even MORE securitywaiter brainrot. these little fellas just don't leave my head do they
part one part two
-ness is the type of waiter to put the check in front of the baby so everyone can have a good laugh
-actually im kinda stealing this from gtlive (sorry mirror matt) but since sparky's is kinda just full of regulars and townfolk, whenever someone new comes in ness will completely invent a new personality. tourist asks what he studied and he's like "archeology, i actually went to egypt last year and we uncovered a tomb" or a family comes in and he puts on a bit of a southern twang and starts dropping "yall's" (that theater major is really coming in handy)
-his coworkers are used to it by now. idk i just feel like ness is the kinda guy you can't help but be endeared by. he's friendly, he's charming, he's bright
-actually wait that could be a meet cute. abby and mike come in one day and he assumes they're just passing by town so he makes up this whole personality. except they keep coming back. and ness maybe perhaps also thinks mike is quite cute and once he finds out abby isnt his daughter he wants to shoot his shot but he also doesn't even know where to begin explaining that everything mike knows about him is a lie (miscommunication trope i guess?)
-omg ness probably heard about the mall incident. one day he’s talking to mike and he’s like “I remember one day hearing about a mall security who beat up this kid’s father! Isn’t that wild?” meanwhile mike is like, “haha yeah that’s wild” and he’s sweating bullets lmao
-kinda explored this dynamic in the baking fic (shameless self promo) but ness and abby get along swell! almost too well in mike's opinion. he might be a little jealous since abby doesn't always listen to him (sibling dynamic) but ness says it and suddenly abby's like "great idea!"
gemini, virgo, pisces, cancer, capricorn and scorpio placements when someone asks them to take on another responsibility when they're already overwhelmed and completely burnt out
i think part of the resistance i’ve seen in response to the view of ed as an abuse victim—not just the view of izzy as someone who abused ed, but of ed as someone who was abused by him, as opposed to interpretations that pursue an image of Nuance and Complexity (unnecessarily, because their dynamic has heaps of both, but there seems to be a popular impulse to conflate complexity with shared culpability) by characterizing their relationship as being toxic/unhealthy in equal reciprocity, or as “mutually abusive” (oxymoron)—i definitely see the influence of racism there, but i think the racism is also working to amplify an adjacent issue where we tend to receive very specific cultural messaging about What An Abuse Victim Looks Like, and ed is excluded from a lot of that criteria.
he’s outspoken. he’s boisterous. he’s Very Cool and he Wears Leather. he’s physically bigger and browner than the person mistreating him. he spends the first season with a big grey beard, he’s covered in tattoos, he projects the image of A Man’s Man, to say nothing of his being a man in the first place. we see him get aggressive and we see him get angry (and sometimes we even see both at the same time). we see moments where he’s surly, prickly, insensitive, arrogant. his survival techniques and trauma responses incur collateral damage to other people, and in the second season this extends into affecting people we actually sympathize with. he’s extremely private about expressing fear. without examination, his professional relationship to izzy seems to position him as the one with the power slanted in his favor.
most damningly, we see him react multiple times to izzy’s abuse with physical violence. this is behavior that gets referenced all the time in the construction of narratives condemning subjects of physical abuse, let alone emotional abuse. which is why writing that intends for its audience to interpret a character as being unambiguously A Victim Of Abuse will often, for simplicity’s sake, avoid showing the character regularly engaging in anything of the kind.
and again, all of these departures from the image of The Model Victim are compounded by his being a man of color.
without any of the shorthand designed to point a big flashing arrow at his mistreatment, all we have left to work with are the words and actions we see from ed and izzy onscreen. who instigates conflict, and how does the other respond? how are they able or allowed to respond? how do we see them speak about each other to outside parties? does one go out of their way to control or isolate the other? what consequences does either party stand to face in saying “no” to the other? in acting against the other’s wishes? in trying to leave the relationship? when either of them attempts these things, how do we see the other respond?
i realize and appreciate what people are driving at when they garnish their analysis with disclaimers that they’re not saying ed’s just a poor innocent abuse victim, they’re not saying he’s a perfect angel who’s never done anything wrong, and that’s true, but these are points already contained implicitly in statements like “this show’s protagonists act like human people” and “ed’s emotional struggles are portrayed in a realistic and believable way.” my assumption is that these disclaimers are anticipatory responses to worst-faith interpretations of any discussion that attributes any victim status to ed whatsoever, so i definitely sympathize with their inclusion, but a (very small) part of me still worries about them potentially reflecting or reinforcing a belief that there is any way for someone to behave towards their abuser that imparts a responsibility for them to make right whatever damage the abuser receives, or for that matter any degree of ambiguity over their status as an abuse victim in the first place.
part of what i find so gratifying about ed as a character is that i don’t feel like the show’s writing is pressuring me to consider that ambiguity at all. which was a really nice thing for me to discover!
and tbh—did using ed to deconstruct The Model Victim even factor into the writers’ agenda?? ive got no clue. im guessing no? ??maybe?? probably not?? but if you create a main character whose central premise is that he feels trapped in a performance of exaggerated masculinity that he’s desperate to escape, and then you set him up with a character premised on embodying a tangible obstacle against that escape, then i guess that’s the natural shape your story’s gonna be inclined to take
even though I've never read the books, i love how you handle the women in this series.
The utter lack of interest in the internal lives of women characters in WC kills me. If you don't read the series it's hard to put it into words, but it really does not value women on the same level as their male counterparts
I think the best example I can use is Turtle Tail. All of her choices, from going to live with Bumble, choosing a "cruel man" as a mate, and even her grief when Bumble dies, all only happen as accessories to Gray Wing's arc.
Living with Bumble was because Gray Wing was obsessing over a woman who didn't love him, neglecting Turtle who does
Choosing Tom the Wifebeater was also because Gray Wing didn't appreciate her enough
She accepts that her friend's murder was just an unfortunate accident and her emotions carried her away in the moment, because Gray Wing needs to be right that his brother is a good boy
In this way, Turtle Tail's emotions and motivations aren't allowed to really be about her. They're about how her romantic interest influences her. And then she's crushed by a car for his man pain after they've explored every other way her life could make him sad.
This does not happen with men. Even characters like Stemleaf and Larksong, whose primary narrative purpose is dying for their wife's pain, have functions outside of that. Stemleaf gives his life opposing the tyranny of the impostor in a rebellion, and Larksong has input on The Kin, SkyClan, and even serves as a source of comfort and support to a son who he's never met in contrast to the unreasonable mother.
There's just so much more respect and reverence to the toms in this series. You have to be in the POV of a molly to get depth, and even then, they nearly always (exceptions being mothwing and mistystar) include a major conflict over romance and/or parenthood
(And they usually get punished for their choices a lot harder than male counterparts. Directly contrast Crookedstar and Sparkpelt, who both distance themselves from their children out of grief, but only one has to deal with the lasting consequences of being a "bad parent")
Anyway, enough wistful analysis. It is MY kitchen and I get to choose the conflicts. It is my personal mission to write lots and lots of women persuing a higher education in STEM. Sadism, Torture, Evisceration, and Murder <3
it's great that enstars is taking such a clear anti-ai position and educating their players about it, but at the same time it sucks that makoto had to be the plot device to introduce the topic again
i wanna post my skip to loafer art but i cant do it knowing ppl are gonna put it on tiktok and pinterest bc itd be like. bringing an invasive species ykwim