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dreadlord-mr-son · 2 years

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A partial discussion of my thoughts on "canon".

While it doesn't drift across my dash as often as anti/pro shipping discourse, there's a lot people have said over the years about the nature of "canon" and how much respect should be paid to it.

While I'm not on the side of "all concept of canon and non-canon should be abolished", as some people believe -- and here I give a nod to my latest follower who's expressed that sentiment sometimes -- I do believe that canon should not be treated as something pure, distinct, and untouchable.

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Bearing in mind as you read this, I am not an expert. I'm Just Some Guy.

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Firstly, there's the question of... what even is canon in the first place?

Historically, canon is a term for the collection of Christian literature and doctrine recognized by the heads and/or bulk of the organized sects as official. But that's just where the term was taken from. How does fandom use it?

Canon, out of context and without any modifiers, is generally recognized to mean the source material that a fandom comes from. The book, TV show, cartoon, music videos, comics, manga, or any other possible source a fandom might spring from. A canon may be a single work (book, movie, etc) or it may be a series.

Thus what seems to be a clear distinction -- and more on that coming later -- is drawn. Canon is the original work, and anything outside that original work is not canon.

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My argument for continued distinction between canon and non-canon is its usefulness during discussions and analysis of media (and writing fanfic can be filed under 'analysis' for these purposes). Having a way of referring to 'things which are part of the work" and "things which are not part of the work" is -- to my mind -- an obviously useful tool to have available.

I also must admit to a personal attachment to having a defined 'official' version, though as an avid collector of AUs, I would never let the official version stop me from enjoying unofficial versions simply for not being the 'true' version.

To abolish a distinction between what is part of the source work and what is expanded on by derivative works I feel is putting unneeded obstacles in the way of having nuanced discussions of media.

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It must, to have a fruitful discussion of the values of canon, be recognized that 'canon' is not actually a singular concept.

This is where I get into that aside I brought up earlier after mentioning that 'clear distinction' that seems to exist between a work and its derivative forms.

Because there are types of canons, and they encompass different things.

In most cases, those things will be the original work AND some extra details that are included as part of the recognized "official" version. Though in some cases they will refer to elements outside the original work primarily and may not include the work itself.

I'll write up a partial list of common terms and concepts, as I see them used and/or as I use them myself. This is all from my own viewpoint, so you might find they don't perfectly mesh with your own understanding.

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Canon: Without modifiers, canon usually refers exclusively to the original work. "In canon, this character-" is referring specifically to the character in the original work.

The complications with the boundaries of what counts as canon arise right away.

The original work may be a series where some parts were written by one author, and other parts by another. One way this happens is an author dies during a book series and someone else continues it after their death. Is the entire series canon? Is only the part written by the original author canon? Does it make a difference if their successor is working from their notes, or if they're inventing their own personal ideas?

A series may be complete but then added onto by an unrelated party later. Star Wars is a good case study in shifting canon. There's the original series. Then the prequels. Then the Expanded Universe. Then the Disney sequels. How do you count each of them, canonically?

Here's a quick illustration of the most likely breakdowns I can think of. Which of these is your "canon" for Star Wars? Only the original? The original and the prequels? The original, prequels, and Disney sequels? The original, prequels, and the EU?

Disney "decanonized" the EU, but do you... accept that? Do they have that power for you?

I propose a new term.

Corporate canon: The canon officially declared by an IP-owning estate. Personally I don't have a ton of respect for corporate-declared canon. While the EU might not be canon for Disney, I see no reason that means it has to stop being canon for those who were already using it as source material.

Multiple conflicting canons may also come in the form of alternate official versions of the same work. This is commonly seen in cases where a public domain character becomes popular for a while and spawns many retellings. See all the different Sherlock Holmes TV shows, for example. But I think the most useful examples for me right now would be anime and manga.

Many, MANY anime come from an original manga that then is adapted into an anime. Sometimes more than once.

One of my fandoms is Fullmetal Alchemist, which has two anime adaptions which both have drastic differences from each other, because one was started before the source manga was completed.

When discussion FMA's canon, one generally has to specify which version one's using as the source. While "Brotherhood" is close enough to the manga that they can mostly be used interchangeably, the 2003 anime has several important plot, worldbuilding, and character differences that mean distinguishing it from the others is often highly important. Fanfic is often specifically labelled "Brotherhood/Manga", " '03", or if it's a hybrid of the two, so readers come in knowing what to expect. Meta discussions likewise often have to mention the version they're drawing from if they don't want to risk confusion.

So the "canon" for FMA is a moving target, and is generally whichever one you're currently using as your source. Brotherhood, Manga, and 03, are three overlapping but not identical canons.

Word of God: Word of god can alternatively be called "declared canon", though that's not really a term in circulation. It's not part of the work but the creator of the work (or the estate owning the IP but see my comment on not having respect for that) has said this is a true thing for their work.

Fans vary wildly on how much they accept these declarations as part of the accepted canon. It seems to have a large amount to do with the social trust built between the creator and their fandom. Someone such as JK Rowling squandered her trust with both political takes the fandom found distasteful (not the topic of this post, and will not be discussed here), and with declaring things as canon that had little to no support in the text, or seemed weird and disconnected both from "what made sense" to the fans, or to what they were interested in knowing about the world.

Word of god seems to exist in a fuzzy place inbetween canon and not canon.

Let's move on to more loose and personal canons.

Headcanon: Most commonly refers to something that isn't directly supported by the original work, but the person talking about it likes to treat as true. Either because they believe it's the most logical conclusion from what is shown in canon, or just because they like the idea for whatever reason.

While typically a person has one set collection of headcanons for a work or character that they occasionally add to or change, some people (*raises hand*) will have many alternate headcanon clusters. Much like an anime and manga might overlap but have changes between them, a fan might have alternate versions of their pet characters or worldbuilding for their world. Whether this is because they're exploring multiple AUs, or they just haven't chosen which version is their favorite, or whatever reason.

Headcanons are personal to the people who hold them, and are fairly clearly not part of THE canon, as it's recognized. But it's again a useful way of explaining "I am treating X as true" and a valuable tool for fandom discussion.

Fanon: "Fan canon", fanon is headcanons which become popular among a large percentage of the fandom.

An example I grew up with was the Saiyan erotic tail sensitivity from Dragonball Z. Canonically, Saiyans have sensitive tails, though this is expressed as pain at being pulled or squeezed. Fans extrapolated this to them also being erotically sensitive to being gently stroked, and this ballooned into them being treated as erogenous zones. It was not universal, but it was so common that in any given fic with erotic scenes, one could expect tail stroking to occur. It was treated as just a fact about the way their biology worked by large segments of the fanbase.

Fic canon: While I'm calling this one "fic" canon, obviously it applies to other fanworks such as fangames, fancomics, etc.

Fic canon is, as the name implies, what's true or "canon" for a specific fan work. It may or may not be a headcanon of the creator. It might be something they extrapolated from the source work, or it might be something they invented on their own. But the point is that for this fan work? It is true here. If the fanwork then spawns derivatives of its own, those will then follow the fan work's truths as if they are their own source canon. The fanwork essentially becomes a new source work in the chain.

For an example I'll use a Naruto self-insert reincarnation fic I enjoy, called Dreaming of Sunshine. This fic inserts a new character called Shikako into the Naruto world who then grows up and has her adventures in the world the same as any "canon" character. Very typical. But Dreaming of Sunshine has spawned fanfic of itself. So the fanfic of Dreaming of Sunshine treat Shikako as a given premise of the world. She is now "canon" for them.

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In summary, canon is a useful concept, and I think it would harm fandom and discussions of media to eliminate it, but it is also much more complicated and nuanced than just what is or is not canon.

Canon is a relative measure. Things can be included or removed from "canon" based on what they're being used for and what's being talked about.

Canon isn't one single thing, it's a framework for establishing what is or is not relevant to the matter at hand, whether that's a fic, a meta discussion, a character analysis, or anything else.

#fandom #canon #meta #mr son vs fandom #mr son writing #long post #there's more to be found in this topic but it's late so this is what you're getting right now

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dereksmcgrath · 3 years

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I had said before that the number 108 can be unlucky. It wasn’t unlucky at all for My Hero Academia: Vigilantes. But 108 is kind of unlucky for this episode: not only are we focusing on the Villains, but we just aren’t giving their story the structure and emotional weight it deserves.

(I either opened with those remarks or just made a bunch of corny jokes about how “Meta Liberation Army” can be abbreviated as MLA--and I’m saving those jokes for a future review.)

“My Villain Academia,” My Hero Academia Episode 108 (Season 5, Episode 20)

An adaptation of Chapters 220, 221, 222, 223, and 224 of the manga, by Kohei Horikoshi, translated by Caleb Cook with lettering by John Hunt and available from Viz.

My Hero Academia is available to stream on Crunchyroll and Funimation.

Spoilers up to My Hero Academia Chapter 325.

When I teach literature, I refer to the plot as a problem: it is something that the protagonist is trying to solve. This problem can take various forms, but it is often as an antagonist that the protagonist confronts. When this episode has the Doctor refer to a “villain” as someone “who turns nonsense into action,” that’s kind of the point: the villain is here to get the plot rolling. Without them, you don’t have a hero, you don’t have a story.

It has been long accepted by a lot of fans and scholars that superheroes tend to uphold the status quo. I think the first time I gained awareness of this popular argument--although likely not the first time I encountered it--was Dr. Horrible’s mangled remark that “the status is not quo.” More recently, however, I have been reading academic books on superheroes, and not only does that argument persist--that superheroes represent law, order, and upholding traditional norms even in the face of new evidence or out of sheer obliviousness to the need for systemic change--but the argument has become that, if a superhero story does not have the heroes doing something to effect systemic change, then it’s not a good story. I may be misunderstanding that argument, but if I don’t, then it’s not an argument I can stand behind.

The argument is that superhero stories tend to reduce complex issues to having avatars for each side of the issue--the good guy and the bad guy--get into a fight, where we are focused on the spectacle rather than on seeing actual people engaging in the actual work needed to address problems not on the individual level--again, one good guy physically fighting one bad guy--but on a larger scope.

I am oversimplifying this argument, as even those same scholars will point out that, initially, of course there were superhero stories that had the protagonist taking the fight against the system. Superman is one of the ones named most frequently, whether in his initial comic book premiere doing what police and media would not to face down a corrupt senator (a sign of things to come in his later fights with Luthor and in Justice League Unlimited) or fighting the Klan (in the meta sense, fighting their analogue on the radio show and, more recently, literally in the comics). It kind of makes Superman look like one influence on the Peerless Thief in My Hero Academia, but we’ll get to him far later in these episodic reviews.

Even with that exception of Superman, it’s not hard for me to agree with the argument that heroes prop up the status quo. That has been the plot point for My Hero Academia and why this war against the villains has been incoming: a system that depended on just All Might, now depending on a wife-beating abusive father like Endeavor with his crimes not popularly known, has a level of corruption that cannot stand up with just one man’s shining example of honest goodness and integrity to be the Symbol of Peace. It was why I appreciated the manga eventually showing that, yes, there was an entire network of assassins within the Hero Public Safety Commission to keep All Might’s hands clean--and, in retrospect, while Lady Nagant was our first named example, given what Hawks ends up doing to Twice, deadly force may be frowned upon by law in MHA but has to have been something Hawks was told he had legal authority to do. (Also, as I will never stop pointing out, Endeavor unintentionally and unknowingly killed another Pro Hero in Vigilantes, and we’re just supposed to pretend that was fine.)

But going back to this academic argument, about how superhero stories tend to stick to one-on-one battles and don’t let the heroes effect systematic change, I’m ambivalent. There have been a range of superhero or superhero-adjacent stories that have the protagonist making on-page, on-screen, obvious work to not just get into fisticuffs with the bad guy. I already pointed out Superman’s first appearance and his fight against the Klan. I can also identify other examples, some hamfisted like Captain Planet, others more nuanced like Korra reaching out to Kuvira in The Legend of Korra. While the scholarship I read bristles at the idea of reducing these fights to just avatars for good and evil, I shrug and say that kind of comes with the territory of a superhero story. I hate justifying tropes: it’s like saying “this fanservice is acceptable because that’s part of the genre”--which leads to its own set of problems, especially when I hear fools defending sexualized fanservice that is just not needed for the story and is abusive by gender and representation. Heck, The Brave and the Bold animated series had Equinox and Batman battle as giants representing the avatars of chaos and order--which is confusing enough, with Equinox having a vaguely yin-yang motif that debunks any clean separation between chaos and order. And yet, here I am, arguing that this kind of fanservice of a hero and a villain beating each other up is to be expected: you have a debate about ideals of what a hero should do when you see Iron Man and Captain America each representing a side in a fight, whether the poorly handled comic book Civil War or the better film version, and even then, that film also lets the individual personalities get in the way of saying anything meaningful about government oversight and individual agency, ideas better handled in that other Captain America film, The Winter Soldier, and even then that film also gets stuck in just being about Steve and Bucky’s relationship.

All of this is me saying that, when you add a superhero to the fight, you’re going to feel disappointed that almost nothing systematically changes in its setting, not only because, as I’m hinting, these are stories about individuals fighting each other and not stories about the individual against society or nature, but also because a superhero can only change so much of their world for the better before that world no longer looks like our own or a new societal problem has to emerge to create the problem that is the plot itself for wherever the story goes next. Once a hero makes the setting into a utopia, either a new problem emerges to show the fiction of that story and that a dystopia is always married to a utopia, or the utopia is revealed to be hollow (Shigaraki’s word of the day) and fake. My Hero Academia already showed the utopia of a world where people get to live with their Quirks is fake, not only by (largely necessary) regulation of those Quirks but also, as we’ll see more with Spinner, Compress, Toga, Gigantomachia, and others, looking different, or being socially aware, or having disabilities, or being the “wrong” size, excluded you from that society.

What I’m trying to say is that, once you add superheroes into a story to fix the problem, you can’t show what systematic change looks like. How do you write a story where it makes sense that no hero came to save Tenko Shimura from becoming Tomura Shigaraki? What’s a story like My Hero Academia supposed to do to show the problems with a society, if you have superheroes who can fix those problems by beating up the bad guys?

Solution: You have the bad guys beat each other up.

In this corner, the League of Villains, people who were made outcasts because they did not fit in--which reveals the flaws of a society that is not accepting people who may not be able to change their past or their bodily conditions.

And in this corner, the Meta Liberation Army--which reveals how society breeds people in business, media, and politics who abuse laws and societal norms to elevate themselves and create a social Darwinist nightmare.

Granted, these are some foolish schmucks for starting up this fight in public, but I’ll address how the MLA just doesn’t work in a later episode review.

But for now, let the fight begin. No matter who wins, at least we see how society at large allowed these Villains to emerge--and we can either see All For One’s dictatorial forces get wrecked, or see Re-Destro’s fascistic oafs get wrecked.

Unfortunately, no matter who wins, the Pro Heroes are going to lose, too.

I am overly impressed with myself for realizing all of this. And I say “overly” not only because this is arrogant of me but also because I’m pretty sure just about every other person following this series already came to this conclusion: if you want to show actual systematic change, you have to show what the villains are up to, because they are the ones showing the holes in our society that need to be fixed. Either a villain exploits those holes to cause damage to people, or the villain is themselves representative of unfairness in the system and, by breaking the law to save themselves and others, are unfairly maligned as villains.

That being said, I’m not a big fan of the “[Insert villain’s name here] was right” arguments. Yes, Magneto is justified in his goals and ethics, and the debate is the means he takes to them, so his existence is to show why the X-Men are screwing up and need to be more radical. Yes, Killmonger is right that Wakanda’s isolationism is reckless and allows for travesties to persist, but his choices are largely out of individual desire for vengeance, so he’s an example that T’Challa can follow. Taken too far, though, and you get people who preach anti-establishment notions without having an alternative or are just trying to sound edgy rather than actually pointing to the actual problem: it’s someone who celebrates the Joker without recognizing that, no, you don’t want to be that asshole, or who celebrate villain-turned-hero Vegeta just because he looks cool and without appreciating what steps he took to change and what fall he experienced before he got to the point of being a villain.

In all these cases, if done poorly, you have the same tired trend of a villain existing only so long so that the hero changes for the better. It’s as tiresome as I unfortunately sometimes feel reading post after post celebrating how complex and sympathetic the League of Villains’ members can be when, still, a lot of them are just assholes using empty excuses to defend atrocious behavior (primarily, just All for One) or, for the most part, are people put into desperate situations (Shigaraki, Toga, Spinner, Dabi, Twice) who are doing the best they can (Twice, Spinner) even if their actions are not defensible (Toga) or also out of line (Shigaraki) due to their own refusal to seek the legitimate help they need to work through their issues (Dabi).

It’s hard to read posts online calling the League members sympathetic when we have not had a chance in the anime to know their full story. And as with the slow revelation that this setting is not really as welcoming of people of all shapes and sizes as initially hinted, so too do the villains’ backstories show that they were justified in some actions they took, except for those that led to deaths. Too bad none of that really pops up in a meaningful way in this episode that would rather tease out Shigaraki’s back story, keep dangling the obvious answer to who Dabi really is, and short-sells what should be a meaningful friendship between Twice and Giran but is just dropped as fast as Shigaraki takes off Twice’s mask. Jeez, Shigaraki, that is a dick move to Twice…

But I’m already on Page 4 of this rant, so let’s get to the episode already.

Pulling back the curtain yet again, these reviews tend to follow a pattern. Since I first wrote about the MHA anime, my process would be to first re-read the chapters, then watch the episode in Japanese, then watch the episode in English, so as to retrace my steps in how I first encountered most of these stories, as well as to see any patterns in the production process moving from manga to anime to localization. But with this episode, that practice was made nearly impossible given how prevalent the hostility towards this episode, this arc, and this season have been, especially when a friend shared numerous reactions from other viewers about this episode. Seriously, for all the whining I just did the previous four pages, you could read this person or this person who are much better at explaining why the introduction of Re-Destro to the anime sucks, for more than one reason.

So, I had a different approach: I already had the flaws to this episode shared with me by other viewers, then I listened to the English dub, then I re-read the chapters, then I watched the Japanese dub with English subtitles.

And, boy, am I grateful I took that approach, because this episode is a ton of talking--too much talking. For an anime adaptation that cut so much of Spinner’s Leonardo from Ninja Turtles narration, I’m shocked that they kept the boring parts of his narration and cut the only good parts, including the very opening that had a lot more action and gave us a reason to sympathize with these Villains.

I know I’m a snob regarding animation; I have expressed before how, despite my love for animated works, I tend to appreciate them more for what they do with storytelling rather than the spectacle of the visuals. I really dislike works where the value of the work is in the animation alone: I am here to see a story unfold, and if there is no narrative, no plot, no beginning-middle-and-end, then what I’m encountering is a museum piece, not a work of cinema. (Feel free to bash me for that hot take: I’m still railing against Patty Jenkins’s ridiculous argument from this week.)

And as with most forms of karmic punishment I experience, I pay the price: if I rail long enough about works that are only all about the animation and not the story, then my punishment is an episode where all we get is a lot of story and not much in the way of animation. Yet I can’t even say we got a story here, so much as back story, exposition, needless narration--it’s Blade Runner only bad. As much as I have loved how this anime’s storyboards stick so close to the manga panels, the pan over the League listening to Shigaraki’s vague back story felt like the least interesting way to handle this scene, especially when it excises so much of Spinner coming around from questioning Shigaraki to sympathizing with him. Who would have imagined cutting so much of Spinner’s initial narration and the opening from Chapter 220 would screw up how to adapt Shigaraki’s back story from Chapter 222.

The anime cuts how this arc begins in the manga: Chapter 220 starts with Spinner facing off against an extremist group that hates him for his reptilian appearance--a moment that would have garnered more sympathy from the audience for these Villains than this episode is exhorting. We needed a scene to get behind these villains and agree with them, before we are shocked to hear Shigaraki say what we have long expected, that he just wants to destroy everything and make everyone as miserable as he has felt, to wake us up that, no, you may sympathize with these outcasts (to use Twice’s one-word self-description), but you shouldn’t agree with Shigaraki’s goals. (I know Shigaraki relents somewhat when asked by Toga, but it’s hard to backtrack from “destroy it all” to “destroy it all but not the stuff my friends like.” How on Earth is Shigaraki going to destroy Izuku when Spinner somewhat admires the guy and Toga...well, yeah, best left unsaid.)

While watching this episode, I also was reviewing other topics about anime and manga I’m going to go into more detail about later this month, and one topic of discussion is the assumption that anime and manga, by their visual style and story tropes, especially shojo and shonen, tend to be about big expressions--emotional outpours in words, movements, facial expressions, and actions to more easily communicate what is happening, regardless of context.

I hate to keep repeating “ambivalent” in my reviews (another academic word I need to expunge from my lexicon for a bit), but I’m ambivalent about that argument, that anime and manga, especially shojo and shonen, are better at communicating. If your character is unreadable, that likely has an intentional reason: we don’t get much of a read on the Doctor in this episode, not helped by his mustache and glasses, but we also don’t get a read on what Shigaraki is up to.

This episode only heightens my regard, not just about anime, manga, shojo, or shonen, but in animation and comics at large, that not everything is readable in what a character is planning.

On the one hand, I do agree that visual works tend to make ideas easier to comprehend for some people who can engage with such visual works. As someone who teaches English literature and writing in a United States setting, I use comics in my teaching to cross language and cultural barriers, especially for students for whom English is not their primary language or who are the first in their family raised in the United States. And this teaching approach also helps in reverse: I include manga and anime in my teaching to show how not all details cross language and cultural barriers in a one-to-one correspondence, hence the challenges of translation and localization, and how all of us struggle to make ourselves understood within our own primary language to someone else who is fluent in that language, let alone trying to translate into another language or to present ourselves in a different set of cultural norms.

On the other hand, anime and manga are not a fixed genre. Yes, I agree that the images tend to emphasize big eyes, big expressions, and big motions--but that’s like saying all animation is Looney Tunes, or all animation is Disney, or is Dragon Ball, and so on. Likewise, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, shonen is more than just one type of storytelling, and the same goes for shojo. This arc of My Hero Academia is placing focus, after admittedly far too long, on the Villains as the protagonists--and their behavior pokes holes in the idea that things are obvious, when the Villains are themselves such liars, so crafty, have their own hidden agendas, are keeping secrets from each other. It’s as if their behavior is a commentary on this plot and how BONES is adapting it: the Villains are keeping secrets, so this plot is going to keep its secrets for just who Re-Destro and the Meta Liberation Army are, what their personalities are like, and what Shigaraki and the Doctor have in mind for getting what he wants. We’re even kept in the dark as to Shigaraki’s full back story; we’re in the same position he is, knowing just little bits and able to make assumptions from a handful of visual cues and memories, without fully knowing who the hell Tenko is. Add to that Spinner’s struggles to narrate all of this and to get into Toga’s mind and Shigaraki’s mind, as well as Dabi’s own secrets and agenda with Hawks, and we have a story that blows up the notion that anime and manga are easier for reading a character’s mindset: no, they are not always easier, not when the creators deliberately mislead the audience or keep them in the dark for a surprise.

By keeping so much of the audience in the dark, so that we become aware of how deceitful villains can be, and we are put into Shigaraki’s place of not knowing where he came from. This should be a set of brilliant choices by BONES to adapt this arc in this manner. But the problem is, no, almost none of this gets anywhere close to brilliant. It’s not brilliant--it’s frustrating, because we already know what is going to happen. You can just pull up the manga at low cost with a Viz account and read all of this in the order it was originally presented and get the answers ahead of time. And if you’ve been reading the manga all along, you already know how this arc ends, and you know stuff from the next set of arcs so that you do know already what Shigaraki’s back story is, what Dabi was really up to, who survives, who dies. You even learn more about Compress’s back story--stuff that really should have been hinted at much earlier in the manga, and could have been hinted in this adaptation but as of this episode has not.

Maybe that is why the anime removes Re-Destro murdering his assistant: it’s such an odd moment that it is challenging for me to get a read on Re-Destro, as he alternates in the manga between being very friendly and devoted to his comrades but also violent and heartless.

It may be obvious that I didn’t like much of this episode. I think when I stopped taking this episode seriously was when I heard the voices. Like I said, I tend to start with the Japanese dub first before getting to the English dub. And I have nothing at all against English dubs: I would not be listening to them as much as I have, often first before I ever hear the Japanese, and I would not be a fan of so many English-speaking actors in dubs if I had any animosity to the craft, their work, and the benefit they provide for creating a larger audience for these stories. And nothing against Larry Brantley and Sonny Strait, but some of this casting feels off. I wasn’t able to take this episode seriously as soon as I heard the voice distortion that was used for Re-Destro’s phone call: that took me out of the story. If I had the chance for localization, I would really need Twice or someone to call out how freaking ridiculous that Mickey Mouse voice sounded. You have freaking Sonny Strait here: use the Krillin voice, use the Chibi Ragnarok voice, use the Usopp voice--use something, really go bizarre here, it’s just a voice distortion device! And as I said, nothing against Strait, but when I hear Re-Destro when I read the manga, that’s not the voice I have in mind. For right now, HIroaki Hirata in the Japanese dub is closer to that smoothness I expected for this character. But I have no doubt Strait will do excellent as Re-Destro’s empowered form: think Strait’s role in The Intruder II from Toonami. It’s just that Re-Destro in the English dub is lacking that odd refinement I was expecting.

Granted, it’s the same problem for me when I hear Brantley as Spinner: I am making unfair assumptions that don’t suit the goals of the creators when it comes to this character. It is sadly not as obvious in this episode as it is in the manga: this arc in the manga starts with Horikoshi invoking Laird and Eastman’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by having Spinner, who is already a sword-wielding reptilian martial artist, narrating just like how Leonardo narrating at the beginning of the very first issue of TMNT. I wanted a voice for the English dub that is like Leonardo’s, a little higher pitch and more youthful, like what Brian Tochi brought in the live-action Turtles film or what Cam Clarke and Michael Sinterniklaas bring in the animated versions. I think, for the Japanese dub, Ryo Iwasaki’s performance as Spinner is very close to what I expected. But that also may seem too obvious: Spinner may be young, but giving him an older-sounding voice can belie his inexperience, youthfulness, and naivete, similar to how people make assumptions about him by his reptilian appearance. The anime is putting me into my place--I think of Spinner one way other than who he really is, so I’m no better than the people around him who have discriminated against him for his physical appearance.

Just as I have a set of assumptions that unfairly influence how I would cast Spinner, I also think Re-Destro should have sounded more refined and less graveley in the English dub. But my expectations belie that, just the Joker whom he resembles, Re-Destro puts on this cultured facade to hide that he is just another violent gangster thug, someone who would kill his own assistant. I know I cited examples above about how complex Re-Destro is, but it’s hard for me to see him as sympathetic just because he’s crying over something he did out of his own volition: he coldly killed his office assistant Miyashita, his tears and kind words don’t suddenly make this a warm and cuddly death, we don’t get to think of him as our woobie. It only makes it more irritating that BONES so far has cut not only that scene of Re-Destro killing Miyashita but also Re-Destro’s TV commercial: it would clue us in that the reason he has that gravelly voice is because, no matter how much he tries to present himself on TV, he is not that kind of a man.

But since I invoked the Joker comparison to Re-Destro, yeah, I’m disappointed we didn’t get Troy Baker as Re-Destro, as unlikely as I imagine that would be to happen, regardless of Baker’s previous work with Funimation. It does lend a bit more to conspiracy theories on my part, though, given casting director Colleen Clinkenbeard telling Twitter followers to stop expecting Mark Hamill in MHA, it’s never happening--we can’t even get Troy Baker doing his Mark Hamill Joker.

(I’m not being fair to Baker: I’m not saying his Joker is at all bad--it is not, he has been excellent as Joker, especially playing him and Batman in the Ninja Turtles crossover film, but it is obvious Baker is performing the kind of Joker that came out of Hamill, so I’m trying to say he’s doing the “Hamill Joker,” rather than the “Nicholson Joker,” the “Ledger Joker,” or the “Caesar Romero Joker”).

It’s also a challenge to sympathize with these characters when we aren’t getting what this arc should give them: a re-introduction. I hate approaching this episode in a post-James Gunn The Suicide Squad world, but seeing how much MHA owes to not The Suicide Squad of the comics but that motif in so many superhero comics, there is that missed opportunity to reacquaint the audience with who are the members of the League of Villains. So, where the hell is my freeze-frame re-introduction to each League member? There was that fan theory a long time ago that Giran was really Present Mic in disguise: imagine doing Present Mic’s introduction of characters by name, Quirk, and pithy comment, only it’s Giran in the announcer seat this time.

(Don’t even get me started on how annoying it is to have Izuku handling the post-credit preview: give that to Spinner.)

Again, maybe it is brilliant for BONES not to include some re-introduction scenes, whether narrated by Giran or happening naturally in conversation between these characters. These Villains barely know each other’s back story, so there’s no artifice where they would believably share their back stories to each other in conversation in this context. And as I said, Shigaraki does not know enough about his own past, and Dabi is hiding his real identity. But when we’re stuck with Spinner as our half-hearted narrator, who seems not to know why he and Toga are still here with Stain being gone, and when Toga is this dull in her answer about what keeps her going after Stain’s arrest, and when Spinner himself seems not to know what he’s still doing here, all of that does not communicate a reason for us to keep going with this story.

I know this arc is going to get better, storywise at least, just based on how it went in the manga. I can only hope that the animation can capture the chaos that the original manga illustrations showed. But I am trying to think what a new viewer is going to do if this is their introduction to this series. I’m not invoking the Episode 7 Rule, I’m not doing a hypothetical experiment to gauge which episodes are the best to bring a newbie into this series--I am asking, honestly, if a fan was already into this series, and was watching it one Saturday morning, and a friend or roommate or relative saw them watching, they would be utterly lost about why they should care about this. Even the explanation for why Twice is indebted to Giran is presented as such an afterthought that does disservice to a potentially emotional moment, to what is supposed to be a pretty deep friendship, as deep as it can be for a weapons trader like Giran and an outcast-turned-criminal like Twice, so that, when Twice helps rescue Giran, we feel that emotional payoff.

It is honestly shocking that, for all the throwbacks, recaps, and flashbacks we get, including how Giran’s fingers match up to previous places where the League fought, that this still leaves a new viewer in the dark. And the problem lies at the feet of MHA arriving at a fifth-season slump: the series has gone on so long that things feel lazy and making far too many assumptions on what knowledge the audience is bringing. You’re not getting a bigger audience if you keep appealing to the diehard fans and the people reading the manga. After all, why would you keep doing ridiculous recaps and flashbacks if the fans already know what happened?

But speaking of the recaps and flashbacks, that should have been how this episode redeemed itself. As I said last time, if you re-worked the order of episodes to start with the Oboro Shirakumo story, that would be more shocking. But what if this episode could have been the very first episode of the season, and following the trend of previous seasons, make it a recap episode? We already had Izuku narrating a clip show, Class 1A at the pool, a photojournalist visiting the UA Dorms--it would be so much more interesting seeing “League of Villains camping in the woods while in the background Shigaraki gets squished by a giant.” Have the Villains tell campfire stories about how they got here: it would be a great excuse to re-use the animation and save on the budget. You could fit in a few gags, as Toga starts telling a really gruesome story but gets distracted by all the blood in it, while Twice’s story bounces between sugar-sweet happy and grim-and-dark chaos, while Compress and Spinner are stuck trying to keep them focused. It’d be a hell of a lot more interesting than how BONES somehow screwed up a potentially emotional volatile moment between Izuku and Amajiki that would put into question whether Izuku is going to have to kill a Villain and just how devastated Amajiki feels after Mirio lost his Quirk.

And speaking of whether Izuku is going to have to kill a Villain: obviously, this arc is setting up how much more dangerous Shigaraki is than UA gave him credit. Back in Season 2, I hated how Nezu and UA staff referred to him as a “man-child,” given the connotations that have surrounded masculinity and being a man. I wrote that before 2016; in this post-2016 atmosphere, and the increased prevalence of toxic masculinity, I am, once again, that annoying word ambivalent. I am likewise ambivalent how well this series has shown Shigaraki to be able to form the plan he does by episode’s end. We’re only told by Spinner how much faster Shigaraki is getting and how much slower Gigantomachia has become--but the animation doesn’t show that. And we’re being told how great Shigaraki’s plan is--when it sounds ridiculous.

By cutting so much of Spinner’s narration from the manga, we also don’t get a scene where Spinner confronts Shigaraki to ask him what is his plan. Up to that point, Shigaraki has said that, with Kurogiri gone over the last month and the computers at the old League hideout destroyed, they can’t reach the Doctor. Spinner is insistent: what is the plan? Shigaraki responds that he just told them--as Gigantomachia crashes through their hideout. The other characters explain for readers like me who aren’t following: Shigaraki just said Kurogiri was gone; to contact the Doctor, Kurogiri sought Gigantomachia; Gigantomachia would sniff out where Shigaraki is and bring him to the Doctor. Brilliant--that shows more attention to Shigaraki’s planning and scheming, and now, it’s not even here in the episode to make me think this guy is that smart. (This episode also had Shigaraki reveal his plan to have Gigantomachia attack the MLA, whereas it was Spinner who predicted that was going to be Shigaraki’s plan--so, again, we’re not letting Spinner stand out as smarter than we expected, either.)

I know Shigaraki is supposed to be our chessmaster, given his association with gaming, especially when he was faking his ignorance about shogi to lower Overhaul’s guard before defeating him and stealing his Quirk-cancelling bullets. But I’m having the same problem I had when following All For One throughout this anime: it just feels like these two antagonists are getting ahead out of sheer luck and because everyone else is a fool, not because either of them are that great as villains. Give me a Xanatos, give me a Luthor, give me a Norman Osborne (not Clone Saga Osborne, a different one). Show me Shigaraki is more than a pawn for All For One and the Doctor, because I don’t feel anything here, not even when we’re supposed to feel that Shigaraki has some legitimate concern for All For One that just isn’t getting communicated to me, whether by my stubbornness or because the content is not giving the animators and actors what they deserve. Eric Vale can sell the hell out of a scene, but Shigaraki’s talk about All For One is not giving that opportunity to the actor.

My remarks this time are a lot more disorganized and doesn’t really arrive at any conclusion. I have more to say about how this arc works and doesn’t work, especially when it comes to how ridiculous the MLA comes across in underestimating the League, but we’ll get to that next time.

#my hero academia #shigaraki #league of villains #meta liberation army #spinner #long post #mha spoilers

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slightlyrebelliouswriter23 · 3 years

Note

hey so i'm hoping to get some writing advice about creative burnout? like i seem to write in fits and spurts. some months i can churn out a oneshot or chapter everyday and some months i can do one (1) creative thing only. so i'm wondering how to prevent creative burnout and how to just create more smoothly <3 thank you!

Creative Burnout & How To Ward Against It

First, I’d like to preface this all by saying you’re definitely not alone. You probably already know this, but sometimes it’s nice to be reminded.

I know from personal experience that creative burnout can leave you feeling hopeless, detached from yourself—the kind of identity crisis no one needs in 2020.

So buckle in, folks. It’s a dosy.

I. The Symptoms

Not to be the local WebMD page here, but signs of burnout can include:

Procrastination (more than usual)

Dreading writing and feeling stuck or overly perfectionistic when you try

Physical tiredness and/or irritability

Feeling like everything is monotonous

It’s more than just writer’s block. It’s a physical and emotional exhaustion response to something that goes deeper than a simple lack of inspiration. In my experience, and from a bit of research, I’ve found that what your brain is really looking for is dopamine.

Dopamine is essentially your brain’s chemical reward system for doing something interesting or exciting to you. As someone who is diagnosed with ADHD, I have chronically low levels of dopamine, so this is a constant struggle for me—but it is absolutely made worse by creative burnout.

II. The Problem

Studies have shown that the more we do A Thing the less that thing will give us dopamine (unless a component of the activity changes regularly). This is because eventually our brains desensitise to the stimuli provided by the activity, and subsequently, we become disengaged.

But it’s not necessarily The Thing (i.e. writing) that becomes boring. Actually, more than a few factors could be at play here, and the first step to finding a solution is to identify the problem.

1. ENVIRONMENT LACKS EXCITEMENT/CHANGE—

Sometimes, the monotony of everyday life can feed creative burnout. This becomes especially applicable in quarantine when you’re not leaving your house.

What we don’t realise is that even something as small as the variables of driving to and from work, or interacting with passing coworkers, gives us dopamine. So if you have the same routine every day that does not involve any added variables, your brain will begin staunching that dopamine supply.

2. EITHER TOO EASY OR TOO CHALLENGING—

In 1975, Hungarian-American psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, coined the term “flow”, which refers to a heightened state of creativity and concentration on an activity. Csikszentmihalyi posited that if your skill level is equal to the level of challenge in any given activity, you will experience this state of flow.

The chart below is taken from Csikszentmihalyi’s own study on the subject of flow and motivation. It examines “your skill level” on the x axis in relation to the “challenge level” on the y axis.

Essentially:

Too much challenge + not enough skill = anxiety, worry (which might lead to procrastination and perfectionism)

Too much skill + not enough challenge = boredom, apathy (which might lead to monotony, irritability, and other depression-like symptoms)

Skill level = Challenge level = Flow

3. NOT ENOUGH “ACTIVE” STIMULATION—

When it comes to dopamine seeking, there is a distinct difference between active and passive stimulation in the brain.

Active stimulation is any form of activity that you have to actively engage in. For instance; exercising, doing a crossword puzzle, or reading a book. These kinds of activities not only give you dopamine, they also facilitate critical thinking and problem solving thought processes, which act as catalysts for creativity.

Passive stimulation, on the other hand, comes in the form of television, social media, and YouTube. It’s anything you can consume without having to actively engage. Passive stimulation will indeed give your brain dopamine, however, it won’t activate your creativity.

The problem also lies in the speed at which you receive the dopamine from passive activities. Passive stimulation is so easy to access that the more you consume, the harder it becomes to pick up active stimulation. Your brain expects a hit of dopamine just by picking up a phone or turning on the TV—it becomes addicted to the quick fix of a Netflix binge.

III. The Solutions

Based on the problems mentioned above, I am going to list a few solutions. Keeping in mind that not every solution will work for everyone, these can act as both preventative measures and remedies for someone who is currently burned out.

1. CHANGE UP YOUR ENVIRONMENT/ROUTINE—

Aim to do at least one thing per day that will add “variables” to the monotony. This can be as simple as going on a long walk, dressing up in that bold outfit you always wanted to wear to the office but never did, or sitting at a different workspace in your home.

Anything you can do that’s simple, but might provide an extra variable to your day to spice things up. Note: this shouldn’t be the same thing every day.

2. CHALLENGE YOURSELF MORE—

If you find yourself bored by your work, try challenging yourself more. This could mean setting goals for yourself that go a bit beyond what you’ve been doing.

For example, if you’ve been writing 500 words per day, see if you can beat your own word count every day for the next week. If you’ve been writing mainly fluff pieces, switch it up and do an angst piece. See if you can write a book in a month, or start a blog where you don’t write fiction at all!

Anything you can do to add a little kick to your workload. Note: Beware of challenging yourself too much! This can lead straight back into burnout.

3. CHALLENGE YOURSELF LESS—

If you’re on the flip side of that coin, and find that you are anxious, procrastinating, and perfectionistic when it comes to writing, fret not. Just because you’re experiencing any of these things, doesn’t mean you’re incapable of doing the job with your skillset.

It just means your perception of the job needs to be shifted.

Procrastination, at its heart, is a fear of failure, which results in actively avoiding the negative emotions associated with the task that causes this fear. Perfectionism is a type of procrastination that is a combination of a fear of failure and a fear of success (or, more accurately, other’s critiques of your success) all at once.

Neither have anything to do with your actual skillset, but they have everything to do with your perception of your skillset. Obviously, this is a harder thing to fix, as it has to do with deeply ingrained levels of self-esteem.

What I can offer you is a tactic to trick your mind into thinking you’re capable.

If you have a task, big or small, and you are feeling overwhelmed by it (like you might go curl up in bed and scroll Tumblr), immediately break that task up into smaller tasks. Keep breaking up the smaller tasks until you have the smallest possible part of the bigger task without doing nothing.

Then do that smallest possible thing.

If your goal is to write a 2000 word one shot, a small part of that task is writing half of it. An even smaller part of that task is breaking the one shot up into “scenes” and writing one scene. For instance:

Jude wakes up to a sore throat, a runny nose, and a fever.

She tries to go to work, but Cardan, being the mother hen that he is, threatens to never make her another grilled cheese sandwich (her favourite food) ever again if she doesn’t stay home.

Jude agrees begrudgingly, and Cardan sits her down in front of the TV with a bottle of Gatorade. He leaves to go get medicine from the store.

When Cardan comes back, Jude is worse than before. He makes her soup and saltine crackers and spoon feeds her.

She complains the whole time and, in her feverish state, threatens to never buy him another bottle of wine (his favourite food) ever again if he doesn’t let her feed herself.

Each bullet point represents one “scene” of about 200-400 words each. Obviously, there will be more details that you work out as you write. But with these five smaller scenes, your goal is no longer writing the 2000 word one shot. Your goal is writing the first of the five scenes.

If you complete the smallest possible task, you can stop, and you’ll still feel like you’ve accomplished something because you can cross off that task from your list. But chances are, by the time you cross off one task, you may have inspiration enough to keep going.

4. ENGAGE IN ACTIVE STIMULATION—

Since active stimulation has been proven to turn on the creative “tap”, try incorporating more of these activities into your daily routine:

Exercise: As the resident couch potato, I hate to say that exercising is good for creativity, but it is. Even if it’s just going on a short walk, so long as you’re moving.

Reading: Sometimes you have plenty of ideas, but no words to fit those ideas. Fill your well of words by carving out an hour or two each day for reading a good book.

The Creative Process: In the writing world, the creative process is a process of about 20-30 minutes that the writer partakes in every day before they start writing. This process should be creative, but also have nothing to do with writing. You can try colouring in a colouring book, painting, organising a page in your bullet journal. Anything that is creative but does not make you think about everything you have to do that day. Think of it as creative meditation.

Listen to music: Having APD, I personally can’t listen to music while I write. However, studies have shown that if you listen to at least ten songs per day, it will significantly benefit your dopamine levels and overall mood. If you’re like me and prefer to work in silence, maybe stick on a couple songs during your creative process. If you can manage music and writing together, get out those headphones!

5. KEEP A REGULAR SCHEDULE—

I know this is the most cliche point in the book, but it’s valid. This doesn’t mean do the same thing at the same time every day over and over, because ultimately we’re looking to avoid monotony.

But having pillars of structure to bolster the excitement can definitely work to keep you from slipping into burnout. Going to sleep, waking up, and having your meals at relatively the same time every day are good examples of this.

Feel free to change up the things you do between breakfast and lunch, but make sure you have those pillars of consistency so your brain knows that a break is on the horizon and doesn’t get tired.

6. PACE YOURSELF—

This is particularly difficult for those of us who are coming out of a creative burnout, but I urge you to pay special attention to this one. If we are suddenly hit by inspiration and the writing is flowing and flowing and flowing, eventually we will hit the point of highest dopamine capacity for writing.

Not putting a check on the flood of inspiration coming out of a creative burnout, I’d argue, is actually a guarantee that many of us will experience burnout all over again. It becomes this vicious cycle in which we are trapped.

While it feels great to write non-stop and receive immediate validation for that work, try to limit yourself to how much you’re writing and how immediately you post your writing (if you plan on posting it).

Whenever I finish a one shot or a chapter of something, I like to allow at least one day for editing before I post. This timeframe is important, because it acts as a buffer of rest between writing marathons.

You can take however long you need for the editing process, but definitely make sure you have a set amount of time in place. Otherwise, your brain might not have enough time to come down from what is essentially a writing high, and you will always need to reach greater heights in order to achieve that same level of dopamine.

~~~~

Overall, the most important things to take away from all of this are:

Change up your environment

Keep your brain actively stimulated

Have pillars of structure between which you can run about chaotically to your heart’s content

PACE YOURSELF!

Hope this helped. Happy writing!

-Em 🖤🗡

Writing Tip Masterlist

Fic Masterlist

Celebrate 2K with me!

#this one was a spiritual one y'all #thanks for the ask babes!#writing #writing tips #writing advice #writeblr #writing tip masterlist #writer #writer's desk #writer's life #writer's problems #writer's block #ao3 #fanfiction #creative burnout #asked and answered #em answers #danaanruhn #thank you for 2k!! 🥳💜

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potteresque-ire · 3 years

Link

Not sure if this has circulated before, but here’s a link to Henry Jenkin’s reactions to 227, largely as responses to an interview he did with Sanlian Lifeweek magazine (三聯生活周刊), a publication modelled after TIME magazine and published under China Press Publishing group (中國出版集團), the largest and state-owned publisher in China. The magazine asked for Jenkin’s opinions on the fandom-related aspects of 227 back in March, 2020. Henry Jenkins, as many may already know, is among the most renowned scholars of (Western) fan culture ... if not the most renowned.

Personally, I find this article to be quite limited in perspective, because 227 had a significant non-fandom-oriented, sociopolitical component ~ and hence its scope, its chaos, its damage. IMO, 227 stopped being a fan war, stopped being about solos, cpfs, and even Gg the moment AO3 was shut down ~ the powerful Chinese state had intervened, and the incident necessarily became a political incident. That One Fic on AO3, the conflict between solos and cpfs about whether and where That Fic should exist was at most a lighter left at the scene of what would become the blaze; it wasn’t even responsible for igniting the first fire. Most i-turtles (i-fruits?) are probably aware too at this point: if fan wars are sufficient to start 227, then there wouldn’t have been a 227 ~ because 227 would have been every date of the year.

Fan culture is fundamentally transgressive, and what that means can only be defined in the context of the subculture’s “mainstream” sociopolitical and cultural environment. I therefore find the article’s attempt to transplant Western fan culture’s observations / theories / analysis / conclusions to the incident without explicitly comparing, addressing in depth the differences of the pre- and post-transplant environment to be ... prone to rejections (as organs are after transplantations!)—exclusion from being useful or valid. And this article was very short on such comparisons or address. Jenkins being a fandom expert aside (and he was careful about not treading outside his area of expertise), early “antis” of 227 presented themselves as crusaders for the freedom of speech and, by late March when this article was published, the heated debates surrounding the incident on Chinese social media had already led to embarrassment for multiple powerful state publications. It was probably a wise choice to not make another dive into the political aspects of the incident.

Being a new(-ish) turtle who joined the fandom a full half-year after 227, I’ve been backtracking, trying to really understand the incident, which remains very much beyond comprehension in many aspects. The discussions I’ve dug up that have most fascinated me have been those in non-fandom spaces, by non-fandomers / politics enthusiasts who barely knew who Gg was, who didn’t know That One Fic involved more than one idol and had zero knowledge about solos vs cpfs. In these discussions, “antis” are not referred to as “antis” because while the action of the so-called “227 coalition” was to kill Gg’s career, that wasn’t considered its ultimate goal ~ its ultimate goal was to warn whoever tried to clamp down the freedom of expression that their opposition was strong enough, populous to fight back and take away whatever, whoever those who attempted the clamp-down care the most about. In this case, “Gg fans”—I put this in quotes because eventually, no one would know who would lurk behind those pro-Gg Weibo IDs (and the anti-Gg ones as well)—were the perceived enemies of creative freedom. Gg, assumed to be the one, the symbol of what “GG fans” cared about the most, naturally became the target of the coalition.

Gg wasn’t special in that sense ~ and that was perhaps, the saddest thing I found about this incident as a Gg fan (without quotation marks); Gg could be any idol who achieved top fame at the moment, who had enough fans to make the point known. The coalition was therefore not “anti-Gg” in its ideological sense. It was anti the fan circle culture that had cemented Gg’s popularity, that had already been known to deal extremely poorly with dissent—complaints had been abound that c-ent was no longer fun for bystanders because the latter could issue no critique, not even doubt, about an idol without the fear of being reported, torn down by fans. The coalition eventually grew to include anti the many happenings, the many censorships and imprisonments in the past few years that had silenced the creative crowd in China, happenings people dared not speak about beyond a loud grumbling ...

The coalition tried to take down Gg, because they couldn’t take down the force that had shut down AO3, that was truly responsible for the silencing. They played the Hunger Games in the Weibo arena instead of challenging Who The Real Enemy Was, because some might not have given much thought about The Enemy; some might have thought the Enemy too invincible to be worth the effort; some might have got too carried away by their blood thirst, the cruel schadenfreude of shredding a beautiful, successful young man into pieces, and forgot why they were there in the first place ...

And that was only the political side of 227. 227 was also widely suspected to have a commercial component, which added another layer to the symbolism behind Gg the Idol ~ pretty much as soon as 227 happened, netizens investigated, tried to uncover the chain of capital behind Gg. With the scent of money was the memory of filth associated with it, in a country not exactly unknown for its corrupt business practices. Much like in The Book of Exodus in the Bible, the Idol is believed to be forged with gold; it is ungodly, tainted. Whether Gg the Person was identical to Gg the Idol, Gg the Symbol mattered to few. That Gg *was* a person seemed lost to many ...

I’ll have to dive into the non-fandom aspects of 227 with more rigour. As much as I'd love to leave 227 behind, every time I see Gg, I see its legacy on his face, in his smile, and perhaps, I’m not the only one ~ ADLAD cast him as Patient #5 because of 227′s effect on him. Put it another way, 227 is already modifying, writing Gg’s career trajectory ~ a trajectory that is undoubtedly under scrutiny by many who wish to duplicate his success but circumvent his pain. And every time I see a young idol—Gg, Dd, and anyone else—I wonder if the hurt of 227 can happen to them (again) because the crux of the incident has never been resolved; the oppression and silencing have remained strong as ever.

Anyway (sorry for the rant) ... what I found noteworthy about this article was the quotes the magazine highlighted in its published form (in Chinese), which weren’t highlighted by Jenkins on his own website. They reflected what the magazine would like to be the take-home messages of the interview. I’ve listed them below; all of which had Jenkins as the speaker:

[Pie Note: About Real Person Fiction (RPF) in Western fandoms]

“American fans often do have some shared norms about what is and is not appropriate to write, mostly having to do with protecting the privacy of other people in the star’s life. Writing about the star is seen as fair game; writing about their family members is not.”

---

[Pie Note: About GG being “cast” as a transgender woman in The One Fic that started the incident; gender in fandom]

“We write fan fiction as a form of speculation and exploration. For some people, it may be one of the few spaces in the culture where they can express who they are, what they are feeling, what they are desiring. And for others, it is a place of “what if” where they explore in fantasy things they would not necessarily desire in reality.”

---

[Pie Note: Whether GG should be held responsible for his fans’ behaviour]

“Under these circumstances, I would not hold a performer responsible for his fans’ behaviors but the performer is responsible for their own behavior and fans may respond negatively to performers who over-react to the existence of alternative fantasies and insult or hector their audiences.”

---

[Pie Note: About AO3 and why fans were so upset about its closure] “Keep in mind that AO3 is a particular kind of platform. Alongside Wikipedia, AO3 is one of the greatest accomplishments of participatory culture in the digital era.”

---

[Pie Note: About the “problematic” content on AO3]

“Among my findings were that fan fiction sites can be a valuable space for young people to acquire skills (and receive feedback) on their writing from more experienced writers who share these same passions ... That said, while teens have participated in fandom, a large part of those on AO3 are adults, engaging in adult conversations on adult topics.”

---

[Pie Note: About media text in the new media era]

“First, I would stress the proliferation of media texts at the current moment ... We have access to a much broader range of media content than ever before and in this context, fans play a constructive role in curating that content, helping some shows get greater visibility ... Second, these texts have become more malleable”

---

[Pie Note: About idols not producing “good” media texts]

“Rather, the question should be what are fans finding meaningful about these performers and the texts they generate. I start from the premise that human beings do not engage in meaningless activities. I may not immediately recognize why something is meaningful but my job as a scholar is to understand why cultural materials are meaningful to the people who cherish them.”

---

My understanding of this selection of quotes is this: this state publication (as others) was quite ready to forgive Gg, to put this incident behind. It could choose to not publish this interview; it could choose to leave out certain quotes, or not do the highlighting that cast both AO3 and Gg in a positive / innocent light. But it did all these things. This article furthers my impression that the state never intended 227 to blow up the way it did, and that it did—enough for stories about it to be found in non-China websites, and in English—was what I’m still trying to comprehend. 227 was, admittedly, how I was first introduced to Gg beyond Wei Wuxian. And as I got to know Gg, like Gg, my want to understand 227 only becomes stronger, perhaps because only through comprehension I feel I can find peace for the GG fan (again, without quotation marks) in me.

Maybe I should email Dr Jenkins and ask if he’s looking for a PhD candidate. 5 years of research and thinking ... maybe that’s what it’ll take.

I feel I’ve already started anyway.

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

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lov3nerdstuff · 3 years

Note

Hi Kay!

I just wanted to take a moment and say how deeply moving (and overall comforting) I find your writing to be! I've gone through almost the entirety of your masterlist twice in the past month alone and have found myself returning more often to the pieces of literature/poems your reference sometimes. (Especially that one poem by Benedict Smith! I've read a few more by him because of you and they're just wonderfully lovely 💛 so I'm eternally thankful to you for including it.)

I may be wrong in assuming, but I believe you may have studied/are currently studying a degree involving literature. I hope this isn't too foreward of me but I was wandering if you have any other works of literature that you'd recommend? (I'd love to read anything you recommend from poems to plays 💛) I'm slightly embaressed to say but the works I've read are quite limited to a highschool level and since I'm currently studying Pharmacy, there are very few people who can recommend me such moving works. :)

I also feel like I should apologise for writing such a large ask, so please accept this apology as well hehe 💕🥺

Sincerely,

Bek 🌻

Hey there Bek 💚💕✨

First of all... I'm incredibly sorry for how long it took me to reply to this ask, I know you sent it weeks ago and I'm honestly just ashamed of myself for only replying now! I've been taking a bit of a Tumblr break again, or rather a break from literally everything, and I guess not having written anything in a while made me feel guilty whenever I opened Tumblr, so... All I can say for myself really is that I'm sorry you had to wait so long! Again, I never ever ignore anyone, I promise! It just sometimes takes a while for me to reply 😅🙈

Now, I'm so happy to hear that you've been enjoying my writing! 🥺🥰 Hearing that it's comforting and inspiring to you is honestly such a relief and indeed does make me happy more than I can say 💚 It's so cool that you're checking up on all the references I make aaahhh 🥺🥺🥺 I love it 😁 You're always more than welcome, love! I don't think I could stop including references to literature, culture, history and the science around it even if I tried 😅☺️

And yeah, I did study classics and newer literature as a minor for my undergrad degree 😄 But tbh I still work with literally a lot even now (I'm in grad school for media and cultural studies) even though it's technically not something I've been properly taught ☺️ I'm just a nerd who likes to learn on her own, and with media and culture you can pretty much delve into almost anything you want 😂😅🤷🏻‍♀️

Now, it's not forward at all to ask me for literature recommendations! 😁😃 I truly love recommending stuff!!! I have a few up my sleeve, even though you've probably heard of a few already, for obvious reasons: A lot of what I truly enjoyed reading was something Tom Hiddleston has worked on in one way or another! It's truly a magnificent guideline for picking new literature... Just look up the literary origins of his films/shows/plays and you will be in for quality literature most of the time! I don't think I've ever mentioned it on here, but me reading High-Rise (JG Ballard) because I heard Tom would be partaking in the film adaptation was actually what sparked my love and passion for literature!!! Yep, it's that good. Now on to the recommendations though 😁(This... got rather long):

Plays

Anything by Harold Pinter really, but for obvious reasons you'll find a lot of additionally fun stuff for Betrayal, which is lovely and truly funny if you're in on the kind of humour btw

Medea by Euripides (a classic, but I love it nonetheless... You can find translations in almost every language) ((and pls stay away from Seneca's Medea, because ugh... Euripides is far better AND the og story, as much as anyone can say that for Greek mythology)

La Bohème by Puccini (I know, this is technically an opera, but if you read the libretto it's honestly just like a play... And if you're up for it, the og story is in prose and written by Henri Murger... It's better than the opera, but oftentimes more difficult to find) ((this one is hilarious and basically explains an entire cultural subgroup in the 19th century)

Faust by Goethe (many people hate it, but I LOVE this one!!! It's also been translated into any and every language, and it's so interesting philosophically!!! It's also referenced SO freaking often literally everywhere, and the operas and ballets based on it are always my fave) ((there's technically Faust I and Faust II, but you're good to go just reading the first one)

Anything by Shakespeare, obviously... Though I do love me my Hamlet like every other literature enthusiast (Yes, I can do that one famous soliloquy in act 3 scene 1 by heart as well...)

Poetry

Again, anything Shakespeare for the win, but I LOVE the sonnets and keep a copy of them with me most of the time (Yes, I own multiple copies of the sonnets...) ((My faves are 116 and 91, but there's always so much truth to be found in there!!!))

A lot of the stuff William Blake wrote is amazing, though you have to pick carefully with him if certain religious motives aren't your thing... I love The Tyger, which is an individual poem, and the collection of works called Tyger, Tyger which does have many good ones and a few ones that are a little more on the mediocre side

Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas (I know this one by heart as well... It's beautiful, and there's a version of Hiddleston reading it on YouTube, which gives you even more goosebumps than the poem does anyway)

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (same for this one, also read by the one and only) ((I love to read this when I'm feeling down or powerless))

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot (This is another wow piece with many quotable lines and truths... I love it a lot and keep coming back to it! It's also a great example of how literary modernism tried to condense the complexity and passing of time and history into a single frame that had to be intrinsically poetical in nature... As in, this poem could've been a short story in any other period, but modernists loved to make everything a poem so here you go)

Der Zauberlehrling by Goethe (This one sucks in all English translations I’ve found, poetically speaking, but in German it’s such a fun piece! If you’ve ever seen the Disney ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ with Mickey Mouse or listened to the orchestral piece by Paul Dukas, then this poem proves very useful in truly understanding either! But again, the English translation should only be taken for informational value... The German one is also worded hilariously)

Prose

Short edited by Alan Ziegler (This is a collection of short prose forms that honestly is a must for me... I love this book to pieces and have had it for years now! It’s an international anthology, so you’ll find more and less famous authors from all around the world represented with short stories, prose poems, short essays and just curious and interesting snippets of writing! I draw a lot of inspiration from this book)

High-Rise by JG Ballard (As mentioned above, I owe this book part of my personality... I don’t think I would be the same person without having read it. It’s not necessarily full of wisdom, but if you’re interested in a different kind of portrayal of the human condition, then this is the read you need to take a look at)

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers (This is another piece that changed my perception of literature, even though this is a more ordinary and ‘fun’-value read... It’s one of my favourite books and it’s endlessly entertaining! So if the classics are a bit heavy for you, this one is perfect for casual readers as well! Its value really does lie more in the realisation of how fun literature can be, and the freedom you have as an author... So really, I could recommend everything by Moers, his style is amazing both in the German original and in the English translation. Yes, I’ve read both.)

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (This is comedic gold, stylistic gold and generally a bloody perfect book. Also a ‘fun’-value read, but it also does a magnificent job at showing you what you can do with literature, and how well-developed characters are supposed to be written)

The Penguin Book of the Undead (Penguin Classics) edited by Scott G. Bruce (This book is basically an education on fifteen hundred years of supernatural encounters and how culture wrote, used and perceived them. You get introductory texts for different periods and social groups, explaining how and why ghost stories were written and used, followed by passages of the prime source texts (eg. ancient necromancy shown on The Odyssey). Really, this book is just for cultural history nerds)

The Earthquake in Chile by Kleist (This isn’t necessarily one of my faves, but it has helped me understand what studying literature and culture can do for you. In case anyone remembers my insistence in Wicked Game that you gotta know what a pomegranate symbolises... this novella is such an instance where this knowledge would prove useful. Generally, it gives many opportunities to think about privilege and circumstance)

The Symposium by Plato (You’ll probably not want to read the entire collection of speeches tbh... But the concepts introduced mainly here and in some of Plato’s other work are well worth looking into! For example, the ‘double being’ introduces a concept that in modern fiction is called soulmates... Just sayin’)

#literature #lit rec #recommendation #literature recommendation

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angelinasway · 3 years

Text

Regaining Hope

Chapter Eight

Pairing: Clark Kent/Buffy Summers Warnings/Triggers:Torture, Violence, Mention's of Major Character Death, Bad Language, Sexual Tension, Eventual Smut, Mentions of Sexual Assault Summary: Takes place during Man of Steel. When Buffy discovers the U.S Military trying to keep quiet about an object buried in a twenty thousand year old glacier, she immediately thinks the worst. However, when a surprise visit to the Canadian Arctic puts her in the path of a mysterious stranger her whole world is changed forever. Authors Notes: Thank you all so much for being so very supportive. You guys have been absolutely wonderful. Seriously I couldn't ask for a better group of readers. I need to warn you all that this chapter has quite the graphic and gruesome scene in it, so if that's not your thing I highly recommend skipping the part where Clark starts to watch the video. Some major questions answered here. Hope you all enjoy, and keep the reviews coming. Special thanks to my ever amazing beta Hipkarma. She always helps and inspires me. Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Previous Chapters: [Chapter One] [Chapter Two] [Chapter Three] [Chapter Four] [Chapter Five] [Chapter Six] [Chapter Seven]

[TTH] [AO3] [FFN]

Chapter Eight

Dawn smirked as she saw the caller ID flash. So, Buffy had talked to Wes. That was good. She really didn’t want to have to break into the Watchers Council just because she was nosy and worried for her sister. Buffy hadn’t told her much when they talked yesterday, just that there was some sort of prophecy about her and this Clark guy, which just raised all sorts of red flags for her. Dawn had insisted on seeing a copy of the prophecy and her hackles raised even more when she found out how quiet Wes and Willow were trying to keep this. Looks like big sis came through however, and now it was time to give the man on the other line hell for keeping something this important from her.

“Xand, honey, can you take Abby? Wes is on the phone and it’s time for her nap anyway.” Dawn said, reaching for the phone.

“No!” Her one and a half your old screeched at the top of her lungs, making Dawn cringe. When they coined the phrase, ‘children are your parents secret revenge,’ they weren’t lying. Abigail was just like her too, even in looks.

Xander came out of their shared office, a crooked and amused smile on his lips. “You should know by now not to say that word in front of her,” He said, kissing Dawn on the forehead before reaching out and swooping up their toddler. “Come on Abby,” he said as Dawn answered her call. “Daddy will read you your favorite story.”

“Try to get Joyce down too,” She added, before saying into the phone, “Hello Wes, so good of you to finally call me.”

She heard the groan on the other end of the line and smiled. “How much do you know?”

“That there’s a prophecy about my sister and some uber-powerful guy she’s been spending time with, on your instruction I might add.” Dawn said in a mockingly sweet voice.

She heard him sigh. “Yes, that is all true. Look Dawn, I’m going to send you a copy of the prophecy through your secure fax now. We’ve been able to translate some of it, but there are certain areas where…I don’t think the language is of this world. It’s nothing like we’ve ever seen in any human or demon writings before.”

Dawn got up and walked into the office, a frown on her face. “You mean like interdimensional, there’s gotta be a reference somewhere Wes.”

There was silence over the line and for a second and she thought Wes had hung up. She’d just opened her mouth to see if he was still there, when he finally said, “No Dawn, that’s not what I meant at all.”

Her frown deepened as the first page spat out of the machine. She slid it off the rack and looked at the prophecy. There were several different languages written on the copy, Etruscan, Ancient Sumerian, Ancient Greek, and Latin. At the top were strange symbols unlike anything she’d ever seen before, almost flowing together like cursive. The next page that came out was Wesley and Willow’s translation of that page. She bit her lip, walking over to her desk and went to work making sure what they had translated so far was correct.

“So,” she began casually, “what I’m getting from the first page is that this guy is much farther from home than just another dimension.” She paused, huffing in annoyance as she snootily added,” It was Sun God by the way, not Star God.” She sighed. “Who are you using anyway, Basile?”

“Vonten,” He answered and Dawn rolled her eyes. Of course, he was using that moron’s guide.

“Vonten is an arrogant prick Wes, that book confuses people more than it helps. Burn it, it’s better as kindling. Bachman is the best at Etruscan and Ancient Sumerian, and you already know Ancient Greek and Latin enough not to need a reference.” She said, before frowning as she came to the part about the soulbond. “Wes, what the hell is a soulbond, and why is this referencing my sister and Mr. E.T. having one?”

As Wesley began to explain what they knew so far, Dawn's face began to pale. Oh, this was not of the good. Buffy was gonna wig to the nth degree when she found out.

"Does she know any of this?" Dawn asked, turning around and grabbing more of the pages that were still spitting out of her printer.

"She knows about the bond. I told her this morning." He answered.

"And what, you’re waiting until she gets pregnant before you tell her the rest?" Dawn asked angrily. "You know this is gonna freak her out..."

"Which is why I decided not to tell her." Wes interrupted.

"If you'd let me finish," Dawn snapped, slamming her hand on the desk. "I was going to say this is gonna freak her out, but it would be better if you tell her now." She huffed in frustration. "This just proves how little you guys know my sister. She absolutely will freak and she'll probably fight it at first. Just the idea of her own children having to live the life she has, is not gonna be a happy, joyous moment for her. She's already worried that Joyce or Abby, or maybe even both will be called one day.” Dawn said, before emphasizing her next words, "However, my sister is not stupid, and when push comes to shove, she'll make the right decision like she always does. I get that you’re worried about the Slayer line Wes, we all are, but keeping this from her is not the right way to go about it.”

She heard Wes’s sigh, “I realize that Dawn, but with the bond itself needing to be fulfilled, I thought that was more than enough for both of them to handle at this time.”

Dawn looked at the pages covered in the strange flowing script, similar to the symbols on the first page. Wes was right, it was a language. "We need to find a way to translate this. Do you think this is Clark's language from his home world?"

The line was silent for a moment, before he said in annoyance, “Yes, that’s what I meant when I said I don’t think the language is of this world.”

“Do you think Clark knows how to read it?” Dawn asked.

A sigh came over the line, “I honestly don’t know. I believe he just discovered where he came from, so I don’t see how he could.” He paused in thought and then murmured to himself, “But even if he can’t, perhaps the ship has a historical archive or maybe there is some form of AI technology that could translate it for us.”

Dawn frowned, “What ship?”

As Wesley explained how Buffy and Clark met and the danger Buffy had recklessly put herself in, Dawn found her ire sparking at Buffy’s stupidity. “I’m gonna kill her!” Dawn growled. “She hasn’t done something that reckless since Joyce was born. God fucking dammit, she promised me!”

Wesley sighed. “In her defense, it could have very well been her fate that made her act so rashly.” He paused before saying, “In any case, Clark was there and according to Buffy, he saved her and watched over her after she went into a healing sleep.”

Dawn was quiet as she processed that information. So, she didn’t die, which meant Buffy actively tried to stop it from happening. That was good, she was still getting smacked when Dawn saw her, but at least she hadn’t completely broken her promise from three and a half years ago. It was also good to see that this godlike Champion the prophecy spoke of wasn’t just a creature with a penchant for destruction playing at being a white hat because of a curse. That was a nice change.

“What else do you know about him?” Dawn asked. “I’m assuming you started trying to find him as soon as you started translating this.”

“Well,” Wesley began, “We first caught wind of a possible candidate about a year ago. We’d been monitoring airwave chatter for possible beings with superhuman strength when we caught a lead. A distress call came in about an oil rig off the coast of Canada in flames and about to explode. In that communication there was talk of a man rescuing the crew members aboard the rig and preventing the tower from collapsing on the rescue helicopter with his bare hands.” He paused for a moment, before saying. “We managed to find a few other incidents of him saving people, one that happened when he was thirteen. According to the incident report, his school bus went off a bridge and into the river. Three witnesses stated that a young Clark Kent managed to push the bus out of the water and rescue his classmate.”

Dawn whistled, “So this guy really is the real deal white knight, huh?”

“It would appear so.” He sighed.

“Wes we’re gonna need to access that ship.” Dawn said, looking over a small section of Sumerian that talked about a trial of choice. The rest of the page was in the alien script however, so any clue as to what that meant was beyond her.

“I know,” Wesley agreed.

“Which means, we’re gonna have to tell Buffy and Clark everything.” Dawn reiterated.

She heard Wesley groan, but he conceded nonetheless. “Alright fine, Willow needs to bring them some pendants to stave off the worst of the compulsion the bond is creating. I’ll have her stop by and get you on her way, unless you want me to tell Buffy myself, that is.”

Dawn shook her head, “No, no. I think it will be safer for everyone if I’m the one to do it.” Then she bit her lip in thought, “And don’t bother with Willow, just call me when she gets back. I think I need to do this one on my own.”

“Very well,” Wes agreed. “Willow should be finished within the next few hours. I’ll call you as soon as I know she’s returned.”

“Alright, in the meantime I’m gonna go over this and make sure all the parts I can read are translated correctly.” Dawn said, adding, "Talk in a few," before hanging up.

She sighed, rubbing her fingers along her forehead. "Well fuck," she muttered to herself.

"Everything alright?" Xander asked, coming into the office.

"No, not really," she answered handing him the translated first page of the prophecy.

She watched his eye scan the words before he blew out a breath. "So, this guys an alien?"

"Looks like." She answered.

Xander snorted, "Man the Buffster really knows how to pick 'em, doesn't she?"

Dawn mock glared, before she couldn't contain her amusement at the absurdity of the situation. "Well, you know Buffy. She doesn't do anything by halves."

****<S>**<S>****

As Clark followed Buffy down the hallway, his thoughts were a jumbled mess. He knew she had been trying to reassure him, but her words only had the opposite effect. Were they only feeling any of what they were because of the prophecy and furthermore, given the choice, would she even choose him? She had basically confessed to falling in love with her best friend. The history they had both shared, as disturbing as it was, was an important one to her. She had cared very deeply for this man. How could he ever live up to the memory of a man who had essentially changed a piece of himself for her? Part of him wanted to erase Spike’s memory from her mind, to do whatever he could to drive this man, this demon from her past and another part of him just felt wholly lost. He didn’t want to be anyone’s second best and he certainly didn’t want her to want him only because some guy thousands of years ago decided they were destined. God, he wished his dad was still alive. This would definitely be the type of thing his dad could help him through.

She stopped at a large set of double doors and turned, catching his expression before he had time to school it into a much more neutral one. She blinked in surprise, "Clark...what’s wrong?"

He shook his head, “It’s nothing Buffy.”

Her frown deepened, “Oh no, you definitely have something face. Talk to me. I promise whatever it is, I’ll try to understand.”

Clark shifted uncomfortably, before finally admitting, “I’m just feeling a little unsure about all this.”

Her eyes widened slightly, “Because of Spike?”

Clark sighed, “Well I mean think about it Buffy. You basically told me that you fell in love with your best friend and were willing to marry him for eternity, but the only reason you didn’t is because you were too scared. Would you even look twice at me if he was here now? Are the feelings I’m having for you even real, or is this just destiny trying to force us together?”

Realization flooded her expression, and she quickly shook her head. “I can’t speak for what-ifs, because I would be lying if I answered that either way…” She swallowed, “As for how you’re feeling, I’ve been under love spells before and granted you usually don’t know you’re under one when you are, but if the feeling’s part was being fabricated, we…we wouldn’t be able to fight this like we are. We would have probably already slept together.” She blushed, looking down. “Fabricated feelings they’re false obviously, but they’re very strong…strong enough to make people dangerous. If what we were feeling was a manifestation, you wouldn’t have these doubts Clark, you wouldn’t even realize there was doubts to be had.” She met his eyes then, her expression serious and stoic. “And as for the fear part, I didn’t want to get into it because…” She sighed again. “You remember how I told you that Angelus showed up right when I was starting to get my life back together?”

Clark nodded, “I remember.”

“Well, what I didn’t say is that I was planning on retiring.” She rolled her eyes, “I had this grand plan of going back to school and getting a degree in Art History and moving to Hawaii to open a gallery.” She shook her head, “It was stupid, I know.”

He immediately shook his head, “That doesn’t sound stupid at all.”

Buffy blushed. “I just mean it was stupid that I ever thought it could happen.” She shook her head, “Anyway, I started training a girl named Rayanne when we were first getting the new Watchers Council on its feet. She was bright, witty, resourceful and she already had the makings of someone who could be an excellent leader.” She looked at her feet, her hands clenching. “Me and Giles had agreed, in three-years-time, when Ray was eighteen, she would step in and fill my shoes. Faith didn’t want the position and the only other possible candidate that actually did, I flat out refused due to her inability to get along with just about anyone but Willow. I mentored Ray for over a year and she became…well, like a little sister to me. After the whole General Voll fiasco, I was ready to promote her to Senior Slayer status. She had been on it more than any other girl at the compound, helpful and demanding when need be. She’d fought through a horde of zombies and we came out of it with zero losses. The attack was completely unexpected and if she hadn’t been there, I don’t know what I would have done.” She met his eyes, “I was so proud of her.” Buffy sighed, “A few months later is when the first girl, Alicia went missing, and by the time Ray disappeared, there were already six that seemed to have just dropped off the planet.” She swallowed, “Angelus revealed himself and killed Giles a few weeks later, and almost three weeks after is when we found Alicia. She was the first and youngest to go missing and she was the first he dropped on our doorstep.” Buffy shook her head squeezing her eyes shut, “I knew what he was doing to Rayanne then, and that she would probably get the worst of it because of her association with me. Alicia was just a taste of what Angelus was capable of.” She opened her eyes, meeting his. “I wanted to have Spike claim me so we would be strong enough to save her and the rest of them, and I was scared because I knew I’d be asking for the wrong reasons. I was afraid Spike would know it too and I would only hurt him by asking. Does that make sense?”

It was Clark’s turn to avert his eyes. “Yes,” he said quietly.

She pulled out her phone and began to scroll through it, “Well just in case you have any doubts…” She swallowed, “I don’t even know why I kept this. Angelus loved tormenting me and we didn’t know it at the time but there were several Watchers from the old regime who were very unhappy with the way we were running things. Some of them made deals with Angelus, gave out my email and phone number and my location.” She looked at him, her lips pursed in anger. “One of them would even take video or pictures, documenting my pain for him when he couldn’t be there hiding in the shadows to see it.” She handed him her phone, “I’ve never watched this one, it’s the morning I found Rayanne, he saved her for last. I don’t need to see it, I lived it.” She nodded at her phone, “When he sent it, I didn’t even open it. I just dropped it in an archive and it’s been there ever since.” She shook her head, “I highly recommend only opening the third video file, the one that says, ‘Are you broken yet?’ She met his eyes then, “The first two will be what he did to her. So, unless you feel like throwing up, I would skip those.” She gestured with her chin at the double doors. “I’ll be in there beating on a bag, meet me when you’re done.”

She turned without another word and went through the double doors not looking back. Clark looked down at the phone swallowing heavily, before opening the file. The video began with the image of the front of a house, not unlike the one they were in now, except there was a large tree in front and something very obviously dangling from it. It looked to be sometime in the middle of the night or perhaps early morning, but he couldn't tell either way due to the lights on the house illuminating everything.

The person carrying the camera ran towards the house and a refined British voice in distress yelled, "Ms. Summers, come quickly. I think it may be Miss Stevenson."

The front door flew open and there she was, except she looked nothing like she did now, her eyes were wild, feral even, and she was so pale and sucked up. She looked hollow, worn-down, nothing like the girl he’d spent the last couple of days getting to know. The scream that tore from her lips and the look on her face when she saw what was hanging from the tree, tore through him like a tidal wave of emotion. Clark felt himself growing angry at the Watcher, who was obviously playing both sides. Another man with bleached hair and nothing on but a pair of black jeans came flying through the door next, his eyes wild and worried.

The camera panned and followed Buffy as she ran out to the tree, falling to her knees and screaming again. Clark saw what was in the tree then and his stomach almost rebelled right then and there. It was a young girl, no older than sixteen and the only skin left on her body was on her beautiful face and near her pelvic region. The girl’s expression was frozen in a horrified scream that no one who cared ever had the chance to hear. A large white sheet wrapped itself tightly around the girl’s wrists and tied over the lowest branch, the excess linen draping behind the dead girl as some sort of sick backdrop silhouette for the body hanging lifelessly from the tree. There was hardly any blood to speak of, just a pinkish residue from where the body had touched the clean white linen, which told Clark she had been dead for more than a few hours. It wouldn’t be visible to a human through the recording, but because of his enhanced vision Clark could even see puncture wounds in places and deep gashes from where the girl had been restrained.

The blond man came into the picture then and the Watcher came towards them, circling around so he could see Buffy’s expression, or at least that’s what he assumed the person with the camera was doing. Buffy's mouth was open in silent gulping sobs, giant tears dripping down her cheeks.

“Love,” The blond man whispered in an apparent British accent not nearly as refined as the Watchers Clark had heard so far. The man fell to his knees behind her looking up at the tree. He shuddered as tears sprang to his electric blue eyes. “Don’t look Buffy…please kitten, please go back in the house.”

The man placed his hand on her shoulder, and Buffy turned at the gesture and Clark could no longer see her face as she flung herself into the man’s arms and began to sob harder. “It’s Ray,” she howled. “Oh god, it’s Ray.”

“Shh,” The blond man hushed, rubbing hands along her back in a comforting gesture. “I know,” He choked. “I know, love.”

“We…we can’t leave her like that.” She sobbed. “I-I have to get her down.”

Clark watched the blond man close his eyes and shake his head, “I’ll do it. Go back in the house, please Slayer.”

“No,” Buffy shook her head as Clark caught the silhouette of another man flying from the house and over to them. The sound of retching could be heard, and it took Clark a second to realize the sound came from whomever had just come from the house and seen the body. “It has to be me. Don’t you see, don’t you get it? I knew,” she sobbed. “I knew what he was doing to her and I didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, sweet girl, you’ve been trying to find her. We all have. This isn’t your fault.” The man choked.

“It’s not good enough,” She screamed, shoving away from him and falling on her rear, “And it is my fault, all of it! They were called because of me, because I was too chicken shit to just except the power that was offered to me!”

A sob broke from her lips, and she turned looking directly at the cameraman a sudden realization dawning in her hollow eyes. “You!” She snarled, her eyes flashing. “It’s you, isn’t it?” She started marching towards the cameraman.

“Ms.…Ms. Summers,” Whomever was holding the camera stuttered and then she was there, a well-aimed kick flying towards the camera before Clark saw sky for a few seconds.

“I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!” She screamed suddenly hovering over the man, the wild fury in her eyes telling Clark that she had every intention of killing this man, and part of Clark couldn’t agree more. “No one else but an Angelus minion would have called me out here for Rayanne! Everyone else would know better!”

Clark watched as she threw a punch, the sickening sound of cartilage breaking ringing through the speaker as the guy howled in pain. The way her arms were angled next and the gurgling sound through the phone told him she was choking the man before three sets of arms suddenly grabbed her, pulling her off. Clark could hear the man wheeze as he tried to catch his breath while Buffy screamed and fought the three people who had pulled her away. Faith was one of them, and then the blond man, which Clark was pretty sure by now was Spike, and another man, tall, brunet, with an eyepatch. He saw Willow in the distance coming towards them and when she reached them, she touched Buffy’s shoulder before she could react and muttered a few words that sounded like Latin. Buffy suddenly collapsed and Clark realized Willow had put her to sleep. All eyes then turned towards the cameraman.

“Get her in the house, Xander.” Spike growled.

“Uh, Spike–” Xander started to say when Spike turned on him.

“Get her in the bloody fucking house, now!” He snarled, a sound like grinding bone emanating from the man as his voice altered to something more sinister. “I’m not going to kill him.” He said turning back towards the camera as two glowing amber eyes stared at Clark.

“Speak for yourself,” Faith said marching towards the man. “I’ve been getting those fucking emails too.”

“So have I,” Willow said, her eyes black as she stared the camera down.

“We won’t have to kill him,” Spike clarified as he fell in step with Faith. “Angelus will do that for us.”

“How you figure?” Faith asked, her eyes just as enraged as Buffy’s had been.

Spike suddenly sprung forward, his arm reaching out and a ripping sound emanated as the man screamed. His hand came back with what looked like a wad of hair. “This enough Red?”

“Plenty,” Willow said, sudden realization dawning in her black eyes.

“Now,” Spike said, a sinister grin stretching his fanged mouth, to the whimpering man. “The way I figure it, you got three options. The first being, you can go back to Angelus and give him this tape, at which point he finds out we now have a way to track you, and oh trust me Marcus, he will most definitely kill you for that.” Clark heard the man begin to sob, and part of him wanted to turn off the video at that point but couldn’t look away at the furious amber eyes that stared back at the camera. “Option number two, you can destroy the tape and run, which if we’re being honest would be the preferable of the three, but I’m sure you are well aware of the kind of wrath he would bring down on you if he didn’t get to see his almost masterpiece complete, so I’m sure you won’t.” Spike’s hand suddenly flew forward and the man screamed in pain, “Or option three,” He growled, “Where you run like a coward and keep the tape for leverage, hoping that your usefulness hasn’t run its course.”

He suddenly had the camera in his hands, staring directly into the screen his eyes burning into the lens. “Looks like your mole got ousted. This is your last one, Angelus. We’re coming for you and when we’re done there won’t be anything left.” The screen suddenly went black as the video cut off.

Clark let out a trembling breath looking around him and realizing he had slid to the floor at some point, his heart pounding in his chest. God, he didn’t know, he didn’t understand until that moment. That poor girl, no wonder Buffy was desperate. How many girls did she find like that before this one was left for her? How many videos did she force herself to endure before this one was sent, even Faith and Willow had said this wasn’t the first one? Clark squeezed his eyes shut, she had told him, so had Gunn but to see it. She was driven half-crazy by what that vampire had done and he could not blame her for that. What would he do if it was his mother in that position? God, he could only imagine.

He shakily got to his feet, listening as he heard the sound of a fist hitting leather, he walked to the doors and threw them open, not stopping when she paused to look at him. He had to reassure himself that she was okay, that she wasn’t that angry creature that he saw in the video. He went straight to her, his arms coming around her in a crushing embrace before his lips met hers. God, she was so strong, he didn’t realize how much until that moment. Buffy immediately melted into him, her lips parting for him as he slid his tongue into her mouth. She was such a small woman, everything about her was deceptively tiny, except her strength and fortitude both physically and emotionally. To go through what she had and still be able to function on a normal level was just short of a miracle.

He pulled away and looked down into her green eyes, haunted by her past but not dead and hateful like in the video. He bent down and laid his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. “I…” He started, “I didn’t…I’m so sorry Buffy.” He whispered, and he could still feel himself trembling. “I didn’t… You hear words like torture, rape, and murder but–”

“They’re not real until you see it for yourself.” She finished in understanding.

Clark sighed, hugging her closely, her head resting against his chest. “I get it now, not…but I understand how desperate you must have been to try and save the girls from that.”

He heard her sniffle, “I didn’t know what else to do. I watched all the others you know, even…even what he did to them. It was my fault, you see; those girls lost their lives because they had a connection to me.” She shook her head, “If they hadn’t been called, they would still be alive today.”

Clark pulled away and used his hand to raise her chin so he could see her eyes, “You blame yourself for every one of them that dies no matter how it happens, don’t you?”

She closed her eyes a shuddering breath hissing through her lips, before she opened them, meeting his gaze head on. “How can I not?”

He sighed, hugging her close again and shook his head. He had no response to that; he didn’t think she should. He didn’t think it was healthy, but he didn’t want to get in an argument about it with her right now either.

They stayed like that for a little while before she whispered, “You’re shaking.”

Clark nodded. “I know, the video…I’m still upset.”

She pulled away, meeting his eyes again. “Do you want me to show you how to throw a punch properly? The heavy bags have been warded well, we can start there.” She looked down, “It will…it will help relieve some of what you’re feeling at least.”

“Yeah,” He nodded in agreement. “Yeah, okay.”

****<S>**<S>****

To say Clark was a fast learner when it came to training would have been the understatement of the year. He was an absolute natural. He moved with precision and grace, sometimes striking so fast she almost didn't see him move.

As of now she was simply holding the bag for him as he got comfortable with the rhythm of landing punches and even with the wards on the bag, she could feel the impact of his strikes. At this rate she would need her suit within a few days to let him get the feel of fighting a moving target. At some point she might even bring him back to Cleveland to put him up against multiple fighters and see how he did.

"Remember to move your feet,” She reminded. "A moving target is harder to hit."

He nodded, bounced on the balls of his feet and struck, the impact of the punch making her bones rattle. "Whoa, nice one Clark." She laughed, "Felt that one in my toes."

He grinned, striking the bag again harder. "You were right," he said casually in between punches. "This does help."

She grinned, "Nothing like getting your aggression out with a bit of violence." And then she blushed, smirking, "Well almost nothing."

He chuckled as he threw a few more punches in quick succession, his own smirk forming on his lips. He had a mischievous look in his eyes and had just opened his mouth to comment when Buffy’s phone rang.

Buffy sighed, releasing the bag. "That will either be Wes or Willow."

It was now around three in the afternoon; Clark had told her he had to pick his mom up at six and it was an hour drive to Smallville from where they were. So, she was grateful that they were going to be able to get this taken care of before meeting his mom.

Buffy walked over to her phone and answered. "Hey Wes," she said in greeting. "What's the haps?"

He was silent for a moment and she could almost hear him roll his eyes at her butchering of the English language. "Willow," He began, "should be there shortly. Dawn would also like to see you. I told her I would call her once Willow was done securing the pendants."

Buffy frowned, “What? Why?”

“Dawn and I have come to the conclusion that one of the languages in the prophecy that I have been unable to identify, is most likely written in the script of Clark’s home world.” He paused, “We are going to need access to the ship, unless of course Clark can read it.”

Buffy looked at Clark and raised an eyebrow, but he quickly shook his head. “Only a few words,” He confirmed. “I think the computer on the ship might be able to translate it though.”

“That’s a negative, Wes,” Buffy answered, beginning to pace. “But he agrees that the computer on the ship should be able to do the job.”

“Very well, I’ll inform Dawn to dress accordingly. The ship is still in the same location I presume?” He asked.

“Whoa,” Buffy said halting her steps, realizing what he was suggesting. “You want us to go tonight? Clark has to pick up his mom from work, Wes.”

“I think it would be for the best. The sooner we get this prophecy translated, the better.” He paused. “Lorne told me I needed to send out more Slayers to India, Kansas, and Metropolis within the next two weeks and I would very much like to know if I should be sending two or a few hundred. If this prophecy gives any indication of what’s to come, I would very much like to know what it is.”

Buffy and Clark exchanged worried looks. “He only told me something was coming for Clark, and we’re gonna need all hands-on deck when it does.”

Buffy watched Clark swallow nervously. “He told me my time for hiding was almost up, but he said it was in the coming month.” His eyes widened in realization. “We need to translate that prophecy.”

Buffy nodded in agreement, “And I need to train you harder than just beating on a bag, which means it’s gonna be eight-hour days from here on out.” Clark opened his mouth to argue and she held up her hand, “We’ll get as much as we need to do in the mornings done, but if for whatever reason we can’t, I would loan you the money before I would let you lose your home.”

Clark frowned, “Buffy–”

“Take it from someone who knows what those kinda money troubles feel like,” She interrupted again. “I think in the scheme of things saving the world is a little more important than pride, don’t you?”

His frown deepened. “You think it’s going to be that big?”

“Lorne said all hands-on deck and it’s you. Someone coming after you has got to be as powerful, if not more.” She watched his face fall and reached out her hand out running it down his arm, “You’ll be ready, and now that we have a general idea of where this stuff might take place, we’ll all be even more prepared.”

“Wes,” she said, addressing the Watcher once more. “Were gonna need Willow to keep close, and I would call Illyria back from Cairo.”

“I agree,” Wesley said, just as a portal opened up and Willow walked through. Her smile melting away at the look on both Buffy and Clark’s faces.

“Uh-oh,” Willow said nervously. “I know that face.”

“Is that Willow?” Wesley asked over the line.

“Yeah,” Buffy said.

“Let me speak with her, please.”

Buffy held out the phone to Willow, who frowned but took it anyway. “Hey Wes,” Willow said in greeting as Buffy walked over to where Clark was standing looking more than a little worried.

“Hey,” she said quietly.

He attempted to smile but he couldn’t pull it off. “Hey, yourself.”

She bit her lip watching him, seeing the turmoil play across his face of having an unknown enemy out there that could be responsible for hurting others when they decided to rear their ugly heads. She didn’t blame him, if she needed to pull out her big guns as Lorne hinted then it could definitely get bad. She was optimistic however, because of what she’d had to face in her past. Clark didn’t have that same luxury.

“I-I know you’re not exactly used to going up against big bads, or having to fight gods,” she started. “But I promise you Clark, no matter what it is we’ll deal with it together. Tonight, I’ll have my sister meet us at your place and we’ll go to the ship and find out what this prophecy says. Whatever’s coming, we’ll deal. I promise you; we won’t lose.”

“How do you know?” He asked, a bit of hope showing in his eyes.

She stared at him seriously, “Because I don’t lose when it’s the world.”

His lips quirked slightly, and he opened his mouth to say something when Willow walked up to them. “Wes wants me to fit you for a suit,” She said to Clark, handing Buffy her phone before saying, “And, he wants to talk to you.”

As Buffy reached for the phone Clark said, “I already have a suit and it’s Kryptonian.”

Both Buffy and Willow blinked in surprise at his words, their voices ringing out in unison. “You do?”

He nodded, “Yeah, it’s on the ship still, but I have one.”

Willow smiled, “Well then, that’s gonna make this quicker. Can you bring it to me? I can enhance it with magic, add some safety features and protect you against the mystical.”

“Will that still work, even if the material isn’t of Earth?” He asked.

“Yeah Wes,” Buffy finally said into her phone, pulling herself away from the conversation. So, Clark already had a suit, she wondered what it looked like.

“So, for the time being I’m going to send fifty Slayers to each location, but keep the others on standby incase things go pear-shaped.” He said, already planning ahead. “I’ll also be moving quite a few closer to all three locations, that way all the girls have backup nearby. I think Willow should stay there at the safehouse that way she’s not far from either of you.”

“And Dawn, Xander, and the kids? They live in Metropolis after all.” Buffy asked.

“Perhaps you should explain the situation to her when she gets there. Staying there at the safe house with Willow might also be a wise move for them.” Wes said, adding, “As well as a few Slayers. I know Faith’s been itching to get out of Cleveland for a mission, maybe she and a few of the other girls should accompany her.”

“Just as long as it’s not Tanya, that girl’s a liability and she doesn’t listen to anyone.” Buffy said.

“I concur,” Wesley agreed. “Only the girls who are focused and dedicated will be allowed to participate in this mission. I would like as little casualties as possible.”

“I agree,” Buffy nodded, “What about the mystics, how many of those can we tap?”

“I have sixty-eight on file, I’ll start making phone calls now.” He sighed. “I’m just glad we have this much to go on.”

“Me too,” Buffy agreed. “I’ll call Dawn when Willow gets done here and tell her where to meet us and to put on her suit and a warm hat.”

“Very well,” he said. “Call me when you know more and I’ll begin the preparations.”

Buffy hung up, walking back over to Willow and Clark as they spoke to each other a bit awkwardly. “So, let’s get this over with Wills.”

Willow quickly nodded opening a small bag she brought with her. “So,” she said quickly. “These were a bit difficult to make since from what we’ve read the compulsion itself seems to be based purely on hormones as well as a need to unite your souls.” She looked at them both, “It took me a little while to find what I needed and even longer to put the spell together.” She sighed, “The pendants themselves will be made out of several crystals used to block compulsion, amethyst, ametrine, chrysocolla, and ruby.”

Willow pulled out two small corked vials filled with multicolored stones and handed them to both Buffy and Clark. “Now, hold out your hands and link your free ones together.”

Buffy and Clark did as she asked, holding their hands out palm up. Willow placed a vial in each of their hands and then covered them with her own hands, closing her eyes and beginning to chant. Buffy immediately began to feel her hand heat up and for a second it almost became unbearable and Buffy even watched Clark wince from the heat. It was gone just as quickly however and in its place were two hard looking marble like multicolored stones with a dark metallic chain that would hang from each of their necks. Buffy heard Willow mutter one more spell that she recognized to be a ward against breaking.

“Well go on.” Willow said smiling happily at her work. “Try them on, see if it worked.”

Buffy quickly slipped the necklace over her head and a sigh of relief left her lips. The sexual tension that had never fully abated her all day finally easing enough to where she wasn’t thinking about sex every few seconds.

Clark had a similar reaction, his face seeming to ease slightly, but Buffy was surprised when he turned to Willow and asked, “You said the compulsion is only based on hormones, does that mean any feeling we have that aren’t sexual are real?”

Willow nodded, “Of course, real love is something that can only be based off of free will. Its why love spells don’t ever work. You can’t force someone to love you.”

Buffy watched amused as Clark seemed to sigh in relief, and then quickly blushed when he noticed her watching him. “Come on stud,” she said hooking her arm through his and dragging him towards the door of the training room. “Let me go grab my stuff before we go get your mom,” a grin creeping over her face as she turned and wished Willow a good night and a promise to catch up tomorrow. “And for the record”, she added quietly as they walked out of the training room. “I still want to jump you, that hasn’t changed even with the necklace on.”

He quickly reached out to grab her arm, but she easily dodged him and took off down the hallway, a blush and a giggle leaving her lips.

Clark was suddenly there in front of her, a crooked and devilish smile on his lips. “Is that so?” And then his lips were on hers, his tongue sliding into her mouth as she squealed in surprise.

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dreadfutures · 3 years

Text

aight let‘s talk ao3 tags again

the very nice tag wrangler I’ll be quoting from has given me permission to share their kind and thorough responses (all bolding/emphasis is mine) without identifying information. and we very nicely go through some of my own tags from my long fic Dead Pasts, Dread Futures. Many, many thanks to this wrangler for explaining so much to me.

Anyway. I present these discussions as a peacable offer of: these are many writers’ concerns, and they are valuable, and worth considering. don’t dismiss concerns about the tag limit off hand, and don’t insist that edge cases don’t matter.

tldr; at the moment, after all this discussion and back and forths and bullying, I still believe that having 75 tags, period, as the limit across ALLCharacters/Relationships/Fandoms/Additional Tags penalizes longfics. Period. If it were even a limit of 100 tags, or broken down by Tag Type, it would be a little more forgiving. For advertising and for content filtering purposes, it only helps writers and fic visibilty to be specific and thorough in tags. A limit like this just so clearly has the potential to negatively affect large fandom/large ensemble/long fics.

It feels like this decision is being very broadly based on a "for the majority" mindset, which has never been what AO3 is about, without actually physically looking at the kinds of fics it will affect. The tag system on AO3 has been able to give fic filtering and reader-judgement a nuance that no other platform has accomplished, and longfics and large ensemble fics still, I think, depend on that as both a courtesy and necessity. I saw the rough math someone did and know that almost all fics currently on AO3 are <25k or something like that, and sure, for the average oneshot, or for even a fic <100k, a tag limit that's very strict across all tag categories probably won't be felt at all. But it's clearly something that people who write certain types of fics, and take them very seriously, will feel. Like I genuinely don't want to have a million tags. I want to tag relevant content that allows potential readers to filter & include & exclude my fic as they so choose, but also, if it does show up in their search, I want to give them the information they want to be able to decide if they want to read my fic or not. I don't want to have to put all my content warnings into a giant summary, or into a giant author's note that grows and grows. The tags have been a very helpful way of accomplishing those. Being able to cut down on parallel/synned tags is great, but it still seems like longfics that deal with multiple fandom entries, large casts, and require content warnings will butt up against that limit very quickly.

tag limit discussions:

- long fic writers adding tags as they go

- writers of franchises with many installments and ensemble casts

- writers with extensive content warnings

- use of tags to clarify a filtered tag

- use of tags to demonstrate how content is handled

off the bat - stop being jerks

look, I know objectively fics don’t need to be tagged at all. I lived in the wild west, too, when “lemon” meant anything from the merest mention of arousal to an explicit vanilla sex scene to all out dead dove craziness. a large part of me still is of the opinion that readers should just read shit, and if they decide they don’t like it, just dip. but that’s not what we’re about here. tagging is a kindness that we voluntarily undertake, and it’s also a form of advertising.

tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes

(that’s one of the cruxes of the arguments both pro-shippers and antis make: you can filter things! But you can only filter things if they’re tagged.)

I also understand that a few asshole writers have ruined this for all of us by purposefully adding so many tags it slows down the site and makes pages fail to load and hides other fics because the tags take up 10 pages. i also am frustrated with kinkmemers who just have prompt fill fic dumping grounds that span multiple unrelated fandoms and are impossible to navigate.

...the answer is not to suggest to writers that we put all our content warnings and pairings and etc. in our summaries, or our A/Ns, or to insert a first chapter that is a placeholder summary/tags page/world state. tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes.

I also have been dealing with people being murderously angry, and super self-righteous and targeting and mean about my own tags, and tags in general. people who are anti-tag are being giant fucking dicks about it. like get over yourselves and let’s just talk about a website function lol. tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes.

THE ANSWER IS NOT TO GET RID OF TAGS.

Alright, so now that we’ve gotten that flippin’ straw argument aside.

The next thing anyone has been doing is going to my page and critiquing my tags. Let’s address redundant tags.

(the wrangler has done this nicely! no ridicule necessary!)

using my fic as an example:

If you tag your fic Female Lavellan/Solas (only), it will show up in the following searches: Inqusitor/Solas, Female Inquisitor/Solas, Lavellan/Solas, Female Lavellan/Solas. If you tag your fic Inquisitor/Solas (only), it will show up only in the Inquisitor/Solas search and in none of the others. If you tag with the most specific version, it will show up in the more general versions, but not the other way around. So there's no real reason to tag with the more general tags.

Though I will point out that if you don't use the canonical tag and tag your character or relationship with a custom name it will be synned to the nongendered version, because at some point the DA wranglers decided that they didn't want to make gender assumptions. So "Annabelle Lavellan" will be synned to "Lavellan (Dragon Age)" rather than "Female Lavellan (Dragon Age)", and someone searching for works with specifically "Female Lavellan" won't see it.

Response: In the fanfic writers server I'm in, we've talked about how tags work and are supposed to work extensively in the past. There's just always been a lot of confusion, which I think has been added to when people go and try to double-check for themselves and find instances where this treeing/synning is broken. Someone put out this guide (also here) for AO3 meta text this year, which has been referred to by multiple people in the server, and it says:

What if you wrote a fic for something where there's a movie based on a book, but the movie's really different, and you've used both things that are only in the movie and things that are only in the book? In that case you either tag your fic as both the movie and the book, or see if the fandom has an “all media types” tag and use that instead of the separate tags. If the fandom doesn't have an “all media types” tag yet, you can make one! Just type it in.

“All media types” fandom tags are also useful for cases where there are lots of inter-related series, like Star Wars; there are several tellings of the story in different media but they're interchangeable or overlap significantly, like The Witcher; or the fandom has about a zillion different versions so it's very hard, even impossible, to say which ones your fic does and doesn't fit, like Batman. Use your best judgement as to whether you need to include a more specific fandom tag such as “Batman (Movies 1989-1997)” alongside the “all media types” fandom tag, but try to avoid including very many. The point of the “all media types” tag is to let you leave off the specific tags for every version.

Which I believe is in direct contradiction to guidance to use the most specific tags, so that's definitely one source of confusion. The most recent ao3 meta text guide (https://archiveofourown.org/wrangling_guidelines/2 I think this one) doesn't present itself in a way that makes this clear for writers tagging their own works. The way authors usually go about tagging things (and what's in the FAQ) is to start typing into one of the boxes and look for what populates the drop down, which doesn't lend itself to knowing that there are trees, or knowing what tags are interrelated (it seems like a whole grab bag of tags get suggested, some in-fandom and some outside of fandom, some canon/parent/meta and some children/random freeform, in just about any field you start typing in).

I'm not sure what can really be done about this. Many of us have turned to ao3-comment-of-the-day and their posts about using Tags, and various sources on google, and have clearly come up with a whole load of conflicting advice.

Fundamentally, finding parent/meta tags for a tag as you’re tagging a fic is NOT clear to writers. The fact that a nested and a meta tag can both be suggested one after the other when filling in tags largely contributes to redundant tags.

Writing for Multiple Fandom Entries

Here’s what a tag wrangler had to say about my fandoms:

As with the relationship tree, you can look at the fandom tree here: https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Dragon%20Age%20-%20All%20Media%20Types and see how the fandom tags are related. Going back to your story Rogasha'ghi'lan as an example, it's tagged with Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: The Last Court. But as I said, you only need to tag with the lowest relevant level(s) on the tree in order for your fic to show up under the higher levels. So if you tag with Dragon Age: Inquisition and Dragon Age: The Last Court, it will show up not just under those categories, but also under Dragon Age (Video Games) and Dragon Age - All Media Types. And of course because you've tagged with the specific, if someone searches under, say, Dragon Age (Video Games), but doesn't want Inquisition or Last Court fic, they can use the exclude filter to show only the earlier games.

(So that's two more tags you can remove with no effect on searchability!)

In my (but not only my) own case, I am indeed writing for Origins, DA2, Inquisition, and Last Court extensively within the same fic, so I should be tagging for all of those, specifically, still. In order to make sure my fic is seen by the correct fans, I need multiple specific tags.

Longfic Tag Bloat (adding tags as you write a fic)

And like many other longfic writers, even if I narrow down my character tags only to those with dedicated character arcs longer than 5 chapters, I still have Loads & Loads of Characters (including Dalish from the Chargers!).

A lot of longfic writers I know add characters, relationships, and content warnings as they go along.

At 170 chapters/580k words, Dead Pasts had a ton of important relationships (for example, like Vivienne & Lavellan), and as a story it's nowhere near done. I found myself planning an arc from 171 onward that would introduce a very important relationship (Felassan & Lavellan). This is how longfics end up with so many, many, many character tags and relationship tags, which is another major criticism people seem to have about "people who abuse tags."

A solution that people propose online is "split your fic." Which is actually what I ended up doing...but the old relationships and fandoms from DPDF still apply to Rogasha'ghi'lan, so Rogasha'ghi'lan will have the same number and more tags than DPDF.

If I hadn't split the fic, I would have just kept adding tags to Dead Pasts...and still had the same problem of continually adding tags. They're not superfluous tags: someone who wants to see a plot that is deeply influenced by Vivienne & Lavellan will find that in my fic; someone who is looking to see a major Felassan & Lavellan friendship grow and drive plot will also find that in my fic.

My fic is long; there are other fics that are longer, or are going to be longer, with casts that are just as large or larger, with many relationships, and that's not even talking about content warnings.

Polycule / Relationship Tags

"Tagging a polycule like Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan requires four tags: Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, Bull/Dorian, Bull/Lavellan, Lavellan/Dorian"

This assumes that people who like Lavellan/Dorian will want to read Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, which is often not the case. If your story Is Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, tag it that way! It doesn't make any sense to me to tag with the pairs as well unless the story would be of interest to people who read for that pair, or unless that pair relationship is a big step in the story (like, if you have established Lavellan/Dorian, and then they bring in Bull, you might tag for both that pair and the trio). I mean, you can tag how you like, there's no requirement that tags correspond to content. But for me, personally, if I search on Dagna/Lace Harding (I am weak for dwarf women!) I do not want to get a Dagna/Lace Harding/Sera fic.

My personal tastes don't include poly fics, but several writers I know who write poly fics are adamant that: tons of readers will not know of the possibility of the poly fic until it shows up in a search result, and the individual relationships often are significant to the fics, especially in fics that are not oneshots. For example, a great number of "fav fics" are stumbled-across! We aren't interested in the Sera/Dagna/Lace polycule ourselves, but someone might not have considered it, found it, and said, "Hey! That's my new favorite." But if polycules are segregated and only searchable by the polycule itself, alas, what's the option for visibility at all if not tagging it as Lace/Dagna in addition?

Additional Tags

Knowing when something is a "character" and when something is "additional"

Knowing that "Warrior Lavellan" (or the [Name] Mahariel) would be more useful in an Additional Tag vs. a Character Tag is also something I'm not sure how we're supposed to know? Like, I'm glad to know it now, but it's definitely not at all obvious without you telling me why it would be more useful in Additional vs in Character. Especially when to me: Warrior Lavellan is a character, and the fact that it populated the Character tag for me says that it's a Character. Because like I said, the guidance has been: start typing, and if it appears in the drop down, use it. Or, for example, my friend has the Well of Sorrows personified as a Character. Like an actual character. Does that have to go under Additional Tags, or as a Character? How do I know?

Additional tags as tone/content indicators

A lot of writers / readers have approached the Additional Tags as a surface-level overview of understanding how an author is approaching many topics concerned in the fic. Like, Vivienne is a character in my fic, but specifically I am Vivienne-positive, which I feel is important to denote because she's important to my fic, and she's a divisive character. Mood/tone/theme indicators like "Pro-Vivienne" or "we are Vivienne-positive in this house" (or like Male-Female Friendship, or "Expansive Lore" vs "Lore - Freeform" which denote different things to me) in tags (which in the comments section on the ao3 blog post get derided as "chatty tags") are still important to me, though they're useless or far less likely to be used for filtering. (I had the thesis of the conflict of my fic: “empathy is the enemy of free will” “but hope is a choice” as “chatty tags,” among some that were more mundane but important: “sera shows up late in fic”)

More seriously, there are fics that have content warning tags for filtering purposes but also clarify those content warnings to give context to readers and allow them to make a decision whether or not the content actually fits their preferences, ie, one that specifies domestic abuse as a tag (which would be in the Additional Tags) for filtering purposes but also specifies "domestic abuse not present in x relationship" (which would also be in the Additional Tags, but is useless for filtering purposes, but is immensely helpful and demonstrably used by readers to decide if they're going to even bother reading the author's note of that fic).

People are also nervous that not being able to thoroughly tag content warnings is going to end up with unhappy readers amid all the purity culture flaming that's going on lately.

Like, personally I err on the side of "suck it up, reader, and just read and find out," for a lot of things (not talking about content warnings, but talking about mood/tone additional tags), but also, given that there is already a venue here to let readers know what they're in for...taking that away sucks.

I hate a giant fic summary as much as people hate 10 pages of tags, but at least one can hide tags in their preferences, and likewise the thought of starting a fic up front with a giant author's note that gets continually updated with content warnings also isn't super appealing. Leading with a giant author's note that lays out: this is my world state and this is my character's spec and this is my character's background so you know how I'm going to approach this and these are all of the content warnings for the fic as a whole, just feels like getting into "My Immortal" territory. There's definitely a balance to be had between the art of writing a summary, what to include in an author's note, and what to include in tags, but this still seems like it's going to be fairly limiting for writers in these large franchises, especially for longfics that span a lot of topics.

Like I genuinely don't want to have a million tags. I want to tag relevant content that allows potential readers to filter & include & exclude my fic as they so choose, but also, if it does show up in their search, I want to give them the information they want to be able to decide if they want to read my fic or not. I don't want to have to put all my content warnings into a giant summary, or into a giant author's note that grows and grows. The tags have been a very helpful way of accomplishing those. Being able to cut down on parallel/synned tags is great, but it still seems like longfics that deal with multiple fandom entries, large casts, and require content warnings will butt up against that limit very quickly.

#ao3 #ao3 tags #long post #writing #look i really don't want to engage with anyone else but the amount of dimissive takes #and bullying #i see on my dash / have been targeted by / my friends have been targeted by #when we're trying to be conscientious?#is ridiculous #i'm just going to leave this here

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gffa · 4 years

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THE JEDI AS NATURAL, INSTINCTIVE TEACHERS IS A FUNDAMENTAL TO WHO THEY ARE AT THE CORE. For @jedijune‘s theme for Saturday, June 13th: Teaching/Learning

Taking a Closer Look at the Jedi Order in Star Wars Canon [Meta/Reference Guide]: Chapter 3: Teaching Is A Central Theme To The Jedi

Teaching is a central theme to the Jedi: Obi-Wan: “You’d make a good teacher.” Anakin: “No thanks.” Obi-Wan: “Anakin, teaching is a privilege. And it’s part of a Jedi’s responsibility to help train the next generation.” [Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie]

“Master Yoda said we never stop learning. Perhaps the Master is meant to be as much a student as the Padawan. I may not be the teacher that Qui-Gon was. But I am the one that Anakin has.” (–Obi-Wan Kenobi, Age of the Republic: Obi-Wan Kenobi #1)

Henry Gilroy and Dave Filoni on establishing Yoda as a teacher early on: Gilroy: "There were elements that we really wanted to explore, and that was things that were classic to Yoda, as a teacher. We thought this was a great opportunity to show how the Jedi interact with the clones. Specifically Yoda in a teaching role, of the clones, who were socially new, who were created to fight, and he really broadened their horizons, and helped them realize there was a great big universe out there that was bigger than just fighting and killing.“ Filoni: "You see Yoda teaching the clones, much like he taught Luke, ‘cause that was kind of natural for them, a natural instinct to take these clones like their students. And it really allowed Yoda to have a scene that was reminiscent of a scene we both liked growing up, when he was teaching Luke.” (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, “Ambush” commentary)

George Lucas on education (who believes it is the most fundamental issue): “Plato didn’t teach [in the sense of drilling answers into them] people anything. All he did was ask questions. The process was asking questions–'Why is the sky blue?’ It was purely a reverse of us feeding you all the information and [instead] teaching the kids how to learn.” I find this is often the answer for why Yoda or the other Jedi don’t just lecture on the answers re: Force theology, because the narrative believe/creator’s belief is that it’s more important to teach how to ask a question than to drill in an answer. A direct example is Yoda’s teachings to Ahsoka in “Teach You, I Will” getting her to think for herself and how George Lucas talks in an Empire Strikes Back documentary about Yoda’s bizarre speech patterns being about getting the audience to really stop and think about what the weird little frog man is saying.

JEDI PHILOSOPHY + TEACHINGS:

The Jedi did not see themselves as infallible or that failure was something any of them could avoid, even for their most esteemed Council members: Depa Billaba: "We cannot deny, Masters, that I failed you. Failed you on a massive scale.“ Obi-Wan Kenobi: "A lack of failure has never been a prerequisite to service, else none of us would be here. Welcome back to the Council, Master Billaba.” [Kanan: The Last Padawan]

The Jedi do not see themselves as a source of the light side of the Force, but rather the other way around. In Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, Jocasta faces off against Vader and says: “You are [Palpatine’s] tool. Little better than a droid, set to stamp out the light side of the Force. But this is impossible. The Force is eternal. It cannot be ended, it cannot be stopped, not so long as life exists.“ showing that, even if all the Jedi were dead, they knew that the light would still find its way in the galaxy, because the Force is eternal, the Force is in all life, the light is in all life, so long as that life exists.

“The Jedi can guide. We can teach. We can help people to help themselves. But we are not an army. If a people are truly determined to write themselves out of existence, there is little we can do.” [Obi-Wan & Anakin]

Questions are shown as natural and a good thing: “A child, Anakin remains. His path before coming to us, difficult. His questions, natural.” [–Yoda, Obi-Wan & Anakin] "I have no issues with Anakin. He is asking questions, as he should be at his age.“ [–Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan & Anakin]

It’s not just younglings that should be asking questions, but everyone: "Answers, did you find?” "I did. And as often is with the Force, more questions.“ "Mmmm. Good, questions are. Ask them we must. Certainty in our understanding, to arrogance it leads. To the dark side.” [–Yoda, Qui-Gon, Age of the Republic - Qui-Gon Jinn #1]

Questions and determining your own path tend to be a big theme with the Jedi, that everyone must determine what they want for themselves, what they understand the Force has laid out their path to be and whether they want that, like with the above, and when it’s woven into the very decision that Ezra has to make, that Kanan can’t just tell him what to do on this: “Which way is the right way? “The wrong question, that is.” “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. To be honest, I don’t even know what I’m doing here.” “A better question, that is.” “Kanan said I was gonna be tested, but he never said what for or why.” “And your Master tell you everything, must he?” “Well– No.” “Your path you must decide.” [–Ezra and Yoda, Star Wars Rebels, “Path of the Jedi”]

Obi-Wan taught Anakin that things should not be trampled just for acting according to their nature, instead (when they can) use the Force to move them along: "These beasts are nearly mindless, Anakin. I can feel it. They are merely following their nature, they should not die simply because they crossed our path. Use the Force to send them on their way.” [Obi-Wan & Anakin]

Henry Gilroy says a similar thing with: "Obi-Wan truly is a Jedi in that he’s like, ‘Okay, I’m not going to murder these creatures [in the Ryloth arc of The Clone Wars]. They’re starving to death. They’ve basically been unleashed against these people as a weapon, but it’s not their fault. They’re just doing what they do. They’re just animals who wanna eat.’ [Aggressive Negotiations Interview]

Ezra says he saw his parents and Kanan tells him what the Jedi teach: "I saw them, Kanan. My parents. I-- I can't explain how." "The Jedi teach that life doesn't cease at death, merely changes form in the Force. Your parents are alive inside you, Ezra. They will be. Always." [Star Wars Rebels, "Legacy"]

JEDI AND THEIR STUDENTS:

A great emphasis is placed on teachers and students working together: “Yoda cocked his head. ‘Adapt he must as well. Cooperation is learned not through individual effort. Only together can you progress.’” [Master and Apprentice] Yoda also says the bond between a Master and a Padawan is sacred. [Dooku: Jedi Lost]

Jedi are never really done being students/being tested, even when they become teachers and Masters themselves, that students teach Masters just as Masters teach students, and their tests reflect this: "But surely I should have been informed if you were testing my Padawan?“ "Who says the lesson was for him?” Bant said, smiling at her old friend. Obi-Wan’s jaw dropped. "You were testing me?“ "For both of you, the test was,” Yoda told him. Mace nodded. "A reminder that while Padawans must listen to their masters…“ "Teachers must also listen to their pupils,” Bant concluded. [Choose Your Destiny: Obi-Wan & Anakin]

“This is why we study. Why we learn. Skill is the child of patience.“ [Obi-Wan & Anakin]

"Your mission was never about [bringing back] the book. It was about everything you did to find it. All the challenges you had to face along the way. And you overcame them all.” "It was a test.“ "It was a journey, the next step in your training, and you succeeded in every way that mattered.” (–Luminara Unduli, Barriss Offee, Star Wars Adventures #20)

EARLY JEDI TEACHINGS/JEDI PHILOSOPHY 101:

As an overview of what Jedi teach as the early and foundational lessons, across multiple media, we see that meditation and self-reflection are just as important as bonding with their sacred crystal and practicing with their lightsaber, which then also connects with how so much of the early teachings Kanan gives Ezra when they're just starting are just as much/more focused on connection and understanding of self. (As detailed below this!) [Age of the Republic: Obi-Wan Kenobi + Kanan: The Last Padawan + Obi-Wan & Anakin]

One of the very first training sessions we see Kanan giving to Ezra–and thus informing our understanding of the foundations of Jedi teachings–is to have Ezra doing a handstand and tells him to, “Focus. Focus on letting go.” Eventually, trying to toss objects at him to get him into letting the Force move through him, hear its whispers instead of shouting at it. Before Kanan brings out his lightsaber to practice with, he wants Ezra to first mentally focus. [Star Wars Rebels, “Rise of the Old Masters”]

Another one of the earliest lessons Kanan teaches Ezra, putting it as one of the foundations of Jedi teachings is how they're connected to other beings: “Step outside of yourself. Make a connection with another being.” as he teaches Ezra to connect with a loth-cat. “I just don’t see the point of this.” “The point is that you’re not alone. You’re connected to every living thing in the universe.” [Star Wars Rebels, “Empire Day”]

When Kanan first starts training Ezra, he repeats Yoda’s saying of, “Do or do not. There is no try.” When Ezra questions it, Kanan says that he really doesn’t understand it, either. By the end of the episode, after Kanan realizes Luminara can’t train Ezra, that he has to commit to Ezra instead of half-assing this, he says: "I– Ezra. I’m not gonna try to teach you anymore. If all I do is try, that means I don’t truly believe I can succeed. So from now on, I will teach you.“ [Star Wars Rebels, “Rise of the Old Masters”]

Another early lesson is that Ezra must be honest with himself to advance as a Jedi: “Ezra, you’ll never advance as a Jedi if you can’t be honest with yourself, at least.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “It means Tseebo matters to you. You do care what happens to him.” [Star Wars Rebels, “Gathering Forces”]

Which is then reaffirmed later in that same episode: “I got news for you, kid. Everyone’s afraid, but admitting it as you just did makes you braver than most, and it’s a step forward.” [–Kanan Jarrus, Star Wars Rebels, “Gathering Forces”]

Ezra has trouble moving forward in the first season because discipline and focus are fundamental to being a Jedi: “But you said I was a Jedi. Why else would you be training me?” “I never said you were a Jedi. I said you had the potential to become one. But you lack discipline, focus.” [Star Wars Rebels, “Path of the Jedi”]

JEDI CULTURE:

Jedi younglings (at least the diurnal ones) wake at dawn to meditate on the three pillars–the Force, Knowledge, and Self-Discipline. Then they go to the refectory for lunch, where Dooku always likes to sit next to Sifo-Dyas. [Dooku: Jedi Lost]

The Jedi have a strong aesthetic that echoes the deepest parts of the Force–all circles and lines. Time and the Force and the Jedi are all connected circles and arcing lines.

“You must not grow too attached, too fond, too in love with life as it is now. The emotions are valuable and should not be suppressed… but you must learn to rule them, Padawan, lest they rule you.“ (Kanan: The Last Padawan)

“This man is perverting our sacred teachings to prey upon a vulnerable people. I can think of little my tongue could say better than my saber in this instance.” “Dissolve your hostility, Padawan. Channel your frustrations into an appropriate emotion. Violence, as always, is a last resort.” “Of course. Apologies, Master.” “A fire burns inside of you, Padawn. That, in itself, is not inherently wrong. It is my job to help you temper it.” [Jedi of the Republic - Mace Windu]

JEDI AND FACING THE DARK SIDE:

“The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through [Anakin’s] life and that he can’t hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally.” (George Lucas, Attack of the Clones commentary)

The Jedi test from the Rebels episode “Path of the Jedi” novelization on facing their fears/the dark side within them: "This test was not designed solely for the apprentice. It was also a test for the master, for facing one’s fears was a lifelong struggle.” (Ezra’s Duel with Danger)

The test is specifically designed by the Jedi–as is the same test on Ilum for the Jedi younglings that they all had to face–to face their fears, because it didn’t just happen one time, it was something they faced all their lives, younglings and Knights and Masters, all of them. This is why Ezra has to face it in Rebels, why Luke has to face it on Dagobah, why Rey has to face it on Ahch-To, the Jedi have always had to face the darkness within themselves and work beyond it.

Kanan also says it plainly as they enter the Temple: “In here, you’ll have to face your worst fears and overcome them.” It’s pretty obvious that’s what happening when the Temple shows him a vision of the Grand Inquisitor killing Kanan and Ezra has to pick himself back up, admit what he’s feeling so he can face the fears again, and understand that he has to let them go and then it cannot hurt him here, the Grand Inquisitor’s blade passes right through him. It’s then Yoda’s voice calls to him and we see that Ezra letting go of those fears allow him to move forward: “Big fears have you faced, young one.” “Yes.” “Hmm. For what lies ahead, ready are you?” “I am.” “Come. See more clearly what you could not see before.” [Star Wars Rebels, “Path of the Jedi”]

When Cal is struggling with facing his fears and needs to create a new lightsaber, Cere gives him a pep talk and they head off to Ilum, where she tells him: “You will be tested. I don’t mean just here [on Ilum]. Every Jedi faces the dark side. And it’s very easy to fail. We will always struggle. But that is the test. It’s the choice to keep fighting that makes us who we are." [–Cere Junda, Jedi: Fallen Order]

THE THEME OF GEORGE LUCAS’ MOVIES:

George Lucas says, “All of my movies are about one thing. Which is the fact that the only prison you’re in is the prison of your mind. And if you decide to open the door and get out, you can. There’s nothing stopping you.“ –George Lucas (American Voices, 2015)

Which is reflected in the teachings of the Jedi, which further shows they’re in line with the narrative intentions of Star Wars: Petro: “You-you said we would be trapped.” Yoda: “Not by the cave you were but by your mind. Lessons, you have learned. Find courage, you did. Hope, patience Trust, confidence, and selflessness.” (The Clone Wars, “The Gathering”)

#jedi order #jedi june #obi wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #mace windu #ahsoka tano #luke skywalker #george lucas #meta #long post

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blackjack-15 · 3 years

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Ziplines, Blood Ties, and Colonavirus — Thoughts on: The Silent Spy (SPY)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP, ASH, TMB, DED, GTH

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SPY; mentions of the “Nancy Games” (ASH-SPY); SAW; mention of National Treasure (2004).

The Intro:

It’s our penultimate meta, and this time, it’s personal.

In every way, The Silent Spy is the culmination of the Nancy Games. Ever since her trip back home in ASH, Nancy has been increasingly featured in the games, showing us more of her personality, her life, and her backstory — all in an effort to lead up to this story, where we actually delve into Nancy’s place in the world and what it means that she lives in it.

And the answer to that is a lot less wholly idealistic than the franchise would have given 20+ games ago.

I don’t mean to say that SPY is a cynical game — it’s honestly fairly neutral, edging on positive — but that SPY accepts the fundamental truth that all of the Nancy games have been leading up to: that Nancy, though talented, hardworking, and connected, is simply another fish when it comes to the sea of life. She’s not unique in any way that really matters – look at her foils in Alexei, in Jamila, in Deirdre, in Jessalyn — and yet she continues to work hard, to solve puzzles, and to right old wrongs.

At least for me, this is a hopeful message. The point of “Nancy Drew, Girl Detective” is not that no one could do what she does, it’s not that she’s the best, most experienced sleuth in the world, and it’s not that she’s the Last, Best Hope of those who call upon her for aid. The point behind her character is that she’s a relatively normal (if wealthy) girl who does what she can, and chooses to do it again and again.

There’s a wonderful part in the equally wonderful movie National Treasure when our heroes are reading a part of the Declaration — the part talking about the right of the citizens to throw off a despotic government like the British had become — and Ben (Nicholas Cage, actually in a good movie for once!) defines it in modern speech:

“If there’s something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.”

In the beginning of the Nancy Drew games series, Nancy is merely an intuitive puzzle solver. She gets her cases through family connections, turns up at places where mysteries happen to occur, etc. etc. As time goes on and she practices, she eventually comes to the point where she’s being hired for bigger and bigger cases, more and more regularly — in short, she starts to live the truth of that quote. Nancy is, at her core, someone with the ability to take action against things that are Wrong. Throughout this series — and most especially, throughout the “Nancy” games (ASH-SPY), she becomes someone who recognizes her responsibility to take action.

And that’s what’s showcased here in SPY. Upon arriving and learning that she’s been led to Glasgow under false circumstances, Nancy is immediately and wholly over her head — but she’s still someone who has the ability to take action to right a wrong. When she’s working against Revenant, warning the scientist, or reading through secret memo after secret memo, she’s not doing it with the intent to Save the World; she’s finishing Kate Drew’s last task. Her loyalty isn’t to Glasgow, to Cathedral, to MI5, or any other player in this story — her loyalty is to her mother, and to the task Kate Drew died while trying to finish.

Which is, in my view, the best possible motivation in a game that’s all about family.

With that discussion behind us, I want to talk a little bit here about the other theme of this game — power. Revenant, as the terrorist group that they are, want to seize power; their goal is to run Glasgow (branching off from there into a wider sphere, of course) through seizing power during a (self-induced) state of emergency — aka, what’s referred to in-game as the Colony operation.

This is, of course, Politics 101 — whip people up into a frenzy, come in promising to Save Everyone, and entrench yourself in power that you can’t be moved from with any amount of ease. And while Revenant planned it for 2005, it would work even better in 2013, when social media and instant, 24-hour news cycles can keep the fear alive far more effectively than Revenant would have hoped for nearly a decade prior.

Both in 2005 and 2013, Revenant nearly succeeds, only to be foiled by a red-head out of her depth but who tries anyway (the difference between the two, of course, is that Kate was isolated and Nancy had backup). The most startling thing — and one of my favorite things about this game – is that it doesn’t end with Nancy ‘killing’ Revenant once and for all, or even stopping the Colony Operation once and for all. Nancy is, in every way, out of her depth here; she’s not used by either side as an agent, or even as an asset — she is, as Zoe reminds her, a tool, valuable for what she might know, not for her skills, not for who she is, or what she works for.

As the games from TOT on have worked hard to expand Nancy’s world and tie it together, SPY shows the benefit of having a wide-open world: that the world goes on, people live and die, and secretive organizations (ATAC, Revenant, Cathedral, MI5…) plot and scheme to remake the world in their image.

This, in my view, is also a great thing. The thing that Nancy Drew books (and a lot of the early games) get wrong is that Nancy fixes (or is party to fixing) all of the problems introduced. The piano-playing girl that Nancy meets ends up with a Grandmaster as a teacher; the inheritance goes to the Worthy Widow and Her Daughter; Nancy rescues her tied-up father AND solves his case for his client all in one brilliant masterstroke.

That’s not to say that every story should have all of its threads dangling by the end, but Nancy is simply a smart and resourceful girl, working (most of the time) with her own relatively meager resources. She shouldn’t be the answer to the world’s problems, and I think it’s lovely that, especially in the Nancy games, she really isn’t. Nancy is a helper, and that’s far more valuable than being an omniscient, all-powerful being who can magically fix everyone’s problems just by being there.

The last thing I want to talk about in this introduction is how good SPY is for Nancy’s own personal lore. There’s a lot of fuss every time SPY is brought up about how “Nancy’s mom actually died when she was three!!” which, honestly, tells me that the 60s re-writes (which, yes, if you’re pedantic, started in ’59) did more damage than I had previously thought.

The original Nancy Drew books were written in the 30s by various ghostwriters, and were a little different from the yellow-bound 60s rewrites that most people consider the “old Nancy Drew books”. 30s Nancy Drew was a little closer to our games-universe Nancy; brash, outspoken, punishingly independent, and incredibly capable. She’s also a bit violent and unruly, has graduated from school at 16, lost her mother at 10, and does as she pleases with the occasional call home to reassure Carson or (more often) to ask a question about the law.

Sadly, other than taking out a few racial and societal overtones that weren’t really acceptable after 30 years — mostly by taking out any non-white characters and including different forms of bias, note — the yellow rewrites weren’t an improvement to the stories or to Nancy’s character. Nancy becomes less bold, less independent, and far more focused on describing each meal in punishing amounts of detail. The words “kindly” and “sweetly” were increasingly added after “Nancy said”, she’s far more deferential to authority, and her mother instead passes when Nancy is 3, rather than 10.

In changing the form of the media to video games, rather than books, what would eventually become HER had a choice; they could align themselves with the newest Nancy Drew books — the Nancy Drew Files and Nancy Drew on Campus, both of which were known for being Hotter and Sexier (and, in the case of Campus, ridiculously stupid) — or choose what people called “the classics” — the yellow-spine 60s rewrites, as the once-famous blue books had been all but forgotten in the 90s. In the first (and still one of the last, honestly) brilliant move of the series, HER chose to mix and match the things that made for good game fodder from (nearly, given how much the Campus books suck) every written incarnation of Nancy.

And, to their credit, they chose an important fact from the 30s: Nancy’s mother died when she was 10, not when she was 3.

Losing a parent is a defining moment no matter when it happens, but the exact effect often changes based on (among other things) the age of the child. In order for Nancy to be the kind of person who is influenced by the mystery of her mother’s death, her mother had to have died when Nancy could remember — thus, 3 is right out, as Nancy might remember tiny bits and pieces of the events leading up to and right after, but nothing else.

By taking bits and pieces of contrasting (and often contradictory) lore and making their own out of it, HER (and I’m hat-tipping Cathy and Nik especially here, given Nancy’s characterization spike beginning around WAC/TOT) gives us a version of Nancy that’s similar to the sleuth we know and love from the books and movies (ignoring the 2007 disaster) and, occasionally, TV shows, while still keeping her mostly consistent and showing us a few new flashes that make this character stand out and win her place in the Drewniverse.

Now, with all of that said, let’s move on to this game in specific, shall we?

The Title:

The Silent Spy, as a title, is one that is wonderfully mysterious and really makes you want to know more — right up until the title drop within the game itself, at which point it shifts from quite alluring to desperately sad and foreboding.

After all, “the only silent spy is a dead spy.”

As the game really is about our resident Silent Spy — Kate Drew and her actions and legacy — this is really the only title that the game could have had, and it suits it down to the ground, both with its mystery and with its sadness.

In life, Kate Drew was silenced, and in death, she is obviously necessarily silent — but Nancy reads her words, remembers her speech, listens to her voice, and, of course, hears her song, whenever the world is quiet enough. And I think that’s a wonderful dichotomy for the title to introduce before the game has even properly begun.

The Mystery:

Summoned to Scotland by a mysterious message and guided by a photograph of her mother, Nancy arrives ready to retrace her mother’s steps — only to be thrown into a world of espionage, gadgets, untraceable phone calls, and deadly mishaps. Her luggage (and her best clue about her mother) having been stolen, the presence of an old family friend who refuses to talk, an evasive skiptracer, an excitable local, and a clever intelligence agent all work together to ensure that Nancy is off-balance the minute she arrives.

All, of course, is even less what it seems than Nancy is prepared for, and she spends to game gloriously off-balance trying to keep up with the larger forces pushing and pulling her. She needs to retrace her mother’s steps, escape from certain death, dig deep into the pasts and presents of the people she meets, and do some impressive sleuthing of her own to even make the change from tool to player — and even that might not be enough to keep her safe when the dastardly minds at Revenant come a-knocking…

As a mystery — or as a collection of intertwined mysteries, honestly — SPY succeeds at what a lot of other games tried (and ultimately failed, in one way or another), which is to link all the happenings in the game together under one cohesive plot that grows more and more horrifying the more you think about it. GTH has a fandom reputation for fridge horror, but SPY holds its own easily when you consider Kate’s fatal chase, Moira’s abduction and guilt, the threats that Ewan and Alec operate under, and the life that Zoe leads on the regular.

Every action that Nancy takes benefits someone — whether it be Cathedral, Revenant, herself, or an interested third (fourth?) party — without her really meaning to, and the game is great in including another question in every reveal.

The beauty of SPY’s mystery(s) is that it takes careful reading, paying attention, and honestly replaying in order to grasp the enormity of every action. No matter how many times you play or replay, there’s something new to find — a time-sensitive conversation, an implication in a note, a theory behind the presence of a clue or a piece of (what you previously thought to be) set dressing — it honestly is limitless, and it just helps to contribute to the feeling that this is a world that Nancy isn’t meant to truly be fully immersed in.

And speaking of people who are immersed in that world…

The Suspects:

We’ll begin, for organization’s sake, with our out-and-out (current) agents first, then tackle our other suspects, then our Nancy-related people, and finish off with — for the final time in this series, as this is the last “Nancy” game — Nancy herself.

A new, yet returning character, Bridget Shaw is one of the cover identities of Zoe Wolfe — aka Samantha Quick, who Nancy impersonated in VEN and who helped the Hardy Boys in Treasure on the Tracks.

Prior to SPY, I had money for a very long time that Samantha Quick would eventually come into the game, and I was absolutely delighted with her appearance in SPY — where else would she be so well situated? Zoe is snarky, disillusioned, cynical, and sometimes downright nihilistic, but she’s also someone who took up a job that, percentage-wise, no one wants to or is able to do, because she’s alone:

“I work in the field for two reasons: one, I don’t need any help. And two, because no one would miss me if I fell off the grid.”

I love watching the ND games subvert their own formula, and Zoe is a great example of the “helper”-type suspect who really isn’t like your traditional “helper” at all. She’s there to do a job, and if sticking with Nancy helps her to do it, then that’s what she does. But she’s not there to Right some Great Wrong for the warm fuzzies of it all, or even because it’s Just and Right. She’s there because it’s her job, and her job is to play the game.

“It’ll be brief, painful, and full of garbage…but that’s life, isn’t it? And that’s the metaphor I’m riding into the grave.”

Next is our (kind of) double operative and partial culprit, Ewan McLeod (real name Sean Kent Davis) is a clever operative of Cathedral who decided that he wasn’t valued or important anywhere near as much as he should have been, and reached out to Revenant to supply them with information. Summoning Nancy to Scotland, Ewan is easily able to gain a portion of her trust as the Watcher in the Wires and is her tie to the relative safety of Cathedral.

As a culprit, Ewan is — ultimately — pitiable. Not that he’s not an egotist with a victim complex a mile wide, but when you actually look at the situation he’s in, it’s hard not to feel bad for him, even though he did it to himself. Having contacted Revenant, he’s now attempting to hold a tiger by the tail, praying it can’t eat him — and his worst fears come true, as his loved ones are threatened (“trying to keep my friends and family alive”, remember) and he’s discarded and made a target by the terrorists that he tried to use to make himself important.

Given the rather chilling threats made by Revenant, I’m inclined to believe that when we find him tied up, he didn’t do it to himself. Nancy would have noticed if the knots were too loose to have been done by a third party, and we know Revenant told him several times that if he wasn’t useful, he’d be punished.

While Ewan makes terrible choices, he’s also a pawn being played by a larger force — like everyone else in the game — and that is at least worth pity, if not forgiveness.

Next up is our former Cathedral agent and all-around tough cookie Moira Chisholm. As one of the people responsible for the events that led to Kate’s death — though no one but Revenant is responsible for killing her, note — Moira lives with guilt, regret, and a powerful sense of loneliness that only the loss of everyone you hold dear can bring.

Moira’s guilty of nothing in the present-day calamity, and helps Nancy the very best she can in her own limited power, but is ultimately a character for whom the past looms larger than the present can match. She has her hobbies, but her house is filled with memories of days when people sat on her couch and broke her teacups, not of hours reading alone.

She’s an intensely tragic character, and an example of what happens when your need to know the “truth” can get in the way of doing right by those you love. Moira lost everything to her previous job for Cathedral (who is implied to have left her, an otherwise dangerous free agent, alive because they knew (correctly!) she would become stagnant and docile under the weight of her own guilt, ouch), and yet she risks life and limb to help Nancy —not because she thinks it’ll exculpate her, but because Moira, at her core, wants to help the world, no matter what it’s taken from her.

Our final suspect is Glasgow’s resident skiptracer and unwilling pawn Alec Fell, who, along with Moira, can be traced back to Kate Drew’s death. Originally, Alec investigated a mysterious car crash — the one that killed Kate Drew — and, when he didn’t stop after a warning, had his office ransacked and burned. In the few months before the game starts, he experiences another break-in and his sister is kidnapped, with a message informing him that if he wants to guarantee her safety, to comply with Revenant’s orders.

Unlike Ewan, when pushed into a corner, Alec does his best to raise a little hell while still trying to keep his sister safe. For everything that he does on Revenant’s orders, he also helps Nancy out, finds her suitcase, locates Moira, tells Nancy where the cards are, and does his best to push back in other, little ways.

Sure Alec is guilty of a few things — most notably the fake shooting scare in Nancy’s room — but he’s a very active character, riding the rails and searching for anyone who can help put an end to this situation. It’s not for nothing that he’s a fan favorite, both for this game for the series at large, and his excellent VA and charming dialogue only make up half of his appeal.

On our Nancy side, we’ve got a few returning characters and one (semi) new one, so let’s go through them before getting (for the last time!) to the girl detective herself.

Carson Drew, father and golf model extraordinaire, is here to ground (as in steady, not punish) Nancy as she goes through this mystery. As the other person besides Nancy who was most affected by Kate’s death, Carson is an invaluable source of Kate-related knowledge, but is concerned foremost with his daughter’s safety.

For my money, the most important thing we learn about Carson here is that, well…he married the wrong woman as much as Kate married the wrong man. It’s sort of simplistic to say that their story shows that, in some cases, love doesn’t conquer all, but it’s true all the same.

Carson was happy to jet off to Scotland on occasion to visit Moira and her husband, but being happy to take vacations is a very different thing from a life constantly shifting and changing. He’s a prosecutor, so he has a strong sense of justice, but also has a strong sense of stability — he chose a career with a set trajectory and clearly defined rules.

Kate Austin, however, was a journalist who occasionally consulted for a Spy Organization when life got a little too boring (it’s important to note that she wasn’t a straight-out spy like Moira — she was far too free-spirited for that). She had all of Nancy’s inquisitiveness but more people skills than Nancy will probably ever have, and made friends easily.

It’s easy to see how she would have been attracted to the All-American, hardworking, solidly intelligent, emotionally balanced man, just as it’s easy to see how the slightly flashy, clever, inquisitive, intuitive redhead would have attracted him.

If this is starting to feel like I’m describing two other characters here…well, longtime readers of this meta series already know what happens when I use a paragraph to describe characters without using their names.

Kate is important in the game in that we’re shown her differences from and —more enlightening — similarities to Nancy. Nancy’s actions in this game are reflections on what Kate did (and what she would have done) as much as they show how the daughter diverges from the mother. And while Nancy doesn’t have her mother’s people skills or ease of making friendships, what she does have is her mother’s – and I’m going to use this word purposely — flightiness.

At the end of the day, Carson couldn’t be with Kate when she flitted off around the world, and Ned can’t be with Nancy when she does the same.

(I also find it interesting that we deal in the games only with Carson’s side of the family, and never even have a mention of Nancy’s maternal grandparents. Yes, I know Kate could have been an only child and her parents could already be dead…but I do like the possibility that they blame Carson for Kate’s death (entirely undeservedly!) and thus cut off contact. But this meta is for, well, meta, not fanfic.)

Ned Nickerson plays an important role in SPY in that he tries to help Nancy the best he can, even to the point of breaking and entering in her house (though really, it’s just entering, since he has permission) to find a document for her.

Ned comes off brilliantly in this game, but it’s important to note that his big, impressive (yet charmingly understated) speech isn’t to Nancy, but to Carson. And it doesn’t sway Nancy, it sways Carson. Because, at the end of the day, Carson can relate to lots of the pieces that make Ned what he is, and the situation that Ned finds himself in.

He’s wonderful, as boyfriends go; he calls her, encourages her, offers oddly prescient hints…but he doesn’t go with her. It’d be easy enough to make that a point in the series that, though we don’t see it happen, Ned often accompanies Nancy on her escapades, but instead we’re told — often through contention — that the exact opposite is true.

Ned is solid, true, intelligent, emotionally balanced and kind, but above all, Ned is stable. He’s enrolled in college — in an honors frat — and plays sports, attends his classes faithfully, remembers important dates…the list goes on and on. These are all wonderful characteristics for a boyfriend, but he, like Carson with Kate, ultimately isn’t what Nancy needs out of a relationship — and she is certainly not, like Kate with Carson, what Ned needs out of a relationship.

At the end of the day, both would need to compromise — Ned would need to set off with her sometimes, and Nancy would need to stay close to home sometimes — in order to make the other happy. And, well…nothing we have in any of the games says that either one would do that in the long term. Sure, Nancy returns home after the fight in CAP for ASH…but is in Egypt the very next game — immediately followed by Colorado, Georgia, and Scotland.

And honestly, this is the basis on which I disagree with Ned/Nancy as a couple. It serves neither one and, as we see in quite a few games where they squabble, they can make each other worse.

And speaking of our resident sleuth, let’s talk about Nancy Drew before wrapping up this character section.

In SPY, Nancy is — as mentioned above — a tool, used by both sides to get what they want without caring how it personally affects her. The big thing we learn about Nancy in this — and one of my favorite characteristics about her — is that Nancy is pretty ruthless. To me, it makes sense that, to get the information she wants, Nancy does what a terrorist organization tells her to because 1) it’s not her home immediately at risk, and 2) most importantly, Nancy has done bad things in the name of a good end in pretty much every game.

Lying, stealing, breaking priceless artifacts, endangering others — none of these are really new to Nancy, and what SPY does is brings that to the forefront. Sure, you as the player have the option not to do what Revenant tells Nancy to do…but then you miss out on big parts of Kate’s characterization — and, more importantly, a big part of Nancy’s.

In an unprecedented move, I’m going to reference National Treasure again, and quote part of Ben’s speech before he steals the Declaration:

“[A toast] to high treason…here’s to men who did what was considered wrong, in order to do what they thought was right — what they knew was right.”

To me, that shows us why Nancy does what she does — in SPY, and in every other game where she lies, cheats, and steals her way to the truth. She does it because, at the end of the day, Nancy is a person who is ruthless in her pursuit of her goal. And that’s a valuable trait.

Especially when one is dealing with spies, terrorists, and shady government operatives.

The Favorite:

I love most of SPY, so I’ll stick here with the things that especially stick out to me.

As covered above, I love: what this game does for the lore of the ND world; ‘Samantha Quick’; the many motivations of our suspects, and the emotional resonance that this game has.

Beyond that, there are a lot of little things. I absolutely love that they got the relative of the guy who plays Carson to play Nancy when she was little — that’s adorable to me. I love the cookie-making minigame, the outfit swap for Bridget/Zoe, the voice work for all of our suspects and helpers, and the beautiful locations (especially the spy cabin, both exterior and interior).

My favorite moment in the game is a sad one, but I’m a mercurial kind of person, so you should have really expected that. It’s actually Moira’s log/diary/letter to Kate (it functions as all three) after Cathedral deactivates her as an agent. I love a lot about it — the sad, almost desperate feeling to the words, the pen color changing as the seasons do — but nothing is better done than Moira’s last entry:

“It’s winter. It doesn’t matter that it’s winter, does it?”

My favorite puzzle is probably the zip-lining one. Sure, it’s easy, and sure, the animation makes me a little motion-sick, but it’s just….zip lines are just cool. That’s all there is to it. It appeals to the spy-loving idiot in me, and I think big-woosh-go-fast is stupid cool.

I also have to give a hat-tip to Kate’s letter — turning a fandom meme into a heartwarming story? Nik, you mad genius — and Nancy’s letter to Kate at the end. Both are beautifully written and are the perfect centerpiece to their respective characters, and both always put a smile on my face (and, at times, a tear in my eye) when reading them.

The last thing I really do have to mention here is Logan’s quasi-reappearance. I mentioned this in my “Top 5 Surprising Moments” meta, but I love, love, love that Logan is a Cathedral operative, and that he reported on Nancy during SAW. Not only does this continue to open up Nancy’s world, but it also shows that there are consequences to Nancy’s actions. She’s in rare form as far as rudeness goes in SAW, and SPY weaponizes that against her, giving Cathedral (and Revenant) a way to weaponize her feelings about her mother’s death and her — to be frank — inability to let things lie as they are.

The Un-Favorite:

There are a few things that aren’t quite my favorite in SPY, so let’s run through those as well.

First, in the common refrain of “small visual distinctions are difficult for me personally”, I didn’t like that there wasn’t enough contrast between a plain (on the bottom half) cookie and the orange/purple jelly. The shadow on the screen makes it kind of difficult to tell them apart, especially if there’s sprinkles and/or frosting on top of it, and I found that mildly frustrating, even though I love the minigame itself.

The second thing I don’t like is the option to skip the dialogue. Yes, this is present in most of the newer games, and I don’t like it in them either, but it’s especially egregious in SPY and LIE. Both of these games really rely on hints given in the dialogue (and of course, in the written materials hidden around the game) in order to get a full, clear view of what’s going on. The option is great on repeat plays, but I really do wish that it was disabled if it was your first save file on the game.

The last annoying thing is the Jabberwocky puzzle — or rather, the percentage of the jabberwocky puzzle that the player actually has to do. The puzzle as it stands feels very confusing, and the “hints” you get are quite unintuitive.

The record tells you basically how to create the encrypted message — it’s the first letter from each green word, the second from each orange word, etc., arranged in the order they appear in the poem — but when you start the poem, Nancy has already basically completed this step, and it’s up to you to do the actual decoding just through process of elimination.

It’s a puzzle of letter deduction, like in TMB and the minigame in ASH — and these are normally my favorite puzzles! — but it’s cloaked in the disguise of an encryption puzzle, and for that, it’s incredibly irritating.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Silent Spy?

The first thing I’d do, which you can probably guess based on the above section, is to fix how the Jabberwocky poem is presented. Even a bit of dialogue establishing what the player actually has to do versus what Nancy does for the player would be helpful in working through it without bothering making the encrypted message oneself, and would set the player up to actually know what they’re doing, versus the mass of confusion that comes with the puzzle.

The only other change I would make would to put in one more flashback — that of 10-year-old Nancy’s perspective shortly after Kate’s death, perhaps after the funeral. We spend a lot of time in flashback seeing Kate before her death, and I think it would add to just a little bit more of seeing Nancy’s relationship with her mother if we could see the Drew house with her recently gone.

(And perhaps, see or hear Hannah? Please?)

The Silent Spy is a game that I find, on the whole, to be one of the best that Nik penned, and certainly a fitting end to the series of “Nancy Games” that gives us a little more perspective on our teeth sleuth. There are as many moments of joy as of sorrow, but in the end the player is left with the feeling that Nancy’s world is a little better for knowing more about her mother, and that whatever else Kate did and was, she left behind a world (both in game and breaking the fourth wall) that was better — and had ways to become even better than that — than it was when she lived in it.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #clue crew #the silent spy #nancy drew meta #SPY #video games #my meta #long post

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roscgcld · 3 years

Note

i wanna give my two cents on the whole nsfw content!!

i dont mind it really i actively indulge in it myself so i can really get on it too much especially since it something that you just cant stop no matter like if its on the internet there’s gonna be p*rn of it 😭😭

my only issue is like when some people kind of get upset with you when you say you shouldn’t make nfsw content bout minors characters like i never thought i’d ever be in situations where im virtually getting my ass beat for saying “hey isnt it kind of weird to write bout fucking that 15 y/o” and they always respond with “well its fiction!” “its not real” “well i aged them up” and like okay that’s still a 15 y/o at the end of the day so what now baby 😭😭

its especially upsetting with jjk cause like gege has mentioned that he doesn’t want any sexual related content bout his main trio but click on the jjk x reader tag on here and the first thing you see is probably gonna be smut about his main trio idk its really wild to me and ik i cant force everyone to stop but its still makes me feel icky yknow

but yeah thats all i wanted to say sorry if this was kind of vent-y i just been thinking about this recently and i had a lot to say 😭😭

- L anon

I think it depends on how you see it.

For example, for me, I know there is no way to deny that smut is widespread here. And for me, I do not mind if something is written for minors if they are written in an aged-up scenario because to me, JJK and any cinematic universe (regardless of country), is just a fictional reality of a sort. Where whatever is done in that world stays in that realm of 'reality'. Also - some mangas and animes have time skip eras too - so characters can be written in that sense as well.

Before you say "oh but fiction affects reality" - that is not a fully valid argument in a sense. Many fully legal and normal people can tell the difference between what is reality and what is fiction. It is also why people who write 'dark content' will always encourage underage readers to not interact or read their works because they are worried that people who cannot differentiate people between 'real life' and 'fictional life' will start to develop their own twisted version of what is acceptable in society and what isn't.

Hence why JJK is for readers who are 16 and above - because this is around the age where you learn where the lines of 'fiction' and 'reality' starts and ends. And the people who usually can't differentiate that already have a set of issues going on with themselves, so this is where the phrase 'the consumer controls what they consume' come into play - because at the end of the day, you, as the consumer, is the one in charge of what you consume and how you choose to understand the content in your own way. Of course, there are a few who slip through the cracks, but that small majority should not be the reason as to why you ostracize an entire community who writes/produces content that is 'questionable' in terms of your own individual morals/what we are used to consuming in media. It's an art form that some people chose to use to express themselves, and it isn't harming anyone.

But this also comes down to the reader - for example, I am 19 years old. I am a legal adult in many countries, and I should not be pining over a 15-year-old child because hello; that is illegal lol. So while I know in the canon material, which I think JJK is sent in 2018 (which is an entire argument on its own), I should not be like lowkey simping for these people. But in my head, I keep thinking they are of my age? Like when I read JJK I forget that the main trio and the second years are high school students? Because the content doesn't necessarily follow the entire high school education and such? It's a trope that is used in the storyline, but the high school itself does not play a huge role in the story besides the titles given to characters, their uniforms, and how they are referred to by other characters in a sense? You know what I mean - like the high school is just a 'home base' that the characters return to, but if you take the high school aspect out, I don't necessarily think it affects the main storyline too much.

And I know Gege-sensei means well when he says he does not want people to lewd his main trio and such, but I think at the same time he knows he can't stop it. There are obviously people who are going to respect his wishes, and there are others who had no idea (like me, like I had no idea he said that 0-0) that will not know that, and will write it because they personally want to.

Plus, not gonna lie, Japan anime/manga culture and the unofficial comic books that are essentially manga fanfiction can get quite lewd and PG18 as well - so in a sense whenever you produce a body of work, I don't think you can expect it not to be lewded. It's bad, since it makes it feel like I am invalidating the creator's wish, but coming from a very like common sense and practical point of view, there is no way you can stop everyone from doing what they want in a way. You can advise and you can tell them nicely, but there are always people who are just going to do what they want.

So might as well just respect them and their decision on how they want to express their creativity, and if it is not hurting anybody, I don't see an issue with it.

#roscgcld asks #roscgcld rants #L nonnie #jujutsu kaisen #jjk

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thedevildomdaily · 3 years

Text

Demonic Possessions Ch 2: Getting A Little Cozy

NOTE: Sorry about the delay. Had an unexpected guest I had to babysit. I also couldn’t stop writing this. I had no idea where to stop this chapter lol.

Warnings: None, just a little language. I

“Pftssss…” Lena had to cover her mouth with both hands quickly. The badass demons everyone on Earth feared were a bunch of bratty children! The nephilim wanted desperately to film the scene and share with her brothers. They wouldn’t believe her if she told them about this.

Lilly rolled her eyes and sighed as she begrudgingly went on into the room to join the chaos. She then patted the empty seat beside her for Lena. Of course the guys didn’t even pause in their antics at the arrival of their new guest.

The remaining seat available for Leviathan was on the other side of Lena. It seemed he would be stuck beside the 3D nephilim for eternity at this rate. He sat down, focusing on his phone, trying to rapidly tap on it while reaching towards his food.

“You’re going to pay me back for my property AND you’re going to retrieve it.” Satan responded. Lena thought he looked like he was going to snap at any moment given the giant vein on his forehead. She didn’t envy Mammon being the target of his rage.

Lucifer started to eat, but hesitated to say, “Mammooooon…” Which instantly caused the loud demon to melt into his seat to sulk. The eldest resumed his meal, ignoring the death stares still being shot at him by Belphegor.

“This looks delicious.” Lena finally spoke. The commotion, all of the food, the smells; All of it had been overwhelming and she didn’t realize she hadn’t tried anything yet. It was definitely colorful, and somewhat intimidating. She absolutely would not question the ingredients, let alone the nutrition facts. Wait, do they even have Nutrition Facts in the Devildom?

Asmodeus had sat down, giving up on Beelzebub’s inability to control himself. When Lena spoke up, he gave her a sweet smile, “Oh it is. And it is super healthy. I wanted you to get to taste something wonderful for your first meal in the Devildom.”

“That’s sweet of you, thanks.” Lena chimed with a huge grin before digging in. “Damn this is sooooo good!” Her piercing blue eyes widened with excitement. No wonder the bigg’un over there was wolfing the stuff down. Her reaction caught a few of them off guard and nobody confessed that Asmo merely ordered the food. He solely focused on the presentation.

It did get a few under-the-breath chuckles from a few of them as Asmodeus beamed at her response, “Oh thank you hun. I knew you’d like it. You seem to have good taste...you’re brothers too.” He was referring to the fashion they were wearing. He also noticed the fine quality of her luggage before. It looked quite expensive.

Lena chuckled, “Haha...Azri trained me well. We share a love of fashion...and shopping. I really need to do some shopping as soon as possible…” It was more of a note to herself out loud, but the beauty guru of a demon lit up with excitement, “Oh let me take you! Lilly we have to show her Majolish!”

Lilly joined in with equal amounts of excitement, “Yes we gotta. And it sounds like Azri should tag along too.”

“NO!” Lena responded louder than she meant to. Lucifer actually stared at her for a moment. “I mean uh, not this time...he and I may have a few disagreements...when it comes to expenses.” There were a few demons at the table who could understand that. Pretty much Lucifer and Satan were the only responsible shoppers in the room. And of course Lucifer tried to keep a tight leash on his little brothers’ shopping expenses.

“I do need a few immediate room amenities ASAP.” Lena continued, “After Levi wrestled down all of those sheets, dust and cobwebs went all over the place. It’s a hot mess...and not in the good time.” that got a laugh out of Asmo and Lilly, “And I have no sheets, pillows, or a comforter...and I some furniture for my clothes...they’re all packed away still…”

“Awe! That’s no good! You can’t let your clothes get dusty!’ Asmo covered his mouth. He couldn’t imagine living in a room so dusty. It made him want to skip dinner and head directly to his luxurious bathtub. “Lena, you can sleep with me tonight?” Of course he was all smiles and eager to offer that.

“Asmo. Yer just being a perv.” Mammon commented, pausing his sulk-eating.

Lilly shook her head, “I’m lending her a set of my sheets and a pillow for tonight. And did you show her the Akuzon app Levi? She can quickly order some cool furniture to be sent here in no time.”

The otaku demon looked up from his phone, “Yeah, I showed her Akuzon. We ordered some manga and wall scrolls and…” Leviathan proceeded to list 30 unnecessary anime or gaming-related items.

“What the hell! Did you just order that for yourself?!” Mammon exclaimed. He thought his brother went on a wild spree with Akuzon again. A rather bold assumption coming from the Avatar of Greed himself.

“No no no no!” Lena laughed, “He gave me a few recommendations, and then I saw a few things I liked. I'm a huge fan of gaming and manga myself.” Mammon, Asmo, and Lilly blinked with surprise. Great, there was another one amidst them. “Hey, don’t judge me! They are great art forms and there is such a plethora of dynamic stories you couldn’t experience in any other media. I would also like to add that I am a freelance artist on the side and I focus on anime and gaming characters…”

Leviathan stared at Lena for a moment in awe of her ‘speech’. Where everyone else understood that she was just conversing about the subject, the indigo-haired demon saw her standing at a podium, giving an academy award-winning performance and he fought the urge to clap.

“Ah, gotcha.” Mammon responded. The other two nodded.

“Hey! Why did you guys just nod when she spoke passionately about those things, but when I say anything, you give me such crap you normies!” he scrunched his nose at his brothers in particular.

“Because she didn’t try to ramble incoherently about it for an eternity or bog us down with unimportant details Levi…” Asmodeus shrugged.

“Awe...I’m sorry…” Lena patted his shoulder, feeling bad for Leviathan, “I’ll listen to your rambles anytime.” Leviathan sighed and shrunk down for a moment, then realized that the female nephilim was patting him. A girl. Touching him. Repeatedly!

“WAAAAAGH! NooOoooOO!” Leviathan rose like a vampire from a coffin, out of his chair, and ran from the room. Everyone laughed at the scene. Even Lucifer ‘covered his mouth to cough’ at the same moment.

Lena merely chuckled sheepishly, “I didn’t mean to make him so uncomfortable...I guess I’m a little too chummy…”

“No. Leviathan is just…” Lilly tried to find the right words for it, “well he refers to himself as a shut-in. He always freaks out about body contact. Pretty much with just about anyone…” Though she knew Lena’s case was a little different and couldn’t help but chuckle.

When dinner was over, the house members scattered. Lena went with Mammon and Asmodeus to Lilly’s room to hang out and further discuss shopping plans. Levi didn’t respond when Mammon banged on his door to join them. It was nice to be getting along well enough with a few of the brothers already. The nephilim didn’t feel as welcomed earlier that day as she was now.

“This looks cool!’ she said as she approached the tree, “I can’t say I’ve seen a huge tree just growing in someone’s bedroom before. Are Poison Ivy or something?” Lena chuckled and sat on the side of the bed.

“Well, she and I do have a few things in common, not gonna lie…”Lilly responded as she joined her new friend.

“So, are we gonna go shopp’n after class tomorrow?” Mammon scratched his head, looking a bit uncomfortable as he sat on the couch, “I may have to ditch last period if I’m gonna go too.”

This made a huge smirk spread across Asmo’s glossy lips, “Ah, trying to avoid paying our Dear Satan your check tomorrow by spending it all with us?” The question caused his older brother to blush and furrow his brows, embarrassed and angry that he got caught.

“I don’t know what you’re talkin about. I just feel like getting a head start…”

Lilly exchanged looks with Asmo, then Lena. “You know that’s bullshit, right?”

“100%. I just arrived here today and I can read you like a book dude.” Lena gave Mammon a devilish grin.

Great, now the new girl was joining in on the ‘let’s pick on Mammon brigade. It’s bad enough when his little brothers and best friend did it, but her? Crossing his arms, the greedy demon refused to respond to her remark.

“While I do love poking fun at my scummy big brother,” Asmo chimed, “I do want to resume our discussion from earlier. What are we ever going to do about you in that filthy attic room?” Lilly joined in at the concern. “Why don’t you store your clothing in my closet until your furniture arrives from Akuzon? Lilly did the same thing.”

“That would be great, actually, I was kind of concerned about wrinkles and creases...and my brother vaporizing me over it.” Azri was the chillest guy out there, but fuck with his clothes and he was a 6’4”, fire-breathing maniac with claws.

“And as for sleeping arrangements, I do really think you should consider sleeping in my room with me.” Asmo added. Immediately Mammon and Lilly glared at him.

Lena wasn’t an idiot; she knew he was clearly the Avatar of Lust. The right amount of narcissism, the insistence of closeness, and the weariness of everyone around him. She was also a big girl that could take care of herself. Even if he was a demon of seduction. “You know what? I’m game. If you have a clean, comfy bed I will crash it.”

The other two just looked dumbfounded at her, while Asmodeus closed his eyes and grinned. “Oh this will be lovely. We can do nightly facials and I’ll braid that beautiful silvery hair of yours. Maybe we can take a bath together?”

“Hmm...I might forgo that bath...for now.” Lena responded, “but the rest of that sounds delightful after this incredible fucking journey. My day wasn’t going well before I arrived, and then I’ve been a little overwhelmed by...well, EVERYTHING I’ve seen since we got here.”

“Are you sure about this? My brother’s a little perv…” Mammon’s arms were crossed again and he looked genuinely concerned. He didn’t want to be strung upside down somewhere by Lucifer again for not at least warning the girl. They were also supposed to be cautious with the nephilim until they learned more about them at least. Lucifer’s orders.

Lena yawned, unphased by the older demon’s concerns, “Maybe I am too?” She gave a sly expression at Mammon, making him blush and look away, pretending not to be. “I think you guys have some misconceptions about nephilim. Just because we are half angels, doesn’t mean we are highly virtuous and prudish.” She grinned, reflecting on the trouble she and her brothers have caused over the centuries. “I mean, we have more morals than demons, that’s for sure, but our feelings are so intensely human and we’re considered flawed for it. We’re whimsical, passionate, reckless, and live life to the fullest. And we suffer for it too.”

The others in the room were quiet, reflecting on what she said. Mammon admittedly thought she and her brothers may be a bit innocent-like. Even older angels like Simeon tended to be. He and his brothers were once before. Asmo shared that sentiment as well, but was delighted knowing for sure that Lena wasn’t.

Standing up, Lena yawned again and stretched before she walked over to Asmodeus with an extended hand to help him up, “I’m really tired after eating so much tonight. Don’t we have to get up early tomorrow? I wanna rest ‘cause I am a horrible monster to wake up in the morning.”

Asmodeus took her hand; it was as soft as his. He blushed with delight and excitement. “Yes, we’d better get our beauty sleep! You too; the both of you!” Lilly was something of a muse for Asmo when designing and consulting Majolish with petite creatures in mind and his big brother did a lot of modeling.

The demon’s bedroom was so pretty and feminine. And it smelled wonderfully. The bed looked as soft and comfortable as she’d imagined it to bed. “Asmo, are you sure you’ve fallen? ‘Cause this room looks heavenly after doing all that dusting!” she stepped out of her shoes quickly and sprung for the bed, eager to touch the cozy comforter. “You weren’t kidding about this.”

There was a chuckle from Asmo, not taking offense to the comment at all. She was genuinely excited. Mimicking a feline, he walked slowly towards the nephilim. ‘I never kid about luxury and beauty darling.” He reached for Lena’s hair, pulling it all behind her. It was as silky as he imagined. She didn’t withdraw from him, good. He ran his fingers slowly through her locks before suggesting they went over to his vanity.

They both gazed in the mirror together. She looked drowsy, he was only a little. “I am so curious about you nephilim. I never met one personally until today.” He picked up a brush and began running it through her hair before putting it into a braid. Everything he did was in a rather intimate way, yet Lena never gave a reaction beyond her tiredness.

“There’s honestly not a lot to be curious about.” Lena responded. She loved when others played with her hair and it was quite common for Azri to braid hers so no tangles got in it. He was more concerned by it than she was. That Mother Hen. “You really can ask me anything. You all can. We are transparent; we literally can’t lie. That’s the stupid angelic trait we all share. At best we can simply not answer you. That being said, and simply because we three are scorpios, we fucking hate lies. Don’t. *clap* Do. *clap* It. We sense that shit miles away.” She made Asmo laugh uncontrollably as she gave instances where exes got their cars destroyed or a garden gnome’s decapitated head through their bedroom window on the 5th story of an apartment. They were definitely far from angelic. Definitely emotional creatures to say the least.

“Lena. I think you and your brothers will really like it here in the Devildom. Your..passionate natures can run wilder here than it possibly could in the human world.” When he finished her hair, Asmo lifted the end and smelled it in a sensual way. “You can put your jewelry here. I promise it’s safe from my scumbag brother, Mammon. There’s a curse on this box specifically targeting him. Solomon created it.

“Oh did he now?” That got her attention. Her brow was raised as she looked at it. It did have the elaborate designs he fancied. “So you’re one of his..contracted?”

Asmo nodded as he retrieved the night masks they agreed to apply once their make-up was removed. “Yes. We have a contract. He’s such an interesting human; I couldn’t resist him.”

Lena chuckled, “Trust me, I know. Been there…” This time Asmo was brought to attention.

“Are you one of his…?” he asked carefully. “Hell no! I wasn’t one of his 300 wives or 700 concubines...or is it vice versa? Any no. We did have a wild time together during the renaissance period in Italy. I’m not easily tamed and we were just ‘having fun’.”

Asmo beamed, wanting to know all of the juicy details. “Oh I’ve got some stories for you, darling. But then again he has plenty on me so you’d better not say anything to anyone else, got it!” Lena gave him a serious expression with the mask on, making him chuckle, but agreed not to tell. “I can promise pinky. Lilly explained how important a tradition it is. Heavier than a blood oath!’

The nephilim started at him blankly. This was one of those times where she just had to avoid the truth. No comment. No problem. She shared the pinky promised the demon and they continued getting ready, spilling little stories along the way. Then came time to change clothes.

The demon leant her an oversized t-shirt that smelled like citrus, because Lena wasn’t going all of the way back to the dusty attic after getting nice and clean. She began removing her shirt, not thinking anything of Asmo being in the room.

“Oh my!” he said with wide eyes, “how bold you are, tempting me like this.” He turned away blushing, but held quite the smile. He thought of how much fun they might have in time.

Lena chuckled, “Sorry, I’m used to changing in front of others. Dorm life; fashion life; party life.” Her bra was tossed aside only after she put the shirt on and slid her ripped jeans off. Asmo changed in his giant bathroom.

He emerged where cute, cyan pajamas that made Lena giggle, “You look so cozy.”

“And you look cute, yet seductive.” he chimed back as he headed to pull back the comforter. He insisted that Lena got in first, and to get comfortable. She followed the suggestion, then decided it was best to place a pillow between them, just to set things straight. She didn’t mind flirting around with him, but she had a little apprehension and self-control.

He wanted to pout at the dividing pillow. Lilly did the same thing, which was no fun. He wanted to at least snuggle with her, feel her curves that filled-out his shirt. They laid beneath the top sheet and comforter, facing one another with smiles. “Good night Asmo. Thank you for the delicious first dinner, volunteering to go shopping with me tomorrow, and letting me crash here.”

“You’re welcome Darling. And thank you for sharing some candid Solomon stories. I’ll cherish them forever!” They both laughed and the demon watched as Lena drifted off into her dream world. It was really quite something. She had all of the trust in the world in him not to try something with her. He was always used to apprehension and it took forever for Lilly to fully trust in him.

He found himself wanting to run his fingers against the edge of her soft, porcelain face and hair as she slumbered. Asmodeus refrained, but continued to watch over her until he too fell into a deep sleep.

The sound of some odd alarm clock started buzzing, causing Lena to groan and bury her face under a pillow. It was strange. It smelled like lavender and honey. She didn’t recall trying any new perfumes lately. And she didn’t have one of her witchy ladies crash.

“Good morning Darling.” she heard a songbird voice chime. It was so close to her; TOO CLOSE! The nephilim quickly rose, clutching the pillow beside her in a panic. It was obvious that she forgot all that had transpired the night before. Lena was totally lost, having no recollection of entering this “Better Homes Than Yours”-looking bedroom.

Her eyes darted straight over to the owner of that voice: a “pretty boy” type. He had a seductive smirk as he stared up at her. He was clothed, though his pajama shirt was completely unbuttoned. It made her instinctively look to see what she was or wasn’t wearing.

The nephilim’s antics caused Asmodeus to chuckle lightly. He knew exactly what was going on in her head. He’d seen it happen so many times: The panic of waking up in a stranger’s bed. The Avatar of Lust never got bored watching this scenario play out. He was highly curious about what Lena thought had happened. “What’s wrong Darling? You look a little lost…” He decided he would have a little fun with her.

“I uhm…” was all Lena could manage to respond with. Her hair was braided, yet the top was completely frizzed. Her eyes widened when the stranger reached towards her. “Did we…?” It wouldn’t be her first time, by a long shot, but she felt completely refreshed instead of her normal hung over status after an ONS.

“Did we what Lena, Darling?” Asmo asked, playing coy. He was loving this. What naughty thoughts was she having about him? She froze, looking at his open shirt. He looked so hot laying like that. She’d be very proud of herself if she didn’t in fact jump his bones the night before.

“You know…” she said, slightly embarrassed, “bump uglies…”

“There is most certainly nothing ‘ugly’ about me Darling.” he responded, giving her a wink. He let her process that for a moment, watching her sigh and throw herself back on the bed, covering her face with her hands. He knew he was on the edge of taking things too far, and decided to stop with the charade.

Leaning really close to her, Asmodeus whispered in Lena’s ears, “As much as it would’ve been, we only did facials and went to sleep.” He chuckled softly as he saw her ear turn pink.

“Eeeergh!” Lena gritted her teeth and popped the side of his hip, as he was casually lounging on his side, embarrassing the hell out of her. “You are fucking aweful!” She kicked around, pouting.

Asmo chuckled more, loving being able to see her like this. She was absolutely adorable in this state. He totally saw why Solomon would try to fool around this dangerous beauty. He didn’t react, but that swat actually hurt a little. “As much as I want to keep snuggling-up in bed and tease you, we really need to start getting ready for class. You do NOT want Lucifer on your case, especially so early in the morning.”

Remembering she had to go to school made Lena groan even more. “Damn it! I don’t wanna Asmo...it’s too early!”

It took awhile for the two of them to get dressed, followed by hair and make-up. Asmodeus couldn’t resist getting to make-over someone after getting himself dolled-up. It was clear that Lena was used to it, holding perfectly still and moving about just right. She explained that she modeled for her brother, Azriel, quite often.

When they were ready, both Lena and Asmo exited his room, giggling about some joke she’d told about Solomon. It just so happened that Levi and Satan were walking down the corridor to witness this.

Of course, neither of them knew about the sleeping arrangement, and thought exactly the wrong thing. “Oh, good morning guys. What do you think? Am I RAD material?” the nephilim asked, showing off her school uniform. She felt rather silly wearing a uniform. Her school didn’t require one, focusing on individuality and expression more.

Satan merely stared at her, blinking. He wasn’t sure what this situation was, nor how to respond. “Uhm, it suits you well..” he cleared his throat a bit. Asmo was such a clever little demon, knowing what his older brothers thought and continued to play games. He reached out and took Lena’s hand. “It does, doesn’t it!?”

Leviathan’s face was red, but he looked otherwise rather deadpan. He gave no response, but instead walked right past his younger brothers and the nephilim. It was a curious reaction to both Lena and Satan. She assumed he just wasn’t a morning person.The three followed after Leviathan downstairs to the dining room table.

It was Mammon’s day for cooking. He’d gone the waffle route, making it quick and easy. The was beast bacon, hellfire bumble bee syrup, and fresh fruits of The Devildom. “You guys are gonna spoil me with all this delicious food.” She chimed and gave her compliments to “Chef Big Money Mammon” which caused him to blush and go tsundere on her.

“You don’t eat like this at your place?” Beelzebub asked, before swallowing what she was sure to be an entire waffle whole.

Blinking for a second in disbelief, she quickly shook her head, “Nah, we had a cafeteria at Belmont. We’re too much in a hurry to enjoy a setdown meal in the mornings. Too many things to do on our agendas. That and Azriel forbids sugary foods, especially during the most important meal of the day.”

“There’s only one important meal?” Beel asked, swallowing even more food.

Lilly laughed, “I told you we believe breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It sets your energy and mood.” Lena nodded as she began to take her seat.

‘Oh Lena, Darling,” Asmo chimed, “I might have to agree with your brother about eating too much sugar at breakfast. Your skin is so soft and smooth…..(paused for effect), I don’t want you to get any acne flare-ups. Especially after I spoil you with the latest line from Majolish.”

Okay, the sneaky 5th brother was really having some fun with his implications. Though everyone really did jump to conclusions quickly. And what made things even more suspicious was the way Lena didn’t react to him or get embarrassed.

“Today, Asmo DARLING, I will make an exception to the dietary rules thwarted upon me.” she replied, “Mammon took time to fix me a plate and I intend on enjoying it. Besides, it’s a part of my learning experience. Cuisine speaks volumes for culture anywhere you go.”

The second eldest brother couldn’t help but smile to himself at the appreciation for the food he made. It was unexpected coming from a stranger. “Yeah, don’t waste that food. I got up early to get it ready!”

There were jokes flying around the room about ‘chef Mammon’ with a lot of laughter. Even Belphegor, who was still in sulk mode, took the time to thank him for ‘slaving over the waffle iron’ for everyone. The only one that didn’t seem to joke around was Leviathan. He was quietly focusing on his phone as usual.

“Enough, everyone. It’s time to leave.” Lucifer announced. There were a few sighs that followed. Beelzebub quickly crammed as much as he could in his mouth as his twin began to push him towards the exit. “Beel, you should be good til lunch…” he murmured sleepily.

Lena was actually excited to share her first night experiences with her brothers and learn about how they fared. She didn’t text them anything besides ‘good night lub you!’. She’d rather see the expressions on their faces.

On the way to the Academy, Lena walked up beside the 3rd eldest; her ‘keeper’ she decided to call him. “Hey, are you playing the same Otome today?”

Leviathan froze for a moment, then continued to play. “No, I’m playing an action RPG…” He didn’t seem enthusiastic, nor did he seem focused on the game either. It puzzled Lena, so she kept on with the conversation, “I like those. The Marvel Alliance is my favorite.”

She could see a struggle in him. It was like he wanted to ask about it, but held back. What was his deal? Since he wanted to know, obviously, she went ahead and continued, “So it's all of the characters in the whole Marvel universe. It’s random what good guy characters or bad guys you get, but you draw random ones, build your team that are good against certain types of enemies, and level em up. It’s got decent story lines, and it’s cool you can play as bad guys too...it’s just. I really hate the ‘pay to play’ games that get you into gambling away your money for the characters you want.”

He glanced at Lena out of the corner of his eyes as she spoke. She really was the only person he knew that could ramble on about games like he could. Well not as much as him. He was the king otaku here after all.

“Are you by chance upset with me?” Lena asked, “I figured you’d at least share your opinion of the whole pay-to-play thing…” she had a tuition for these things and hated feeling awkward around people, especially ones she’d be around a lot.

At first Leviathan was going to dodge her question, then Asmodeus called to the nephilim to ‘hurry up’ to walk with him. It made him grit his teeth. “NO! Why would a shut-in otaku care about a 3D girl getting a little cozy with Asmo!?” He shouted at Lena and stormed on ahead of everyone.

Lena felt the eyes upon her. Not only did the fellow House of Lamentation members look at her for answers, but other RAD students gathering about the school grounds who witnessed the scene as well.

The nephilim facepalmed as Lilly joined her at one side, with Asmodeus at the other. “What was that all about?”

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dragonflymage · 3 years

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(This has taken me forever to write. Be prepared for a long answer! *kicks it out of the draft box*)

I don’t think I’ll choose a Type for this answer because I chose Types in similar questions. This time I’ll go with the word “ideal” and play with that for a while.

This answer will be about the steps to finding an ideal match. INFP style.

Everyone knows that INFPs are the dreamers. They dream their way through being a child, through the teen years, and yes right through adulthood. It’s unavoidable. If a potential situation creeps up on an INFP, it won’t be long before they have come up with all the imaginative ways to live it and make it their own. Within their minds.

I am going to reveal some things about myself as an INFP that aren’t easy to reveal. Tapping into this realm of idealism that INFPs seem to be known for.

What exactly does it mean when someone says that INFPs are idealistic? It’s more than just seeing the good in others and hoping for a bright future. There’s a side of darkness within it as well because this doesn’t always mean ‘realistic’. It can mean searching for qualities that only exist in our thoughts.

My topic within these imaginative daydreams will focus on “The Ideal Match”.

I have to say that the first sensation that comes to me while thinking of this topic is… wistfulness.

In my expansive INFP imagination, my ideal match is someone who wants to know me.

That’s it.

Okay, that’s not all, but that’s where it begins. With someone who has SEEN me. And not just seen me, but moved closer instead of shaking their head and walking away. Of course, that doesn’t make an automatic match, but it has to begin somewhere.

Can you imagine the elation of being truly seen? That tiny ray of INFP light shown outward has caught someone’s attention. What should be done now? It isn’t love yet. Right? This elation isn’t love. But what if it is? No, it’s much too soon. Maybe if the door is opened a little bit more. … What are they doing now? Running? Moving even closer? OMG. What should I do next?!

Breathe. This doesn’t mean they are devoting all of their eternity. It just means they are curious. Stay calm.

Does that sound like panic? It might be. There’s always the fear of doing too much too soon, yet wanting to reach out and touch. The unseen internal tug of war.

So, this is where the INFP stands now — Revealed some of their deep self and was noticed for it. Then the person stuck around wanting to know more.

This is a great beginning. But what’s next? It would probably be easier to know what to do if this took place in-person. Body language and tone of voice is clearer to decipher. Most likely this all happened online, where emotions and reactions can be filtered through the process I refer to as: “I’m doing my freakin’ best to explain myself with only text!” *flails*

I would say that being seen and someone wanting to get to know you are where new friendships and possible future-relationships reside.

Being seen is nice, but being understood is even better!

It looks like a connection is forming. This is where our INFP will decide what sort of sharing is appropriate.

There are all sorts of sharing:

💙 Surface sharing - which involves interests and everyday activities. Also known as “small talk”. Topics such as pets, job or school, hobbies, books, etc. This isn’t always an INFP favorite, but conversations have to begin somewhere. During the small-talk phase, an INFP will determine whether there is potential for a connection. And, yes, an INFP is more than capable of this discovery just from small talk. This could last for a brief time period or for many days, depending on the person’s comfort level. 💙 Test sharing - which involves emotions attached to topics. Such as the meanings behind this or that event in life. It could be another subtle test to see if the other person is still interested in talking. Or it could be a bit of desperation to have someone to finally discuss the deeper aspects of the world. Some of these emotion-laden topics might not be used by most people until later in a potential friendship-relationship, but INFPs may reach this level of conversation fairly quickly. This type of conversation could continue throughout the friendship-relationship, obviously while no longer in a ‘testing’ fashion. 💙 Personal sharing - which involves longer and more frequent conversations. It’s a bit like sharing your life in ‘real-time’. At this point, the INFP has decided this is someone who is interested because they haven’t run away, and maybe it’s okay to invest more of ourselves with them. These sorts of talks are like inviting them to our home and giving them a glimpse of what life is like for us. These discussions are saved for close friends and potential love interests. 💙 Deep sharing - which involves all those things an INFP shares with no one. And by ‘no one’ I mean ‘a rare and special someone’. I think many INFPs have an inner vault where they keep all the topics that have been too much for other people to handle - such as traumatic memories. Some INFPs, after being rejected in the past, may choose to never touch this level with anyone again. Other INFPs may decide that if this special person can understand what’s in the vault, then they are absolutely ‘the one’. Whether as a love interest or a very close friend.

🍵 There could also be a level 5 which may involve fantasies or the darkest of secrets they may never tell anyone, but some INFPs might lump those in with #4. It depends on the individual. 🍵

The difficulty with those Sharing Levels is finding an order that works and sticking to it. It wouldn’t work well to start with #1 Small Talk and then skip right to #4 Deep Sharing. (I mean, unless you’re talking with a therapist, then go ahead.)

Now that I got the informative portion out of the way, it’s time for some INFP idealism!!

INFPs are amazing humans. We care with our every breath and we want the best for those around us. We can also become stuck within our idealistic thoughts. No, that isn’t a secret.

We are called The Dreamers for a reason.

INFPs have a difficult time with this strange thing called Reality. We are flooded with violence from the media, and sometimes it exists in our personal lives. Reminding us of all the hurting souls we can’t help. We have potent plans of how we will change the world. Then Reality sneaks up from behind and whispers “you do realize no matter how hard you try, you can’t save them all…” Thanks, Reality.

It’s these realizations that can infiltrate all aspects of life - how we envision our future, how we envision our environment, and how we envision our Ideal Match or our Ideal Partner (in a potentially romantic sense).

I first started imagining a ‘love interest’ at around age 12. It wasn’t marriage or white gowns that I imagined. It was someone who cared by listening to me.

One of the first crushes in a love-interest way I had on a person (other than classmates I mentioned in a different answer) was Hawkeye from the MASH re-runs. ( I don’t know what it is about me and ENFPs, but anyway… I spent long hours daydreaming about somehow being illogically inserted into that environment just so I could sit and have long conversations with Hawkeye. 😅 I thought he was the perfect match for me. Of course, he had other issues going on, but I was willing to overlook them all! This daydream went on for a few years until I moved along to other potential unreachable love interests.

The important factor about the idealism and daydreaming is that I was internally forming a list of what I hoped to find in a future partner.

Attention and caring were important. Kindness to others. Devotion to helping people. Silly humor. Depth of character. Capable of understanding pain. Willing to imagine what could be.

Sadly, if an INFP isn’t paying attention, they can idealize themselves through life…even through the most painful events and can become addicted to this coping mechanism.

Like I did.

The downside was that since I never truly encountered a great deal of decent treatment personally, I didn’t know how to recognize it in others. It was unfamiliar territory (for many depressing reasons). So in my early 20s, what I did was latch onto a person who I thought had the potential and idealized everything else about him. He gave me attention, sure, but I think I consciously idealized everything else about him. Even when there were many clues that he wasn’t a good match for me.

I rejected every natural instinct I had and encompassed myself in flowery daydreams in order to survive the life I’d suddenly found myself in.

That is probably an extreme example of what idealism can do to a person. But I think that INFPs have the very real probability of slipping into this unhealthy internal mindset.

If we aren’t careful, idealism can turn into an INFP mind-trap.

I don’t want to turn this into a negative answer. Idealism has wonderful benefits if used in healthy creative ways. To imagine what could be. But there also needs to be a balance with Realistic thoughts.

Always stop and ask yourself “Is this truly a possibility? Is this actually what is taking place? Am I somehow coloring the truth from myself?”

Only then will an INFP truly find, not just an Ideal Match, but a True Match.

Without any of the rose-colored glasses interfering with what is Real.

#mbti #infp #infp thoughts #relationships #mbti thoughts #introvert #myers-briggs #hsp #emotions #emotional #sensitivity

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