#me when I compare and contrast a mind reading character to a literal four year old: I've connected the dots (you didn't connect shit!)

[goldenlie]

glad we share an opinion queen!! also getting annoyed because of 4 year old acting like a 4 year old is incredibly valid to me tbh definitely had my own share of yup definitely no chlidren for me ever moments. I feel like later on it gets a little better because now we are focusing more on Kazuki and Rei's past and issues each of them brings to the table lmao I usually have issue only when people claim Miri isn't at all acting like an actual 4 year old and compare her to... Anya... a child who can literally read minds 😐 and will change her behaviour accordingly to what she hears as we have seen her do many times before and I didn't even watch all of spy x family like sir surely you are joking right now?? anyways I hope you are doing well, it's been a while ^_^ what are you up to these days? hope uni isn't giving you too much of a hard time!

(formerly) QQQQQNFFFFFF ENJOYYEEEERRR!!!! AGNESSS!!! It's so good to hear form you <3

If there's one thing I'm reliant at its being a bit of a hater to kids antics, I simply lack the gift of patience. I am right there with you in those moments I'm ngl. Okay the focus on more of their past dynamic and potentially how they got to be in the profession they're in sounds pretty interesting. The potential for angst skyrockets with each word I hear about this show and I am loving it.

That is,,,, a real unique comparison people have made. As someone who has suffered through two seasons of spyxfamily I can definitely vouch that Anya and Miri are not similar characters at all (To clarify spy family was good up until every progression the characters had was wrote away for a cheap punchline or coincidental memory loss, literally happened every second episode after s1 ep9). The only similarity between the two shows point blank is the premise. I would assume people are trying to draw nonexistent parallels purely based off of that, I have no idea as to why though. From what I saw (so, so little) Miri was undoubtedly acting like a four year old, when she spilt that drink in episode 2 it was very on brand kid looking for attention, I thought it showed her age pretty well. Anya as an older character, literally six years old, but she had a lot more motives at play. Obviously she's still young and immature but a lot more mature than Miri nonetheless. Anya could play strategy and was attempting to aid Loid with his spy missions, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume Miri is not going to locate a bomb or something in the remaining 10 eps I have to watch. Miri seems to be a much more honest and open character whereas Anya can be more scheming and conniving (I say with love, I did like Anya's character up until everyone minus Yor became very dislikable very fast), for her own self preservation. The two of them are pretty incomparable, I can see where your disbelief is coming from.

Uni is making me spin in a circle five times and then jump through a hoop 2 meters off the ground. The biggest thing rn is finding time to carry out experiments for my thesis which I will hopefully finish up with this week! It's actually such coincidental timing but this week I have to give a presentation on the most impactful book I've ever read (purely to build confidence in public speaking, damn though, thought I was in science so I didn't have to talk personally) which was extremely difficult considering all impactful "books" I've read in the past four years have been on ao3. So I ended up scavenging through our old messages trying to locate some book recs you had! I actually ended up with another recommendation from the bts boy though, who was reading Almond, this one is called "The Midnight Library" and sounded pretty intriguing! I'll be reading it tonight and tomorrow so if it's worth it I'll update you. What about you queen, are you still working in the job you started last year? I hope it's been going well if so! I know you're into buddy dads these days but anything else been keeping you occupied? Anime wise myself I'm actually about halfway through hunter x hunter?? I started the end of December and it intrigued me ngl. I'm not sure if you've seen but it's very easy to like the main character and his three main besties so I'm looking forward to seeing how things progress further. I also watched the entirety of Voltron out of pure curiosity for how bad the ending was? And I was surprised to see it was actually as shit as they say. However comma the show did lose its appeal much much earlier, have you ever watched? I actually finished up a kdrama series recently as well I believe you recommended me last year called Beyond Evil and holy fucking shit was it good. Usually I fear for around the halfway mark of kdramas that they lose their purpose but I swear they had only warmed up the engine by ep 8. It was addictive to watch and I was so immersed, my love dong sik and his relationship with inspector Han growing and changing throughout the series was extremely interesting to watch unfold. They were a powerful duo when they worked together and I will miss the thrill of each ep.

I hope you've been having a good time in general queen and things have been going well for you :D

#me when I compare and contrast a mind reading character to a literal four year old: I've connected the dots (you didn't connect shit!) #the information that people think they're similar had me speechless

[bestworstcase]

Can you elaborate on what Salem meant with the "[...]when we could replace [these humans] with what they could never be?" bit of your recent post comparing her with Ruby? Because I feel like you either didn't address that or the point sort of flew over my head. Like, what else does she mean by replacing them?

my reading of the line is “why spend our lives trying to redeem these humans [before the gods] when we could replace [the gods]”—ie her proposed alternative to fulfilling the divine mandate is rebellion.

this is something i’ve talked about a lot before (<- if you poke around in my archive you’ll find it pretty easily) but in the essentials my argumentation for this reading is:

first, that “replace the gods” has much stronger congruence with salem’s characterization than does “replace humans.” she founded her rebellion upon the idea of humankind usurping their “old masters” in order to “perfect their own design” and told ozma very directly that they could supplant the brothers. this has been her driving ambition for quite literally millions of years!

in contrast, even now, salem thinks of humanity as “strong, brave, and resourceful,” recounts the discovery of dust as proof of human “passion, resourcefulness, and ingenuity,” calls the capacity for hope humanity’s greatest strength, etc. and she also doesn’t seem to value ancient magic, particularly: she spends V4-5 coaching cinder to “remember that [magic] comes with a cost,” she used dust rather than her own magic to make monstra fly, she leverages her power over the grimm expansively but we can count the number of times she’s used ancient-human-magic on one hand.

the first time ozma came back, he found her living alone in a rotting hovel with a fairly well-maintained path leading right to her doorstep. he heard frightened whispers about a witch who “commanded dark powers” and lived in the wilds, but this was also an era when faunus were hunted down and kept in cages—that’s important context to hold in mind when we evaluate where those stories about salem came from. everything we see in the lost fable suggests that salem just kind of… existed on the outermost fringes of civilization and mostly wanted to be left alone.

so, for salem to express a sudden interest in… what, genocide? some kind of fucked up breeding program using the one of their four daughters who ended up with magic neither salem nor ozma expected her to inherit at all? strikes me as startlingly out of character.

second, that grammatically the line does make sense to read as salem stumbling over her words. the verb ‘redeem’ implies a subject to whom the verb’s object is redeemed. in order for redemption to occur, there needs to be a debt owed to somebody; in this case the creditor is the gods. ozma’s mandate is to redeem humanity on behalf of the gods. reading salem’s meaning as “replace the gods” requires only that she have the implied antecedent of “redeem […] before the gods” in mind. (in much the same way that ruby clearly had jaune’s usage of the phrase “make-believe” in mind when she spat that in his face!) given her long-standing, passionate hatred of the brother gods, i find this much more plausible than not.

and third, salem is profoundly upset in this scene. she’s rattled from the second ozma says “this isn’t what she asked of me.” and while he reveals everything he’s been keeping from her—reveals that the cause she supported on his behalf for years was all secretly in service to the gods who cursed her to eternal suffering and annihilated humanity out of spite—she curls in on herself (arms tightly folded, face tense, leaning back into the desk) but hangs on his every word. she’s upset! she’s pressing it down as hard as she can, but it’s clear that this hits her hard—so it makes sense emotionally that she’s not able to articulate herself with perfect clarity in the moment. and then of course ozma just walks out without asking for clarification or giving her a chance to explain herself, so if she did misspeak it’s not as if she has the opportunity to elaborate.

and then ozma either took her literal words at face value or (i think more likely) heard what she really meant and, forced to choose between staying with her and remaining true to his mandate, chose the mandate.

#rwby v9 spoilers #<- kind of lol

[thatbangtanbloom]

petals | bts [1]

petals | bts

teaser | [1] (could be read without the teaser)

characters: kim namjoon, kim seokjin, min yoongi, jung hoseok, park jimin, kim taehyung, jeon jungkook, reader

pairings: ot7 x reader

categories: angst, fluff, (light???) smut

genre: idol!bts, idol!reader (fem!reader)

warnings: reader is a bit sensitive but comes out of her shell slowly,, uhh,,, grinding???, making out ;) , sad kissing????, hoseok is lowkey whipped for reader, so is jimin,,, taehyung is a little mean for like 2 sentences

a/n: this first chapter introduces the reader, j-hope, and jimin! more members will be introduced with reader next chapter :]]

❀

The seven of them may not have been bound by blood, but they were in every other way. Their interests often aligned and common actions were shared where sometimes they did not know where one began and one ended. They began their days together as they made their way to the practice room and ended it when they loaded into vans to make their way back to their shared dorm.

It wasn’t as though they had never noticed the fundamental difference between the seven of them and you. They were keenly aware of it whenever the stylist squeezes you and your other girl group members into shorts opposite to their pants or the added slits to accentuate your figure when suits were the dominant style. Yet, your performance was the tipping point.

Each of them had drawn silent as they watched you move like a siren across the stage. The male dancers seemingly falling at your feet while your white chiffon hugged your every curve, floating like water with each move to the beat. Never mind that you were in a group with seven other girls, all of their eyes could only be glued to you.

They would like to think that it were the performances that had them glued to your every move - that it wasn’t the remnants of false dreams that led them to watch you like a hawk. Almost like wolves, they would be eager to pounce at you if there was one misstep. Yet, you made none.

Hoseok was the proudest of them all. He purposely would stay up to watch you practice, giving helpful tips to evoking further emotion.. but this? Seeing you move this sexily as an enchantress almost made him feel weak in the knees.

They had attempted a lot to make you feel welcomed into their tiny home of seven. When BigHit informed them that the top trainee from Produce 101 would be joining their company left a sour taste in their mouths, but after learning it had been you who captivated millions, their worry lessened. BigHit had provided themselves on growing from the ground up - working organically to cultivate each trainee with precision, sincerity, and perseverance. Their own premonitions of how you functioned as an artist did make them question your credibility. It was only a matter of time before their watchful eyes looked after you since your pre debut days. The trainee girl division of BigHit had been long gone, but BigHit could not let go of you, not after so many monthly evaluations, tearful performances, and years going down the drain.

It was not as though you were coming into the group empty-handed. You had your own fan base from the show and project group who swore to stay by your side no matter what. Admittedly, your fan dynamic was a bit more mixed - guys eagerly flicking to see you and the other girls in school uniforms while you belted your heart out. The latest addition was the reassurance that BigHit needed to their girl group that they intended to put together.

“She doesn’t belong here.” were the first words you heard when your bags finally were placed down. It had been Taehyung who had uttered such words. You instantly find your blood run cold from the words. You could not quite understand why Taehyung was so against you. The two of you had never spoken more than three words to one another outside of promotional shoots where you were slated as an MC for the few shows variety was on.

Nevertheless, you tucked your head down and followed your other group members to the practice studio where you would dance for hours on in. You would practice until your limbs ached, taking every moment of a break as one step closer to the solace of your bed when comeback preparations were soon approaching. But every time you rested for just a moment, you could remember the echo of Kim Taehyung’s words. She doesn’t belong here.

Unbeknownst to you, not every member of BTS was antagonistic towards you. In particular, Jung Hoseok admired your tenacity more than anything. The two of you spoke in quick words, him congratulating you on your variety show appearances and complimented the way your freestyle had improved over the years. He was in complete awe of you.

“You’re here again?” His soft voice greets you at seven in the morning on the fifth-floor practice room of BigHit Entertainment. You would be embarrassed that you are currently laying on the floor looking utterly disheveled with your gray sweatpants loosely hugging your hips and the way your shirt is drenched with sweat if this were the first time.. but it had not been. He has two iced Americanos in hand and his lovely heart-shaped smile to match. “I swear.. you’re one of the hardest working people I know.”

His words lift your heart and you scramble to stand up and bow deeply to him, “Thank you, senior.” You say before bending a full ninety-degrees to show your respect.

“There’s no need for formalities… aish… are we not close?” Hoseok teases playfully as he places his keys onto the television monitor’s counter and shrugs off his jacket. He has always been one of the more friendly members of your senior group. Most likely because he catches you in the practice room four days out of the week when your leader, Roa, has not realized you snuck out of the dorms in exchange of the four walls. “You can just call me Hoseok. Or j-hope if it makes you feel better.”

You shyly rub the back of your neck, “I.. I suppose we are.” You admit sheepishly as you watch him pass you the iced americano into your hands. His hands are soft and gentle as they overlap over yours. “Congratulations on Billboard and the Grammy’s…. It must be very exciting,”

“Yah, yah, you said that yesterday.” Hoseok has always teased you as his hand raises to your head and pats it gently. In particular, Hoseok has always found your shyness cute. He thought it was sweet that despite years of being an idol, you still never lose the softer parts of yourself. “Let’s talk about you. And Reverie, huh?”

Your girl group, Reverie, had ultimately been a successful feat despite Korean netizens eager to question the validity of putting former IOI members and BigHit trainees as the first girl group the company would produce as opposed to using ‘fresh’ talent. Reading article after the article had made you insecure when they commented on your rather ‘boring’ facade compared to the other members that had charms that seemed to overflow. Were you that bad?

As though reading your thoughts, Hoseok gently clears his throat. “You should show me your dance.” He contends with a warm smile.

Despite only having these secret times in the practice room, Hoseok felt as though he could read you. He noticed your demure way of approaching things that were unfamiliar to you - the sharp contrast for when you performed on stage. If anything, he wanted to help you find the same confidence you felt on stage. He wanted you to find it with him.

“I can do that,” You say as you take another sip of your iced Americano and rush to place it in front of the mirror. You steal a peek from the corner of your eye as the older man settles into the chair and shrugs off his jacket. The other members (most likely Jimin since he tended to be as much of a practice fiend as he was) would not join for another half an hour, so Hoseok was eager to spend this time with you.

His eyes follow your every moment as he leans forward like a man entranced. He’s always admired the fluidity in your movement; the way that you texture changes without warning and how sharp each move is when it needs to be. Like water, you move as one with no disconnecting movements until you want it to be. Quite literally, he thinks your poetry in motion.

The latest comeback is equally as alluring as it is power-based. BigHit quantifying that girl groups should not be held to a double standard meant the choreography being just as difficult as your male counterparts. More than satisfactory for you, it let you feel a greater sense of accomplishment when you hear Hoseok’s claps of approval.

“You’ve improved a lot.” Hoseok remarks with a bright grin as he stands to his feet before walking over. “Though… I would say that this one move could be drawn out more. You’re focusing more on the timing rather than the execution.” He watches as your features contort at his words as you try to piece together what move in particular was he talking about. Could it had been the pas de bourrée? “Here,”

He moves closer to you with a reassuring look in his eyes as his hand rests on your shoulder and slightly presses down, “You’re supposed to have your shoulder go slack, right? You shouldn’t be so tense. Relax.” He says as his fingers trap down your arm to graze over your elbow and tuck it in more. “Your arm was taking away from the focus on your legs. You know the choreography, so why do you dance like you don’t?”

“Ouch,” You say with a forced laugh. You knew he meant well, but from to time, Hoseok did tend to critique you more like you were a member of his own group rather than a junior. Regardless, you were still thankful for his key eye for detail. You never would have deduced it was because he was looking out for you far more than just as a senior, but as something more. “You said last time you wouldn’t be so harsh,” You joke after mustering the courage after fixing your posture and your eyes reclaiming Hoseok’s.

Hoseok chuckles softly, “If I knew you couldn’t take it, I wouldn’t say it,” He remarks gently before turning on his heels beside you. “You’re practicing for the partner stage within the comeback, right? Then you should do it properly.” His voice lowers ever so slightly when he speaks, “With me.”

This hadn’t been the first time you had practiced with Hoseok. Early morning practices often consisted of him arriving at roughly the same time each day, if not earlier, with his small critique prior to him opting for a more hands-on approach. You saw it as nothing more of a senior looking after his junior, but Hoseok saw it as far more than that. How could he not when you were this cute without realizing it?

He wanted to ruin you.

Your thoughts melt away when you feel Hoseok’s hands settle onto your waist, pulling you closer to him as the two of you make eye contact. The way that he looks at you, his pupils slightly dilated with an intensity you can not quite discern, makes you let go of the breath you had not realized you were holding. How come it never felt like this when you were dancing with the actual backup dancers?

“Your leg should rest on my hip, like this,” Hoseok says as he purposely tucks his hand in the dip of your waist to press your waist against him. He’s warm to the touch, much like the sun itself and you have to bit back the blush that threatens to paint on your cheeks. “There, you’re doing good. You’ve always been good at listening.” He praises you as he guides you through the next move. Each moment you spend closer to him has you nearly buckling in the knees when his voice tickles your ear. Did he have any clue what the hell he was doing to you?

You may not have realized it, but Jimin ultimately did. The shorter man has grown familiar with the scene as he tucks his bag under his arm and lingers by the door to watch. He’s not surprised that Hoseok had shown up an hour early for practice in the wrong practice room when he leads you across the room. Jimin has to wonder if being attracted to you is infectious when it seems he is equally infatuated with you. Perhaps even more than Hoseok.

Jimin chuckles to himself as he pauses the music and leans against the door frame with an amused grin. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you two were star-crossed lovers.” It’s almost biting the way your face changes of recognition when your eyes meet Jimin.

You immediately pull away from Hoseok to bow deeply to Jimin out of respect, “It’s not like that. He was helping me-“

“You should let me help you too,” Jimin almost pouts as he repeats the familiar action of discarding his jacket and strolling over. “I can dance too, you know?” He teases as he notices the chuckle that Hoseok had been holding back. Both of them found you being flustered adorable, especially when this normally wasn’t like you. What happened to the alluring siren on stage? They practically craved to have you put them in their place.

Unlike Hoseok, your history with Jimin runs deeper than your ties to BigHit Entertainment. The younger man had known you at your lowest point, kissed away your tears on the night that your first group, I.O.I, had disbanded after the project’s deadline came and went.

You had never mentioned it, but you remembers the last night in the IOI dorms like it was yesterday. You had never wanted to know the pain of your group disbanding again. You had called Jimin that night because you didn’t know who else to call. Somi had been crying in the bathroom for hours, saying how it felt like SIXTEEN all over again, and you could only console your dongsaeng for so long. Kyulkyung and Nayoung already were going to be debuting in PRISTIN with eight other girls as though IOI never existed and was another project group. The time zone left you unavailable to call you parents and Jimin was all you had…

“I’m always going to be here, you know that, don’t you?” Jimin had whispered into your ears as his fingers gingerly stroked your cheek. He looks into your eyes, hoping that your words give some semblance of comfort when your heart ached to no return. How many times would it be that you had to build yourself up to be strong just for everything to fall apart outside of your control?

You sniffle when Jimin makes you look into his eyes, “I-I-I know,” You stammer out as you try to regain your control over your emotions, but it hurt. It hurt so bad that your head was pounding and it felt like you could hear the blood rushing to your ears. “It just.. I just want it to stop hurting, Jimin..” You grip the fabric of his shirt as though he were the one person in this world that piece you back to gather.

“It will take time.. but I will be here until the very end.. you hear me?” He whispers as he stares into your eyes. His soft monolids drip honey when they meet yours. “YN-ah… look at me.”

With a sniffle, you nod, “I am.. I am…” You whisper as your eyes scan his own. You never quite realized how long his eyelashes are or the way he holds the entire galaxy in his eyes up so close. You never have clung to him this much either, so it leaves you a bit breathless when Jimin says nothing for a while, just admiring you. “Jimin?”

“Mmm?” He asks as he does his best to wipe away your tears and not think about how pretty you look right now. He was here just to comfort you, but why can he not stop himself from looking at your lips? From thinking about how badly he wants to help you forget and kiss you?

“You’re pretty,” You say simply as you sniffle slightly and wipe away a stray tear with your sleeve.

“You’re prettier,” He tells you with a soft laugh as his thumb brushes against her chin. He wonders how close it would be for him to close the distance between the two of you with just a kiss.

Jimin has always complimented you, reassuring you of your every perfection, but this time he seems to mean it a little bit more as he presses you tighter against his chest to hold you close.

“Jimin…” You whimper as you hug him closer to you. “Please.. please help me forget,” you whisper softly for just the two of you to hear.

So without thinking, you cup both of his cheeks to close the distance between the two of you. Your arms snake around his shoulders to pull him closer as his arms instantly wrap around your own waist. He is warm to the touch, but fits like a perfect puzzle piece.

Jimin can not say how many times he had thought of this moment - the way you would fit around him like missing puzzle piece. The way he would kiss away every worry from your pretty little head as his hands bunch up the sweatshirt at your waist as he would kiss up your stomach before peppering kisses along your thighs. He’s dreamed of what it would feel like to finally hear your soft moans for him and him alone, but he still holds back as he lets you take the lead. Especially when you are this sensitive.

His lips are soft and pouty; they feel like the inside of a rose as his jaw slacks to let your tongue brush against his own. The taste is sweet with a bit of a tangy flavor: much like that of strawberry lemonade when each finger that presses against your side feels like keys being paid against a piano. For the first time in a while, things feel stable, sure, certain.

You’ve never wanted anything more in your life. You have no doubts as your hips grind against his own on the floor of your dormitory. His moans are soft each time your hips rhymically brush against the hardening tent within his pants. You like this reaction from him, the way his hips buckle into your own as your own teeth begin to nibble along his plump ones to elicit another mewl of pleasure from him. He feels like a dream, the way his hold on you tightens to bring you closer to him ; a sneaky hand that brushes along your hip to graze against the strap of your bra and tug it down in anticipation. You’re thankful that your door is locked in case one of your fellow members were to walk in on you grinding against your best friend after a fit of tears. God, you want him. You want him. You want him.

“YN-ah….” He groans as you begin to paper kisses along his neck. “I.. I want this… you have no idea how badly I want this… but I don’t want this if you’re just trying to forget,” He whispers as he forces you back to look at him. “Do you understand that?”

You grow silent as you watch his chest pant up and down in excitement. You know he wants it as badly as you do. You would be a fool to not see the way that he looks at you like you are the only one in the room. But you feel ashamed from how quick you are to close the gap between friends and lovers in the blink of an eye. Would crossing this boundary ruin things for you?

Jimin wonders if you remember those memories as vividly as he does. Sure, it had been a couple of years since that time, but he could not forget the way you fit perfectly around his lips. The memorable roll of your hips that nearly had him crying for him to be inside of you. He could remember all of this when you stared at your figure years later no longer as just friends, but with you as his junior and him as his senior.

Was it incomprehensible that he would wish to cross those paths again?

- - -

Don't be a silent reader! Let me know what your thoughts are! How do you feel about Taehyung not liking the reader very much? What do you think about the reader with Hoseok and Jimin? Let me know your thoughts :)

#jimin x reader #jimin fluff #jimin smut #jimin angst #jimin fic #jimin x you #jung hoseok #hoseok x reader #park jimin #hoseok smut #hoseok angst #hoseok x you #jhope x reader #jhope x you #bts x reader #jungkook x reader #ot7 x reader #jungkook x you #yoongi x you #taehyung x you #seokjin x you #namjoon x you #jungkook fluff #jungkook angst #jungkook smut #namjoon fluff #namjoon angst #namjoon smut #seokjin fluff #seokjin angst

[freddiekluger]

Why Cap Being Internally Closeted Is Not Only Possible, But Valid Representation 

i wrote this to a lot of mitski and onsind, so you can’t blame me for any feelings that bleed through

now i don’t know if it actually exists, but i’ve heard of there being a lot of discourse surrounding the captains story arc regarding his sexuality- i believe the general gist is that having a queer character that remains closeted to themselves is either unrealistic or ‘bad’ representation, and as someone who really treasures the captain and relates to his story so far a lot, i thought i might break this down a bit. 

i’ve divded up every complaint i’ve heard about this into four main questions which i’ll be covering below the ‘keep reading’, because this is gonna be pretty comprehensive. full disclaimer i reference my experiences as an ex-evangelical non binary butch lesbian a couple times, and i spent a year studying repression and the psychological impacts of high demand sexual ethics for my graduating sociology paper, so this is coming with some background to it i swear

the big questions:

can you EVEN be gay and not know it????

but isn't this just ANOTHER coming out arc, and aren't we supposed to be moving beyond those?

but if cap can't have a relationship with a man because he's a ghost, what's the point?

since cap's dead, isn't this technically bury your gays, and isn't that bad? 

1. "but is it really possible to not know? Isn't that bad representation?"

short answer: no and no.

before i get into the validity of the captain's ignorance about his own orientation as 21st century rep, let's break down how the hell the captain can be so clearly attracted to men and still not even consider the possibility that he might be gay, as brought to you by someone who literally experienced this shit.

the captain's particular situation is both a direct result of the lack of information around human sexuality he would have had (aka clear messaging that it's actually possible for him to be attracted to men. i don't mean acceptable or allowed, i mean physically capable of happening- the idea that orientations other than heterosexual exist and are available to him, a man), and a subconscious survival mechanism. the environment in which he lives is outright hostile to gay people, while the military man identity he has constructed for himself doesn't allow for any form of deviation from societal norms, let alone one so base level and major. as a result of this killer combo of information and environment, instincts take over and the mind does it's best to repress the ‘deviant’ feelings until a. one of these two things changes, or b. the act of repression becomes so destructive and/or exhuasting that it becomes impossible to maintain. the key to maintaining a long-term state of repression of desire is diverting that energy elsewhere, and a high-demand group such as the military is the perfect place for the captain to do this (this technqiue is frequented by religions and extremist ideologies worldwide, but that’s not really what we’re here to focus on). 

while the brain is actively repressing ‘deviant’ feelings (aka gay shit), this doesn't mean you don't experience the feelings at all. when performed as a subconscious act of survival, the aim of repression is to minimise/transform the feelings into a state where they can no longer cause immediate danger, and something as big as sexual/romantic orientation is going to keep popping up, but as long as the individual in question never understands what they’re feeling, they’ll be able to continue relatively undisturbed. you know how in heist movies, the leader of the group will only tell each team member part of the plan so they can’t screw things up for everyone else if they get caught? it’s kind of like that.

this is how the captain appears to have operated in life AND in death, and it’s a relatively common experience for lgbtq people who’ve grown up in similar circumstances (aka with a lack of information and in an unfriendly-to-hostile environment), and accounts for how some people can even go on to get married and have children before realising that they’re gay and/or trans. 

personally, while i can now identify what were strong homo crushes all the way back to childhood, at the time i genuinely had no idea. there was the underlying sense that i probably shouldn't tell people how attached i was to these girls because i would seem weird, and that my feelings were stronger than the ones other people used to describe friendships, but like-like them in the way that other girls like-liked boys? no way! actually scratch that, it wasn't even a no way, because i had no idea that i even could. i even had my own havers, at least in terms of the emotional hold and devotion she got from me, except she treated me way less well than cap’s beau. snatches of the existence of lgbt people made it through the cone of silence, i definitely heard the words gay and lesbian, but my levels of informations mirrored those that the captain would have had: virtually none, beyond the idea that these words exist, some people are them, and that's not something that we support or think is okay, so let's just not speak about it. despite only attending religious schools for the first couple years of primary, until i got my own technology and social media accounts to explore lgbtq content on my own- option a out of the two catalysts for change- the possibility of me being gay was not at all on my radar. don’t even get me started on how long it took me to explore butchness and my overall gender, two things which now feel glaringly obvious. 

when shit starts to break down, you can also make the conscious choice to repress which can delay the eventual smashing down of the mental closet door for a time (essentially when the closet door starts to open, you just say ‘no thanks’ and shut it again by pointedly Not Thinking About It). in the abscence of identifying yourself by your attractions, it becomes quite common to identify with a lack- in my case, this meant becoming proud of how sensible and not boy crazy i was, and in the captain’s case, this means becoming proud of how sensible and not sensuous/wild (aka woman crazy) he was, identifying with his LACK of desire for women and partying (which, even in the 40s, involved the expectation of opposite sex romances and hook ups). i’m not saying that’s the only reason he’s a rule follower, but i think the contrast between About Last Night and Perfect Day pretty much support this. (the captain getting on his high horse about general party antics that he inherently felt excluded from because of underlying awareness of his difference & his tendency to project his regimented expectations of himself onto others, vs. joining in the reception party, awareness of how the environment supports difference in the form of clare and sam, and relaxing his own rules by dancing with men- the captain doesn’t mind a party when feels like he has a place there.)

so the captain was operating in a high demand, highly regulated environment (primarily the military, but also early 20th century England itself), with regimented roles, rules, and expectations. working on the assumption that he wouldn't have had out/disclosing lgbt friends, he would have had little to no exposure to lgbt identities, and what information he did receive would have been hushed and negatively geared. while my world started to open up when i started high school was allowed to have my own phone + instagram account, resulting in me realising something wasn't quite 'right' within a few years (making me a relatively early realiser compared to those who don't come out to themselves until adulthood), in life the captain never had that experience. he didn't receive the information he needed, his environment didn't grow less hostile. with the near-exception of havers related heartbreak, his well disciplined and lifelong method of repression never became destructive/exhaustive enough to permanently override the danger signals in his mind and allow him to put his feelings into words. neither of the most common catalysts for change happened for him, so he continued as usual, even after his death.

BUT, and here’s where we come to why this is actually great representation, arrival of mike and Alison represents the opening up of new world. for the first time, the captain is actively made aware of the fact that his environment is no longer hostile, and better than that, it’s affirming. he’s also getting access to positively geared information about lgbtq people and identities, so option a of the two catalysts for change is absolutely present, and resoundingly positive. 

the captain’s arc is also relatively unique as it acknowledges the oppressive nature of his environment, but actually focuses on the internal consequences, and the way that systems like those that the captain lived in succeed because they turn us into our own oppressors. for whatever reason, we repress ourseslves, and often can’t help it, and i find that the significance of the journey to overcome that is often overlooked in more mainstream queer media. perhaps it’s just not very cinematic, or it remains too confronting for cishet audiences, but ghosts manages to touch on it with a lovely amount of humour and hope. Jamie Babbit’s But I’m A Cheerleader is another favourite piece of queer media for the same reasons.

not only does it show this, but as the captain continues to get gayer and lean into some of his less conventional traits (like an interest in fashion and the wedding planning), it shows lgbt people who have been or are going through this that there CAN be a positive outcome. it takes a lot to unlearn all the things that have painted you as wrong, especially when a massive institution is desperate to continue doing so, but you can do it, you can be happy, and it's never too late. (i've been meaning to say that last point for ages for ages, but a mutual beat me to it here)

2. not just another coming out arc

i absolutely support the demand for queer stories that don’t center around coming out (it’s like shrodinger’s queer: if you’re not coming out on screen, do you really even exist?), but i don’t align with the criticisms that the captain should already be out. for the reasons mentioned above, the captain’s particular story is fairly different to the ‘young white teenager who mostly knows gay is fine, it’s just everyone else that’s got the problem, but have a unremarkably straight sounding soundtrack, a trauma porn romance, and a cishet saviour’ that we keep seeing. the captain’s ongoing journey with his sexuality emphasises the overaching theme of the show: recovering from trauma and humanity’s endless capacity for growth, and i think that’s worth showing over and over again until it stops being true.

additionally, while the captain’s journey regarding his gayness is a big part of his character and story, ghosts makes it clear that it’s not the ONLY part, and being gay is far from his ONLY characteristic or dramatic/comedic engine. the fact that i’m even having to congratulate ghosts for doing that really shows how much film and television is struggling huh.

while all queer media is, and should be, subject to criticism, i think if it helps even one person then it absolutely deserves to exist, and i can say i’ve found the captain’s journey to be the lgbt story i’ve found that’s closest to my own, which says a lot considering he’s a dead world war 2 soldier who hangs out with other ghosts including a slutty Tory, a georgian noblewoman, and a literal caveman. 

3. if captain gay, why he no have boyfriend???? 

another complaint that’s been circulating is that since the captain doesn’t, and likely won’t, have a boyfriend, that makes him Bad Representation because it follows the sad single gay trope. i kind of get the logic from this one, and a lot of it is up to personal interpretation, but part of me really enjoys the fact that the captain’s journey towards accepting himself is separated from having a relationship.

coming out is often paired with having romantic/sexual relationships (either as the reason or reward for doing so). my own struggle with repression didn't end the second that came out, and i still struggle with letting myself develop & acknowledge romantic feelings as a result of actively shutting them (and most other feelings in general) down for years, and statistics show that lgbtq youth in particular tend not to live out their 'teen years' until their twenties. by not giving cap a relationship straight away, ghosts separates the act of claiming identity and sexual orientation from finding a partner (two things which are, more often than not, separate), and also provides some very nice validation to folks who have yet to have the relationship they want, especially when lots of mainstream queer media is now jumping on the cishet media bandwagon of acting as if every person loses their virginity and has a life defining relationship at sixteen. it’s essentially a continuation of the earlier theme of “it’s never too late”, and who’s to say the captain won’t get a gay bear ghost boyfriend to go haunt nazis with??? people die all the time, it could happen.

(also, i think him and julian will have definitely shagged at least once. it was a low moment for both of them and they refuse to speak of it.)

lots of asexual/ace spectrum fans have come out to say how much they’ve loved being able to headcanon cap as ace, and while that’s not a headcanon i personally have, i think it’s brilliant that ace fans feel seen by his character- we’re all in this soup together babey (and sorry for cursing everyone still reading this with that cap/julian headcanon. i’m just a vessel)

4. “okay, but cap’s a GHOST- doesn’t that make this Bury Your Gays?”

this is a bit of a complex one, but i’m going to say no as a result of the following break down.

Bury Your Gays (BYG), aka the trope where lgbtq characters are consistently killed off (and often with a heavy dose of trauma, while cishet characters survive) is probably one of my least favourite lgbt media tropes. BYG has two main points:

1. the lgbt character is killed, thus removing them from story entirely- hence the use of the phrase ‘killed OFF’ (killed off of the show/film)

2. the character’s death reinforces the perception that lgbtq people’s lives must end in tragedy, instead of being long and fulfilling, or are inherently less valuable. bonus points if the character is killed in a hate crime or confesses same-gender love right before they die (that one implies that queer love genuinely has no future!)

not every death of an lgbtq character is bury your gays, and i personally feel that the captain is an example of an lgbt death that isn’t. 

first of all, while the captain is dead, so are the vast majority of characters in ghosts. the premise of the show means that death is not the end of the line for its characters- for most of them, it’s the only reason we get to see them on screen at all. as such, the captain being dead doesn’t remove him from the story, so point one is irrelevant.

at the time of posting, we don’t know how or why the captain died, but we've had nothing to suggest his death was in any way related to his latent sexuality, so his mysterious death doesn’t actively play into the supposedly inherent tragedy of queer lives, nor the supposedly lesser value. that’s as of right now- since we don’t know the circumstances of his death it’s a little tough to analyse properly. while the captain’s life absolutely features missed opportunities and it’s fair share of tragedy, hope and growth (which seems to be the theme of this post) abounds in equal measure. the captain may not be alive, but we DO get to see him growing and having a relatively happy existence, that for the most part seems to be getting even better as he learns to open up and be himself unapologetically- that doesn’t feel like BYG to me.

while writng this, it’s just occured to me that death really is a second chance for most of the ghosts, especially with the introduction of alison. from mary learning to read, to thomas finding modern music, they’ve all been given the chance explore things they never could have while they were alive, and hopefully grow enough to one day be sucked off move on.

in conclusion,

i love the captain very much and i hope his arc lives up to the standards it’s set so far. i don’t know where to put this in this post, but i’d alo like to say i LOVE how in Perfect Day, the captain wasn’t used as an educational experienced for fanny at all. i am very tired of people expecting me to be the walking talking homophobe educator and rehabilitator, so the fact that it’s alison and the other ghosts that call fanny out while the captain just gets to have fun with the wedding organisation made me very happy.

here’s a few other cap posts that i’ve done:

the captain’s arc if adam and the film crew stayed

a possible cap coming out 

the captain backstory headcanon

if you’ve read this far,

thank you!

also check out @alex-ghosts-corner , this post inspired me very much to write this

#i subluxed all my fingers and wrists doing this but worth it #bbc ghosts #bbc ghosts headcanon #bbc ghosts analysis #the captain #caphavers #the captain x havers #ben willbond #lgbt representation #lgbt rep #queer media #lgbt media

[galacticlamps]

im sorry im sorry im sorry i know it’s been well over a year but i accidentally thought about Short Trips: Deleted Scenes (again) and it’s killing me (again) so i think im just gonna go ahead and post all these stupid thoughts that have been plaguing me about it since i first heard it & maybe that’ll help clear up some space in my head for like, real life things.

Spoilers I guess? It’s like a year and a half old but also high key the most recent 2nd doctor content i believe we’ve gotten which is like, the only negative thing I can say about it

The TLDR version is this:

I literally cant believe how sweet it is? Painful, but sweet. Like. I don’t honestly know what’s more likely - did they set out to write Jamie a nice little straight love interest and just fail miserably at it by constantly likening her to the Doctor AND paralleling the Doctor’s perspective with her ex’s AND putting Jamie’s relationships with both of them in direct tension with each other while constantly letting his with the Doctor win out?

OR - did they do a very 1960s thing and say hey we’re gonna write what’s essentially a story about how much Jamie and the Doctor love each other and release it on Valentine’s Day thinly disguised as a one-off romance with a french lady?

Now, as a general rule, my attitude toward questions like that is usually “don’t know, don’t care, doesn’t matter” - and while I 100% stand by that, I also have to admit that this particular audio seems to pay enough attention to detail that I’d kind of think I was selling it short if I assumed too many of these things were just meaningless coincidences, you know?

Anyway, that’s the most coherent/overarching thought. And here’s a disorganized list of things I absolutely cannot get over about it (they don’t form any kind of argument, mind, they just all happen to live rent free in my head):

- Celine is first taken in by Jamie being an idiot (specifically him claiming not to speak French, in perfect French); likewise, her entrance in the scene where they actually kiss is marked with a little anecdote about her hat getting stuck on a doornail and her scolding it as she attempts to fix her un-tameable appearance, and the narration says Celine “would often clown for Jamie like this” - all of which, while undeniably adorable, don’t exactly strike me as entirely original traits to have been assigned to Jamie’s love-interest (but also Celine is so cool and her perspective on film/media/time is an excellent addition to the long list of dr who characters)

- When they’re in the present, describing Jamie’s relationship with Celine in 1908, they call him her “companion” and highlight his going nearly everywhere with her, which earns a laugh from the 4th doctor (and me as well, though probably for slightly different reasons - but like, is that really all it takes to have a fling with someone in 60′s era who? bc if so...)

- Celine’s ex-fiance is still in love with her and is jealously watching when she kisses Jamie ... and then the Doctor appears beside him, evidently doing the exact. same. thing. They have the following conversation:

“You know, it’s not prudent to spy on people. But then, people in pain can’t be expected to act prudently.”

“Pain, monsieur? You mistake me.”

“Ah, do I? Good, because I rather thought you’d lost something.”

“What would you know about loss monsieur?”

- I’m sorry doc but who do you think you are, saying stuff like that and smiling sadly at the floor to boot? I 100% had to pause it here the first time I listened, just to not throw my laptop across the room. 

- Then when I recovered continued, the Doctor closes the door so they can’t watch anymore and explains “Possessing things comes so terribly easily to some men that losing them can feel cruel, intolerably cruel. In my experience, only the very best of men cannot be tempted to answer that cruelty with more - I do sincerely hope that you are the best of men.” (guess who gets described as the best of men by the end of the audio?)

- Jamie and the Doctor apparently develop a habit of walking along the river in Paris in silence

- During one such walk, Jamie suggests Celine come with them since she already figured out about the Tardis - and when the Doctor’s worried by this, he says he only allowed Jamie & Celine to grow closer “because of Victoria.” Jamie takes offense at the ‘allowing it’ comment and also refuses to admit he knows what the Doctor means about Victoria, which leads the Doctor to say that he knows how fond Jamie was of her - he was too, of course, but with him, “it was different, wasn’t it?” Jamie only says maybe that’s true and maybe that’s not, but his voice catches until he changes the subject

- Jamie doesn’t see Celine for days both times that she’s recovering from the shock and depression of her work being destroyed. In contrast, when the Doctor’s not well, Jamie’s "afraid” and “guilty” and hardly seems to leave his side at all, if his being there “rushing to embrace him” the second he wakes up - after a period Jamie describes as “at least a week” - is anything to go by, anyway. so either bf writers need to learn how to write a committed straight relationship or admit that’s not what they ever intended in the first place

- Oh yeah, and the Doctor spends that week "asleep” in Jamie’s bedroom - no, there’s no explanation as to if that’s where he was when he first collapsed or if it’s where Jamie decided to take him bc why would they feel the need to explain him being there? why was it even relevant to tell us it was Jamie’s room in the first place?

- The Doctor somehow manages to control the Tardis enough to take Celine on one trip to an alien planet and then return to the correct time & place for her to use the footage she recorded there in her new film - and while the audio doesn’t do very much to explain how that was possible, it does treat this as A Pretty Big Deal, and immediately afterward the Doctor has to spend a week communing with his past self (and/or the Tardis?) debating how likely it is that the Time Lords could use this to trace him. When he decides it’s not worth the risk and they have to stop the film from ever being shown to the public, Jamie asks why he agreed to it in the first place, and all he can say is “Because, Jamie, you asked me to!” earning awkward stares from the crowd.

- Oh, but, lest we forget, that little outburst is also immediately followed by him putting his arm around Jamie’s shoulders, and, shockingly, apparently beginning to actually explain the truth about the danger from the Time Lords - until they’re interrupted, of course idk why exactly but the idea of a 60s dr wanting to come clean with a companion but not being allowed to bc the show demands the war games be something of a reveal hurts me in a very good way

- The mental image of “the Doctor and Jamie, resplendent in borrowed evening wear”

- The audio admitting that Jamie’s not very good at subterfuge, and the Doctor asking if he’s going to be alright with them having to steal the film back from Celine - and Jamie’s little “Aye, Doctor” as he feels a ‘glass arrow piercing his chest’ glad to see bf is reading all my letters about exactly how i feel any time something sad happens to james robert mccrimmon

- The Doctor’s anxious to get out of there for obvious reasons, but he hangs around bc Jamie wants to see Celine again - which doesn’t happen, because of her aforementioned shock & depression, but she does leave Jamie a note that ends “you and that Doctor of yours - look after him Jamie, he loves you dearly, as do I.” yeah, if you didn’t want people to draw a parallel there, you could’ve picked, like, any other wording in the world.

- In case you weren’t fully convinced I’ve been reading too much into this whole audio already, consider this: Celine dies in Long Island in 1968, three days before her birthday - 1968 is when this story would’ve taken place in the show’s history (between Fury & Wheel), and dying three days before/after a birthday in America seems a bit... well I had some deja vu from it, anyway

- Four of all people being the one to bring back the film - I know he does it bc Sarah Jane makes him, but personally, I often feel like despite the length of his run, 4 is the Doctor with which we might’ve gotten the fewest glimpses into his interiority, so the fact that it’s him and not one of the more overtly sentimental Doctors makes it feel like it carries even more weight somehow, to me anyway. I think I wrote a post saying roughly the same thing about 4 & Fate of Krelos/Return to Telos but maybe I only did that inside my own head lol. Still, I’m all for any opportunities for Jamie to be one of the few characters to draw some noticeable emotion out of Four, but in fairness I haven’t touched too much of his EU stuff to really be able to compare the frequency with which this happens with other past companions

- Is Four referring to Two or Jamie when he says he got the film from “an old family friend”? Two did the actual stealing, but he probably means Jamie’s involvement - either way, it’s an interesting way of describing old companions - or selves?

- When Jemima goes to call Jamie a thief, Four is “roused” to defend him: “he really was the very best of men” again, any time four freely shows he cares about someone, im over the moon about it

- Oh ha ha, there’s an audio called “Deleted Scenes” featuring the Doctor who’s most affected by junked episodes. And at the end of it, a character who’s spent her life researching and lecturing about a lost film gets to watch it be ‘rediscovered’ after it’s gone unseen for decades. I feel marginally less stupid for reading into the other details of a story like this when it ends up deciding to be to be clever & slightly meta like that

But yeah

all in all, it’s kind of amazing to me that this genuinely reads like they sat down and said okay boys it’s valentines day, let’s write an audio where jamie kisses a girl, since that hasn’t happened except as a plot device in one story in 1967 - but then when they got down to business they accidentally(?) wrote a story all about how important his bond with the Doctor is and how easily that can be compared to a legitimate love interest (even if the love interest in question is a one off character & the extent of the relationship appears to be like one kiss & then having Jamie spend most of his time around the Doctor instead)

I realize there’s something slightly illogical about writing the words “shipping aside” after a post like this but seriously - no matter how many categories you’re able to see two & jamie’s relationship fitting into, this is 40 minutes of big finish just hitting you over the head with how powerful/special/important that relationship is, and with them being two of my favorite characters, i really haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since

#jamie mccrimmon #second doctor #big finish #Short Trips: Deleted Scenes #yes i am gonna tag this #two/jamie #i think it earned it with the line from celine's letter if nothing else #and quite possibly the doctor's so-called imprudent & pain-driven spying #but i'll leave it at that #in case anyone's looking at the tags to decide if they should actually read this rambling monster of a post #also if you for some reason read this but haven't listened to the audio - #a) that's kind of you to care what i have to say but #b) you could probably have listened to half of it by now lol #did i mention it's a stand-alone audio that only costs $3? #and it's more of a traditional audio book format with one narrator who voices all the characters? #sorry i wasn't ready to do a bf pitch in the tags here #i genuinely dont know why someone who hasn't already heard it would bother to read all this #but if anyone has - thanks? #i'll shut up now so you can get on w ur day :)

[yumeka36]

Thoughts on Rebuild of Evangelion (all movies plus ending interpretation)

*Artwork credited to リオ on pixiv*

Now that Evangelion 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, the last movie of the Rebuild of Evangelion saga, has been released, I'm finally ready to discuss all the movies as a whole, including my interpretation of the ending...

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

I've been a fan of Evangelion for nearly 20 years, starting back in 2002. After hearing the series praised by some classmates, I asked for the DVD set of the original TV anime for Christmas that year. I was 15 years old and a fairly new anime fan at the time, so naturally I was blown away by the show. The Internet was young then, and since there were no fandom wikis or YouTube explanation videos available in those days, I had to rely on a few scattered fan sites and my own resources (mostly bonus features on the old DVDs) to try and figure out the lore and symbolism. Even though many aspects of the series, as well as the eventual "true ending" movie, End of Evangelion, left me scratching my head, I still loved it and it left a long-lasting impression on me. And now, here I am almost two decades later, sharing my thoughts about the new movies...

-Before Thrice Upon a Time was released, I hadn't touched Evangelion since 3.33 came out in 2012. I had forgotten many details, and since Evangelion is a franchise that is fraught with nuances and subtleties that can be key to understanding what the heck is going on, I wanted to watch all the Rebuild movies again before watching Thrice Upon a Time. So I plowed through all four movies this week, and I gotta say, after being away from the franchise for so many years, I'm happy to report that I still thoroughly enjoyed it. But I can also recognize that it is definitely not a series for everyone. The drawn-out technobabble, constant introduction of lore jargon with little to no explanation, and the ambiguity between what's real and what's symbolic, can certainly turn off casual viewers (it gives Kingdom Hearts lore a run for its money!) Funnily enough, as I was watching the Rebuild movies, I was thinking, "I understood the lore better 20 years ago than I do now, lol" (maybe it's because I was younger and didn't have as strong of a theorizing mind as I do now!) But after reading through a bunch of pages on the EvaGeeks Wiki, I learned enough to get a gist of the story's vaguer elements. But unfortunately, the fact that information necessary for understanding the plot can only be found by Internet research, could certainly be a turn-off for viewers. But at the same time, for those willing to make the commitment, or at least appreciate the series' other qualities even if you can't follow many aspects of the lore, it's definitely an anime unlike any other. There's a reason it's been such a well-known franchise in Japan for so long.

-Asuka has been one of my favorite anime characters ever since I saw the original Eva TV series, and thankfully, I'm happy with what they did with her character in the Rebuild movies. My only complaint is that I preferred her original backstory that emphasized her relationship with her mother, rather than having a "clone-complex" similar to Rei. However, her character development in this new storyline made up for it. The Rebuild movies really nailed her abrasive, no-nonsense personality that hides depth within. There were also more scenes that showed her "softer" side, something I always felt was lacking in the original series, such as when she confides in Misato towards the end of 2.22 and when she confesses her feelings to Shinji in Thrice Upon a Time. I also felt her initial dislike for Shinji and Rei was a bit more warranted this time; despising the fact that they were able to become Eva pilots purely by connection to Gendo while she had to work hard for it. But again, we get more hints at her kinder side when she makes the sacrifice to help Rei get Shinji and Gendo together. This is pretty contrasting to the original series, where she was always oozing hate for Rei. Even their infamous elevator scene ended differently in 2.22 compared to the TV series, where instead of hitting and yelling at Rei, she agrees to help her (in her subtle, Asuka-way). Asuka and Rei also had a brief scene together when they were at Village 3 in Thrice Upon a Time, and the way Asuka talked to her made me feel like she actually cared about her, or at least didn't hate her. But even with the Rebuild movies giving Asuka more scenes to show her goodness, they still stayed true to her tough-love personality - it's not like she suddenly started smiling a lot, or gave Shinji a passionate hug, or broke out in tears...they developed her character without making her do a 180 change, which I appreciated. Even in her final scene with Shinji on the beach before he saves her (loved that scene, and the shoutout to End of Eva there) she still reacted in her "tsundere" way (though not as harshly of course). I'd also like to mention that they made the fourteen year time-skip in 3.33 very believable in terms of Asuka's growth. I really liked the hardened, lone-wolf, protector role she had in Thrice Upon a Time because it makes sense - fourteen years had passed and she not only matured during that time, but she had spent all those years being the sole Eva pilot along with Mari fighting to protect humanity, so settling into that kind of identity makes sense for her. But yeah, Asuka's always been a great character, and the Rebuild movies made her even more awesome in my opinion.

-When I first watched 2.22 years ago when it came out, I was puzzled that they decided to put Asuka in the Eva that Unit-01 ends up destroying rather than Toji. But looking back on it it now, it worked better since they had a plan for Toji's character that had nothing to do with the Evas. I did kind of miss Asuka's friendship with Hikari though (they could have tied that into her staying with Toji and Hikari at Village 3 instead of with Kensuke). I actually wrote a WYDS fanfic for End of Evangelion way back in 2003 that emphasizes Asuka and Hikari's friendship (that's somehow still on Fanfiction.net!) But she got a friendship with Mari instead, so it's fine, lol (I also liked that they removed her crush on Kaji, which I never thought fit well in the original series). But I do wish we got to see what was going through her mind while she was stuck in the Eva and getting attacked by Unit-01. We know she was aware of what was going on because she knew what Shinji did (that he didn't try to save her or attack) so it would have been nice to see a scene or two of her reactions.

-Misato was always my second favorite character after Asuka, but I wasn't thrilled with the coldness she exhibited towards Shinji after the time-skip in 3.33. I know she probably got hardened after all those years and maybe still felt resentment towards him for initiating Near Third Impact (which killed Kaji among others). But even so, I felt like her coldness was more to keep the suspense rather than stay true to her character (plus she was the one encouraging him to do what we wanted at the time of Near Third Impact). It makes sense for Asuka to be cold to Shinji, since she was always standoffish like that, but Misato was always shown to be a source of warmth and the most "human" of the characters. But at least she made up with Shinji in the end and got to finish her story arc with a bang (literally).

-I'm not sure if it's still a thing now, but back in the day, Shinji got a lot of hate from anime fans for being too whiny and indecisive when confronted with his task of piloting the Eva. But even all those years ago, I always thought those reactions made him believable. Maybe it's because he's compared to anime shonen heroes like Naruto and Luffy, who are always cheerful and brimming with motivation, while Shinji is pretty much the opposite of those kinds of characters. But it makes sense for him to be like that...if I were a fourteen-year old kid who never knew my mother, had a father who abandoned me, and had to live on my own in a crumbling world while witnessing death and destruction all around, I'd be pretty hesitant and scared too. He's definitely not a "wish-fulfilling" protagonist like many shonen and super heroes are, but a protagonist grounded more in reality, representing a disillusioned youth. So it was nice to see him finally get over his insecurities and be proactive with saving everyone at the end of Thrice Upon a Time (compared to everyone giving him the pep talk at the end of the original series). Though I did think his personality shift was a bit abrupt...he was at his lowest point at the beginning of Thrice Upon a Time, but the one kind gesture from Rei seemed to immediately snap him out of it. A little more gradual build-up to his change would have been better, but it's a nitpick.

-Mari was an enigma in 2.22 and 3.33, so I was hoping Thrice Upon a Time would give us her origin story. Unfortunately, it didn't offer much and maybe brought up more questions than not. My main question is, we see that she knew Gendo and Yui when they were younger, yet if she was their age then, that doesn't match up to the age she appears to be when Shinji first meets her. So she must have been afflicted with the "Eva curse" all those years back, which means she must have become an Eva pilot around that time, but it seems too soon. I thought the first Evangelion pilots didn't exist until after Yui died, so Mari should have been older...I don't know, I'm still having trouble figuring out her place in the timeline. But besides that, I did like her relationship with Asuka that we see in Thrice Upon a Time. Again, it makes sense in terms of the time-skip that they'd develop a good friendship after spending all those years being Eva pilots together.

-I don't have a lot to say about Rei, since I feel her story arc is one of the simpler ones (which isn't saying much for this series, lol). The scenes of her in Village 3 in Thrice Upon a Time were endearing, though I knew they would end in tragedy. Actually, that whole part of the movie with the characters spending time in the village was great. The world-building in those scenes was fantastic too - it really felt like what a post-apocolyptic survival camp in that situation would be like. It was nice to see the characters partaking in and reacting to situations that don't have to do with Angels and Evas (spin-off series for this when?)

-And lastly, how did I interpret the end of the Rebuild saga? Was I satisfied with how it ended? Right after I watched Thrice Upon a Time, I wasn't totally sure. But after reading some more wiki pages and watching some explanation videos, especially this one here (it's a great explanation if you can forgive the bad pronunciation of the names), I've realized just how brilliant of a conclusion it is. There's been speculation that the story involves a time loop, with the events of the original TV series, as well as the Death & Rebirth and End of Evangelion movies, being different versions of the time loop, while the Rebuild movies is where the loop ends because Shinji finally overcomes the pain of his past and can restore the world this time (while he had failed to in the previous loops). I don't think it's a time loop so much as a cycle that keeps resetting and repeating. Further support for this theory is that Kaoru acts like he's met Shinji before, since he's reborn in each cycle to meet Shinji only to be killed by him later (all the coffins seen on the moon are for his past/future selves). I think the final movie title is symbolic of this too, with "Thrice Upon a Time" meaning "three times upon a time," the three times being the three cycles of the Evangelion story: the original TV series, the movies Death & Rebirth and The End of Evangelion, and finally the Rebirth movies. But mostly, the scene towards the end where Shinji meets Rei in the anti-verse, and they're standing in what appears to be a filming room while projected images from the Eva TV series are shown behind them. This to me symbolizes that the original Eva series exists in the Rebuild movies as one version of the cycle, and Shinji has now finally broken out of the loop. Once Shinji has saved everyone, the filming room (which symbolizes the old versions of the story, as I believe it's supposed to be the room where live-action footage used in previous Eva works was filmed) fades away and the literal animation around Shinji begins to break down into its purest forms, as key animation, then layouts, etc., - a near 4th wall-breaking depiction of the world resetting. However, Gendo and Yui had sacrificed themselves so that Shinji wouldn't have to, so Mari is able to pull him back into the world, just like she had promised. In the end, Shinji is able to join his friends in the new world that's free of Evas. Without the Eva curse, all the pilots are now their proper ages as well. The movie closes with Mari and Shinji heading off somewhere in their new lives while the environment merges into live-action footage, representing the fact that the story has now transcended animation and is now "real" because the cycle has finally ended and a true Neon Genesis took place. Like many aspects of the franchise, there are many ways to interpret this ending, but this is the interpretation I've settled on.

-While I am satisfied with the ending overall, I do wish the epilogue showed us more of what the other characters were doing, especially the survivors from Wille and Village 3. I know we can assume they're living out their lives as well, but it would have been nice to get confirmation of that with a few quick cameos. But there are some main characters whose fates are uncertain, particularly Misato, Kaji, and Fuyutsuki. I'm assuming the only people Shinji was able to save were the ones whose souls were still bound to Evas, namely Asuka, Rei, and Kaoru. I don't know about Kaji since I'm still not clear on exactly how he died. Maybe Shinji couldn't save Misato because she died "for real" and wasn't just trapped inside an Eva/Angel. But it is implied that many souls, not just Eva pilots, were saved when the world was restored...so maybe she was too? And like Kaji, I'm not sure what happened with Fuyutsuki. Did he turn into LCL because he gave up his humanity in some way, like Gendo? I'm also a little salty that we didn't get a decent shot of adult Asuka at the train station, lol. I'm not sure if the ending was hinting at Mari and Shinji being an item...possibly Rei and Kaoru too, maybe even Asuka and Kensuke. Like many things in the franchise, the eventual pairings, or lack thereof, could be interpreted in many ways.

In conclusion, while there were some aspects of the old Eva TV series and movies that I liked better, the Rebuild movies overall did an excellent job of retelling the story with the same rich lore and thought-provoking symbolism that we're used to for the franchise, but with enough new twists to make it stand out. And as I mentioned in my interpretation of the ending, these movies weren't just a retelling but a redefinition of the franchise as whole, bringing together the previous versions of the story and giving them true closure. Though we could see some spin-off material at some point, Thrice Upon a Time does seem like it was intended to be the final installment of the Evangelion series. While I was satisfied enough with the endings for the TV series and End of Eva movie, having watched the Rebuild movies, I do believe they're the "retelling we didn't know we needed." It's a tad bittersweet to know that such an influential franchise, and one of my favorite anime for years, has come to its true end. So, to translate the text in the below fan art...

"Thank you , Evangelion."

*Artwork credited to リオ on pixiv*

#evangelion 3.0+1.0 #neon genesis evangelion #evangelion #rebuild of evangelion #evangelion spoilers #rei ayanami #asuka shikinami langley #shinji ikari #evangelion thrice upon a time

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

wait a minute. So I've read your bits on civil war 2008, and I have a question for you: all the characters in the civil war event, at least the major players(like stark, Cap, Spidey, FF), do you believe that they are acting OOC, or that the writers chose to bring out the character's worse qualities to create drama?

And do you think that if the writers had written them In Character, or at least written them to be more balanced, would it have improved the story? Actually, do you think that Civil War could have been... at least A not Bad Story under an intense rewrite? or that the whole concept should have been thrown away?

The OOC talk is tempting and also partially justified. There is a batch of previous stories scattered through the years with the Fantastic Four dealing with similar scenarios where Reed is pretty much anti-government.

1) In one Social Services sue the FF4 for endangering Reed and Sue Kids by keeping them in the Baxter Building despite it being blown up once every 2 weeks. They ask them to "register" them and put them in a safe government facility, so to spearhead a new law where they can get pre-teen superhumans "out of harm way" or some shit.

Keep in mind Franklin is still a Mutant in this story (And still is right now because FUCK YOU SLOTT). Anyway, Reed seemingly agrees,only to set up a dummy facility and "register" his kids there. He doesn't even announce it he literally only writes it in the Government's documentation and shit.

The facility is razed to the ground a couple hours later. Because yes the Baxter Building can explode at any time but AT LEAST they are there to protect the kids from the countless people.

2) In another story, Reed is asked by Congress to create a device that outs mutants and "abnormal" humans, so the government can better individuate them for "reasons." Reed agrees, and makes a device SO POWERFUL it detects every deviations from the supposed norm, so when he gives a demonstration in Congress, he reveals half of its members would qualify as "Mutants" if they kept that line of inquiry, which makes them hastily drop the whole thing. This was intentional, because who the fuck are they to decide who is or isn't not normal?

3) Compare and Contrast with Civil Ear Reed Richards, who is a McCarthy apologist who goes "Logically speaking, we need to listen to the government on this one otherwise we might get burned just like my (gay coded) artist uncle was by the McCarthy Trials in the 50s when he told the court to shove it and his life was ruined as a result. It's the rational way to do it."

4) (The three main proponents of the Registration Side being Rich, White, Heterosexual Men in positions of powers, with jobs in the science field that justify their decision with "Facts and Logic" was PROBABLY unintentional, but is also a great unintended allegory for this kind of shit. The ones who are hurt the most but these kind of laws are the ones who can't afford it after all, and who is ever going to go after the rich and powerful first? Especially if they come with little repercussions on their lives (Tony, Reed and Hank where all already outed as Superheroes after all))

5) Peter is OOC in OMD mind you, Civil War goes pretty much how you'd expect him to go (gets manipulated by authority figure into it, MJ and May are supportive of him because they see only half the facts, the SECOND Peter realizes that those people are monsters he drops them and gets the shit beaten out of him for it, unlike Reed or Tony who can AFFORD having their identities public Peter barely has the money to survive which ends with May getting shot for it). It's an incredibly poignant scenario that I wish was used to TELL A MESSAGE rather than just a backdrop to shoehorn OMD in.

6) Which is to say Civil War could indeed be written better under the same premise. If they want to keep the Patriot Act Allegory, they should be aware of what that would entail for the characters that support it.

We are currently seeing a similar scenario going on in Marvel in the Champions comics where the registration side is pretty much spearheaded by an unambiguous evil corporation and shit. In light of Civil War I existing the whole thing kinda loses its impact (Like that one joke scene where Tony goes "Maybe we should register them" with a smug look on his face as if he isn't responsible for so many deaths), but at least they are trying to shift the conversation? The villain is not the Government of course it's Evil Apple, but at least it's not a "Both Sides are equally ok" centrist bullshit take like they did in Civil War or in Skyrim.

Like, fuck, it's literally called CIVIL WAR to invoke the American Civil War in the context of the "brother kills brother" interpretation some bastards are so fond off, I wouldn't call THAT a "Both Sides are valid" scenario by a long fucking mile, yet here we are.

7) I think the best way to put it would be to set up the same scenario but make it realistic to the setting and shit.

Hank and Tony still support the Government because one is a Skrull Chaos Agent the other is misguided, Carol takes Reed's place in the Triad because Women can be War Criminals too (She was leading the equivalent of a child soldier program during Civil War so she is one already at least). Steve is also anti government because this is happening during the fucking BUSH ADMINISTRATION and he goes "When will Washington decide who the villains are?" Like he did in canon but in, like, a poignant moment.

Speaking of Reed he will keep his family neutral and go "I admit superheroing does need failsafes and some kind of oversight mind you, I just don't this this country's government has demonstrated their right to be that."

Let's not put the "Cap you are out of touch because you don't know what MySpace is" or "Luke every time I see a Sentinel that's like seeing a Burning Cross" rants in the story too because those were some raw shit.

Tony, again, lives in privilege, so it wouldn't exactly affect him, and is genuinely trying to do good, so we need to put him as the "Patsy" who gets duped by Skrull Hank Pym for it, the government is the one with the secret prison for Superheroes, Hank is the one recruiting Nazi Scientists and starting child soldier programs, clones Thor, sets up with the Government a Super Prison in the Ocean (can't use the negative zone without Reed), outside of US Jurisdiction so the government can ship then there with no trial and torture them. When Skrull Hank Pym is confronted for it, and the blame is attempted to be pinned on him and him alone, he goes "Are you earthlings daft or something? I did almost nothing, it was your government who did most of the work in their desire for security and safety, I just sped up the process for them, they would have done all of this with or without me."

Around the ending Tony finds out and is devastated and drops the whole thing."

When someone tries to comfort Tony over it because he didn't know any of this he goes "Oh, that's were you're wrong Peter. I knew. Deep down, I knew things weren't right, unjust, but I did nothing, because I could make things better from the inside, because it didn't affect me, because It would have been inconvenient to me to stop this. This is on me for passively accepting it as it is on the ones who enforced it." Which leads him to make amends, that way he is not as much of a awful character here.

The scene where The US kidnaps Ororo so they can strong arm Tchalla into getting registered happens but is treated as a international crisis as it deserves.

The Prison Break finale happens because Namor discovers the prison in HIS FUCKING DOMAIN and just goes ham on it with the help of the Anti Registration side, he drops a line like "I've seen shit like this before, I've seen what happens when man declares another man a criminal for things out of their control, for what they've been from birth, and I say NOT IN MY KINGDOM!" or some shit (He is a WWII veteran after all).

Since Steve isn't pummeling to the ground Tony in this scenario there isn't the dumb as fuck Everyday Heroes scene and he doesn't get shot by Sharon later on..

We have instead the scene from Secret Invasion where Skrull Hank Pym kills Steve (In SI it was Skrull Queen killing Janet Van Dyne) on national television, which leads to the anger of everyone involved who rush him, only for Tony to be the one who pull the trigger.

Tony is put in charge of SHIELD, which leads to Iron Reign (Dark Reign equivalent), and the story ends with him going "Let's see if things can reach change from the inside this time" as he actually reforms Shield from his position of power. The Registration Act becomes unpopular due to Steve's death and Alien Interferences, so that helps, and leads to actual protests in the streets after Namor reveals to the UN the war crimes the US is committing. It's a slow process, but is something.

OMD doesn't happen, The Peter storyline remains pretty much the same, but instead of Tony bragging about his private prisons for Superheroes in hell, it's the Punisher who shows up to him and reveals some troubling shit he discovered, Peter Confront Tony for it who dismisses it as fake news because he doesn't want to believe, Peter drops the registration side out of disgust, which then leads to the government sending villains after him rather than Tony. Tony is then seen strongly arguing with Maria Hill for this since Peter almost died from what he got from his suit readings (which he never hijacked or deactivated), but the Skrull Hank Pym shows up and supports Maria Hill for it, and Carol is busy with her child soldier program to comment.

May still gets shot and dies right as Peter and MJ discover MJ is pregnant with their second Daughter, which is ripe for lots of good stuff.

Maria Hill will therefore have to take even more of a role as a Government Plant and shit, but what's new.

Johnny Storm still gets hate crimed on but not by black people. Maybe confirm him as Bi while we're at it? You know, to get topical and all.

Ideally No More Mutants never happened so mutants are still a thing and most of them are vehemently anti registration. Emma Frost appears neutral at first glance, but ultimately she is playing the long game, secretly helping militant mutant groups and shielding the school from unwanted attention. She still has a restraining order filled for Tony Stark, she still points out to Carol how fucking dangerous a mutant life can be if outed via mind powers.

Can't think of much else for now, maybe Felicia helping MJ and May while they are in hiding? MJ is nauseous and all and she goes "must be the nerves" and Felicia agrees but May knows. This could lead to the polycule post May death since Felicia blames herself for it for not being fast enough, and MJ now is pregnant and scared and the Registration Act is getting repealed by the future is still glum and Peter is depressed so they all comfort each other and then 69 issues later we have a two parter maxi event where they face their fears and BANG we get the polycule.

Aunt May still poisons the Chameleon while he was posing as Peter. She actually actually poisons him rather then just drug him this time, because she knows of that one time he tried to force himself on MJ while posing as Peter which lead to MJ beating the shit out of him with a baseball bat, and May is a nice old lady but there are things she really can't stand you know?

Felicia and MJ help her hide the body. Peter never finds out.

And that's it?

#anti civil war #marvel

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Okay I was gonna do another SG:WoT post anyway because we’ve got a new King interview but THEN, he released the cover to issue four so you KNOW I gotta geek out about this.

(Sorry that this blog is all SG:WoT, all the time now, but I am just. Insanely excited that Evely is drawing Supergirl. Feel free to block/mute these posts as needed. XD)

Okay, so!

First! The interview!

It’s on (ugh) screenrant so I’m not gonna link, I’m just gonna nab the interesting bits:

On the different direction of the book, and if he wanted to go back to the original Adventure Comics vibes: “So, the idea of this thing was to strip her story down, because Supergirl has a majorly weird history in terms of continuity. At least 13 writers have rewritten her origin over the years. Her dad has 13 origin stories; sometimes he's evil, sometimes he's a robot, sometimes alive, sometimes he's dead. She's changed dramatically in the last 10 years, between coming back to life to the New 52 to Rebirth. She's gone through so much that it's hard to get a hold of her. Not to mention in the '90s, when I was coming up, she was like an ectoplasmic space angel. There's so much there, and I just wanted to take all that stuff off and get to the core of the character; get her out of her normal environments and her normal conflicts. It seems like all our stories are about her dad or her relationship to Superman. Instead, let's see the purity of that character.”

On starting the book the way he did: “...I wanted to start out with a very human moment of a person turning 21 and getting drunk. And a person who is getting drunk because they want to be alone, and they just want to forget about the shit that's happened in their past. That's such a human moment. And the fact that she's Supergirl, so she waits till it's legal - because these super people, they follow the rules. She waited, and now it's legal and she can have this moment. She goes off by herself, with her dog that always follows her, and she has a moment where she can be free. For a lot of people in the US, whether you've been drinking since you were 14 or started that day, your 21st birthday and the day after are days you remember for the rest of your life. It's a day of freedom and consequence, and I wanted to show Supergirl going through that.”

On rising to the challenge of helping Supergirl perform better, sales/popularity-wise: “ When I first got on this book, I called Steve Orlando, who had just written a Supergirl run. And he was the one who opened my eyes to how good the character is. He had such insight into her. He was like, ‘There is a difference between Clark and her, and what she's gone through.’ He just laid it for me.”

On starting the book off with Ruthye’s journey, and gradually building to Kara’s: “ I was like, "Okay, this is going to be from the point of view of someone under Supergirl." And so I switched the point of view to this new brand new character, whose name is Ruthye. And we went from there: we start with Ruthye's story, we see her discover Supergirl, and she's our audience. She's our way in, the way Robin has always been the way into Batman.”

On whether or not other characters will show up, outside of Supergirl and Ruthye: “It's like my Superman: Up in the Sky, where it's a distillation of the character. You'll see other characters, but the focus of every issue will be on Supergirl. And it's something where at the very end, you can be like, "Why is Supergirl great? Why is she important to the DC Universe? What is her future in the DC Universe? Here, read this one trade that can answer all three of those questions at once."So, there will be other characters in the Super universe. But the focus will always be on her; on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. It's her finding out about herself and her own strength.”

On Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow vs. his other titles: “Supergirl is my first 2021 book, or my first book of the 20s. That wrapped up my books of the teens, and now we're in a new generation. God willing, from the moment I started this book, I was like, ‘I'm gonna take a risk, and I'm gonna write books that are a little brighter.’ I know that's coming from me, and it's not to say we're going to avoid conflict or we're not going to explore the depths of the human soul. All that stuff will be in there. But these books are made from a place of joy, not from a place of anger; from a place of hope, not from a place of despair. It very much contrasts to those other books, in my mind.”

On how he thinks folks will react to the Krypto cliffhanger: “I mean, they're gonna think it's a good cliffhanger. That's how I think they're going to react. They're going to say, ‘I want the next issue.’ That's literally my job as written in my contract. Something where at the end of an issue, someone says, ‘I want more.’ So, that's how I hope they react.”

As mentioned, this is not the full interview; the whole thing can be found on screenrant, and I think Tom King shared a link on his twitter. 

And now, as always, SOME THOUGHTS:

I love that he brings up the fact that so many Supergirl stories focus on Zor-El and Clark, and how he was like, ‘let’s not do that.’

That’s my big gripe with modern Supergirl comics; they are trying so hard to make a statement on why we need both a Supergirl AND a Superman, that they end up spending ALL THEIR TIME talking about Clark, instead of, you know. Telling a fun Supergirl story.

Same thing with Zor-El! I know folks love Rebirth--I like it quite a bit myself--but I think the nostalgia goggles prevent folks from remembering that the whole first arc of that book was re-doing the ‘Cyborg Superman’ garbage from the Nu52. 

Speaking of Rebirth, really like that of all the recent SG writers he coulda talked to, he talked to Steve Orlando.

Like, if ya can’t get Gates on the phone, get Orlando.

(I get the sense that Gates doesn’t like this book, actually, based on a vague tweet. But don’t quote me on that.) 

Looks like Ruthye is gonna be our POV/audience insert character for the whole run. I’m...mmmm. I don’t love it, but I understand the logic here. Especially since he compared it to Batman and Robin--how you use Robin as your entry point for a bat book. 

And you know what? Kara’s supporting cast needs some help, so. Welcome to the Superfam, Ruthye.

I also love the explanation behind the drinking thing, as well as the fact that Kara waited until it was 100% legal for her to drink because OF COURSE SHE WOULD.

I am so worried that Krypto is gonna die b/c of what we saw in Future State. I’m over here with my Pepe Silva board like, ‘Well, what if Kara agrees to help Ruthye because Krem MURDERED HER DOG?!?! WHAT IF THIS IS JOHN WICK IN SPACE?!?!?!’

So I am DISMAYED that King does not reassure us AT ALL.

Thus I am forced to cling to this tidbit here: “ But these books are made from a place of joy, not from a place of anger; from a place of hope, not from a place of despair. It very much contrasts to those other books, in my mind.”

Killing the dog would not be joyful. XD So, like. I’m REALLY HOPIN’ HE’LL BE OKAY.

AND LASTLY, (Except not really)

I have some additional, miscellaneous thoughts unrelated to the interview b/c I’m me and I’m loving having a Supergirl comic back on the shelves, however polarizing it may be.

Something I realized, when details started to come out regarding the book, and that other folks have now noted as well: Kara was 16 when Rebirth launched in 2016; she’s just turned 21 in 2021, making her one of the extremely few comic characters to age in real time.

I don’t think that was planned, but it is cool.

It occurred to me on a re-read that Ruthye never calls Kara Kara in her narration, only Supergirl. And I was a little sad! But then I remembered that Kara wouldn’t necessarily reveal her identity to people she’s helping, she would just be ‘Supergirl’ to them. 

I really do love how, so far, there has been NARY A MENTION of Kara angst-ing over being in Clark’s shadow, or being Superman’s cousin.

It appears that her drinking alone on a remote planet is more related to trying to forget her trauma/grief related to Krypton. MAYBE. We don’t know yet.

The Clark thing could still come up. I hope it doesn’t. 

(Interesting to note! Kara recently appeared in Action Comics, helping Clark and Jon investigate some Kryptonian refugees; IDK how closely these books will necessarily ‘work together’ in terms of continuity, but! It’s possible that the discovery of those mysterious refugees was triggering, thus sending her on her way to her own solo title.)

(Well. That’s gonna be my headcanon, anyway. XD)

AND LASTLY, (for real this time)

ISSUE FOUR COVER!!!!

Okay, some immediate thoughts:

GOOD LORD IT’S STUNNING.

I loooooove the fire motif, reminds me of a part from the Rebirth run, where Kara met the Super-Man of China, and they visually referenced All-Star Superman, having the Kryptonians kind of...become the sun.

Also STAR CHART?!?! PIRATE MAP!?!?!?! 

The VIBES I tell you, the VIIIIIIIBES.

Also I love that it’s just Kara.

Don’t get me wrong! I like Ruthye just fine so far! But yeah, yeah, give me some more solo-Kara focus, even if it’s just in the art.

Just realized that once this thing gets collected as a TBP, we might get some Evely art backmatter. OhHhhHHhhH YESSSS. 

Anyways, the long wait for issue 2 begins! 

#stranger speaks #long post #supergirl: woman of tomorrow #comic thoughts #comic opinions #interview

[unsparingcritic]

Discussion and Translation of Leopardi’s “L’infinito.”

Here is Leopardi’s “L’infinito.”  After a discussion of the poem’s structure and drama follows my translation.  If you don’t know Italian, you may still enjoy the discussion; if you do know Italian, and care to comment, I’d like particularly to know if you think my observations justify my having translated sovvien as “to my rescue come.”

Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle, e questa siepe, che da tanta parte dell’ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude. Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani silenzi, e profondissima quiete io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco il cor non si spaura. E come il vento odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello infinito silenzio a questa voce vo comparando: e mi sovvien l’eterno, e le morte stagioni, e la presente e viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa immensità s’annega il pensier mio: e il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare.

 Always dear to me was this hermit hill, and this hedgerow, which from so many sides closes the view off from the last horizon.  But sitting and gazing, interminable spaces from here to there, and superhuman silences, and profoundest quiet I imagine in my mind, to the point where my heart almost jumps in fear.  And as I listen to the wind storming among these growths, that infinite silence to this voice I go comparing; and come to mind the eternal, the dead seasons, and the present one and living, and its sound. So amid this immensity drowns my thought: and shipwreck is sweet to me in this sea.

The poem’s four sentences make for its four parts: (i) Sempre…esclude; (ii) Ma sedendo…si spaura; (iii) E come…suon di lei; (iv) Così…mare.  The first and fourth parts are contraries indicated by the contrast of caro to dolce; they bracket the contraries of the second and third parts indicated by il pensier… il pensier; the il cor…at the close of part two contrasts with an il cor implicit in the first line’s caro and another in the last line’s dolce; you could say that in that cor-cor-cor a three-part structure overlays the four-part one, the character arc at work in the four-act plot; and the play in movement unfolding in questo (masculine form of “this”) in line one, questa in two, quella (feminine form of “that”) in five, queste (feminine plural) and quello in nine, questa in ten, questa in thirteen, and questo in fifteen is a passage from an initial station through a restless back and forth to a final settling; they bind the arc to the plot. 

Three oddities require recognition of these structures so that one can grasp the spiritual drama. 

The first is the fact that in sempre caro mi fu, sempre, “always,” does not have the sense of everlastingly, but continuously or continually thus far; thus fu does not mean has been, but was. So, for instance, when a person who has played an important part in our life dies, we do not say, “He has always been good to me,” for that leaves open the possibility that his kindness might in future cease, but rather, “He was always good to me.” We may say that the moment he dies, or the moment we hear that he is dead.  This means that, when Giacomo—let’s call the speaker in the poem—begins to speak, he shows himself to be aware that an epoch in his life has ended and with its death nothing in its past existence is at his disposal for any future.   

The second is that the questo and questa of the first two lines indicate that Giacomo is, at this very moment, on that hilltop and at this very moment is looking at that hedgerow, just as the questa of line thirteen and the questo of line fifteen indicate that at this very moment it is in this immensity and at this very moment in this sea that he finds himself; since the ermo—from the Greek erêmos, “desolate, lonely,” from which comes our word “hermit”—indicates that he is alone, in the poem he is not recollecting an experience, but narrating his own experience to himself.  Of course, that is not quite right:  obviously if Leopardi had chosen to write in the third person the poem would lack all force; and just as obviously in the moment in which we pass from perplexity to epiphany our experience of the passage and of the climax is wordless, so there is no way for Leopardi to represent Giacomo’s experience except in the odd self-narration; the thing is, all that happens is happening now.  

I insist on pointing this out because only so can I make clear that the opening sentence, the first part, does indicate the close of one epoch in Giacomo’s life with himself in relation to the hilltop, and that, with the second part’s opening ma, literally “but,” he indicates his displacement into the first moment of the new epoch whose relation to his heart is indeterminate.

It seems to me that the oddity of the narration as it unfolds in the four-part dramatic structure with the three-part character arc shows that in reading we follow an unfolding drama in which Giacomo finds himself perplexed at the death of a source of contentment, gets himself in trouble, makes an effort to get himself out of trouble, gets help, sees his adversary vanquished, and feels a new contentment from a new source.

Third, since Giacomo tells us that, for the most part, the hedgerow blocks his view of the horizon, and since in the second part he tells us that he is sitting and gazing, but that he is also imagining spaces, he cannot actually be looking at what portion of the horizon the gaps in the hedgerow do allow one to see—if he were, there would be no point in mentioning the hedgerows; and if it is beyond because starting from the hedgerows that he is imagining spaces, then he cannot be sitting in front of the hedgerows looking, for then, in order to imagine spaces beyond, he would have to start from the visible portion of horizon. 

(I have found two types of photographs: one looking up at the hedgerows atop a wall that stands on some deck on Mount Tabor from which the photograph is taken, so that we are shown the rising walls and the capping hedgerow:

and a view from some spot on Mount Tabor, presumably, but that does not include the hedges, from which one can see Recanati, the town in which Leopardi was born and grew up, sprawling to a perfectly visible horizon:

There may be photographs taken from within the hedgerow so that you can see how much it blocks the horizon from view, but I have yet to find them.)

It would seem, then, that Giacomo is sitting on something in the space on the hilltop that the hedgerow encloses with his back to the hedgerows, and just staring into space, absorbed in the vision he conjures for himself of space and silence in his thought.

The second part ends with the experience of fright, reminiscent of Pascal’s le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie—but only reminiscent:  where Pascal calls his spaces merely infinite, Giacomo says that they are interminati—that they don’t come to an end.  That implies that in his mind he is travelling along those spaces and at some point realizes that they are never going to come to an end; that’s why he says, not that they frighten him, but that in imagining these things in his thought he does so to the point where his heart almost suffers a spavento, no simple fright, but a jolt or spasm.

The third part begins with a return to the earthly present—he hears the storming wind, and begins to compare the endless silence to the noise; compare why?  My surmise is that he needs help against the lingering dismay from that silence and endlessness—note well that it is THAT silence, that the silence is distant from him, but it is still close because, of all the thats that he can contrast to the this of THIS noise, the reality that is closest to him (sight will not help him) and perhaps standing between him and that silence, he chooses the that of that silence. Compare how?  With respect to what is endless in THIS noise; why say that that is the respect?  Well, what happens as he starts comparing? 

The eternal and the precession of dead seasons—stagioni is not a synecdoche for eras or epochs, since eras and epochs don’t have a sound—and the living present and the sound of the present come to him; they themselves, not the thought of them, come to him; but again, what makes me think that? 

You’ve had that experience when, after so many years, you return to your childhood home or haunts, and in their presence you feel the intervening years slough away—you feel this in your body. 

There’s another experience you’ve had; you look at a photograph of a size and shape and cut that indicates it is from a long dead epoch of photography: it is a photograph of unknown people dressed in fashions that indicate they belong to a long dead epoch; but neither set of epochal signs suffices to indicate any determinate temporal route from them to you; but you are not disoriented—you feel a quiet awe at the strangeness of time.  It’s a feeling that comes over you and you feel this in your appetite—you cannot get enough of looking at the image—and you cannot get over the uncanniness of which you are in awe—the feeling takes hold of you; you feel it in and with your simple existence as a temporal being. (In Germany: Year Zero, Godard has someone say that, according to the Talmud, the first men who realized they were in time smiled.)

Yet another:  usually we are immersed in the present and so do not think about it as present, but sometimes, when all claims are lifted from us, we feel the presentness of the present—that’s why we call a vacation a vacation, that is, a time that is vacated of claims on us to make use of something past in the present for the sake of some future.  That’s why we like that moment in The Shawshank Redemption when after their labors the men sit on the rooftop drinking beer. You feel this in the suspension of all passions of concern and care, in the lifting of their weight.

As to the sound of the present, the first thing to be said is this: Only two of our senses have horizons, sight and hearing.   Sight has a horizon only in front of us and only across the field of our vision, but in our hearing we relate to ourselves as the center of several horizons that circumvault us above and below and every which way roundabout variously according to the distance from which the sound can travel to us;  it is because sounds do have distances and directions and never fill the air entirely that we can hear silences and quiet, meaning we can tell where they are, how far they reach, and can distinguish them with respect to the things not making noise, so that we relate to silences and quiet as having a manifold of circumvaulting horizons, too.

And each season sounds as no other season sounds, and each season can present itself as a whole in one moment of characteristic sounds: the whole of summer is presented in one moment of a buzzing past of something near your head, somewhat far off behind you the sound of children screaming in play, further off still but in front of you the sound of a tractor’s sputtering roar, from below the splash of a stone your little brother has tossed into the lake that spreads from the foot of the hill on which you sit, and high above an airplane passing and its drone rippling down through the heavens just to you.

So the third part ends with a sloughing of years, a boundless appetite for what is incalculably near and far in time that holds you fast, all weight lifted from the present, and the presentation of the presentness of the present in the several horizons in its sound; what happens next?

Giacomo finds himself in a new vastness now—the vastness that is the eternity in which season upon season presents itself then passes into eternity, and in this new vastness his thought drowns—poor thing! Requiescat in pace!  Now what he feels in his heart is the sweetness of the event in and by which his thought drowns, a shipwreck.  What shipwreck of what ship broken against what?

Pascal says that you cannot not bet—you are already embarked.  I always point out to my students that the term embarked implies that in existing we are not on a journey, but on a voyage; I ask them to explain to me the difference between a journey and a voyage—they seldom can, so I point out that, on a journey, before arriving at your destination you can always stop; not possible at sea.  But though death is necessarily the final port of our voyage in existence, and Pascal depends upon that necessity to convince us that we cannot not bet, death is not a misadventure, as is a shipwreck, and anyway, Giacomo says nothing to indicate that he experiences any sort of death—only his thought drowns; so again, what shipwreck of what ship broken against what?

 My translation:

Always sweet to me was this sequestered

Hilltop, and this hedgerow which, turn what side

I will, shuts the last horizon from my view.

Sitting now and gazing, in my thought I

Conjure, spilt from that hedgerow, spaces

Never-ending, and silences dealt past all

Things human, and hush abyssal, so my heart  

Leaps nigh beside itself in fright. But as I hear

The wind thrashing through these growths, I try

Comparing that boundless silence with this

Din:  and to my rescue come the eternal,

And the dead seasons, and the present one

All living, and the sound of it. Thus

Into this vastness drowns my thought:

And easeful to me’s shipwreck on this sea.

 Italians consider this poem of Leopardi’s to be the most beautiful in the language; here’s roughly why.

The poem consists of four sentences unfolding in fifteen lines with ten enjambements—a line ending that does not coincide with the syntactical end of a clause, so that in reading one does not pause between the end of that line and the beginning of the next, because the words form one unbreakable syntactical unit; the syntax includes several displacements of the semantic head of the sentence to its syntactical end, inversions of the usual order of adjectives and the nouns they qualify; a complex and gorgeously understated play of assonance and alliteration; and its matter involves things vested with an uncanny, muted splendor; think of Turner.

When I first thought of translating Leopardi’s poem a few weeks ago, I looked for recitations on YouTube. What I found surprised me.  

Time after time the actors seemed to think that, because of the poem’s beauty, their voice had to flow in honied languid undulations from Sempre to questo mare; the absolute worst was a reciter who pronounced each word with an orgasmic gurgle and each stressed word in a clause with a giddy roller-coaster flip in which down springs and up plunges. The poem is beautiful, yes; but Giacomo’s experience is not an experience of beauty—not like, say, Byron’s “She walks in beauty” is a beautiful poem about the experience of beauty.  

But the relative worst was Germano Bonaveri. Bonaveri is quite handsome: he’s swarthy, wears a ring in his right ear, has thick black eyebrows over dark hooded eyes, has a close-cropped feathery white beard and a thick black moustache—the look, I think, that casting directors want actors to have when they are to exhibit the sort of lush gypsy or pirate virility that makes women fall easily backward in thought onto a cloud of willingness, thighs spread in ready waiting high humidity.  I mention this because Bonaveri’s face fills the screen but is shown only from just below his brow at his eyebrows, just a little past his right ear lobe, and not quite down to his chin; in reading, Bonaveri keeps his lips puckered right at the round knob head of the microphone, and you can’t help but note every dip of his head and every time he lifts his brows or holds his eyelids closed in that interlude of voluptuously ineffectual pulling of the hood of the upper lid against the tarrying why-can’t-this-last hermetic clamping of the upper lid’s lip to the lip of the lower that signifies o-what-sweetness a-waft in the mind; in his recitation he caresses each word and phrase in bursts of urgency according to the sense, so that when he stops for each caesura you hear the silence as you see a lace curtain billowing down nearly to the sill only then to billow up backwards into the room:  it’s like he’s performing cunnilingus. 

I thought it was the relative worst because Bonaveri does use a certain restraint and understatement proper to the poem, but since “L��infinito” isn’t a love poem, the restraint and understatement should not be erotic; he hasn’t taken on the persona of Giacomo to give it life.

I think the poem should be read with restraint and understatement because of what seems to me that movement from perplexity at the sudden loss of a long-standing enjoyment to fear to rescue to a new satisfaction or contentment.  Leopardi isn’t speaking to us as beings who like to climb mountains and glory in the earth’s beauty, but in the persona of Giacomo represents us to ourselves as beings who can find ourselves, in some innocent contemplation, suddenly caught in the toils of something that threatens to undo us, and even if we escape, find we need something to undo our ever having been caught. 

The one reader who recites with the necessary restraint is Giuseppe Cederna; characteristically, it seems that most of those who have commented on it hate it.

#literature #l'infinito #giacomo leopardi #translation #my post

[gayregis]

I've listened to the part where Geralt talks with a very ill Cahir about Ciri and vengeance... it was one of the most emotional parts of the book by itself but also thanks to your take about the lost innocence of Ciri ! I felt it thrice hard in the feelings! Also, do you have thoughts on the declared love of Cahir for Ciri? Personally I see it as disturbingly romantic, let's say. Thank you for your commitment to the books and sorry to bother you

omg thank you for the ask. first of all i have to say you’re not bothering me!! tbh i have been loving getting asks because it gives me an opportunity to like bring more discussion to the witcher community... 

i feel like although reblogging pretty gifs of characters/landscapes from tw3 and any good fanart i can find is nice, my FAVORITE thing to do is write or read a really long textpost about the witcher books, i really like the discussion aspect of fandoms where people post their reactions and opinions to the content they like, because you get a bunch of shared reactions and differing opinions.

so no this is NOT a bother at all, and its nice especially to get asks about topics that i have strong feelings about but have not made posts about yet, like this one

ok, as for the actual topic: i hate forced heterosexuality, so you KNOW i hate that canon cahiri! it was out of line from sapkowski and imo, it came out of absolutely nowhere in tower of the swallow, it wasn’t something built up to or foreshadowed at all, so it felt not only weird in context but weird for sapkowski as an author.

my main problem with canon cahiri: i think it’s super creepy!

first of all, let’s discuss the age difference. cahir in baptism of fire is estimated to be “not over 25,” which i see as putting him around 20 to 25 years old, and i usually take the median of this which is around 23. while this “not over 25″ comment is said in the context of the hansa to remark upon how young cahir is (i believe it’s thought of by either geralt or dandelion, and geralt is around 60 years old and as a witcher he looks 45, and dandelion is 38 in tower of the swallow), and how cahir is described as a young man in time of contempt to illustrate that he has a sense of innocence to him as ciri cuts him down, his age gap with ciri is super innappropriate for anything to occur between them, since she is 10 or 11 during the massacre of cintra (as stated by geralt in something more), so she would be around 14 at thanedd, and 15-16 during baptism of fire to lady of the lake. so sapkowski deemed it fit to pair a 23 year old man with a 16 year old girl. this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this, what with essi being “not over 18″ and shani also bein around 18 / college age, and yennefer canonically looking around 20. listen, the man has some messed up values when it comes to women’s ages. we have to take it upon ourselves as people who like the not-weird parts of canon to understand how worldviews and personal biases affect one’s writing, and change it for ourselves to make it right so we can continue interacting with it, if we so choose (tldr: retcon some shit when it’s fucked up in canon).

now, before someone argues that “it’s fantasy medieval world, medieval relationships between men and women were just like that,” believe me, i am aware. i study ancient greece/rome and men who were in their 30s were most often paired with women in their teens as part of their arranged marriages. that is how their ancient societies functioned more than 2000 years ago. the issue is that this is a fantasy world, in which societal norms and laws do not have to conform to real-life earth history, and this is the work of a modern writer writing in the 1990s. it’s not “just how the times were,” it’s deliberately choosing to include an age gap like that to be something canonically acceptable by their society/ies.

also, one could argue that the age gap would be fine once they are older, like, when ciri becomes an adult she is already medievally-style betrothed to cahir so they start dating when she’s like 20 and he’s like 27. eh... that’s still an uncomfortable age gap, at least for when they’re in their 20s. people in their older 20s have more life experience than people in their younger 20s. but at least it wouldn’t land cahir in modern-day jail.

it’s still just an uncomfortably large age gap, and if you think about it, it’s even creepier considering that cahir met ciri when she was a helpless child around 10 - 11 and it just makes the bathing scene excruciatingly creepy too if you put it in the context that he eventually would fall in love with her. it even begins to not be about strictly age, but about life experience, development, and power imbalance within the relationship. i mean, he did literally kidnap her.

cahir in tos calls ciri a “woman” when she is like, 15 or 16 (with the rose tattoo) (to anyone reading, please don’t come at me with that “the age of consent is 15 in poland, just because it’s 18 in the US doesn’t mean your laws and culture apply to everyone” ... please do not try and justify this with laws, legality is not morality. only saying this because i’ve seen it in other posts). like.... hm! don’t like that! she is a teenager... he is in his 20s... this should not be occuring.

sorry for the loooong explanation, but every time someone brings up the subject of age gaps on tumblr it turns into crazy discourse with everyone trying to justify it.

but yeah, CANONICALLY cahir would have been 16-21 (median 18) when he met ciri at 10-11, and 20-25 (median 23) when he declares his love for her at 15-16. that’s ... not good ... to put it more into perspective, these are their ages on a traditional school system path: a 18 year old is a high school senior, an 11 year old is a 6th grader. a 23 year old has been out of college for 2 years, a 16 year old is a high school sophomore. ITS NOT GOOD

my other problem with canon cahiri: it’s boring and contradicts sapkowski at his own game.

all of the witcher is about taking fantasy tropes and inverting them, like you can’t have some random peasant kill a dragon, you’d need a professional, and also guess what, the dragon isn’t evil but a dad trying to protect his wife and child.

all of the characters in the hansa (as well as the four main characters of geralt, yennefer, ciri, and dandelion) are inversions of the tropes they represent. for some examples, milva’s trope is something like the hot action girl who only exists to be the only girl in the company and to be sexy eye candy. instead of falling into this, she is actually an action girl, not bothering with sexiness and appeal to the gaze of a male audience but a “get shit done” type, who also dresses and acts “like a man.” regis’ trope is all vampire tropes ever. he/vampires in the witcher doesn’t/don’t fall into any of the traditional european vampire myths like burning in sunlight, needing to drink blood to stay alive, being disdainful of humanity, having aversions to garlic, belonging to a super-secret orderful society that lurks in the shadows and controls everything like puppetmasters, etc... instead, he is the epitome of redemption arcs and overall “goody-goodiness,” understands humanity perfectly and does things out of his good nature. i already talk about regis too much, so i’ll quit it. 

cahir is an inversion of every knight trope ever, particularly the evil knight. he scars ciri’s memory as a night terror, but actually is not ... a bad person. he’s just some guy, pressured by his family and his society to do what he saw as an assignment like a college kid might see their final essay assignment posted on canvas. except you know. the final exam was to kidnap a girl. and he got an F on that and failed the course (ie got thrown in prison). ANYWAYS, cahir is meant to be this inversion of the knight tropes, so WHY, WHY, WHY make him become the knight trope of being the one to romance and to save a hapless princess? if we’ve learned anything about ciri, it’s that she’s the inversion of the princess trope! she KILLS PEOPLE. she ALMOST KILLED CAHIR. she can defend herself and kill for herself, she doesn’t need the knight trope going to protect her! 

heterosexual romance as the Big Reason and Motivation behind all of a character’s actions is tiring, annoying, boring, and not well-thought out. it’s so base and not unique, it doesn’t fit in with everything else about the witcher.

how i would fix it: not make them fall in love.

cahir already HAS a motivation to find ciri and to help her. he needs to APOLOGIZE. he needs to say, hey, i’m sorry i kidnapped you and ruined your life, i made peace with your dad, he doesn’t wanna kill me anymore, i can only hope that you can forgive me too after i SET THINGS RIGHT. 

as opposed to regis’s arc (i swear i am not playing favorites with regis, i just tend to compare and contrast regis and cahir’s redemptions because they are quite different yet they join the hansa side by side so they’re bound to be compared), cahir actually can find the one (not many) people he wronged, and set things right on his own accord, not go forth with a larger mission to assist all humanity, or whatever.

i think cahir also had this WONDERFULLY UNDERUTILIZED anti-imperialist message as part of his character that pains me to see being swept under the rug for some cheap lame romance story. sapkowski already created some anti-war sentiments with the battle of the bridge in baptism of fire, and he tried to create anti-racism sentiments throughout the book/at the end of lady of the lake. anti-imperialism fits with the rest of the saga as a message.

the fact that cahir was instructed by his family to hate the northern kingdoms, despite the fact that they were related to northerners, is really profound as something to happen to a character, and holds a lot of meaning in today’s society. the fact that he broke, finally, after he lost ciri, just completely lost his mind and had to be restrained because he was wailing so hard, because of the pressure that this society put him under to succeed and achieve pride for his family, is such a great example of the tragedies of society. then he speaks out against his leader and is jailed... and yet, after this, he gets to learn from his mistakes and redeem himself as a good person, and his character has developed SO much. he is not doing what his country wants him to do, he is not doing what his family wants him to do. he is doing what he wants to do because it is the RIGHT thing to do. that already is such a powerful message, he doesn’t need anymore character motivation!

so yep that’s my thoughts on why cahir is a good character asides from all that forced romance biz

#ask #cahir #ciri #master-dellamorte

[merimaatelegiac]

“The Hero of Men” Notes Pt. 2

The Prophecy of the Hero of Time - Like I mentioned in part 1, this prophecy is very important both in the series themselves, and for If Time Healed Wounds’ background. In Ocarina of Time, Sheik speaks of both this and the prophecy of the game’s seven temples. I wanted to put out there my theory on how they came to exist. Since they are temples, we can assume that they used to be places of worship before being corrupted by Ganondorf, and from some (such as the Shadow and Spirit temples) we actually learn a little of what they were used for, though nothing too specific. Now, thanks to the games that “canonically” go before OoT in terms of the chronology, it was very easy to take advantage of the fact that the Master Sword is not used again after the events of Skyward Sword. There’s also the fact that, even though those previous games have pretty serious events hidden in the background (such as the apparent genocide of the Wind Tribe---another post that will be!), they are still minor threats compared to all the sh*itshow going on leading to, during, and after the events in OoT. The Civil War, Hyrule finally being conquered by the bad guy and gone to waste (or semi-waste, considering the actual waste that is Hyrule in BotW), the timeline splitting up... All of that is, imo, much worse than anything that’s happened since the time of SS, even more so than the interlopers going wild. From all of these things I gave form and purpose to both prophecies.

And, insert here GoW Kratos’ voice saying “BOY”. All the bits and pieces I still had to make sense of for the Reader character’s story, put themselves into place once I had these events explained in my mind.

The thanking ceremony - When I was little, the Temple of Time creeped me out in a very weird way. I used to find it extremely weird that they’d built such an enormous building only to have it empty literally all the time. As I grew up I understood that the game’s capacity probably didn’t allow the devs to give more life to OoT’s Hyrule, but I was always left with that awkward feeling. Then, as I thought about all of those bits of lore that would be so fresh in the days of the Minish’ arrival from the time of the war against Demise, I figured that there’d be, necessarily, different holidays in Hyrule, one of which had to be some sort of celebration around his defeat. And what better place to hold it than the Temple of Time?? Let’s not forget that the Sealed Temple, placed on top of Demise’s original tomb, used to be where the Temple of Time now stands. I honestly loved the idea, and it’s even given me a different way of experiencing it when I replay any game where it appears. Which are, like, two xD.

I had so much fun thinking of the little details on how the ceremony would be performed. I actually created the prayer recited by Princess Aryn based on an ancient Templar prayer that they used when they started being persecuted by the Church.

Also, remember how it is mentioned that something about that prayer makes the princess feel calm and secure? Well, it is dedicated to the Hero, after all. It works!

A little on the Geography of Hyrule, according to Reliable Me - This honestly deserves its own post, and I might just do that in the future. But I do want to touch some of that here. Naturally, the main map I was using as reference for the vast majority of the chapter was that from The Minish Cap. The one major change I made was the denomination of the Minish Woods, which in the story was refered to as the Southern Forests (continuing the naming pattern in TMC, with names such as Eastern Hills, Western Wood and North/South Hyrule Field). Naturally, the Minish Woods would be named as such after these events. Now, Lake Hylia does not appear in TMC, but it does in Four Swords, which, canonically, would go after TMC. In FS, Lake Hylia is more or less where the Zora Domain is located in Ocarina of Time. So! In my headcanon that is the original Lake Floria, which then was named Lake Hylia, until the Zora arrived. Then, with the years and the expansion of the Kingdom of Hyrule, the lake to the southeast was named as Lake Hylia instead. In my mind, Hyrule was not very big in these early years, and I think its very plausible that all of the areas in the center of TMC’s map are the middle areas in OoT’s map, including Castor Wilds, right east of the natural barrier of the hills leading to Gerudo Valley. I have a whole explanation of how the area of Mt. Crenel turned into the frozen wasteland that we see in Twilight Princess, along with a detailed outlining of the entirety of Hyrule’s western desert...

... But I’ll leave that for its own post. :D

The Minish and the Guardian Spirits... - Again, as is usual in the series, the origins of the Minish are left extremely vague. So, I filled some of those gaps, while not getting into too much detail. I made them the origins of the guardian spirits that we encounter in Ocarina of Time (the Great Deku Tree, Lord Jabu-Jabu, and, you guessed it! -?-, Volvagia ---yes, I like the theory of Volvagia being the Spiritual Guardian of Fire before being corrupted by Ganondorf---), along with a fourth, the Spiritual Guardian of Wind (who might it be? Perhaps the Wind Fish?? Who knows!!), whose fate we don’t know anything about, after the Wind Tribe was massacred. As years passed, I like the idea of the Hylians starting to call the Minish with the name of the sword they made, with only the Royal Family remembering their original name, for the average Hylian villager didn’t really know the details of that whole story. In contrast, as is usually the case with locations, the Minish Woods would retain that name.

As to what happened to them... let’s leave it open for speculation, like Nintendo did.

The Wind Tribe - These guys fascinate me so much. I think there’s a lot of potential for their origins and lore in general, and I tried to exploit that. I unfortunately took the easy route and assumed that all red-haired tribes in Hyrule come from the same peoples (so goddamned brilliant of me, I know), based also on the fact that most of them have origins in the west of Hyrule. My reasoning is that the original Dark Tribe developed the red hair trait, which remained after they were reinstated into Hylian society and during their rift, half of them becoming the Wind Tribe, the others what would be known as the Dark Interlopers. Now, we know that after the events of The Minish Cap, there came another Hero with a unique adventure, separate to that of the Four Sword Hero. In those times,Vaati is said to kidnap beautiful women and take them to his Palace in the sky. Since the Wind Tribe is never heard of again, many theorize that Vaati might have killed them after he escaped his first imprisonment, thus taking over their home from then on. I personally go for this theory as well in my headcanon, but I don’t think all of them were destroyed.

In TMC, the Ocarina of Winds works with music. That alone was my cue to link them to the Song of Healing (it makes more sense int he chapter, haha) as was implied in the chapter :D And if at this point you’re thinking something about the Happy Mask Salesman, you’re probably right. But more on this in another post!

I think that covers all general topics in the story. As I said in part one, I’ll make separate posts for the other, more complicated ones. Ask me for any doubts you have in regards to these!

Thanks for reading!

#twilightprincess #twilight princess #ocarinaoftime #ocarina of time #majora'smask #majora's mask #the minish cap #theminishcap #zelda theory #zeldatheory #thelegendofzelda #the legend of zelda #the hero of men #zelda #princesszelda #princess zelda #templeoftime #temple of time #midna #sheikah #fourswords #four swords #a link to the past #alinktothepast #hylia #dark link #darklink

[hotel-japanifornia]

Like, I love Miles Edgeworth, but he's overshadowing literally everyone else. Like he's not overrated since he actual holds up to his love, but damn, there are so many fics on him and his story from the og trilogy only. Miles has grown up beyond it and I love him for it since it makes him three dimensional.

Ok, you wanna know what greatly amuses me about you mentioning how people only pay attention to him and his story from the og trilogy only?

Edgeworth plays an important role in 4 of the 5 cases in the original game (3 of 4 if you really hate RFTA and want to exclude it from your mind. Feel free to do so but you’ll be hella frustrated when you play AJ. Unless you liked Ema.)

He only appears in 1 of the four cases in JFA and is mentioned in 2 and cameos in 1. If you don’t count the cameo, which I do, that only adds up to 1 case. Comparatively a small role, but he has a big impact on Franziska’s motivations and is the reason she wants to crush Phoenix so badly. Points to Takumi for not doing a generic “avenge my father” plot. Respect him (and Franziska) for that. He does play an extremely important role in the one case he appears in, so don’t think I’m trying to downplay him or anything.

Edgeworth is majorly absent in the third game. He prosecutes in only one case and that’s his annoying 20 year old self. He comes back in the fifth case to fill in for the defense and does play a hand in Iris and Dahlia switching places. Had it not been for that earthquake, he wouldn’t have freaked out and lost sight of Iris in the first place. He doesn’t do a whole lot else after that though. 

I say this because if you think about it, Edgeworth is only in 7 of the original 14 cases if you count physical appearances only (6 out of 13 in the OG trilogy). While I won’t argue that Edgeworth isn’t important in the cases he’s in because he is totally, I will argue that it does feel odd how the focus is on him so much of the time.

And the thing is, I can see how people would argue how Edgeworth is the central character in the first game. Edgeworth is the character we see grow throughout the course of the game. We learn the most about him than any other character and the events of the game revolve around him (Turnabout Goodbyes, the DL-6 incident, etc) more than other characters besides Maya who shares a connection with him as they both lost parents to the DL-6 incident (how have those two not had more interactions, honestly?) and loses her sister in the second case.

I would argue however, that Edgeworth isn’t the character at the center of the second game although we do see him mentioned in conversations by Franziska and Phoenix. I don’t know why people will acknowledge his “Miles Edgeworth chooses death” note but absolutely refuse to acknowledge how awful of a move that was. The reason being is that it was cryptically worded and anybody reading it would think he killed himself which Franziska and Phoenix did, while Gumshoe was the only one who knew what really happened. I know what the note actually meant (i.e. the death of the prosecutor Edgeworth once was) but still, it was poorly worded. 

In actuality, Phoenix is the protagonist and central character of the second game. He’s the one who goes through the most growth as we see him face a huge moral dilemma in the fourth case where he has to choose between saving his friend or sending a truly guilty man to prison. It’s absolutely interesting to see him in conflict with the character he was up to that point (someone who believed his client was genuinely innocent) and it’s something I think needs to happen more often. By that I mean, defending truly guilty defendants. While I don’t think they should be like Matt Engarde necessarily, it would be interesting to see more truly guilty defendants. (I know there’s one in DGS but not everyone has played that one so I won’t spoil.)

As for the third game, it’s pretty obvious who the main protagonist in that game is. It’s the Fey Clan obviously. Specifically, we learn more about Mia Fey, Phoenix’s mentor, through getting to play as her during the tutorial case and the other tutorial case both of which are short but help us get to know Phoenix’s wise and calm mentor. We see her during her first two cases and even get to witness her taking down Dahlia Hawthorne in an amazingly cool manner (by asking her to prove her innocence by taking Phoenix’s cold medicine which she poisoned). We also see her during her first case which was mentioned in Turnabout Memories and was said to traumatize her so badly that she felt like she was never going to step into court again. Since her opponent, Bratworth, had never lost a case before Turnabout Sisters, we know that the case won’t end well. But even so, it’s what actually happens that makes the case so gutwrenching. Seeing Terry Fawles kill himself on the stand to protect his former girlfriend who was the true killer makes for a saddening end. Regardless of what you think of him as a character, seeing Mia so distraught over not being able to prevent Fawles’ death tugs at your heartstrings. 

What’s even worse is that six months later, she loses her boyfriend when he gets poisoned by Dahlia. Which does raise an interesting question: did she see the case against Wright and take it because she saw Dahlia mentioned in the case files and thought she might be connected to it? It’s likely, seeing as she brought the article talking about Diego’s poisoning with her but who knows? Either way, seeing her so determined to take Dahlia down that she’s willing to have her badge revoked is sincerely cool to watch.

And even in the present day case that Dahlia appears in, Bridge to the Turnabout, Mia doesn’t stop being rivals with Dahlia. When Maya channels Mia to ask her what she should do after Dahlia attacks her, Mia advises her to lock herself up in the Sacred Cavern in the Inner Temple and channel Dahlia in order to protect herself. It’s an extremely risky move on Mia’s part and had Dahlia not been so stubborn in seeing Maya’s corpse for herself without considering that she might be channeling her, Maya could have died of hypothermia in there (which isn’t something I had considered until the last year or so). Still, it works out in the end and Iris and Dahlia-in-Maya’s-body switch places during the second investigation period. Mia then proceeds to exorcise Dahlia out of Maya’s body with Phoenix’s help:

Dahlia: …Grr…Mmm…Nnnn… Grrr… Ahh! M… M… Mia F… F… Fey Mia Fey! Mia Fey! MIA FEEEEY! You… You… spinster!! I was supposed to kill Maya Fey like I swore I would! And if only you had gotten this spiky-haired jerk the guilty verdict… …I wouldn’t have been hanged to death!

Mia: …… True.

Dahlia: …!

Mia: But I think you finally understand, Dahlia Hawthorne. …You will never defeat me.

Dahlia: Wh-What…!? What did you say!?

Mia: Whether you’re alive, dead, or somewhere in between, you will never defeat me. As long as I’m around, you’re destined to lose for all of eternity!

Dahlia: Grrr… Grrrr… Grrrrr…

Phoenix: …I remember what you said earlier in the trial. You said there was no way we could punish you… …because you were already dead.

Dahlia: What about it!?

Phoenix: Then you said… “Even when the body dies, the spirit, the ego, it lives on… forever.”

Mia: …That’s very true, Dahlia. And that’s exactly the punishment you’ll never be able to escape from.

Dahlia: …!

Mia: For all of eternity, you’ll have to remain as Dahlia Hawthorne. A miserable, pathetic, weak creature who can never win at anything… And for you, there is no escape from that. No hope of freedom. Since the day you were executed… …the narrow bridge that once stretched out in front of you has burnt to a crisp!

This causes Dahlia to freak out and pop out of Maya’s body with a extremely loud scream. It’s extremely chilling and awesome at the same time. 

One thing that stands out though, is that defeating Dahlia never stops being Mia’s personal victory as Godot mentions later on.

Godot: The woman who had spiked my scalding hot coffee… Dahlia Hawthorne! Ha…! Good ol’ Mia. She didn’t let me down. She got her revenge before she checked out. In the end… There wasn’t anyone waiting for me when I woke up.

In a way, the way that Mia Fey and Diego Armando go about taking revenge against Dahlia serves an interesting contrast to each other. Mia, although angry at Dahlia for sure, never let her anger consume her when trying to take her revenge on Dahlia. The only thing that Mia sought out to do was to make sure that she received justice for her crimes and upon finally getting Dahlia convicted of murder, moved on with her life. Mia even took Phoenix under her wing, despite his past connection to Dahlia. Even though he really had nothing to do with her crimes and even was supposed to be one of her victims, you can’t help but admire her for that.

On the other hand, Diego Armando never let his hatred of Dahlia Hawthorne go. Even after waking up from his coma and realizing that Mia had gotten revenge for him and got her sentenced to death. He was so blinded by hatred that upon encountering her at the Inner Temple Garden, he stabbed her with the cane sword, killing Misty Fey in the process. And unlike Mia, Diego hated Phoenix and even blamed him for Mia’s death. There’s also a line that suggests that he knew that Phoenix was the one that inadvertently helped Dahlia hide the bottle necklace containing the poison:

Godot: …… I never liked you. Six years ago… …you helped the woman who put me to sleep by hiding her bottle of poison. 

It’s an interesting line, indeed, and implies that Diego’s hatred of Phoenix went beyond Mia’s murder. Because Phoenix “hid” the bottle of poison, Dahlia was never able to be caught for Diego’s poisoning and thus escaped justice. In summary, Mia was able to move on with her life after Dahlia got caught while Diego wasn’t which ended up being his downfall.

I can also see how some people might make a case for Maya going through development of her own throughout Trials and Tribulations. During the second and third case, we see her express doubts about her own abilities as a spirit medium and it’s implied that she’s still shaken up by the murder in Kurain Village to the point that she hasn’t even returned to the village in a while:

Maya: Well, I’m kind of taking a break… I’m having a bit of trouble right now, you know?

Phoenix: (Last year’s incident must still be on her mind… I haven’t seen Maya train at all since then. I think Mia said it’s because Maya’s “at a loss these days”…)

It’s an interesting line, and is definitely one that people seem to overlook while playing through the game. Despite her lack of training however, Maya is still able to channel Mia during the last portion of the Stolen Turnabout. The conversation the two of them have reveals that Maya is going through a dilemma currently.

Mia: I’m just joking, Phoenix. Don’t take everything so seriously. But on the other hand, Maya… She seems kind of lost these days.

Phoenix: You mean about becoming the Master of the Kurain Channeling School?

Mia: Becoming the Master… means saying goodbye to our mother.

Phoenix: You mean Misty Fey…?

Mia: …Watch over her, will you Phoenix?

One thing I find interesting though, is that Maya’s dilemma about becoming the Master isn’t overly prevalent in dialogue. Sure it’s a part of what she goes through over the course of the game but it doesn’t take a huge focus. It’s certainly unique. Here’s one such example in Recipe for Turnabout 

Armstrong: You ‘ave la perfect face for a waitress, you know.

Maya: Um, thanks. I guess if things don’t work out someday, then maybe I’ll be back.

Phoenix: (What things? Is she talking about her being a spirit medium…?)

I honestly appreciate it for it’s subtlety; little character moments like this one, is what adds to the replay value of the games. True, you can just breeze through them, but taking the time to present random things to people can also reveal tons of interesting dialogue that can reveal more about the characters than if you were to do a regular playthrough and do what you need to do to progress further through the case.

All of this culminates in the last case when Maya goes to Hazakura Temple with Pearl and Phoenix to do some training which as mentioned before, she hasn’t really done much of since the Kurain Channeling incident. And unfortunately for her, it ends in disaster with her nearly being murdered by the ghost of her cousin, Dahlia and also witnessing Godot stab the spirit to death which kills her mother in the process.

When we first see Maya in the last trial portion of Bridge to the Turnabout, she’s more traumatized than we’ve ever seen her. And through this line, we get to see how she feels about the Kurain Channeling Technique in her current situation:

Maya: … I… I’m frightened. The Fey clan… I don’t want any more to do with it.

Now, let’s think about what this line means. Maya has dealt with a horrible amount of tragedy in her young life due to her heritage. She lost her mother, her sister left the village partly because she didn’t want to feud with Maya over the title of Master; her aunt plotted to have her convicted for murder and later tried to murder her through her beloved cousin, Pearl; and the one time that she decides to start training again, another tragedy occurs. Her mother was killed right in front of her by a man who was blinded by hatred towards the spirit possessing her body. It’s hard not to see why Maya would not want anything to do with her heritage after all the grief it caused her, so then, why does Maya decide to inherit the title of Master anyway?

Well, here’s the deal: The Fey Clan is extremely screwed up and has caused many of its members grief over the past two years. It’s no secret that the branch family has plotted against the main family before and has done so throughout its history:

Bikini: There is only one heir to the title of “Master” at any time, and it’s usually the eldest. That child becomes the new Master of Kurain, and her daughters, the main family. All other mediums become branch family members, with no hope of controlling the clan. That’s why nothing has changed throughout the history of the clan… Branch families always have and always will plot to erase those of the main family line.

However, Pearl doesn’t hold any sort of resentment towards Maya despite her being the heir to the title of Master. In fact, Pearl adores Maya and vice versa. The only reason she ever went with Morgan’s plan was because she thought by “It’s for the good of the Fey Clan” that her mother meant that her plan would benefit Maya and Pearl both. Maya similarly doesn’t hold any resentment towards Pearl  when she tries to blame herself for the death of Maya’s mother.

If you think about it, the fact that Maya stays and decides to become Master could also considered to be not only a result of her strength but a result of her deciding to fix the screwed up legacy of the Fey clan. As two of the people hurt most by the rivalry between the main family and the branch family, Maya and Pearl could work together to fix their family’s screwed up background and restore the Fey clan to its former glory. That’s the way I see it anyway.

Sorry for my long rant there, the Fey clan is very interesting to me. Honestly though, I’d argue that Edgeworth is more like a tritagonist. He’s extremely important at first but he becomes relatively less important over the course of the trilogy to the point that he’s only ever in one case in his present day form in the last part.

Maya is more or less the deutragonist of the games. She’s in 10 of the 14 cases in the trilogy and 6 of those cases (1-2, 1-4, 2-2, 2-4, 3-2, and 3-5) have her involved majorly in the plot whether it be her being accused of murder, dealing with her and her family history, or kidnapped (in which we get to control her too!). While she isn’t involved in the plots of 1-3 or 2-3 directly, she is the person who convinces Phoenix to take both cases and she even helps Phoenix out in the latter by raising the question of where Max’s bust is located which helps him catch Acro as the true murderer.

However, despite Maya’s overall importance to the trilogy, what stops her from being the main protagonist like Phoenix is that we don’t get to go into her head very often. We see Phoenix react to the situations around him, we get to see his thoughts while dealing with crazy witnesses and when he’s having a difficult time trying to prove something in court. Through this, we get to know Phoenix and in a sense, feel like we can connect with him. Even Edgeworth gets to be played during the first investigation and trial day of Bridge to the Turnabout where like Phoenix, we get to go inside his head and see how he thinks and how he feels about what’s going on around him.

With Maya, the time that we do get to control her in 2-4 is extremely short and doesn’t exactly allow us to get into her head. That’s not a point against her however as we do see her react to what’s going on when we aren’t in control of her. It makes sense that it would be extremely short though, as Maya is currently kidnapped when we do control her and the areas you can have her go aren’t very numerous. 

Still as much as I argue that Phoenix fits the central character and protagonist mold more than Edgeworth and Maya do, I believe that all three characters are important in their own unique ways.

#ace attorney #maya fey #phoenix wright #miles edgeworth #mia fey #diego armando #godot #god this got long #ask

[emblemxeno]

(3H SPOILERS) Analysis of Main Characters in FE and the Western FE Community’s Perception of Them

In the midst of all the Three Houses hype, there’s a lot of contention with Edelgard as a character as well as her route in general with how it plays out.

With this, it’s given me some perspective on how the community feels about main characters and whether or not they are liked and/or well written. Since I am a Westerner myself, please always assume this is in the context of the western FE audience, as I don’t know enough about the JP audience to do comparisons or whatnot.

Now with this, there’s more or less a pattern with some main characters in how they’re received by western fans. (Sigurd, Seliph, Leif, Roy and Kris won’t be covered in this since I haven’t read enough of their games’ scripts to get a grasp on them)

The most contentious main characters by far are Eirika, Micaiah, Corrin and Celica (when I say contentious I don’t mean unpopular as they have many fans; however, though popular, they also have the most detractors). 

These characters all have very defined flaws that get them in trouble in their games, are peace seeking in general and look for peaceful ways unless there is no other choice, and all do questionable things in their stories that call for doubt, discussion, and criticism. Most of their development comes from making mistakes and learning from them. They are also all known for getting into situations where they either need rescue or because of something they fucked up.

The least contentious main characters (compared to the four above, I might add) are Hector, Ephraim, Ike, and Alm. 

They may or may not have noticeable flaws, but they hardly ever cause trouble for them. They may or may not seek peace at some opportunities, but are always willing, with no hesitation, to fight. They are all blunt and speak their mind, and though sometimes that poses situations where they could get into trouble, but they never really do. Most of their development comes from growth after bad things happening to them rather than something that they messed up.

In this, realize that main characters are the ones that people identify with the most, therefore, there’s a reason for certain characters to be less contentious than others. In particular, the reason for FE main characters?

It’s probably a little bitchy to say it like this, but it’s kind of power fantasy esque. 

Hector, Ephraim, Ike, and Alm all have great authority/renown within their groups or territories and are always seemingly in control of the situation. They are hardly questioned, and when they are they are almost always proven right. In short, the players like these characters because they are validated as strong, intelligent, and almost always in control of the moment. Since these are the characters players identify with, the players themselves feel validated.

In contrast, compare to them Eirika, Micaiah, Corrin and Celica. They hold little authority (compared to the other four), are questioned and not always proven right, doubted at some points, they question and doubt themselves, they’re not as notably strong in various fields like the other four so they don’t get validated as the other four. Being main characters, these are also characters that players are to identify with, but since they have unattractive/undesirable qualities to them, (and because FE players always believe they themselves have the perfect solutions to everything) they are instead cast aside as being badly written, stupid, incompetent, and the oh so misused moniker, Mary Sue. 

(Well, Celica doesn’t really get called that, but that’s because she wasn’t known by the audience that uses it frequently, and Echoes came out at a period when people stopped using it wrongly)

Again, I don’t wanna sound condescending, but power fantasy is really what I get from this.

Now there is sort of a problem with this theory, and that’s Ephraim, because he’s contentious in his own right because of the shit he pulls in FE8, but he gets less flack than his sister, Corrin, and Micaiah, so...

Anyway, besides the characters I intentionally left out because I didn’t know enough about them, there remains Marth, Lyn, Eliwood, Chrom, Robin, and the 3H Lords.

What’s notable about Mar-Mar is that his Shadow Dragon interpretation is very well received over here in the west. Marth in Shadow Dragon is written as being more blunt, and not really questioning himself, his actions, or anything that happens around him. Notice how this is very much unique to SD, as the original Dark Dragon script as well as Mystery and New Mystery portray softer, more idealistic Mar-Mars. Heroes also takes after those portrayals. Yet the audience here likes the SD portrayal the best; the one most similar to Hector, Ephraim, Ike, and Alm.

Lyn is in an interesting situation; she’s very much in control and she’s not as unimportant in the story as some say, but it’s still very much Eliwood’s story. Which makes it all the more weird that Hector shines over poor Eli. Had Lyn not been many players first Waifu FE lord, Hector would no doubt be the most popular one. Compared to Hec, Eli is peaceseeking and idealistic, though not to the point of the more contentious lords, so he gets passed on compared to his friends, but not to the point where people think he’s badly written.

Chrom and Robin are in an interesting situation as well, as the story is Chrom’s and then gradually become’s Robin’s story as it nears the end. (Some say they stole it from Chrom, but I would say it’s like the spotlight slowly drifted from him to them) 

Chrom doesn’t have a notable flaw that gets him into danger, and is in control/has authority throughout a good deal of the campaign, but also very emotional and starts looking for peaceful solutions more often than say Hector, Ephraim, Ike, and Alm. Chrom tries to reason with Walhart, even, and those other four would never. So he’s kind of at an in between. Robin... is kind of hard to discern. They are supposed to be the character the player identifies with more since they are the avatar. We do see that they are in control as well and never makes to many mistakes. But they’re also batshit crazy for setting fleets on fire and fighting in a volcano. Having the player suspend their disbelief like that isn’t the best thing for identifying with a character, but it seems people like them enough for other reasons so indirect validation isn’t as prominent a thing with them.

Then come the 3H lords, and oh my, they do not fit into any sort of mold whatsoever; not perfectly anyway.

Byleth being a complete blank slate means they are truly in the middle on things; despite being the least customizable in appearance, they are the most avatar like of the FE avatars. The player can feel true, direct validation from the 3H cast as you get to pick which dialogue choices you want, and do other things at your own pace. (Unless you care about support points) As a character they’re not anything too special, but since they are a true avatar, they’re not seen as bad as say, Corrin, because the player can literally be who they want through Byleth and be validated by the story at the same time.

Edelgard, (the most discussed of the lords) is also unique. Never has a main character been so extreme in how they accomplish things. From what I’ve gathered from FE4, she’s Arvis like. And yet, she’s a protagonist in one possible outcome. She has the attractive qualities of protagonists like Hector and Ike, (being in control/having authority, speaking her mind) yet she’s contentious because unlike them her morality is very grey. The very definition of the ends justify the means. There’s a reason her title in Heroes is ‘The Future’. Because her goal and ambition is for the future, with no limit on what she’ll do to get there.

Dimitri is unique because he starts off as model prince, honor loving, sweet boy with bad hair. Then you gradually notice strange things about him, then Remire happens, then you learn he’s at the academy for revenge, then he goes feral at the Holy Tomb, and descends even further for 5 years, until he’s a revenge obsessed beast. He then begins his ascent back to being a proper king for his people (he’s more deserving of the title Restoration King than Ephraim, but that’s just me). There’s never been a main character in FE that falls so low and then climbs back up like that.

Claude himself is unique as well. Besides being the most well adjusted of the three lords, he’s actually pretty idealistic compared to them. He has big dreams and ambitions for Fodlan, and his main concerns are with the world at large, and his story doesn’t end with the major war among the 3 factions. He’s intelligent enough to not be blinded by emotion like Dimitri but also keen enough enough to realize that pure brute force isn’t the only option unlike with Edelgard. He’s very much a middle ground, but a middle ground that’s like a bell curve instead of a straight line, since Edie and Dima both fall hard and do messed up things, but are still not completely terrible people, whereas Claude is nowhere as extreme as they are and feels like a true balance.

If nothing else, 3 Houses achieves something very different with all of its main characters for once.

Anway, that’s kind of all I have. Sorry for the long post, but Fire Emblem is my #1 game series for a reason, so I get big into these passion analyses sometimes.

#fire emblem #fire emblem shadow dragon #fire emblem echoes #fire emblem blazing sword #fire emblem sacred stones #fire emblem path of radiance #fire emblem radiant dawn #fire emblem awakening #fire emblem fates #fire emblem three houses #marth #alm #celica #eliwood #lyn #hector #eirika #ephraim #ike #micaiah #chrom #robin #corrin #byleth #edelgard von hresvelg #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #claude von riegan

[cclkestis]

survival of the fittest

character(s): ruthless!connor x fem!reader, nines

word count: 3k+

warning(s): death, mention of blood, angst(?) - it’s a hunger games!au so you probably get the gist

a/n: OKAY SO this was supposed to be a drabble inspired by this (shoutout to @imaginovator and @the-darklings for that!!) and instead I may have gotten carried away just a smidge whoops - this isn't properly proofread or edited because I am sleepy but I hope I've at least attempted to do this idea justice and yeah enjoy my nonsense I guess?? Disclaimer that I also haven't read or seen thg in a couple of years so I apologise if I've made mistakes with things!!

–

That ominous, haunting boom shook the air around you not for the first time since that glaringly bright fake sun had risen in the sky.

Another one was dead. Another wasted life. Another chance for you to hope that maybe this time it was him.

If only you could let yourself believe that someone else might have managed to get the upper hand over him – how could they possibly hope to, when the other tribute from his district had been felled by his own hands. Did she anticipate him betraying her like that so early on, you wondered, unable to even begin imagining what it would be like to have that one person you might have been able to trust turn around and stab you in the back – literally.

The crack of a branch sounded below you, eyes snapping down to scan the ground for the source and desperately keeping your fingers crossed that it was an animal of some sorts.

It had been two days since you'd eaten something that wasn't berries or plants and you were well aware that you wouldn't last long if things continued that way. Neither of you would last long unless you could find something decent to eat.

In reality though, you were more hopeful that it was anything but another person or creature dead set on tearing you apart and leaving you for dead.

The softest of breaths left you in a sigh as a familiar figure passed below you, yet still you hesitated.

You had to be sure that it wasn't the bastard who'd been hunting you from the very beginning of the games. The brother of the one who held your heart, intent on doing whatever it might take to come out of this Hell as the victor.

He paused below you, so still that for a moment you might have imagined he'd fallen prey to some horrific trap of the arena if you'd simply stumbled across him in such a position.

And then those dark eyes you adored were turned upwards, finding you easily among the branches as if he knew exactly where you would be. You didn't understand how he was somehow always aware of where you were, but you weren't complaining. That uncanny ability of his had saved your life on more than one occasion.

Seeing him looking up at you like that, a distinct lack of emotion gracing his features, you'd never been happier to see him alive and in one piece – despite the blood that stained his hands a shining crimson.

Four days ago, the sight of that ugly red had you wanting to throw up. Now it brought you a strange sense of relief, which perhaps disgusted you more. It had been only days, and already you barely recognised yourself.

But at least you had Connor.

Hearing your name called at the reaping would forever be one of the worst moments of your life – however long your life might last for now – but it was nothing compared to knowing what was going to be quick to follow.

“I volunteer.”

You can't even remember whose name was drawn out of the other bowl now, only the pain that came with realising what Connor had done – and realising why he did it.

For you. It was always for you.

It had taken years for you growing up to finally start worming your way past the harsh, cold shell of a man that he was – although if Connor was being honest, there was something inexplicable about you that drew him in right from the very beginning.

A burning curiosity had been lit in him, a desire to figure out just how you were managing to tear down his carefully crafted defences without even trying. He wanted to see you happy and safe – things that were hard to come by in your district – no matter what that might cost.

He would go to the ends of the Earth for you – words that he'd spoken to you himself in one of the quiet moments you'd shared, with lips touching and breath shared between you. How you wished there was time for more of those moments.

Those softly spoken words and the threat they held were perhaps what made him the most dangerous person in the arena that had become your prison.

You weren't consciously aware of your decision to climb down from your perch in the branches, your only desire being to feel Connor's arms around you in that moment. And he didn't disappoint.

“You're alive.”

With your simple statement as one of his hands tangled in your hair and held you against his chest, it felt like an invisible weight was lifted from your shoulders. You hadn't wanted to acknowledge the fear that hearing the cannon had brought you – the fear that someone might have gotten the better of him.

“I told you – Nothing is going to happen to you. I'll always come back to you.”

He pulled back to study your features, a bloodied hand gently grasping your chin, smudges of red smearing in a stark contrast against your pale skin. Tilting your head up as he met your gaze, you were reminded how Connor was the one person who always saw right through you

You had no doubt he would easily be able to read all of the emotions you were trying so hard to lock away upon hearing those words from him.

They filled you with a hope that you desperately needed, a reassurance that you weren't alone in the terrifying scenario you'd been thrust into. Yet with them also came a looming sense of dread that couldn't be ignored.

You had no doubt that he meant what he said – that he intended to keep his promise of keeping you safe no matter what. If he succeeded in that, it would bring you both to an end you didn't want to think about.

There could only be one of you walking out of this torment alive. Neither of you had brought it up, but you both knew what was more than likely to happen if you two remained after all of the others were dead and gone.

An unspoken understanding of what Connor was planning to do. The idea of what he was willing to do for you was more painful than the thought of meeting your own death. But arguing with him would be pointless, you knew without a doubt that his stubbornness would always outweigh yours. He would restrain you so you wouldn't be able to stop him if it came to it, of that you also had no doubt.

You will be the one emerging on top, if he has anything to say about it. Never mind the fact that it wouldn’t really be you walking out at the end. How could you possibly hope to keep going after that, especially when you already felt like you'd lost yourself.

“(Name), look at me.”

The instruction was sharp, leaving you no choice but to obey as you forced yourself to really look at him. His usually blank expression had softened a little, but that softness didn't reach his eyes. You knew you should be more on guard, asking the important questions – like whose blood he had on his hands, or whether he'd found anything useful whilst you’d been split up.

You couldn't though, and Connor seemed to realise that you were on the verge of spiralling off into the thoughts plaguing your mind – any edge of gentleness was scrubbed from his face as his cool lips slammed against yours, the hand previously in your hair slipping down to wrap around your waist and pull you tighter to him.

Suddenly, you were able to forget just where you were. All you could think about was Connor and the safety that came with him as he stole your breath from you, actions relentless as he walked you backwards until rough bark scraped at your back.

Chest heaving when he finally pulled back just enough to let you breathe, you almost missed the next words that he spoke.

“Do I have your attention now?”

His question was serious, but you could've sworn there was some of that rarely seen amusement in the mix somewhere too. It was enough to jolt you back to the reality of what was going on.

“Did you find anything?”

Another question directed at you, this time one that you responded to with a shake of your head.

“No luck, did you- “

Silencing yourself the second Connor's head whipped around, you felt your blood run cold as voices echoed through the trees far too close for comfort.

“We need to move. Now.”

He didn't need to tell you twice. You'd only had one proper encounter with the Careers thus far and it had been a close call – the sound of a knife ripping through flesh was still all too fresh in your mind, and it wasn't something you wanted to hear again let alone be on the receiving end of.

Besides, the Careers meant that he was nearby. Nines. You were sure that couldn't possibly be his real name, but then again, the people in the richer districts had different ideas of normal names.

Not that what they called him mattered, at the end of the day. He was brutal, trained his whole life for this one moment. And he wasn't about to let you or his brother stand in his way – unfortunately for you, that wasn't just a fact. It was a promise. The icy words had plagued you from the first time you'd met him in the training room.

You'd never asked Connor how he and Nines had come to end up being raised in two completely different environments – admittedly, you were afraid to ask. There was a darkness that took over Connor’s perfect features any time his brother was even hinted at, giving you enough information to know that nothing good had happened between them in the past.

“You can't run forever, little rabbit – he can't protect you from all of us.”

That same icy voice was taunting, now, as you took off through the trees with Connor hot on your heels. There was no point in being quiet, all you could hope to do was outrun them until they got bored – for Nines and the Career pack, this truly was a game. You were fighting for your life – Connor was fighting for your life – whereas they were simply playing to win. For the honour. Killing meant nothing to them, not if it got them the glory they'd been training to earn all their lives.

A whistling sounded off to your left and was promptly followed by a dull thud and the glint of metal as the thrown knife lodged itself firmly into a tree just ahead of you. He wasn't just taunting you with his words now – you'd seen Nines working with knives in training.

He never missed.

Too late you realised that the knife was intended to force you right into their trap. Your terrified shriek was mingled with a snarl of anger from Connor as you crashed to the ground, ropes tangled around your legs and only seeming to tighten as you scrabbled at them with desperate fingers.

No. No, no, no.

You couldn't go down like this.

A weight slammed into you, your head connecting with the ground as you felt the knees pinning your shoulders and the edge of a blade on your neck, digging into the soft skin with enough pressure to draw a whimper from you.

“How disappointing. I really thought you were going to put up more of a fight- “

The girl – Alison? Anna? Amanda. – pressed down further with each word, leaving you certain that this was it for you until surprise flitted across her face a fraction of a second before she slumped forwards like a puppet with cut strings.

Another cannon shot sounded.

Silence surrounded you for a moment before her weight was pulled from you and a figure cast her aside as if she wasn't a living person just seconds before. Blinking, you felt yourself relax the smallest bit at the figure looming over you.

Until he crouched down in front of you, revealing the steely eyes that spoke of nothing but bad intentions.

“What a waste,” You realised then that he wasn't looking at you, but at the unmoving body beside you. “She didn't listen.” Almost lazily, those eyes were turned towards you, a hand casually reaching out to stroke across your cheek as he ignored your flinch. His fingers came away damp – with tears, you realised suddenly. “You two are mine.”

“Don't fucking touch her.”

You'd never heard Connor so livid before. He didn’t even need to raise his voice, the anger clear in the surprisingly low words. Trying to turn your head to seek him out, you were stopped as Nines grabbed a fistful of your hair and stopped you from moving anywhere.

“You're not really in a position to be making demands, brother – and I'm starting to lose interest in this chase we've had going on.”

The monster in front of you didn't look away as he spoke, seemingly amused by the way you shrunk back under his harsh gaze and how unsettled you were by his eerily calm approach to everything that had happened over the space of the last few minutes.

“Besides, I don't understand why you're so attached to her – don't you realise you'd be so much better off without her? Without such a…weakness.”

“Why don't you stop playing games and just get this over with.”

Light sparked off metal again in response to your words as another knife came too close for comfort – although this time it was to free you from the ropes binding you before you were hauled to your feet, Nines towering above you as he held you firmly in place.

“Tell me, (Name) – is it a brave rabbit who challenges the wolf, or a stupid one?”

Your reply – “It's one that's already dead.” – was on the tip of your tongue when a gurgling sound interrupted the conversation.

Connor was on his feet. The tribute who'd been holding him down was not so lucky. Of the other three in the Career pack, the closest one to him made a move towards him, stopped only by Nines lifting his free hand in a gesture to stop.

Stalking towards you both, Connor radiated an aura of danger that had every nerve in your body screaming at you to run. And how you would have run, if you weren't being forced to stay where you were by a grip far stronger than you could hope to fight.

As if reading your thoughts, Nines shoved you away from him and into the waiting arms of one of the other tributes as he stepped forwards to match Connor's movements, the two of them circling each other. The tension in the air was suddenly through the roof, watching these two predators coiled and ready to pounce.

But that wasn't the only change in the air. Something was wrong – something that you couldn't initially put your finger on. Connor felt it too, you realised, watching his every move and not missing the way his gaze flitted towards the sky and then towards you for the briefest of seconds. The flash of concern you registered on his face was not reassuring, but somehow you understood.

You both needed to get away from there fast.

It was then that Nines lunged, like a coiled spring being released. Your heart jumped to your throat, but Connor was just as fast – just as deadly, despite having nowhere near the same training that any of the Careers had.

Their collision was a distraction you could take advantage of – and you did just that. Throwing your head back, there was little time for you to be satisfied by the crunching of bone or the whoosh of breath you heard as you wrestled the knife from your captor's hands and wasted no time sinking it into his leg.

If only you had the chance to celebrate that small victory, but it would seem the Gamemakers had other plans as the world seemed to explode around you, electricity striking the ground with enough force to send you all flying in different directions.

You hit the ground for a second time, although this time it was much worse. There was a lingering charge in the air, building and warning of more danger to come. Your ears were ringing and eyes struggled to focus in the aftermath of the strike, but you did feel a hand on your wrist and another on your upper arm guiding to your feet and prompting you to move.

Connor must have avoided the worst of the blast, you realised, as you were urged to move. It was difficult, with your head spinning and legs shaking uncontrollably, but this might be your only chance to get away from those intent on seeing you dead.

Maybe the Gamemakers weren't quite ready to see either of you dead yet, which really wasn't a comfort. It no doubt meant there was worse to come.

A crackling filled the air behind you, the flickering light bouncing around the forest alerting you to the second strike without any need for looking back. Still, you glanced behind you, regretting it when you stumbled and your knees hit the ground.

Before you could catch a breath, you were jerked up again, hands clutching at Connor's forearms as you drew in a breath and found your voice.

“Connor, please – just give me a minute.”

You hated the way your voice sounded so pleading as you tried to blink away the spots clouding your vision.

“We can't afford to stop,”

A supporting arm wrapped around you, fuelling the sudden disgust that flooded your system at the contact and in response to the horror that would have floored you if he hadn't been holding most of your weight.

“I can't have my brother catching up to us again, can I now? But don't worry, little rabbit, we're going to have a lot of fun, you and I.”

–

Tagging: @connorshero @finding-jericho @wecanbe-heroes @deviantsupporter @connorfixinghistie @feminist-violinist @becomingrk800 @mynahx3 @liveloveandbekind (I may have forgotten some people who asked to be tagged because it's been a while, so please just yell at me if you want to be added <3)

#me: i'll just write a short drabble bc i really like the sound of this au #also me: 3k words later #i tried my best y'all #-\_(ツ)_/- #ruthless!connor x reader #dbh x reader #nines x reader #reader insert #ruthless!connor #nines #dbh #my writing #hunger games!au #WOW am I out of practice with writing #i'm gonna see all the mistakes once i reread this later #but anyway if nothing else this got my words going again!! #god it's been a hot minute since i've written something this long ooft

[ourmrsreynolds]

Jon, Arya and the Childhood BFF to Lovers Trope: Or, why everyone ships J0nsa

I had an argument with my sister which was precipitated by her quipping “nobody likes childhood BFFs” and “hot new guy is always endgame.” I almost flipped a table. I sat there and I seethed for 30 seconds and then I texted her back PIRATES OF THE MOTHERFUCKING CARIBBEAN and I gotta say I was p pleased with myself because yes, Elizabeth and Will end up together even though Jack Sparrow exists and is indisputably hot.

My sister and I are reading Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. This is a story that sets out to deconstruct the trope of “It was always gonna be you and me,” and while my sister can crow all day about how Hot New Guy Gets the Girl, I want to examine why it makes thematic and structural sense for that to be endgame. I think it comes down to the protagonist, who seldom ventures out of her comfort zone and has trouble letting herself want things. The combination of extremely deep feeling and almost pathological constraint is what makes her story so compelling—because in the course of the novel she learns to unabashedly want things, to reach out and take them: and what she wants is the sardonic lacrosse-playing jock, not the Boy Next Door she’s had a crush on since forever. One of the running gags in the background is her nine-year-old little sister inventing increasingly far-fetched reasons she should be allowed to have a puppy, because the kid “knows what she wants and will do anything it takes to get it.” The contrast with hyper-repressed Main Character could not be more pronounced. I ask you, who does Main Character remind you of? Not Arya, for a surety. This is one thousand percent Sansa.

After the finale aired Jenny Han and some other YA authors were dragged on twitter for openly shipping J0nsa, which, I mean (a) it was more “ugh fan fiction” and “ew incest” and “think of the children!!1!” than anything specific to J0nsa (b) of course she ships J0nsa. Of fucking COURSE. J0nsa is not a childhood BFFs ship, because the whole point is that Sansa’s character development leads her to see Jon in a new light. It’s above all about Sansa’s arc and the scales falling from Sansa’s eyes and there isn’t room for someone who has always seen the value in Jon, who has always loved him best. Because that would not be sufficiently Pride & Prejudice-y. Allow me to remind everyone that Pride & Prejudice is (1) the ur-Romance novel and (2) about people changing their minds and revising their initial judgments. Ffs it was originally titled “First Impressions.” This is the dominant narrative wrt romantic love, then—that one must fall in love, that it must be accompanied by major character development and reevaluation of preconceptions. This is the appeal of Enemies-to-Lovers.

Listen, I don’t ship a pairing because I think it’s endgame; I ship it because I think it’s interesting. What I’m trying to do here is formulate a theory as to why so many people find Jon & Sansa’s dynamic interesting, as compared to the small handful of us who find Jon & Arya’s dynamic interesting. I’m not engaging with the people who are anti-incest on principle (if you’re not into incest this is maybe not the fandom for you). I think it has a lot to do with the sort of romantic stories we elevate and validate. Gendrya is a wildly popular ship, and it falls very much in the Childhood BFFs mold, but I think we can all agree that Gendry & Arya are not a finished product—they have a lot of stuff to work on, and what shippers are interested in is the process of them hammering it out. Jon and Arya though? They’re already president of each other’s fan clubs, where’s the tension or drama in that? The obstacles to their relationship are external and plot-driven rather than internal and character-driven. And I say unto you: This is Arya’s creation myth: Before there was anything, there was Jon. That’s it that’s my kink that’s the kind of all-encompassing bond I’m about. The absolute trust they repose in each other gives me LIFE. I’ve seen some J0nsas parry the “she’s not even his favorite sister” argument with “because she’s his wife not his sister” and like ... ok valid ig but the whole reason I’m interested in Jon/Arya is because they set no boundaries on their love?? They are each other’s e v e r y t h i n g. I mean if you want to read about two strangers fumbling their way towards feelings that’s fine but do not pretend to me that J0nsa is some kind of underdog ship. It’s the most basic of ships -- it’s a Pride & Prejudice ship. (Gendrya otoh is Persuasion, which is the best Austen novel don’t @ me.) For in-universe reasons why J0nsa undercuts Jon and Arya’s unconditional love this is a great post, but I’m going to stick to the meta reasons people ship what they ship.

Here is the thing I will die mad about: Everybody takes childhood BFFs for this hegemonic trope and wouldn’t it be so eDgY to subvert it by making her fall for a HANDSOME STRANGER instead. Jfc have you seen the biggest young adult franchises of the past decade? They are: Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Mortal Instruments. Spoiler alert none of the heroines end up with their childhood bffs. I know the love triangle is hardly the point of The Hunger Games but facts are facts. It’s been 150 years and the Little Women fandom is still generating twice as much Jo/Laurie fic as Jo/Bhaer fic because Louisa May Alcott did Jo March dirty by not letting her marry the man she clearly belonged with. I just think the idea of there being someone you belong with, always have and always will, is ultimate #goals and this is the hill i will die on.

I look at Sansa and Arya’s starting points, when it comes to Jon, and however their arcs resolve in the end I cannot imagine how you could retcon J0nsa into some kind of lifelong attachment?? Here is Sansa in the wake of Lysa’s death, mulling her options:

there was nowhere for her to go. Winterfell was burned and desolate, Bran and Rickon dead and cold. Robb had been betrayed and murdered at the Twins, along with their lady mother. Tyrion had been put to death for killing Joffrey, and if she ever returned to King’s Landing the queen would have her head as well. The aunt she’d hoped would keep her safe had tried to murder her instead. Her uncle Edmure was a captive of the Freys, while her great-uncle the Blackfish was under siege at Riverrun. I have no place but here, Sansa thought miserably.

She lists Tyrion among her potential refuges, without once mentioning Jon! TYRION. Unreal. Even Brienne weighs the possibility of Sansa going North to Jon, and Brienne has literally never even met Sansa:

though all her siblings had been slain, Brienne knew that Sansa still had an uncle and a bastard half brother on the Wall

In case anyone requires reminding, Arya takes every possible opportunity to suggest “hey we could go to the Wall instead of wherever we’re going!”:

"I know where we could go," Arya said. She still had one brother left. Jon will want me, even if no one else does.

Maybe I should go to the Wall instead of Riverrun. Jon wouldn't care who I killed or whether I brushed my hair

One of these girls has been trying to get back to Jon for going on four books now. The other one thinks about Jon Arryn more times in her POVs than she thinks about Jon Snow (18 Arryns out of 27 total hits for “Jon” in all Sansa chapters). I’m not saying Sansa hasn’t grown and changed, or that her reunion with Jon might not evolve into something interesting; it’s just not a dynamic I personally care about. I’m definitely not saying that authors deserve to be publicly shamed for shipping fictional characters, but I think an author’s shipping preferences are revealing and shed light on their choices as far as which stories they choose to tell. I’m saying I ship Jon/Arya and I accept it’s not the ship dynamic that appeals to most people but here I am.

#jonrya #needleheart #otp: needlework for northerners

[fae-fucker]

Review: Shatter Me

by Tahereh Mafi

Juliette hasn’t touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal. As long as she doesn’t hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don’t fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war– and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she’s exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: BE A WEAPON. OR BE A WARRIOR.

*This review contains vague spoilers.*

I uh … I’m having a hard time figuring out where to even begin with this one, lads. I guess I’ll start with the absolute basics:

This book is not a dystopia. This is a superhero (supervillain?) origin story. I didn’t know this going in and it didn’t feel like it until the very end. With heavy-handed romance, heavy-handed writing, heavy-handed messages, and a plodding plot that I’m pretty sure sucked about 25 years out of my goddamn life.

*rubs hands together*

Well, with that in mind, let’s do this!

The “Writing”

Tahereh Mafi isn’t some backwater Harlequin mommy porn writer, nu-uh! She’s an Artiste, and as such, her art isn’t merely art, it’s Arté.

When a sentence could be five words, Mafi makes it a paragraph. When a metaphor could make sense, Mafi confuses your PLEBEIAN MIND with her MYSTIC WRITING POWERS, to the point where nothing fucking makes sense anymore and you’re just scratching your head, wondering how the fuck supposedly near-catatonic Juliette is able to come up with such convoluted comparisons. When other writers use pages to put words on them for people to read, Mafi puts maybe one word at the very top for four or five pages for the DRAMA of it all, except unlike when we all freaked out about Stephenie Meyer doing that, here it’s Artistic.

Jokes aside, this book is the epitome of everything I hate about purple prose. As someone who violently dislikes purple prose (because usually it’s done horribly by people who want to show off how many big words they know rather than evoke any sort of emotion), I knew going in that this book wouldn’t be for me, but I wasn’t expecting this.

Metaphors are long ang confusing, the prose and the rhythm are all off, the dialogue is atrocious and cartoonish, and Juliette’s thoughts are painfully obtuse despite her supposed “deep” personality. Except sometimes her thoughts are so convoluted and specific that it clashes with how dumb she is. Sometimes she thinks of the lackadaisical ennui of the uncaring sun, sometimes she compares her boyfriend’s eyes to buckets of water. It’s a huge, disjointed mess of word vomit.

People have defended Juliette’s narration as being a result of her solitary confinement, but those people’s opinions are bad and wrong and you shouldn’t listen to them, and I will explain to you why when I discuss Juliette’s “personality” in the character section of this review.

This book’s main “thing” is Juliette crossing out words and sentences, but it’s not consistent enough to actually mean anything or tell us anything about Juliette. It also happens in dialogue, which is fucking baffling. How do characters speak the words that are crossed out? Presumably they don’t, and I’m guessing that it’s supposed to represent what Juliette thinks people want to say but don’t, but then why the fuck would you put the crossed-out shit inside the quotes with the actual dialogue? Don’t!!!! Do that!!!! You’re clearly not equipped to ignore the rules of grammar yet, Mrs Mafi! You need to level up!!!

Sometimes, things that are implied to be true are crossed out. Sometimes, it’s the propaganda that Juliette knows is untrue that’s crossed out. With both the truth and the lies, Juliette’s thoughts vs her feelings, being crossed out without any rhyme or reason, we can never be entirely certain what the fuck the strikethroughs are supposed to represent.

If, for example, only the lies were crossed out, it would imply Juliette was aware that they’re lies and isn’t afraid to confront the truth. If only the truth was crossed out, then it would mean Juliette is in denial, knowing something is wrong but believing it anyway.

Instead, the strikethrough bullshit is just … there. What it means changes from instance to instance, and because of that, it loses all the impact and significance it could’ve had and ends up meaning nothing.

In short: the writing in this book is a whole-ass mess and nothing you say will convince me otherwise.

The Characters

Juliette’s mind is perfectly fine at all times, characters even praise her for being able to withstand literal psychological torture unlike all the other female WEAKLINGS in the facility. Her obnoxious inner monologues are just there for show, because Juliette is Deep and Troubled but in a sexy, dramatic way that doesn’t actually impact her as a person or her life at all. She doesn’t suffer from any mental illness or trauma that would’ve been brought on by 260+ days of nonstop psychological torture and years of emotional abuse and neglect.

How do I know that? Because she doesn’t believe any of the bullshit she spouts. It’s made perfectly clear that Juliette only thinks in metaphors because that’s just her obnoxious “personality”. Sometimes one of the Boys says something and she claims that her knees shatter or something similar. Except she doesn’t react as if they were, as if she felt the pain. She only thinks that because … Idk. It’s deep. Shut the fuck up.

I think her narration is supposed to imply that Juliette is smart, but that’s hilariously contrasted by her constant, and I mean fucking CONSTANT thirst and attraction to both Adam and Warner, the latter being especially jarring considering how she keeps saying she despises him and is disgusted by him.

She ogles and fawns over these men even when she’s in pain or in danger, even when they’re the ones inflicting the pain or threatening her. That’s how fucking horny she is, that’s where Mafi’s priorities lie.

She undermines her own protagonist by having Juliette constantly act like a horny schoolgirl instead of the broken and tortured person she should be after what she’s been through. After years of isolation and discrimination, after 260 days of solitary confinement, this girl still acts just like any other normal horny teenager, and it’s fucking awful to read, because it invalidates everything Juliette has been through and once again puts sex appeal and men higher on the priority list over an honest and realistic portrayal of trauma and isolation.

Speaking of sex appeal …

Warner. Oh Warner. What wonderful potential was lost. I think he’s genuinely interesting, or at least had the potential to be. He’s damaged and he’s troubled and he’s complex, despite how edgy he is. He’s hands-down the most interesting character in the book, and I weep for Mafi’s inability to fucking pace herself because that’s what’s absolutely ruined him for me. Let me explain:

I’m all for redemption arcs, alright? And Warner? He’s … salvageable. With some work and some atonement, I can totally see him becoming a complex anti-hero type. He’s clearly fucked up and the things he does are damaging him.

You know where Mafi fails? You know where she fucking destroys the guy?

She’s constantly describing him as hot. When he’s acting like a terrifying and abusive shithead, Juliette can’t help but think of how the anger makes his green eyes flash. When he takes off his shirt, Juliette claims how disgusted she is by the sight, and then in the same breath describes his perfectly sculpted chest in careful detail.

We’re supposed to find Warner sexy.

We’re supposed to reluctantly be attracted to him, just like Juliette, despite that and sometimes even because he’s a dangerous and abusive jackass.

There’s even a makeout session between Juliette and Warner where she’s complaining about how grossed out she is, but the kissing is described in more sexy and hot detail than any Adam makeout, and Juliette can’t help her attraction to Warner despite her believing he’d just killed the man she loves in cold blood.

Do you undersand my problem? If Warner was just a tragic villain and Juliette pitied him and didn’t feel any, and I mean ANY attraction to the guy, I would 100% accept him later trying to change sides to atone or to make up for the things he did. Aka a proper redemption arc.

But here, he’s already written as attractive to us. He’s already sexy and desireable and alluring. The narrative paints him in a good light by undermining the terrible things he does through constant descriptions of his appearance and Juliette’s obvious lust for him.

And you can say that “Woe, Juliette can’t control her attraction!” and you would still be a dumbass, because guess who can control Juliette’s attraction? Tahereh Mafi. It was Mafi’s conscious decision to make Juliette attracted to Warner, to write him this way as a sexy but dangerous man we’re supposed to root for and want to fix.

And that’s just gross. So whatever excuse or justification or explanation Warner’s actions get in lieu of an actual redemption arc, it won’t matter to me, because it’s already been undermined by how sexy he’s supposed to be despite his damage, and the terrible things he does are only there to make him more “mysterious” and his eventual love interest status more unexpected.

Mafi isn’t interested in writing a redemption arc, she just can’t write a morally ambiguous or mysterious love interest without taking it up to eleven and have him be a fucking unhinged dictator, but it’s ok because he’s still hot enough to bang!

I love redemption arcs. I hate abusers who are painted as attractive.

Adam exists. And what a pointless existence it is! He’s very obviously a decoy love interest, too nice and too basic to be endgame, and just vague and nonthreatening enough to have a sinister plan.

See, girls? Boys who protect you and care about you are actually evil! The boys who abuse you and terrify you are the ones who truly love you!

Kenji is very clearly designed to be quirky and snarky and for the Tumblr fangirls to fawn over to the point where he sticks out like a sore thumb among the rest of the cast. I didn’t like him and found him to be pretty boring without any deviation from the snarky flirty guy archetype.

There are a bunch of other characters that are spoilers and who don’t really matter, but I will say that there is a Black man who’s described as chocolate, so there.

Um. Women? I’m pretty sure the only named women we actually get to see on the page are two identical twins who are basically one entity and they show up in like the last chapter?

Before one of you shouts OMG THERE ARE MORE WOMEN IN THE LATER BOOKS, yeah, probably, I fucking hope so, but I’m not reviewing those books yet, I’m reviewing this one, and it’s one fucking giant sausage fest of hot dudes and faceless mooks.

Dems the fax.

The “Plot”

If you go into this expecting an exploration of the importance of human touch and how the lack of it might impact a person, you’re a dumbass and so am I for making that mistake.

If you’re expecting a gloomy but action-filled dystopia based on some more district/caste/personality oppression, you’re wrong again but at least justified because that’s what this is marketed as.

The stakes and conflict are … are they? Are we sure they even exist? Jury’s still out because I have no idea what Juliette wants aside from sucking Adam’s dick (and Warner’s sometimes). I know what she doesn’t want, I think (?), but I don’t know why she doesn’t want it aside from the “uwu i’m too good and pure and love people too much even tho they’ve shown me nothing but hatred and rejection” crap.

I’m honestly having a hard time figuring out what this book even is about. Supposedly the major plot development is Juliette realizing how powerful she is and how nobody will get to use her anymore, but the first thing happens in the very last chapter out of fucking nowhere, while the last thing doesn’t even matter because up until this point, Juliette has already been spending the entire book refusing to be used in the first place.

Oh, and about the first thing again, where Juliette must realize her power? It’s supposed to be this big epic moment for her at the end of the book, but we see her use her powers to throw around threats to get what she wants several times before that, on people she barely knows. She threatens Kenji just because he makes a few inappropriate comments about her, which is fucking baffling because she refused to even try to hurt Warner even though he’s been nothing but an asshole to her up until that point.

The moment Juliette gets her hands on a gun, she’s suddenly super empowered and has no problem spitting badass one-liners, even though she was a sad woobie pacifist up until that point and who couldn’t even IMAGINE hurting anyone, not even supposed monster Warner. The whole gun thing is weird and vaguely gross tbh, because Juliette genuinely seems to enjoy the power it gives her and I’m not into that.

On a technical level, this book is mostly Juliette being pushed around by men, feeling sorry for herself and clinging to morals that only serve to show how pure and good she is despite making no sense and being odd for someone in her position to have.

There are entire chapters of repeated revelations, where Juliette is sometimes literally dragged around from scene to scene by the hand, and she realizes the same thing over and over, seemingly forgetting it at the start of the chapter just to she can learn it again by the end of it: Warner is a meanie poopy-head who’s willing to hurt, kill, and torture other people for his own gain. Every time he shows this, Juliette acts shocked all over again.

This goes on for about half the book until shit suddenly takes a turn and the book becomes yet another Underground Teenage Rebellion Fighting to Take Down the Man drama, except this time the teenagers are mutants with cool superpowers.

It’s a complete tonal shift and it’s jarring as all heck, but at least there’s no more pretense about this being a dystopia because boy oh boy is it painful to watch Mafi struggle to worldbuild even the slightest concept for this superpowered angstfest.

The Worldbuilding

Important Proper Nouns galore. The book’s website (where I got the blurb) says that this book is “fresh” and “original”.

Yeah let’s uuh … Let’s investigate that statement.

The main evil guys are called the Reestablishment. That’s two letters away from Juliette fighting the establishment.

D-do I need to say more?

I honestly don’t know if I can. It’s like Mafi just sorta took all the other YA dystopian “quirks” and threw them all in without rhyme or reason.

Climate is fucked because of Big Corporate? Yeah. All animals are dead or mutated? Yup. Art and religion is deemed bad and terrible and banned for reasons? Throw that in there too, why not? They’re destroying all languages, English included? O-ok?

We never really … dwell on any of these things or figure out why they happened or how or even where. These things are always brought up together like some sort of checklist of all the bad things that the Reestablishment has done.

And I guess for a superhero story with “pulse-pounding” romance, it doesn’t really have to be that much more complicated, and it serves its function, but on Mafi’s website there’s boasting about how it has the worldbuilding of The Hunger Games and honey, you might become a more successful circus act than a writer because the level of contortion required to shove your head that far up your ass is frankly impressive.

The Wokeness

Warner is constantly described and called “crazy” and “insane” and a “madman”, so that’s FUN. Combined with the fact that this book doesn’t seem to have any idea about what solitary does to you and effectively trivializes literal torture, this isn’t looking good, lads.

There’s also, as I mentioned, no women aside from Juliette, and everything’s always about men and how they affect her and her life and how much they matter to her.

Just. Bad. The most progressive thing about this book is the fact that a WoC wrote it, and that’s about it.

The Quotes

I’m … so sorry for this. But you have to see them.

This Kills the Lady

Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too.

I always wonder about raindrops.

I wonder about how they’re always falling down, tripping over their own feet, breaking their legs and forgetting their parachutes as they tumble right out of the sky toward an uncertain end. It’s like someone is emptying their pockets over the earth and doesn’t seem to care where the contents fall, doesn’t seem to care that the raindrops burst when they hit the ground, that they shatter when they fall to the floor, that people curse the days the drops dare to tap on their doors.

I am a raindrop.

My parents emptied their pockets of me and left me to evaporate on a concrete slab.

Wot?

I catch the rose petals as they fall from my cheeks, as they float around the frame of my body, as they cover me in something that feels like the absence of courage.

Huh?

He shifts and my eyes shatter into thousands of pieces that ricochet around the room, capturing a million snapshots, a million moments in time. Flickering images faded with age, frozen thoughts hovering precariously in dead space, a whirlwind of memories that slice through my soul.

Come Again?

Summer is like a slow-cooker bringing everything in the world to a boil 1 degree at a time. It promises a million happy adjectives only to pour stench and sewage into your nose for dinner.

The Sun is a Rat Bastard – Poem by Juliette

I hate the lackadaisical ennui of a sun too preoccupied with itself to notice the infinite hours we spend in its presence. The sun is an arrogant thing, always leaving the world behind when it tires of us.

Juliette Contemplates Cannibalism

He whispers, “How are you?” and I want to kiss every beautiful beat of his heart.

He’s Not Wrong, I Guess

It’s the only reason Adam is staying with me – because Warner thinks Adam is a cardboard cutout of vanilla regurgitations.

Get You A Man Who Can Fix Years of Abuse and 260 Days of Solitary!

He’s kissing away the pain, the hurt, the years of self-loathing, the insecurities, the dashed hopes for a future I always pictured as obsolete.

*Sarah J Maas voice*

Realization is a pendulum the size of the moon. It won’t stop slamming into me.

I … What?

He’s a hot bath, a short breath, 5 days of summer pressed into 5 fingers writing stories on my body.

Juliette is a Loony Tunes Character

My eyelashes trip into my eyebrows; my jaw drops into my lap.

Kenji Is the Worst

He grins and hobbles forward. “You know, you’re pretty hot for a psycho chick.”

I … What? part 2

My jaw is dangling from my shoelace.

The Conclusion

Don’t waste your time on this. Trust me. There’s so many things I’ve left out for the sake of brevity, and I still ended up with a mile-long review.

It doesn’t work as a romance, it doesn’t work as a dystopia, and it certainly doesn’t work as a superhero origin story. Mostly because it tries to be all of these things at once and ends up being an overwritten mediocre mess.

For a time I felt vaguely invested and interested in knowing what happened in the next books, but that feeling has passed now and I couldn’t give less of a shit.

I would honestly be very interested in seeing a character like Warner be written properly and watch him try to redeem himself and atone. But that train has already left the station, and Mafi was not on it.

#book review #repost #shatter me