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corruptedplaylist · 4 months

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looking out for you: act ii behind the scenes

just pretending like im on a talk show i am both the interviewer and the host <3

motivation for writing the lance and keith solo chapters

i've been raring to write the solo winter break chapters (i just called them the winter break interlude in my head for a bit) since september/october actually. i viewed it as my reward for finishing act ii 💀 not just because i love angst but also i love a good character study/character development heavy chapter and i really got to dig into each character and their home lives.

the foundation of this fic is entirely based on my dissatisfaction with how the show progressed and ended and subsequent self-indulgence— i've just been addressing a lot of the issues i had with vld. one such issue for me was the lack of in-depth character development. i enjoy a good romance as much as the next person but i really wanted to understand keith and lance as individuals who functioned outside of each other and the context of the group, and the solo chapters were a great writing exercise for me in terms of characterization and character-driven storytelling. so let's get into it baby!

lance's section (chapter 11) first.

we never got to see lance's growth as a character beyond "the dumb one" or the guy who cracks jokes for the sake of the team. the smaller vulnerable moments lance had, where he broke down and felt like he was useless and tried to leave the team or when he admitted he missed his family and Earth— they never got properly resolved. i think lance's identity as a 1.5 generation immigrant (immigrating to the States as a little kid) as well as his status as the youngest in a large family impacted his thought process and self-perception and i wanted to showcase that.

for children especially, immigration can be traumatic. i know "trauma" is an oversaturated buzzword used in pop psychology these days but i refer its definition as something established in one of my classes: "an event or series of events that is perceived as frightening, distressing, or life-threatening and has long-lasting effects on the survivor's emotional, social, mental, and physical processes." i imagine that for a 5-year-old lance, who has always been family-oriented and prone to bouts of homesickness, he experienced his immigration as traumatic when he had to leave behind everything he knew in cuba (his house, his friends, his neighbors, most of his family members) and start his life over in america. like, that's a LOT for anyone, let alone a little kid, to have to deal with. and that's where i extrapolated the notion that lance is afraid of being left behind— he didn't really have a choice in whether or not he got to leave cuba and so he's carried this fear that everyone in cuba will move on without him.

on top of that, i think lance acted as a sponge for his family's negative emotions related to immigration (stress, anxiety, sadness). that's partially where he developed the conception that he had to perform, to always be on and distract them from their negative feelings. ofc, it also doesn't help that as the youngest, he really has to jockey with his siblings for a Thing (i.e. Luis is the family man, Marco is the athlete, Veronica and Rachel are the career-driven women).

i knew from the get-go i was gonna make this bitch have daddy issues lol. first and foremost, i do not want to dismiss the very real fact that there are tons of immigrant parents who hold homophobic notions and ideals because that is 100% real. however, the way that it's portrayed in media can sometimes flatten a lot of the potential for a nuanced relationship. i'm not excusing homophobia by any means but i am coming from a place of engaged empathy. our parents are a product of a society and culture that has ingrained in them homophobic ideals and fucked notions of gender expression. it's difficult to break a way of thinking and acting when you've had that logic shoved down your throat since birth. i think there's a lot to be said on the concept of masculinity and the "strong silent immigrant parent," which i haven't seen much in the voltron fanfiction i've consumed. i wanted to craft a relationship between lance and his dad where it can be boiled down to: "your love hurts." their conversation at the end of chapter 11 is by no means fixing everything, but it's a step in the right direction.

i also just really love lance's relationship with his siblings. i'm the oldest so it was a fun exercise to just see how lance interacts with his siblings as the youngest. also that's not the last you'll be seeing of the McClan in this fic......

let's talk about the keith section:

ok first, we've been able to view shiro from keith, lance, and adam's pov thus far. the thing is, though, is that lance still kind of views shiro as his idol/someone he's looked up to, and i wrote adam's pov primarily so the audience could view klance as a unit. shiro's character felt a little flat, and that was kind of on purpose thus far. keith and shiro are obviously incredibly close since they're brothers in this universe, but there's been an underlying tension so far because keith feels distant from shiro and i wanted to address that finally.

i think it's a natural thing for relationships to change once people hit college/move out. keith's mom left when he was a kid and his dad died and he bounced from foster home to foster home so ofc he's going to develop a huge complex about forming attachments to other people. i think it makes sense that one of keith's biggest fears is that shiro will leave him or grow tired of him, which obvi isn't true, but when you get in your head about something, after years of trauma and reinforcement of a spiral of bad thoughts, it's hard to get out of it. so keith's chapter was kind of confronting this idea that he deserves good, and that he might be good, and maybe he should stop running and learn to accept that he is loved.

i'm sure y'all have picked up on the whole thing i have for keith about showing the evolution of his willingness to be vulnerable and open up through cooking. at the end of keith's chapter, he is making kimchi fried rice with akemi which holds a lot of nuance.

1) keith is slowly but surely exploring his own heritage. (i know i haven't touched on keith's korean identity in a bit but dw that's coming in later chapters). fried rice isn't an entirely new concept to him bc he was raised in a japanese household (and also just exists in the world) but he's embracing positive change within himself and even initiating it himself by trying out a korean recipe, using kimchi, a korean food

2) not only is he trying out a korean recipe, he felt safe enough to attempt it for the first time at college, in a shared house with all his friends, and even served it to them, which is a HUGE step in his willingness to be perceived.

3) he is sharing this recipe with akemi, his japanese kind-of mom. it's the fact that cooking is kind of a love language for keith and akemi, and he wants to share something he's found for himself, away from the texas house, and integrated it into his old life, mixing what he knew with what he knows now.

akemi, who has shared her own recipes she learned from her family with keith and took on the role of teacher, is now the student. she's learning a recipe from keith and engaging in his explorations of his koreanness through cooking. and keith is sharing his culture with her because he tried it on his own with his own little found family, like "hey look at this thing i tried out for myself can i share it with you?"

tl;dr for chapters 11 and 12

i wanted to use the solo chapters as ways to show how lance and keith react to change— the ways they view it and the reasons they fear it. it can be boiled down to this:

lance: i am afraid of being left behind and i wish things would stay the same so i do not have to address the fear of being left behind because that implies i am not good enough for someone to stay for. keith: nothing has ever stayed the same for me and i am afraid of getting comfortable in the love that my community has for me because that could all be ripped away at a moment's notice. i will leave first as an act of self preservation.

allura 💖🧚🏿‍♀️🥰

i love you allura!!!! i got to have keith and lance each have a little moment with our fave princess because 1) keith and allura didn't interact a lot in this supposed found family in the canon other than when allura found out keith was galra and 2) i really liked the friendship between lance and allura in seasons 3-4 and i wish there were more moments like that. i think keith and allura could both connect more on grief and heritage since they both lost their parents, bridges to their respective cultures (keith korean, and allura jamaican). that little moment in ch 6 between both of them was very special for me as well— as an adoptee, i felt disconnected from a lot of traditions and holidays and foods that were a part of my birth culture but i didn't have anyone to celebrate it with. having keith and allura kind of discuss that together was not only a great character development moment but also was me projecting a lil 😗

side note: allura saying goodnight to keith in chapter 8 after halloweekend shenanigans parallels chapter 2, when they're outside the bathroom and she goes to touch his shoulder but he ducks away. i thought it'd be a nice little easter egg to show the progression of their friendship— in chapter 8, keith lets allura touch him and affirm their status as friends who have fun together.

i like lotor as a character but i had to nerf him a bit in this fic in regards to his relationship with allura. i think allura's relationship with lotor adds to her depth as a character— she's seen as the strong girlboss who doesn't take shit but hinting at her toxic relationship and portraying its affects was important to me. yes, allura is a badass but also she is not immune to shitty stuff, and even the most badass of people can get into bad situations. it doesn't make them weak, it just makes them human. i wanted lance, who def has this image of allura that's different from reality, to kind of find allura in this vulnerable moment and 1) realize that she's a person first and foremost, not an infallible goddess and 2) comfort her wholeheartedly because lance, to his core, is a very kind person and even when drunk, he's going to try and find the right words to say.

allura is a side character in all of this but i wanted to give her some complexity as well, since lance hangs out a lot with hunk and pidge and keith is closer with shiro and adam.

ch 9 klance development

ok look everything everywhere all at once left a fucking imprint on my brain when i saw it. "in another life i would have liked just doing laundry and taxes with you" ok stab me in the gut. that being said, i know i really wanted to give klance a moment to just be friends who run domestic errands together, to start nudging them in a direction where they're both like, "hey i kinda enjoy hanging out with this person one-on-one, and im comfortable enough to feel like i dont have to perform in front of them." klance just being domestic and folding laundry together at a laundromat and sharing airpods askgjakdjghlkadjfhgadf.

i also wanted to include the little adam and lance moment toward the end, because let's face it, adam would have absolutely adored lance (i say from the 2 minutes of screentime canon adam w got). lance has hunk and pidge and he's friends with allura but i wanted to give him someone to look up to and rely on the way keith has shiro. esp since lance is the youngest and away from home— adam probably reminds him more of his siblings initially, because lance has a more grounded perspective of adam than shiro, who's a microniche celebrity.

about the beach episode

i love beach filler episodes so fucking much. it's just a great time to get the ensemble out of the typical college setting and see how they function as a unit in a different environment. from the car rides, to stopping for food at some dingy ass fast food chain, to fucking around on the beach and chasing birds and sharing lunch ugh i love it so much it was lovely to write. mirroring adashi's relationship development with klance's was fun, i've had that idea in my head for awhile now so it was gratifying to see it come to fruition. i knew that i would have lance realize he liked keith first simply because keith takes a bit to process his emotions. dw this isn't gonna be some one-sided, drawn out pining for too long.

this beach chapter was a way for me to simultaneously reflect on how things have progressed with klance's relationships. not just with each other, but the rest of the group as well. i wanted them to have gotten a natural dynamic where they're all close enough to go on a beach trip and just fuck around and be normal college kids taking a break for finals. it also allowed me to plant the seeds for further klance development, as well as hint at the central conflict that would follow lance in chapter 11. chapter 10 was a great wrap up for the overall dynamic of the group and a way to end the fall semester.

what was it like to write in adam's pov?

that was so much fucking fun ahhhhh. for one reason, klance aren't together yet and i wanted. to write. domestic bliss. second, it's a great narrative tool to kind of zoom out a bit when viewing klance. we can see how the boys interact in a group setting from an outsider's perspective, without all the gay panic or inner monologues, as fun as they are to write. they just exist as they are, and adam takes note of it. third, i love adam and the potential of adashi and i am so so so sad that adam got killed off after less than 90 seconds of screentime. nothing against curtis, but i've just been more attached to adam since his character was revealed in the show (even if it wasn't for long). shiro deserves a loving partner and healthy relationship and i think adashi are so fucking cute. and yeah, i'm paralleling adashi's relationship development with klance, i just couldn't fucking resist.

when tf are lance and keith gonna get together?

LMAO yeah i knew this was gonna be a slowburn but damn i really am drawing it out. i do want to follow a somewhat logical progression and pacing, though. act i was building klance up as people who could find some common ground and humanize each other instead of just butting heads. act ii has been following the development of their friendship and planting the seeds for romantic attraction, as you might have seen from chapter 10. dw, there is a spike in the klance development in act iii as i focus on their navigation as a couple, and as y'all know, i already wrote the confession scene. it's coming!!!! soon!!!!!!!

multilingualism as a plot device

i've talked about it before but i love!!!! using language as a plot device to demonstrate a character's personality/development/interpersonal relationship!!!

i'm not a fluent speaker in any of the languages that have appeared or been mentioned in this fic (spanish, japanese, korean, jamaican creole, tagalog). i've studied most of them lackadaisically and i'm sort of fuzzy on grammar and cultural nuance. i've been consulting with actual native speakers of these languages to try and make it as authentic as possible but ofc, if you do speak those languages and something sticks out with the translations, please let me know!

i studied spanish in high school, but it was a mix of mexican and castillian spanish because i had different teachers between the years. diving into cuban spanish, which is an entirely different dialect because of its history in the caribbean, has been really fun (and also a lot of work my god i haven't had to bust out my spanish in years). learning all the different curses has been sooooo cool, i love profanity in other languages.

that being said, i think it's really interesting when writing from keith's pov and incorporating language. i have this idea that when keith first moved in with the shiroganes, akemi and shiro tried to encourage him to go to korean school but he probably got embarrassed because he was put with a bunch of little kids due to his speaking ability and stopped going.

the linguistic and cultural barrier was fun to craft between keith and akemi because when they first met each other, keith probably spoke 0 japanese and akemi was more comfortable in japanese and less in english. from the flashback in chapter 12, we see that keith has already been studying hard to work to a conversational level of japanese, and he can understand basic phrases (akemi tries to accommodate him as well). even so, keith still uses 丁寧語 or teneigo, the standard level of politeness for japanese, when he's speaking with akemi. it shows that even though he's progressed in his japanese, he still puts some distance between him and akemi, like he sees himself as a long-term houseguest. ofc there's layers of respect that are interlaced with teneigo, but close family units don't use teneigo when they speak to each other.

this has been a disorganized and rambling behind the scenes of looking out for you act ii. thanks for tuning in and see y'all next time <3

#ao3 fanfic #voltron legendary defender #klance #college au #keith kogane #lance mcclain #takashi shirogane #adam voltron #hunk garrett #pidge holt #allura vld #adashi #behind the scenes

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killerpancakeburger · 1 year

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I fucking hate women's day

And I say it as a woman.

Every fucking year it can be resumed to two things:

- Being reminded by medias/politicians/social medias/associations/etc of all the ways women are still wronged by society/our own government/men/medias/etc in the 21th century, like progress has stopped in the 80s.

Even much worse, we have regressed. This is what the High Council for Equality between women and men (Haut Conseil à l'Égalité) stated in their annual report in january 2023.

Street harassment isnt getting better. There are laws against it but there is no way to prove the harassment in court and the cops don't care anyway. You could film it but why would your harasser let you?

Pay gap is not getting better any time soon cause Men Getting Paid More For Same Work Aside (minority), the gap comes from women sacrifying their careers for kids and men not doing the same - they dont even need to entertain the tought! -, high paying jobs being filled by men AT 97%, and women not bargaining for better pay like men do.

Feminicides are getting worse, or we are paying more attention to them but they're not stopped. Police don't care even when women have the courage to press charges. Spain has made great progress in terms of gender equality when they're less wealthy than France and yet we seem to be unable to do the same!!

When I first heard the word feminicide I found it ridiculous. I thought, why are we making this distinction? Why are we singling out women? I don't need to be reminded that Im a woman and the risks that comes with it.

But then I heard about how many women got killed by their exes/husbands/bfs and how this specific issue wasnt taken seriously at all. And suddenly it made complete sense to have a specifc word for it, because its not about a random killing where the killer has a reason for it (mainly man on man crime). It's about men killing women because they are women. Because they feel a sense of ownership over the woman they f*ck, a sense of ownership so developped, that the reaction they have when being left, is that the woman should be dead. If she's not with dead she's better off dead. Because she should only exist for them.

- Having to endure an endless procession of politics and companies pretending to care about women's rights by posting some fancy words online and taking measures that are insignificant or straight up useless, all to make themselves look good in the public eye.

If I have to read one more fucking article by FranceInfo asking women "But but! MeToo happened! How can misogyny still exist in our country???"... MeeToo was just a lot of noises for little results. Our government members pride themselves on cops more trained to listen to brutalised women when cops still dgaf. Men in positions of power can have 17 sexual harassments accusations and besides it being talked about in media, the reality is that they won't suffer from it. They still have power, money, influence, and they're not judged or put in jail.

#rant #rambling into the void #anti women's day #women's day #france #gender inequality #feminism

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selamat-linting · 7 months

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yknow, the way "get help" and "get therapy" become the go to words to tell someone off is annoying. it comes across as insincere. especially when you know the usual context of its usage and how bad psychiatry is as an institution. the biomedical model of mental illness is based off of pseudoscience, many therapists are several kinds of bigoted, and plenty of the mindfulness advice can only act as a temporary measure if the source of the trauma (material conditions) arent properly addressed. a lot of people came out worse out of psychiatry.

people say get help, get therapy. as if its easy. they dont think of the kind of hoops and cost one had to go through to even access a proper therapist. or finding a medication that work. worst case scenario of "getting help" isnt that nothing changes, the worst case is becoming involuntarily hospitalized, abused and violated by medical staffs, and take meds that gave you side effects you dont want and were not informed of. like, im not saying therapy and meds are useless, every case of mental illness is different and you should choose therapy and/or meds if it works, but therapy isnt a cure for all for all kinds of behavior that you dont like. stop saying "get therapy" when what you truly want to say is "get out of my face you dumb fuck"

disclaimer, i dont think the words "get help" or "get therapy" is inherently wrong. i think its the intention behind it that matters. and im the kind of person who'd like it better if people say what they truly mean. and oftentimes i see that "get therapy" is used as just a gentle way of telling someone to disappear off the face of the earth until they can learn to be a normal and pleasant member of society. not actual concern. a way of being mean without being painted as an asshole. thats so fake. and kind of ableist tbh. like, i'd rather have people telling me to outright kill myself than to have them tell me to go get therapy. at least theyre honest.

#anti psychiatry #disc horse #like. i went to a therapist and i didnt even get a cbt workbook #i got meds. one which did help me and i still take #and another one that help at first #but is highly addictive. and my therapist doesnt care. she just kept prescribing me even when i told her that i dont want to end up like #my addict father. and now i cant stop taking the medicine even though i hate it because i will actually get withdrawal symptoms if i stop #so yeah. i cant say i came out better or worse after getting help. but im still a lucky few compared to many horror stories abt psychiatry

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orbleglorb · 8 months

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ok. i have a question for the masses.

i get along with my family really well, moreso than most people. i don't talk about my family that often, but every time i say something about them, especially in discord servers, it makes someone sad? like, every single time, there's at least one person who says "i wish my family was like that." and that i don't really mind. but sometimes it seems like i genuinely send people into a spiral. and idk im starting to feel bad. like it's just constant. no matter where i mention it, what i'm talking about, it always makes at least one person sad. it's not that i want these people to never vent about this but it feels very weird to be like "i had a fun day with my mom today" and get two people saying "wow i wish my mom loved me like that" or "i wish i had that relationship with my parents."

so, here's my question: am i breaking some sort of Secret Societial Rule by talking about my parents? should i just stop mentioning my family? i know that this probably reeks of privilege (not the right word for this scenario, but i can't figure out what it would be). i'm not saying anything of importance, nothing would be lost, and nobody would be randomly sent into a spiral & start feeling unsafe.

i know that neurodivergent circles, and just friend groups in general, all have those Secret Rules that are sometimes so secret that the group members aren't aware of them until someone breaks them, just like neurotypical ppl do, but they're Different. have i been breaking a Secret Rule this whole time? and if i haven't, how do i respond to ppl when they say this? "i'm sorry" feels hollow and useless. am i expected to do or say anything? usually i just stop talking. is that worse?

thank you, this has been another autism socializing moment

#sasha lore #like this is such a stupid fucking problem to have #it just sounds like “wah wah i have nice parents”#but i am genuinely starting to think that i am fucking up by mentioning them in any public space #this is NOT aimed at anyone in nawball #this has just been going on for YEARS #and i'm starting to think i might be doing something wrong #i started the conversation with a script i had and knew #and someone else changed the conversation because they had a different script #but i can't peek at their script to know what im supposed to say next #and i can't continue using my script either #what do i do ;-; i don't want people to feel bad

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postnuclearophelia · 1 year

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im like in my useless member of society era

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wintersoldierbmb · 10 months

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thursday june 6 i feel like a useless person.

im not depressed and haven’t been for like a year now but i can feel it creeping back in. family drama somehow found a way to me and without saying too much i don’t know who to trust anymore. people really don’t care about me as much as they lie and say they do.

on another note I’m just not motivated to do anything anymore. i wish i could just die. i don’t want to be useless. even though i am in college and stuff i still feel like my life is going to go nowhere and i’ll just be another person existing, taking up everyone else’s oxygen for no reason. i don’t deserve to live if i can’t be useful. i feel like i am incapable of doing the simplest of tasks and that makes me feel like i have no future. i wish someone would get rid of me so i don’t have to kill myself. i wish i didn’t have ADHD. i wish my mind wasn’t on a trillion things at once all the time. i wish i was easy for people to understand. i wish the smallest ripples in how i feel in a moment didn’t have the potential to make my whole day crash and burn. i really wish i was rich, and if not rich then at least normal so that i could be a functioning member of society and be able to get a job or something. i wish i had my own house but i will probably never get one because i can’t save money for the life of me. music isn’t working even though I’ve been consistently doing that since i was born (literally) so there’s another goal in the trash. i have been wasting my time with everything i try to pursue. i should just die.

i’m 19 years old and the only asset i have is the fact that i’m in college. i passed my summer one classes (i think) and i can’t even celebrate it. i can’t bring myself to be happy about that achievement. all i can do is thank God and move on. internally i’m not happy or proud of myself. even now i want to drop out. i am my biggest enemy. i’m not capable of doing things everyone else has learned to do when they were 15, 16, 17 in high school. i don’t think i have an interesting future or even a good one at all. i will die with regrets on how i lived my life. if i grow old, it will be into a life of regret of how lame i was as a youth, and how i didn’t choose to do what everyone else did. my perception on life is very skewed, but i don’t even know how to look at life anymore. i spent so much time being high and under the influence in the past few years that it was the only reality i could function in. now i’m trying to be sober again and not depend on weed to make me a normal person and the only thing it is doing is making me feel like shit inside. my self worth is only high on one day out of the week (probably because i was high that day) and for the rest of the week i feel worthless. if i killed myself i wouldn’t hurt a lot of people except for MAYBE my mom and i don’t want to do that to her.

i feel like something is wrong with me or that i am mentally retarded. everyone else seems to have the necessary brainpower to do everything they need to in life, but here i am being slow in mine. i try every day to improve my work ethic and attitude about living, but my insecurities overwhelm me. all i can think about is how dumb i feel. i feel like a stupid person. i am not intelligent or as intelligent as people make me out to be. if i was in any situation worse than i have been in in my life i probably wouldn’t make it. i thank God every day for always giving me another chance, but i feel sad because i feel like i’m wasting it. He is too merciful to someone who cannot make anything for himself. music is all i have to offer anymore. nothing about me is special or different enough for me to get recognized for. i don’t even feel like a real person anymore. i feel like i’m nobody. i should die soon and quit wasting everyone’s time, but i’m too scared to do it to myself. drugs are the only thing that “restore” me, but thats how you end up being a fucking junkie. i will never be a junkie. i’m hoping one of these days i overdose or get a bad batch of some weed or tale a strange pill or get spiked and die from it. i don’t want torture or deserve a long painful death as i haven’t done anything to earn that. the only thing that i need to do is die. quickly

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cloudslou · 2 years

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sorry im back on it again this morning (since i think these asks i came across are from the same op as the last post i screenshotted and this is likely in response to my post and the tags of others on the post)

a) op states that refusing to acknowledge harmful things a person (woman) is doing is not feminism. thats true, its not. and it’s not what i do, either. what i am specifically talking about is baseless comments made that distort reality and presume olivia to be an unequivocally immoral person and harry a victim of a stunt, rather than understanding this as a mutually-beneficial arrangement that both parties have entered into, with full knowledge of what it entails and what would be asked of them

b) if anything, there is no “lowering an objective moral and ethical standard” for women, but in fact an unreasonably high standard women (in general, but also specifically within this fandom context) that women must meet to ever be considered acceptable (and if any woman has met this standard, please do tell me cus i cant name one). the things olivia is derided for, the thing she is hated for, are in equal measure (or greater) present in harry styles. “treating others poorly in professional settings” (firing previous members of his band w/ little to no regard for their financial wellbeing or that that his tour was likely the major source of income they were waiting for since they had been slated to work it prior to covid) (not to mention that olivia’s supposed mistreatment of people is, so far as can be materially proved, pretty baseless atm), “allowing them to make everything about sex to the detriment of other people’s comfort” (again, fairly baseless for olvia since she has talked about a range if things in regards to dwd, and she is hardly to blame for the focus that media outlets and fans have on sexual aspects of the movie) (and i think this is where harry’s music videos come in-- in ws and lnt both he was full clothed surrounded by much-less-clothed women, and i think its likely models and actors in the videos were more likely to accept the role despite discomfort because of financial motive, and i do not think there was any kind of intimacy coordinator to help manage sexual and sexist scenes, since this role is apparently very important to dwd haters)

c) i disagree with the “crux of feminism” here and find it unbearably shallow, but the whole “women do bad things too!” is the most useless and overdone idea of modern feminism, as if women do not have a history of being accused of wrongdoing, being thought to be immoral, being the scapegoat for all things bad and the downfall of good society, etc. there is no “dehumanizing” here or denial of “complexity”.

d) literally what in god’s fucking name decisions are you talking about in which patriarchy made it harder for olivia to make the RIGHT decisions?? (also condescending but). for all that this last paragraph pretends to be sympathetic to patriarchy and the impact it has on women, it all comes down to “well even if patriarchy is involved, olivia still did wrong and deserves no ‘pass’ at all and btw i have no empathy for her and the position she is in”. again, no one is getting a “pass”, but if someone actually wanted to consider patriarchy as a motivating factor for any of olivia’s actions, i think you would end up at a much more nuanced and empathetic conclusion.

e) my “crux” of all of this is that it is absurd and obviously misogynistic to say baseless things about olivia and hold her to much higher standards than you would harry. clearly so. if you dislike olivia, stop paying attention to her. disengage. admit that your dislike comes from a place of “protecting” harry and not liking the choices HE is making, rather than pretend you are on a moral crusade.

#hello anon from this morning here is my more meaningful and coherent post about misogyny #tbh its funny i even came across these lol #this isnt the whole post but tbh if u have a brain its not worth reading the whole thing

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thelavendercrows · 1 year

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random thought i had that doesn't really mean anything

i always felt, for some reason, that kaz, inej, jesper and wylan felt separated from matthias and nina in some way

dont get me wrong, they all work great together and contribute to the story

but im gonna ramble about this for a second (big spoilers)

kaz, inej, jesper and wylan are victims of capitalism

the negative effects of capitalism is a major theme in the soc duology.

kaz was scammed by a rich asshole that saw fit to rob children, leading to a bout of poverty and homelessness that killed his brother and sent him into a life of crime, in a bid to get some control over the system that screwed him over

inej was seen as an object when trafficked by the slavers, something they could take and sell for their own gain. then, by kaz, she’s called an investment. but she eventually takes back her own identity (”she was inej ghafa and her future was waiting above”) and does what she wants with her life, free from the system that used her

jesper is what kaz would describe as a pigeon. granted, he’s a very smart pigeon that would shoot me to death without a second thought, but the fact of the matter is that he was taken in by the allure of the casinos when arriving in ketterdam, fell into debt, formed an addiction, and had to start living a life of crime to ensure his debts didn’t reach his father

wylan is the son of a wealthy man who saw him as useless when he couldn’t fit society’s expectations. he was so ashamed that his son wasn’t going to be a typical ‘productive member of society’ that he cast him out and tried to KILL him, not only to get rid of him, but to save his own reputation

all of these people are screwed over by the system of capitalism in different ways, and they come together to get their own back

...and then there’s nina and matthias.

sure, nina had to work her ass off in a dangerous city to save matthias, but that was her own choice.

what really separates these two from the others is that they’re victims of war

(yes capitalism leads to war in a lot of cases but let’s not get too complicated)

nina is an orphan, and because of her talents, had to become a soldier

matthias’ family was killed, and he had to become a soldier too

their countries hated each other, and so they had to hate each other. even when, against the odds, they started to fall in love, they couldn’t be together because ravka would’ve had matthias killed, so she had to get him arrested to save him.

when everything seems fine at the end, and they think they can finally be together, what gets matthias? not a scam or some rich asshole like van eck, but another druskelle that killed him for defecting.

like i said, i think they work well in the story and it’d be incomplete without my favourite witch and witch hunter. but, thinking about the rest of the grishaverse (the shadow and bone trilogy and king of scars duology), the six of crows duology is the odd man out in that its story doesn’t centre on a grand war.

but, of course, the effects of war still manage to catch up to nina and matthias

#i feel as if their story could've been its own book yknow #but then again each of the crows could have a damn novel going through their backstories and i'd pay for it all #but you see what i mean #nina and matthias feel like they were displaced from shadow and bone in that way #of course they still fit in to the story #of outcasts screwed over in some way getting to fight back #but idk this just felt especially tragic #six of crows #shadow and bone #crooked kingdom #rule of wolves #king of scars #crooked kingdom spoilers #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #jesper fahey #wylan van eck #nina zenik #matthias helvar

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