#none of that is a real concern within the actual canon

[streaminn]

Bianca hated being a siren. All of history painted them as these seductive murderers, their voice luring thousands of men to their death. Modern media painted them as con artists, cultists, and cheaters both in bed and the entertainment industry. No matter what, they were the bad guys because of their voice. The worst part about it was that she couldn't even deny the claims. Every siren she knew before nevermore was all of what modern media portrayed, and a little bit of history.

At nevermore, however, she found that it was less true. Sure there was the occasional romance scandal, bit every highschool has those and they were actually more common within non-siren couples. There at the school, she didn't have to live with the stigma of morning song hanging over her head. She didn't have to use her voice on unsuspecting normies. She even got a necklace to block her voices powers! She thought all the bad views of sirens were behind her.

Until the rave'n.

Xavier Thorpe proved her wrong.

He had asked her to use her voice to forget a girl. He knew she hated using her voice. And yet he asked anyway. So, like the girlboss she is, she ditched him.

Option a(tons of canon, just a gay lense mostly)(accidentally made it more wenclay, but just pair it with my previous writings(which i felt happened pre Wednesday) and it's all good);

She ran into Wednesday while returning from taking a breather, she tried to take her anger out on the young goth, but the psychic just took it. It was an eventful evening.

The more eventful evening, however, was when Wednesday had asked her to use her voice. Instead of being told to use it for selfish reasons, like wealth or forgetting the pain of rejection, the Addams had asked her to use it to save people. She didn't know that was even possible. To use something so scorned and so hated by others and herself, to save people. The only two times Wednesday Addams had asked the siren to use her voice, was for the sake of others. It stunned her.

And then Wednesday was dying. She was pushed up against a broken table and dying. The rotten bigoted pilgrim was killing her. So she stabbed him. It didn't finish the job, but it gave the goth enough time to kill him. And she saw the pilgrim burst into flames and was gone. Relief had flooded her system.

They made their way back to the rest of the school, and when they got there, Enid almost tackled Wednesday to the ground in a hug. Bianca thought nothing of it, they were roommates after all. But then Wednesday reciprocated it. And Bianca found that she had very conflicting feelings about it. She would need to dig into that later.

Or, option b('she's the man' au)(again, with the previous installments of sinclay, it looks a little better);

She found Wednesday out in the hall, sulking it seemed. The young psychic didn't notice the siren sit down next to her.

"Addams"

Wednesday looks to Bianca, "Barclay"

"Trouble with your date?" Bianca is looking straight forward, not acknowledging the goths reaction except with a smirk,

"We aren't- Me and Edwin are not romantically involved"

"You sure?"

"Very"

"Then why are you pouting? Edwin go dance with another girl?" Bianca waits for a response, but none comes and she looks over to the goth. The ravenettes face is almost completely neutral, except for the slightest of furrowed brows. "Wait, for real?! He asked you to the dance, and now he's dancing with another girl!?"

"Yes, and it is none. Of. My. Concern. Or yours." The young Addams gets up to leave, but is stopped by a hand on her wrist. She immediately grabs the hand and twists, her self defense and martial arts reflexes activating. A short and intimidating(a/n, hah, like her)"Do not touch me" later and she releases her grip.

Clutching her wrist, "ow, i was just gonna recomend we dance together, a truce for the night to get back at our respective dates!" Rolling her wrist a little and then not bothering it anymore, the siren looks up slightly(a/n, hah, cause Wednesday is short) to the goth.

"Very well, that revenge sounds adequate. However, still no touching" Wednesday holds out her hand to seal the deal.

"Perfect" Bianca goes to reach her own hand out to shake, but Wednesday pulls her hand back last second.

"Like i said, no touching." And they head back into the [insert whatever the heck it's called] and go toward the dance floor.

Bianca looks around to find Xavier staring right at her, and she smirks. Xavier returns with a confused look until he realizes the two are heading toward the dance floor.

Meanwhile, Wednesday is subtly looking around for Edwin. She only finds him when she almost runs into him.

"Ah! Hey Wends! I've been looking for you!" That one remark almost makes the psychic rethink the dance with Bianca. But she made a deal, so she'll go through with the plan.

She ignores Edwin.

And so Wednesday and Bianca start dancing. Wednesday with her kooky dance, and Bianca just playing along, trying to make it look authentic. But as they say, pretend enough, and it won't be pretend.

And so Bianca started enjoying the dance. The freedom that the way Wednesday danced brought. For the first time, Bianca didn't worry about how people might see her, and just danced.

Later, during sleepless nights, she would dwell on the feelings of freedom and unfiltered joy the goth brought out from her that night, how the goth probably never even thought of asking her to use her voice to forget Edwin for the night, but now she danced and enjoyed the rest of the night.

(A/n, unless the blood(paint) rain actually happens, in which case she enjoys the night until the sprinklers turn on.)

*~*~*~*

One thing that pisses me off in movies is their sprinkler mechanics. THATS NOT HOW THEY WORK!!!! Sprinklers of the type most seen in movies and tv shows(this includes Wednesday) have a little vial of a liquid that expands a lot in heat blocking the water from getting out, when the room heats up from a fire, the liquid expands and breaks the vial with how much it expands. Meaning they go off individually when they reach that point. They do not go off all together if one is triggered! The only possible way for it to have happened in Wednesday is if the rave'n had generated enough heat to make the vials close to their breaking point and that when the fire alarm was pulled, it was just a signal for the jericho kids to start pumping the paint, thus the extra pressure in the system makes the vials break. Whew, that took a bit of energy 😅

I'm hungry now, so imma go eat something

(really love how the main points are how Wednesday didn't at all ask Bianca to use her powers, like damn girl your standards that low 😭? Just how much damage did Xavier do to you. Then again, crushes start it all sorts of odd places so once again, I love it :)

Thanks alot for the content drunken!! )

Anyways, she's the man au content

Enid knows she's sulking and she really shouldn't be but dammit there's an ache in her chest and it isn't bc she's on the risk of wolfing out.

"what's got you all sad?" yoko calls out, leaning onto the werewolf's shoulder as she player with the drink in her head.

"Wednesday ignored me," Enid murmurs, watching as the two royals of the school danced. Going in felt unappealing for some reason and so she picked at the cuffs of her polo. "normally that's fine bc it's a noisy event and she must want her space but then she went to go interact with Bianca next so I'm just confused."

Yoko squints at the fallen shoulders on her friend before huffing out a smile and chugging her drink in one go. They call it liquid courage for a reason and the vampire's eyes meet the curious look of her girlfriend.

Divina, who sat with Kent gave a thumbs up in approval. That was enough for Yoko.

"you're a dumbass Sinclair," she laughs, allowing her hand to dip from around the undercover girl's shoulders to intertwine fingers instead. "stop your sad boy nonsense and dance with me!"

Enid, quite confused at the sudden invitation let's out a woah! As they got dragged into a sudden intense waltz. It's nice! She even got to do some weird three part dance with Divina but even with all the blitz and glamor, Enid can't help but let her eyes stray to the familiar braids of someone peculiar.

She looks like she's having fun, her mind thinks, without us. The thought is painful for some reason and if her teeth catches at her lip, no one needs to know.

I'm sure Wednesday has her reasons, she'd convince herself. Besides the night isn't over yet, I'm sure we'll be able to dance eventually-

Then Yoko laughs when Enid's feet caught in her own shoe laces and those worries lessen just a tad. Right, this was supposed to be a night of enjoyment not worry. Wednesday is having fun, that's what matters.

If they can't dance then so be it.

It's fine, she thinks, If Wednesday wants to dance with someone for a bit then so can I.

They never do get to dance that night, not when a prank cuts it off so early.

Enid wonders why she's so broken up over it.

#Drunkenbartend #Writing #She's the man au

[cal-metacritic]

The Guardian - Momentum (Lindsay Lohan)

Lindsay Lohan

Momentum

50/100

Lindsay Lohan is by far one of the most controversial figures that the industry has seen across the last several years, and that has made her absence all the more noticeable. Mostly retreating after a series of very public embarrassments, no one really expected a comeback, even when her signing to a new label was announced. It seemed impossible for an artist like her to rise up from the ashes and reclaim former glories, but there was an odd bit of curiosity that seems to’ve surrounded the release of her return EP. Whether it be down to simply who she is or her recent controversial relationship with Brendon Urie remains unclear. 

What is clear is that this curiosity will continue throughout the duration of the project as it leaves you with a lot of questions and not a single hint of an answer. 

Proving from the gate that she still intends to be a provocateur, the production credits of the EP feature work from Dr. Luke alongside Aaron Joseph and Vaughn Oliver. Whether the presence of the first is there just to be a conversation starter remains to be seen, but what is quite evident is that he and none of the producers bring anything notable to the table. 

The production work is quite bland and sterile throughout. Despite the lyricism on several tracks, the production work is radio ready and as such is quite anonymous. Even the final track, the only one with any sort of identifiable personality within it, doesn’t land in the territory of being genuinely interesting to listen to. There’s nothing out and out offensive or legendarily bad within the sound, but there’s also not really a single memorable thing within that sound either. 

From a songwriting standpoint, there is a little bit more personality in the mix, but that isn’t always a compliment. 

Lindsay has never been a particularly identifiable songwriter, bearing no real trademark that many of her peers have managed to develop. As such, her style can be adaptable to context, but it seems that here she went back and forth between actively trying to be something she isn’t and actually succeeding in doing something notable. The songs that dare to be just a little bit more grounded in their writing are the best ones. There’s nothing exactly personal within the work, and that is no requirement, but there are moments that feel more realistic and human than songs like the opening track. 

The worst moments the project has to offer are when it feels it’s most pointless. Whether that be crass songs about sex (not inherently an issue in isolation, but somewhat irritating when it feels purposeless) or a song about partying (again, not inherently problematic just disappointing in it’s lack of something to say), there are many examples of things on the project that seem to be there just to be there. 

Whether we want to count this as a comeback or not is up to others, but as far as I’m concerned this is more transitional than anything. After all Lindsay’s experienced, it’s only natural she’d struggle finding a voice upon starting over. But that doesn’t make that transition any easier to push through either. This isn’t the worst thing to ever happen to music, but it is so far the most inessential thing that exists within Lindsay’s canon and for that it’s a bit of a letdown. Sure, there’s controversial aspects to pick apart, but that doesn’t provide the project with much in the way of identity. It’s a bit faceless, which for Lindsay is quite bizarre. 

Perhaps in the context of a complete studio album, she’ll have more room to move about toward something more intriguing.

[ciaraloves]

I mean, to each their own.

Kinnporsche is a show where normal morals and ethics shouldn't really be brought in to condemn or judge the characters because of the genre (mafia/organized crime) and as Apo (Porsche's actor) has said, nothing is easy to define and nothing can be defined as black or white since every thing/one is shades of grey including the characters. The characters all have wants needs, and motivations in their relationship and as people that aren't necessarily healthy from an outside "normal" perspective but it's what they want, ultimately, and who can take that away from them if it's what they want? (reminds me of "what doesn't kill me gives me kinks that are difficult to explain" lmao).

That, of course, doesn't mean that the audience can't analyze and objectively view and recognize that all the relationships in the show are problematic and/or questionable. Because they are. They all are.

None of the relationships have started out as anything short of manipulation and/or coercion, and abuse of power (Kinn, Vegas, Kim) from people in a lesser positions of power and lacking knowledge (Porsche, Pete, and Porchay) even if it eventually turned into genuine love.

I understand that last anon and I get why KimChay-ers get touchy, because let's be real, KimChay are the most tame of all of the ships but I think you will soon realize (in the later episodes) that Chay is the most emotionally intelligent character in the show, even above Porsche, who despite his outwardly soft and naive appearance, chooses himself first before being treated like shit and is absolutely not a pushover (which is why I love his character because its a dichotomy).

Its a fandom meme that Chay ignored the red flags more so that he didn't know or see that they were there because he chose to leave instead of putting up with it unlike the other two (and I say that affectionately for Porsche and Pete).

I also get why KimChay-ers get sensitive about the actors' 9 year age gap (18/27) but to be honest, Barcode's parents allowed him to be there and I don't feel the need to coddle a person just performing their role as an actor. To begin with, his and Jeff's character will never step up to be as intense as KP and VP and that was a concious decision on the directors' part for Barcode's age/age gap because KC are explicitly emphasized in the canon novel as having sex despite them being much younger (about 16ish) than they are in the show...

I don't understand why people project Jeff and Barcode onto KimChay. One are characters, and the other are respectful coworkers. If you see any weird behavior in regards to KimChay or Jeff and Barcode, its usually the fans creating it more so than the actors who have cute sibling/mentor relationship and don't do weird fanservice or yuck it up to promote the ship.

Hope you enjoy the rest of the show ! :)

yea i don’t concern myself with the actual actors and their age I trust to some extent there was consent and agreement between them regarding their roles

this debate is all about the show and within the show’s context

I have no feeling towards kimchay. I didn’t hate them (dislike yes but not hate). I don’t love them. I’m genuinely uninterested in their storyline. whatever happens happens, you know?

thank you for your thoughts anon :)

and I am enjoying the show I love porsche so much he’s defs my fave. he’s such a disaster and gets himself into ten times more trouble than he needs to.

I’m also extremely excited for pete’s continuing arc. cannot wait to see where that goes.

I have 5 episodes left !! I’m ready!

#ciara watches kinnporsche #kinnporsche #anon loves #ciara’s convos

[lightdancer1]

One other factor in how I write Death of the Endless and why she's the Endless I choose to write the most

All of the other Endless have extremely simple factors that can go into stories. Dream, of course, is the hinge of the actual setting and his very nature as Lord of Stories means he's got all that sweet, sweet meta-commentary I so adore....but I find him a boring asshole which means he avoids the Midnighter Jackhammer approach I do for characters I actually like.

Desire is the concept of Want and their perspective of Dream is assholish and marred by willful evil for its own sake. Desire is also not wrong in any of their criticism of Dream and the main difference is that Desire is as bad or worse.

Destruction is perfect for slice of Life ala Jeff Bridges "The Dude" type stories that are sitcom-ish about this awesomely powerful cosmic entity trying and failing to be a regular Joe and blowing off all the family drama. Destruction is my second favorite character but works extremely well as a foil to Death given in canon Death is the only Endless besides Destruction to leave their position and the background shows the two were extremely close before it all went down.

Despair is basically a character who as someone with depression issues I know exactly what kind of stories could be told but it is wisest for my own mental health that I shy away from it. The stories, though, are 'examining the spiraling patterns of despair and sorrow' from the perspective of an all-seeing entity in a grey realm of rats, fog, and mirrors.

Delirium is Absurdism with Beatnik prose, which would be lovely, really, but incoherent babble to most people and only a real master of prose should dare to stir those waters.

Destiny is basically the meta-guy narrator who is a surrogate for the reader.

Death, OTOH, has no rules or drawbacks, none of the things that would seem, at an obvious level, to provide fodder for drama (and then you read her canon backstory narrated on her own voice and this combined with the 'absence of drama and happy wonderful cheerful big sister' view of her from *all* the other Endless). She is a nearly-all powerful entity who treats time and space like they're a redheaded stepchild. She is beyond the rules or restrictions of any of her family.

She can and does have at least some indications of having some parentification in the background, too, which adds extra fodder for it by careful analysis of how the Endless all interact with each other.

That is exactly why I take the challenge of writing her perspective as it takes more focus to do something for a character who's seemingly beyond challenges than for one who is. It also adds the simple idea of taking an almost all powerful character who identifies heavily with being beyond rules or restriction and for all she may protest otherwise taking vast power for granted being stuck in situations where none of this is true.

The very twin natures of Death's job also allow for focusing on an amplifying the whole dichotomy and duality of the Endless, especially where her personality is concerned. Even my more brooding and gloomier Deaths (in relative terms) still adore life and living over the dying bit of the job, this particular element of hers also means she plays off as well with and against Hob Gadling as Dream.

Each of the other Endless works very well for stories and ones that work within the rules the Endless have to follow and the consequences of not doing them.

And then there's Death who canonically can do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, and depending on how you judge some of her dialogue in High Cost of Living and whether or not Didi is more like actual Death or not she reliably gets herself in avoidable messes precisely for these reasons.

AND it allows for setting up stories that note that yes, her siblings DO have those annoying rules but the rules are why the Dreaming functions, if slowly crumbling apart, when Dream is cut off from his realm, why Destruction still happens even if the actual Endless is off playing Jeff Bridges from the Big Lebowski as voiced by BRIAN BLESSED....and why judging from A Winter's Tale if anything happens to death her function completely grinds to a halt.

None of the other Endless have a true name that works quite like hers, either. Their true names, insofar as they exist, on Earth are those of various IRL entities and simply invoke 'speak of the Devil.' Death's true name has a 50 foot kill radius and is an incomprehensible syllable in a non-human sense operating under fundamentally different laws....and gives her a massive Kryptonite factor literally none of her siblings have.

And that is the set of complexes that go into why Death is my favorite Endless to write. Vast power with equally blunt weaknesses not a single one of her siblings shares, being supremely fragile and given the whole 'worship' treatment plus the kind of effects that seeing her has on people in canon (there are a few stories where encountering Death while alive leaves lasting psychological effects that are uh....not the greatest). And ultimately the tragedy of a being who is weighed down by a task she hates, which she focuses on in a way that creates major problems and what happens when people buy the persona and then it turns out the actual person behind that was never what they thought and then whoopsie, it's a mite too late.

#death of the endless #sandman #why I love writing death of the endless over any other character in the setting #dream of the endless is a much easier character to write #almost all of the others are actually #easy is boring #Death of the Endless when written as a character in her own right is surprisingly difficult to make a good story out of #which is exactly what makes it fun

[phcking-detective]

not to be a gavin apologist BUT

Connor: Hello, I am an infiltration unit. My job is to mimic human emotions in order to make people like and trust me. I am specifically stating I was built to manipulate others.

Connor: Additionally, I was built by the future equivalent of SUPER-MEGA-AMAZON, whose products are now being used throughout society in media, journalism, medicine, the financial sector, etc etc and SUPER-MEGA-AMAZON has now just invented me to be the first of their own line of personal cops! :D

Connor: Also-also, I can and WILL be reporting literally everything I see and all that you tell me back to SUPER-MEGA-AMAZON corporation. This is not a severe breach of privacy or constitutional rights--again, I am An Cop(tm) for the largest, richest company in the world--because *has big pretty eyes*

Hank: I hate you and I wish I could slam-dunk everyone like you into a dumpster and set it on fire

Gavin: I also hate you and do not trust you. I don’t believe you really have feelings because you specifically just said that you don’t, you’re an infiltration unit, and any “feelings” you display are literally just to manipulate us >:(

Connor: *can preconstruct possible actions and is apparently a super incredible badass combat unit capable of storming Cyberlife Tower*

Connor: *expects us to believe he really didn’t know Gavin was gonna hit him after deliberately provoking him, could not poooosibly preconstruct that outcome, couldn’t just fucking dodge?? we literally have a scene of him laying out Gavin on his ASS and we’re supposed to believe Gavin legit landed a hit on him?*

everyone: HEY WHAT THE FUCK HOW DARE YOU HURT THIS SWEET PRECIOUS CORPORATE NARC WHEN ALL HE WAS TRYING TO DO IS SET PRECEDENTS FOR COMPANIES TRYING TO OWN AND CONTROL THEIR OWN POLICE FORCE HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLY GO WRONG I TRUST AND BELIEVE IN SUPER-MEGA-AMAZON!!!

Connor, an infiltration unit specifically designed to preconstruct outcomes and manipulate people: (: (: (:

**Gavin is narratively portrayed as a racist asshole; Hank is fine tho**

Gavin: MOTHERPHCKER

#gavin reed #dbh #like!! #I know a large part of this is just that d*vid c*ge would NEVER go this deep #none of that is a real concern within the actual canon #but also how much disbelief am I supposed to suspend here?? #what just because dc couldn't think critically now I'm supposed to deep fry my brain?? #literally all [they're stealing our jobs] bullshit aside #THIS CORPORATION IS A BUILDING THEIR OWN LINE OF COPS #HELLO???? #*running around and tapping on people's brains* IS THIS THING ON?! #I'll accept that not everyone at the precinct knew all of the above information #at least not immediately #but if Connor dies and comes back #any reasonable person #much less DETECTIVE!! #should be able to realize that if he's still got all his same memories #then that shit is being recorded and backed up to Cyberlife #EVERYTHING HE SEES IS RECORDED #if you're freaked out about Alexa? #yeaaahhhhhh buddy! #on the personhood and civil rights part #yes deviants are people and deserve to be treated as such #yes they're a stand in for lots of other minorities #I totally get why people IDing with Connor on being discriminated against #will not and never will like Gavin #that's fine #I just hate that taking that at face value requires believing #that if Amazon announced TODAY they were making police robots #I'd have to believe NONE of us would be Gavin??

[danganronpadespairtime]

Bonus Episodes + Other Questions

Briefly, I will open up the askbox again, because I think there may be some questions.

You can send in questions here. A Tumblr account is not needed to ask questions.

There may be chapter 1 spoilers.

Anonymous asked:

Can we get color palettes for the characters? It's hard to get the right colors from the sprites since there are so many gradients, and not every character has a CG. Sorry to inconvenience you.

I color pick from sprites, because when the gradient is removed it may make certain colors look lighter... But if that isn’t a concern for you, then I will provide flats.

Anonymous asked:

What each of the cast member’s clothing preferences? I want to do fan art of them in casual clothing, so I’m pretty curious! 

Sorry, I have a bad fashion sense and it may limit my responses, but I’ll try to answer to the best of my ability

Eden: She enjoys cute fashion, but she also enjoys wearing androgynous style clothes.

J: Refuses to wear feminine things. Likes dark colors and hoodies.

Teruko: Her fashion sense diverges from what she’d actually wear. Secretly she wants to wear girly, cute things, but is unable to afford that kind of thing. She likes skirts.

Nico: Like Teruko, wants to wear girly things but doesn’t due to external factors

Hu: Wears modernized casual hanfu. She also likes long skirts

Veronika: Complicated, lolita-like fashion

Min: She cares more about practicality than looks. She wears comfortable clothing

Levi: Fashionable

Arturo: Something that appears expensive... Designer clothes, faux high fashion

Whit: A similar style to the clothes that he is current wearing

Arei: Cute,Girly

Ace: Sporty

Charles: Semi-formal, but he doesn’t care too much about appearance

David: Semi-formal. ‘professional’ and stylish look

Rose: Eccentric and colorful, and not delicate

Anonymous asked:

This question doesn’t relate to the episodes, but rather the comic: would you say that the comic is also canonic and prior to the events of drdt? 

No, it was just a joke.

Anonymous asked: 

Was the Ultimate contest for eminent students part of the Korean Hope’s Peak, and then Min later came to america?

Currently there is no confirmation that Korea has built a Hope’s Peak. I think there may be some assumption that because someone has a foreign name, they can’t be american nor have grown up in america. This isn’t really true.

Stated explicitly, every member of the cast is American, and has spent a significant portion of their childhood growing up in the US.

That being said, Min has always been serviced by america’s Hope’s Peak. Whenever DRDT references Hope’s Peak, it will almost always be in reference to the American ones.

Anonymous asked:

Why Xander has both eyes? What happend to his eyepatch?

Xander presumably received his eye injury shortly before the start of the the events of DRDT, so it’s not like he had it for most of his life.

Anonymous asked:

sorry im so confused... is chariton like, a country that xander is from or something?

Chariton is a fictional town in an unspecified state in the US. North C is a city that is north of Chariton, in the same state. Both receive water from Chariton River (also fictional) that flows from north to south. 

There is a real town and a real river named Chariton but that is an unintended coincidence.

Anonymous asked: 

Is there gonna be more Bonus episodes? 

That is all there is for now. More bonus episodes may come after chapter 2.

Anonymous asked: 

Is there a fully body for Xander's casual outfit in the bonus episode? I think it looks really awesome!

Anonymous asked:

Do you have a rough estimation of the next chapter release? It’s ok if you don’t!

No to both, sorry. Regarding the second thing I am so early on in the production process that I cannot even begin to fathom a release date.

Anonymous asked:

Are both "unnamed students" the same person given that they have the same voice actor? Or is it just a coincidence? Also, why is Nico called "Nico Kasabyan" in the prologue? Was that his original name?

1. Same person

2. That was a mistake

Anonymous asked:

Not exactly an important question, but did Ace’s hair turn more dull?

Yes. He is getting a little sloppy with his hair dye maintenance, and/or he stopped caring.

Anonymous asked:

What year does this take place?

I don’t want to be too specific with dates nor places lest I accidentally invoke some real-life associations. DRDT takes place 70-80 years after the events of Danganronpa, somewhere in the US. That’s about specific as it gets.

Although you’d expect things to be very different after almost a century, much of that time was devoted to rebuilding post-Tragedy, so it is about analogous to our present day.

Anonymous asked:

Will Duke Spurling be mentioned in the main story at all? The story in the side episodes intrigue me a lot, and it makes me wonder if they’ll ever cross over.

I should clarify that the bonus episodes being “not plot important” doesn’t mean that none of the content will show up in the main story, just that if any events in them are plot important, then they will be also discussed as necessary within the story themself. That is to say, you can skip them and still understand the main story.

I do realize now this may be misleading wording on my part, so I apologize. That being said, some of the people and events mentioned, particularly in the second episode, may come up in the story... sometime in the distant future... Please remain patient!

koivoid asked:

How many students were in East Class 27? 

16 students, with (including) one randomly selected Ultimate Lucky Student. This is standard for all Hope’s Peak classes, with very few exceptions. In addition the classes are always “evenly split by gender” (in theory).

Anonymous asked:

are Nico's eye fades red or gray? Cause I noticed some inconsistencies between the videos and cast page. I'm not sure if it's intentional or the cast page is old and needs to be updated.

I changed them to gray after seeing that too many characters already had red eyelashes, but I haven’t updated the cast page. If there are any discrepancies within the cast pages or photos, they’re usually insignificant.

#QnA

[rich-and-bitchy-is-my-type]

In Spite Of Me (let’s drive)

(previous) Chapter III (next)

Tags: post-canon, semi slow burn, potential NSFW in later chapters.

Bee frowns, entirely unconvinced and clearly still very concerned. In the silence that follows, Poppy turns back to face the ceiling, eyes closed, and pinches the bridge of her nose and breathes again, slow and shaky. In, and out. She does it three times before she feels a gentle hand grab her wrist and guide it away from her face. When she opens her eyes and looks back to her side, Bee’s worried face is hovering inches away from hers.

here’s chapter 3! kinda messy, super rushed, a little angsty, whatever. im not sure when I’ll be able to update again since the next few days are probably gonna be a little busy, so i wanted to post this one today. hope everyone likes it <3

huge thanks to @hallowdiamond for proofreading it for me 🥺❤️ you’re litch rally the best!

------------------

"So how far away are we from the hotel?" Poppy asks, shuffling uncomfortably in her seat. She’s more exhausted than she’d like to admit.

"Not far," Bee answers, turning down the volume of the radio.

They’ve been driving for hours now, but the hours seem longer now than they did earlier in the day. Of course, since Poppy isn’t driving, her mind is running a mile a minute about other things, about the future, and the past too. 

It’s the first time all day that Bee isn’t trying to make small talk. Now that the adrenaline has passed, the past events are replaying in her mind over and over again.

Her mind darts back to the night of the Apoidea ball. She thinks about Veronica and Carter, siding with Bee and looking at Poppy as if they truly pitied her. The hurt, the rage, the overwhelming sense of betrayal she felt in those moments before the winner was announced were like nothing she had ever felt before. Never had she been so utterly blind to what was manifesting right under her nose. Poppy has always prided herself on her ability to read people, to know exactly what’s needed to make them do what she wants them to do. Even now, though she is starting to know better than to manipulate people without a care, she still likes to think that she understands what makes them tick. It’d been a shock to have that ripped away from her.

She looks at Bee and tries to make sense of everything she’s feeling. This is the same girl who took everything away from her, who promised to take her down and actually did. The same girl who warned her about an angry mob showing up at her door and made sure she was safe.

The same girl who humiliated her at the Bacchanalia and took revenge for her best friend. The same girl who found out about her most kept secret and didn’t use it against her.

The same girl who makes her smile despite herself and the only one who can keep her on her toes.

Bee Hughes. How does she actually feel about Bee Hughes? How can she hate someone so much and still want to be around them?

She knows that Bee wouldn’t fuck with her again. She knows that her feelings for Poppy are real and that she’d probably be willing to do anything to make her trust her. And if she looks within, she knows that she’s known this for weeks now.

But sometimes…

Sometimes, she has nightmares still, about Bee’s sweet smile twisting into a sneer, her laugh exploding into a cackle, and it's her own cruel words she said to Persephone Dalton that spill out of Bee Hughes’ mouth (Just wait and see what I do to your life. There’s one role you were born to play: the human sacrifice. You will never be one of us.) Sometimes she dreams about the things that Bee actually told her, too (I turned your friends against you because none of them liked you. We thought it’d be fun to ruin your life because you deserved it and oh my god how much fun it was to see you fall) until Poppy snaps awake, soaked in sweat and panting.

And sometimes, it’s just a little too much for her to bear. Sometimes it leaves her aching for some comfort she doesn’t quite understand. But really, there’s nothing to do then but to sit up and tell herself, over and over, that it was just a dream.

It’s always just a dream. There aren’t any more competitions and she doesn’t care about the T anymore and it’s over now.

She looks at Bee again. What are they even doing, right now? How can she trust her? How can they trust each other after everything that went down?

And, more importantly, why does she want to?

"Tired?" Bee asks her, bringing her back to reality.

Poppy nods, and looks outside her window. The sky is getting dark and there are barely any other cars on the road. She doesn’t like how uncomfortable she’s suddenly feeling.

"We’ll get there in less than an hour," Bee promises, reaching for her thermos flask and taking a sip of her coffee.

"Where are we even going?"

"We’re stopping at a local bed and breakfast run by a local beekeeper. It’s really quaint and they even have an option to sleep in a barn," she tells her. Immediately noticing Poppy’s panic, she adds: "don’t worry! I booked us an actual room."

Poppy looks at her incredulously. "What made you think I’d like this?"

Bee smirks.

"Oh, I didn’t think you would," she laughs. "But think of it this way: you’re getting the full ‘road trip with Bee Hughes’ experience."

"That truly doesn’t make it any better" Poppy grunts and closes her eyes. She can sense an oncoming headache.

"Yeah, yeah, you’re the one who agreed to come with me, though," Bee laughs again and Poppy rubs at her temples. "Besides, how fun is that? The owner is a beekeeper and my name—"

"—your name is Bee. Yes, Hughes, I get it," she rolls her eyes. "It’s just not funny."

"You are no fun," Bee pouts.

Poppy sighs. "Bee, I’m from New York city. I know that in your world this probably sounds like a really fun evening, but for me, this is worse than getting a Pap smear."

"You are so dramatic," Bee tells her, barely stifling a laugh. "Like, seriously, Poppy. I think you should’ve gone to an art school or something. You’re giving me major theatre kid vibes right now."

"That is the worst thing you could’ve said to me," Poppy says indignantly.

"Shut up, Poptart. Quit complaining. You promised you’d play nice, remember?" Bee gently nudges her with her elbow.

"I could actually murder you right now and no one would ever find your body," she squints her eyes.

Bee smiles at her. Poppy thinks it’s the most infuriating smile in the world. She hates how much she doesn’t hate it.

"You could, but…" she pauses, and makes eye contact. "You’d get pretty lonely without me."

Poppy hates that she’s right.

------------------

Yawning, Bee falls face first down onto one of the beds in the room she booked. Her things are splattered around, but she doesn’t seem to mind as she sinks her face into her pillow. "I am so, so tired."

"Did you really book two twin beds?" Poppy asks, looking around the room. It’s… quaint, to say the least. Bee was right to use that word to describe it. Poppy purses her lips as she tries to stop herself from making any rude comments. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah!" Bee smiles in understanding. She seems to notice Poppy’s awkwardness, but doesn’t mention it.

Poppy walks to her own bed and sits down. Bee follows her, standing a little short from the foot of the bed.

"Huh. I thought you would’ve booked at least a queen size bed."

Bee laughs, reaching for her suitcase and placing it at an arm’s distance.

"Aw, Pops, did you want to sleep with me?" she raises an eyebrow, clearly amused.

"No!" she’s quick to deny it, maybe a little bit too quick. It makes Bee smile. "I just thought that knowing you, you would’ve tried something like that."

"Don’t worry. We still have to spend the night in a hotel tomorrow. There’s plenty of time to— ow!" she squeals. "You can’t be trusted around pillows!"

"I can’t be trusted, period. I thought you’d know that by now, Farmsville," she smirks. "Now get out of my side of the room before I transition from pillows into something heavier."

"You really do love violence, huh?"

"Maybe you bring out the worst in me."

"Please," Bee snorts. "Weren’t you the one who told me I made you better at being you?"

"Same thing, really."

"If you say so."

"I do. Now shut up before I whack you again," Poppy yawns. "I’m gonna take a shower."

"Want some company?" Bee smirks. Poppy can’t tell if she’s being serious or not.

"Step foot into the bathroom while I’m there and I’ll seriously murder you."

"Fine, fine," Bee rolls her eyes and plops herself on her bed. "Try not to use all the hot water."

Poppy raises an eyebrow. Limited hot water? What kind of cheap hotel is this one, exactly?

Thirty minutes later, they’ve both taken (separate) showers and changed into their pajamas. Poppy is wearing an expensive silk pajama set while Bee is just wearing an oversized T-shirt and cotton shorts. Poppy tries to ignore the way it makes her feel.

The place doesn’t offer room service (shocking) so Bee had to step out to buy some food while Poppy was in the shower. They’re eating sandwiches quietly . The TV provides some background noise, but other than that, the room is filled with a pleasant silence.

Bee is the first one to break it. "Long day, huh?"

"Yeah," Poppy takes a sip of her diet coke. "Your car seats get really uncomfortable after a couple of hours."

"I’m pretty sure that’s something that happens with every car seat, Pops. Not just mine," Bee chuckles.

"No, I’m pretty sure I’m right," Poppy smiles with her. It makes Bee look away in embarrassment.

"Anyways, are you done with that?" she asks, pointing at Poppy’s plastic plate and now empty soda can.

She nods and hands them over. Bee throws them into the trash can before walking up to Poppy and sitting down next to her on the bed.

"I figured we should wake up by… 7:30 am-ish tomorrow, if that’s okay with you."

Poppy yawns again. "Yeah. Now, Farmsville, get out of my bed. I’d like to at least get five hours of sleep tonight."

"Fine," Bee gives her a nod before she’s overcome by a huge yawn of her own. "Goodnight, Pops."

"I’ll kill you in your sleep if you snore," she murmurs, her eyelids growing heavy.

"I’m already looking forward to it."

------------------

Then she finds herself sitting at her table at the Person to Watch gala. The lights are off except for the one illuminating the stage, leaving the room unnervingly dim.

That’s weird enough. Even weirder is the fact that, as she looks around, she finds that every single table around her is completely bare. Even her own. The plates are wiped clean, the champagne glasses are empty. There’s absolutely no indication that this room has ever been in use.

Completely lost, she looks at her phone screen. The date and time are definitely right, and the gala should be happening right now. So why is it like a fucking ghost town in here?

As if summoned by the thought, she suddenly hears the clicking sound of high heels walking towards the stage. The lights dim before turning themselves on again, and Bee reaches for the microphone.

Poppy sighs in relief. She stands up from her chair and gets closer to the stage. "Good, you’re here too. What the hell is going on?"

Bee gives her a funny look, like maybe Poppy’s completely lost her mind. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, why is there literally no one else here? Did we get the date wrong, or something?"

Bee breaks into a laugh. "What do you mean? Everyone else went home already. The real question is, what are you doing here?"

Her brow furrows when she realizes that actually, she has no memory of coming here. She has no idea of who won the award or what happened during the night. And if the gala is already over, why would Bee stay behind…?

"I… I don’t know," she says hesitantly. "Did I win?"

Bee lets out another laugh. "You? Oh, no. I won."

Poppy feels her stomach sink.

"What…?"

"Do you seriously not remember your little meltdown?" she asks, raising an eyebrow. She’s still smiling, as if everything’s alright between them. "Here, look at yourself."

She hands her a double sided compact mirror. Poppy looks at herself, and sure enough, her mascara is all runny and her cheeks are stained with tears.

"I don’t remember—" she starts, but Bee interrupts her.

"You went a little crazy over there," she laughs.

"I did?"

Something strange happens then. Bee’s smile falters a little, like a cracking façade, except somehow it reveals nothing about what’s underneath. "Yeah, it was a real shit show."

"What are you doing here?" Poppy asks her, still confused.

Bee lets out a chuckle and shakes her head.

"You should get going now. Your parents, er, I mean… your mom and Piers are waiting for you outside."

"What?" she can feel herself start panicking. "What do you mean—"

"You should probably check the T."

"My phone… I don’t know where I’ve left it," Poppy admits.

Bee takes her purse and reaches inside to grab something. "You can use mine."

She hands her phone over, which Poppy accepts with bafflement. Before she can say anything else, Bee is out the door.

"Farmsville!" she calls after her, peering out into the hall. But somehow, Bee is already nowhere to be seen.

Finally, she looks down at the screen.

The T’s latest submission is about her family. She feels the tears forming in her eyes, but she can’t stop reading. Every secret is exposed there for the world to see. The truth about her parents, about her mother’s affair, about her birth. And the worst part? Bee was the one who exposed it at the gala.

"No, no, no…" she sobs. "This can’t be happening."

And suddenly a wave of dread washes over her, spurring her into motion. Poppy hurries down the disturbingly-empty hall, turning corner after corner, only blind instinct guiding her steps until she finds herself outside, close to a fountain.

Bee is standing about ten feet ahead, her back turned to her as she watches the fountain.

"Farmsville, what the fuck did you do?!" she yells as she hastily makes her way over to the other girl.

Slowly, Bee turns around. Her expression is inscrutable. She looks her up and down, twice. Judging her. Poppy thinks she’s turning smaller under her piercing gaze.

Finally, Bee sighs and says, "Sometimes, we get what’s coming to us."

It makes her heart stop and her breath catches in her throat. She watches as Bee’s gaze flicks upwards, to look past her at something over her shoulder. She watches as her lips curl into a small smile. She watches as Bee Hughes walks away without another word.

She whirls around just in time to see her parents bearing down on her.

------------------

Poppy wakes with a startled gasp.

Hopelessly disoriented and unadjusted to the dark of her room, she shoots a hand out to the side to fumble for the lamp on her bedside table. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Except this is not her bed and this is not her room and oh right, she’s at some random bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere. It’s three-thirty in the morning, according to the digital clock that is on the table.

Okay. That’s okay.

She manages to force herself to take three long, deep breaths before they dissolve into hiccuping sobs and Poppy clasps a hand over her mouth a second too late because she had also forgotten, for a moment, that she isn’t alone in the room.

And now Bee is already stirring, blinking the sleep away from her eyes. As soon as she regains her senses, she focuses on the girl on the bed besides hers. She leans over to touch her shoulder. "Whoa, hey, what happened?"

Poppy tenses, stubbornly refusing to meet her eyes. She can’t bear to see the concern on Bee’s face that she knows must be there. "Nothing," she mumbles. "Nothing happened."

She feels a hand on her cheek, soft but persistent as Bee turns Poppy’s head to make her meet her gaze. "Poppy, you’re crying," she says, soft and matter-of-factly. "What’s wrong?"

Poppy sucks in another breath, trying desperately to calm the hammering beat of her heart. Seeing, knowing and feeling Bee right there beside her, warm and so very very real, helps quell the fear nightmare-Bee induced. When she finally feels her heartbeat slow, returning to normal, she opens her mouth. "It was just a bad dream. Think nothing of it."

Bee frowns, entirely unconvinced and clearly still very concerned. In the silence that follows, Poppy turns back to face the ceiling, eyes closed, and pinches the bridge of her nose and breathes again, slow and shaky. In, and out. She does it three times before she feels a gentle hand grab her wrist and guide it away from her face.

When she opens her eyes and looks back to her side, Bee’s worried face is hovering inches away from hers.

"Was it…" she trails off, hesitatingly. "Was it about me?"

As much as Poppy doesn’t want to admit that (a part of her refuses to show vulnerability in front of Bee — or even worse, let her know that she’s the source of it) she’s sure the expression on her face confirms what Bee’s already figured out. So she nods, shortly.

"Does it— do you get nightmares about that a lot?"

"Sometimes," she admits, "I do. About all the other shit too, like Persephone or the mob. But you… yeah. You’re always there."

She almost regrets saying the last part at the flash of guilt on Bee’s face. She knows now that it’s not really her fault. So she adds: "They’re not always bad dreams."

She means it. Sometimes she dreams about Bee saving her from the mob, or the two of them teaming up against Selene in the bathroom. She dreams about things she wishes she would’ve handled differently, too.

Poppy’s sure Bee’s opening her mouth to apologize (she does that a lot, even though Poppy is the one who should be apologizing) so she braces for it and gets her reply ready in her head. She’s caught off guard, though, when Bee says, "It’ll be okay."

"You’ll be okay," she repeats. “It’ll get better, and we’ll be here for you, Poppy. Chloe, Veronica, and I. No matter what your mind tries to tell you. I’ll be here for you."

Poppy’s at a complete loss for words. She just sort of… stares at Bee for a solid ten seconds, unsure of what to say. Bee looks back at her so calmly, patiently, that gentle smile of hers sending warmth flooding through Poppy’s chest. There’s that feeling again, she thinks. She can feel tears forming in her eyes again, but for a completely different reason. "Okay," she finally manages, as she goes to wipe them away as subtly as possible and completely fails.

The other girl laughs softly. "Okay."

Poppy closes her eyes. She’s finally starting to calm down, but…

And, as if she’s read her mind, Bee asks her gently. "Do you want me to sleep with you tonight?"

Poppy doesn’t have the strength to say any words right now, so she just nods instead. And before she knows it, Bee’s reached out and wrapped her arms around Poppy and pulled her close to her chest. Poppy stiffens for just a moment before she sighs and allows herself to relax into Bee, nestling her head on her shoulder. 

There isn’t much room for the two of them in a twin bed, and Poppy thinks that Bee’s large figure might fall off the bed if they move around too much. So, she wraps her arms around her and holds her closer still. Just so she won’t fall off, she tells herself.

"Hmm," she mumbles into the soft fabric of Bee’s oversized shirt.

"Can I ask…" Bee starts, a little hesitantly. "Can I ask you what I did to you in your dream?"

Poppy takes a few seconds to breathe before answering her question. Her bodies are still flush together, comforting her. "We were at the gala again, except you exposed the truth about my father after you won."

Bee’s breath falters a little. "I wouldn’t— I would never!"

"I know," Poppy whispers. "I know you wouldn’t, Bee."

That seems to make Bee relax a little, because she tentatively brings a hand to Poppy’s hair and starts running trembling fingers through it. "Okay."

"Night, Bee," Poppy says, letting her eyes fall shut once again.

"Goodnight, Poppy," she hums in return, the smile in her voice clear as day.

Tagging: @simp-pony @baexpoppy @noone6252 @ownagef

Next

#poppy min sinclair #mc: bee 🐝 #poppy x mc #my writing

[choicesarehard]

I keep my streams about Wolf Bride light-hearted. It’s been a hell of a year, and I think we all need a space where we can laugh together. But part of responsibly consuming problematic media is being aware of where it fails. And that’s why I think it’s important to talk about Morgan, and Wolf Bride’s troubling depiction of blindness. 

Morgan is one of the first Love Interests in Choices to have a canon disability. She is representation many players with disabilities, like myself, are eager for. But like any form of representation, writing a blind character requires research. A quick google search will lead you to numerous visually impaired voices who outline the tropes and stereotypes that harm their community. Wolf Bride has included nearly all of them. 

signal boosts are appreciated

Not All Blind People Wear Sunglasses

Morgan is shown wearing dark sunglasses from the moment she appears on screen. And there are certainly blind people who wear sunglasses — particularly those who (unlike Morgan) can still perceive some degree of light and dark, and experience painful light sensitivity. But no context is ever giving for Morgan’s use of sunglasses. In fact, they aren’t even addressed for four chapters. 

[ID: Two screenshots from Chapter Four of Wolf Bride. The first features a text box over a forest background, and reads “You glance at Morgan, and are surprised to see the dark glasses still covering her eyes.” The second features a labeled image of her sunglasses, placed over a black background, with a selectable button that reads “What does Morgan look like without these?”] What follows is a scene Pixelberry could have used to provide insight into an assistive device the sighted community may not be entirely familiar with. They could have touched on degrees of visual impairment, or why some blind individuals need dark lenses while others don’t. They could even have explained that for some individuals with visual impairments, dark lenses make tasks like reading or navigating dimly lit spaces harder.  Instead, and far more troublingly, MC is given the option to ask Morgan not to wear them anymore. And depending on your choice, the book is coded to remove the sunglasses from her sprite in future scenes. This reduces an assistive device to a fashion choice, something our MC can wish away if they don’t find it attractive. And that isn’t okay. 

Unusual Eyes

[ID: Two side-by-side screenshots from Chapter Four of Wolf Bride. The first features a text box placed over a forest background that reads “With a start, you realize her pale eyes aren’t looking at you, aren’t seeing you, aren’t seeing anything.” The second features Morgan’s sad sprite in the same forest setting, and a text box that reads “...I’ve been blind since birth.”] Morgan has a customizable sprite. But regardless of the ethnicity you select for her, she is depicted with pale blue eyes. And that troubles me. Because the stereotype that all blind individuals have cloudy, distorted, or unusual eyes is pervasive and harmful. 

Even when it isn’t tied to another harmful trope — the blind character as mystical seer or psychic — this stereotype create an expectation that blindness is something that always manifests in a visible way. And for millions of blind individuals, that isn’t the case. 

And while cataracts, trauma to the eye, and corneal infections can all cause the clouded effect most of us recognize from media, none turn your brown eyes into blue.  Heightened Senses

Another common stereotype in media is the blind character who’s remaining senses have become heightened as a compensatory mechanism, often to a supernatural degree.

[ID: Two side-by-side screenshots from Chapter Four of Wolf Bride. The first features Morgan’s surprised sprite in a forest setting and a text box that reads “I guess I sort of...feel things. Like the place on my cheek where the branch blocked the wind.” The second features Morgan’s neutral sprite in the same forest setting, and a text box that reads “I can smell the dew on the leaves, and the moss on the bark. Can’t you?] Individuals with visual impairment may learn to rely on their other senses to navigate the world around them. But they do not suddenly gain the ability to sense the location of a branch based on wind patterns, or to accurately throw a dart at a carnival game ballon based on its smell. 

[ID: Two side-by-side screenshots from Chapter Eight of Wolf Bride. The first features a text box placed over a carnival background that reads “Pop! Pop! Pop! Three darts fly through the air, striking their targets.” The second features the white MC with straight blonde hair. Her sprite is surprised, and beneath it is a text box that reads “So you did that by smell, too?]

This trope may seem harmless — after all, it gave us Daredevil, a beloved blind superhero — but it contributes to the unachievable expectations we often place on real-world individuals with visually impairments. And that isn’t fair. 

Of course, we all suspected Morgan’s abilities were due to something other than heightened senses. And that in and of itself is a problem. 

Magical / Supernatural Abilities

To the surprise of no one, Morgan exhibits these unusual abilities because she is a werewolf. But choosing to give a blind character magical abilities should only be done after asking yourself some challenging questions. As visually-impaired Tumblr user @mimzy-writing-online explains:

Your blind characters don’t need a magical ability that negates their blindness. [Ask yourself why it’s so important to you to give them one]. If it’s because they can’t do all the things you want them to do without it, then should you really have written them as blind in the first place? 

And that’s the thing. Morgan isn’t actually written as a blind character, not when it counts. Morgan shoots bullets with accuracy, runs through unfamiliar terrain, and navigates moving objects with ease. She doesn’t use common assistive devices like canes or screen readers. Her sunglasses are discarded at MC’s request. The scientific papers that fill her research facility are not digitized for accessibility or written in braille. 

Even her dreams, which should be reflections of how she perceives reality, look identical to Bastien's — which makes no sense for someone who has been canonically blind since birth. 

[ID: Two side-by-side screenshots from Chapters Five and Eight of Wolf Bride. The first features a scene from Morgan’s lucid dream. Set in a glamorous hotel, it includes visual details like twinkling lights, and patterned carpets. The color is tinted a grey-blue and the exposure on the image has been increased to an unnatural level. The second features a scene from Bastien’s lucid dream. Set in a forest, it shares the same tinted and over-exposed qualities as the first.]

Her blindness isn’t an integral part of her character. Instead, it’s a narrative device, paraded in front of the reader when it can further a central — and deeply disturbing — plot point. [content warning: discussion of discrimination and child abuse / abandonment ahead]  Morgan Was Left to Die Because She Was Blind 

And Jesus, what a plot point it is. In Chapter 11, we learn that Morgan was left to die in the woods because she was born “wrong, sickly, blind.” But the only canonical disability or illness she is ever shown to have is her blindness. 

[ID: Three side-by-side screenshots from Chapter Eleven of Wolf Bride. The first two feature the white MC with straight blonde hair’s shocked sprite in front of a forest background. The first text box reads “I don’t understand...” followed by two dialogue options “Why was Morgan abandoned?” and “Is that what you do to full moon babies? Kill them?” The second panel’s read box reads “Just because she was blind?” The third panel features  the old woman Noemi’s sad sprite, placed over a forest background. Her text box reads “If we know an infant will not survive, it is best to let it die quickly.”]

I...am frankly having a hard time thinking through the screenshot-induced fury to make a coherent argument here. To imply that blindness is an impairment so limiting that death is the only foreseeable outcome? That being born blind somehow makes a child “wrong”? The ignorance and prejudice shown in this scene is staggering. 

But equally troubling is the response of the main characters to this revelation. Yes, in fiction, bad people sometimes do bad things. But Noemi isn’t shown to be a bad person. Neither is Bastien, who knew what his pack had been guilty of in the past, and even seeks to justify it to a limited degree. 

Most shockingly, Morgan herself, who in the second screenshot below has just overheard that she was left to die as an infant because she is blind, isn’t angry or upset. She’s almost apologetic, still seeking a place within the pack. 

[ID: Two side-by-side screenshots from Chapter Eleven of Wolf Bride. The first features Hispanic Bastien’s sad sprite in front of a forest background. The text box beneath him reads “It doesn’t happen often, Clara, but...” The second features white Morgan’s sad sprite in front of the same forest background. The text box beneath her reads “I didn’t mean any harm. Especially after...what I just overheard.”]

By introducing the idea that a child born blind cannot survive, let alone thrive, without superhuman abilities, and then failing to soundly and thoroughly refute that idea through the characters we identify with, Pixelberry is unintentionally perpetuating the same false beliefs that have led to real-world instances of infanticide for centuries. And that isn’t okay. 

I don’t know where Pixelberry will go with the story from here. Perhaps in today’s chapter some of these concerns have been addressed...but I doubt it. In the meantime, I’ve also written to their support staff to express my deep concern and disappointment in the treatment of Morgan’s character. And I’d encourage you to do the same. 

Will I continue to keep streaming Wolf Bride? For now, yes. My VIP subscription is already paid for, and frankly, I want to see Morgan’s arc through. I guess the small part of me that was excited for the representation is still hopeful the narrative can be corrected. 

But I’ll be adding a content warning at the start of each stream for ablism, and that’s something I never thought I’d have to do.  Screenshots courtesy of CrimsonFeatherGames on Youtube

#playchoices #pixelberry #choices vip #wolf bride #choices wolf bride #cw: child abuse #cw: ableism #anti-wolf bride

[bigskydreaming]

Hi! I was reading a fanfic and it brought up Roy and Dick's fight, which I see a lot of in fics but never what they fought about and consequently why they don't talk. I thought it was a vague excuse/reason why Roy was Jason's friend not Dick's anymore but this fic brought up when Dick was batman so I was wondering if there was actually a fight between them? Btw I really enjoy your metas! They're v thought out and well articulated. Also it's v easy to separate what's your opinion and what's fact which is. Very helpful for me

Yeah this is one hundred percent a fanon thing that's kept deliberately vague to justify why Roy in his friendship with Jason seems to have no positive thoughts or concerns about Dick whatsoever. Now granted, Dick and Roy are not nearly as close in the New 52 as they were pre-Reboot. The lack of their friendship there is definitely one of the things I disliked most about the Reboot - and I actually don't care if Jason and Roy are friends tbh, its the total erasure of his history with Dick as if he can't be friends with both, that like, bugs most.

But so like, yeah, Roy and Dick aren't super close when they interact on the Titans in the New 52, but there's literally nothing in any of their interactions that explains the complete absence of him from Roy's life or a reason that Roy would like, hate him the way he tends to in a lot of Jason-centric fics.

When you factor in pre-Reboot stuff though, it starts to get a LOT more.....uh wyd? And this is why I have trouble buying that people just write Roy and Jason the way they do because its the only thing they know from recent comics. Like one, most fans talk about how they don't even read the source comics, so there's no reason their knowledge of the characters or events would be limited to just recent comics if they're going off wiki summaries and scans anyway. And second, most fans AREN'T limited in their knowledge to just recent comics.

Like, the second people start writing Roy and Jason and Kori but with their pre-52 characterizations and references to events from THAT timeline, it all gets very messy, the way they're like, completely antagonistic towards Dick a lot of the time. Because Roy and Dick were always solid. Yes, they fought. A lot. But they always, ALWAYS made up afterwards. They had conflict about Roy's drug addiction - it didn't stop Dick from being there to support him through rehab, or Dick being the first person Roy called to help him get Lian after he learned of her existence. Dick literally held Lian before Roy ever did? He's the one who first put her in Roy's arms for the first time.

(Which is the prime grudge I and most Dick Grayson fans have about Roy and Jason fics which make Jason like, the absolute apple of Lian's eye. If you want to expand Lian's circle of loved and trusted ones to include Jason as Roy's friend and thus her uncle, like go for it! But there's zero reason that should require invalidating and erasing the fact that Dick was this little girl's adored godfather and uncle for pretty much her entire life. And the way Dick is just shoved offstage from Lian's life entirely, to slot Jason into his place as though they're completely interchangeable, its like....THAT'S the kind of thing that gets people irey about how Jason 'steals' Dick's dynamics and character relationships.

Because there's nothing saying they both can't be major players in Roy and Lian's lives! But just that they're not interchangeable! You need to develop the specific role Jason plays there WITHOUT just overwriting everything Dick actually did in relation to the two of them pre-Flashpoint, which is what you're drawing from the second you write Lian, unless you're specifically going with the few appearances we've had of her within literally just the last year.

But I mean, when people just search and replace Dick Grayson in all Roy and Lian's pre-Reboot stories and act like Jason was the one doing all of that instead.....why wouldn't fans of the source material be annoyed by a character getting credit for interactions and things done for Lian and Roy that Jason literally NEVER DID, while at the EXACT SAME TIME, conjuring some mysterious, unnamed 'Falling Out' that Roy and Dick had, that was clearly all Dick's fault, and resulted from him being basically excised entirely from Roy and Lian's lives?

Same with Kori, for the record, and like despite being Dick's ex, she and Dick have NEVER been like, estranged? She and Dick have often been close even after their breakup. None of it makes any sense, and the fact that a lot of fans don't even try to make it make sense or justify it, and expect other fans to just be fine with settling for an inexplicable reversal of Dick's every actual dynamic with these characters while setting up Jason to occupy the exact same role Dick played in these other characters' lives, like.....lol. Its fun.)

Anyway, back to your question, like, there are fights you can go with pre-Reboot as the source of various conflicts between Dick and Roy - but again, I maintain its just as crucial that they're always written as getting past them. They have a very tempestuous relationship because they are the two people MOST likely to call each other on their shit, two of the two people WITH the most shit in common due to the parallels in their childhoods and the roles they've occupied in the Titans and the superhero community in general, and the two people most resistant to being called out on their shit by each other, lol. Mostly in that case because like, they do recognize that they have a lot in common and understand each other very well, so the second the other is calling them out for something, they're usually like "ugh, if HE'S saying this, its probably true and I am just not prepared yet to be wrong about this. I need more time being unjustifiably rawr about things." Its like that thing where they both look at each other doing something that feels familiar or calls back to their own reasons for doing something and they're like ugh I'm in this picture and I don't like it.

So they clash. A lot. But always with the implicit bedrock of like, there's nothing either of them can do or say to the other that will push the other away for good.

They fought over Roy replacing Dick as leader of the Titans when Dick's wedding fell apart, even though Roy actually didn't want to do it and was kinda pushed into it by the government, but again, Dick like, got over it and realized it was for the best and forgave Roy for it that very same issue. And on and on. It always went like that. So there's plenty of stuff that can be used or pointed at as a source of conflict between the two, but the part I'll always call unbelievable is the idea that they never make up after one of these fights. Why now? What fight, specifically, is so bad between them that despite everything else they've gone through AND gotten past, they can't get past this one? Y'know?

So yeah, that's my take on this. There is no definitive falling out between Dick and Roy as many fics like to point to in order to shove him offscreen and make room for Jason in Roy and Lian's lives, and personally, I just don't find it necessary and I actually think it makes Roy look REALLY bad. Because when you're not specifically detailing all the things that Dick has actually DONE for Roy, the lengths to which he's been there for his friend, and like, specifically invalidating each and every one of them as something that never happened in a particular fic, then literally anyone who reads that fic and has their own awareness of Dick and Roy's friendship is kiiiiiinda likely to be reading that and thinking wow what an ungrateful asshole, when Roy's just written as bitching about Dick with Jason and sandbagging him without any real explanation as to WHY, beyond just 'oh they had a fight years ago.'

(And coming up with some random awful thing that Dick did to justify Roy hating him now isn't like, a superior alternative, lmao, because again, its still just trashing one character for the sake of getting him out of the way of two other characters' friendship and people are going to think what they think about that).

Anyway, my now standard stock disclaimer that like, there doesn't actually need to be a canon fight obviously, for people to just write things this way and handwave that Dick and Roy had an epic falling out years ago and now they just hate one another or whatever, or just Roy hates him or vice versa. Obviously people are free to do what they want. They don't need a reason other than "I want to write it this way so Jason and Roy are friends and Jason doesn't have to 'share' him with Dick or have his friendship be overshadowed by their greater history together." That just happens to be a reason that no Dick Grayson fan is ever really going to be happy about, lol, for what should be perfectly obvious reasons, so it honestly shouldn't be surprising to people that fans of the source material often gripe about it.

Because yeah fanfic is a tremendous opportunity to transform the source material into something better, but if what's better for some fans actively takes away what was working perfectly well for other fans the original way, they're going to say that. Especially in a fandom where so many new fans take their view of the characters and their dynamics from fics rather than the source material - when fandom has that much of an influence on what new fans perceive to be 'canon,' fans are perfectly within their right to emphasize what is ACTUALLY canon and what isn't, so that new fans at least have the opportunity to determine for themselves what take they want to go with, instead of just accepting at face value that the nature of say, Dick and Roy's relationship is just that Roy hates Dick because of some mumble mumble ancient history vague mumble details not found mumble mumble fight.

[ukcyo]

eyes locked forward.

❦ summary ; you love eren, but it isn’t enough to save him.

➳ pairing ; eren jaeger x reader

➳ genre ; angst

➳ warnings ; spoilers for chapter 119 and beyond, nsfw mentions, death, canon-typical violence

➳ a/n: happy late valentines day lovs <3 i was supposed to post this yesterday but i kept scrapping it and it went downhill from there sijfosidj

"I did love you once. But that was when I thought you weren't like the rest of them: a slave."

If Hell was real, the fire that scorched it realms could never compare to the way your heart burned when he had told you those words yesterday, only mere hours before he begun the destruction of all lands beyond Paradis. You waited for a sign, a quiver, a betrayal in his expression--anything to tell you that he didn’t mean what he just said to you, that he was just too caught up in the moment. But those blue-green eyes, absent all of life, continued to stare coldly at you, as if you truly were nothing to him but a pebble on the side of the street.

And that was when you realized that your Eren wasn’t here anymore.

You remember the first time you’ve met him. Blue-green eyes with a certain intensity that reminded you of the fiery blazes of the sun, he swept you off of your feet when his zealous words and promises of revenge and freedom made you realize that there was hope within these walls, that humanity’s savior trained right beside you. The way he was eager and happy beyond words when you agreed to his sentiments and provided opinions of your own further intensified those emotions of yours, feeling yourself get attached to everything he offered. Your feelings were confirmed when he was revealed to be one who can become a titan, telling you that it was only Eren who can guarantee a future for all of humanity. 

Yet, as both of you spent countless conversations under swirls of red-orange and the occasional star-ridden darkness of the night sky, you no longer bonded over only shared goals of freedom. First it was your smiles, then it was jokes, then it was the sudden appreciations over being there for each other, tinges of red appearing both on your faces. And on a Thursday night, when both of you had gingerly kissed for the very first time, Eren and you realized that you had given a half of yourselves to each other.

That was why it was worth and continued to be worth it for the longest time, because Eren was there, as you were for him. Countless sorrows, imminent grief, frequent loss, the guilt of surviving while hundreds of the soldiers you all fought with were left either mangled or eaten--they all became bearable because both of you leaned on each other, melding beautifully into one whole that only fueled the strength you had.

What foolish thinking.

You remember the first time he touched you. It was a week before your first ever visit to Marley, just a little over a year ago. Eren had drastically changed, much more quieter and solemn, he had a habit of staring into space with a deeply blank look in his eyes. It hurt you to see him like this, the pains of the world consuming his soul, but it was enough for you to be by his side and easing his woes even just little, something you knew you were able to do when an adoring, sincere grin appeared on his face. Yet, besides that, both of you barely spoke as much as you did in your past, usually resolving to sitting in comfortable silence as you stared at the vast green scenery of the island. That was why it greatly surprised you when he had appeared in your bedroom that evening, hand caressing your cheek and lingering there, his eyes intently looking at your features, as if he was trying his best to memorize it. And when he asked if he could lay in bed with you that night, hands moving down to the collar of your nightgown and gently clutching it, you smiled and whole-heartedly agreed.

You can still vividly recall every feeling Eren had managed to procure from you that evening. His hands were like the paintbrush of a talented painter, brushing even the slightest upon your skin and producing a magnificent shade of color that you’ve never experienced and seen in your life. Both of you were inexperienced, two people lost in a world that they thought they understood so well, but realized that they actually knew nothing all. But if you were to say that the experience wasn’t heavenly, that the way he had moved against you wasn’t divine and almost brought you to tears, you would be lying. Because it was absolutely beautiful, ethereal even. In the first time in years, both of you tasted the feeling of happiness, what it meant to be alive. Both of you understood that maybe you were born to live in this exact moment, intimately connected as if tomorrow was such a distant concept.

The memory of it was a treasure in your heart that you swore to never reveal and offer to someone else, identifying it as sacred and a light in this dark tunnel you have been facing. 

(Now your heart only twists in ache, for the treasure had altered into poison.)

As you reminisce, you suddenly come to a painful realization that that evening was the last time Eren had stayed alive. Both of you laid in bed afterwards, entangled in each other’s arms as you attempted to fall asleep. You remember thinking that this was the essence of being alive, until Eren had suddenly tightened his grip around your body, his arms shaking in the process. He acted as if he was in fear, fear that you were going to slip away and leave forever if he even loosened it just a bit.

“Eren,” you said his name in a concerned tone, “What’s wrong?”

He was whimpering. You realized that it wasn’t only his arms that shook, but his whole body did, his heart hammering rapidly within his chest.

“In the future, I want you to find happiness no matter what happens, even if it isn’t with me. I want you to be free, like we’ve always longed for.”

You stayed silent for a second, stunned from his words, before smiling and hugging him tighter in return.

“Eren, wherever you end up running to and wherever you go, look to the distance and know that I am there too. Freedom is still what I consider happiness, but now I realize having you in my life is too.”

That conversation, the desolation in his words, the venom in his tone when he had told you were no longer important to him--it all made sense to you now. His attack on Marley, his subsequent escape from his prison here, activating the rumbling and releasing all those colossal titans to wreck havoc to all the lands beyond Paradis--Eren knew that this was going to happen. Long before the Marley trip, long before you made love, he knew that he was meant to destroy the world the moment everyone decided you were all devils. He knew that the blood of all the innocent people that made up numerous nations was going to be on his hands. He knew that he was going to have to kill who he was, and that was why he said those words to you that evening. Because despite that all, despite how much you mattered to him, it isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to save Paradis, it isn’t enough to vanquish the fear people had on the island you called home, it isn’t enough to change the future.

You love Eren, but it isn’t enough to save him. It isn’t enough to save you all.

Sacrificing himself and everything he held dear to his heart for the sake of freedom, there was no going back to who he was, and there was no going back to you.

That’s why he said it, you tell yourself, because he knew how painful it would be when I will have to face him.

As you currently lay huddled against the campfire, the woods deathly quiet for almost everyone around you slept, silent tears cascaded down your cheeks. Not because you understand that what he told you was a lie, but how much he had to slice himself up for the sake of protecting all of you. This wasn’t fair. None of this was. Why wasn’t he given another choice? Why?

A new resolve develops in your heart as you quiver from the tears that refused to stop spilling from your eyes. It didn’t matter what will happen, what will happen to you, you will get Eren back. You will save him, away from the crimes he was forced to commit, away from the cruelty of the world that refuses to leave him alone.

Because wherever Eren runs to, wherever he ends up being in, you will always be there in the distance, ready to lift him up when he ends up crashing to the ground.

#eren jaeger x reader #eren jaeger x you #eren x reader #eren x you #attack on titan x reader #aot x reader #aot x you #attack on titan #aot angst #eren x y/n #aot x y/n #pain #i am in so much pain #isayama please don't kill him off #eren come back alive challenge #aot fanfiction

[angelanimedesaray]

Breathe

AN:  I was contemplating on some future multi-chapter fic things and when I realized I couldn’t put this into any of them with my current plans, I ran over here to write this little drabble because I NEED TO WRITE IT!!!

Also, I know this was OH SO LONG AGO COMPARED TO OTHER THINGS, but I was thinking about it because I just watched my favorite reactor (A Goodwin TV) react to Midnight Sun and it’s on my mind, as well as the reason above. (Imma just name drop him real quick cause his AOT and ATLA reactions are GOLD)  Okay, name drop over, back to the drabble/One Shot

FINALLY:  If I’m being honest, I kinda imagine Vampire!Reader from Wings in the Dark doing this, but still, don’t take that as canon, cemented fact here, it’s just READER in this piece...but in my mind that’s kinda what I was thinking, heh

Characters:  Levi, Reader, Erwin (Post-Mortem, Mentioned)

Pairing:  Levi x Reader

Warnings:  ANGST, Post Canon-Character Death, Grief, Loss, Brief Non-descript Nudity, Hurt/Comfort

Word Count--Idk, I wrote this in Tumblr and was too lazy to check in google docs or something just take the drabble from my mind at 1:30 a.m.

*Reader’s POV*

Ever since Levi made the choice, there was a solid wall between the two of you, unseen to the human eye, but felt by both of you as it seemed to tower far beyond the abused walls of Wall Maria that you were surrounded by.  It wasn’t out of any animosity towards you--by now you knew him well enough to know he wasn’t angry at you or anything like that.  Far from it, actually.

But there were still things to do.  Injured to look after--what remained of the Scouts to be injured, anyway--and a sweep of the town to make sure there weren’t any more surprises lurking that might wipe out the very, very few who remained.  For a brief moment, you’d considered following him on that sweep of the area before deciding against it.  You weren’t out of the woods yet, there were still things to do, and you weren’t going to distract him.

Even when Levi and Hange went to put Erwin’s body to rest, you didn’t follow, both of them already making it clear that it wouldn’t be rushed out of respect, but it was not going to be a long affair, either.  The necessities, maybe a more personal touch here and there, and then back to work.

And he might want that time alone, as well.

When Levi came back, you got to your feet, expecting to pull him aside and at least talk to him, but he kept walking, stepping around you and heading straight for Armin and the others to have the much needed talk with them.

You silenced any kind of comment or concerned look that tried to rise to the surface at that.  And you held your tongue as the five of you walked through the broken streets of Shiganshina to finally see what this great sacrifice bought, or rather revealed.  The trip back was silent, everyone either busy with recoveries or with heads swimming with the reveal of humanity beyond the walls, bent on the destruction of everyone within the walls.  But even with thoughts as monuments as that, you were painfully aware that nothing had been said between Levi and yourself still, that Levi was quiet as ever--no, quieter--and that there was a sense of something brewing in the air around you.  You didn’t see any cracks in the façade, but when Wall Rose appeared, and the sea of smiling celebratory faces below, and then around, the blur of the world around you all as you were swept away in a sea of people who wanted to know what happened, what this meant, all these responsibilities suddenly falling on new people, reports needing to be made, debriefings, no rest for the wicked...

Even you couldn’t breathe with the sheer size of it all.  It was insurmountable, a weight that was pressing down with no escape, and that was just what you felt.  You didn’t have the weight that was on Levi’s shoulders, the knowledge and choices and responsibilities still oh so damn fresh with no time to process.  So much to process.  It still hadn’t quite clicked that the 10 people who came back to Wall Rose were the only ones who were going to be coming back.

Somehow, at some point, you and Levi found yourselves walking through familiar halls, past doors that suddenly found themselves without use, the halls empty of any activity or signs of life--at least the ones you were walking.  There was life, elsewhere, but not in this particular wing, not at the moment.  It was just you, Levi, and the bloody silence, the wall that Levi had shored up and somehow managed to keep up without any visible cracks.

Visible.

But that pressure in the air was mounting as he opened the door to your shared quarters, no creak on the door, just the softest whoosh of air as he stepped through, hands undoing the cloak from around his shoulders in the first two steps into the room, the gear being unlocked from the straps by the forth step you saw wobble--

The gear and cloak clattered onto the couch in a temporary position before Levi could finish taking off his gear, and you hardly had time to shut the door behind you before that wall shattered to dust without any warning, the moment it was just you and him and the silence with no chance of anyone disturbing you, as soon as you were hidden from the world.

It clicked, and it all came crashing down, all at once.

The distance evaporated the moment Levi’s knees hit the stone floor, a hitched breath cutting through the air as you hurried to his side, not even bothering to take off your own gear or cloak as all your focus centered on the stalwart man crumbling so visibly in front of you.

His hands were curled into fists against the cold floor, knuckles white and teeth grit as he tried in vain to hold the floodgates closed just a few moments longer, enough to at least get out of his gear and get it properly put away, for a more appropriate time and place than immediately on the floor of the office/sitting room portion of your modest shared quarters.  But all the emotion he’d been bottling and trying to subdue until a more appropriate time could not be held back any longer.  The moment the weight of it all hit him with nothing left to distract him was the moment he couldn’t hold it back any longer.  Silent tears were carving a path across a face that had only gotten a few splashes of water to clean up hours ago.  All the resistance and struggle he could still muster wasn’t enough to stop the sudden onslaught of damned up emotions hitting him at once.

As his shoulders shook and he started to turn his face away, still making an attempt to hold it back a bit longer, your arm slipped across his back, the other carefully touching his shoulder to turn him to face you.  He didn’t have it in him to resist, he was too busy trying to contain himself to divert any energy into resisting your quickly offered embrace even if he wanted to.  So, he turned into you, your hand coming up to gently thread through his hair and cradle his head into you as you maneuvered you both so you were facing one another.  Your other arm was moving gently along his back in soft rubs not necessarily to soothe so much as to help him relax enough to let it out in a way that didn’t seem so physically painful.  Right now the hitched breaths sounded sharp and sudden, the kind that made a persons chest physically ache, his muscles tensed so tightly you were worried bones would snap and sinew would tear.

You didn’t know what to say--what kind of words could possibly be of solace to him at a time like this, the weight of all that death and sacrifice and his monumental choice on the roofs of Shiganshina that had cost him someone more than a dear friend--cost him Erwin--causing him this physical pain.

One thing at a time.  He needed to let it out, not bottle it up.  He needed to release some of this grief, and he needed to not hurt himself even accidentally in the process.

“Just breathe, Levi...just try to breathe...” you murmured to him, trying to make your back rubs make a smooth, soothing pattern that mimicked a breath in and out to get him to slow down and breathe around the tears and the jagged breaths.

You continued your mantra of telling him to breathe as he struggled to follow your suggestion, breathing sporadic and tears dampening your uniform as you held him securely against you, fingers threading gently through hair that had turned greasy with the dirt and sweat.

He was going to want a bath right after this.  But first, he needed this emotional release.  That was the most important thing, even he seemed to realize that.

His fists raised from the cold floor to instead tighten into the fabric of your uniform, clinging to you in a death grip instead of digging into the palms of his hands.  He was still shaking, and his breathing still sounded painful at times, but it was slowing down as he tried to match his breaths to the pattern of your soothing back rubs, trying to slow it down and take deeper breaths.  You simply told him to breathe and rocked slightly in place, chin moving to rest against the top of his head.

You weren’t trying to make the pain go away--you knew you didn’t have that power.  But you were going to offer him what help and comfort you could.

As Levi’s breathing slowed down to something a bit more manageable, you pulled away just enough to look at his face, hands shifting from his back and hair to gently cusp the sides of his face in your hands, thumbs wiping at the tears that had stained his cheeks and your clothes.  He wasn’t looking you in the eyes, still, considering how rarely he let himself be this vulnerable, even around you.  But this was a special exception, an anomaly none of you could have predicted, and you were making more than just simple, small exceptions.

His eyes were bloodshot from the harsh crying, and he looked utterly exhausted, like if you told him to go to sleep right now he actually would, without issue, but definitely with nightmares.

You were both in for some harsh and brutal nightmares going forward.

But again, that was not your focus right now.

Your thumbs gently wiped at the tears that were now trying to hide in the already-made rivers on his face, your touch kind and tender, your eyes full of sorrow of your own--you’d known so many of those that had died, as well.  And you knew that Erwin had been special to Levi in a way you didn’t fully understand.  It wasn’t the same thing you and Levi had, but it was still deep and strong in its own way, and it had just been cut out of him the first time while he was helpless to do anything about it, and the second time with his reluctant consent.

It took a few moments, but he finally looked at you, briefly, which was all you needed--that quick dart of his eyes towards yours, and the fact your gaze was locked on his eyes was enough to trap his gaze to yours long enough to say what you needed to.

“He was ready to go, Levi.”

Almost imperceptibly, Levi’s eyes widened at the fact that was the first thing you were going to say to him, out of everything (besides the brief coaching to calm him down.  The first face to face, conversational thing, first real sentence).

You didn’t know what to say about the grief of so many people dead just so he could get one shot at the Beast Titan, which he then ultimately failed because of a split second of hesitation.  You didn’t know what to say about being the one to make the decision to make that suicide charge, sending all those people to their deaths willingly.  But there was one single thread you felt like you could actually say something about, something that might help ease his burden even the slightest bit.  The pain and loss would still be there, but his load would be just a bit lighter...hopefully.

One grief and--you hated to say it, but--failure, that burned to the forefront of your mind as the greatest personal pains he had to be feeling right now.

Erwin.

You would focus on that.  With Erwin, you had some kind of comfort to give, as strange as it may seem.  But Levi could not take the full brunt of Erwin’s death, not as harshly as he was.  Yes, he’d made the decision, both times, but again...

“He was ready to go,” you said in a carefully tender voice, your thumbs gently tracing along the smooth edges of his cheeks and cheekbones, holding Levi’s gaze and making sure your words were sinking in.  “We both saw it.  You know he was.  You gave him...arguably what he wanted the most.  He was ready to go.”

Levi seemed to remember to breathe again, leaning his head forward into your chest once more--voluntarily, this time--and simply seeking your quiet embrace.  You didn’t make any more comments, simply holding him on your gathered position on the floor, staring off at nothing in particular as you slowly rubbed his back, murmuring little reminders to breathe whenever his breath would start to hitch again.

When your legs started to ache from the kneeling position you’d taken to pull his collapsed form into your arms, Levi pulled away, not even pausing to wipe at any tears or say anything or even look at you.  He simply got to his feet and started undoing the straps that made up the full body harness of the ODM gear, adding them to the pile and starting to strip off his filthy uniform as well.  You clambered to your feet with a bit of effort, pain shooting up your legs and making you pause to wait out the pins and needles sensation burning through your legs from holding that position for so long.

“I’m going to clean up,” Levi said bluntly, his voice still gruff, gravely from the harsh cry he’d just had as he finished stripping of his dirty clothes and started to head for the bedroom door so he could reach the washroom.

“And then get some sleep?” you suggested, turning to face him with a worried look.  Levi simply grunted in response, hand on the bedroom doorframe as you threw out one last thing before the moment slipped away entirely.

“For what it’s worth...” you said quickly, slowing down for the important part.  “I agree with your decision.”

Levi paused, held his position, and then said in a soft voice, “You’d be the first.”

“That’s not true.  Mikasa and Eren--” you started to argue, but Levi simply turned and gave you a look that silenced your argument immediately.

They didn’t count.  They’d been guaranteed to want Armin over Erwin because of their personal ties.  Everyone else, however...you’d both heard it, even from Armin’s own lips in a way.  Everyone else thought it should have been Erwin.  Everyone.  They had expected it to be, as well.

You squared your shoulders slightly, stubbornly standing your ground on the matter.

“I stand by your decision, Levi.”

Levi studied you for a long moment, fingers that had tightened to a white knuckle grip on the wood relaxing again as he gave a slight nod.

“...so do I.”

You felt a bit of relief seep through you to hear him say that to you and mean it, nodding as you started to take off your uniform as well.  “I’ll be in there in a moment.

Levi hummed in acknowledgement and disappeared into the other room after that, leaving you to get undressed and tidy up the bear to be properly taken care of later when you were both in a better shape to do just that.  Tip-toeing into the washroom, you could see Levi had already washed up and was simply soaking for a few moments, eyes closed and head leaning back slightly, one of his legs bending so his knee peaked out of the water as you approached.

He cracked an eye open once you got fairly close, sitting up and adjusting in the water for you to slide inside and join him, wrapping his arms around you in a firm hug and gently nuzzling against your neck, giving your jaw a soft kiss before he started helping you clean up, his movements gentle and slow, usually followed by a chaste, thoughtful kiss against your skin as the two of you washed you of all the dust, dirt, grime, and blood from the devastating mission.  Once you were clean, you shifted in Levi’s embrace, curling into his chest as his arms linked around you again, holding you tightly to him and burying his face in your hair, breathing you in deeply and simply...holding you.  Just holding you in silence, both of your minds heavy with the weight of far too many things, but finding a moment of solace in the unspoken fact that by some miracle you’d both made it out alive and were here to comfort each other in the aftermath, to help each other slow down and simple...breathe again.  Even if it was just for a moment before the world continued forward in it’s harsh series of events.  Even if it was just to hold each other until the water got cold and you had to migrate to the bed for sleep that would undoubtedly include nightmares of the very thing you each needed comfort for.

It was still a much needed moment where you simply clung to one another as that reminder to take a moment to breathe again.

Everything Tags:  @antisteller

Levi Tags:  @clary-quinn @humanitys-hottestsoldier @whalerus @sunny-flo @thirstyforsometea @hauntedhousecat @peaches-and-clouds @queenofcurse @wubbawubwub04 @lollobos @pasteldays @itsmeaudrieee @macaronnv @tokyo-banana @apuci-kis-szornye @morgana-olson​ @yellowminb​ @ashikothedog​ 

#levi #levi ackerman #captain levi #levi aot #aot levi #levi heichou #snk levi #levi snk #levi x reader #captain levi x reader #levi ackerman x reader #aot levi x reader #reader insert #drabble #one shot #captain levi fanfic #captain levi fan fiction #captain levi fan fic #captain levi fanfiction #levi ackerman fanfiction #levi ackerman fan fiction #levi ackerman fanfic #levi ackerman fan fic #aot levi fanfic #aot levi fan fic #aot levi fanfiction #aot levi fan fiction #levi fanfic #levi fanfiction #levi fan fiction

[supercantaloupe]

okay yeah actually, i’ll bite. i’ve got some of my own thoughts about the unsleeping city and cultural representation and i’m gonna make a post about them now, i guess. i’ll put it under a cut though because this post is gonna be long.

i wanna start by saying i love dimension 20 and i really really enjoy the unsleeping city. i look forward to watching new episodes every week, and getting hooked on d20 as a whole last summer really helped pull me out of a pandemic depression, and i’m grateful to have this cool show to be excited about and interested in and to have met so many cool people to talk about it with.

that being said, however, i think there is a risk run in representing any group of people/their culture when you have the kind of setting that tuc has. by which i mean, tuc is set in a real world with real people and real human cultures in it. unlike fantasy high or a crown of candy where everything is made up (even if rooted in real-world cultures), tuc is explicitly rooted in reality, and all of its diversity -- both the ups and downs that go with it. and especially set in new york of all places, one of the most densely, diversely populated cities on earth. the cast is 7 people; it’s great that those 7 people come from a variety of backgrounds and identities and all bring their own unique perspectives to the table, and it’s great that those people and the entire crew are generally conscious of themselves and desire to tell stories/represent perspectives ethically. but you simply cannot authentically represent every culture or every perspective in the world (or even just in a city) when your cast is 7 people. it’s an impossible task. this is inherent to the setting, and acknowledged by the cast, and by brennan especially, who has been on record saying how one of the exciting aspects of doing a campaign set in nyc is its diversity, the fact that no two new yorkers have the same perspective of new york. i think that’s a good thing -- but it does have its challenges too, clearly.

i’m not going to go into detail on the question of whether or not tuc’s presentation of asian and asian american culture is appropriative/offensive or not. first of all, i don’t feel like it’s 100% fair to judge the show completely yet, since it’s a prerecorded season and currently airing midseason, so i don’t yet know how things wrap up. secondly, i’m not asian or asian american. i can have my own opinions on that content in the show, but i think it’s worth more to hear actual asian and asian american voices on this specific aspect of the show. having an asian american cast member doesn’t automatically absolve the show of any criticisms with regard to asian american cultural representation/appropriation, whether those criticisms are made by dozens of viewers or only a handful of them. regardless, i don’t think it’s my place as someone who is not asian to speak with any authority on that issue, and i know for a fact that there are asian american viewers sharing their own opinions. their thoughts in this instance hold more water than mine, i think.

what i will comment on in more depth, though, is a personal frustration with tuc. i’m jewish; i’ve never really been shy about that fact on my page here. i’m not from new york, but i visit a few times a year (or i did before covid anyway, lol), and i have some family from nyc. nyc, to me, is a jewish city. and for good reason, since it’s home to one of the largest jewish populations of the country, and even the world, and aspects of jewish culture (including culinary, like bagels and pastrami, and linguistic, like the common use of yiddish words and phrases in english colloquial speech) are prevalent and celebrated among jews and goyim alike. when i think of nyc, i think of a jewish city; that’s not everybody’s new york, but that’s my new york, and thats plenty of other people’s new york too. so i do find myself slightly disappointed or frustrated in tuc for its, in my opinion, rather stark lack of jewish representation.

now, i’m not saying that one of the PCs should have been jewish, full stop. i love to headcanon iga as jewish even though canon does not support that interpretation, and i’m fine with that. she’s not my character. it’s possible that simply no one thought of playing a jewish character, i dunno. but also, and i can’t be sure about this, i’m willing to bet that none of the players really wanted to play a jewish character because they didn’t want to play a character of a marginalized culture they dont belong to in the interest of avoiding stereotyping or offensive representation/cultural appropriation. (i don’t know if any of the cast members are jewish, but i’m assuming not.) and the concern there is certainly appreciated; there’s not a ton of mainstream jewish rep out there, and often what we get is either “unlikeable overly conservative hassidic jew” or “jokes about their bar mitzvah/one-off joke about hanukkah and then their jewishness is never mentioned ever again,” which sucks. it would be really cool to see some more good casual jewish rep in a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in the main cast of a show! even if there are a couple of stumbles along the way -- nobody is perfect and no two jews have the same level of knowledge, dedication, and adherence to their culture.

but at the same time, i look at characters like iga and i really do long for a jewish character to be there. siobhan isn’t polish, yet she’s playing a characters whose identity as a polish immigrant to new york is very central to her story and arc. and part of me wonders why we can’t have the same for a jewish character. if not a PC, then why not an NPC? again, i’m jewish, and i am not native, but in my opinion i think the inclusion of jj is wonderful -- i think there are even fewer native main characters in mainstream media than there are jewish ones, and it’s great to see a native character who is both in touch with their culture as well as not being defined solely by their native-ness. to what extent does it count as ‘appropriative’ because brennan is a white dude? i dunno, but i’m like 99% sure they talked to sensitivity consultants to make sure the representation was as ethical as they could get it, and anyway, i can’t personally see and glaring missteps so far. but again, i’m not native, and if there are native viewers with their own opinions on jj, i’d be really interested in hearing them.

but getting back to the relative lack of jewish representation. it just...disappoints me that jewishness in new york is hardly ever even really mentioned? again, i know we’re only just over halfway through season 2, but also, we had a whole first season too. and it’s definitely not all bad. for example: willy! gd, i love willy so much. him being a golem of williamsburg makes me really really happy -- a jewish mythological creature animated from clay/mud (in this case bricks) to protect a jewish community (like that of williamsburg, a center for many of nyc’s jews) from threat. golem have so often been taken out of their original context and turned into evil monsters in fantasy settings, especially including dnd. (even within other seasons of d20! crush in fh being referred to as a “pavement golem” always rubbed me the wrong way, and i had hoped they’d learned better after tuc but in acoc they refer to another monster as a “corn golem” which just disappointed me all over again.) so the fact that tuc gets golems right makes my jewish heart very happy.

and yet...he doesn’t show up that much? sure, in s1, he’s very helpful when he does, but in s2 so far he shows up once and really does not say or do much of anything. he speaks with a lot more yiddish-influenced language than other characters, but if you didn’t know those words were specifically yiddish/jewish, you might not be able to otherwise clock the fact that willy is jewish. and while willy is a jewish mythological creature who is jewish in canon, he isn’t human. there are no other direct references to judaism, jewish characters, or jewish culture in the unsleeping city beyond him.

there are, in fact, two other canon jewish characters in tuc. but...here’s where i feel the most frustration, i think. the two canon jewish humans in tuc are stephen sondheim and robert moses. both of whom are real actual people, so it’s not like we can just pick and choose what their cultural backgrounds are. as much as i love stephen sondheim, i think there are inherent issues with including real world people as characters in a fictional setting, especially if they are from living/recent memory (sondheim is literally still alive), but anyway, sondheim and moses are both actual jewish people. from watching tuc alone you probably would not be able to guess that sondheim is jewish -- nothing from his character except name suggests it, and i wouldn’t even fault you for not thinking ‘sondheim’ is a jewish-sounding surname (and i dislike the idea/attitude/belief that you can tell who is or isn’t jewish by the sound of their name). and yeah, i’m not going to sit here and be like “brennan should have made sondheim more visibly jewish in canon!” because, like, he’s a real human being and it’s fucking weird to portray him in a way that isn’t as close to how he publicly presents himself, which is not in fact very identifiably jewish? i don’t know, this is what i mean by it’s inherently weird and arguably problematic to portray real living people as characters in a fictional setting, but i digress. sondheim’s jewish, even if you wouldn’t know it; not exactly a representation win.

and then there’s bob moses. you might be able to guess that he’s jewish from canon, actually. there’s the name, of course. but more insidious to me are the specifics of his villainy. greedy and powerhungry, a moneyman, a lich whose power is stored in a phylactery...it does kind of all add up to a Yikes from me. (in the stock market fight there’s a one-off line asking if he has green skin; it’s never really directly acknowledged or answered, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear at first and it’s stuck with me since viewing for the first time.) the issue for me here is that the most obviously jewish human character is the season’s bbeg, and his villainy is rooted in very antisemitic tropes and stereotypes.

i know this isn’t all brennan’s fault -- robert moses was a real ass person and he was in fact jewish, a powerhungry and greedy moneyman, a big giant racist asshole, etc. i’m not saying that jewish characters can’t be evil, and i’m not saying brennan should have tried to be like “this is my NPC robert christian he’s just like bob moses but instead he’s a goy so it’s okay” because...that would be fuckin weird bro. and bob moses was a real person who was jewish and really did do some heinous shit with his municipal power. i’m not necessarily saying brennan should have picked/created a different character to be the villain. i’m not even saying that he shouldn’t have made bob moses a lich (although, again, it doesn’t 100% sit right with me). but my point here is that bob moses is one of a grand total of three canon jewish characters in tuc, of which only two humans, of whom he is the one you’d most easily guess would be jewish and is the most influenced by antisemitic stereotypes/tropes. had there been more jewish representation in the show at all, even just some neutral jewish NPCs, this would not be as much of a problem as it is to me. but halfway through season 2, so far, this is literally all we get. and that bums me out.

listen, i really like tuc. i love d20. but the fact that it is set in a real world place with real world people does inherently raise challenges when it comes to ethical cultural representation. especially when the medium of the show is a game whose creatures, lore, and mechanics have been historically rooted in some questionable racial/cultural views. and dnd is making progress to correct some of those misguided views of older sourcebooks by updating them to more equitably reflect real world racial/cultural sensitivities; that’s a good thing! but these seasons, of course, were recorded before that. the game itself has some questionable cultural stuff baked into it, and that is (almost necessarily) going to be brought to the table in a campaign set in a real-world place filled with real-world people of diverse real-world cultures. the cast can have sensitivity consultants and empathy and the best intentions in the world, and they’ll still fuck up from time to time, that’s okay. your mileage may vary on whether or not it’s still worth sticking around with the show (or the fandom) through that. for me, it does not yet outweigh all the things i like about the show, and i’m gonna continue watching it. but it’s still very worth acknowledging that the cast is 7 people who cannot possibly hope to authentically or gracefully represent every culture in nyc. it’s an unfortunate limitation of the medium. yet it’s also still worthwhile to acknowledge and discuss the cultural representation as it is in the show -- both the goods and the bads, the ethically solid and the questionably appropriative -- and even to hold the creators accountable. (decently, though. i’m definitely not advocating anybody cyberbully brennan on twitter or whatever.) the show and its representation is far from perfect, but i also don’t think it ever could be. still, though, it could always be better, and there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had in the wheres, hows, and whys of that.

#sasha reviews #sasha speaks #the unsleeping city #unsleeping city #long post #dimension 20 #gd i stayed up way too late to write this #tuc #the unsleeping city chapter 2 #the unsleeping city 2 #tuc2 #antisemitism

[petersthree]

Okay so I’ve seen a lot of conflicting responses to Buddie this episode, from it being clear to people that they’re getting together, to thinking the writers have unintentionally messed things up to thinking it’s purely queerbait.

And I get the different responses, I do - tbh I’m somehow in two camps, where I simultaneously believe it’s a slowburn but I also think it’s bait. And those are two very different opinions to have and it got me thinking about why we have these different responses as fans to the possibility of a queer ship (namely two men who would presumably be bi/pan) being canon. 

While people talk about how it’s just people wanting two characters to kiss or entitled fans - sure, that’s existent in every fandom, but I think there’s also a very real fear from queer fans who don’t want to get their hopes up and I d on’t love how the conversation has shifted to calling queer fans stupid for having hope, so I kind of wanted to break it down into 3 aspects that I’ve noticed: 

How writers portray bi characters and why that makes fans hesitant to have hope

What queerbait actually means as a concept

How much “slowburn” has changed in procedurals

1. How writers portray bi characters

Something I’ve thought about a lot are the bi characters I’ve seen on TV - Darryl (CEG), Sara Lance (Arrow), Lucifer (Lucifer), just to name a few. These are great characters imo and I think you’d have a fun time watching but a thing to note is that all these characters were established as bi within the first season of their respective shows and they all fairly quickly fell into a clear romantic ship as well (with the exception of Sara as she spanned multiple shows). It may have taken time for them to say the word bisexual, but it was still clear these characters were queer fairly quickly on. You could maybe argue that Lucifer was a slowburn, but then (while it does not take away from him being bi/pan so do not use this as an excuse to be shitty about him) it’s a m/f ship which is still not the point of my post, to find a m/m or f/f ship that has that same treatment.

Some writers have done it - like for Valencia in CEG, or Petra in JTV - when they saw that fans read them this way, but trying to find those characters were few and far between, and when I looked at popular queerbait ships (whether or not they actually are queerbait) it’s usually ships where the characters are largely viewed as bisexual. A lot of times this also comes with pushback from both straight and to be frank, other queer fans as well. Straight fans don’t always see the signs that queer fans do, so to them a queer character who hasn’t been explicitly clear from the start comes out of nowhere. And what I’ve seen from certain queer fans are concerns that people aren’t appreciating the canon queer characters in a show - and I think there is a conversation to be had about that, but I don’t think the response should also be about then demanding less representation for people either. 

If we go back to 911, people talk a lot about how it has canon queer characters, which it definitely does - Michael, Hen, Josh, Karen, and David are all canonically gay/lesbian and that’s awesome, and we absolutely should talk about fans (white fans in particular) ignoring these characters. It also does not change the fact that none of these characters are bisexual and that is the representation people are looking for. Both of these things are true - these characters are often under appreciated in canon AND people deserve bisexual representation. They don’t contradict each other and to act like one negates the other does a huge disservice.

And even if a character was made bisexual in the canon text we don’t get that slowburn. This may be true for things like Leverage, or LOK, but there’s also a real fact of censorship that affected these shows and the fact that general audiences may not understand the queer text tjat the writers intended. It doesn’t make the writing any less wonderful or the ships any less poignant or beautiful or important, and there’s ofc shows like She Ra that made this more obvious (or the.....mess that was Supernatural that made it. Half true?) but these are still real things that should be acknowledged on why people are so hesitant to call it slowburn - because it’s something most queer fans haven’t SEEN DONE, because m/f ships will get that care for slowburn when it’s done but it’s not done for m/m or f/f ships in that same capacity.

2. What queerbait is

This one’s fun because I don’t think many people understand what it is, but queerbait is very dependent on the intentions of the writers/creators/etc. - which tbh can be hard to gauge, because a genuine intention that ended up not happening or someone baiting fans or someone trying to support all ships and not be rude all have very different intentions but to a fan who only sees bits and pieces of this person on social media, it can be hard to gauge.

Honestly with how much the 4th wall gets broken because of social media now I’d personally say we’ve probably moved into a different definition of queerbait - unintentional vs intentional - because we’re at a point where a show knows what ships are popular and at what level of excitement fans are for it - but that being said, there’s still a clear spectrum of intent. And imo? I don’t think 911 has that intent of queerbait - whether it’s a slowburn or they have a different vision for buddie that I (probably) won’t agree with remains to be seen, but this show usually treats its storylines with care. Are they perfect at it? No, definitely not, I definitely think that they’ve dropped the ball a few times (especially with just how many characters they have lmao), but they also clearly do their storylines with earnest and with genuine care for these characters.

Is 911 getting them together? I want to say yes. I don’t think this was always the plan, just something that they decided along the way, but I also don’t think that changes anything about the ship. A lot of people point to Tim Minear being vague about the ship, or the actors and their interpretations, but 1. We have no idea what they’ve been told about Buddie moving forward and 2. No show runner is going to spoil their show that much. 911 may be keeping quiet because they have a different plan for buddie, sure, but also maybe because they’re still figuring out how exactly they want to do this and/or they want to make this slowburn and don’t want to give it away.

3. Slowburn in procedurals

I feel like this is something that procedurals have started shying away from, but slowburns used to be very common - Bones, Castle, their ships didn’t get together for literal years, but that’s just not something that many shows do nowadays, even for m/f ships. Even things like Deckerstar will have the characters get together after ~3 seasons and explore the relationship onwards, whereas a few years ago, y ou’d pr obably be watching a sh ow and it’d take them 7 seasons to get together. My assumption for this is that shows are afraid  of getting canceled, but there’s been a pretty big shift in getting a couple together after say, 6 seasons to now getting them together about halfway through the show. I don’t think either one is bad or good - in good writers’ hands, either can be amazing - but that shift has made it so that a lot of younger fans in particular, I think, don’t fully recognize slowburn when they see it.

911 as a show tends to run pretty fast - it kind of has to with its depth of characters they have - but when they do have slower running storylines they really do make use of that as well. Bobby’s addiction is something that’s always going to be present in his character, May’s suicide attempt was brought up again front and center after 3 seasons, even Chim’s dynamic with the Lees was brought up again and it was reinforced again that they’re his family. There are certain storylines that have to be continuous and aren’t a one and done type of thing, and that includes Buck and Eddie, especially if you want to establish them as queer to a general audience who doesn’t think about these things.

And honestly, despite my fears, I think they are laying groundwork there. We have Buck learning to be more confident in his relationships, we have Eddie ready to date and learning to follow his own heart, we have Buck and Eddie both establishing that Buck is family and will always be there for Christopher. These are pretty big steps to do for a ship and we’ll obviously have to see how the show goes forward but they’ve already insinuated Eddie and Ana are breaking up, I’m sure Taylor and Buck may last a season and be over, but we do have to see what this next season brings. Do I think they’d say this? No, definitely not.

tl;dr: 

911 is a show with good viewership, but there’s always a possibility they can’t continue with their season and then their promises would feel like a lie. Or they may still be hammering out the details as this season hasn’t been written. Or they may just simply not want to spoil their show,  or they don’t want people criticizing a story before it’s finished, all of these could be reasons. The showrunners, writers, actors, ultimately they owe nothing to us as a fandom to potentially spoil their series, or do something, change it or their schedule for it, and get accused of bait. 

But it also doesn’t change why fans are wary of this storyline either, and I wish people would have more nuance and compassion for fans who are worried about queerbait (whether they think it’s not queerbait and dislike people worrying about it or if they do and are calling people idiots for believing it). There’s a lot of reasons why fans are wary and don’t want to have hope, and it’s not necessarily about 911 specifically as it is a pattern of writing seen in other pieces that have fans worried. These things can all coexist and I wish we as fandom in general could acknowledge that, because pretending that they don’t and criticizing each other/people’s intentions or knowledge when they have certain expectations also doesn’t do much to help.

#warning this is long so if you read this bless you #but also i wrote this forever so maybe give a read? #it gets into buddie more specifically at the end so bear with me lmao #buddie #911 fox #fandom #queerbait #janie overthinks media #buddie meta #911 on fox

[potteresque-ire]

More ask answer about Word of Honour (山河令, WoH) and the so-called “Dangai 101 phenomenon” under the cut ~ with all the M/M relationships shown on screen, does it mean improved acceptance / safety for the c-queer community?

Due to its length (sorry!), I’ve divided the answer into 3 parts: 1) Background 2) Excerpts from the op-eds 3) Thoughts This post is PART 3 💚. As usual, please consider the opinions expressed as your local friendly fandomer sharing what they’ve learned, and should, in no ways, be viewed as necessarily true. :)

(TW: homophobic, hateful speech quoted)

Here are the key points I’ve picked up from these op-eds:

* The state believes Danmei can turn young people queer. * The state also believes Dangai dramas can turn young men “feminine” to suit the taste of Dangai’s young, largely female audience. * The state views queerness in both sexes, and androgynous beauty in men as negative traits. * The state is wary of Danmei and Dangai’s popularity and wishes to contain them as subcultures. * The state is particularly annoyed by how the Dangai dramas have achieved their popularity with CP-focused promotions and marketing tactics, in which the actors are involved and blur the line between fictional and real-life suggestions of queerness.

What do I think of, concerning the acceptance and/or safety of … everything, with the above opinions given by the state media about Dangai?

* For c-queers, I don’t think things are different from before—these op-eds didn’t change the big picture for me. The op-eds taking traditional BL characterisation for Dangai / Danmei means the state’s intended focus of the genres is not its queerness; this is not unexpected, as the established review system is supposed to have removed the show’s queer elements, and to characterise those elements as queer would be a critique against the NRTA.

 While unpleasant, the veiled, antagonistic view towards non-traditional gender expressions and homosexuality isn’t new: the state has long believed popular culture can turn its young male audience “feminine”; the NRTA directive that bans homosexual content from visual media already makes clear its stance that homosexuality is, while not criminal, something that is Not Good in its eyes.

A (very) good thing that can be said, I think, is that none of the op-eds explicitly disapprove of the queer elements, the things that got away from being censored—of which there were, arguably, many in WoH. While Article O2a noted such “playing edge ball” (note the articles use this term to avoid mentioning “queer”), the comment right after was neutral / positive (“provide their audience with room for imagination”). Article O3, meanwhile, acknowledged that Dangai can be imitated by introducing suggestive atmosphere between male characters in their plot layout, thereby admitting that suggestive atmosphere between male characters in their plot layout is a defining trait of Dangai—and it didn’t say anything bad about it; the criticism was only for non-Dangai playacting Dangai.

This signals, to me at least, that Dangai can continue to be the cover for queer relationships to reach its audience for now — which is, perhaps, the best case scenario for continued queer representation on TV, given the current sociopolitical climate.

* For Danmei / Dangai, I’d also venture to say the genres are safe. Upcoming Dangais may need to undergo stricter / further reviews (if the rumours surrounding Immortality 皓衣行 are to be believed), and whether they can still achieve explosive popularity after such reviews remains a question; the genres themselves, however, will likely survive. 

Article O1 was a very positive, very enthusiastic review of WoH; its determined focus on the show’s aesthetics (as TU’s review) signals to me that the state approved of the genre’s take on aesthetics—which, again, also includes the aesthetics of a world cleansed of its real problems, which also aligns with the NRTA’s directive on TV / web dramas to focus on the positives of life in the country (Previously translated in this post: D12: … They [Pie note: the dramas] cannot place too strong an emphasis on social conflicts, must showcase the beautiful lives of the commoners.). Article O2b was very critical at places, but actually tried to sever Danmei  / Dangai from its major complaint, argued that the attention-grabbing gimmicks path was taken * instead of * aspiring to positively, proactively guide and display Danmei culture, therefore positioning Danmei on the “good side”.  While Danmei was named a (bad) influence for potentially turning youths queer (and predator, by the cartoon) in Article O2a, no mention was made of eliminating the genre both in the same Article or its editorial (Article O2b). The focus was placed, instead, on the subculture’s “containment”, and how it has been broken for “Rot Culture” to reach mainstream. The implied solution to Danmei’s “bad influence”, therefore, was to re-contain rather than eliminate.

[Logically, of course, this makes little sense. Blaming Danmei on turning youths queer is already confusing correlation and causation—youths may be drawn to Danmei because they are queer, rather than Danmei turning them queer. Re-containment, meanwhile, suggests that the state, which isn’t a fan of gays, is okay with Danmei turning kids gay… as long as there aren’t a lot of kids.

However, I’m hoping to tease out what the state may do, not whether the state is logically sound.]

Article O3 had the harshest wording on Danmei—“the canon and the Rot Culture behind it still hides large amounts of pornographic, violent content…”; “this vulgar custom of “playing edge ball” as a means to tempt, to lead the audience into indulging in fantasies [Pie note: sexual fantasies implied by the idiom 想入非非] have spread from visual media production…” . Still, no word on axing the genre, only containment.

* For CP culture, specifically, actor-character based CPs that are promoted with the dramas: while I don’t see it on the chopping board yet, these op-eds are, I believe, warnings for those in charge of the promotion and marketing of the upcoming Dangai dramas to tread carefully. I find the reach of these warnings difficult to predict still, because these warnings can be genuine—as in, the government truly believes the CP-focused promotion and marketing tactics are morally objectionable—or they can be more for show, in that the true reason behind the warnings is that CP-focused promotions, which also put a heavy focus on in-drama candies, make the NRTA / censorship board look like a joke and the government had to put up some objections to save face. 

In all cases, companies will likely need to talk to the government to nail down its stance. Whether to heed the warnings afterwards, tone down or eliminate the CP-focused promotions will require a thorough risk-benefit analysis. After all, CP culture appears to sits at the heart of the money-making machinery of Dangai dramas. The expenditure of fans is mainly to support their favourite actors and see their interactions, and money is, ultimately, what Dangai 101 is about.

Finally, for the sake of completion ~ how likely did these op-eds reflect the actual opinions of the state? Here are the sources of the articles:

Article O1: 上觀新聞, which is under Liberation Daily 解放日報,  the official daily newspaper of the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

Article O2: 半月談 Banyue Tan, a state-controlled biweekly magazine published by the Xinhua News Agency, the official state-run press agency of China.

Article O3: 光明日報 Enlightenment Daily, a newspaper associated with Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (中共中央機關報).

None of them are of the calibre of People’s Daily (official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party). However, they’re all very well-respected state-sponsored sources. Banyue Tan does require an asterisk  ~ while affiliated with the Xinhua News Agency, the massive influence of which has earned it its nickname “the world's biggest propaganda agency”, Banyue Tan‘s authority on this particular issue of Danmei/Dangai has been somewhat undermined by a … strange (?) trivia to end this super long piece: the magazine has also been caught in the controversy surrounding 227. Due to its pro-TU, pro-Gg stance, antis have insisted there are Gg fans within its writer’s ranks, who have used the state-sponsored publication for their private, support-Gg purposes. To this day, the argument is ongoing—with the criticism of Danmei in Article O2 sparking another round of “discussion” due to its previous approval of TU—and the lead anti is a well-known international politics professor and CCP (Chinese Communist Party) mouthpiece named Shen Yi (沈逸), whose claim to fame was the US government cancelling his visa and denying him entry due to suspected espionage …

[Banyue Tan was not the only state-sponsored publication caught in 227′s cross-fire. This is one of the reasons why some political watchers have suspected 227 to have a political component, that some form of political power struggle was happening in the post-227 chaos and disguised as the fan war.

While the truth may never be revealed, one thing is for certain ~ fan wars are about the worst things fans can do for their favourite idols, by lending space for such veiled conflicts to happen, by lending the names of their idols / their idols’ fans to the actually warring parties who may not wish to reveal who they are.]

[Okay okay, I will shut up now :) ].

PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 <-- YOU ARE HERE

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

[prince-of-elsinore]

Sam and Dean: psychological analysis and headcanons

In response to this anon ask from the 66 SPN Questions:

6. Do you have any psychological headcanons (or canon interpretations) of the characters?

Anon, this is probably not what you asked for. But I started writing, and kept finding more I wanted to say, until I thought--why not just say it all? And by all, I  don't actually mean all--this is by no means exhaustive. But it was a wonderful, self-indulgent opportunity to organize my thoughts on Sam and Dean's psychologies, and even find some new ideas as I was writing, and to put them out there so others can read and discuss. (Always happy to discuss any of this! Inbox is open.)

As a disclaimer, I know most of these thoughts are probably not original and may be retreads of many things fandom has been discussing for years. I'm not claiming to be breaking new ground here. Also, I sorta float backwards and forwards chronologically in my discussion--some parts pertain more to them when they're young, some to when they're older, and I don't always clarify which. Also, these are generalizations! I point out patterns I notice; that doesn't make them all hard and fast rules, because Sam and Dean are each human and complex!

Here's what you'll find below:

1. Core motivations 2. Happiness 3. Approval and secrets 4. Approval from authority figures 5. Need and attachment re: others 6. Sympathy and empathy 7. Walls—hiding vs. performing 8. Need and attachment re: each other 9. Ambitions and goals 10. Normality and monstrosity 11. Guilt and self-loathing 12. Autonomy and sacrifice 13. Personal identity 14. Concluding observation

1. Core motivations: Dean’s purpose is to protect Sam, obviously. Sam’s purpose, though a little less clear, is to save Dean. Sometimes it’s explicit, as in s3 and s9-10. But I think Sam also wants to save Dean, in general, from himself and from the life. It’s why he pushes against Dean’s obedience to their father. It’s why he tells him to get out and go to Lisa after he jumps in the Cage. At a certain point, I think Sam accepts he can’t “save” Dean without changing who he is, so he chooses to stick by him—because at least then he can make Dean happy.

2. Happiness: Dean’s happiness—or perhaps contentment is a better word—is knowing that Sam is safe and alive. Sam’s happiness is Dean being happy. In Sam’s world, things are good when Dean’s good. I think that, conversely, Dean wants Sam to be happy, and Sam wants Dean to be safe, but they both know and to an extent accept that those things are not within their control, so they focus on what they feel they can control.

3. Approval and secrets: They are each other’s north stars, guiding principles, in different ways. For Dean it’s “look out for Sammy,” for Sam it’s “what would my big brother think/do.” Dean doesn’t need Sam’s approval. Sure, he loves it when Sam admires him, but if he feels he needs to do something against Sam’s approval, he doubles down because approval from Sam is not the top priority. He’ll do what he thinks is right, especially to keep Sam safe, no matter what Sam thinks about it. Sam, on the other hand, does crave Dean’s approval and cares very much about his opinion. It doesn’t mean he won’t go against Dean (all the conflict of s1-5!), but it affects him differently. This leads to different kinds of secret-keeping: Sam goes behind Dean’s back to avoid his disapproval; Dean goes behind Sam’s back so that Sam doesn’t interfere with what he thinks needs to be done.

4. Approval from authority figures: Dean does crave approval from others—specifically, respected authority figures. The big one is obviously John. I think in a way it’s Mary, too, when she comes back. But it only applies as long as the person has his respect. Sam doesn’t crave approval from other authorities in the same way, perhaps because his primary authority figure growing up was Dean.

5. Need and attachment re: others: Sam is the only person Dean cannot live without, but he also makes outside connections of a friendly nature fairly easily. He’s the more socially outgoing brother who latches onto people like Gordon, gets friendly with Ash, and forges connections with Jo and Charlie, just to name a few (and Castiel at times—though their relationship is so inconsistent and often convenience-based I hesitate to include it in this category). Though Sam is Dean’s core need, I do think Dean thrives with other friendships. I’m not talking about found family, though I’m well aware of Dean’s tendency to call people “family” quite readily. Honestly, I think this is a manifestation of his craving for connection with others. Dean has an affectionate and playful nature, and let’s face it, Sam isn’t always super receptive to that—so naturally, Dean seeks out people who are. (I think this is also, in some cases, related to Dean’s craving for approval from others). Of course, none of those other relationships come close to the depth of his relationship with Sam, and when his relationship with Sam is at its best, I don’t think Dean really needs anything else to sustain him. But in reality, it can’t always be at its best.

Sam, on the other hand, doesn’t forge outside connections easily—but when he does, they tend to be deeper than Dean’s easy casual associations (even when Dean has real affection for someone, he tends to keep the tone of the relationship light). It’s pretty clear Sam was a loner kid, and I imagine it took him a while to find friends at Stanford, and even though he loved Jessica he still clearly kept many secrets. That’s the thing with Sam—he’s got walls. Dean’s got his own walls, but they’re different. Sam can seem emotionally open, but he protects his innermost self very carefully and rarely puts his emotions out there in a truly open way—even less than Dean does. I think this is a consistent personality trait for Sam, not one born of trauma (though perhaps exacerbated by it at times). In fact, it’s in later seasons that I see Sam finally, in rare moments, let down those walls, with Rowena and Jack. When he’s young, I think this was partially a coping mechanism he developed for hiding his desires/feelings, even from himself, because he was so unhappy with his life. It means that even though he’s an introspective guy, he’s not as self-aware as he thinks he is until he’s older and more mature. He’s very good at self-deception when he’s young, because as a thinker, he can convince himself of just about anything.

To circle back to attachment, what this means to me is that Sam, while he certainly appreciates close friendships and has a lot to offer those he cares about, doesn’t crave friends in the way that Dean does. I think he desires to be understood (this is a natural human need) but he’s much more comfortable with himself than Dean is, and is somewhat of a loner by nature. This means he’s also not (usually) going to be too affected by the status of his relationships with others. Dean is much more volatile and easily hurt by others (this is where Castiel is a great example).

6. Sympathy and empathy: On the surface, Sam appears to be the caring, sensitive brother, while Dean is brash and insensitive. This is a very incomplete picture, however. It mostly comes down to the difference between sympathy and empathy. Empathy is an involuntary response, whereas sympathy is something that a person chooses to express, though that doesn’t make it necessarily superficial—it also comes from an emotional place. Dean tends to be more empathetic, and Sam more sympathetic. Dean, despite his performative walls, is more easily affected on a visceral level by others’ emotions. He is more sensitive, more easily hurt or swayed to anger, and also more easily experiences empathy. This has nothing to do with what Dean thinks is right—it’s another involuntary emotion. He is sometimes moved to express this feeling, but he’s not generally concerned about appearing sympathetic. Sam, with his careful emotional walls, isn’t generally so viscerally affected by others, but he is kind. This is expressed as sympathy, because he cares about others’ feelings, and he wants to be good/morally right. On the one hand, it comes from an intellectual place—“it’s socially acceptable/morally right to express care for this person” (which Dean is less likely to care about)—and on the other, it is an emotional response—“I know what that feels like”—but a more regulated one than empathy, where one almost directly experiences another’s emotions.

7. Walls—hiding vs. performing: It’s interesting that both brothers have their own walls, which they construct as a form of self-preservation, but they have different levels of effectiveness in protecting themselves from outside influence. One difference might lie in what the walls were built in reaction to. Sam built his walls at a young age to separate himself from the outside world because, ironically, it was precisely what he desired, but was not allowed to have. He therefore consciously distanced himself from it, to dull the pain of not having it. The goal of those walls was to have something to hide behind, where he could remain generally unnoticed, so he could conceal his pain from outsiders and even from his family.

Dean took a little longer to build his walls—or at least to consciously do so. He already no doubt fashioned himself after his dad as a kid, and often put on a brave face—for Sam, for his father—when he was not feeling brave. He therefore became accustomed to performing at a young age, and performed many roles for both Sam’s and John’s benefit. He was unconsciously building walls with these performances, concealing his true feelings and desires. Later, I think this started to become more intentional, especially in relations with women/sex partners and especially after the Stanford split, as Dean realized how vulnerable to hurt his sensitive nature made him. It was much safer to perform all the time, and never let his real feelings show. For Dean, even more than Sam, I think he often lost sight of what those real feelings were behind the walls as he tried his best to be the performance he was putting on.

For a visual metaphor, I think of it this way: Sam is a boy at the center of a self-constructed labyrinth. He is almost always able to maintain control over how close people get (except when a few slip past his defenses, at which point he may be susceptible to manipulation). Despite all those elaborate passageways, though, there’s still Sam at the center. It’s lonely there, but he knows himself pretty well at least. Dean is a man in a mask who wants the mask to be his real face. He does everything he can to fuse himself and the mask together. They probably are fused at this point, so it would hurt to take the mask off. His memory of the face under the mask is hazy. He’s afraid, if he looks under the mask, he’ll hate what he sees. He’s lonely because no matter how close others get—and he lets them in close, can surround himself with people—none of them will ever see his true face. But he’s convinced himself it’s better this way, because if anyone saw his face, they’d hate it.

8. Need and attachment re: each other: Clearly, both brothers need each other. Sam’s need for Dean is different than Dean’s need for Sam, though. The way I see it, Dean’s need is one that requires reassurance. Perhaps it traces back to the concern about Sam instilled into him at a young age. I think it was strongly exacerbated by the Stanford split, when Dean realized his and Sam’s desires didn’t align. In Dean’s mind, Sam left once and can do it again—he’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sam, on the other hand, has always been able to rely on Dean as a rock, a constant in his life—to the point that, in a way, he takes it for granted when he’s younger. Not in a spoilt, ungrateful way, but in that way that we, as children, might take our parents for granted—they’re always going to be there, right? That’s why, on the few occasions where suddenly, Sam isn’t sure of Dean’s devotion, the rug is ripped out from under him and he’s completely adrift and distraught—seasons 4 and 8 come to mind. Sam needs to be the center of Dean’s universe. When he fears that that’s shifted, that Dean hates him or has chosen someone else over him, it turns Sam’s whole world upside down. For Dean, the fear is that Sam will leave, but it’s a constant, background worry. For Sam, the fear is that Dean will hate him, but since he can usually count on Dean to be obsessed with him, it only comes up now and again. Only Dean can truly hurt Sam, while Dean is vulnerable to hurt from others—though, as always, the deepest hurt can only come from Sam.

9. Ambitions and goals: Sam is the one with greater needs and ambitions outside the scope of their relationship. For Dean, if he’s got Sam and he’s got hunting, he’s content. His greatest accomplishments are taking care of Sam and saving people, and that’s all he needs. I see Sam as craving other sources of fulfillment, though—academic/lore study for its own sake (the pursuit of knowledge), and a leadership/mentorship role. I thought it was very fitting that Sam finds these in late seasons, with leading hunters against the BMOL, then leading the apocalypse AU hunters, then mentoring/nurturing Jack. Dean has always had (and needed) a mentor/leadership/nurturing role with Sam, but Sam also thrives when he’s able to step into that role for others.

10. Normality and monstrosity: I’m just going to link to this post rather than repeat myself.

11. Guilt and self-loathing: This is something they both struggle with and at times, are defined by, but it manifests differently. I think their Hell traumas exemplify their different brands of guilt: for Dean, it’s perpetrator’s guilt. He knows he did something terrible and feels he can never atone for his past actions. For Sam, it’s victim’s/survivor’s guilt. He may not have done anything wrong, but there’s a certain amount of self-blame, especially for perceived weakness. This is another theme for Sam; one of the main faults he sees in himself is weakness—too weak to save Dean from Hell for instance—and as a result tries to shoulder things alone (killing Lilith, Hallucifer, etc). Sam has a need to fix things, to prove to others and himself that he is capable. Dean, I think, sees his main fault as neediness, but really, it’s a deeply buried sense of innate worthlessness. He was taught from a young age that his brother’s life—not his own—was of the utmost value. He internalized that his life was only worthwhile if he could save others, and has trouble with the idea that he, himself, has value beyond what he can do for others.

12. Autonomy and sacrifice: The above leads Dean to have a very constrained sense of his own autonomy. In general, he values duty/loyalty to others over autonomy (although when it comes to cosmic beings, he’s all about free will—see this post if you want more thoughts on that, and Sam’s autonomy). Often, his desire to control others comes from a place of frustration when Dean feels they are neglecting duty/being selfish. I think partially duty towards others is really a deeply ingrained value for him, but there may also be some buried jealousy at play, in that Dean wishes he could act with more freedom, put himself first every once in a while, but doesn’t know how to. Sam tends to value autonomy over duty (this doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe in any sort of responsibility—he’s willing to sacrifice for the greater good, after all).  This means he also tends to respect others’ autonomy, though we all know he can get plenty unhinged where his brother’s safety is concerned. The theme of Sam and autonomy has been talked to death so I’ll stop there, but you can click the link above if you want more.

13. Personal identity: One of Dean’s biggest struggles is with how much of his personal identity is received rather than self-determined. He is tasked with taking care of Sam and he is trained to be a hunter; these become the foundations of his identity. He says it himself: taking care of Sam is not just what he does but who he is. Then in season 3, his own subconscious mocks him for his lack of originality, styling himself and all he loves after his father, showing that this is a source of deep insecurity. This discomfort with himself contributes to his fear of being abandoned and left alone with himself. He doesn’t know who he is without Sam—or rather, is convinced he is nothing without Sam, which is why he fights so hard to keep him by his side. It also contributes to his general desire for friends, or better, family: people who won’t abandon him.

Later in the series, I think Dean has come to embrace his genuine self more. He’s nerdy and excitable and playful—and I don’t see this is as regression, but rather a healthy embracing of what makes him happy—not tastes inherited from his father. If it seems juvenile, it’s because it’s the first time in his life he’s allowed himself to express and explore these things. I think his relationship with hunting is also healthier; it’s no longer something he does because it’s the only thing that can give him worth. He does it because he believes it’s right and genuinely wants to help people. He has a more complete sense of self, and while it’s still totally tied up in Sam, he has gained some self-worth.

[I should note that basically everything I’ve written about Dean supports the headcanon that Dean has BPD—a headcanon I accepted after I realized this. For some more great writing on Dean and BPD, see this post by @venhedish.]

Sam has always known what he wanted for himself and rejected what was given to/allowed him. Wanting what he couldn’t have, from a young age, helped him develop an individual sense of self, not defined by others. I think it’s this difference in their sense of individual identity that leads some viewers to think that Dean loves Sam more than Sam loves Dean. He doesn’t, and losing Dean is just as huge a loss and a grief for Sam as losing Sam was for Dean. Dean is central to Sam’s life, and he can’t feel complete without him; however, his identity and every desire has never revolved as entirely around Dean as Dean’s has around him, so Sam has a foundational sense of self that even losing Dean can’t completely destroy. It’s what allows him to rebuild in grief and carry on (whereas I have no doubt Jensen’s right and Dean would waste away in the back of a pool hall without Sam). Dean’s central role in Sam’s life never disappears, though, and it is, in fact, what allows Sam to carry on; an effort to honor his brother’s memory, living in a way that would make him proud. There’s continuity in that for Sam; the craving for his brother’s approval and happiness never disappears. Seeking those things is what makes Sam happy, both in their domestic years together before Dean’s death and in the years after. They are both, after all, co-dependent!

14: Concluding observation: Sam and Dean have many similar issues, desires, and insecurities: the desire for a normal life, the fear of their own monstrosity, the desire for love and friendship, their need and love for each other, their desire for approval/to be admired, resentment at their childhood, the feeling of being impure and unworthy, the desire for freedom, issues with bodily autonomy. Sometimes these are seen as the purview of one brother or the other exclusively, but that’s almost never true when you consider canon as a whole. The difference is in how these things are internalized, sublimated, reflected, and expressed for each of them. It makes sense they would struggle with so many of the same things, because their lives are deeply intertwined and they are in the same boat most of the time.

#spn meta #sam meta #dean meta #sam and dean #winchester brothers #my meta #the brodependency #long post #spn

[dwellordream]

“…At the same time, however, until the mid-eleventh century, the question of whether women were suited for militant activity had simply not been of any real concern to medieval scholars. To be sure, there were historical examples within Western Europe of women who were significantly involved in military activity, but they had not stimulated major debate on this issue. The legendary Boudicca, for instance, led a military revolt against the Romans in early Britain, yet her existence remained unknown throughout the High and Late Middle Ages and was only rediscovered in the sixteenth century.

Much later, another more well-known female military leader, Æthelflæd, the so-called ‘Lady of the Mercians’, led an army that won several battles within England and even invaded Wales in the early-tenth century, but her actions also aroused little comment in the contemporary sources. Though unusual, the activities of these women were not sufficiently contentious for contemporaries to use them as a basis for an argument in favour of female militancy.

Thus, it was not until the military career of Countess Matilda of Tuscany in the late-eleventh and early-twelfth century that we find the first clear evidence of works written in support of female militancy. Matilda, whose military career is examined in more detail in chapter two, inherited a large territory in northern Italy and became the chief means of military support and main defender of the Gregorian reform papacy in its struggle against the Western Roman Emperor Henry IV (1050- 1106).

Her continued military success raised fresh questions concerning women’s place in war, and forced many intellectuals who were dependant on Matilda to come up with new and inventive ways of defending and justifying her military actions. They were, in particular, driven by a desire to appease Matilda’s apparent reluctance to wage war against other Christians, as indeed she was doing by fighting the imperial German army. To this end, a range of innovative arguments were offered in support of Matilda’s cause and female military leadership in general.

Amongst the first to do so was a grammarian in her entourage, John of Mantua, known only for a biblical commentary he wrote on the Song of Songs in c.1081. In this tract he attempted to convince Matilda that an ‘active’ life fighting heresy and schismatics in the Church was just as noble as and indeed more useful in God’s eyes than leading a more ‘contemplative’ life as a cloistered nun. John also applied an allegorical form of biblical exegesis to argue that Matilda’s efforts in fact represented legitimate use of the ‘secular sword’ in defence of the Church, which itself wielded the ‘spiritual sword’ – an idea that was to later gain much currency amongst Church scholars.

Similarly Donizo, the author of a life of Matilda, employed biblical imagery to frame and contextualise Matilda’s accomplishments – military or otherwise – as the continuation of a long tradition in strong biblical female leaders, such as Deborah, Jael, Esther (an Old Testament queen), and Judith (another Old Testament heroine). Although the use of these biblical figures cannot necessarily be said to have legitimised Matilda’s leadership (none of the figures were actually rulers), they nevertheless still illustrated, to medieval eyes, how certain women throughout history had divine support for their actions, and in Matilda’s case, how her use of military force must have been approved by God.

A further attempt at explaining her success was that of Rangerius, bishop of Lucca, who defended Matilda’s actions by lauding her masculine qualities in ‘overcoming her sex and not fearing the brave deeds of men’. In thus construing Matilda as a sort of ‘honourable man’ as it were, Rangerius was able to avoid questions as to how the supposedly weaker female sex could defeat the other in a militarily battle, especially as women were thought to be ‘inherently...unfit for [military and political] command’.

Two others to defend the Church’s use of secular armies and Matilda’s participation by way of canon law were Bishop Anselm of Lucca and Cardinal Duesdedit. Both men wrote early, yet independent and influential collections of canons in the 1080s, each of which were identically titled the Collectio canonum. Anselm’s Collectio, especially book 13, is particularly notable because it represented the first canonical collection of its kind, in that it was the first canonical collection designed specifically to justify the Church’s armed struggle against heretics and other perceived enemies of the faith.

More importantly however, at least in terms of legitimating female military command, both Anselm and Duesdedit were the first to employ a little known, and previously ignored, letter by Pope St. Gregory I (590-604) to the Frankish queen Brunhild, in which the pope permitted the queen to use military means in order to defeat any aggressive or evil threats. In Anselm’s collection the letter is discussed under the heading ‘That the power to correct evildoers is granted to the queen’. When placed in the context of Anselm’s support for Matilda and considering the significance and importance of his collection as the ‘the first major systematic justification of warfare in the Christian tradition’, this statement constituted a strong endorsement of female military leadership.

Lest we assume that efforts by intellectuals such as John of Mantua or canonists like Anselm to sanction Matilda’s military activities meant that they actually believed all women might be suited for military leadership, one must remember the context in which their works were written. As Hay has suggested, it is important to realise that Matilda’s very support for the papacy and various persecuted clerics is what predisposed polemicists in the first place to find excuses for her military involvement and justify to both themselves and each other why they were supporting one woman’s military activity.

Indeed, were it not for the need to explain and defend Matilda’s continued wartime victories and political savvy, her supporters may never have gone to the extent they did to justify her actions. Although their efforts to go against the centuries of anti-feminine thought in political and religious circles could not hope to change, in the space of one generation, long- standing beliefs about the legitimacy of female military involvement, their efforts indicate, if nothing else, that ‘medieval conceptions of gender [allowed for] the occasional female combatant’, without contradicting the established belief in male superiority.

Some of the more explicit arguments offered against the idea of women in war in the Middle Ages were also promulgated during Matilda’s life by Bishop Bonizo de Sutri (c.1045-c.1094). Interestingly, although his earlier work, the Liber ad amicum, written in 1085 or 1086, represented an endorsement of her military struggle and the others fighting on her side for the Church, his later canonical law collection, the Liber de vita Christiana, completed 1089-1090, offers a decidedly negative assessment of Matilda and her illegitimate usurpation of masculine power. The reasons for this shift in opinion have to do with Bonizo’s career.

Initially bishop of Sutri, he had been expelled and captured by the Emperor Henry in 1082, then forced to find sanctuary in Matilda’s court where he composed the Liber ad amicum. In it he spoke glowingly of Matilda, calling her a soldier of God and a true daughter of St Peter, who must fight to defend the church against the anti-pope Clement III and his supporters, using ‘every means, as long as her resources last’. His circumstances changed however when, after controversially being elected to the see of Piacenza with only weak support from Matilda and the papacy, he proved unable to maintain his position in the face of opposition, and in 1089 was cruelly mutilated and ousted by his opponents from his seat.

The Liber de vita Christiana therefore, reflects Bonizo’s disillusionment with Matilda, an attitude that is evident in its argument that women must always be under male command; moreover, although he concedes that historically some women have held military or political leadership, he contends they have only ever brought destruction or misfortune to their subjects. Invoking various biblical and historical examples of women who he felt had gone against this divine order and suffered for it, Bonizo concludes by exhorting that a woman’s place is at home, performing domestic tasks, not leading armies on the battlefield, the obvious implication being that Matilda’s struggle could only bring harm to those involved and that she ought to desist in her military activities.”

- James Michael Illston, ‘An Entirely Masculine Activity’? Women and War in the High and Late Middle Ages Reconsidered

#matilda of tuscany #james michael illston #history #high middle ages #late middle ages #warfare #gender #religion #medieval