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burst-of-iridescent · 6 months

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so sorry you've been getting these anons ana :( i thought as a native i could give my two cents on the fire lady katara trope? ill admit im more of a casual zutara shipper, so i havent seen a good chunk of the fandom, but ill give it my thoughts. for me personally, i am not a fan of fire lady katara- it's not particularly to do with the trope itself, but the execution often done by the fandom. ive discussed this with other natives before, but sometimes in the fire lady trope, it is often that katara moves to the fire nation, that she wears fire nation clothes and is surrounded by fire nation culture. obviously, that isn't wrong! the sharing of culture is a beautiful thing, but there is a good majority of fics where it feels like her water tribe culture is forgotten, that she is made to move permanently to the fire nation in favour of zuko. specifically in a post war climate, where a good majority of the people in the fire nation would still hold onto imperialist and racist beliefs, the idea of katara living there permanently is uncomfortable. i moved out of my mostly native village into a nearly fully white uni, and it's scary, and so when i apply those thoughts to katara living in the fire nation, its uncomfortable. and as for the rest, it's mainly just how sometimes it feels like the fandom doesn't value her culture as much as zukos, even unconsciously- it often feels like the fandom values the perceived glamour and power of the fire nation royalty, and finds fire nation culture more understandable than anything water tribe, and so prefer to have katara in a setting that is more 'easy' for them. in hand with this, is often the fandom perception that the water tribe is less progressive than the fire nation, that they are sexist and that zuko is giving katara a better life (i will say that this is not something i have not seen often, especially recently, but it is something i have discussed w people so i thought id mention it, especially since its usually not intentional). sorry this got so long, i went on a bit of a ramble but obviously this isn't the be all end all. like you said, there are lots of people who are fine, or enjoy fire lady katara because they perceive or write it differently, and that is fine! everyone perceives media differently, just like some people will be uncomfortable with zutara, some might not be. i just thought id send this as a reason why some of us do dislike the trope, and things to keep in mind when ppl are writing it

hi anon, thank you so much for sharing this with me! i really appreciate you taking the time to write out your thoughts and offer your perspective on this.

i definitely agree that the fire lady katara trope can be executed in some exceedingly problematic ways. there are many zutara fics that i've clicked out of for the reasons that you've mentioned, especially older ones that were written around when the show aired or shortly after. i won't deny at all that there are ways people write the zutara relationship that make me profoundly uncomfortable. my problem arises when someone assumes that the trope itself is inherently racist or wrong, instead of understanding that it can be written in a variety of ways by a variety of people, who bring their own perspectives - and prejudices - to their individual portrayals.

what you said about moving from your mostly native village to a fully white university really struck a chord with me because (although it's not the same, and can never be) i can really sympathize with those feelings of alienation and sudden lack of belonging. i'm part of the desi diaspora myself, and i've grown up in a country where i've always been the minority, and had to deal with racism and ignorance, so your experience really spoke to me. i hope that doesn't come across like i'm trying to co-opt your struggle or anything like that, because that was not my intention at all. i just wanted to let you know that i can understand what a scary feeling it is, even if not exactly in the same way.

that being said, personally if i could choose between spending my life in india or growing up overseas, i would still choose to do the latter even if it meant living through the bigotry and ostracization i've experienced again. i love the life i've built here, though it's a more difficult one than what i could've led back home.

in the context of atla, i agree that katara would most likely face racism and discrimination in the fire nation, at least in the immediate years following the war. but personally i also find a very empowering narrative in seeing her confront and dismantle the prejudices within the fire nation system, just as she did with the sexism of the northern water tribe. katara wouldn't abide bigotry in any form, and i think fighting inequality is a battle that she would want to take on, and would willingly choose to take on whether she ended up with zuko or not. that's why i take issue with the insistence that her becoming queen of the fire nation inherently equates to her victimization, because it can also very much be a power fantasy, and i know many woc who do see it as such.

(of course, that is just my own perspective, and i completely understand why others see it differently and might not be comfortable with it. their feelings are just as valid and legitimate.)

ultimately, i think correctly executing the fire lady katara trope isn't just about katara herself valuing her culture, but zuko doing it as well. i love seeing explorations of the trope (and the zutara relationship in general) where zuko takes an active interest in katara's heritage, incorporates her traditions and practices into his own life and home, and involves himself in her culture just as much as she involves herself in his. zutara is a ship that has always been about equality to me, and that's something that can and should carry over to how they blend their cultures together. like you said, there is nothing wrong in katara wearing fire nation clothes, or being surrounded by fire nation culture - so long as she isn't the only one in the relationship taking an interest in her partner's heritage. thankfully, in most zutara content i've seen, she isn't.

in my own personal view of katara becoming fire lady, it happens only years after the war ends. she spends her time postwar travelling the world and kicking ass, empowering women in the north to learn waterbending, rebuilding the southern water tribe, meeting and learning from everyone she can. when she becomes fire lady, she continues to travel often - home, of course, but also to the other nations when necessary, using her skill of inspiring and motivating others, and her desire to help the less fortunate, in matters of international diplomacy. when she returns, her husband is in blue, and her children wear whalebone beads in their hair, and there are fire flakes next to stewed sea prunes on her dining table. there are hard times, but there is also love and respect, and so she changes the world as she damn well deserved to in canon.

#zutara #fire lady katara

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halfusek · 1 year

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man. batdr archives. what

i hate them

sorry im gonna go full on hater mode here because oh my god? oh my god

i’ve got a sneaking suspicion that this came out now as damage control for the AI thing because 1. it wasn’t included in the game all along like BATIM’s archives were and 2. this tweet

like was it thrown together in such a rush that they forgot a whole ass character?

or it is a joke and was a planned action half a year after the game came out but eh who knows

either way this is not what i’m here to rant about (cuz im sure this is gonna turn to a rant)

it’s about bad writing, bad exposition and bad game design. buckle up!

i see what they mean with the smile being a challenge to create, you can see in countless animations for fansongs how different artists tackled that and for one i think they did that very well

however. why the clothes exactly? is it just a meta reason with no reasoning in-universe whatsoever?

and look i’m not a fan of the ink demon having a voice (though i respect the craft behind it, the voice actor is very talented, it’s just a personal preference) BUT if you made the ink demon talk you should by logical extension either make toon bendy talk as well or explain why the hell he’s talking? i can see it being distracting but there are characters that have squeaky annoying voices in games and they’re fine (and it’s not like toon bendy is around the player for a super long time)

i dunno what logic this whole thing operates on anymore but if joey commissioned the ink machine then it should be his and arch gate got all his shit after he passed away so idk what retrieve is supposed to mean here

but it could just be badly written sentences and the archive is full of those (once again making me think that the thing was done in a rush)

that’s fair i guess

yall did make him look like a generic demon tho

i mean... it could be worse? if the goal was to make him look out of place then it was achieved but idk if it’s actually a good thing

i do like the bit about Wilson influencing how things look under him being in control of the cycle (though they have a very silly definition about what the cycle is but more about that later)

dude. the beast bendy design was already bad in BATIM and they made it even worse in BATDR like what TToTT

its just an angry mountain of muscles, the batim design at least had that leg injury thing going on which made moving with front arms make more sense, this dude right here is just a big inky gorilla (and not in a good way)

playing as the final form in on itself isnt a bad idea, does sound quite fun, personally tho i did not enjoy the very ending on the game

i dunno it just felt weird and all the other characters randomly appearing and the lost ones attacking being so awkward and ink demon acting as if they could kill you... nah man i wasn’t feeling it

okay so lets get this straight

cycle = a series of events that repeat

breaking the cycle would mean doing something different and stopping the cycle from continuing (so what... wilson was doing actually)

saying that making it restart again is what breaking it means is just??? no?

“satisfying face reveal” welp. each to their own XD

i see their purpose theme and thats neat and all but man do i hate how henry in this game is just. there and how some stranger is the person helping him get out of his horrible fate like its sooooooo unsatisfying

yeah she got more personality ill give her that

but she’s not a beacon of hope. she’s a beacon of tearing away the satisfaction of defeating a villain that we as the player worked hard towards

and uh... isn’t getting thrown into a horrible dimension full of monsters that audrey isn’t familiar with and is supposed to be freaked out about a bad moment to introduce a familiar face? like from a writing perspective, because it happens nearly instantly as chapter one starts

shouldn’t audrey be unmotivated then and struggling to figure out the world on her own? the player should also be haunted at this world, like it’s a horror game bestie ! don’t make me comfortable

well glad to hear the confirmation on that batds is happening in pararel to batdr

but his involvement in the main story is honestly such a nothing burger

is he there just so you can put batdr on the “can you pet the dog” site?

oh ok so what you’re basically putting down here is that he’s a boring perfect extremely rich guy, wasn’t even a bad father, completely stripping wilson’s arc of depth, cool, was afraid there would be something of substance powering the backbone of the plot of this game

and saying that both joey and wilson are worse people because theyre cringefail at business XDDDDDDDDDDD

ok here is something that im glad they addressed because ive been wondering about it - how audrey forgot that joey was her dad and how did she end up working at arch gate then

i suppose it implies that there’s something we might still learn/theorize about it, like for example if it was the machine drawing her in or gent wanting to get the machine back and manipulating things into place from behind the scenes

i really wonder how you can enter in and out the ink realm unnaturally but good to mention why he looks like that if he’s supposed to be nathan’s son

you cant just say that a character was important to the story, its not gonna happen from words

how is she important exactly? she just talks and uh.. helps audrey make the drink that makes you fall asleep? man that section of the game was Weird

i do want to like her, she seems nice and there could be interesting things to her backstory but as for the plot she really didn’t do much, sorry, betty

if you wanna say that pushing the plot forward by giving audrey that drink and then alice appearing outta nowhere and kidnapping here is a good big contribution then idk what to tell you... its such a bad way to make the plot progress, it was so confusing because characters were behaving as in forced to do Things to Progress the Plot (especially Audrey drinking that thing at all like seriously girl?? and Alice appearing comically at the last sip like wooooooow are you for real)

ah. so they were attempting a redemption arc

[saying this he didn’t threw aside the large rock. he was right to be holding the large rock]

this sucks man! what did joey help correct exactly? created more ink people to suffer eternally? wow, dude, thanks

also lmao what learned from his mistakes, did you HEAR his dialogue at the end of batim?? (an audrey can be heard right after that scene as well so isnt his whole change of heart supposed to be happening around here + allison has already been added to the squad)

it’s just... it’s just such bullshit man

you can make us like joey as a character but don’t you fucking dare make us like him as a person

bad. just bad

(aaaaaand this is the part that made me realize i wish the archives just. weren’t added! wow! i’m even surprised with myself with how much I Don’t Like them)

WHAT flaws??? hello??? please give it a big thinking and tell me what flaws does Audrey have im shaking and crying

also is her “deep dark past” supposed to just be like bEINg JoEY DRewS DAUghtER OOOoooOOo? lmao. wow so dark wow so deep

i dont know why this story needed a fresh pair of eyes because the story is that audrey is joeys daughter and that wilson is nathan archs son and that bendy is bendy. wow so deep so dark and complicated!!!!!!!11!!111

also whats the point of fresh eyes if you welcome us with familiar faces?

also sorry to break this to you but its not hard to stand out from the kinda cast that is presented to us in this game. sorry i cant decide if i care more about audrey or random employee number 24 with a random problem that i have 0 reason or time to get attached to. i seriously cant decide

suuuure we were so muddled xD oh you got us so good you sneaky little cheeky little quirky little

cant fucking believe we almost had a proper nathan arch jr and a secret one eyed villain that there was so much hype about and theories that they obviously tried to deliever here

its speculative but. knowing that they take inspiration from fan theories - they admitted to it and ex employees said so, i think we would have to be in some serious denial to think that @lucky-dreamfisher‘s one-eyed bendy theory wasn’t meant to be represented here with wilson’s character

ALSO THIS NARRATIVE. THIS NARRATIVE HAS ZERO- NO, NEGATIVE AMOUNT OF COMPLEXITY

GOD

this story makes so much LESS sense based on what you said! aaaaaaaa we were so close to greatness

what is so wrong with not resetting the cycle then?

not that im a fan of how wilson was approaching things, he very clearly wanted to make himself the ruler of this realm and have power over everyone but sounds like that sure beats living under ink demons reign?

but also idk if this is entirely true like in batim chapter 5 we can see that lost ones were capable of making that lost harbour and sammy is later mentioned to have mastered a special ability too so??

i wish we learned more about the pit because it sounds quite interesting and we were working hard towards getting there and finally didnt get to see it at all (a shame! very unrewarding to the player)

im not gonna comment on reverting here cuz its a serious mental thing im not knowledgable about

i haaaate this

you... this is not how exposition is done!

show don’t tell?? how about SHOW don’t TELL??

what in the goddamn. you can’t just pull that outta your ass and say yep. this is how it is. bro. dude.

im referring here to the ink machine bit, the previous sentences can actually be seen in the story

but the design does not reflect what is written here

and they are doing so much of that in these archives, this telling of the story in a place that is not meant for telling of the story, you do that IN the STORY. rarghrgrh

surprise i found another nice thing: confirmation on that alice was the one who mutilated the butcher gang, cuz i dont think that was ever confirmed before but at least you can find implications of that in the game so its fine to outright confirm that here, good job about that

i dont know what theyre on about carley, she doesnt really look like that to me and ive looked at her model in the archives, in the files and at peoples renders of her and i just dont see it

but i guess it might mean it was like a suit that someone got stuck in- FNAF?!>!!>!?

no way. no fucking way

we got robbed what ToT

he was removed in favour of WHAT???? AMOK????

dude there ill be real. there’s barely anything that is worth keeping there instead of having him play a bigger role

and im not even that big on sammys character! hes one of my least liked characters personally even! but at least there is something more to him and just man after 5 years you could have given him more than just a dumb wilhelm scream joke, that almost feels like a spat in the face lmao

thanks for again confirming something though with that flow thing, as we noticed sammy uses gaps in the wall in batim chapter 2 to travel around the place

why not have him teach audrey the flow ability? imagine how could that would have been

im just baffled this exist but sammy apparently had to be cut out

lol

lmao

moving on

my brother in christ why are you making it a mystery if she will appear, she literally appeared in every game so far with quite major roles

also... what layers? sure in batim with her story (susie’s story) there sure been some layers, susie’s story in batim is probably aside from joey’s story the deepest character arc they got

but alice in batdr? she’s there to play a stupid game she set herself up to lose, get mad at that (eh?) shoot you and die

what layers, really

gender

but also idk i found the fight annoying and random, you could throw it out and not much of value would be lost, put sammy back in

YOU MADE HIM NOTHING

YOU TOOK A PERFECTLY FINE ENEMY AND GAVE IT ANXIETY THATS WHAT YOU DID /j /ref

idk if id describe the ink demon as putting the player on edge because he doesnt actually roam the place

you see a grey overlay on your screen and you need to hide or you die... which gets tiring fast and annoying

you totally could still have lurker (even if just restricted to some areas) as a free roaming monster

and the unlikely ally thing is just so bland like yeah he’s there, we know nothing about him aside from that he eats hearts, incredibly charming fella

not thrilled by his design either but that issue i already had with the first trailer but i guess they just sticked with that

bendy devs not use mental illnesses as derogatory terms challenge

i like the crab boy design, he’s sillay

bro forgot a texture tho

so yeah not. happy with the archives

sorry if im like overly negative but ive honestly tried to give this sequel (because despite what they were saying it IS undoubtedly a sequel) my best assumptions and it turns out its nearly all the worst assumptions

its annoying, im annoyed

they should hire a writer to help them get this mess together, maybe get adrienne in on it, i dunno, because clearly if they need to be specific and not leaving things open like in batim, then they arent managing very well

they even fucking killed harold

#bendy and the dark revival #bendy and the ink machine #batdr #batim #halfpost

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princess-of-the-corner · 4 days

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Glad you liked the submission, as I have more on the Aware of Abuse AU!

I think it would be really interesting to reflect on how this situation would be kind of a drawn out grapple for Marinette. This is in no way salt and I think if it was written she'd both warrant having hear grievances hear, but also could definitely come off as a bit antagonistic, or at least wary.

(Exactly how hostile she defaulted to with Chloe tended to oscillate episode to episode so ya know how it be)

Marinette would have the easiest time getting close with Kagami. She has no history like with Chloe & no baggage, IE friendship with Chloe, like Adrien. Tomoe is not someone Marinette admires and its much easier to see abuse in the physicals side. While she'd struggle to see it more in the verbal or negligence side; or otherwise be able to rationalize the negative behaviors such as over protectiveness.

Meanwhile Adrien would be tied a lot closer to Chloe going into school as she'd be being less overtly antagonistic or vain. Plus, they'd have a much stronger "We need each other to keep from falling back into old patterns and to survive" mentality.

Plus Adrien would be a bit more overtly snarky and less respectful to authority or stuff like Gabriel's fashion shows. He still is very nice and super wants to be liked by everyone all the time, but it'd be a lot easier for her to see the negatives in his behavior.

Chloe meanwhile would probably rankle and outright frustrate her the most. Not just because she'd still be hard to get along with in general, or because she still is not against ignoring rules or disrespecting authority figures. But because...

No clue what your religious views may or may not be, but have you heard those talks of "Catholic guilt" and the idea of needing to suffer, do penance, ETC before one can be redeemed?

Marinette wouldn't strictly think or want that, but there would be a part of her that would sort of... Well resent that Chloe is seemingly just choosing to change and not even necessarily enough.

That is to say, Chloe might still rudely reject Sabrina's cookies out of hand but then instantly walk it back and have some.

But more in that she's suffered no defeat, she's not been taken from her previous luxurious circumstances, she hasn't seemingly lost anything and even more she'd not even be overtly contrite.

That is to say, Chloe wouldn't be doing stuff akin to the Lady Luck AU (Nothing against it, great fic!) where she'd frequently reflect on how much of a 'fuck up' she was. Or or say stuff like, "I know I was a bitch but I am trying to be better". Or feel guilt in the "I can't even be mad they assume the worst of me cos I probably would have done X."

She's just choosing to be different and on some level its deeply unsatisfying and even frustrating.

(Where is the arc, the climax, the catharsis!?)

Especially if some people roll with it or let her get away with it when she starts falling into old habits.

Marinette doesn't want Chloe to suffer or beg forgiveness or hate herself she doesn't. She just doesn't understand why now? Why at all? Why because of her friend? Why because of how she was treated and not how she treated others?

Why couldn't she care enough about hurting Marinette to change!?

That I think would be the lynch-pin and one that is, from Marinette's perspective, as well as others in and out of universe entirely sympathetic, she was hurt after all.

But in that same vain Chloe's an abused child lashing out due to trauma and taught such terrible lessons she sometimes couldn't process that she wasn't doing 'right'.

Marinette's been hurt, and that would need to be properly addressed. But it wouldn't need to happen in a self recriminating manner necessarily.

Not that I don't love those, self hating characters rife with issues are fun to explore. It is just that I think it'd be interesting to explore both, changing as a person, and a "Bad" victim getting help before they actually even start processing over much how others might warrant reoperations.

Does that make sense?

The story "restorative Justice" sort of dips into this from a different middle ground angle and most stuff by Generalluxun often have elements of it too.

Oh yeah no it's.

Marinette doesn't understand why Chloé is Like That™ in the first place, so she can't fathom her wanting to change.

From Mari's perspective, Chloé's life is pretty perfect. She's beautiful, she's rich. She can do whatever she wants whenever she wants and always gets her way through money or influence. She's always bragging about how she's so much better than everyone. Clearly her parents must adore her because they spoil her with gifts and never tell her 'no'. Any 'hardships' are just minor inconveniences that Chloé brought upon herself by being mean.

So why would Chloé choose to change? If it's not broke, don't fix it. Chloé's life is Perfect™, why would she do something to make it different?

It's not that she wants Chloé to suffer, or thinks that she /should/ suffer. She just doesn't understand why someone with a Perfect Life™ would change without going through some kind of suffering that forces introspection.

#aware au

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sillybayo · 8 months

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Viewing Revolutionary Girl Utena from an Aspec (mainly asexual) Lens

Some notes before I begin;

-This ramble/essay/whatever contains discussions of CSA and objectification (specifically towards a brown little girl, which contains racist implications). I mean, its quite obvious considering the show I'm talking about, but I still think this is an important warning. Also, please remember that the majority of the characters in utena are 13-17. While I don't mind a deeper discussion into their sexualities, desires, events, etc. etc., you need to remember that they're still children, and such topics need immense maturity. Please don't leave comments that sexualize the characters. It will leave me heavily disgusted.

-This is written under the assumption that Adolescence of Utena is an alternative universe, rather than a direct continuation from the show. This means that I don't think the characters in the movie remember each other nor the events from the show, and have a complete fresh start in all of their relationships.

-I'm not saying that these are the only possible interpretations or meanings, thats far from the truth. Its more so, "This event is because of this, but I also think its because of this on top of that." I just want to share my headcanons, as I think they make sense and want to give others a different perspective.

-I've only finished the show during the spring of last year, and I'm in the middle of a rewatch (somewhere in the black rose arc). I apologize if I misremember things, forgot something, or state something that lacks clarity.

-I'm perfectly aware that asexuality is lack of sexual attraction, and doesn't exactly mean that you don't enjoy sex. However, I'm using asexual (and other identities I mention here) as a general term containing both preferences. Absolutely no shame towards my acespec sex lovers, y'all rule the earth >:3!

-This is purely a thought dump, so I apologize if topics tend to bounce around, not make any sense, and/or the lack of proper episode references (like saying "when Utena and Anthy did a silly goofy dance", instead of "on episode 17, so and so"). This is really just for fun :3! I wanna put my ideas out there and want to talk about them with more people.

Now with that out of the way, I want to share why I think Utena and Anthy are acespec bambi lesbians. Lets get started ^o^!!

I'll start with Anthy. Throughout the entire franchise, she has been seen as an sexual object. In the show, this is less obvious until we're further introduced to Akio, since when people own her, shes seen as a key to revolutionizing the world, and going up to the castle illusion above. The farthest we see more romantic or intimate scenarios with Anthy and the duelists (other than Utena, of course), is her and Saionji exchanging diaries, and Mikis crush with misogynistic seasonings throughout.

Back to the topic of Akio though, he has been forcing her into sex for who knows how long, to the point where its her duty. She has only been an object to anyone and everyone she meets. Someone to project desires onto. Even Utena has accidentally done this (though it was far more tame, as she simply said Anthy wants more friends, when she, too, is lonely herself).

In the movie, this becomes much more clear. The way Saionji rubs her face, the way Touga talks about her, how Utena asks "Is this what the rose bride does?". The things she does for Akio has expanded to duelists. Once again, it has become her duty.

This is further proven when Utena and Anthy lay in bed after the first duel. She touches her, even without prior consent. Ever since I first saw this, I didn't think it was a sign of attraction, but rather, that Anthy just assumed that was what Utena wanted. This isn't the only thing that Anthy does without asking or talking it out first. She enters Utenas dorm room, she looks through her clothes. She now belongs to Utena, so she must prepare for her usual task.

So then, what if, with all of this in mind, that Anthy doesn't like sex at all? This follows the similar concept of her being a lesbian, since shes only forced to be with men, and has shown no genuine interest nor happiness towards any of them (well, not concept, as she is a canon lesbian, but you get the point).

Theres also a scene in the show where she implies that she didn't enjoy intercourse with Akio, in which he replies "Why must you torture me?" (once again, I apologize if I remembered this wrong). Theres obvious reasonings for this. One, hes her adult brother, two, shes a lesbian, and three, this is rape. But considering what I stated above, Anthy possibly being asexual is another reason.

Meanwhile, instead of being forced into romance and sex with other duelists, with Utena, theres always this more calm and comfortable air. Of course its because Utena actually cares about Anthy, and duels for friendship and love alone. But neither of them suggests sexual intent towards one another. Theres this emphasis on pure romance and patience, compared to other intimate relationships in the show and movie (keep emphasis and comparisons in mind!)

Although, Anthy could also easily be seen as demisexual, as she always chooses Utena in the end. Personally, I view the ending of the movie as nonsexual, as the removal of clothes being more about breaking out of their roles in the story, and the kissing being them finally being comfortable with their love for one another. Once again, thats just how I view it though. But Anthy growing a trustful bond with Utena is something a lot of demiaces can relate to. She can even be demiaro! Thats another wonderful read into her arc. Generally, I personally don't think Anthy is allo, and watching the franchise with amatonormativity and allonormativity in mind just doesn't feel exactly right, y'know?

Moving onto Utena, I'll be talking more about particular emphases, and how Utena acts towards sex compared to other characters in the show. Showing how one character stands out compared to all of the others, even subtly, is a writing tool often used in queer storytelling. For example, how all of the girls in monster high are boy crazy, except for Clawdeen.

Whenever Utena is put into a situation that implies sexual intimacy, shes shown to be uncomfortable. Like when she bdoyswapped with Anthy, and Saionji pulled her aside and removed a part of his clothing (only to reveal a diary though, thank goodness). When Touga constantly played with her hair or got really close to her. When Akio made continuous advances towards her, trapping her in a kiss, and eventually raping her. All of them show her either being terribly displeased, or groomed.

But she enjoys the idea of sex with girls, right? No, it doesn't seem like it. In the movie, when Anthy touches her, she immediately backs away and is clearly distressed. When she has to pose nude for a painting, she hesitates and clearly doesn't want to reveal herself, even though the task is nonsexual in nature. You could turn to the ending of the movie and say that shes interested, but I've already gave my personal thoughts on that.

Characters like Shiori, Kozue, Touga, Saionji, and Kanae, compared to her, however, don't mind about such things at all. Though for them, it could easily be read as trauma response, especially Touga. This is one of the many ways that Utena stands out instead of fitting in with the rest, and why I heavily believe she is not only asexual, but also caedsexual, akoisexual, and sex repulsed.

Andd that should be the end of my ramble! I hope you enjoyed peaking into my silly little brain. Rgu means a lot to me for many different reasons. It helped me become more comfortable with being a lesbian. It helped me figure out my gender and my relationship with it. It helped me process the trauma I was going through at the time. It improved my writing and analytical skills. Its truly my favorite show of all time, and I'm so glad I decided to watch it. My ramble may not be as metaphorical and deep as all of the other utena essays out there, but I had fun writing this :3. And to the aros, aces, and lesbians reading this,, I love you,, mwah <3

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lamentable-comedy · 2 years

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The Rest is Silence: Arden, Adaptation, and Narrative Stewardship

hey remember when i announced my intention to write an essay on arden and then didn't do it for two years because i was waiting for season 2B to come out and then... just kept not doing it? Well I finally wrote it and it's below the cut

i. Narrative Stewardship

Narrative stewardship is a term that you’ve never heard before because I invented it to describe who is entrusted with telling a story and when. It goes beyond just a matter of perspective or narrative voice, and specifically addresses in-universe instances of characters shouldering the responsibility of telling the story. And this can be varying degrees of explicit in terms of how it occurs.

One of my favourite less explicit examples of this is The World’s End. The film opens with narration from Gary, placing the story of the first golden mile firmly in Gary’s stewardship, and implicitly setting you up to think of the events of the movie from his perspective. However, it ends with narration from Andy, telling a group of people about the events of the film and retroactively applying his perspective to the story. The narrative has now passed into his care, and he is the one sharing it and bringing it forward. However, this switch isn’t the result of any explicit conversation that Gary and Andy have, nor does it directly represent that everything we’ve seen is something that Andy has been telling-- there are scenes that he just wasn’t there for, for one thing-- whatever version he tells the other people in the circle, it isn’t exactly what we’ve seen. The point is that the story of the first golden mile is in Gary’s care, and the second in Andy’s. In this instance, drawing attention to stewardship serves more of a thematic purpose in order to underscore the point that the movie is making about the past and how we interact with it.

For a more literal example, you can look at The Lord of the Rings. In-universe, the books that you read when you read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are a translation of The Red Book of Westmarch, which was primarily written by Bilbo and Frodo, and that is finished by Sam. Frodo directly, in the story, tasks Sam with the work of writing the end, and there’s analysis out there that pinpoints where that shift happens to within a few lines.

So that’s narrative stewardship. It doesn’t always have to be defined by a shift from one character to another, and there’s a lot of other situations under which it can be applied, probably some that I haven’t even thought of, but that’s more or less what I mean when I use the term, and it’s a concept that I think about a lot when it comes up.

Arden interacts with the concept of narrative stewardship on a number of occasions, first and most obviously, in its format as a true crime podcast. Throughout season one, Bea and Brenda are telling the story of Ralph and Julie. They have not been entrusted with this story by the people it actually concerns, they have taken it on themselves, and they’re each doing it for different but similar reasons. Bea sets out to tell Julie Capsom’s story. Not just to share and find out what happened to her, but because of a connection she feels she has with Julie, and because she feels she has some responsibility or duty to be the one to say what happens. Brenda is there for Ralph. She barges in and kind of strong-arms her way onto the in-universe Arden podcast because she wants to make sure that Ralph’s end of the story is being done justice, and at the core of her involvement in the rest of the season is the desire to prove that Ralph isn’t to blame for Julie going missing.

Bea and Brenda each feel that they have some responsibility to one of the key players in the story of season one, and both feel they have some right to tell the story because of their initial involvement at the time, Bea as a reporter and Brenda as one of the police officers investigating Julie’s disappearance. And the story was public enough at the time and it’s been long enough that the rest of Wheyface, the public, and Ralph and Julie’s friends and family all just... let them proceed with that goal.

However.

Julie and Ralph don’t want their story to be told. They don’t even want to be the ones telling it, they left it unresolved with intent. So when they do step in and are all but forced to take over stewardship of their own story from Bea and Brenda, it’s an act of self defence almost. They don’t want to be doing it, but they need to in order to justify, or at least explain, their actions. Of course, in-universe “Episode 11: The Monsters Who Did It” doesn’t actually exist, but the in universe equivalent of this reluctant re-possession of their story is when Julie agrees to answer Bea and Brenda’s questions on mic when they find her. Of course, doing so means owning up to her past actions. In season one of Arden, narrative stewardship means responsibility. Julie’s responsibility for the crimes she committed in order to orchestrate her disappearance, and the responsibility of Bea, Brenda, and the rest of the Arden team for negatively affecting the lives of at least three people.

So of course for season two they change things up a little.

Dana Hamill wants her story to be told.

Dana Hamill wants her story to be told by the Arden crew, to as wide an audience as possible.

Dana Hamill wants the world to know what happened to her Dad and why the actions of her uncle and, to a lesser extent, her mother, should be considered suspect in the light of what happened.

The question of narrative stewardship shifts in season two. The matter of how one person’s memory of the past can differ from another’s, and how that affects how they tell the story of what happened comes up directly a number of times-- Dana’s impression of her father as compared to those of Trudy and Clyde, Dana and Olivia’s differing perspectives on their past relationship, the different things that Bea and Brenda take from their initial interactions in 2007 and how that effects their present relationship... But the most noteworthy places for our purposes are the shift in the form that the podcast takes, and one Rosalind Ursula.

The Arden team is aware that, after the disaster that was the end of season one, they need to be more careful with how they approach season two, and as a result the episodes that we are hearing are not at all what the in-universe podcast, A Town Called Elsinore, actually consists of. So while Bea and Brenda are trying to tell Dana’s story, we aren’t just getting their version of that story. Moreover, their perspective on what the story is that they are telling is very different from Dana’s perspective on the story she wants them to tell. They are more aware of the possible consequences of taking responsibility for telling this story, and so they are more wary of fully doing so.

Which... brings us back to Rosalind.

Rosalind takes her first name from the main character of As You Like It, a character who would definitely, 100%, no doubt, get along with Hamlet so very well that one of my main takeaways from this podcast is turning over that possibility in my mind. Her last name, Ursula, is a nod to a minor character from Much Ado About Nothing, which ties her into Brenda and Bea as reimaginings of Benedict and Beatrice, but other than that doesn’t have much of a bearing on her character. Like, she’s not an adaptation of Ursula in any form. And it's interesting to note that she is one of the few characters in the podcast who is based on a Shakespeare character, but who is brought in without bringing in other elements of the play from which they are is taken. The only other contribution As You Like It has made to Arden is the title, but even that is more strongly connected to the real-life forest of Arden near Shakespeare’s home town than it is the fictional Arden in As You Like It’s France. Even Andy Wheyface is actually surprisingly similar to Andrew Aguecheek what with his willingness to throw his money around and comedic attempt to get married with vague motivations as to why he actually wants to, though that is retained without importing much else from Twelfth Night. The only other Twelfth Night reference being Malcolm Volio in season one.

But Rosalind! She does bear a similarity to her Shakespearean namesake in terms of character, but not at all in terms of role. And the fact that she has been taken so entirely out of her original context essentially gives her leeway to be a more flexible character for the writers while still maintaining a connection to Shakespeare. And what the writers do with that... is make her Horatio.

I can still remember listening to season two for the first time, and realizing that Rosalind was going to be acting as Horatio and... I think I literally got goosebumps? Because Horatio... Horatio is the person who has stewardship of the story of Hamlet. Hamlet entrusts him, at the end of the play with the task of telling this story. In the world of Hamlet, the only way that the story of all of death and tragedy-- the “carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts”-- gets told, is because of Horatio. And we know that he does tell it, at least once, to Fortinbras, when he shows up at the end of the play.

Dana gets Rosalind to tell her story. She contacts Arden generally, but Rosalind is the one who does the groundwork of flying out to Montana and looking into Dana’s story in preparation for the in-universe season 2. And as a result of befriending Dana, Rosalind is swayed to her perspective on events, and becomes the only person on the Arden team advocating for the version of the story that Dana wants them to tell. This interacts with some other aspects of adaptation in some ways that I’ll get to in a moment, but first and foremost it makes her... a really good Horatio. By which I mostly mean it makes her a very Horatio Horatio. She really takes her responsibility as the steward of Dana’s story, as the person entrusted with her version of events, very seriously. To Rosalind, this is Dana’s story-- much as in season one Bea saw the events as Julie’s story almost to the exclusion of Ralph-- and so, first and foremost, Rosalind sees Arden’s responsibility in telling the story doing right by Dana. At least until she realizes that she's gotten too close to Dana and comes clean to the rest of the crew about the gaps in Dana’s story.

Season two asks questions about the role of objectivity in narrative stewardship, because if someone asks you to tell their story-- the story of what happened to them, and what they did, what happens when that conflicts with just telling the story of what happened?

ii. Adaptation and Narrative Tension

Arden isn’t fully an adaptation. Partially because it’s got so much original stuff that there are whole storylines that can’t be found in Shakespeare, but partially because it’s never a straight-up retelling of any of the plays that it takes on. There’s always enough distance from Shakespeare’s actual text, story, and themes that despite the obvious influence, it also stands on it’s own as a new version of an older story.

Which is actually very in line with how Shakespeare approached his plays. With very few exceptions, (Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merry Wives of Windsor, and The Tempest) they're all based on existing stories or historical events. Some plays are the result of combining two stories, and faithfulness varies greatly between different plays, but in general, Shakespeare plays aren’t original. They’re just really good at standing on their own.

But none of Shakespeare’s plays are mysteries. There aren’t really twists or reveals. Villains tell the audience what they’re up to, the Chorus synopsizes events for you before they happen, foreknowledge of the ending will not in any way hamper your enjoyment of the story. So Arden is actually given a very difficult task in terms of adapting stories that everyone knows into a true crime format where the reveal of what happened and who did it needs to actually hold some weight. That approach to adapting the plays essentially requires a genre shift, because the aims of a mystery are directly at odds with the aims of the kinds of tragedies that Shakespeare wrote. And the really amazing thing is how it’s done differently in the two seasons.

Everyone knows how Romeo and Juliet ends. The prologue of the play tells you how it ends just in case you didn’t know. And, listening to season one of Arden, you already know what happened to Ralph and Julie, because you know they’re Romeo and Juliet. Well. You should know they’re Romeo and Juliet. You might not know the details, but you know they’re dead, and you know they died together. Season one relies on that foreknowledge to keep both the real-world audience and the in-fiction audience engaged. Even if you somehow managed to miss the fact that Ralph Montgomery and Julie Capsom are Romeo and Juliet, in-fiction, everyone making and listening to the show knows what happened to Julie Capsom. All that blood? The crashed car? She for sure died. They just don’t know how.

So, when the twist is revealed and it turns out that they’re not only not dead, but still together? And thriving? You, like the in-universe are surprised by it! It’s like. Undoing any dramatic irony that existed in the original.

Also, if you’re me, you’re kind of more emotionally affected by that twist than you are by the original ending. Because you were prepared for them to be dead, gosh-darn-it, you were prepared for that because you’ve had years to accept it-- but for them to be alive and happy? You wrote a story where they’re ALIVE and HAPPY?? How dare you. How dare you change their fates and show me what could have been, because now the fact that this story has ended in death for four hundred years is sadder.

Anyway.

Season two, builds on that. Season two is an elevation of season one in pretty much every way, honestly, and with that comes an even further departure from the source material and a more deliberate obfuscation of what an audience expects from Hamlet. Because in order for the mystery to sustained in a manner which fits a story of an investigation, we can’t have our Hamlet given concrete knowledge of the culprit, heard from the murder victim, right at the start of the story. Yes, in Hamlet, Hamlet has his doubts about the information that the ghost gives him and that’s part of why it takes him a while to kill Claudius, but the audience doesn’t really have their doubts. We know. Both because of the narrative itself, and because Hamlet is, um. Very famous.

So, Arden season two lacks a clearly articulate ghost describing his murder in detail. The listener is still predisposed to suspect Clyde because they have read or seen or are at least culturally aware of Hamlet, but that suspicion is shaken by remembering that they changed how the story went in season one, so... who knows what could happen. And the further season two of Arden departs from the source material, the less sure you you can be of who’s going to make it out okay.

And this is an amazing exercise in getting you to think about the story differently, because the way Hamlet is written-- giving an audience knowledge as to what Hamlet it doing and why, by showing us his interaction with the ghost-- makes Hamlet’s actions and the fact that he suspects Claudius the way that he does more or less make sense to us in a way that it doesn’t to the majority of the characters. We know that he has his reasons for all of the weird stuff he’s doing, and even if you don’t agree with how he goes about it, you’re still able to see the justification in it. To the other characters in the play-- with the notable exception of Horatio-- his actions are absolutely wild, and Hamlet’s entire plan relies on that.

In Arden, we’re not following Dana directly. We’re following her via Bea and Brenda’s investigation, and that investigation is also following all of the other major players in the town. That shift in how we are presented with our Hamlet figure removes the perspective of knowing who (probably, if ghosts are to be believed) dunnit, even if some shadow of it is still there because of cultural knowledge of Hamlet. It’s basically asking you to relate not to Hamlet, but to Claudius and Gertrude and Ophelia and Polonius-- all the people who are worried about just what Hamlet is up to and that... that is an amazing trick to pull off.

Let’s go back to Rosalind and Horatio. Because Horatio is actually monumentally important to the audience’s understanding of Hamlet as a person for much of the play, and Arden puts that into a much sharper focus by having Rosalind literally trying to shape what the in-universe audience hears of Dana and the story, to the point of deleting footage that might incriminate Dana and interfering with Brenda and Bea’s investigation. Horatio is tasked by Hamlet with telling his story, and Arden asks us to question the ethics of that in the framework of true crime, as well as asking us to question Horatio’s objectivity. It’s asking “but what if Hamlet wasn’t right? What if Claudius didn’t do it?” and that... I don’t even know what to do with that.

Now, no discussion of our access to Dana’s inner thoughts and motivations would be complete without the matter of the soliloquies. In Arden, the soliloquies are fantastically adapted into Dana’s songs. They serve the same purpose as a soliloquy in that they give us some insight into Dana’s thought process, but they also emphasize the element of performance that is at play in Dana’s actions. Performance is such a big part of Hamlet’s actions, in the play. There’s a really amazing ambiguity to just how much of his actions are performance and when he’s performing and when he isn’t that can vary from production to production. Is Hamlet aware that Polonius and Claudius are spying on him during “to be or not be”, for instance. Some of Dana’s songs happen in more private moments-- “Show ‘Em I Mean Business”, arguably “Watch the Fire”-- but most of them are in public, drawing the audience’s attention to the fact that, while Dana’s emotions about her father’s death and the ensuing situation are genuine, on some level she is still performing. And when and how she is performing, not to mention for whom, is immensely interesting.

iii. Conclusion

In the commentary episode for season 2, episode 6, Christopher Dole expresses the aspect of true crime ethics that Arden explores as "who has the right to tell another person's story? [...] And what is the storyteller getting out of choosing this story?" While these questions are of course relevant to questions of true crime, I think they also have bearing over the matter of adaptation, and the matter of theatre. Theatre is unique in that the exact same story, the same script, gets told over and over in many different forms, with different actors and blocking and set and what have you. Shakespeare, as the meeting point of theatre stories that have had cultural relevance for a long time, is a nexus of two forms of repeating and retelling the same story. Arden, both in the act of adapting and retelling Shakespeare, and in the way it chooses to adapt and retell Shakespeare, asks questions about how we frame narratives, who gets to tell stories, and what stories are chosen to be told.

#arden #arden podcast #these are not all of my arden thoughts #not even close #they are just the arden thoughts that need to be fully articulated because they've been bouncing around my head as fragments #i'm also gonna make this into a video #but editing takes time so i'm posting this as is and i'll post a link to the video when it's done probably #depends on how i feel #you might just get the written version idk #anyway....#words #a lot of words #podcast #meta #analysis

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iwanthermidnightz · 1 year

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Have you listened to interview Zane Lowe recently did with The National yet?

Yes, and oh boy I can’t wait for this one. Seems like she’s been getting at least some of her inspiration of “switching perspectives” from the collaboration Matt does with his wife. I love it when years of back and forth and hearing her talk about different perspectives comes to the forefront. But I’ll skip to the part you’re probably referring to (took the liberty of typing it out):

And speaking of collaborations, you know, Phoebe’s not the only one making an appearance on this record, we’ve got Taylor Swift, who I feel like The National expanded universe includes Taylor and I know you guys made an appearance on her track Coney Island, but talk about how that relationship made its way onto this project. It’s the first real National album in four years, everybody’s been off doing these projects, you know you and your wife did the stuff on Cyrano and Aaron’s been super busy with his own stuff and this feels like the first time that you guys are all coming back in the studio and brining those experiences with you. What was it like working with Taylor on this project?

Matt Berninger: Well, I met Taylor along time ago and we knew Taylor was a fan and eventually we got to know her and her work with Aaron was so brilliant, and I know that she was really interested in the writing process and how Carin [his wife] and I collaborate and so when the song The Alcott, when I wrote that and it very much is a perspective of one person sort of coming to try to reconnect with a one person in a space, a room like in a hotel bar and I’d written all that side of it and Aaron sent it to Taylor right away and I think she jumped right into sort of like the role of the other voice, the other perspective and like I was writing about my wife but it sets a scene of a person with a notebook writing in a bar basically and she knew exactly and fit right into that. So when it came back, all of a sudden this song I’d written suddenly has the other viewpoint or the other perspective added to it by one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

More on this:

So some listeners have been surprised to see the two emerge, in recent years, as close collaborators. After the pandemic interrupted Swift’s promotional plans for her 2019 album, Lover, she reached out to the multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dessner to help produce two new albums, Folklore and Evermore, the latter of which featured all five members of The National—whom she called her “favorite band”—in some capacity. The albums easily could have amounted to a credibility-chasing costume change: pop star goes coffee shop. Instead, they refreshed Swift’s style by pairing sophisticated, moody arrangements with a new lyrical approach. Rather than once again mine her own life for lyrics, she imagined fictional scenarios: a teenage love triangle, a murder conspiracy among friends, a romance between two con artists. Swift was availing herself of the freedoms, even imperatives, that men in rock and roll had long enjoyed—projecting moral ambiguity rather than wholesomeness and virtue.

Now it appears that Swift may have pushed the men of The National in new directions too. On the band’s latest album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, out in April, Swift’s influence feels pervasive. It’s not just her voice, which she lends to the lilting track “The Alcott”; she seems to have taught them something about the mode of candid self-expression that she has mastered. In so doing, The National and Taylor Swift have become one of the unlikeliest and most productive synergies in contemporary music—the cross-pollination of a gloomy indie-rock fraternity and proudly sentimental, stadium-charming pop.

But the band guards against cheap inspirationalism by relying on the idiosyncrasies that have defined it all along. Its old motifs—romantic death and rebirth, sad saps saved by realists, drums that burst like flak cannons—now serve a new aim by acting as a reminder that empathy doesn’t come easily. Rescuing people can mean coaxing them to share how they really feel—and that process requires psychological struggle. On “Alien,” Berninger urges someone to “drop down out of the clouds you’re in.” A hint of conflict lurks in the line, acknowledging just how bracing such conversations can be. Real breakthroughs, these artists have shown in their work together, come from blunt and open exchange.

As Swift and Berninger sing on “The Alcott”: “I tell you my problems / You tell me the truth … You tell me your problems / And I tell you the truth.”

#yeah dig deeper into matts collab with his wife

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abcd-em · 8 months

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Talk to me about irondad but make it MJ 🎤

why NOT, let's go!!!

I've written over 200k for this trope, it's fair to say that it consumes my brain just a little bit thinking of them

The MCU gave use such crumbs when it came to MJ and her family, her background that it's fun to build her one that ties her into the heart of that universe especially in the Spidey franchise where so much of what happens is the fallout of Tony's existence/presence in Peter’s life

You've got two intelligent people who so often use that wit and smarts to keep people at a distance - putting them in a room together to talk is immediately fun for me - then add in the layers of Tony's own history and his father paired with MJ's 'expect disappointment and you'll never be disappointed' and you get such an interesting look at both their characters.

They can both be evasive and nosey and protective and prickly and its so intriguing to unpack that. Especially bc it can put MJ at the heart of the MCU, bring her more into what we would normally consider Peter’s world but also shaping it around her own perspective and experiences WITH that world. Which I really tried to write in Vagary.

SPEAKING on the PeterMJ of it- a) the identity shenanigans that can go on - enough said. b) it has the fun of famous MJ with everyman Peter Parker. The sneaking around, the secrecy, the masks they both wear. c) MJ meeting and falling in love with someone who is a superhero, something that has plagued her childhood, and having to reckon with that? Choosing to be with him even though she KNOWS how this ends?

And simply bc I CAN that's half the issue with them in Rolling Fake Dice. There'll be a little more insight into what their relationship pre-blip really looked like in later chapters but so much of it was spent with her not wanting to know about the spidey side Vs. Now when he's keeping things from her. She wants the ease they used to have bc everything else is big and daunting, but she also nearly lost her dad to this - technically she lost Peter too - she wants to know and that's exactly the reason he isn't telling her, just like she isn't telling him everything either.

#em answers #petermj #irondad but make it mj #spideychelle

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montyterrible · 1 month

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“This is a (wo)man’s world”: The Excessorious Thinktation of Mr. Monty Terrible, re. Birds of Prey 2020

For a movie so focused on women, one of the most noticeable early design choices in the 2020 Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn ironically concerns a man: specifically Jared Leto’s Joker. The character is present here but in ways that deliberately omit the particulars. The animated Joker seen in the opening is more of a classically… clean-cut version of the character and not really recognizable as the Leto Joker. Ditto the image of his head Harley has as a bulls-eye on the wall of her apartment. The man himself is only seen from the back, in the couple of instances where he does “appear.”

He isn’t even seen breaking up with Harley. We’re just told about it. You can read this as meaningful if you like—Joker’s presence and his influence on Harley being this intangible, malignant thing, like a ghost, maybe, wholly separate from his physical body—though it’s also just blatantly an attempt to dodge using a version of the character that did not exactly win over audiences without outright rebooting him. The obvious brand rehabilitation happening here undermines the art a bit, such as it is: It’s more transparently a product in this way. While there may be artistic or logistical excuses, I don’t think any fully invalidate this point since it still feels like the movie is dodging even the established look of the character in a pretty telling way.

Whatever the exact ratio of intention to coincidence, the result is a message of separation, liberation—*emancipation*—for the Harley character, in-universe and as a valuable asset/property. The title might lead with “Birds of Prey,” but this is Harley’s movie: no Jokers allowed.

Not that the absent Joker is a “bad” thing. While I can find my way to liking other parts of the 2016 Suicide Squad, including Leto’s Joker, it’s inarguable that that film’s contribution to the modern DC universe of live-action films was mainly Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, as well as a certain garish sense of style that does persist here, arguably in a stronger sort of way than in even the proper Suicide Squad sequel that would come later. The impression that I come away with is that this movie’s temperament is more genuinely meatheaded in a 2016 Suicide Squad sort of way than it is crass-but-clever like the 2021 THE Suicide Squad. The fist bump the lady protagonists share at the end (over breakfast drinks and tacos) feels very much spiritually of a kind with the visual of two masculine hands gripping one another, muscles bulging from the camaraderie.

Maybe that is itself a notable feature given that this is a movie principally about women, written and directed by women, and with Robbie as a producer. It’s glittery, ridiculous, violent fun For The Ladies. It’s a movie with a breakup at its center, and we see Harley deal with that in some perhaps stereotypical ways, like giving herself a haircut and eating junk food while crying, but the whole movie kind of has a certain post-breakup anger, determination, and wildness behind it. It’s fast paced but not so much in a deft way and more like the proverbial bull in the china shop. Harley is the narrator, so her typically chaotic perspective is the excuse, in a sense, for the stylistic excess: bright colors, character introductions and sometimes vengeful motivations conveyed via on-screen text, a surreal performance of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” when she’s hit in the face by mob boss antagonist Roman Sionis/Black Mask at one point.

The overall vibe for the plot is “heist”-esque, with some interruptions and rewinding by narrator Harley to create excitement and a sense of fun and complication. It isn’t exactly wildly original or interesting in terms of the narrative or writing, however, and there are points where the movie seems to more or less acknowledge this: like Harley essentially admitting that Renee Montoya’s suspension (as a cop) is a trope or how Black Canary calls attention to Harley suddenly having rollerblades on for some reason in the funhouse fight sequence. Momentum is the focus here. The Fantabulous Emancipation is a lean sub-two hours, and that feels about right for this concept. The much-missed 90-minute runtime standard of old, which this movie still exceeds, was the exact right length for a disposable bit of entertainment with some highlights. You can practically feel the script (and Harley) trying to force the team together in time for the climax, but it generally does not feel like the story was mutilated to reach this runtime.

Roller derby feels like a good fit for this version of Harley aesthetically (and also jibes with the feminist theming), and it gets paid off with the skates at the funhouse brawl and afterward when chasing down Sionis’ car. Cassandra Cain has been taking things out of people’s pockets all movie long, and then she reverse-pickpockets a grenade onto Sionis to finally end him. Harley’s troubles really get started when she tries and fails to eat an egg sandwich, and then she finally gets to eat one at the end. There’s even a fun bit there where the narrator and on-screen Harleys sync up as the story concludes: “Call me a softy,” says the narration; “I dare ya,” says Harley in the car with Cass. It’s a cute, conclusive-feeling beat to end on.

The real treat here, in my opinion, are the fight scenes, especially a couple starring Harley in a police station where the music is reminiscent of a shriek of rage at times. There’s a moment where she’s hiding behind a palette of cocaine, which is then shot up by Sionis’ mercenaries, allowing Harley to inhale the dust and go a little extra berserk. The funhouse fight is visually pretty engaging thanks to the environment, which also creates opportunities for interesting fight choreography. I can’t compare this to every one of the live-action DC movies, but Fantabulous definitely has some of the crunchier action I’ve seen in these films, with a somewhat higher degree of visual credibility. This section is small, but even on rewatch, I would say that the fights are the main reason to see this movie. They’re at least noteworthy highlights.

The “emancipation” of the title definitely shows in the design and theming of the film in ways that I have to imagine made some people very angry—something something “shoved down our throats,” “childhood ruined,” woke, etc. The women aren’t sexualized in a leering way here, and the focus seems to have been on clothing them to give them a sense of style appropriate to their character versus creating something strictly “attractive” or honoring the designs from the comics. Black Canary gets somewhat more revealing attire, but in a considered way where there’s still more covered than not. Harley’s outfits take the Suicide Squad 2016 foundation and add like 200% more accessories and glitter. Cass is dressed like a kid, and Montoya looks like she’s a living, aging person and just very “normal” overall. Huntress might come closest to wearing something like a super suit consistently.

The theming is very straightforward empowerment stuff and very safe—or it would not be broadcast so aggressively like this—though that fact won’t stop the aforementioned, theoretical, angry viewers from thinking it’s some aberration and step too far. Too “political” and so forth.

It’s laid on very thick: When Harley blows up Ace Chemicals early on, Montoya immediately gets her intent (“She just publicly updated her relationship status”), while her partner (a man) is oblivious. Montoya is overlooked and overruled at work in favor of men; Black Canary is repeatedly referred to by Sionis as his “little bird.” Probably the most high-falutin’ it gets is with Harley telling Canary that “A harlequin’s role is to serve” and “You know, a harlequin’s nothing without a master.” And then Canary saves her from being some kind of kidnapped or trafficked in the back of a van after a man gets her drunk(er). Even Doc, the elderly man who owns the restaurant Harley lives above, sells her out. Some of the most squirmy violence in the film, to me, involves breaking a man’s legs with a baseball bat. It’s a movie that some might claim is misandrist, though, if anything, it feels pretty egalitarian with how hard the blows consistently land. The ladies strike one another and men and are struck by men with quite a bit of oomph.

“Friends, brothers, men of Gotham,” says Black Mask to his army, making what should be simple mercenary/goon work feel downright fraternal. Later, the final part of the final showdown happens on a pier lined with statues of the Gotham founders, most of which seem to be men. This is where Harley and Cass kill Sionis, who had risen to the top of the patriarchal heap in the modern day.

There’s maybe some self-awareness here since, earlier, Harley tells Cass to “blow something up” or “shoot someone” to get respect from boys.

While there are other men characters, two of the most prominent are Sionis and his right-hand man, Victor Zsasz, and the two of them have this very… interesting (read: gay) relationship. Like, Zsasz is incredibly visibly jealous of the attention Sionis gives Canary at one point, and Sionis has this sort of BDSM-adjacent thing going on, which would make sense with the “black” “mask,” in a way. He’s more often associated with gloves (and a fear of uncleanliness despite apparently also having a penchant for having Zsasz remove people’s faces) than with a mask in this movie, however. A fixture of his club’s stage are these two big black hands on either side, with eyes held between their middle two fingers. Which kind of suggests the gloves are the mask. Meanwhile, the mask itself is on a pedestal in a room with this sort of bondage-y art on the walls, and putting it on almost seems to be a last resort and feels like this particularly manic, strained moment for Sionis. There’s at least an association being made.

There’s part of me that appreciates how this could be an intentional assault on a certain contingent of the movie’s audience. “Aggressive” is a good word for it, as is “gay.” Neither of those things bothered me, though I did find Chris Messina’s (Zsasz) and Ewan McGregor’s (Black Mask) performances kind of grating at times. It’s funny that Leto’s Joker is persona non grata here, as both of these men are at points doing things with their mannerisms and voices that remind me a lot of that take on the Joker. You might even call some of the acting that they’re doing “bad,” in fact.

They both have their moments of genuine menace, though, that intersect with the themes and help redeem the oddball stuff—like this pretty tense and upsetting bit where Sionis thinks a woman in his club is laughing at him, so he forces her to dance on a table and her male companion to cut and then tear her dress off. Looking on, Canary sheds a tear of, we can assume, sisterhood. Zsasz similarly gets a bit creepy with Harley’s paralyzed body later in the movie and then tries to get Canary to cut open Cass to prove her loyalty and extract an all-important stolen diamond, and when he dies in this scene the women essentially take turns stabbing him in some form. It is not subtle!

Now, potentially associating male gayness (or at least some shade of queerness) with violence against women seems problematic. And while I can appreciate these versions of Sionis and Zsasz being some kind of cishet male comic fan repellant, and also just the weirdness of the take, it seems like making them more conventionally masculine and straight would have kept the theming tidier. There’s not room in here for too much nuance.

#movies #dc movies #superheroes #movie review #harley quinn

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loricritterwritestoo · 11 months

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Hi!!! Lori Critter (they/them) here! You might know me from some of my work on twitter (if ya know what i mean lololol) but I also write, and make art. I’ve been working on this lesbian sex worker road trip novel for over two years, fleshing out the basics of the main story and writing all the scenes I was really excited about. Let me know what you think! I will have a patreon available any day now where you can read the chapters in real time every week as I actually put the book together cohesively. I might add some poems here/add a novel and poetry tier, but my poems are pretty weird so we’ll see about that lol. Thank you so much for taking the time to read my work!!! (also the novel is written from the perspective of Angelica she/her who eventually IDs as nonbinary, this excerpt doesnt explain that so I thought id add it :) )

I hated how scared I was. My job was to be supportive, but all I was doing was sitting in a back corner of the room staring at her worriedly. Evangeline was getting ready to see a client for a date. She had just finished painting her nails and was now blushing her cheeks with her other hand, holding a compact in the shape of a heart. I always thought of myself as someone who knew all about the “rougher” side of life and had no qualms about sex work. But all I felt was worry. Eva had done this so many times before and I wanted to think she knew what to do in every single situation. And I did trust her. But I didn’t trust the world.

In this past month, we had created our own universe overflowing with new love, lust, and adventure. Yes, I was scared for her. But I also didn’t want a bunch of men butting into our world.

“I’m almost ready… I’m a bit dusty” Evangeline giggled. I fucking love her giggles. The way it sounds like shes shy but you know shes anything but. I watched her walk past me and was infuriated that some truck driver or lonely dad gets to touch something so sumptuous. Could even I deserve a backside that fits blue satin granny panties so well? (“they let my pussy breath!”).

Eva was putting on her strappy heels at the edge of the bed. I sat down next to her and rubbed her back, my head leaning on her shoulder. She smelled so, so good. Like sweat and summer. “God, you smell amazing. You really have to leave RIGHT now?” I smiled at her. I was trying to sound like I was teasing her. But I wanted so bad for her to change her mind.

“You want me to stay, don’t you?” she turned and looked at me. “I’ll be fine. I know what I am doing, and its no more dangerous than my waitressing job where my boss kept a gun loaded on his desk. If I worked at a grocery store, it could get shot up. If I was “just” a stripper, my boss could turn me into his personal concubine. I’ve seen it a million times before. And it WOULD be because shes a stripper! But thats his problem, the worlds problem. I refuse to wait for the world to catch up to, like, the truth of humanity, that we’re all the FUCKING same and no ones better than anyone else. I will work my way, and all I need from you is support. This is what I want, how I am most happy. I totally get that the whole world told you the story of the poor little dead hooker, but thats just not me. If I’m killed tonight, its still not me. And it doesn’t exist. I am NOT what my clients, you, or a shitty movie tell me I am. No one is.”

I just stared at her. I felt bad. I felt confused. I flinched at every snatch and quick movement she made as she finished getting ready. Maybe she could’ve not lectured me at the drop of a hat, without me even saying anything that serious. But she was right. I was being stupid and trying to protect her in ways you can never truly protect someone. And I knew from the beginning who I was running away with. Looking at her, pissed and stomping around the room, I decided to learn, as best I can, just how exactly she needed me to love her.

I looked down at the floor, where her overflowing suitcase was. I saw a pair of sheer panties with little sea creatures like octopi and seahorses on them. It wasnt a thong, but it was the kind where it was meant to ride up your ass and basically serve the same purpose.

“I think you should wear this. Just don’t sell it for him to keep under his pillow.”

#lesbian #sexwork #novel #web novel #patreon #feminist writing #writer #queer #queer writers #queer writing #nonbinary #nonbinary writer

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khangthecinephile · 1 year

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Lady Bird (2017): Love = attention ?

One of the best movies to be released in 2017, a movie that is one of a kind in its genre, Lady Bird is written and directed by Greta Gerwig. Starring Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet and many other talented actors, this dramedy, coming of age movie follows the main character Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson and explores her complex relationship with her mother Marion played by Lauri Metcalf. Lady Bird is a movie about maturity, acceptance and most importantly love and attention.

The main theme of the movie was delivered through the one quote of Sister Sarah Joan when she was talking to Lady Bird about her college essay: “Don’t you think they are the same thing, Love, Attention.” From the first scene, the center of the movie was presented, Lady Bird and her mother. One special thing about Lady Bird is that Greta Gerwig allows audiences to see from both the daughter’s perspective and the mother’s perspective. The deeply complex relationship between Lady Bird and Marion are exactly the representation of the quote. Finding a way to show our love to somebody isn't always easy and love is also sometimes hard to understand. Marion and Lady Bird are two people who clearly love each other but don't know how to express their love to the other person. Most of the times that these two characters appear in the same frame; they either fight or argue with each other. They fight because they pay lots of attention to one another's actions and personality. An example of this would be the scene when Marion and Lady Bird argue over how Lady Bird doesn’t fold her clothes. While Marion has to take care of the family and deal with financial problems, she also cares a lot about her daughter’s future. Although she may appear as strict or intruding Lady Bird’s life, everything she does starts from love. Another thing people can learn from Marion is acceptance. In the scene at the thrift store, Marion said that she wants Lady Bird to be the best version of herself but sometimes, love is also about accepting each other's flaws and imperfection.

From Lady Bird’s point of view, she always asks if mom likes her, showing how much she cares about Marion’s love for her although she often says that her mom hated her. At the climax of the movie, after Marion found out that Lady Bird completely ignored her advice and applied to a university in New York city without her permission, instead of yelling or scolding her daughter, Marion decided to ignore Lady Bird back. In the scene in the kitchen, Lady Bird tries to explain her decision to Marion but Marion just stays completely quiet and gives no attention to her at all. Even until Lady Bird is about to leave Sacramento to go to New York city, Marion still tries to ignore her. These reactions obviously hurt Lady Bird deeply and helped her a lot in realizing the things she did wrong. Just when the two people stay apart, they realize how much they love each other. Marion instantly regrets her decision not to go into the airport with her daughter but it’s already too late. For Lady Bird, just when she reads the letters that Marion wrote, she finally understands how much Marion loves her and figures out her love for her mother as well.

Towards the end of the movie, at one of the best endings to a movie I’ve ever seen, Lady Bird woke up at the hospital after being drunk at her college party and walking down the street of a city that she’s completely unfamiliar with. She feels lonely and decides to go to a catholic church to find some sort of connection with her hometown. Lady Bird again realizes her love for her hometown and calls her mother to confess her love for Sacramento, also confessing her love for her mother. “Did you feel emotional the first time you drove in Sacramento?” She begins to describe it again “so affectionately and with such care.” Many people believe that attention is something humans rarely give to each other so it becomes more valuable and special, in other words, attention is equal to love.

The connection between attention and love was presented not just in the relationship between Lady Bird and her mother, but also in many other situations throughout the movie. When Lady Bird doesn’t give her best friend Julie as much attention anymore to become friends with the rich friend Jenna, she basically took her love away from Julie and it surely made her best friend sad. In another case, this time a romantic relationship with Kyle, Kyle doesn’t really pay attention to Lady Bird’s feelings, especially when the two just had sex and this truly hurt Lady Bird. Even when Lady Bird wants to go to prom with him, Kyle doesn’t care and decides to go to his friend’s house instead without taking notice of how Lady Bird feels.

After all, though having lots of arguments and disagreements, Christine and her mother have one thing in common is that they both love each other. Through Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig has successfully delivered her message about love, attention and also about appreciating the things that are close to us like family and home. According to the director herself, Lady Bird is a love letter she wants to send to Sacramento, the city that she grew up in. Playing Lady Bird in this movie, Saoirse Ronan has given one of the best performances in her career so far. I can’t really imagine another person playing Lady Bird besides Saoirse Ronan herself.

#lady bird #greta gerwig #saoirse ronan #laurie metcalf #timothee chalameet

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soulemerging · 2 years

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Reiki

What is Reiki?

Is it possible to explain reiki? Is it possible to scientifically determine its benefits? There are lots of articles out there to both verify or disprove the effectiveness of Reiki. This post is not a research article, it is written from the perspective of someone who has given and received Reiki.

Let me go back to a time before I learned Reiki. I was in university having horrible headaches and undergoing a ton of stress. My maternal grandparents both had cancer and they both passed away after lengthy battles with cancer. I was living in a home with roommates who sometimes drove me nuts (some of them were also awesome). It was a time when Oprah started talking about Spirituality. I was already somehow on that path but having her openly discuss it made me feel less alone.

My mom had done mediation and yoga with me as a teenager, we even went to mediums who, I KID you not, said the most astoundingly true things (they had no idea who we were). These headaches were debilitating, so my mom hired a Reiki therapist to come to my house and perform reiki. I lay down and she moved her hands in a pattern above me. Even though her hands were not always touching my body, I could feel heat emanating from them. When she moved her hands over my face/head I saw the most incredible colours. It was a rainbow swirl of light. I remember I told her about that, and she said it was pretty incredible that I could see that the first time and feel so much! I had no idea what to even think! All I know is the headaches went away and I was able to feel far less stressed.

Fast forward a few years and I decided to study Reiki amongst other healing modalities. It seems I had a natural affinity for feeling energy. Maybe it’s the empath in me…I can sense what’s going on, with or without people’s actual input. I also studied medical intuition but that’s another post!

I studied Reiki 1, then did reiki 2 about 20 years later (which made my teacher chuckle). I never felt like I really needed it – I could sense things, feel things, move energy around, etc. But wanted to see what it was all about. My teacher made everyone do the hand positions – but she laughed when I would go off script – she always trusted I knew exactly what to do. Reiki level 3 was super interesting. First off, I had a new teacher, sadly my other teacher had a massive stroke and couldn’t teach. I learned more about my own ways of doing reiki – turns out I was already doing more advanced reiki than what I had been taught. Let’s just say I had some intuitive guidance for that.

So what the heck is REIKI? The definition is that it’s Universal Life Force Energy being guided/directed through the body of the practitioner to the client and directed in a healing way to aid the client to heal their own body. Yada Yada Yada.

What is it really? I stand beside you and using all my senses I feel your energy. I use my hands, which to me feel like little magnets and they stop on the part of the body that needs healing. It literally feels like a metal detector finding a jackpot! Then there’s this weird pumping of energy through my hands. It’s not my energy, is it some Universal like energy, the same energy that exists in plants, trees, animals, the human body etc. It’s light and happy and its sole purpose is to heal. Your body gets activated and things start flowing. They often flow from my right hand to my left and back. I move my hands around in no particular order (note, that’s my way, not everyone’s). I LISTEN to the body. I hear it with my mind (like telepathy), my own body (kinesthetic empath), and my hands are drawn to what you need. I sometimes SPEAK to the client about what I feel, I ask intuitive questions about what’s happening in their lives/bodies/past trauma. I Sense it. I KNOW it. BUT, I don’t tell them 100% of what needs to happen. That’s not my job. (Well, I strive to have people receive healing of course) My job is to open the client up to what’s really going on in their body. Call it trauma work, body talk, body dialogue, whatever you want. It’s all about what that person needs to heal in that particular moment. Not everything comes up (that would be insanely overwhelming). Every session is Different. Some build on the previous…some don’t. Reiki is kind, gentle and loving energy. There doesn’t have to be speaking involved, when there is it just moves things more quickly from my point of view.

With or without words/dialoguing Reiki is a healing session where we move energy off the body/aura system so that the client is free of that pain and quite simply we activate the clients own healing abilities which are sometimes blocked in the body. We can be moving physical issues, emotional, mental or even connections (with permission). We CLEAR their energy.

So, what do clients feel? They feel the heat from my hands (some say it feels like I put a heating pad on them), some see colours (how cool is that!!), some feel energy moving like bursts of energy or tingling, some feel pain and we work on that spot more, some feel emotions, some laugh, some cry. There is no right answer for what Reiki is.

I can tell you what it can give you though. It can offer a sense of relaxation. It can heal old emotional wounds. It can help you let go of people and pain in your life. It can heal physical complaints (but that’s more complicated than it sounds, and also somewhat simple depending on the issue). It can clear your energy, so you feel more like yourself.

Please understand that this is MY experience of Reiki. All practitioners are different, just like all clients are. If you tried Reiki and it doesn’t make you feel good (or it makes you feel worse) – please find a different therapist and try again. If you love Reiki, spread the word, it’s so profoundly healing to those of us who’ve tried it.

#reiki #reikihealing #energyhealing #headaches #stress #destress #toronto #healing #self care #self love #clear your mind #clear your energy #usui reiki

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verydeerbeard · 2 years

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A Guide to the Omniverse. Part 2

By Aleatony / Alexander Maximus Randomness.

Traveling through the Omniverse isn't a matter of jokes unless your journey takes you to the more funny clusters of the Omniverse. Luckily for us, the Matrix, aka the organizing crystal network of the Omniverse, is completely visible in the space between worlds, easily recognizable for its crystalline composition, everchanging colors, and rhizoid structure.

The intelligent traveler will use these structures like roads and paths to reach their destination, but within an infinite amount of realities is easy to get lost, so the first reality one must visit when reached the space between clusters is the Omnibrary or Omnitheca, the place where ALL the information was, is and will be kept, preserved, and organized. To find it just travel to the place where all the roots converge and emerge from.

Within this special cluster, the adventurous traveler will find a true treasure trove of all kinds of information, including indications to reach whatever it is its destination, and go back to the exact reality from the exact cluster from where the traveler came from.

If your target was to reach the Omnitheca, well you have reached your destination, you are welcome, just be careful about what you inform yourself about. The disponibility of information for those who manage to come to it is absolute, which means that without care and consideration will drive you to absolute madness or end your life.

First of all, try to remember that, because you appear as an author on something, doesn't mean you have written it, there are infinite versions of yourself after all, and even your name could be the pseudonym for another author.

Second, just because you don't or do believe in something, doesn't mean that you are right or wrong, in the Omniverse reality is flexible, what was real in your homeworld could be fictional in another, and vice-versa, this is the only full truth, reality itself is a matter of perspective.

Third, don't annoy the librarians, when I say that they can make your life a living Hell, I'm not joking.

Fourth, don't mess up with, or annoy Matty, the consciousness of both the Matrix and Omnitheca which are one and the same, and she has enough power to do to your insignificant existence anything she wants, also it might be wise to not rile her up, or make her cry, as this will make the librarians very mad.

Fith, respect the information, (there is a punishment for messing up the books, and I don't wanna talk about it, nope,.............moving on), and any creature you may find while searching for information, kindness isn't obligatory but is greatly appreciated.

-Sixth, and final, if searching for information about any future, always take it with a grain shaker of salt, (a grain wouldn't be enough). The future is at the same time written in stone, and flowing like a river. For example, any information about your future may be subjected to changes after your interaction with it or could be for a different you, a different timeline, or universe,......etc. Unless you can prove that the obtained info corresponds exactly to the place where you want to apply it, for safety issues, don't treat it seriously, it's like the betted money on a casino or cryptomarket, you are sure that you are gonna lose and don't know if you are gonna win.

The Omnitheca, at least in its early iterations, it's divided into floors, in order, they are, first, the library, where all the written and digital forms of information are kept except for the biographies, videos, rulebooks, and videogames.

After that, the Omni-rooms, are empty rooms that are 100% adaptable to the guests.

The next floor is the buffet and kitchens.

Later we found the Ludotheca, a room with almost every toy, game, and rulebook, except for those classified as artifacts.

The event Pavillion is right below, a place to hold multiverse/cluster scale events.

And the last ones are the Videotheca, the Biotheca, the Artifact Compendium, and the Biographic Archives. All these floors are connected through an elevator of expansive space, made to adapt to the space and weight needed to move any guests of the Omitheca.

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buckyownsmylife · 3 years

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Oh, well, imagine - Andy Barber smut

The one where Andy gets tired of living a double life

Word count: 2K<

Warnings: smut, sugar relationship, infidelity (reader is the other woman), daddy kink, breeding kink, dubcon because Andy does stuff without getting reader’s consent beforehand, unprotected sex.

A/N: this was written for @donutloverxo‘s #sugary4kchallenge! I took the opportunity to write something in the same universe as my first Andy fic, I write sins not tragedies, but this could be read by itself. Congrats on 4k, sweetheart!

Y/N’s P.O.V.

The sound of the door being slammed startled me, almost making me drop the dishes I’d been washing. My eyebrows furrowed, confused and worried about what was going on. Only Andy had the key to the apartment, so I wasn’t curious as to who it was, just what had him behaving that way. In all the time we’d known each other, I’d never once seen him angry.

Still, when he appeared by the kitchen, it was clear that was the case. His chest heaved with the simple task of breathing, and when his eyes fell on me, they seemed darker. I almost felt scared - I probably would, if I didn’t trust him so much.

“Andy?” I asked, but he immediately shook his head.

“Not what you call me, princess.” Automatically, I stood up straighter, body electrified by the meaning behind his words. I knew what he wanted, even if it was clearly that more than desire. He needed this.

“Daddy.” He nodded once, clearly pleased at my acknowledgment. But there was still so much I needed to understand. “Why are you looking at me like that?” Instead of answering, he just kept staring at me long and hard, making me feel small and naked under his attention.

“Come here.”

My legs obeyed instantly, having been trained long enough to do exactly what he said without having to think about it. “Good girl.” The compliment was like some pavlovian buzzer to my poor cunt. I could feel the fabric of my underwear begin to uncomfortably stick to my lower lips, and I shifted from one leg to the other as I waited for further instructions.

“Daddy needs you tonight,” he finally began explaining, a single finger running under my jaw to make sure I’d keep our eyes connected. “Will you let me do whatever I want to you and this body?”

The perspective excited me, and I didn’t know if I was stupid for it, but I found myself nodding anyway. At the end of the day, I trusted Andy with my life. I knew he wouldn’t push me further than I could take it, and if he ever came close to it, I always had my safeword.

“Yes, Daddy.” He rewarded me with a kiss, but it wasn’t a soft one. His tongue invaded my mouth and before I could even realize what I was doing, I had to find a hold on his shirt, standing on my tippy toes just so I wouldn’t completely tip over.

“Are you excited to help daddy?” He asked, fingers already making quick work of my clothes as I trembled with excitement in his hold. He looked feverish, like he couldn’t hold back anymore, his mouth nipping and sucking and biting every inch of skin he could find.

“Yes, Daddy,” I repeated, forever his subservient servant, knowing that aiding him would bring me to pleasures I’d never known before we’d met. I watched as he licked his lips, taking in my naked body before his, the kitchen a mess of my discarded clothes and abandoned dinner, but instead of taking off his clothes, his hands went directly to his belt.

“Lay back on the floor.” It took me a full second to understand what he was saying, but thankfully he didn’t read it as hesitation. Instead, despite his eager state, he watched as I slowly lowered myself to the cold marble, stopping once I was on my knees to make sure of what he really wanted.

“Lay back,” he repeated, nodding towards me, and despite my confusion, I did as he said, gasping once my naked back met the icy stone. My nipples hardened against the air of the silent apartment and under his gaze, and I gasped when he knelt before me, hands reaching out for my thighs as he pulled me even closer.

“So, so beautiful,” he moaned, and I watched stunned as he lowered himself until he was eye-level with my navel, and I felt more than saw as his tongue stuck out and collected the wetness that was already threatening to drip from me. “And mine, all mine.”

The first time he’d said that, there was a conversation to be held right after we both came back from our highs. I needed to make sure that he remembered what this was, and he laughed when I tried to phrase it as sweetly as possible.

“I know this isn’t conventional,” he’d said, “but as long as it lasts, you’re mine. In and out of this apartment, but especially in this bed.” It didn’t take too long to realize that he was right.

I truly was his. My body responded to him in a way it’d never reacted to anyone else before. And I knew that whenever this little affair of ours came to an end, he would still forever own parts of me I’d never even realized I had before we met.

Andy’s P.O.V.

My mind was becoming hazier by the second. I needed to make sure she understood what was going to happen before I completely lost it. But first, I knew I’d hate myself if I didn’t take advantage of the delicious meal laid bare before me.

“Daddy!” She screamed, fingers curling around my strands as I lapped her up, rubbing my bearded jaw on the apex of her thighs. She was everything. I had never wanted anyone the way that I wanted her. And I knew that I never would again.

It was why I couldn’t lose her.

Connecting our eyes, I pushed two fingers inside of her and immediately curled them as I searched for that sweet spot I’d memorized so many months before, knowing I’d struck gold when she cried out for me again.

“Yeah, baby… I know you like that, sweet girl. So sweet for me, aren’t you?” I knew she wouldn’t be able to answer, and I didn’t mind. I could barely speak myself. The need to have her was just too strong, and so I kept licking her pussy and fucking it with my fingers until I felt her clench around my digits, not even waiting for her to calm down as I immediately raised to my knees and worked on releasing my member from its confines.

“Better get ready, princess… I won’t be able to stop until I’m done with you.” The lust in her hazy eyes was unmistakable, but just as I was about to plunge into her, warm hands found their way inside my shirt, holding my chest to stop me.

“Andy… the condom…” but I wasn’t having it.

“No,” I announced it, the finality in my voice clear as day as I pushed her arms down against the floor and penetrated her slowly, making sure to watch her jaw going slack as it always did at my first thrust.

When I saw that the initial shock had started to subdue and she was about to argue, I took her lips with mine, devouring her mouth the way I’d done with her pussy just seconds before. “I’m fucking you just like this, and you’re gonna take it.”

She wiggled underneath me, but it seemed more like she was going through the motions of showing that she didn’t want that than actually trying to make me stop.

It didn’t stop me. She would never be able to stop me. Not when I was in this mindset, not when I needed her so much. “I’m tired of wanting you,” I admitted. “I’m tired of wanting you, having you and then going back to wanting you again. I will never have my fill of you, I know that now. I need you.”

Her pussy clenched around me sporadically, her moans escaping her lips as she failed to speak when my hips grew quicker, my thrusts more forceful. “I need you more than sexually. I’m desperate for you, baby.”

And finally, she stopped squirming, her eyes suddenly widening in realization as my voice betrayed all of the emotions I was feeling. “I want to come home to you, Y/N. Only you.”

My confession earned her surrender. I felt her muscles relax underneath me, a sign of her acceptance of my new quest for ownership of her body, and so I could finally release her hands to run mine all over her skin.

“Don’t worry, sweet girl,” I whispered once the tempo became softer, but no less passionate. “I haven’t fucked her since we met.” I could see the shock in her expression, and I knew what she would argue.

“That’s not what I’m worried about.” I shook my head at her silliness, stroking her cheek after I kissed her one more time. I could see my future in her eyes, even if she didn’t allow herself to see hers in mine.

“I want to get you pregnant, Y/N.” And there it was. The truth and my heart, stripped of all pretense, exposed for her to see. And if I feared the rejection, the way her eyes softened before she pulled me to another kiss sealed our fate.

“I love you so fucking much.” And so we made passionate, desperate sex on the kitchen floor. I fucked her so hard, it didn’t take much to have her drooling for me. I drowned all of my worries and sorrows in her sweet pussy, making sure to worship every single inch of her body with my lips and tongue.

“I’m gonna keep you forever, princess,” I promised, heart aching just at the thought of ever losing her. “She won’t ever take you from me. Ever.” At the reminder of the reality of our situation, the fact that she was “the other one”, her body writhed underneath me, her struggle to fight back once again rising, but I wasn’t having any of it.

“Ever, baby,” I promised against her lips, silencing her cries with a deep, sloppy kiss that only ended when I needed to gather some air. “I can’t even think of having to live without you.”

The rhythm of our hips finding one another kept up, the sounds growing exponentially wetter with each second, with each drop of her arousal that collected on her lower lips, lubricating my member and aiding my goal to fill her up until it lathered the floor beneath us.

“You won my heart,” I confessed, making sure that she’d see the honesty deep in my eyes. “You left me no choice but to fall for you. Now I won’t live without you.” A desperate cry tore from deep within her, rekindling the passion with which I fucked her. Normally I was so sweet to her, so patient. But I knew she liked this as well. She liked to be fucked like a whore, even if she was as far removed from one as possible.

“Call my name, sweet girl.” It was a plea, a desperate need to blur the lines between what our relationship was and what I wanted it to become until they disappeared altogether. “Say you are mine. Say it.”

She was drooling now, and I knew how hard it was for her to find the words I needed her to say as she succumbed to bliss right there, on the kitchen floor, with me. Still, her scream penetrated my hazy mind, adding to the overwhelming tightness that squeezed me, begging for my cum, “I’m yours! I’m yours, Andy.”

The aftermath found us breathless, with flushed chest and flushed cheeks. I don’t think I’d ever seen anything quite as beautiful as the nervous but hopeful look with which she gazed at me. I knew what she needed to hear, and with a kiss on her forehead, I reassured her, “Let’s go to bed, princess. You won’t be sleeping alone tonight.”

And as we cuddled the night away, the unspoken became clear and clear. Not tonight, nor ever again.

#sugary4kchallenge #my fics #andy barber smut #smut #andy barber #sugar daddy au #andy barber x reader #andy barber reader #andy barber reader insert #andy barber reader inserts #andy barber one shot

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parachutingkitten · 3 years

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Y'all suck at dissecting Kai's character, so I guess I have to do it.

And I'm not even a Kai stan. He's a bottom tier ninja for me, which I guess means you can trust me, cuz I'm not biased, but also why am I the one doing this? I don't know about y'all, but recently on my dash, the method by which Kai fans try to make him sound good is... saying the writers hate him, ignore him, and that he isn't written well? Which... I mean there is a little bit of truth to, but like yikes guys, is this the best you got? Kai is a wonderful character with plenty of attention from the writers, a meaningful piece of the cast when put in secondary rolls, fairly consistent character writing with actual progression and valuable qualities that help the team without having to be the smart one- despite what some posts might tell you.

Let's get one thing cleared up: Ninjago isn't the best written show. By high level Hollywood standards, most the character arcs are kinda weak or too heavy handed, character consistency can be iffy, and most things serve the plot rather than the characters. There is no character you can point to and say "wow, this character is written so well! No complaints!" Nya and Jay were butchered by their weird love plot, Cole's one season doesn't actually give him an arc, Zane's been nothing but the robot numbers guy for like 10 seasons now, and Lloyd seems to be incapable of doing anything but relive the same one piece of dad angst for depth. Sorry, it's true. All the characters suck when you look at it from a large scale writing perspective. So when I say Kai is well written, I mean by ninjago kids show standards- cuz that's the scale we're working on. No, you couldn't drop Kai into a well written drama, but as far as ninjago goes... he's got a lot going for him, and by no means is he the biggest victim of poor writing.

(fair warning, wall of text below)

The title is a bit disingenuous. There are plenty of good Kai character break downs. What I am presenting here is a more positive perspective. On the whole, I will tend to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, and credit for what they do right writing is hard guys. That's what I'm doing here. I don't see much sense in getting mad the writers on behalf of Kai, or any other character. Ninjago is a simplistic ensemble show that works because of the identifiable simplicity of its main characters with some deeper layers hidden underneath if you keep watching. They've given us a damn good show with some damn enjoyable characters, so here are some criticisms I feel are a little flawed:

First, let's get the 'focus' thing out of the way. Apparently there are people saying Kai doesn't have a season yet? Which... what? I mean, I get that the pilots aren't a full season, the first two seasons, though he is the central protagonist, aren't "Kai seasons" as we've come to define ninja focus seasons, season 7, though he gets majority focus, he shares with his sister. But like... did y'all just forget about season 4? You know, the season where he had the title card, was on the box sets, got the love interest, and the majority of the A-plot? not to mention it's the best season don't @ me Like... if season 4 isn't a Kai season, I can make a damn good argument that season 3 isn't a Zane season, and I doubt anyone wants to go down that rabbit hole. I really can't wrap my head around this one. And I get that the fandom hates season 11 for some reason, but like you can't just pretend it doesn't exist. Kai has a consistent arc across 30 episodes in which he takes his powers for granted, loses them, and learns that, not only does he have value within the team without them, but that his element is intrinsically a part of him that he reclaims, bringing them back more powerful than ever, and with new respect for them. That's one of the most solid arcs in the whole series- the location is even thematically connected to his element. That's some good stuff right there! (Quick plug for season 11 if you haven't watched it in a while. Give it a rewatch, you might be pleasantly surprised)

Not to mention the writers give him fun side stuff all the time. Lots of fears of tech and water to overcome, a deep protective streak with Lloyd, becoming a chancellor, having a true potential actually relevant to the plot as a whole, blacksmith responsibilities, befriending dragons, hanging out with his dad. Not to mention actual focus stuff we haven't talked about yet, like his whole "my dad is evil" phase, and his "I might be evil" phase with him and Skylor. And on top of that, even when he doesn't have an explicit side plot, he's always just a fun and dynamic side character to make jokes or give exposition.

Now, into character stuff. Let's start with Kai's hot headed-ness. Some people say he's been loosing this quality, and I will admit, that's true! But those that claim this makes him inconsistent... I strongly disagree. In early seasons, Kai's temper would lead him to snap at his friends or make stupid decisions that set the team back (see episode 2 Zane freak out)- these are bad things. These are character flaws, yes? Now, in newer seasons, people say that he's inconsistent, cuz sometimes he'll be hot headed, and sometimes he won't. I'd say, this is exactly how being hot headed... works? It flares up without warning, and as an individual gets control of it, it'll pop up less and less often because they're channeling it into productive things - like say directing the anger towards an enemy (see season 11 end freak out). Kai has gained control of a character flaw, and though it still pops up on occasion, the fact that it's a once in a while kind of thing speaks to his growth. I have a little brother who has this exact personality, and watching him grow up, I can tell you, this is how it is. He used to snap all the time, and he still does sometimes, but much less frequently, because he's a more mature person with better control of his emotions. This is a good thing. This is overcoming personal flaws. This is progression we're seeing.

And while you're hyper focused on this one aspect of him, things like his cocky confidence haven't changed a bit. I mean, that season 3 bit between him and Pixal, and his season 11 "fire maker" streak have the exact same energy. You can not convince me otherwise.

Another adjacent quality that hasn't been dampened is Kai's impulsiveness. This can be a good quality of his, he'll get into a fight without thinking, getting the jump on the enemy. Good stuff. But, this has become such a well defined trait of Kai's that it has been used in a comedic capacity. This is what happens when a character is extremely consistent to the extent that both the audience and the characters in universe would be able to predict their actions. Kai's impulsivity used to be a more serious quality that put himself and others at risk, and was a big power move whenever he did something rash, but it's become such a staple of the show that it's now being used for comedy. That isn't Kai's impulsivity going away, that's Kai's impulsivity being recontextualized for the sake of the show. The season 9 "Who's stupid enough to jump on that thing" isn't a joke at the expense of Kai just for being dumb, it's a joke at Kai's being so predictably impulsive that everyone already knows he'll be the one to put himself in an insane amount of danger without thinking twice (you know, something stupid that might get him killed). But because in this instance, the danger is warranted, this is bravery. It's a complement to his character- it's what ends up defeating the colossus. Why are some people so bothered by this joke?

Oh right, cuz for some reason people want to peg Kai as the smart one? Look, Kai isn't stupid, none of the ninja are. All of them have smart moments (all of them have dumb ones too) and Kai can certainly handle himself, but "smart" is definitely not one of his defining characteristics- I think some people are confusing smart for his actual strength. Connected to his impulsivity, Kai has very good simplistic instincts. He sees the big picture and looks at the most surface level solution- which when the situation calls for it, that does indeed make him smart. But the same logic that led him to think "This snake has a glowing target on its head, lets hit it" also led him to think "I'm in a video game, therefore I am immortal." Are you really going to look at me and say he figured out Lloyd was the green ninja through logical deduction and a careful consideration of the facts? No. He had a gut feeling, and he trusted it. Instincts- instincts paired with his impulsive following of said instincts is what leads him to solve problems- and sometimes, that can be extremely effective. This goes for other ninja too. Jay isn't the smartest ninja- I would really only classify Zane and Nya as having intelligence define them (hence their ship name). But Jay is extremely creative and crafty. He also knows his was around mechanics, and as such, this will lead him to come up with creative tech based solutions which are smart. But, idk about you, if I had to point to another ninja as being 'dumb' it would 100% be Jay. Kai is a lot of things. He's passionate and determined and confident and persistent. He's a good improvisor, he's powerful and he's charming! These are all wonderful qualities, he doesn't also have to be the smart one. I am the worlds biggest Pixal stan, and she's a smart, sassy, powerful character, but I'm not gonna sit here and tell you she's also hilarious and adaptable and strong willed. She's a straight man to all the ninja's antics, extremely tied to her samurai x suit, and lets people push her around all the time. That doesn't mean she can't be funny, or self interested, but when she does act these ways, it stems from her other more prominent qualities. That make sense?

And while we're clearing up what Kai isn't, please stop characterizing Kai as an overly protective brother - especially romantically. The only two times he's been romantically protective to Nya are in Wu's Teas which I mean, come on and in the pilots when Jay is literally a stranger. For crying out loud, by the end of the pilot, he's smiling when Jay and Nya hug. That's not overly protective, that's just normal, any reasonable person would react this way, protective. And it's such a great stereotype break for a kids show like ninjago, having an older brother who actually trusts his younger sister to be her own independent person who can make her own decisions. I mean, I guess it's fine if you HC differently but like... idk, I don't buy it.

Now, is there still room to criticize the writers? Yes. Hell yes. But not to an extent greater than any other character. Could he have had more of a defined reaction to events of the most recent season that I won't name for the sake of spoilers? Yes. But could Zane have reacted for more than .5 seconds at being an evil war lord for apparently 60 years? Yeah. Has Kai taken a back seat in the past 4 seasons? Yeah. But so has Lloyd- and he's literally the main character of the show. Not to mention two of those seasons have gone to people who had to wait over ten seasons to get one to themselves, and one of them is a 40 minute special. Kai's doing just fine.

Anyway. Kai is great. He's a fun, stereotype breaking, impulsively driven, ball of energy and confidence who gets a good amount of screen time and some fun side plots.

One last thing to clear up: no hate to anyone. This isn't targeted at anyone specific, this post has been a long time coming, I've just seen some weird overblown claims on various platforms over the past few months and I finally sat down to write about it.

I like the Kai content we have. After all, if the writers were really that bad at writing him, then no one would like him.

Wow this was so much longer than I thought it would be. Um... if you have other long winded rants you'd like to see from me... let me know I guess?

#ninjago #kai ninjago #kai smith #parachuterants #analysis #lets add this tag:#/lh

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vizowrites · 3 years

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“We” vs “Me”| or “Why BlitzStrike Works So Well For Me But Stolitz [as of episode 6].....Doesn’t”

Alright my Loves, so I said that I was going to talk in further detail about my feelings regarding Stolas and the multi-layered portrayal of his relationship with Blitz in the new episode, and today’s the day where that happens!! First of all, though, before I really get into my feelings about things, I want to just make it ABUNDANTLY clear that I’m not trying to sway anyone from one side to the other, or trying to shame anyone for shipping two fictional characters. I’m fully in the boat that you are completely entitled to ship whoever you want, but I also think it’s wise to at least be able to recognize the faults and flaws in a pairing--and especially to be able to recognize them in the context of an IRL relationship. In this analysis in particular, I’m specifically focusing on these two relationships within the realm of the Helluva Boss universe [......Hell] and within the specific context of their characters as they’ve been portrayed in the show thus far. And, my biggest disclaimer of all: I’m doing this for no other reason than I felt like putting my jumbled thoughts together into a cohesive post so that they don’t have to stay bouncing and buzzing around in my head. Please keep that in mind that this is just pure personal opinion and interpretation before anyone comes at me with torches and pitchforks. <3 <3

SO WITH THAT LONG ASS DISCLAIMER OUT OF THE WAY

Let’s finally get to the good stuff. And the not so good stuff. :D

So I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone who follows me here that I’m a huge BlitzStrike fan. What I think fewer people know is that when I first entered the fandom a few months ago, I actually was on board the Stolitz train like so many others that I’ve met here in the fandom. Naturally Stolitz was the first major pairing I was introduced to, and I did find both the characters of Blitz and Stolas incredibly interesting and compelling in their own rights AND saw the potential in how they could really come to grow into one hell of a relationshp over time. I was honestly really excited to see it happen, too.

And then I watched Episode 5 [still my favorite episode, btw] for the first time and had this sudden question hit me like a truck that even now is still relentlessly burning in the back of my mind because I still haven’t found a legitimate answer for it: Why in the FUCK wasn’t Blitz falling head-over-heels in attraction to Striker throughout this fucking episode??

And I don’t mean that in a “They’re so hot and I ship them now why didn’t they get together?? DX DX” kind of way--I mean that in the genuinely perplexed “I don’t understand based on what has been presented to me thus far about Blitz as a character and the storyline overall why he’s reacting so nonchalantly to this whole thing”. To Note: This is me wondering this from the context of what’s in the show itself, not from any extra fan materials like the Instas or Twitter or just straight up knowing that the most likely answer is that there are people on the creative team that ship Stolitz really hard and realistically wouldn’t have probably written Blitz as being attracted to Striker because that would just be--to quote Jack Sparrow--blowing holes in their own ship. No, this is me disregarding ALL of that and trying to rationalize this with myself from the perspective of a fan whose entire knowledge of the show and its characters comes exclusively from what’s in the episodes themselves. .....And that’s where I just can’t find my answer, except for the Stolitz positive “He’s not attracted to Striker because he’s in love with Stolas” answer. Which really doesn’t even feel like a satisfying answer, because the entire vibe I’ve gotten from Stolitz in the show has just felt.....strangely.....off. Like, the framework is there and the elements are there, but I’d felt as though they had so far to go still that it would be entire SEASONS before they got there.

And THEN the new episode [Episode 6] came out and I’d heard a handful of fans going crazy because the show was finally addressing Stolitz in full, and I thought to myself, “Well, maybe if the show really is going to go with saying that the reason Blitz wasn’t interested in Striker is because he’s in love with Stolas.....sure. I’m curious to see how they finally establish it in an episode, especially since there’s only two more episodes left in the entire first season.” And then I watched the episode. And then it hit me why Stolitz just does not do a damn thing for me but BlitzStrike does despite the fact that we’ve had 4/6 episodes [5/7 if you count the Pilot] of Stolitz but only 1/6 [1/7] of potential--not even canonical--BlitzStrike:

When Striker talks about Blitz, or interacts with Blitz, he always talks about them as a “we”. As a team. A partnership. OR he just straight up puts the entire focus on Blitz and his accomplishments and keeps himself out of it entirely.

When Stolas talks about Blitz, he always talks about them within the context of “me”--of himself--of what Blitz does or should do for him. Even here in episode 6, in the most “selfless” instance we’ve seen yet, where he does ask about Blitz’s safety first BEFORE going right back into how Blitz’s actions affect him and what Blitz should be doing in response for him. Stolas’s focus is always automatically set to himself--and even when it comes to the people he supposedly loves the most.

To explain what I mean here, let me give some examples directly from the show itself, starting with the Stolas side of things:

Episode 1

Blitz, in the middle of trying to hide so much that he actually clamps both of his hands over his mouth just to muffle the sound of his own breathing, knowing damn well that this psychotic bitch who already shot him once won’t hesitate to do it again if she finds him.....gets a call from Stolas. Stolas, who we clearly see from his leisurely hang out time in his bubble bath, is literally watching this happen and is fully aware that calling Blitz right then was potentially putting him in danger. But what does he say when he gets Blitz on the phone? He offers--not help--but Blitz the use of his book in exchange for monthly sex. Stolas literally uses Blitz’s peril as leverage here--consciously or not, though given the fact that he knows the situation at hand, I’d find it very hard to argue that he didn’t do this on purpose--just to get him to agree to be his bootycall until further notice.

Stolas not only doesn’t lift a finger to help Blitz once in all of this--even at the moment where he and Millie are about to be shot in the face--but instead continues to stay on the phone talking about all of the things he wants for their upcoming future rendezvous. He already got exactly what he wanted out of this and he still just continues to go for more for himself.

Episode 2

.....There are honestly so many fucked up things that happen here as far as Stolas and his relationship with Blitz goes but honestly the thing I want to draw the MOST attention to is actually Stolas’s storyline with his daughter, Octavia. I know it’s a little left field, but bear with me--this is actually something I want to use as comparison for Stolas’s relationship to Blitz as we go along:

When Stolas first decides that he’s going to take his daughter to Loo Loo Land, he does so while completey setting aside the fact that she doesn’t want to go. He just offers her assurances that it’s going to be so much fun because he remembers that she loved it so much when she was a little girl--effectively putting his memory above her wishes even as she’s sitting right there and telling him that she doesn’t enjoy the idea of going now.

Stolas doesn’t actually notice just how uncomfortable he’s making Octavia throuhought their entire trip by spending his time sexually harassing paying more attention to Blitz than he is trying to cheer her up. This tells me that Stolas--though I do believe he genuinely wanted to do something to make her happy--still wasn’t able to completely overcome his own self-centered tendencies at first even when it’s for her. And this is the person that Stolas loves more than anyone or anything else in the entire world. It still wasn’t enough.

It’s only when Octavia runs off and completely breaks down that Stolas finally gets the much needed slap-to-the-face of reality to understand just what he’s putting his daughter through--and, for the first time in the entire show, he actually puts someone else’s needs and well being above himself. It’s the one solid honest display of love that we see from Stolas in the entire show--and it’s how we as the audience come to learn that that’s how Stolas shows that he loves someone: When he puts their needs above his own with no strings attached or expectations of something in return. A true selfless act just because he loves them. **Keep in mind the parallel of Stolas carrying Octavia out of Loo Loo Land at the end, and how it compares to Stolas carrying Blitz out of D.H.O.R.K.S headquarters.

Episode 5

The. Fucking. Cigarette. I had no idea that something so small and quick would be able to infuriate me as much as it did, but the fact that Blitz used the post sex cigarette to free Stolas from his wrist bondage but then Stolas turned around and put the cigarette out on Blitz’s horn which is literally a part of Blitz’s body just.....honestly it sums up exactly what I’m trying to get across in this entire huge ass post: Stolas only ever thinks of himself first and anything pertaining to anyone else just doesn’t cross his mind at all unless you blatantly put it there in front of his face. And the fact that he’s still at this point with Blitz all the way here in Episode 5 is not.....promising for their relationship.

The fact that Stolas literally cannot stop himself from calling Blitz “Blitzy” or talking to him in such a condescending way no matter how frustrated Blitz gets and how many times he asks him to stop. I just--how is that supposed to be interpreted as someone talking to a person that they love? There’s no respect or dignity given to Blitz at all on Stolas’s part, and the fact that it seems to be presented as a “Oh teehee it’s just their cute couple thing” is just.....I really, really don’t like that. It also doesn’t match with the Stolas in the very next episode which I quite frankly think is because the creators have been listening to the feedback from fans and were like “We need to SHOW THEM that Stolas actually does speak to Blitz respectfully!!” but that’s just my personal opinion there and, also, it still didn’t happen.

Episode 6

Keeping in mind that THIS is finally the episode where we see Stolas actually save Blitz from danger and demonstrate even the slightest inclination towards his well-being.....I think that honestly makes the next few things here even more fucked up

First and foremost: “WE”. The second after Stolas asks if Blitz is alright and gets the assurance that he is, he roughly grabs his cheek and points out that “If you get in trouble, I get in trouble! WE don’t want that”. The fact that this is the first time that Stolas ever talks about Blitz in the context of “we”--when really what he’s really saying is that him [Stolas] getting in trouble is going to be a bad thing for all of them--is just.....so, so disappointing. At least with this I could hope that perhaps the idea here is that Stolas is genuinely afraid that if he gets in trouble, he won’t be able to protect Blitz from the undoubtedly much worse trouble that he would be in as an imp, but still. The fact that Stolas immediately reverts back to his self-centered perspective so quickly after supposedly being so worried about Blitz’s wellbeing, really makes it seem as though it’s just his own ass that he’s trying to protect. And that.....isn’t exactly what I’d been expecting from “the episode that confirms Stolitz is canon” feedback I’d been hearing.

"Am I going to get ANY thank you for the rescue Bltizy?” This for me was kind of what actually lead to me having this whole epiphany over Stolas’s selfish perspective in the first place. I realized that even here--even when he’s just been the most “romantic” towards Blitz that he’s ever been in any previous episodes up until now [and yes this shift in his character was incredibly jarring for me because of that]--Stolas still goes right back to thinking about what he’s going to get out of this now that he knows Blitz is safe. Let’s take this back to that thing I was saying about Episode 2 and comparing how Stolas rescued Octavia and how he rescues Blitz. Obviously they’re going to be different because it’s Stolas’s daughter vs his hook up BUT just think about where the focus is for Stolas in both of these scenes. With Octavia, Stolas is entirely focused on making things up to her--taking her to do something she wants to do--even if it’s something that he himself doesn’t fully understand or isn’t fully into. That doesn’t matter though, because the entire point is that he’s doing something just for her. It doesn’t have to be about him. But now go back to the scene where Stolas is carrying Blitz out of the room. What does he do? Ask what Blitz is going to do for him. That just takes the idea that this scene was a confirmation of their love and throws it right out the window. Stolas--as we’ve been shown before--would never ask for something in return from someone that he actually loves.

Now let’s take a look at the one and only episode we have of Striker and Blitz interacting together, with an honorary shout out at hallucination!Striker’s appearance in Episode 6:

Episode 5:

Striker knows Blitz’s name.....and he uses it. He’s literally the ONLY other character that we’ve seen so far refer to Blitz as “Blitz” instead of “Blitzo” or “Blitzy” by someone who wasn’t a member of I.M.P.. Aka someone who wasn’t a member of Blitz’s family. He shows Blitz respect at that basest level, and only builds on that from there going forward.

Striker first recognizes Blitz for being “the bold imp that started his own killin’ biz”. Not his hotness, not his skills in the Harvest Moon games because at that point he hasn’t seen them yet.....but for his accomplishment in starting up his own successful business down in Hell. He treats it as an accomplishment. With the kind of respect that comes with acknowledging another person for their accomplishments. Right there, within two seconds of meeting him, Striker demonstrates more respect for Blitz than Stolas has yet to do in the entire show.

The Harvest Moon Festival Games. Now this is something I find fascinating to think about from Striker’s perspective in particular. We as the audience are shown pretty early on that Striker has a strong desire to be the one who comes out on top. He likes the idea of being superior and he openly relishes in the praise and attention he gets for being better than everybody else. ....Except Blitz. When they tie in the games, Striker doesn’t seem bothered with sharing the spotlight with him at all. If anything, he--again--respects just how skilled Blitz is in rightfully earning his place beside him on the stage. That, to me, is HUGE. I’m not going to go so far as to say that Striker necessarily sees them as equals because I think that might be going a bit too far for his ego but he does still fully acknowledge that Blitz is in the same general class as him: that is to say, better than most. Worthy of the same kind of acknowledgement and praise that Striker gets. I literally can’t get over just how big of a thing that is for what we’ve been shown of Striker’s character, and I think it’s unfortunately something that’s incredibly easy to miss or gloss over. :(

And now--for what I personally think is the most significant thing of all--we have: “We”. How many times does Striker suggest during that final scene between them that he really wants Blitz to join forces with him as equals? He never demands that Blitz join up with him, he doesn’t threaten him into joining up with him--Striker barely even hurts Blitz at all during their fight scene compared to how he tried to straight up murder Moxxie--and, most of all, Striker continues to acknowledge that Blitz deserves better than his current arrangement with Stolas. And he’s right. But instead of putting it as “I’M right and this is why you should do this”, he always puts his focus on Blitz himself, or the two of them together as a partnership: “You are so above sucking on a a digusting rich pompous Goetia” | “We could be the most dangerous beings in Hell, Blitz” | “You could partner up with me and klll the unkillable--starting with the one that treats you like a plaything”. It’s just--I honestly can’t believe it’s taken me this long to put together why Striker appeals so much more to me as a romantic interest for Blitz, but really breaking it down episode by episode and comparing the differences in wording between Striker and Stolas’s dialogue when it comes to Blitz is just.....holy shit.

Honorary ShoutOut of Episode 6:

The fact that the only thing hallucination Striker has to say to him is “But you don’t want to do things alone Blitzo!” is really, really interesting to me in the fact that he’s.....not......wrong?? Like, To be fair, Striker, RoboFizz, and Verosika all spill their harsh truths, but the thing is.....Striker’s is markedly different in that his wording really isn’t harsh or aggressive at all the way the other two are. He’s just kinda stating a fact in an overexaggerated way because tripping balls hallucination sequence. It’s very interesting to me that that’s the worst that Blitz can imagine him to say--as well as the fact that halluci!Striker calls him “Blitzo”, which is really weird considering that Striker’s never called him “Blitzo” once in the entire show. Makes me kinda wonder where that came from tbh.

Alright so, in conclusion of this very long and rambly styie post: I want to take things back to where I started by reiterating that this is not me trying to convince anyone that BlitzStrike is “right” and Stolitz is “wrong”, or that you should stop shipping what you’re shipping in the fandom. This was just me honestly getting way more excited than I should’ve been over having my “Eureka!” moment for realizing why this new episode didn’t put me back on the Stolitz train like it did for so many other people--and why, in fact, it actually made me think even more favorably of the idea of Blitz and Striker being together.

Thanks for sticking around with me for this very long read, I hope you found it interesting, and I really really hope that it didn’t piss anyone off or rub too many people the wrong way. Like I said at the beginning, ship who you want to ship!! That’s part of the fun of being in a fandom. I’m just hoping that this might help make it easier to understand at least one perspective on why Stolitz is seen as being so problematic as a ship [as of where they are right now].

Here’s to seeing where things go from here!!

#vizowritesthoughts #BlitzStrike #Stolitz #Helluva Boss #hahahahaha I've been dreading posting this because I know it's going to lead to shit even though it's all just personal opinion :'D #but since I went to the trouble of writing this entire thing up I figure what the hell #might as well post it now #anti Stolitz

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