#idk its just some very realistic traumatized parent stuff tbh i absolutely know people who have been like this or had parents like this

[thisisadonaldduckblognow]

what im saying is, splinter genuinely and fully loves his sons more than anything. they gave him a reason to carry on when he needed it most. he’d die for them, he wants them safe, he wants them happy. he is not a caricature of abusive physical neglect who deliberately ignored their survival needs when they were little. to the best of his ability, they were looked after and provided for. he adores them and always has.

what i’m saying is, splinter is a complicated person with a lifetime of trauma and damage thrust into the role of parent at one of the lowest points of his existence, with no support network or resources or coping mechanisms. he was emotionally disconnected with his children in ways that were genuinely hurtful and damaging to them. he could be selfish and impulsive in ways that were harmful to them. his sons step in to act as parents with each other because of the ways in which splinter was not there acting as an involved father (a role that largely falls to raph, but they’ve each had their moments).

and what i’m saying is if your takeaway from the series is that he’s an incredible perfect dad and always has been or that he’s an outright abusive malicious dad who only cares about himself, you missed the point entirely. he is not always a good dad. he is not always a bad dad. he loves his kids but his issues have also been harmful to his kids. he works and improves and apologizes. his very real mistakes and what motivates them are explained without being excused.

#rise of the tmnt #rottmnt #rottmnt splinter #rise splinter #i come on here to raph stan largely esp about the complicated feelings he deserves to have abt his dad bc like #splinter IS super complicated everything about it is nuanced #he sucks and he messes up a lot but he loves his kids and improves too like #idk its just some very realistic traumatized parent stuff tbh i absolutely know people who have been like this or had parents like this #and seeing it reduced one way or the other SUCKS

[fae-fucker]

Zenith: Chapter 76-79

Chapter 76

Andi has a nice little poetic nightmare. It’s irrelevant. The next morning has the girls preparing for the ball, complete with dresses and makeup.

Some things to note include Lira saying that in Adhiran religion (which is global, I guess), one has to mourn for three days before “letting” the souls of the dead pass on into ... everything.

Andi tries to say that it’ll take time to heal from it all, but Lira is having none of it.

“It will take time to move past what happened on Adhira,” Andi started, but Lira held up a hand.

“My three days of mourning have passed. Lon’s and my aunt’s, too. Now we, and the others who lost loved ones during the attack, must give the lost spirits to the stars, to the trees, to the wind.”

Which basically means that she’s done feeling bad about the unexpected and brutal attack on her home planet, so that’s convenient. Well, if one of our main characters doesn’t care about her people getting senselessly murdered, then why should we?

She also lets us know that her aunt has fixed up the Marauder and brought it here, because of course. Lira wants to arrange for Lon to be transferred to the Marauder, and though she has a logical reason for it (taking him home personally), it’s only a setup so we know why he’s on there at the end of the book when Andi’s bleeding out and needs a universal donor.

Spoilers, I guess.

Andi’s mother, Glorya, intercepts Andi as she tries to leave her crew to their makeover montages, just so we can move into a scene where her mom is brushing her hair and babbling on about gossip and vapid high society stuff.

But Andi, of course, gets lost in a flashback that’s so amateurishly written it’s honestly embarrassing and only highlights Shinsay’s helpless reliance on flashbacks as a storytelling device.

Observe:

Her words faded away as memories took their place. Andi lost herself to them.

The whole flashback is written in italics for some inexplicable reason, even though it would’ve been fine as just regular text since we’re clearly told what’s happening now and what’s a memory.

Also, there’s one bit where the memory “fast-forwards” to a different one. Shinsay, this isn’t a fucking movie. This isn’t a screenplay. What the fuck are you DOING.

The flashback and the mother’s inane babbling are all there to illustrate how vapid and brainless Glorya is and how she only ever cared about her status and not about her kid. Glorya pretends that everything is back to the way it was but Andi curses her out for abandoning her when she needed them most and how “the way it was” was actually always shit.

I mean it’s fine. It’s all right. I see what they’re going for, it’s melodramatic as all fuck but it works for what they’re trying to do? I can see this as being a realistic way for an emotionally neglectful family to look like. I wish it was more nuanced and wasn’t just shoe-horned in here (Glorya doesn’t show up before or after this bit, this is the only time she’s ever present or even mentioned in this book in any meaningful capacity) for the sake of making Andi’s friends look better and for her to not have anything that anchors her to Arcardius, but like, I won’t say this isn’t realistic.

And then Shinsay can’t stop themselves and it’s back to silly time:

“Really, Androma...” 

[...]

“That is not my name,” Andi whispered. She allowed the darkness to come up into her voice, the mask of shadow and steel to sweep across her face. “My name is the Bloody Baroness. And if you or Commander Racella ever so much as utter a single word toward me or my crew again, I will personally strip the skin from your body and wave it like a flag from my starship.”

Glorya let out a soft squeak. Andi snarled with all of her teeth.

Guys I can’t breathe this is too fucking funny. And not in a good “woo vindication!” sort of way, but in a “they really put this right after an emotional confrontation about parental emotional neglect/abuse huh?” way. They really thought this was ... badass? Revenge? Andi, sweetie, you’re, like, traumatized? Presumably? I can’t really tell. But maybe get some therapy?

Do Shinsay think this is somehow a win and that Andi’s threat means she’s fully released from the hurt and pain her parents have caused her through their neglect? It’s honestly written as if Andi just confronted her mother and her own hopes of coming back to her family in this one short scene, and then upon realizing her parents never loved her, she scares her mom a little and then is all smug and satisfied at the end.

That ain’t how it works, darlings.

Then the annoying Marketable Space Pet runs in and starts biting Glorya’s toes and she runs away shrieking like a defeated Disney villain.

Way to undercut your own drama, Shinsay.

The chapter ends with Andi thinking about how her crew is her True Family for the bajillionth time. Because we’re all idiots and Shinsay wants us to remember that.

Chapter 77

It’s the evening of the ball and Andi thinks about how she missed Bavista, which is apparently your generic coming-of-age ball held at Arcardius for every 16-year-old. I’m guessing it’s a yearly thing? The book never clarifies. Not sure why the fuck it’s here tbh.

Actually, it’s a pretty good demonstration of how the worldbuilding in this book is presented so here, have at thee:

She could still remember seeing the otherworldly dresses and suits float by her on the feeds as she watched the girls and boys glide into the A’Vianna House in the Glass Sector. They seemed light as air, full of pride, bursting at the seams with excitement. Once inside, they would be greeted by members of the Priest Guild, who would award each young person three items.

The first was a vial of water from the Northern Ocean, symbolizing strength. For growth, they accepted a single leaf from the oldest tree on Arcardius, known as The Mother, which was said to have been planted when the Ancients first arrived. Lastly, they were given a single floating pebble, no larger than a child’s fingernail, chiseled from the very gravarock where the Cortas estate was. It represented the wisdom of rising above.

Is this relevant to anything? Does this help you understand this world or its inhabitants? Does it tell you anything of the culture of Arcardius or its youth and what’s expected of them? No? It’s just a really generic list of things thrown together using Mystical Proper Nouns as glue? Weeell heeell.

Also what does “it represented the wisdom of rising above” mean? This is utterly generic and means fuck-all, that’s what.

Anyway, Andi’s admiring herself in the mirror. Her dress is very sexy, trust me, I can’t be bothered to include it so just imagine your favorite My Immortal outfit description. It does include sword holsters at the back, which are Andi’s favorite part, because she’s a strong independent woman who don’t need no man. She never actually uses them or brings the swords to the ball so ... Idk what the point of this was.

We also get some shit about how Andi actually LOVES dresses and being pretty but she never admitted it to anyone. But don’t you worry, this badass space criminal LOVES all things girly, because that’s feminism! Can someone check in on Shinsay? I’m not sure they’re getting enough air with their heads so far up Sarah J Maas’ asshole.

Admitting to herself that she looked pretty was something Andi kept private. She didn’t want to give her crew the satisfaction of knowing her true thoughts about fashion. How even though she was a fierce, hardened criminal, she could still appreciate the joy of a beautiful, impractical ball gown.

Huh. And here I thought they were your family. That’s weird that you’d keep this information from them, especially considering all of them seemed pretty excited to be prettied up in the last chapter. I guess they’d really just haaate the idea of sharing this joy with their captain, huh? Why aren’t you admitting this to them, Andi?

You’re saying shit about how “even though” you’re a hardened criminal, you can “still” appreciate beautiful gowns, like those two are somehow contradictory. Are you, mayhaps, ashamed of having this traditionally girly interest? Hmm! Interesting. Why could that be, I wonder? Why would having traditionally feminine interests or even caring about one’s appearance be seen as something inherently shameful or embarrassing, as inherently contradictory to being fierce and “hardened?”

This is all just so *clenches fist* feminist.

Forreal though, somehow Shinsay managed to take their entire made up GALAXY and make it subtly and not-so-subtly sexist. Good job, morons. Really girlbossed that one, huh?

The only bit I like about this whole mess is this:

The dressmaker had also accented her gown with a sparkling necklace full of jewels that Andi didn’t plan on giving back.

This is the one and only space pirate-y thing Andi does -- sorry, considers doing -- in the whole book and honestly could’ve been used to build her character more, but it’s just a one-off joke here. Wasted.

Valen comes to fetch her and we get some subtle foreshadowing.

“Valen the Resurrected.”

He stopped to look at her, brows raised. “What?”

She shrugged. “It’s what the press is calling you in all the feeds.” Valen let out a deep chuckle.

[...]

“Something tells me things are about to change for the better,” he said. “I’m ready to see it all happen.”

Andi wondered what he would do now that he was home with a whole planet at his disposal.

He deserved to have some fun.

Is it bad that I’m rooting for Valen to destroy everything? And this isn’t my villain-fucker coming out, I just want this poor bastard to absolutely annihilate Andi and her gang of acolytes.

Chapter 78

Andi and Valen arrive at the ball. It’s all very pretty and space-y and aesthetic. There’s a bunch of aliens everywhere. Andi sees a woman with funky eyes and assumes it’s a body mod, because I guess she knows the genetic characteristics of every species by heart and can tell when something is real or not.

An old classmate of theirs comes up to talk to Valen and congratulate him on being alive, then Andi reminds him of who she is just to be a smug asshole and the guy fucks off in a panic. She’s just so cool and badass, you guys.

Then it’s time for Valen and Andi to dance, and of course General Cortas looks like he’s about to lose his marbles because these darn kids! >:(

The chapter ends on Andi noticing Dex pouting in the distance.

“Relax,” Andi whispered. “Let’s give them something to talk about.”

She flashed him a wicked grin as the music began.

And as Valen spun her into the first move of the dance, Andi saw Dex standing on the fringes of the crowd, an expression of longing clear on his face.

Chapter 79

This chapter is exactly 298 words of Dex moping around about how he’s actually not over Andi at all when he thought he’d done such a good job of repressing his feelings, and how he should be the one dancing with Andi instead of Valen. If you’re surprised, you’re clinically dead.

#eff reads: zenith

[sethnakht]

tagged by the lovely @azalea-scroggs (forgive me for this incredibly late response)

Rules: choose any three fandoms (in random order) and answer the questions, then tag 10 people you want to know better

Three fandoms:

Star Wars

Coco

Harry Potter, if only because it lends itself to this meme

The first character you loved:

Luke (in childhood) - mostly, I think, for his moments of Extra, such as: a) the choice to take death-by-abyss over Vader’s offer, b) his black outfit, with its aura of faux-mystery (the product of brooding over Vader, it seemed), c) the fact that he Force-chokes his way into Jabba’s palace d) and that his solution to killing the Rancor is to send a barbed gate into its windpipe, e) the showiness of his flying kick on Jabba’s barge, f) how he reaches for Vader’s hand not long after having chopped one of them off

Mamá Coco - the beauty and dignity of great age, all of the implied little acts of resistance she’s hinted at having taken throughout her lifetime, strewn throughout the house

Harry - I think what instantly endeared me to him is his resilience, what one might even call spite - the way his hair grows back after Petunia cuts it shorter than he wants, for instance, and then the sheer nerve, the cheekiness of some of his responses to adults - the constant presence of repressed or unacknowledged wells of emotion beneath the calm surface. I learned a lot about what I like in a narrator from him, because he’s highly observant but completely unreliable, often coming to realizations with great belatedness

The character you never expected to love so much:

Leia - I remember seeing ESB in theaters as a child and being inexplicably drawn to the shot of her watching the blast doors close, to her eyes - feeling a sense of such longing it almost hurt. But I didn’t like her romantic subplot and totally lost interest after her bikini scene. It took far sharper eyes than my own to realize just how complex she can be, and years to recognize in her grief, in her struggles, in her determination, in her resistance just what it was that had sparked that initial response

Imelda - she reminds me almost uncannily of my real Dominican grandmother, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about her too closely at the beginning. But she’s emerged to me as That Kind of Character I love to write about - headstrong, resentful, masked, walled on the outside; she’s open to many metaphorical readings as well. Cheech, Victoria, and Elena have also grown on me to a surprising degree

one of the great joys of Potter is that nearly every character has a remarkably skewed perspective. I kind of love the cast as a whole - from weirdos like Aberforth and Filch and the Lovegoods to the worst-ever purebloods to Lily and the Marauders - and over time have found the adults especially fun to think through, not least because of how settled-in-their-ways and batshit some of them have become

The character you relate to the most:

I’m going to rephrase this as “the character perspective you find most rewarding to write”, because that’s how I relate to characters --

Vader - because anger! and a journey! because he’s a sad but hilarious murderbot! have explained the fascination a bit here

Héctor - he’s a trickster, immensely changeable and fluid, and yet also caught in something of a traumatic loop, one both of his own making and not. He's in some way the character who can cross every boundary but the one he wants to cross, or rather who has to cross all kinds of boundaries, who keeps crossing boundaries despite being denied passage to the one place he wants to be by an apparatus that regards him as an outsider. There’s lots one can also do with him to think about class relations, about the history of the twentieth century, about time more generally (time in music, time in poetry), about language (he’s a poet). And on a psychological level, he’s got all the baggage I love: guilt, shame, persistence in desperation, a particular form of good-natured obliviousness that has a way of getting in the way of clear communication on his end and also of setting him up for betrayal

Snape - he’s a miserably depressed, endlessly spiteful, hopelessly guilt-ridden young teacher who can’t keep his anger or his tongue in check, is ridiculously partial to the sort of rich prat who helped ruin his life in the first place, is obsessed to the most obsessive degree with Harry and his parents, is probably on a whole bucketload of potions to get through the day, is physically a total mess, and gets to wield some of the most cutting sarcasm in the books - of course his perspective is a riot

The character you’d slap:

other than Anakin? or Padmé? probably Obi-Wan pre-ROTS. Which is not to say that I don’t love him (love his sass especially); more that there are things he does in TPM and AOTC that remind me too much of real people - of bad teachers I know. Much could have been avoided without his grudge in TPM, with a franker acknowledgement of the fact that his charge looked up to him as a father and not as a brother and was vulnerable to predation from those who could see the disconnect. The difference a sharper ear for tone ( “I do my best, Master”) might have made . . . not unlike Snape, he’s a poster-boy for bad teaching, and in a very different way from Snape, he’s arrogant and fairly privileged at the same time. That he’s never called out on his behavior until it’s far too late is harrowingly realistic

Ernesto - boy becomes a media star and yet has never heard of communication, apparently. if he’d simply asked Héctor to write him songs from home, the entire mess might have been avoided

Snape deserves to be in this category, but I think the character I’d want to actually slap is Draco Malfoy - just - i mean

Three favorite characters (in order of preference):

Vader, Leia, Ahsoka or Aphra

Héctor, Imelda, Coco

Snape, Harry, pretty much everyone but Voldemort and Draco

A character you liked at first but don’t anymore:

I still love Luke, so this isn’t quite the response being asked for, but I also don’t seek him out, don’t want to write about him. As a kid, I devoured pretty much every Luke-Vader story out there; now, when encountering Luke-Vader, I confess I struggle to muster interest if Leia (or Ahsoka, or some other female character) isn’t present

this movie hasn’t been out long enough for that, I think . . . 

Hermione is a character I adore still, but as with Luke, she’s no longer for me what she was as a child, when she was my role model - idk, I love a lot of the qualities in her that tend to be overlooked in fic, her brutality for instance, her more hidden impulses - how much she wants to belong, how much her marriage says about her structural needs and wants (love Ron, btw, another totally under-appreciated character). I think she’s super interesting, if not in her prescribed role as the know-it-all ex-machina. As the character used to always playing that role and under pressure to remain in that role, however, she’s fascinating

Three OTPs: 

Leia + Vader gen, of which there is not nearly enough in this world - Vader spends two films chasing / capturing her, Leia spends two films escaping / defying him, he doesn’t want her dead because she can lead him to things he wants, she absolutely wants him dead and is driven to lead by her hatred for him, they’re extreme versions of each other and understand each other extremely well as a result, possibly are even drawn to each other, if only to really hurt each other - you bet I want to see this dynamic further explored

Héctor/Imelda - guilt-fest, psychological drama ahoy, plus they’re musicians, connected through time and language

aside from the stuff I somehow avoid like the plague (H/G, Drarry, anything with Voldemort), I’d read pretty much anything with an interesting narrator. Rarepairs are where it’s at for me in Potter, tbh

I tag @glompcat, @marythegizka, @chancecraz, @songofthesstars, @force-scream, @cyberdyke-industries, @thewillowbends, @babycharmander, @lloronadeazulceleste, @pengychan

#fandom meme #meme #long post