#-have the chance to explain their own ideas and defend their own viewpoint

[gamercock]

while i agree that twitter users are massively irritating, it's really funny watching people go so far as to say that tumblr users are less so, or even not annoying whatsoever. idk what site YOU'RE using but it's definitely not tunglr dot hell

#the cost to benefit ratio is much better here imo but don't get me wrong the cost is identical #every time one of my posts gets 500+ notes there's a minimum of 3 clowns in the notes misinterpreting my every word so they- #-have the chance to explain their own ideas and defend their own viewpoint #which is fine!! everyone SHOULD feel free to share their ideas and views #but that doesnt change that it's a) annoying as fuck for the op and theyre absolutely allowed to be annoyed about it #and b) something that both tumblr and twitter have in common #no one has any reading comprehension anywhere it's an occupational hazard of social media in general

[corseque]

This is very SPOILERY Dragon Age meta that is exploring a possibility that I was thinking about a few months ago, and only found in my drafts now. I think that there are still Reveals that are yet to come about Solas because he’s still suggesting that you’ll have “questions” for him, and there are a few possibilities of what those reveals could be, and this is one of the more likely possibilities.

This depends on the theory that Solas was originally a spirit, so if you don’t agree with that theory this won’t have legs for you, but maybe you’ll find it interesting.

So given established lore, if you draw a Wisdom spirit from the deepest Fade and you bind that spirit and charge it with something opposed to its nature/original purpose—fighting, as extremely clearly defined specifically in Solas’ personal quest  —

 (or “it started with a war,” as Solas describes while grimacing in Trespasser, and also “he did not want a body, but she asked him to come. He wanted to give wisdom, not orders”) 

 — that is exactly how you corrupt a wisdom spirit into (specifically) a pride demon.

So if that’s the case, and if Solas was originally a wisdom spirit

—then we are being told very clearly that Solas was actually “corrupted” into a demon thousands and thousands of years ago.

If he ever started as a Wisdom spirit, a theory that is extremely cemented to me after hard revisiting his content the past few weeks, then Solas, if those other banter comments also apply to him, must have been technically “corrupted” into Pride, ever since the war in which he was bound to fight. With the story we know, and what we know about spirits, it would be more technically accurate to call Solas a demon. And then, when he “broke the binding” of the vallaslin, and was able to become “himself again” perhaps he found some equilibrium, but he also seemed to have been changed. “He calls himself Pride.”

This explains several strange things about his character and his viewpoints, especially if we consider what we also know about the established intended canon of Compassion/Despair and Justice/Vengeance as well.

—why he gets absolutely the most incensed compared to anything else by one of his oldest friends also being drawn forth, bound, and corrupted specifically (and almost strangely specifically) by orders to kill.

—why that is what Patrick Weekes chose to explore for his personal quest, because it is ACTUALLY telling you about Solas himself in a way that is extremely illustrative

—Solas’ personal quest is ACTUALLY personal, it’s the most personal it could be, because it’s about him

— “You summoned that demon! except it was a spirit of wisdom at the time! You made it kill! You twisted it against its purpose!!”

— he never wants that to happen to any spirit ever again (the way it happened to him) 

— In my collection I made when finding all the times Solas yells, for the “solas yelling for 10 minutes” post I did, by far the MOST ANGRY and UPSET he gets is during his personal quest. This is personal for him, this isn’t the way he yells when he is defending someone else. And the way that he immediately wants revenge by burning them alive! It’s about him and what happened to him!

— why when Patrick Weekes was writing Cole’s personal quest, the original idea was for him to choose between being a Spirit and a Demon (not a spirit and human), because that would cover a lot of ground for Solas too

—why Solas is very nearly as incensed by the Grey Warden’s plan to corrupt an army of demons

—why he, when walking through the lair of an enormously fat, powerful fear demon, has an extremely mild and calm aura

—why he is so obsessed with learning and wisdom and finding out knowledge, but also mentions pride about as much

—the hint with Abelas/Sorrow about how the ancient elves would change their names through traumatic events

—why Solas is SO opposed to bindings in any way, shape or form, and is driven single-mindedly to set spirits and elves free every chance he gets

— why Solas had so much insight for Cole about what it means to choose not to be a demon.

— why Solas can appear as a giant demon wolf with multiple eyes, but also a nice spirit wolf with two eyes

— why in Tevinter Nights, the Dread Wolf’s 6 eyes were described specifically as being like a pride demon’s 6 eyes.

— why the “tiny scar” on Solas’ face was mentioned specifically in Tevinter Nights, because “it left a scar when he burned her off his face” and that detail is still important and still going to reveal perhaps, that he was bound into a demon

— why Mythal would apologize to Solas in the stinger after-credits scene. She corrupted him all those years ago!

— Why Solas has that very specific viewpoint on spirits vs demons, and how it’s your expectations that affect the spirit. And how the player’s pov of Solas could change him into a demon, just like Solas describes happens to spirits. If you expect a spirit to be a demon, it will adapt, he says. Or they could become fast friends. The exact same thing happens with Solas.

It’s also a very BioWare thing to do. To find out that this character has been technically a “demon” the entire time. It would make some people think “welp, time to kill.” While those who like him could be like “well, what does that mean exactly? Isn’t he his own person? Hasn’t he become a complex person?” and would make others think “how could we ever trust anything he says or does?” It’s just, I feel, a likely gray area Bioware place they could take it. I feel like there MUST be a reveal for this character still waiting in the wings, and this could be what it is. It could be several things, though, or the details could be different. If he “took a body” it could give it different nuance.

Thinking about it in this way actually clears up a lot of the lingering details that sort of have been hanging for me for several years, especially about why his extremely specific personal quest is the way it is, and I think it’s where they’re going. 

#Dragon Age #Inquisition spoilers #Trespasser DLC #DA4 #Solas #DA4 speculation

[defyances]

𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐒 𝐎𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐑 𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐀

( where yugen is so incredibly obsessed with this woman that she decides to rant about her )

on: her followers

to start us off, we’ll discuss the main event of irelia’s performance: her relationship with blossoming blade. they are very close with each other, and it can be interpreted as platonic or romantic. i only say this because they establish their relationship as teacher/student, a platonic/familial bond that can be as powerful as a romantic one. but i also digress, given the affectionate remarks they give each other such as:

irelia: i wish i could give you silks, but i must give you steel. blossoming blade: stay by my side. i cannot ask for more.

irelia: ionians into formation! blossoming blade: i’d follow you to the black heart of noxus itself.

&& there is so much more. blossoming blade is not confident in her ability to fight, much like irelia && her lack of confidence in her ability to lead, which might explain why irelia has some sort of connection to her. she sees her as a mirror of herself, and much like she needed at one point, blossoming blade needs someone to support her. so, she will give that plus much more. lastly, irelia’s reaction upon blossoming blade’s death; it is simply undeniable that they love each other.

i am a bit bothered by the lack of interactions between irelia && zinneia since it is implied that zinneia is her former mentor:

irelia: zinneia, you are a master at your craft. zinneia: and fate has sent you to give my craft purpose.

irelia: as a child, i watched you dance at the placidium every spring. zinneia: it was your bravery that brought me to the fight.

i was hoping to have more information on their relationship && the sort of impact zinneia had on irelia, but at the same time, it gives me the opportunity to fill in the gaps! given zinneia’s interactions with the rest of irelia’s followers, she is an elder ( we will not talk about how that isn’t reflected in her card art ) who leads the dance program at the placidium. while irelia’s o’ma taught her how to dance, zinneia perfected it with her lessons, and she became the mother/grandmother figure in her life once all her family members passed away. it assures me that irelia did have a support system ( even if a part of her might disagree. ) i will do a more thorough ( * headcanon based ) look at their relationship in another post.

when irelia said she is a warm && caring person, she really meant it. she cares a great deal for her followers as shown:

coastal defender: generations tended this land. i cannot leave. irelia: we must retreat for now, but i promise we’ll return.

ribbon dancer: stand behind me! they won’t hurt you. irelia: if they hurt you, i’d never forgive myself.

fighting for your freedom is important, yes but not so recklessly. if a battle isn’t turning out in their favor, irelia would rather retreat and keep her followers safe rather than dying in vain. her tone is mother-like, always worrying for them even though they are confident and determined to protect their home, and at their deaths, she is torn apart. she is both grateful ( ‘ your sacrifice mattered ’ ) && heartbroken ( ‘ so young . . . ’ ), which is why i emphasize her hesitance to believe in herself as a leader. she is responsible for their lives and for each that falls, she fails. she cannot fail them ( something she says herself upon the death of her card ); her people deserve to live to see the day of bittersweet victory.

on: noxus

as expected, irelia harbors a lot of hate towards them, and rightfully so. however, what i want to talk about is riot confirming my assumption on how deep this hate runs.

imperial demolitionist: for the empire. irelia: so young, already so wicked.

imperial demolitionist: remember the objectives. irelia: ‘murder the innocent’ and ‘destroy their homes’?

for those who don’t know, imperial demolitionist is a child. irelia is speaking to a child and not in a tone you would expect an adult would talk to a child ( especially one who was brainwashed to commit awful atrocities. ) this confirmed my headcanon of irelia’s white && black mentality: no matter who you are or how you came to be, if you are noxian, she will kill you. she will refuse to see you as anything but a tyrant, and she will continue to allow this hate to fester and dehumanize noxus as a whole. she won’t even refer to them by name! she has her reasons, given how much they have taken away from her, but it doesn’t make it right. as we all know, noxus has slaves, ranging from adult to children, and will send them to war whether they volunteered or not. they have to act in order to survive, but irelia can’t see that they’re trying to live; she sees them trying to kill her home, so in turn, she’ll kill them. && that is a flaw i will cover more on in another post.

even though the faith in herself wavers, the passion to protect ionia doesn’t with how confident she talks back to the noxians. she threatens them, promises to kill them, even when faced with their technology and their machinery. she has that much faith in her people and the land, and it’s admirable. no wonder why people follow her.

on: shurima

i never expected interactions between irelia and the shurimans ( especially with azir and nasus ), but it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless! azir && irelia are two fierce leaders, fighting tooth and nail to secure the safety of their homes; however, the difference between their idea of leading is evident within their interactions.

azir: a leader must see victory beyond each loss. irelia: my heart weeps for every fallen ally.

azir: war is an instrument that can make or destroy its leaders. irelia: instruments create beauty; war ends it.

from my perspective, azir isn’t so affected by the loss of lives in the war like irelia is ( it could be because he’s become desensitized after leading for so long or he truly doesn’t care ), and i could be wrong as i am not so familiar with azir. but with irelia, it is obvious that she is very sensitive towards the death of her people. whether they were close to her or not, as far as she knows, they were innocent souls, and they were dragged into this war unprepared. so many lives lost, so many deaths unjustified — it is simply unfair to her people, who have done nothing wrong. && no matter how many times she’s seen a body belonging to the first lands, it never hurts any less. she’s been able to mask that pain over the years she’s grown, but she still grieves, and it can be seen/heard whenever someone very close to her dies.

another difference i like to point out between the two leaders is their viewpoints on war: azir sees war almost like survival of the fittest. in the second quote, war is a way to create leaders, the best of the best while irelia sees it as destroying the beauty of life. war is a massacre, no matter which side wins, && even though she also strives for victory, she will only remember it as the day that peace died.

nasus: sorrow weighs upon you, but death could bring you peace. irelia: not yet, curator. i am far from done.

this made me snort because it’s basically nasus telling irelia, “k’ing yourself would make you feel better,” but i’m sure it isn’t meant to sound that way. rather, he understands her grief && how badly it is affecting her, so he is “testing” her will to see how strong it really is. if she had the opportunity, would she die && end her suffering there, or would she continue to preserve despite the agony she holds in her heart? irelia answers almost incredulously; if she dies now, ends her suffering now, who will lead her people to victory? certainly not anyone she knows/trusts. so, she cannot die. she will not die, not until she knows that her home is safe. ( this plays a bit into my headcanon that irelia doesn’t really fear death since she anticipates the day of reuniting with her family && ending her torment. )

there isn’t much to say about her interactions with the soothsayer && the voice of the risen other than she’s grateful for their aid in these trying times.

on: miscellaneous champs

lastly, i’ll be touching upon her interactions with in-game characters — which, suffice to say, isn’t a whole lot. it’s a bit disappointing. i expected more interactions with shen, karma, riven, and zed; i expected interactions with yasuo, yone, and lulu ( who is apparently in ionia?? ) but unfortunately, we weren’t given that. but i won’t say i’m heavily disappointed either because we did get some interactions with ionian && noxian champs plus extra.

shen: the balance requires a watchful eye. irelia: ionia needs brave hearts and able hands, too.

much like akali, irelia does not believe in waiting around && letting the land fight on its own. she even questions shen’s philosophy because of the slaughter that happened, which makes me theorize her faith in the spirit; clearly, she still believes in it but not so deeply like shen and the elders.

karma: ionia speaks through me. irelia: then tell me when this bloody fight will end?

she even questions the spirit of ionia itself, in a tone that is tired and desperate to end this terror. she is a lot nicer to karma in lor than lol, which confirms my suspicion that while irelia was initially frustrated with karma’s ( lack of ) action, she has come to understand her reasoning through the years that they’ve worked together.

zed: pledge yourself to the shadows. irelia: noxian tyranny has already forged our bond.

riven: [ dies ] irelia: irredeemable.

isn’t it crazy how irelia would rather side with the “evil” shadow master rather than the former noxian? of course, zed isn’t all bad, and riven isn’t all good, but it just further proves how she doesn’t treat noxians as humans at all; however, i would also like to point out her interaction with riven is if she’s against her. irelia would perhaps give her a chance if her quote in-game with her proves anything: “you want redemption? join me, and kill your masters!”

&& i’m still flabbergasted by her interaction with zed. she might not entirely agree with him, but she’ll work with him without hesitance. after all, they do share the philosophy of killing all noxians.

irelia: join us, prince jarvan. dance by our side. jarvan: i’m afraid i was born with two left feet. it’s a lightshield thing…

jarvan: noxus will pay for what they did to your people. irelia: yes, demacian prince. we will see to that.

so not only does she have shurima’s support but also demacia’s! a bit shocking since demacia is antimage and irelia is technically a mage, but i am glad to see that she and jarvan are on good terms.

irelia: my family...h-have you seen them? kindred: drifting between innocence and consequence.

STOP!! astra and i literally discussed this: if irelia was given the chance to talk to kindred, she would most certainly ask for her family && question why she was spared. of course, kindred would answer ominously, which in this interaction, makes me curious. between innocence and consequence? what do they mean? is her family stuck in limbo? are they currently being judged based on irelia’s actions in life? or are they waiting for irelia to join them? perhaps we’ll never know.

#˗ˏˋ⠀ 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧. ›› the day you died，you did not tell your body. #/ wow this is the most i've written for a character ever #/ three hours n i was just rambling nonsense at the end sfjdhsb

[alyblacklist]

Do you think the keenler storyline is going anywhere? I used to be sure that it was, I mean why else would they have them kiss and have sex. However now that Liz has been gone for five episodes and she is being quite mean to Ressler (the whole pointing a gun to his head and pretty much telling Cooper about them sleeping together) I feel like a relationship between them will never happen and the writers are just trying to make us forget or dislike Keenler.

Ok, on to the asks about Ressler/Keenler in 8x09 where things were said, but only through contact lenses and earpieces. Thoughts below the jump, because it’s a long post that will (hopefully) address all of these at least in part.

I do think it was Liz speaking through the doppelganger at all relevant times. They haven’t given me a reason not to think that at this point. She knew things only Liz could know. So I assume (unless we get new info) that everything Mia Collins said to Ressler was actually Liz telling her what to say to him (and likewise to Aram and Cooper). I did express to BlacklistRoom on Twitter that they were evil for having faux-Liz call Ressler “Donald” on screen before real Liz does. And at first, I thought maybe that was some sort of signal to Ressler that things were amiss because real Liz wouldn’t do that, but in the end I think it was just the writers playing their usual games. NOT because they hate Keenler or Keenler fans (they’re the ones who made Keenler canon, for God’s sake), but just because they love to toy with fan emotion. They give you a Wing Yee birthday nugget one ep, they throw in a loose “Donald” in another from the lips of a faux-Liz. They know exactly the emotional points to hit if they’re paying attention to social media (and they certainly are, to a point). 

I did catch that accurate observation on Twitter that the doppelganger did not have her finger on the trigger while pointing the gun at Ressler’s head. I’d like to think the actress and crew are careful enough to catch such things as her finger was nowhere near that trigger (and she knew how to shoot that unnamed FBI agent during the chase) so I hope that was purposeful, perhaps as a small signal to the audience that Liz never really intended to hurt Ressler, even though he of course couldn’t see what was going on behind his head. A nod, at least, to the idea that Liz doesn’t really mean to hurt him.

Before I get too much deeper into my personal impressions of the scene, I want to specifically address the anon who wonders if she’s alone in finding it hard to root for Liz or Keenler in all this.

Of course you’re not.

Darker Liz isn’t for everyone. If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me Ressler deserves better than Liz over the past five years, I’d be able to buy you dinner (even at NYC prices). Never mind how many have abandoned the ship over that exact issue or related issues over the seasons. But I also think you know that I don’t share your viewpoint. Maybe that’s why you send me asks, or maybe you’re just using my inbox as an outlet to find those who agree with you. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter (although I admit if it’s the latter, publishing your thoughts on your OWN page rather than in my inbox might be preferable because as much as I enjoy asks to a point, I’m a little tired of ship hand-holding asks. I like what I like and trying to explain it or defend it gets a little tiring.)

All I can say is after five years of deep investment in this fandom and these characters, it takes a LOT more than an absent female lead and a bumpy episode to capsize my ship and send me into the pit of despair. For me, this is the expected price we pay for the ship being canon now versus only at the very end of the show. The Blacklist has never been about showing smooth, happy, relationships. Angst, drama, tension is the name of the game. You have to decide for yourself whether you can stomach that on a week to week basis and especially this season because they warned us – “good AND difficult” – difficult!  - for Keenler. I reconcile the conflict by the fact that Ressler still WANTS Liz and BELIEVES in Liz despite her flaws and if he does, then so do I. The man has some blinders when it comes to Liz, certainly, but not the sort that they love to mock him for on screen. He’s not thinking solely with his male parts brain, he’s thinking with his actual, in his head brain and he LOVES this woman despite her crazy and I love that about him. He’s smarter than most people give him credit for. And I am also of the view that real life and ships do not need to be equivalents. You can love two flawed fictional TV characters without being a person who wants to see those things manifest in real life. (I also ship Wanda and Vision for the record).

So I think we can all agree that this episode – and Liz’s absence generally – has been more “difficult” than good Keenler-wise. Ressler himself told us in those early episodes before her departure that it’s different if you see her, and it certainly is. We’ve been robbed of Liz’s thoughts and emotions entirely ever since she last graced our screen in Ep. 8x04. (And of Ressler’s reaction to said departure, for the most part). At the same time, I think Liz recognizes that too as she hasn’t to our knowledge directly engaged with Cooper, Aram OR Ressler since she left except through surrogates. Purposeful choices on the part of the diabolical writers.

As I said in my earlier ask response tonight, I remain of the view that Liz is in control of her actions and is doing her own risk/benefit assessment in how she responds to the situations she finds herself in. 

I do NOT think that means she has lost all emotion or feeling for Cooper, Aram OR Ressler, but as she explained to Townsend, “Reddington has an army on both sides of the law. I can’t do this alone. I need a partner.” She believes that the Task Force – all of them – are tied to Reddington in their own way, including Ressler, and she doesn’t expect them to violate those arrangements/principles for her. She’s moving outside the boundaries of those relationships to shed light on the secrets that she believes are being kept. Did she involve them this week?  Yes, but I think only because Townsend forced her hand on dealing with his sister. I doubt she would’ve sent her double to the Post Office otherwise. (I totally agree that the Post Office needs better security protocols btw – the idea that Liz can continually breach their defenses has become absolutely laughable at this point).

But, part of that is personal relationships.  She needed Ressler to give her the door codes and he did. Why? Not because he’s her patsy or her f--- boy or whatever derogatory term someone wants to slap on him (!), but because he loves her, flaws and all. The whole letting her go/letting him go thing has always had double meaning, back to S2. 

Cyranoid Liz: You should let me go. Ressler: Those days are over. Cyranoid Liz: Why? Nothing’s changed.

Has nothing changed? He let her go in S2 and then she shot Tom Connolly and he beat himself up over it. Then, the “I can’t let her go” (Ressler pointing the gun in S3 outside the Russian embassy), followed by that car chase and then Red in the next episode, Eli Matchett:

Red: Ressler is a law-enforcement robot. The FBI winds him up– Liz: That’s not true. He’s a person. He’s a good person. Red: Look at me. You need to let that go, Lizzy. I have survived for a very long time now, and I assure you, I didn’t do it by relying on the goodness in people.

I’d submit it has and it hasn’t. All these seasons later, she is once again having a hard time letting him go and so is he (with respect to her).

Ressler: Why’d you call? Liz: I don’t know. I guess– because every time we say goodbye, I’m afraid we might actually mean it.

Both with eyes open wider this time and yet, still wanting the peaceful night, free of all the distractions. 

Yes, he let Liz’s double go physically without much protest. Emotionally? He hasn’t let go of Liz. Not one bit. And Liz saw that, through her cyranoid. He’s still on her side. He still wants to believe in her, no matter what she’s putting him through (and poor Ressler, he’s really enduring a lot – though I hope the tide will turn on that at some point).  He had no reason to open that door, and yet – he did. He doesn’t want that one night to be just ONE night and deep down, I don’t think she does either.

“I won’t give up on you.” 

He hasn’t, yet. “But I still need to do my job, Keen.” She better not push him too far because the day he does is the day I worry. He’s desperate not to repeat the mistakes of the past, he’s desperate to trust her this time. Not because he’s thinking with his small man-part-brain, but with his HEART. He loves her. He’ll do anything he can for her within the limits of his conscience. They are each others’ second chance.

I don’t view Keenler or Ressler’s feelings for Liz or Liz’s manipulations of Ressler as fatal to the ship because I accept that this whole thing – Liz’s mission – is the battle for her soul  that the writers have teased for years . Which side will win? Hopefully the right one. The hopeful one. The one that makes second chances happen.

Cheers.

#keenler #anon #anons

[leutik]

Literature between Political Correctness and Cancel Culture

(Analyzed through Walter Siti, Natalie Wynn and Rick DuFer.)

(buckle up, because if you're gonna read this, it's gonna be long)

«Today is much easier to mistake an author’s personal stances with the content of their works, and then make the author pay for the work’s sins.

Today I look around and I have the sensation that literature is no longer taken seriously: that the way to interpret literature the way I knew it, depth-focused, focused on the power of words to reveal truths otherwise concealed to their own author, is disappearing — substituted by a conception of literature that has to serve a list of good causes.

When some writers of the “neo-effort” (Siti’s neologism) insist on the fact that words are decisive, and that it’d be urgent to change the words in order to change reality, I’m suddenly reminded of those old Marxist authors: they explained that the structure, which is what lays under society, determines what lays upon it, that is words and ideology. Thus, changing the name of something doesn’t change the thing the word stands for at all.

Literature has been considered throughout time the most indicated form to make resurface the part of ourselves — often, the least pleasant — that we’ve exiled in the shadows of our subconscious: a process that often happens without the author’s acknowledgement of it.

The authors of the neo-effort believe they have the duty to spread their ideas to the largest possible number of people and that, in order to do so, they have to simplify as much as they can what they write, sacrificing on the altar of efficiency the style, considered useless. The aim is to do good, namely gain an effect, what does it matter if it’s good or bad literature? Literature used to “take root”, to influence; put at the service of pre-established ideas, and not to venture into the discovery of something we don’t know yet. This way, it gains an ancillary role. And it’s a humiliation of literature — which can truly be useful, instead, only then it hurts.

Sartre’s “Nausea” doesn’t align with his political stances. For Sartre, the effort was the individual reflection of a society in perennial revolution, substantially a school of liberty, whilst for neo-effort the role of literature is to reassure.

Their attitude, their rejection of style, their low consideration of literature, tends to isolate the good writers out there, marginalizing them in a niche that looks like a convention of obsessed aesthetes in the public’s eyes.

I see it in the writing courses I teach: more and more young people whose main interest isn’t to write to learn something about themselves or society, but it’s to write to gain the title of writer and place themselves on the market, detecting the most profitable sector at the moment, which might be fantasy, crime, or effort-centred writing: it doesn’t matter, what matters is for it to be trending and to be reassuring to the reader, in a more and more therapeutic conception of writing.

Literature isn’t immediately therapeutic, this is the difference. When “The Sorrows of Young Werther” was published, copies of this book were burnt, because of the suicides it inspired. Today we read it at school. How much time has passed? I don’t refuse knowledge’s benefit, I refuse that knowledge can benefit instantly, painlessly. When I went to a psychoanalyst to face my neurosis, the psychoanalyst made me suffer for months, and only after I took benefit from it. What would have happened if they had welcomed me with a pat on the back and said “Don’t worry, stop thinking and go help African children”. Probably I would have had an immediate benefit, but all my neurosis would have stayed there, intact.

The Literature I talked to you about is depth-centred, and literature hasn’t always existed: thus it can disappear, sink for many years. Who said that it’ll survive, despite everything?

In Pasolini’s trial he was acquitted because Ungaretti was called to testify. He wrote a letter where he wrote that the formal value of Pasolini’s work turned into literature even those scenes that the prosecution deemed obscene. Law couldn’t do anything but recognize the critical judgement and welcome it. Web’s tribunal, today, would have burned Pasolini at the stake, and Ungaretti with him.» (via Walter Siti’s interview with the Huffingtonpost)

In other words, we can summarize Siti’s view with the sentence «novels aren’t the cure to the world’s evils.» They aren’t, because they don’t have the power to be, and more so they aren’t even supposed to be: writing is a form of art, and art has primarily an end in itself. Literature isn’t a political marketplace, even if it can be used to be — it’s not a crime to turn it into one, but by doing so, one loses Literature’s nature. By doing so, the harm could be mistake literature’s primary aim (that is being a form of art, that is style, that is the pursuit of the truth) with what they turned literature into: a marketplace to defend the author’s ideology.

Siti’s powerful image of the Web’s tribunal, the Web’s court finds an echo in Natalie Wynn video Canceling: in a sense, what Siti calls “neo-effort writers” fall under the same line of thoughts of Cancel Culture perpetrators.

«Like the guillotine, [cancelling] can become a sadistic entertainment spectacle.

Now there's a version of this conversation that's already been had to death, and it goes like this: On the one side are a bunch of male comedians who constantly bitch about how Cancel Culture is out of control, you can't joke about anything anymore without these Millennial jackals trying to get you in trouble.

And the other side is mostly progressive think-piece authors who argue that there's no such thing as cancel culture, it's just that powerful people are finally being held accountable for their actions and they can't fucking handle it, so they go around bitching about cancel culture.

Now unfortunately, neither of those viewpoints is quite as correct as some people might hope.

What Cancel Culture does, [is to] take one story and transform it into a significantly different story.

Presumption of Guilt

There's a traditional understanding of justice according to which, before you condemn or punish a person, you hear the accuser's side of the story and the accused's side of the story. You allow both sides to present evidence and only after everyone involved has had a chance to make their case do you pass judgment and punish the convict.

But cancelling does not abide by the law. Cancelling is a form of vigilante mob justice. And a lot of times, an accusation is proof enough.

Abstraction

Abstraction replaces the specific, concrete details of a claim with a more generic statement.

Essentialism

Essentialism is when we go from criticizing a person's actions to criticizing the person themselves. We're not just saying they did bad things. We’re saying they’re a bad person.

Pseudo-Moralism or Pseudo-Intellectualism

Moralism or intellectualism provide a phony pretext for the call-out. You can pretend you just want an apology; you can pretend you're just a “concerned citizen” who wants the person to improve. You can pretend you're simply offering up criticism, when what you're really doing is attacking a person's career and reputation out of spite, envy, revenge.

No Forgiveness

Cancelers will often dismiss an apology as insincere, no matter how convincingly written or delivered. And of course, an insincere apology is further proof of what a Machiavellian psychopath you really are.

Now sometimes, a good apology will calm things down for a while. But the next time there's a scandal, the original accusation will be raised again as if you never apologized.

The Transitive Property of Cancellation

Cancellation is infectious. If you associate with a cancelled person, the cancellation rubs off. It's like gonorrhoea, except doxycycline won't save you this time sweetie.» (via Natalie Wynn's Canceling video transcript)

Natalie Wynn describes and formalizes the phenomenon of Cancel Culture in those steps:

I only listen to the presumed victim,

I abstract the context to a vague idea,

I equate the action to the actor’s very essence (as if such thing even existed),

I say I’m acting in favour of morals or truth,

I accuse every person the presumed abuser ever came in contact with to be an abuser as well,

and I either reject every form of apology at the moment, or bring up the issue as if no apology was ever made at their first misstep.

Now, in this post I’m not trying to perpetrate any concept of charity, not only because it’s an attitude that takes a lot of work to inherit, but also because the negative aspects that might bring one to be a neo-effort writer or a Cancel Culture perpetrator are part of the very human nature (or, very stupidly, they wouldn’t be humans.)

The self-evidence rises here: those negative parts of human nature can be channelled everywhere, and literature or any other form of art is the healthiest way to do so: you’re not going to get rid of your anger, or your sadness — the best thing you can do is learn to control it and suppress it, but how is it going to work in the long run? It’s going to act past your good judgement, or even cloud your good judgement, clouding it into thinking you’re defending some pseudo-moralism or pseudo-intellectualism, when what you’ll be doing is just venting on someone else.

This is one way to see it: when one forgets what proper thinking is and falls into those quick and gut-feeling “thoughts”. Or one could even take advantage of this Cancel Culture, of this ground of poor thinking to instrumentalize this lack of critical judgement to attack someone else.

On instrumentalization and its dangers, Rick DuFer says:

«Political correctness works when its aim is to protect the weak from abusers, but when it favours every little susceptible sensitivity it turns dangerous.» (via Rick DuFer’s podcast DailyCogito)

Rick DuFer talks about a shared responsibility that happens during offence: shared between the offender and the offended. The problem with offence, as opposed to harm, is that it isn’t quantifiable, so the offender is guilty in regard to their intentions, and the offended is guilty in regard to the instrumentalization they can enact with the situation.

And again we find “instrumentalization”: if one destroys my property, I can quantify the damage, but if one insults me, how can I quantify how offended I truly am? This is when I can twist one person’s words and turn them into an offender, this is when sensitivity becomes a mask and no longer a virtue (or, for the toxic masculinity’s thought, a vice.)

Now, to wrap things up:

These people take the (s)word of this school of thought (which some other dichotomists may, generalizing it, call it “Strong Thought” or “Unique Thought”), perhaps without even knowing there’s an alternative, while there are multiple, actually: as many as the human beings right now populating Earth.

They may do it out of a dualistic and very childish view of society — divided into good and bad people. And if that’s your view of life, you’re not gonna want to be associated with who others deem as bad, following a gut feeling and nothing more. (And I say “gut feeling” to avoid saying “very poor thinking”, because that’s what absolutization, essentialism, and the rest is.)

Your thoughts aren’t really yours, and you become a vessel for something that belongs to someone else, someone who crafted those thoughts in a very different context, or with instrumentalization in mind. You don’t want to risk criticizing those thoughts because you don’t want to be isolated, or because you’re a sane person who deems it important to act rightfully (even if you’re letting others tell you what “right” is.)

And for how problematic moral relativism is, it surely is better than any form of absolutization: better than rejecting your status as “sapiens” and stopping thinking altogether, passively accepting what others taught you to be right and wrong, maybe even out of fear, or a stupid rush for glory and sympathy.

So I wouldn’t call this moral relativism, strictly, but rather moral subjectivism, or context-centred morality. A morality in which people still have a brain to separate a piece of work from an author’s ideology (against essentialism) and to still take into account the context in which an action was performed (against abstraction). A morality in which “good” and “wrong” aren’t seen in black and whites, but rather into lighter and darker greys; a morality which systematic use can slowly dress into the habit of charity towards one another, into kind teaching rather than cruel instrumentalization.

And is it really utopistic, is it really unfeasible, if we’re not falsely annihilating the suffering and the negative parts of the Human Experience?

This whole discourse could be turned into a political marketplace of rights and lefts, of conservatives and progressivists — but my aim here is much smaller (or bigger, if one is a humanist): to make the reader question their critical thinking, and just that.

(We love some self-doubt.)

I believe moral acts aren’t supposed to be a badge to share on one’s vest — to renew your status as “approachable person” (as if saying “don’t worry, you can talk to me, you’re not going to be deemed as bad for it”) or to be praised for. Moral acts are the only acts that raise humans from other species, the acts where the “sapiens” shows its evolution, the acts where our negative aspects aren’t hidden but channelled into arts, without the fear that someone might call us bad for it. (Immoral, even, whilst acting in the most moral way possible, exorcising those negative parts of us in the least harmful way possible.)

So, at the end of this unnecessary rant, my question is: is it better to be a minion in a culture where you have to watch your mouth, as if it wasn’t yours, or to be a person who’s engaged in researching how right and wrong truly manifest?

#the first and last sources are in italian #i did my best translating them #rant #philosophy #literature #cancel culture #cancelled #politically correct #controversial #opinion #thoughts #very open to discuss civilly

[paceypeternathanslawyer]

Dawson being an insufferable, evil prick in Dawson’s Creek 3x03 (None Of The Above)

1. We open with a scene of Dawson and Eve in his bedroom 

Dawson: First things first. Movie night we're supposed to watch movies.

Eve: I prefer TV.

We have painfully been forced to watch Dawson watch movies and not just any movies... the movies HE wants to watch for the past two seasons. One movie night when someone else chooses what to watch and Dawson can’t imagine that they would do something that he “King Dawson” wouldn’t want to do. He then proceeds to be an insufferable snob and turn up his nose at her choice of TV show and TV shows in general. What else is new?

2. One of the reasons he hates Felicity is because she’s “chatty?” Fuck you Dawson! That toxic viewpoint that a boy who’s chatty, i.e. Dawson, is gregarious and charming, but a girl who’s chatty is a handful who should shunned by any self respecting man.

3. Dawson: You know, which is, in general, my complaint about television. It's not reality, it's perfection. I mean, nobody ever blows it or gets tested in any real way or ever makes the wrong choice or bad choice or...

I see why Dawson doesn’t like TV now.... he’s never seen a TV show. Seriously though, I have never seen a show where the characters are “perfect” and “never make bad or wrong choices” that show literally does not exist. 

4. Dawson brings the PSAT test answers to the whole group and proceeds to dangle it in front of them, even going so far as to encourage them to take advantage of it. He tempts Joey by mentioning how doing well in the PSATs would help her get a scholarship and then later in that episode he gets all mad at Eve for quote un quote tempting him when he himself was doing the same thing to his “friends.” What a fucking hypocrite. But what else is new?

(Little side note. When they have to leave the classroom and leave the PSAT test results on the table.. they come back and we see Dawson looking under the table. That makes me laugh every time. As if the test results just walked off the desk by itself. It either walked off the desk or someone took it. Either way, your not gonna find it under the desk 😂😂 )

5. Eve: It didn't disappear, Dawson. Somebody took it. 

Dawson: How do you know that?

Again... Dawson... you carefully left it lying there in the middle of a table. Of course it was taken, there’s no other option.

6.  Dawson: Whoever stole the test give it back. 

Jen: Well, wasn't it already stolen, Dawson?

Jen makes an amazing point. Dawson expects everyone to follow his idea of morality and follow his every command when he himself touted around a stolen test and tempted everyone with it, insinuating that it should be used. But now when it’s taken from him, suddenly his strong moral code can not allow them to have it.

7.  Dawson: She didn't tell me to do anything with that test. 

Joey: I bet when she offered you that test, you didn't fire one ethical comment her way, did you? It's just your friends who have to sit here and-- and suffer through the Dawson Leery morality play.

Another good point. Any chance Dawson can have to make himself feel morally superior to his “friends.” You know what? He probably brought that test to them in the hopes that someone would steal just so he could psychologically abuse them and make them feel like trash.

8.   Dawson: Here's the deal: I'm gonna leave my locker unlocked. Whoever has the test will put it inside by 5:30 today.

 Pacey: Oh, come on, Dawson. The petty thief among us already left the crime scene. They're not gonna return that thing now. What's the incentive? 

Dawson: To do the right thing.

To do the right thing?!?! So the right thing is to give a test to Dawson and Dawson alone with no idea what he’s gonna do with it? He could use it for his own self alone. How is that morally right? Because Dawson said so? And Dawson is surely the arbiter and decider of everything that is or is not morally right. Technically the right thing to do is for the thief to keep it and then burn it... right Dawson? 

9. Eve makes one comment about how one of his friends probably stole it and Dawson immediately thinks of Pacey. Truly showing what a horrible friend he is and how little he really knows about Pacey. Pacey is not the kind of person who would cheat on a test. He has not written one word on tests, he has even blatantly fallen asleep in class during tests. He just truly does not care enough to cheat and anyone who knows Pacey even the slightest, would know that.

10.  Friends, huh? Friends, you know, that word "friends"... it's an interesting word. It implies that you would actually believe your friend when he's telling you something. 

Dawson: When he tells me the truth. 

I hate that line by Dawson because in it he has shown his hands and put Pacey in a position where, no matter what Pacey says, Dawson’s not gonna believe him. Pacey said himself that he didn’t take it and Dawson says he’ll believe him when he tells the truth. Dawson has made up his mind and nothing Pacey says to defend himself is gonna change that.

Pacey: When he's tell-- ha ha! You want to know what I find so very amusing about this situation? I mean, what i think is so really, really rich about all this is that you yourself were capable of stealing this test. All right, you thought about it. You didn't throw that test away. You didn't give it back to Eve. You brought the test to us!

Dawson: No. I wanted to consult the people I trusted to determine what the best thing was to do. I never thought that anyone would be so weak or so self motivated to actually swipe it. (Trust? Hmmm his idea of trust and mine are two totally different things... but okay then, spew your bullshit if you want Dawson. Also weak and self motivated? Fuck you Dawson! You know nothing about Pacey)

Pacey: Weak and self-motivated, huh? Now, which one of those 2 colorful adjectives would I be? 

Dawson: You are who you are, Pacey.

Pacey: Yes, I am, Dawson. And so are you. You, Dawson Leery, are a self-righteous son of a bitch who cares more about his rose-colored defunct 1950s belief system than the people who fail to live up to it, huh? (👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 You tell him King Pacey)

Dawson: Interesting choice of words, coming from a smug, cold-hearted son of a bitch who just dumped his girlfriend after she begged him-- pleaded for an ounce sympathy! (SMUG?! COLD HEARTED?! Andie cheated on him!! Fuck you Dawson. Isn’t a friend supposed to support his friend? This makes me think the part in S6 where Dawson says that even before the whole Pacey/Joey/Dawson drama that he realized that Pacey hadn’t wanted to be his friend for a long time. Funny because I seem to recall Dawson being a horrible and vile “friend” to Pacey for seasons and seasons before Joey and Pacey began a relationship)

Pacey: At least I didn't send her father to prison. (Number 1, I don’t think this was out of line. I’d like Dawson to explain to me how this factually inaccurate)

Dawson: No. You just made her go crazy. (This is way out of line on so many levels and Dawson wasn’t even drunk. Even if what Pacey said was out of line... number 1, Dawson started it by calling him a smug and cold hearted son of a bitch for being betrayed by his GF. Number 2, what Pacey said was correct. Number 3, Pacey was drunk. Dawson has 0 excuse. What he said here was evil to Pacey and belittling to Andie and her mental health struggles that have nothing to do with Pacey)

11. Dawson: The only thing I can come up with is you, Eve. You happened to me. You and that stupid test. Look, Eve, I accept my blame in this, but don't even try to tell me that you didn't know what giving me that test would do.

No, Dawson, you do not accept your blame. You never accept your blame in anything. It is not Eve’s fault at all. Yeah, she gave you the test but she did not make you do or say anything you said over the course of this episode. That’s on you. 

#i've been meaning to make a post about dawson in this ep for a while #he is so horrible that it just brings this angry monster out of me #thank you for letting me get on my soap box once again #dawson's creek #dawson's creek rant #anti dawson leery #dawson leery #pacey witter #joey potter #jen lindley

[violethowler]

Death and Separation: Emerging Trends in Pop Culture Franchises

Warning: The following essay contains ending and character death  spoilers for Voltron: Legendary Defender,  How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Game of Thrones, and everything released under the Disney umbrella since January 2017. That includes Marvel, Star Wars, and vanilla Disney movies, both animated and live action. 

I’ve noticed a pattern in the last couple of years of media consumption. 

Since 2017, there has been a string of major releases by major companies or networks that featured story decisions that proved controversial with audiences. Now, such things on their own aren’t really a big deal because for the most part there’s always going to be some fans who aren’t satisfied with how a story turned out, regardless of their reasons. 

But what I’m noticing is that there is a pattern to which elements fans are criticizing and why. 

As I became aware of this trend I started looking back at media released in the last few years and noticing that many of these stories were featuring the same plot elements, whether they worked for the story or not: 

One common point I noticed is how many of these franchises have taken morally complicated characters that were popular with audiences, and permanently killed them off in ways which a lot of people have found narratively unsatisfying: 

In Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, Ben Solo manages to achieve his redemption and turn back to the light after all prior supplementary material showed how Snoke preyed on his feelings of abandonment to groom him into joining the dark side. After being redeemed, his contribution to the story’s climax is being thrown into a pit, where he stays until after Palpatineis defeated, and upon climbing out finds the girl he loves dead. Ben then uses the force to heal Rey and restore her to life, only to immediately kick the bucket himself, after which point the narrative ceases to acknowledge him in any way. 

Loki and his brother Thor reconcile at the end of 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok, only for the film’s post credits scene to herald their encounter with Loki’s former “employer” Thanos. The next time audiences see Loki in the opening minutes of Avengers: Infinity War, he’s strangled to death on-screen by Thanos following a failed assassination attempt before the film’s title card has even appeared. Despite theories that he had faked his death and would return in Avengers: Endgame, the only versions of Loki to appear in the finale of the Infinity Saga are past versions from alternate timelines, with only the characters dusted during Infinity War being brought back to life. 

Gamora escapes from her abusive father figure Thanos in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie and spends subsequent films building a life for herself outside of Thanos’ toxic influence, with the sequel focusing on her repairing her relationship with her sister Nebula. After being captured by Thanos and forced to bring him to the Soul Stone, Thanos flings her off a cliff to her death when he learns that obtaining the Soul Stone will require him to sacrifice someone he loves, and awakens in a pool of water with the stone in his hand. Despite theories she would be brought back to life in Avengers: Endgame, but like Loki, the only versions of Gamora to appear were from alternate timelines that lacked the dead version’s character development.

Black Widow’s defining character trait across the Infinity Saga has been her desire to eliminate “the red in her ledger” to atone for the things she did when the Red Room had raised her to be an assassin. In Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow sacrifices herself to obtain the Soul Stone in the past to give her close friend Clint Barton a second chance to come back from the brutal path of vengeance the death of his family had set him on, in the same way that he had given her a second chance to build a better life for herself when they first met. 

In Voltron: Legendary Defender’s third season, Prince Lotor is introduced as a morally ambiguous figure with unclear motives. When forced on the run by his tyrannical father, he forms an alliance with the Paladins of Voltron and eventually develops a romance with Princess Allura. In the sixth season, Lotor is accused of mass murder of the survivors of Allura’s destroyed planet and their alliance falls apart. Lotor insists that his intentions for peace are genuine, but his efforts to explain himself fall on deaf ears, and after a battle, is left for dead in the Quintessence Field. The second episode of the final seasons fills in the details of his abusive childhood while showing that despite what he’d suffered, he was genuine in his desire for peace. Seasons 6 through 8 are sprinkled with hints that Lotor was innocent of the crimes he was accused of, but despite Season 8 Episode 6 Genesis depicting him being still alive after four years in the Quintessence Field, the audience is treated to an image of his melted corpse four episodes later, while his abusive mother searches alternate realities for a better version of him.

The first seven seasons of Game of Thrones depict Daenerys Targaryen as someone from an abusive family who was nevertheless determined to rise above her turbulent upbringing and make the world a better place. Over the course of the eighth and final season, her new allies disrespect her, her lover repeatedly betrays her trust, and her advisers not only question her mental stability but immediately attempt to undermine her campaign as soon as a male heir to the throne from her bloodline is presented to them. When her trusted confidant is murdered in the penultimate episode, she snaps and burns large swaths of the capitol to the ground with dragon fire. In the series finale, her remaining advisers convince her lover to kill her for the good of the realm, and her destructive rage is presented as who she always was.  

In the narrative of these characters’ stories, some of these fit with the themes of that character’s story arc. Black Widow sacrificing herself makes sense because of the symmetry with what we know of her backstory. Clint Barton gave her a second chance and guided her back from the dark path she was on when they first met, and in Avengers: Endgame, she returns the favor. Her death, while upsetting to many fans for different reasons, fits within the context of her personal narrative arc from across the last decade of Marvel movies. 

While Daenerys turning into a Mad Queen like her father would still be disappointing to fans hoping to see her disprove the “madness is in the blood” ideas about her family, it wouldn’t have come entirely out of nowhere. The hints that she had the potential to go down that path were there, even if many hoped it would only remain potential. One of the biggest issues is how Season 8 portrayed her descent into madness. Her cruelty towards King’s Landing is treated not as the rage of someone who has been pushed too far, but that this is who she always was. 

Meanwhile Ben Solo’s death came suddenly and abruptly after repeated narrative fakeouts that he came back from. The previous films, novels, and comics had built him up as a victim of abuse and set up audiences to anticipate him breaking free of the Dark Side and finding a happy ending, likely while working to atone for his actions as Kylo Ren. But despite his actor having been promised that Ben Solo’s story would not end the same way that Darth Vader’s did, that was exactly what happened: with the redeemed villain dying to save a person they loved. 

The context may differ, but there is a visible pattern of major genre franchises in the last year taking this type of complicated character and either killing them off when they’re finally in a good place mentally and emotionally, or in the case of Lotor and Daenerys, striping away their happiness to force them into the role of a one-dimensional tyrant and then killing them off. Lotor’s case is even more egregious because there were unanswered questions and inconsistencies surrounding his alleged crimes that after his death were never explained.  

While I doubt the creators of any of these titles set out to intentionally hurt people who identified with these characters, their narrative choices still send very damaging messages. 

These character’s backstories involve them either intentionally or unintentionally set up to fail by the people around them. Where most characters begin with a blank slate, theirs was already written in with expectations, pressure, violence, condemnation, control, manipulation, and/or outright subjugation. Fans young and old find them relatable because of similar rough pasts or trauma, often because or in spite of their grey moral compasses. This type of character resonates with audiences because they represent what it means to be human -  to struggle, to make mistakes, and to have the ability to atone for them in the end. 

Except in recent stories they don’t ever get that chance. Seeing Ben Solo and Lotor and Daenerys and Loki denied a chance at a happy ending tells people who identify with them that they will never find happiness. That their struggle toward the light is doomed to fail and will only end in death. 

And that isn’t the only divisive trend that’s been observed in recent years. Since 2018, there have been sequels and series finales where the characters whose bond was the core of the story go their separate ways either after the conflict has been resolved or as the means to resolve the conflict: 

In the series finale of Star Wars: Rebels, audience viewpoint character Ezra Bridger forces Grand Admiral Thrawn’s Star Destroyer fleet into hyperspace to protect the capital city of his planet Lothal from orbital bombardment. This separates him from his Found Family, and due to their commitments to the rebellion it isn’t until several years later that they set out to find him and bring him home. 

During the course of Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-it Ralph 2, Vanellope von Schweetz becomes enamored with the virtual world of the internet, having grown tired of the routine of her life in the arcade in the five years since the original movie. Ralph’s desire for life to stay the same and his insecurities over losing his best friend drive the plot of the movie, and the conflict is resolved when Ralph learns to let go of his insecurities and respect Vanellope’s wishes. Ralph returns to the arcade while Vanellope remains on the internet, though they stay in touch via video chat.

The series finale of Voltron: Legendary Defender depicts the surviving paladins going their separate ways after the war ends, only meeting up once a year for a memorial dinner to honor Allura’s sacrifice. Lance is depicted with the markings of Allura’s people branded on his face, grieving her as he spends his days working on his family’s farm. Keith returns to the stars to restructure the Blade of Marmora into a peacetime organization. Hunk becomes a galactic chef, while Pidge returns to Earth to build robots at the Garrison. A year after the series, Shiro retires from the job he loves and marries one of the men on the bridge crew for the Atlas. 

In order to protect the dragons of Berk from Grimmel the dragon hunter, Hiccup must send Toothless away so that the Night Fury can lead the Berkian dragons to the safety of the Hidden World. Year later Hiccan and Astrid take their children to the entrance of the Hidden World where they reunite with their dragon friends and their children. 

In order to defeat Thanos and his army, Iron Man uses the Infinity Stones to snap Thanos’ legions out of existence at the cost of his own life. Following Tony’s funeral, Captain America returns the Stones to their original timeline before settling down in an alternate timeline to live a peaceful life with Peggy Carter in the 1940s. After reaching old age, Steve returns to his original timeline and passes the mantle of Captain America on to Sam Wilson along with the repaired shield. Thor abdicates the throne of New Asgard to Valkyrie before setting off to the stars with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Hawkeye returns to the quiet farm life with his wife and children, and the remaining heroes all go their separate ways. 

After the death of Daenerys in the series finale of Game of Thrones, the Westerosi nobility decided to form an elected monarchy, choosing Bran Stark as the next king of the Seven Kingdoms. Sansa returns to Winterfell, where she becomes Queen of the North, while Jon Snow is “exiled” beyond the wall, and Arya sets sail to explore lands west of Westeros. 

In Toy Story 4, Woody is feeling pushed to the side as Bonny plays with him less than she does the other toys. After getting lost on a road trip, Woody is reunited with his lost love, Bo Peep, who has been living alone scavenging from humans rather than being played with by a single child. After rescuing Bonnie’s new toy Forky, Woody and Bo race to get everyone back to the RV before Bonny’s family leaves. Before boarding the RV, Woody ultimately decides to stay with Bo, and he parts ways with the rest of Andy’s toys as the film ends. 

After the previous film was about Maleficent becoming a surrogate mother figure to Aurora, the sequel, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, is about Maleficent learning to let her daughter grow up and leave the nest. After Queen Ingrid’s crusade against the fairies is thwarted, Maleficent gives her blessing for Aurora’s marriage to Phillip and lets her adopted daughter go. Maleficent returns to the Moors with the promise that she will return when Aurora and Phillip have a child of their own. 

In the course of uncovering and making amends for their bigoted grandfather’s actions against the Northuldra people, Elsa and Anna learn that the rumored fifth spirit that bridges the mortal and the supernatural is actually them and their bond. After breaking the curse on the Enchanted Forest, Elsa abdicated her throne and remains in the forest to continue exploring the full extent of her powers while Anna takes the throne. Thanks to the magic of the other elemental spirits, the sisters remain in constant contact, with Elsa returning to Arendelle for regular visits. 

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker establishes that Ben Solo and Rey are a dyad in the Force - literal soulmates. At the end of the movie, Rey sacrifices her life to destroy Palpatine, and after climbing up from the pit he was tossed into, Ben uses the Force to heal Rey’s wounds and bring her back to life, at which point he immediately dies. After a victory celebration with the Resistance, Rey travels to Tatooine and is last seen burying Luke and Leia’s lightsabers in the sands outside the farm where Luke grew up. 

As with the trend of killing off morally complicated characters, some of these examples work within the context of the film. 

Motherhood was an important element of Maleficent’s arc across the two live action films, and learning to let her daughter leave the nest is a classic lesson in a parental figure’s character arc. 

Hiccup and Toothless parting ways fits with the How To Train Your Dragon series’ focus on protecting the dragons and the animal conservation message that comes with that. 

Ezra being separated from his found family at the end of Rebels was a way to maintain Luke Skywalker’s status as the only Jedi working for the rebellion in the original movies without permanently killing Ezra off, and the show’s writers left the door open for a potential sequel focused on Sabine following his trail to bring him home. 

Other examples, however, do not align with the themes of their respective franchises. 

Game of Thrones spent several seasons focusing on the surviving Stark children as they find their way back to each other. Sending them all in different directions at the end feels disappointing and pointless after they had finally been reunited in the previous season. 

The Paladins of Voltron finding their own careers after the war that take them to different parts of the galaxy but still making the effort to consistently stay in contact makes sense in theory, but with the death of Allura it comes across as if her passing broke the team apart. 

While the original Avengers going their separate ways to let a new generation of heroes step into the limelight seems like an organic conclusion to the Infinity Saga, Captain America’s ending in particular feels like a regression. His character arc across his previous solo films has been about moving forward, and Endgame concludes with him literally going backward. 

It’s been common for fan complaints over these story elements to be directed mainly at the people directly responsible for making each project - the showrunners, the movie directors, the script writers…… But I couldn’t help but notice just how many of these examples for both trends fell under the Disney umbrella.

And then I remembered that Infinity War, Endgame, and The Rise of Skywalker all had reshoots done at some point in the production process. 

It really makes me wonder how much of these disliked story decisions were really the individual directors’ and showrunners’ decisions and how much were mandated by someone higher up the ladder. And I can’t help but notice the demographics of the people in charge of these companies and the people affected by them. 

The demographics of fans that enjoy morally complicated characters and want them to have a happy ending, that enjoy stories where the the characters who bonded over the course of the story stay together after their mutual goal is achieved, are from what I’ve observed predominantly made up of women, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, nonwhite people, and people with mental illnesses. 

And most of the people in charge of these story decisions are cis, straight, neurotypipcal, able-bodied white men. The CEO of Disney... The showrunners of Game of Thrones….. Voltron’s a little more complicated because while Dreamworks made the show they didn’t own the franchise, but the Voltron IP owner is a straight white male.  

These stories are controlled by straight white men, and the audiences that have the biggest negative reactions to these story decisions are women, LGBTQ+ people, and POC. 

Companies may talk about having more diversity on camera and behind the camera, but the people at the top of the corporate hierarchy - the ones with the money and therefore the ultimate control over what gets released to the public - are for the most part the same demographic as they've always been.

And all of these show finales and movies have been released within the last four years, as fandom spaces and American public discourse in general have become increasingly polarized into a black and white mentality with no room for nuance. Where someone can only be either a perfect ally or an offensive oppressor. This trend in killing off morally complicated characters in ways that don’t always work for their character arc has also coincided with the rise of fandom’s pearl clutching over moral purity and whether a villain or anti villain “deserves” a redemption arc. 

Your first instinct will probably be to dismiss what I’m suggesting, insisting that these are just shows and movies and that they don’t matter. That it’s Not That DeepTM. But more often than not the media we consume is a reflection of the world around us. And we are seeing a pattern that as fandom becomes increasingly obsessed with purity and enforces a “one strike and you’re a monster” mentality, the major franchises of pop culture are producing stories where people who aren’t clear-cut Pure Good Heroes or Pure Evil Villains die. 

Also, dismissing people’s thoughts about the social messages of a movie or show, insisting that we’re wrong for saying that something doesn’t fit with the story so far, is part of the problem. Having critics and other fans praising the stories we feel hurt by and dismissing our criticisms as, for example, whiny shippers mad that our favorite pairings didn’t happen, has a very stifling, damaging effect. It tells us over and over again that this is the way that stories are supposed to be, and that there is something weird, broken, wrong with us for not being satisfied with stories that break up the Found Family or kill off your morally messed up fave regardless of whether it actually makes sense for the story. 

It leaves us isolated and alienated from wider fandom discussions because we’re told it again and again until we internalize it that we’re in the wrong. That people just don’t want to make the kinds of stories we want to see. That we’re paranoid for suspecting that there is a pattern when we see this happen over and over. But it’s clear from the way that some creators have acted - going from excitedly promoting their work to complete silence after the initial disappointment over the finale - that there are creators who want to tell those kinds of stories, but they are being silenced. They are being forced to change the stories they wanted to tell because someone in charge didn’t like that kind of story, and because of their NDAs are forced to either keep silent, or lie and take credit for decisions that weren’t theirs. 

It’s easy to dismiss these story decisions as a coincidence. To believe that all of these creators made similar decisions on their own. That they just fucked up a beautiful story on their own with no intervention from someone higher up the corporate ladder. It’s a comforting option. It makes us feel like our criticisms have an impact. Because the alternative? That creators can and have been forced to change their stories because the person at the top doesn’t think that it’ll sell well if it doesn’t cater to the demographic they consider most important? That’s terrifying. 

#media analysis #meta #trends I'm seeing in popular franchises

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 7, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Last night, commentator Kevin Williamson published a piece in National Review justifying voter suppression by suggesting that “the republic would be better served by having fewer—but better—voters.” Representatives, he says, “are people who act in other people’s interests,” which is different from doing what voters want.

This is the same argument elite slaveholder James Henry Hammond made before the Senate in 1858, when he defended the idea that Congress should recognize the spread of human enslavement into Kansas despite the fact that the people living in that territory wanted to abolish slavery. Our Constitution, Hammond said, did not dictate that people should “be annoyed with the cares of Government,” but rather directed that they should elect leaders who would take those cares upon themselves.

It is the same argument wealthy men made in the 1890s when they illustrated that laws calling for “better” voters meant that white registrars would hand-pick the nation’s voting population. In the South and the North both, legislators wrote new state constitutions to keep Black men, immigrants, and poor workers from the polls. Leading Americans argued that such men “corrupted” the vote by electing lawmakers who provided public infrastructure like schools and hospitals, paid for with the tax dollars of hardworking white men. To keep poor voters and men of color from the ballot, new state laws called for literacy tests, in which white registrars personally judged a man’s ability to read; poll taxes for which one had to keep the receipts; grandfather clauses, in which a man could vote if his grandfather had, and so on.

Williamson’s is the same argument Arizona Senator Barry’s Goldwater’s ghostwriter made in 1960 in The Conscience of a Conservative, when he wrote in frustration about the New Deal government that was wildly popular despite businessmen’s hatred for it. The framers had absolutely not created a democracy, he wrote, but rather had worried about “a tyranny of the masses” who would vote for laws that redistributed tax dollars into projects that would benefit themselves.

The theory of government that lies behind the argument for limiting the vote to “better” voters was also articulated by Senator Hammond in his 1858 speech. He explained that the South had figured out the best government in the world. It had put a few wealthy, educated, well-connected men in power over everyone else: those he called “mudsills,” workers who produced the capital that supported society but had little direction or ambition and had to be controlled by their superiors. In the South, Hammond explained to his northern colleagues, the mudsills were Black, but in the North they were wage workers. It was imperative such men be kept from political power, for “[i]f they knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box is stronger than ‘an army with banners,’ and could combine, where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided… by the quiet process of the ballot-box….”

In 1859, Abraham Lincoln rejected this vision of government by wealthy elites and replaced it with one of his own. Government worked best not when it protected the property and thus the power of a few wealthy elites, said this poor man’s son, but when it protected equality of access to resources and equality before the law for everyone. Rather than concentrating wealth upward, society should protect the rights of all men to the fruits of their own labor.

Throughout our history, adherents of these two different visions of what constitutes the best government for the U.S. have struggled. On the one hand are those who say that the country operates best when the government is controlled by a few wealthy, educated, well-connected, and usually white and male leaders. The argument goes that they are the only ones with the skills, the insight, and the experience to make good decisions about national policy, particularly economic policy. And it is important that wealth concentrate in their hands, since they will act as its stewards, using it wisely in lump sums, while if the workers who produce wealth get control of it they will fritter it away.

On the other hand are those like Lincoln, who believe that government should reflect the will of the majority, not simply on principle, but because a wide range of voices means the government has a better chance of getting things right than when only a few people rule.

In today’s world, Americans appear to be siding with the popular measures of the Democrats. A Morning Consult/Politico poll today says that 65% of Americans support higher corporate taxes to pay for infrastructure and that 82% want infrastructure in any case. To make matters worse for the Republicans, counties that voted for Biden provide 70% of the nation’s gross domestic product, the value of goods and services in the nation. The large corporations Republicans used to be able to count on for money and support are now eager to court these young, liberal producers.

So, to combat the nation’s drift toward popular government, it appears the current-day Republican Party has taken up the cause of elite rule.

Williamson is not the only Republican to muse about how getting rid of voters might be good for the nation. Arizona state representative John Kavanagh has said of voting that “[q]uantity is important, but we need to look at the quality of votes as well.”

Today, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) reacted to a story about rising crime rates during the pandemic by tweeting that “[w]e have a major under-incarceration problem in America.” He appears to think that we need more people in jail despite the fact that we already imprison our people at a rate more than 5 times higher than that of the rest of the world. We imprison nearly 2.3 million people, with another 3.6 million on probation and another 840,000 on parole. More important for the current struggle over government, though, his statement is that of an authoritarian rather than a democratic leader, and fits nicely with the idea of a strong-handed elite rule.

In Florida, Republican lawmakers appear ready to silence their opponents with a law that would, according to the Miami Herald, “require public colleges and universities to survey students, faculty and staff about their beliefs and viewpoints.” It would also permit students to record their professors without their consent for a civil or criminal case against their school. A lobbyist for the measure, Barney Bishop, told journalist Ana Ceballos that “the cards are stacked in the education system… toward the left and toward the liberal ideology and also secularism — and those were not the values that our country was founded on…. [T]hose are the values that we need to get our country back to.” “The truth of the matter,” he said, “is that kids are being indoctrinated from an early age.”

Also today, a member of the Boogaloo Bois who attended a “Stop the Steal” rally at the state capitol in Minnesota as part of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election was arrested and charged with illegal possession of a machine gun. He had used a 3D printer to alter a semi-automatic weapon to make it shoot automatically.

The Republican attack on democracy is not playing well at home (although a number of our adversaries like it well enough). A new Gallup poll shows that an average of 49% of Americans consider themselves Democratic or Democratic-leaning Independents while only 40% identify as Republicans or as Republican-leaning Independents. This is the highest split since 2012.

Still, in the end, if Republicans manage to rewrite the voting laws to silence their opponents, how their actions play with the majority of American voters won’t matter in the least.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #voting rights #history #racism #classism #corrupt Gop #criminal GOP #Lincoln #wealth #poverty #the poor

[denisedimalanta]

RECOVERING BETTER FOR A SUSTAINABLE AND EQUITABLE WORLD

We are all chains by an infectious disease induced by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, also known as Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Nonetheless, based on who we are as individuals and our status in society, our view regarding the outcome of the pandemic and its impacts is varied. Some people began to adapt to online classes, work at home, and even purchasing food through delivery services to avoid going to market. Others have no option but to be risked to the virus to sustain their family needs, and some stop their education, works, business, etc., because they cannot keep up with their finances because of the pandemic.

Honestly, this virus is massacring a massive number of people. As of September 19, 2021, 15:10 GMT, we already have 229,076,324 confirmed cases globally and 4,702,702 deaths cases, according to Worldometer. In the Philippines, we have reached total cases of 2,366,749 and covering 36,788 deaths. We are momentarily in a severe stage with a continuously high quantity of new daily cases and tremendous demand for continued vaccination and diligence of the society.

Sustainability explains as the capacity to be supported at a particular level. From various viewpoints, sustainability has a shared idea which is the following; (1) our resources are limited, (2) we must exercises to deliver durability, particularly in nature, and well-being to posterity. It concludes that sustainable development implies seeking and developing a better and more equitable world. Moreover, it must be a medium to solve global problems and objects to guarantee the earth's fairness and eco-friendliness.

Most of us might believe in the idea that everyone should get adequate amounts of food, shelter, medical attention, etc. Of course, we want to maintain a nourishing environment and a great ecosystem. We desire to support social equality, narrowing the gap between the wealthy and the underprivileged. One feasible alternative in sustainable consumption is to encourage and maintain the middle-class. Universally, innumerable people dwelling in extreme scarcity, and more high-income people fall into extravagance consumption, threatening the necessary survival of middle-class consumers. The two followings can be the resolution to our enduring and sustainable world - Social justice and Impartiality.

Currently, we struggle to heal from the pandemic and create a healthier future for humans and the planet, yet more problems are rising like violence, attacks, more viruses, etc. We are fighting against nature, and we cannot build a sustainable, versatile, and peaceful world. Right now, peace becomes the grounds of restoration, while the rehabilitation movement provides a chance to flourish and improve our connection over the earth and nature.  

As a young adult, facing the global crisis is too daunting. In addition to being related to our health, it is also facing concerns in various areas within our community while fighting its harmful effects. Besides, seeing half of the world struggling within their hidden jeopardy as the world somehow collapsed in our own eyes, my heart stung so much. However, I acknowledge that we can tide over the difficulties together. 

First of all, we need to remember to stay at home unless there is an urgent need or an immediate thing to address to be process outside our house. To flattening the curve, we need to engage in the weakening of more and more cases. We have to make sure to maintain our physical distance and self-isolate from others when we are unwell. By doing that, it is inevitable a vital benefit in fighting the pandemic.

Since we are staying at home, we are likely to have a close relationship with our family, but kindly keep in mind that some people may not feel welcome at home throughout these times. If they show traces of poor performance at home, do not nag them or even answer in toxic positivity. Please understand that we do not know everything they are fighting. They may feel lonely, despair, miserable, and isolated due to their distance from mates or people they regularly bond together. We may not know that some of them may be victims of domestic violence inaugurated by their own families.

With this in mind, we can support them in several ways by distributing some hotlines and contact numbers of the authorities responsible for children’s rights, like Bantay Bata 163 hotline, Human Rights Commission hotline, PNP hotline, etc. that is unrestricted 24/7. During the quarantine period, we need continuously protect and strengthen the rights of women and children. If you see or know someone being treated mercilessly by someone in their own family or anyone who violates the law, please reach different management. If you detect a similar event on your newsfeed on Internet, please report it too. This behavior, regardless of how trivial others can see, can protect people's rights.

Finally, extend your hope and positive messages during certain difficult moments. It does not harm to be friendly to people we know digitally. Exercise compassion even online as they did not disclose what others are fighting. Let us seek to acknowledge their situation since this crisis is not simple and convenient for everyone. Despite this, we do not indicate that we bear harassment, perils, and prejudice on the Internet. During the quarantine, you have to keep your views, recognize your rights, and persist in defending and supporting equal rights for everyone.

Momentarily, we still strive to adapt to the sudden shift toward a new normal globally. I believe the essence of resilience and friendship of the Filipinos and the international society will continue and overcome all the restraints endeavoring to disintegrate our world. When we go hand in hand, let us stay secure, familiarized, and be stable. We will fight together to deal with this disaster, and we are a few steps approaching a new world mended by humans. Although the future is unpredictable, we must move forward with others and would not leave them behind.

#RECOVERING BETTER FOR A SUSTAINABLE AND EQUITABLE WORLD

[ordinaryschmuck]

Top 20 BEST Animated Series of the 2010s-8th Place

It’s funny. Four years ago, there was no doubt in my mind that this show would easily make the top five best-animated series in the last decade. But the more it went on, the more...controversial it got. However, despite all the hate this next series has been getting recently, I still believe that there’s something to be desired within it.

#8-Steven Universe/Steven Universe: Future (2013-2020)

The Plot: For years, immortal warriors known as the Crystal Gems have been defending the Earth from anything that seeks to do it harm. Until one day when Rose Quartz, the Gems leader, had fallen in love with a human named Greg Universe. From that love, Rose gave up her physical form to bring her son, Steven, into the world she was sworn to protect. Taking guidance from the other Crystal Gems-Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl-Steven will try his best to grow up into the same warrior that his mom was. But as he learns more about the Gems and his mother, Steven will soon realize that he’ll have to grow up far faster than he thought.

Right out the gate, I should mention there's a 60%-40% chance that you’re either going to love this show or think that it’s pure garbage. And honestly, I believe it all depends on perspective. Like the quality of most shows, the enjoyment depends on the viewpoints you chose to take with it. Some people will look at specific decisions as well done, where others will see it all as a mess of storytelling. For instance, one person can make a two-hour-long video about how Steven Universe is garbage, and another person can make a video arguing about how it isn’t. Everyone has different reasons why they like or hate something. If you genuinely hate Steven Universe or think you might not like it, that's perfectly fine. I just hope you’ll give me the chance to explain why I personally enjoy it, and why I think it deserves all the adulation it has. 

For instance, the main thing I really enjoy about Steven Universe is its style. From the designs, to the animation, to even the music. Everything about how Steven Universe both looks and sounds leave me awestruck. First is the show’s designs of both the backgrounds and characters. Nearly every part of the world in the series looks absolutely amazing, fitting seeing how the Crystal Gems fought for Earth due to its beauty. There are also times when lore and backstory can be seen through the backgrounds, giving some fantastic utilization of visual storytelling. Such as when the Crystal Gems visit war zones and temples that they’ve spent years fighting in, showing hidden secrets that can make much more sense by later episodes. As for the character designs, they all look pretty good. Each character has a dynamic and unique style, making them all fun to look at. It’s even better when the character’s personalities are shown throughout their entire designs. I especially love how the artists managed to get creative with how real life crystals (lapices, bismuths, and jaspers) will look like people when designing the Crystal Gems and their enemies. However, I should first mention that Steven Universe is another show where the art style depends on who’s storyboarding the scene. While not as bad as OK KO: Let’s Be Heroes, it can be pretty distracting given how character sizes and proportions are inconsistent. Regardless, I still like how good the designs look for a majority of the characters. And at a practical standpoint, I think it’s great that the artists kept the figures as simple as possible as it makes animating the characters a lot easier.

Speaking of which, I really like how Steven Universe is animated. It’s not entirely groundbreaking like The Amazing World of Gumball’s or as fluid as Wander Over Yonder’s, but the animation in Steven Universe is still pretty dang good. The characters' movements look believable, and the expressions each one makes is downright amazing to see. It gets more aspiring for the show’s fight scenes. You can almost feel each punch, jab, and slash that the characters trade with each other, and the fights themselves are pretty fun to watch. As for the action itself, Steven Universe might just have the most creative action set pieces I’ve seen from any animated series. Case in point, there is an entire fight scene that’s also a fantastic song at the same time.

On the topic of songs, let the record show that showrunner Rebecca Sugar really understands music. I say this because Steven Universe has some really great music in it. From background music to full-on musical numbers, this show proves how important melodies are in a series. Look at the background music, as it not only does a suitable job at making audiences feel the right emotions but also sounds really good when isolated. As for the character motifs, each note perfectly encapsulates the character's personality that it’s meant for. Like Pearl, who has a piano melody to show off her classy and orderly personality, and Peridot, who has a more 8-bit tune to her leitmotif as a way to show off her tech side. And since we branched into talking about 8-bit, there are times when this show’s soundtrack sounds like it belongs in a really cool video game (Google Lion’s and Obsidian's themes if you don’t believe me). As for the actual songs in the show, Steven Universe has a pretty good selection. As they can be beautiful and downright awesome to listen to. And even though the show uses songs to develop the characters and story, these musical numbers can still be pretty fun to listen to on their own, with no context (most of the time).

But while a show's style is essential, it’s the substance that truly matters. And here is where we go back to the discussion of perspective. To some viewers, you might think that the substance in Steven Universe is handled well, where others...Well, I think it’s pretty obvious how they might feel.

Let’s look at the story because Steven Universe actually has an intriguing and compelling story...Or at least it does when it tries to eventually tell that story. Whether you’re a person who either loves or hates the series, everyone can agree that the slice of life episodes are easily the show’s weakest. Personally, I don’t mind them, and that’s because I view these episodes as giving me a choice between eating a chocolate cake or a carrot. The story-driven episodes are a chocolate cake. Their sweet, delicious, and I’m always craving more after just having one piece. As for the slice of life episodes, they’re like carrots. I can eat a carrot. I can digest a carrot. I might even enjoy a carrot. Hell, there are times when I’m willing to ask for another carrot. But if you’re going to give me the decision of a carrot over a chocolate cake, then I’m always going to pick the chocolate cake. Even if I enjoy episodes like “Laser Light Cannon," “Too Short to Ride," and “Alone Together," they can never hold a candle to “Jail Break," “Reunited," and “Change Your Mind." This is because the slice of life episodes give off a sense of distraction from the main story. After all, they rarely add anything new (read: meaningful) to the tale. And going back to the carrot and chocolate cake analogy, there’s one aspect that doesn’t do the slice of life episodes any favors. You see, where most shows feel like you have to eat the carrots before having the chocolate cake, half the time Steven Universe feels like you can skip most of the carrots and go straight for the chocolate cake instead. And Steven Universe isn’t the only show to try this. In fact, tomorrow I’ll be talking about a show that perfected this idea. But tomorrow's series manages to make both the story and slice of life episode the chocolate cake instead of the carrot. And it has everything to do with the fact that the characters care about the situation they’re in. There are actual moments in the show where Crystal Gems refuse to participate in everyday antics because they simply don’t think those antics are worth their time. Which is something you never want to do. Because if the characters don’t care, then why should the audience? Speaking of the characters--

I want it to be known that I like the majority of the characters in Steven Universe. Greg, Connie, Peridot, Amethyst, and Garnet are all enjoyable to watch in their own way. Not only is their development on point, but their personalities are all likable, and their issues are also relatable. It’s three other characters that things get a little iffy. Those characters being Steven, Pearl, Bismuth and Lapis. If you ask me, I like these characters, and I think it’s fun to study/analyze their personalities. However, these characters make decisions that audiences are either going to hate or love. It’s sort of like that optical illusion of the old lady/young lady (Google it). Some people can see the ugly old hag, where others will see the beautiful young woman. You’re most likely going to see one or the other, and it isn’t until someone else points out what you couldn’t notice that you are capable of seeing both. It’s something very similar to Steven, Pearl, Bismuth and Lapis. One response is that you’re either going to see characters who are selfless heroes that are victims of circumstance. The other is seeing toxic idiots who cause more harm than good to the people they love.

And then there are the people of Beach City. These are mostly hated by both fans and critics of the show. Personally, I don’t hate most of them. Don’t get me wrong, characters like Lars and Ronaldo deserve every ounce of hate they are given (Although Lars does get better). As for the rest of the Beach Citizens, I don’t think they are that bad of characters. In fact, I think they’re good characters placed in the wrong show. Some of them have issues that most people deal with (Sadie, in most of her episodes), where others seem to be slightly layered and almost intriguing (Mr. Smiley and Onion in “Future Boy Zoltron” and “Onion Gang”). In fact, if these characters were a part of a different series, I’m sure people will be more willing to watch their struggles. It's just compared to the Crystal Gems and company, the people of Beach City are not as interesting to watch or dissect. And because of this, the show drags down to a screeching halt whenever it focuses on these characters.

And the most controversial element of these characters is (semi-spoilers ahead) when the show tries to pull off redemption arcs. Steven Universe seems to work off the logic that nobody is evil, just misunderstood. There’s both a right way and a wrong way of illustrating that logic, and Steven Universe, unfortunately, does it the wrong way. And the best way for me to describe how to do this idea is to use the game Undertale as an example (I’d warn you about spoilers, but odds are you already know everything about that game). In Undertale, you play a character who fell into an underground prison full of monsters, and you have to find your way back to the surface. The monsters you run into give the impression that they’re dangerous and want to destroy you (or at least most of them do). However, the game allows the player to interact with the world and characters around them, soon discovering that the monsters are more complex than one might think. In fact, the game allows you to actually interact with monsters who tried to kill you, showing the logic and reasoning as to why. By the end of Undertale, you learn that every character you encounter is not the villains in the story, but rather victims of a war that forced them away from the surface. Steven Universe has a similar idea but fails to do it properly. All it reveals is that the villains have done bad things, realize that they’ve done wrong, and decide to have an out of nowhere change of heart by the end. The problem is that except for one character, the turnarounds don’t feel earned. Instead, they feel forced than anything else.

These elements are what make Steven Universe slightly controversial to enjoy.

(And also the ridiculous amount of hiatuses. But that’s not really an issue I have with the show, but the network running it.)

But if there is one thing I hope we all can agree on, both the pessimistic and forgiving, I think it’s safe to say that the best thing about Steven Universe is how important it is for the LGBTQ+ community. There may have been kids' shows in the past that hinted at same-sex relationships and they deserve some respect as well. But I'd say it’s Steven Universe that popularized the idea with the characters Ruby and Saphire. Not only are these two downright adorable together, but they also manage to be enjoyable characters on their own (Even though it isn’t often you see them apart, but their personalities still shine through). And I’m willing to make the argument that it’s because of these two why children’s animation is less afraid, but still cautious, of being explicit with having same-sex couples. Like I said, most shows decide to hint at these relationships, so they don't get in trouble for doing so. Nowadays? Most of Cartoon Network’s series seem to have more gay relationships than most children’s networks in recent memory. Nickelodeon allowed The Loud House to have gay parents in a children's cartoon, and one of the main characters being canonically bisexual. Hell, even Disney is currently taking steps in the right direction with their smash hit called The Owl House. Now, more than ever, kids can learn at an early age that gay relationships are more than just acceptable, but they’re also completely normal and should be accepted as such. And I’m more than willing to give Steven Universe credit for giving this trend the push that it needed, like other creators for these shows usually point fingers at it as well.

Is Steven Universe a perfect show? No. But that doesn’t mean I think it’s garbage. There are some legitimate faults that this series has, some of which I’m inclined to agree with. But with all the good it does and how much fun people have while watching it, I can’t really say I hate this series. If you think you’ll hate this show, you have every right to. I can’t change how you feel, but I can ask you to keep an open mind. Because who knows? You might be someone who will find the diamond in the rough of this series.

(Now that’s a pun you’ll be willing to appreciate by the time you reach season 5).

#top 20 of the 2010s #steven universe #steven universe future #what i thought about

[lost-eternity]

Matchup Requests: CLOSED

Match up request for:

Match up request for: @bumbleslut

Okie dokie. I match you with...

Deadpool / Wade Wilson!

Okay this was a difficult one

But let me explain why 

Wade disguises his insecurities and flaws behind wise cracking jokes.

He has a thick skin and is easily able to act tough and unaffected, despite how deep the words cut

It is because of this tendency to neglect and hide his emotions that I feel he would work well with you 

Your deeply compassionate and empathetic nature, combined with the persistence of a hopeless romantic is just the type of personality I feel Wade needs to not only open up but reconcile with himself

He refers to himself as sexy or handsome, but we know for a fact that he is ashamed of his scarred face. Like his new face somehow diminishes his worth as a person

Which just isn't true

But he needs someone open minded enough to tell him that

Someone who would truly find him to be beautiful, even if his beauty is not conventional 

Wade Wilson is presented as being morally ambiguous and is often brought up in reference to anti-heroes, however, I think the opposite is true. Wade has a very strong moral compass and can distinguish right from wrong. He always tries to do the right thing... he just has rather unorthodox methods of achieving those things. 

While I wouldn't say he is sensitive, I think part of that is because he has buried his own emotions so deep that he chooses to ignore them. 

Which again, I feel like is something he would need help with unlocking 

As a couple, you two would be legit

~

You both have rather talkative characters so I can say that without a doubt, there would never be a dry moment between the two of you

It could get chaotic 

But that's fine. Wade revels in chaos

I also feel like you have the capacity to defend yourself 

Show some snark and sarcasm. And, if not, Wade would definitely influence you into become a bit more of a bitch. 

In a good way, hahaha

~

Unconventional adventures and weird little trips is definitely something you would find yourself involved in a lot

It's not like Wade ever explains why

But it doesn't matter cause the two of you have a blast wreaking havoc 

You would act as Wade's conscience on these little outings

A foil to his reckless behaviour, keeping him safe, and morally in the right

Eventually he will learn to do this on his own- for your sake

He claims it is because he doesn't want to hear you talk "my already melty ears off" but it's because he cares about you 😉 

~

3AM Netflix movies are a common thing

He'd probably come in through the window missing a hand or a leg and you are just staring at him like: "bitch, what???"

Although he just wants to cuddle and watch Netflix and pop popcorn 

It's like... 'dude, it's 3AM, and you crawled through MY window missing a limb... and ask to watch ‘This is Us’???’

He'd never admit it but he has a thing for soap operas

You were also pleasantly surprised to see that he owned every episode of Star Trek. Or as he put it "The classics. Not the one with the bald guy that looks like Professor X."

~

Be prepared to be flirted with a lot

And his words can get pretty dirty pretty fast

You may have to talk him down

Seriously, he loves trying to make you blush

And oh boy, try he will

You will have to learn to either out flirt him, or shut him up with a snarky comment or remark 

But I don't think that will be too much of an issue as you have no qualms stating your opinions 

Wade does like a girl who can stick to her guns and defend her viewpoint. 

He finds it admirable 

~

Let's be honest.  You met at a strip club. 

Well kinda

You were walking past a strip club when it exploded

Yes, it exploded

The blast wave knocked you behind a car, lucky for you because the flying shrapnel did not hit you

Ears ringing and vision blurry, you sat there for a moment trying to figure out what the hell just happened

That was when a figure came flying out of the burning building, skidding along the asphalt and nearly colliding with your feet

"Wheeew!" The masked figure groaned  rolling onto his back as he hitched up his leg. "That was not a superhero landing." He coughed.

You stared at him, still kind of in a daze from you know... the explosion 

Apparently he noticed you for the first time. "Oh, hello! How's your Wednesday been?"

You just kinda stare at him

That was when you heard a very loud, very angry sounding voice screaming "DEADPOOL" from within the blaze

"Shit, gotta go. Mamma's ringing." The masked figure cooed and rolled to his feet before walking back into the fire screaming something about... 'deepthroating a bell'?

Now properly confused and somewhat recovered from the initial blast, you figured that the smart thing to do would be to run away

But you knew that there were still people in that burning club 

You could hear their screams

You had to help them

Steeling your nerve, you walked into the fire

The smoke was suffocating and the feeling of asphyxiation was beginning to set in as your covered your mouth with a rag 

Through the stinging smoke which scorched your eyes, you were able to make out three figures cowering under a fallen beam. 

The roof crackled as the fire threatened the integrity of the building. 

Reaching out your hand seized calloused burnt palms and you began to escort them out of the building 

Moving further in, you heard the sounds of a battle ensuing

Two hulking shapes danced through the smoke

One was the man who you had met earlier and the other?

You weren't entirely sure what he was

It looked like he was wearing some kind of... bell on his head. And cape...

You guessed this was there the first man's bell comments came from

But seriously, what was going on 

That was when you noticed the bell-guy lifting an arm, his entire right hand has been replaced with a heavy-looking metal sphere

And he cobbled it straight into the first guy's gut

With a loud grunt, Deadpool crashed into a beam behind them, causing the entire building to shake

If this continued, these two idiots would bring the entire roof down on top of you and kill everyone 

You had to stop them

Hyped on adrenaline and possessed by some kind of heroic spirit, you interjected yourself between the two of them screaming "STOP!!!"

Both figures seemed to grind to a halt, even bell guy who stared at you

Then you proceeded to give them a lecture in structural damage 

You, this small little human between a towering Goliath of a bell person, and an actual superhero

You were sure you were going to get them to move this conflict outside with the roof gave one final screech before entirely fracturing, sending flaming beams piling right on top of you 

~

You awoke somewhere entirely new

Your head was pounding, your hair charred and your skin blistering from the fire

You had no idea where you were... or how you got there

And as you slowly regained consciousness, your brain swimming in what felt like treacle, you became acutely aware of someone's finger jabbed into your cheek

Wincing, you tried to pull away but realised that something was restraining you

Your vision blurred as you opened your eyes 

The red-masked man was literally right in front of your face, pressing what you could only assume was his nose against your own

Jerking back, your head hit a wall, sending a spike of pain rushing through your skull

"Whoa! Calm down there, Sparky." Deadpool pulled back, removing his finger from your cheek.

"W-where?" You rasped and looked around

You were tied to a metal chair, your arms bound behind your back 

Deadpool sat in a similar chair next to you. Except he was shackled by his feet, not tied with rope

You appeared to be in some kind of warehouse... a rusty fan above your screeching with every rotation of its fins

"The big baddie caught us." Deadpool hummed. "Stupid of you to try to intervene."

You fixed him with an expression somewhere between acquiescence and a glare

He chuckled 

"Do you have a plan to escape?" You groaned

"Of course!" Deadpool replied happily 

"No, you don't." You sighed, noticing the hesitation in his tone

Deadpool just gasped, a sound akin to a little kid. "How'd you know? Are you a telepath?"

You sighed, wincing slightly as the aching in your head doubled back. You asked him what he had done to piss off this bell guy, who you could only assume was your captor

"Oh, that. Uh, well. Dr. Bong and aren't on the best of terms because may or may not have accidentally, purposefully cut off his hand...."

"You WHAT?"

He changed the topics on you and for the next 30 or so minutes blabbered on and on about one thing or another, as if being kidnapped and tied up did not concern him in the slightest 

That was when Dr. Bong showed up (a name you found entirely ridiculous, albeit a bit fitting)

Turns out he has a major crush on this lady named Beverly

And that he was going to use Deadpool as bait to lure her out and force her on a date 

Seemed like a completely nonsensical plan but this guy also seemed like a regular old psychopath

Still, you had to empathize with his tale of unrequited love

The poor thing just wanted to belong somewhere, but has been told old his life that he was too ugly or fat

So you two began talking

Much to Deadpool's chagrin who kept yelling at you to "stop sympathizing with the bad guy!"

You didn't listen 

Everyone deserves a chance, that was your own personal philosophy 

You advised Dr. Bong on dating and romance, speaking to him as you so often speak to your friends

You helped him to gain the confidence he needed to just ask this Beverly out, saying that her love wouldn't be real if it was first

He actually seemed to agree and after a few hours of talking he... let the two of you go

Deadpool was absolutely floored

This girl who he had just met defeated the bad guy by listening to him. 

Wtf?!?!

He was very much intrigued after this encounter, convinced you were hiding some kind of superpower. So he walked you home and gave you his number

Whatever you choose to do with this wisecracking anti-hero's number is entirely up to you ;)

I hope you enjoyed. I am sorry for the wait, dear. Do tell me what you thought, though :)

#marvel #deadpool #deadpool x reader #wade wilson x reader #deadpool x you #wade wilson x you #matchup #matchups #match up #match ups #marvel matchup #marvel match up #marvel ships #marvel ship #ships #ship #wade wilson #request #marvel request #MCU #MCU deadpool #marvel comics #comics

[screamingatanemptyroom]

I Can’t Eat Love pt 9

Part 9 is here guys! I’ll do a master post after part ten so I only have to post a single link and you guys can find the chapters all in one place! 

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 linked here. 

Hope you guys enjoy!

_____________________________

When I arrived at the next lesson with Jim in the Royal Treasury, he held up his hands in apology. “I know, I know, I’m sorry! I really couldn’t get away!”

I sat down in front of him, placing my finished books in front of him with unnecessary force and glaring silently.

“I sent you Nate, didn’t I?” He clasped his hands in front of him, getting on his knees and pretending to beg “Oh great future queen spare me!”  

I couldn’t help it. I laughed at that. “Fine. You are forgiven.”

“Whew!” He mimed wiping a nervous sweat from his forehead and got back to his desk. “Did you really fire every single corrupt official in the duchy?”

“First of all, I didn’t ‘fire’ anyone. They excepted an ‘early retirement’ as a reward for their hard work.” I shook my head as Jim rolled with laughter. “And no, I didn’t get rid of all of them, just the four with the most power.  Without their support, and newer, more honest management in place, the whole corrupt system will collapse on itself.”

“And hopefully not take the Duchy down with it?”

I shrugged. “Never said my work was over. All I’ve done so far was the easy part.” Looking around the room, trying to appear casual, I asked. “Is Nate not coming today?” 

Jim smiled. “Ah, she notices at last. Actually, that’s on purpose. I gave him a later time to show up.” Leaning forward, he looked surprisingly serious. “Tommy told me about the argument you two had after he saved you from getting punched in the face.”

“Hallers…” I sighed, unsurprised. 

“He worries about you to much, which is shocking really.” He chuckled. “I didn’t think Tommy knew how to care about anything besides perfection at work. He really isn’t one to make friends.”

I felt a worrying pain in my chest at those words. “We’re not friends. I provide an constantly improving and complex work environment. He supports that. That’s all. There’s nothing personal about it.”

Jim sighed. “Sure, just keep telling yourself that, kid.” 

Running a hand through his hair, he continued. “I know you had your plans, and they involved you putting yourself at risk… but I’m not going to lecture you about that.”

“Really?”

“You DO have an impossible task, and honestly there are going to be risks in any path you take if you genuinely want to save your home. I don’t know the best way to accomplish that, or if it even CAN be done. So how can I tell you not to go all out?”

I felt relieved, “Thank you.”

“That’s not what I wanted to talk about with you about.” He hesitated once more. “Nate… he cares deeply about the people around him. And he’s lost so much already… too much for someone who is the same age as you.”

I frowned. “So I should feel sorry for him? Let him boss me around?”

“You know that’s not what I’m saying.” He rolled his eyes. “Just know that you’re not the only messed up person out there, and try to understand. The world is a lot more complicated then you think. You putting yourself in danger may seem reasonable and simple to you, but to him… it reminds him of regrets and things he wishes he could forget.”

“…” I knew better than anyone the secrets people held. I shouldn’t be surprised that Nate carried some of his own. “I’ll think about it.”

“Thanks.” Jim looked relieved. “He’s a good kid, a little too quiet sometimes, but I don’t want you two falling out over something silly.”

“What’s silly?” Walking through the door, Nate entered, smiling.

Jim waved a hand. “Nothing. Let’s get started with the lesson.”

_____________________________

We began our discussion in earnest. I kept an eye on Nate, but he didn’t seem to give any indication that he was still upset after our last encounter. He met my gaze back openly, smiling with a wry expression while pushing me to defend my own viewpoints on tax rates.

It was a lively discussion, and as usual, Jim handed us both a hefty reading assignment after the end of it.

“I think you get some sort of sick enjoyment out of making us suffer.” I groaned, mentally trying to figure out how to schedule enough time free to manage the workload.

 “Don’t be ridiculous.” Jim laughed mischievously “I simply enjoy the chance to enrich young minds.”

Neither Nate or I looked convinced.

“Sure.”

 “Right.”

He laughed again. “Making you suffer is really just a side benefit.”

Shaking my head, I started to leave, only to be stopped by Nate.

“Do you have a moment to talk before you go?”

I thought it over briefly. He seemed sincere, and not as if he wanted to start another argument. “I can spare a few minutes.” 

We left together, an awkward silence hanging in the air between us.

_____________________________

 “I just wanted to apologize.” Nate started off right away, startling me. “ I only have a vague idea of your circumstances, and tried to judge you for not doing things the way I might have done them.” He headed over to one of the palace gardens, sitting on a bench. “You are honestly trying to protect your people, and I truly respect that.” 

I didn’t sit, standing in front of him, considering his words. “I forgive you.” After a brief hesitation, I added. “I apologize as well for involving you in a situation that made you uncomfortable, before you understood what you were getting into. I should have taken the time to explain what my plan was before starting the meeting, and gave you a choice as to whether or not you still wanted to be a part of it.”

Nate nodded. “If it makes you feel better, I probably would have still stayed and helped… but I would have still stopped the attack.”

“Yeah, I expect you would have.” I chuckled.  Relaxing slightly with the air cleared, I sat down on the bench next to him, although I left plenty of space between us.

 “… You remind me of my brother, you know.” He was smiling, but the expression was somehow deeply, incredibly sad.

“Your brother?” 

“George.  He was only older than me by a couple of years, but we were nothing alike.” He chuckled. “He was so passionate about everything. Our country, our people, how to make everyone’s lives better; He would find a project that would help someone and then he’d be off, not stopping for anything or anyone until he had finished it. He just cared… so much.”

The comparison made me slightly uncomfortable. “I don’t care about others.” Everything I had done was done with the singular purpose of saving myself. Even improving the duchy was just to prevent us from losing our home for when Ronan finally broke off the engagement.

Nate raised an eyebrow. “Really? Then why was your first concern when you talked about going a more official route to stopping corruption in the duchy about the families who would starve? And it mattered to you so much you were willing to put yourself in harms way? Is that really how someone who doesn’t care acts?”

“…” I shook my head silently. I couldn’t see myself as anyone’s savior.

“Anyways, I think that’s why I reacted so strongly that day.” He was trying to force a smile, but it crumbled as he continued talking. “George always said that the Cause he was working for justified the risks he was taking. He was my older brother… I believed him.”

He trailed off, staring off into the distance, and I couldn’t help but ask: “What happened?”

“ He died. “ Nate whispered the words, his eyes filled with pain. “And I couldn’t save him.”

Clearing his throat uncomfortably, he stood up, forcing a slightly crooked smile. “Sorry, maybe one day we’ll talk more about that… but I don’t think I can today.”

I followed his lead, standing up and pretending not to notice as he discretely wiped a few tears from his eyes.  “Well, I better go home…”

“Just one last thing!” Nate took a deep breath, seeming to steady himself. “Even with our disagreements on silly things like tax rates and extortion and blackmail as a governing technique,  I really would like to put that behind us and help each other out in the future.” He stuck out his hand. “How about it? Can we be friends?” 

I started to reach out to shake his hand, but hesitated.

_____________________________

I was being led out of the ballroom, someone’s arm was around my shoulder. My father? He was muttering about how terrible this all was, but I couldn’t understand him. My mind was filled with shock over Ronan’s betrayal.

How could he break things off the engagement now?  Who was the woman he truly loved?

I had always thought he loved me, and now felt very foolish for the assumption.

Just before we went through the exit however, my tear clouded eyes caught sight of someone familiar… and in that moment I felt the my entire body freeze with shock.

Edith, standing next to Prince Ronan, her hand on his arm.

“Isn’t that Edith, your friend?” I heard my father ask.

“Yes.” the words I spoke were barely audible over the ringing in my ears as the world closed in around me and I faded into darkness. “She’s my friend.”

_____________________________

I pulled back my hand.

“No. Not friends. Not again. “ I muttered, more to myself than Nate. “How about ‘pleasant acquaintances’ instead?”

He paused at that, his hand lowering for a moment. At first he seemed taken aback, even wounded by my words. But as he studied me, the hurt in his eyes slowly faded away and he started to nod his head. A type of understanding sadness took its place in his expression and he stuck out his hand once more, smiling.

“If that’s what you need. Pleasant acquaintances it is.”

_____________________________

As he walked me back to the carriage, our conversation turned to less rocky subjects.

“Have you contacted the weaver in Tilendra?” He asked, matching his much longer gait to my own as we walked.

“Yes!” I grinned at him. “Thanks to you I just have one last step before I can move on to the second phase of my plan.”

He looked worried at that. “I saw the first phase of your plan. It was terrifying. I shudder to think what the second phase will be.” 

“Nothing so dramatic.” I waved a hand. “Just ensuring that I become completely financially independent. “ 

“Just that, huh?” He laughed. “Why do I feel that you might take on the whole world next, and probably own it by the time you’re through?”

“Not the whole world.” I shrugged. “Just most of it.”

We arrived at my carriage. Nate waved my footman aside, reaching out to open the door for me himself.  

“I’m not sure whether to be excited for you, or scared for everyone else.”

I stepped inside, smiling at him through the window of the carriage as he closed the door behind me.

“Why not both?”

_____________________________

I sat at my desk several days later, waiting for a meeting with nervous anticipation.

What if she’s completely different then what I remember? I mean, Rig was the same but I doubt even a different lifetime could change that man! What if this doesn’t work?! What if Hallers can’t find her?

…

That last thought made me chuckle to myself. No, Hallers would never be so unprofessional as to not complete a task, even an impossible one. I wouldn’t put it past him if she didn’t exist in this lifetime to simply pull her out of another, just so the job would be done properly.

With a quiet knock, Hallers entered, introducing the woman who followed him with just the slightest hint of a satisfied smile. “Mrs. Maline has arrived.”

I nodded approval, and as she walked though the door, I grabbed the armrests of my chair tightly to hold myself back from jumping up to greet her.

She looked the same as when I met her.

_____________________________

I stood nervously in front of the older woman, my hands clenched tightly in front of me.  She seemed a gentle person, with grey hair and few wrinkles that were outshined by her kind eyes and smile, but it did little to put me at ease.

This was the last interview I had gotten, my last hope. I had learned from past experiences to keep my head down, speak only when spoke to, and NEVER mention my past as a nobleman’s daughter.

“You’re the duke’s daughter, huh?” She asked, startling me.

“How did you…” I trailed off, terrified of the implications. Would she kick me out? I needed this job desperately.

“I once made a dress for you when you were seventeen.” She nodded with a smile. “I remember, you designed the thing yourself, very impressive.”

“…” I didn’t answer, barely able to breathe as nervousness overcame me.

“Can you sew?”

“Yes, but it was mostly embroidery work.” I answered honestly. “But I’m willing to work as hard as it takes to do this job perfectly.”

She smiled at that. “I think you will. Even back then I thought you were a dedicated person. I’m willing to give you a chance.”

“…”

“So stop standing there as if you’ve seen a ghost and grab a needle. “She laughed at my shocked expression. “We have work to do.”

_____________________________

 I gently stood up, shaking her hand politely before motioning her to sit. “Mrs. Maline, I’m so glad to meet you, please, make yourself comfortable.”

She stared at me curiously as she sat, curiosity in her eyes, without a shred of recognition. I felt a stab of disappointment, and chided myself silently.

Don’t be silly, it’s not like she’s forgotten you! She just hasn’t met you yet in this lifetime!

“I assume you are wondering why I asked you here.” I started things off generally, trying to put her at ease.

Maline shrugged. “Begging your pardon, but I assumed you wanted a dress made? Why else would you ask a simple seamstress like me up here.” She grinned. “I doubt it’s simply for the pleasure of my company.” 

I waved at Hallers, who poured tea. “You are both right and wrong. I did not ask you here to simply make me a dress, but I also did not ask you here just for tea, as much as I would enjoy just sitting and talking for once.”

“Then why…?” She stopped, confused as I stood to take a formal dress out of the trunk in the corner and brought it over to her.

“What do you think of this?”

Taken aback, she quickly put on an expression I recognized as her professional face. I had Hallers bring a dress form for her to drape it over, allowing her to study it closely. She walked around it, getting a general feel for the design, stepping closer to check the seams and construction, nodding occasionally. It took quite a while but I watched her happily, thinking of the few happier memories I had from my previous life while working in a dress shop with her.

 “The design is unique,” She finally spoke up. “The cloth… it’s from Tilendra, correct?”

At my nod she whistled with appreciation “Well made, difficult to get on this side of the border. Simple, but elegant, some of the lines could be cleaned up a bit. The sewing was well done, the seams are all passable although not perfect.”

She stopped walking around the dress, stopping at the front with a final sigh. “I’d say it’s a wonderful dress, Milady. Well designed, well made.”

“Thank you.” I answered modestly.

“…” She stared at me in shock. I also felt the prickling gaze of Hallers at  my back as well before he quickly controlled his expression. “You designed this?” She finally asked.

“Designed and sewn.” I spread my hands, grinning.

Maline’s eyes widened as she looked over the dress carefully again. “I have to admit then... You are very talented, Milady!”

“I can’t take credit for that, I’m afraid. I simply learned from the best.”

 Maline laughed. “I hate to disagree with nobility, but that’s impossible.”

“And why is that?”

She pointed to herself. “Because I am the best.” 

We both laughed at that, although for different reasons.

“So why show me this?” She finally asked.

“You could make this design, yes? Perhaps even improve upon this?”

Maline nodded. “Yes, but I thought you didn’t want a dress?”

“I don’t want one dress.” I sat back down at my desk. “I want to open up a business, a clothing shop, and hire you as the head seamstress.”

“…” She sat down silently in her own chair, staring at me as if I had grown a second head. “I don’t want to be rude Milady…”

“You can call me Lenora.” I interrupted, ignoring Hallers disapproving sigh. “We’re going to be business partners after all.”

“That’s yet to be determined. You may have talent, but I doubt you understand the ruthlessness, the determination it would take for us to make it in the clothing industry.”

_____________________________

Maline, usually so calm and collected, sobbed in the corner of the sewing room.

I patted her shoulder,  unsure of how to comfort someone who was normally so confident. “I’m sure it was a mistake.”

“It’s no mistake.” She snapped bitterly, wiping her tears. “Mr Haggot stole my designs, my contacts, and gave them to another seamstress. I trusted him, thought he valued me as a business partner, but instead he cut me out!”

“Isn’t there anything you can do…?” I drifted into silence as she shook her head sadly.

“Nothing. He took everything. I have nothing.” She sniffed. “This is the world of business, girl. Backstabbing, betrayal…. If you ever want to go into it, although I  don’t recommend it… find someone you can trust.”

“Maline…”

“So you don’t end up like me.” She sighed, looking around the shop. “I guess, this is goodbye.”

_____________________________

I looked Maline in the eye, not hiding my determination. “I know exactly what the business world is like. That’s why I need someone who can help me. Someone just as talented as I am so we can make a good product, but mean enough so between the two of us we can beat out everyone else.”

“…” After a few beats of silence she burst into laughter. “Well, you got two things right.” She admitted. “I’m talented and I’m mean.”

“And you won’t stab me in the back.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.

“How do you know I won’t?”

“…” For a moment, I didn’t answer. 

She had never betrayed me in my last life, but if I had learned anything, it was that the ones you never suspect, the ones closest to you who could tear you down the fastest. 

It wasn’t… couldn’t be friendship. There was no true friends in this life, I learned that the hard way. But perhaps there was something else, a certain professional integrity. I trusted Maline for the same reason I trusted Rig to gather information, or for Hallers to do… anything. They built their lives around being the best in their work, and if I couldn’t trust that, what could I trust?

That was it… that was the reason. I let out a silent sigh of relief. Not emotions, not weakness, not friendship.

 Never again.

“You are a professional.” I finally answered.

 She looked at me with renewed respect. “I most definitely am. “ Taking a sip of her tea, she continued. “But even if your designs and my sewing can make the best dresses around, what advantage will we have to sell them?” 

“That’s the easy part.” I pointed at myself. 

“You’re going to sell them?” Her question was skeptical. 

“Without even trying. You see, what do you think happens when the daughter of a duke, the fiancé to the crown prince, shows up to a party wearing a completely different design of dress?”  I leaned back in my own chair, sipping my tea with a smile. 

Maline’s eyes lit up. “They’ll copy you?”

 “They will. And if I tell them that I got the dress from an exclusive shop?”

She nodded slowly. “I- That… that just might work.”

“Not might.” I grinned. “It will definitely work.”

I could speak with absolute confidence. After all, it had happened before. In my previous life, in the years leading up to my downfall, I had been desperate to impress my inattentive fiancé. I started personally designing my dresses and having them made. It had cost a fortune, and in the end ultimately failed to even win me an extra glance from my betrothed, but each new design had sparked multiple new trends  across the nobility. The young women would flock around me, asking where I got my dress, my jewelry. They showered me with compliments and called me their friend.

Of course, once the engagement was broken, each and every one of the women who had called themselves my friend were nowhere to be found. They had used me for their own gain, and I had been too naïve to realize it until it was too late. But that was fine. 

In this lifetime, it would be me using them instead.

“I’ve struck a deal with a weaver in Tilendra, we’ll have good access to high quality cloth. With that, your skills and my influence to sell them, we’ll soon be busier than we can handle.” I set down my tea, leaning forward.  There are of course much more details and paperwork to it then that, but that’s the offer.” 

I held out my hand.

“Partners?”

Maline groaned. “I hope I don’t regret this.” She shook my hand. “Partners.”

We began drafting the framework of a business. I named it “Prosperity” after everything I hoped to have, everything that this shop would bring me. The beautiful plan to escape my terrible fate.

 And so, in my small office in the heart of the Duchy of Armeny, began the start of the newest, most exclusive dress shop, rumored to sell the finest gowns in the country.

#writing #i can't eat love #part 9 #fantasy #second life #second chances #there's a time skip coming after this #her plan is in motion guys

[1-1snailxd-art]

Elements of Love: Chapter 1 - Electric Flames

*you are here* - ch2 - ch3

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Type: Elemental Powers au - Short Chapter Fic (3 chapters with a choose your own ending)

Relationships: LAMP

Characters: Virgil Sanders, Patton Sanders, Roman Sanders, Logan Sanders, Deceit Sanders, Remus Sanders 

Warnings: Fire danger, electric shock, major character injury, hurt/comfort, Possible Major character death

Summary: When Roman attempts to stop an out of control fire on his own, he sets his partners on edge. Virgil may not understand his powers, but he knows he has to use them to save Roman while Patton and Logan struggle to get to them. 

____________________

Virgil scrunched up his face in frustration as electricity snapped from his fingertips as he tried to wrangle Patton’s fluffy, teal blanket out of the drier; giving up trying to fold it and taking it straight to Patton’s bedroom. Static electricity was nothing new for the young man to deal with, but this was more than he generally got; tossing the blanket on the bed and staring at his still tingling fingers. His breathing increased as he watched small flashes of electricity jump off his fingertips, audibly snapping and crackling with each visible flash. Backing away from the bed with his fist pinned to his chest, Virgil felt the electricity fade from the blanket but continue to raise within him.

“Deep breaths, Virgil. Calm down.” He told himself; turning to walk downstairs and seek refuge in the centre of the living room. “Get it under control.”

In the living rooms centre sat a solid wooden table, which Virgil quickly cleared and sat atop with crossed legs. He felt safer sitting on the wooden surface; resting his hands in his lap and allowing his fingers to touch the cool wood below. Energy snapped from his fingertips, but with the wood beneath him, Virgil gave it a place to go. Logan had been kind enough to teach him this trick when he first discovered his abilities; explaining that he could use the wood to displace the energy before accepting it back to himself safely or transferring it to the many batteries they had around the house. Sitting now, Virgil let the energy dance through the wooden grains and calmed his breath as he smiled at the feeling of the energy slowing and returning to his hands. He had been so focused on the task that he barely registered the phone in his pocket vibrating until the caller rang for a second time and he fumbled the device out of his pocket to answer.

“Virgil! Thank goodness, you’re okay! You are okay, aren’t you?” Patton’s words came out in a rushed breath that immediately set Virgil on edge again.

“I-I-I-I just had a – ah – moment, but I’m fine.”

“Is Roman home? Please tell me he came home after class.”

“No.” Virgil felt his phone heating and he gripped  the tables edge to try and guide the building energy again. “What is happening, Patton? What’s wrong?”

“I just got the emergency alert that a fire is heading towards the town.”

“What? No. That can’t-“

Virgil pulled the phone away from his ear, flicking it onto speaker so he could check his messages. Patton spoke the truth; a text alert had come through that the fires outside of town were no longer controlled and were being blown towards the town by strong winds. Virgil had paid the winds no mind and the smoke had remained out of his sight all day; he felt foolish for being so ignorant now he realised the severity of the situation.

“Virgil? Virgil!” Patton’s voice pulled Virgil back from his thoughts and he blinked his surroundings back into focus. “Deep breaths for me… It’s okay… Calm down.”

“Wait, where’s Logan?”

“Logan is stuck on the northern side of town; they closed the highway and he has ditched his car to try and help. I’m worried about Roman; he isn’t answering his phone and I’m still 20minutes away. Virgil? I can hear rustling. What are you doing?”

Already away from his position, Virgil had raced down the hall to pull his converse shoes on; ignoring the buzz on his fingertips as he started planning what to do. If Roman wasn’t home or with Patton, then that meant he was out on his bike and with the fire around…

“I’m going to find Roman.”

“No!” Patton said firmly, voice going surprisingly deep. “You need to pack some things and prepare to move to the evacuation centre. Logan and I will go after Roman.”

“You two are too far away. Roman is probably at the front and I’m closer.” Virgil slipped an oversized woollen sweater over his head and headed out the door where he was met by the strong winds.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Virgil!” The other man practically screeched into the phone; hearing the wind blowing on the speaker from the other end. “Stay away from the fire! There is nothing you can do!”

The words cut Virgil like a knife and he froze at the edge of the driveway; thick grey smoke choked the horizon from his viewpoint, and he believed Patton for a moment. What could he do? Charge a battery. Make sparks come from his fingertips. How was that going to help? Patton could manipulate water; he could ensure the water smothered the flames. Logan controlled the winds; he could choke the flames of oxygen within a certain range. Even Roman, though he had just as much control as Virgil, his power was connected to fire; there was the chance that he could control the blaze on his own. But Virgil had the feeling that wasn’t the case. Deep in his gut he could tell something was off and he needed to get to Roman. Clenching one fist tight with a crackle of electricity, Virgil lifted the phone closer so his voice would be clear.

“I love you, Patton, but you are wrong about me. I’ll meet you out there.”

Patton’s cries never reached the other end as the phone call was ended, and Virgil took off down the road at a run. He wished he could drive faster, but the roads were closing as police redirected drivers to the centre of town as the exclusion zone grew, and the chaos loaded the roads with traffic. Desperately calling for his phone to redial, Patton felt his heart sink as the phone rang out with every attempt. There was no way of stopping it now; Roman was definitely trying to use his powers and now Virgil was going to put himself in danger to protect him. He regretted going to work now. He should have known Roman couldn’t resist the pull of the fire and contacted him the moment the fires began to grow.

Patton tapped his hands-free button and swallowed the lump in his throat, “call Logan.”

Logan picked up on the third ring; breathing heavily, “Are you safe?”

“Virgil’s gone after Roman,” his voice was strained from holding back emotions and forcing himself to remain composed. “The roads are closing faster than I can move.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know, but I’d assume somewhere near Orange Park because Roman would normal ride that way home.”

“It will take some time for me to get around to that area undetected, and there are multiple properties that need defending. Can you ditch your car and head that way on foot?”

Patton considered the idea, scanning the streets ahead and planning the fastest route.

“I will still be behind Virgil, but I could get there in 15minutes if Remus Road is still open.”

“Sounds like an appropriate course of action. Call me when you find them. I love you, Patton.”

“I love you too.”

Patton hit end call and pushed his foot on the accelerator to get around a silver hatchback that blocked his path to the turn off he needed. Hearing Logan’s voice lit a fire in his stomach, and he was determined to find the other two before they got into any more trouble than they already were.

 ******************************

Slipping his phone into his back pocket, Logan switched back to a run along the fires edge. The thick smoke shielded him from prying eyes as he kept his own personal bubble clear, but the path was still treacherous. Compared to the others, Logan had the most control and understanding of his gift and had been using it since he was five years old. The air was willing to listen to him, within reason; and at that point in time, was happy to protect him from the heat and smoke. As the town inched closer with every step, Logan prepared himself to have to make some tough calls: help defend properties or continue to find the ones he loved. Logically it would be a better use of his powers to protect those who couldn’t defend themselves, but his heart had just as much say in the situation.

Shouts ahead made up his mind for him, and Logan charged forward to help the lone fire crew that were desperately trying to prevent the flames from engulfing an old timber home.

******************************  

 The fire was hungry. It wanted to burn, to spread, to destroy. Roman stood in the middle of the inferno, arms outstretched and tense as he tried to get the flames to comply with his wishes. Ash and smoke blew in his face in response and Roman coughed loudly, adjusting the bandana over his face slightly.

“Why can’t you listen to me!” He shouted in frustration kicked out at a burning stump; the flames curling away from him as he did so. “Go into the forest, not people’s homes!”

Wind whipped through and the fire roared in response; raising higher around where Roman stood and continued to catch more and more tree branches within its widening reach. The more the flames took in, the hungrier it became. Roman could feel its joy and excitement increase with every new bit of foliage it grabbed onto and he didn’t have the power to stop it. It seemed he could only protect himself as the flames and heat curled away from him and left him in a circle of safety. It hurt to feel so powerless surrounded by the very thing he was meant to control. Logan and Patton made it seem so easy to control their elements and even Virgil was beginning to have some success in channelling his energy. Apparently, he was the only one that had no control and his element was practically laughing at him as he attempted some form of control. Roman continued to roam through the inferno, calling for the flames to change direction and ignoring the tightening in his chest as the smoke continued to work into his lungs.

  A sudden lift in the fire’s energy caught Roman’s attention and he followed the flames as they eagerly ran towards a new source of energy. Nearing the fires edge, Roman was finally able to hear a voice over the fire’s crackling roar.

“Roman!”

“Virgil!” Roman called back, stepping out from the flames and squinting to look through the smoke that was thicker in the open air. “Virgil, where are you?”

Though the wind was pushing towards the north, the flames stretched east and Roman followed their curve; running into Virgil just at the flames grabbed onto a new tree behind the stumbling man.

“What are you doing out here?” Roman questioned, not yet seeing the trap the flames had set.

“I came to get YOU, you idio-.”

Virgil’s reply was cut short when Roman felt the fire’s joy as a tree limb loosened, lunging forward to wrap Virgil in a tight embrace and turn him away as the limb fell and exploded with embers on impact. Like a swarm of glowing insects, the embers danced over Roman’s back and left him unharmed; calling for more power as they floated back into the main flame.

“Are you okay?” Roman breathed out, cautiously loosening his grasp on the other as he regained his footing.

“Yeah,” Virgil coughed to clear his throat and pulled his hands close as the energy began to buzz again. “Thanks, but we have to go.”

“I can’t leave yet. I need to control this fire.”

“And how’s that working out for you?” Arching his brow, Virgil tried to look composed despite the terror held inside him.

“I was doing just fine,” Roman pouted, folding his arms across his chest. “You were the one that needed saving just then.”

The crackling of the blaze intensified as the fire reared up again, licking the air with orange flames. Roman and Virgil had been so focused on each other, neither of them had realised they were being surrounded by the eager flames until all exits were completely cut off. Glancing around Roman paled as he heard the fires call for energy and realised it wasn’t more trees the force was seeking.

“Ro, what’s wr-“ Pulling his shirt up over his mouth, Virgil coughed hard as the smoke thickened around them.

“It wants you. Come here, I’ll shield you and we can get out.” Virgil turned away from Roman as he moved pull them close; hands visibly sparking and crackling with energy. “What’s wrong?”

“Give me a minute to control this,” he hissed; hands burning as the energy begged for an outlet. “There is so much energy in the air right now.”

Wind swirled around the pair and Roman glanced around nervously as he felt the flames edge closer.

“I don’t think we have minute, Virge!”

Roman cried as he stepped in front of him as the flames reached forward, licking his arms as he crossed them in front of his face. It left his skin tingling and warm, but not burnt in any way thanks to their relationship. Feet shifted quickly to defend Virgil’s other side as the wind helped the flames reach further and his circle of safety appeared to be shrinking with Virgil present. White sparks jumped from Virgil’s clenched hands, and his face contorted in concentration as he desperately tried to hold it back from joining the flames like it seemed to want to. Another tree limb fell and their small circle was once again filled with dancing embers. Roman didn’t care about the risk; shielding Virgil by pulling him close enough for his sparking fists to connect with his chest. Air left Roman’s lungs as he gasped at the surge of energy that ran through his body; the fire flaring and rearing away in response.

“Shit! Princey! Princey are you okay?”

Though he still stood on his own legs, Virgil felt Roman leaning heavily against him and his breathing was yet to restart. Smoke grew thick and heavy with ash, Roman took his first breath in to immediately start coughing in desperation. Dropping to his knees, Virgil pulled Roman down low to try and find a small reprieve; hands no longer sparking but still tingling with energy.

“What…that?” Roman gasped, “I felt…every….thing.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“No,” Roman shook his head, feeling strangely alert considering his depleting oxygen. “Do it again.”

“WHAT! Did I just fry your brain cells? I’m not going to electrocute you again.”

“You didn’t.” A smile spread across Roman’s face that chilled Virgil to his very core. “I felt the fire. I pushed it away. I had control.”

“How does electricity give you control?”

“Not electricity, Virgil. Energy.”

Virgil examined the others face, trying to work out if he was serious or not. They had always assumed that Virgil’s power was linked purely to lightning; especially considering how dangerous he was during thunderstorms, but that didn’t explain what he felt when he had touched Roman. The moment his fists had connected with Roman’s chest he had felt so much all at once; the beating of his heart, the fear in his head, the hunger of the flames. It seemed laughable to think that he could experience all that from a simple electric shock, but more so to suggest that their was more to Virgil’s powers than they had initially thought. Sweat burnt his eyes as Virgil stared at Roman in confusion; the fire creeping closer to the pair again.

“What if you’re wrong and I kill you?”

“If I’m wrong, either you kill me with electricity or this fire consumes you; but if I am right, we can control this fire and save lives.”

Roman held his hand out; Virgil stared at it while keeping his own clutched to his chest. Heat intensified and inched closer, reaching out towards Virgil’s hunched form. Just as the winds swept through again and the flames reached out their orange tendrils, Virgil took hold of Roman’s hand and sent his energy coursing through the others body. For Virgil, it felt like every nerve in his body was exposed and his body burnt from the overload of information from Roman and the fire. Roman on the other hand, was having the time of his life; feeling the fire shift and move as he asked it to.

“I can control it, Virgil!” He cried, pushing the flames to burn back on themselves and clear a path back to where Virgil had entered.

Holding hands, the pair easily stepped out of the flames and Roman continued to encourage the fire to change direction. Though still hungry for more, the flames complied; stopping their advance and instead remained to burn what they already had a hold of. Coughing from the younger man pulled Roman out of his euphoric state and grounded him in reality once again; releasing his hand and wrapping his arm around Virgil to carefully guide him further away from the fires edge.

Virgil’s body shook from coughing and the overload of information; his head pounding as it processed what had just occurred. Every step away from the flame helped though, severing the connection that he had apparently formed while feeling through Roman. As the red motorbike came into view, Virgil finally realised that Roman had been talking to him the whole time and straightened to look him in the eye.

“What was that, Princey?”

“Oh, you missed that. Allow me to paraphrase then.” Roman wrapped his arms around Virgil’s waist and pulled him close for a brief kiss. “That was utterly amazing, Virge.”

Pounding head aside, Virgil smiled and lent against Roman’s chest; breathing in his smoke-soaked clothes. “I’m just glad I didn’t kill you.”

“Me too,” His laugh turned into a cough briefly, but Roman was quick to compose himself and shift to guide Virgil to his bike. “We aren’t done yet though. If you and I work together, we might be able to redirect this whole thing away from the town.”

“Roman,” Virgil groaned; running his hands through his ash filled hair. “Can’t we just go. Patton and Logan will be freaking out.”

“Do you really want to just leave and let this thing burn through the town?” Throwing his hands up in the air, Roman then gestured at the forest behind them, “We could stop this. Please. Help me stop this.”

It was impossible to resist the pleading look in Roman’s eyes and Virgil couldn’t help but nod; accepting another kiss before climbing onto the back of the motorbike. Wrapping his arms securely around Roman’s waist, Virgil felt the energy build within him again as the bike started and took the pair closer to the flames again. In an unspoken plan, Virgil slipped his hands under Roman’s shirt to establish contact and allow his building energy to course through the others body. Energy surged and Roman beamed as he was again able to instruct the fire to change course; pulling it away from a fence it was about to jump and encouraging embers to fizzle out before they took hold of new fuel. The feeling was addictive and suddenly Roman understood why Logan and Patton used their powers so often. Behind him, Virgil kept his eyes shut as he tried to focus solely on Roman and ignore the endless stream of information the fire was trying to provide.

A vision flashed in Virgil’s head of a fire truck ahead; a message from the flames. He was about to get Roman’s attention to warn him, when the bike slowed and Roman turned to yell over his shoulder.

“There’s a truck ahead. I’m gonna take us into the flames and keep guiding it from there, okay?”

With a nod of approval, Roman steered the bike into the flames; parting them easily with his natural defence and speeding on through the compliant inferno. Everything was working out perfectly in the fire users mind; oblivious of the effect the ordeal was having on his partner behind him.

____________________

End Note: This was meant to be a short oneshot, but it got a bit long so I decided to split it up a bit. What inspired this? Well...I was stuck in a fire emergency zone for the weekend as fires burned out of control around my town. I watched the flames move across the mountain side with friends who had been evacuated from their home outside of town. It was my first experience with something of that severity and boy did it escalate quickly. I tried to work on my other stories, but I just couldn’t focus on them and writing this was a good outlet for me. So...fires still burn, but they are at least under control near me. Now I can return my focus to out rapidly decreasing water supply (yay mother nature). 

💜🐌

*you are here* - ch2 - ch3

————————————————

What else have I done:

The Perfect Ring (oneshot - analogical proposal)

You Promised (oneshot - prinxiety angst/injury/near death)

Sides of a Hero (Completed Fic - sides are fusions of impulses and aspects of Thomas. Virgil has a depressing past that he is forced to face thanks to Deceit and Rage. Was canon compliant at the time of completion)

The Shield to your Sword (WIP - A fantasy/magic au - Prinxiety (Royal Roman and orphan Virgil - they’ll admit to their love eventually), Virgil angst, non binary, healer Logan, *spoiler* Patton)

Libraries are for Meetings (ongoing WIP - Human/University au with Royality and developing Analogical. Slow burn and heavily focused on a grieving group of friends that Virgil slowly becomes a part of to better himself.)

Visit my Ao3 page for more

Check out my other blog for random fandom reblogs and stuff @snail-giggles

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides au #elemental au #superpowers au #virgil sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #fanfiction #my writing #snail writing #Electric Flames #fire tw #LAMP #ts lamp #elements of love

[coffeebased]

I won’t be the first or last person to marvel at how quickly February whizzed past, especially in comparison to January’s gauntlet. To be completely fair to February, it had the ongoing COVID-19 international epidemic, as well as the ABS-CBN shutdown crisis, the anti-terrorism bill, the reminder that historical revisionism re: the Marcos dictatorship is alive and well… and those were just the actual headlines.

I must digress before I spiral.

I read 12 books in February, half of which were newly released in this month. I’ve split my post up into three parts like I did last month: one-shots, parts of series, and re-reads. It seems to be working well for me.

  Prosper’s Demon by K.J. Parker

The unnamed and morally questionable narrator is an exorcist with great follow-through and few doubts. His methods aren’t delicate but they’re undeniably effective: he’ll get the demon out—he just doesn’t particularly care what happens to the person.

Prosper of Schanz is a man of science, determined to raise the world’s first philosopher-king, reared according to the purest principles. Too bad he’s demonically possessed.

After I read Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City last year, I knew that I wanted more by Parker. I considered delving into his back catalog, which I still will probably do, but I saw that he was releasing a new book in Feb 2020, so I jumped on that first. Prosper’s is exactly up my alley, what with the discussions of morality and the greater good with demons, and quite a bit of engineering. I’d admired the voice of the main character in Sixteen because he was dry and very caught up in doing what needed to be done, and the main character has the same appealing values. It’s a short read, but it sticks in the teeth and fills the belly.

  Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher

Stephen’s god died on the longest day of the year…

Three years later, Stephen is a broken paladin, living only for the chance to be useful before he dies. But all that changes when he encounters a fugitive named Grace in an alley and witnesses an assassination attempt gone wrong. Now the pair must navigate a web of treachery, beset on all sides by spies and poisoners, while a cryptic killer stalks one step behind…

Kingfisher, also known as Ursula Vernon, tends to write capable and damaged characters falling in with each other and foiling plots. She also tends to write paladins very well, which is a personal delight. I always enjoy a Kingfisher story, because the characters do the sensible thing more often than not, and she deals with trauma very compassionately, from what I suspect is a personal viewpoint. Her books are also usually very funny, very disturbing, and no-nonsense, scratching that Terry Pratchett Witch itch when I miss him very much. Grace is along the same lines, with a good solid HEA that leaves everyone, including the reader, satisfied.

  Kindred, a Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy and illustrated by John Jennings

I lost an arm on my last trip home.

Home is a new house with a loving husband in 1970s California that suddenly transformed in to the frightening world of the antebellum South.

Dana, a young black writer, can’t explain how she is transported across time and space to a plantation in Maryland. But she does quickly understand why: to deal with the troubles of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder–and her progenitor.

Her survival, her very existence, depends on it.

This searing graphic-novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s science fiction classic is a powerfully moving, unflinching look at the violent disturbing effects of slavery on the people it chained together, both black and white–and made kindred in the deepest sense of the word.

Kindred, the novel, is on my Next 20s list. I had meant to read it before I read the GN, but picked up the graphic novel based on a friend’s recommendation. The graphic novel is searingly painful, and I enjoyed reading it, but there are parts of it that feel slightly disjointed. I’m not sure if it’s because of the time travel, or if it’s an adaptation problem. It made me want to read the novel immediately, which is what I am reading right now. I don’t think that I’ll be able to properly synthesise my thoughts about this book until I’ve read the original.

    Mirror: The Mountain and The Nest by Emma Rios and Hwei Lim

A mysterious asteroid hosts a collection of strange creatures – man-animal hybrids, mythological creatures made flesh, guardian spirits, cursed shadows – and the humans who brought them to life. But this strange society exists in an uneasy truce, in the aftermath of uprisings seeking freedom and acceptance, that have only ended in tragedy. As the ambitious, the desperate and the hopeful inhabitants of the asteroid struggle to decide their shared fate, a force greater than either animal or human seems to be silently watching the conflict, waiting for either side to finally answer the question: what is worthy of being human?

Recommended to me by a new friend who’d heard I was into sci-fi and graphic novels, who absolutely hit the nail on the head with this rec. The art is beautiful, dreamy, and layered, and it keeps you tied to the story as the authors build what is a magnificent construction in your head. The authors do some really lovely things with timeskips that I have no idea how to talk about without spoiling anything, and I only regret that we weren’t able to linger through the second volume. I’m don’t know why there isn’t more of Mirror, but I do appreciate how they tied everything up as well as they could in two volumes. Looking forward to more like this in the future.

  Heartstopper: Volume Three by Alice Oseman

In this volume we’ll see the Heartstopper gang go on a school trip to Paris! Not only are Nick and Charlie navigating a new city, but also telling more people about their relationship AND learning more about the challenges each other are facing in private…

Meanwhile Tao and Elle will face their feelings for each other, Tara and Darcy share more about their relationship origin story, and the teachers supervising the trip seem… rather close…?

You can read all of Heartstopper and its future updates here. Heartstopper is a lovely slice of life comic, PG13 at best, that really takes me back to my own mid-teens. The story is centered around the developing relationship of two young boys, Charlie and Nick, and it really deals with it respectfully. It tackles a lot of teen issues without being too preachy about it, which is probably the least inspiring thing I could have written about it, and integrates it deftly into the story. The art style is adorable and really complements the sweet story. This volume, just released this month, revolves around a class trip to Paris, and there are some shenanigans that you’ll have to read for yourself.

  Sixty Six Book 2 by Russell Molina and Mikey Marchan

Kuwento ni Celestino Cabal. Kabebertdey niya lang. Mayroon siyang natanggap na regalo na ngayo’y unti-unti niyang binubuksan. Ika nga ng matatanda, “Huli man daw at magaling, maihahabol din.”

The story of Celestino Cabal. His birthday has just passed. He received a gift that he now gets to open, bit by bit. As the old saying goes, “Better late than never.”

This is the synopsis of the first book. There isn’t an official synopsis for the second book online, and I hesitate to write my own. Sixty Six Book 2 was released during February Komiket, and since I had been waiting for it for a few years, I had to go to the event even though everyone’s been iffy about going into crowded spaces due to COVID-19. I was excited to read this but unfortunately, I don’t think it capitalised on the foundation set in Book 1. The artist was different, and I admired their work on a technical level, as well as their humorous use of WASAK as a sound effect. I don’t know if there’ll be a third book, but the author has made themselves a little leeway for that possibility at the end of this volume.

  Thank You, Jeeves, Jeeves #5 by P.G. Wodehouse

The odds are stacked against Chuffy when he falls head over heels for American heiress Pauline Stoker. Who better to help him win her over but Jeeves, the perfect gentleman’s gentleman. But when Bertie, Pauline’s ex-fiance finds himself caught up in the fray, much to his consternation, even Jeeves struggles to get Chuffy his fairy-tale ending.

This book was in my next 20s! So I’m accomplishing one of my 2020 reading goals, yay! But hot damn there is some racist language in this book. Every time I was finally sinking into the story boom! Racist language! And I know that it was because of the time it was published, like I know that academically, but oof. That aside, the story is solid. It’s a comedy of manners AND errors with Jeeves ex machina, as per usual, but this is the first full Jeeves novel I’ve read, the rest were short story collections, and it was good to see the characters take more space. It certainly made the comedic payoff a lot stronger.

But oof.

  Die Vol. 2: Split the Party by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, and Clayton Cowles

No one can escape DIE until everyone agrees to go home. Or rather, no one can escape DIE until everyone who is alive agrees to go home. The second arc of the commercial and critical hit of bleakly romantic fantasy fiction starts to reveal the secrets of the world, and our heroes’ pasts. Yes, they can’t escape DIE. They also can’t escape themselves. Collects issues #6-10 of DIE

CHARACTERISATION. There’s a lot more breathing space in this newly-released volume of Die and I live for that! The first volume was a lot of the characters running from one place to the next and we, as readers, were being given the sense of setting. But volume two, you can feel Gillen just finally branching out and hitting us with their joined histories. I want to see more of how these older players will be dealing with the actions of their teenage selves, and I think the third volume will really show what the comic’s capable of. I’m really looking forward to that.

  False Value, Rivers of London #8 by Ben Aaronovitch

Peter Grant is facing fatherhood, and an uncertain future, with equal amounts of panic and enthusiasm. Rather than sit around, he takes a job with émigré Silicon Valley tech genius Terrence Skinner’s brand new London start up – the Serious Cybernetics Company.

Drawn into the orbit of Old Street’s famous ‘silicon roundabout’, Peter must learn how to blend in with people who are both civilians and geekier than he is. Compared to his last job, Peter thinks it should be a doddle. But magic is not finished with Mama Grant’s favourite son.

Because Terrence Skinner has a secret hidden in the bowels of the SCC. A technology that stretches back to Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, and forward to the future of artificial intelligence. A secret that is just as magical as it technological – and just as dangerous.

The last Rivers of London book finished the first major arc of the series. It was a succession of explosions contained in a novel. So I was wondering what kind of tone Aaronovitch would be setting with False Value. Would it be all action, immediately? A filler story? I just wanted more Peter Grant. It could literally be an entire novel of Peter going to America to visit the Smithsonian museums and I would be on that.

False Value is a slow story but does a lot of table setting for the next arc. While the case of the book feels very small and contained, you can see that they’re being pulled into the larger world of magic. I did have a hard time with the first few chapters, but I’m not sure if this is a problem of the book, or because I sailed straight into it after the Jeeves book I had been reading.

I finished the book too quickly and now I have to wait for the next one. Bother.

    The Thief, The Queen’s Thief #1 by Megan Whalen Turner

The king’s scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king’s prison. The magus is interested only in the thief’s abilities.

What Gen is interested in is anyone’s guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.

It’s March now, so my friends and I are starting on the second book in our read-along of The Queen’s Thief. I wrote last month that I was worried about how my friends would take the series, but really I needn’t have thought about it at all. The book stands well on its own, and my friends all got into the story. I hesitate to say that they loved it because there are four more books in the series, but they were definitely into it. Some of them had a hard time sticking to the two chapters a day schedule because Turner’s prose really just pulls you in.

I still love Gen, and I’m excited to relive his character growth.

  The Farthest Shore, The Earthsea Cycle #3

Darkness threatens to overtake Earthsea. As the world and its wizards are losing their magic, Ged — powerful Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord — embarks on a sailing journey with highborn young prince, Arren. They travel far beyond the realm of death to discover the cause of these evil disturbances and to restore magic to a land desperately thirsty for it.

I’m reading Tehanu, the last book of the Cycle, now, and I’m scared of ending the series. It’s given me so much joy and peace these past few months. I slipped right into it after finishing The Farthest Shore, remembering that they overlap slightly, and that’s done a lot to soften the blow of the third book. Re-reading Farthest at this age, when things have been losing their colour and flavour, where I have to fight harder to keep myself honest and keep myself ‘good’, hits differently. I’ve been recovering, and the bitterness that Ged has over the loss of his mastery is too real to me. Of course, it’s a good book, but it hurts.

—

All right, that’s it for now. I’ll probably be popping in to post a little about Komiket and some other things I’ve been reading next week or so, so please keep a weather eye out for that next post!

February Reading Round-Up I won't be the first or last person to marvel at how quickly February whizzed past, especially in comparison to January's gauntlet.

#books #books 2 #reading #reading 2 #reviews

[spinedog]

Why I write Adam the way I do

Okay, this started out as a reply to some awesome feedback on FR&H, and it... sort of got away from me. So, I decided to turn it into a textpost here, because I feel it’s really important and I haven’t really had a chance to put it into words until now.

Putting in a page break so to not clutter up your dashboards: fair warning, the below contains a lot of talk about abusive relationships, and a discussion about portraying abusers.

So, it was mentioned that a lot of fan fictions portray Adam as a one-sided monster. It’s a trend I keep noticing, even in stories that are otherwise really, really well written (though, keep in mind, I don’t read all that much anymore, so there could be some and I just haven’t seen it). Not many writers seem to want to give him any depth other than 'shitty dude'. And I understand why. His character shouldn't be sympathized with, and it's tough to walk a line between 'multi-sided' and 'redeeming someone who should not be redeemed'. Especially with all the Adam stans that started rioting after his death, I think most people either hate him so viscerally that they don't want to spend any time on him, or don't want to look like they're trying to excuse him. Both viewpoints are totally valid, by the way - I don't think anyone should write any character that they don't want to write. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t adore all the goat man memes that make fun of him.

But I think there's a bit of a danger there that no one really acknowledges. People with abusive tendencies aren't usually one-sided monsters in real life. Sure, genuine sadistic sociopaths types exist, who just hurt for the sake of hurting and really don't care about reasoning, but these people are rare in comparison. Your typical abusive relationship is generally not like this.

An abuser is the person who is mentally ill and starts to lean on you, then continues to lean, with more and more weight, because it's working, it feels good, and don't they deserve to have some support in their life for once? An abuser is the person who genuinely thinks you're the only person who will ever love them, who will ever tolerate them, and they tell you this and tell you that if you were to leave they would end up committing suicide. An abuser is the person who knows they get a rush of power from the feeling of hitting flesh and leaving a bruise, of knowing it's wrong but knowing they can never admit it, so they lie and backpedal to try and explain why it's okay that they have to hit you, because it was your fault anyways. An abuser is a parent who just wants their child to be perfect, can't you just listen to what they've told you, can't you just be a good child for once? 

An abuser is a person who never emotionally matured, attaches to another person in an unhealthy way to stabilize themselves, and continues to do so even when they realize what they’re doing, using any kind of tactic or rationalization they can come up with to keep that person they so desperately need close. And I want people to see that. I want people to read a perspective that they understand, that they sympathize with, and know that it does not excuse what he's done. I want them to see it happening at the table across the room. I want them to see it in a stranger's eyes. And, most of all, I want them to see how easy it is to fall into that situation. Abusive relationships are far too common, but toxic relationships are even more common - and that’s often where it starts.

It’s almost happened to me. Twice, actually. Once with a very, very close friend who I truly believed could pull her way through her own mental illnesses, who I thought was making progress, who I thought cared very deeply about me - right up until I realized I was crying myself to sleep every night because no matter how hard I tried, and no matter how closely I followed what she wanted me to do, I had always done something wrong to hurt her (once, I asked her how her day was going, and she responded with five paragraphs about how I was incredibly hurtful for forcing her to remember the shitty day she’d had. I believed her.). Then with a romantic partner who I’d known for years, who I knew had toxic masculinity issues that I thought he knew about, who I thought I could trust - right up until he dragged me across the cab of his car into a kiss that I’d already said ‘no’ to. I left both of those people within days of that realization. I still define them both as more toxic than abusive, and I was certainly no angel in my own right - I did and said a lot of things in what I thought was my own defense that I’ve come to regret. But I’d seen abusive relationships before, through a story about a friend my mother had in school, movies, books - and most importantly, a small and very well-written script about a girl defending her boyfriend’s actions that I read in high school and never, ever forgot. I could read the signs well enough to know what road they were starting to turn onto. I knew that the thought of hurting them would stop me and force me to re-think my actions, but the thought of hurting me wouldn’t be enough to stop either of them. So I left - and was able to leave, due to one deciding that it was her idea to kick me out of her life in the first place, and the other deciding I was too high-strung and sensitive for him. The only reason I’m not still involved with either one is that neither attempted to guilt trip me into staying with them any further - and I’m deeply grateful to both of them for that.

That’s why I put so much effort into writing Adam, and why I’ve now written specifically from his POV twice. I knew I had a grasp on who he was, but it was just an understanding for me, and not a trauma like so many others have. I want people to read a perspective that they understand, that they sympathize with, but know that it does not excuse what he's done. And, most importantly, I wanted readers to come to this conclusion on their own, because I believe that the only way to make someone truly accept something is to make them think that it was their own idea in the first place. It's a daunting task, and I think that's why we don't see it as often as we maybe should. No one wants to stray too far to one side and be accused of sympathizing with an abuser, so they back off and stick to the safer side of the spectrum. Or, the people who truly understand it want nothing more than to just leave it behind them. 

But, if you just portray every bad guy as a cartoon monster, you start to forget what real monsters look like. And so does your audience.

I expected to get set on fire by my readers when I posted the first chapter with Adam's perspective, honestly. I'd demonized the hell out of him in the first few chapters, and I didn't like it - I wanted him to be just as real as any of the other characters, and I wanted to show him for what I thought he really was, but I was afraid of the backlash that I thought I would get. But, after a few chapters I decided that I had no real reputation to sacrifice, and I knew that it was either going to sink the fanfic that I had no real stake in, or make it into one that people might actually learn something from. 

So, I went for it. I put together motivations and psychology for him, I made him think he had a reason for what he did, and I made a reason for why he needed Blake. I pulled things from my own experience, even some thoughts from my own head during some of my worst moments, stressed over whether or not it was respectful to abuse victims, made tweaks, deleted most of those tweaks anyways, then pressed ‘post’ and hoped. And instead of the hell I was expecting, I got a lot of positive feedback and no accusation at all. People told me that, rather than coming across as redeeming him, I was making him even more frightening by making him more realistic. In fact, every single piece of feedback praised the fact that he actually had motivation and was a character in his own right, but was still despicable. I think I did lose a couple readers - there were a couple that had been leaving a lot of feedback and suddenly disappeared around the same time as that chapter was posted, and I still wonder if it was because of that. But I got a rush of confidence, because I’d actually accomplished what I’d set out to do. I was walking that line, and more importantly, people could actually see what I was doing.

Now, here we are. I don't think I'm doing anything unique, or special. Honestly, I don’t even really think I’m all that good of an author, overall. I'm just doing what I wish more writers would - depict a mentality that they don’t have. Maybe they're scared to, maybe they don't understand, or maybe they just don't have an interest in how these people think. And every single one of those viewpoints are valid. If someone isn’t comfortable with a character, or concept, or relationship, they should not write it. That’s why I’m doing it - I figured that if I understood it, I was interested in it, and I felt brave enough to try, then there was no reason not to give it a shot. Actually, I sort of felt like I had a responsibility to - like I said before, I have experience. But I’m not traumatized, nor are those memories terribly painful for me anymore. 

So, I use them. Because I know there are people who can’t share their experiences because it’ll bring up too much pain and suffering. Because I know there are people who think they know a monster when they see one, but think that the person that won’t stop texting them, that convinces them to do things they’re not comfortable with, that makes them feel small, ‘isn’t like that’. Because I know there are people who see the Adam in RWBY canon and genuinely do not understand why everyone hates him so much, or why he was portrayed the way he was.

I write Adam as a dynamic character because I want everyone who reads this FR&H to understand the fact that abusers are real people, not plot devices, or horror stories. People that maybe could have been helped, could have turned their lives around, if someone had seen what they were becoming sooner.

But once habits are set, once they’ve sunk into what they want the world to be, once they’ve built a fragile world around themselves, you cannot help them anymore. All you can do is not be a part of that world.

Thanks for reading, guys. <3

#spinedog speaks #long post #rwby #rwby fanfiction

[cloudybookash-blog]

25-50

Soooo… I take forever to do these things, sooooorrryyyy!

26. What would your character say their best trait would be?

Idk, probs that she’ s nice or something? I literally have never thought about how my characters feel about themselves??? 

Great start!

27. What is your character’s greatest fear? Deep, irrational?

That she ends up accidentally, or even intentionally, like her father in her attempt to over throw his rule. I’d say she’s terrified to become a hypocrite, all these years facing against her family and the way the rule/conduct themselves to end up doing or being exactly like them would be nightmare inducing for her.

28. What is currently motivating your character to stay with the party?

She killed the other party… In all fairness, it was an accident.

But for real, before meeting her current Crew™ her biggest fear was leading her Old Party and being shunned by the very peoples with who she was coming to aid/save. Of course, she stays with them because at the end of the day she loves them and enjoys their company but there are obviously a lot of other reasons to stay: she doesn’t know the land (her Old Party were going to teach her when they reached ‘safety’), she doesn’t have any ties on the new planet apart from a single group of rebels from her home world who aren’t the easiest on the eyes, she hardly speaks the language or understands the customs/culture of this new planet, and probably even more that I haven’t thought about. Bottom line is that she needs them.

On a happy note, they need her too.

29. What are your character’s hobbies and interests outside of their class?

I’m translating these q’s for a book and I don’t know enough about dnd (or my fucking characters for that matter) to answer.

30. What would most people think when they first see your character?

Tall. Like, freakishly tall.

31. What stereotypical group role does your character play in the party? (The Mom, the Mess, the Comic Relief, etc. Optionally: What role would your character play in the “Five Man Band” structure?)

Well, she’s technically the leader I guess. It’s kind of her quest they’re all on but at the same time the others tend to take her place leading the sub groups while she figures out a plan. I guess she might be The Man in The Chair or Behind the Curtain.

32. What is your character the most insecure about?

Maybe her intelligence, like not being the smartest person in the room. She’s known (even on the new planet) for being super strong and a great fighter, but she detests that viewpoint because it makes it difficult for people (and herself) to differentiate between the ‘bad guys’ in her family and the ones who’ve been fighting the Good Fight, like her.

33. What person does your character admire most?

I think I’ve answered this before and it had something to do with liking people who could be strong and caring at the same  time. Or something sappy like that.

34. What does your character admire and dislike the most about the player character sitting to your left?

Translating for a book her so I’ll answer about how my character feels about the other four members of the main cast:

J: PRO: very understanding, never have to explain or defend herself to him - he always gets it. CON: not who she thought he would be.ME: PRO: loyal, despite having their little spats, at the end of the day ME would die for her. CON: not very understanding.HH: PRO: funny, can relax the whole mood at a moments notice. CON: reckless, is usually the only reason they get into trouble.M: PRO: is the closest to her in age and as a result is like her best friend, there’s almost nothing she hates about M. CON: I literally can’t think of one Z could have against M.

35. Why is your character’s lowest stat their lowest (the in-character reason, not “because there’s no reason for a wizard to have 16 strength, duh”)?

Not applicable.

36. What would be your character’s theme song/favorite band/favorite genre of music?

Something folky? 

37.  What stereotypical role would your character play in a high school AU/if they attended a normal high school? (Nerd, jock, bully, goth, etc.)

A toss up between the Loner or the Class President.

38. What treasure/item/artifact that your character has collected during the adventure is the most important to them?

She doesn’t/can’t really collect stuff, survival mode, y’know.

39.  Is there any particular weapon, item, etc. that your character longs to find?

No? Her fight isn’t after something material.

40.  Where does your character feel the most at home?

I think I’ve tried answering this before and couldn’t answer, probably at her Uncle’s place though, because it has the best memories for her.

41. Does your character care about how they’re perceived by others? How do they change themselves to fit in with other people?

I think yes, as she’s keeping her identity a secret. As a result I’d say she tends to distance herself out of fear of slipping up that she’s related to the enemy. Her entire plan rest on being supported by a lot of people and the idea that where she comes from could hurt her chances of success would be stressful.

42. What does your character think is the true meaning of life?

Broooo, this too deep for 10:41am.

43. What is your character’s scent? (Bonus points for a description that sounds like it could be from a bad [or awesome] fanfic.)

lol, B.O. probably, she’s a preteen running around in the woods.

44. Does your character think more with their heart or their brain?

Heart.

45. What is your character’s most recent or frequent nightmare?

I don’t wanna be cliché and say the murder of her older brother and mother, or her fear of failing overall but… I’m gonna be cliche and say those are the two things she probably has nightmares over. 

46. What opinion does your character have on [CERTAIN ESTABLISHED GROUPS/AUTHORITIES IN THE GAME WORLD]? (Dragonmarked Houses, royal crown, etc.)

There are a lot of little, influential groups that she comes across and some of them live up to her expectations and others don’t. Overall, she has the opinion that any group in a position of power needs to do more harm than good, and act as both protector and provider to their people. That’s regardless of whether they’re just a random clan that walk around together, or the ‘police-type unit’ in this world, or the political rulers, she doesn’t care how small your reach is, if you rule - you better do it well.

47. How did your character spend their childhood? Where did they grow up/who were their childhood friends?

Pretty sure I’ve answered this before? Um, just recap I guess - she was born second heir to the throne on her world, spent her childhood hanging out with her Guard, learning and training under royal tutors and trainers. Fucked up along the way and got her ass banished, was sad, lived with her uncle who subsequently became her teacher for everything, and spent quality time with her brother as a result, she was then welcomed back out of banishment for a short period of time before she ‘defected’. And, technically, she’s still a child, so the contents of the book are her ‘growing up’ so to speak.

48. What aspect of your character’s future are they most curious about? (If they could know one thing about the future, what would it be?)

Whether they’ll die before they achieve their goals. Morbid I know, but this is war.

49. What colors are associated with your character?

Blue, Black, Purple and White.

50. Who in the party would your character prioritize rescuing, in dire circumstances?

Probably M or HH, both J and ME prove themselves to be able to get out of any situation on their own but sometimes HH can get overwhelmed or distracted and then can’t save himself and M has yet to prove herself as capable enough to handle anything that comes her way.

#lol don't expect the other two q's to be answered any time soon #I got called into work and now im tired #writing #wip #crafiet #wassup bruh