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#just like really deeply moving as a familial tragedy

celaenaeiln · 5 months

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On the subject of Bruce, Dick, and the Titans, do you think part of Bruce’s issues stem from jealousy?

Like being jealous over the fact that after his parents died he struggled for so long with only Alfred and it took Dick to break through that and help him cultivate a genuine sense of family again, but now Dick is branching out and expanding his family while Bruce hasn’t been able to do that (at the point of Dick being fired)

Follow up to that, do you think that if it is partially jealousy and insecurity, do you think it’s a contributing factor for Jason’s adoption? Not just that he wanted to help another kid but also because he subconsciously wanted to show Dick/ mimic Dick in being able to move past the tragedy of his past by finding new family. Like a shitty slightly spiteful move of ‘hey you’re moving on and doing better but look so am I!’ even if it’s not exactly true. Sort of like pretending your dating someone at a party your ex is at even tho ur still grieving the relationship and not over ur ex.

Other sidenote, love your posts and whenever I come on tumblr I check to see if you’ve posted. Hope you are having a good day ❤️

Thank you!!

So for the first one, Bruce wouldn't exactly be jealous of Dick for having a support system. He wants Dick to be happy.

Outsiders (2003) Issue #29

But he also doesn't want Dick to go. He's jealous that he has to share Dick's attention and his jealousy stems from the fact that he isn't the one Dick goes to.

The second one is spot on!!! OOF THE ANALOGY WAS TOO GOOD!!!!

The main reason for adopting Jason was not just because he wanted to help him, but because Bruce was jealous and angry and hurt that Dick left. That he chose the Titans over him.

Batman (1940) Issue #416

Like you said, "hey you’re moving on and doing better but look so am I!"

In the other version Bruce literally fires him, and it's name-called, for Dick's devotion to the Titans.

I think it's sometimes hard to reconcile Bruce's relationship with Dick because of how many Robins and how much the family has grown but Dick and Bruce's relationship is different.

Batman: Court of Owls Issue #1

"Dick, you know me better than anyone, except perhaps for Alfred..."

It was and is always going to be Dick and Bruce. The Titans call them out on it, the batfamily calls them out on it, that's just the way things are.

So imagine someone you're this deeply connected to, your lifeline, leaving you for someone else. The Jealousy tore him apart and Bruce does what Bruce does best when he's hurt - he pushes people away.

Dick has talked Bruce out of everything in his life. If he didn't have amnesia and become Ric Grayson, Bruce's mental state would not have taken a downward spiral. During his post-Selina leaving him at the alter- nightmares, he has one where Selina is dying and Bruce says, "this is just like Dick."

Batman (2016) Issue #63

Nightmares about Dick's death are bleeding over into his nightmares of Selina's.

Batman (2016) Issue #63

It wasn't altruism which made him make the move, it was spite.

I made a post a long time ago for an ask that asked me about Dick and Bruce's complicated relationship that really goes into depth about why the two of them are inseparable. Dick's said it himself too in the action comics. They both knew the partnership was going to end because Dick wanted to leave but Bruce couldn't let him go so he decided to hurt Dick before Dick could hurt him.

He's canonically described as a foil to Batman. So, yes, by Batman's own admission, Dick is the person who knows him best so jealousy of Dick leading a life, prioritizing people that aren't him, plays a huge role in his actions and interactions with Dick.

#chill bruce #bruce literally sees Dick as a one-in-all relationship #dick grayson #nightwing #bruce wayne #batman #cl anon asks #thanks for the ask!

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rathologic · 2 months

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P1 Saburov and Viktor are so terribly underrated and it's such a shame because their characters are immensely interesting and way more developed beyond "evil corrupt politician" and "isolated and rich single father with much children cooler than him", which is how I've seen some people halk about them. You are doing god's work

Oh deeply... I do think there's an effect where an important part of both of their arcs as rulers is that they're rendered obsolete halfway through the game, as soon as the Inquisitor shows up and overtakes their authority. from that point on only their associated healer gets to interact with them at any depth, but both of them are also planning to die (...normal reaction to being rendered obsolete) so it's harder for their dialogue to stick outside what's most vital for quests. also since nobody plays changeling route :-(

I see victor reduced to 'wifeguy' more than 'guy with important kids' more often (and enjoy it, even partake!) but he stands out to me as having the most personal, even self-centered wants in the cast- repairing his relationships with (living) family, the wish to leave and finish his university degree; in fact I'd say victor is someone who's been deprived of the things most important to him for a long time, and is in a position where he could get them back, if he only abandoned the project of leading the Town towards utopia which the kains have devoted themselves to for the past 5 years / forever. and nina's soul is present in and tied to that project, but there is some level on which only victor remembers her as a person instead of a divine instrument- and that lends itself to the ability to grieve and move on. if victor kain walked out of pathologic I think he'd ultimately be happy, and I think he's unique among the rulers for that. but the tragedy of all of the families is that they're embedded in a town and traditions that Will Not Let Them Out

whereas saburov is like. he grew up in this town, his mother would've been a Mistress herself, the town's needs and impositions as a structure are so ingrained to him that he doesn't conceive of any selfhood or duty that Doesn't involve his role as The Saburov, putting himself on the line for everything that might befall the town. and the patterns are also so ingrained to him that he starts to think he can change or at least outsmart them. come to think of it, the whole first half of changeling route is his trying to find someone responsible for the plague, and ultimately when there is no such person he takes that responsibility onto himself but He Tries so hard first... clara's presence disrupts the balance and therefore taking her in might allow him to control the balance (and per recent discussion there's a masculinity in his need for control), except the conjectures he makes don't really apply to something completely new and unknown. and to his credit saburov loves changing his mind when presented with new information and there's a lot of guilt accumulating because of it and ultimately he gives up that control to clara, being one of few characters to genuinely grow over the course of the game. But in a way that's still symbolically equivalent with death 🙂

So they're two self-abnegating people who are the "less important" member of their ruling family and become surpassed by their daughters in the town to come, but from totally perpendicular backgrounds that cross just at this point... it's very fun that they don't get along as administrators when rulerhood is the one thing they kind of share

#SALUTING_FACE. you may be able to tell that I like the rulers b/c it's cool when a place eats people.#victor kain #alexander saburov #pathologic #asks #anonymous

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eppysboys · 1 year

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“Astrid and The Beatles became even closer when she invited them to her home in Altona. For the first time since arriving in Hamburg, the five boys were able to enjoy some home comforts and escape the desperate privations of their hovel like accommodation at The Bambi Kino. They also enjoyed some sorely missed English food: “They loved visiting my house. For their first visit, my mother asked me what they liked to eat, and so she cooked them mashed potatoes, steak and peas – the first proper English meal they’d had since arriving in Germany. She even got them some strawberries, and made tea with milk and sugar. John and my mother got on like house on fire – even though they did not understand a word each other was saying. It was lovely to see. The boys had a good time – they had a bath and enjoyed looking through our records and books. It was to be the first of many such visits.”

Through such occasions, Astrid was able to get to know The Beatles as individuals.

“Paul is still like he was then, very lovely, deeply modest, and very well mannered. He nearly broke his tongue talking German to my mother. He had his phrase book with him. He always tried to be the translator, because he had these three or five words of German that he knew. George was the sweet one. He was just 17, and he would sit and look at things, politely asking “Can I please look at that book, that magazine?” He is one of my closest friends. I am so pleased to know that he is in England watching over me. He had had tough times recently, and so I am pleased he has his family and his religion to help him. He lost John, his parents, he was almost killed during that terrifying attack, and he had that bad cancer, but through all these tragedies he is still the George he has always been; kind, helpful and full of love for his friends. He is very caring toward me.

...

John was the strong one, always asking questions. All that anger that people associate with him and that was showing the film “Backbeat” in several scenes, where he shouts “It’s all dick!” at everyone and anyone - including me – was not the John I knew. That’s fiction, I never heard him say that. We got on every well – he was never hostile towards me.

“And Stuart!!! Well, by the time they visited my home we really had a crush on each other, so we just sat gazing into one another’s eyes, as the rest carried on. Neither of us actually made the first move, it was both of us - like magnets. At that time, Klaus was my boyfriend, but he sensed what was happening. He saw it and, in a way, forced it, which is strange to understand now, but Klaus always wanted me to be happy. He knew I wasn’t happy in our relationship. He and I were great friends, we shared the same tastes, the same sense of humour, but we just could not live together as lovers, that was impossible. So he encouraged Stuart and me a little bit.”

Astrid Kirchherr on the personalities of The Beatles. Interviewed by Colin Hall for Get Rhythm, August 2001

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e-steamedtea · 3 months

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Mild spoilers for the manga up to this point and I'm too lazy to deeply proof read.

Ciel Phantomhive is all I can think about so here's my thoughts

He's 13. He's a 13 year old kid surrounded by death and dispare. It honestly haunts me how young he is. Like I have siblings that age so when people go on about how anyone he is, what would you expect? This a kid that's pretending to be an adult. He lost his family at 10; he kidnapped, violated, and enslaved at 10; he watched his brother die in front of him at 10; and all people can say is that he's annoying. He's traumatized and a teenager. I'm surprised he's still going.

I cannot stop thinking about how lonely he must be. He's right hand is a demon. His servants are all people who have lost something or had nothing. No one there is capable of having normal conversations or social behavior (besides maybe Tanaka). I don't think he could ever just be 13 and it's kinda upsetting.

Everytime I read about someone close to him dying and the way he just moves on? I know he sad but dang does it hit hard. He doesn't know how to grieve and probably no one will ever teach him how.

He's really alone. Everyone tries, but no one is ever allowed close enough. I think he does it out a fear or as a defense mechanism. It's so much harder to feel loss if there's no one close in the first place. Thinking about Agni and Soma and how it ended and how he was like "This is why I told you not to get involved with me". So he knows he's bad news. Then there's the fact he's pretending to be his twin.

So he surrounded by people who love him because they think he's someone else. He also knows he's the "spare." Which fueled his decision.

He also definitely has self depreciating tendencies as show in the manga. When he has his break downs, we get a peak of just how terrible his mental state is. Sebastian doesn't help either so this man is really going in no actual support system.

His life is on a counter. Once the contract he has with Sebastian is fulfilled, that's it. Even if somehow he doesn't die, what would that do for him? Does he even have a will to live outside this? No matter what happens there will be no real happy ending for our Ciel Phantomhive. His story will always be a tragedy.

#ciel phantomhive #our ciel #please save me from my hyper fixation #hyper fixation #black butler manga #black butler #charater rant #black butler ciel #phantomhive twins #Oh god he's doomed #he's also 13 and traumatized #Sebastian you're cool but you cannot support a troubles human child #No because it's kinda messed up.

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literary-illuminati · 4 months

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2024 Book Review #1 – How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

I read the overwhelming majority of this book in 2023 but I finished it after new years so review #1 of the new year it is! Despite it by all accounts being very critically acclaimed and well-reviewed, I had absolutely never heard of it before opening up the packaging on a ‘blind date with a book’ thing a bookstore was doing (incredible gimmick, for the record). Overall a great book, if rambling at points and with a somewhat weak and confused ending.

The story takes place in Kosawa, a village on the western periphery of a fictional west African country, with the incredible bad luck to have been built atop a fortune in oil. The story is told through several POVs, and follows the villagers struggle against the Pexton corporation and their country’s de facto neocolonial government to try and have their home restored to what it was before the river and soil were poisoned and children started dying. It’s told on a generational scale – stretching from the ‘80s to the mid 2000’s – and follows the main cast of characters from childhood into their forties, As might be expected from that, it’s not exactly fast-paced or full of heroics – lots of promises and reassurances being given and never lived up to, and dramatic actions being taken and leading to awful tragedies or only compromised half-successes. The book really beats in the theme that if you’re really powerless and the ones fucking you over have all the cards, a lot of time there really isn’t a winning move. Well, and maybe that the heroic, principled attempts at violent resistance repeatedly got everyone involved killed but did win real concessions and aid for the other villagers who were willing to play along (or just to sell out or give up Kosawa for dead), though I’m not entirely sure that’s how the story’s intended to be read.

The prose isn’t usually eye-catching, but it’s extremely well-constructed, and beautiful at points. The story does a lot with shifting points of view, jumping from a corporate one of a particular age-group of children whose lives parallel the story, and closely individual ones from different members of a particular family whose daughter Thula ends up becoming the moral/intellectual heart of the resistance. Each voice feels incredibly distinct and focused on very different things, in a way that really worked for me. The massive timeframe covered also lets the book really indulge in showing what the day to day life of the villagers looks like – how they sustain themselves, the social rhythms of life, the rituals of adulthood, marriage, and childbirth, how widows and children are treated, and how the poisoning of the environment around them weighs down but doesn’t destroy any of it. It even does a great job of really selling the perspective and world-views of people for whom the world is enchanted and spiritual rites have real direct physical effects, which in my experience the vast majority of books about religious/spiritual characters totally fail to.

The tone of things is pretty overwhelmingly melancholic – this is a story with a deep sense of history, which also means a very tragic imagination. Characters who really dedicate themselves to trying to change the world are portrayed as deeply admirable but almost certainly doomed and even likely to cause more harm than good. You see this most prominently with Thula, whose basically a genius and devotes her entire life from childhood to activism and social change with saintly (if not near-inhuman) purity and focus, and dies in her forties having not won much at all. The ones who take what they can, get government jobs and use the opportunity to become exactly as corrupt as the men who came before them and loot the country for the benefit of their friends and families meanwhile – well, they definitely aren’t making the world any better, but they’re shown as very human and sympathetic and they mostly end up with exactly the lives they were hoping for.

#book review #clifi #literature #How Beautiful We Were #Imbolo Mbue

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takaraphoenix · 3 months

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My Ranking of D20 Campaigns

So I actually managed to watch all of them (or all that are out so far; not counting the still ongoing Junior Year yet) and since I like making lists, I drafted this post early on to keep track of which I love the most and how that love changed whenever I started watching a new campaign.

A Starstruck Odyssey

The Seven

A Court of Fey and Flowers

The Unsleeping City: Chapter II

The Unsleeping City

Mice and Murder

Burrow’s End

Fantasy High: Sophomore Year

A Crown of Candy

Pirates of Leviathan

Escape From the Bloodkeep

Coffin Run

Dungeons and Drag Queens

Mentopolis

Misfits and Magic

Fantasy High

Ravening War

Tiny Heist

Neverafter

Shriek Week

This was actually really, really hard, because the recency bias usually has me go “this is SO SO GOOD”.

I started watching D20 back in April last year, Misfits and Magic was the first campaign I watched - and The Seven was, I think, maybe the fifth or so? And it was my number one for the longest time. I love the girls, both the characters and the players, I love the plot, I love everything about that campaign. It is so heart-wrecking with the emotions it goes through for them all.

But then I watched A Starstruck Odyssey and it just hit all the right spots - the found family crew of a spaceship having wacky space-adventures is just something I deeply, deeply love and these characters were so much fun - and has the benefit of being longer and giving me more to fall in love with, I suppose. Still though, the difference between first and second is very narrow.

And I consider 4 and 5 a tie, to be honest. The Unsleeping City is one story, to me, I know the seasons are very distinct, but the flow of it and also my love for both is near equal. This campaign has the highest concentration of favorite PCs for me, like, when I made a list of my favorite Intrepid Heroes characters, their TUC characters all came in as either first or second place. Sophia Lee is the best Emily character ever, I will fight for her.

I am so madly, deeply in love with A Court of Fey and Flowers, which features my favorite PC romance so far, plus an impeccable cousin dynamic between Lou and Emily, also... there’s no fighting. While most fights are somewhat entertaining in DnD, I still remain Just Not An Action Gal and could skip on those in favor of more roleplaying scenes of character development and relationship exploration. And this campaign absolutely hit that spot just right. Plus, the fantasy fairy setting, and Aabria’s wonderful storytelling (how is this woman so talented? She was my first introduction to DnD as a DM, and then I got to see her as a player in the Seven and Pirates of Leviathan and she makes such great choices as a player too).

This list was ridiculously hard to make, because I look at it and I see Mice and Murder only on 6th place even though that definitely was the campaign where I had the hardest time to stop watching, I pulled an all nighter to watch half of it because it had the greatest grip on me, but then I look at the ones I placed higher than it and I can’t find it in me to move any of them lower either.

Recency bias definitely made placing Burrow’s End very hard. Not to repeat myself, but I am madly, deeply in love with Aabria’s storytelling. Combined with talking animals, the family focus, Brennan playing a mom as a PC (moms are my favorite Brennan characters), I have a lot of love for this campaign and I hope so badly that we’ll get a second part.

And here’s the reason why I couldn’t count TUC as one. Because Fantasy High: Sophomore Year ranks so much higher than the first FH for me. This was such a fun, ridiculous story, and it introduced my two favorite NPCs of all campaigns; Ayda and Garthy. It set the bar for FH3 really high and I am looking at Brennan to keep up the great work.

A Crown of Candy is well-placed in the middle. I am not the biggest fan of tragedies and definitely not into character death, but the characters and the world, are so very compelling still, even if I prefer the ones that died over the replacement characters - and that’s what puts it in the middle. Good, but could have been better.

Pirates of Leviathan was short but the characters, the players. Aabria is so so so good in this, it kills me. And she’s not alone. Bob is one of the greatest PCs of Dimension 20, to me, and that is vastly due to Krystina’s talent.

Escape From the Bloodkeep is one of the most surprising campaigns for me. This is a LotR parody that turned out to be way too heartfelt and much more found family than expected and it is great.

And Coffin Run is honestly one of the funniest D20 campaigns and I am wildly in love with about every single decision Izzy Roland made in this campaign. I am also entirely and absolutely gay for every decision Erika Ishii made.

Dungeons and Drag Queens was a very... standard adventure, but the players were so much fun to see. This would honestly be such a good campaign to start your D20 journey with, because the way Brennan eases them in and explains everything is so wonderful, and the excitement and joy of everything new they’re trying is contagious.

Mentopolis was cute, though I’m not big on noir and detective stories so that factors into why it ranks relatively low for me, even though the players and the characters were amazing. Dan Fucks is brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

And though the very first campaign I watched, Misfits and Magic didn’t make it too high. Some of it is the bytaste of HP, which I have come to just... not be able to stand anymore even though I am well aware that it’s a parody of it, and the other factor is the length. It’s hard to compete with 10 to 12 episode campaigns, that had so much more time to flesh out dynamics, worlds and characters and make me fall in love with them all, and that’s not really a reflection of the quality of this campaign.

I remain not much of a fan of the first Fantasy High. Maybe because I watched The Seven before this so when I watched FH, it gave me more of a feeling of “why is there a prequel spin-off about Zelda’s boyfriend who never had a proper appearance anyway? My girls should have bigger roles in this??”, but I largely feel that FH1 was more set-up, and the Bad Kids and their story really took off for me in the sequel, which I greatly enjoyed.

While I enjoyed the characters and the players’ dynamic in Ravening War, I am just... I guess I’m generally not much into “and it’s all futile anyway because I know how the story continues and these guys are not in it”? Matter of taste, I guess, but if that has to compete with others, it will lose.

Honestly, I enjoyed Tiny Heist when I watched it and I don’t dislike it, but it’s just so short and didn’t have anything that incredibly stood out to me in a manner that gripped me, so it had a hard time competing with other campaigns that gave me something I deeply fell in love with.

I don’t like Neverafter, it had some good characters in it but on the overall this absolutely did not vibe with me. Which is a huge disappointment for me as a lover of fairy tale crossovers, but the dark horror approach does not work for me at all.

The only thing that was easy was the bottom of this list, honestly. Shriek Week was, hands down, the only campaign I absolutely did not enjoy. The storytelling was a mess, even before watching the Adventuring Party for it, it was clear that the whole ~villain plot~ was improvised and I still wish it had just... not... been in there.

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 9 months

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reading update: july 2023

I don't have a cool and witty opening for this one. I read a fuck of a lot of books this month and I want to tell you about them LET'S GO

Black Water Sister (Zen Cho, 2021) - Black Water Sister has a very fun premise: a closeted lesbian and unemployed recent graduate moves back to Malaysia with her parents and is already having a bad enough time when she starts hearing the voice of her dead grandmother, who turns out to have been deeply involved in supernatural organized crime. our hapless protagonist becomes a medium against her will, and has to navigate to world of Malaysian spirits and superstition to lay her grandma to rest. unfortunately the actual style of the story wasn't more me; although definitely adult fiction, the prose is breezy in a way I affiliate strongly with YA, which is not to my personal taste but is still so hashtag valid. if you're one of the countless people trying to make that jump from YA to adult fiction and you like queer urban fantasy then Black Water Sister might be a great fit for you, although I should provide a warning for a pretty surprisingly graphic near-rape in the book's climax that really took me by surprise in a story that's otherwise pretty zany in its violence.

The Bride Test (Helen Hoang, 2019) - I think I said last month that Alexis Hall's A Lady for a Duke was the best so far of the romance-novel-every-month scheme I'm trying to pull off this year. the Bride Test has pretty swiftly displaced it; have I finally discovered the really good romance novels? (worry not; I know what I'm reading for August and my hopes are. low.) our two protagonists, Mỹ/Esme (her chosen American/English name) and Khai, are both genuinely charming and are pretty strong characters independent of each other, which cannot be said for A Lot of romance protags. despite the absolute insanity of how they met (yes, Khai's mother went to Vietnam and offered, uneducated a poor single mother a tourist visa in exchange for trying to seduce her autistic son. yes, that's shady. don't think about it too hard) and Esme waiting until WAY too late in the game to reveal the existence of HER LIVING HUMAN CHILD, I liked this book a lot. it's silly and heartfelt and I had fun; what else do you need? 5/5 eggplant emojis.

Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin, 1956) - there's probably nothing I can say about Giovanni's Room that I could say that someone smarter and gayer hasn't already said, but god. it really is breathtaking. I so often see this book talked about as a gay tragedy, and honestly that feels like almost too glib of a description. it's a really meticulous dissection of white male masculinity and the claustrophobic constraints there of, and our narrator's claustrophobic fear of divesting himself from the power that he's entitled to by virtue of being a white American man perceived as a heterosexual. this man would rather live in repressed misery for his entire life than risk being like those effeminate faggots at the gay club, but spoiler alert! being miserable doesn't make you better than your fellow fags; it just means you're miserable AND a fag. sharp and painful and so so so smart. also I'm going to summon @zaricats because I was supposed to tell you what I thought about this book. oops!

Lone Women (Victor LaValle, 2023) - okay so listen. did I just say Black Water Sister wasn't really for me because of the simplistic prose? yes. did I really enjoy the very sparse, straightforward style of Lone Women? also yes. leave me alone, I contain contradictions. anyway, Lone Women is a ripping piece of historical fiction spliced with supernatural secrets, based on LaValle's research into 19th century Black women homesteaders who made their lives in Montana. LaValle opens on a scene of irresistible intrigue - Adelaide Henry, lone woman, sets out for Montana with a mysteriously heavy trunk after burning down her family's California farm with her parents' mutilated corpses inside. and boy, does it escalate from there! it's a story about isolation and community and the people who are failed by so-called close knit small towns, and the ways in which vulnerable people band together to protect one another. it also makes the compelling point that maybe, just maybe, the real monsters were your local transphobe and her husband's lynch mob all along.

Black Disability Politics (Sami Schalk, 2022) - what a cool book! Schalk's argument begins with the idea that Black disability politics are distinct from predominantly white mainstream disability politics, and are therefore often overlooked in conversation, activism, and academia. Schalk analyzes the historical work of the Black Panthers and the National Black Women's Health Project to showcase what she describes as Black disability politics in action. in Schalk's conception, Black disability politics take a much more holistic approach to disability, conceptualizing as just one form (and, frequently, as a result of) of oppression tangled up with a myriad of others that cannot be meaningfully addressed when they're treated as separate issues. the book concludes in interviews with contemporary Black disability activists and organizers that shed light on ways in which the wider movement is often unwelcoming to folks of color, and an exhortation from Schalk for readers to continue the conversation well beyond the confines of the book. in a killer show of praxis, the entire book has been made available to read in PDF form, and I strongly recommend giving it a look!

The River of Silver (S.A. Chakraborty, 2022) - mentally I am kicking myself a little for waiting so long to read this continuation of my beloved Daevabad trilogy, because it did take me a minute to get back into the swing and mythology of the world and that did make me feel unpleasantly like I wasn't appreciating these character-focused short stories as much as I could be. but even having said that - man! fuck I love the world of Daevabad, and I adore these characters so much. getting to see them again, even briefly, was a delight, and I am once again congratulating Nahri and Ali on being the invention of heterosexual romance. (also, on a related note, but I ADORE the way Chakraborty writes her characters having crushes. they crush SO hard and it's very sweet. these books are such big drama all the way down.)

Men We Reaped (Jesmyn Ward, 2013) - an absolute powerhouse of a memoir, and devastating the whole way down. in Men We Reaped Ward attempts to make sense of a series of tragedies that befell her community when five young Black men - beginning with Ward's younger brother - died between 2000 and 2004. the word 'unflinching' is hopelessly played out, but it's difficult to figure out how to describe the head-on way Ward explores each young man's life and ultimate end and her own upbringing. the men in Ward's history - her brother, the friends she lost, her father and other male relatives - are never idealized; their demons, miseries, infidelities, addictions, and violence are placed on full display. but Ward is also insistent on displaying these men with dignity, compassion, empathy; showing them at their best and, most importantly, as men who were loved and deserved better than the violence that poverty and racism wrought on them. it's a furious memoir, one that will leave you mourning too.

Nimona (ND Stevenson, 2015) - did I only read this so I can make more informed complaints if/when I end up watching the netflix movie with my wife? YES. but listen, it wasn't JUST petty hater behavior. Nimona is just really good, and I think I got a lot more out of it this time around that I did when I first read it years ago. this comic is wild and unfettered and so spectacularly weird; I wish more things felt the way Nimona does. I also with more things starred small girls begging to kill cops and stage a violent overthrow of the government, that rules hard. also man I love Ballister, he's SUCH a good protagonist. he's curmudgeonly, he's deeply principled, he's held a grudge for years, he's paternal, he's even gay. what a guy!

#reading updates

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griffynbird101 · 8 months

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The Black Family tree is weird as hell (not for the reasons you think)

Hi, so a few days ago I made a post talking about squibs in the Harry Potter world and how JK Rowling doesn’t make sense and in it I mentioned how Cygnus Black was part of a child marriage and that prompted me to scour the Black Family tree for more examples…

It is deeply weird. In more way than one.

First of all; Cygnus was not the only child to have children at 13. His father Pollux also started at 13. This isn’t like a trend in the Black Family; most have children in their 20s and 30s, and the pair have siblings who have children at reasonable ages. It is completely random. Cygnus has 3 children before he finishes Hogwarts so it wasn’t like an accident or anything. I could’ve excused Pollux as a one off thing because he has Walburga but then it’s 13 years before Cygnus is born… but then Cygnus goes and has 3 children before he’s 17 so I don’t know what to think. (Especially since Alphard appears to be older, so why wouldn’t they have Alphard get married instead?? Like why did JK Rowling need to do this?)

There’s also a weird, but not impossible, trend where a bunch of Black Family members just don’t get married or have kids. In a normal family I would say that it made enough sense, but this is a family who puts having Pureblood children above everything so it doesn’t really add up. There are 8 people on the family tree who don’t have children and don’t get disowned (Granted we can cross of Sirius I and Regulus who both die young so it’s more like 6). It’s oddly progressive of a family who also at the same time thinks children are so important that they need to marry off 13 year olds??

Moving away from the topic of marriage; there’s an event that happens in 1990-1992 that I like to call “The Purge of the Parents” where all the remaining Black Family Members who aren’t imprisoned or disowned just die. Like literally, only Narcissa is left. The 5 other living Black family members die in 2 years (3 in 1992). It’s not just the Black Family either, I know Abraxas Malfoy also dies in 1992. There was just this massive genocide of an entire generation within 2 years and it’s not mentioned in the story at all. And while I’m writing this I’m starting to think JK Rowling just really hates Narcissa (“Oh Narcissa is your life going well? Well I’m gonna kill your entire family for no reason. How do you feel about that?”) There’s a massive plague or something that killed all the old people in the wizarding world; Harry was just too dumb to notice.

Unrelated to Marriage or death: Each generation has at least one trio of siblings where the second child is disowned. I like to think at some point the Black Family just collectively agreed that 3 was an unlucky number and they had to disown the middle child on principle. (Like; Alphard didn’t do anything against the family he just give Sirius some money, Cedrella still technically fulfilled the family wishes by marrying a Pureblood just not the right one: They were just looking for excuses at this point)

I’m rambling a lot so I’ll just say this; The Black Family tree is surprisingly not impossible. All the things I mentioned are plausible, but all together it makes for a very improbable and odd family tree. Honestly just leads to believe the family as a whole was incredibly unstable; possibly due to the fact that Purebloods in general are likely inbred due to breeding within the same few families for 1000 years. Also; tragedy for only Narcissa that the entire family just died out.. I get the feeling that it’s actually not… that terrible of a thing.

(Yay for that one Gamp (not sacred 28) in the family tree that everyone collectively decided didn’t exist. New blood was needed)

#harry potter #wizarding world #black family #narcissa black #cygnus black #alphard black #cedrella black #andromeda black #pollux black #improbable #jk rowling #jk rowling can’t do math #overanalyzing

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bigfan-fanfic · 2 years

Text

We Are More (Male!Reader x Sam Winchester)

Requested by anonymous for Can I request a fic where Spooky Sam is going going to Stanford and he meets his roommate and end up falling for him? The roommate was also from a Hunter family and he knows Sammy was a hunter but he never bring it up because he truly believes he and Sammy can have a good normal life together

Late registration can be a bitch.

You don't even get to pick your roommate. But considering you've spent the majority of your early life sharing motel rooms with your family, it'll do.

You just... had to get away.

Hunters aren't formed from happy families. They come from tragedy and heartbreak and blood.

Such is the case with you, and grief does... terrible things to people. You hated going around the country, being forced to follow them on hunts and participate yourself.

But you worked hard. You persevered with schoolwork, and with the help of a very kind counselor, you were even able to push for emancipation at age 17 to be freed from "the family business," especially after you were laid up in the hospital from a nasty ogre goring.

But you got a full ride up at Stanford, and you were ready to finally take control of your life.

No more hunting things, no more creatures that went bump in the night.

You've met other hunting families. More than Sam has seen. So it's no wonder you recognize the Look more than he does. The body that belies a combination of heavy exercise and poor nutrition. The almost reflexive way his eyes scan an unfamiliar room. The subtle scent of rosemary smeared on the windowsill and fennel placed over the doorframe of your dorm room.

You recognize the thousand yard stare of someone who's seen walking nightmares far too young and in a way, it's comforting. It's good to know you aren't the only one who left.

Sam is too far in denial, trying to erase that part of his past, and you get it, so you let him evade questions about how much he's moved around, why he's been to certain places, and instead get to know him.

He's kind, almost noble. He doesn't make a lot of friends, but the ones he does make are deeply connected. It's almost like being part of a club.

He can be a little judgy about people, but as time goes on he starts to loosen up a bit. Eventually he even stops looking over his shoulder.

And Sam starts to fall for you. He talks to you every day, and it quickly becomes a highlight of that day. He likes to spend time with you, because instinctively, he knows you "get it."

But when he asks you out, you have to tell him. You don't want any more lies.

"Sam..." you say. It's the day after your 20th birthday, and Sam is still disapproving that Jess tried to sneak you all some beer. He's just asked you on a date.

"I know what you are."

Sam freezes. "W-what?"

You chuckle. "Do you think I don't notice you smudging the window with rosemary, or the salt line you put over the dorm building threshold? The way you always wake up if there's a sound at night?"

"You're a hunter." he whispers in shock.

"WAS a hunter. Not anymore. Like you, right?"

He nods. "H-how long have you known?"

"The first day. Almost from the moment we met." you smile softly. "And if that wasn't a dead giveaway, the protective symbols you drew under my bed last spring break were."

He blushes. You both know that's when he realized he had fallen for you.

"Why didn't you say anything?" he asks.

"Same reason you did, I guess?" you shrug. "I wanted to feel... normal. And I knew you did too."

"Normal." Sam scoffs. "I don't think I even know what that really means."

You smirk. "Well, how about you take me on that date, Sam Winchester, and we can find out together?"

"Oh, that's very smooth." he teases. "But alright. I'm game. Let's see what normal can be."

Family life is still a topic you don't often broach. But it's now something neither of you hide. You commiserate over late night travel, motel accommodations, parents.

But that first date, all those topics are dismissed in favor of normal. Classes, plans for the future, fellow students. A burger date at some random diner (Sam orders a garden burger with a side salad instead of fries).

And if, the next year, you push your beds together instead of sleeping across the room from your boyfriend-slash-dormmate, who's to say that's not normal?

And the year after, when you move into an apartment together that you happily decorate together and subtly weave protective measures into, who can call that strange?

And if Sam is saving up to buy a small ring to propose to you with when he hears about his interview for acceptance at the law school, that's starting to feel normal too.

And you settle into sleep, Sam's arm around you, and you grin because the two of you together have finally found your normal, beyond what your families would have asked of you.

#sam winchester x male reader #sam winchester x reader #supernatural x male reader #supernatural headcanons #headcanons

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copperbadge · 1 year

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HEY SAM! Finally bout all three Askaz-Shidvalakia books (pretty sure that's right, feeling very much like Eddie now) and I'm 3 and half chapters in (counting the prologue as a chapter). I don't think I see much mention of him in general questions, but do you have ideas about Chef Simon/expand on him more later on in Fete, or do you have a side story/mini fic planned for him? I don't know what it is, but I really like him (along with the mains, of course. Bouncing between Eddie and Alanna as my fav right now, but Jerry just appeared so who knows).

I honestly wanted to wait to get all three once you announced LATT just so I'd have all three at once, plus I knew I would need the literary mental boost as winter kept coming, and I planned to get them around Christmas then I forgot then like--just a few weeks ago I remembered they existed again and bought them before I forgot again. Just like I hoped it is perking me up a bit as I'm going through a bit of right now, so I'm happy I waited. So far I'm really loving it, thank you so much.

HEY YA :D You got close with Askazer-Shivadlakia! :D It's the spirit that counts. It's not like it's going to be mistaken for somewhere else, anyway :D

Why did I name this country an eight-syllable name? Why would I do that to myself? Mysteries. In any case I'm glad you're enjoying them :D I think you might be a Jerry fan in the end!

Simon doesn't show up a lot in the books following Fete, although I try to work him in there when I can. He does have his own book coming eventually, probably after Royals/Ramblers, although possibly a bit further out, depends on what catches fire for me. The idea is that the book will be partly traditional narrative and partly essays from his recipe website, which show him to be...I wouldn't call it an unreliable narrator, but perhaps a not entirely truthful one :D

Simon's book is currently called The Chicken Salad War, and is about him discovering a rival in a chef who has moved to Fons-Askaz and is drawing a lot of attention for their cooking. He ends up having to plan a food festival with said rival chef, during which time of course they fall for each other. The food festival culminates with a competition to see who makes the best chicken salad, although I won't spoil who wins.

I'm still working on who this rival chef will be; I haven't pinned down much, not even gender, though I'm leaning male. It's fun coming up with a story for Simon -- he's been with the family for a long time and known Gregory and the others basically their whole lives, so he has a lot to talk about. :D

I had advertised my services as an elite personal chef through exclusive channels, and had a number of offers, but the Shivadh king's offer swayed me because of what he told me when we met: that he had only a passing interest in gourmet food, and that he was hiring the best chef he could find not as a status symbol or from personal desire, but as a gift for his wife on the occasion of their fifteenth wedding anniversary. I was deeply charmed by the idea of such a gesture, especially explained in the king's excellent if Swiss-accented French, and pleased that he was also willing to hire my brother Hugo to serve as palace sommelier, a position which had previously gone unfilled.

King Michaelis and his wife Queen Miranda had a little boy of four, and the family had recently suffered a tragedy which meant they were also sometime-caretakers of a young girl, their son's cousin. I knew I had chosen my new job correctly when, on arriving in the kitchen for the first time, two solemn little children were waiting to greet me in prattling French, with strong Provencal accents gleaned from their mothers, who were of the Askazer side of the country, which borders on that region.

#shivadhverse

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skykashi · 1 year

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Do you think Kakashi had romantic feelings for Rin? I know they were still just kids when she died, but it is for me so frustrating to see this character living his entire life crying for this loss and staying alone. Is it maybe because he loved her and he can replace her? Isn’t it too painful? I wish he could find some happiness with a love, not only helping the village and his students but nothing… He is just waiting his death to meet her again? And what about Obito? There is this issue in naruto universe that people dies but actually the are alive someway and can interact with the world 🤔this kinda makes the plot controverse… What do you think about it? Thank you.

Thank you for the ask

Tbqh, I don't really think Kakashi had romantic feelings for Rin and if he did, he never showed it. At that time Kakashi was deeply traumatized by what happened to Sakumo so he put his entire focus on trying to be the perfect Shinobi and prove that he won't fail like his dad did so he didn't give himself enough chance to think about anything else other than that, there was no room for romance or anything else.. and that kept dragging on with each new trauma, the poor man kept getting constantly hit with one tragedy after the other and so after Obito's death, that one goal changed from being the perfect Shinobi to protecting everyone and hoping for a better future where no one ever has to get hurt or die like his loved ones did... As much as I too, like you wished to see Kakashi having kids of his own, Kakashi himself gets his happiness from seeing the ppl he loves happy and at peace with their families which are like a family to him too. So yeah, I don't think he's single because he can't get over an old love or anything like that, he just feels content and fulfilled because he did achieve his only dream, his students and friends are fine and alive and happy and the ninja world finally found it's peace and learned to work together for a better future, that's all he ever wished for.

As for how ppl can interact with other ppl after their death, they aren't free to do that whenever they feel like it, no. When Obito died and talked Kakashi for the last time he explained that to Rin by saying that all chakras are connected somehow in the land of living so before he completely moved to the afterlife with the little remaining chakra he still had in the living world he can momentarily contact Kakashi, same thing goes for Minato and Kushina because Minato actually sealed a little bit of their chakra in Naruto before they died and so they were able to contact Naruto momentarily too when their seals were triggered, and same goes for Dan, Asuma and everyone that was reanimated in the war, when the reanimation Jutsu was released they only had a brief moment to talk to their loved ones with their chakra that was brought to the land of living by the reanimation Jutsu before they are forced to go back to the afterlife.

#naruto #kakashi #hatake kakashi #kakashi hatake #kakashi sensei #uchiha obito #obito uchiha #obito #rin #nohara rin #rin nohara #team minato #meta: naruto #naruto meta #naruto analysis #my asks #sky answers

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throttlegainwell · 1 month

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This is kinda late, but for the director’s cut ask, I’d love to hear your thoughts on “Dear Whoever You Are.” It always gets me.

Aw, thank you! And thank you for the ask. (And no worries--I wouldn't have been available to answer this until today anyway.)

So this is obscenely long and it spoils the end of Dear Whoever You Are. (Warning for discussions of pot, homophobic slurs, and references to Lonnie's shittiness.)

I have a lot to say about this story, even though it's short.

I went back and forth with the structure of this one a lot, trying to decide what kind of story I was going to tell. I wrote a lot of the letters in advance based on some of the issues that I thought Will might have or what I thought he might be able to slowly get off his chest, and I moved them around, letting the themes and emotional arc of the story emerge through that process. And what emerged was the story of a very lonely kid who missed his brother quite deeply. I actually didn't set out to make this about Will and Jonathan's relationship, but it revealed itself very naturally and I went with it.

For Will's voice, I didn't want it to read too adult, but I think he's probably a little sophisticated with his writing, you know? Not in every line, but there's a certain way with words and an artistry to some of the way he writes, even though sometimes he really does just sound like a kid--and sometimes he sounds a little younger than he is, since he's expressing a very broad range of emotions in these letters. The lyricism to his writing, though, does not obscure that he's a teenager with teenage concerns (and I think it just makes that trauma-instilled weariness even sadder, since it doesn't actually make him sound like an adult--it makes him sound like a kid aged beyond his years).

What should you know about me? I’m an artist. As in I like to draw and paint, but also that I’m pretty good at it. I want to be a professional artist someday. I’d like to go to school for it. My mom can’t draw. Jonathan is a little better—if he drew a shape, you’d basically recognize it, which is more than I can say for Mom—but not by much. I’m the artist in the family. I have no idea whether Dad can draw. If he’s ever tried. Wouldn’t it be an awful tragedy if he’s got an art prodigy somewhere deep inside him, suffocating under about fifty pounds of shithead and never to be realized because he thinks art is for fags and pussies?

[...]

The thing about dealing with Dad, though, is that it did sort of prepare me for the world. Mostly people are OK, but there are a lot of bullies out there who don’t want you to realize that they don’t actually matter. But Dad was my first bully, and he matters the least, so I know they’re all full of shit, too. I have much bigger problems now anyway. Problems you’re way too young to hear about. The nightmare kind.

This one kind of shows that line I was trying to walk with this piece. He sounds like a kid--he's excited to share his interests, he talks about himself kind of bluntly, and he's really honest in his appraisal. But then it hints at that baggage with Lonnie--like this dark cloud that kind of drifts over his narration. And he kind of appraises Lonnie here, too, and finds him wanting, but he also freely admits that this guy is basically a stranger to him. He's an abstract concept who made him feel bad on the occasions he actually had to deal with him in any kind of real way. But there's a tiny scrap of curiosity left there.

And Will has an edge here. He's not a mean guy, but he's seen a lot of shit by this point and he's really sad and lonely out in California. And as we see later, he does have some anger toward Lonnie, but it's very different from Jonathan's anger and comes from a different place. He's not great at controlling his emotional responses because he's just a kid (and a traumatized one at that), but he has a strong self-awareness, like Jonathan. It's not until near the end, though, that he really opens up about why he's so angry at Lonnie. And even though he's written Lonnie off and knows he's terrible, there's still a part of him that just can't quite accept being used that way.

But I don’t want to lose anyone, so I write it here and keep my lips shut, and I’ll destroy this just like all the letters that I haven’t sent. Not these letters to you, not the ones to Mike that are actually honest, not that one to Dad just so I could tell him properly to go fuck himself for trying to cash in on the worst thing to ever happen to me.

Also:

Do you have a lot of friends? I bet it's easier to make friends in the city. You don't have to be stuck with the same people who hate you from kindergarten on, year after year. I'm sure popularity isn't all it's cracked up to be—even if there was something desperately conciliatory about all of Jonathan's insistence that it's better to be a freak than to conform—but having a few close friends who'll play a ten hour campaign one weekend and save your life the next definitely takes the sting out of adolescence. So try to find those people. It's worth it, even if you do end up spiraling because none of them ever seem to call you anymore.

He tries throughout the whole piece to impart wisdom. It's not even necessarily always great advice, but it's very important to him. And he's very hopeful. Like, at times he's quite moody and sometimes very sad or angry, but there's a lot of hope and possibility and newness in many of his letters. Almost a sense of wonder.

Another things is that Will projects stuff all over this kid. Because he's not really talking to this kid, even though he does have real interest in him. He knows nothing about him and there's not really a strong possibility that he'll ever be more real at any point in the future. But Will is lonely, and he has a lot to get off his chest, and he needs to feel like he's talking to someone. So it's kind of sad, but also kind of astonishingly emotionally healthy. This kid has emotional resources to fall back on because he's been allowed that space to develop them, and he's using them.

My family’s grief destroyed them. I live with that knowledge inside of me, and I still don’t know what to do with it. I think pieces of that grief got tangled up in them along the way, like old netting with vegetation grown through it, and it’s there to stay forever in the landscape, even though I’m right here. Some kind of preemptive fear—like they’re holding their breath because they’ve been through it once so they already know what it will feel like and they’re terrified of ever feeling it again. I guess they don’t think they could survive it a second time. [...]

It’s all very frustrating. But how am I supposed to ask them not to feel that way? Jonathan cried himself to sleep when he thought I was dead. He cried alone, I think, but I don’t know why Mom wasn’t there. I don’t know what music he was listening to—all I heard was the click of the buttons, that familiar thunk of the headphone jack sliding home and the way his stereo whirred with a tape playing, so I knew he was listening to something—but I imagined it for myself. Something low and beautiful, maybe kind of weird—one of those sad, moody songs that I thought was a little boring compared to The Clash, too slow. (Jonathan really likes The Clash. He likes a lot of music no one has heard of. You probably don’t know them either. He never listens to them anymore, though.) Anyway, something slow, maybe—something I remembered just enough to hum for myself. Anything to drown out his despair and loneliness while I was freezing, starving, and hiding. Not because it was noisy, really—but because it was so quiet, like he wasn’t even allowed. I didn’t know that near-silence could hurt worse than a sob.

[...] I just knew that my brother was in pain and I couldn’t reach him. That I’d never really heard him cry like that before—like he couldn’t even breathe. If I could have seen through the veil, I know it would have been even worse. But there was something awful about only hearing the echoes of it, at the time. It made me feel almost as helpless as the monster did. Like hearing Mom falling apart even though I was so close, wanting to scream myself hoarse about how I was alive but keeping quiet so I wouldn’t die.

I wavered over whether to include this section because it's so dark and heavy, but ultimately I kept it because I really wanted to honor the horror that Will suffered and get his perspective on an aspect of it that I think gets overlooked very often. He had a front-row seat to his family's suffering. He knows exactly how much he means to them. And that must be a very heavy thing to live with, especially at that age, and especially on top of his own trauma and his own feelings. No matter how he feels or what he's experiencing, it must be there in the back of his mind. How will this affect my family? What will it do to them? Is it worth putting them through this or should I just be silent and spare them this pain? Which is exactly the opposite of what Joyce and Jonathan wanted to instill in him, but now he's a part of this terrible cycle that the two of them are trapped in, and he's hiding things from them because they have their own problems and he can't be the cause of any more. He just can't. Yet in some ways it's just part of this burgeoning independence that he's fighting for--he really wants to be allowed the room to figure things out for himself, even though it's somewhat painful and he feels lost once he gains that space.

You probably don’t like girls yet. Or maybe you’re like me. I hope you’re not like me. It’s a lot.

He also hints kind of a bunch of times that he's gay--so it's definitely a thing that he's firmly aware of, but he's not ready, until one of those last letters, to say it. But it's huge for him when he's able to commit it to paper and see it written out like that, even though he burns that letter, too. It's a big victory.

Besides, I hate the cold. I don’t remember a lot about Dad, but I remember thinking that he never seemed to feel the cold. He was always outside in December without a jacket, without sleeves—not that I knew him for many Decembers—and it would annoy my mom. She thought we would get ideas, I think. But he didn’t seem to notice the temperature or care when it started to snow. Like the world would just bend to his will and he didn’t have to acknowledge anything inconvenient about it. I bet he could freeze to death and still be thinking about cars and how his only real problem was that his kids were disappointments.

I like this bit because I think Will doesn't have a ton of memories of Lonnie, and this one isn't even Lonnie being abusive--it's just Lonnie being kind of a child and a bit of a prick. But it also explicitly draws a parallel between Lonnie and the Mind-Flayer in that he remembers them both as drawn to the cold, and he has that negative, traumatic association with the cold now. So it's very in-your-face, maybe too much so, but I think you can see Will kind of working this out for himself through the text and processing that uncomfortable truth. Like, IRL, we can analyze all of that and draw our own conclusions of the symbolism and implications presented in the series, but even in-universe, Will is kind of like yeah nope there's something off about this.

Did you know that when you cook chicken soup, you’re supposed to skim it? There’s some kind of layer of gross stuff that floats to the top. Mom is learning to cook more, and she didn’t know that. She kept wondering why it was coming out weird, but Jonathan didn’t say anything until the third batch, even though it turned out he knew the problem and the solution all along. (He knows how to cook more things than she does, and they tend to come out better when he does it.) I guess he was just planning to keep eating the weird soup. El didn’t even notice, of course. There’s basically nothing that she won’t eat. Jonathan is the same, really. I’m not even sure he tastes his food sometimes.

I just really like this bit. I think it says a lot about Jonathan, his role in the house, and the emotional and mental place he's in during the story. But I wanted to show that through 1) something kind of mundane and 2) Will's observations.

I stole a joint out of his room the other day. But I didn’t see what the big deal was. It smelled gross unlit, smelled disgusting while it was burning, and it made my whole chest hurt when I inhaled. I had to brush my teeth twice to get the taste out of my mouth, and my sinuses ached and burned for hours. I ended up flushing most of it down the toilet. It just made me jittery anyway, and then I got bummed out because he didn’t even notice. Didn’t notice that I was weird and didn’t notice that his pot was missing.

He didn’t used to be like this, I swear.

This is just really sad, I think. Like, on the one hand, I think it shows totally normal curiosity about drugs; he has access, he knows Jonathan is using them so they can't be that bad, and he does want to know. But there's also a part of him that's maybe hoping he'll get what Jonathan sees in it, or that maybe they can bond over it, or maybe even that it'll help him if Jonathan is so in love with it or whatever. But that's just not what he gets out of it, and he's left very frustrated and further alienated from his brother. But that He didn't used to be like this, I swear is just very, very heartbreaking, to me.

And on that note, I'm circling back to the beginning now to get more into Jonathan's side of things.

When my mom told us about you, Jonathan looked like he was going to puke. Then he looked empty. He’s mostly been high ever since, so I don’t really know how he feels about you.

This is spoilery to point out, but I hope it's one of those bits that hits different on reread. Because it's set up like Jonathan's response to this information is from a place of shock, since we're processing this reaction from Will's POV and this is news to Will. But Jonathan already knows here. So he's actually experiencing an entirely different set of emotions that Will has no context for and can't really perceive, let alone understand; he's feeling a lot of guilt from the tough choices he made, even though they weren't really choices at all because what the hell else could he have done? It's just bringing up a lot of bad stuff for him, and he's uncomfortable with the whole situation. Will has no way of knowing this, and Jonathan at no point sheds light on his feelings or perspective.

Another thing that I was trying to do was show Will's shifting mood via his salutations and closings. He almost always says Your big brother because he's trying really hard to put on this confident, loving big brother air--he really wants to lean into this role and he's very accepting of it. He's almost downright thirsting for this opportunity--especially because he has all this love to share and it feels like no one is receptive to it at the moment. He plays with these greetings and closings a few times when he's in high spirits (yours gayly, yours excitedly), but there are times when he's a little terse, too. Hey Kid, or just Yours, or Kid, or Sincerely, or no closing at all except Will.

And I really wanted to contrast that with the structure of Jonathan's letter. He greets David very simply, with an almost shy familiarity but without that ingratiation Will attempts. Right away, it's different because he knows this kid's name. So either some time has passed and they've learned new information or he had this information all along--and he quickly reveals that it's the latter. And while his closing is warm and kind, it is in no way familiar or open like Will's. It's really very distant and just short of almost formal. This is not a relationship he's trying to form or a door he's opening, but rather a chapter that he's trying to close in the least-shitty way possible. He signs it Jonathan and leaves it at that.

And that leads me into the thing about his letter that I really wanted to come through above all. He's trying very hard not to claim this kid as his family. He's not comfortable with this at all, but he'd do anything for Will, and this is what Will wants. This is a stranger to him, and he'd like to keep it that way, even as he offers up what he can--even as what he offers is somewhat painful in a very understated way, where you have to really read between the lines to see how he feels about it. He straight-up says, more or less, that their connection is through Will. Like, technically they're related, but he introduces himself as Will's brother first and foremost--right away, he's clearly not particularly open to the possibility of a relationship.

It seemed important to Will that I try this, so here goes nothing. Will is your brother. I’m Will’s brother. I guess I’m your brother, too.

Will felt an immediate kinship with and curiosity about this kid--maybe because of the mystery and distance, but maybe he would have felt the same if they'd met--but Jonathan has met him, and it's a memory from kind of a shitty period of his life, and more than that, it just represents a lot of baggage for him. David was never his responsibility--there is literally nothing he could have done for this kid and there was no possibility of a relationship at the time either--and there's an extent to which he's trying to tell himself this, but he can't quite internalize it as truth even as he's very honest about this, even kind of blunt. Shockingly blunt, almost. (Like, he's definitely not dumping his baggage on this stranger, but he says things that he would definitely not share with his family.) He feels like he abandoned this kid. He's always been someone's big brother, and he's always had responsibilities well beyond what he should have, so of course he feels this way. But he does take kind of a healthy, pragmatic view of it. He's like, well, what could I have done? And it's ambiguous whether he's stating a fact or trying to convince himself or maybe even trying to plead his case to David.

There's this real air of weariness and almost melancholy to it that he could kind of hide or distract from, maybe, in person, but it's hard to hide it in writing. He's also clearly not totally aware of the implications of some of what he's saying because... that's just his life. So parts of it read more disturbing than he probably intended--something that a kid wouldn't catch, that even an older teen might not catch, but that maybe Kim would notice.

You seemed healthy and happy, as best I could tell, though I don’t think there’s much I could have done if you hadn’t. But I decided not to worry about you because that was just one more thing than I could handle. Your mom seemed to have it covered. I had enough responsibilities already. I hope you understand. (Actually, I hope you don’t understand. I hope you have no idea what I mean.) You were clinging to her legs, but you weren’t hiding behind them. So I knew you felt safe with her, but you weren’t afraid. You looked like Will, only blond. A really young Will, just a little younger than the Will in the first photographs I took—the ones my mom still has. (If you want to know what Will looks like, go look in the mirror and imagine you have brown hair.) Your eyes were brighter, though. I knew (hoped) you’d be OK.

What's brutally sad about Jonathan's letter, I think, is how different his priorities are in comparison to Will's. Will is thinking about this kid's identity and his interests and even, to some extent, his future. He wants to know who this kid is and what they might have in common, and he's full of what-ifs. He does think about his emotional well-being and his safety (whether Lonnie is mean to him, whether he's bullied at school, whether he has friends), but not as much.

Whereas Jonathan, who couldn't have been older than fourteen or fifteen tops when they met, looked at this child and clearly did an immediate inventory of his physical well-being, and he very carefully tried to discern whether it seemed like he had much contact with Lonnie or whether he was safe with his own mom (whom Jonathan only knew, so far, as someone he was meeting through Lonnie, whose associates usually sucked ass and were generally dangerous). He needed to know whether this kid was walking out the door with someone who would neglect and/or abuse him because that's what Lonnie would do and what a lot of his friends would do. Jonathan cared about whether this kid seemed properly fed, had clean clothes, seemed generally well-cared for--whether his demeanor was fearful, whether he had any visible injuries or showed signs that he might have non-visible injuries, whether he was reactive toward Lonnie or seemed like he'd spent a lot of time in that house. It's sad for a host of reasons--from the fact that he feels the need to do this to the fact that he knows roughly what to look for and how to spot it.

He's very analytical about this--like, okay, this kid is clinging to her legs because she represents safety to him and Lonnie's place is scary and overwhelming, but he doesn't seem fearful generally so he'll probably be fine once he's away from Lonnie and he's not afraid of her. It's heartbreaking that he feels this is necessary and that he's not wrong to do it. Will, as compassionate and sensitive as he is, would simply not notice many of these things (or at least not think to look for them) because it's not how he's had to think, necessarily. Because he was, to some extent though certainly not as much as Joyce and Jonathan would have preferred, insulated from this and because he's never had to look out for someone else's needs (or not the same way). Meanwhile Jonathan is checking trunks for his brother's body. So there's a fundamental difference in perspective there that Jonathan can never really get away from. The world is not a safe place; don't ever take safety for granted.

And there's something really defeated about how he approaches this--he can't not evaluate this stuff, but he's keenly aware that he's pretty helpless in the face of it because he's just a kid himself. He has no power here, and even if he did, it's just too much for him emotionally on top of taking care of Will, helping out Joyce (who was presumably in a very bad place around this time), and raising himself. His concerns are extremely pragmatic--no more than that. He can't afford more than that. So he does care, but he really has no more to give. (And they're related, yeah, but that doesn't necessarily mean some instant and unshakeable bond--that's just not what happens a lot of the time, and I think it's perfectly legitimate and fair to have that reaction instead of the more storybook one. Especially in circumstances like these. It also just doesn't resonate the same way for him because it doesn't represent any big paradigm shift for him--he's already someone's big brother, and there's no great wonder here like Will has. Whereas Will kind of sees an opportunity to reinvent himself, and it's also an opportunity to try on some more responsibility, which he's desperate to be given.)

But Kim seems nice. So he tells himself that it will be okay, and he has to believe this because he knows what Lonnie is like and what he's capable of. And this kid looks just like his little brother, whom he cares for more than anything in the world. He literally sees Will in him. So it's a small guilt that just kind of lodges in places and crystallizes. He's also like if you want to know what Will looks like, go look in the mirror, but he doesn't offer much about himself. Very intentionally.

Your eyes were brighter, though is just one of those lines that's actually really dark when you think about it. He's saying that he knows Will has suffered, despite his best efforts. Will doesn't have quite that same awareness that Jonathan does, but he's by no means naive or untouched; he's also an abused child and he comes from a deeply trouble home and he's bullied at school. He's sad and he carries a certain heaviness within him, even though he's got this bright and sweet disposition, and Jonathan can read it on his face. He sees his pain. But this kid, whom Jonathan knows nothing about except what he can observe in this brief window of time, looks brighter and happier than his little brother, whom he loves more than anything and anyone in the world. Whom he would do anything to protect and whom he wants desperately to shield from the ugliness that he's had to face. So it's a very painful comparison, but there's also something brutally pragmatic about it. He's saying, I can't help you, and you don't really need me the way Will does.

(Kim, if you’re reading this, I thought you were pretty cool. You gave me a stick of gum and said you liked my Clash t-shirt. You looked me in the eyes, instead of past me or anything else, and you talked to me like a person. I appreciate it more now than I did at the time; I was pretty angry back then. Thanks for not taking it personally.)

I really wanted it to be a nice, uneventful memory. Like, okay, he learned he has this little brother, he learned that Dad definitely cheated on Mom, but none of this is really a shock and it's not particularly emotional for anyone. It's just a thing that happened. She was decent to him. He was probably a little rude to her in a vague disgruntled teenage way, but not dramatic, and it's understandable, even though he's clearly a little embarrassed about it now. But you can see a lot about the kind of person she probably was and what that would have meant to Jonathan, who basically had no support in his life at this time, to be treated with respect by an adult--because it implies that he's not used to being treated with respect by adults, at least when he visits Lonnie. Which is in itself very sad. But I really wanted to show him something reassuring and to just have someone treat him decently. And that scrap of basic decency felt like a lot to him.

And from the way your mom looked at Lonnie, I know she didn’t let him into your life. I hope you know she did it to protect you and that you’re better off without him, but in case you didn’t, now you do. Dad sucks. Don’t worry about him. He’s not worth your energy.

He really says very little about this guy, but it's haunting the whole letter. There are undertones of this pain all throughout. Jonathan is keenly aware that this is their point of connection, and in some ways very open about what he thinks of Lonnie--certainly much more open here than he ever is with Will about it. So there's a way in which he's revealing more here than he feels like he can with his family, even though he's still not willing to open up to this kid and doesn't want a relationship. But he's not really softening things as much as he might with Will. And while it's not stated in the story, no, I don't feel like he let Will read this letter before he sent it and I don't think he shared any of this information with him. Nor did he tell Will that he already knew about David.

So he's leaving the door open, but ultimately he's hoping that it stays shut. At least at this point in his life--probably trying to tie up loose ends, before Vecna is defeated, and so with a lot of uncertainty hanging over him.

So. That was my interpretation of Lonnie potentially having another kid. Mostly as a lens through which I could explore Will's relationships with his family and with himself. And Jonathan was always going to know--that's kind of his role within the family, you know? He's burdened with all this terrible knowledge that he shouldn't have, and he just has to live with it and make the best of things. But I really wanted to show how differently they both responded to this information and why.

#answered asks #director's commentary #long post #very long post #dear whoever you are

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silviakundera · 2 months

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Once again reviewing less known/unpopular dramas... Ghost Host, Ghost House (2022, Thai BL) delivers what it promises to be in the first episode: supernatural family drama about ghosts, with a side of romance. I have an affection for media that knows what it wants to be and executes that.

Kevin, now an adult and ready for university, arrives in Thailand to visit family he hasn't seen for a decade - as his mother moved them to the USA when he was young. He's a budding video blogger whose gimmick seems to be: cute gay boy who visits haunted houses. Little does he know that the family he's come to stay with are all dead. The loved ones once separated by geography, as a child of immigrants, are now separated from him in a way he is yet to understand. There at the old family home he also runs into Pleum, a local boy with big dreams who is cheerfully navigating through 5 odd jobs and begins to pursue the visiting hot boy with the same dedication. But whose family is also hiding wounds of his own.

"This flower reflects the reality. Pain hasn't gone elsewhere. It's just hidden, so we can move on and live our lives."

Don't come looking for a thriller or scares or ghost hunting. It's not a fast-paced drama, it's about the characters.

It's charmingly earnest in the two young men's fumbling birth of a romance, elements of whimsical humor in Kevin's ghost family navigating death (think Beetlejuice), and occasionally poignant in discussions of mortality, grief, and letting go. The family relationships are given equal weight to the romance.

There wasn't a tonal whiplash for me. The sweet & sexy parts fit alongside the fact that both MLs are surrounded by death and need to come to terms with it. The tone is fluid. In the midst of life, there is death; in the midst of death there is life.

It's not a deeply profound, philosophical exploration of grieving and I don't think that's a failure because it's not trying to be. It's just characters who are haunted, literally and metaphorically, and who find a way to move on during the course of 8 episodes.

The couple really worked for me (until the writers imo fumbled the end). Post high school, figuring themselves out and what they want. Clearly not virgins and very comfortable with their sexuality and queer desire, while being still awkward & uncertain about how to act around a cute boy you like. I appreciated that the couple is quite sweet & soft without neutering them. They are allowed to be age-appropriate horny! They're also allowed to make mistakes & deal poorly with grief in hard moments, and then apologize and be forgiven for it. Two people who met each other in the worst timing & situation for attempting a romance. Though perhaps without the ghosts that united them, they would have lived out their lives mostly on separate continents & never found home together.

The otp like each other right away - it's external factors pulling them apart. Unresolved grief that must be dealt with and the hovering dramatic tension tension that Kevin is Thai diaspora, essentially American, and this was intended to be a temporary visit to see his relatives. He's presumably considering this a 'vacation fling', while it was clear that Pleum was ready to go all-in. A separation was basically baked into the pairing. I was anxious about how this could really work. Spoiler: happy ending, but I did not entirely like how they got there (see cut).

I would be spoiling too much to discuss in detail, but the family elements are lovely. Bittersweetness in the incomplete time we get with our loved ones. And the subtle tragedy of the opportunities Kevin lost to know his extended family; the taste of home he's been missing as his mother moved on with a new american husband.

Only 2 distracting missteps in the drama. SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING.

A. Kevin is a dual citizen who's mostly lived in America all his life. His English should be perfect but it very much isn't. But tbh to a thai viewer it likely isn't noticeable and this is a thai production; that's the intended audience, not me. So I just used my imagination. It doesn't come up frequently.

B. The requisite separation trope in the last episode is always super annoying to me in kdramas & thai dramas, because it's such a cliche. At least in this case it was foreshadowed several times since early on that Kevin was NOT ready for commitment while Pleum was. (he clearly gets uncomfortable & ducks the question repeatedly when people bring up them being boyfriends. He's not a blushing maiden, this was reluctance to commit to staying in Thailand & settling down with Pleum, despite the connection, compatibility, and everything they went thru together) And it makes sense that he was too young to be brave enough to take such a leap and hadn't made peace with his 1st love Jake's death. So for once, the separation 100% made sense and I wasn't even upset by that part! My issue was how they executed the rest. Frankly, I disagree with the writing choices. I guess they were going with the idea that Kevin was resigned to having missed out. He feels like it's too late. But I hated that they had Pleum waiting for years for Kevin to be ready and it just didn't feel certain to me that they would have reunited except by chance. Like, I wanted Kevin to choose to go to him, full-stop. Not accidentally run into him, sorry that's bullshit to me. Yes, Kevin kept a momento of their time together. Yes, he obviously wasn't over Pleum. But to me it also felt like he was just prepared to move on and never see him again. No me gusta.

There's a romantic sensual reuniting scene and Pleum seems confident that he's not going to let his man go anywhere again. And Kevin is ready to say goodbye to the memory of his 1st love and admit Pleum is the one for him. I did buy-in on the idea that they experienced something truly formative together that no one else would understand. In the end, I did feel like Kevin would make a home with him now. So it's definitely a happy ending. But.. It really annoys me because without this misstep, if they had executed the separate & unite differently, this would be a fav drama I'd rec to everyone.

#drama watching #drama review #i actually watched this a month ago but didnt sit down to write my thoughts yet #ghost host ghost house #thai bl #thai drama

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cicadaknight · 9 months

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tag game (horizon)

tagged by @artekai 💕🤝💖 thanks, pal!

1. ride or die ship: fashav/kotallo straight to my grave. mythological tragedies, those two, i tell you what.

2. most annoying ship: the boat aloy takes to san francisco. can you imagine, never rowing before in your life and making that trek through choppy currents and storms? insufferable.

3. second favorite ship: aloy/kotallo. the parallels of aloy and kotallo being forced into roles they never wanted, being alone and outcast from their tribes, moving through their grief and rage by learning to trust a new found family? being seen by another for more than their physical prowess but their humanity and creativity? excellent shit.

4. favorite platonic relationship: SYLENS AND BETA AND GAIA. Sylens getting taken down a fucking peg or two by a teenage girl and an infinitely compassionate AI. Beta being able to collaborate with someone (and an AI) who sees well beyond her mistakes and faults. GAIA finding consistent, complex companions who remind her fondly of Lis. Sylens making Beta food and teaching her how to cook. HELP ME.

5. Underrated ship: So many. I really love Aloy/Drakka. The idea of him being such a counter to Aloy’s single-minded focus on saving the world by being an absolute goober. But her seeing that he cares so very deeply about doing the right thing and protecting his people. Alva/Beta is sweet. I dig Erend/Talanah.

6. overrated ship: the odyssey. just kidding, i already made a joke about a boat.

7. one thing i would change in canon: the entire last act? specifically varl’s death, that kotallo doesn’t fly to the grove with aloy, that aloy ends the entire tenakth/regalla conflict via single combat duel, and then fights alone twice more with erik and tilda. RIP all the build up to aloy understanding that she’s not alone and all the people in her life are as competent and complex and have just as much stake in the fate of the world as she does. and beyond that, i deeply regret the way they wrote talanah in hfw. she shoulda had that fourth bunk in the base.

8. something canon did right: don’t get me wrong, i wish fashav hadn’t died at barren light, but i love his back story and everything we find out through his journals. added so much nuance to carja and tenakth cultures and characters in just a handful of paragraphs.

9. a thing i’m proud of creating for the fandom: i’ve been in a perpetual state of burnout for yeeeeeears. this kotallo portrait was the first piece i’ve drawn in ages. i’m also working on a bookbinding project and doing art for Kotallo with amazing folks on Focus on the Heart.

10. a character who is perfect to me: Hekarro. I hope the writers, animators, and actor who made him come to life are very proud of their work.

11. character i relate to most and why: uhhh like every other neurodivergent queer with trauma and parental issues, i gotta go with beta.

12. character(s) i hate most and why: tekkoteh. absolute steaming pile of shit. genuinely every time i think i’ve reached peak hatred for that slime, someone writes a beautiful fic where i find myself despising him more. in my interpretation, there’s no world where he didn’t take advantage of, manipulate, and abuse kotallo after his parents died.

13. something i’ve learned from the fandom: awww this is cheesy, but i learned how to take a chance and post things i make again. most people are so curious and so excited to discuss lore or characters in good faith. oh, recently i did discover i missed MANY post-mission dialogues for side quests on my first few playthroughs.

14. three tags i seek out on ao3: i’m guaranteed to get drawn into anything re: kotallo and fashav’s early marshal days, lis character development, aloy/kotallo hurt/comfort (sue me)

15. a song i associate strongly with my otp/favorite character: i made this playlist based off this fic. it’s basicallg my score for fashav and kotallo falling in love during their marshal duties. instants by skúli sverrisson and anything by hermanos gutiérrez sends me into pondering fashav and kotallo’s lives together.

i’m gonna tag @poulticepurse @fogsblue @rowanisawriter @ayaitch @robo-dino-puppy if y’all wanna do this?

#tag game #h

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pidgie-core · 1 year

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Hey.

Sorry if I’m interrupting anything.

But the other day I reblogged numerous posts about the Memorial Day for the Armenian Genocide.

Just to raise awareness of it. And to scare the shit out of idiot denialists.

I also did similarly regarding the Assyrian genocide too (Sayfo).

I’m not Armenian but it doesn’t mean I don’t care because I do. (I’m an Irishman)

This isn’t for clout, I just did it because it felt right.

(I don’t like seeing countries like Armenia (yes that includes Artsakh) being bullied and threatened by violent belligerent neighbours.)

Plus I study history (I have a masters degree) and I feel it’s important we learn from the past.

I just thought you should know at least.

I thank you for your support- it is a great deal emotionally moving whenever non Armenians support us, along with the Greeks and Assyrians who have also suffered greatly. It is even far deeper when you get a message of support from someone who is Turkish. It is very rare and I can only say it has maybe only ever happened just once or twice to me, but I want those people out there to know how much I appreciate them. I know it is very very difficult and brave to go against something you were taught never happened, something that perhaps your own family would convince you out of learning. But I hope you know that I think you are brave, and that you are the future. I love my home country so much, and we have been through such a deep suffering. The recent wars and the current tensions, I am sad to admit, have changed my mental wellbeing and my mind in ways it will never be able to return to. That's how trauma works I suppose. The peace I thought I knew isn't there anymore, just something I work hard to try to maintain each day. As humans really we should stand beside one another- once again I send everyone my hugs. May we laugh and draw and dance again together. I have been working hard on a graphic novel that isn't just about tragedy, but about joy and community within my culture. I think it is a deeply healing thing to create work that is your pure voice. I implore everyone to do it, whether its through art, music, photography, writing. It doesn't even have to be good, it just has to be you. So we can heal ourselves throughout the generational tragedies we live and work through.

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