#and pushing a singular narrative isn’t a good way to go

[scifigeneration]

AI is here – and everywhere: 3 AI researchers look to the challenges ahead in 2024

by Anjana Susarla, Professor of Information Systems at Michigan State University, Casey Fiesler, Associate Professor of Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Kentaro Toyama Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan

2023 was an inflection point in the evolution of artificial intelligence and its role in society. The year saw the emergence of generative AI, which moved the technology from the shadows to center stage in the public imagination. It also saw boardroom drama in an AI startup dominate the news cycle for several days. And it saw the Biden administration issue an executive order and the European Union pass a law aimed at regulating AI, moves perhaps best described as attempting to bridle a horse that’s already galloping along.

We’ve assembled a panel of AI scholars to look ahead to 2024 and describe the issues AI developers, regulators and everyday people are likely to face, and to give their hopes and recommendations.

Casey Fiesler, Associate Professor of Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder

2023 was the year of AI hype. Regardless of whether the narrative was that AI was going to save the world or destroy it, it often felt as if visions of what AI might be someday overwhelmed the current reality. And though I think that anticipating future harms is a critical component of overcoming ethical debt in tech, getting too swept up in the hype risks creating a vision of AI that seems more like magic than a technology that can still be shaped by explicit choices. But taking control requires a better understanding of that technology.

One of the major AI debates of 2023 was around the role of ChatGPT and similar chatbots in education. This time last year, most relevant headlines focused on how students might use it to cheat and how educators were scrambling to keep them from doing so – in ways that often do more harm than good.

However, as the year went on, there was a recognition that a failure to teach students about AI might put them at a disadvantage, and many schools rescinded their bans. I don’t think we should be revamping education to put AI at the center of everything, but if students don’t learn about how AI works, they won’t understand its limitations – and therefore how it is useful and appropriate to use and how it’s not. This isn’t just true for students. The more people understand how AI works, the more empowered they are to use it and to critique it.

So my prediction, or perhaps my hope, for 2024 is that there will be a huge push to learn. In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum, the creator of the ELIZA chatbot, wrote that machines are “often sufficient to dazzle even the most experienced observer,” but that once their “inner workings are explained in language sufficiently plain to induce understanding, its magic crumbles away.” The challenge with generative artificial intelligence is that, in contrast to ELIZA’s very basic pattern matching and substitution methodology, it is much more difficult to find language “sufficiently plain” to make the AI magic crumble away.

I think it’s possible to make this happen. I hope that universities that are rushing to hire more technical AI experts put just as much effort into hiring AI ethicists. I hope that media outlets help cut through the hype. I hope that everyone reflects on their own uses of this technology and its consequences. And I hope that tech companies listen to informed critiques in considering what choices continue to shape the future.

Kentaro Toyama, Professor of Community Information, University of Michigan

In 1970, Marvin Minsky, the AI pioneer and neural network skeptic, told Life magazine, “In from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.” With the singularity, the moment artificial intelligence matches and begins to exceed human intelligence – not quite here yet – it’s safe to say that Minsky was off by at least a factor of 10. It’s perilous to make predictions about AI.

Still, making predictions for a year out doesn’t seem quite as risky. What can be expected of AI in 2024? First, the race is on! Progress in AI had been steady since the days of Minsky’s prime, but the public release of ChatGPT in 2022 kicked off an all-out competition for profit, glory and global supremacy. Expect more powerful AI, in addition to a flood of new AI applications.

The big technical question is how soon and how thoroughly AI engineers can address the current Achilles’ heel of deep learning – what might be called generalized hard reasoning, things like deductive logic. Will quick tweaks to existing neural-net algorithms be sufficient, or will it require a fundamentally different approach, as neuroscientist Gary Marcus suggests? Armies of AI scientists are working on this problem, so I expect some headway in 2024.

Meanwhile, new AI applications are likely to result in new problems, too. You might soon start hearing about AI chatbots and assistants talking to each other, having entire conversations on your behalf but behind your back. Some of it will go haywire – comically, tragically or both. Deepfakes, AI-generated images and videos that are difficult to detect are likely to run rampant despite nascent regulation, causing more sleazy harm to individuals and democracies everywhere. And there are likely to be new classes of AI calamities that wouldn’t have been possible even five years ago.

Speaking of problems, the very people sounding the loudest alarms about AI – like Elon Musk and Sam Altman – can’t seem to stop themselves from building ever more powerful AI. I expect them to keep doing more of the same. They’re like arsonists calling in the blaze they stoked themselves, begging the authorities to restrain them. And along those lines, what I most hope for 2024 – though it seems slow in coming – is stronger AI regulation, at national and international levels.

Anjana Susarla, Professor of Information Systems, Michigan State University

In the year since the unveiling of ChatGPT, the development of generative AI models is continuing at a dizzying pace. In contrast to ChatGPT a year back, which took in textual prompts as inputs and produced textual output, the new class of generative AI models are trained to be multi-modal, meaning the data used to train them comes not only from textual sources such as Wikipedia and Reddit, but also from videos on YouTube, songs on Spotify, and other audio and visual information. With the new generation of multi-modal large language models (LLMs) powering these applications, you can use text inputs to generate not only images and text but also audio and video.

Companies are racing to develop LLMs that can be deployed on a variety of hardware and in a variety of applications, including running an LLM on your smartphone. The emergence of these lightweight LLMs and open source LLMs could usher in a world of autonomous AI agents – a world that society is not necessarily prepared for.

These advanced AI capabilities offer immense transformative power in applications ranging from business to precision medicine. My chief concern is that such advanced capabilities will pose new challenges for distinguishing between human-generated content and AI-generated content, as well as pose new types of algorithmic harms.

The deluge of synthetic content produced by generative AI could unleash a world where malicious people and institutions can manufacture synthetic identities and orchestrate large-scale misinformation. A flood of AI-generated content primed to exploit algorithmic filters and recommendation engines could soon overpower critical functions such as information verification, information literacy and serendipity provided by search engines, social media platforms and digital services.

The Federal Trade Commission has warned about fraud, deception, infringements on privacy and other unfair practices enabled by the ease of AI-assisted content creation. While digital platforms such as YouTube have instituted policy guidelines for disclosure of AI-generated content, there’s a need for greater scrutiny of algorithmic harms from agencies like the FTC and lawmakers working on privacy protections such as the American Data Privacy & Protection Act.

A new bipartisan bill introduced in Congress aims to codify algorithmic literacy as a key part of digital literacy. With AI increasingly intertwined with everything people do, it is clear that the time has come to focus not on algorithms as pieces of technology but to consider the contexts the algorithms operate in: people, processes and society.

#technology #science #futuristic #artificial intelligence #deepfakes #chatgpt #chatbot #AI education #AI #Youtube

[talenlee]

Homestuck 1/2

Alright, look, I made the banner graphic let’s tear the bandaid off.

I make fun of Homestuck and have no intention to stop doing so, but I do so based on the series and interactions with its fans and the creator’s opinions and – look I’m not doing a good job of setting this up, this is a very meta and tortured introduction that doesn’t get to the point, and therefore, by Homestuck standards, it’s good. But what I am trying to get to is that Homestuck is a space that’s super important to people in a way that to me, an older internet denizen, rings true of the Ranma 1/2 fandom.

You know, it was a space full of romance roleplays and weird sexy exploration, and a bunch of queers used it to work themselves out and in the process learned from one another about what it meant to be queer.

I think the overlap between these spaces is a synthesis of three ideas: Isolation, Play, and Smoochiness.

There’s a reason why the Cops Reading Homestuck story was a desireable story to tell and also why it was obvious bullshit. Cops can’t read. But also because the nature of being a Homestuck was one of being isolated. Homestuck isn’t a media everyone at school reads and has as a shared experience, it’s not communal and it’s not actually shareable. Like, you and a friend can’t put the webcomic on at the same time as you, it’s not a thing you can watch together. You have to participate in the webcomic separately, and to share the fandom you have to spend time with people who are also doing so. That pushes you out of social spaces with people you hang around with personally and into spaces where you’re going to interact with them in online spaces, and almost any online space like that is going to inevitably give people a way to be creative.

Similarly, if five to ten years earlier, you were invested in Ranma 1/2, you weren’t going to be seeing that at your library. You might be lucky to be at an anime club or manga club at a university, but if you were an English language speaker, odds were good you were going to only be finding community around Ranma 1/2 was online, and at that time? Online was stuff like Geocities or Lycos or Angelfire. Online was AOL Instant Messenger roleplay rooms. Online was USENET. You weren’t logging onto those places for a bit of everything, you were going there for this fandom, for this thing that you were interested in.

This is a thing I think that induces these kinds of media into being play spaces. You wanted to immerse yourself in it, you wanted more of it, there was a limit for how much of it there was and the only real places you could find it were places that were, definitionally, only going to necessarily share this thing as a frame of reference. It’s a great set of pressures for making sure people completely pickle their brains about a subject material.

Another element that links these two is that it seems the fandoms latched pretty hard onto the importance of romance and relationships. I don’t know anyone who considers themselves Extremely About Homestuck who starts promoting it by saying that the story is really coherent and good and makes a good singular point. I don’t mean this in a way that’s disrespectful to you Homestuckies, aside from the general low-level disrespect that you all are comfortable with and know you deserve, but I don’t get the impression anyone who spent a long time in the Homestuck space, especially the roleplaying Homestuck space, then you were into the characters.

Similarly, nobody should turn to Ranma 1/2 for a great long form story full of character arc moments — it’s a sex comedy martial arts manga with silly magical powers. The conclusion of it is a ‘wedding’ that gets interrupted and returns the story to a status quo (kinda). But along the way there was practically an OC Kit of narrative of hey, here’s a bunch of obvious hooks we reuse for characters to arrive in the story space and here’s how a Ranma 1/2 character gets created and you almost had an RPG sourcebook on that matter.

(Almost.)

No, the thing that drives both stories in their fan’s minds is the characters and the ability to play with them. Particularly, the ability to play with them as people with mouths that could be pushed up against one another and made to kissssss. Now, if you’ve read Ranma 1/2 you might want to go at this point ‘uh actually romance doesn’t come up that much’ because there mostly the romance is in reference to people trying to coerce a romantic situation onto someone and Ranma or Akane resisting it but c’mon.

It’s a 1980s sex comedy anime.

The story is building up to the kissssss.

Which means you have this media that focuses you on focusing on it more, a sort of hyperfocal brain pickler, sitting right next to a big pile of crayons and blank paper, and room to play. There’s non-judgmental approaches to trying things out, there’s a creative space where you aren’t necessarily going to encounter immediate resistance — believe it or not, there was actually a default fandom position of ‘oh, you’re going to make something? cool!’ on the internet back in the day — and in the process you wind up, without necessarily being told or induced to, play with romance in this media space with people who are definitionally not in a position to harm or judge you.

I want to make fun and I will and I like doing so, but to do so I must always do with open honesty that: there’s nothing wrong with this. The fact that Homestuck is very meaningful to people, so meaningful to people, makes complete sense.

I’m still not going to read it, don’t be silly.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Homestuck #ranma 1/2 #Media #Queerness

[theartistichuman]

Are we as the trans community ready to acknowledge that sometimes gender just straight up changes?

Obviously this doesn’t apply to all people, but for some trans people they were fine being their AGAB until they weren’t.

I used to follow an enby who proudly identified as a woman for years before one day they just went “actually… it changed. I’m not vibing with that any more. I was a woman, but now I’m not and I’m ready to open a different chapter of my life.”

Sometimes people who are genderfluid don’t have fluctuating dysphoria, and just have a changing gender.

Sometimes non-binary people will find that their masc/femme alignment changes.

Sometimes people who were binary feel more non-binary, or oppositely binary.

Are we ready to normalize this too?

EDIT:

Something that I have noticed is that many people read the first bit of my post and shut their brains off for the rest of the post. What I was trying to articulate wasn’t just relating to your AGAB as a child, but ALSO relating to your AGAB as a child.

I was trying to say we need to normalize gender changing in ALL stages of life in ALL forms. I’m really glad that this post gave some form of comfort to those who needed it, but what I’m trying to articulate that a changing gender doesn’t disqualify you from being trans or from retransition.

Several people have pointed out that, as of now, AFAB people feel the safest relating to this post and commenting on it. This is true. So if anyone is willing to have a conversation with me abt this please message me or send me an ask because I want to know how to adequately include all people in this conversation.

Thank you!!

#the ‘trans since birth’ is an incredibly important narrative #I honestly believe that I personally was trans at birth #but gender is also straight up not real in a lot of ways #and pushing a singular narrative isn’t a good way to go #trans #trans positivity #trans discourse #trans dialogue

[fedzkun]

Villain Hunt Arc Meta: All For One’s Horrific Guide to Methodically Breaking Down Your Local OFA Holder

Ft. Turning the ‘Overpoweredness’ of OFA into a Setback, and AFO’s Successful Manipulations Of Midoriya Izuku

In which I also give AFO too much credit for all the pain he’s probably caused, and theorize that his plans to break Izuku actually started getting enacted even before he’d escaped Tartarus.

(A.k.a. me loving the angst because this is really good angst writing, but also hating it because the manga doesn’t come with a Angst with A Happy Ending tag unless you count Izuku’s ‘this is the story of how I became the greatest hero’ which isn’t really a guarantee of happiness )

So. What an arc! In the span of ten chapters (starting from the end of the War arc) Hori delivered a full-on Villain-looking, Vigilante Midoriya Izuku. Congratulations, Horikoshi, for finally introducing Akatani Mikumo!

The fast pacing and lack of breather panels are so fitting for this arc truly. AFO never gave them a moment’s rest. Yes, from henceforth as he’d promised... It’s always going to be his turn.

Izuku is making amazing progress with unlocking the full power of One For All. In his words, his abilities might as well already be on par with what a healthier All Might could do, and with no recoil to boot. Plus, there’s only one last quirk to unlock. For villain fights, I don’t think we need to worry about him losing, or him breaking anymore bones at this time.

Which, some might argue, makes Izuku too ‘OP.’

To start with, I want to talk first about the ‘overpoweredness’ of the One For All quirk. It’s a wonderful quirk truly, having inspired and amazed so many because of its sheer power. Used well, it could grant instant victories and restore the people’s wavering faith to the heroes. Because with a quirk like that on your side, everything’s going to be alright, right? There’s always gonna be that bit of hope that something is still strong enough to stand against the looming evil...right?

Yeah. That’s what the people who’d lived under All Might’s Era of Peace thought so too. History repeats.

OFA’s ‘OP-ness’ is both a great blessing and a great burden.

Here are some points on how the narrative has made OFA's 'overpoweredness' a setback:

1. All For One—that bastard—exploits the urge that comes with OFA. Just as ‘AFO the quirk’s’ goal is to steal OFA, OFA’s job is to defeat AFO, and Izuku is sacrificing himself to its cause.

Here’s another thing I want to point out: The conclusion that the heroes drew about AFO planning to capture Midoriya Izuku alive? In rereading, I’m starting to believe it’s nothing but a mere assumption of his plans. Aside from the deal made with Lady Nagant—of which I think AFO didn’t take seriously anyway and set her up for failure— (and while we as readers are already aware of his true intentions to wear Izuku down) it’s weird that nowhere had AFO directly mentioned to Izuku that he’s going to kidnap him and take his quirk from him.

2. OFA made Izuku so brilliant (e.g. Pros and former Pros alike going “This kid...”) that they really can't help but place all their hopes on him. Sighs. In an ideal world, this would be a dream come true of Izuku getting his due credit for all his heroic achievements Pro heroes have started to do to Izuku what they’ve done all their lives to All Might--which is to put him on the pedestal, while they fall back to cover him like guards/safety net. Hence, falling back to the One Pillar Model mindset.

3. OFA makes Izuku untouchable, not only to the villains, but also to his allies. Prime material to reinforce isolation. And if Izuku doesn't want to be caught, he won't make it easy for either side.

4. OFA IS SUS AF, OKAY? What are the Holders doing?! While gaining access to them makes it easier and convenient to have personal trainers in handling OFA, the vestiges prove to add a lot to Izuku’s mental load. If they’d allowed Izuku to come to the point of being caked with blood and filth, they’re not doing very well at guiding him. Realize that most of their arc interactions with Izuku is Quirk Talk. They, of all people, should know how AFO’s machinations work! Hey First, for the love of god, warn Izuku! He’s showing so many signs of being manipulated that you should be picking up on. please /sobs ;;

Tbf, like, I’m pretty sure that the Holders haven’t been as mentally okay either, which would feed into Izuku’s current mindset.

Now that the setbacks have been listed, let’s dive in to AFO’s plans to toy with Midoriya Izuku.

PHASE 1: Pre-Tartarus Breakout

Speaking of OFA being sus, there’s something that has been niggling at the back of my mind.

All For One basically tells Izuku: “You were my main interest that entire time I was in prison”. So, to pass the time in Tartarus (since he can’t use any(?) of his quirks), AFO has been doing nothing but apparently daydreaming and designing a personal hell for the Ninth Holder during that entire period. HOWEVER, it also made me wonder…

…Even before he’d broken out, had AFO made any moves at all in enacting his plans to break Izuku?

Yeah?

And here’s the kicker: he says that before Blackwhip bursted out.

AFO is a master manipulator. Assuming that Izuku doesn’t have any latent AFO quirk (for whatever reason *coughs* maybe dfo if you're a believer) or that Quirk Singularity has anything to do with it, what is the trigger to Izuku suddenly having access to Blackwhip?

I’d argue that it is All For One himself.

Why? What’s his goal? If you notice during the Joint Training arc, Izuku is feeling pretty confident about his progress. He’s rather happy and feeling blessed, and he is making leaps and bounds with base power OFA.

AFO can’t have that. He can’t allow the Ninth Holder to become too emotionally stable, or else he’d have a stronger will. So by somehow activating Blackwhip, AFO makes Izuku feel like he hasn’t made any progress with his quirk at all. During the evaluations, Izuku mentions that he still needs a lot to work on, and while not all of it is visible, with the way he behaves, it’s pretty evident that his self-confidence has taken a rather large hit.

But, wait! If AFO had tampered with OFA during the JT arc, paving the way to unlocking the rest (like he’d also done during the War arc when he tried to ‘steal’ it then), then wouldn’t AFO be sabotaging himself since he’d be making Izuku a more formidable opponent?

Sure. Except that the quirks inside OFA are mostly useless when it comes to the mental part of the fighting. The only thing they’re useful for is for the current Holder to be able to play keep-away in the physical realm. And AFO could easily just find counters for those through his work on Tomura.

You know how else the situation becomes advantageous for AFO? With every quirk unlocked, Izuku’s goalposts keep on getting away from him, and Izuku will always feel like he isn’t ready or prepared enough. Izuku will push and push himself to master OFA to its fullest, to become more powerful, at the cost of his mental/emotional stability and physical wellbeing as he wears himself down.

And every time Izuku grew more powerful, and became more ‘OP,’ he is burdened with all the aforementioned setbacks that came with it. He could be the most powerful person in the world, but it’s all for naught if he doesn’t take care of himself. This plan is both a high risk and high reward on AFO’s part, and as of the moment, with a bloody Izuku staggering all over, AFO is visibly reaping these high rewards.

PHASE 2: Post-Tartarus Breakout

He’s going to toy with Izuku until Izuku fucking breaks. What follows is his series of actions that instills the desired responses from Midoriya Izuku. Let’s see how the master manipulator plays this game of chess, shall we?

Izuku’s plan: Reach out to villains and try to save them.

AFO’s counter: Kill off those who turn their back against villainy and/or acknowledge Izuku as a true hero.

Izuku’s resulting response: Stop reaching out to villains. Gain an instant victory and move on.

After all, what do you get when you block a hero from showing sympathy? You get an unfeeling living weapon.

---

Izuku’s plan: Work with the top pro heroes to bring down AFO.

AFO’s counter: Make plans that will serve to highlight how the top pros are just slowing Izuku down. (e.g. Making moves while it’s raining, so as to divide them, but also to bring out No. 1 Hero Endeavor’s "slowness" in the rain. Nope, I don’t think that’s a throwaway line at all.)

Izuku’s resulting response: Grows more reckless, often leading the charge.

---

Izuku’s plan: Track AFO down.

AFO’s counter: Lead them to dead-ends. Or when they do supposedly reach something, endanger them.

Izuku’s resulting response: His tunnel vision worsens, as he grows more desperate.

---

Izuku’s plan: All Might following him around is okay since it would help All Might from worrying so much, and Izuku could simultaneously keep an eye on and protect All Might.

AFO’s counters: There are a lot to really fuck with this bond, damn you AFO.

Taint that passing the torch memory of ‘You’re Next.’

Declare that All Might no longer interests him. Liar. He outright stated before that he’s one for keeping a grudge

Send another assassin to Izuku [Underlying Message: You yourself are a walking danger zone to those whom you dearly care for.]

Izuku’s resulting response:

Interpret that memory of ‘You’re Next’ as taking up the position of being AFO’s shiny new plaything, and therefore supposedly sparing All Might from the torment (Unfortunately, making Izuku push AM away is just part of the torment ;A;)

Think that AM is no longer in the direct line of fire as long as AFO focuses on Izuku

Finally, push his last line of morale support away, and completely isolate himself.

Btw, I wonder how All Might feels about Izuku using Nana's quirk to get away from him.

---

The suffering doesn’t end.

Izuku’s plan: Save people.

AFO’s counters: (possibly offscreen) Send more villains and assassins to torment Izuku some more with the knowledge that he can’t save them. Sending villains out also puts innocents in danger.

Izuku’s resulting response: He won’t stop for anything. He won’t sleep, won’t eat, won’t slow down. He will always do his best to save as long as someone is in danger.

His body will keep on moving and moving and MOVING on its own.

--- All For One is very effective as a supervillain. He has managed to make the heroes think that his only goal is to capture Izuku alive for his quirk. He has Izuku right where he wants him: dancing to his tune at the palm of his hand, utterly toyed with, left with no escape in sight.

Psychologically vaulted.

.

.

.

PHASE 3

And so, if Izuku is being manipulated to drive himself further and further into self-destruction, what then is there left for All For One to do?

So much more. Because, my god, I think AFO has mastered the art of traumatizing the OFA Holders.

All For One once told All Might, “I will destroy all that you’ve protected.” And boy, is he delivering. He's definitely not done with AM btw.

First, he destroys All Might's image. And he is manipulating Izuku to drive himself to that point. To looking into his absolute worst.

And when that point arrives, AFO will hammer the final nail home.

Something like...

BEHOLD

JAPAN’S SYMBOL OF PEACE.

And oh, how it'll hurt. To see All Might's pride and joy be flaunted about as looking nothing like a hero to the masses, for him to be so utterly humiliated.

"See what I did to All Might's successor."

AFO will be banking upon the possibility that the angry masses will not want to be saved by whom they're tricked into viewing as someone that's the cause of all the pain. Izuku might have the willpower to stay true to his resolve, but with him on the verge of total breakdown, what would happen when he is shunned by the very people he is trying to help?

I once wrote a post about how the current events seem to be a bastardization of Izuku's wildest fantasies: he's working with the top pros, he has the most powerful quirk, and he's working with All Might (whom technically acts as a sidekick to him rn).

AFO has warped all that into a never-ending nightmare. And Izuku...

Izuku is really in need of saving.

Last thoughts:

Let me just say that it shouldn't be a competition about who gets to get through to Izuku. Right now, he’s gonna need all the help he can get, and it can’t be delivered by only one or two people. Saving Izuku is going to be a team effort, a solid support system that sees Izuku as their classmate/friend/student/actual person that they care about. And there’s sufficient space for that.

More hands reaching out means more chances to catch him if he falls.

#bnha #bnha 317 #bnha manga #bnha analysis #bnha meta #all for one #afo #midoriya izuku #all might #toshinori yagi

[solena2]

So.

Tommy isn’t Theseus. Every time I see Techno’s analogy about Tommy being Theseus brought up I’m filled with endless rage and I’ve DECIDED!

That it’s about time I explained just why it’s so objectively incorrect.

-

First: a bit of backstory on Theseus, because I doubt many of you actually know much about him beyond what Techno said in his “so you want to be a hero” speech, which left out a lot of relevant details.

Theseus was a demigod with two fathers and one mother. His fathers were king Aegeus of Athens and the sea god Poseidon, and his mother was Aethra, Aegeus’ wife. Aethra raised Theseus on her own, far from Athens to avoid him being assassinated.

Aegeus left him nothing but a sword with the Athenian crest and a pair of sandals, buried under a rock so no one else could get them.

When Theseus came of age, he took the sword and sandals and headed up to Athens, slaying various monsters along the way. (It pains me to abbreviate it that much, but Techno left out everything before the Minotaur so it won’t help me much in debunking his analogy.)

Once he got to Athens, he met up with his dad, chased out his stepmom Medea, (yes, that Medea) and killed some people. Then comes the relevant part.

Crete had won a war against Athens a while back, and because of this, every seven years Athens was forced to send 14 tributes to be killed by the Minotaur. (Yes, this inspired the Hunger Games)

Theseus decided he’d volunteer and kill the Minotaur, thus ending the tribute system for good and getting one over on Athens. He promised his dad that if he won, he’d come back in a ship with white sails, as opposed to the standard mourning black that signified the death of the tributes.

So he went to Crete, met king Minos and his daughters Ariadne and Phaedra, and got sent into the labyrinth. Ariadne gave him a magic ball of string that kept him from getting lost, allowing him to find the Minotaur and then safely get out afterwards, providing he could kill it.

He killed it, led his other 13 tributes out, and sailed back home. On the way, Athena told him to leave Ariadne stranded on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, so he immediately did so, because Theseus was an asshole.

He got home, his dad committed suicide because Theseus forgot the white sails and his dad assumed he’d died, Theseus became king and married Phaedra, and then the fun began, because again, Theseus was an asshole.

First, he cheated on Phaedra with Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, so she left and took the kids. Next, he and his other asshole friend Pirithous decided to kidnap themselves some new wives. Theseus decided on Helen of Troy, who was a child at the time, and Pirithous decided on Persephone, which resulted in both him and Theseus getting stuck in the Underworld for a while due to pissing off Hades.

Once he got back up, he killed his son for fucking his wife, which is messed up on many levels, and then left Athens because his people were rightfully not super okay with that.

Then he goes and meets Lycomedes, who throws him off a cliff.

-

Next, let’s talk about Techno’s speech a bit.

He starts off by accusing Tommy of being a power hungry dictator (paraphrased), before asking him if he wants to be a hero.

Then, he provides what is apparently the archetypal example of heroism, something often associated with selflessness, kindness, and generally giving at least one singular solitary fuck about other people.

Theseus! Heroic hero who does heroic things, like, uhhh *checks notes* cheating on his wife, kidnapping children with plans to forcefully marry them, leaving people alone on tiny islands with no supplies, killing his kid, etc. etc...

So we’re off to a great start.

Then, he gives a short summary of Theseus’ life and times! He skips the first part of his life completely, which is hilarious to me because it’s the only time Theseus ever did anything actually heroic or selfless, and gets straight to the meat!

“Let me tell you a story, Tommy. A story of a man called Theseus. His country was in danger, he sent himself forward! Into enemy lines. He slayed the Minotaur! And saved his city. You know what they did to him, Tommy? They exiled him. He died in disgrace, despised by his people. That’s what happens to heroes, Tommy.”

-Technoblade

So first off, he doesn’t mention... really anything other than the Minotaur and the exile, which is leaving out a lot of relevant details, like why Theseus was exiled. (You know, killing his son in cold blood?)

Second, he doesn’t give details in general. Not that he should’ve given a full telling, or anything, but I’m always surprised by the shortness of this speech when I go back and listen to it. He pretty much just gives the barest bones of an argument and expects his audience to take it at face value. (Which they do, but it’s still bad practice)

From the more accurate (if still brief) summary if Theseus’ life I’ve just given, I’m sure you can see why this might be more than a bit dubious, as an analogy. Given cc!Technoblade is literally an English major, and doubtless knows significantly more about the myth than I do, I’d imagine this was never intended to be taken at face value.

Over and over again, c!Techno proves himself to be an unreliable narrator, and over and over again, the fandom at large takes his word as gospel.

-

Now, as far as a more in depth argument for Tommy as Theseus goes, I will attempt to debunk that as well, because there are some genuinely good points to be made.

First of all, most people make Dream out to be the Minotaur. Given the time this speech was made, I imagine Schlatt was the intended target of that, but with latter events in mind, Dream does make much more sense.

I’d say this is honestly pretty fair, but I don’t think Tommy takes the role of Theseus in that narrative. I’d argue he’s much more analogous to the role of Ariadne, giving the tools required to defeat Dream but ultimately not doing so through his own power, but because someone chose to take those tools and make use of them. This also provides the very interesting characterization of Punz as Theseus, which is an incredibly unique take that I hope some a Punz enthusiast does something with, because I don’t know enough about his lore to make a good analysis on that.

The idea of Schlatt as the Minotaur, as was probably intended by Techno at the time, makes much more sense, though I still think other characters fit the role better. Firstly, Schlatt wasn’t killed, he died of a heart attack, and if someone had killed him I think it’s more likely to have been Wilbur or Techno who did it than Tommy, as Tommy was still very hopeful and idealistic at the time, at least compared to his character now. You could posit Tommy as Ariadne again in this situation, given he was the one to mastermind the final charge, and though I think Tommy as Ariadne is an idea that’s worth further exploration, I’d say Fundy futs the Ariadne role here much better, with him giving the spy’s diary before being effectively shunned and left out in the cold by both Pogtopia and Manburg, much like Ariadne was abandoned in the original myth.

I’d posit the Theseus in this scenario as Techno, Wilbur, or possibly Philza, as they were the ones to actually kill things in the 16th, though Techno and Wilbur’s killings were more in the metaphorical sense, taking the second life of L’manburg.

As for the exile, Tommy exile was alike to that of Theseus only in concept. Both were sent from their kingdoms for a crime, resulting in a falling out with someone close to them, and had a precarious relationship with heights while they were gone, but that’s about where the similarities end and even then they’re superficial.

First of all, Tommy’s exile was far more because Dream was looking for an excuse to do it than because briefing actually means anything on the SMP, given how Dream had been griefing bases and blaming Tommy for it for a while before it went down. (Fun fact, Bad and Skeppy were going to burn one of his discs over this, but one of them got sick so they had to cancel the stream.)

Theseus’ exile, on the other hand, was entirely deserved, especially when you consider how serious a crime killing family was in Ancient Greek culture. It was pretty much the biggest no-no in existence, and I’m almost surprised he wasn’t just straight up executed for it.

Second, Tommy’s falling out with Tubbo was almost entirely due to outside forces, (Dream) rather than because anything Tommy had done. Though Tommy’s cavalierness towards the trial and attempts to threaten Dream with Spirit doubtless didn’t help things, Dream surrounding L’manburg in obsidian walls and threatening them to exile Tommy was entirely his own choice, and not something that can be pinned on Tommy, no matter what the apologists may say.

Meanwhile, Theseus’ falling out with Phaedra had begun long before his exile with him cheating on her. Him killing his son was merely the last in a long line of dominos to completely destroy their relationship.

Last, Tommy nearly killing himself is very different from Theseus being pushed off a cliff. Tommy’s near suicide was the direct result of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of c!Dream for what was canonically, I believe, several months? (Correct me if I’m wrong on that one.) Tommy almost jumping off a pillar because he was deliberately isolated from his support systems is nothing like Theseus being killed because he was a cocky asshole who thought he was god.

-

So that’s why I don’t think Tommy is anything like Theseus, and why I’m filled with endless rage by the completely uncritical acceptance of this parallel, but it’s not the whole reason it pisses me off.

It also pisses me off because, as stated earlier, cc!Techno is an English major. He knew what he was doing with this. The fandom’s insistence on refusing to acknowledge his character as an unreliable narrator is, in my opinion, acting as a massive kneecap to what could be a great analysis of how he thinks.

Specifically: why does c!Technoblade think Tommy is like Theseus?

Of all the Greek heroes to pick, why that one? Was it just the tantalizing opportunity to parallel Schlatt with a horned monster, or was it because c!Techno has some genuine in-character reason to think this myth specifically applies to Tommy.

Now, we all know people in the SMP have a habit of analogizing Wilbur and Tommy. The assumption Tommy wanted to be president, the belief that Tommy nominated Tubbo directly, the belief that he was intentionally deceiving Techno about Pogtopia’s intentions regarding Manburg... all of these stem from Wilbur. There are more cases of this, of course, but several analyses have been done in the subject already, and this is long enough without more padding.

So why does Techno think Tommy is Theseus? Well, it’s simple, isn’t it?

Wilbur is Theseus.

To be continued, because this is already too long and my brain hurts.

#original post #dream smp #dream smp analysis #technoblade #tommyinnit #technoblade critical #(i guess. honestly I didn’t say much about techno himself in this but just to be safe) #dsmp #dsmp analysis #dream smp meta #dsmp meta #my writing #can you tell i don’t like Theseus much #hated to leave out his early life stuff because it’s genuinely super interesting but it wasn’t really relevant so I had to cut it :( #if you want a more detailed description of Theseus I’d recommend the rick riordan book on Greek heroes #it’s not the most scholarly work but it gives the bare bones of the myths in an accessible way that doesn’t take an English degree to read #call me a fake nerd if you want but I like the humor and digestibility #there are typos in this post and I Do Not Care

[vrishchikawrites]

About YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids Post-WWX Arrival

Dear Dee, feel free to delete or ignore this or post it, whatever floats your boat. This just stuck in my head after those posts and I had to blurt it all to someone. Thanks for taking the time to read my word vomit.

So I had to do this instead of an ask because it got long and I wasn't sure how many asks it'd need or how short I could cut it down without losing parts of the argument. And then other things came up as I was writing and, well.  Well..... >_>;;;; 

But you know, after that post/ask you had about YZY fics saying 'Fuck U' to YMJ/JFM & leaving both with her kids, I had a sarcastic 'yeah right' attitude about it. Mainly due to a lot of negation emotions to such an abusive (and delusional) bitch, partly due to how she wouldn't do that since it doesn't seem to be something her sort of character would consider either because she'd think of it as 'losing' (losing what, IDK, it's why I consider her type of person crazy) or she legit wouldn't think about such a viable action.

But then later, in the shower, I seriously went 'Wait, she can't fucking do that' and it wouldn't be about how MXTX uses her as a part of the narrative but entirely about the/their culture in the novel; the actions that have and would be taken in response; and her entire toxic personality as well.

1) We already know that the sects and the cultivation world in general is sexist, elitist and so Capital T 'Traditional' to the point that it's starting to petrify and any deviancy from this is an exception rather than the norm. YZY might be a madame of a great sect (for what that's worth considering how shit of a madame she's been and the titles she's chosen for herself) but she's still a woman even with her high rank and the things she's personally accomplished.

Even if she was in her rights to leave a 'bad' marriage, she'd be the one who'd get scolded more instead of JFM by her natal family, her former husband's family and by their entire society at large even if she had a few singular supporters. Because That's Not How Things Are Done in their society and I do believe that such a thing was rare even when it was accepted method by the upper echelons. Especially since it would have to be done by more than YZY simply deciding that She Wants Out and just- goes and Gets Out. With no serious allegations that would allow her to divorce or separate from YMJ/JFM without the input from her family, JFM's family and, I think, possibly some measure of compensation as well. And no, having or bringing in a 'bastard child' is not a serious enough offence for such a humongous decision. I think something more along the lines of treason or crimes against multiple, high-ranking parties would be more along the lines. Maybe.

And even if she does this, she'd be considered 'Used Goods' (such a terrible comment) and there'd be no other good/proper marriage prospects for a divorced woman with children let alone a woman like YZY with her entire abrasive personality and attitude put off even easy-going JFM.

(If she'd been widowed then it'd be more forgiven but I consider that a Real Bad End since, IMO, it would lead to the sudden and inevitable decline of YMJ either via mass exodus of disciples and/or residents of LP; being merged with another sect due to it's unstable leadership; or create an internal political war 'cause I bet you anything that the YMJ Elders/relatives (if they have any) Would Not Want YZY in charge of YMJ when she's already proven herself such a shit betrothed let alone madame.)

2) Speaking of families, while YMJ/JFM/LP as a whole might be glad to see YZY's back, I don't think her natal sect, MSY, will be glad to see her come storming back after all the effort they put into getting that particular marriage alliance with YMJ. And if she brings her children with her? Oh man, oh boy- mother or not, that could be considered as kidnapping or line theft (is that a thing?) especially if YZY is also seriously considering divorce proceedings and raising them as Yu and not Jiang. That could give leave to, for anyone more unforgiving and maybe JFM if he's pushed enough, disown both JYL and JWY from the Jiangs through no fault of their own (though I'm sure YZY would make it so as well as blame JFM for her own decisions and mistakes).

Therefore, any inheritance or benefits they might gain for being legitimised children of a great sect are forfeited. JYL will likely lose that betrothal with JZX because JGS will drop it like a hot potato and JWY won't be a sect heir because YZY literally decided to remove that by deciding to raise JWY as a Yu, no matter their blood relation to JFM. They leave him, they leave YMJ and everything attached with it. Which is if YMJ/JFM doesn't demand MSY to give back their heir/ess and to punish YZY for her actions. Or send all three of them back for the appropriate reactions/decisions.

Their society would demand no less in reaction because, to them, it would seem like YZY had gone mad and JFM would look weak (or weaker) and imply that YMJ is vulnerable and exploitable if JFM doesn't do something in response to her actions. That's not even getting into what the other smaller sects may try to do in an attempt to curry favour with YMJ or what LLJ or QSW would try in order to destroy or diminish YMJ. And whether JFM chooses to demand his children back or not, it may not change the fact that this may give him reason enough to choose a nephew or niece to be the new sect heir especially if, even after getting rid of YZY's poisonous influence, JWY grows up to be his mother's child more than his father's or even his own person.

Either way, such a thing would bring great backlash on YZY, and MSY as well as the collateral. No one would want to give face to her or her children because it would bring up some very uncomfortable questions and scenarios to the other sects- specifically, what would happen if the female members of their clans/sets decided to follow the footsteps of YZY and leave with their children and heirs. Especially if they use it as an excuse to leave for their own comfort and whims and not some legitimate wrongs and dangers. That would create some more restrictions on women thanks to YZY

3) And lastly, if any one of those idiot YZY stans think that she'd ever give up the status of being a madame of a great sect they'd be as crazy or crazier than her. YZY is all about status and power and face. Specifically, her status, power and face and how people in her reach reflect her or 'insult' her. She is a selfish, terrible, abusive and toxic person and can only see people in regards to how they would benefit her and the elevation of her and in no other way. Especially her family. They cannot be their own person, they can only be an extension of her and gods forbid they go against her.

We can see this in how she treats the people she supposedly loves. JFM? Arguments day in, day out along with accusations and slander of cheating, having one(1) supposed 'bastard' and being 'in love' with CSSR. Which all seems sus as hell. And that's when she's actually there and not out 'night hunting'. Even her 'training' seems to border on unhelpful rather then helpful if my vague recollections of juniors fainting from exhaustion can be relied upon (please call me out if they're not or find proof).

JYL? Berated by not being 'strong' but not helped at all to be 'strong'. It doesn't help that YZY seems to believe in the same standards strength in their society- that is, of martial masculine strength which does not and should not apply to JYL who has been said to be sickly. Which means h should have been learning a different way of cultivation/fighting anyway.  If that was something she wanted and had been offered in the first place- which I doubt. That isn't even getting into her repeated generational trauma mess of a betrothal which was decided only by those 'sworn sisters', accepted by her as a way out of her terrible home life and puts her squarely within reach of JGS who we know to be a womaniser, rapist, predator and a possible ephebophile considering we don't know the exact age of his youngest 'conquest' or the age of MZY's mother when they met which could be anywhere from 14 to 21.

JWY? Gods, so much meta on him and his(non-) relationships with his parents that I don't think I can contribute more to it. It's been all said and done. Unless people want me to stir the pot by saying that, maybe, just maybe, YZY resents JWY as much as she 'loves' him.Either because he's her son and yet never manages to 'accomplish as much' as WWX or because he's a boy and therefore, more benefits and allowances than a girl/woman- more than anything that YZY ever got without either a fight or screaming at someone about. *shrug*

So, in conclusion to this sudden an unexpected essay that I wrote(I'm so sorry about that, I thought it would be shorter -.-;;;;), YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids? Impossible. Not without some sort of personality transplant or a complete AU. She's too prideful, too bitter, too angry, too everything negative and little positive. She's a resentful product of the values and restraints of her society taken to the extreme negative with a willingness to inflict her pain on others to an abusive degree. But she's also too obsessed and reliant on those same values and restraints to keep up the image of her status. So her? Giving those up? You'd be more likely to see WRH as a doting grandfather than that.

---

Dee - All of this is true and yes YZY leaving YMJ is highly unlikely. While there will be consequences if she decides to leave, she does canonically lives separately from her husband. They seem to be in a situation where they are married but living separately, which was a common way to end a marriage (at least in spirit) back then. She essentially had all the perks of being Madam Jiang but fulfilled none of the responsibilities.

Afaik, her training the Jiang disciples is a donghua thing? I may be wrong but I recall she spent most of her time nighthunting.

As for taking her children along with her- that's completely impossible. At that point, children were the property of the father. She could leave but she would've never been allowed to take JC.

#submission

[mickstart]

hi bestie, I’m honestly still in shock and disassociated with reality after what happened to lewis and I’m so scared to go on social media and look at news articles cause they’ll be going off about how lewis’ dominance is finally ending and whatnot, so I kinda wanted to rant and maybe get reassurance?? that the king is still rising and he’ll only come back stronger cause as nico said, lewis is scarier when he’s hunting from behind??

what are your thoughts on this, are we seeing a red bull resurgence or is lewis only getting stronger and more able as a driver? I’ve only recently got into f1 but I’ve known lewis for years and he’s only gotten more impressive, especially with how committed he is for the environment and equality. will France see the return of the king?? will we see lewis coming back to take the crown like he did in 2018 I think it was? When he wasn’t even leading until halfway through the season?

so sorry for the massive rant, I just wanted to get this off my chest and get some assurance, especially with how wrecked and heartbroken lewis looked yesterday...

;Hey nothing to be sorry for bestie I completely understand feeling a little Out Of It from this! I honestly haven't been able to look at post race stuff with Lewis bc the way he sounded on the radio is just haunting me. Putting this under a cut because I also needed to do a massive rant about how good Lewis is.

First of all: for sure red bull have massively improved and are the best car this year. The regulations specifically target Merc and no amount of Sky trying to downplay how much better the red bull is magically gives Merc the better car again. Valtteri is not struggling that badly with the car because he's suddenly forgotten how to drive, it is clearly a hard car to drive. Realistically, it was only a matter of time before Max and red bull led the championship at some point this year.

But honestly? In Bahrain the scenario we're in now was so far beyond my best case scenario. I truly expected max to lead the championship from bahrain and be running away with it now whilst lewis and merc tried to sort out their problems. The fact that Lewis led the championship - for MULTIPLE races - is like.... it's insane to me. Going into this season I LIKED Lewis as a person sure, but I wouldn't have said he was one of my top 3 drivers. But every single race this season he's been more impressive. His talent, how hard he works, his mentality as a competitor, it has all just been amazing to watch. It keeps hitting me that this is a seven time world champion in his strongest era. I see absolutely zero loss in Lewis' skill, if anything I think he's either still sitting on his peak or still rising.

I know it sucks right now because Monaco and Baku back to back have been terrible races for Lewis, but recency bias is a huge problem in F1 and we need to look at it in context that this feels worse BECAUSE of monaco. Neither tracks suited the W12 and in Monaco Mercedes were an absolute disaster, as poor Valtteri proves. In Baku Lewis accidentally hit one button and the restart went to hell, other than that he was flawless all race and once again got fucked by a bad mercedes pit stop. Also, Mercedes struggle with softer tyres and I think we all suspect the tyres at Baku were too soft for EVERYONE let alone a team that struggles with the softs.

Two bad calls that are entirely on mercedes, and one accidental button press. When you look at it like that absolutely nothing damns Lewis or suggests he's losing it. Quite the opposite actually. It's just unfortunate they happened one after the other.

So Mercedes need to get their shit together - they can do that - but Lewis? Lewis has been dragging these clowns to glory. Lewis has been the apex predator. This season so far has only proven his skill and regardless of what happens with the championship I think that in 5 years time - with hindsight and such - people are going to look back at this year and say that THIS is the year to watch to see an F1 legend at his peak. Lewis has pulled off miracles this year. Two bad races in a row - at tracks where he has to work the car to its absolute limits - don't diminish that.

So yeah, I think that in France Lewis is going to be back at it again. As you said, Lewis always vibes better with the tracks after mid season and at France Red Bull will lose the flexi-wing advantage. I'm not guaranteeing everything will be perfect and rosy from France onward. This is going to be a tight season, and throughout the year we're going to see this pattern of red bull and mercedes trading bad days and good days and tracks that suit either car. Be prepared for that and remember the big picture. But am I worried that Baku means it's 'over' and Lewis is going to get eaten up by Red Bull? Absolutely not.

This sport is made up on hundredths of seconds. We see singular moments where one thing going wrong reshapes the entire narrative. We live in the moment because you have to live in the moment in F1. Sometimes we need to take a step back and see the bigger picture. Lewis was pushing the car to its limits, he lost positions solely because of the team's bad pit timing, and there were tyres blowing up around him with no warning which is a problem that's haunted him before. The pressure on him was immense, and STILL it wasn't really a mental mistake it was a physical one. Not to quote god himself but "Less button?" is a relevant rant today.

I get feeling bad after that race and I'm right there with you I was just sat there in utter shock for the last two laps. But trust me bestie, Monaco and Baku are outliers and should not be counted. Lewis is at his peak and only getting better and I think that Hamilton Resurgence this year is going to be the sexiest it's ever been. You’re feeling out of it BECAUSE lewis making a mistake is so unheard of. Feeling lost and upset when Lewis makes a mistake is itself reassuring proof that Lewis is THAT bitch who is normally rock solid.

The championship is in a holding pattern, neither Max nor Lewis lost or gained anything. Baku might as well have not happened for either of them, so let's follow that example. Strike Baku from your mind, from the record. We are in the same position we were in after Monaco, except we're going to a track that SHOULD suit us more than Baku.

This isn't the first seven time world champion I've defended from the press whilst a red bull driver was leading the championship and mercedes were being clowns, and 2012 taught me how to bite.

TL;DR - Baku means nothing, this is going to be a tight season and there will be days like this, but Lewis is operating at his peak and whatever bad takes the press have this doesn't change that. Baku is over, it's time for France.

#ask #Sir Lewis #I wish I had a tag for my bad F1 takes

[bigskydreaming]

Do you ever feel like you're pushing a boulder up a hill defending characters against the same whole-hearted misinformation that keeps getting repeated again & again as if it's canon? I tried 4 times in a chat thread where people kept insisting that Dick Grayson and even the Teen Titans were jerks to Jason Todd when he was Robin. I don't know how you do it. No matter what you say, it just keeps going. No canon is ever enough. Why are some fans so set on the idea that everyone ostracized Jason?

Ooof yeah, that’s a whole barrel of annoying. The big gripe for me, in both my major fandoms, is that so much of the misinformation comes paired with this contradictory insistence on how much people don’t give a fuck about canon.....even while willfully trying to reinvent canon to say what they want it to say, in order to back up their version of events or take on various characters!

Its like, if you don’t give a fuck about canon, THEN DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT CANON. Don’t TELL me you don’t give a fuck about canon, and then GO OFF on how canon does all these things that canon most definitely does not do, thereby casting MUCH MUCH doubt upon your claims of not giving a fuck about canon, and suggesting that in fact, you do give quite a bit of fucks about canon, actually.

Y’know?

fahsklfhalfhkafl

But honestly, I’m not the person to give advice on this front because oof, I make bad choices here. LOLOLOL, no but for real, I can’t really tell you how to just deal with this because I’m like, I do not have mastery of that skillset myself. I have however long since exhausted myself of any illusions about CHANGING the minds of people who are particularly insistent upon things that never happened informing their particular view of characters, because like.....the reality is, people who come into fandoms emotionally invested in views of characters that they derived from other fics or fanons, like......it doesn’t matter that those things aren’t canon, what matters is their emotional investment in this particular fandom is entirely bound up in those particular views no matter WHERE they originated from, and so most of them aren’t changing their minds any time soon because they don’t WANT another viewpoint, their original one is the reason they’re here and invested in the first place. 

BUT at the same time, everybody wants to feel validated in their viewpoints, so the more that viewpoint is challenged by people being like uh no, here’s a thing that says you’re wrong, look, its here, its clear, the facts say shhhhhh the marketing campaign for all the Hateorade you’ve drunk about this character is based entirely on The Sky Is Green If We Say It Is logic.....the more people are like, determined to prove they’re right, even if their own personal conviction ORIGINALLY was not dependent on canon whatsoever and it only retroactively started mattering to them not as a source point for how they view characters but like, rather, a data point for Here’s How I Can Still Win This Argument.

And here’s where being in a comics fandom gets really fucking annoying:

Because there are so damn many comics.

And like, a lot of people in comics fandoms don’t even read the comics, and say so - and I mean, this is fine? If you’re here for the characters you don’t need to be here for the comics, so if you don’t actually like comics, like don’t read the comics, just read fic. Its whatever. BUT the bigger issue in my experience is like.....people arguing about comics canon even when they haven’t read the comics, like....often project onto everyone they’re arguing with, like, their own stance on comics.

What I mean by that is a lot of the people arguing about comics canon even when they proudly haven’t read a comic in their life because there are so many where would they even start and also, eww, I’m not doing all that.....like....there’s this presumption evident in a lot of arguments that the same holds true for everyone else in comics fandoms.....that none of the rest of us have read all those comics either, because how could anyone? There’s so many of them!

Forgetting of course, that many of us come into these fandoms from entirely different trajectories. If you come into a comics fandom because of fanfics, or a cartoon adaptation, or the movies.....upon your first day in fandom, when you look at all the comics canon that’s out there, you’re like holy shit that’s a lot, nobody could ever read all that, I’m certainly not going to read all that, I’m going back to fics.

BUT for those of us who came into these fandoms from the direction of reading the comics......our perspective was entirely different, because it was never some singular monolithic VASTNESS of unread comics that nobody could ever tackle because where would we even begin. For those of us who were reading comics for years or most of our lives......its been a handful of issues a month, month after month, year after year, rather than all in one sitting.

So the point of conflict becomes the presumption from a lot of fans who AREN’T here because of the comics, that comic book canon is this untapped cornucopia of potential validation, Schrodinger’s Canon, it can be basically whatever they want it to be, because who’s to say it ISN’T? If they can’t read all of that, nobody can read all of that, so when you think about it, its entirely plausible that the thing they insist happened in canon actually DID happen in canon, SOMEWHERE in all of that.....because just because they don’t know where it is and can’t point to it as explicitly existing, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist either. Who’s to say, really?

Well. Umm. People who in fact actually HAVE read all or most of the RELEVANT comics. Like yeah nobody’s read every comic ever I bet, lolol, but for lifelong DC readers, canon ISN’T this vast uncharted territory that can potentially contain everything.....its actually quite charted, and there are people who absolutely do know what it does and does not contain.

And this I think is at the heart of the insistence on particular points of argument, like Jason was always perpetually mistreated and Dick and the Titans hated him on sight and that’s why the Knights of the Order of Protection for the Smol Jason Bean hate Dick, because he was a giant jerkface to a little kid who never did anything to him ever. Like it doesn’t matter how much we point out that no, this did not in fact happen and is untrue, COMPLETELY, like.....people who came into fandom because of fics about Jason in which the entire perspective upon his character is uniformly, with virtually no exception, that he was scapegoated by Dick from Day One and he and Dick will always be eternally at odds because of the remnants of what a jerk and failure of a brother Dick was to him at first.......like, I feel like there’s this conviction lying underneath all those arguments, no matter how much canon they’re presented with, that there still exists out there SOMEWHERE, some untapped treasure trove of panels proving what a buttface Dick was to his first little brother, validating everything they’ve ever believed and thought ever, because look all those depictions of Dick being a giant assbutt to Jason in fics had to come from SOMEWHERE after all, didn’t they?

Well, yeah. They did come from somewhere. They came from the writers who wrote those fics that way because they either just hated Dick’s character or they were working through their own sibling angst and projected certain dynamics onto the characters or someone told them this is what things were like in the comics and they didn’t know any different or just didn’t care or a hundred million other possible reasons for why they wrote them that way with none of those reasons being Cuz Canon Said So.....and then those particular depictions caught on and multiplied fruitfully like the offspring of rabbits doing it sans contraceptives.

Because its not like “perpetual black sheep of the family so unfairly hated, so misunderstood, especially by the family’s favored son, the golden boy” is a fan favorite trope on its own, regardless of whether or not the characters said trope is applied to actually FIT that trope.

So in the end, the painful irony was not only did canon have nothing to do with that trend, canon COULD do nothing about that trend, because the reasons people turned to it, despite how often canon gets brought into it....really had nothing to do with canon.

So tbh, my personal stance these days is the best defense to fic-borne and originating views of the characters and their dynamics is NOT canon, its....more fic. Fic that presents a counter-narrative to the ones that are so often the first thing people see when they enter fandom, and thus become engrained as Truth. So that there’s at least more variety out there, because where there’s variety, there’s varied points of view, and the more people internalize THAT, that there are variations to be found in how these characters relate to each other and their shared histories......the more people have to make a CHOICE about what variations they most want to adhere to, from among the OPTIONS they’re presented with, instead of just doubling down on the first thing that clicks for them, no opposition in sight.

And if these counter “Dick’s just the worst like what an uber asshole gonna give a five star rating for Sucking At Life to that guy” fics happen to be inspired largely by canon rather than fanon like....oh no, how strange and unknowable, that’s not the Process, we’re doing it wrong but hey whatever.

But does that mean its not still frustrating as hell to see people just parroting the Dick and the Titans were mean to Jason truism as fact, especially when you know damn well its not? Hell no. That’s annoying as fuck. But don’t worry so much about trying to change peoples’ minds, I say, and instead just find people who ARE open to canon or familiar with it, and just have a good rant. Its fun!

 Here, I’ll start:

UGH AND ANOTHER THING ABOUT THIS WHOLE “DICK WAS SUCH A JERK TO JASON AND THE TITANS ALL FOLLOWED HIS LEAD” CRAPOLA SUMMER SALES EVENT:

Where would that even have happened???

Like what really chuffs my chopped onions here is when people are so suuuuuuuure that the gatekeepers of comic book fandom are keeping the real juicy anti-Dick panels hidden every time they ask “Hey Siri show me proof Dick’s a jerkmonster to Jason”....because like...they’re just SO SURE these panels are out there and its like lololol but where would they even come from? 

Because everybody overlooks that in proper Dickens fashion, pre-Flashpoint Jason was a Tale of Two Jasons, the pre-Crisis adorable child of sunshine and whee, and the post-Crisis I have smoker’s lung at age twelve Jason......and these two Jasons can and do and are MEANT to co-exist within the same body! They’re the same Jason, in hindsight!

See, post-Crisis Jason only existed for like, less than TWO YEARS real world time, before A Death in the Family! People have this assumption that because of how rock-solid the post-Crisis origin for him is and how solidly that’s informed his characterization and stories moving forward, like.....there was this HUGE foundation for it back in the day that was built upon.....but no! We’re talking like, less than twenty four issues IN TOTAL. Post-Crisis Jason was a drop in the bucket compared to pre-Crisis Jason.

So why then, is post-Crisis Jason so much more firmly cemented in peoples’ minds than pre-Crisis Jason even though pre-Crisis Jason had way more material written about him?

Because for once in DC’s existence, they were SMART about a retcon. They didn’t TRY to pit post-Crisis Jason versus pre-Crisis Jason and make people pick between them. Post-Crisis Jason wasn’t an attempt at overwriting pre-Crisis Jason and making it so he never existed. Instead, what they did with their limited amount of time writing post-Crisis Jason was overwrite only two stories specifically: his actual pre-Crisis origin, and how he and Dick first met....and then they let everything else from pre-Crisis stay! It just got folded IN BETWEEN Jason’s new post-Crisis origin and everything that came after that, thanks to some handy non-linear storytelling and flashbacks.

So rather than Jason having two entirely separate storylines and directions, they still kept him at just one....and his post-Crisis origin and A Death in the Family became BOOKENDS surrounding not just the twenty issues in between those two stories......but ALSO surrounding ALL the pre-Crisis issues featuring Jason.....including the times he interacted with Dick and the Titans.

And that’s why there’s no untapped treasure trove of potentially vilifying issues showcasing Dick being such a can of Jerkola to Jason.......

Because post-Crisis only amounted to a grand total of like twenty something issues.....in which Jason interacted with Dick once and only once....the issue which ends with Dick giving Jason his blessing as Robin, his costume, and his phone number to call him if he ever has any problems with Bruce.

But simultaneously, because all those pre-Crisis issues still existed, were still relevant, were still in continuity (as evidenced by Jason himself when he came back as the Red Hood and fought Tim at Titans Tower, referencing how he was briefly a Titan himself.......aka those issues in which he teamed up with the Titans, which ONLY happened before his new origin)....we similarly know that it wasn’t like Dick and Jason never had any contact after their first post-Crisis encounter....we just never saw Jason use that phone number on the page AFTER that issue (because again, there was no time before he was killed off in the comics TO engineer another on the page meet-up, like both characters were busy in unrelated stories in the course of the mere year between that issue and ADITF). BUT by the power of retcon, we do know that Jason still must have used it at some point, or else Dick reached out to him again at some later point off the page......because Dick and Jason’s easy familiarity with each other pre-Crisis STILL EXISTED AS WELL. They had a sibling relationship post-Crisis because they had a sibling relationship pre-Crisis...AND IT WAS THE SAME RELATIONSHIP.

And this is Part Two of why no untapped treasure trove of Jerk Dick and Poor Jason panels exists......because other than that one post-Crisis issue, all their other interactions hail from the pre-Crisis era....where Dick adored Jason and so did the rest of the Titans.

Jason wasn’t resentful of the Titans or scared of them or nursing grudges, he thought getting to hang out with his big brother’s friends WAS THE COOLEST FUCKING THING IN THE WORLD and you could practically see him bouncing on the page the times it happened. He glowed when Dick would ruffle his hair playfully or compliment him, and the Titans’ collective energy towards Jason was very much OH OUR FRIEND’S BABY BRO IS THE MOST ADORABLE SMALL CHILD EVER AND WE WILL PROTECT HIM WITH OUR LIVES.

Like people WILLFULLY misconstrue this one issue where Jason teamed up with the Original Titans other than Dick for a mission against Cheshire, and claim like “oh see, this is the proof that the Titans were mean to Jason because of Dick, they kept giving him shit for not being Dick and hated him for replacing Dick....” which omg noooooooooooo, that is so odiously NOT what happened in that issue. First off, NOBODY blamed Jason for replacing Dick back then, because at the time those issues were written, he DIDN’T....this was when Dick had given Robin to Jason himself, when choosing to move on as Nightwing. And even RETROACTIVELY looking at this issue in light of the retcon where Dick was fired as Robin, this STILL changes nothing about Dick and Jason’s dynamic at this particular time or how the rest of the Titans would have viewed Jason as of this issue.....because that’s where the post-Crisis issue specifically writing Dick and Jason’s new introduction to each other on the page matters so much. As now the ultimate takeaway is even while not making Jason Robin himself, this issue STILL showed Dick giving Jason his blessing.....thus maintaining and stabilizing every pre-Crisis interaction between Jason and the Titans and ensuring that this whole “they resented him on Dick’s behalf” scenario wouldn’t throw any retroactive curveballs into how they were with Jason...because now there still was no need for anything on Dick’s behalf, as far as Jason was concerned, because Dick had given his A-Ok.

So that just flat out never happened, not originally, pre-Crisis, and not even in hindsight after the post-Crisis retcons were factored in, because the HOW of the post-Crisis retcons specifically factored in an avoidance of this potential tangle.

And in fact, what DID happen in the arc where Jason teamed up with the Titans without Dick, to go up against Cheshire.......is that Donna, who was in charge of the team at the time, kept trying to defer to Jason-as-Robin, because subconsciously she was insecure about her leadership at the time and having a Robin at her side was making her think of when Dick had been in that role, and simultaneously been their leader, and thus she was trying to lean into the familiar comforts of being able to turn to a Robin for direction.

And Jason CALLED HER OUT ON THIS. Politely. And cutely. No for real it was adorable. But like, he did it with poise and self-confidence and deliberation, and SHE HEARD HIM. She snapped out of it. Jason laid out exactly what she was doing and why and Donna was like oh shit, you’re right, I HAVE been doing that. And Jason was like, and that’s not fair to me. And Donna was like no, you’re absolutely right, that isn’t fair to you, I’m sorry. And Jason’s like, I can’t be the leader here, I don’t have the experience that Dick does. But you do, and you can be the leader. And Donna was like. You’re three for three kiddo, damn you’re good at this.

AND THEN THEY WENT AND KICKED BAD GUY ASS TOGETHER AND EVERYTHING WAS HUNKY-DORY BECAUSE THE POINT OF THAT ENTIRE PLOT WAS NOT “EVERYONE IS MEAN TO POOR JASON BECAUSE DICK MADE A CONSPIRACY OF MEANNESS” IT WAS “JASON’S A KICK-ASS LITTLE GO-GETTER WHO KNOWS HIS STRENGTHS AND HIS STRENGTH IS TELLING PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE BEING DUMB AND THEY NEED TO STOP THAT.”

Okay, one caveat here. I must confess, its killing me....there is ONE Titan who was a jerk to Jason.

But uh....that Titan was Hank Hall aka Hawk. And he’s a jerk to everybody. Its kinda his superpower.

And he most certainly didn’t do it on Dick’s behalf, as Hank hates Dick and Dick hates Hank asfhilfhalfhalf. Seriously, they’re basically the hateship that ppl keep trying to make Dick and Jason into, only without the incest makes it spicy or whatever element, but like, if you’re not hung up on that and can ship people without them being related, oh no, oh woe, oh say it ain’t so, like, DickHank is the unsung hateship of dreaaaaaaaaaaams. They’re like:

Hank: As it is a day ending in y, I feel now is the perfect time to let you know, without prompting, that I hate your guts because people like you. And I hate people and everything they like, on account of people are the worst.

Dick: Well, you’re people, and you’re the worst, so that tracks.

Hank: So we’re agreed. I hate you. You hate me.....

Dick: Our hate is so in harmony.

Donna: What is even happening here and do I want to know.

Roy: In reverse order, no, probably not, and I’m not sure, but I THINK they’re getting hate married, and exchanging vows to hate each other in sickness and in health, forever and ever.

Wally: *skidding around corner* I CALL BEST MAN.

Donna: Its not a real wedding Wally.

Roy: Idk they seem pretty serious about it. Which means the best man position should be valid here, which means it should be me, because suck it West, only way you’ll ever be Dick’s best man is over my dead body.

Wally: Get ready to throw down then, Robin Hood, and just call me the Sheriff of Notachanceinhell, that best man position is MINE.

Garth: Whoa, hold up, I have an agreement IN WRITING from when we were THIRTEEN for Dick and I to be each other’s best men at our weddings, so I’m gonna need you both to stand down, I LITERALLY CALLED DIBS. Look. ITS IN WRITING.

Donna: Oh for fuck’s sake, you collective pluralization of buffoons, STOP TREATING THIS AS A REAL THING. ITS NOT A REAL THING.

Dick, eyes dead-locked on Hank: Oh this is real Donna. This is happening.

Hank, stepping forward, eyes equally locked: I have never been more serious about anything in my life. 

Lilith: Sure, you’ve only both saved the world but hey why should that matter. This is definitely the real shit.

Hank: Please. I only did that to prove I could do it better than Dick could. I hate the world.

Dick: Aww, and did you cry yourself to sleep when that flopped?

Hank: Wouldn’t know. It didn’t happen.

Donna: I swear by every god on Mt. Olympus, the first one of you to say I know you are but what am I is getting flung into orbit.

Anyway. I might have gotten distracted somewhere in there. What was your question again and did I answer it? I think I did....fahlkfhaklfhalhfa.

[dahlia-coccinea]

What’s your opinion on the main characters in WH (like one for Nelly, one for Catherine etc)? Do you have a favourite and a least favourite?

There are a lot of main characters...I guess Nelly Dean, Heathcliff, Catherine Earnshaw, Cathy Linton, Hareton Earnshaw, and Linton Heathcliff? I feel bad cutting out Edgar and Isabella, they are important characters but I could easily write a thesis on each character and I don’t want to make this unbearably long (you’re going to regret asking me this as it is lol).

Nelly - She is not the “sensible soul” that she esteems herself to be. Compared to other characters she may seem discerning, but that’s partially because she’s just a witness to events that more deeply affect other characters. She can be very biased towards and against certain people, and her opinions tend to be fairly rigid. Her actions and convictions seem more an unconscious exhibition of societal norms of the time and her station in life; rather than her objective rational thinking. She certainly isn't immune to common superstition and small-mindedness. That being said, she is not the villain of the novel as critic James Hafley argued. She certainly isn’t heartless and cruel and she is motivated to do what she believes is the right thing to do. Overall I like her character.

Heathcliff - It's a testament to the complexity of his character that there is such a wide range of narratives on him…some I admittedly don’t understand. While a powerful force in the novel, I think he shows himself to be very human and fallible, and not the “ghoul” or “vampire” he is sometimes accused of being. It makes me laugh how many times I’ve seen critics say he is the human embodiment of the Heights but the first meeting of him it's literally said that he is a “singular contrast to his abode”? It’s also strange that his physical nature is often questioned by critics that reduce him to an elemental symbol, yet I would think Catherine is a better candidate to say she is more symbolic since we first encounter her in a dream and she is merely a memory/ghost in half the novel. Not to mention that throughout her life she displays a fixation on the spiritual and divine (not that I think she is symbolic either). I think he’s meant to be read as a human, not a devil or a symbol, and it makes it more interesting to read him as such. He can be sarcastic and witty and also utterly devoid of humor. His pain and loss is tragic yet his anger and hatred is fearsome. He plans to enact revenge over decades and (kind of) succeeds yet he also is so short-sighted and often misjudges characters and situations. He’s a villain and a victim and never plays either part in exactly the way you’d expect. Despite all this, he never feels inconsistent or out of character. 

Catherine - I’m such a broken record on her lol. We get a lot of negative opinions about her from Nelly but everyone else loves her? So I think it’s worth questioning what Nelly says about her. I don’t agree with popular narratives that exaggerate how terrible she is. She is certainly proud, quick-tempered, and her strong, unrelenting nature is unique for any character and even more so for a woman. These traits also make her Heathcliff’s natural counterpart, although she is never cruel in the way he can be, and she doesn’t seem to enjoy that side of his character either. I think audiences/readers often forget the better parts of her character, such as her love for her father regardless of his constant admonishments, her love of Heathcliff despite his harshness and his wrongdoings, and her brother Hindley in spite of all his cruelty. The tragedies of the novel are not her fault as it has sometimes been suggested. 

Hareton - It is interesting his character probably has the most physical descriptions and I’d say is the most flatteringly portrayed male character. Yes, he starts off being described as brutish by Lockwood, but we later get many moments showing he also has a gentleness. His faults are normally immediately shown as not wholly his doing and I’d say he has the most character growth, even more than Cathy. Cathy’s appearance gets a lot of mentions too, but because Lockwood is kind of a romantic and in a faraway, lonely place, it makes sense that he projects a lot of romantic notions on her. We don’t need to know that Hareton is good-looking but it’s certainly made known lol. I think it’s in part because Cathy’s and Hareton’s good nature are meant to be shown as desirable and Nelly certainly makes an aesthetic connection there in her descriptions of them. I really like his character, and how despite everything, and his initial pride, he tries repeatedly to help Cathy, even though it does nothing in gaining her good opinion and only puts him at odds with Heathcliff, who he sees as a father. He also shows that you don’t have to be the product of your upbringing.

Cathy - I really like how she tries to do the right thing and is good, yet doesn’t allow anyone (even Heathcliff) control her. She has faults but she’s able to grow from them. She also has a lot of similarities to her mother. For both Cathy and Hareton, I really dislike the idea that their move to Thrushcross is the symbolic win of culture over nature. That’s never made any sense to me and makes even less sense when you consider that Emily preferred nature, and the freedom and spirituality she found there, and not riches and formality. And after all, Cathy and Hareton are the successors of Catherine and Heathcliff. I can’t imagine they will become supremely refined, cultured, and gentle. Everyone forgets they are both wild and proud, and at their worst, they both physically hit the other - Cathy cuts Hareton with her whip, and years later Hareton hits her. This notion of their new domesticity comes from the narrative of the Heights = wildness and Thrushcross = respectability and progress, and I’ve mentioned before this also distorts our image of Isabella and mislabels her as a weak, refined, gentlewoman, even though she shows herself to be highly spirited. Sorry, got a little off-topic at the end there. I think they can forgive and learn to be kind to each other without equating it to them becoming genteel and upper-class. I don’t like that critics do this. 

Linton - I get why he’s no one’s favorite character but I don’t hate him. He is tragic, despite the fact that he also very annoying and bratty lol. I understand why he doesn’t care to better himself, and it seems pretty clear his behavior is a cry for the safety and affection that has been missing in his life since his mother died. He’s a pawn in a game he doesn’t understand, and yet he’s very aware of his role as a pawn and that his life will be short and its meaning and worth are ascribed inasmuch as he can prove useful. It’s understandable that he would cling to Cathy and her kindness to him. Of course, some of his sufferings are his own making. It seems he could less lonely if he was perhaps a little kinder to Hareton who doesn’t seem to have a preconceived dislike of him but is pushed away by Linton’s snobbishness. 

Favorite: That's a really difficult question. The simple answer is I love them all hah! It does change, but I do often go back to Catherine Earnshaw. Charlotte Bronte wrote that there is a “certain strange beauty in her fierceness” and I think that sums it up perfectly. The fact she dies tragically young and the closest we get to her as a narrator is the little bit of her diary Lockwood reads, and that her memory lives on so strongly with Edgar and Heathcliff, all make her a compelling figure. The fact that so many readers hate her also makes me like her more lol. 

Least favorite: Everyone always says Linton and Joseph are the worst so I’ll say Zillah because she doesn’t get picked on enough lol. She literally didn’t realize Nelly was being held hostage and instead believes some bullshit story about her being lost in a marsh and assumes Heathcliff saved her?? She was terrible to Cathy - granted she had been proud and stiff-necked but she was clearly being held against her will? Like is Zillah just not at all aware of her surroundings? She doesn’t get Dr. Kenneth when Linton is dying and instead leaves Cathy alone crying in the stairway, supposedly out of fear of losing her job if she disobeys - yet she didn’t seem worried about that when she puts Lockwood in Catherine’s old bedroom? She also knowingly embarrasses Hareton when he shyly asks her to ask Cathy to read aloud for him - she immediately says that Hareton is the one asking for it. Zillah is just one of those people that has no self-awareness and no consideration for others beyond her self-preservation. So yeah she wins the spot of “least favorite” lol. I’m not sure if you meant my least favorite of the main characters? If so then it would have to be Linton just cause no amount of sympathetic feelings towards him makes him less annoying lol sorry. 

#wuthering heights #there is probably a million grammatical errors but i hate rereading myself lol its like hearing a recording of my voice #thoughts

[greenhappyseed]

We need to talk about All Might.

After Chapter 309, everyone seems to be screaming DEATH FLAG (more than normal), and I wouldn’t ordinarily agree given the fakeouts we’ve seen before. However, AM isn’t given much to do yet (except look cute in his sunnies) and doesn’t seem to be in a good position to grow as a person. It makes me sad bc there is a lot of potential with AM, and it all seems pushed aside in favor of Endeavor’s narrative, which I don’t love. As a ::cough cough:: older BnHA fan in a workaholic profession, I want to see the larger hero society narrative use AM to ask if you can be a hero (and therefore of any value to society) when you’re old and/or have less strength/power/endurance than you used to have. What happens when you WERE an equal, and then you lose a step along the way (note there may be a parallel to Bakugo’s/Aizawa’s post-war condition on this theme)? Or, given the focus on teenagers and the role of the “new generation” in rebuilding society, let’s ask whether AM made the right choice in sticking with his teenage ideals through adulthood. Was he right to give up EVERYTHING for his dream, only to crash land into a nightmare? I mean, the dude destroyed himself for years and then watched his life’s work crumble in a matter of weeks. Can he pick himself up, powerless, and still find a new way to help? In BHNA, all of the top heroes have major flaws (a meta for another time!) and a chance at redemption, so I really want to see AM do the same thing.

AM starts the story as the singular, self-proclaimed Symbol of Peace, which was a mission he gave himself as a naive, idealistic middle school student(!!!) Through Nana Shimura, AM received the power to make his teenage ambition a reality and then ... kept at it for 40 years. Alone. Without critical reflection. In Vigilantes, we learn the cost of this relentless pursuit is that AM has no real friends and no social life. Even among other top heroes, he’s not an approachable peer, but the hired gun brought in to clean up the biggest, baddest disasters before he’s immediately called out to the next one. To the extent he socializes after a big win, it’s to talk to the media and sign autographs, not debrief or bond with fellow heroes. The guy has charisma and can do stage banter all day, but he has no idea how to have an actual functioning relationship with colleagues. At the beginning of BNHA, it’s been 20ish years since AM spoke to Torino, 10 years since he spoke to Endeavor, and 5 years since Nighteye. He does keep in touch with Tsukauchi, but he’s more like a “work husband” than a best friend.

When Deku meets him, AM is holding it together on the surface, but is really in mental distress. AM is the first hero in the story whose facade is ripped away (initially to us readers, then eventually to everyone in universe). Unable to do the hero work that defines him for more than 3 hours a day, he seems to spend the rest of his pre-UA time wandering around aimlessly. He’s lost his sense of purpose, has nobody to confide in (he may not “lie” but he definitely doesn’t tell anyone complete truths), and he is indifferent to his own survival. He is certain Nighteye’s prediction is coming true, and he’s looking for a successor because he HAS to before time runs out, not because he wants to. If he can pass on OFA then he can die, ideally in a blaze of glory. And, if not for Deku, he would have let the slime villain kill Bakugo and told himself he can’t save everyone. In Deku he sees his younger self’s ideals and decided his new purpose is to build the next Symbol of Peace, not just do a handoff. With a true successor secured, he can really go for one last big heroic act.

Except it doesn’t work out as planned. Deku — lonely and idealistic himself — desperately needs AM around for approval. And AM, with extra time on his hands, seems to enjoy being needed by his boy, like a parent with a toddler. As hard as they both aim to create the next AM, Deku is his own person (as all children are), which makes the process trickier than either one anticipated. At first AM tries imitating Torino and trains Deku through physical activity and battle, the same way Torino punched a grieving, teenage AM around. AM encourages Deku to sacrifice himself, just because AM also did it for 40 years. But these tactics just don’t work for Deku. AM gets (rightly) scolded by Recovery Girl. Then AM sends Deku to Torino, who teaches Deku Full Cowling and scolds AM for not telling Deku the truth about AFO — and for this one time, Torino is right. Slowly, fuller truths start coming out from AM, and in return Deku learns to protect himself and ask his mentor questions rather than merely imitate. Both begin to grow and change for the better.

After Kamino, Inko uses her leverage to convince AM to stop the blaze of glory nonsense. He wants to be her successor as parent to Deku, and she’s not going to allow it if AM is going to drive her son towards needless self-sacrifice. This seems to take root, and we later see AM openly defy Nighteye’s prediction because he wants to be with Deku. He starts jogging! We even see him confide in Aizawa he has decided to live. Even if he’s not always sure how to give his new life purpose, and he bristles at needing to be protected, he’s accepting his post-pro existence. Progress!

Finally, AM comes into his own as a teacher and member of the old guard with experience to share. He may be using “Teaching for Dummies” as a shortcut, but he’s recognizing his own failings and trying to improve. He tells Deku to quit imitating him, full stop, finally giving Deku permission to become his own hero with his own style. AM takes initiative to teach Deku Air Force, and really guides Deku through the use of the power until Deku becomes proficient. AM also gets actively involved in coaching other students (not as much as he should, but it’s something). AM will similarly counsel Endeavor later, saying Endeavor has to walk his own path and answer for himself why he has his power. AM is building new relationships, new skills, and forming an identity outside of punching things!

Of course, we still see signs AM is a work in progress. Staying up too late at night to do research on prior OFA users for Deku. Diving to protect a woman from a falling streetlight (saved only by a fast-acting Bakugo). At the same time, we see that Deku is coming into his own with his 1A friends. And Deku is no longer looking back to AM for approval (both literally when jumping away and figuratively as part of Deku’s decision-making processes). AM seems both proud and sad, as is natural when a parental figure watches their child become independent.

Fast forward to 309, and a powerless AM leaves all the growth behind to help Deku, Endeavor, Jeanist, and Hawks find the LOV. On the good side, AM isn’t keeping secrets anymore (arguably, telling Jeanist and Hawks about OFA should have involved a consultation with Deku, but okay). Moreover, AM isn’t useless in this fight; he can provide financing, emotional support, police connections, UA connections, and Oracle/guy-in-a-chair backup to the active heroes. But what will this change tell us about AM? Can he ever really get comfortable with this role or is he there just out of duty? Can he actually deliver some hard truths to Deku about AM’s own experience if/when Deku stretches himself too thin? Is this new role respected by the other heroes? If not, will he be tempted to return to battle to be “valuable”? To give his life for Deku so he can claim one last “win” by saving? Or give his life for Deku because he actually loves him and has something personal to fight for? All of these questions bear on where an older, powerless person — that is, an outcast — fits into society and how a lifelong loner can find their role within a group. (Boy, this sounds like a familiar BnHA theme!)

I feel like, if AM dies just to become a vestige, all of these deeper questions are unexplored and we’re just copying Star Wars plot points without any added meaning. I’m not satisfied AT ALL with AM living rent free in Deku’s head and robbing others of his wisdom/experience (which he was just starting to share!!!). Likewise, if AM dies as a plot device so Deku can stand as a hero on his own, or tap into his inner rage or whatever, well, that’s also copied from Star Wars — and it seems to counter what we’re starting to see with Deku calling his own shots and AM supporting. Unlike Torino and AM, who don’t talk for years, I want to see Deku be his own hero AND have his mentor in his life. I want BnHA to keep resisting the absent adult trope, because it’s entirely possible (and realistic!) for grownups to be their own people while having mentors and parental figures in their life. It’s an adjustment for a parental figure to watch their teen become an adult, but it doesn’t mean the parental figure just ghosts and ceases to matter as an influence.

Similarly, if AM turns to sacrifice, it will turn AM’s life story into a cautionary tale with no growth. How can a story about saving people who have done bad things have a good guy succumb to his worst instinct, with nobody to save him? How can AM’s life lesson be “make friends now and learn to give and take in a relationship, otherwise you’ll get too old and it’ll be too late and when you aren’t powerful you’ll have to take a hit to have value”? Even if his sacrifice ultimately allows Deku to win against AFO it feels hollow against the larger narrative. Unlike pre-war Bakugo, we already know AM will self-destruct for others. AM wanting to take on the world alone and die “heroically” is the PROBLEM that drives his pre-Kamino failures, not the solution. And if AM can’t escape this and become comfortable in society post-retirement, who can???

I’m worried we are going to see AM’s growth cut short while Endeavor, Hawks, and the LOV get a shot at redemption, which feels problematic. Of course life isn’t fair, and not everyone gets to have a second act, but it feels wrong for the BNHA narrative to punish someone who is trying (and who wants to help Deku save the villains). Maybe you can argue it’s AM’s fault that the hero society became corrupt, so it’s a cosmic balance for him to die watching it fall. Or maybe the other heroes will realize AM needs their help too (not just Deku) and keep him safe. (Maybe Endeavor will save him in a parallel to Bakugo and Deku.) Much is TBD, but chapters 306-309 make me worry.

#all might #yagi toshinori #mha 309 #mha spoilers #mha #my hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha all might #toshinori yagi #bnha meta #bnha all might

[foolgobi65]

i really wish the writers of lucifer hadn't turned chloe and maze's friendship into such an afterthought! like ok:

- when they start in season 2, both of them are in pretty isolated places socially. chloe, already a pretty introverted workaholic, is just newly divorced and has exactly one (1) friend: lucifer. maze has finally split off from lucifer and has two (2) friends: linda and trixie, but for the purposes of this comparison linda really is maze's one friend. maze has just accepted that she's not actually going back to hell, that this time on earth isn't really just a lunch break before they go back to the real world (hell) and so she now has to figure out how to build a real life in LA.

- basically, both maze and chloe are kind of in similar positions in terms of being isolated and really only having a singular overwhelming relationship with someone as opposed to having a network they can rely on so that all their eggs aren't in one basket. you can see where this backfires on both of them throughout the series when linda spends the week not talking to maze after seeing lucifer's face, and when lucifer runs off to vegas and suddenly chloe is stuck with all these feelings she can't express (and crucially can't talk about to him, her best friend.) ofc lucifer and maze's relationship transcends friendship just based on their immense history and is its own weird thing that i also kind of wish they had given more thought to, but w/e.

- enter: maze and chloe's friendship! i think for both maze and chloe, the other person is as "far" as you could get from themselves, but is fascinatingly still someone they can like, respect, love, and be loyal to. for a good while (and this is something i REALLY wish they had maintained) chloe, maze, and dan are basically raising trixie together which takes so much respect and trust that the other person is someone you want having a hand in influencing a kid you love! i think what's interesting is that, unlike lucifer who is trying to answer existential questions about his place/purpose in the universe, maze is really just focused on the people she cares about and having a good time (which is rooted in her doing meaningful work as a bounty hunter.) chloe is someone who pursues duty to the point of self-sacrifice, and obviously her friendship with lucifer helps her loosen up, but the pedestal he places her on/reverence he sometimes feels for her prevents him from really popping that bubble in the same way maze does. also chloe and lucifer's relationship gets SO much more complicated around the time maze enter's chloe's life so the role that lucifer once had to shock chloe out of her comfort zone kind of goes to maze once chloe has to draw some personal boundaries with lucifer.

- i think the key to maze and chloe's friendship is that they're both people who desperately need someone who embodies the other person's best trait. while this tendency isn't always healthy, maze is fundamentally someone very loyal to those she believes deserves it. obviously she's also betrayed people a billion times but at her core she's deeply committed to those she cares about which is something that i can see chloe find really appealing. at this point chloe has spent so much of her life in this weirdly precarious position where, since her dad's death she hasn't been able to fully trust anyone or open up to them. obviously she loves dan, but its clear that even when they're still "good" he doesn't trust her instincts or potential like he should, and when he spent those months gaslighting her the issue for her even beyond the fact that he shot malcom would have been that he didnt support or trust his wife. the appeal of lucifer is that from the beginning he identifies that she's smart and moral with good instincts. he trusts her, and strangely over the season she begins to trust him too! and then he runs off to vegas, etc etc lol. maze's primary loyalty probably isn't to chloe, but we see that to the best of her capacity she wants chloe to be happy -- she gets the prison warden killed, she "tries" and then really does listen to chloe venting about lucifer, attends the parent night chloe was stressed about, sets aside her grudge with lucifer to find chloe.

- in turn, chloe's best trait is her ability to accept people as they are and see their potential. of course she doesnt really have that many friends, but the people she is attracted to are all works in progress (dan is obvious, as are lucifer and maze lmao, but there's also ella who confesses something very personal and scary to chloe and gets a hug in return, and even charlotte who chloe's had clashes with both as charlotte and Mom for years but still gets the benefit of the doubt.) maze does have to change when she comes to live with chloe and trixie, but we see trixie grow up heavily influenced by maze in ways that makes it clear that chloe must genuinely like maze, or those influences like the handshake and the passion for gore and the knife training wouldnt have been allowed. we know that the reason maze is so loyal to lucifer is that he was the first person to ever accept her for who she was unconditionally, without shame or judgment. we see that for lucifer chloe is that person, especially because she sees his potential for growth just as she sees maze's. because she doesnt have preconcieved notions of what they're supposed to be she only sees them as people going through a difficult period of growth and supports them as best she can: reminding maze that they're friends, worrying about her in canada, trusting her with trixie who is the most important person in chloe's life.

- of course, chloe and maze have lucifer and linda but narratively lucifer and linda become so much MORE for chloe and maze. the show sunk linda/maze lmao but linda's clearly the adult maze cares most about just as lucifer is chloe's. and for both in s3 this person they each place so much of themselves into suddenly hurts them and they both spiral. i think there was real potential for chloe and maze to become each other's support and develop into a really steady, enduring friendship in contrast to the chaos of their individual romances (you will NEVER convince me that triangle was about amenadiel rather than linda lmao.) even post s3, they don't really address that maze really hurt chloe by pushing her towards pierce, and that chloe hurt maze by lying to her. i really think there could have been a lot of growth from maze going back to living with chloe and trixie after making full ammends and chloe realizing that actually, yes she can deal with this and it isn't that scary and then the tragedy of her maybe missing her shot with lucifer becomes more stark. we see chloe and maze teaming up in the first episode of 5A but then they blow that up too! i get that chloe needs space and its clear they're both using the other as placeholders for the people they really want, but there's no reason that they couldnt have come back together later and re-established their friendship on screen. obv they wouldnt work together after lucifer comes back, but to me this is where i believe they should go back to living together. without that, maze's connection to trixie in terms of what they can show on screen becomes tenuous and chloe's home life just becomes less interesting/worthwhile to see bc it'd just be her or maybe her with trixie. without that, it feels like we just see a lot of chloe either at work or in relation to lucifer (bc thats the best bang for your buck in terms of interaction!) we do get to see maze with linda, which is nice, but idk just feels like a step back from early s3 when maze felt more embedded in a community of people who liked, accepted, and cared about her wellbeing.

- i think one of the issues is that chloe and maze's friendship might have seemed like a knock off of their "main" relationships with lucifer and linda bc they have similar dynamics with them, but idk! there's a sense of fun that we get from their friendship that we dont really see from the main pairings because those are so serious and passionate and the main mechanisms by which the 4 grow so there isn't as much room for the lighter stuff. i know i said that chloe sees the potential for growth but she's not really pushing maze to talk about her feelings. she's doing the dishes maze won't, smiling at maze and trixie's handshake, shrugging off the fact that maze is throwing knives at their rented walls. maze and chloe create space for each other to be seen as themselves, good or bad, in ways that linda and lucifer can't for whatever reason. they don't really push each other, just let the other person be. it wouldnt be the ideal dynamic if they were the only person in each other's lives, but i think its vital to have someone in your life who can, in chloe's case, gently push you outside of your comfort zone and in maze's case offer acceptance, friendship, and trust.

idk this is just going in circles as i repeat the same points over and over and over but i really wish they had put more thought into sustaining the maze and chloe friendship throughout s4 and s5 because it would have brought out notes in both of them narratively that i think are lost otherwise. also its just sad for trixie that someone who was basically part of her family who she was living with is just...not there anymore and that's never addressed. : (

#lucifer #maze #chloe decker #lol im just writing this here to avoid doing school work rip #back to pretending to do a reading!!!

[thewebcomicsreview]

Homestuck 2 has updated! Christmas is ruined!

Previously, on Homestuck 2: Literally nothing happened, and a non-trivial portion of the patreon supporters gave up and quit. Can this update pull a Christmas miracle and right the sinking ship of Homestuck 2? Probably not, but let’s find out! 

We’re back in Candyland, having completely skipped over Karkat and John talking about Dave’s apparent death, because this comic is only interested in long conversations when they’re boring and not about anything at all. That’s alright, I got the gist of it.

When Karkat is finally gone, John still doesn’t move. It isn’t as though he has nowhere else to go, since there are quite a few places he might attempt to make himself useful, for better or for worse.

So, it appears to be morning now, meaning that John’s son has been missing in a war zone for almost 24 hours and I guess John literally forgot Harry existed?

Prediction: This conversation is going to end in some variant of “Where is our son?” “Oh shit!”

ROXY: hey john can u do me a quick solid

ROXY: actly idk how quick itll be but its definitely solid

ROXY: harry anderson says i just missed u being here but could u skip back on over?

What.

So, I went back and checked, and apparently nowhere is it explicitly said that Harry Anderson was also looking for the Vriskas, so I guess he....stayed home? Which makes sense, I suppose, but maybe a “Stay here I’ll go look for them” would’ve helped. I wasn’t the only one who thought Harry was out looking for Vriska too. 

ROXY: sup

ROXY: follow me

ROXY: well were just going to my room so i guess technically u know the way

JOHN: haha ok.

John follows, trying to shake the ominous feeling he got from what she’d just said. He’d been in and out of this house a lot in the past few days. Why should this be any different?

Is Roxy....horny? Is the solid she’s looking for John’s dick? I mean, that’d make her saying Harry wasn’t available kind of weird, but I think this framing is a fake-out.

...

What the fuck is that lamp, Jesus Christ it’s awful. Just a cat’s asshole, facing the door.

ROXY: r u kiddin me rn egbert

JOHN: i’m not? unless you were, in which case yeah lets say i was also kidding.

JOHN: oh my god, i’m sorry, i don’t know why this making me freak out.

ROXY: i remember our past boot knockin with fondness but that is a situation im not interested in revisiting

Oh hey, it was a fakeout. Good job, Homestuck 2. You successfully implied something just through the art. Art which, by the way, looks a lot better than the last chapter. There are backgrounds and everything. I wonder if Chapter 15 was rushed out due to Hiveswap and that’s why it was so weak?

He’s almost embarrassed by how relieved he feels. So what if his ex wife wanted to hook up? Shouldn’t that be a situation he could navigate? Don’t people like to find solace in human physical connection during dire times? Why did the idea of it make his mind white out in panic more than, say, any number of the traumas he just experienced?

I’m not the biggest fan of the way the narration is going JOHN IS AFRAID OF SEX WITH ROXY LIKE HE’S A TEENAGE VIRGIN AGAIN (LIKE IN HS1!) AND IT DOESN’T REALLY MAKE SENSE PLEASE REMEMBER THIS IT’LL BE IMPORTANT LATER, but okay, noted.

ROXY: u said ur house is gone??

JOHN: yep.

JOHN: completely.

ROXY: jeez

Heh. I like Roxy, still. 

JOHN: so i just sat there, watching, trying to figure out why watching my house burn down felt like i was being released from prison.

If this comic actually uses the phrase “home” and “stuck” in the same sentence I’m turning this blog around and we’ll go right back to Winnipeg.

ROXY: aight then no wind bending just use your mangrit

Roxy flexes, the corner of her mouth pulled up into a familiar grin. John feels his guts, so recently calmed, twist up into knots again. Her eyebrows shoot up and the smile loosens. He must have shown something on his face.

ROXY: ok or just like push when i push

ROXY: we both got sick muscles

ROXY: no other adjectives necessary

I feel unqualified to talk about how hard Roxy is pushing the June Egbert thing.

....Is that the fucking portal from Hiveswap under a tarp? Also hi Candy Callie, appearing in HS2 for the first time. One of the Calliope’s is nonbinary, I think, but I honestly can’t remember and I think it’s Meat Calliope? 

JOHN: do i get to know what that big thing under the sheet is?

ROXY: hmmmmmm no

JOHN: oh ok.

JOHN: are you sure? i mean, it seems like a pretty prominent feature of the room.

JOHN: space.

JOHN: wherever we are.

ROXY: and a totally mysterious n COMPLETELY inconspicuous feature it will have to remain for now

ROXY: we r kinda in a hurry here fyi

ROXY: and by that i mean

ROXY: we are in precisely the amount of hurry that means im excused from having to a that specific q rn

JOHN: right, sorry.

JOHN: i will pay no attention to the object behind the curtain.

ROXY: u catch on fast egbert

Oh thing HS2 has not been great at is that it has a lot of plot mysteries that are supposed to keep us enticed but they don’t really get implanted into the audience’s head (Remember Vrissy mysteriously collapsing that one time? Probably not, she did it off screen and the boys kind of laughed it off). This one’s hard to miss.

JOHN: so... this is all downstairs?

JOHN: it seems like you had a lot of work done.

ROXY: well no not x actly

ROXY: were in the old meteor

It’s kind of weird how this meteor keeps popping up like this. 

CALLIOPE: besides, hUman divorces are even more fascinating than i had ever imagined, and being able to witness yoUrs in motion was an honoUr.

This is an unexpected but not unwelcome direction for Callie to have gone.

CALLIOPE: ah right, right. yoU're probably a little cUrioUs as to where the dickens we are.

CALLIOPE: how much do yoU know aboUt black holes?

Oh, wow, we’re going right there, then. This does seem like a bit of a reaction to complaints HS2 wasn’t shmoovin’ enough, but maybe I’m reading too much into it.

CALLIOPE: no, i mean, what if oUr whole WORLD was inside a black hole.

JOHN: ok.

A’ight, that got a laugh out of me

JOHN: ugh, i fucking KNEW it!

JOHN: i'm so sorry.

JOHN: i'm so sorry that i put the earth inside a black hole everyone. ):

I like this conversation a lot. 

ROXY: iirc at least part of y u got so weepy was the fact that u couldnt believe a version of earth existed where ppl got 2 watch more mcconaughey films than you

JOHN: listen.

JOHN: i simply don't think you all appreciated the gift you were given.

Quite a bit, in fact.

ROXY: ur not gonna enter a weird time vortex and change the trajectory of a little girls life with the power of love

JOHN: aw.

Roxy and John have a good dynamic. 

CALLIOPE: bUt Upon her departUre, the rift closed for good. as far as i can see, there's simply no way for Us to commUnicate with the world oUtside the black hole.

CALLIOPE: i woUld certainly be very sUrprised to find oUt that anyone had managed sUch a thing!

JOHN: ...right.

John’s phone has very good coverage, since he was able to talk to Terezi in the epilogues, as we’re being subtly reminded of here with that ... before the “right”. I wonder if it still works after alt-Calliope left.

CALLIOPE: oUr exclUsion from the overarching coUrse of events which governs all reality means that oUr existence here is liable to dramatic and violent Upheaval.

CALLIOPE: to pUt it another way, becaUse nothing in here "matters", we are likely to be sUbjected to things which are a bit bats in the belfry, for no reason other than it's totally insignificant to the wider canon of reality.

CALLIOPE: and mUch thoUgh i am personally titillated by some of the conseqUences of this predicament, it is a degrading way for Us to live. u_u

Okay, so we are now being explicitly told that living in the black hole is fucking with the characters and is part of the reason they make such baffling decisions, like Rose not telling Kanaya about Yiffy, or naming her daughter “Yiffy” in the first place.

CALLIOPE: we need yoU to free vriska from the clUtches of oUr misgUided friend jane, and bring her here, to the singUlarity.

ROXY: weve been calling it the plot point

CALLIOPE: yes, the plot point is a key part of oUr plan

CALLIOPE: as far as we have been able to sUrmise, the only remaining method for escaping oUr grim confinement depends on leveraging the UniqUe properties of this location to create an event of sUch catalcysmic proportions that it simply cannot be contained within the black hole any more.

CALLIOPE: something SO dramatic, so hyper-relevant, that it becomes ontologically impossible for anyone to ignore it.

CALLIOPE: for that, we need an individUal of sUfficient narrative cloUt, so to speak.

CALLIOPE: and to liberate her, who better than the embodiment of the aspect of freedom itself?

So, the plan is literally for Vriska to be such a Huge 8itch that the black hole itself gets sick of her and yeets Earth C out of its own event horizon to freedom.

This is actually a great plan. 

And that’s Hamsteak. This definitely feels like a bit of a reaction to complaints about HS2, but hey, I dig it, I guess? Definite improvement over the last chapter.

#homestuck #homestuck 2 liveblog

[bakujho]

Strap in folks, it’s rant time.

So, let's talk a bit about manipulation and abuse present in fandom. It’s uncomfortable, but fuck it lets go, I’m tired of the “good vibes only” push that sweeps all this shit under the rug. I’m not pretending to be an expert by a longshot here and I’m happy to discuss, but I have dealt with enough abusive and manipulative people personally and professionally to spot em a fucking mile away and generally keep my distance. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed a gross trend where there are people being attacked, then are guilted into keeping quiet because the Abusers make it seem like it’s not worth mentioning or that it doesn’t really matter... Unfortunately, the Abusers know exactly what they’re doing, they’re really fucking good at it, and they know exactly the kind of response they’re going to receive (because in some cases, this isn’t the first fandom they’ve pulled this same shit in). 

Right off the bat though, lets get some basic facts about fandom out of the way. No one in fandom owns any character: be it interactions, personality or anything else about said character. No fandom creator owns an idea, or has any right to tell people off for having similar ideas/techniques/styles etc. There’s no such thing as a completely original singular thought, and pretty sure if you think of something ‘original’, there’s inspiration from another source. No one owns a hairstyle, a costume, a backstory, a colour scheme, an item, a scar etc etc. If someone has a similar thing, neat, clearly you’ve got similar tastes. If someone has a carbon copy of your creation on multiple points, ABSOLUTELY question it, but having the same hairstyle isn’t copyright infringement, and having a similar history isn’t ripping someone off, it’s coincidence. 

Going to put the rest under the cut, CW for manipulation tactics, abuse, and all those sorts of goodies.

So, I’ll start with the Abusers here. Everyone knows who they are, they know who they are, unfortunately the victims of them are worried about speaking out because, for the most part, the ones abusing people are in a position of perceived power and speaking out against them can put the victim in a tricky position. No one wants to be ousted from a fandom they enjoy for speaking out against someone that’s been around fandom since its inception. Which brings me to my first point.

Power: Abusers LOVE the feeling of having power (be it follower count, general clout, perceived hierarchy etc) and get really uncomfortable when they feel someone new comes to threaten their position. So, what do these people do in that situation? Option A is to completely ignore and hope they’re not dethroned, Option B is befriend immediately and subtly manipulate the person to keep a close eye on their actions. Keep your friends close, but enemies closer amirite? 

So how the fuck does a person subtly manipulate another person, shouldn’t it be obvious? Fuck man, I wish. But there’s a lot of different techniques used to keep people reigned in and submissive: guilt tripping, evasion/diversion, attention seeking, lying, intimidation, playing the victim etc etc. So obviously these will all present differently based on the abuser, but the goal of all of them is the same. To stay in power, and keep control over everything they can. 

So how would all of these present online? (of course these examples leave some wiggle room for context lost in text/translation/cultural differences etc, but for the most part it all fits the same pattern that the abuser would use in a face to face situation). 

Guilt- tripping: “Well you wouldn’t be here if not for me” “You owe me for your place in the fandom” “well if we really were friends you’d do this for me…” etc etc. Things that pit your emotional attachment to the Abuser against you, the closer you are, the easier it is. Suddenly the Victim finds themselves indebted to the Abuser for their ‘friendship’ that the Victim didn’t realize was conditional. 

Shaming: Invalidating the victims feelings by saying things like “even a child knows better than this”, “it’s okay you don’t understand, you’re probably young”, “I’ve been around fandom longer so I know how things go” etc etc. It makes the Victim feel like they’ve done something wrong by drawing boundaries for themselves, or sticking up for themselves. Remember, the Abuser doesn’t want to lose their crown so they will talk down to their Victims to make them more unsure of their stance, second guess themselves, and feel bad that they spoke up in the first place. 

Projection: “Others have done X to me, I would NEVER do the same” It’s a simple yet effective tactic. The Abuser takes the things they’ve done to people, say it happened to them, and shift the blame to the now faceless enemy so the Victim feels obligated to side with the abuser because, yea, those things mentioned fucking SUCK and no one wants to experience it. No one wants to be that asshole saying “no you deserved it” (because no one fucking deserves to be doxxed, swatted, hacked, etc etc)

Playing-the-victim: Abusers LOVE playing this game. It’s their bread and butter to set the stage for manipulation. “Having a really hard time rn, sorry im such a fuckup”, “struggling with mental health”, “this is all so hard for me” (legit though, if you are struggling please seek help where/when you can, mental health is important). So any of these statements alone can be harmless, and overlooking someone's mental health can have dangerous outcomes, HOWEVER, when these sort of statements are paired with the other things mentioned, it’s no longer simply a vent or a way to work past personal demons, it’s a way to gain sympathy and support, and it is very intentionally done to garner that emotional response from those that will listen to them. 

Attention-Seeking: can be as simple as “no one interacts with me anymore”, making a dramatic vague post, deleting that same post and making a newer, more dramatic post but this time seeking affirmation from the good responses of the last post, posting cryptic messages that ooze “ask me what happened” (vaguebooking is a plague), basically anything that is asking for a response without asking. How is it manipulative though? Guilt. If you’re aware of the Abuser, these types of posts are meant to abuse the Victim's sense of empathy, the natural response to these sorts of posts is “what happened, I’m sorry that happened to you”. 

Diversion/Evasion: straight up changing the subject or switching the blame to anywhere BUT the Abuser. The Abuser says “change X you’re copying me”, the Victim responds “I feel I didn’t copy you”, and the Abuser presses “well the fandom might not think so” and changes it from a personal issue to a larger, more aggressive problem. In this case, the Abuser is the ONLY one with a problem, but are purposely misleading the victim to take the blame off themselves. It’s not THEIR problem, it’s the FANDOMS problem...now making it the Victims problem. 

Blame: Abusers love to blame everyone BUT themselves for their perceived problems. Fandom isn’t interacting with them as much? It’s the fandom that’s dying. More drama in the fandom? Well there’s too many people here now. Getting called out for bad behavior? That’s the problem of the person who CLEARLY doesn’t understand how fandom must work. It’s the age old tale of “I’m perfect, it’s obviously everyone else who is wrong”. At what point does the Abuser realize that they may be the cause for their own misery? They don’t. 

Intimidation: This is a fun one that’s usually a last resort because if the Abuser is pretending to be a sheep caught in a snowstorm, it doesn’t look good for them to publicly announce they’ve been the wolf the whole time. It looks like “well I have X on you”, “if you only knew what I could say about you”, and “I could ruin you” type shit. Of course, in most cases, the Victim hasn’t done anything to warrant this sort of aggression, but the queen is losing her pawns and is now grasping for anything to fight back with. And who knows what sort of lengths the Abuser has gone to to gain information on the victim. It’s pretty easy to find out a lot about a person online, so the Victims back down due to the threat of the unknown.

Avoidance: refusing to talk about the problem, which is an issue I have with fandom itself, in this case. The “no drama good vibes only” is so fucking detrimental when there are problems that need to be addressed. An Abuser will push the narrative that they’re only here for a good time and don’t want drama, while actively creating drama in the shadows. Its not a problem if we don’t talk about it, right? If no one knows, it’s fine. It’s fine. No, it’s manipulative, and if there are problems they NEED to be talked about, because that’s how you find resolutions. 

Denial: This one ties in with avoidance and blame, in that the Abuser will straight up deny that they’ve ever been, or have ever created a problem. The Victim is making a big deal from nothing, they can’t control how others feel about them, so they’ve done nothing wrong. The Abuser will claim they had the best intentions when approaching someone, so clearly they have done nothing wrong. 

Lying: Including omitting any information from arguments that may paint the Abuser in a bad light. The Abuser absolutely doesn’t want anyone to find out what they’re up to, so they’ll say exactly what they need to to change the narrative surrounding them. It could be minor changes to conversations to complete fabrications. Ex “I only approached X to make sure they were okay after X happened”, but X screenshots tell a completely different story. It’s not always easy to catch an Abuser in a lie, especially when there’s the push for “no drama” so no one talks about their personal experiences and can confirm/deny what was/reported to be said. 

So bringing all of those points together and bringing it back to the Abuser wanting to have the power to control what they like/don’t like in fandom. Once they have that feeling of invincibility, they may coyly ask people to delete posts that could lead back to them looking bad, politely ask another creator to change their creation because the Abuser doesn’t like it, or them asking nicely to stop interacting with another member of fandom the Abuser doesn’t like. It may not seem like much at a first glance...after all they asked nicely. However, once you look a little harder and a little longer, it becomes very clear that the intention is to stay in control. The Abuser will do ANYTHING to stay on top, and will employ every trick they have in their arsenal to sew discord and mistrust amongst other members of the fandom to keep the fingers pointed anywhere but at themselves.

So, sound familiar to anyone? My inbox is open for anyone who wants to chat about the topic. If I’ve now made you uncomfortable and you’re going to unfollow/block, cheers, wish you the best. And if you’re feeling called out and attacked by my post? GOOD, stop being a fucking shitty person. 

A few last reminders before adding some resources:

Setting and enforcing personal boundaries is not abuse.

Choosing not to interact with those who make you uncomfortable is not rude.

It is important to call out abuse when you encounter it, it could save someone from becoming a victim themselves.

Always stand up for yourself, you’re your own best advocate. 

Now for some resources: I used a few of these while researching along with my old textbooks from my psych, abnormal psych, and human relations classes I took back in university.

Manipulation tactics

How to recognize a guilt trip

How to spot an attention seeker

#deep breath #i think that's all i have to say about this right now #for now at least #when i get salty i get real salty #fandom is the worst sometimes #though people in it can be worse #discourse

[yolkyeomie]

Trade Off of Gifts | Bang Chan

summary — no one knows the world of an artists as well as you do, at least that’s what you thought until he decided to show up one day

word count — 1.7k words

pairing — chan x gender neutral!reader

genre — fluff, artist!reader with a tiny hint of musician!chan (even tho he’s already a musician???)

disclaimer — just something tiny for all your fast and short topher needs !!

Being someone who is artistically gifted has its perks, leaving you to be more creatively thoughtful than most of the people around you.

The world and its people was one big incomplete painting to you, splashes of colors being splattered into its surface as you began to maneuver through it. You were the artist who determined what colors were allowed to stay and what colors no longer fit the narrative you were trying to create. It was a tiresome and even lonely job when you had to pick up a brush and bring a new color into your final masterpiece, but it was a rather exciting process nonetheless.

Different colors meant different things and different shades indicated different tones. Sometimes they’d change meanings and sometimes they’d stay the same, it always depended on how you felt that day. You could never explain exactly what everything meant to you, thinking of it as some innate feelings you were born with.

You never bothered trying to help outsiders comprehend what you meant either, as it was easier to keep it to yourself instead of giving your thoughts and feelings for the world to see.

But then somehow, you were stumbled upon by someone who shared the same views as you. Someone who saw the world in a rather similar artistic and dreamy light as you did, and they weren’t even an artist who puts pen to paper.

“That’s a nice drawing,” the stranger told you, hovering over your shoulder like a hawk to its prey. You scrambled to your feet almost immediately, pressing your art to your chest in a defensive manner. You didn’t like it when people hovered over you while you were drawing, entranced in this magical world of fantasy and possibility when you doodled on whatever surface you.

Usually, people would interrupt you when you weren’t finished, commenting on how odd everything seemed and how empty your art looked.

But then it clicked in your head, the stranger didn’t make any sort of ignorant comment on it. He simply said it was nice.

“Thank you,” you managed to say, your eyes darting down to the sketch you had created.

It wasn’t anything special, a half-done headshot of one of your friends from memory. It didn’t really look like any of your friends at the time either, there wasn’t enough detail on the features for it to be recognizable of who it was. “I mean, it’s not really done or anything so it’s not the best I’ve ever created but—“

“Really?” He questioned, his eyes widening to show off the little twinkling stars in his eyes and his mouth gaping open at your response. You couldn’t help but chuckle at his expression, nodding your head as an answer. “You’re a really good artist, you know that? Not many of my friends can even pick up a pencil if we really wanted to, but I guess that’s not really a compliment. Is portraits the only thing you draw?”

You lifted an eyebrow as he spoke, cautiously eying him and the choice of his words. He definitely wasn’t new to the whole artist thing, there was no way he was that knowledgeable on what artists liked to hear and what they didn’t like to hear and wasn’t an artist himself.

He even called you an artist instead of a “drawer”! If that wasn’t a dead giveaway of the fact that you were in the presence of an artistically gifted person then you don’t know what was.

“Not always,” you answered him, shrugging your shoulders as you tried to come up with a decent answer. “It really depends on my mood, but I like drawing portraits of people more than anything. It gives me an excuse to look at others without seeming… creepy? You know?”

“Oh…,” he nodded, a smile donning his face as he looked up at you. “So you’re a people watcher?”

“Not exactly,” you corrected him, “I just enjoy looking at people’s faces. You know, to catch every little detail that makes them unique to themselves. Everyone’s got something about them that’s different from everyone else and drawing lets me capture their uniqueness in a form that can be treasured forever.”

“That just sounds like an over-exaggeration of people watching,” the boy insisted, a laugh escaping his lips when he caught your frustrated glare digging daggers into his skull. “I’m kidding I promise! I completely understand what you mean. So who were you drawing just now then?”

Your expression immediately falls into a grimace, hesitantly peering towards your unfinished work to your friend. “Ah… this?” You ask him, trying to stall time from explaining your latest creation to him.

Through when you looked up to the boy he only nodded at your question and gave you the brightest smile he could. “It’s… it’s a drawing of a friend. He didn’t ask me to make this or anything, but I was just using him to practice faces.”

“You’re only practicing?” the boy gasped, scooting closer to you to steal another peek of your sketch from before. “That’s crazy, I would have thought you were working on an actual project and trying to get to the final piece!”

“You flatter me too much,” you joked, giving your sketch a half-smile. You appreciated the compliments he was showering you with, but there was no way you were actually living up to those expectations in your head. Being artistically gifted had its perks yet also had its more major downfalls: creating unattainable standards for yourself that you constantly set yourself up for failure was one of them. “I still have a long way to go before I can get anywhere near where I want to be.”

“I think where you are now is a great place, you should help yourself to the compliments when you get them. You deserve them,” he commented, a wide grin stretching across his face. Watching his lips turn into a smile made you so do the same, the atmosphere around him too addicting to go to waste. “Plus, I can tell you like it when people praise you.”

“Shut up, you ruined the moment,” you hissed, jumping to your feet to shove him out of your range of sight. The boy giggled at your reaction as he forced himself to stay put, not moving a singular inch no matter how hard you pushed him. “Leave! I don’t want you around me anymore, you ruined the moment!”

The boy thought about your words for a moment, as if he was trying to determine whether or not he wanted to leave you alone. “How about this,” he offered, spinning on his heel to face you. It caught you off guard for a moment, stumbling back on your feet as he shined that same smile from earlier on to you. “I’ll leave you alone now, but you have to let me come back and talk to you about your art more.”

You snorted, “I don’t even know you, why would I do that?”

He nodded in understanding, considering your comment before holding his hand out for you to shake. “Okay then, hi! I’m Bang Chan and I want you to let me come back another day and talk to you about your art. Does this make up for the lack of acquaintanceship?”

“Hi, I’m Y/N,” you humor him, shaking his hand before sliding out a slightly impolite question from your lips, “Is Bang Chan asking to hang around me because he wants me to give him a free drawing? If so I’m sorry but I’m not confident enough in my skills to even make you anything if I wanted to. There’s a reason I’m practicing here you know.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he clarified, slumping back onto the ground and laying back with a content smile. “I don’t want free art, I just want to hear you talk about your art. Maybe people watch with you from time to time.”

“I’m not a people watcher.”

“Sorry,” Chan nodded, “maybe not-people-watch with you then.”

You went silent for a moment, looking down at the sketch in your hands and glancing back towards the boy. “So that’s all? You just want to… hang out with me while I draw? No strings attached? You’re not going to ask me to draw you for free in the future or make fun of my unfinished work at all?”

He nodded in response and pointed a finger at your head. “The mind of an artist is a very interesting place to explore because not every artist has the same thought process when it comes to their creations. I want to see how we differ from each other.”

“So you’re an artist as well?” You question, your eyes widening as you slowly began to realize what he had said.

“Wouldn’t exactly say an artist,” Chan laughed, downplaying his statement as much as possible. “More of a… musician? I guess? I make songs, but that’s nothing compared to being someone who puts a pencil to paper.”

So your hunch was correct, Chan was artistically gifted! Of course, it wasn’t exactly in the way you had thought before but the mere fact that he was like you made much more sense now. “A musician is still an artist,” you tell him, “just because you’re not creating art in that sense doesn’t mean you aren’t an artist. Art comes in many different forms you know, you can’t limit it to one medium.”

“Well my form of art isn’t very… how do I say this, it isn’t—“

“—You’re embarrassed.” You finished. As expected the boy came up with as many excuses as possible, trying to drill the false act into your head but utterly failing. All you could do was laugh as you spoke, “don’t worry! It’s normal to be closed off about the things you create, I’m embarrassed to show off my art to people all of the time.”

Chan nodded, nervously fidgeting with his hair as he tried to play off his flustered actions. “I guess that’s one thing we have in common right?”

“Make that two things,” you corrected him. He turned to you with a confused glint in his eyes as you held up two fingers and grinned at him as you explained, “we’re both artists and we’re embarrassed to show people our creations. Oh the woes of being artistically gifted, am I right?”

He nodded in agreement, a cheeky smile appearing on his face once again as he repeated, “oh the woes of being artistically gifted.”

#stayhavennet #kpop imagines #kpop #kpop scenarios #kpop fluff #kpop au #stray kids #stray kids imagines #stray kids chan #skz imagines #skz fluff #skz chan #skz #bang chan imagines #bang chan #chan x reader #bang chan x reader

[darth-schism]

Evidence to Suggest that Luke was NOT all that he seemed in TLJ

Luke Skywalker may have isolated himself because of his guilt/depression. But I also believe he did it for practical reasons, and that his “totally given up” act, was just that, an act. Evidence for this Head-cannon/interpretive take:

1. He made a map to his location

Not only that, but it was so specific, it was literally called “The Map to Skywalker.” The only way it would have gotten a name as tailored as that is if someone else had found him before Rey, or, if he told people about it himself. In any event, to whatever varying degree, Luke wanted to be found and/or influence the galaxy around him.

One piece of the map was  tossed around to all sorts of corners of the galaxy, while the rest of it was entrusted to R2D2. 

2. This was a deliberate combo to serve two different purposes

          - Keep Snoke distracted: The entirety of TFA was Kylo and Snoke obsessing over Luke’s location. Their preoccupation with it was evident and, instead of letting them focus on relentlessly attacking the New Republic, Luke gave them a reason to go on wild goose chases. Consider that Snoke doesn’t go ‘all in’ on trying to destroy the Resistance until after he realizes he lost the race to get to Skywalker. Which shows just how much stock he had put into that singular Jedi. What’s more, even if they had succeeded, they’d only have a useless fraction with no reference as to where in the galaxy Luke’s secret location actually was.      

          - Meanwhile, R2D2 would also play the role of a “given up/powered down” hero: But we see that, soon as the coast is clear, and some plot heroes arrive with the map, he assessed the situation, turned on, and sent them right to Skywalker. I think it’s safe to say that R2D2 was merely in ‘sleep mode,’ as opposed to ‘shut down.’ However, despite all this, the element of being powered down/unassuming was still crucial because... 

3. Snoke made it abundantly clear that when he found Skywalker, he’d blow up the entire landmass he was found, or even theorized to be, on

Luke would never put a population of innocents at risk of complete annihilation just because someone might to recognize him at a local market. So it’s no wonder he chose a place as isolated as he did (On top of that, considering his critical stance towards the Jedi Order by 28ish ABY, it wouldn’t necessarily be a heartbreak to him if the island did end up getting destroyed, or one to anyone else really, because of how obscure/unknown it was...or so he convinced himself).

4. He was picking his battles

If Luke Skywalker wanted to be found. Then why was he so dismissive of Rey? There’s no solid evidence here (aside from the whole existence of the map scheme), but I think there’s good reason to believe that Luke’s instant stand-offish behavior is one of caution and assessment not dissimilar how how Yoda and Kenobi put up an initial façade when they were discovered in exile (but more on that later). In any event, this approach would give him the means to offer personalized help to those who ended up on his doorstep. It honestly didn’t take Luke long to go from tossing his father’s lightsaber, to offering Rey the three lessons she needed to understand the force better. Although I believe Rey’s visit to Luke was far different than what others had probably been but (again) more on that later.

5. He was able leave anytime he wanted

The very clear image of Luke’s submerged X-Wing in the ocean painted a picture of cut ties, and a “no going back” stance. However, it wasn’t the first time that starfighter had been at the bottom of a water bed, and clearly it wasn’t the last. I’m inclined to believe that this is another part of Luke’s deliberate presentation of a hero who had lost all hope. But all speculation aside, there was nothing to physically stop Luke from leaving that island whenever he wanted. There’s nothing to say that he didn’t break form/character operate to find a way to undermine Snoke further.

6. He was actively protecting others close to him

There was a reason Luke getting Grogu at the end of Season 2 of The Mandalorian caused such a stir in Disney, and caused Kennedy to go for Faverau’s throat. All “who’s idea was who’s” arguments aside. At the end of the day it created two possible outcomes for this element of the Star Wars franchise: Either Grogu died in Kylo’s attack. Or there were survivors. Since killing the money making Baby Yoda isn’t necessarily on Disney’s to do list, it’s a reasonable bet that he survives the slaughter (unless he’s returned to Din’s side before Kylo goes ballistic, in which case he avoids it all together). But even if that does happen, this theory still holds a little water). Luke lying low, and operating in secret may have been the only way he was keeping himself, the galaxies citizens, and his few remaining students from getting hit with an orbital strike. 

7. He was never fully disconnected from the force.

Perhaps, somewhat disconnected, but it’s clear that Luke hasn’t cut himself off from the force as much as he, perhaps, wanted to admit. Luke is still able to effortlessly summon a weapon, keep control of the duel between himself and Rey, and gently lower his body to the ground when he loses his footing. Despite his stance on using/taking ownership of the force in TLJ, it seems as though Luke kept just enough around so that he could still fight. This theory is more optimistically minded than some of the others, but I still can’t help but think that Luke kept these reserves of power ready, because he already had to use them more than once during his supposed isolation.

8. Rey’s visit was different than the others who had come before.

“You went straight into the Dark. It offered you something you needed, and you didn’t even try to stop yourself.” 

“I've seen this raw strength only once before, in Ben Solo. It didn't scare me enough then. It does now.”

Other plot heroes/adventurers may have come, gone, or even convinced Luke to help them in secret. So assuming all, or even some, of the above is true, then that means Luke wasn’t just pushing to dismiss Rey, but also disillusion her. I think this is because Rey wasn’t there to get help with a specific mission, rescue, etc, but there to have Luke become the public symbol of hope again. And we’ve already listed the reasons why this couldn’t happen. On top of that, this push was done in a way that directly conflicted with all the “none theorized” reasons Luke had isolated himself. Luke knew he couldn’t accommodate this. He sensed the darkness in Rey. He sensed her connection to Kylo. In many ways his lessons also doubled as a means to properly evaluate Rey, and confirm his suspicions. In any event, all of this brought up an element of his isolation that no one else knew. He already had the, half truth, story as to what happened to his temple well rehearsed. But it was Rey’s visit that dragged out his greatest regret, which was his near attempt to take Ben’s life, due to both the mind bending fear Snoke had manipulated into palce, and the hypocritical, and self destructive Jedi philosophies that had been drilled in to his head. This was the final straw that made him want to destroy the Jedi texts. But it was also the push he needed to find inner peace, and think of the means to make one last public appearance, without endangering anyone.  

9. In no interpretation is Luke an attempt child killer 

This is more of a bonus point in nature. I think so many people were caught off guard by the narrative choice Luke undertook in this part of the film, that it painted the whole ordeal in a far more unfavorable light than it actually was. For starters: Ben was no child. He was 23 years old when he fell to the darkside. Luke was saw the images of planetary destruction, and the deaths of friends and family alike at the hands of an adult. But even at that, Luke’s ligthsaber had already lowered, and his face expressing that of shame and sadness, when Ben glances over, and decides to take up his lightsaber, and make the first strike. Luke doesn’t even ignite his lightsaber in response until after Ben swings it. The influence Snoke had over Ben, and the mental attack he lured Luke into suffering, to make this moment come to pass cannot be understated.   

 - This also means that Luke’s isolation lasted only 7 years. Not twenty, not even 10. Just 7. Which is less than half the time both Yoda and Obi Wan imposed on themselves.

10. He was following in the footsteps of his masters

I think Luke’s response to trauma is a little unfair in some ways. Obi Wan and Yoda witnessed genocide, and imposed exile on themselves for twenty years. Now, in film, we know that Obi Wan, while playing the part of a delusional hermit, worked to protect Luke as he grew up on Tatooine, and that Yoda, playing the part of a silly swamp kook, did...something...on Dagobah (?), waited for Luke to grow up so he could train him for a few weeks at most (?). 

Those are two pretty limited things, and yet they don’t catch near as much flack for “abandoning the galaxy to the Empire” as TLJ Luke does, after he also witnessed slaughter, and went into isolation for only 7 years. But, of course, we know Obi Wan did more during his time in the desert, and that Yoda did more during his time in the swamp. So why can’t Luke have also done more while on his island? Everything about the parallels here point to Luke, despite his own misgivings, applying what he learned from his master. All three Jedi isolated themselves because of their personal tragedies. All three greatly reduced their presence in the galaxy. But all three had no choice, and all three still did what they could despite their circumstances.    

11. Luke may have been overcome with grief. But he hadn’t truly changed

Now, I fully admit that this is a very optimistic way of looking at things. But some of these points also have more weight to them than others. I also cannot stress enough that even though I think some of what Luke was doing was an act, I also know it was equally proportional to the very real, emotional reasons, and struggles he faced. I also definitely do NOT think Kennedy/Johnson meant for any of these possible theories to have any validity to them. But with how they are presented, they also can’t be disproven. 

If Favreau doesn’t formally put the sequels in it’s own little pocket universe, then I really hope he takes the opportunity to make something like ^the above^ happen. It could easily be established in one to two episodes in a live action show. Lots of things could be done to make the sequels a more bearable set of movies to watch. And as much as I’m worried that hoping for this is simply too optimistic, at least now there is a justifiable interpretive take that has both in film evidence to support, and a lack of otherwise to refute.  

At the end of the day (and as usual) the important part here is to see that Luke hadn’t given up. Struggling, disillusioned, forced into a tough spot, willingly keeping himself scarce, etc. All bearable. But knowing he hadn’t given up is super important to the character and fanbase, so hopefully we get something that makes that cannon. In any facet really.  

AND IT WOULD GET MARK HAMILL BACK ON SET GODAMNIT! XD

*Reblogged with new gifs and information

#star wars #the last jedi #tlj #mark hamill #luke skywalker #the mandalorion spoilers #the mandalorian season 2

[passionate-reply]

This week on Great Albums: a Great Album that your average rock critic would actually agree with me about! Find out how Kate Bush got her groove back with her fifth LP, Hounds of Love, and whether she ever came down from that hill. Full transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Ever since I first conceived the idea of Great Albums, I’ve always intended it to reflect nothing other than my own personal “canon”--not necessarily a list of albums that were influential, successful, or acclaimed by anybody’s standards but my own. But in this installment, I’m making a somewhat uncharacteristic move, and diving into an album that really doesn’t need me to advocate for it: Hounds of Love, by Kate Bush, often considered Bush’s greatest masterpiece--if not one of the greatest albums of all time.

Released in 1985, Hounds of Love was Bush’s fifth studio LP. Her career had started off surprisingly strong in 1977, with the release of her debut single “Wuthering Heights,” written when Bush was only 19 years old. With a high-concept theme, based around the titular novel by Emily Brontë, it would set the template for much of Bush’s subsequent career: irreverently eccentric, high-concept art-pop with the intensely personal passion of a singular singer-songwriter. But just how much patience for that sort of thing does the general public have, beyond letting the occasional “Wuthering Heights” through as a sort of novelty hit? Bush’s subsequent work in the early 1980s met with inconsistent reception, with her fourth LP, 1982’s The Dreaming, marking a particularly low point. The first album that Bush produced all by herself, The Dreaming took even more radical creative liberties, pushing her sound into increasingly experimental territory.

Music: “Get Out Of My House”

Following the fairly cold reception of The Dreaming, Bush took several years to produce her next album, but it would prove to be the one that redeemed her career, and arguably turned her into a bigger star than ever before. Hounds of Love managed to stay true to the core principles of the Bush aesthetic: moody and introspective, full of rich and complex narratives, as well as musical risk-taking. But it honed and refined that sound into something that was also remarkably pop.

Music: “Running Up That Hill”

“Running Up That Hill” was one of the biggest hits of Bush’s career, and arguably dethroned even “Wuthering Heights” as her signature song. I think the secret to its success is its ability to balance Bush’s experimental impulses with an intuitive, deep-felt emotional quality that makes her best work resonant in an accessible way. On paper, “Running Up That Hill” is as high-concept as anything else in Bush’s catalogue--a song about making a deal with God to swap sexes with your lover, and feel what life is like in another body? But at the same time, the song has an ability to “work” even if you don’t know all of that. Who hasn’t longed for a way to bargain with supernatural forces, for a chance at the impossible? There’s a certain applicability to its themes, which I think is a chief reason why it’s inspired so many covers and reimaginings over the years. But even when one listens to the original, the stately washes of digital synthesiser and the powerful conviction that propels Bush’s vocals make it easy to sympathize with. It feels grounded and physical, rooted in the most carnal aspect of the human body. Positioned as the opening track of the album, “Running Up That Hill” feels like an obvious lead single--in the best way possible. But it’s worth noting that not everything on the album is quite so radio-friendly.

Music: “Cloudbusting”

Perhaps one of Bush’s most compelling narratives, “Cloudbusting” is also, ostensibly, fairly high-concept, portraying a heavily fictionalized episode from the life of Wilhelm Reich. A controversial figure both in life and legacy, Reich is best remembered for his work in psychology, heavily influenced by the spectre of Sigmund Freud. But “Cloudbusting” focuses on his later-life fascination with the physical sciences, and his belief that a mystical energy called “orgone” was responsible for both human emotional woes as well as disturbances in the Earth’s atmosphere. Reich attempted to develop a machine that could manipulate this energy, and hence achieve the longtime dream of technological weather control, but there’s no evidence his “cloudbuster” really worked, or that there’s any such thing as “orgone.” But Bush’s “Cloudbusting,” and its accompanying music video, portray Reich as a tragic hero, silenced by government authorities who sought to destroy what they couldn’t understand, conflating his work with cloudbusters with his censure by the FDA for his questionable medical devices.

The song was inspired chiefly by the memoirs of Wilhelm Reich’s son, Peter, with Bush explicitly portraying Peter’s naive childhood perspective on his father, and that does allow for some substantial nuance here...but at some point we have to ask ourselves what responsibility an artist has to the truth. “Cloudbusting” is the musical equivalent of a film that’s “based on a true story,” and I see no reason why music can’t be just as capable of spreading misinformation as the Oscar-bait biopics of Hollywood. Just how accurate, or how beautiful, does a work of art need to be, for us to allow a bit of playing loose with the facts for the sake of a great story?

Setting aside these quandaries presented by its subject matter, “Cloudbusting” undoubtedly delivers musically. Across its sprawling runtime, it develops and earns a sense of grandeur, building from its infectious percussion and cresting with Bush’s fragile, but assertive prayer: “I just know that something good is going to happen.” If you listen closely to the percussion tracks on the album, you’ll notice that there’s no cymbal or high-hat utilized anywhere, which helps give the album its particular hazy, meandering ambiance.

That effect is perhaps even more pronounced on the second side of the album. Hounds of Love is divided quite sharply into two sides. The first side, also sub-titled Hounds of Love, opens with “Running Up That Hill,” and finishes with “Cloudbusting,” which serves as something of a bridge between the two, combining a singable hook and a pop-like verse-chorus structure with a taste for more visionary narrative. While the first side is home to all four of the album’s singles, the second side, sub-titled The Ninth Wave, strays much further away from the standard expectations of pop.

Music: “Under Ice”

Going by the tracklisting, there are seven tracks that make up *The Ninth Wave,* though their smooth transitions and willful defiance of verse/chorus structure create a seamless oratorio or song cycle feel, not unlike many of the great “album sides” of the prog tradition. The Ninth Wave also departs from the feel of the first side in its instrumentation. While the Hounds of Love side has its fair share of exotic instruments, such as a balalaika on “Running Up That Hill” and a didgeridoo on “Cloudbusting,” The Ninth Wave is more richly baroque, with elements like that jarring violin on “Under Ice.” As it progresses, the breadth of timbres increases, climaxing in the Celtic-inspired “Jig of Life.”

Music: “Jig of Life”

The explosion of folkish, backward-looking sounds of “Jig of Life” and “Hello World,” with their fiddles, whistles, and full choir, represent its protagonist’s return to the realm of the living, after the trauma represented by earlier tracks like “Under Ice.” The abstract, though affecting, narrative presented by The Ninth Wave seems to be a tale of death and rebirth, with a narrator who drowns themselves, only to be reborn--whether literally revived from a failed suicide attempt, or metaphysically reincarnated after a passage through the realm of the dead.

Much more has been written about the themes of *The Ninth Wave* than I’m getting into here, but suffice it to say that many people consider it the relative highlight of the album. But I think it’s worth questioning that a little bit, and taking the time to look at Hounds of Love a bit more holistically. Just because the first side is a bit less overtly experimental doesn’t mean it doesn’t have just as much to offer, artistically, or that it isn’t a part of what makes this album truly great. At the end of the day, I think we can probably agree that far fewer people would have ever heard The Ninth Wave if it weren’t for those more accessible singles on side one, moving copies of the record and adding to Bush’s widespread acclaim. Without “Running Up That Hill,” Hounds of Love might have gone down in history as a fairly niche cult classic like The Dreaming, instead of the era-defining album that it got to become.

On the cover of Hounds of Love, we see an image of Bush reclining and embracing two dogs--who were, in fact, her own pets. The image’s saturation in purplish pink and Bush’s perhaps sultry expression combine to create an impression of traditional femininity, which resonates with the album’s themes of gender and sensuality. Framed in by large white borders, we might read the composition of the cover as evocative of a personal locket or memento, a sort of furtive glimpse into Bush’s more private or intimate essence, fitting for the introspective and emotional focus of much of the music. This “framing” is perhaps also evocative of the idea of the domestic sphere of life--and hence, again, of femininity.

While the title track of the album portrays the “hounds of love” as figures of menace, who are said to “chase” after its narrator, the submissive and comfortable-looking canines portrayed in the cover art seem like a foil to that idea. In the history of European art, dogs are often used as symbols of fidelity, particularly in the context of romance. Titian’s Venus of Urbino, painted in the 1530s, is often considered the progenitor of the Western “nude” as an archetype. Alongside the titular goddess, paragon of eroticism and the feminine, the painter has also included a lapdog, peacefully dozing beside her. It’s tempting to see the composition of the cover of Hounds of Love as doing something similar, invoking confident sensuality alongside a symbol of faithfulness to portray the essence of idealized love.

After the release of Hounds of Love, Bush would once again take several years to produce her next LP, 1989’s The Sensual World. More closely related to The Ninth Wave than the A-side of Hounds of Love, it was nonetheless another commercial and mainstream success for the artist.

Music: “The Sensual World”

From the mid-90s to the mid-00s, Bush took an extended hiatus from music, focusing instead on her family and her personal life. Despite uncertainty surrounding the future of her career, she would eventually return to the public spotlight in the 21st Century, and remains active, if somewhat intermittently, to the present day. At this point, it’s safe to say that Bush has a fairly enviable position, having lived long enough to become a cultural institution, and able to bask in the cult following her unmistakable and distinctive work has earned her. For as much as I’ve praised the more commercial side of Hounds of Love in this piece, I still believe in the power of the truly unfettered creative soul, and I’m still happy for Bush that she’s achieved that kind of freedom.

My favourite track from either side of Hounds of Love would have to be “The Big Sky.” In the context of the album, it stands out for its rousing, triumphant crescendo of energy--a marked difference from the languid, introspective sensibility that dominates most of the material. And it manages that without bringing the cymbals back, either! Thematically, its emphasis on weather and the sky prefigures that of “Cloudbusting,” perhaps providing a more hopeful and naive vision of what weather can do, which resists being “clouded” by political drama. That’s all I have for today--as always, thank you all for listening!

Music: “The Big Sky”

#music #great albums #kate bush #album review #album reviews #classic album #classic albums