#and from a writing perspective the line plays off on a lot of bad tropes

[enneamage]

There’s been some chatter about fanfic and after a quick look around some tags that I don’t visit a lot, I’m back to thinking about the consequences of repression and fandom sexuality again. Below the cut I’m going to talk about the way that parts of the fandom tend to hide themselves from their own motivations and the ways that sexuality tends to bubble up when people loose their self-awareness to the obsession with being “good.”

I think it’s important to define my terms up front, so I’ll say that ‘kink’ does not have to be literally explicitly sexual to be kink, I’ll be using it from here on as an umbrella term for highly intimate power dynamics and sensuality related to those dynamics. It’s like when a dominatrix walks someone like a dog, it’s not sex but something is clearly going on that’s creating a mood, and the people involved (and watching) are getting something out of it.

I’ll also throw out a 'not all fic that involves these tropes is this way' disclaimer as well, since being black-and-white about what is and isn’t allowed is what got us here to begin with. Some of this stuff comes down to things being greater than the sum of their parts and coming to intuition-based conclusions, which for a while I was putting on the back shelf because of how hard stuff like this is to talk about, but in light of some new developments I think it’s worth trying to explain my thinking.  

I think that there are fic tropes around SBI that have gone on for a while now that are over the line into kink territory. Back when Tommy was younger and the family dynamic was more of a meme playing out in real time, having him be the young adoptee made sense for plot reasons. He was projected on because he was the ‘protagonist’ as well as the same age as the audience, so he was the most convenient seat to sit in as a viewer/reader. What I wasn’t prepared for or expecting is the places where things haven’t changed over the years, or the way that time has flowed backwards for some people into even more extreme ‘caregiver’ situations. This has made me re-think some things that I’ve seen over time as being less coincidental than I thought, and becoming a bit concerned about the notorious ‘platonic’ blind spot in the fandom.

Honestly, I’ve been under the impression that people have been sublimating their wants for a while now when it came to SBI. I know that people argue all the time about ‘platonic’ physical affection but in the brief trips I’ve made into the ao3 tag there’s a suspiciously strong drive to get them to either coo over each other, be possessive of each other, sleep in the same bed or just touch each other a lot. I’ve seen short fics about animal hybrids being opportunities to engage in sensuality that people don’t have to feel guilty about writing because there’s no human equivalent so you can just. Rub someone. For a really long time. A lot of the above comes off as pre-sexual behavior for people who know what to look for, even though you could lawyer it into being fine from a technical perspective.

Over time there’s been a building, fairly motivated lack of self-awareness around what is and isn’t above board. I think this is a cycle that comes up because people want to make or see something, but don’t want to feel guilty or “bad’ or stop making it, so they defend it morally to avoid being attacked morally. “I don’t think they would do that, this is kind of incesty” becomes “Let men/families be Soft, you’re the weirdo for thinking this is weird.” People don’t have a developed sense of what feelings are on the sexuality spectrum and are discouraged from figuring them out because it would make them boundary-breaking sexualisers if it turned out that that’s what their motive was. Nobody wants to be labeled an evil pervert so people shut down and withdraw into whatever team will back them up while still getting what they want.

This community actually has a perfect example of what this lack of self-awareness eventually creates: Fellas I’m doing it, I’m talking about ‘mcyt tickle.’

The mcyt tickle community is a group that swears up and down that they are not sexual and they don’t want anything to do with shippers and they’re purely, exclusively 'platonic.' This community is focused on tickle dynamics, tickle content and tickle fic, and almost everyone in the community claims to be against shipping and very against ‘sexualization.’ People from minors to legal adults are all gathered in this space and sharing content that they are all really, really into. This space is a perfect mini-example of what scares me the most when a community is afraid to self-reflect, because I’ve been keeping loose tabs on them for a while with a question in mind:

How the hell did they get their hands on the language and habits of the tickle fetish community? And how did it ever get this big?

This group uses the terms Lee, Ler and switch, all of which are terms for what ‘role’ a person plays in the fic. These are lifted from the fetish scene, whether they know it or not. Some of them even avoid the word tickle, which is another tell because people who have fetishes will sometimes avoid even using the word for it since it’s so intense for them. Sometimes fetishes are so strong and innate that they completely replace the sex drive with the desire for the thing or scenario, so I would even call into question when people insist that they’re ‘not into anything except tickling,’ because that may well be the issue.

Somewhere along the way at least someone lied by omission, either to themselves or to somebody else, and it spread to people who range from minors to adults, all of whom swear that they stand completely against ‘sexualization’ and would never do such a thing. I do genuinely believe that at least some people in that community aren’t aware that they’re producing things in the style of fetish content, or that fetish doesn’t have to have anything to do with ‘normal’ sexual activity because that’s what makes it kink/a fetish—it’s a non-standard expression of sensuality that people have a fixation on. Kink is more than literal sex, and that’s where things get messy.

Back to “Family Dynamics,” you can imagine where I’m going with this. I think that the rein of the SBI family dynamic has accidentally installed a subsection of the fandom with a fixation on Tommy being the child character and Wilbur/Phil/Techno being caregiver characters in a way that if left unchecked starts to look like “Caregiver” / “Little” dynamics, but made even more literal by aging him down to whatever they see fit. Again, this isn’t everyone, but it’s enough people to notice by now, and you can imagine where the discomfort comes from when it’s done on main. The petplay community also get a shoutout if we’re covering all the bases, since pet shifter / “X animal hybrid" Tommy is also a high traffic concept, and he gets the caregiver/possessiveness treatment in that context as well.

I have been online for years, I know kink dialogue when I see it. Corny Dom voice can be heard from miles away. Mcyt tickle has it with fetish sprinkles, corny Dadbur can have it, dark SBI can tend toward it in romance novel level possessiveness, the menacingly or playfully possessive petname language is clear as day when it shows up. It’s designed to put emphasis on the possessive power gap and make the small one feel smaller and the big one feel bigger, that’s the payoff, that’s the intimacy that puts it over the line.

Caregiver little/pet dynamics are the millennial and zoomer kink relationship styles. I know you’ve seen those corny discord kitten memes, this is literally it. This is the call of the power dynamic, this is the compulsion, the fixation on ‘softness’ and intimacy and the contrasting power dynamic of being really really tiny and having intense dominant caregiver attention solely on them and their vulnerable littleness. It’s a dynamic based on something real (child or pet,) but it’s a caricature, and it’s a means to an end to create a power dynamic/effect to satisfy a need. It might not need to be literally sexual, but that fixation is coming from somewhere and feeding something.

I want to be clear that I’m not angry about this as much as I am aware of how awkward this position is for people. It’s obvious that these spaces have guilted people out of very normal feelings like age-typical crushes and attraction to people who it would be perfectly normal to find attractive. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of this content is to cope with the fact that people have been guilted into repressing more ‘normal’ sexual feelings into “enthusiasm about family dynamics.” I also know that not everyone is hiding something and some people really are here for gen fic, but it’s becoming clearer and clearer that not everyone has the tools to be honest with themselves or others.

There’s a massive consent issue that comes into play when people don’t know that what they’re looking at or participating in has crossed over into kink. Pushing the idea that some of this stuff is not only a morally safe thing but the only morally safe thing is coercive in ways that makes me nervous. I’ve seen people condemn shipping in the name of boundaries and then turn around to write blatant kink, the cognitive dissonance is huge, and I’m worried for the younger people who could be guilted into or fall for it because they also have a very literal understanding of sexuality.

I don’t think that these people deserve to get the firing squad for having wandered in this direction, especially if they didn’t really understand what they were doing, but I think it’s really important that people are allowed to talk about this stuff to get that self-awareness, otherwise we get another hiding-in-plain-sight fetish community situation. The issue is, people are afraid of questioning their own motivations because of how harsh the fandom can be, so they get in the habit of hiding from each other and themselves and keeping certain trends in motion. Still, I think it’s worth pointing out that this community is prone to self-deception and is very defensive in certain areas because of how much fear and shame exists around the topic of sexualization.

#CW: sexualization of a minor that is often a self insert in fiction but is also very much another living human guy #I have no clue how to tag for this one honestly #but there's some shit in here #Mageessay #The sfw fic situation tag

[mineshaft-birdie]

“I know you didn’t mean it.” Isn’t a good line. It just isn’t.

Edited to add tags:

#within the context of muriel and lucio's relationship it's really fucked up#in muriel's route#everything lucio does is written as intentional#every person he kills has a purpose#to aid his rise to power#writing muriel's enslavement off as an oopsie is so bad#like so so bad#Lucio may be a fool but he isn't a dumbass#hes 40 years old ffs#and from a writing perspective the line plays off on a lot of bad tropes#by not having muriel condemn what lucio did to him the devs are essentially having muriel forgive him#it's a cop out plain and simple

#within the context of muriel and lucio's relationship it's really fucked up #in muriel's route #everything lucio does is written as intentional #every person he kills has a purpose #to aid his rise to power #writing muriel's enslavement off as an oopsie is so bad #like so so bad #Lucio may be a fool but he isn't a dumbass #hes 40 years old ffs #and from a writing perspective the line plays off on a lot of bad tropes #by not having muriel condemn what lucio did to him the devs are essentially having muriel forgive him #it's a cop out plain and simple #Edit: it's the audacity for me #muriel #the arcana #muriel discourse #the arcana game

[captnjacksparrow]

I just got into the fandom and I love it so much. However, there are parts where I just cringe. I’m going to be completely honest when I say I can’t see SS being a thing, a healthy one at that. A rumor said that Sasuke always had feelings for Sakura but he didn’t know how to show them because hatred blinded him. I just... find it utterly bullshit. Hell, even I do ship narusasu, I tried to be open minded and not fall too far off canon or the characters. I don’t understand how Sasuke had those feelings for her when all he did was shown the opposite and it felt genuine. He seem always annoyed and pushes her away. She kept forcing her feelings on him when he makes it clear that he’s not interested. I don’t hate the ship because it’s not my ship but because it’s extremely toxic. It feels one-sided (Sakura’s side) more than anything and it’s makes it hard to believe he had those feelings for her. I mean, on the second episode of season five, she confessed and poured out her heart and he blew it off. I cringed hard and was beyond disappointed because she’s making it about herself. That’s literally how I feel about their damn “relationship”. She made it about her and her only. When he’s hurting, it’s about her. It’s so annoying and it makes me see how self-centered Sakura. When she said she understood Sasuke, I wanted to scream (I nearly did but my family is sleeping and I don’t need a lecture.) She doesn’t know Jackshit about Sasuke besides he’s the only survivor of his decease clan, he’s a loner who cares only about himself, and he’s attractive. She’s just like every other fangirl expect she’s on his team. I’m trying my best not to hate her but Damn she’s really pushing it. Anything that annoyed me was that she made it seem like they were dating, again making it about herself and her feelings. She sent Naruto to get Sasuke for her benefits, so she can keep him. Again, disregarding Sasuke’s feelings and what he wanted. Naruto should’ve said “I’ll bring him back because HE wants too, to keep HIM safe, not for you.” I just can’t with this ship. I’m still wondering why the hell is it even a thing? Also find it beyond pitiful how she stayed with Sasuke in Boruto when he left for 12-13 years?! No note. No checking up. Nothing. Hell, Sarada doesn’t know how her own father looks like or the truth of her mother. Both of them were miserable and I find it absolutely ridiculous when SS shippers still say “they’re in love” or they’re OTP. If that’s what true love looks like (good thing it’s not), then I’d die single. I can’t be the only one who thinks this ship is just as bad as Harley Quinn x Joker.

First off, Thanks for this lovely ask @larrycherry04 ❤️❤️❤️❤️ I've always wanted to write about this and your ask is the perfect timing.

Disclaimer: SS shippers, Sakura fans!!! Don’t read  this post!!

Me being an SNS shipper, I am just going to write this from a non-SNS perspective. Meaning, I am going to consider Naruto and Sasuke are just friends or rivals. 

Bear with my lengthy answer.

Where do I even begin?

A rumor said that Sasuke always had feelings for Sakura but he didn’t know how to show them because hatred blinded him.

I think this rumor is from a light novel called Akatsuki Hiden or whatever shit. But for me, it looks like a pathetic attempt to convince those horny women shippers who would pay any money to read a romance which mirrors their own love life where they desire an ‘unreachable & handsome’ man who has this ‘cool & overbearing’ aura and carries this ‘bad boy badass’ vibe. They would do anything to get the attention from this boy. Until this point is where the reality ends. 

What they really wants to happen and fantasize is somehow that handsome man, one day, will look only them and recognize their love and becomes a ‘soft’ guy who would bring the heavens for them and treats her like a princess. That fantasy led them to buy these novels and believe everything while completely disregarding the canon material. And those novels are aimed at these type of women.

You must have been wondering now, ‘I have seen these type of shit somewhere’!!!!!

That’s right.

50 Shades of Grey, Twilight, Beauty and the Beast, 100′s of K-Drama, C-Drama follow this shit romance trope and it’s regrettably fucking popular. 

In other words, Don’t believe anything apart from the canonic resources. 

Let’s dissect the canon materials about SS.

TEAM 7 

This is how it all started

Does anyone see anything positive here???? 

Well, I am not.

Sakura wanted to impress Sasuke. Since, Naruto always picks fight with Sasuke, she badmouthed Naruto in the hopes that Sasuke will recognize some common ground with her which may develop into a friendship. But she shot her own foot. 

[Regardless, I hated her here and she never redeemed herself, for her being completely insensitive & oblivious towards Sasuke’s life, the boy she loves]

Technically, Sasuke should have said ‘You’re Annoying’ towards Naruto for kissing him before the class and tying him up later. Here, Sakura is simply badmouthing another guy. He, somehow, find this very annoying than anything Naruto did earlier. 

Sasuke always had feelings for Sakura but he didn’t know how to show them because hatred blinded him.

Am definitely not seeing any feelings here.  

ZABUZA ARC

Alright, much later, somehow Sasuke started to integrate into team 7 and started to see them as a Family. No denial here. He started to care about everyone in his team at some point. Which was evident from the way he thought to himself, ‘That was Sakura’s voice... What is Kakashi doing?’

But does it means he hopelessly fell in love with her??? Nope. 

It’s just a team camaraderie where he was worried about his teammate. If he has special feelings towards her, he should have said ‘I must go save Sakura’ or something along the line. 

But, later in that episode, he went on to die for Naruto and even at his dying moments he didn’t think about Sakura or Team 7. It was all about someone else.

Even seconds before falling into Naruto’s arms, Sasuke was smiling with no regrets. 

It was funny very later that after he got up from his temporary death, rather than consoling her like ‘Sakura, Don’t cry. Am alright’ or anything, he was asking ‘Where’s Naruto?’. LOL.

Even much later, when Sakura was asking him about a date, he bluntly said ‘I refuse’.

So, you’re telling me, throughout this arc, a boy blinded with hatred can able to pout, play childish games, train and die for a boy but when it comes to Sakura he can’t show his feelings???

Sorry, I don’t see romance here. Not in this arc.

Whether you agree or not, every parent has their favorite child, every child has their favorite parent. Even within your family, you always have a special person.

For Sasuke, Itachi was that person in his real family. Sakura was not that person in his Team 7 family. It was Naruto.

CHUNIN EXAMS ARC

This arc is where those SS shippers celebrates a lot and I know why. Remember earlier I talked about that shitty 50 Shades of Grey romantic trope??? The following scene vaguely falls under that pattern.

A guy loses his control because of a cursed seal and beats up the guys who hurt one of his teammates which happens to be a girl and calms down after seeing the girl. 

That Infamous back hug. 

I understand why SS people lose their mind with that scene. And I don’t blame them. I am going to throw their own proof at them.

So, this First databook, tells us that he finally sees both Naruto and Sakura as comrades and his heart softens from the path of revenge, a little bit.

Definitely, Sakura’s tears or love towards him stopped his rampage. But nothing says about whether Sasuke loves her back.  

Much later, Sasuke also stops his cursed seal on his own after thinking about worried Sakura and a screaming Naruto (Who don’t know about this seal thingy at that time). 

Well, whatever. That databook has another funny fact, that too in the same page. 

LOL. Weird!!!! This accidental kiss unravels Sasuke’s heart ❤️❤️???? 🤣🤣🤣

So, influencing Sasuke’s heart can be attributed to both his teammates,according to this databook. Atleast upto this arc. There are no special feelings for Sakura alone, guys. 

Proof?

If Sasuke really considers her in a romantic light (this is after that back hug), he doesn’t have to do this at all. Believe me, Love is all about subconsciously or purposefully enjoying or feeling little touches. Those touches can be through eyes, memories or physical. Sakura is delighted with his touch because she loves him but Sasuke just see her as a comrade and keeping his distance but this time very politely.

If Kishi really likes these couple, he doesn’t have to make this scene at all. It’s not just this one instance, he rejected her twice very bluntly before this saying ‘Don’t cling to me!!!’, ‘Sakura, you’re heavy!!!’. 

If you say her back hug is a token of romance, then I can say ‘this’ kiss is also a token of romance. You can’t ignore one while keeping the other.

Anyways, at the end of the arc, Orochimaru is the best judge to identify who can change Sasuke’s heart. And that person is not Sakura.

DEPARTURE

she confessed and poured out her heart and he blew it off. I cringed hard and was beyond disappointed because she’s making it about herself. That’s literally how I feel about their damn “relationship”. She made it about her and her only. When he’s hurting, it’s about her. It’s so annoying and it makes me see how self-centered Sakura. When she said she understood Sasuke, I wanted to scream (I nearly did but my family is sleeping and I don’t need a lecture.) She doesn’t know Jackshit about Sasuke besides he’s the only survivor of his decease clan, he’s a loner who cares only about himself, and he’s attractive.

You know what, Larry??? You are 1000% right. 

But, atleast, I thought she was genuine in the first part of the proposal, like saying ‘Revenge is not good’.....bla bla.. Because, Revenge will never satisfy a person completely and I agree. Then she took a 180 degree by saying ‘Take me with you, Sasuke-Kun. I’ll make you happy’. This is where I lost it entirely. ‘Alright Bitch, So you really don’t care about his revenge or health. As long as you have the chance to get inside his pants, you are okay with it. So you are okay with Sasuke going to Orochimaru as long as you are with him..... Fucking Shit!!!!’  This is not okay at all. 

How did Sasuke respond?

“Why should I have to tell you anything”

“I’m telling you to keep your nose out of my business”

“Stop bothering me over everything I do”

Ummm..... where I come from, this screams ‘Irritation’ to me. Added to it, throughout the whole conversation he never saw her face. There was evidently no pain or anything from his face. On top the cake, here comes the cherry

“You really are...annoying”

This is where he saw her face throughout that painful confession before knocking her out. Umm... When you love someone or atleast feel for someone, you will look in their eyes and speak some farewell words before you leave. Or atleast show some pain??? There’s visibly nothing from Sasuke’s face. 

Alright, I know what SS wankers will pull out here. That Databook 2 with some vague words. I am going to throw this at them. 

Again, like I acknowledged before, he considers her as a comrade and part of a family. So, her existence also eased his loneliness. But you have to look at the word choice here. “The one that filled his lonely existence was Sakura”. It’s not the ‘Only’ person. Before he left he said ‘Thanks’. Meaning, Thanks for all these days. That’s all between us. 

This piece was about the Team 7 picture. So he acknowledges, he was not alone during his genin days because of his companions and Kakashi (so it’s not just Sakura to ease his loneliness). Whatever he said to Sakura was real. 

So can we safely confirm “You’re annoying” is real????

But what’s really interesting is the way Sasuke projects himself before Naruto. I am going to refrain myself from attaching all those rollercoaster of emotions flowed throughout the fight in VoTE 1. Otherwise, it will become an SNS post. 

However, this particular scene caught my attention.

Ummm.... Initially Sasuke walks without looking at Naruto. Then he looks back and answers him. 

Naruto was pretty much asking the same question as Sakura. “Why does it come to this?”

But Sasuke pauses and surprised for a moment and asks him pretty much “Why do you care about me?”

Why couldn’t Sasuke do the same with Sakura???? Kishi can pretty much make a panel or two rather than making some insulting panels.

Anyways, If they throw the databook, then I can also throw the same.

Alright, can someone explain the highlighted sentence for me???? Because I want to confirm whether I have a blurry vision.

Here, Sasuke is trying to punctuate Naruto as a different person from the rest of his companions. ‘his companions as well as that with Naruto’, I mean, Come on!!!! Naruto is also one of your companions along with Sakura. Why differentiate????

‘The village, companions, Naruto,....’ . Again....He is differentiating his home (village), companions (his friends), and Naruto. So who is Naruto for him? What is the need to make exception for Naruto? It’s very clear he is placing Naruto at a high pedestal for some unknown reasons.

Before this Databook dissection, remember I said something about saying Goodbye, ‘ When you love someone or at least feel for someone, you will look into that person’s eyes and speak some farewell words before you leave‘

Sasuke is doing exactly that here in this scene without saying anything.

Am sorry SS shippers, you can scream all you want about Sasuke knocked her out and left her on the bench. But there was no emotional distraught when he left her. Sasuke seemingly spent a longer time staring at Naruto than looking at Sakura when she confessed. 

OROCHIMARU HIDEOUT

Well, there is nothing I can say about here for SS. He pretty much saw her and said, “Sakura, huh?”.. And that’s all. He didn’t give two shits about her. 

His attention was completely on someone else. 

UNDER THE BRIDGE

She sent Naruto to get Sasuke for her benefits, so she can keep him. Again, disregarding Sasuke’s feelings and what he wanted. Naruto should’ve said “I’ll bring him back because HE wants too, to keep HIM safe, not for you.”

Naruto pretty much said the same thing in this arc, Larry. Naruto, in part 1, was happy for Sakura feeling the same about Sasuke as him, that is ‘To bring him back’. And also sad that his crush really loves someone else. But after Sakura gave up on Sasuke and faking her confession, Naruto decided, ‘Alright, I want to save him personally. I don’t care about our promise anymore”. 

This is where, SS ship goes into a crazy ride and it’s not a positive one.

Sasuke was on a rampage. He lost the ability to differentiate between his friends and foes. He stabbed Karin. And when he find her alive, he was about to Chidori her. 

And then comes the pink princess, full of lies and deceit. And Sasuke being impatient and disgusted with her lies, he does this

Well, in part 1, she had a degree of power to change his heart. But not here. He, instead, got riled up more and even tried to kill her without a warning and that too by not looking at her face. Pathetic!!!!

This scene screams ‘Trust issues’ from both sides. 

Did it stop here???

Fucking Shit!!!!!! Is there any people who still ship this nonsense?. If you are a Sakura fan, you should hate her for the lack of trust and backstabbing the person she loves, 

If you are a Sasuke fan, errrrmmm.....I have nothing to say. You know what to do. 

There is nothing positive here, that can make me ship them. He is killing her like a Mosquito.

If you truly loved someone in the past, even in your darkest moments, you will be honest and you cannot fake before that person.   

Proof??

Here, Sasuke had a clear resolve to kill his brother, Itachi. He lived for this moment for about 8 years and immersed himself in Darkness for 3 years with Orochimaru. He could have run away, dodge or look away from Itachi. But Sasuke simply couldn’t!!! You know why?? Sasuke loved Itachi once more than anything in this world. At this moment, he is letting all those defense loose and embracing the moment and see what Itachi was about to do. Because somewhere in his heart he trusts Itachi. 

But killing Sakura doesn’t make Sasuke feel anything. She is just another victim like Danzo or Karin or all those Samurais or a fucking mosquito!!!!

So you are telling me that Sasuke had feelings for her but kept it hidden all along and still tried to kill her like a pest???

Give me a fucking break!!!!

And you all know, who changed Sasuke’s heart here in this scene. It was not Sakura. There’s absolutely no reason for Sasuke to listen to that person and what’s more, Sasuke even made a promise (despite being in darkness, he had it in his heart to listen to that person) to destroy Konoha only after killing that person .. 

WAR ARC

Well, this is the arc where Sakura behaves like a rabid dog on heat waiting for Sasuke and shamelessly trying to wag her tails. But Sasuke didn’t give two shits about her, not once or twice but multiple times.

MOMENT 1

An explosion was about to kill the whole shinobi alliance and this dude wants to save Jugo, his companion and Naruto, the person who will challenge his Revolution, his rival and the one whom he wants to kill. Why only Naruto??? Why not Naruto and Sakura???

Pink cherry Queen doesn’t even crossed Sasuke’s mind.  Because he already threw her away in part 1. 

MOMENT 2

Alright Bitch!!! The entire shinobi alliance was dying on the other side of the battlefield. And this asshole is doing a clownshow before Madara just to get inside Sasuke’s pants????

I mean, Come On!!!! 

Well, if Sasuke truly likes her, he should be the one to have catched her or atleast should have asked her, ‘are you alright??’ 

I am sorry, where are the romantic feelings???

MOMENT 3

ROFLLLL🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

For the first time, Kishimoto is trolling those Sakutards through Sasuke’s words, what we, readers were right about all along. He is calling her useless here. And still these fake feminazis trying to ship her with him???

Don’t you guys have any self respect??? If so, this should be the moment to jump out of this trash ship.

MOMENT 4

Geez!!! You are still on this ship????? 

He clearly doesn’t want to save her at all. The hawk can clearly lift 3 people. Sasuke is not even making an effort here. 

And you are still yapping that he is blinded by darkness??? 

MOMENT 5

This is the moment SS calls it as ‘eyesmex’... While in reality, he was just looking at her and silently thanking her for helping him out. Do you know what is a real ‘eyesmex’??? I will attach it at the end.

If you guys pull this as true love, then he should have stayed in the same love till the end. But Sasuke has other ideas. 

This is the one of the funniest thing in this arc. LOLLLLL

Instead of being relieved that Sakura was saved, Sasuke was wondering about Kakashi’s Susanoo.....and Sharingan. 

Do people still think he cares about her????

MOMENT 6

Am cackling here, while dissecting the sorry state of this ship guys 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣!!!! If something good happens to me because of SS , it’s just the way you guys are making me laugh by making a clown out of yourself!!!!

Do you guys know something? There was a man named Itachi. Before massacring his clan, the very first person he killed was his ‘supposed’ Girlfriend, named Izumi. I wouldn’t say Itachi loved her like a lover boy. It was just one sided on her part. He just talks to her when he finds a spare time and considers her a good friend. 

Do you know how he killed her? 

By putting her in a ‘Tsukuyomi’. And what kind of Tsukuyomi, you ask?

Can you see how he fulfilled her dreams gracefully before he was going to kill her???

Why didn’t Sasuke do this???? Why particularly select a murdering genjutsu????

MOMENT 7

He said it, finally.

He don’t love her at all. There was no hidden feelings. He admitted from his own mouth. 

One day later, after the final VoTE battle ends.... After exchanging some intense feelings and even crying tears of happiness with Naruto....

Sasuke tells Sakura, ‘Sorry’....

Ummm.... That’s all???

All those negative shits happened before cannot be solved by just simply saying ‘Sorry’ and ‘Thank you’. If someone has an ounce of self-respect, they should know this is not OKAY at all...🙅🏻‍♀️🙅🏻‍♀️🙅🏻‍♀️🙅🏻‍♀️

Am Sorry, but Sasuke was just being politely blunt, kind of insincere towards Sakura and turned his attention somewhere else in a matter of minutes. He was not even bothered by Sakura’s tears here. Instead staring at someone on his left. Remember I talked about touching the person physically and visually?

Sasuke is subconsciously or purposefully touching someone on his left through his eyes. Definitely it’s not Sakura. You know who it is. Remember SStards’ infamous ‘eyesmex’... I seriously believe this is a perfect example of ‘eyesmex’.

All these intense looks and feeling pain still doesn’t serve Sakura, even after pulled out of darkness. If there is a moment, where SS wants to shine, then this is where it should be. He should have told her, how he missed her all along, how he felt about hurting her, should have wiped her tears and some corny shit. But instead, Sasuke went for a long ass monologue for his friend and talking about sharing his pain. 

What about your kween’s pain???? 

You don’t have to ship SNS. But you should know where Sasuke’s priorities are. 

It’s not Sakura. 

Sasuke said ‘Sorry’ to Karin too. ‘Thank you’ to Kakashi as well. 

And what’s even more pathetic is, still Sakura wants to get inside Sasuke’s pants by accompanying him. Bitch, you can help your village, console your best friend Ino who lost her father, try to surpass Tsunade, improve your skills or whatever... Why bother him???

So, if you really think ‘Thank you’ as a token of love, then I can’t help it but term Sakura as a rabid dog who waits for her master to come home and throw some bones whenever he finds time. Your standards for a romantic love is piss poor and you will suffer just like Sakura in Boruto with just emptiness. All Sasuke did was poke her forehead just like Itachi which symbolizes keeping someone at a distance. He also said the same words to her just like Itachi said to him many times ‘Mata kondo da’ meaning ‘Maybe next time’. And we all knew that next time never came for Sasuke. 

Now all we see is a Sasuke as an absentee father in Boruto for which I don’t blame him. He was never a marriage material in the first place. Sakura and the Manga Editors forced him and she is paying for it. 

Hell, Sarada doesn’t know how her own father looks like or the truth of her mother. Both of them were miserable and I find it absolutely ridiculous when SS shippers still say “they’re in love” or they’re OTP.

All I want to say to SS shippers is, Your Ship Has Sailed Already. You cannot expect Sasuke to go lovey dovey towards Sakura with a 12 year old daughter around and for fuck’s sake, this is not a romance manga, it’s a battle manga. So stop dreaming about this kind of non-existential romance and pull yourself altogether.

#naruto analysis #ask #sasunaru #sasunarusasu #anti sakura #anti sasusaku

[jennagrinsoverml]

ML Fic Recs - Ladynoir

I think most readers can appreciate a good rec list, but it’s often the same fics that I see recced again and again. I get why they’re recced - they’re amazing! But I want help finding fic I haven’t already read. So I decided to be the change I want to see in the world. The rule: the fic must have less than a thousand kudos on AO3 (but I’m trying to limit to fics that have less than 500.) Obviously this means a lot of my favourites are not included here, but you’ve probably read all of those already anyway. 

If you enjoy these, please reblog so more readers can find these awesome fics!

To get things started and in honour of the quality ladynoir content we just got (which I’m hoping will inspire even more quality fan content!), let’s have some ladynoir recs. Fics are in no particular order.

Amnesiac? More like Amnesi-Chat by therealjanebingley

Oblivio's back, and this time only Chat Noir gets hit. Based on his limited knowledge and the way Ladybug acts towards him, he makes some assumptions.

One-shot. This is hilarious. From Chat’s genuine glee about his superheroes to Ladybug’s affectionate indulgence to having Chat provide an “outside perspective” on Ladybug’s non-platonic behaviour towards him to the teasing... I could see this actually happening in an Oblivio 2.0 episode.

Experimental Kisses by @komorebirei

Ladybug watched him. Maybe it was guilt, maybe sympathy, maybe a streak of playfulness. Maybe the traumatic akuma experience had softened her up. Whatever the reason, a thought wafted lazily through her mind and out of her mouth. “You know… you’re right. It isn’t fair, is it?”

Chat Noir looked up.

“I remember my first kiss, but you don’t.” She hummed and tapped her chin, making a show of remembering. “It wasn’t a bad kiss, but we were in the middle of fighting an akuma, so I didn’t get to enjoy it much, either.”

Oops—that came out sounding a little, no, a lot more flirty than she had intended. Anyway, if she was going to commit to this idea, she may as well go all in.

One-shot. Ladybug offers to kiss Chat since he doesn’t remember their kiss and the way she reacts to the kiss...it lives in my mind rent-free. I have fallen asleep many a night fantasizing about what the repercussions of the kiss might look like. 

What's your favourite colour? by @hermionemonica

Ladybug and Chat Noir sit on a rooftop, watching the sunset.

One-shot. This fic is short and sweet and absolutely lovely. It’s set post-reveal and despite only being 566 words it’s full of sweetness and feeling.

Margins of Error by orphan_account

“Do you…” Ladybug's voice is at an almost-whisper. He can feel her breath fire-hot against his face. “Do you want me to show you how I think they should write our kiss?”

Adrien isn’t here anymore, leave a message after the tone.

--

Adrien was raised on order. His life is meticulously planned, each day as reliable as the equations he studies in physics and calculus. But Ladybug- Ladybug always has him at a loss.

One-shot. Okay, so I know the author of this one since I download all my favourite fics, but since they’ve orphaned it I’m going to respect that. However, since the author was kind enough to leave the work up so people can continue to enjoy it, I’m going to suggest that people do so! Ladynoir kisses featuring my absolute favourite dynamic: sexually assertive Ladybug and receptive Chat Noir. (Don’t take this to mean the fic has sexual content - it’s just kissing.) AMAZING.

Liquid Luck by @somethingvaguetodo

Ladybug enlists Chat Noir's help in decoding the remaining ingredients for the power-up transformation potions. Together, they work on creating them, and possibly destroying the barriers between them.

Multi-chapter. The riddles of the secret potion ingredients are fun to think about, Ladybug and Chat Noir both get to show off their smarts, and the trust and support between the two of them is showcased. Perfect ladynoir.

when you weren't mine to lose by @bugsandchatons

Change is a scary thing, especially when it feels like nothing has stayed the same.

It's been a year since Marinette became the Guardian of the Miracle Box - a year of struggling beneath a burden she never asked for, a weight that has her leaning on her partner more and more as the hours fly by, of letting him come to her, too, when he needs a soft place to land. A year of falling for the boy who takes on the world by her side with a smile made of sunlight, and fighting the growing urge to tell him what he means to her.

After all, they'll have time enough for that when Paris is safe.

But when the unthinkable happens, Marinette learns the tragedy of loving someone quietly, and the lines she'll cross to save him.

Multi-chapter. This is what happens when Ladybug loses Chat Noir. It hurts in all the best ways and the writing is absolutely gorgeous and somehow we still get a happy ending!

well if i'm beautiful and you're beautiful then who's saving paris? by celebreultimaverba

Chat flirts. Surprisingly, it works.

And then it backfires.

One-shot. This one is so cute and sweet! It’s a quick read but you’ll be smiling by the end of it.

sometimes the dreamers finally wake up by magesamell

"Four days ago a mermaid flooded Paris and an ancient guardian introduced himself to his father as a substitute Chinese tutor. He had thought that would be the end of it."

Ladybug tells Chat Noir all of her secrets.

One-shot. Post-Syren. The fic we all desperately need about Ladybug actively working to restore the balance of her and Chat’s relationship after Fu messes with that. It’s not overly romantic, but it’s absolutely perfect.

i fall in love just a little, oh, just a little by @mlady-noir

If she was asked, Ladybug wouldn't be able to give a specific date when her heart decided to fall for her pun loving partner, but she could point out the night she realized it.

One-shot. Sofffffttttttt. This is just a beautiful narrative of Ladybug’s fall for Chat with a sweet, sweet ending.

Someone I Can’t Fall In Love With by @yslen54

Ladybug agreed with Chat Noir when he suggested that they should finally share their identities with each other, but she’s been dreading it ever since.

One-shot. This is short and sweet. An identity reveal that explores Ladybug’s feelings for Chat Noir and then plays with the divided heart trope.

The following fics are amazing and absolutely worth reading, but do feature sexual content, so minors beware.

You can’t stay away from me by plikki

When Adrien sides with his father, he expects to protect Ladybug and buy some time. He doesn't expect that his emotional state will make it so much harder to resist the girl that he loves, until he just gives in.

Multi-chapter. Rated M. Not-quite an enemies AU, but with all the beautiful angst and tension of one. There’s a fair amount of sex, so be warned but it’s SO SO GOOD. And all of the pain and angst is followed by a sweet happy ending.

baby, we don't have time to be coy by Molebear

"What are we doing?" Chat breathes, the words sending a tendril of lucidity back into Ladybug's hormone-addled brain.

It's a fair question.

The origins of this tryst are a little hazy in her mind at this point. Something about a lovesick akuma, maybe? Ladybug vaguely remembers Chat Noir getting struck by something, only seconds before it hit her too. There was a fight, or... there was something she and Chat Noir had been in the middle of doing - something important, like.... save-the-world important - before she'd dragged him underground with the sole intention of climbing him like a tree.

A scorned lover gets akumatized and gains the power to cast Lust. When it comes to distracting Paris' beloved superhero team, this power turns out to be... rather effective.

One-shot. Rated M. The UST of this one damn near killed me. It’s hot AF and I would commit homicide to read the conversation these two have after that lmaoooo

Charmed, I'm Sure by @chatonne-rousse

Friends with benefits. It's right there in the name, and it's what they are - friends. Best friends. This is just a way for two consenting adults to relieve stress after akuma fights, with the only person they'd trust with this level of intimacy. Really, what could go wrong? (The real question is, what could go right?)

Multi-chapter. Rated E. The sex is really, really hot. It’s in character and full of emotion. And there’s an amazing identity reveal followed by “I’m so happy it’s you!” sex. 

A Little Too Far by imploder

Ladybug gets handsy, and Chat Noir lacks self-control. Alternitavely: "Plagg's Worst Nightmare".

One-shot. Rated E. This one is hot and in character and just absolutely amazing steamy ladynoir content. Features my favourite: sexually assertive Ladybug. Because who doesn’t love playing with gender role stereotypes?

#ml fic rec #fic recs #ladynoir #ml love square #ml lovesquare #jennarecsml

[overheard-at-camp-half-blood]

A Rant About Heroes of Olympus Character Arcs.

Just as a warning most of this is negative, but I put the names in big bold letters, in case you want to skip. I do have some controversial opinions in here, specifically towards Percy and Annabeth, and their relationship, but I don’t think I’m negative towards their actual characters... I more so critique how it could have been written better.

I do still love the series, and even though I poke fun at Rick a bit, I still like him as a writer (though I recognize the problematic elements in this story). These are my own opinions on the books, and I’m sorry if I criticize your character in ways you don’t like.

Also, I may do another post about some other problematic elements, so be on the lookout for that.

Percy

Let’s start with Percy, shall we? After all, he is the one who started it all, and he was the one who introduced us to this world. If I’m being extremely honest, and I know I’m going to get hate for this, but I think Percy’s arc should have ended in the first series. He could have still remained a major character in this series, but I think as far as his main arc went, it wrapped up better in the first series, because I feel like this series added nothing to his arc.

I mean, he and Annabeth went through some majorly traumatic shit in The House of Hades, and then nothing was done about it, and I feel like it would just be better had it not happened. Besides I have some major issues with how his relationship with Annabeth played out.

Annabeth

I was really excited for Annabeth, and I did like her arc in MoA. It seemed like a good continuation of her arc in the first series, where Annabeth wanted to prove herself to everyone else, and now she wanted to prove herself to... well, herself. The arc had potential, and I really enjoyed seeing her arc in MoA, but as I said, I didn’t like how her and Percy’s relationship ship played out.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I am NOT anti-Percabeth, in fact, I do post a lot about it on this blog, but I am critical of how Rick writes established relationships. Perhaps it is because I’m older, so therefore my mind is more critical of these sorts of things.

I love Percabeth, but I really dislike their codependency.... I mean Annabeth’s arc in MoA was great because there was a focus on her relationship with Percy, but it was still about her. And yeah, I understand they’ve been through a lot together, but I really don’t like how their development was dependent on each other.

The reason why I put this under Annabeth and not Percy is because for me, it was much worse for Annabeth, because this was our first time getting this from her perspective. We got to see Percy develop through his own eyes, but we never really got the same for Annabeth. Most of Annabeth’s development was through Percy’s eyes, which was why I was so excited that Annabeth was getting her own POV.

And it was great in MoA! But after that, it honestly felt to me that her story was more about her relationship with Percy, than Annabeth herself.

Jason

Jason was doomed from the beginning.

That’s the main issue, is in the beginning, he was literally a blank slate, and while we were worried about the mystery of his character, there was really no way for us to know who he was as a person, because HE didn’t even know. So, as he was introduced at the same time as Piper and Leo, he didn’t get the same development as Piper and Leo. As we learned the other two’s backstories, and how those backstories represent who they are in the current story.

And the thing is, when we finally DID find out who he was, it was too late to do anything with it, because the story ended. I think by the time Blood of Olympus rolled around, and we did learn more about him... a lot of people had no interest in him.

That being said, I love fanon Jason, and I didn’t like how he was treated in the Trials of Apollo series.

Piper

Piper... I have a very complicated relationship with Piper. I kind of wrote this several times, because I couldn’t quite pinpoint my issues with Piper, and she is such a controversial character for whatever reason, and whatever I say will be perceived as me hating on her. That is not the case. I like the idea of Piper’s character, though I can agree she, as well as the other Aphrodite children, are written with sexist tropes, which is another post.

My main issue with Piper is that most of her development happens off the page. In the first few books, she her charmspeak is shown getting her in a lot of trouble, and she often lacks confidence when using it. My issue is the resolution for this happens mainly off the page.

A huge internal conflict with Piper is her lack of self confidence, which is something that I personally can relate to, but we never see her develop that confidence, we’re just told that it happened. Like she worked with Hazel and Annabeth on xyz, so suddenly she is much better and confident in her abilities of xyz. This kind of made her hard for me to connect with her in general, because it seems like most of her struggles happened off page.

This isn’t even just with her overall character; it’s with her relationship with other characters. We do see her friendship with Leo develop to some extent, but that’s because they already had an established friendship before the series started. Her other relationships? Jason and Piper went from barely knowing each other to dating between books. We never saw her friendship with Annabeth develop. She apparently was friends with Hazel, but that happened off the page.

Now, this happened to each character to some degree, but I think Piper got hit the hardest with the “tell, don’t show,” thing. I do think that because a lot of people didn’t like Piper, and imo, most of the criticisms were bullshit, Rick tried to overcompensate by trying to force development on her, without doing the work of showing us her development.

Leo

To be honest, his wasn’t as bad as others, but I feel like more people were disappointed, because he was a relatable fan-favorite. His arc went wrong for the exact opposite reasons as Piper’s, as there was legitimately a lot of development on the page, and he had a good arc set up, but Rick literally forgot everything that initially made his character so likeable to the audience.

So, here’s my thing with Leo’s arc; it was really good for the first three books, as Rick did develop him while leaving room for more development in new books. He also had a consistent arc; in The Lost Hero his arc was about his inferiority complex, which was directly connected to his trauma. He never felt like he had a home, and never felt like he belonged.

This was the direction I was hoping they would go with the “seventh wheel” storyline; meaning, yeah, he’s the only one in the seven who’s not in a relationship, but why does this bother him so much? Because, I don’t think it was the fact that he was in a relationship, I think it was trauma.

I so badly wanted the seventh wheel plot line to be an extension of what happened in TLH, but it became ignored, and it just seemed like a reason to put him in a relationship.

I’m not going to sit here and say that Leo shouldn’t have been in a relationship (though I will say I had an issue with Caleo), but I will say that I hate how a relationship was supposed to solve his feelings of inferiority- when it’s clearly indicated that Leo had those feelings because of trauma. A relationship can’t reverse years of trauma.

I also thought it would be so much more impactful if Leo made his sacrifice because of his feelings of inferiority, then perhaps the resurrection happens through one of his friends.

Hazel

I fucking hate how little Hazel (and Frank) were written into the series, especially considering she was one of my favorite new characters introduced in HoO. I also think she had the most potential, and her backstory was the most intriguing of the seven.

Why the hell was she not in the books more? Rick literally wrote a whole ass book in the series that mostly centered around the two already developed characters of the series, but he couldn’t give Hazel and Frank more POVs?

I don’t have anything to say about Hazel’s arc, because she barely HAD one, at least not after her initial one in SoN. The Sammy arc was made about Leo, which I get to some extent, as they sort of have a connection through Sammy. That being said, Leo never actually knew Sammy, and I feel like the flashback scene would have been so much more impactful from Hazel’s POV.

The biggest issue with that is it didn’t really feel like a way to develop any of the characters, but it was used as a way to justify a love triangle... that was barely even a love triangle.

In conclusion, Hazel was screwed over.

Frank

Frank, oh I have some things to say about the writing of Frank’s character, because my issue with Frank’s writing is a combination of the off-the-page development that happened with Piper, and the lack of POVs issue with Hazel, but to different degrees. Most of my issues with this comes from between Heroes of Olympus and Trials of Apollo

See, I do think his lack of POVs contributing to his lack of character development, you know what pisses me off?

The fire stick thing was a HUGE part of his character arc. It caused him legitimate fear and partially affected his relationship to some of the others (coughLeocough). And the resolution? Happened between series, and it’s literally mentioned in passing. What the fuck, Rick?

I don’t know, to me, it just seemed like a betrayal to his whole character arc, because we saw him struggle so much because of this, and the resolution just happened off page? I can just rant about how annoyed I am by that, because it just felt like Rick realized he forgot about Frank, and resolved his whole internal conflict off the page.

Nico

I love Nico! But, of course, I do have my criticisms of his character.

First of all, I really enjoyed how we got his point of view in Heroes of Olympus, but I really just wish he was part of the seven to begin with, for a number of reasons. First of all, it just makes sense- it’s indicated that he is the only demigod who knows about both camps... so wouldn’t it make sense that he would be part of the plan to reunite them? Don’t get me wrong, he does play a big role in this anyways, but it’s kind of weird that he just knows, and nobody thinks, “Hey, maybe we should include Nico!”

Another huge issue I had, was Nico’s coming out scene was in Jason’s point of view... which I get, because I’m reality, he wasn’t one of the seven... but it just seems fucked up? I mean I like headcanons of Nico and Jason’s friendship, but the unfortunate truth is... they didn’t actually know each other.

In fact, Nico wasn’t really that close to any of the seven- he was probably closest to Percy, and even he didn’t know that much about him at times. It just felt weird, not only seeing Nico come out in someone else’s POV, but in a POV of someone he barely even knew.

Also the fact he was forced to come out... I see the intentions, but it’s just not a good look.

Reyna

Reyna... don’t have any issues against Reyna, other than I wish we had more time with her before the last book. She was such an interesting character and I needed more of her.

#heroes of olympus criticism #heroes of Olympus critical

[scripttorture]

Hello! I’m a long time follower of this blog and first of all, I wanna thank you for your amazing work! I’ve learned so much from your analysis and explanations! My question is: I have a character that is kidnapped along with two partners/friends that are beaten to death in front of her. She then endures torture such as being repeatedly drowned, tased and whipped, and she spends most of the time in a stress position (hands tied above her head from the ceiling). That lasts about 2/3 days (1/2)

When they threaten her with rape, she says the information she’d been withholding in an attempt to escape it. Is this realistic, or does it go against the fact that the most you torture, the less the victim is likely to cooperate? Also, they end up raping her still, and shortly after that she is rescued by her friends. What would be the extent of her psychology damage? I don’t want her to bounce right back into work like nothing’s happened - that would be disrespectful to actual victims (2/2)

-

I find gauging/explaining the extent of psychological ‘damage’ difficult because one of the things I try to avoid here is grading people’s pain. We have a tendency to default to almost ranking these things and I don’t think that’s helpful. It’s a perfectly legitimate question (and I don’t think you are trying to rank how much this character suffers) but it’s a… cultural quirk that makes answering a bit more difficult.

 The truth is that with all of these things there’s a range of individual responses rather then one universal ‘right’ answer. So if you’re struggling remember that the target you’re trying to hit isn’t a pin, it’s a boulder.

 As you practice writing different survivors you’ll get more confident handling symptoms and long term mental health problems.

 I’ll circle back to that, let’s tackle the question of whether people ‘talk’ first. I think a lot of people get confused by this because there are a lot of factors at work and it’s difficult to picture the knock on effects of all of them at once.

 Torture does not lead to accurate information. It fundamentally can’t. And it can’t because of mixture of factors including:

how our memory works

how our nervous system works

how torturers behave

the effect torture has on organisations more broadly

the erosion of public trust torture causes

 The question of whether an individual victim ‘talks’ or not concerns the first two points. Which (putting it briefly) are: pain and trauma cause memory problems meaning that torture actively destroys the evidence it claims to seek and that we are stubborn creatures who become a lot less inclined to actively cooperate with people who hurt us.

 However the issue is bigger then the victim here.

 When an organisation uses torture they lose the public trust, people stop volunteering information. And volunteered information is the main source of accurate information for any organisation.

 This means that the majority of people arrested by these organisations typically know nothing. They are then tortured and given a big incentive to lie.

 This creates a cycle of increasing misinformation. I talk about this effect in more detail here.

 On top of all this torturers… how to put this… They don’t give a fuck about genuine investigation.

 They claim that they do. But their actions tell a different story.

 Torturers don’t record what their victims say. They do not fact check what their victims say. There are multiple recorded incidents of torturers continuing to ‘interrogate’ prisoners who did not speak the same language and of torturers continuing to torture when victims were clearly physically incapable of responding.

 There have also been cases where victims have reported trying to give up information only to have torturers completely ignore it and carry on.

 And torturers are no better at telling the difference between lies and truth then anyone else. They often believe lies told by victims who know nothing. And they are equally likely to dismiss the truth.

 The main point to understand here is: there’s a difference between a character giving up information and a torturer/organisation that tortures obtaining accurate information.

 Personally? I think it is easier from a writing perspective to have the character lie, especially if this is your first time writing something like this.

 Writing torture is hard. It will be a lot easier to avoid falling into the common torture apologia trope that ‘torture works’ if the character lies. Especially if you don’t think the narrative has the time and space to explore the knock on effects of torture on the villainous organisation.

 So this isn’t so much an issue of realism as what you feel you can take on in this story.

 A small number of people do try to tell torturers the truth or give up information. But the scale of misinformation that torture produces is so vast that any small truths get lost among the lies.

 Conversely readers expect that if they see a character telling torturers something true, there are going to be narrative consequences. They expect this to mean the Bad Guys ‘know everything’ and will act on it.

 Realistically… torture can’t produce that sort of coordinated, thought through response. Because for everything this character says there are twelve others in separate cells contradicting that information. Because her torturers may not actually want to hear the truth, because they’ve probably sunk a lot of time, effort and personal prestige into a lie they heard a month ago being ‘true’ instead.

 But that’s not a leap most readers will make. It isn’t a context you can expect the average reader to understand. That isn’t me disparaging your readers it’s just… accurate information on torture is hard to find or access, so most people believe the apologia they see everyday. It’s another kind of trope and we’re all used to tropes playing out a particular way.

 Question whether your story has the space to explain this context and whether it can be done in a way that’s narratively satisfying.

 If the answer is ‘no’, or if you just feel like it’s a lot to tackle, then I think you’re a lot better off with the character lying to her torturers.

 Looking over the torture scenario itself I think you do have a survivable scenario here.

 I would say that it’s uncommon for victims to be put in stress positions for a few hours: generally the typical time frame is around 24-48 hours. Using a stress position in this scenario would still be painful but you don’t need to use it. You already have a lot going on with five separate tortures (six if this character is beaten as well.)

 I don’t see anything wrong with keeping it in here if you feel it adds something to the story. But if you want to drop one of these abuses the stress position seems like the odd one out.

 Circling back to the beginning and the psychological problems torture causes, I think a definition of ‘disability’* is helpful here. Disability is any impairment, mental or physical, that has a substantial, long term, negative effect on daily life.

 That’s what we’re talking about with torture survivors.

 Recovery is possible. Life for survivors can get better. Every common psychological condition torture causes can improve with time, treatment and life style adaptions.

 But we are talking about disability. Improvement and a happy life doesn’t mean that someone goes back to the way they were before.

 Let’s take a few examples from the list of common symptoms which you can find here.

 An ‘easy’ example to think through would be something like chronic pain. I think most of us can imagine how being in pain every day would have a negative impact on your ability to do things.

 It can make it harder to perform normal, daily tasks. People with pain in their knees might struggle climbing stairs and walking long distances for instance. People with pain in their arms or shoulders might struggle to get dressed, hang washing on a line and access things on shelves above chest height.

 Chronic pain can also make it harder to interact positively with people and socialise. We’re rarely at are best when we’re in pain.

 A harder example to think through might be the kinds of long term memory problems torture commonly causes. You can read more about them here.

 One possible type of memory problem is a sort of general forgetfulness that a lot of survivors experience. It is not dementia, it isn’t a progressive loss of memory. But some survivors find it a lot harder to remember information and that can have a huge impact on a person’s daily life.

 Typical examples are things like:

forgetting medical appointments, which can lead to people being denied treatment

being consistently late for work, which can lead to loss of employment

difficulty managing money

forgetting to pay bills, leading to essential services being cut

forgetting meetings with friends, leading to reduced social life and isolation

 That’s not a complete list but hopefully it gives you an idea of some of the ways this particular symptom impacts daily life.

 This thought process that I’ve outlined is what you’re aiming for when you’re trying to think through symptom severity. It imagining the knock on effects on daily life and ensuring they’re at a level where the character is disabled.

 That will look different depending on the combination of symptoms you pick.

 Survivors don’t typically experience every possible symptom. As I said there’s variety; survivors of the same traumatic event can come out with completely different sets of symptoms and we’re not always sure why.

 Given that I think the best thing a writer can do is pick 3-5 symptoms from the list for their character and show those symptoms consistently over the course of the story.

 Remember that symptoms can improve. A person’s mental health problems can get better; but this means ‘easier to deal with’ rather then ‘no longer there.’

 It’s also worth keeping in mind that the same mental health problem can look different in different people. It’s common for people with depression to experience insomnia but it’s also common for people with depression to feel tired constantly, sleep excessively and find it impossible to get out of bed.

 Decide on the symptoms you want to write then take a moment to think about how they should manifest in this particular character.

 I find it helpful to consider what it will add to the story. If a symptom works well with a theme in the story or creates interesting narrative opportunities then it’s usually a good pick. When thinking through the severity of the symptom consider whether this particular disability would create interesting challenges for the character as the story progresses.

 Recovery and learning to live with disability takes months or years. It’s not linear and there are some people who will require regular assistance.

 Essentially because symptoms are so varied between survivors and because they can manifest is different ways I can’t give you a perfect road map to writing trauma. There isn’t one ‘correct’ way to do it because there isn’t one way it manifests in life.

 But it isn’t necessarily as hard as it sounds. Writing this stuff well takes practice, trial and error. That shouldn’t stop you from trying.

 If you can I’d recommend finding a beta reader or writing group. Having other people reading over your stuff and giving feedback can really help. It’s a good way to make sure your scenes are coming across as you intend them to.

 I’d also recommend taking a look through ScriptTraumaSurvivor’s archived blog here.

 I hope that helps. :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

*I’m quoting from UK anti discrimination law here mostly because I think it’s a clear, helpful way of picturing what we’re talking about.

#writing advice #tw torture #tw rape #tw kidnap #torture as interrogation #torture does not work #memory problems #torture and organisations #torture and compliance #writing victims #writing recovery #writing torturers #scarring torture #clean torture #disability #mental illness #time frames for torture

[ljandersen]

More 100 Days of Writing!  Yay!  I love that I get a hundred days of seeing everyone's writing process on my dash.  I’m not strictly following the questions in order or posting every day, but it’s fun to still play along.  Thanks, @the-wip-project !

--------------‐-----------------

Question from Day 2 (I know it’s not day two, but I’m erratically cheating, remember?)  For your current WIP:  Do you have many WIPs?  What motivates you to write this specific story?  What makes this story special for you?  Is there a special twist/trope/setting you wanted to explore?  What got you started on this particular story?

My current WIP is “Sideways,” a 5-part fShenko post-war long fic.  I’m posting it like a box set, essentially all the parts (books) in one big post on AO3.  I have the first draft written for all five parts and am currently posting part 3.

What motivated me to write this story was a string of “what if” questions that haunted me after finishing my 300k fShenko post-war long fic, “Burning Barriers.”  My mind kept spinning on questions about human-asari relationships.  What would it be like to be with someone who would live a thousand years?  You’re just a blip on their radar, while they’re you’re whole life.  

What would it be like to have a child who’s another species?  Asari have unique abilities like mindmelding, strong biotics, long lifespan, monogendered, not to mention unique culture.  Would the child feel less “yours” for being so . . . well, alien (pun intended)?  How would it feel knowing your partner and child would live on long after you?  

That’s when I started thinking, what if the asari parent died?  Whoa.  Then my mind was blown by the complexity.  Your child would be another species, bound to live a thousand years, and the parent meant to take care of them is gone.  Since your partner was going to live hundreds of more years, the human partner probably never even considered the possibility of losing them.  Now the human parent is all this alien child has.  It had so many implications, my mind kept going.

I wanted to explore these ideas in a story, but I didn’t want to write an AU of my own fanfiction.  I didn’t want to write a story that wasn’t fShenko.  FemShep and Kaidan are my favorite characters, and it’s their relationship I find compelling.  

That’s when I thought, what would Shepard think of this alternate storyline?  It’s interesting enough to think of her outside perspective, but what if it was further removed than even that.  What if she saw it like I did having this other canon story ending in mind?  What if the Shepard who finished my story in “Burning Barriers” and who ended up with Kaidan went to this other AU reality?  

I could follow an idea from “Burning Barriers” that wasn’t realized but intrigued me.  Kaidan’s asari wife is dead.  He has an asari child now.  How much better if he and Shepard are even enemies?  Maybe Shepard has been a bad person in this timeline.  After all, Mass Effect is all about the Paragon and Renegade timelines. Add in this story being told from the POV of the Shepard who’s been happily married to him in the “real” timeline, then the complexity and nuances expanded.  How would she reconcile his identity to her, being both the person she knows and loves the best, but also the person she knows the least and who is also an adversary?  

Then, I thought . . . What is Bad Shepard took my canon Shepard’s place?  I ended “Burning Barriers” with Shepard being human Councilor.  She lives on the Pacific with Kaidan and their daughter.  That was already there in my post-10 year epilogue.  What if this switch went both ways?  It’s always a fascinating trope taking someone who’s a maverick loner and dropping them into a family situation.  Do they become a better person?  

False identities always interest me, and both stories lines would play so well to that interest.  How would this imposter function?  Both Shepards would be taken as the their altero ego, at least, initially if not longer.

So I started writing “Sideways.”  I needed to tell the backstories to fill in the ten years of lost time for both timelines.  But how to do it?  Just through present-day revelations?  A bit boring.  Flashbacks are often considered unnecessary and needlessly complicate a story.  

What if the flashbacks had more meaning beyond just revealing the past though?  What if they provided a ticking clock.  I needed a ticking clock, after all, and this was the perfect way to hit two birds with one stone.  The present day revelations about the past could provide tantalizing clues and hint toward scenes that aren’t revealed yet.  There would be gradual progression of stories from the past connecting to the present storyline.  Perfect.

I actually wrote several chapters of “Sideways” and then discarded it.  I didn’t want to pour myself into more fanfiction.  It was time to move on.  Do something original.  Who would read a long fShenko fic that jumped off my 300k story?  “Burning Barriers” wasn’t read.  I think a year after posting, it had 25 kudos, under a thousand hits, and was pretty stagnant with the hit count even moving.  I had a few wonderful people who made the process worthwhile through their generous comments and friendship. It would go on to get a lot of great feedback that would change my feelings about it, but at the time, the story’s reception was disappointing.  It seemed unwise to take an already abysmal turnout for 300k words and cut the readership even further for a new story +100k story.  So I tossed my first few chapters of “Sideways” aside.

I came across the chapters again a while later.  I still had these ideas in my head for it that I was trying to squelch while I focused on ideas for an original sci fi series.  When I was flipping through a notebook, I came across the story I had abandoned, and I started to read it.  By the end, I was left thinking, “But then what happened?  This is actually pretty good.”  At that point, I decided I had to write it.  I had too much passion in the project, and I had to see it through. 

I decided for it to be successful (or at least, not catastrophically unsuccessful), it had to stand on its own.  Hardly anyone had read the preceding 300 k story, which I had made the mistake of posting all at once.  I needed this to be its own story.  It had to be less words than “Burning Barriers,” which at 300 k was already too much of an investment.  

Then I started writing my new story . . . 800 k words later (or so I estimate), I obviously didn’t meet my goal.  But I loved writing every word, and I love how the story progresses and develops.  It had a good pace, and I’m proud of it.  It lent itself naturally to being divided into a series, since it had mini-arcs with mini-villains and achievements being reached.  By editing each part separately, I was able to start posting, which after two years of writing the story was beginning to feel like would never happen.

Now, here I am posting part 3.  I have amazing people who support me and have made the experience rewarding by sharing their enthusiasm and thoughts in comments and tags.  “Sideways” surpassed “Burning Barriers” initially low turn out and has managed to stand on its own as I hoped.  For a story that took so long to make it to this point, it’s been fulfilling to have so many fandom friends who cheer me on.  I appreciate everyone who supports “Sideway” and just me in general as part of the fandom community.  

And that’s how my supersized story came into being.    

#100daysofwriting #not doing my questions in order I know #I feel like day 1 and day 2 were the most important general questions #Which is why I'm doing them now #on writing #my writing #on fanfiction #on mass effect fanfiction

[les-belles-infideles]

What happened with Kora @princesshamlet: A start at contextualizing the events of the past week

While I am writing this because Kora expressed that they would like it if someone would post something contextualizing what happened, I do not speak for them; my opinions and perspective are my own. I think the general response has been wildly disproportionate to their actual words and actions. Let me know if you have questions about anything or if my writing style is hard to read and I’ll do my best to clarify.

Tl;dr: Last fall, Kora, a new Supernatural fan, started rewriting Supernatural to be more racially diverse and to more overtly address social issues such as homophobia and misogyny. They continually asked for feedback, particularly from POC, and received overwhelmingly positive responses.

Earlier this week, Kora posted something that unintentionally played into ideas that harm trans men. They were horrified to have hurt people, immediately apologized and made an effort to learn more about the issues involved.

Yesterday, some of Kora’s friends cut them off, presumably over the abovementioned. Some people read Kora’s Supernatural rewrite and were offended by portrayals of various ethnicities; Kora tried to learn from these criticisms and apologize for them. People organized to spread bad-faith, extremely hostile claims and Kora left Tumblr.

Background:

- last fall, Kora started watching Supernatural, and posting about it, including making some popular reaction videos and an elaborate summary of the events of season 16 as of mid-November. They got really attached to Cas as a character and DeanCas as a ship.

- Kora made a post along the lines of “what if I drew Castiel as Indian?” and got encouraging responses, so they made a drawing. A lot of Desi people left comments saying that they really liked the drawing and that the representation was meaningful to them, so Kora started posting and reblogging a lot more about recasting Supernatural to be racially diverse.

- Kora accumulates a lot of ideas around how they wish Supernatural had been, and starts casually writing it up into a story. It didn’t even have a title for the first few chapters, but it quickly amassed a small, enthusiastic following.

- I started reading it at first mostly as a way of getting to know Kora, who was at the time a new friend irl (they didn’t mean to give me their Tumblr; I had followed them for Hamlet and Star Trek posts and then recognized them when they posted a selfie) but wound up getting pretty invested. I started watching Supernatural despite the fact that I can pretty much never commit to finishing a TV show.

- Kora’s general strategy was to post ideas on Tumblr and get input before including them in the fic, particularly regarding race and ethnicity. Plenty of people gave them feedback -- I remember one really long conversation where people swapped headcanons about what music a Mexican-American Dean Winchester would have liked growing up.

- iirc, they actively collaborated with multiple Latine fans of the fic on one chapter that foregrounded Mexican-American culture. These fans are credited in an author’s note.

- they received substantial encouragement from Supernatural fans of color for how they were writing the fic, and afaik no negative feedback.

- they also used the fic as a way to discuss and joke about their personal experiences with misogyny, repression, and homophobia, including writing Dean Winchester as undergoing a character arc involving working through and overcoming severe homophobia. When we called recently, they described going from homophobic to not homophobic as “the best character arc a man can have.”

- afaik they had beta readers or at least people to run ideas by for most chapters.

First incident:

- earlier this week, Kora posted a somewhat poorly-worded vent post about Dean Winchester’s misogyny in Supernatural canon.

- I think I reblogged it because I don’t have super high standards for my SPN blog and yeah, afaict Dean said some pretty gross things in canon? I’d seen a lot of people talk about it, particularly Asian women, it’s clearly a thing.

- several people expressed hurt at the post’s wording, which could be read as bigoted against trans men.

- Kora immediately apologized and started looking for ways to learn more about trans men’s issues (afaict, mostly asking friends and going through the trans dean tag)

- they messaged me about it (Tuesday 4/13/2021), and I took a closer look at the post and explained how in isolation it looked harmless, but some of the rhetoric fit into wider patterns of transandrophobia, i.e. part of the impetus for this post was Kora being surprised that some of their trans male friends project onto Dean, since he’s a pretty bad role model for gender -- I pointed out that one way trans men are marginalized within queer movements is by people perpetuating the idea that we’re more misogynistic than cis men (which makes no sense), and their post could be read as playing into that trope (that reading had occurred to me when I first saw the post, but I had initially dismissed it because Kora and I had been spending a lot of time talking about gender and I never felt that they distrusted me or saw me as a threat).

- they made another hasty apology post, quoting my message to them.

- I encouraged them not to worry too much about what strangers online thought about them, but they were very insistent that they had hurt people and needed to learn and make amends.

- I think what happened next was that the conversation sparked a larger discussion about transandrophobia in the Supernatural fandom? I’m not sure about this though, I was off Tumblr most of Tuesday and Wednesday. I saw a few well-written posts refuting the idea that it was misogynistic to headcanon Dean as trans. I did not see anyone claim it was misogynistic to headcanon Dean as trans, but again, I wasn’t looking.

The Discourse™:

- yesterday, Kora started getting a lot more and a lot meaner messages.

- a large part of their social circle cut them off all at once, saying they felt unsafe and that Kora was transphobic. Kora did not/was unable to receive further clarification, while actively seeking the chance to learn more and repair harm done.

- someone made a dedicated hate tag for them.

- a new group of people read their Supernatural rewrite, and were offended by their portrayals of race and their writing about homophobia, and additionally mocking their writing style. The tone was often extremely mean-spirited.

- Kora responded to and apologized for some of the concerns around their portrayal of race, and refuted some of the bad-faith readings of their depictions of homophobia.

- Kora made an effort to understand what they had done wrong but a lot of the posts weren’t very specific.

- some of the claims got fucking wild. A lot of them involved taking stuff out of context. I think w*ncest got brought up at one point???

- Kora wrote another apology and took a break from Tumblr, on the advice of another friend.

- I spent like a day gearing up to write this because I vastly underestimated the speed at which Tumblr discourse moves.

#i know this would be a stronger post if I linked to posts addressing the issues in question #but I kinda just need to post Something at this point #supernatural #spn #princesshamlet discourse #discourse cw #ask to tag #tooth speech #lore

[authenticcadence18]

Hey, Cadence. Sorry to trouble you with this, but I was wondering if I could get your advice on something. Your work (particularly the Phineas & Isabella stuff) never fails to bring a smile to my face, and I would like to write something similar in tribute, but, well, I’m not entirely sure how. You manage to make them just so sweet and easygoing and trusting, which is a welcome and pleasant distraction, but I don’t think I’ve ever learned how to have a relationship like that in my life so I worry it’ll come off too forced. (Actually I end up freezing up when I try, stupid as that sounds.) Is there anything you might recommend?

(No obligation to answer, and beyond and apart from all that, really do love your work.)

hey, anon! First of all, thank you🥺💕. I’m honored that my writing makes you smile and that you want to write something like it. Your worries are not stupid whatsoever! Writing characters in a relationship can be hard, especially if real life has not been kind in that regard :(. I will try to do my best to help!!!

When I write Phineas and Isabella, I pull inspiration from a few different places! I’ll talk about them, and hopefully that helps!

I’ve never been in a romantic relationship, but I DID have a big crush on a friend when I was younger, so I pull from those blushy, awkward experiences at times (especially when writing them as kids!) when I write them. I also like writing Isabella and Phineas in the kind of relationship I’d like to have someday. When you go out to write them (or any other characters in a relationship!) you can ask yourself, “what are things I think are important to a relationship?” and incorporate that into your writing to make it feel authentic to you. For me, a few of those important things are mutual respect, consent, kindness, levity (like, being able to joke around and be silly) and friendship. I might not have relationship experience, BUT I’ve experienced watching other people going through relationships AND I’ve thought through the kind of relationship I want. If you’ve done the same, you can apply that to your writing!

You can also get tons of inspiration from episodes of the show! I pull SO MANY IDEAS and bits of dialogue from canon. That can be a great place to start from! You could always take a Phinabella scene—like, the ice cream date at the end of “Happy Birthday, Isabella!” and write about what the characters are thinking. That could help you get into their heads! (And it would be super adorable.) Other sources of inspiration can include music, other movies/books/shows, fairy tales, common tropes. The possibilities are endless!!!

If you like to draw, sketching out scenes can help you work through emotions and ideas too!! I’ve done that with CHFIL. Even if the sketches are rough or “bad,” they can be very beneficial!!!

In general, I use Disney movies/media as a gage of whether or not moments would feel natural in canon. I always like to say, “If Rapunzel and Eugene could have done this (be it in Tangled or Tangled the Series), Phineas and Isabella can do it too!!” 😂 Rapunzel and Eugene in general are a GREAT example of a healthy and affectionate fictional couple, I love writing Phinabella in ways inspired by them! Forehead kisses, hand holding, hugs, ALL OF IT, YES.

Finally, I’d say it is SO TOTALLY OKAY to be cheesy and/or “forced” in your writing!! Writing is a process, and often lines won’t just come out sounding perfect as soon as you type them. It took me months to write the “Big Kiss” and confession in chapter 9, and it changed SO MUCH in that time. The first take I wrote in August 2020 was alright...but the scene it became by December 2020 was SO MUCH BETTER. Also, don’t be afraid to joke around with yourself and be informal while writing! Like, here’s a work-in-progress line from chapter 11 of Can’t Help Falling in Love: “Phineas stopped in place for a moment, having been struck with a realization while taking the crumbcake out of the oven with oven-mit wearing hands (THIS SOUNDS SO BAD BUT I’LL WORK ON IT IT’S FINE).” Acknowledging that a line of dialogue or prose doesn’t sound as good as you like is very freeing!! Sometimes, you just need awhile longer to ruminate on the line and figure out how to make it sound exactly like you want :). It’s also totally fine to write something like “Ok, so I want Isabella and Phineas to hug here and I want to emphasize how relieved and happy they are, say something about warmth, idk” while working on a fic. If you know the general idea of a line of dialogue or even an entire fic, write it down! Even if it sounds “bad,” it is helping you with your process, which means it is actually really good!! And it is also totally fine to ask for help! Idk what I’d do without my beta @youruinedmylifebynotbeingreal! She’s read every chapter of CHFIL and given me insight and suggestions on so many things, and sometimes I flat out say “hey idk how to word this, help me” 😂. Sometimes you just need an outside perspective! If you ever want to bounce ideas off me, I’m here!!

Okay, actually, one more thing: sometimes I’m not always in the mood to write romance or fluffy stuff. After all, I’ve NOT been in a relationship, so sometimes writing characters that are can hurt a little. You can explore any hurt or uncertainty in writing as well (I posted a short fic recently that does just that), and you can also write stuff that has nothing to do with romance or anything at all!! There is far more to life than romance, you know? And it is also totally fine to do something else. Draw art, play music, fold some laundry. If you are writing for fun, there’s no deadline! The right words and mood will come in time. I wrote a lot more last year because I needed to write to get through a difficult time and give myself something soft and fun to focus on. This year, I’ve been spending more time with art (and I’ve been a little busier). Writing is a little more tiring now, so I’m not writing as much, and that’s totally okay!

More than anything, you have to write for you. As sweet as it is that you want to write a fic in tribute to things I’ve written, if that is the only reason you’re writing, it might frustrate you or make you feel burned out. I for one hate expectations, so if writing ever becomes an expectation for me, it isn’t fun anymore☹️. I usually find that writing is the easiest when I don’t put pressure on myself to “write to post” or “write what’s popular.” I genuinely try to just write for me, to write things I want to write because they’re fun or cathartic or whatever else! That’s how Can’t Help Falling in Love started out, I didn’t expect many people to read it, and well....it turned out far better than I could have anticipated, lol!

Thank you again, anon! I hope this helps. And if you have any other questions or thoughts, please feel free to reach out💕

#🥺💕 #anon #omg i have an ask!! #cadence rambles #long post #writing things

[jockrightsnow]

omg I would love to hear you talk more about your tags on that last post—how you research syntax/speech patterns for non-native English speakers’ dialogue. this is something I struggle with a lot in writing fic (esp writing Russian players!) and I’d love some advice on how to get better at it.

god this got long! i just care about this! i will put under a cut for the 99% who will be like u little pedantic bitch.

so my answer is probably not AS helpful for Russian players because i have not written at any length with Russian characters and their language is SO different, so i find it is trickier! but the process is likely the same. i am not an expert at this by any means (only know/have taught spanish <--> english), but i do think it gives you more believable voices and also tends to help you understand the perspective. some people are better at english than others! some are less good! some have been in english classes for a while, some haven’t! there’s variation! you don’t have to do this to write well, but i think about it.

some things i think about:

1. sentence structure/syntax--more than vocabulary, sentence structure is the thing that gives most english language learners trouble and tends to give them away. in order to figure out common mistakes along these lines, it is helpful to look up how sentences are typically structured in someone’s native language. very often, people learning english will rely on those structures. this is actually why swedish is very easy to learn for english speakers--the sentence structure is most often subj, verb, object. but there are tricks: in complex declarative sentences, the verb will always be second, even if there is an adverb or object in the first position instead of the subject, in sentences with subordinate clauses, the independent clause inverts verb and subject. stuff like that does tend to give a sentence a different feel, and it absolutely very commonly almost-always sticks with someone. it’s foundational to how people construct their thoughts, it can be hard to change.

2. pronunciation--i don’t love to see heavy dialect written phonetically and i think many people don’t, but there are ways to consider it and certain ways to write it well. certain languages have different stresses or tone ranges or pitches, which can give off a certain Vibe if you’re used to english, which is on the more expressive end of the scale in tone and pitch (obviously i don’t think that’s better, but it is different and it does affect how people hear a speaker’s voice). certain sounds straight-up do not exist in other languages, certain letters are always pronounced a different way. it leads to predictable mispronunciation. for this, resources like this are very interesting.

3. actual cultural language differences! this is in part about what turns of phrase are common, what’s the cultural (or often, can be regional) “cat who got the cream”-type idioms, what is colloquial that you don’t realize is colloquial, etc, but it can also be about how you talk about concepts on a larger scale. 

the recent sidney crosby engaged fiasco is a good example of this--in russian, “girlfriend/boyfriend” has a very casual connotation, so for longer-term relationships, a russian person might say “fiancee” instead. there are certain languages where you talk about love using different words if a relationship is more casual. these are fun, i think, because i do think that kind of thing can be meaningful. 

there was some book or study i read about how maybe the way we learn language impacts how we think. i think parts of it were debunked (eg not having a word for something like ‘crush’ doesn’t mean you don’t feel it, that’s silly), but parts of it are certainly true, right? like, if you have a different way of talking about spatial awareness or time, your ability to translate those concepts will be affected because your thoughts are often structured along those lines. 

4. vocabulary--less important than you’d think, but still interesting to think about what words someone would have learned. i expect hockey players to know virtually every hockey-related word in english, and even in the KHL, there is some coaching done in english because plenty of non-russian players play there and never learn the language (it is very hard). pretty much everywhere, you’re going to know the english words for many hockey-related terms. but you might not know other complex words, because you might not ever have a reason to or a context where you would’ve learned it or been corrected on it.

i often have to examine or cross-examine spanish speakers, and you actually don’t want to correct every single thing they say--you only want to correct things which might lead to a misunderstanding, because you don’t want to seem pedantic to a judge or condescending to a witness. 

this is also true in a lot of social settings. so i do see some things which tend to go uncorrected because they don’t lead to any wrongness. for example, videoS plural in Swedish is video klipp. it’s the same, it’s really the same. but i notice sometimes that plural S is dropped by Swedish speakers or a word like “klipp” that’s so similar in meaning and context to the english word will come it. there’s one video where petey says ‘eller’ instead of ‘or’--it’s close, it’s a word that doesn’t matter, you wouldn’t correct it, it’s normal, you get the point. there are plenty of words that are so similar they might just have a different inflection, or which are entirely the same in different languages. these will not get corrected in daily conversation for the most part.

but there are also false cognates which you DO need to correct (eg in spanish embarazada = pregnant, i do need to correct it every single time because it has a huge impact on proceedings if someone’s pregnant) and being aware of those is also helpful! 

there are also some crutch words which differ from person to person (this is also true for native english speakers). when people use those and in what way can be important. there are certain things a specific person gets wrong only when nervous or not thinking or whatever (i personally find the “person realizes they’ve been speaking in a different language while having sex because it was so good” trope. exhausting, to say the least. but it is true that in higher-stress moments, someone might not have the capacity or desire to do internal translation, or might feel frustrated by it.)

i really do think all of this is Very interesting, and mostly my advice on doing it for languages you don’t know is:

1) be thoughtful about stuff, be believable. contrary to what it seems like from this whole dissertation, not every sentence needs to have errors in it, especially for people who are Growing/Learning/Actually Very Good at english. don’t be condescending about it. being at an intermediate stage in english learning might make someone choose a simpler sentence that’s still correct. it might lead to an actual relevant misunderstanding or tonal shift. it might not. it might enhance someone’s understanding of a situation! it’s not all about just fucking shit up--it’s a hard thing to learn another language. you gotta respect people who are doing it!

2) hear people talk, preferably the people in question if available but doesn’t have to be (for characters i care about less, i will often wholesale map a sentence and then copy the structure exactly. i did this for pasta because i didn’t care about actually figuring out so much about him emotionally--i just listened to his ep of sp*ttin ch*clets as i wrote and copied several sentence structures exactly with my own Content and then, as you may be able to tell, gave up on that venture to movie-montage the rest because i am Lazy.) 

it’s interesting to hear someone talk both in their native language and in english--you get a feel for the tone and pitch differences, and also i love to see native language interviews because i tend to think they’re more reflective of someone’s actual thought processes when they’re not trying to come up with words or modifying their sentences to be simpler. petey’s swedish interviews, for ex, are far more reflective and eloquent and funny. but again, he is getting better very quickly, in part because swedish and english are more similar than they appear. progress is often slower for russians, because there’s a lot more ground between the two languages and a whole diff alphabet and also strong cultural affinity to where a good number of russians living in america almost exclusively hang out with other russians living in america. (see ex alex ovechkin, nikita zadorov--both have very russian-heavy social circles if Instant Gram is to be believed)

3) actually look up stuff like “common english mistakes for [x group]”--there are plenty of good language learning resources which will show you the mistakes people tend to make, the pronunciation errors, things like that. these are invaluable.

4) google translate stuff if you’re going to have a touching language-teaching moment. once read something where someone was contemplating how to say something, which they wouldn’t have done in reality, because how you say it was Exactly the same in the person’s native language. i also think it’s fun to read google-translated articles and see which things jump out at me as Weirdly translated, because those are often things which are going to be different! but that’s not gospel, it’s something you can look into. sometimes google translate is just bad.

[ewdaviddd]

folklore think piece

for a lower case album such as this, i will be writing a lowercase think piece on the subject. i will not explain why. you get it or you don’t.

the 1: i have never been in love or any type of romantic relationship that left me with lasting feelings of any kind. but, on my fourth listen through of this song today, what once was just a promising and fun intro to this peasant girl summer gut punch, brought me to actual tears as i sat on the toilet in my lime green childhood bathroom as if i were mourning the one that got away (another great song). however, i am an expert on being hung up on the past, the “what could have been”, and made up hypotheticals. this song also introduces the film motif seen a lot in this album. i think dating an actor has really gotten to her. anyway what a killer way to begin, top notch stuff. how can a song be so fun and so soul crushing at the same time?

cardigan: when did taylor wear black lipstick? this is important to me. an old cardigan is an inherently bisexual article of clothing. that is not an opinion. i read it somewhere today and i believe it. this is the tip of the queer-coding ice berg in folklore, never fear. another reference, “tried to change the ending / peter losing wendy”. this year i wrote a movie script where both peter and wendy were both gay. coincidence? probably. basically this one is classic taylor poetry on every level and it being one of a trio in a larger story makes it that much better. yet again, high school romance is not a universal experience (like for me for instance) but haunting my “what-ifs” is going to haunt me for a long time. and the thought of someone saying i was their favorite cardigan makes me want to scream into a pillow.

the last great american dynasty: my favorite ts songs have always been the ones with detailed characters and stories and this one introduces the trope of the “mad woman” who comes back later on as well a long with many fun character details. at first this song is just cheeky and cute, very visual, a fun world to jump into. but then this particular stretch of lines makes your heart drop into your chest and reminds you why taylor isn’t just always fun and always cute and always creative, she also holds the ability to nimbly sock you in the gut when you least expect: “fifty years is a long time / holiday house sat quietly on that beach / free of women with madness, their men and bad habits / and then it was bought by me.” my jaw is still on the floor. and i’ve never bought a house myself. but i’ve spent numerous christmases having a marvelous time ruining everything (so i’ve been told) so this song still applies to my life.

exile (ft. bon iver): i’m gonna be honest. for as long as i can remember i have strongly disliked bon iver and i never remembered why. it is a matter of principle at this point. i just don’t trust him. but then taylor announced she wrote a song with him which filled me with tremendous anxiety. but i can rest easy. much like “the last time” this song is a ts and male artist collaboration i can get behind. also the film motif again: the only time i’ve left a theatre when i didn’t like a movie was never because movie tickets are so expensive and if i’m shelling out 11 dollars to sit in a chair, i’m staying the whole time no matter how bad the ending. but i probably would have left my sister’s keeper if i had seen it before if i’m being honest. so i get it. thats why i read spoilers for everything i watch before watching it, because the anxiety of worrying about how it ends make me not enjoy it in the first place. the end of this song: the call and response felt… ethereal? i felt like i was watching a broadway musical from the splash zone seats, crying as i was spat on.

my tears ricochet: this song is what i picture stepping outside in the middle of the night when an inch or so of snow has just fallen and i can see the flakes fall in front of a street light sounds like. or the scorned secret ex lover throwing themselves onto the coffin demanding to know why they weren’t enough.   which is to say it feels like a sign from some sort of god. yet again, haunting is brought up, an overt reference to the fact that this album will live in my brain rent free for eternity. for some reason this song reminds me of the relationship between hamilton and burr when burr kills hamilton. that could be because i just watched the disney+ recording last week. one lives, one dies, but neither survive, both pay for it. Which is a super romantic and understanding view on murder. both musical experiences equally chilling and moving. if i die under mysterious circumstances this will for sure be played at the funeral.

mirrorball: first off, this is my mom's favorite which is very important. also, it has skewered a very specific but also universal insecurity of mine; existing just to please others and yet miserably failing. it is comforting that ts is not a “natural’ and feels she must always “try try try” because i too lack natural ability, but also rarely “try” even just the one time. the best way i can describe listening to this song is walking through a silent disco where everyone else is listening to some classic lady gaga jam and you are listening to a calming lullaby sung very far away. but don’t let the soothing sounds fool you. it still will have you reflecting on what it means to look and be looked at. a dark rabbit whole, like falling through the looking glass. i’ve never actually read that book though so i could be wrong.

seven: i’m dumb and on my first listen of this song i thought she “hit her peak” at 7 clock as opposed to age seven. but i always saw taylor swift as someone with an early bedtime. also a fun discovery while writing this, “seven” is the 7th song on the track list. clever. although this song is young and innocent and so nostalgic for a time when screaming ferociously was a widely accepted form of expression, it also sounds like a very old secret someone is whispering to me. a love from long ago that lasts beyond the person being in your life, passed down to me and it all just sounds a little gay. not just because of the specific line to hiding in the closet. but that certainly doesn’t go unnoticed. when i was seven i was definitely in love with girls and assumed that was just what friendship was, playing pirates and making plans of running away together.

august: the eighth track for the eighth month. her mind. also my birth month so that’s special. controversial opinion: from what i’ve read most people seem to think illicit affair is the third song in the triage of teen love. i will strongly make the case that it's actually this one. first of all, the subject: a short lived summer fling, which is specifically mentioned later in “betty”. the central heartbreak of this song is liking someone who always belonged to someone else. yes, this song is a window into a different summer, far from pandemic central and the escapist imagery is delightful. but a whole song from the pov of the “other woman” to james and betty is just so much more fun. and there are two more specific lyrics that prove my point. “remember when i pulled up and said "get in the car”” you will see later comes back from the other person’s perspective. and most of all: the repeated line, “meet me behind the mall”? only teenagers make plans to meet up behind a mall. i rest my case. so now we have cardigan and august. two pieces of the puzzle.

this is me trying: i’m glad i now have a succinct message to send to anyone when they ask me what the hell i’m doing at any given moment. this song just sounds like regret and waste in the most self-assured and confident way. this is “back to december” with the training wheels off.  i have no apologies for my efforts at wasting all my potential. but in this song, taylor has opened her arms to me in a warm embrace and has forgiven me for all i’ve done wrong and reminds me to not take for granted the “try”. okay mom. i’m crying again, but okay.

illicit affair: this is the kind of thing that makes you feel sixteen, living in a dull suburb, while secretly screwing your 38 year old married neighbor who’s rich but wants to be an artiste. aka like a character in euphoria or something. it’s sexy and dangerous until you think about it and then it's just dingy and creepy. but this song starts and stays beautiful. most importantly, this song is too sad and depressing frankly, to be a part of the trilogy. we could never forgive james for leaving such a mess and making her a fool. you don’t want to be this girl. you want to walk up to her and shake her and yell “you exist and will not be ruined by any dumb man”. and that’s feminism.

invisible string: is it reductive if i say this one’s about joe? all my non-stan friends have asked me which ones are about him. we forgive them and point them in this direction. because it is lovely and beautiful that we are all tied to our soulmate for our whole lives before we ever meet them (because that would in fact mean that there is someone out there for everyone which might be naive or dumb but i am both of those things and whats the point of living if you don’t believe in the power of love). this honestly gives me “begin again” vibes in the best way. it’s red-era level with the wisdom of lover-era tay. sublime.

mad woman: the second mention of the “mad woman” as both taylor herself and the character in the story. as usual, tay stays calling out double standards and the manipulation of women into “going crazy” for expressing reasonable anger. I, personally, wish i could say “fuck you forever” without someone saying i’m “overreacting”. this is my least favorite song on the album and i’d still listen to it three times in a row and need to resist the urge to set a man’s lawn on fire. just girly things.

epiphany: i know she said this one is about her grandfather’s experience in the military but all i imagine is a slow montage of harry style’s character in “dunkirk” on the beach. and it’s beautiful. and much like my sophomore in high school self reading “all quiet on the western front” it evokes a pain from deep inside me that engulfs a loss i could never describe and a sadness too awful to witness. you will listen to this song and feel absolutely powerless to the will of the universe and it’s cruelty. and the faint but steady heart monitor beep in the background… i’ve never seen “grey’s anatomy” but i can imagine why it has so many fans sobbing. and let me end on this: two soldiers in some old war (meaning both men based on dunkirk) watching each other like this and living and dying together…gay.

betty: the first verse was pulled directly out of my subconscious fantasy of being in love in high school and it being so wonderful and painful and dramatic. and taylor riding a skateboard… is a mood. the song has been out for less than a week and it’s already a cold take to talk about how this is her gayest song to date (close runner-ups being reputation’s “dress” and “cardigan”). but of course i will still talk about it. the lyrics embody such authentic awkward gay energy (see the lesbian in booksmart for reference) and having been a 17 year old only three years ago, i can say with reasonably good authority that no 17 year old straight boy could stand in front of a crowd of peers and beg forgiveness from a girl he hurt. it’s just not realistic. these are all awkward, over-dramatic, young girls stumbling through love. and it’s awesome. james is the speaker of this song, and the subject of “august”, the summer fling that was never truly there due to james’ love for betty, the titular role of this song. thus completing the love triangle. and there are so many obvious references in this song to both “august” and “cardigan”. rhyming cardigan with car again makes me want to light myself on fire in the best way. i love it. “i dreamt of you all summer long” is the final nail in the coffin for the girl in “august” who was clearly just a place-holder. totally separate from taylor swift, my favorite word is porch. so the amount of times it appears in her lyrics is wonderful. say it out loud. it just feels nice. anyway, this song makes me want to be young and dumb and in love. the second can really only be tolerated because of the first and third. i hope the story has a happy-ending. if james were a boy i’d wish him the plague.

peace: the coming-of-age movie starring james and betty (and inez) is over. we have come to “the age” i guess. there’s a thought that’s gonna fester. if this song was just the line, “would it be enough if i could never give you peace?” over and over for four minutes it would still smash me to pulp and fill my body with helium gas. i can and will cause a car wreck when this comes on the aux. if this song is what being grown up is like (bare in mind grown up to me is like, 30) then i’m ready to be done coming of age. because i already worry if i’ll be at all enough for anyone and way too much for someone at the same time. but like all good poetry, this song isn’t about what it “means”, but how it “feels”. and this is new york city, the summer, pouring rain, a long walk home, desperately fearing and hoping they are there waiting for you.

hoax: a one-sided conversation between me and my stubborn clinical depression. i too, constantly stand alone on the cliff demanding a reason. one has not yet been presented. it operates both within and and against me. i could be bigger and stronger than it. but instead i tend to it like a prickly plant. (“no other sadness in the world will do”). there is nothing both sadder and funnier then the scene in “avatar: the last airbender” when prince zuko stands alone on a cliff screaming at the sky for lightning to strike him. i don’t know why this song reminds me so much of that. what a way to end such an emotional rollercoaster. it is so emotionally draining that it simply forces me to start folklore again from the top and listen to it all over again.  or take a long therapeutic nap.

there are no skips. and it will still surprise you on your 267th listen. proceed with caution.

i knew you, in a past life maybe. i have not met you yet, but folklore has made me believe you exist.

@taylorswift 10/10 good work

@taylornation this had to be shared and i don’t have a twitter so

#@taylorswift #@taylurking #@taylornation #taylor swift #folklore #ts8

[silver-wield]

tbh after playing the remake, I get the appeal of CA, because it's a familiar manic pixie dream girlfriend type love story. It even plays into the tragic boy loses girl trope which helps frame it as some grand romantic story. and yeah they're cute, and they definitely have a special connection. I think I could ship it if not for the whole rest of the story. It's a relationship that has the potential to become romantic, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. 1/5

The remake is doing a great job on untangling a lot of the ambiguity the OG left us with. Yes, Cloud could develop feelings for Aerith and vice versa, but the remake is planting so many seeds that confirm he currently has feelings for Tifa (which she reciprocates) and I don't think it's possible for any feelings he might develop for Aerith to overcome these feelings he has harboured since childhood. 2/5

Unfortunately those feelings are something he cannot fully understand because of his comprimised mental state. But you can clearly see that his deep affections for Tifa and desire to protect her stay with him despite that (as can Aerith). The problem with the OG (other than having to potray this incredibly complex subversive nuanced story through text and polygons) is that the LS scene recontextualize so much of who Cloud is, but by that time people had already made their conclusions. 3/5

With the remake you can see them trying to fix this by having a constant thread of romantic undertones to all of cloti's interactions. The CA relationship meanwhile is potrayed with these moments that play into romantic tropes and expectations. The bridge scene is flashy and grand and draws the attention, but it doesn't carry the substance that a single hand-clech does. 4/5

It's meant to be a smokescreen to the real story - just as Cloud is not the hero you think he is, the love story is also not the one you think it is. And that's what makes FF7 so great. It's all about the subversions of what you expect - it's about the truth underneath these grand and compelling illusions that is complicated and real but still just as beautiful. 5/5

Okay, first off I don’t see how anyone can play Remake with Cloud being biggest mood around Aerith and find that appealing. Personally I think it’s the most toxic and harmful behaviour in the entire game when he’s alone with her and she’s literally trying to force him to act like her dead boyfriend. There is zero appeal in that and it’s not cute how she behaves, it’s arrogant and self serving. Like I said in a different post (or maybe a tweet) both Sephiroth and Aerith use Cloud to fulfill their own selfish desires. Sephiroth needs Cloud to destroy the planet by getting him the black materia, and Aerith wants Cloud to emulate Zack so she can fool herself into believing he didn’t die. In both cases what Cloud wants doesn’t even factor into things. That harmful dynamic doesn’t give them a special relationship. It mirrors Cloud’s relationship with Sephiroth in that it hurts him. Aerith and Sephiroth are two sides of a coin and the whole isn’t anything that benefits Cloud. Even after they’re both dead they continue to harm him through their obsession with him. It’s only at the end of AC when they’re both truly gone from his life completely that he’s able to smile and be at peace. He has no stalkers in DC and that’s why he’s so cheerful. He gets to live happily with Tifa and not worry about ghosts coming after him. It has zero potential to become anything because to make that a thing, you need to totally destroy everything else about the story and characters themselves. You have to take away Zack being Cloud’s best friend and saviour, at which point he’s just dead. You have to take away Tifa being his motivation to become a soldier, at which point he’s dead cause Sephiroth still comes to Nibelheim and burns it. Point is, there is no way that dumdum dinghy is possible without removing Cloud and most of his personality from FF7, at which point he’s just a pretty face, so people should just go write AU fanfiction and admit they wanna bang the pretty boy and not deal with his canon personality and story. 

There wasn’t any ambiguity in OG because 7R is FF7 and the devs have said multiple times the story is the same as before. The problem back then was a poor translation, bad advertising and people refusing to follow the narrative to its proper conclusion. Cloud at no point in OG or any of the compilation could develop feelings because it’s shown in the entire compilation that he has always and will always love Tifa. Before Crisis he loves Tifa. Crisis Core he loves Tifa. OG he loves Tifa. AC he loves Tifa. DC he loves Tifa and Remake he loves Tifa. There’s zero room for anything with Aerith because his entire character arc is consumed with his desire for Tifa. It’s literally shown in the damn game that he’s in love with her. So, no, there never was any chance for Aerith, and I’m tired of people trying to entertain one by saying “if she lived”. Sorry, not sorry, if she lived Cloud is still in love with Tifa, so he never would, could or want to develop any feelings for Aerith. 

Cloud loves Tifa. It’s the goddamn plot. 

There isn’t any problem with the lifestream scene being the big reveal at that point in that game. The problem, again, is that people refused to follow the narrative to its logical conclusion and got hung up on their dumbass headcanon about Aerith. The entire premise of the game is built on illusion vs reality and yet some people still refuse to wake up and see reality. The game spells it out for everyone. They got so triggered over her dying that they acted like the game ended at that point instead of it carrying on and reaching the actual true culminating arc where we find out Cloud wasn’t himself this entire time. People seem to think Aerith dying is the plot and that she’s the main character or something. It’s Cloud’s game. The plot revolves around him. That’s why the lifestream scene is the apex of it. 

It’s Cloud’s story, not Aerith’s. 

I’ve pointed out several times how Aerith’s optional scenes in Remake show that Cloud is barely even a fixture. Her language of flowers you barely have Cloud in shot while she’s doing all that talking. She’s basically talking to the player. Her optional dress scenes show the illusion for what it is. That bridge is tiny and yet in the red dress is looks like this massive structure. I laughed my ass off when I spotted it. The pink dresses perspective shortens drastically for each one, with the funeral dress having Cloud standing nearest to Aerith, so that one’s probably closer to reality than that ott scene with random fireworks and fans popping up from nowhere. Not to mention the fact Aerith’s entire figure is padded out to fill that dress and she’s got hair extensions in and a ton of make up and the ost is actually called a mess of makeup or something like that and not a certain gaudiness. I mean, Madam M tried to turn Aerith into Tifa to win the bride contest and beat Sam. The game makes things very clear that the illusion is Aerith and the reality is Tifa, and players can’t turn Aerith into Tifa to make Cloud notice her no matter how hard they wanna believe they can. Her resolution literally has her repeating her OG lines from the GS about how Cloud isn’t himself, but she also arrogantly assumes he fell in love with her or would because she’s arrogant. It’s a character trait that again mirrors Sephiroth’s arrogance. It’s what gets them both killed in the end. Aerith underestimates Sephiroth and Sephiroth underestimates Cloud. 

And we already saw what Cloud had to say about her declaration cause he only ever refers to her as a friend and didn’t show any romantic behaviour when he rescued her. Unless “Yep” is the height of romance now. It’s not that the romance isn’t the one you think it is. It’s that it’s the one you ignored and acted like wasn’t important because you hate the heroine. Tifa and Cloud are together from start to finish, but because people decided the pink girl was more important they acted like Tifa had no right to what was hers from the beginning. She didn’t get between Cloud and Aerith. There never was any Cloud and Aerith. It was always Tifa. She just took what was always hers and kept it. 

Anyone who doesn’t understand that should try playing the game cause it’s clear they didn’t.

#ship war #for the plot

[emilywatchescursedshow]

Ep 12 - Faith

Director: Allan Kroeker Writers: Eric Kripke, Sera Gamble, Raelle Tucker

Another X-Files classic story: the creepy faith healer and what’s happening with him. A close cousin of the creepy towns, and definitely piggy-backs in a way I like on the general creepiness of small town factions of Christianity and the weird stuff they get up to. In general I liked this episode, I liked the twist that the pastor’s wife was actually the one who was doing the magic, and I thought it was kind of clever that she was specifically using the magic to target people she felt deserved to die. I also liked how it was clear her character felt justified in her behavior the entire time.

I thought the reaper makeup was fun and the lore that there is more than one grim reaper. Also there’s a line about how keeping the reaper like this is "putting a dog leash on a great white"  which I fucking loved, that was a great line. And the ending where the reaper turns on the wife and smiles while doing it was very satisfying. Even though the reaper makeup & overall appearance of the character was a little simple, I feel like this is the first time the actual villain was a human acting on motivation that is very true to the real world, and by extension the characterization of the reaper was a little more complicated than normal. The smile at the end implies that the reaper really wanted to kill the wife all along, and leads the audience to wonder about what the “emotional state” of the reaper was the whole time. Maybe I’ll start writing reaper fanfic that just retells this episode from the perspective of the reaper. Maybe the reaper also has a crush on Dean Winchester. Who knows.

I feel like the morality aspect of the episode - like who gets to live or die - was a little half baked? Like Dean feels really weird and bad about someone being sacrificed for him (I didn’t catch who it was, I think it was the doctor? which I’m not quite sure why the wife would want to target the doctor specifically but ok) and then he feels weird about letting the girl who is dying from cancer just, continue dying from cancer. I think the end scene with her was supposed to somehow clear up his guilt? Like the perspective of the show was definitely that Dean’s guilt was not deserved, which is good, but I didn’t feel much tension throughout the episode either caused by or with regard to this angst. I guess Dean has a moment of hesitation regarding the lady at the end, but I found myself more annoyed by it than I did worrying that there was a chance Dean would let her get healed. This is clearly a one-off MOTW episode and we’re still building the characters in pretty piecemeal ways, so I’m sure we’re in for a greater amount of Dean angst around the corner. And I do think it matters that we learn in this episode that Dean Really Doesn’t Like the idea of someone dying for his sake. So I don’t think this is a bad plot element, I just thought it was a little half baked.

In the moment comments: - Meh on this creature design (from the beginning of the episode) - Starting in media res w this one - Uhoh Dean’s gonna die bc heart attack - Oh they're going to a faith healer this is another xfiles subject - We love Dean's reliable horniness for petite blondes overcoming his skepticism - Psychic wonder Sam - I don’t believe that god is who's helping the pastor choose - I forgot who Marshall is - "I have this thing" = inoperable brain tumor - Marshall hall dies bc Dean was healed i see - I like this grim reaper makeup - "we do that we're no better than he is" 😒 - "putting a dog leash on a great white" - Why did the dr die then? - Just tell her its trading a life for a life and let her think god is being unjust or whatever - These men have no idea what they're supposed to be doing at any given time - Dean want those officers to put more than the fear of god in him 👀 - I guess Sam gets to save Dean this episode instead of the other way around - It’s gonna kill the wife now - Ohhh Dean is gonna get some maybe - Oh no it's so he doesn’t feel guilty for her death anymore great

I forgot until I went through this how this episode has two tropes I particularly dislike which is the “we can’t kill someone bc we’re the good guys” when another character is clearly being very threatening and the “I can’t explain!” when a pretty bare-bones explanation that already fits within another character’s worldview and would do a lot to change their mind would be simple to construct. However, I think the fact that I didn’t remember these things until later means they didn’t bother me that much.

Again, overall, I liked this episode a lot. I think the actress who plays the wife does a really great job of seeming just a little too Present in all the scenes without being totally obvious which made the twist feel very believable without being totally obvious.

#spn s1e12 #spn #supernatural liveblog

[savvyblunders]

Personal Post: Imposter Syndrome, Reading Traditional Books, and thoughts about my own writing

{Just rambles regarding books, fanfiction and some of my thoughts therein.}

It’s been a terribly long time since I read any published books--aside from those written by fellow fanfiction authors. It has reached the point that I find them entirely too cringey. The plots are tame, the characters stiff, the language rote. I especially have a hard time caring if there is a supposed ‘romance’ involved. Forget about het romances, they’re so formulaic that they leave me cold. It isn’t that I have no interest in the portrayal of a relationship between a woman and man, it’s that by and large they might as well have been churned off of a factory production line. 

Part of my objection is to the tired old tropes and gender roles which authors (and readers) don’t seem to realize they’re not only falling prey to, but encouraging with their work. The world doesn’t have to be turned on its head to be interesting, but you shouldn’t know from the first few scenes between characters how it will play out--and further more, not care.

I did read a rather good psychological mystery a few days ago, however. I think perhaps it was successful in part because it was so different from the usual run of stories that people publish, but also because there wasn’t a romance shoe-horned into the storyline. The narrator wasn’t particularly sympathetic, but nor were they entirely unredeemed. I don’t want to give too much away, but it explored the themes of bullying, memory, redemption and revenge, with an enjoyable twist that I didn’t see coming--I was successfully led astray by red herrings, which isn’t always the case when I’m reading mysteries. The book, should anyone be interested, was Girl Gone Mad by Avery Bishop.

{I keep on rambling after the break ;)}

I also read another which was such a stinker I deleted it from my Kindle history and couldn’t tell you the title or author. This beauty had a somewhat interesting premise of a woman who wakes from a six month coma with full amnesia and throughout the book has to struggle with not remembering anything and depending on her husband, children and neighbors for the details of her life. Frustratingly, she finds parts of her personality and tastes have changed--at least as far as they all tell her. She begins to doubt that she is who they say--an issue further compounded when certain facets of her life pre-coma are revealed. Then when the ending arrives, there is a twist and a reveal which could have been pretty neat, only it arrived at the end of such a rote story, with such clunky storytelling and unimaginative language that I kind of didn’t care. It was clear, I might add, that the female protagonist was written by a man. Although blessedly he didn’t go into raptures over her perky breasts, long hair, or other physical attributes [insert vomiting]

My reading resulted in a two-fold feeling. One, traditionally published books are by and large crap. A few months ago I tried reading a book from a famous author whom I used to be quite a fan of. It was part of a series with which I used to be enamored. I settled in, expecting a very enjoyable read. After slogging through three chapters I gave it up. The writing was generic, the characters shallow and the ‘bad guy’ was so sketchily written as to be bewildering, not mysterious. 

That book left me frustrated and annoyed. But it also revealed something to me which I had somewhat accepted and understood prior to that, but not entirely absorbed. Just because a book is traditionally published doesn’t mean it’s any good. Just because an author is well known--or even on the best seller list--doesn’t mean they can write. There are more places to find interesting, funny, heartbreaking, sexy, fun, amazingly written, daring and wonderful stories than at a bookstore or through Kindle. 

The second part of my two-fold feeling was that while, as a writer, I may have much room to grow, I still have valuable skills to offer. My four years of writing fanfiction have honed my talent, refined my style, and influenced my voice, perspective and ability. A good beta, or editor, is invaluable. While I used to write solo and not show it to anyone, simply edit and post, I’ve come to understand the inherent value of feedback. It can be a tricky road, as you might find yourself influenced too much by a reader into trying to suit their tastes rather than your own, but a good beta (eternal thanks to @paialovespie & @hoomhum)--that is to say, a great beta, will not only see the nuts and bolts which might need tightening, but will offer insights which blow your story from ordinary to inspired. The same goes for a ‘personal cheerleader’ (the highest of praise to @mottlemoth) or someone who reminds you at your dark times that you are capable of far more than you can conceive of in that moment. Forget nasty comments online, most of us are our own worst enemies--after all, we know our weakest spots and can zero in on them mercilessly.

Even without a beta, I believe in myself as a writer enough these days (most days) to hope that one day, with hard work, skill, great editing, and some luck, I too could be published. Not a NYT best seller, perhaps, but then, I’m not entirely certain I’d like that. I don’t say this out of any sort of pretentiousness, but because, in essence, these days, I want to write the kind of things that appeal to a more niche audience. I’d like to point with pride at my small book, nestled there on a bookshelf, or available with one click of a button, as something that helps give a voice to a community which has, and still continues to be, marginalized, ignored, fetishized and pandered to, in equal measure. Perhaps it would be for the best if what I wrote wasn’t palatable to the greater reading public.

Of course, those days when I’m full of zest and confidence don’t always last. Like any creator, I fall prey to Imposter Syndrome. Lord, I can’t believe that a time used to exist when I didn’t know what that was! I knew the feeling (oh, how I did), but had no clue that a term existed to encapsulate it. The concept that I wasn’t alone in having days (weeks, months, years) of being cast into doubt that I had anything worth saying--a voice worth listening to--isn’t a new one, but to find out that I’m not alone was unutterably comforting. 

Since, like so many people, I’ve been suffering from a lack of ambition and ability to focus during this global pandemic, I haven’t written much at all, that inner voice rang loud and clear. I’m a fraud, a fake. Any ability I had was used up, clearly as shallow as a mud puddle if a little adversity was enough to dry it out. The struggle to get myself past that was, and is, one that swings from good to bad almost day by day. I had to finally give myself permission to be sad, scared, worried, tired, uninspired. Eventually I decided it was enough that I could find comfort and solace in other’s writing. And oh, how I have! Even though days and days would pass when I couldn’t even muster the interest to read, other times I would consume fanfiction fervently, feverishly. 

And there was so much out there! Adventure, sex, romance, comedy, crack, fluff, hurt/comfort. It seems funny that I can rail against the ‘formulaic’ writing of published books and then turn to ‘tags’ and ‘tropes’ for comfort. But I think the difference lies in the heart that is written into those fanfiction stories. Most of us, while being somewhat influenced by friends, mutuals and fans into writing for a hungry public, are, by and large, writing for ourselves. The old tried and true ‘write what you know’ advice seemed empty and meaningless to me for years. If we only ever write what we know, then how do sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, etc., get written? My brain went to the obvious and ignored the heart of the matter--it isn’t so much what you ‘know’ as writing what you need. What makes you passionate. Even if you’ve never been on a space ship, or been part of a polyamorous, platonic communal family group, if you write it with that yearning and spirit in your heart, it will reach out to someone else.

Fanfiction, at it’s core, is self-comfort.

In my estimation, looking at traditionally published books, it seems that what most of them lack is that heart. The writers aren’t writing because they need the story, or because they are compelled to tell it. It isn’t that they had a hell of a good time writing it, or that they made themselves laugh while doing so. They had a publishing deal to fulfil, a publisher to make happy, a reading public who had certain expectations. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, but if it’s your only motivation...then the writing suffers the neglect and a percerptive reader will note the difference. 

By and large, the fandom, the ship, even the trope, aren’t what captivates me most. I’m a pretty eclectic reader. I enjoy a good story more than I do the fact that it is a particular pairing. The draw is how well it is written, any chances the author took, the indulgence into style, formatting, etc. that they allowed themselves. So why should published books be any different? I’ve heard (non-fandom) people dismiss fanfiction as niche. Perhaps it is. But it is also broad, vast, uncharted territory where we’re all having a lot of fun and enjoying the hell out of ourselves.

Maybe those published authors need to spend a little time with us. 

#personal stuff #savvy ponders #writing #traditional publishing #fanfiction #pandemic #depression #anxiety #self comfort #introspection

[fatesdeepdive]

Entry 18: A Random Purple Crystal Saves Kaze

I upgraded a few buildings and tried bribing Daniella. She requested 42 pieces of amber. She’s going to stay in the hole for a while. By the way, I realized I only did two supports each in the last two entries, as opposed to the regular four. I’m not going to do extra today to fix things, I just thought I’d bring it up.

Support: Lady Corrin/Scarlet

C: Corrin spots Scarlet training and the two train together. Scarlet explains that her parents were knights and that she wanted to be a knight, but became a rebel because of Garon’s cruelty.

B: Scarlet shows Corrin how to bedazzle her weapons, which would probably be bad in a combat setting but is a neat character detail. Side note, there is only one piece of official artwork that actually shows Scarlet with a decorated weapon.

A: Scarlet and Corrin go stargazing together. Corrin says that the stars remind her of Scarlet’s weapons. Scarlet, in a surprisingly touching moment, says that the people of Cheve believe their dead become stars and that stargazing makes her feel like she’s visiting her parents, who died in the war. Scarlet contemplates her own mortality, asking Corrin what type of star she’ll be.

Review: This line, especially the A-Rank, is fantastic. Scarlet’s acceptance of the possibility of her own death is poignant, especially if you’re playing classic mode. I can just imagine this conversation replaying in the player’s head if Scarlet dies in their run.

Support: Lord Corrin/Scarlet

C: Corrin fins Scarlet smashing up rocks to get shiny gems for her weapons. She promises to give Corrin a demonstration, as soon as she can find some new gunk. By the way, Scarlet calls glue magic gunk, because apparently glue doesn’t exist in this game, despite glue being tens of thousands of years old. Or maybe she just calls glue gunk.

B: Corrin gives Scarlet glue and Scarlet makes a mosaic of Corrin’s face. On her axe. Or maybe her lance, because they keep saying weapon instead of what type of weapon, which is odd.

A: Scarlet sparklizes Corrin’s armor.

S: Corrin asks Scarlet to decorate him...with her love. Which is such an awful pickup line that Scarlet’s confession is her mocking Corrin.

Review: The platonic support line was more romantic than this, I feel. That said, it was fine. Scarlet bedazzling Corrin’s armor and the horrible, horrible pick-up line were fun.

Support: Ryoma/Saizo

C: Ryoma asks Saizo if he’s ever had doubts about taking his father’s mantle. Saizo says no and the conversation ends very quickly.

B: Ryoma asks if Saizo is dissatisfied about his pay, which is apparently very low, and Saizo says no.

A: Saizo explains that he is compensated not by pay, but by serving a good master.

Review: A fairly bland support line, all things considered. Side note, the way I thought this would go based on the C-Rank is Ryoma and Saizo bonding over living up to their fathers, which I kinda think would have been more interesting.

Support: Rinkah/Subaki

C: During battle, Subaki chases after fleeing enemies. Rinkah yells at him for endangering himself and he brushes it off because he’s arrogant.

B: Subaki apologizes for brushing off Rinkah’s concerns. In doing so, he implies that she has a short temper, which pisses her off.

A: They apologize to each other.

S: Subaki reveals that he’s always loved Rinkah. See the last entry for why I hate this trope. Rinkah points out that they’re getting married way too soon, which is the only thing I like about this support.

Review: This support was unbearably bland, to the point that I’ve already forgotten it as I write this.

Birthright Chapter 15: Wolfskin Peak

Kaze returns from scouting and reports that there are thousands of Nohrian troops swarming the area. Ryoma reveals he knows of route around the Nohrian army, through a dangerous mountain range called the Impassable Peak.

While climbing the mountain, a group of werewolves, led by a man named Keaton, shows up to threaten. Keaton explains that in the past, humans tried to kill him for his fur, and shows off the collection of human bones he apparently carries around at all times. Corrin convinces KEaton to let the party pass, but a magical explosion suddenly kills one of his men. Keaton, blaming team Corrin, attacks.

First off, I’d just like to say I love the concept of the Wolfskin as Nohrian versions of the Kitsune. The idea of werewolves being the counterpart to japanese shapeshifting foxes is brilliant. This somewhat filler chapter features Wolfskin, who can run over mountains without issue, swaming our army. Spread around the map are Dragon Veins that lower the stats of all enemies. My main strategy with this map was to position Mozu so she was on the edge of enemy ranges, with Kaden right behind her. Enemies attack Mozu, who currently has the best defences in my army, and Kaden finishes them off with his Beastbane.

After we kill literally all of the Wolfskin, Corrin says that she’ll never forgive herself for what happened. How much you want to bet this is never mentioned again?

Now, this chapter’s dialouge changes a lot depending on whether or not you have an A-Rank support between Corrin and Kaze. If you don’t, Kaze volunteers to be Corrin’s retainer during this scene.

Suddenly, a random landslide knocks Corrin and Kaze off a cliff. Kaze barely manages to grab Corrin. Corrin begs Kaze to let her go and save himself, but Kaze refuses. Kaze explains that he blames himself for Corrin being kidnapped. Hinoka shows up and Kaze tosses Corrin to her, sacrificing himself and falling to his death in the process. Afterwards, Ryoma and Corrin spot a sunrise, despite the fact that the sun never shines in Nohr (a detail that is confounding from an astronomy perspective), which they take as a good omen. The chapter ends with Corrin vowing that Kaze will not have died in vain and praying for her firend to rest in peace.

That is what happens if Corrin and Kaze don’t have an A-Rank. If they do, something different happens. Kaze spots a random purple crystal and throws a shuriken at it. It explodes, sending the two of them back onto the cliff. Corrin asks what just happened and Kaze just shrugs.

From a story perspective, I obviously prefer the death scene. Anything is better than the ridiculous non sequitor that is the survival scene. From a gameplay perspective, I’m torn. A moment like that can increase the stakes and give the story a darker tone, but it also sucks to lose a unit you’ve been training up. It’s notable that Kaze lives if you’ve used him more, which is better from a gameplay perspective, but also lessens the impact. Ultimately, I think this scene fails because its pointless. If the game had Kaze die advancing the plot, perhaps holding off an army of enemies so Corrin can escape, it would actually had a good impact. But, because it’s just a random scene that exists solely to kill Kaze, and half the time doesn’t even do that, it stands out as a low point of this game’s writing. Specifically Birthright’s writing. This isn’t even close to some of the shit in Conquest and Revelations.

#fire emblem #fire emblem fates #fe fates #fe 14 #kaze fire emblem #keaton fire emblem #scarlet fire emblem