#genuinely should not have an opinion on things that directly relates to information from those titles

[beautyofthend]

Kate Fleming - A Character Study

There were many things that annoyed me about the series finale of Series 6, I could talk about it for days on end. But the one thing that perhaps annoyed me the most was the way in which Kate went through massive character development throughout Episodes 1-6 and then that got all but dropped by Episode 7. Dropped in the sense that every piece of character development within Kate through those first episodes had been obvious, explicit; we can see very clearly that Kate had changed in the time she had left AC-12 and joined MIT, but as we got to Episode 7 this character development dropped to mere subtext and having to read between the lines just to understand Kate’s motives. 

I’m going to be exploring that and finding the best possible explanation for Kate’s character because I feel as though it would be very easy to misjudge her without explanation. 

To start I just want to say that this is all my opinion, I’ll try to back up my points as best I can but it is just my interpretation of how I’ve seen Kate as a character. Enjoy. 

Character development is crucial in shows that have multiple series, more so when it’s main characters are prevalent throughout. We, as the audience, need to see these characters go through change, they can’t stay as the same person the whole time. They can have certain characteristics and arcs that remain as we watch their journey but when characters go through situations, like real life, they don’t come out the other side as who they were before. We as humans change everyday, I am not the same person I was last week. Of course, not in a drastic way but events change us, we develop. So when we watch programmes we expect to see similar changes in characters. 

And we do. Throughout Line of Duty we see our main characters, Kate, Steve and Ted, put through many events, some major, some not so. They are often put in danger or will be witness to catastrophic moments: Kate and Steve were present when Tony ended his life, Kate was present when Dot got shot, she was also present when Danny got shot. I could go on but you get the point. We’ve seen our characters go through a lot so we should expect to see their development. I shouldn’t expect to see that Kate remains fairly the same between Series 1-5. 

But let’s dig into that more. Kate is a strong, steely, kick-ass character. She doesn’t put up with things and isn’t afraid to tell someone when they’re in the wrong - she has quite happily pulled Ted up on his wrongdoings over the years. We see Kate in numerous undercover operations, we know that she is an expert at hiding her true feelings as a result of that. She can manipulate people into giving her information and she’s very good at playing on their emotions - but this only occurs under the guise of being a UCO. 

Kate follows a set guide when she becomes a UCO and we see this throughout. I find that she is pushy, never letting her questions up when she hasn’t been given the answer she wanted. She earns their trust by offering her support and being emotionally available for them (some more than others). One particular thing that she always does without fail is slate AC-12 as a means of gaining trust. Everyone she goes undercover for are under the watchful eye of AC-12 so she must show that she has nothing to do with them, that her aliases: Flynn, Foster, Francis, do not side/agree with the actions of AC-12 - this is excluding the first series where we see her using her real name Kate Fleming but she still sticks to the idea of bad-mouthing AC-12 to earn trust. Some examples over the show being: 

“AC-12, they’re robots them lot. They don’t get the difference between a corrupt officer and a decent one who made a mistake.” - To Tony Gates in S1E3

“AC-12, they twist everything and make everyone look guilty.” - To Lindsay Denton in S2E2

“You know what they’re (AC-12) like, fishing for inconsistencies. Anything they can pounce on.” - To Jackie Brickford in S3E3

“AC-12 leaving with their tail between their legs.” - To Roz Huntley in S4E2 - this is more telling as this scene actually takes place in front of Steve and in E3 she does it again, going as far to call Steve a “wanker” in front of everyone. 

The only time we don’t see her using this tactic is in S5, because she has no reason to - she’s not undercover at any point so she doesn’t need to gain anyone’s trust - and in S6 where in which she actually uses her knowledge of AC-12 to reassure Jo. 

“I know the kinds of cases that AC-12 are into, boss.” - In S6E2. She’s not trying to distance herself from AC-12 she’s trying to show Jo that she doesn’t have to worry about anything since “It’s just the way AC-12 operate.” - You could argue that she has no need to bad mouth AC-12 since Jo is fully aware of Kate’s connections to anti-corruption though. (She does also mention that she got “fed up of nicking coppers,” but this is in relation to her own personal feelings rather than AC-12 itself). 

But that doesn’t mean to say she doesn’t slate AC-12 at any point during S6, it’s just that she does this directly to Steve, “You spend too much time on anti-corruption, it starts to change the way you see things.” This shows that despite, in a way, defending AC-12 to Jo she doesn’t particularly side with them and feels very strongly about her reasons for leaving them in the first place.

All this is proof that Kate will go to a number of lengths to keep her cover, appearing to hate AC-12 and people that she trusts just to get close to the people she’s investigating. And she does this fairly successfully, she manages to pull the wool over their eyes - to an extent - and proves that she is a good officer, she is good at cutting off her emotions for the sake of the job. As Dot says to her in S3E2 “You’re a brilliant liar that’s all. Kind of unsettled me,” and Lindsay says something very similar to her in S2.

Kate is a master manipulator when it comes to her undercover operations, okay she isn’t always successful and has had her cover blown a number of times but they’ve always ended up being worthwhile and they manage to bring down the person that they were investigating. It shows that she is very good at her job. And her ability to control her emotions so well, really go against this stereotypical idea that women aren’t in control of their emotions, which isn’t a bad thing. 

We instead see this trope throughout Steve’s character - and Ted to an extent. Where Kate can take control of a situation and push her emotions to the side, Steve isn’t as successful in that department. He is an extremely emotional person and often lets those emotions get in the way of his job. For example, his anger and frustrations towards Tony Gates in Series 1 meant that his vision was clouded and he couldn’t see the wood for the trees, similar to his dealings with Dot -  both occasions needed Kate with her lack of emotions and clear vision to help him. 

Whilst I think it’s good that Jed is challenging these stereotypes and telling us that men can be just as emotional as women, and women can be closed off and cold - even the fact that Kate is a mother and she remains so steely is very telling - I don’t think it always works. I love that Kate is the resident heroine in Line of Duty, she’s always there to save the day and that’s great. But that doesn’t mean she can’t show emotion and that doesn’t mean she has to be so closed off all the time. We see in glimpses that this emotional side to Kate does exist however, after she hears Ted slate Dryden for having an affair with Lindsay (it’s an unknowing attack on her own situation), when she gets locked out of her house and most notably during S6E6 - there is a lot of emotions at play so there is a lot to talk about for that particular episode. 

With that being said, Series 6 does delve into this emotional side to Kate - with Jo being integral in bringing about that development. Unlike the previous series, this one perhaps focuses on Kate the most, showing her in a different setting through MIT and showing her making genuine connections with people outside of AC-12. 

When we have seen Kate outside of the realms of AC-12 it’s only been through her undercover operations, where she is having to pretend to be another person to get information out of others. But finally, in Series 6 we see her perhaps being her most true self. This is shown through the change in her wardrobe, she’s wearing clothes that she hasn’t necessarily worn before. I could go deeper but people have already done that and could explain that much better than I can. But to put it into simple terms, her wardrobe for Series 6 is vastly different from her wardrobe throughout Series 1-5, right down to the shoes. 

(Won’t go off on a tangent too much but one thing I did notice was the fact that throughout Series 1-5 Kate, most of the time, wears heeled boots - on occasion she can be seen sporting trainers or flat pumps but it’s rare - but in Series 6 she starts wearing flat, doc-style boots and can be seen wearing them, along with other flat shoes through the series. Up until that meeting between her and Jo and she’s wearing her heeled boots again - no doubt symbolising how the events of this meeting cause Kate to almost cut ties with Jo as she returns back to AC-12. She continues to wear these heeled boots through the next couple of scenes but returns to the flat ones she’s been wearing this whole time when she goes to save Jo - symbolising that yes she’s letting Jo go but she’s still on her side despite everything.)

Series 6 Kate stands out from what we’ve seen of her from the other series - she seems genuinely happy. She’s able to be herself, not having to pretend. Not having to manipulate others for information or form false friendships. Instead, she forms a close, emotional bond with Jo Davidson and there are many indicators that this is real and genuine and not Kate “pretending” as Jo so aptly put it. 

From the first episode it is very clear that Jo and Kate are close, the first time we see Kate in this episode the two of them are flirting with each other - in front of their team as well. 

“Don’t think I didn’t notice DI Fleming skulking in last minute like the dirty stop-out.” 

“Don’t go there, boss, glass houses.” 

It’s showing that Kate has settled into this new team and new dynamic and is very comfortable. Further pushing this sense of casualness that has been set up between Kate and Jo is in a later scene when Kate comes into Jo’s office and Kate is leaning on the back of the chair next to Jo’s desk.  

When we usually see Kate in a scene with a senior officer she can be seen doing the typical ‘stand to attention’ and the fact that she isn’t here is very telling. She also goes on to say in this scene “I haven’t shared this with anyone else, boss.” Telling us that there is a level of trust that has already been set up between these two - Kate doesn’t need to earn Jo’s trust, she already has it. 

This is very different to how we’ve previously seen Kate, she usually has to earn people’s trust: 

“I just want to help sir,” “Just give me the chance to prove myself to you,” “I’m here if you need to talk,” “If you need my help, just ask,” “I could make it disappear.” - Various phrases she said to Tony Gates throughout S1.

“Anything I can do boss?” Along with telling Lindsay that she’ll say that she was with her the night Lindsay’s neighbour alleged Lindsay attacked her during S2 and turning up to Lindsay’s apartment with a bottle of wine - trying to form a friendship. 

“Thanks for letting me in on this, ma’am. Look, I know we’ve had our differences but, for what it’s worth, I don’t think they’d have replaced you as SIO if you were a bloke,” to Roz Huntley in S4 - she’s also very good at working out how to get to people. She knows that the lack of female diversity and patriarchy is a weakness for Roz so Kate plays up to that (although how much of that is Kate pretending is another story but will get into that later.)

The only time she doesn’t use this ‘buddying up’ tactic is in S3 where she takes on a whole different approach with the ‘MOB.’ Where she had been previously seen, with Tony and Lindsay, to play nice to the people she’s investigating, to earn their trust, in S3 she almost aggravates them. She’s straight in there with questioning them and probing them so that they’ll crack - but I think she also knows that they’re weak, they don’t have that close a bond so if she pokes them enough someone will break away. 

But we don’t see this set up between Kate and Jo, we are thrown into an already established and trusted connection which is done on purpose to show that Kate and Jo have been close for a while prior to the events of S6. Further emphasising this, is Farida’s accusation that Kate and Jo are having an affair - it’s not said without reason. We see repeatedly throughout the time that Farida is in MIT, she is keeping a watchful eye on the interactions between Kate and Jo and it’s enough for her to suspect a relationship/affair. 

What is most interesting however, is the fact that this is the first genuine female connection that Kate has had on-screen. Of course, we became aware of her friendship with Jayne Akers but Kate was also sleeping with Richard, Jayne’s husband, so it couldn’t have been that close of a friendship. We also see a glimpse of a friendship between Maneet and Kate but it’s never delved into enough to make it relevant. 

This is the first time we’ve seen Kate work alongside a fellow female officer and have their connection be something that is real rather than faked - I think this also plays into a lot of Kate’s confusion surrounding her feelings towards Jo. Is her connection with Jo related to the fact that they’re both women who have had to work their socks off to get to the top or is it the fact that there is something deeper bubbling under the surface between them? 

Whatever it may be, there is a strong level of trust between Kate and Jo that sets them apart from all of Kate’s previous UCO interactions. Where she would normally have to dig for information from people, asking leading questions etc, Jo gives Kate information freely (obviously this is done on purpose on Jo’s part since we later find out that Jo wanted Kate on the team to solve the case and henceforth free Jo from the clutches of the OCG). All Kate has to do is ask if Jo is okay and boom, Jo opens up - not totally, but enough to emphasise the trust. 

This is a completely new dynamic for Kate, yes she’s close to Ted and Steve but even then there’s a professional distance set between all three of them. They know hints about each others lives but they don’t know everything; it wasn’t until Mark phoned Steve in S2 did he find out about Kate’s situation. And it isn’t until the last episode of S6 that Kate finally learns about Steve’s painkiller misuse. They are friends and they are close but there’s a small wall between them. But Jo is the one to break that wall and invites herself into Kate’s personal life via the small dates we see them on and Kate wanting to see Jo at the weekend outside of work. 

It’s not just a new dynamic for Kate but also a new dynamic for the audience. The only consistent friend Kate has had across the show is Steve, we see them leaning on each other in a sense and going out to the pub or for takeaways. We see that they’re close (even if they don’t necessarily reveal everything about themselves) and now all of a sudden, we are seeing Kate meeting up with someone else. Talking to someone else, having a friendship with someone else. And it’s nice. Kate deserves to have someone else outside of Steve and outside of AC-12, it hints that she’s able to have a life outside of her work. 

Note: Steve’s “Do you see a life for yourself outside the job?” In S2. Jo is proof to Kate that she can exist outside of her work. 

But now that this trust has been set up between Kate and Jo, we then delve into the moral dilemma that Kate is thrown into once Steve asks her to become a CHIS on behalf of AC-12. 

“Great. So either I’m accused of being a traitor or I become one to avoid being accused?” 

She doesn’t want to be stuck in the middle because she has loyalties to both parties. The trust formed between herself and Jo showing that she wants to stick by her but there’s still trust between her and Steve despite there being distance - this is told through her clothing later on (as pointed out by wecantseeyou here) and also by the fact she doesn’t strictly tell Steve she won’t do it, rather that she will think about it.  

Returning to Kate’s relationship with Jo and what solidifies the bond that has been set up between them is that scene that takes place at the end of the first episode. We see Kate watching as Buckells is laying into Jo about her decision to not charge Terry Boyle. Kate appears to be the only one watching, or at least the only one that cares enough - shown by the fact she follows Jo out when she leaves the room. If this was undercover Kate this would be something we expect to see, she would use this as an opportunity to swoop in and provide emotional support. But Kate isn’t undercover, she’s going after Jo because she genuinely wants to see if Jo is okay. 

She doesn’t ask Jo about what Buckells had been having a go at her about, she only asks “Boss, you okay?” - that’s the first one and Jo delves into the reason she had become so upset/why Buckells was having a go. This wasn’t something Kate asked about but she lets Jo talk and get it off her chest. As Jo goes to leave Kate then asks again, “Boss, is everything okay?” She wants to know how Jo is feeling within herself, why else would she ask twice? Kate is interested in the welfare of Jo, not in finding out the gossip of what was said in that room. 

What happens next is monumental and this is where Kate’s confusion really begins. Everything that happened between Kate and Jo before (dirty stop-out scene, talking at the same time etc) could all be passed off as them having a close friendship, nothing more. But there is a shift in this scene that pushes their relationship in a different direction - the music playing in the background only emphasising this.

Kate’s reaction to this moment is very telling, the way she looks down at their joined hands, she knows how it would look if someone seen them now; it’s not exactly how colleagues act around each other is it? We’ve not seen her form a romantic connection with a colleague (you could maybe argue Dot but it wasn’t set up in the way Kate and Jo have been set up) let alone a woman so this is all new territory for her but it is definitely romantic and this is the shift towards that. Kate’s panicked look towards Jo as Jo is leaving, she knows that something deeper is going on between them from this point on.  

Before I continue with Kate and Jo’s relationship I have to talk about that scene between Jo and Buckells and why it’s so important that Kate is the one watching that interaction and why she is the one to comfort Jo. I have said in a previous post about how there are many parallels/similarities between S4 and S6. I also said that it wasn’t necessarily related to Kate’s character but it absolutely is the more that I think about it. 

Series 4 heavily plays on inequality within the police force, how women are at a disadvantage to men when it comes to getting promotions and what not. This is portrayed through Roz Huntley, her frustrations being that she is now having to work extra hard to prove herself after returning to work from being a mum - this coincides with Hilton blackmailing her and putting the pressure on her to close the case. 

Now although Kate goes undercover to investigate Roz, they do bond over one thing: they are both women who are striving to be the best. Kate throughout S4 is persistently undermined by Ted, yes she gets a promotion to DS - something that Steve gets rather jealous over - but even after passing her inspectors exam and being more than capable of being a DI, Ted still turns her down, telling her that it was more than likely going to go to Steve since he has more experience. 

Kate is visibly hurt by this but does well to hide it. This moment in particular we can see that Kate is feeling isolated, she’s put on her own in the lift, pushed to the back of the frame, she holds herself - a visual representation of how women often feel in a male dominated workplace. This is no dig at Steve (it is, sorry) but Kate is a much more capable detective than Steve. Kate even swiftly points out how Steve’s attempt at an undercover operation had landed them in court. He’s not a bad detective, he is an extremely good one and does the job well but in comparison to Kate, he doesn’t match up. But simply because Steve is a man he gets a better chance of promotion before Kate - or at least that is how it appears. 

This brings me back to my earlier point of when Kate uses something Roz feels strongly towards and sides with her to gain her trust. But I don’t think this is Kate necessarily pretending, it’s convenient to have the topic come up but I do think it’s also something Kate feels strongly about. She’s just experienced first hand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of inequality and in a way, despite being there to investigate Roz, she does share her feelings on this issue. 

There is a defensiveness to Kate’s tone in this scene between her and Steve:

“It’s a crucial item and any irregularity…”

“Is something to throw in Huntley’s face?” 

“This isn’t personal. She’s at the centre of everything, I just want to get the truth.” 

Obviously Kate’s opinion on Roz does turn back to believing/knowing Roz is guilty but for a brief moment it appears she takes the view that AC-12 might just be investigating Roz simply because she is woman who made a couple of mistakes. We also go on to see Roz and Kate having a confrontation and sexism comes into play, with Roz lowkey telling Kate that she is worth more: 

“How old are you Kate?” 

“31.”

“I’ll tell you about my road to 31. I’d been a DI two years already. Then, I made life choices in the best interest of others. Not in my best interests, at all, as it turned out. And from what I know, you won’t make that mistake. You’d give up anything to get to the top. But despite all your ambition, you find yourself on the wrong side of the line.”

“What do you know?” 

“That you’ve got a son you barely see. Hardly holier than thou.” 

(Remember Roz’s “You’d give up anything to get to the top,” it’ll be important later).  

These words get to Kate because she knows they’re true. She is an ambitious woman who keeps getting knocked down simply because she is a woman. And the fact that she has given up her life with her son in order to pave the way for her career and yet it still hasn’t paid off clearly annoys her. She might not like Roz but they do agree on this. 

Something else that Roz brings up in her series is something that was mentioned briefly by Steve, Kate and is later mentioned by Jo - bringing in the link there. The something being The Masons. We first hear it in S3 in reference to Ted Hastings and Patrick Fairbank. And since Fairbank ends up being corrupt I think it’s fair to say that The Masons now = a form of corruption. In the same series Kate goes to meet a female AC-3 officer in order to request permission for an undercover operation, said officer goes on to say “Because I’m a woman, I can’t be a Mason,” this further solidifies that The Masons are synonymous with corruption. I mean, they are an organisation that exclude women from high ranking positions and get away with it. The fact that Kate seeks authority from a different, female officer because she knows that The Masons are technically a corrupt organisation is very telling of how she feels towards them. 

Roz accuses Ted of being a Mason and henceforth explaining that that is why he is always more interested in investigating female officers and why there is a lack of diversity within AC-12. This is a play on Kate since she had just been turned down the DI role in favour of Steve - and I think it’s fair to assume that Ted then only gave that position to Kate later because of what Roz revealed in that interview, and if he didn’t put a female officer in a high ranking role after what he had just been accused of, it would’ve looked bad on him. Which is really rather annoying to be honest, Kate should’ve got that role because she makes a good DI not because Ted got called out on his bullshit, but we move. 

In S6E3 Jo says to Kate about Buckells employing Ryan: 

“Family friend or something, probably got a nudge down at the Masonic Lodge.”

Now that one line was enough for Kate to know, at the time, that Jo wasn’t ‘bent,’ since she had just spoken out against a form of corruption. Jo had shown a dislike towards the idea that Ryan got a job on merit for simply being a man and that gives Kate ammunition to go after Buckells and find the evidence that would prove Buckells is corrupt. The fact he does end up being ‘The Fourth Man’ further pushes the idea that The Masons = Corruption. 

So Kate witnessing Buckells laying into Jo is another reason for Kate and Jo to share a bond; they’re both women in a very male dominated workplace who are more likely to be subjected to bullying by fellow male colleagues. If we do get another series I wouldn’t be surprised if it digs into The Masons and that form of corruption. 

In summary, Kate feels very strongly about inequality within the workplace since she is always undermined by her male colleagues and it wouldn’t surprise me that if half the reason why Kate feels so comfortable within MIT is because she’s working alongside a woman and she isn’t undermined nearly half as much. 

See: Jo’s constant, “That’s a good point, Kate,” “You’re right, Kate,” as opposed to Ted’s constant, “Steve’s right, Kate.” 

Back to Kate and Jo’s relationship. The shift in their relationship post that corridor scene becomes more obvious as it is from that point on where Kate starts to defend Jo to Steve:

“For Christ’s sake Steve, she’s my gaffer, you want me to rat on her?” 

And that moral dilemma comes into play again as Kate warns Jo that AC-12 are going to storm MIT and seize files. Kate isn't happy with what she’s done, you can see that from a mile off but she knows that she needed to do it since her loyalty now lies with MIT and she needs to protect the case she and her team are working on.  

I also think it has something to do with what she previously says to Steve:

“You know what it’s like being ex-anticorruption. I’ve had to work my bollocks off with them lot.” 

She knew that if she didn’t warn Jo about AC-12 then her whole team would turn on her and accuse her of being undercover/colluding with AC-12 when she isn’t (necessarily). And we’re back to the point she raises to Steve about her being seen as a possible traitor. 

We later see the first ‘date’ scene between Kate and Jo and much like how we were thrown into Kate and Jo’s relationship/closeness, we are thrown into this scene. We assume they’ve been there for a while and they’re in the middle of a conversation when we join them. And Jo is leading the conversation, she is talking freely whilst Kate is listening - once again, there’s a lot of trust between them. 

What is striking in this scene however is the parallels to a similar scenario between Kate and Tony in the first series. Context is different since that meeting is arranged as a means for Kate to dig for information from Tony whereas with Jo, it’s a chance for Kate to be a ‘sounding board’ as she puts it, she’s being emotionally available for Jo. But there is something that really stood out:  

Kate’s reaction to both being very different. With Tony she makes light of the situation whilst with Jo she doesn’t say anything, just simply nods her head. It’s all explained when given the context, she’s undercover with Tony and rule number one is to not form too close a relationship with the person you’re investigating as it could jeopardise the case she’s working on, so she has to keep it impersonal. But she puts it in a way that shuts down the allusion but doesn’t give anything away. 

Her reaction to Jo, on the other hand, is striking. She nods, not saying a word. She wants to call her Jo, she wants to cross that boundary and there is nothing stopping her from doing that so she can agree to it.

But whilst we’ve brought up this parallel we might as well look into other parallels concerning Kate’s relationship with both Tony and Jo. Tartan grey suits aside, Tony and Jo are quite similar, they were both groomed by Tommy Hunter - Jo in a much deeper and longer way but the point still stands. Tony was the one to introduce Tommy into the show and Jo was the one to take him out - not in a literal sense but she revealed the most information that would shut down the era that could be deemed as Tommy Hunter’s era. Both Tony and Jo form a close relationship with Kate, Jo’s being more genuine whereas Tony’s is faked and all smoke and mirrors. 

The proof is in the pudding here:

It’s awkward and unwelcome. Vastly different to this scene: 

Jo and Tony are perhaps the only two of the ‘bent coppers’ we see that don’t really do anything - at least nothing drastic like murder anyway. Out of all the ‘bent coppers’ they’re the most innocent. The fact that they both have connections to Ryan Pilkington as well is very telling. But I won’t go into it too much since this is about Kate. 

The difference between Kate’s relationship with Tony and her relationship with Jo is that it is made very obvious that she doesn’t like Tony. She shows no sympathy towards him at all when talking to Steve in private - once again proving how good of a liar she is since that isn’t given away in the slightest during her scenes with Tony. Jo, on the other hand, she is very fond of, even after Jo lures her to the lorry park to be murdered Kate is still defensive of the woman and still, in a small way, takes her side. 

That being said, of both relationships there are assumptions made. Nigel makes the dig “Her cover wasn’t the only thing she blew, ask Tony,” and Farida’s “Smart money’s on Kate Fleming,” to which Jo replies, “Kate and I have been shagging on the sly for months.” 

Now what would’ve made a REALLY good parallel between S1 and S6 would’ve been this conversation between Steve and Kate:

“He saved my life.”

“He put you in danger in the first place.”

A wasted opportunity there considering how many parallels there have been between these two series with all the callbacks to old characters and little references that have been made. It would’ve made the parallels between Tony and Jo even greater; Tony lured Steve to be murdered (note how Ryan is present there also) but ended up saving him and Jo lured Kate to be murdered but ended up saving her by taking the blame for Ryan’s death. It would’ve made for a very good reference. 

Moving back to the ‘date’ scene between Kate and Jo, I think I’m pointing out the obvious when I say that it has clear romantic undertones, from the lighting to the music that plays underneath - notably increasing as Kate says “Nah, not really my type.” The close up shot of this moment making it even more intimate. 

Then we move onto Kate being the one to ask Jo around for the weekend, which Jo initially turns down and Kate adds, “Yeah, no pressure,” before initiating the hug that then changes Jo’s mind. We have not seen Kate in this situation before at all. Not in a heavily loaded romantic scene anyway, not even with Richard Akers. There was a sense of a deeper connection with Richard, they were sleeping with each other after all, but it also felt impersonal. Kate would turn up to his house, they’d sleep together, they might have a small scene together afterwards and then Kate would leave. We didn’t even see them kiss. They were just two lonely people, stuck in a loveless marriage wanting to feel something that they were both missing in their relationships.  

But there’s an intimacy that’s been set up between Kate and Jo, this is more than just a friendship and it’s coming from both parties, with Kate being much more explicit about it than Jo; offering drinks, seeming happy that Jo turned the two men down and then asking to see Jo more - this is all Kate. But it’s not in the pushy way we have seen with her when it comes to her UCO’s. She’s not digging for information from Jo she just wants to love her. 

They also reveal their relationship status to each other in this moment, “It’s Mark’s turn to have Josh this weekend,” “I’ve just come out of a long term relationship.” If that isn’t screaming that what is happening between Kate and Jo isn’t just friendship then I don’t know what is. 

We then have Kate watching Jo as she leaves, there’s a pensive look on her face. She’s just crossed that boundary, she’s all but asked to spend the weekend with Jo and then followed it up with a hug. She’s made the first move and is clearly nervous about it. The romantic music continues under this and it sounds hopeful/happy. A stark contrast to how the show usually feels so the fact it’s playing up to this and taking the time to set Kate and Jo up shows that it’s important - the show doesn’t focus too much on personal lives. And because of that, it only signifies more, how annoying it is that these two got dropped to subtext after having it be so obvious. 

And with such focus on Kate in this moment it show it’s integral. Kate is finding herself in a position that she has never been in before and because she knows that AC-12 are now investigating Jo, it only worries her more. She might think that AC-12 are wrongly investigating Jo but there’s always that chance they could be right and if they are, then her professional integrity is going to be questioned for the first time. She’s finding herself in a position that is usually filled by Steve. And Kate is highly judgemental of Steve in that department. 

Then we have this scene in the third episode: 

This is their first sort of argument and Jo has pulled Kate up on her interviewing techniques, telling her that she was too harsh and that she’s “gotten used to nicking coppers.” It bothers Kate, she taps her foot, ponders for a moment and then follows behind Jo. She knows Jo’s right and we know this because she says to Steve in the next episode “You spend too much time on anti-corruption, it starts to change the way you see things.” 

She’s actually taken something that someone has said to her on board. This is rather unusual for Kate, who is extremely stubborn and isn’t a fan of people criticising her (but will happily criticise others - Kate really is the epitome of AC-12 isn’t she?) But the fact she listens to what Jo has to say and it changes her in a sense just goes to show how much she really likes Jo and she wants Jo to like her and also shows how much change Kate has gone through in just the first three episodes of S6. 

I am still trying to figure out why Kate made the decision to follow the patrol car but then I suppose it can be easily explained if you think of the fact that Kate will never be free of AC-12, no matter how hard she tries. Kate is AC-12 through and through, she is so deeply embedded in it she will never get out - it’s a stark parallel to how Jo is in a similar position in regards to the OCG. Going to be ~controversial~ here and say that I don’t think AC-12 makes Kate happy. It’s her home, it’s where she feels safe but it isn’t what makes her happy. S6 is, perhaps, the happiest that we have seen Kate. There were small hints throughout S5 that Kate no longer enjoyed working as a UCO/for AC-12, a number of quotes alluding to that, S5E1: 

“She couldn’t stop the hijack but the best she could do was limit the loss of life.” 

“Oh Christ I’ve been there. The lies, the fear. Got only knows what she’s going through.”

S5E2:

“Look Kate…Corbett’s embedded in a group of hardened criminals who’d execute him if they discover his true identity.” 

“I’ve been there, it’s not nice.”

S5E2 again:

“(About UCO’s) Ask her. She was undercover. Perfect job for a selfish arsehole that don’t give a toss about his own family.”  

“Look what Corbett’s missus said about undercover work, that was never you.”

“Thanks Steve, but she was right.” 

All that does is hint that it wasn’t just Ted’s betrayal that pushed Kate to leave AC-12, rather it being the last straw and it giving her an actual reason to want out. 

She does, however, go back to AC-12 in the end because she has nowhere else to go and her job is her life. She’d rather sacrifice her happiness to keep her job and to keep doing what she’s doing.

When she returns to AC-12, for the first time this series, she hits us with the “My first duty as a police officer is preservation of life, sir. That’s why I’m here.” Her job always comes first, above everything else (it’s half the reason why her marriage broke down). Other examples of this include this moment from S2E6:

“I was undercover with Denton, and I blew it. And now we’re blowing the whole case. I need to close this, Steve, or I’ve got nothing.” 

And in S5E6:

“I’m just calling it as I see it, Steve. The truth comes first…I’m not going to sit around and wait for a kicking off the gaffer or Carmichael when there’s police work to be done.”

Kate is highly committed to her work and will stop at nothing so she can complete it; no matter who she might be investigating/building a case upon. This causes her to come across as callous and cold but this is Kate. Her job is her life. And honestly, out of all three of the main characters, Kate is probably the straightest. The only thing coming to mind about this not being the case would be the concealment of her relationship with Richard Akers but even then, it wouldn’t have effected the case too much since Jayne and Kate never had that phone call. This idea that Kate is the straightest out of all three of them does change in S6 however, since she is the one to shoot Ryan and she lets Jo take the blame for it. But despite that, Kate still continues with her holier than thou attitude which we’ll delve into more later. 

I know I keep switching back and forth between Kate and Jo’s relationship but Jo really is integral to this development in Kate that I can’t not talk about it. There’s further proof that Kate is more interested in the welfare of Jo rather than wanting information out of her shown via this scene:  

Kate can be seen listening to the conversation between Jo and Steve but it isn’t until she hears Jo’s voice falter after hearing about Farida in prison does she then turn to look over at Jo. It peaks her interest and it explains why she brings up the topic of Farida at their next ‘date.’ 

“Look boss, I, uh, don’t want to speak out of term but…well, (Farida) claims that you two were close.” 

She’s not asking Jo a question here which is interesting. UCO!Kate would ask the question, she knows how to work people to get information out of them if she needed to. But she leaves this opened ended sentence that gives Jo the option to answer if she wants to (you could argue that since she knows how to work people then this is her way of working Jo but it doesn’t ever come across that way in my opinion). And she doesn’t, but this doesn’t necessarily bother Kate, at least not enough for her to push another question on Jo. 

“I imagine everyone’s got off on that little scenario. No life of their own so they pick holes in someone else’s. Especially if you’re a single woman.” 

“Yeah tell me about it, all it takes is a short haircut.”

Typical Kate to make a joke in this situation, it’s very much in character (made me think of her making a joke about putting Lindsay’s cat Bella into an evidence bag). The light joke doesn’t go down well with Jo and it causes her to back off. But we must remember that this is Kate’s first proper female friendship, we’ve only seen her in male dominated groups and she’s used to their way of making jokes. Prime example of that being half the jokes made by Dot and Nige during the first series, hardly stuff you want to hear but unfortunately it’s true to life. Being used to that sense of humour meant that Kate didn’t see much wrong with what she said until after she notices that Jo closes herself off: 

“Whatever you’ve heard Kate, it’s wrong. Farida’s a liar. That’s not me.”

“Okay.” 

Kate knows it’s a lie but doesn’t push it. Her obvious confusion is pointed out when Jo leaves the room: 

I can’t tell you what’s going on in Kate’s head but it’s probably a mixture of wondering why Jo had gone so cold on her suddenly, if she had said anything wrong and if everything that has happened between them in the past three episodes has been all in her head? 

But what happens in this scene and what is spoken about isn’t necessarily subtext. Okay they don’t actually say the word ‘lesbian’ or ‘bisexual’ it’s more alluded to. But this is a very obvious and deliberate conversation about Jo’s sexuality/Kate trying to figure out her own and wanting confirmation from Jo that she hasn’t just been imagining it. It’s done on purpose because they’re setting Kate and Jo up to go on that route - and once again, this is what makes it so annoying that they did get dropped to subtext by E7. They had painted a very clear picture in the first couple of episodes - Kate and Jo are falling in love with each other, it’s a doomed love story but it’s still a love story. 

Despite Jo being hurt by Kate’s not very well thought-out joke, she still carries a lot of trust in Kate by the fact she leaves her belongings on her seat. This seems minimal and unimportant but it rules out the idea that Kate was asking about Jo’s relationship with Farida for more information, from a case POV. If she had been and if she was interested in finding out if Jo really was as bent as AC-12 are making out then she would’ve seized that opportunity to take a look through Jo’s bag (we see her debate that opportunity when Tony leaves his phone behind after their drink at the pub in S1, but before she has chance to he’s already noticed he’s forgotten it and takes it back). But Kate is too busy wondering why Jo had lied to her, once again showing that she’s interested in Jo from a relationship standpoint. 

One thing I do love though and just from this alone we know that Kate and Jo are genuine is the fact that they bond over their hatred for Ian ‘what a twat’ Buckells: 

“I hope he’s going to give credit where it’s due.” 

“How do you mean?” 

“You brought Ryan onto the team, boss.”

“Not me. That was Buckells’ idea.”

I’m not going to underestimate Kate in this moment however because she does pull a very clever move. She doesn’t ask outright but she is able to get an answer to a question she might have been asking. Steve made a dig earlier on in the episode about how Jo may have employed Ryan onto MIT herself, allowing Ryan to interfere with the Gail Vella files. Kate doesn’t play up to that accusation but you can see that she keeps in mind, she doesn’t want to believe that Jo picked Ryan on purpose but there is always the chance that she has. So, she uses this opportunity to find out if that was the case. Knowing now that it wasn’t, she’s reassured and she feels more confident in defending Jo as we see in later episodes. 

And as previously discussed, Kate starts looking into Buckells after Jo’s quip about the Masonic Lodge. And once she gets all the information she needed she then takes it to Jo and we get this line: 

“I knew you’d come through for me.” 

There’s a perspective change, we’ve seen before how Kate actively pushes how she will be able to do something for someone in order to gain their trust, “I’ll make it disappear,” in S1 and once again, telling Lindsay that she’ll say she was there that night of the ‘alleged’ attack on Lindsay’s neighbour. But she doesn’t investigate Buckells on Jo’s behalf, or because she wants to gain Jo’s trust. It’s quite ironic really isn’t it? She’s always tried to gain trust from these ‘bent coppers’ by offering to cover their crimes - which they never take her up on to be honest - and then the one time she does something off her own back and without any of those intentions, she does - sort of - cover for a ‘bent copper.’ But as we know, Buckells does end up being bent so Kate wasn’t in the wrong to look into him, just a shame they never clicked on to his deeper corruption sooner. 

And then Jo follows up with the line: 

“I needed someone on my team I could trust completely. Someone with no chance of being bent. Who better than an ex-anticorruption officer?” 

Oh if Kate only knew the deeper meaning of that line at the time. But in the same way as The Mason dig Jo makes, this is confirmation to Kate that Jo isn’t bent and AC-12 have got it wrong. If Jo was bent, why would she encourage Kate to flush out the corruption? 

It isn’t until Episode 4 where we actually learn more about Kate’s reasonings for leaving AC-12 and it comes at no surprise that it is due to Ted’s indiscretions during S5. But what is surprising about Ted and Kate’s conversation is that Kate doesn’t hide her true feelings and tells Ted the truth: 

“You made your choice to move on, and I know that the disciplinary action against me was definitely a factor. It put you and Steve in a really difficult position.” 

“Yeah, I’m not going to lie.”  

But considering that Kate isn’t all that shy being honest in front of Ted it’s not that surprising. But given it is a tender, emotional topic for Kate I suppose you’d normally expect her to hide away her feelings but it’s quite nice that she doesn’t. She wants Ted to know that she hasn’t totally forgiven him for what he’s ‘alleged’ (at the time) to have done. 

And then we get the conversation between Kate and Steve and we get Kate’s second defence of Jo. And this time it is said with more confidence because she’s witnessed key moments first hand that have confirmed to her that Jo couldn’t be bent: 

“Without Jo we wouldn’t have got Buckells. Look, you haven’t seen the change in her I have. Now that Buckells is off her back, she’s on the Vella case 100 percent.” 

Typical love is blind moment there, ‘you don’t know them like I do.’ And the fact that she mentions that Buckells has been on Jo’s back for most of the case, is pulling it back to my previous mention of how Kate witnessing the argument between Buckells and Jo is so important - she’s now using it as an excuse to Steve about why Jo may have been lacking in her investigation into Gail Vella’s murder. 

(Just want to drop in and check that you’ve had drink or something, this is about halfway through I think so...continue).

Later on in the episode she’s seen defending Jo again: 

“He’s watching her.”

“Or meeting with her.”

“You got evidence of that?” 

We know why Kate is so defensive, she’s falling in love with Jo and she trusts her completely. But even still, it’s very interesting since she has never defended anyone quite so fiercely - at least not in private to Ted and Steve. 

In S1E5 Steve and Kate have this conversation about Tony Gates: 

“He didn’t kill her.”

“No?” 

It’s short and simple but enough to prove that no matter how much it appeared on the surface that Kate liked Tony it was all faked and she didn’t trust him in the slightest, going as far to say that he was capable of murder. 

We also see in this scene that Steve grows suspicious of Kate’s closeness to Jo (or at least that’s what it appeared to look like at the time and maybe if Kate and Jo’s relationship was acknowledged by Steve then this moment would’ve made more sense): 

There is also another paralleling conversation that Kate and Steve could’ve had in S6 from S1. And once again, this is in reference to Kate’s relationship with Tony: 

“Something happened between you two.” 

“Like what?” 

“Nothing, forget it.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I shouldn’t have asked, it’s private.”

“Yeah, it is.” 

It’s very interesting that all the ‘moments’ between Kate and Tony were all faked on the basis of Kate wanting information between him but because of one comment from Nigel, Steve decided to pull Kate up on that accusation. Yet in S6, despite appearing suspicious of Kate and Jo’s relationship he never once brought it up? You could argue that Steve knows Kate better than anyone and he has learnt not to push her on those topics because she will just tell him to piss off, but, how many times has Kate slated Steve for getting involved with witnesses/suspects? That would’ve been Steve’s perfect opportunity to tear a strip off Kate and say that she is no angel and she’s not protected from falling in love with the wrong people. But alas Jed Mercurio would rather have focused on a straight relationship where one half only appeared in a handful of scenes <3

But back to the ‘You got evidence of that?’ Moment before I get too annoyed, the fact that Kate wants to reveal to Jo about Ryan’s movements is very telling. She wants to protect Jo and she genuinely believes that Jo is a good person/isn’t bent. We see that this trust runs even deeper when she goes ahead and tells Jo anyway despite Ted telling her not to - but she’s clever enough to not mention any collusion she has with AC-12.

“I need to talk to you in private.”

“Something wrong?”

“It’s not personal. It’s work.”

This is the first use of the word ‘personal’ from Kate and the fact she feels the need to state that what she wants to talk to Jo about isn’t to do with them and their relationship is…interesting. A few people have pointed about how the use of personal within Line of Duty could be argued to allude to relationships/love interests - Farida left for ‘personal reasons’ after all - for Kate to use it here and to make that separation between personal and professional shows that Kate and Jo’s relationship runs deeper than being just colleagues. We know that already from how they’ve acted around each other but now we’ve had it explicitly confirmed. 

Ironically though, this is the moment Jo starts taking a step back from Kate in order to protect her. She now knows that Ryan is watching her and if Ryan is watching her then he will be able to see what’s forming between herself and Kate and that puts Kate at the centre of danger. Look what happened to Farida, she was in a relationship with Jo and then she ended up in prison. Worse could’ve happened but Jo did what she could to protect Farida - she used harsh words to hurt Farida and push her away (a similar tactic used by Tony Gates to his wife), but because Farida kept pushing and ended up ratting on Jo, Jo had to take drastic action by planting those burner phones. 

And now it’s happening to Kate but she knows that Kate isn’t Farida and she won’t cave as easily - as we go on to see later on. 

That being said, Kate does give Jo a confidence boost. She tries to get rid of Ryan. But Kate’s support isn’t enough, it’s too late for Jo. But just the fact that one word from Kate gives her enough to stand up goes to show how much Jo has come to rely on Kate and how much she trusts her. 

But as we know, Jo gets threatened by Ryan so Jo does the only thing she knows how to do and that’s to push Kate away. 

She tells Kate to drop her issues with Ryan otherwise she’ll request a transfer for Kate. Kate mouths the word ‘ma’am’ completely unable to use her voice. She’s annoyed and evidently so. But she isn’t just annoyed at the fact Jo has told her that she would get rid of her if it came down to it. She’s annoyed because, in her eyes, Jo doesn’t know the danger she’s putting herself in by keeping Ryan on the team. (Of course we know that Jo knows Ryan and his connections but Kate doesn’t, she’s been defending Jo to high heaven and truly believes that Jo is innocent). Kate has seen firsthand the sorts of things Ryan has been involved in - she doesn’t learn just how much he’s involved until later on but she did see some of things he got up to as a kid and knows that he could be just as dangerous now as he was then. 

You could argue that she’s also annoyed at the fact that she went against AC-12 and people she inherently trusts in order to protect Jo and now she’s just got that thrown back in her face.

And then we move on to the big episodes. What happened at the end of E4 clearly created a rift between Kate and Jo, we see Kate trying to pull Jo to one side but gets rejected, and she’s hurt by that.  

Kate expresses her hurt to AC-12 in the following scene: 

“Jo’s become cold and distant towards me, I don’t know what’s going on in the background.” 

Shows that there’s a distance between them now but Kate is still sympathetic towards her. She doesn’t like that Jo is pushing her out and I think this is when it really starts to click for Kate that something isn’t right. She gets those suspicions evidently confirmed when Steve reveals that Jo’s DNA was found at Farida’s house and henceforth that she’s related to Tommy Hunter. (Also the fact that Kate is using ‘Jo’ here and not ‘Davidson’ as you would expect her to reveals her personal relationship with Jo).

Despite that distance, Kate is still defensive of Jo and still trusts her: 

“You’ve put Jo under surveillance, why?” 

“Our in-depth forensic examination of Farida Jatri’s home detected Davidson’s DNA.”   

Her face the moment she finds out that Jo lied to her about her relationship with Farida is heartbreaking but I think the fact that we see Chloe and Ted’s reaction to this also, is so important. They’re very clearly aware of the feelings between Kate and Jo even if it is never said, and we’re back to being annoyed that Kate and Jo’s relationship wasn’t acknowledged in E7. Everyone was aware of it so why wasn’t it mentioned?!

“Davidson’s DNA is a partial match for Tommy Hunter.” 

…

“I know, from Steve, that you’ve formed the view that Davidson isn’t bent, Kate. But I’m sorry, it appears that she’s pulled the wool over your eyes.” 

And then there’s the explicit confirmation that Steve is aware of Kate’s feelings towards Jo.  

She’s just been bombarded with a lot of information, information that goes against everything that she has believed in/defended for the past couple of episodes. She’s conflicted and doesn’t know what to think. Kate Fleming, who is usually calm and collected and in control of her emotions is now finding herself caught in a moment that she usually isn’t in. And now she’s wondering why she couldn’t see it, why she couldn’t see that something wasn’t right. She’s usually so sharp, quick to pick up on corruption - she spotted Dots pretty early on. But she knows, deep down, she knows and I think that scares her more. 

Kate has always pulled Steve up on his lack of integrity, for getting himself stuck in situations that would cloud his vision and now suddenly the tables have turned. It’s her getting in that situation. It’s her having her vision blurred because of her relationship with someone and she doesn’t know what to do. 

That being said, her trust in Jo is still very much there. It’s why she formulates the plan. She wants to prove that Steve and AC-12 are wrong about Jo, that just because she’s related to the OCG overlord doesn’t mean that she herself is corrupt. But she also needs to prove it to herself, she needs to know that she didn’t get it wrong. That she didn’t let a corrupt officer slip through her fingers because she fell in love. She’s an ex-anticorruption officer, she should be able to spot when a police officer is bent, more so than anyone else. 

She later reveals what her plan had been to prove Jo’s innocence to Ted and Steve, she wants to shout it from the rooftops that she was right about Jo and they were wrong: 

“Only one site was disclosed to MIT officers. However, I took the decision to inform DSU Davidson of all three possible sites.” 

“It’s a big call, Kate.” 

“Well, I believed it paid off, sir. You said yourself the information on Jo’s family history strongly suggests she’s colluding with organised crime, but that doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen first hand. We needed to know one way or another. She had plenty of time to tip off the OCG and she didn’t. As far as I’m concerned that’s proof she isn’t bent.” 

It’s the fourth defence of Jo and is said with even more confidence because now she has evidence to back it up. She knows for definite that Jo isn’t bent and her conscience had been appeased; she didn’t get it wrong.  

And even after all that, after everything Kate does, Ted still hits her with the “Steve’s right, Kate.” She’s undermined yet again. She wants Ted and Steve to trust and like Jo as much as she does because she loves Jo. 

And then we get another hostile scene between Kate and Jo but Kate is still trying to let Jo know that she is on her side, that she has her back, that she has spent months defending Jo’s arse to AC-12 and Steve: 

“I’m telling you the truth, Jo, because I trust you with it.” 

Jo fires back by telling Kate to request a transfer but this has come after a warning look from Ryan. Jo knows what’s going to happen next and she wants to get Kate out of the way before she’s asked the unforgivable, she evens mentions that AC-12 would take her back in the hopes that that would be enough to turn Kate. 

“You’ve been distant with me for days, is this personal?” 

“I’m your senior officer, I should be distant.” 

“I thought we were friends, what’s happening here?”

“So you can tell AC-12?”

“No, I wouldn’t tell them personal stuff.”

And there’s the ‘personal’ again, twice. They’re talking about their relationship, Kate is making it about their relationship. She’s trying to tell Jo that the reason she trusts her so much is because she loves her and that’s something she wouldn’t tell AC-12 because it doesn’t concern them. 

“And as for requesting a transfer, I respectfully decline. I’m not leaving.”  

That is very much in character for Kate, sticking to her true stubborn self there. But she’s angry at Jo because she won’t let Kate help her. Jo is angry because Kate doesn’t realise the danger she’s putting herself in - a nice parallel to the other conversation they shared where the roles are reversed and Jo was trying to help Kate by getting her to drop the subject of Ryan and Kate was annoyed because Jo was blind to the danger she was in. 

Kate’s ‘I’m not leaving,’ does have much more meaning to it than we first realise however. After shooting Ryan, she runs off with Jo - she has no reason to, she was lawfully carrying a firearm and serving her duty as an officer. But she gives Jo the chance to tell her everything, she doesn’t leave her side and does everything she can to protect Jo i.e the car chase scene. She takes Jo’s side despite everything and sticks to her words of ‘I’m not leaving.’

Later on, Jo manipulates Kate, playing on the one thing Kate wants to address, “The personal issues we discussed,” she knows that’s the only way Kate will come out with her (at least, that’s what she thinks). Kate is desperate to explore whatever is going on between them and Jo plays on that.  

And judging by Kate’s hopeful face, it seems to do the trick. Kate’s hopeful face being that she thinks Jo might actually open up to her and tell her the truth, and invite Kate into whatever is going on in her life/head. Poor Kate.  

She knows deep down that something isn’t right but she goes along with it because she trusts Jo so much and I think she truly believes that she’s gotten through to her. 

There is a dilemma going on within Kate here, she wants to trust Jo but knows deep down she can’t because of the AC-12 officer that is embedded in her (Ted’s ‘That’s my officer out there,’ coming into play here). She keeps the gun on her person which shows despite her constant defence, she’s still suspicious. However, she doesn’t phone Steve until after she’s arrived at the address showing that the trust for Jo is still there. Obviously that changes when she realises that the location is dodgier than she probably first thought. 

“Let’s not hang around here Jo, we’d rather be inside with a glass of wine.”

Sticking to her character once again here, trying to be hopeful, trying to be right about Jo’s character. 

“Jo wanted to give you a way out.” 

This line from Ryan is crucial for Kate’s trust in Jo. It may get lost amongst the other, more pressing events, but even just hearing first that Jo tried to save her probably brings her some reassurance in the long run. From this line alone she knows that Jo never intended to kill her and was coerced into setting the scene up. 

“I’ve done my bit. I don’t have to stay here and watch.” 

Jo was only told to ‘get rid’ of Kate. She was never told to kill her. She was the one to entrap Kate but she was never going to be the one to kill her, that was on Ryan. This is another crucial moment adding to the reason why Kate would run away with Jo and give her the chance to talk. 

E6 opens up with Kate being her typical self and taking control of the situation. But even so, she’s struggling. As I’ve mentioned a lot throughout this, Kate is normally calm and collected, she very rarely lets her emotions get in the way of what she wants to do. But there’s no room for her to hide from her emotions here, she hasn’t had the time to compartmentalise them, she hasn’t had the time to process and understand them. And that unsettles her, she wants to take control - and she does as best as she can - but she’s faltering. The person who she loves has just lured her to her death and she doesn’t know what to do with that information.

“You lured me there to be murdered.” 

Confirms that she knows that Jo wasn’t going to be the one that actually murdered her, just that she was the one to lure her. 

“Kate.”

“Didn’t you?”

She cuts Jo off, she’s angry and understandably so. But because she hasn’t had time to process her emotions she isn’t being as cool as she normally would be in a high-stress situation.  

She is really struggling and it’s understandable of course. And then we have that scene:

“I always worried you were pretending.” 

“Pretending?” 

“You know what I mean…to lure me into trusting you.” 

Kate’s ‘pretending?’ Is more offence at the fact Jo felt she had to suggest it - Kate was far from pretending, her behaviour across the series is enough to prove that she is in love with Jo. I also think it’s to do with the fact that Jo had the audacity to ask the question now, of all situations to bring up the topic, Jo could’ve picked a better moment. But Jo doesn’t let up, using Kate’s preferred tactic of getting information out of people:

“You still won’t answer, were you lying to me Kate?”

“This is about you Jo, not me.” 

Deflecting the question that she has every right to deflect, given the circumstances. But she neither confirms nor denies said question - she’s trying to keep control of the situation, she’s trying not to let her emotions get in the way of what she needs to do. She needs to find out the truth, she needs Jo to tell her everything before the law inevitably catches up with them. 

She turns the question back to Jo, asking if she was the one lying, that maybe she didn’t want Kate on the team at all. She then goes on to reveal that she knows Jo lied about her relationship with Farida. It’s coming from a place of anger and frustration and like I said, Kate is well within her rights to feel like that.  

Then we have Kate doing something surprising, she drives away as she hears police sirens. I’ve been trying to place why she was so determined to keep Jo away from the police, to give Jo that chance to explain herself but then all of a sudden, Kate hanging the phone up on Carmichael made it all make sense. 

The moment Steve told Kate that the observations on Jo and Ryan had been pulled as a result of Osbourne and Carmichael, she knew that something bigger was at play here. If Osbourne is the real H/The Fourth Man (extremely bloody likely) and Buckells was just the messenger, then it’s fair to say that it was actually Osbourne who ordered Kate’s death. And if that is the case then it makes sense he would pull the observations off, meaning that there would be no witnesses to the murder. But Kate’s not a stupid woman, she’s worked for AC-12 for God knows how long and she’s been part of the investigation into H/The Fourth man for just as long. She knows it’s someone higher up in the force and that information from Steve told her that something was going to happen at the meeting. 

But upon hearing that Jo tried to give her a way out, she knows that she can trust Jo, that she is just another pawn in this sick game, that she’s vulnerable and in need of protecting/saving. She must guess pretty early on, that it is The Fourth Man that is manipulating Jo and she knows that Jo isn’t going to reveal that in an interview, especially if it is someone high up. So that’s why she takes Jo out of the situation, that’s why she sacrifices her credibility and her integrity, as Ted said Ryan is a ‘sprat’ - he’s not important - she can get more information about the top man from Jo. Kate gives Jo that chance to talk and to prove herself before she is silenced by Osbourne and Carmichael. It helps that Jo trusts Kate and wants to tell Kate the truth. 

And then we have the emotion, oh the emotion:

“Jesus Christ, Steve’s in on it.”

She’s lost control of the situation, she’s lost control of her emotions and everything has just come tumbling down on her. And for a brief moment she feels as though everyone has turned on her: Jo, Steve, Ted, everyone she trusts most in the world and she can’t bear it. I can’t even begin to imagine how utterly alone she must’ve felt in that moment.  

“You bastard, Steve!”

“Stay there, Kate.”

…

“You gave me up! You told them!”

“Kate, I give you my word, I didn’t.”

“That’s bullshit.”  

“I promise you, I’ll get you to safety. Both of you.”

Kate doesn’t comply until after she’s assured that Steve will protect both her and Jo - shows that despite everything she still has a loyalty to Jo and she still wants to protect her. Despite what’s happened she can see that Jo is vulnerable and has been used her entire life, she gets that impression just from the little bit that Jo reveals to her. She feels for Jo, sort of in the same way she felt for Dot but this is on a much deeper level and to be fair, Dot did worse things than Jo. Kate might be an expert at compartmentalising her emotions but she still has a heart - we see it in glimpses across the whole show but it comes in tenfolds where Jo is concerned, as a result of how they’ve been set up. As much as she’s angry and upset and how much she feels betrayed by Jo, Kate still wants her to be safe and protected. Kate knows that Jo has been trying to get out of the clutches of the OCG i.e employing Kate in the first place. Jo holding the gun and taking the blame gives Kate enough assurance that Jo is being true to her word when she says she wanted out/didn’t want to kill Kate. That’s why she wants Jo safe, because she believes in her. 

Being put in that cell on her own now gives Kate the chance to compartmentalise her emotions, she has time to think over the events of the night. She has time to think about her feelings for Jo, the love, the loss, the betrayal. We see that this works, later on when Patricia tells her that Jo had taken the blame for Ryan’s death.   

She’s back to her usual stoic self, emotions cut off. She can’t allow herself to react about what Patricia has told her because it would give too much away, if she reacted then it would make it even more obvious that Jo wasn’t the one who shot Ryan. She can’t even show that she’s relieved or grateful that Jo had taken such sacrifice for her/kept to her word. 

“Are you sure you’re okay? I know nobody’s coming after you over Ryan Pilkington’s shooting, but if you ever need to talk about it.” 

That is not the face of someone who is fine. She’s very clearly trying desperately to push her emotions down, put them to one side because she has a job to do. Jo has given her this chance to solve the case and she sure as hell isn’t going to let her down. 

“Did she say anything about her family history? She told me her dad was a police officer.” 

“No. Never even gave us that much.” 

Proving my earlier point that Jo inherently trusts Kate and was willing to give her more details before they were interrupted. 

“She’s scared, Steve. After what happened to Tommy, Dot, Lakewell, never mind John Corbett.”

“That’s why we’ve got her on the VPU at Brentiss, security cameras monitoring access to her cell.” 

Even now, after everything Jo put her through, Kate is still defending her. She still has Jo’s back and it just makes it even more annoying that Steve doesn’t bring up the Jo conversation to Kate. He has seen Kate defend her this whole series, he knows that Jo lured Kate to her death and now he’s there, listening to Kate defending Jo and worrying over the fact that she’s scared and vulnerable. I know at this point there’s a sense of trust between Jo and Steve (as a result of Kate) and Steve is much more aware of the situation Jo has been in her whole life, he does feel for her and understands Kate’s defence of her. But the fact that he’s not even suspicious of how Kate’s opinion hasn’t changed despite learning of Jo’s collusion with the OCG and almost being killed, just highlights how Jed was so quick to drop Kate’s development, pushing it to the side for the sake of making a political point. 

And here comes the complete reversal of all the development Kate has had across this series, and more to the point, the memory loss she seems to go through. 

“The stuff he’s hiding. I never thought I’d look at the gaffer like this.” 

But she did? In S5 when they were only suspecting that Ted may have ratted John Corbett out to the OCG. She was willing to report it, that was how much she believed it. And now she’s acting as if that never happened? 

“Maybe we should let sleeping dogs lie.” 

“Come off it Steve. How many times have we criticised coppers that’ve took retirement to dodge disciplinary action?”

It’s a valid point and strengthens my previous mention of how she might be the ‘straightest’ out of all three of them. She is the embodiment of AC-12, truth and integrity - or at least she likes to believe that she is. Kate often sits in a place of judgement and thinks of herself as an innocent being that could do no wrong. This is hardly the case, she has made plenty of mistakes and although she hasn’t got herself into the vast number of predicaments that Steve has found himself in, she isn’t exactly free from this sense of ‘corruption.’ It does get pointed out to her on two occasions, the first from Richard Akers, “Holier than thou doesn’t suit you Kate,” and the second from Roz Huntley, “Hardly holier than thou.” 

The fact it’s mentioned twice and is very much the same quote shows that this attitude Kate upholds, is a part of her character. And we see it again with this moment: 

“She’s got a right to know what happened to her husband.” 

“Maybe she already does. She might be blackmailing the gaffer.” 

“Steph? No.” 

“You seem pretty sure…what?” 

“We’ve become…”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Steve.” 

Before I get into the main issue, I think it’s made pretty obvious in this scene that Jo isn’t the only one Kate is being cold towards, it’s everyone. She’s coming across as very cynical and unsympathetic. But you could argue that this is Kate, she’s almost the stereotypical ice-queen who has no emotions and doesn’t care who she hurts which, if this was pre-S6 Kate I would say is very much in character. 

But this isn’t pre-S6 Kate. S6 has shown the more emotional side to Kate, it’s seen her with her walls broken down, she’s opened up, fallen in love. And I know the events of the previous episode would be enough for her to put those walls up again but surely, if you are going to go to the effort of developing a character you could at least show the change that this development has had on her? 

I would’ve fully expected her to shrink away after what happened, I think that’s a completely normal reaction, even more so where Kate is involved. But given how she has gone through things in this series that she hasn’t gone through before, I would expect a different reaction from her? More emotional or more obvious that she’s trying to hold herself together. But I don’t see that, I just see her back as her S1-5, AC-12 self. 

It’s so hard because it makes total sense for Kate to revert back to her old self, she’s been burned and she’s hurting. But like I said, if she’s gone through this development over the course of S6, it’s set up in a way to make you think that she’s not going to handle this situation as she normally would but she ends up doing exactly that - any development Jed has put her through has now been reversed. 

But my main issue with this scene between Kate and Steve brings me back to my earlier point. Steve is shown to be aware of the possible thing that’s happening between Kate and Jo - little looks when Kate is defending Jo, the fact that Ted mentioned how Steve had been talking to him about Kate’s trust for Jo. 

Now Kate, throughout the entirety of show, has consistently berated Steve on his lack of control when it comes to women. She has torn a strip off him at every opportunity, when the situation with Lindsay occurred, she was so unbelievably angry and annoyed with him, that he had just quite possibly ruined the entire case because “Steve can’t keep it in his pants,” (thank you Lindsay Denton for summarising that up perfectly). 

This would’ve been the PERFECT opportunity for Steve to turn it back around on Kate. He’s aware of the situation and he would finally be able to pull Kate up on something that he is known for doing and something Kate never stops short to criticise him on. He could’ve taken that opportunity to humble Kate and make her aware of the fact that she’s not innocent and she’s certainly not free from falling/being interested/getting involved with the wrong person. A simple “What and Jo’s different?” From Steve would’ve sufficed. We don’t even need a verbal reaction from Kate, just a look that one, would’ve acknowledged Kate and Jo’s relationship and two, would’ve put Kate in her place and make her realise that she should be the last person to pass judgment on Steve since she has now found herself in a very similar position.

What’s more, and I have mentioned this before and it’s what makes E7 so frustrating, Kate and Jo have been constantly paralleled to Steph and Steve throughout the series, all the romantic scenes, alluding to relationships bubbling for our two main characters. So that scene is where I would expect the parallel to occur again but it doesn’t? And I just have to ask, why on earth would you parallel these relationships, show their romantic scenes side by side, have their development evolve in similar ways just to then only focus on one relationship? 

Okay the possibility of a relationship occurring between Kate and Jo went out of the window the moment we knew Jo was colluding with the OCG but Jed still took the time to explore it, to delve into it. So for it to not even be mentioned or acknowledged, I just think, why waste our time if it’s going to end up not being relevant? I mean the fact that a heterosexual relationship where one half got barely any screen time took precedence and verbal acknowledgment (aka not subtext) over a queer relationship occurring between two of the main characters of the series? I don’t even need to say it. 

But if subtext was all we’re going to get for Kate and Jo in E7 then I’ll just get back to analysing and reading between the lines because Jed can’t stick to and acknowledge storylines that he has spent the entire series building up and I need to make sense of it for some peace of mind. 

I’m going to call this outfit the ‘Proving Jo Davidson is innocent’ outfit since Kate wears it when she hatches her plan to prove just that and again, when she’s gathering evidence that would mean Jo would be able to get witness protection.   

I promise you that these are separate scenes but honestly the fact that we have the same shot with Kate sitting in the same place, from the same angle only just emphasises my point even more. This was Kate on her proving Jo is innocent mission that she never let slip. Her goal hasn’t changed since E5, but perhaps now she is even more determined because she now knows that it’s what Jo wants. Jo got Kate on the team for a reason and now that is what Kate is doing. 

And because I’ve *briefly* touched on the fact that Kate/Jo are always paralleled to Steve/Steph I think it’s only right that I point out how in both of the scenes shown above, there is a Steve/Steph scene paralleled to it, either before or after. Both the Steve/Steph scenes taking place in Steve’s car with Steph on the phone/over voicemail with the scenes showing that Steve is unsure about his relationship with Steph - which you could argue is the exact opposite to Kate and Jo. Kate might be unsure of her feelings and how deep they go but she is sure of one thing and that Jo is innocent and will do everything she can to prove it. 

We go on to next to see AC-12 discussing new messages that have come through entailing The Fourth Man’s plans for Jo. Kate refers to her as “Davidson” a stark contrast to how she has previously referred to her in the presence of Steve and Ted but this is most likely to do with the fact that has had to cut her feelings off for the sake of saving Jo so she is trying to make it as impersonal as possible. 

I won’t even talk about how easy it could’ve been to include a scene between Kate and Jo in that ambush scene. Before or even after, if Jed wanted to keep that element of surprise that AC-12 had managed to intercept before the ambush could take place. A simple moment where Kate went into the van and said “You alright?” would’ve sufficed. 

“You’re safe now Jo.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean really safe. To apply for witness protection. All my notes, all my records will show that you acted under the control and coercion of others. You can live the life you should’ve lived. Be free to be the person that you really are.” 

I have spoken about this before but will briefly go into it again. ‘The person’ that Kate is referring to is the person Kate has been defending for this whole series. Kate was the only person to see through Jo’s walls and glimpse the person that existed outside of the clutches of the OCG. Jo could be herself around Kate, probably felt liberated and had moments where she realised that Kate is something she could’ve had if she wasn’t stuck in that life, so it’s only right that Kate was the one to set her free - even if it’s at the expense of her own feelings but we’ll get into that now.

Although Kate is coming across as ‘cold’ during this scene, she isn’t unsympathetic. Everything she is saying to Jo is coming from a compassionate place. It’s vastly different from the previous scenes shared by Kate and Jo so it feels more harsh but Kate is having to cut her feelings off to provide the protection for Jo and to henceforth save her. She still cares deeply for Jo but she’s not allowed to show that, and it’s more for her own sake than anything. 

If Kate allows herself, for even a moment, to let that emotion escape then it’s all going to come out. Everything she has have ever felt for Jo will be free and then she won’t be able to let Jo go because then it will be even harder. She can’t let herself come to terms over what she feels for Jo because she has to set Jo free, she can’t be selfish, it’s either her feelings or it’s Jo’s freedom. And considering she has spent so long defending Jo it’s obvious what option she favours. 

Then she gets straight back to the point, not allowing her facade to drop:

“If you tell us who the top man is.” 

Now remember how I said to remember Roz’s quote because it will be important later? Here’s why it’s important, “You’d give up anything to get to the top.” ‘Top’ in the context of Roz and Kate’s conversation is referring to Kate wanting to better her career but ‘Top’ could also refer to the fact that Kate, along with AC-12, have spent years digging into institutionalised corruption to find out who the orchestrator behind it all is, and now she’s so close to finding out who the ‘top’ man is, because of Jo. 

You could argue that this idea completely reverses the points I’ve just made and offers the alternative that Kate only cut her emotions off in order to get to the top - which is what Roz’s quote alludes to. But I do think that both standpoints can coincide with one another. She cuts her feelings off for Jo so she can save her, but because she has had to do that, that makes her able to dig for information and solve the case and hence find out who the top man is. 

And therein is the last scene that Kate and Jo share and to quote Kate Fleming on this one “Thanks for making me feel like shit.”   

But Kate’s story isn’t over just yet so we will continue. 

“Sir, during an unlawful search an item was found that relates to the sum of £50,000. You’re not under caution so anything you say to us at this time can’t be used in evidence. That’s loyalty right there.”

I know she’s having a dig at Ted’s previous comment about loyalty to Steve whilst he simultaneously reveals Steve’s issues from across the series to Kate, but I also like to think it’s a dig at the fact that despite Ted continuously undermining Kate, she has still stuck by him and still fought his corner - to an extent. But the fact she does stand up to Ted and isn’t afraid to do so is something I have to give her, she is staying very true to her character there. 

I think this has been pointed out before and although it probably is a reach but this is Kate’s reaction after Ted says “…of a woman I cared deeply about…” 

I do think that this is a moment where we’re meant to assume that Kate could be thinking about Jo as a result of Ted’s words. The focus is on Kate’s reactions rather than Steve’s so I think it’s a fair assumption/association to make and it’s not out of the realms of possibilities. 

“If I decide to come back.”

“Will you?”

“Well someone’s got to keep you lot in line.” 

She just can’t stay away from it, no matter how hard she tries. AC-12 will always pull her back. 

“You don’t realise what you’ve got until it’s gone.”

It’s a loaded statement from Kate and comes with many meanings to it, her missing AC-12 ( to an extent) and wanting back in, her missing her friendship with Steve and now losing Jo without having the chance to tell her how she really feels/that she wasn’t pretending. 

“You just going to stick to the one drink?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Still early enough to drive up to Liverpool.” 

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to keep seeing Steph.”

“But you want to?”

“Yeah. But what chance has it got?”

“You wanna be careful mate, you’re going to end up on your own.”

Having to read between the lines here again but Kate is encouraging Steve to go for Steph because she can’t go for Jo. It makes sense when you consider how much those two relationships have been paralleled against each other, one was doomed from the beginning but at least the other has a chance to *be* something. And this conversation could’ve been spun differently to acknowledge Kate and Jo’s relationship also:

“But what chance has it got?”

“More chance than me and Jo.”

It’s really that simple. I’m fine with subtext, it works sometimes. Not everything has to be said. But across the whole series Kate and Jo have been everything but. Everything that has happened between them has been obvious and deliberate. So the fact it got dropped to subtext in the last episode doesn’t make sense? If their relationship from the beginning had been pure subtext then fine it works, but like I said, it hasn’t. Kate and Jo’s relationship needed to be addressed and acknowledged, otherwise why the set up if you’re never going to bring it up properly? 

Okay, you can argue that it dropping to subtext and having to read between the lines is a representation for how Kate is having to suppress her feelings for Jo but your audience deserve better than that Jed. And not to sound like a stuck record but you don’t have your character go through massive development for her just to end up as the exact same person she was before she went through said development. She has to change, even if it’s just a little bit. No one stays the same after what Kate has been through. 

 Which brings us to the therapy scene. 

“Me and my partner are separated.” 

I have also already spoken about the vagueness of this line so won’t go into it too much but, subtext again, she could also be referring to Jo. I would just like to point out as well that music that underplays the moment in which she talks about Steve is very different to the music that underplays the date scenes between Kate and Jo and the scenes between Steph and Steve so you could say that that rules out any allusion to a possible romance between Kate and Steve (and honestly thank God because there’s more sexual tension between two planks of wood than there are between Kate and Steve and if they EVER went down that route, another type of anger would escape my body because, just let women and men be friends without it being a *thing* please).

She looks so washed out and unhappy in this scene - a striking comparison to how she looked during E2. 

She looks drained but it’s understandable considering that this is the first time that’s properly opened up and given way to accepting her emotions and feelings - even if she isn’t addressing the elephant in the room. So, you could argue that this scene is that small change we have from Kate as a result of her development from across the series. But given that this scene, at a push, lasts 30 seconds, it’s not enough. I’m not expecting a half an hour scene of Kate opening up about everything but something a bit more than a nod to her kid and husband that she has only mentioned once throughout the entire series - along with a couple of text messages in the first episode. It just felt as though this scene was chucked in because they couldn’t show Steve going to therapy without showing Kate going as well, considering that they’ve both been through similar ordeals. 

But I’ll take it because it’s still part of Kate’s development, in a sense.

Digging into it more, it’s very obvious that Kate has lost the happiness we seen her with at the beginning of the series, she’s lost her warmth - a warmth that was depicted via Jo through clothing and scenes they shared together. There is a warm light in that scene but it’s situated behind Kate, a visual representation of how Jo is in her past now and how the loss of warmth in her life has left her cold and miserable - which further explains how she comes across in this episode. 

I’m going to return my earlier point of Kate not necessarily being happy at AC-12 here. I’ve mentioned throughout how Kate is AC-12 through and through and she will never truly escape it. She goes back to AC-12 in the end because it’s her home, it’s where she feels safe and comfortable but that doesn’t mean to say it makes her happy. And I think the fact that when we see her at the end of this episode and we see that she is the most unhappy she has been this entire series, it’s meant to signify that (and like I mentioned before, there were a few moments throughout S5 & S6 that emphasise how she might feel that undercover work/being in anti-corruption might just not be for her anymore). 

Kate set Jo free from the OCG but who’s going to set Kate free from AC-12? Jo did for some time, made Kate realise the life she could have outside of anti-corruption but that got ripped away from her and now she’s gone back to them, tail between her legs and probably feeling even worse than she had when she left in the first place.

Questions I wanted to address throughout this piece, is Kate Fleming a master manipulator?

Yes, to an extent. She knows how to use people and their feelings to her advantage. She knows how to get information out of people, we have seen that time and time again across the show, but it’s only ever under the guise of being a UCO and half the time I don’t think she enjoys it all that much (as we see in S5 with her allusions to that there). Outside of being undercover Kate is a genuine person, we see that via the connection she makes with Jo. She never pushed Jo for information, they built up trust between them and shared a bond. Jo worries that Kate would go running back to AC-12 with all the dirt on Jo but Kate reassures her, “I would never tell them personal stuff.” And she doesn’t. We know that she could, we see her do it with Tony Gates the moment she finds out the extent of his relationship with Jackie Laverty. But the fact she doesn’t, is telling us that outside of being undercover, Kate, despite what people might think, is an authentic person who can form relationships without it being faked for beneficial reasons.

Are her motives clear?

Not always. On the surface she is quite a hard person to read but once you pick her apart and piece everything together, you realise that she is an incredibly smart woman who, despite holding her cards close to her chest, plays them very well. She doesn’t reveal things easily which is testament to her being a good undercover officer but when you dig into it, I think her motives can be clear. She’s very career-driven, often putting that above everything else. She always want to get the job done and to the best of her ability. As I’ve mentioned throughout, she is the embodiment of AC-12, integrity and truth. She very much holds up the law. 

That doesn’t make her innocent and doesn’t mean she doesn’t bend the truth/law to her all the time either. But I do think that’s Jeds way of saying that no matter how hard you try to be good, you’re always going to end up in tricky situations that you have to worm your way out of, as depicted by Steve’s quote in S2 “Maybe there are some people out there who always tell the truth and ones who always lie. The rest of us choose our moments.” 

How has Kate been developed across the show? 

In short, she hasn’t been developed all that much and where she has been developed it’s been reversed by the end of it. From S1-5 she remains pretty much the same person, not much bothers her or effects her. Partly think that’s because of her burying her emotions and her trauma but I don’t want to give Jed too much credit where it isn’t due. 

S6 was where we seen the most development from Kate. We seen a whole new side to her, we seen her experiencing things for the first time, having feelings that have never been delved into where Kate has been concerned. S6 Kate felt miles apart from S1-5 Kate, or at least she did until E7. Kate had the potential to be fleshed out and to be shown that not even Line of Duty’s resident heroine is free from trauma and emotions but that, like I’ve said, got scrapped for the sake of a political point. We needed more than a 30 second therapy scene to address the issues and dilemmas going on in Kate’s head. We needed the relationship that she had been involved in, that had been set up, to be acknowledged and addressed. That relationship with Jo was so integral and important to Kate’s development, it needed to be brought up, even if it was just in relation to Kate’s development and Kate’s character. 

Jo and Kate were never going to end up in a relationship, it was doomed from the beginning but it still brought about a change in Kate and her character deserved to have that tied up and acknowledged to an extent, at the very least. We, as an audience, deserved that also. Kate went through so much in this series and the fact that all we got was a 30 second scene therapy scene to address it is, quite frankly, insulting.

I don’t care that Buckells was H, looking back on it’s obvious. I understood the political point of it and Jed was making a good point, in a sense. But with shows like Line of Duty, where it’s main characters remain constant throughout you have a due diligence to develop them and flesh them out into 3D characters who have good sides and bad sides - and that goes for ALL of them, Kate included. And she is but to an extent because she isn’t explored enough. Jed will start it, pave ways she could go and then forgets about it. As much as we all follow along for the plot and wanting to find out who these corrupt officers are, we also become invested in the characters, we want to know more about them. We want to see them go through things, we want to be able to relate to them and go on journeys with them. 

As much as we watch for the plot, we’re also watching for the characters. Like come on how many of us shouted “Oh God Steve, watch your back!” When the van toppled over and not “Oh shit they’re about to be ambushed!” I could go on but you get my point. The main plot is interesting and well thought out but we’re also watching the characters and we want to see them be developed with justice. 

Kate Fleming is a complex character and she deserved to be fully developed throughout S6 (and the whole show considering, you know, she’s a main character) and didn’t deserve to have that development fizzled out for political point scoring.  

And if you made it this far, well done. Have a drink. 

#line of duty #lod #kate fleming #long post #oh christ #this is 17k words of utter nonsense #but if you read it thank you <3 #line of duty spoilers #lod spoilers #analysis

[lightsinthedistancee]

Darkness : Poe Dameron x Reader

Pairing: Poe Dameron x Reader

Words: 1.4k

Excerpt: “Darkness is a time of peace for you. A time to crawl into soft sheets, to curl up against your pilot. Some nights, to feel him lazily press a soft kiss to your forehead before his breath levels out in sleep. Others, to feel his hands roaming your body, feel him inside you.”

Summary: A short talk to Poe is always enough to cure a case of loneliness.

Warnings: Some sexual references

A/N: This is for @autumnleaves1991-blog Writer Wednesday. I actually originally meant for this to be a perhaps 500 word-ish Drabble but it ended up way longer obviously. But I’m really proud of it and love the concept of Writer Wednesday, so hope you guys enjoy! (Also, we’re just gonna pretend that phones and phone booths exist in the Star Wars universe...).

You’ve always found something lovely in darkness.

It’s simple, quiet, a constant that never changes, that rolls around at roughly the same time each night. Settles over cities and towns and every being in the galaxy in a thin blanket. Darkens faces into comforting anonymity, conceals the activities of lovers, provides peace in slumber for the weary.

There is a saying: One should not be afraid of the dark, but of what lies in it.

And after years of life, years of travel, years of experiencing the galaxy, you know that nothing sinister hides beneath darkness. No monsters, no demons, no ghosts. It is something that simply exists with no ulterior motive, something that is debatably hard to come by these days.

Darkness is a time of peace for you. A time to crawl into soft sheets, to curl up against your pilot. Some nights, to feel him lazily press a soft kiss to your forehead before his breath levels out in sleep. Others, to feel his hands roaming your body, feel him inside you.

In those times, darkness is there, still a constant. Hiding his features, hiding those eyes you adore during the daytime, allowing you to become entirely tactile, to simply feel him to the fullest, void of the distraction one’s most used method of perception, sight,  provides.

Yet tonight is a rare night. Your feet hit pavement as you walk quickly, hands in your coat, head bent towards the ground. You’ve been on this Outer Rim planet for nearly two months, gathering intelligence undercover, maintaining little to no contact with the Resistance, and therefore, Poe.

The darkness seems stronger than ever tonight. It slithers up and down the sides of buildings, seems to wrap around you in strings. In this moment, it is not simply a cover—it is suffocating.

The loneliness had been getting to you. Too many days going by a name that is not your own, too many days living in constant fear, too many days away from the touch of someone that’s always able to take your mind off of everything.

And that’s exactly what you need right now. A distraction. A brief moment to bind you back to everything you know, something you are slowly, imperceptibly slipping away from in your mind. The buildings seem to tower over you, to dwarf you. It’s an intimidation act, and you feel it’s working.

It feels as if you can sink into the asphalt, become one with the soil that had been so cruelly compressed by man-made rock. As if you can sink beneath and become one with the dead, the figurative and the literal that had most likely been so barbarously worked to death to build this historic city in the dark days of the galaxy.

You round a bend, turning onto the main street, and your eyes, adjusted to the dark, flare painfully as light hits you. You snap them shut on instinct, flinching. However, the object of your discomfort is not an unknown. This route had been walked by you every day the last two months, and the light is the same phone booth you’d been using to transmit information back to the Resistance due to the anonymous, unmonitored, and therefore, rare quality of it.

It is hardly used anymore, for everyone has their own personal holos, and this one is particularly beat up. It’s translucent walls are cloudy, it’s metal backing dented. Nowadays, it is probable that is it only frequented by drunks and Spice addicts and, well…you.

There is something ironic about the fact that this small, dilapidated booth is your only connection back to D’Qar.

But not ironically, perhaps in a poetically symbolic manner, it also shines bright in the darkness, eradicates the very thing that had been suffocating you moments earlier. It is almost a physical embodiment of hope.

It is also a universal rule that hope births more hope, and an unwise desire comes over you. One that could put the whole operation at risk. But resisting the temptation, it hurts. It’s agonizing, and you want to give in to it. You want to hear one voice. One voice that can wrap you in softness, encourage your imagination to conjure up the sensation of his touch.

And before you know it, you’re in the booth, dialing a long string of numbers you’ve memorized by now. A voice of a communications officer sounds.

You state your name.

“Security code?” the officer asks.

“Six nine eight oh seven three.”

Your eyes nervously glance around. Despite having done this a few times, the experience still makes your heart race. You can only hope that any observer would see only an ordinary lone figure, silhouetted in the light, making an emergency call to a friend because she drank too much or got her wallet stolen.

“You got information?”

“No,” you respond, letting out a soft breath and lying through your teeth. “I need you to transfer me to Commander Dameron. I have a hunch regarding something naval, and I need his opinion.”

You silently chide yourself at your quickness to over explain.

But luckily, the communication officer says nothing. “Transferring now,” he says.

You thank him, leaning against the inner wall of the booth, hovering the phone directly next to your ear. Moments of silence pass before a voice breaks it.

“Hello?” says Poe.

Every point of tension in you seemed to relax in a moment as your eyes slowly close. The timbre of his voice washes over you, through you. “Hey,” you whisper.

“Sweetheart?” He sounds confused. Above all, tired.

“Did I wake you?” you ask, feeling bad all of a sudden. The high that had been coursing through your veins moments earlier plunges back to the ground. The intensity with which you feel it is irrational, yet nothing in you mind is steady.

“Yeah, but that’s okay,” he replies, a slight urgency to his voice. “Is something wrong?”

You picture him in your shared bed back on D’Qar, shirt off like usual. Propped up on one elbow, sheets falling to his waist, holo to his ear, concern on his features. Concern at his love calling him in the middle of the night, her voice shaking.

“Nothing’s wrong…I just…I….” Your voice trails off, and a silence a bit too long elapses.

“Baby?” he asks.

Your breath trembles slightly as you let it out. “This was a mistake,” you mumble. “I’m sorry, just—“

He interjects at the tone of finality in your voice. “Hey…don’t go, sweetheart.” You hear him shift, perhaps sitting up. “Just talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“I miss you,” you blurt out. You’d meant to say it more eloquently, less directly, but that’s not something you have the energy for right now. “I miss everyone back on D’Qar. This assignment…it’s the most least contact with base I’ve ever had, and—why am I even telling you that? You know that.” You let out a frustrated breath, gathering your thoughts. He patiently waits, something you’re grateful for. “I’m just…having a hard time. That’s all.”

His energy transmits well through the phone. He’s thinking, the gears in his mind turning. You can feel the helplessness, for there is undeniably little he can do. “I miss you, too,” he finally says. “It’s a few more weeks, baby. I know you’ve got it in you…”

It’s a simple sentence, yet nearly reinvigorating in a way. Nothing that immediately lifts your mood, but perhaps something that briefly abates the hollow feeling within you.

“I’ll be there the moment you’re back.” His tone is soft, a little raspy with tiredness, slightly reminiscent of the way he tells you how much he loves and how amazing you are in a post-sex haze of exhaustion. It’s an odd relation, but the sense of peace that both tones hold is something you always cling to. “I’ll be there to kiss you. To hold you.” He pauses. “To take you to bed….”

The way his voice, on the last statement, walks the line between humorous and genuinely seductive makes you laugh quietly. It’s neither a common nor desirable combination.

“There’s that beautiful laugh,” he says softly, letting out a breath, returning to his previous demeanor. “I’ll be there, baby. I know you know that.”

You nod even though he can’t see you. Air brushes past your lips as your eyes flutter shut. “I know.”

..::::.. ..::::.. ..::::.. ..::::..

Taglist (for everything): @dark-academics-and-florals @theultimateslashgirl

Taglist (for Poe): @synical-paradox @spider-starry @paper-n-ashes

If you wish to be tagged on any of my future works, just let me know or do the form on my Masterlist if that’s easier!

Based on this Writer Wednesday pic:

#Writer Wednesday #poe dameron #poe dameron x reader #star wars #star wars fanfiction #poe dameron fanfiction

[thebiscuiteternal]

Since the exchange reveal was today, I can finally cross-post this here.

“A Working Relationship” Sci-Fi AU, Artificial Intelligence, Secret Histories, Intrigue, Finding Your Place (and getting a crush on your android boss)

__________

“I don’t care how smart he is, you’re not putting a Jin on this ship!”

His first reaction is a flush of anger. The second is a barely-smothered explosion of laughter.

In all the insults he’d borne over his parentage in his lifetime, this had to be the first time in… well… ever that it was his father’s side being disparaged.

But when he peeks around the corner and sees who’s arguing with the Admiral, he immediately understands why.

The speaker is a perso-core droid.

Meng Yao has no illusions about the treatment of the droids custom-ordered by the ports his father owns. He’s even met some of them, when they came to drop off another meagre payment to his mother. Delicate, beautiful dolls designed for little more than to be stared at… or played with.

Easily broken, and just as easily replaced.

His still healing ribs give a throb. He can relate to the feeling.

He can use it, too, he realizes, a plan coming together in the back of his mind as he watches the pair bicker.

“Excuse me.”

They both turn at the sound of his voice, and the droid’s eyes narrow, photoreceptors and the light patterns decorating his body briefly shading closer to red than their usual pale green. He’s reasonably sure that if that long dark hair and silver skin weren’t synthetic, he’d be bristling like an offended Firenian Raptor Cat.

It’s an uncomfortably attractive look.

He immediately squashes that thought, then bows, carefully emphasizing the stiff discomfort of the motion. “I apologize for causing any discord. It’s true that my father is Jin Guangshan, but I have no association with the company, nor the ports that it owns.”

“You approached him for work two stationary cycles ago,” the droid says, voice tinged with suspicion.

He had been made aware his background had been searched from the moment he’d been identified as a Jin, however, so he is ready for that. “My late mother desperately wished for me to join the family business. His, of course, not hers. But visiting him has proven to be a mistake. It’s clear now that my father has a very similar opinion of his illegitimate children as he does his droids.”

He opens one of the side panels of his flight suit to show off the bruises that still prominently mottle his skin despite two visits to a medical ward he could afford.

It’s the briefest flicker-flash, a barest twitch of synthetic musculature that most people wouldn’t notice on a human, much less a droid. But the reaction is there, and he can feel the emotional shift in the air as the droid and the Admiral look at each other, the argument between them now silent instead of snapped.

After a few moments that surely feel longer than they actually are, the droid makes a noise that would have been a huff from anyone with lungs and turns away. “One full planetary rotation,” he grumbles, then stalks away down the hall.

If the droid means the planet they’re currently in orbit over, that’s thirty days by the timers in the ports. “Is that to be my entire billet?” he asks cautiously, not wanting to let it sound like a complaint.

Admiral Nie shakes his head. “Probationary period. If Sang-er declares you a fit for Baxia’s crew by then, we’ll re-draw your contract for a more formal position.”

“You value his opinion very highly,” Meng Yao says, careful to keep his tone neutral, lest the Admiral think he’s probing.

Which he is, but-

“As well I should. He's been serving with our ships since before I was born, after all; he knows the fleets inside and out down to the last fastening and half-byte of data."

Something about the way the Admiral says that lingers in the back of his mind even as he’s herded down to the ship’s infirmary to have his ribs properly treated. It’s hardly uncommon for the owners of a particularly well-made droid to brag about them, but to his ear it sounds… odd.  

Less like an owner pleased with his possession and more like a younger brother proud of his elder.

He’s finished settling into his cabin, what few things he owns unpacked and stowed away, when something twigs in his brain.

Sang-er.

It couldn’t possibly be what he’s thinking… could it?

---

The first week of Meng Yao’s temporary new job starts with a surprise and ends with a realization.

Given his prior experiences with employers and Sang-er’s clear dislike of him, he braces himself for the bottom of the heap and jobs like cleaning over-boiled acid out of engine cells. Instead, Sang-er puts him through a mentally grueling -and yet actually somewhat satisfying- examination of his skills, then unceremoniously shoves him straight into financial work.

Tracking numbers and allocating data has always been something he could do in his sleep if he so wished; though he doesn’t exactly let his mind wander, the tasks are easy enough that they allow him space to observe.

He wasn’t wrong, he decides, in pegging the relationship between his human boss and his mechanical one as being something akin to siblings.

Which really only lends further credence to the theory his other observations are steadily building.

Observations like how Sang-er is simply too advanced for a perso-core droid. He sifts and sorts information, skimming star maps and calculating alterations via hard-light illusions generated from his own body, and does it all with a speed and ease that should have overtaxed him a hundred times over. Small-droid cores simply aren’t designed to hold or process that much information that fast.

But a ship’s core, on the other hand…

When he’d been small, a friend of his mother’s had dreamed of one day leaving and joining the Qinghe fleets, drawn by the near legendary status of Nie Zhuyun and her ship Huaisang. A captain so sharp and daring and a ship so clever and nimble that people claimed she had somehow bonded her mind to the core to make them a perfect symbiosis.

How many of the tales his mother’s friend told were true were arguable, but what had been true was that when the Wen Chancellor had finally succeeded in his near singleminded obsession to have the ship destroyed, its core had never been found in the wreckage.

Nie Mingjue had said that Sang-er had been serving the fleet since before his birth, but that didn’t mean it had always been in the same body.

And then there is the second most important observation: Sang-er never leaves Baxia.

He’d been unsure about that one at first. Even though they are docked, most of the crew remain onboard a good portion of the time. But after a few days of watching, it has become clear that while even the Admiral occasionally goes out into the port for one bit of business or another, Sang-er stays on board at all times, sometimes with some gentle but pointed reminding on the Admiral’s part.

As if the droid is being purposely kept hidden.

And he can guess from whom. His father has a very good business relationship with Wen Ruohan; even though the ship is docked in a port that isn’t directly owned by the Jin family, there’s a fairly large presence of both Jin and Wen contingents. If he’s right, and Sang-er really is a reconstruction of Huaisang’s core-

He stiffens, then reaches out to stop the flow of numbers he’d been monitoring.

When he had gone to that first medical ward… there had been…

He closes his eyes and sucks in a sharp breath, then lets it out slowly.

"There a problem?" a nearby officer asks.

"No, sir. Just needed a moment for the eyes," Meng Yao says, and then gets back to work.

---

His thoughts nag at him for the rest of the designated day hours and follow him into his bed that night. They’re still plucking at his nerves the next morning, annoying him enough that he barely touches the breakfast he would have gladly stolen -maybe even committed violence to get- from a rich man’s table not too long ago.

If he's right, then he has inadvertently picked up some information that would be extremely valuable to the Admiral and Sang-er.

But to use that information, he will have to do something he absolutely despises.

Tell everything.

There is no safety in full disclosure. Keeping things close to his chest had been the only way he’d survived the arduous journey between the port he’d grown up in and the central hub where his father resides.

But Sang-er has already proven very capable when it comes to checking up on those he does not trust. If he withholds anything that he overheard, and Sang-er finds out he’d done so, then being ousted from the ship is probably the best thing he could expect.

And… he... likes it here.

It’s hard to admit that, even just in his own mind. He’s only been employed on Baxia for a week.

And yet something in his heart just settles at the idea of staying here in a way he can’t remember feeling in years. The Admiral checks up on his wellbeing. His other crewmates treat him as his station befits. He’s comfortable in the jobs he’s been assigned. Even Sang-er -for all the droid’s aversion to him- judges his work fairly and takes his opinions into genuine consideration. Comparing the crew he’s found himself with to the tittering sycophants who’d taken such glee in watching his father reject him-

He bites his tongue to stop the flow of bitterness before it becomes overwhelming and clouds his thoughts.

The point is that, for the first time in a very long time, he has found himself a place he does not want to give up.

If that means having to lay all his cards on the table, then… then fine.

He reaches a point in his tasks that he can safely pause for lunch, but instead of going down to the dining hall, he goes looking for Sang-er.

---

After more than a little unsure wandering and some eventual directions from a couple of helpful crewmates, Meng Yao finds the droid in question in one of the small-ship hangars, surrounded by a star map and several of their scout pilots.

For a moment, his breath catches in his throat.

In the dim lighting of the hangar, Sang-er's eyes and the geometric designs decorating his form glow brighter, mingling with the reflective light of the illusory stars against silvery skin. With one fingertip, he draws flight paths and points of interest, directing models of their ships less like he is ordering soldiers and more as if he is conducting dancers.

It’s hard not to stare, and in that moment he understands better some of the particulars of the information he’s about to relay.

Drawing up his nerve, he straightens his back and approaches the knot of people just in time for the lights to come back up and the star map to vanish into the palm of Sang-er’s hand. A couple of the younger scouts wave to him, drawing the droid’s attention in his direction.

“Please excuse me if I’m interrupting anything, but may we speak in private?” he asks quickly, before any potential judgements can be made.

Sang-er regards him silently, expression completely neutral, then tilts his head in acquiescence. “You’ve all got your assignments,” he says to the scouts. “See you in fourteen days.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Follow me,” Sang-er says as he turns on his heel, and Meng Yao obeys.

Their destination turns out to be the hangar manager’s office, or what would have been the hangar manager’s office if they didn’t have Sang-er. The doors close behind them with a swish and click, but Meng Yao barely hears it over his own heartbeat.

He swallows hard as he watches the droid lean against the desk.

Okay.

All cards on the table.

"Wen Ruohan knows that you're Huaisang."

Sang-er doesn’t flinch or stiffen or show any other reaction that would give away a human but, like their first meeting, Meng Yao feels the subtle shift around them. "Interesting. And you've come to this conclusion because…?"

It’s not an outright denial. No automatic accusations of wild imaginations or delusions or… anything like that. Just a quiet demand to show his work, like the evaluations before. Meng Yao can’t help but find it oddly soothing for this to be treated as nothing more than a basic report despite the severity of what he’s revealing.

“There’s a specific medical ward in the district of Koi Port that most of the residents pretend doesn’t exist. At the time I was… dismissed, it was the only one I could afford to visit. One of the other patients there was complaining that a job for the Wens had been taken from him and handed over to shifters employed by the Jins.”

That gets a visible reaction as Sang-er’s hands clench on the edge of the desk he’s leaning on.

It’s an entirely understandable response. Shifters are the worst of the worst when it comes to orchestrating and carrying out the theft of high-end droids, and their services don’t come cheap at all. For someone like Wen Ruohan, who already has so much power of his own, to enlist them from another company…

Well, the implication is clear.

“Go on,” Sang-er says, and Meng Yao doesn’t fail to notice the tension that’s entered his voice.

“He didn’t specifically describe the target, but he did mention it was aboard the flagship of the Qinghe fleet, and that the backer had ordered it to be captured fully intact, or else. No offense to any of the other droids here, but there’s no one other than you who could possibly garner that kind of demand. And no other reason why Wen Ruohan would make it.”

“I see.” Sang-er’s expression still hasn’t changed, but the words are decidedly even more clipped. “And what price would a Jin expect for information like this?”

There’s the suspicion that he’s been waiting for.

All cards on the table, Meng Yao reminds himself for what may be the tenth time. Or the twentieth, he admittedly has lost track. If he doesn’t remain honest now, he stands to lose everything.

He allows himself one more nervous swallow before answering. “I don’t know… probably something obscene, honestly. I want to be extended to a full contract.”

“And?”

“That’s it.”

Sang-er blinks at him, unable to catch the surprise from flickering across his face quickly enough, though it’s quickly schooled away. “That’s it,” he repeats, arching one eyebrow disbelievingly.

“You’ve already given me nearly everything I was looking for when I originally went to meet my father. I want to keep that,” Meng Yao says. “The rest… I will come to terms with eventually.”

There’s no immediate response, and the silence stretches uncomfortably between them as Sang-er appraises his words and everything else. It’s hard not to squirm under the stare.

Then Sang-er’s expression visibly softens, and the sight nearly knocks the wind out of him, it catches him so off guard .

Oh, that’s just not fair.

He quickly recovers, standing straight as Sang-er pushes himself away from the desk and walks past him.

“Well, come on, then,” the droid says, and he absolutely does not shiver at the new warmth in his voice.

“Where are we going now?”

“To give my recommendation to Mingjue and have you moved to more permanent quarters. And then we will start planning to deal with this new development.”

We will start planning, he says.

Meng Yao finds he very much likes the sound of that.

#mdzs #nie huaisang #nie mingjue #jin guangyao #fanfic #sangyao #in the future anyway

[butwhatifidothis]

Do you personally believe that the war was started with good intentions? (I'm asking this to several blogs and wish to see opinions)

Ahhh, now that's a toughie.

It depends heavily on how sincere you believe Edelgard is with what she says she wants to do. If you genuinely believe that Edelgard genuinely believed war was the best - and only - way to achieve a better quality of life for those who are overlooked, weak, and/or born on the lower rung (among the myriad of other descriptors for those under privileged), then, well, yes, the war in your view would have been started with good intentions.

Me personally though? I just don't think so, really. imo there's just too many things about the war, what it ultimately resulted in, and the things brought up by CF's endings that are never said to be resolved - with Byleth, who is supposed to bring out the best of the routes' potential outcomes, being present at that - for me to honestly believe it was started with good intentions.

Edelgard states that the Kingdom and Alliance ought to be reunited back under Adrestia despite them being two independent nations with long-standing cultures separate from Adrestia (which are forgotten after the war according to CF's ending narration),

she mentions nothing of the starvation of Adrestia's citizens due to her war (you have to recruit and then talk to Ashe to find this out) (this would be fine - well, not really fine, but at least more acceptable - if, again, she hadn't been the one causing this starvation through her war),

she puts the people in direct danger in three out of four routes,

she continues her war despite initiating it with the stated goal of only taking down the Church but continuing it after she's disbanded the Church,

she lies about the Church dropping a bomb on Arianrhod to her allies in order to hide TWS' actions from them - people who pose a far more direct and larger threat to the people of Fodlan than the Church ever has, and whom she knows have already caused immense harm to her citizens in particular (Remire)

FEH mentions her not having any solid political reforms even after the war is finished which shows how little thought she put into her plans (not having an idea of what to do would be fine/more acceptable, if she hadn't started war certain that her way was the best for Fodlan. She can't say that and then also not be ready to implement some form of government without at best being wholly irresponsible),

the entire basis of the little political structure she outwardly describes would only further help the strong and do nothing for the weak (meritocracy will only elevate those with access to the means of elevation and even then is based entirely on what Edelgard views as valuable),

the people having to be spied on by Hubert constantly due to the amount of rebellions and risings that happen throughout her reign (Dorothea's paired ending with Hubert),

And with that last point mentioning endings, a large amount of CF's endings showcase that Fodlan harbors many of the traits Edelgard supposedly instigated the war for:

undue inheritance granted by birth (Sylvain and Lorenz each have an ending showcasing this to be true),

nobles holding ownership of land,

the loss of choice regarding political standing (Bernadetta being forced to take on House Varley's head position in at least two endings),

one person holding amalgamated power that wasn't rightfully theirs to begin with and that they have by forcefully taking power from others (Leicester and Faerghus being conquered, nobles being stripped of long-held power immediately after her coronation),

censorship of history being present after the war (Dorothea's paired ending with Edelgard, as well as propaganda being deployed even within the ENG ver. of the game, shown by Hubert outright saying that Edelgard hium and Byleth should "control the flow of [this] information")

With all this in mind, I can't honestly say I believe Edelgard had good intentions when starting the war. Every metric that would lean to that idea - keeping the people safe, wanting to elevate the less privileged, wanting to instate legislations that she has put ample thought in that she believes will help the people eventually, throwing away corrupt practices she perceived were being conducted by those she strove to overthrow - all don't happen. Even DLC bringing in Constance and giving Edelgard some sort of idea of what to do in one area of politics isn't stated to have done anything in the ending the support is attached to.

The best I can say for Edelgard's intentions is that she wants for humans to rely on their own strength to become strong, but even that idea is tainted by her continuation of that idea being to strip away support pillars many people rely on to get through life because they are based on a divine presence, not a human one. It means that Nabateans are not allowed to be present in Fodlan - or at the absolute minimum, allowed to hold any form of power - in her mind, because they "lack humanity." It means that the religious are weak-willed and can't survive on their own. It means that they are not allowed in her Empire, as shown by all four routes expelling them in some way (even CF, when she says before she initiates the war that Rhea as well as the servants of the Goddess must be killed in walking her path).

Like... to expand on one of the examples, Dimitri and Claude do not start the war, they have no idea that the implementation of political reforms must be made in the aftermath of war must be made, and yet their solo endings, while still vague on the exact details, give us an idea of how they're going about actually implementing the changes they want to do, with these changes being said to have a visible, positive impact on the people.

Dimitri installs a participatory government that allows for the common people to have a say in politics in order to have their voices and concerns heard directly from them as well as improving foreign relations in general, and Claude installs new trade routes between Fodlan and Almyra and sends forth Almyran reinforcements to assist in Fodlan's skirmishes with Imperial loyalists in order to foster better relations between the two nations. They are very simple explanations for how they're ruling and how they're accomplishing their goals, but they're a starting point. We have some clue as to how they get from Point A to Point B, and we see that they have a very clear, very directly positive result.

Edelgard? The one who started the war? Who started it with the presumption that she knew how best to rule it? Who knew that she needed to rule and implement changes in the aftermath of war ahead of time? She simply "reformed the class system." No how's, not even a simple one, she simply - supposedly - does it. And again, FEH (as well as some supports, like Ferdinand's) shows that she hasn't thought this through, that that part of ruling wasn't a priority for her when she started the war.

To me personally, that's not a sign of someone with good intentions. It's another sign that she mostly started the war in order to get back what she thought was rightfully hers, which was rulership of Fodlan under Adrestia's banner, with little care as to the outcome of her actions in getting that apparent birthright. None of the above results of her actions contradict this idea whatsoever, and many in fact bolster it (only she may decide who is worthy of promotion, only she may decide what the people are allowed to know of history, only under her watch may religion be allowed).

Now, does the setup of her having this intention make sense? Definitely, yeah. Being told by the one family member you have left of this supposed grand birthright that belongs to you and your country and how this evil race of godly beings is stealing it away from you and you must fight to get it back - after you've experienced the horrific lost of every single other family member you know and love to torture you were forced to witness and after you yourself were horrifically tortured and after you've come to the realization during the torture that the Goddess everyone loves and worships didn't help you - and with the torture happening to you in the first place (again, according to your one family member) because other people that aren't you and your family wanted power that rightfully belonged to you and your family....... uh, yeah, that can make more than a few people go a little extreme in their grabs for power. In that regard Edelgard is extremely sympathetic and understandable... just not good.

Again though, this is me personally! I'm not gonna sit here and say that seeing her intentions as good is an invalid view of Edelgard or anything. Hope I answered your question!

#anti edelgard #anti-edelgard #edelgard discourse #edelgard critical #just to be safe #was bout to take a nap and saw this ask lol #thought it was interestin' but imma take that nap #sorry for the long af answer lmao

[memryse]

thoughts and theories about the note from enderboo

(dsmp spoilers below! check ranboo's 29/4 stream if you don't know about this note.)

(note: enderwalking c!ranboo and regular c!ranboo are not separate personalities, i use "enderboo" and "awakeboo" as shorthand when talking about the two but please remember c!ranboo does not have multiple personalities! enderboo is still ranboo. also i can't be bothered to keep typing c! so everything from here is /rp)

the ideology certainly lines up with awakeboo's - he did have the whole plan to build a court and help people resolve things nonviolently. even if that's been abandoned now, it still correlates to ranboo's general dislike of conflict and taking sides. the difference is that enderboo is taking a more active stance, compared to awakeboo's typical passiveness. "he's me, but more wild" definitely checks out here.

however.

what it doesn't correlate with is what we already know about enderboo. which is admittedly not much, but still, there are some glaring contradictions there.

firstly: compare this to enderboo at the red banquet. did you guys see him doing any kind of conflict resolution there? protecting anyone? keeping anyone safe? cause i sure didn't. leaving a note to awakeboo saying "I WON" after the red banquet is... kind of demonstrating the exact opposite of that, actually. (note: "I WON" may not have been referring to the red banquet, if ranboo was enderwalking the entire time since his lore stream - it could have been in his inventory prior to the red banquet)

secondly: it goes against the lessons, and all the things enderboo has done related to those lessons.

"never fully trust anyone." this doesn't really seem like a good thing for someone who wants to help everyone and make life better for them.

"if you have the opportunity to gain a favour, take it." is this not directly taking advantage of conflict? for example, the shulker box deal. a deal that was proposed because foolish was scared people would try and take the shulker box from him. when enderboo asked for the war favour, he never said anything about foolish not taking sides. he only said that if a conflict arises, he may need a favour from foolish. he also talked for a bit about being good at manipulating people.

everything with the community house, hiding the disc, etc. that was quite the opposite of conflict resolution. like i don't think i need to explain any further.

there are a few reasons i can think of for why these contradictions exist.

enderboo lied. if "I WON" was referring to enderboo starting to gain more control/become stronger, and that he wants awakeboo to continue to remember, perhaps he would lie to gain awakeboo's trust...? i don't like this one personally because, again, "he's me, but more wild". they're not separate personalities, so their beliefs should align.

he was telling the truth, but has seriously messed up morals. perhaps enderboo thought the doomsday conflict would be worth...? causing doomsday would lead to one of two scenarios: either everyone is defeated by dream and gives up, or dream - the greatest source of conflict on the server - would be defeated and stop manipulating everyone else into fighting. doesn't explain all the other times he helped dream though.

enderboo had the same defeatist attitude as awakeboo about giving into dream. this is especially interesting if we consider enderboo to be ranboo's "active" side: awakeboo remained passive and essentially said to lie down and let dream blow up l'manburg because at least that way people aren't fighting with each other. enderboo, on the other hand, decided to actively help dream.

dream manipulated the shit out of enderboo. if enderboo thought dream was genuine about the whole "big happy family" thing - if he bought that lie and thought dream really wanted to help - it wouldn't be hard for dream to get him on his side. especially because dream has been working with enderboo for a long time, perhaps since before enderboo ever even developed a solid ideology. hell, maybe he only started seriously wanting to prevent conflict after dream went to prison, and prior to that dream was fully in control. i personally see something along these lines as the most likely because it explains the discrepancies in enderboo before and after getting banned from the prison. but it doesn't explain why he just watched at the red banquet. all i can really think of is that he has a bigger plan.

i'm hesitant to give any solid opinions on all of this just yet, because i prefer to build my theories on solid fact and as of yet there is not enough information about the enderwalk for me to do so. but i'm in favour of my final theory; it's the only way i can think of to explain why enderboo, who blatantly helped cause one of the biggest conflicts on the server, would suddenly be all about peace and harmony. because i'm not really a fan of the idea of enderboo lying and being utterly different from awakeboo. but then again i suppose if it were truly a force for good we wouldn't be getting so many horror elements. who knows! i sure don't, i just like exploring what we've seen in canon. probably also going to write up a list of confirmed facts we know about enderboo and any inferences i can make about them

#ranboo #c!ranboo #c!dream #dsmp #dream smp theory #dsmp theory #dsmp lore #lore post #dsmp spoilers #enderwalk saga #mcyt #dsmp analysis #mae post

[davethot]

Aysha is homophobic but more so in the realm of being lesbophobic. Remember that she completely removed all Rosemary interactions from Pesterquest for more Davekat, decided to push for Yiffy the cuckhold child to be forced into the narrative during Lesbian Visibility Day and has made sure to demean any positive Rosemary interactions in lieu of Davekat which she is solely invested in. Her being transphobic more relates to her poor handling of Jade (dog dicked sex fiend isn't good transfem rep)

You do realize you sound fucking insane right???? This is literally what I’m fucking talking about when I mentioned people in my og post about hs2 pointing fingers and giving someone a really harsh label such as LESBOPHOBIC because they didnt quite handle a lesbian couple EXACTLY how you would have.

First of all i want to mention that Aysha is non-binary poc and is married to a woman. This doesnt exempt her from possibly writing some shitty things, but its good to have perspective here. Shes not some cishet white person writing these characters.

So are you going to ignore the literal thousands of pages of the original comic where we had a PLETHORA of Rosemary interactions??? And absolutely no davekat? And if you remember Kanaya was still having hang ups with Vriska, so it only made sense that that was explored a bit in Pesterquest rather than jumping straight to Rose and Kanaya cuddling on a couch and spewing gay poetics at each other. Like I genuinely dont know what you fucking want.

Also i would like to point out that romance wasnt even the fucking focus of Pesterquest. Dave and Karkat’s interactions were barely anything more than characters mentioning them and them being in the same place together for one single ending and mspar implying that they had a feeling they were supposed to be good friends. Tbh it sounds like you and the people who often have this complaint are way more fucking obsessed with what’s going on with Davekat than Aysha or the rest of the team will ever be. Maybe you should redirect your efforts into creating more wlw content for Homestuck since you think the new team is so lesbophobic for portraying two grown ass women having some marital problems (and acting like that cant happen in the real world with real people literally every day).

You and tons of other people fucking love to point to Kanaya and Rose’s issues in hs2 and preach that it’s suddenly lesbophobic that theyre not happy go lucky 24/7. Again, Davekat didnt even fucking happen in the og comic. We had one flash where Dave rests his head on Karkat’s lap and they’re playing hopscotch on a poorly drawn dick on the ground, meanwhile Rose and Kanaya had comfortably been together for Awhile at that point. I just don’t understand how Dave and Karkat finally having a semi-functional and happy relationship in hs2 is promoting lesbophobia. Also we didnt even get to see the comic FINISH!! We dont KNOW what exactly was going to happen with Rose and Kanaya, and we arent going to for a long fucking time because it’s people like you who are perpetuating this narrative of the team and that theyre horrible awful people because they did two fucking things you dont agree with. It’s honestly fucking exhausting. And you know I can throw this right back at you right? Like, pretty homophobic of you to only be focusing on wlw ships and invalidating Davekat, one of the only healthy relationships PERIOD in Homestuck, not just a healthy mlm relationship. Like, pretty shitty of you anon :/ kind of homophobic of you fr.

And this isnt even mentioning the genuinely nice interactions we have seen with Kanaya and Rose in Homestuck 2. Everyone’s really fucking eager to forget that in meat Kanaya was wistfully looking out at the stars missing her wife and told Dave she’d do anything to get her back, esp since it’s implied that Rose was being manipulated pretty heavily by Dirk. But no, according to yall that never happened and Aysha + the rest of the team are just spitting on all wlw folks.

Also again I feel like youre coming to insane conclusions. You think it was a purposeful move that Aysha and the team introduced Yiffy on lesbian visibility day??? Like???? Also pretty lesbophobic of you to invalidate a child born from two women. Like hm pretty shitty of you anon. Rose and Jade explained why they did what they did, and tbh, again, we could have had more information if people like you didnt indirectly harass the creators and cause it to go on indefinite hiatus.

As for the Jade dog dick thing, I have multiple friends who are trans women who have issues with people blowing it out of proportion. Its important to remember that every trans woman is going to have a different opinion on this, and we shouldnt invalidate any of them, but at the same time what one trans woman says about it isnt the end all be all of the situation. Some trans women think this portrayal is transphobic, while plenty others think it isnt, and that people are making way too big of a deal out of it. Therefore I’m going to leave it at that. Personally I dont know if how Aysha and the team wrote Jade is transphobic and its not for me to decide. However, my trans friend would like to be quoted saying this:

“People claiming that the writers intended for Jade’s dick to be the driving force in her emotional and sexul appetite shows someone’s willingness to ignore Jade’s actual reasons for doing these things that she STATES in the actual text. All in favor of projecting their own transmisogynist reading onto the writers.”

This probably ended up being longer than my og post lmfao but fr anon im sick of people like you. Even if you didnt directly contact the creators of hs2, you’re literally the problem here. I wish you and others would stop throwing around these terms like lesbophobic, homophobic, transphobic, etc, because it literally makes those words lose meaning. Someone writing a lesbian couple having marital problems, especially in the context of Homestuck, is not fucking lesbophobic. And i hope i helped you understand that by throwing the terms back at you because tbh, im sure youre a good person with good intentions, and I would never seriously call you homophobic for this. But i hope you can have some fucking perspective and stop targeting marginalized authors and creators moving forward. Its embarrassing fr.

#homestuck #homestuck 2 #hs2 #i am literally so tired #please fucking stop this shit

[phantomphangphucker]

Ectober Day 30: Disguise - The Guise Of Change

When Danny died he really didn’t change much at all, and that was a problem. But ghosts only resembled their living selves rather than looking the same as they once did.

Danny’s well aware his disguise is flimsy at best, borderline non-existent at worst. The divide between his two halves was practically reliant on the fact that being half-dead was illogical and should be impossible. Like, literally and explicitly impossible; even in the opinion of ghost experts. Slapping on a jumpsuit and some colour changes does not a good identity-hiding costume make. He had felt a little jealous of Vlad in that regard. Put Masters and Plasmius next to each other and almost no one is going to think they’re even related. The face shape was pretty much the only similarity, but the shadows a ghosts glowing eyes could throw across their faces really changed the way their faces looked. Ancients, that’s probably the only reason his parents’ hadn’t recognised Danny Phantom’s face as being identical to their son's face. Same for the rest of his body honestly, his jumpsuit didn’t exactly hide his figure. If he lost his glow he would have probably be screwed. Utterly screwed.

Problem was, he couldn’t change his ghost form. That was literally just his body, his suit was basically a second skin. Hair couldn’t be dyed and if he wanted to wear a mask it would get constantly destroyed, and he’d have to carry it with him constantly. The chances of someone finding said mask on human Danny Fenton was too great a risk and absolutely would get him revealed in a heartbeat. And he wasn’t about to ask Vlad how the heck his ghost form looked so different from his human one. Even the guy's physique changed. Masters was a skinny man, Plasmius had a comically broad chest. But Danny’s not about to let that man think he’s learned anything from him. Vlad is not going to be his mentor in any shape, way, or form. Fuck that guy and his villainous ulterior motives.

So that had kinda left him in a bit of a pickle. So what did he do? Eh, what he usually does. Ignored the problem and hoped it went away, while also making his paranoia just that much worse. Did that usually work out for him? Hell no. It usually bit him squarely and directly in the ass soon rather than later. So whole ass, he expected to get bit; and probably by some stupid mistake or something ridiculously simple. Like someone taking a photo of him and accidentally turning on their phone’s colour invert. His parents’ tech messing up was always a possibility and had almost shattered his disguise more than once. To this day he is supremely glad that Dash is a bloody moron and that his dad is stupidly easily distracted. But standing in front of his mirror changing between his forms, he thinks he might just avoid that ass bite for once in his half-life.

Watching the muscle on his arm change, shrinking down in human form to the point where he’s borderline scrawny then bulking up in ghost form to the point where he thinks he’s got a more muscular look than Dash does. Even his bone structure seemed to be changing now. His ghost form had a muscular broadness that his human form simply didn’t. Even his hands got bigger in that strong man muscular way. It weirded him out a little actually. But his running theory was that all the fighting and his increasing ecto-level was all going to his ghost half, rather than his human one.

Sure he knows now that some of the other changes -like his fangs, claws, and tapered ears- were just him starting to develop into an adult ghost. His jumpsuit was going through its own changes naturally too, but that really doesn’t help him disguise himself at all. Plus the similarities to Dan’s jumpsuit, that he was starting to notice, was hard to feel happy about. At least he hasn’t started forming a cape or anything yet; even if that actually would help make his body look different between forms. Well okay, the pointiness did frame his muscles in a way that made them a little more noticeable. So he guesses it does help a little.

The wavy smoky look his hair was taking definitely hid its shape, he just seriously hoped it stays wavy thick smoke and doesn’t transition into full-on flames. Sure that would make his forms look even more different, but he’d rather his forms look similar than look like Dan. But... sighing and shaking his head at the mirror, Dan was his future self, that’s probably what he’s going to look like no matter what he does. Well, excluding the red eyes. ClockWork had told him how the eye colour change had been due to Core damage that the whole ‘tearing out his humanity’ thing caused. He used to tell himself that he wouldn’t wind up looking like Dan since future Vlad said Dan was a combination of Phantom and Plasmius. But nope, according to the much more trustable resource that is ClockWork, Phantom had cannibalised Plasmius in pretty much a psychotic bout of madness. Since apparently completely cannibalising another ghost can make you stronger and even steal their powers. Danny is never making use of that information.

Changing back human, another good thing was that none of the injuries he got ever scarred. Because no way could he explain all the kinds of scars he would have otherwise. Running a hand over his jaw, even his face was leaner in human form; and his cheekbones and eyes were a little shadowed/sunken like he didn’t quite eat or sleep enough, which he didn’t. He was starting to get facial hair in both forms though, at least it was kinda smoky in ghost form though. Running his thumb over the stubble, it annoyed the heck out of him how it was growing in as a pointy goatee and literally nothing he did seemed to change that. He’s pretty much resigned himself to the look at this point because he is not just shaving it off. He’s also resigned himself to Vlad making ‘approving’ and ‘mocking’ comments about it. Whatever, the guy can shove it.

Now, the only thing he didn’t like about the differences between his forms was that it wasn’t just his appearance. He actually was physically weaker in human form. He didn’t just look scrawny, he was scrawny. It was annoying as Hell and very often he forgot that he couldn’t lift something in human form that he could in ghost form. It almost annoyed him enough to make a damn point to workout in human form. Problem was, that would run the risk of his human form developing in the same way as his ghost one. He didn’t want to make his forms look even more similar. And Ancients, both Fenton and Phantom bulking up? Talk about suspicious. That would be just another thing for anyone suspicious of him to add to their lists of suspicious shit. So he’d rather put up with the annoyance and inconvenience of a weak human form. Hell, he wore baggy clothing to accentuate his skinniness.

Moving to flop down face-first in bed, changing between forms a bit just to feel his feet dangle off the bed slightly and then not at all. The height difference was something else getting annoying. He’s blaming that on him not eating enough, his ghost forms height had nothing to do with a good diet, unlike his human form. He honestly expects that as an adult there’s going to be a solid foot difference between his forms. Maybe more. Honestly? He’s just gonna have to get used to the differences. Even something as simple as rolling his shoulders or taking a deep breath felt so different between forms. But hey, it was worth his secret identity not being nearly as see-threw as glass. Now it was more like very foggy glass.

The personality differences he made a damn point to emphasis between his forms probably helped too, which used to be hard to do but now it just felt natural to be meek and timid while human then bold and carefree while ghost. Which Jazz worries wasn’t exactly healthy, for him to effectively be juggling two personalities, that he genuinely might have forcibly developed two personalities. Even his friends have pointed out how he’d act a little differently based on form even when it was just with them. But needs be musts. If he had a level of a split personality then so be it. Besides, being stronger made him feel bolder, being smaller made him feel like more of a pushover. That just seemed right and natural. Being tiny just makes people feel tiny. Being large in a muscular way just makes people feel imposing. That’s normal, right? Eh oh well, if it’s not then it’s not. He’s not normal in the first place anyway. And yeah, he wasn’t doing the whole superhero disguise thing even remotely normal or according to the movies and comic books. But fuck it, it seemed like it was going to work out for him, and he doesn’t have to carry around a suit or disguise crap. There will be no changing in phone-booths for him or wearing a jumpsuit under his clothing (which honestly? Talk about an easy way to get caught).

Hell, maybe those fictional heroes should be jealous of him. All he had to do was alter his molecular/genetic structure and the substance his body was made out of, not cart around a whole ass disguise and perpetually speed change. And now that his body was changing, well maybe he actually was lucky.

End.

#ectober #ectober2020 #ectober 2020 #danny phantom #phandom #introspection #secret identity #disguise #the quirks of being a halfa #fan fic #phan phic #my writing #have a fic suck my dick #phantomphangphucker #gothmoth #short

[subjecta5newtella]

alright fuck it it’s been about a week the blinding rage has simmered down into a tasteful anger stew so I’m gonna talk about the crank palace a little. technically this is probably spoilery, but I don’t really go into specific plot points

there’s... a lot of shit I can point to that’s wrong in the crank palace. blatant contradictions to things in the original trilogy. pacing. weirdly explicit descriptions of violence. some truly baffling choices made when it comes to dialogue. newt forgetting glader slang for some reason? everything about how sonya and newt’s sibling relationship is handled, which is still probably something I can’t talk about without going nuclear so i’m just gonna direct you to point 4 on sami newtedison’s excellent post here. 

some of these things just make it hard to read and enjoy from a technical perspective, and some of them show that there wasn’t enough care taken to make sure basic established in-universe facts weren’t directly overwritten. while all of those are warning flags in their own right, the issue at the core of tcp is, in my distinctly less than humble opinion, that newt himself is barely a character in his own novella.

obviously at the point where the story starts, he’s not going to be the exact same newt we’ve seen throughout the trilogy. partly that’s because we’re now actually in his perspective, partly it’s because the flare is progressing so quickly, and that would create some understandable differences. the problem here is not just that he’s kind of different; the problem is he’s hardly an actual character at all.

one of The Most Basic things about characters is that their history has an impact on them. this is not fucking groundbreaking, but I say this because I literally do not think it’s achieved here. aside from his resurfacing memories (which... even then is basically all stuff we already know from tfc) we do not learn anything about newt that is not established in the trilogy, which is an incredible waste. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that when people have expressed interest in newt’s POV, it’s to get information we don’t have from the earlier books, like his time in the glade, conversations he had that thomas didn’t see, anything we couldn’t see or easily extrapolate from thomas’ perspective.

thomas in book 1 has no memories. newt, theoretically, has over two years of them at this point, so why doesn’t it feel like his pre-series past exists any more than thomas’ does? i’m not about to subject myself to a reread just to 100% fact check this, but I don’t think we get any meaningful recollection of his time in the glade before main series canon begins. there would’ve been plenty of opportunities for these kinds of things to be woven in naturally, but more crucially, there are a couple places where I think pieces of his past should have absolutely come up, and they just... don’t. 

newt obviously has leadership experience as the glade’s second in command, and yet in tst is very vocal about not wanting to be the leader. when he’s kind of thrust into a leadership position in tcp, both of those things should affect the way he acts, and yet they don’t really seem to. if we’re looking for places to sprinkle in memories, this would be a really good one. he could be thinking about the point at which he became alby’s second, the reasons he accepted, and the anxieties associated with that, all in relation to his current situation. in tcp, becoming the leader of the group of cranks is just... straight up something that happens to him because he was a WICKED subject, with no real internal strife about it. I do not like the vibe of this whole plot point anyway, but im not gonna get into that. 

in a similar vein, I swear to god dashner forgot newt used to be a runner, because there are times where it should have logically come up. there’s a point at which newt talks about minho as a runner while giving absolutely no indication that he himself also used to be one, even though during the situation in question it would be relevant for him to have the skills and memories of his time as a runner (you could argue this was forgotten in any meaningful way as of tst because a similar thing happens, but i’m not gonna go on that rant rn). this is a crucial fucking character piece! based on a loose timeline, newt was a runner until probably ~6 months before tcp. it should have an impact on the way he acts and the way he evaluates situations.

regarding minho himself, newt’s descriptions of him feel like he read the wikipedia page, not like this was a) someone he’s been through over 2 years of highs and lows with and b) one of his only surviving friends in the first place, let alone one of the only ones from that original group. and minho’s hardly the only one that gets fucked over. alby? newt’s best friend as of the first book, with whom he co-ran the glade and who literally saved his life? mentioned once, as part of a list of the dead. those are the two that immediately come to mind as deserving better based on the way we’ve seen newt interact with them previously, but none of newt’s dynamics with existing characters feel lived-in at all. I think that contributes significantly to the fact that he feels so off, and frankly, not really wildly compelling a lot of the time despite being one of the most interesting and well written trilogy characters (there’s also times where his dialogue is just... weird and ooc, but im trying to stay out of nitpicking to that degree).

and to what end?? was dashner just too lazy to write in anything more than what’s established after this long? was it because creating any too-meaningful relationships with other characters could potentially take away from the thomas/newt dynamic that it seems like he’s relying on in order to stay relevant? even for people who go hard for newtmas, I can’t imagine it could really be considered a bonus to have one character’s past and other significant relationships stripped away. also?? even though he mentioned thomas’ name a lot, I don’t feel like we got that much of a sense of a meaningful connection there either. 

there were parts I liked about tcp, which may come as a fucking shock at this point, but still. keisha was a good character, a good break from the mold in terms of anything we’d seen before in the series, and I did honestly appreciate some of her interactions with newt. some of the minor characters were kind of interesting, and there were a couple small pieces that were... surprisingly well written? i think in terms of word choice and description, his writing has improved from what we see in the trilogy, so there’s my positive feedback. also, newt bitching about the lack of fruit and vegetable offerings at the crank palace was objectively funny as shit. one of the most genuine moments of Personality in the whole thing.

this could have been something. I think some pieces would’ve worked well as a short story, in which case I wouldn’t have expected nearly as much in terms of characterization and utilization of backstory. instead we just get a lot of suffering and not much out of it, because the one thing that could’ve made it worth it was an actual deeper understanding of this character and I truly don’t feel like we got that. 

#the crank palace #if you’re one of the people I’ve already ranted to I’m so sorry but at least this version is... cleaner #maybe #getting back into tmr is kind of fun in that I have gotten so much better at articulating my anger jkhfdsjkhdfjhk #love to be full of rage but with a College Degree #not that this like. Requires a college degree but still. it’s all gotta count for something might as well be this

[bevvydraws]

Luka Positivity

Yes I actually did write an essay on why I love Luka. also tagging the sweet and awesome @sleepysloth707 <3 

Okay so to start off with, I’m going to state right now that these are my observations, interpretations, and opinions regarding Luka. You’re not obligated to agree with me but I’d appreciate if you’re someone who views Luka as a boring/bland character that you take some of what I say into consideration. This is in no way meant to try and invalidate your view on Luka! He is just a comfort character for me and I’d like to show him a little love. With that out of the way, let’s discuss the issues I’ve seen people have with Luka’s character, discuss what we know/can infer about his character, and then why I personally love Luka’s character and Lukanette. 

Starting with the issues people have with Luka: I think what I see the most often is that he’s “bland” or “boring”. People view him as a very flat character who’s only personality traits are “I can play the guitar” and “I love Marinette”. Some people’s issues with Luka is just because he appears to be the basic secondary love-interest type of character. Also some think that he’s “too perfect”. The only other things I can think of that people criticize him for is his character model not having eyelashes. 

Now I’m going to go in order of episodes where we actually see Luka and make points as to what we can learn about his character. 

Captain Hard Rock: Obviously this is the first appearance he has in the entire series so this is where we get the most of the immediate information about him. We see he has a grunge/soft rock aesthetic, and that he enjoys meditating. We learn that he is a little awkward (or as he puts it: “not being very good with words”) but that he isn’t afraid to apologize for accidentally making someone uncomfortable. We also see in this episode that he is incredibly honest with how he feels, not censoring his opinions at all. We obviously learn here that he enjoys playing the guitar, is in the band Kitty section, and that he collects guitar picks. 

Side note: in this episode we also learn that Luka and Juleka’s father (whomever it may be) is not in the picture. 

Frozer: Obviously this episode is very focused on the love-triangle, but taking the romantic feelings out of it, we learn that Luka is very passive and cares about the feelings of those around him. He doesn’t want to get in the way of anyone’s happiness, even if it sacrifices his own. I would like to note that this can be seen as both a positive, and a negative. 

Reflekdoll: In this episode, we get to see a bit of Luka’s personality away from interacting with Marinette! He’s shown to be a very loving and supportive older brother who just wants the best for his little sister. 

Silencer: Alright, so this is the first episode where we see Luka angry. Every other appearance he seems relatively level-headed, calm, and happy. And even in this episode towards the beginning we can see how supportive he is of Marinette, and how happy he is having her working with Kitty Section. It isn’t until he sees the work he and his friends put in being stolen without any semblance of credit that he starts getting riled up. But even then, he tries to walk away. It isn’t until Roth directly insults Marinette and threatens her that he loses his cool enough to become akumatized. So what does this teach us? Luka is incredibly protective of his friends. It also shows that he cares about injustices and honor (it’s a pretty standard trait, but still just an observation). It also brings up again the fact that he’s incredibly open and honest with his feelings. 

Felix: Okay so here’s where we start getting into the “flaw” territory. Luka expresses to Marinette that he will be happy for her if her and Adrien get together (which is a good thing! This shows that he is still really concerned with her happiness and not his own agenda) but at the same time it puts him in a position of being okay if she “settles” for him. 

Desperada: Luka is very patient and understanding of Marinette, well aware of how she’s feeling and that emotions and feelings can be really hard to work through. Also it shows in this episode that he has the potential to be a great superhero, whose power is noted by both Hawkmoth and Ladybug to be hard to stand up against. 

Last but not least we have the season finale of Season 3: Now, this is where Luka cemented himself as my favorite character in Miraculous Ladybug. Luka, once realizing Marinette is not okay, drops everything (literally) to comfort her. He doesn’t ask her to tell him everything, or demand answers, but he tells her that he’s there for her whether she wants to tell him everything or nothing at all. He reminds her that it’s okay to be herself around him. This shows that he deeply cares about her boundaries and not crossing them. Also this episode shows that he has a job! 

And a common theme throughout every interaction he has with Marinette is that he always reassures her, compliments her, but doesn’t bombard her with his feelings. He says what he thinks should be said, and doesn’t push for any sort of response back. He even has high praise for Marinette when she “isn’t” around, such as when he compliments Marinette in front of Ladybug. 

So what does that mean? It means Luka is: Calm, level-headed, respectful, protective, a good musician, a good older brother, a hard worker, and someone who is careful about boundaries. But he’s also someone who is awkward, who has a hard time expressing himself verbally, and someone who tends to undermine his own value. And while he is very honest and open about his feelings, he doesn’t care about his own feelings as much as he cares about others. 

With that established, let’s talk about why he’s one of my favorite characters. Now, I’m someone who can heavily relate to Marinette. I have a lot of responsibilities on my plate, and often stretch myself far too thin, all while trying to keep up a positive front for those around me. I find it hard to express how I feel and sometimes get laughed at for being so “worked up” over some things. And when I saw Marinette break down in front of Luka during that season finale? I cried. Because it’s something that is so relatable to my own experiences. And Luka expressing that Marinette didn’t have to pretend around him, that she could be herself, and more importantly that he wasn’t going to force her to tell him anything, it was just such a healthy and wholesome interaction that she hasn’t had with any other character! 

Not only that, but he is hyper aware of her boundaries. He never expects an answer to his feelings, or pushes for one. He doesn’t invade her personal space or tease her in a way that she’s obviously uncomfortable with. The one time he did was after they had just met (the Ma-Ma-Marinette incident) and once he realized it had made her feel bad, he immediately apologized! He didn’t tell her she was being dramatic, or silly. He apologized and immediately moved on. 

He’s one of the few characters in the show that you never have to guess what he is thinking. He’s quick to hand out encouragement and compliments and obviously genuinely means what he says. Not only is he supportive of Marinette, but he is very supportive of Juleka’s dreams and wants her to pursue her dreams. 

So all of this comes to why I love Lukanette so much: It feels like the least-forced ship in the entire show (other than side character couples like JuleRose or MyVan). Marinette isn’t mortified every time she tries to interact with Luka, and Luka respects her boundaries. The two work very well together creatively, and are even able to get up to mischief together. Marinette just seems to be very comfortable around him, and she deserves a relationship like that. And I believe that if they got together, Marinette and Luka could both work on recognizing that it’s okay to speak up for yourself and that being passive can sometimes be harmful to yourself! 

TL;DR : Luka is much more well-rounded than people give him credit for and I love him and Lukanette.

#bevvy writes #bevvy rambles #miraculous ladybug #miraculousladybug #mlb #luka couffaine #luka miraculous ladybug #luka positivity

[freddieofhearts]

Bye bye, dears (for now!)

I know there have been a lot of rumours and some posts about me leaving, so here I am to set the record straight and say a quick ‘au revoir’. This post is long, and I don’t expect everyone to read the whole thing—if you just want information on how to keep in touch, or about access to my removed fics, scroll to the bottom. ⬇️

*

Why are you leaving?

Firstly, of course I’m not leaving Freddie. This is just an ongoing hiatus from the social side of fandom, because while I have some incredible friends here, who have done all they can to support me and have made this experience wonderful in lots of ways—it’s also true that the social space has become more and more toxic for me.

I get a wild amount of hate. Despite never having my ask box enabled on here, people create new accounts just to message me and tell me all the problems in this fandom are my fault, that I’m faking being sick, that I should kill myself, that I’m fat, etc. I also very regularly get hateful comments on AO3.

Obviously I realise that I’m not the only one who receives these cruel attacks, but it’s become increasingly hard to handle them—especially as some people (‘real’ accounts, not faceless anons) do continue to blame me for wider problems in the fandom. It makes me feel consistently sad, anxious, and paranoid, so that I can’t focus on anything Queen-related that I enjoy.

More pressingly, it’s affected my mental health, which is—imperfect at the best of times. As I’ve occasionally alluded to in older posts on this blog, I have a history of anorexia, OCD, PTSD, and some other overlapping issues. Most people who know me in the fandom are also aware that I’m ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ to Covid-19, significantly immunocompromised, and have been isolating at home for eleven months.

The combination of all of these things + the constant toxic messages has really been triggering me, and leading to an uptick in disordered behaviours, which my body cannot sustain. Every new instance of hate from an anon—every time there’s another indication of groups in the fandom wanting to ostracise me further—my reaction is deeply self-punitive and unhealthy. Ultimately I need to be out of this environment for, at least, a protracted period. My therapist, my partner and my close friends in the fandom support this decision.

*

So, what went wrong?

In 2019, I expected to be an absolutely tiny blog in the Queen Tumblr landscape. The fandom was already well-established, and I have never worked to ‘build a following’ on here—I think I’ve linked my own fic a maximum of three or four times!—in fact, more or less the opposite. As I mentioned above: ya girl is nutty as a fruitcake. As a result, I often avoid extremely niche things in daily life which cause severe anxiety for me, Relevant examples here: I never look at my timeline. I never intentionally look at my follower number. Yup, it’s strange, I fully admit it, but it’s best for me to go with these things—usually. In Queen fandom, however, this avoidance both of analytic stats and of most direct engagement led to some problems... My followers grew without me realising, and way more people were reading my blog than I was aware of. I was still in a—“Wow, this fandom is very frustrating, and rife with ableism, racism, etc., so how do we fix this???”—mindset, and I wanted to share my opinions, sure! but I also thought I was sharing them with 15-20 like-minded people.

Now, intent is not impact, and I recognise that I was brusque, didn’t phrase things particularly sensitively, and absolutely did hurt some people by criticising the fandom so freely. I still regret this—and I regret just as much the fact that some assholes have used my criticising the fandom on my own blog as implicit justification for attacking authors. I have said on here many times that I don’t condone that behaviour—but I also think there’s some truth in the presumption that these anonymous malcontents felt my critiques somehow ‘permitted’ them to engage in abuse. For the first few months, though, I genuinely had no idea there was a link at all—and so I was initially slow to condemn this abusive behaviour in public, because I was taking it for granted all authors agreed it was shitty. It took someone directly telling me (shoutout to @a-froger-epic) that people had identified a connection between my posts and the anons, before everything fell into place.

I would like to offer my apologies to the fandom at large for not being more quick on the uptake about this, because I feel that had I realised sooner that these people were taking ‘inspiration’ in some way from me, it might have been easier to put a stop to it. It does seem that there is still a lot of confusion about whether I support them and which of their views I agree with. Let’s be 100% clear on this: I do not support the anonymous commenters on AO3. At times there is some, limited overlap between parts of their views and parts of mine, but even that is less than you may think—I often see anonymous comments from so-called ‘Freddie fans’ that I substantially disagree with.

Perhaps even more importantly: I do not support anyone who sends anonymous hate on Tumblr.

*

What’s all this about ‘overlap’ with the anons?

Let’s do a mini-summary of the myths vs. the truth. There are views I hold which are genuinely unpopular in the fandom—but which I own up to completely, and have never tried to hide in any way. I’ve never needed to use anonymous to share my opinions because I’m completely open about them! What people who don’t know me tend to have ‘heard’ about me, though, is usually a drastic distortion of my real opinions.

What people think I think:

- Freddie should never top.

- It’s okay to send anon hate if someone writes Freddie ‘wrong’.

- It’s more important to correct ‘wrong’ portrayals than to respect other writers.

- It’s inherently wrong to be more interested in band pairings than canon pairings.

- Freddie should be overtly written as a r*pe survivor/victim (and not doing this is wrong).

- Freddie should be overtly written as having an eating disorder (and not doing this is wrong).

- Kink fics are wrong.

What I actually think:

- I believe Freddie did have a strongly defined sexual identity with marked preferences, but I don’t think Jim Hutton lied when he said that Freddie topped. I believe Freddie did top, but this isn’t the time or place to get into my thoughts on why/when/how much. I do believe that my analysis of the sources relevant to this subject is as historically accurate as one can reasonably be in matters of sex (where historical accuracy will always be particularly limited and imperfect)—but I don’t think it’s morally wrong to write Freddie as topping more than he probably did.

- I don’t believe there’s only one ‘right’ version of Freddie (all others being ‘wrong’). I do believe it is possible to be more right or less right—but I’m also conscious of the fact that this scale of value is not one by which everyone measures fanfiction. As a result, then, I don’t think that any perceptions surrounding ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ justify sending anonymous, non-constructive criticism, or outright hate.

- I do believe constructive criticism is a good thing. I welcome and appreciate it myself; I have received it on my fics in Queen fandom, and it has made them better. I have been in writing workshops which included very forceful criticisms, and the value of such feedback has been intimately and immediately part of my life as a writer for years. However: in this case, I have accepted that my opinion differs from the general community preference, and so I no longer offer any constructive criticism (outside private beta-reading). I haven’t changed my view, but I’ve changed my practice to align with community norms.

- I do not think any single, individual writer has a personal responsibility to write about Freddie Mercury in any given way. That ranges from including the more distressing topics to which I’ve devoted attention (such as trauma)—to concentrating on ‘canon’ pairings like Jimercury—to, even, focusing on Freddie at all.

“Now, that doesn’t sound like you, @freddieofhearts,” you might be thinking. And I know it doesn’t; I think something I’ve done a poor job of articulating is the difference between how I view each individual fan—namely, as free to shape their creative experience at will, even in ways that I might find distressing or offensive; even in ways that you might find distressing or offensive—and the way I view the Collective. I think people have interpreted some of my critiques of ‘Queen Fandom’ as meaning something like: “You-in-particular, a specific Queen fan, are doing it wrong and should change everything about how you do it; also you don’t really care about Freddie.”

And—that’s not it. What any given fan, as an individual, does, isn’t a problem. And that can be true alongside—concurrently with—a multivalent critique of how the fandom is lacking in representation of Freddie’s life, with all that that (wonderful, deservedly celebrated, but also profoundly traumatic) life entailed. I still hold that view; I still have myriad problems with ‘the fandom’ (structurally, collectively, historically and presently—from the 1990s to the 2020s). Some of what I want to work on (away from the social life of fandom) is expressing those critiques with greater nuance, in ways that can’t be misinterpreted as shading any particular fanfiction author or subgenre of story.

In brief: I haven’t changed my mind, but I think Tumblr is an untenable environment in which to discuss the things I want to analyse, especially as there is an ever-present danger of hurting someone.

*

Can we keep in touch? Where is the fic?

I will drop by this account periodically to check out posts that friends have sent me, so you can always sent me a private message to ask for my contact details on the other app that I’m using now for fandom friends. Multiple Freddie conversations and projects are going on over there, off-Tumblr, with a much ‘gentler’ environment and no bad actors—I personally love it!

All my fic has been downloaded and saved. I don’t want to deal with constant harassment on AO3, but I’m happy to share a copy with anyone who missed it and wants to read/re-read something. I also saved everyone’s lovely comments and thoughtful con-crit, so none of that has been lost or erased.

Thank you to everyone who welcomed me to the fandom, made me think, taught me, shared with me, sent me into fits of the giggles, collaborated with me creatively, and otherwise made this one hell of a ride! Love you all. ❤️

#au revoir my dears #lil gay bby

[favoniuscodex]

Hewwo I really love your writing and I want to improve my own to a form similar to yours. If it's okay, can I ask what your writing process is or if you have any writing tips? Sorry if you already answered questions like this. I am not a native speaker by the way, can i also ask about how you built your vocabulary as well? Thank you very much in advance and I hope you're having a great day/night! Drink lots of water and don't forget to eat three meals a day.~

hello, anon! you’re actually the first to ask about something like this and i’m honored you think my writing is good enough for me to give advice on (and honored that you think it’s good enough to take inspiration from!).

i have two different writing methods, which are as follows:

long fics (10k+ words)

i write an outline and have my friends look over it to make sure that the scenes are both impactful and enjoyable, along with being organized. the most important part of writing a long story is making sure the timeline is coherent and that you have proper buildup to the climax of the story.

before i write a scene that contains foreshadowing to a future event, i write down what themes i wish to convey with this scene, along with any future information that will be relevant later in the story. this is helpful because you never write something all at once if it’s this long! you might forget important details, so having notes is always nice.

if i’m hesitant on writing a scene, i’ll talk it out with some of my friends and see if i’m still comfortable with writing it.

one of the biggest things i can recommend is being adaptable! being willing to change your story plans is crucial, because (typically) the first idea you think of isn’t always the best one. in my own experience, i change my ideas a lot as i write something. this is because i will get bored writing otherwise.

this is from my own experience, other writers may disagree, but i NEVER set word count goals for myself. i write when i want to write, otherwise i will get discouraged when i do not meet said goals.

take breaks or you will hit burnout fast!

have a glass of water and set a timer every 15 minutes to relax your eyes from your screen and drink some of it. it gives your mind a chance to soothe itself from the bright lights of a screen and also gives you a short break. and you stay hydrated!

short fics (<10k words)

when i write short fics, i typically don’t have an outline (unless if it’s a series) and i just go with my gut

if i don’t really like where a story’s going and i know it’s short, i finish it anyways because a finished product is better than giving up in my eyes? at least i know what not to do next time!

sorry a lot of these tips don’t pertain to actual writing! they relate more to planning. :( i’ve been writing stories for fun since i was 6 or 7 (i have journals upon journals of my first stories in my basement!) so most of what i do is just... gut instinct at this point? i apologize if that’s not very helpful of me to say. ;.; i don’t think of myself as very talented but like... i wish to say this in case it happens: please don’t compare your writing to mine! i’m sure your writing is lovely in its own right.

now that that’s said, here’s some stuff i can actually help with, which is under the cut because this is getting long:

word choice / vocabulary

first off, the best thing you can do for yourself is read something complex. like... the type of book where you have to pull out your phone and look up what words mean. if you’re not exposing yourself to new words, even if it is annoying to have to pause, you won’t learn new words.

this typically means ditching the fanfics and looking for actual published novels, typically older ones. i love fanfics (i write them lol), but the word choice in fanfics is typically limited to casual conversational language as they are written for fun, not necessarily to challenge the mind.

next, the best thing you can do is use a thesaurus. i personally use thesaurus.com but it’s different for everyone! but this is dangerous. using a thesaurus can be one of the worst things you can do for your writing if you don’t use it properly. you use a thesaurus to get synonyms for words that are commonly used, but may have a lot of other alternatives (i.e. happy, sad, etc.) and NOT super specific words.

ONLY use words listed as synonyms in a thesaurus if you know them and it’s safe to assume your readers likely know them as well! for example, i used the word ‘insouciant’ as a joke in my last fic. however, if i used that seriously, that probably would’ve been bad as it’s a SUPER rare word. nothing will ruin a reader’s experience faster than a story that blatantly uses too many words from a thesaurus and, worst of all, uses them improperly.

let me give an example:

starting text: “she was happy to see that he had returned safely. she could see relief in his eyes that she was safe as well. he smiled happily at her as she ran into his arms.” this is good enough, but it’s rather plain. it’s an easy read, but nothing about it is super engrossing.

good thesaurus example: “she was overjoyed to see that he had returned without harm. she identified relief in his eyes that she had stayed out of harm’s way as well. he smiled enthusiastically at her as she sprinted into his embrace.” it sounds a lot nicer before and definitely more polished, but nothing about this requires someone to whip out their phone in frustration to google a word. the point of typical writing is not to challenge your reader’s intelligence but to entertain them.

bad thesaurus example: “she was jocular to perceive that he had reappeared in an unharmed manner. she prognosticated solace in his blue orbs that she was guarded as well. he smiled jovially at her as she charged into his forelimbs.” this is a bit of an exaggerated example, but this is actually how i feel some authors tend to write. it’s very blatantly using a thesaurus, it uses words incorrectly, and it overcomplicated things to where it feels like the reader has to do a mental exercise to read it.

tl;dr for this section: if you don’t know a word, do not use it. if you are familiar with a word, it’s probably good to use as long as your writing still seems natural. thesauruses are your friend but can be your enemy.

i would like to clarify that i am a native speaker and it’s not necessary to read books forever in order to keep your grammar and word choice up to date. i have not picked up an actual published book within the last 4 years (don’t laugh at me i know this is bad). however, in learning to expand your grammar, reading books is essential.

some miscellaneous writing tips i have include:

you don’t have to take every request that comes within your inbox if you do decide to do tumblr writing. i probably, much to the behest of the people that submit, throw a good chunk of my requests out. write what you’re passionate about and your writing will improve and your followers will be happier.

if someone criticizes your writing, this does not mean they’re trying to criticize you (usually. don’t go on twitter if you want this to remain true). they are providing something most people don’t want to offer: advice. many times you will find yourself surrounded by people who will applaud you for writing nearly anything. this is not good. living in an echo chamber will ensure that your writing never improves. you want to ask people for advice and find those who will give you genuine advice, even if it may hurt to hear.

try to discern what authors you like do with their writing versus authors you don’t like. consciously making these comparisons will allow you to directly apply them to your own writing and help you emulate someone’s style as well.

please don’t write meme references into your work. it will get outdated fast. try to write something you can look back on within a few years and not cringe at. :) this is just my personal opinion lol, someone might disagree.

i do not proofread my writing. it makes me second guess everything. everything on my blog, as you see it, lacks proofreading, aside from inheritance, in which i had a beta reader glance over it. for beginner writers, this is probably shit advice if you’re not used to grammar BUT that’s just how i roll and i wished to share that.

the most important thing i do for my writing is have a good music playlist in the background. NOTHING will make you write better than listening to music that fits the mood of what you’re writing. find a premade youtube playlist or slap together a spotify playlist of songs you think fit the mood and get grooving to it. you’ll find that you’ll write better and you���ll enjoy the process of writing much more with the mental stimulus.

don’t write jokes in which you have to overexplain them. if you have to explain to the reader what the joke is, it won’t be funny. humor is difficult to write, but no jokes involved are better than a bunch of failed ones.

don’t worry about pinpointing fanfic characterization of a specific character perfectly. i get praises for my characterization of diluc and kaeya within inheritance a lot, even though i specifically altered them from canon (??????? this confuses me a lot that i get praised for this but anyways) and haven’t even read the webtoon. as long as it’s within reasonable expectation, you should be fine. zhongli shouldn’t be written as going off the walls crazy with excitement just like venti shouldn’t be written as super serious about frivolous matters. as long as you get the general gist of a character, people will enjoy it.

try to find some writer friends. they don’t necessarily have to be in the fandom, but being able to shoot off ideas with other people is amazing at improving both your plot and your writing overall. (shoutout to @shannara because for as much as i annoy him, he’s always willing to listen to me blab about any story and any idea, even though he doesn’t read reader-inserts nor should he care about my dumb OCs, but he cares about mine because he’s a cool dude)

don’t get discouraged if a fic doesn’t get good reception. in fact, it’s probably better if your first few fics don’t blow up in popularity if you do post them because it’s humbling and you can decide if you’re actually writing because you enjoy it or if you’re just doing it for clout.

i hope this made sense and if you (or any other people reading this!) need any more writing advice, my ask box and DMs are always open. if you ever want me to beta read something, please send a DM and i’ll see if i can as long as it’s like... not super long and i have spare time.

sorry this turned out to be so long but it turns out i had far more to say than i thought! good luck writing and i believe in you!

#long post #mail #advice #i hope this helped? i'm not very good at this sort of thing. #Anonymous

[genderfluidlucifer]

Response to being asked to give  an opinion on Connie’s calout by residentevil-4

(Tw: CSAM, rape fic, incest fic, predatory behavior, racism, ableism, kink mention, nsfw mentions. Minors should probably dni.)

“Connie and I know each other irl and went to school together for 3 years, although they now live in a different state and have cut contact with me. We went to a private therapy school in Manhattan as we're both disabled and were deemed unable to attend public school. Even though we were pretty close, Connie didn't like having photos taken of them, so I don't have any selfies of the two of us; however, these are from our sophomore and senior yearbooks which at least confirms that we were in the same year at school. People who have seen Connie's selfies should be able to confirm that that is what they look like. First and foremost, Connie is not TMA. They are intersex and the two of us have discussed intersex issues both in person and online, but they are still decidedly CAFAB.” Ok so first off, I want to address this part of the callout. To be honest...was it really necessary to literally doxx Connie ehre? Because this textbook definition of doxxing. Yes Connie’s done some shitty things but I freally don’t think that what they’ve done warrants this level of doxxing. Or...even better, any doxxing. This feels like a really unnecessary breach of privacy, revealing sensitive information on Connie’s childhood that they choose to confide in you with. I really don’t agree with this aspect of the callout as it feels very invasive and bordering on stalkerish.  Btw when I say bordering on stalkerish I’m not directly calling you a stalker Bonnie. Just so we’re clear. I am not defending Connie supposedly faking being TMA. Because faking being TMA is a very serious issue. HOWEVER since I don’t know Connie irl and to be quite frank it’s none of my business what the nature of their agab is. Were not close and I’m certainly not going to like lead Connie onto thinking we’re friends just to confirm this with them because that would be creepy. So to be honest I’m going to take this part of the callout with again of salt for now.

[ID: A cropped screenshot of a numbered list Connie posted to their blog hadrosaurs in response to an ask. 

“3. I’m TMA And that’s completely irrelevant. I’m not accusing them because of their gender I didn’t even know their gender when they said that to me saying that they said that because they fucking said that and the reaction to it was incredibly alarming. Don’t fucking say that stuff to people.]

I mean I”m not a trans woman so take this with a grain of salt if you want but...I don’t see how this is really proof of Connie being deliberately transmisogynistic? Yes Connie gives iffy retellings of mistakes they’ve made in the past. I’ve seen that on their blog before and I won’t pretend it doesn’t happen. BUT here they sound genuine enough and to be honest a growing issue I’ve seen with callouts as of late is. A person confirms they in fact did not do the thing they were called out for. And then the people who make the callout choose to see it as proof of incriminating behavior anyways. To be honest it’s a big problem and it’s also incredibly unfair to the person being called out. If you’re so determined at that point to see the person as bigoted no matter what they say then of course anything they say can be seen as proof. So I’m going to have to pass on this bit of evidence. “Connie responded: “Final note: I have spoken extensively with several trans women about using TMA to describe myself. I will not be getting into discourse about that on this blog again. All that leads to is people demanding my medical records and calling me slurs. If you wanna have a thoughtful conversation about it direct message me cause it’s not happening again here.” Again this really doesn’t seem all that self incriminating. Connie mentions here that they’ve talked to rl trans woman about whether or not they can be considered TMA. Connie really doesn’t have to disclose that personal information to people for any reason. Yes even when people are e including this ask response in a callout. And considering lots of people DO get invasive about Connie’s medical history ans general personal life over matters like this? I feel their reaction is pretty understandable here. “Connie has constantly compared “exclusionists” (or anyone, really) to TERFs, even when the people in question are not transmisogynistic, trans exclusionary radfems, or are even transmisogyny affected themselves.

“ Gonna have to disagree with this part of the callout too. Lots of ace inclus blogs, even some run by trans women , have proven that the ace exclus movement was started by swerfs/terfs. But the blog that has the most evidence for this is courteousmingler on tumblr. I suggest you check out that blog’s archiving of the history of ace exclus rhetoric before rushing to call me a transmisogynist for disagreeing with this part of the callout. I looked through all of the evidence for Connie being racist and tbh as a black ndn it all feels incredibly flimsy. It’d be one thing if Connie was using their experiences to derail and invalidate the discussions about how black people are oppressed But they weren’t doing that there at all. This part of the post feels incredibly biased. And like OP is looking for things to be mad about. Going to have to pass on this list of evidence. Also uh I seem to recall that residentevil04 got called out for some questionable behavior as well. “Both me (insepsy, hi) and ezrat have had really weird spikes in activity on our Statcounters, both on the same day. (Saturday, 4/17/21) For both of us, majority of the pages looked at by these visitors have been related to or about Connie, or have been posts that Connie would find "problematic" such as the f slur untagged or something related to "panphobia"/aphobia. I’m sorry but...none of the proof of cyberstalking holds any water. Visiting someone’s blogs and rbing posts to disagree with them is not cyberstalking. Keeping tabs on urls that an abusive person who has harassed are using so you can block them (in this case with kyoshi) and warn your mutuals is not stalking. As a victim of rl stalking it’s...really weird to call this legit stalking at all. Much less claim that you have damning proof of it being stalking when no such evidence exists in the callout. Besides after Connie and nonbinarydave called out one of kyoshi’s buddies for sending a death threat hate anon to nonbinarydave’s toddler st4lker partly admitted to doing it a few times. Then other mutuals in kyoshi’s toxic social circle clearly began joining in. Making side accounts where they tried to spin a false narrative of nonbinarydave’s daughter being one of their alters (ableist as hell.) And also trying to do it in such a way that they thought would trigger nonibnarydave’s psychosis (also ableist as hell.) If you’re going to drag Connie for their mistakes and never let them move on from those mistakes then it’s only fair to do that to people you agree with who also do toxic/bigoted things. ALso the fact that your wording here suggests that you think panphobia and aphobia aren’t real makes me doubt this claim even more. Exclus and their allies are notorious for mislabeling inclus disagreeing with them as stalking. “connie said that they would release that info at a later time and the minor began to argue with them that they had a responsibility regardless of their complicated relationship with age. in this argument connie for a time kept their age ambiguous and at one point told the minor (who confirmed in a later ask that they were severely traumatized by adults) that they obviously weren’t traumatized. connie quickly deleted this ask and any mentions of it and the next post they reblogged was about how wrong it was to try and quantify or discount others’ trauma. on my old blog i @ed them in the replies and asked if they had just done that. connie admitted to it and said it was fucked up but quickly blocked + deleted my comment. i can’t remember whether or not connie apologized to the minor, they may have? but yeah. i thought that was pretty weird.”] I do agree with some of the concern here that adults shouldn’t over expose minors in discourse. I’ve been contemplating this for awhile myself. And trying to figure out how to take better steps to avoid including minors who are triggered by discourse in discourse, especially. HOWEVER I have one little issue with this addition to the callout. If that is the case then exclus and their allies need to practice this as well. You cannot ignore the fact that the reason a lot of minors are getting involved in exclus discourse is due to adult exclus and their allies forcing minors to pick a side in the discourse. Y’all are not at all exempt from this problem. I still remember an ex mutual of mine trying to convince a minor to agree that aces can’t face corrective rape. And based on how aggressive it got with me when I tried to avoid giving an opinion on the matter, I can’t imagine that it would’ve reacted better to the minor refusing to give an opinion or to the minor outright disagreed. Refusing to put these standards on exclus and their allies is both hypocritical and quite frankly very transparent. The claims about them glorifying dark topics on AO3 through their fics also seems unfortunately legit. I mean those asks of shaming people who ask their viewers to not romanticize or glorify abusive relationships in their works is very damning. I’m very disappointed to see that Connie has taken being an inclus to the point of validating antis anti culture wholeheartedly. I can’t think of much more to add to my opinion on that part of the callout. As for the issue of Connie interacting with pro shippers in the past, I do know that this claim is legit. I’ve seen it before and so has Breeze. This was why for a brief time we decided to stop following their blogs. Because it was triggering to have pro shippers put on our dash. And sometimes we just don’t feel it’s worth it to always let people we’re platforming know they’re rbing triggering stuff. So sometimes we just quietly unfollow and choose to not interact until we’re sure they’re filtering what they do and don’t rb in some way. I definitely don’t agree with that behavior. And if they’re still doing that I”ll deplatform again. “The anon asks: “A weird question but do you know any other stimboard blogs with your follow criteria? (No radfems, racists, fandom antis, etc.) I was hoping to find more through your “similar blogs” but a lot have no anti-antis for their DNI or allow truscum/transmeds and exclus. :(“

The user responds: “I know of @turtle-pond-stims, @outofangband, and @kinaesthetics! 🍂🍄" “[ID: A cropped screenshot of an ask sent by Connie from their now-deactivated blog, butch-with-a-tortoise.

Connie says: “hey anon I have safe stim blogs. dm me if you want them. And radfems/bigots aren’t allowed to interact. For my own safety (because the community is honestly terrifying) I can’t publicly say on my blogs that I’m safe for proshippers/kinky people but I try to spread word how I can.”] [ID: Screenshot of a post by evilwriter37, which reads, “I’ve been seeing posts about fandom police leaving ao3, and it’s like: Good. We don’t want you here anyway. Go find your own fanfiction site.”

The post is tagged “#Fandom #AO3 #Antis #Purity Culture” and has 87 notes. It was posted on December 21st, 2020.

There is a reply from main-to-outofangband-andothers saying: “there are Silm antis on that site who are against Russigon (Maedhros and Fingon) not because they’re cousins but because they’re both male (coded)”] [ID: A screenshot of an anonymous (though signed off as being from outofangband) ask sent to evilwriter37, which says, “Melkor and Viggo solidarity is ‘Look there’s nothing wrong with keeping my enemy chained up in my personal chambers at all times so please just focus on the war efforts and I’ll focus on the boy* in my chambers’ -@outofbangand.

*boy used figuratively @ antis”

The user responds: “Pfft!!! Hahaha! You’re absolutely right! (And Viggo does refer to Hiccup in canon as ‘my boy’).”] I can’t really say anything to refute this. Because these are all posts of Connie outright stating that they disagree with antis. And not only sympathize with anti antis but are fully against antis. Looks like very damning evidence. Although ngl I’m not entirely against kinky blogs as a whole? Just so long as they truly stay in their lane with their kink content. And don’t force it on others in any way. Or shame people who are triggered by their kinks. It is true that being entirely against kinky blogs no matter what is dipping your toes into swerf rhetoric. Tbh I’m not going to look at the rest. This is pretty much all I need to make a decision on whether or not I”ll continue platforming Connie. Though I will try to get some more  perspective from people who I interact with as well. Because I feel better about making a more definitive decision after doing that. Also in general please don’t not try to get an opinion from me on how I feel about syscourse. A lot of the claims about Connie’s age weirdness and them using their alters as a shield feel like syscourse to me. Especially if this callout was written by one or several singlets. Singlets should never be trying to judge how legit someone’s system is ever. Even if their system friends encourage them to. You can call out a horrible person with a system without trying to insinuate that they’re lying about their alters in some way. Doing otherwise is ableist ESPECIALLY if you’re a singlet. Also in general the reason I stay out of discussions of judging how someone is handling their systems is because it’s syscourse and syscourse is triggering for my system and I. If this post was an attempt to get me to give an opinion  on the validity of Connie’s system I don’t appreciate it. And I would appreciate not being dragged into such matters again, thank you.

In general there’s like a few parts of this callout that feel legit. Which is unfortunately cluttered with obvious bias and obsessive hatred of Connie. I’m not here to stan or coddle Connie. I know they are not a perfect person. Especially since no human being in the world is perfect. But I feel the way this callout was created was very sloppy since a lot of the evidence was messy at best. And some points were very hypocritical as well as there being some no true scotsman moments from OP. In acting like exclus never do any of the thing that they tried to call out Connie for. Which is behavior that I am not a fan of. This is why people need to be more careful about callouts and like make roughdrafts and have a more unbiased person helping them if they don’t feel they can do it on their own. I’m even trying to make a resolve to do better at that myself. So it’s not like I’m unwilling to put my money where my mouth is. Anyways those are all my thoughts on this messy callout. And tbh I’m not going to get too much more heavily involved in this. Because I need to focus on more immediately serious rl stuff more often, like doing what I can to get out of the hellish landscape of a house I currently am stuck in.

[moltenhair]

Uuugh fine. since people are getting really nasty with each other over if it did or didn’t actually happen.... All the evidence only a few minutes of google searching and looking through tumblr can offer of Chris’ poor behavior. Since there are those who think the people who are tired of this are making it up.

You are free to draw your own conclusions but .. Please don’t fight in the replies with childish insults. We’re better than that. 

It’s also important to keep in mind that these tactless comments and responses to other people came during great emotional highs in the fandom. The fandom was either already upset at how he or the show was handling something, or anxious about the future and instead of choosing to diffuse the situations or offer any form of apology, he chose to do the following-

An early offense:

Arianna’s treatment. This follows an entire season of Arianna standing by and not being allowed to have a significant bond with Rapunzel and even having to defend Frederic’s abuse and imprisonment of his daughter.... Only to have “Happiness Is...” air and have Arianna not have any speaking lines and have Rapunzel write a letter to her father and ONLY her father saying she misses him and loves him. The fans were understandably confused and upset that Arianna was once again being completely ignored in favor of Frederic. This time even more explicitly.

It starts here:

A fan expresses serious concern about the character of Frederic and his abusing of Rapunzel taking center stage while Arianna does nothing and allows him to continue to abuse her... Responds with this

Which is a... troubling response at best. Considering the contents of what he was responding to. 

A fan response to this. And Another. And another. People were genuinely hurt by his carelessness and his response was to tell them “don’t be hurt” and to tell them how he wanted to write a story about himself and things HE can relate to (which I guess means he can’t relate to a woman so he’s not going to write about a woman) instead of offering any kind of apology for doing something hurtful. He doesn’t even acknowledge any of the aforementioned abuse he made Rapunzel go through to focus on putting his own experiences into the show. 

Then there’s the Varian fans stuff... Which is scattered all over his social media and the Tangled discord. 

Here’s one from season 2 when Varian fans were asking when he was going to show up and getting a little impatient. (Because a press release for season two said he would be there and it turned out it was only a 10 second fantasy sequence in one episode and while Varian is not a main character they DID get a lot of people’s hopes up needlessly and his response to it was pretty indelicate. He also made a habit of targeting Varian fans across social media when it came to watching the show ‘wrong’ but.. that’s a lot to dig through for caps from the past 3 years)

He also said the same in the Tangled Talk Podcast (for the S2 midseason) around the time the above tweet was posted where he couldn’t believe fans cared about Varian with everything else happening. What about what happened to CASS? (Disclaimer: This was in the height of the fandom putting up with Chris’ bull and the people on that podcast have long since changed their perspective. So if you listen to that episode, take the opinions of the hosts with a grain of salt. They no longer feel that he’s right and agree that fans should be free to watch the show for whatever reasons that make them happiest.) And he only got more rude from there.

Here’s a more recent one 

Keep in mind: They never implied varian was the ‘point of the show’ just that they wanted to know more about him based on information the show gave them. And they didn’t even ask him directly he just chose to insert himself into the discussion to say this incredibly rude thing.  This is a grown man responding to a young viewer interested in learning more about the show he created. 

Chris was also banned from the series fan discord for repeatedly insulting the varian fans and upsetting the young viewers of his show. Children. Telling them they are “watching for the wrong reasons” if they want to see more Varian and calling Cass fans the “real true fans”. This man is alienating children and telling them they are wrong for relating to the one character they had in the first 2 seasons who was their age. This is a grown man talking this way... to children. The demographic his show was made for. And he’s telling them they’re watching the show ‘wrong’ because they have a fav that isn’t HIS fav. 

The mods are currently working on getting caps of this

This one is his most recent from a few days ago in a Q&A. In which he takes the pair that his entire franchise is based on- a show that exists to fill the space between the end of the movie and when the characters are supposed to be married- and implies that they are boring once they’re married. As if them being married and living happily ever after wasn’t what got him this show in the first place. As if this couple isn’t what he owes all of his success to. As if the fans who love this couple and are invested in their relationship and have wanted to see them married for 10 years are boring for wanting to see them married. 

Which... paired with the way marriage is treated in the show (Like a trap/prison and the end of a woman’s freedom) is pretty darn concerning. 

But he’s also gone on record saying he has an entire spinoff idea for Cass and her PREVIOUSLY UNMENTIONED BIOLOGICAL FATHER that he would do if Disney gave him a call. Further cementing that all this was for him was a way to promote his original characters instead of caring about the movie characters the show was supposed to be about. Continuing Rapunzel and Eugene’s story would be BORING. Cass apparently deserves a whole series in his eyes. 

The racism problem

This discussion (which was in no way targeted at him before he chose to insert himself into it)

1

2

3

This response to it being all he had to say. 

Inserting himself into the conversation to draw attention to the fact that he SAW the criticism and was going to leave because he doesn’t like it. Instead of... i don’t know... Apologizing for putting not one but TWO offensive romani stereotype characters in his show.

Guess he doesn’t have a problem with it?

It is important to note that in all of the above cases, no one ASKED him to comment except for the one that was from a Q&A. He wasn’t a part of the conversation at all and he went out of his way to MAKE himself a part of the conversation and make things worse. 

#long post #happy now? #negative

[rpbetter]

You make some really good posts!! Can I ask something about DNIs? I know it's not directly RP-related, but I have trouble as an RPer with how many DNIs, with urls, there are now. I try not to interact with muns who have them, I block them, because it feels manipulative? But I'm also tempted to block people who follow those muns, because they probably think their DNIs are okay to have, so they're still "bad", just not as bad? Do you think that's overkill, am I shooting myself in the foot?

Oh, thank you! I'm very happy you've enjoyed them!

And, of course, ask anything at all!

I think, ultimately, the answer to whether that's overkill is entirely dependent on what your experience is and if you're happy with it. I don't think it is overkill at all, but if you feel like it is costing you too many mutuals, it might be overkill for you.

I'm a pretty insular RPer, I like a handful of close writing partners that I write a lot of threads with, so, having something like, under ten writing partners is great for me while it's miserable for other muns. I can go wild on blocking and not have it negatively impact my enjoyment, but I know that's not the case for everyone!

And I do, actually, I do go pretty wild with the blocking when it comes to things like DNIs. If it comes off as policing to me, not just something like a difference of opinion or a strong opinion on something, I'm going to block. Otherwise, it's just recognizing that this isn't a mun I'm going to work out with, but no hard feelings. With policing though...I don't want that anywhere near me or my mutuals, so, it's going to be a block.

Because they do tend to be in these odd, like, nested situations lol I totally will spend the effort if their DNI is bad enough to look at the muns they interact with and make sure I don't have future contact with them either. The RPC is such a big place, making it easier to forget URLs than to remember them, but it's also a place where we establish circles of contact, making it easier to run into the same group repeatedly. I feel like it's better for my peace of mind to be a little more certain than not at all that this isn't going to happen as easily.

If that DNI etc. has been so awful, I definitely don't require their mutuals professing the same beliefs as loudly as they are. If you interact with someone, maybe you don't know their pet fish's name or the obscure lore in a headcanon they posted five years ago or the rule they updated without telling anyone, but you do know what is on their pinned post or blog description or rules. At some point, we all visit each other's blogs in dash-view if nothing else when we're getting replies or checking for memes they might have posted, going through their tags, whatever. I do not believe that you're mutuals who reblog from each other often, reply frequently to each other, ship each other's muses and so forth, and all this time, you've somehow failed to notice your bestie mun is telling proshippers to die in their DNI lmao

No, you've seen it. And I find it extremely hard to believe, too, that it's never come up in conversation OOC either.

So, this hypothetical mutual is so oblivious to others, completely agrees with the other one's views while not feeling confident enough to share them publicly, or is scared enough of the other one that they won't disagree...and no matter which/which combination that might be, they're not a mutual I want.

Especially when it comes to a DNI with someone's URL in it. Hard pass on anyone who is okay with that!

If I visited a writing partner's blog, let's say this person is also my closest friend, I value them and the threads I have with them so much, and I saw that in their DNI they had dropped someone's URL? We would have to talk. I'd have to bring it up because it's the right thing to do (and would also be highly out of character for any of my friends, thus very concerning). There would have to be a question posed about what happened here, why did you feel like this was a good choice, and do you think it's increasing or lessening the problem to have that there?

Honestly, sometimes people do get so upset about something that has happened that their worst impulses are let loose freely. When you ask someone you have an established relationship with about that, unless you're being really hateful about it right off, it can help them settle down, take a step back, and see that this is maybe not the right action to take. To me, silence says you're okay with it.

When muns started putting more elaborate DNI's in, that alone rubbed me the wrong way because I genuinely do not think that the majority of that information is at all necessary. It's something I can see and fully understand minors doing, not because they're terrible or anything but because the impulses and rationale are just different. You're very much geared to be as loud as possible about things that are important to you, making them a part of you in a huge way, as a teenager. Shit just is unreasonably intense! But as an adult, I expect that behavior to be different. You don't actually need to say on your RP blog's DNI that "transphobes WILL be blocked!!!"

Well, yes, I should hope so lol we're a community filled with muns who are trans, I'd certainly hope you were not cool with that kind of thing. It's one of those assumptive states, it goes without saying because, in a group of legitimate adults, it literally doesn't have to be said that a trans mun in a group of trans muns in a RPC filled with trans muns would be intolerant of transphobic assholes.

And, no one likes a damn transphobe, it's not like this stunning, fresh information, here. Not making such a statement does not, in fact, act as a welcome.

Saying that, and I do not mean literally just that, it's just an example of the type of things found in a common DNI, is a little immature for me. Some of those things are, in addition to being purely self-validating: playing into the fear created by policing, virtue signaling, policing, or baiting. And all of them are pointless. Telling someone who would already be bigoted toward you and others to not interact if they somehow miraculously ID as whatever label that takes for them to not interact with your posts is waving a metaphoric red flag in front of a bull. Kind of like tagging a post as either "antis don't interact" or "proshippers don't interact." Actual quickest and most assured way to get that interaction!

I totally understand the age thing, it's self-protecting. Most people do respect it, but when they don't, you've clearly stated that this is not for whatever age group. Things pertaining to your writing and/or muse I also understand and think are great for a quick glance before someone even gets to the rules. Having in a DNI something like "muns who are easily triggered by gore" when you write a horror muse, for instance. You're advising them that this isn't a great idea for them, and it shouldn't be expected that you change your muse and topics because they decided to follow anyway.

But it became excessive very quickly, and there is the expectation that blogs have a DNI. The further expectation is that there be a specific list of things found in that DNI, if yours does not include it, you obviously don't have a problem with those things. I really cannot be okay with that, you know?

However, when it wasn't being used as a callout or a way to police, that was something that could just be ignored. Once URLs of other RPers started to appear, it was a whole other problem.

It used to be the pervading rule of the RPC that it is not alright to force other muns to chose between you and another mun that you had an issue with, but now we have DNIs with other muns' URLs in them. Now, it's the opposite take - if you have an issue with a URL being dropped in a DNI, or if you continue to interact with the mun, you're likely to get a callout or be on the receiving end of other bullying.

So, I very much think the self-insulating thing to do is to avoid those mutuals as well as the RPer with the URL-laden DNI. They could just block you, but is someone who was so juvenile as to put another mun's URL in their damn DNI going to be mature enough to do that? Will their friends once they complain about you? For me, it's too high of a risk of being around muns I wish would take a very long break from RP and only come back once they've grown up some.

I would never advise anyone to do something that is erring on the side of getting them into harassment water unnecessarily (as in, not something that pertains to digging in your heels and writing what you want or not tolerating bullying where you see it happening), and I feel like not doing what you are is that. However, I also am a firm believer in agency, even to make mistakes.

So, if you genuinely feel like blocking mutuals of someone with a URL-dropped/callout/other highly offensive and bullying thing in their DNI is costing you so many chances to RP that you're no longer enjoying yourself here? You might want to consider adjusting how widely you are blocking.

If that's the case, try going for mutuals who are what I call Casual Mutuals and leaving them open. Those are mutuals that the mun doesn't write with often or at all, they're technically mutuals because they both follow each other, but that's it. There might be some liking of posts or even comments or non-committal, OOC style memes sent in by Casual Mutuals, but that interaction is sparse and, yep, casual. These mutuals might legitimately be unaware of the mun's hateful, bullying bullshit in the DNI, or they are actually afraid to unfollow/block them at this point, so their option feels like staying around as quietly as possible.

With that last deal...you could even be doing someone a favor, Anon. When I've encountered that situation before, it's come about because the other person's Casual Mutual is painfully anxious, shy, and a previous victim of bullying. They feel isolated, they don't have many or any writing partners, and they really, truly, are terrified to distance themselves in a way that might be noticed. It's a type of toxic interaction that rarely gets mentioned in PSAs, presumably because it is so low on the actual interaction scale.

Giving them someone else in their corner, especially if that other mun is more open about their intolerant stance on bullying, can go a long way toward giving someone else confidence. I've had other people's Casual Mutuals become my Casual Mutuals and wouldn't you know it? After a while, they get braver. They see my friends and mutuals doing our thing without any of the bullying going on, they see us supporting anti-policing and not tolerating bullying, and they get brave enough to unfollow the hateful mun. It feels nice to even inadvertently help someone, and over the years, some of those Casual Mutuals have become great writing partners, too. People I would have missed if I had made the choice to block them by the association of a hateful mun they were trapped in the orbit of.

Just try to exercise caution! You seem like a reasonable person who doesn't mind truly thinking on things or doing the work required to be cautious. Assume the close mutuals are a problem, too, and block away. Build a wall with some razor wire on it with those blocks! Don't assume the low-interaction, very casual mutuals are, though. Check out their blogs for signs of agreement with Hateful Mun, and if they don't have any, give them a shot as far as just leaving them unblocked goes.

I also have to say, here at the end, that it's extremely nice to see that people out there are doing this. Honestly would have thought I'd be the last person to encourage a ton of blocking, but that's the environment of the RPC now, and it's really the only way we can deal with this issue. You can't reason with these people, you can't stop them, you can only stay away from them for your own good and send a message that this isn't benefiting them. Not everyone agrees with them, they're not going to keep having people left open for their attacks or their RP entertainment. And if enough people are just walling them off, that is a message they'll have to receive because RP runs on interaction with others.

They might think they want every "nasty ass" xyz Problematic RPer to block them, not interact, or vanish from their view of the RPC, but I don't think they realize what that really looks like. What it looks like is a huge percentage of the RPC missing, including people they didn't realize were "problematic." We tend to be quieter, wanting to stay in our own lanes and actually enjoy the hobby and each other. That's why they have to resort to shit like making everyone pre-guilty, or setting up traps to catch people out on being "gross."

So, I genuinely do not think they're prepared for the rude awakening of silence that would happen if we all actually vanished, but I am dying to see it lol and do sometimes have to wonder if the complaints about the RPC being dead/dying/empty, not in a fandom but overall, are coming from the purity police some of the time. It's quite active over on the Leave Folks Alone Over Fiction side of life :D

#answered #anonymous #policing #dni lists #blocking #rp advice #rp problems

[woman-loving]

@eiriee replied to your post “@butyouvealwaysbeenthecaretaker replied to your post “I hate to say it, but...”

Do you have any posts on your thoughts regarding Bi: Notes? It's been on my shelf for years & I've read some of it but not finished.

I do, but they’re older and mostly rambling. The trouble I have with the book is that there’s so much content and framing that I disagree with that it’s hard to hold it all in my head and draw out a structured criticism for it. It’s been quite a while since I looked through it, but here are a couple of things I discussed in my older posts.

So, you know how some people will say that hostility toward women-loving women or woman-woman couples that’s expressed in the language of “lesbians” or “dykes” isn’t really about bi women? Eisner pulls a similar move to put bi women and biphobia at the center of harassment against WLW. They have a section on Sexual Violence in Chapter Four where they talk about men pressuring bi women (and also lesbians) to engage in threesomes or “perform bisexuality” by making out with other women. They then say (bolding mine):

At this point, some of you might be wondering why I consider these types of violence against bisexual women [men harassing women who make out in public, men asking if “they can watch,” etc] as biphobic rather than lesbophobic, since lesbians are often harassed in very similar ways to the ones I described. This is biphobia, however, rather than lesbophobia because this type of harassment is based on biphobic beliefs and perceptions even when they are aimed against lesbians. As explained throughout this chapter, the logic of this type of sexual violence is that bisexual women are “actually straight,” or only performing their bisexuality for male pleasure. When lesbians are harassed in the same way, they are first presumed to be bisexual, and then attached with the same biphobic notions used against bi women. What happens here is a combination of lesbophobia and biphobia: Lesbians first have their lesbian identity erased, and then are presumed to be “actually straight” as a result of being presumed as bisexual. Thus, biphobia constitutes the center here, and remains biphobia even when it is aimed at lesbians.

What we can see here is that this type of biphobia not only harms bisexual women, but also monosexual women, as it is also aimed against them. As explained above, lesbians often receive the same type of harassment as bisexual women when being affectionate or sexual in public. Heterosexual women are often also subject to pressure by strait men to perform bisexuality (privately or publicly) for their pleasure. In many communities (especially ones that consider themselves "alternative," "open," or "liberal"), performative bisexuality might be a standard that all women must meet. This means that in those communities, women are expected and pressured into being sexual with other women for the satisfaction of straight men. Although this mostly harms bisexual women (who are presumed to want this simply because they identify as bisexual), it also works against monosexual women.

What all of this means is that biphobia against women is not only the concern of bisexual women, but of all women regardless of their sexuality identity. [...]

This differs from the “misdirected lesbophobia” discourse, because they’re arguing that all women can be negatively affected by biphobia, and present this as a reason that people should take biphobia seriously. The people who argue that expressions of lesbophobia toward bi women are just “misdirected” are more often emphasizing a disconnect between the effect it has on bi women versus lesbians, and want to see this hostility as “really” only about lesbians (so that “dyke” as a politicized identity is the cultural property of lesbians exclusively). So Eisner’s not being as stingy with the centrality they claim for bisexual subjects in this type of harassment, but it’s still a shit move and denies a lot of ground to what can be considered “about” lesbians.

Ironically, I think Eisner and the “misdirected lesbophobia” camp talk about lesbophobia in a similar way, where the subject of “lesbophobia” must be understood--even by homophobes--as a woman who is exclusively attracted to women. The “misdirected lesbophobia” camp say that “a woman who is exclusively attracted to women” is what’s really on the homophobe’s mind when he calls a woman “dyke,” and therefore the insult can’t be about bi women, while Eisner presumes that a man harassing a woman to perform for him must believe that she’s genuinely open to men and therefore cannot really see her as a lesbian.

I think both sides misunderstand the slippages that occur when people see expressions of woman-women eroticism. I would argue that homophobia against women (which I would just call lesbophobia) often involves a denial that woman-woman eroticism is real/final, and that any women should be permitted to have sexual relations and identifications outside of particular heterosexualities. In other words, it’s possible for someone to know that there are women in the world who call themselves “lesbians” and claim to only like women, and to believe that this phenomenon is bad, without believing that “women who only like women” actually exist. If such a person argues that “lesbians” are just women who can’t get a man (an argument which presumes they want men), this is still a message about what self-identified “lesbians” are like, even though it totally dismisses their own understanding of their lesbianism. But going further, this message isn’t just “about” self-identified lesbians either, because it’s implicitly a message about all woman-woman eroticism and identifications, including bi women’s identity and desire toward women. Arguably, it’s even about women more broadly, in that it suggests that getting a man is a central preoccupation for women, and that perceived rebellious from women can be dismissed as a petulant reaction to failure in this area, rather than a reflection of agency and goals beyond patriarchal expectations.

In any case, it’s inaccurate to claim that this kind of harassment can’t really be “about” lesbians. Eisner’s logic isn’t consistent here, as you’ll notice. If a lesbian is treated as though she were open to men, they reason that actions toward her are reflective of attitudes about bi women specifically, not lesbians. But when a bi woman is treated as though she were “actually straight,” they don’t conclude that actions toward her must reflect attitudes toward straight women, not bi women or lesbians. There also isn’t an option for lesbians to be directly perceived as “actually straight,” even though this isn’t uncommon. Any suggestion that a lesbian might be open to men automatically moves the topic to bi women, meaning that there’s a whole huge area of lesbophobia that fundamentally has nothing to do with lesbians. (I think this move is cruel and outrageous, even if it’s a reversal of a move often used against bi women.) I also think they make the mistake of presuming that men only pressure women whom they think will be open to their advances. While the idea that women might eventually “like it” can be used as rationalization for this behavior, I think the behavior is rooted more in a simple lack of concern for women’s interests and boundaries, when men expect that they can get away with ignoring these.

Eisner makes similar moves in other places. Here they are talking about “lesbian” porn:

Following all of this, I think it would be more accurate to discuss “lesbian” porn in terms of bisexuality. If we follow from the sexual acts performed by the women appearing in these types of scenes, it would be very hard not to notice that bisexuality is here at work. The women in scenes titled lesbian have sex with each other, as well as with men. Even in scenes where no man is present at all, the logic behind the activity is still bisexual, since the women are perceived to be performing for a cis straight male audience.

These representations of bisexuality, in turn, contribute to the cultural construction of female bisexuality as we've seen it in the media depictions above. The media take up on the pornographic logic of bisexuality and send the same messages, but in covert ways. Thus, looking into pornographic representations of bisexual women might help us shed light on social and cultural treatment of female bisexuality in general.

Instead of recognizing the possibility for slippages in meaning, or that there can be inaccurate messages about lesbians as well as bi women (e.g. lesbian sexuality can also be regarded as a performance for men), Eisner finds in these representations an essential and exclusive bisexuality. Now, I do think that media representations of “lesbians” also inform attitudes toward bi women, that looking at them can be useful, and that representations of “lesbians” can simultaneously be representations of bisexuality. But I think it’s a silly exercise to claim that “lesbian” porn is only depicting bisexuality, as if the (fictionalized) dynamics depicted in media have their own independent and singular reality which can be empirically determined. Just a couple paragraphs above this, they obverse that “[t]he women's sexuality is irrelevant since the definitions are not about them but about the men fucking or watching them.” They should have gone a little bit farther with this idea, in my opinion!

While there are times when it makes sense, I think there can also be a danger in treating bisexuality as a singular expression, encompassing same-gender and man-woman relations, when these relations have very different positions in society. I think Eisner tends to treat bisexuality as a singular, marginalized expression that needs protection, including from gay people, in a way that can end up aligning with heterosexism. I don’t remember if this idea featured in their book, but they once made a post saying:

All gay and lesbian readings of mainstream movies and TV are based in bisexual erasure. Because in order to read characters as gay or lesbian, it is necessary to erase the character’s different-gender attraction and relationships.

It’s telling that they’re talking about “characters” having different-gender attraction, because of course these sexually-unmarked, mainstream “characters” are actually imagined, depicted, and normally received as straight. Eisner is again employing some weird media analysis where characters, even across individual imaginings (i.e. from the original creator’s depiction to a fan depiction), seem to have an independent reality. So interest in man-woman relations is an essential part of the character, always. Then, when you want to imagine that the character is interested is same-gender relations, you can only add that as an additional fact, thus making the character bisexual. And then, by becoming part of a (hypothetical) singular bisexual expression which is uniformly marginalized, canon man-woman relations now need protection against gay readings that would “erase” them. Even though these are actually straight characters in heteronormative media. The end result is that we’re meant to always uphold man-women relations as integral to a character’s (or anyone’s?) sexuality and identity.

In general, my impression when reading the book was that Eisner solely wants to look at identity or group belonging as the site of oppression, and doesn’t want to give any attention to the ways that man-woman relations themselves may be relatively valued, legitimized, and enforced over same-gender relations. I can understand the reluctance to look at those processes, since bi people’s potential engagement in man-woman arrangements is often used to deny their sexualities and the possibility that they could face any problems, or even an intensification of problems in some areas over lesbians or gay men. But these processes are still an important part of patriarchal gender systems, and need to be part of the analysis. I don’t have a good quote for it, but this one might suggest a bit of that line of thought: 

The idea of passing as an act of disguise presumes an essence of identity. Without a "true core," a disguise becomes impossible, for the very meaning of disguise comes from the discrepancy between what one "is" and what one is "seen" and "understood" to be. However, instead of being an essentialist notion, passing can subvert these presumptions by showing, in practice, that appearances--including one's very body--are no guarantee for the "truth" of one's identity. From this point of view, passing becomes particularly useful in demonstrating the way in which all identities and appearances are socially constructed, the way identities are written into our very bodies, and the enormous fragility of these constructs themselves.

In the case of bisexuality, we might look at society's insistent attempts to naturalize both homosexuality and heterosexuality, appealing to bodies, genes, hormones, and brains in order to establish that "this" (the sexuality in question) is inborn, natural, and immutable. Under this logic, one is either "born" gay or "born" straight, and thus any performance of their desires is "true to its nature." Being in a same-gender relationship presumes homosexuality, and being in a different-gender relationship presumes heterosexuality, because one's relationship choices are understood to reflect one's inner essence. Bisexuality— and bisexual passing—short-circuits this circular logic by showing that “acting gay” or “acting straight” does not necessarily equate with “being gay” or “being straight.” It allows us to distrust visual presentations and to deconstruct claims of inner essences. In this way, bisexuality may again be one way out of rigid identity constructs, a way of resisting both the lines of separation imposed by them and the hierarchies built upon them.

That’s nice, but you actually don’t need to imagine that same-gender acts stem from a different innate character in order to condemn them, or to institutionalize heterosexuality to the detriment of other pursuits. You don’t need naturalized concepts of essential heterosexuality and homosexuality in order to have a “hierarchy” among social arrangements and practices. In fact, ambiguity between subjects and the inability to finally “prove” that a person is one way or another can actually be beneficial to oppressive systems. When there’s ambiguity, more people can come under scrutiny and face demands to continuously prove themselves by conforming to gendered expectations or distancing themselves from marginalized subjects and practices.

That goes back to my original complaint that bi theorists focus too much on minority sexual discourses. Man-woman sexual relations and kinship can be institutionalized (while same-gender ones are stigmatized or denied) without any reference to “heterosexuality” as one of multiple sexual orientations. It does NOT need a corresponding “homosexuality.” The “gay-straight binary” is not a crucial linchpin within systems of gender. These discourses on sexual orientation do exist and do have more institutionalized backing now, so that more people are now forced to engage with them at some points. But I still don’t see them as really universal or fundamental to gender/patriarchy overall. I think the exclusive focus on discourses of “sexual orientation” leads to distorted analysis, because there’s just more going on in society.

There were just so many things they said that I objected to, and I really just don’t agree with their whole approach.

Although, I was originally complaining about another paper I was reading, which seems to be a Master’s thesis (although that’s hard to believe, because it’s so bad). It’s “The Bisexual To Be Corrected: Interrogating The Threat And Recuperation Of Women's Femme Bisexuality,” which can be found here. This was one part that I thought was especially... lackluster:

As several women I interviewed point out, heteropatriarchy needs people to be monosexual, or attracted to only one gender, in order to neatly hierarchize. It is rather difficult to maintain the disenfranchisement of a group if that group is incoherent, with its members presenting in different ways that shift, slip, and take on a variety of meanings. The notion that women can be attracted to men, women, and other genders simultaneously is a threat, because it points to the fact that perhaps masculinity and femininity, men and women, are not such polar opposites at all... and if men are not the powerful, aggressive, dominant opposites of women, why should they be at the top of the hierarchy? If masculinity is not the opposite of femininity, then perhaps all men are more intimately related to femininity than they would like to think. This line of thought destabilizes the patriarchal order, so monosexism and biphobia punish bisexuals for their attraction to multiple genders—and more specifically, for destabilizing the gender binary. Bisexuality must be erased, invisible, and invalid because it threatens core values of patriarchy that organize and define our culture. [...]

Again, this relies heavily on the idea that clarity between groups is necessary for hierarchy, and that ambiguity is automatically destabilizing rather than beneficial. (Like, not only does ambiguity extend the circulation of the power-effects of these discourses among more subjects, as Storr would say, but it also provides a measure of flexibility to the system: if you can’t condemn and/or recuperate something using one approach, you can try a contradictory approach.) Even beyond that, the idea that you need “facts” and “consistency” in your oppressive ideology is obviously baseless. The author’s understanding of heteropatriarchy is again focused only on categories of people, even though behavior itself can be regulated (and categorized), and everybody’s behavior is subject to regulation within systems of gender. While I think that gender dualism is very relevant to how bisexuality is understood, my thinking is more that bisexuality won’t be a non-issue until gender dualism is undermined, and less that the very existence of bisexuals inevitably results in the undermining of gender dualism. This paper also seems guided by the goal of uncovering intrinsic and maybe unilateral subversiveness in certain groups of people, and I’ve grown kinda w(e)ary of that.

#biphobia #lesbophobia #shiri eisner #bi notes for a bisexual revolution

[unohanadaydreams]

Angst for gin x reader?

how him betraying the soul society would affect her and like him dying

There’s so much angst all in a row in my inbox haha. Honestly, Gin leaving behind those he cares about with no context or information to achieve a goal he has told No One about has always got to me. He was really that sure he could pull it off

Gin Ichimaru:

If you were known to be his significant other, then you’d definitely be in for--at the very least--an interrogation. You’re pretty lucky that directly after Aizen the Central 46 isn’t reassembled, because I’m sure it’d be harsher if they were, considering Gin was part of a conspiracy that slaughtered their predecessors. I think you’re probably looking at two or more very invasive methods of lie detection from both the 2nd and 12th divisions, with General Yamamoto overseeing the operations. (If you knew of Gin’s involvement before he revealed himself and didn’t snitch, then congrats, you went to bondage jail or the maggot’s nest).

General opinion is a very hard thing to sway and if Gin is labeled a traitor, it would be hard to sway people at large with “but he was trying to stop Aizen the whole time”, because 1. he still went along with Aizen’s plots until pretty much end game 2. people are often stubborn once they make up their minds, especially when it comes to such emotional topics as betrayal. (Also Gin was a main suspect in the narrative of Aizen’s death before the truth was revealed; people just DON’T trust him).

For you, this means a lot of people shunning/ignoring you, to say the least. If you’re in a division with a captain who addresses the issue at large and makes it clear they won’t stand for nonsense then existence in your own division should be relatively fine, especially if your captain enforces it. This is to say nothing of the actions of those outside your division, especially when you are off-duty. People will decide if you’re guilty for themselves and you will be at the expense of a lot of passive aggressive and sly behavior at least and outward condemnation at worst.

There are obviously people other than you that would be sorrowful of Gin’s death and regard him as someone who was trying to do the right thing and someone who did his best, but I really don’t think they would be the majority. If you were to take pride in the fact that you loved Gin and mention him in passing (”ah, Gin used to love that dish, so I’m pretty familiar”), you’d probably encounter a good amount of resistance from people. People would go dead silent. Sneer. Drift away. Perhaps even people you thought were your closest friends.

I think it would be really hard for people at large to make peace with the fact that you were Gin’s significant other but he didn’t tell you what was going on. I don’t think people like Matsumoto or Izuru were immune from such treatment either, but as vice-captains, it’d obviously take a lot of fucking balls to do more than just ignore them or gossip behind their backs if you found them suspect. However, the general attitude towards you would mellow with time, especially when the Central 46 is reinstated and you are still deemed innocent and other threats are established.

Matsumoto seeks you out almost immediately after she is well enough to be up and about post-Aizen betrayal and shoves a saucer of sake in your hand, because she’s not about to cry during the day sober. It doesn’t matter if you’re at your desk mid-work load, you’re getting pulled to the nearest secluded room and having a tender moment comprised of tearful hours with her right then and there. If you were Gin’s significant other, I think it would be very unlikely you didn’t have some sort of amicable relationship with her, so it’s not even just out of wanting to relate and mourn with you, but out of genuine care.

I think Izuru would be more hesitant and unsure. What would he even say? “Sorry Gin didn’t think we deserved to know the truth?” “Sorry someone we both cared about left us behind like we didn’t matter?” He’s either getting dragged to you by Matsumoto (or Renji--OR BOTH), an already weepy drunk, or waffling outside your division or apartment every day for like a month before chickening out every time because he can’t fathom his words or comfort being welcome or enough. Honestly, I think if he organically came to you (if you haven’t already opened your apartment door after his second week of loitering near it and pulled him in to talk), it would be with a very uncertain and shaky letter.

To be even Spicier(tm) for a moment:

If you were pregnant or already had a child with Gin, they would almost DEFINITELY get told to their face that their father was a bad person because children are ruthless about that sort of thing and no matter how hard you try to instill that Gin was trying to do the right thing, they’re going to hear plenty of conflicting opinions and grow up really bitter about it.

Izuru would absolutely find himself randomly bursting into tears looking at your kid freshly after Gin’s betrayal and then again after his death.

Rangiku would be the vodka aunt of your dreams but if your kid looked a lot like Gin, I think it would really get to her sometimes, as her most fond memories are of Gin when they were children.

Your kid will view lying as The Biggest Sin.

#gin ichimaru #bleach headcanons #bleach imagines #bleach scenarios #gin ichimaru x reader #matsumoto rangiku #izuru kira #i went into this like: well you'd be sad.... #and left like: haha imagine if he also left you AND YOUR KID #and that's just the angst baby