#now let me dismantle all of them one by one in this essay of love and devotion done right

[motivationisdead]

Interesting that the first case we see Xie Lian solve is basically about how love and devotion can go wrong.

Xuan Ji loves and worships Pei Ming to the point of obsession but it’s a selfish love. She doesn’t really care about how Pei Ming feels or what he wants—only about forcing her own feelings onto him. Even to the point of hurting herself in order to try and force Pei Ming to stay with her.

It’s a great contrast to how Hua Cheng handles his own love and devotion to Xie Lian. Hua Cheng’s love is one without expectations or demands. He’s never needed Xie Lian to return his feelings or even know of them because to him respecting Xie Lian’s autonomy and choices has always been more important.

Where Xuan Ji’s love is selfish Hua Cheng’s is selfless.

#tgcf #hua cheng #xuan ji #xie lian #literary foils #character contrasts #i love hua cheng so much #like how mxtx is like: alright here are all the pitfalls of this trope #now let me dismantle all of them one by one in this essay of love and devotion done right

[williamrikers]

On the subject of consent in recent BLs

In this analysis, I will take a look at several love scenes in recent Thai BLs, how they frame consent and the sexual agency of the characters, and why those matter.

(KinnPorsche deserves its own post: I’m sure people have already written in detail about how much emphasis is placed on issues of consent/non-consent throughout the show and how fundamental consent is to the relationship arcs of both KinnPorsche and VegasPete, and I won’t belabor the point here. Also, special shout-out to The Warp Effect for what it brought to the conversation about gay sex, but TWE isn’t technically a BL so I decided not to include it in this analysis.)

I am going to take a closer look at the following shows in this essay: Not Me, The Eclipse, A Boss And A Babe, Step By Step, and La Pluie.

Not Me and The Eclipse predate the other shows by two years/one year respectively, but I feel it is valuable to include them here because both show very explicit negotiations of consent that I feel are spiritual successors to the wonderful scenes we’ve been getting in the other three shows.

Why am I even writing this? There used to be an unfortunate tendency in the genre to have a power imbalance between the “seme” and the “uke” character, which translated into the seme deciding when to have sex and what kind of sex to have—and even though recently, several shows have done good work in dismantling the seme/uke dynamic and questioning the associated stereotypes, it cannot be denied that the archetypes are still an important part of most BLs, and even in cases where the tropes are played with and questioned, understanding those subversions still requires a knowledge of and familiarity with the original tropes on the part of the audience.

However, gone are the days of Until We Meet Again and Dean’s “I’ve waited long enough, make sure you’re ready.” (I enjoyed UWMA a lot but that was. Yeah. Not Great.) Now, we see characters actually talking about and negotiating their limits, and doing what feels good to them.

Let’s start from the very beginning. Not Me was an absolute trailblazer in this regard, and not mentioning it here would be a gross oversight. The first time Sean and White have sex, it happens in their version of the beach episode. (Which, in Not Me, is the two characters briefly living in a tent inside an abandoned building. This show is the best.) Sean and White are removed from their usual environment and protected from the outside world by two barriers: the walls of the old house and the tent that’s literally enveloping them and giving them a space that is unequivocally theirs, shared, in which neither one of the characters has any sort of power over the other. And what happens in that space when they’re about to have sex is extremely interesting: the first thing Sean asks is whether White is afraid of him, which White denies. The following exchange goes like this: White: "So, what are we doing?" Sean: "What should I do to you?" White: "That’s up to you." (Watch the whole scene here.)

I find this exchange incredibly meaningful because this already turns the seme/uke dynamic that can be found in a lot of other shows on its head. OffGun as a branded pair can easily be stereotyped into the seme/uke dynamic just because of their physical appearances, and clearly spelling out that both characters have agency in this scene is incredibly important.

And then it gets better! Sean assumes that White is sexually inexperienced (which is not true but the fact that White was actually in a relationship with a woman back in Russia never comes up again after the pilot episode, so maybe the show expects us to assume this, too), and suggests they try different things and White can tell him what he likes and doesn’t like. Compared to the stuff we’re getting now, this scene isn’t very high heat at all, but it’s one of my favorite intimate scenes ever because them asking each other “Do you like this?” after every kiss, every touch, is so incredibly unique and transports a wonderful sense of figuring out sexual pleasure together, as a couple.

Sex in Not Me is not something one character does to another, it is something that is discovered and shared together, and we even get an afterglow scene in which they gently tease each other about their fast beating hearts. (And don’t get me started on the importance of White choosing to ask Sean whether Sean is okay with White not being like Black in that moment right before they have sex, because he doesn’t actually want to have sex with Sean as Black! He wants to discover and share intimacy with Sean as White, as himself, not as his brother! The layers!)

Anyway, I think that scene paved the way for a lot of the conversations around consent we’re now getting in BL, just because it is so explicitly, unashamedly putting forward a definition of sexuality that has nothing to do with one character actively giving and the other passively receiving, but frames intimacy as something that is built together. (More on giving and receiving later!)

Now, moving on to The Eclipse. I decided to include the first time Akk and Aye have sex for a different reason: while we don’t really see them actually talking about consent, we see them practicing non-verbal consent. Let me explain. Akk’s and Aye’s whole thing is teasing each other. At first, Aye is usually the one doing the teasing, but Akk gets the hang of it towards the end of the show and teases his boyfriend right back. When they’re in Akk’s childhood bedroom together, Aye clearly alludes to the fact that he thought they might use this opportunity to have sex for the first time, which Akk pretends not to understand, all while alluding to it himself. I love this guy. (Watch the whole scene here.) Anyway, Akk says he wants to sleep, lies down and once again, tells Aye jokingly he just wants to sleep, clearly expecting Aye to do what other BL protagonists do at that point and not take no for an answer (sidenote: I HATE the “saying no as foreplay” trope with a passion and as far as I’m concerned it should die already).

However, Aye is not like other BL love interests, and he backs off. He stops touching Akk, lies down with his back to Akk, showing Akk that he takes him by his word: if Akk says he wants to sleep, Aye is going to let him do just that. So now, it’s on Akk to say that, no, that’s not what he meant, can Aye please come back to cuddle. And then Akk is the one to escalate from cuddling to kissing, which is extremely important: we know that Aye has been ready to have sex with Akk since forever, it’s Akk who’s been having hangups about intimacy this whole time.

They don’t put consent into so many words on this show, but Aye shows Akk that he respects his limits and that Akk only has to tell him he doesn’t want to do something and Aye will take him at his word.

So, these are, to me, two foundational scenes of establishing consent: one that shows consent as something that is established verbally, as an ongoing conversation, and one that shows consent as something that is established physically, by showing your partner that you respect their choices and limits by way of simply acting accordingly.

Now, let’s get into the fun part: scenes we got so far in 2023. I’m writing this post on the 13th of June, and I’m sure this year still has some great things in store for us, especially because Step By Step and La Pluie are both ongoing and neither of the main couples are actually together yet at time of writing. However, they’ve both already given us AMAZING scenes on the topic of consent, so I feel it is worthwhile to write about those already.

I want to start off by talking about A Boss And A Babe.

Let me just preface this by saying that the intimate scenes in ABAAB are some of my all time favorites in BL ever, because in them, sex is something that is just so normal. When Gun and Cher have sex, we don’t see them very passionate, excited, reluctant or wide-eyed innocent (which are some of the emotions traditionally associated with sex in BL). On the contrary, in every single scene that shows them being intimate, both characters are incredibly calm. They’re certainly happy to be with each other, but in a subdued way. Someone described their second intimate scene as them seeming like they’ve been married for a few years. They’re both just… incredibly normal about having sex with each other. It’s simply something they like to do together. It’s a part of their romance but it’s not more or less important than any other aspects of their lives.

And consent is at the very heart of it.

When Gun and Cher have their first time, we see Gun explicitly asking for consent two times: first, “Can I kiss you?”, then, “Can I do more?” The second one even comes with the promise that if Cher says no, Gun will immediately go to sleep without mentioning it again. And then it is on Cher to say yes, to pull Gun close and kiss him to show him that he is comfortable with taking things further. (In the show, these two questions were shown apart from each other, I cut together a version of the whole First Time Scene in its entirety, watch it here.)

Now, things get more interesting: the second intimate scene shows Cher initiating the encounter (watch the whole scene here). Cher pretty consistently falls into the uke category, both physically and as far as characterization is concerned, but he’s certainly not shy in the bedroom. And this time, he’s the one who asks for consent from Gun: Gun asks “You’re starting it?” and Cher’s response is “Can I?” Despite him being framed physically lower than Gun, basically at Gun’s mercy, he still seeks confirmation that Gun is okay with the way things are going. Not to overstate it, but to me, this feels revolutionary. Once again, we’re being shown that sex is something two people do together, as a shared activity, and that the “seme” character isn’t expected to just be up for it. He, too, has the right to say no.

On this show, sexual agency is taken extremely seriously, and it is clear that both Gun and Cher give each other space to decide what they’re comfortable doing. This is shown in non-intimate scenes as well: there are so many moments on ABAAB in which the characters negotiate physical touch and closeness, asking each other for hugs before actually hugging each other, Cher leaning on Gun’s shoulder in the car but not allowing Gun to touch him because that’s not what he’s comfortable with in that moment, and so on. (The only exception to this otherwise pretty consistent rule is the kiss in the car scene, which I’m still extremely confused about because it seems to go completely against Gun’s character. Who knows what happened there.)

Of course, the fact that so much emphasis is placed on negotiation and consent isn’t surprising on a show that has such obvious kink undertones and whose Our Skyy 2 entry basically consisted entirely of Dom/sub roleplay at work—I’m just saying, I think someone on the writing team is way into BDSM and knows all about the importance of enthusiastic consent from all parties involved, and I would like to send them flowers.

Step By Step hasn’t really reached the point where we can analyse the dynamic between the main couple (although we can take some educated guesses based on the interactions we’ve seen so far). However, last week’s episode had an extremely important scene between Pat and Put: Pat wanting to have sex with Put, then changing his mind mid make-out (watch the whole scene here). I really like the way this scene was done. No matter how shitty Put treats Pat at times, in this instance, he immediately understood and respected Pat’s change of mind without Pat even saying or explaining anything—at the end of the episode, Put says to Pat that Pat should tell Put when he feels ready to have sex. (We already know this will never happen because of course, Pat and Put are not endgame, but I do appreciate the sentiment.)

BLs rarely include a whole storyline in which the protagonist is in an actual, serious romantic relationship with someone other than his endgame love interest (hi Moonlight Chicken!), or if they do then just to up the angst factor. In this case, however, I feel that this scene raises our expectations for Jeng even further: if the guy who is definitely not a romantic match for Pat treats Pat with this much respect in the bedroom, then Jeng has to do at least that and then some. I do feel confident that Jeng won’t disappoint in this regard, but it’s fascinating to see a show frame this kind of respect as the absolute baseline minimum, with the endgame love interest expected to do even better.

Now, the one you’ve all been waiting for. The one that made me write this whole essay in the first place: La Pluie.

Oh boy. Where to start.

A week ago, we got an incredible make-out scene on Saengtai’s floor, which ended in Patts stopping the encounter because he could tell Tai wasn’t really comfortable taking things further—@bengiyo talked about that scene in detail here. And then, three days ago, La Pluie gave us the most unique, trope-defying, timeline-changing blowjob scene of all time, and I want to talk about it.

Tai and Patts are making out on their bed, Tai is not ready to go “all the way” and stops Patts from undressing him. We see a very realistic frustrated reaction from Patts, who nevertheless immediately stops and accepts Tai’s wishes—it is clear that Patts does not expect things to go any further at this point, and that he won’t pressure Tai into anything.

And then, Tai offers to blow him.

(Unfortunately, this show is only on iQiyi so I can't link to it, but you can get a good impression of the scene here.)

I mentioned the concepts of giving and receiving earlier: other people have said this more eloquently than me, but there is a tendency not only in BL but also in wider society to view sex in terms of giving and receiving, with a lot of expectations and stereotypes attached to the roles during different sexual acts. On other shows, that blowjob might be framed as a consolidation or an apology, something that the giver does out of a sense of obligation without enjoying it much. Not so on La Pluie! Tai is shown incredibly happy and satisfied afterwards, both when they’re sleeping next to each other, as well as on the morning after (see also @ginnymoonbeam's post about that here). Tai offered to blow Patts because he simply wanted to, not motivated by guilt or anything of that sort. And he genuinely enjoyed it! In the post I linked above, @bengiyo points out that La Pluie consistently centers queer desire, or more specifically in this case, male desire for a male body; much in the same way that the camera fucking loves Force’s body on ABAAB: the sensuality of the skin, the hands, the abs, the flat chests, the broad backs and shoulders of these men is explicitly emphasized, and Tai’s desire for a dick in his mouth is made absolutely crystal-clear. Of course, since this is a TV show and not a porno, we only see Patts’s thumb in Tai’s mouth instead of his dick, but the imagery, the implications, are clear as day.

And it is such a gentle framing, too: Patts caresses Tai’s lip lovingly, Tai opens his mouth slowly, seductively, then faces Patts’s crotch with a soft look on his face. We do get a clear sense of this encounter as tender, and gentle, and most of all, desired. Tai’s queer desire is at the heart of this scene, and at the heart of the afterglow scene as well. He wanted this man’s dick in his mouth, openly suggested it, showed Patts he was sure about his decision after Patts asked him whether he was, and ended up clearly happy and satisfied with the sex they had. This post, also by @bengiyo, goes into more detail on that.

This, once again, shows us sex as a conversation rather than a series of predetermined acts, shows us sex as a shared activity, as something that can be wonderful and intimate and make people happy without following what society views as “the correct steps”. I think this is extremely important because one part of queer identity is figuring out one’s own relationship to sexuality, one’s own desires and needs, and BLs that ignore this aspect fall a little short in my opinion. Sure, those men are kissing, but do they experience queer desire? Do they experience joy in their queer desire?

For me personally, a show that does not shy away from these questions is a lot more meaningful than a show that does, and consent is at the heart of it all. By framing sex as a conversation, as something that is built and shared together, the shows I looked at here are actively positioning themselves against the idea that there should be predetermined roles for partners during sex, and instead suggest that queer joy can be found in communication and consent. Understanding sex and intimacy as something that is built together, with both partners as equals in conversation, is just as radically queer as a man waking up with a smile on his face after giving his soulmate a blowjob the previous night.

And quite honestly, a male character who clearly, passionately, unquestioningly communicates that he wants a dick inside of him—that is incredibly sexy. But maybe that’s just me.

#*mine #not me the series #the eclipse #the eclipse the series #a boss and a babe #step by step #step by step the series #la pluie #la pluie the series #i said ''is anyone going to write a 3k meta analysis on this topic'' then didn't wait for an answer

[lilgayforg]

Fuck Project 2025 Essay

Soooo, I'm writing this essay on how Project 2025 sucks ass and it is homophobic, racist, transphobic, classist, ableist, and just terrible among other things. So if I could get some tips on how to reach more peeps with my essay once its done i would love to see ideas/feedback.

I'm going to paste the rough draft so far under here so you get a feel for what im going for plus give me feedback if you want :)

thanks!

btw- this is formatted as a message to conservatives especially ones i know personally so i'm trying to be a bit nice at the beginning. and things that are asterisked (*) are notes to me to write more lol

TW: homophobia, transphobia, bigotry

Why You Shouldn't Support Republicans in the 2024 Election

Now, I try to be an open person. I like to hear other people’s perspectives and if I disagree, I accept it as their opinion and move on. I have quite a few conservative family members and I love them and respect them. I understand if we have different points of views on gun rights, taxes, etc. Yet, there is a line. It’s when it becomes a human rights issue when I’m more judgmental of people’s opinions. If you have strong, negative opinions about things like gender, sexuality, sexual assault, race, equality, and censoring topics, then we are going to have issues. This is when I begin seeing those people less as conservatives and republicans and more as bigots. And unfortunately, there is an overlap. I want non-bigots to be able to vote for the policies they want in this country without it also taking people’s rights away. However, that is getting increasingly difficult. This is where Project 2025 comes in. Project 2025 is a “Presidential Transition Project” funded by conservative organizations that is looking to “rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left” (Project 2025 Website). They have created a website and 920 page step-by-step outline of how they are going to change this country. Initially, it doesn’t sound too bad. They outline some of their main goals:

“1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.

2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.

3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.

4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’”

First of all, they want to protect children and restore families. That does not sound too bad, right? Well, we have different definitions of such. First, they talk about how we need to get children fathers because 40-70% of children do not have a father in their life. They do not provide a solution to fix this so I’ll move on. Then they move on to the goal to “delete terms” such as sexual orientation, gender identity, gender, gender equality, diversity, equity, inclusion, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and “any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights” (pdf). Let’s tackle these topics one at a time.

First, sexuality or sexual orientation. I’m not going to super into the details, but sexuality exists. In fact, heterosexuality is one, so if these conservatives are implying that sexual orientation does not exist then they must not be heterosexual and have no preference. Pettiness aside, homosexuality has existed and still exists and it has for many, many years. There is evidence of it since the Greeks and Romans and also in animals like penguins, lions, dolphins, monkeys, and ducks. I recommend just looking up homosexual animals, there is quite a list! So maybe you do recognize that sexuality or gay animals exist, but you are against all of those liberals that are trying to force it onto the children. As a person that proudly is part of the LGBTQ+ community and also as a person that went to public school, this is not what is happening, and this applies to gender and gender identity as well. LGBTQ people just want to live their lives being their true selves without worrying about people openly hating them or stopping them from loving who they love or being who they are. When LGBTQ topics are brought up in school (and frankly it is not often), it is to educate people that children may have two parents of the same gender or a classmate that may be changing their name or pronouns. It is not telling tom-boy girls that they are boys or saying that being gay is better. It is just simply educating them on how some people may be different and that’s why they may do certain things. And if that “turns” your child gay or trans, it is only because they were given awareness that those things exist in other people and they are not broken, weird, or different. If your kid is gay, bisexual, trans, non-binary, or whatever- they will figure it out eventually, and before they do, they are going to go through a cycle of mental anguish, self-hatred, and confusion if they do not know about these topics or have a bad connotation attached to it. So, please, if you love your children, save them from the pain they may endure inside and possibly save their life.

The Trevor Project found that “LGBTQ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers” and that “The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth”. Again, if you care about your children, it doesn’t hurt to educate them to possibly save their life or their classmates’ life. The cons of a child’s death outweighs the conservatives’ pro of eradicating the words sexuality and gender.

Now you may be thinking to yourself a few different things after reading this. 1. This would never happen, it is all empty promises. (*don't say gay, panic response)

2. Nobody I know is LGBTQ+ so I don’t care / they’ll figure it out. (*straight lady killed) 3. Well, once they graduate they will be okay and they can do whatever they want. And those are valid thoughts, but you’re unfortunately wrong.

*talk about going further than children with marriage equality, and rights to hurt these people- “gay panic response” and that one straight lady that was killed for pride flag

So if any of this resonated with you at all, please consider not voting republican or do significant research to make sure the people you are supporting are against Project 2025.

#lgbtq #advocacy #civil rights #lgbtq rights #lgbtq issues #homophobia #equality #project 2025 #us politics #leftist #democrat #liberal #fuck ron desantis #fuck project 2025

[isalabells]

I am very curious why Ted going back to the US to be there for his son is him making the mistakes as his dad and a real tragedy. Or did I read your tags wrong and you didn’t mean it this way?

Anon, I never meant to insinuate that this is him making the same mistakes as his dad, nor do I think my tags suggests that. But it's Ted fearing he is making the same mistake as his dad that is the driving force for his ill-advised decision. (That being said, i've seen the Ted's gonna end up like his dad eventually take flying around here, and while -- even in the face of the final scenes -- this is too horrid and bleak a thought even for me I can't entirely refute it, so there's that.) As for your other question, hoo boi- I recommend going back to the post I reblogged and scrolling through some of the tags because there's a lot of people out there who've articulated it way more eloquently than I am currently capable of, and my answer is nothing but a potpourri of all these thoughts.

But let me ask you in return- Did Ted look happy to you? Did he? Did his constant dissociating throughout the episode and him being emotionally closed off and unresponsive to all the people who love and care for him so deeply, him forcefully shutting them all out so he could be A Good Dad and soldier on and do what must be done because he fears otherwise he will make Henry feel like his Dad made him feel (which in itself is a loaded thought, and I bet Sharon could dismantle it within two sessions) make you feel all warm and fuzzy? Him more or less being pushed into this decision because his mom was guilt tripping him and going through with it bc he is under the misguided impression that he has to break-the-cycle in order to prevent impending doom for Henry (guys pls this isn't Succession).

I know there's a post making rounds where people are being outraged bc how dare anyone say choosing to be a parent is the inferior choice here, why do you want Ted to abandon his child and like- I'm genuinely sorry if you feel that way.

The implication that Ted not living within close proximity to Henry renders him a bad father is just bonkers. Emotional availability and taking care of your kid, being involved in their life is not necessarily tied to local distance at all. In all those three years, Ted hasn't neglected Henry once? Hell, with all the constant facetiming and irregular visits and whatnot he's probably kept more up to date with his kid than a good chunk of parents do despite living under the same roof as their offsprings.

Emphasizing the importance of the nuclear family (one that technically doesn't even exist anymore in Ted's case) and telegraphing that this is the main if not only way to be A Good Father seems like such a shocking conservative and nearsighted move for this show, and, pardon me, a very US-American one as well. All of this seems quite tone deaf, but it wouldn't be the first time this season (maybe one day @hubba1892 will bless us all with the essay on TL taking a stand on defying Super League and pushing for 50+1 rule vs. City being a major advertising factor for the show.)

Obiously, this is strongly influenced by me being a firm believer that parenthood shouldn't swallow your whole identity. Playing at pretend happy family and, as someone else put it so nicely, sacrificing your happiness for the sake of your kid is not healthy, and it will gain your kid nothing in the end. Ted seeing himself as nothing but a vessel to fix other people's lives and help them become the best version of themselves only to remove himself from the situation, nay, the entire story (literally and metaphorically, cf him suggesting Trent change the title) once the job is done without a thought or care for his own wants and needs, let alone his happiness is just so deeply saddening. "But the second to last ep showed that they're all gonna be fine without him!!" Yes, that's exactly the point, he should stay because the wants to, not because they need him.

Now Ted 'ain't nobody in this room alone' Lasso is quite literally all alone in the big vast room that is Kansas, with his main people being Henry (a literal child), Michelle and his mom, two people who both make him fucking miserable. A less pointed take would be that he doesn't even have to stay at Richmond specifically. The opportunities that he now has at his disposal in the UK bc of his success story are endless; lots of possibilities for him to continue doing what he loves without being stuck in the depression show that is coaching little league for funsies, quenching all of his wants and needs and dreams and aspiration.

#something something Ted is more or less the only character that is regressing #which could be fine this also counts as character development if an uncomfortable one #but it came out of left field and really does not fit the show's tone #replies #Ted Lasso spoilers #not to engage in speculation but the people who say JSud's personal life and his current situation influenced the s3 writing too much #whether consciously or subconsciously do have a point #lowkey wish we knew nothing about the Wildeikis drama #can I blame Harry Styles for all of this

[a-secret-bolton-vampire]

Daenerys Stormborn, Part 2: Wake the Dragon

Oh hey, I have part 2 already! Guess my brain is really focused on Dany now. In part 1, I talked about Dany's arcs from AGOT to ASOS, exploring the narrative and thematic purpose of her journey. However, the most important part of her journey occurs in ADWD, and sets the stage for some incredibly exciting developments to come in TWOW. For part 2, I'll be talking about the gradual transformation of Daenerys into a slightly different, darker character for the future.

Breaker of Chains & Mhysa

Slavery has been an important background element throughout Dany's time in Essos, even in AGOT, but it becomes front and centre in ASOS. She accepted the Dothraki, a society that uses slaves for many things, and wasn't too perturbed at the use of slaves in Qarth. However, it is in Astapor where she finally realizes just how bad the institution is, as she tells Xaro:

"Whence came this madness? Should I count myself fortunate that you did not free my own slaves when you were my guest in Qarth?" I was a beggar queen and you were Xaro of the Thirteen, Dany thought, and all you wanted were my dragons. "Your slaves seemed well treated and content. It was not till Astapor that my eyes were opened."

As mentioned last time, ASOS is when she begins to take control of her destiny, and she does so by beginning a revolution to free the slaves of Slaver's Bay. She believe she has a greater destiny lying ahead of her, that there is a reason for her dragons, the red comet. She also has great empathy for people and sees this disturbing injustice being played out with nobody to stop it. But she has the power to do so, and thus she begins by going fire and blood at Astapor, killing the Good Masters and freeing all the slaves. Afterwards, she leaves the city with a ruling council of a priest, a scholar, and a healer and moves to Yunkai.

She does a different approach with Yunkai, negotiating with the Wise Masters to surrender their slaves and to leave them in peace. And then when she arrives at Meereen, she decides to stay and rule as its queen. This is where things begin to get difficult for Daenerys. The ruling council of Astapor is overthrown by a butcher named Cleon, who said the council was conspiring to bring back slavery, who declares himself King of Astapor, enslaves the children of the former Good Masters to make new Unsullied, and tries to ally with Daenerys against Yunkai, who has resumed slavery.

Daenerys is not interested in any war with Yunkai. The reason she stays in Meereen is exactly because she learned what happened when she left Astapor. The fire and blood approach didn't work. You can't just dismantle such a deeply engrained system so easily. So instead she opts to rule, and protect the people she can. While a lot of readers view Dany's actions in Meereen as pointless, the whims of a naive girl, and poor leadership, I actually think it's the opposite.

For starters, Dany realized that she can't simply burn the slavers to end slavery, but she needs to stay and instill changes. While King Cleon repeatedly begs for Daenerys to join the war against Yunkai, she refuses, and warns Cleon to not do such a thing. She turns out to be horribly right, as Cleon is killed, Astapor is sieged, before being slaughtered, burned, and sacked, to be reinstated as a slave city once more. Likewise, the Yunkish siege Meereen, first by creating a blockade in the bay with ships, and then by having armies amassed outside the city walls.

In addition, refugees from Astapor begin to pile up outside the city, and a deadly plague called the pale mare (for the horse from Astapor that arrives at Meereen) begins to sweep the starving Astapori freedmen, who begin to resort to cannibalism to survive. Dany blames herself for leaving Astapor a mess, but does not wish to have the same thing happen in Meereen. She wants to protect the people she's freed, not just from the Yunkish, but herself as well.

When a sheepherder brings the burned bones of his daughter, Hazzea, who was killed by her dragons, Dany has Rhaegal and Viserion chained in the dungeons below the Great Pyramid to prevent them from causing any more harm. However, Drogon is still loose, unable to be found. In addition, when the sons of the harpy, a terrorist group opposed to the emancipation of Meereen, begin massacring freedmen, Dany decides to raise a tax on the Great Masters and have all families of suspect loyalty send a child to serve as a hostage and cupbearers. Yet, as the killings continue, she has grown close to the children and decides not to have them killed.

Now, some of you may notice that I am taking a lot from the Meereenese Blot essays written by Adam Feldman. That's not only because they are really well written essays, but ones that GRRM himself has approved of.

"I read those when someone pointed them out to me, and I was really pleased with them, because at least one guy got it. He got it completely, he knew exactly what I was trying to do there, and evidently I did it well enough for people who were paying attention."

So I am retreading some of the ground Feldman has laid, but it's important to do so if I am to build up to what I think is going to happen in the future of Dany's story.

As Feldman notes, Dany's own actions (or in the case of the cupbearers, inaction) actually made a peace possible, because the Yunkish saw that she was someone who is capable of mercy and not a (in their eye) violent mass murderer. Knowing what happened with Astapor, and seeing what happens when her dragons are unleashed with Hazzea, Dany decides to make peace with the Yunkish and marry Hizdahr.

Under the peace, Meereen itself would remain a free city, but the Yunkish would continue to sell slaves. They even sell them in markets outside the walls of Meereen, which displeases Daenerys extremely. In addition, slaveowners could bring their slaves into Meereen without fear of them being freed, and the Yunkish promised to respect the rights of the freedmen in Meereen. Yet, despite the peace and the progress made, she feels as though this is a defeat.

This is peace, she told herself. This is what I wanted, what I worked for, this is why I married Hizdahr. So why does it taste so much like defeat?

The thing is, Daenerys has had to sacrifice so much of herself and her morals to get to this point. Yes there is peace, even if it is tentative, Meereen would not be sacked by the Yunkish, but slavery is still going on, and she thinks that she has let herself and other people down by agreeing to peace and allowing the Yunkish to continue slavery. She has agreed to peace to people she loathes and thinks are despicable, she has married a man she does not love and does not love her, she has chained her dragons in the pit below, she has allowed the fighting pits to reopen. This comes to ahead at Daznak's Pit when she is at the height of her discomfort.

The boar buried his snout in Barsena's belly and began rooting out her entrails. The smell was more than the queen could stand. The heat, the flies, the shouts from the crowd … I cannot breathe. She lifted her veil and let it flutter away. She took her tokar off as well. The pearls rattled softly against one another as she unwound the silk.

And then Drogon arrives, and in the chaos of him attacking the boar and being attacked by the soldiers in the pit, Dany tries to calm him, but he spits fire at her, and she tries to tame him by whipping him into submission. Here, Dany is quite literally fighting herself. She herself in this moment represents the Queen of Meereen, someone who desires for peace. Meanwhile, Drogon represents the dragon inside her, who wants to unleash blood and fire on her enemies. In the end, Dany climbs onto Drogon and they fly away together, which foreshadows and symbolizes Dany's later decision to choose being the dragon.

Despite her frustrations in Meereen, the peace was a good first step. Not to say that it solved every issue, it didn't, but that doesn't need to be the end of it. Daenerys could forge new peaces, new agreements, and if she stayed in Meereen, she could implement great changes throughout Slaver's Bay. But what is done is done, and cannot be undone. The peace that was forged is now gone. Next comes war.

The House with the Red Door

Before we move on to Dany's final chapter and what that means for the future, we must take a look at a very important part of her backstory which is one of the main elements of her own story. Sure, destiny, greatness, prophecy, power, and identity are themes with Daenerys, but at the center of it all is the desire for home. Dany was born on Dragonstone, but was whisked away to Braavos, and there she lived in the house with the red door, with Viserys, Ser Willem Darry, and their servants.

To Dany, the house with the red door was the only place in her life she called home, and she has very fond memories of it, of Willem, or the lemon tree. But after Willem died, they were kicked out and forced to become beggars on the streets, selling off their possessions and travelling the Free Cities. The red door was closed and gone forever after, but the dream of having a home hasn't.

Daenerys has a desire for home, for love, for family. Throughout her childhood, Viserys would tell Dany all about Westeros, how they need to take back the Iron Throne, that the Seven Kingdoms were the most beautiful lands in the world. And sure enough, soon, Westeros represents the idea for home and belonging to Dany.

"I pray for home too," she told him, believing it. Ser Jorah laughed. "Look around you then, Khaleesi." But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King's Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind's eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind's eye, all the doors were red.

Although she takes on the mantle as the new head of House Targaryen and carries on Viserys's dream of taking back the Iron Throne out of a sense of duty, she also does so for desire to belong in a place she can call home. It's a nostalgic feeling she gets of the old days, that she wants to relive again.

But then other ambitions get in her way. She frees the slaves of Slaver's Bay, and decides to stay in Meereen to try to ensure that her revolution succeeds. Thus, her quest for home is put on hold. Throughout ADWD, she gives up parts of herself, to try to become one with the Meereenese; marrying Hizdahr, reopening the fighting pits, chaining her dragons, dressing in the Ghiscari fashion, and making peace. But in the Dothraki sea, hundreds of miles outside Meereen, she finds that she wasn't being her true self, that she can never be the Queen of Meereen, or become a true Meereenese.

I must keep walking. Water flows downhill. The stream will take me to the river, and the river will take me home. Except it wouldn't, not truly. Meereen was not her home, and never would be. It was a city of strange men with strange gods and stranger hair, of slavers wrapped in fringed tokars, where grace was earned through whoring, butchery was art, and dog was a delicacy. Meereen would always be the Harpy's city, and Daenerys could not be a harpy.

The series is all about the human heart in conflict with itself, and Daenerys in ADWD is one of the best examples of that. She was struggling with her two competing titles of Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons, but in the end she was not comfortable with being the Breaker of Chains. This final transformation she undergoes in the Dothraki sea really sets the tone for what she will do in the future, and how she will change as a person and character.

Mother of Dragons

Daenerys X is one of the more bizarre chapters in the series, since it follows only one character alone with her thoughts, but it works extremely well as a character study, and the development over the course of the chapter is one of my favourites in the whole series. Through all the hallucinations and visions and dreams Daenerys has during this chapter, it's important to remember that they all (apart from possibly Quaithe) are her, so the discussions she has are with her own internal thoughts directly.

The topic of Targaryen madness reoccurs throughout the series, but it's ADWD where it is brought up the most. Now, the topic of Targaryen madness will be another post i will do in the far future and won't discuss in depth today, but the matter is that Dany is aware of some of it, even if she hasn't fully accepted the truth of her father. She fears that she is succumbing to the madness at points.

"Your Grace?" Missandei stood in the door of the queen's bedchamber, a lantern in her hand. "Who are you talking to?" Dany glanced back toward the persimmon tree. There was no woman there. No hooded robe, no lacquer mask, no Quaithe. A shadow. A memory. No one. She was the blood of the dragon, but Ser Barristan had warned her that in that blood there was a taint. Could I be going mad? They had called her father mad, once.

Later, she implies this fear again to Barristan.

I lived in fear for fourteen years, my lord. I woke afraid each morning and went to sleep afraid each night … but my fears were burned away the day I came forth from the fire. Only one thing frightens me now." "And what is it that you fear, sweet queen?" "I am only a foolish young girl." Dany rose on her toes and kissed his cheek. "But not so foolish as to tell you that. My men shall look at these ships. Then you shall have my answer."

But in an early version of Daenerys III, the answer Daenerys gave was "myself". She fears what would happen if she "woke the dragon", as Viserys put it. She's afraid of succumbing to the madness that consumed her father and probably was consuming Viserys. She's afraid of what would happen if she unleashed her dragons, how many innocents they would kill. But in the Dothraki sea, she begins to question her decisions, starting when she woke up after finding blood between her thighs:

"I am the blood of the dragon," she told the grass, aloud. Once, the grass whispered back, until you chained your dragons in the dark. "Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was … her name …" Dany could not recall the child's name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. "I will never have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons." Aye, the grass said, but you turned against your children.

The importance of this quote cannot go unnoticed. She thinks about Hazzea all the time throughout the book, feeling deeply guilty about what Drogon did to her. But here, at the end, she cannot remember her name. The in world explanation is that, of course, she is delirious from being in the wilderness eating berries and being sick, but thematically this is her slowly turning away from the people she freed. Next comes a dream with Viserys (long quote incoming):

She dreamt of her dead brother. Viserys looked just as he had the last time she'd seen him. His mouth was twisted in anguish, his hair was burnt, and his face was black and smoking where the molten gold had run down across his brow and cheeks and into his eyes. "You are dead," Dany said. Murdered. Though his lips never moved, somehow she could hear his voice, whispering in her ear. You never mourned me, sister. It is hard to die unmourned. "I loved you once." Once, he said, so bitterly it made her shudder. You were supposed to be my wife, to bear me children with silver hair and purple eyes, to keep the blood of the dragon pure. I took care of you. I taught you who you were. I fed you. I sold our mother's crown to keep you fed. "You hurt me. You frightened me." Only when you woke the dragon. I loved you. "You sold me. You betrayed me." No. You were the betrayer. You turned against me, against your own blood. They cheated me. Your horsey husband and his stinking savages. They were cheats and liars. They promised me a golden crown and gave me this. He touched the molten gold that was creeping down his face, and smoke rose from his finger. "You could have had your crown," Dany told him. "My sun-and-stars would have won it for you if only you had waited." I waited long enough. I waited my whole life. I was their king, their rightful king. They laughed at me. "You should have stayed in Pentos with Magister Illyrio. Khal Drogo had to present me to the dosh khaleen, but you did not have to ride with us. That was your choice. Your mistake." Do you want to wake the dragon, you stupid little whore? Drogo's khalasar was mine. I bought them from him, a hundred thousand screamers. I paid for them with your maidenhead. "You never understood. Dothraki do not buy and sell. They give gifts and receive them. If you had waited …" I did wait. For my crown, for my throne, for you. All those years, and all I ever got was a pot of molten gold. Why did they give the dragon's eggs to you? They should have been mine. If I'd had a dragon, I would have taught the world the meaning of our words. Viserys began to laugh, until his jaw fell away from his face, smoking, and blood and molten gold ran from his mouth.

The dream terrifies Daenerys, but once again, Viserys (really herself here) is telling her she is stalling in a place she doesn't belong, that she needs to go home, that she should embrace being a dragon. The climax of this comes right after she realizes Meereen would never be her home, where she argues with Jorah (again, herself):

Meereen would always be the Harpy's city, and Daenerys could not be a harpy. Never, said the grass, in the gruff tones of Jorah Mormont. You were warned, Your Grace. Let this city be, I said. Your war is in Westeros, I told you. The voice was no more than a whisper, yet somehow Dany felt that he was walking just behind her. My bear, she thought, my old sweet bear, who loved me and betrayed me. She had missed him so. She wanted to see his ugly face, to wrap her arms around him and press herself against his chest, but she knew that if she turned around Ser Jorah would be gone. "I am dreaming," she said. "A waking dream, a walking dream. I am alone and lost." Lost, because you lingered, in a place that you were never meant to be, murmured Ser Jorah, as softly as the wind. Alone, because you sent me from your side. "You betrayed me. You informed on me, for gold." For home. Home was all I ever wanted. "And me. You wanted me." Dany had seen it in his eyes. I did, the grass whispered, sadly. "You kissed me. I never said you could, but you did. You sold me to my enemies, but you meant it when you kissed me." I gave you good counsel. Save your spears and swords for the Seven Kingdoms, I told you. Leave Meereen to the Meereenese and go west, I said. You would not listen. "I had to take Meereen or see my children starve along the march." Dany could still see the trail of corpses she had left behind her crossing the Red Waste. It was not a sight she wished to see again. "I had to take Meereen to feed my people." You took Meereen, he told her, yet still you lingered. "To be a queen." You are a queen, her bear said. In Westeros. "It is such a long way," she complained. "I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl." No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words. "Fire and Blood," Daenerys told the swaying grass.

And here is where everything changes. She has spent time trying to protect innocent lives, to make peace, not war, to be loved and accepted by Meereen. But here, she decides that it is time to do away with that. Meereen is not her home, Westeros is, and it's time to wake the dragon and burn Yunkai. No longer will she be burdened by the idea of a cost of innocent lives, no longer will she fear herself, and no longer will she linger. When the time comes, she will burn her enemies and leave for Westeros.

I need to make a few things clear here, however. For one, I don't think she's mad now, this is just her resolving her internal conflict. For another, I don't care what she does to the slavers. They deserve what's coming for them. She will still care about the innocent, but she's now going to go full-blooded Targaryen and burn cities to the ground, and this will mean massive collateral damage she will try to rationalize away.

Daenerys has now transformed into a different, much darker character, which I feel will continue to define her for the rest of the series. She is now the Mother of Dragons, in her entirety, and Essos is about to bleed and burn. I really appreciate how GRRM put this together, and that she didn't stay fire and blood after Astapor. His character development is realistic, and sometimes the development is not linear. In part 3, I will be discussing predictions about Daenerys's arc and story in TWOW, more specifically what she will do in Essos.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #asoiaf character arcs #daenerys targaryen #daenerys stormborn #mother of dragons #adwd #meereen

[permets-2]

Your tag that says why do we have to say this, I get it's a hypothetical question but JFC this is the most racist fandom I've ever been in. I can't conceptualize why, but it is. It's the epitome of white queerness and feminism, and is just tiring.

Okay I’m so sorry this is probably a longer response than you wanted but I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and yeah. Let’s talk. 

Why is the Les Mis fandom so racist?  

(Disclaimer that this is based on my own experiences in this fandom, I don’t speak for all Les Mis fans of color, obviously. Also that this is not a post to “prove” the Les Mis fandom is racist. If you need that before you wanna know why, you’re part of the problem.) (There’s a tl;dr at the end)

It’s because at the end of the day, anon, no matter how many Black Grantaires are drawn and no matter how many Asian Cosettes we get, Les Mis is media primarily by, for, and about white people. I mean, on a factual level, Hugo was white, and let’s not forget he had some wild thoughts on race - saying that white people were “the highest type which the human race has so far reached” and talking about the “inferior races,” saying that Europeans would “civilize and cultivate” Africa in the letter he wrote to The London News regarding slavery in America and John Brown. Also, obviously, all the characters are canonically white. That’s part of why content of the Amis as involved in BLM protests is so harmful imo - no matter the surface story you’re depicting, no matter how you draw them or write them, these are characters who are rooted in and steeped in whiteness, and The Black Lives Matter movement is not for or about them as white people. And, however you rewrite this story, it doesn't change the fact that you'd be imposing a narrative created by a white supremacist on a movement against white supremacy. This is not to say headcanoning/drawing/writing characters as whatever race you want is wrong, or that there isn’t power in artists of color reclaiming stories that have excluded or erased us for so many years! Lord knows I live and breathe for Amis of color, especially when they’re culturally well-represented. But it would not only be naive but also factually inaccurate to pretend that Les Mis is a story for People of Color, or a story that contains acute discussions of racial dynamics, let alone actively dismantles white supremacy.

 Also, anon, the culture surrounding Les Mis source material is steeped in whiteness and exclusion. Musical Theatre is one of the most financially exclusive forms of art - tickets are often upwards of $100 each especially for a big name show like Les Mis. I could talk forever about the ways theatre is used as a tool of classism and racism, but in this instance, it boils down to People of Color are directly and indirectly denied access to the world of musical theatre, as audience, writers, directors, performers, etc. We basically see only white people playing the characters of Les Mis in professional (and non-professional) theatre, which is another less tangible barrier to communities of color. You’d think the brick would be more accessible, and on a factual level, sure, most people can find a copy for $9 at Barnes and Noble or get it from the library. But by God, the amount of academic elitism in high school essays to tumblr posts about the brick is off the charts - classic lit has a long history of pushing out People of Color. Why is Hugo one of the most well-known names in all of literature and not Hurston? Baldwin? Du Bois? (This is rhetorical. We know why.) There’s a lot of reasons why the brick and musical alike have been kept away from people of color (that i could get into, starting in 1619, but honestly we’d be here a while)- making this, once again, a piece of media by, for, and about white people.

 Which is not to say there aren’t people of color in this fandom, or that we don’t belong here. I know so many Les Mis fans of color in our online community (myself included) who love it here and are so grateful for this space. It’s just harder - we have to write things off all the time. Why is almost 100% of cosplay white people? Why are most all the most popular creators white? Why, when characters are drawn/headcanoned/written as POC, does it play into stereotypes- why are Joly and Combeferre (the doctors) and Cosette (the woman who does not get much agency) the ones depicted as Asian, why are Eponine and Grantaire (the characters who Hugo explicitly calls ugly) the ones depicted as Black? (My broski @everydayatleast as a great post about that here) Why are we so set on blond Enjolras, no matter what ethnicity he’s depicted as?

And here’s the kicker: because of the plotline of Les Mis, we tend to ignore any issues of injustice in our own fandom. We think that because Les Mis is about equality and revolution, we’re automatically culturally and politically progressive. We think that because “Enjolras says Eat The Rich” and “books like these will never be useless”, we have achieved Wokeness. We think that when we stan these activist characters, we’re checking our activism box. We think that because we’ve got a diversity of genders and sexualities we’ve checked the box of representation but that’s another can of worms I will not get into. And this is almost always unconscious, I don’t think any of us are actively and maliciously trying to be racist! There is nothing wrong with having a background of whiteness! There is nothing wrong with being factually or culturally white as a piece of media (or, like, a person)! It is when we fail to be critical of the ways this whiteness affects others that we create racist spaces. (Which, as you said, anon, is how we get White/Non-intersectional Feminism.)

This is not directed at anyone in particular in the slightest, and this is in no way intended as a callout - I have so much love for this online community. And no, I don’t mean every single one of you is actively and aggressively being racist on Tumblr every single day. But yes I do mean the collective us as a fandom contributes towards a culture of racism every day, myself included. We as a fandom can do so much better. As Moose said when we yelled about LM racism for a hawt couple hours today, “In a fandom that purports to be about equality and social justice, we have to live up to our own ideals”.

(tl;dr - the Les Mis fandom is racist because it is a piece of white culture and writen by/for/about white people, Broadway and classic lit is rooted in exclusionism and there’s a lot of forces keeping people of color out of our original source materials, and because of the narrative of Les Mis being about revolution and social progress, we feel like we’ve achieved that and aren’t critical of our own shortcomings)

(phat thanks to my bro moose @everydayatleast for editing and contributing and Yelling with me!!)

#Les miserables #les mis #les amis #fandom racism #sollie speaks #if you feel hurt offended ashamed bitter guilty targeted while reading this post #maybe its time to do some thinkin #Things i did not include in this bc i have self control: the complexities of Black Javert and White Valjean #White Enjolras with a raised fist (aka BLACK POWER FIST?) #how i see almost no art of latinx/hispanic amis and even less indigenous amis #i think once i saw a middle eastern feuilly #how i looked through the faculty of prestigious univerisity classics departments and found 2 people of color out of hundreds of total facult #white people dont clown on this post challenge #other people of color would Love to hear your thoughts on this #seriously lets chat #would also love if yall (poc) have thoughts for you to message me instead of publically vibe checking me #plz im doing my best here #A series of disclaimers #first op is a person of color if that wasnt clear #listen to black creators and black voices especially for issues around BLM #second i have not read all of hugos letters #but i read this one on slavery a while back for apush and it stuck with me #hugo was racist #and im not saying like hes cancelled or some shit #because fuck cancel culture #just please can we be CRITICAL here #third PLEASE dont come for me about saying cosette has no agency #this is not what this is about #you are missing the point #fourth seriously this is not a callout

[richincolor]

Interview: Michelle Quach

We have a special guest today. Michelle Quach was kind enough to answer a few questions for us about her debut, Not Here to Be Liked. It's being released today so you can grab it right away.

Summary: Eliza Quan is the perfect candidate for editor in chief of her school paper. That is, until ex-jock Len DiMartile decides on a whim to run against her. Suddenly her vast qualifications mean squat because inexperienced Len—who is tall, handsome, and male—just seems more like a leader.

When Eliza’s frustration spills out in a viral essay, she finds herself inspiring a feminist movement she never meant to start, caught between those who believe she’s a gender equality champion and others who think she’s simply crying misogyny.

Amid this growing tension, the school asks Eliza and Len to work side by side to demonstrate civility. But as they get to know one another, Eliza feels increasingly trapped by a horrifying realization—she just might be falling for the face of the patriarchy himself.

Crystal: First off, I read Not Here to Be Liked all in one gulp. You had my attention from the first page and I absolutely needed to know what was going to happen next. The plot was intriguing and the romance had me smiling so many times. On a side note--I also seriously considered simplifying my wardrobe.

From the title, it's fairly obvious that likeability is not Eliza's priority. How do you think likeability plays out along gender lines?

Michelle: Aw, thank you so much—I’m glad to hear that you enjoyed the book!

I think it’s possible for people of all genders to be unlikeable, but it plays an outsize role in the way a girl’s worth is determined. Being liked isn’t always a requirement for a man’s success, but it is almost always for a woman’s. On top of that, the standards for female likeability are quite fickle. Your appearance factors in disproportionately, as does your ability to make others feel comfortable. Sometimes you can even become unlikeable just for being too popular (think of basically every young female celebrity ever). And the worst part is, these expectations can continue to shape your behavior even after you’re aware of how absurd they are.

Crystal: Are there unlikable female characters in other novels that have caught your attention in the past?

Michelle: Probably my favorite of all time is Harriet from Harriet the Spy. She’s self-absorbed, judgmental, and nosy—but she also learns, which mean there’s hope for all of us. More recently, I also found Ivy from White Ivy by Susie Yang to be terrifically unlikable. I won’t say whether she learns anything, though.

Crystal: What kind of relationship do you have with the term and concept of feminism?

Michelle: I definitely consider myself a feminist, though my relationship with the concept has evolved a lot over the years. In fact, I’d say it’s still evolving! What makes sense to me right now is the idea that feminism needs to be as inclusive as possible, which means it should dismantle not only sexism but also all other forms of structural inequality, including racism and economic inequality. That said, I do also support all kinds of progress, even if it’s incremental.

Crystal: What was the most fun aspect of writing Eliza and Len's story?

Michelle: Their banter! I love writing dialogue in general, but it’s so fun to throw two well-matched characters together and just let them go at it.

Crystal: Were any of the characters more challenging to write than the others?

Michelle: I would say Winona, because her experience as a Black teen in a majority Asian and White community is most outside my own, and I wanted to do my best to make sure her story felt authentic.

Crystal: Can you tell us a little bit about your journey to publication?

Michelle: I started writing Not Here to Be Liked about four years ago, after almost a decade of not writing anything at all. Before that point, I’d basically given up on my dream of even finishing a draft, let alone getting published. But I gave it another shot as part of a 100 days challenge…and this time I made it to the end! Everything happened really fast after that: I got my agent through PitMad, we went on submission a month later, and then the book sold at auction within a few weeks.

Crystal: If you're able to share, what's up next with your writing?

Michelle: I’m currently working on Book 2, another YA contemporary romance, and trying to read and watch as much as possible to get inspiration for Book 3!

Crystal: We wish you the best with the book release and look forward to reading more of you work in the future. Thanks so much!

Michelle Quach is a Chinese-Vietnamese-American who also spent a lot of time working for student newspapers--including The Crimson at Harvard College, where she earned a BA in history and literature. Currently a graphic designer at a brand strategy firm in Los Angeles, Not Here to be Liked is her first novel.

#debut novel #interview #Michelle Quach #not here to be liked

[tiny012]

Crit Post: The Break Up Arc

You know what’s hard? 

Wanting to write an essay totally dismantling the Break Up Arc and explaining not excusing Mamoru actions in a Introverted perceptive. 

I have been trying to figure out how the do it for the longest. 

Because really there are more things wrong with the break up arc than just Mamo breaking up with her, acting cold, and not telling her about the dreams. 

There are more logistics to it and how it honestly could have work with a introverted and female touch to it. 

 Because I’m introverted and some of the things Mamo did in the 90′s anime ( and the manga) makes sense to me as I got older. 

I say this 

Some Introverts have a hard time getting close to someone or telling their inter thoughts. We are honestly better listeners than actual talkers. You can vent to us for hours( even tho it can get draining) but getting something out of us if we not comfortable with you yet is like pulling teeth. 

We are private as hell and let some people see sides of us of what  want to see and we internalized a lot of shit in.

We would rather hold all in, address the problem themselves and not include no one else in it. We would rather handled things by themselves.

Is our intent to hurt some one? No It’s honestly the last thing we want to do.

Actually our intention is NOT to hurt someone which is the reason why don’t tell things. We put walls around them so order they want get hurt as well.  Honestly we can be our own worst enemy sometimes. 

So when we do find that person that we can trust and have our backs they get the flood of words and emotions that we  have. When we find someone to vent to we vent. 

So if you look back at what I said is that true to Mamo? HELL YES 

Mamoru’s intention in the break up  was never to hurt Usagi but to save her because he saw the dreams that shook the hell out of him thinking the one person that he love the most could die again. 

Read more because boy this got long!!! 

Being a reincarnated prince who had a ill fated romance with a princess which ended in tragedy and now seeing your current girlfriend who you just got with who is the reincarnated princess die again? Which it seems like it’s could be your fault that she’s in this again?

Yeah should shake anyone who sees the love of their life dies again after receiving a second chance to love.... 

With his tack record of having Dreams about SliMli and the fact he probably felt it was his fault she died as Serenity in the past makes sense he would be absolutely shook if he’s having Prophetic Dreams of Upcoming Doom ( PDUD if you watch my livebloging of SMC season 3 I’m bring this back. lol) )with a booming face saying saying “ Oh Yeah Usagi is going to die again if you don’t stay away from her. “ 

His first thought wasn’t “ Oh maybe it’s an enemy is sending me this dreams” or “ maybe I need to talk to her about this or Rei who have prophetic dreams like me” his though was “ Oh shit She may die again because of me. I have to protect her from me. Even if that means hurting myself.” 

Was he thinking rationally? No! Hell No!

How would an 17 -18 year old react to seeing his new girlfriend who he shares a tragic past with dying on their wedding day in a dream? This supposed to be the happiest day of their lives and end up being the ending of November Rain by Guns and Roses Video ( yall please look that video up. it’s a classic) I’m surprised Endy didn’t have the dream being centered on her dying as Moon. ( Oh shit yall) 

So yes the dream shook him. 

Yes he wasn’t thinking rationally and thought a break up would be the best option out of it and she would be still alive to save the world....  

Here’s where the problem comes in with the behavior.. 

Remember when I said that Mamo was Emotionally Detracted to Usagi in the first two seasons? 

 Actually he was only Emotionally Detached from her in the first season hence the teasing and borderline bullying.

Emotional Detachment -an inability or unwillingness to connect with other people on an emotional level. For some people, being emotionally detached helps protect them from unwanted drama, anxiety, or stress.

He was actually Emotionally Attached to her in second season in which this is where the problem comes in. 

Emotionally Attached -having feelings of concern and care for someone, and not wanting the friendship or relationship to end. It's an emotional connection to another person.

Mamoru Chiba trying to act emotionally detached that this doesn’t phase him or she meant nothing to him  to Usagi Tsukino but failing so bad at it that he made some decisions that where horrible and was borderline abusive. 

Because seriously some of the shit he said and did even tho he looked like he was going to break down crying everytime... (Tears on the Motorcycle Hamlet..)

Because season one he was an jerk to her that actually like get her pissed off for fun meanwhile in season two he was pretending to be an asshole to her so she stay away which is harder to do. Especially the fact he wants to be close to her and knows he can’t. 

The tactics that were used and how the narrative went about it is the problem. 

Let name the things that the narrative had Mamo do and the reason why this arc needs to be in a dumpfire.. 

1. Lying to her didn’t help at all cause it completely breaks the trust they supposed to have. Him saying cold and mean things, like he didn’t love her, that he doesn’t like weak girls, acting an ass when he passed her down the street crushed her already low self esteem  I will never forgive the narrative for letting him say “ I don’t like weak girls.” BOY

I think it could have been a way to still do the break up without him lying to her pe se but not telling her about the dreams yet due to the fact he hold things in and want to handle himself. I don’t know what it would be. Maybe he start to distance himself from her and the tell her that they got together to quickly because they barely know things about each other and should be friends first then see where this would go? Since they didn’t really have to time to really build up their friendship? That they shouldn’t be together solely because of the past and because they actually have a thing for each other?  I mean I think it would be WAY less messier than him saying that he didn’t love her or he didn’t like weak girls. Also I truly believe that she would be upset at first about that but he realized he’s right and agree.  That way he wouldn’t have to be cold to her and keep some distract but still be friends with her. 

2. Using Motoki’s  sister as a pawn to show that he moved on and hoping that Usagi would hate him  which he publicly humiliated her in front of her friends by telling Motoki ‘s sister that she was somebody that he knew was completely wrong. ( Which still hunted her cause in a episode in S he was taking Motoki’s    sister home on his bike which Usagi almost freaked out thinking about the last time she was on his bike)  Then  turn around in the same episode and humiliate her again saying that he didn’t love her after he saved her made it worst

This is where it went from unintentionally trying to hurt her to  intentionally hurt her by using his best friend sister to do it in which almost actually killed her. ( Guys we don’t talk about her binge eating in front of the fridge while crying enough. We don’t and we need too. If it wasn’t for the fact this essay is already getting long. I need to rewatch that episode again so I can do a full rant on that scene)  That honestly should have been the end because after he intentionally hurted her which cause her to almost die.. He should have said fuck those dreams.. 

3.It also make look like it was her fault since you had her friends saying that he had his reasons (which he did) instead of by supportive, Chbiusa and Rei joking that she got dumped,Luna not being supportive, and Rei telling her she have to trust him even tho he given her zero reasons to trust him 

Now let me drag the Inner senshi and Luna in this for a min.. 

The break up arc is the reason why I refuse to say that the Usagi and the Inner Senshi friendship was the best in the 90′s anime. You can’t pay me to say that shit. 

When you fail to show their friendship at it’s highest peak during one of the most reliable things that happen in the show.. When your core audience is at that age where they starting to have their first loves,boyfriends ,girlfriends and heartaches. When also that audience have friends their age and gender that they talk to help them through that situation. Who show their support and shoulder to lean on. When you fail to show it at a reliable light by showing your core audience that your friends going to tell you “he has his reasons” and sort of “bush it off” instead of being there but then at the end act like they’re bestest best friends ever ?? That act like they supported her since the beginning??

SERIOUSLY 

But yeah we do get a scene of Rei teasing her that she got dumped and then telling her that she have to trust him even tho he gave no reasons to trust him. In which Koan Usagi more sound advice than her bestie does but due to fact Koan is evil her advice is looked down upon by the narrative..  Fun times.. 

I would have killed for scene like this 

Where Usagi and the girls are at Rei Shine trying to cheer Usagi up while having a sleepover. They are all eating pizza, watching a movie ,and just having a good time. Just trying to take her mind off of Mamo. Then while in the midst of her laughing ,she starts to cry. She starts to cry and tell them that she have to be strong to get him to love her again. That she have to better herself. That she’s too weak for him. That she have to earn his love back. I just want them to tell her that she doesn’t. That she doesn’t have to earn his love back because she got nothing to prove. That she doesn’t have to change herself cause she’s the strongest person they know. Who have the biggest loving heart ever.To tell her that’s it’s ok ,they support and love her and everything will work at the end. They she have to stop letting it eat her up cause it’s not her fault. Cause they can’t lose their sister and friend like that to her false guilt. After that she tells them she loves them ,they have a big group hug and start laughing through their tears. After that ,they watch movies until they fall asleep. Oh Chibs is with them as well giving her encouragement too.

But nope we didn’t get that..  Don’t get me started with Luna. 

Moving on. 

Seriously, the narrative went out of its way to make him look like an asshole than he was in season one and her being like “ Even tho you are cold to me I still love you.”   

4. Endymion was just used as a scapegoat cause the writers wrote themselves into a hole and he was the only way to explain it even tho it still didn’t make any sense because he was taking a risk messing up his own happiness.  

King Endymion could have easy played the guide role in this and help him untap his power like he does in the manga. Like the dreams he sent him could have been vision about Crystal Tokyo and what’s going on. Can you imagine him sending the vison of Serenity in the glass coffin to Mamo?? Or even a dream confirming what he expected in which Chibausa is actually their daughter? Or what the Black Moon Clan is up too? Or even their wedding day without the booming voice?  That would have been way more helpful than telling him he needs to stay away from her. In matter of fact he probably tell him he needs to get his shit together because if he don’t he would lose her forever. Because believe me that vision of her in that coffin looking beautiful and regal would have fucked his ass up. He would have totally forget to tell her and their others the things he seen and only focus on that which would be reason why he distanced himself from her. 

Would Endymion be sympathy ? Hell Yes because Mamo is younger him before he learned to let go and trust.. He would understand that Mamo didn’t want to bring her into his darkness but he will he make him understand that Usagi is his light to his darkness and together they can do some powerful things. That Usagi does embrace his darkness and light and dark balance each other out. 

Or even the  dreams are really manifestations of Mamoru’s self-conscious. Meaning that his inner self still trying to keep their walls that Mamo built for so long intact which the way to do so is send dreams of the person that are tearing them down. .That the dreams scare him enough to push her away and built them back up. It will show that Mamo is still afraid of what Usagi is doing. That he’s still afraid of love and not being alone anymore. That he can’t let the six year boy who lost his parents and was alone for so long go.That whole arc could have been focus on him realizing this by looking deep in his heart and finally it letting it all go. That he have let the scared little six year boy who was alone for so many years go so the 18 teenage whose on the edge of become a man embrace something that he deserved so much. Love and companionship.

It was ways to do this without breaking Usagi low esteem worst and making him look like an asshole. 

So yes while it’s understandable why he broke up with her cause he was scared of losing her dying which broke him up instead too, the tactics behind it was horrible. The writers didn’t understand how to write for a introverted character like Mamo.. 

#Mamoru Chiba #usagi tsukino #Break Up Arc #Sailor Moon #Sailor Moon R #Tanya rants about SM

[fencesandfrogs]

cloudtail’s daughter: jayfeather

alright, strap in, it's time for jayfeather. i've been holding it in on him for what feels like forever now; he's ya boy's favorite character

also, aside from dove and ivy, he's the character with the highest volume of changes to canon. even above cloudtail and brightheart, because they continue their lives, it's not a big deal. and lion and cinder go to the tribe, but like, that's it. (i'm figuring out if jay goes with them over the course of this essay. i think i said he did in holly? but he literally hasn't been mentioned once in that arc because there's a lot going on.) anyway lion and cinder don't get up to anything. but jay's priorities shift and we see that in his books. i'm really excited to write him but i need to finish arc 1 lmao.

but first, same deal as always. this is part of my cloudtail's daughter au, where dovekit and ivykit are born to cloudtail and brightheart. i don't know how well this will read preemptively, but i suspect it will be rather dependent on the others. cloudtail's daughter: dovewing and/or the long post that explains it are both good places to start, see the cloudtail's daughter tag on my blog.

[2.5k words, 14 minute read, one of the last warriors essays on this blog. i'm going to finish out with my character essays and then everything will be on new sideblog. so check out @mallowstep for more.]

section one: the leafpool business

at the beginning of this series, leafpool and jayfeather are on bad terms. they will stay on bad terms for basically the entirity of the book series. while one of my main complaints with po3/oots is the lack of acknowledgement of adoption, jayfeather has been lied to by his mother and his mentor, something neither hollyleaf or lionblaze have to contend with, and then his sister kills herself over it. obviously she doesn't, but from his perspective. so he blames leafpool because he was really close to hollyleaf and now she's gone, and it's his first real loss, and there's so much going on.

and so he's a grouch and he's unhappy and he's just trying to function when his whole support system has been dismantled over the course of what, like, a quarter moon? yeah so dovekit and ivykit are like "wow what a grouch he sucks" the same way they don't realize prey is dying of thirst & etc.

for the most part he's j chilling and then hollyleaf comes back and man is it some family drama. unfortunately it's postponed til book 4 because hollyleaf and jayfeather have journeys but anyway i'm getting ahead of myself, because this section should end and unlike the hollyleaf essay i want to actually have decent organization.

section two: hollyleaf is away (but jayfeather doesn't get to play)

holly, cinder, and dove go to deal with beavers. we only get jayfeather through lionblaze in the books, but jayfeather is...conflicted. he got his sister back and lost her again and oh i should say. i think jayfeather and hollyleaf are the closer pair of the siblings. not that they don't love lionblaze the same, but you know how cats pair bond? like, it's usually a trauma thing, but even in feral cats, you see very close friendships. anyway yeah so for other au's i've been sorting siblings n denmates into pairs for this purpose (mostly jaywing au because there's a lot re. dovepaw and jaypaw and remember they are reincarnated siblings they've got a close bond going.) and it's kind of...i don't know my point is jayfeather misses his sister because she's like, his best friend too. or she was. and then she died and now she's back and she left again, and lionblaze is more concerned about cinderheart, so jayfeather just comes off as grouchy all the time. but really he's lonely and sad.

so yeah, jayfeather is kind of moping around camp and then the tree falls and whoops now briarpaw/light is parapalegic.

and uhh this goes more or less as in canon but we don't get pov which is fine bc u can sub in canon. but jayfeather? he's still a sad boy but now he's a sad boy with purpose and that makes all the difference

yeah he's close with her. they're sweet. it's sweet. he's pressured by brambleclaw to take an apprentice. he's bristly and angry and "you're not my real father" you know?

beaver crew gets back. jayfeather, who had missed holly, is back to being angry for...angst and plot purpose, really.

but you know, when you love & miss someone and they leave and they come back and somehow that's worse because now they can leave you again? and you can't tell them you want them to stay because you're angry and hurt but you want them to stay? god i'm excited to write these chapters i love emotional turmoil.

he's protective of briarlight, he's trying to keep dovepaw from being a medicine cat, hollyleaf is apologizing but he's not ready to hear it and lionblaze and hollyleaf are beginning to reconnect and it feels like betrayal. so when cinderheart and lionblaze go to the tribe, he tags along. everyone, uh, strongly encourages he go. he is the big grouch.

section three: time travelling times

okay so the timeline for these books is...messy. if you track the chronology of my writing, it's messy. which is to say, i was thinking i could put forgotten warrior and distant whispers over the same time span, but that actually doesn't work, as i review my notes for FW because a big part of it is ivy and holly's relationship. so. fake news. whoops. that sucks.

or maybe it doesn't? idk i don't usually tell linear stories. i like messing with emotional impact of events. so writing 600k of very linear story telling is very not easy for me. but i'm trying.

right so basically the official order of events until i change my mind again is as follows (names abbreviated as DIHLJC because they're all unique): DCH returns from beavers, DILCJ go to tribe with some other random warrior undecided, J + rando return, JH start awkwardness (beginning of TFW, middle of DW), DILC return (end of DW), time travel stuff (middle to end of TFW). hopefully that was intelligble, but it is admittedly 85% for my own benefit.

alright so we've covered during beavers, now jayfeather and hmmmm let's say, uhhhh, let's say they go with, literally any interesting background character, uh, bumblestripe! he doesn't do anything in this au bumblestripe goes with them. also since his name starts w b i can still write DIHLJCB and have things be unambigious. and it means there are fewer bs in thunderclan and trust me you don't know how frustrating the existence of like 6 b characters is.

alright so we really have 3 sets of two pairs of cats here. maybe i won't go w bumblestripe, bc he doesn't have an existing relationship w jayfeather. i dunno. i'm a big fan of jay & briar, whether as a ship or just besties, but that's just out, and hollyleaf can't come a) because i said so and b) honestly maybe she can? actually wait hold on that solves my problems. hot damn so 6/6 of the pov cats go to the tribe and this will be one of the only times all six characters are plot relevant at the same time. but i'm going george r r martin on it and seperating the books not by time but into DICL + JH because they're two completely separate character arcs that happen to take place at the same time. (don't worry i'm going to resolve the fallen leaves thing. in this essay ig bc i've already covered hollyleaf.)

okay so yeah hollyleaf is sent bc jayfeather isn't planning on staying w tribe for long time. just short time. and he's all "firestar why"

"well jayfeather," firestar says, "you don't talk to your family."

"i talk to dovewing," jayfeather says

"you're not related to her," firestar says

"there's a whole prophecy about how i'm related to her," jayfeather says

"you know about that?" firestar says

and that's how the cat gets out of the bag.

so anyway. jayfeather and hollyleaf are sent because...hold on, spinning the wheel of reasons for a character to go on a field trip...because...because...because...because...jayfeather had one of those dreams. i don't know. rock or something. now he's going.

they get there, and this is where the books get a lil time wonky, bc jayfeather and hollyleaf stay for like a moon, during which jayfeather goes back in time. i think.

i haven't worked out the details and probably won't until i do an updated au synopsis because it's hard to keep track and i'm more concerned about character through lines. like, jayfeather does this and he feels sad, and hollyleaf is sad about her ghost boyfriend, and they're travelling back together, and hollyleaf is his sister and she doesn't make him feel like he needs protection and lionblaze is bad at that, and they start to talk again.

and yeah, they bond. again. it's kind of, on top of their old bond? like they don't repair anything, they bond like strangers. but it's not nothing, and that matters.

so jayfeather gets back, and we're moving into book five, and i don't remember when the last time i made a section break was or what number we're on, so...sorry.

section ???: old man yells at cloud

alright it's finally jayfeather's moment. you know, he's one of my favorite characters, and he only gets a book and a half. "but mateo," i hear you saying, "doesn't every character get a book and a half? and more importantly, 6x1.5 is 9, so how does every character get a book and a half?" well, yes, every character does, but dovewing and ivypool are relevant in books 1-3 and 6, cinderheart in 1-3 and 5, lionblaze in 1-3, and hollyleaf in 2-5 (and has a critical role in 1 and 6, just no character development), while jayfeather is just really essential to books 4-5, and has a background role in 3. that means he's about equal to lionblaze. he's equal to lionblaze. as far as the numbers go, i cannot tell you. it's a mystery.

right so the reason for this is because (a) jayfeather doesn't do that much in oots. i love him, but he's not, like, super important, and (b) he's going to work better in these books if he's concentrated. because his big theme is his relationship with hollyleaf and the past. they're both kind of stuck in it but in different ways. and that prevents them from ever properly healing. so jay never has a full arc in this. i mean he has a full arc, it's just not a satisfying one. and that means he's sort of got to be put in the containment units.

so anyway, he gets his real big moments in the fifth book, when he's reuniting starclan. i think this is one of the riskier decisions on my part: we'll see whether or not i can deliver on him the way i plan to. but i think i can pull it off so that his arc is more meaningful condensed as such.

right. so. jayfeather is decided. he is going to fix starclan. because dead cats need to get thier shit together and he dgaf.

he spends a decent amount of time arguing with yellowfang and bluestar, because basically no important cats have died. at least we're in omen of the stars so it still makes sense? i have no idea why yellow/blue are still so important. please kill more important cats. it makes us feel things.

but feathertail is also probably going to be involved, i don't know. i haven't read these books (specifically, books 4 and 5 of oots) in forever so i don't really remember what happens. but he's kind of, super done with everything. i think he'll probably try to get the support of mothwing and kestrelflight (which is canon i believe?) and try to work as a team. i feel like there's weirdness w shadowclan too i should sort out.

so yeah, there's some medicine cat bonding, everything is OK, sol is happening? but cinderheart is dealing with that. jayfeather is naturally very upset about disconnects with sol but like he's also dealing with stuff i...i really need to reread outcast and sign of the moon. well, they're on my list after "all of these fucking riverclan novels like why they don't show up in the main series but i still have to read a bunch to be able to write them that's not fair."

alright, well, with that very vague description of what happens, moving on, the prophecy gets revealed to the clans at a whole in like...the ending eighth of this book. trying to maximise the amount of exposure to other clans without messing with the pacing.

so jayfeather and undecided warrior B (definitively not hollyleaf) go to windclan. jayfeather is...very unhappy about this. he does not want to leave. thunderclan is his home, and he's blind, and it's really hard to adapt to a new space and he thinks everyone is going to treeat him badly.

and well, if you've read my culture posts, windclan is....very pro-medicine cats and pro-prophecy cats. funerals. mourning. prayer. is probably the best place to start, but to get to the meat of it, start with general clan culture. to summarize, windclan: religious. but kind of like catholics, they don't believe in an individual connection with starclan. only leaders, and medicine cats, and very rarely members of prophecies have a connection. so. jayfeather. he's twice over. that's very cool to windclan.

so cats are kind of falling over themselves to help him, and like. i mean jayfeather is a grouch and he hates that he needs someone to help him through the territory, but at least they don't treat it like a chore, or like he's pitiable. this is a desirable task. apprentices want to know about his powers. and kestrelflight is a respected part of the clan, arguably more important than onestar, and jayfeather has never really gotten over being shoved in the healer hole as a child like it was lesser or easier to be a medicine cat, and so it's a big change.

and yeah. so i mean. an unobservant reader might say jayfeather has sufficient ego. he does not need stroking. they, of course, would be wrong.

jayfeather has a complex, but it's not an ego issue. he's...he's been denied everything he's wanted, and he's jaded, and weary, and he's never really believed that his clan views him as able and equal. in canon, at present, he's lost almost every cat he's every cared about. alderheart is his strongest remaining tie, and his fear at losing him, but willingness to let him leave, is very telling.

so yeah, jayfeather enjoys being accepted. anyone would. he doesn't really have confidence issues, but....argh. i know why this is good i swear it'll come out in the writing.

anyway, that's...that's pretty much it. jayfeather? done.

#warrior cats #warriors au #warriors #hollyleaf #jayfeather #q #mine #txt #13th #March #2021 #March 13th 2021 #cloudtail's daughter #essay #long

[the-busy-ghost]

Hi! I hope you're well - I was just wondering if you had any recommendations for interesting & engaging "introductory" texts about Scottish history (particularly between 500 and 1500 AD, although I know that's really broad!) No worries if you don't have any ideas or don't feel like answering such a vague question though! Have a lovely day :)

Hi! 

Apologies for the delayed response on this, I have no real excuse except being anxious that I wouldn’t be able to answer it perfectly. So I’ve decided to bite the bullet and answer somewhat imperfectly. This answer also depends on just exactly how much knowledge you already have of Scottish history, so if I’m being patronising and assuming too much ignorance, or alternatively if I’m not being clear enough, please let me know. 

The first thing I would always recommend before diving into serious literature is having a basic framework in the back of your mind. It may be an inaccurate framework but given that mediaeval Scottish history really isn’t taught or known to the same extent as say mediaeval English history, it is essential that you know where you are on a basic level, so you can both enjoy and learn from the texts that go into more detail. This basic background can come from almost anything- Braveheart and blatantly inaccurate novels aside. 

This is quite freeing because basically reading almost ANYTHING can be useful at first, and also first and foremost if you’re going to devote a considerable amount of time to something, you should work out how to make it fun and understandable.

I always had some idea of Scottish history since I was a kid but I got more into it in my late teens and I’ll be honest, though I probably don’t agree with anything in it pages now, one of the first books I picked up at the age of about sixteen was Neil Oliver’s ‘History of Scotland’ (released alongside the documentary series). Any basic ‘History of Scotland’ of that type (if it looks reasonably reputable) should give you a basic framework that you can build on- in the same way some people learn the kings and queens of England. Wikipedia could also work this way, though it may be more patchy. Other, slightly more reputable and in-depth but not really textbook, works of this kind include Stewart Ross’ “The Stewart Dynasty”; Alistair Moffat’s ‘The Borders’; popular (if coloured) biographies of people like Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, and Mary Queen of Scots (she’s post-medieval but still a relevant example); and even some of the older Victorian histories of people like Tytler (watch out though, they get weirdly ‘ethnic’ in their interpretations of some historical events and processes- some were convinced that there was a centuries-long feud between the “Celt” and the “Teuton”/”Saxon”). Even novels and songs- though sometimes highly inaccurate- can help with this, even if they’re Walter Scott. 

So I’m not going to be a purist and get snobby about Neil Oliver or Walter Scott even if I would never set store by any of the above works in an academic context (or even just a drunken argument). The first step in my view is literally to get a basic feel for what we *think* our history is (and enjoy learning about the different regions and cultures a bit!), and then you can set about dismantling all these stereotypes and misconceptions with better books. 

If you DO want a reasonably trustworthy general overview though, I believe that Fiona Watson has written one called “Scotland: From Prehistory to Present” and there must be a few others written by academics, it’s just been so long since I’ve read completely general histories I can’t really comment on this accurately.

Assuming you’re already aware of the above though and have a pretty good idea of what you’re dealing with then there are two next steps I would recommend.

The first are the series of texbooks/overviews that are often published by universities. Obviously since these are textbooks they are more introductory and general, but they do often cite academic articles and books that are more detailed. I have found a couple of series particularly useful and outlined the main titles below:

- The “New History of Scotland” series. This is a good series as most of the books were initially A5 sized or slightly bigger (so quick to read and easy to carry). Sadly this means that they do not employ footnotes/citations to any great extent, usually only providing a ‘Further Reading’ section at the end of the book. You can usually find old copies of these online for a reasonable price. This series includes, among others:

- “Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland, 80-1000”, by Alfred P  Smyth

- “Kingship and Unity: Scotland, 1000-1306″, by G.W.S. Barrow 

- “Independence and Nationhood: Scotland, 1306-1469″, by             Alexander Grant. (This one has a particularly good basic overview of diet, trade, e.t.c.)

- “Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470-1625″, by Jenny Wormald

- “Power and Propaganda: Scotland, 1306-1488″, by Katie Stevenson (note- the previous titles listed were written in the 1980s and 90s, but this one was added to the series in 2014, so it’s more up to date in some ways though it’s up to you whether you think it’s more persuasive).

- The “New Edinburgh History of Scotland” series. These are bigger books than the previous series and are complete with on page citations and bibliography. They tend to all come in matching blue jackets, and I thought that secondhand copies of these would be slightly more expensive than the above but a quick search on amazon has surprised me, since a copy of Oram’s “Domination and Lordship” is several pounds cheaper than Grant’s “Independence and Nationhood”. Anyway these are slightly more in-depth than the above series, but work very well in tandem with those shorter books. The series includes:

- “From Pictland to Alba: 789-1070″, by Alex Woolf (it is a very long time since I read this, so I have to admit I have very little memory of its contents but I put it here for balance)

- “Domination and Lordship: Scotland, 1070-1230″, by Richard Oram (good used along with Kingship and Unity)

- “The Wars of Scotland, 1214-1371″, by Michael Brown

- “The First Stewart Dynasty In Scotland, 1371-1488″, by Stephen Boardman (full disclosure I have not read this one yet, but I have read some of Boardman’s other books).

- “Scotland Reformed, 1488-1587″, by Jane E.A. Dawson

- The “History of Everyday Life” series. These books are collections of essays on some selected aspects of day to day life in medieval Scotland and can provide some interesting reading and insights. Only one of the books in this series is relevant to our time period, but it may be worth checking out the other three since some customs and behavioural patterns from more recent times are worth comparing with the past. The volume covering the medieval period is “A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland, 1000-1600″, edited by Edward Cowan and Lizanne Henderson.

- The “Northern World” series. This is not a series I’m particularly familiar with outside of some light reading while at university (mostly because these books can be really expensive compared to the previous ones mentioned). HOWEVER not only do they range across northern Europe (not just Scotland) but a couple of them help to balance out the Lowland focus which sometimes predominates in the above general overviews. There are quite a few interesting books in this series (identifiable usually by their purple jackets) but some that I know of include:

- “Kinship and Clientage: Highland Clanship, 1451-1609″ by Alison Cathcart.

- “The Lordship of the Isles”, edited by Richard Oram (this is a collection of essays)

There was also an older “Edinburgh History of Scotland” series published in the 1970s- some of the authors were better than others and they’re a bit dated now but they’re still a useful starting point. The series includes:

- “Scotland, the Making of the Kingdom”, by A.A.M. Duncan

- “Scotland: The Later Middle Ages”, by Ranald Nicholson

There are lots of other book series out there- the St Andrews Studies in Scottish History or the publications of old literature by the Scottish Text Society for example but I think I’ve listed enough to be getting on with. There are also a few books that I think make good general overviews (or are collections of interesting essays) that aren’t in a particular series:

- “Women in Scotland, 1100-1750”, edited by Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen M Meikle (this is a collection of essays rather than an overview of women’s history but it’s a good starter, and great if you only have fifteen minutes to spare)

- “Glory and Honour: The Renaissance in Scotland”, by Andrea Thomas (a beautiful coffee table book with lots of pictures of art and architecture). It starts in 1424.

- “The Kingdom of the Isles: Scotland’s Western Seaboard, c.1100-c.1336″, by R. Andrew MacDonald

- “The Black Douglases”, Michael Brown

- “Robert the Bruce’s Rivals: The Comyns, 1212-1314″, by Alan Young

- “The Northern Earldoms: Orkney and Caithness, 870-1470″, by Barbara E. Crawford

- “Scottish Independence and the Idea of Britain: From the Picts to Alexander III”, by Dauvit Broun

- “Virgins and Viragos: A History of Women in Scotland From 1080 to 1980″, by Rosalind K Marshall (Marshall has also written some good introductory overviews on Scottish queens, on Mary of Guise, and on the women around Mary, Queen of Scots, though these last two are sixteenth century).

- Any of Alexander Fenton’s books on agricultural history- they don’t deal exclusively (or even mainly) with the medieval period, and they’re not the most up to date but they are still useful handbooks.

There are also lots of shorter academic articles on JSTOR and elsewhere, as well as online networks for things like Scottish Women’s History and Environmental History. 

The second step I would recommend is using biographies- biography is not always the most useful form of historical writing, but they do have their own benefits. For this time period most of the full book-length biographies of individuals are royal figures (though lots of other people are covered in academic articles).

For some figures it’s wise to have several biographies on hand since they’re well-known or controversial- for example, for Robert Bruce, you could start with an older bio like G.W.S. Barrows “Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland” and then supplement it with a more modern biography like that written by Michael Penman or by Colm McNamee. In other cases, a historical figure may not be quite so well known so jumping straight into an academic biography of them, which hops around and analyses expenditure and parliaments, may be a bit confusing- for example, for King James IV, it may be useful to start with R.L. Mackie’s (admittedly dated and a bit romantic) biography to get an idea of the structure of the king’s reign before diving into Norman MacDougall’s more scholarly biography.

Other biographies/overview of royal reigns include Richard Oram’s works on David I and Alexander II; D.D.R. Owen’s bio of William the Lion (this is an interesting one, since it’s written by a French professor rather than a straightforward historian so there’s a big focus on the importance of literature); Andrew Fisher’s bio of William Wallace; Stephen Boardman’s survey of the reigns of Robert II and Robert III; the two biographies of James I written by E.W.M. Balfour-Melville and Michael Brown; Christine McGladdery’s ‘James II’ and Norman McDougall’s ‘James III’; and Annie Dunlop’s biography of Bishop Kennedy.

Lastly once you feel you’ve got a bit of a grip on some secondary source material (or really, as soon as you like) I do recommend checking out some of the primary source material as soon as possible. A LOT of primary sources of medieval Scottish history were printed during the Victorian and Edwardian periods and now thanks to digitisation projects many of them are available online- from chronicles like those of Melrose, John of Fordun and Andrew Wyntoun (and useful English chronicles like Lanercost and Scalachronica); to acts of parliament and accounts of royal expenditure (Treasurer’s Accounts; Exchequer Rolls); to letters of the nobility and poetry. Personally, I find that you learn as much from working directly with the words of historical figures themselves, even if you’re untrained in source handling, as you would from a whole host of textbooks (also it lets you get used to the languages- Scots is straightforward enough to pick up even if you don’t have Latin or Gaelic). If you ever have trouble finding these let me know and I might be able to point you in the right direction. 

It is also worth bearing in mind that sixteenth century sources may shed a lot of light on earlier periods.

Anyway hopefully this helped but if you have any other questions please let me know and I will endeavour to reply quicker this time!

*One last disclaimer, the above list of texts is based purely on my own experiences and what my brain could remember quickly- it is not to reflect a bias or to promote these texts above the works of other historians. It is also not an exhaustive or comprehensive list (and some dearly beloved books are not included- but I tried to stick to simple overviews/textbooks and a few other interesting surveys).

And people are very welcome to add to this since there’s lots I’ve missed!

Lastly try to have a bit of fun with it. Some of these books are very informative but can drag at times- on those occasions I highly recommend taking a break and trying to get outside to a hill or a castle, or if you can’t do that try putting an old ballad on on youtube, and physically look at or listen to the thing you’re studying.

#Scottish history #British history #sources #books #reading #Yes now everyone can come and laugh at 16 year old me who got her childhood love of history back from flipping Neil Oliver #And the Corries though they're more respectable if less accurate

[pynkhues]

Love your analysis on Beth’s playing a role to control Dean—but now I’m curious about your thoughts on the ottoman haha

Oh my gosh, thank you for taking the bait and asking, haha. I’ve been thinking about the ottoman all week, because it felt like such a strange and very specific thing for the writers to bring up again in the context of Dean, Judith and Beth in 3.11 after Beth had made the joke about it to Rio in the bar back in 3.08. And hey! I get a lot of asks about writing and about critical creative theory, and how to develop both those skills, and I always give the advice to start by asking why.

So let’s ask why together, because let me tell you: if something in a story feels strange, and it’s specific, and especially if it’s repeated, it usually means the writers want you to notice. And if they want you to notice, that in turn means it’s either a) an important plot point (which, err, I don’t think the ottoman is, haha, unless somebody stashed some money in the thing), or b) it’s important symbolically (and sometimes both! The flashforwards on Breaking Bad in particular did that really well).

So yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about the ottoman, and these two, seemingly flippant references to it, and ultimately it’s reminded me of a post I never actually wrote (classic Sophie, haha), about Beth and Judith in 2.09 and 3.02, and that kind of made a feedback loop in my head and - -

Look.

Basically I think it’s a symbolic rejection of Beth’s old life / Judith’s life; an important character beat for Beth, and an indicator that she’s more than what she was with Rio, and that she won’t ever be more than that with Dean, but that’s a lot. So.

Let’s break that down a bit.   

Mommy Dearest

While motherhood is a central theme of this show, I am perpetually fascinated by the fact that the only mother to the main characters we really know is Dean’s mother, Judith, something that does actually feel like a deliberate choice.

After all, I could write a whole fresh essay about how it seems that Beth, Annie and Ruby each function as mothers themselves in ways that reflect a multigenerational trauma, and, ergo, a damaged mother in their own childhoods – we learnt in 2.08 after all that Beth and Annie’s mother was bedridden with depression, if nothing else, and Ruby’s mother was widowed when Ruby was just a young teenager (to say nothing of the trauma Ruby must’ve faced herself losing her father at that age) – but actually…that’s as much as we do know about them.

Dean though.

Well. 

We actually know probably more about his family and his history than we do about any other character on the show. We know his parents were John and Judith. We know that his father created Boland Motors and that Dean inherited the business from him. We know that John cheated on Judith throughout his career, and that Judith briefly tried to go back to work herself as a shop girl before feeling forced back home.

We know that Judith sacrificed everything – her career, her autonomy, her body, her happiness – to give Dean the illusion of a perfect family. While Dean might not know all the details himself, he’s certainly picked some of the expectations of that up through his parents, because ultimately, he expects Beth to do the same. And she did! And still does, in many, many ways.

There are a lot of examples of this, but the biggest one, of course, is the arc across 2.07 through to 2.10, which culminates with Dean holding their children ransom at Judith’s house, blackballing Beth into caving, and then flat out not caring about her inner life at all in 2.10.

That entire arc hinges on a lot of things, but one of the most integral conversations within that is the one Beth and Judith have at Emma’s birthday party in 2.09.

A conversation that’s pretty sublimely paralleled in 3.02.

2.09 vs 3.02

Beth and Judith’s conversations at Emma’s birthday party in 2.09 and then in the Boland kitchen in 3.02 are in fact two scenes that are also in conversation with each other. They’re different, but they’re the same. They’re circling the same information, while offering new takes, bantering old jokes that pivot into new jabs. They’re great, and I know they’re nobody who watches this show’s favourite scenes, but I actually love both of them a lot, and I think they’re really important – not just for Beth as a character, but for the show’s themes overall.

The scene in 2.09 falls on the back of Dean having taken the kids, and Beth’s grief arc around that. She only gets the invite to Emma’s birthday party because Dean’s put her in a position where she has to ask for it, and within the first 20 seconds of Beth and Judith exchange while they’re cutting up Emma’s birthday cake, we get this absolute gem:

Beth: [Dean]’s a good dad.

Judith: So was John. Not much of a husband though.

Judith goes on to confirm  that John cheated (with enough women she “stopped counting”), just like she now knows Dean did, but that’s not the point, and it’s not the thrust of the conversation.

The throughline is that men might cheat, and you can leave them, but as a mother, your responsibility is to them. You have to sacrifice your own needs to give them the best life you can.

In both Ruby and Annie’s cases, these are moral sacrifices to create financial gains for those children. Ruby’s in a loving marriage and needs to pay for her daughter’s medication, so that’s all literal with her. For Annie, it’s not quite as literal, but explores a parallel morality by way of her empathy – she feels no moral guilt about robberies, but she feels moral guilt by way of Marion and Nancy, in order to provide for her son.

Beth’s not like them.

She enjoys crime. She empathises with others, but isn’t a bleeding heart like Annie.

All of Beth’s sacrifices are felt personally.

She dims her own light, her own passions, her personality, her needs, her ambitions, to fuel the light of Dean’s, or for their children.  

It’s a conversation she has again with Judith in 3.02.

Judith’s been helping out more since Beth went to work. It leads to a few confrontations across the episode, but the one between the two of them in the kitchen after dinner is pivotal. I could actually transcribe the whole conversation here, because it’s honestly awesome, revealing dialogue, but instead I’m going to break it down into three little blocks.

a) The first in that it tells us how much Dean diminishes and doesn’t think about his mother.

Beth apologises for the fight which Dean ignores, and Judith asks a simple question:

“Did Dean ever tell you that I worked?”

No, Beth replies, simply, effortlessly.

A telling thing for a couple who have been together for over 20 years.

b) It builds to Judith telling Beth about having Dean, and then –

Judith: Everyone’s fawning over this new baby boy, while I’m just…nothing. Empty. Flesh and hormones over ice.

Beth pours them both a drink.

Confides that she had post-partum depression too.

c) But that’s not what Judith is saying. Judith’s not empathising with Beth, she’s telling her to go home.

Beth: Your happiness was important too.

(beat)

Judith: How much does the card shop pay?

Beth: You shouldn’t have quit.

Judith: And you should be home for dinner if you don’t want the kids saying grace…what a lie, huh? That we can have it all.

This scene is sharp, and it’s designed as a narrative weapon against Beth, who is desperately trying to keep her family above water, and actually gives Beth the triple duty in terms of protective responsibilities.

She’s trying to provide for her children, of course, and trying to justify her own purpose outside of motherhood to her mother-in-law, while also concealing from Judith how much Dean has failed their family in every way.

Judith gave up everything for Dean, so what can Beth do except placate her?

The thing is, these two conversations have very, very different results. 

In 2.09, Judith’s conversation with Beth was a key part of Beth ultimately quitting both crime and Rio, and trying to revert back to the woman she was – the woman Judith would always be. 

3.02 had a very different outcome.

Beth didn’t quit.

She doubled down.

Not only that, it directly pivoted into a scene where Beth, Ruby and Annie were criming, fucked a part of it up, and Beth’s instant response is “What would Rio do?” trying him into that overall arc.

The Ottoman

Which brings us, finally, to the ottoman!

It’s an offhand joke in 3.08, right? Beth’s dressed up, and she and Rio are in one of their games of eternal bargaining after she robbed him and he replied by stealing literally everything she owned. She’s trying to earn it back, he says he has something for her, she jokes, “My ottoman?”

It’s not serious. She’s not serious, which already loads the term, but Rio’s response is equally light, equally dismantling.

No.

The thing he has for her is Boomer.

And sure, there’s a lot to unpack in that, but what’s important here is that Rio treated the ottoman as something as frivolous as Beth treated it. They were on the same page – in maybe one of the few moments they were all season.

He knew as well as she did that the ottoman wasn’t something she needed.

The scene in 3.11 is really different.

Beth’s literally dressed down, on the toilet, in the robe she wore when she broke up with Rio in 2.09. Dean barges in, tells her no one will give him money to buy the hot tub place, then instantly breaks into a diatribe about how his mother wants to give them his ottoman.

Beth: We don’t have a couch!

Dean: I told her that.

Beth: Good.

Dean: The ottoman will be here tomorrow.

[Beth sighs]

Dean: I know, I’m sorry.

[beat]

Dean: I just don’t want [Rio] involved again.

The scene serves the purpose of, once again, emasculating Dean – showing that he can’t get out from under his mother’s thumb in the same narrative beat that it tells us as an audience that Dean can’t wriggle out from beneath Rio’s either – at least not as long as he’s with Beth.

In turn, the ottoman as an object holds a lot of narrative weight.

It’s something Beth and Rio can joke about, and something that labours on Beth and Dean’s marriage.

On a deeper level, the ottoman is something that holds a purpose, yes, but needs other items to be complete.

On its own, an ottoman is a joke. With a couch, it’s a living room.

Beth wants the couch – she wants the career – she wants the functionality and purpose of it. She wants to build her home herself, not scrape around for leftovers, nor rely on superficial or frivolous function in the way that she did before she robbed Fine & Frugal.

Beth is a character bursting with purpose, utility, passion. She wants to build this new life, not accessorise it, and Rio knows it, and Dean can never offer it to her, and that matters to her, particularly as she tries to untangle her future from Judith’s.

What I’m getting at is that I think Beth made a very different decision in 3,02 than she did in 2.09. She decided she was going to do this. She was going to be less of an ornament in her own life, and it would take her away from her children but hopefully give her more function to provide for them, and notably for herself too, and I think the narrative symbol of the ottoman is that the domestic goddess / Judith image isn’t her anymore, at least not exclusively. It’s not what she needs, and Rio knows that, and can laugh with her as she makes a joke of it, while Dean knows it, but will never fully support or empower her in disentangling from it. 

#gg 2.09 #gg 3.02 #gg 3.11 #beth x rio #beth x dean #beth boland #rio #dean boland #judith boland #welcome to my ama #audreydear

[in-tua-deep]

Hufflepuff Five! He has traits that would help him fit in any of the houses, but underneath, everything he does is motivated by his love for his siblings so Hufflepuff would be the best fit. Also, just the idea of the house full of sweethearts dealing with Five the undercover sweetheart is funny and adorable. In this au would Delores be a fellow Hufflepuff that Five bonds with or would she be a ghost or a painting?

Hufflepuff Five is a valid child, bless. Me? Purposefully sorting the Hargreeves so that there’s two to every house except Five who is alone? It’s probably about as likely as you think actually but in hindsight it’s a cool move

Five isn’t sure what to make of Hufflepuff at first, admittedly. Someone told Five that Hufflepuff is for “everyone else” and is a catch all house for rejects from the others, so he’s not exactly thrilled about it. Especially because he’d rather be in a house with his siblings 

(Ravenclaw definitely because he loves Ben and Vanya best, but he’d grudgingly accept Slytherin - maybe not Gryffindor though because quite frankly he doesn’t want to get between Luther and Diego butting heads ugh)

Five is sorted last of the siblings because his name is listed as ‘5 Hargreeves’ and they weren’t sure whether they should put numbers before or after letters and they ended up putting it after so Five got sorted last. 

But his new housemates are surprisingly fierce. They tell him that they’re not the catch all house, and even if they were all that means is that one of their ideals is acceptance and no one gets left behind. 

(Five refused to leave any of his siblings behind, not even Luther who he thinks is an idiot every day ending in a y. So he understand that ideal on a personal level.)

They tell him that Hufflepuff means loyalty and hard work. It means forming ranks and protecting one another, of standing firm and tall and strong. Bending, but never breaking. Hufflepuffs are unassuming, everyone discounts them, but it was a Hufflepuff who was chosen to represent the entire school during the triwizard tournaments.

(They whisper Cedric’s name with reverence, with mourning, but also with pride. He wasn’t the Chosen One, he was just an ordinary boy and he was still chosen and performed admirably, with noble intentions and kindness. He was a Hufflepuff.)

So the older years look at the boy with a number for a name who is wary of everyone and protective of his siblings and they soften. Strangely enough, the child abuse cases usually end up in Slytherin with far more frequency that then other houses (there is something to be said, for cunning and resourcefulness sitting in the hearts of eleven-year-olds) but Hufflepuff has had their share.

So when they catch Five sneaking out in the middle of the night, the prefects show him the secret passageways and the quickest routes to the other common rooms and look the other way. When they notice Five stealing away food in napkins in the great hall, they take all the little firsties on a field trip to the kitchens and show them how to tickle the pear.

(When Five approaches a seventh year with hands clenched into firsts and asks how to cast silencing charms around his bed, the seventh year takes him to the library and presses books about wards into his hands. If the pages with wards to chase away bad dream is bookmarked well, it came like that.)

(Five spends the next week sneaking into the Slytherin dorms and carving runes into Klaus’s bedposts. He only does his own as an afterthought, honest.)

Five pretends he doesn’t really care for his housemates, except they keep sneaking under his skin. The magicborn ones have nightmares, too. They lived through a war. Some of them tell Five they’re orphans, but he learns later that their parents are in wizarding prison for following a genocidal maniac. Five ends up carving good dream runes on almost every bed in the dorm.

They teach him how to play exploding snap and gobstones. They beg him for help in charms and ask him to read over their transfiguration essays. They show him all the good passageways. They drag him along behind them when a handful of them want to go investigate the Forbidden Forest because Five is the best at defense spells! Please! They’d be so much safer with Five there.

Abby keeps snacks in her pockets and is always offering some to Five, who takes them because his ability to jump tends to jumpstart his metabolism and takes a lot of energy. James helps Five with wand movements and sends for books from his family’s personal library when Five can’t find what he needs.

Jasmine is a fifth year who ruffles his hair and picks him up and spins him around, but she always telegraphs her intentions and gives him the option to back up and duck out. Hamish is a seventh year who fusses over all the first years and walks them through difficult homework assignments in his spare time. Rowan teaches him all the fun jinxes which aren’t actually in the curriculum but they insist are extremely important for every little witch and wizard to learn. 

No one minds when Five ditches them at meals and muscles his way into the Slytherin table to pile more food on Klaus’s plate and trade barbs with the Slytherins (who are all secretly fond of the Very Slytherin Hufflepuff). No one minds when Five steals Ben and Vanya from the Ravenclaw table and drags them to eat with him so they can regale him with the riddles they’ve answered and slip Five books they they stole from their common room 

(not that Five couldn’t get into the Ravenclaw common room. he can and will get into every house common room. It drives all the other house prefects and house pride kids insane. No one can figure out how he keeps popping up and bypassing the security. The other Hargreeves children roll their eyes but keep their lips zipped as well.

The other houses have approached Hufflepuff to beg them to put a leash on Five, but they close ranks and smile and tell them that if they can’t keep a first year from their common rooms, then it’s really their problem, isn’t it?)

sometimes Five mentions something offhand that he thought was normal but then the others just look like someone hit the ‘pause’ button for a few seconds as they process before giving Five a look which screams on god i will escort you to a psychologist myself

One of the seventh year prefects corners Five early on and asks him if he’s safe at home and basically offers to smuggle him out of Hogwarts come break if necessary. Five, who assumed it was common knowledge, is just kind of like “oh we lived with McGonagall for most of the summer. I dunno where we’re going next summer, but we’re staying at Hogwarts for winter break and stuff, so. yeah.”

and that prefect breathes a sigh of relief and passes on to the other prefects (in Hufflepuff and out of it) that the Hargreeves kids are Not In Custody Of Their Shitty Abusive Father

James: wow muggles sure have to get creative to abuse their kids huh

Five: i think dad was just. a special case. most parents can’t just toss their kids off a roof and expect no repercussions.

Abby: oh hey you could bond with Mr. Longbottom - the guy who’s training under Professor Sprout and is always around the greenhouse? I think his family tossed him out a window.

honestly the ONLY reason Five and the squad were probably taken away wasn’t even the Rampant Abuse because let’s be real Neville and Harry were never looked into. The reason was that Reginald was planning to ‘expose’ the magical community through the kids ‘powers’ and they couldn’t have that, especially not by a muggle goodness gracious. 

(Honestly, there’s a high likelihood that Reginald/Pogo/even Grace if that’s possible were probably obliviated - with contact with government people in the know to fix records etc. - and the knowledge of the magical community and the kids was straight up erased. After all, if Reginald was planning to expose ‘magic’ then he can’t be trusted with any knowledge even related to it)

as for Dolores

Five is thirteen and he learns about the chamber of secrets and all that and everyone is like “yeah only a parselmouth can get in there” and Five is like “haha you thought” because he can jump regardless of apparation wards so he trots on over to the girls bathroom, inspects the sink for a while, and then jumps

which was probably a mistake because he jumps into the empty space underneath yeah but it’s a dramatic slide down fuCK and he just pinwheels down and ends up in the chamber of secrets. Nice.

and so he does what everyone in the books didn’t seem to do - he explores. And look, Slytherin clearly spent a good amount of time down there, he probably left a bunch of stuff. It’s probably booby trapped, but Five has a passion for wards after the bad dream ones and he’s a malicious little shit so he also loves booby traps so. 

Slytherin would probably roll in his grave to know that a thirteen-year-old goes down to the Chamber of Secrets to systematically dismantle all the fun curses and traps just to pass the time. 

And within one of the booby trapped rooms is a painting, and within this painting is a teenage girl with close cropped hair and a raised eyebrow. She’s older than Five (for now) and she asks him what he’s doing here.

“Exploring,” Five says, with a shrug, rifling through some of the pieces of parchment still on the desk. “What about you?”

“What do you mean?” The girl asks, looking confused. 

“What are you doing down here?” Five clarifies, poking at a suspicious looking jar with his wand. 

“I’m a painting.” The girl says, crossing her arms, “Someone put me down here.”

“Who?”

“None of your business!”

Five shrugs, “Okay. Do you have a name, then?”

“Dolores.” Dolores says, not offering a last name. “You?”

“Five.” He shrugs through her incredulous look, “Yeah, like the number. Do you know what’s in this jar?”

It turns out she does. In fact, she knows an awful lot about pretty much everything down in the chamber, though she refuses to give him hints when it comes to what curses and wards and traps there are. She laughs at him when his attempts blow up in his face and ruins his umpteenth uniform for the year

(“Honestly Mr. Hargreeves.” Professor McGonagall says severely when he shows up with burned holes in his robes and a mildly sheepish expression. “This is the fourth time this week.”

“I can’t seem to get a hang of this spell.” Five says, mild as milk even though they’re both fully aware that he’s lying. 

McGonagall just fixes his robes and tells him to ask a seventh year to help or something with his ‘spell difficulty’ and Five thanks her brightly and flounces off to go directly back to the chamber and do some more wardbreaking while Dolores critiques everything he does)

“Did you know Salazar Slytherin?” Five asks her, frowning down at the book on ancient runes. 

Dolores sniffs, “I don’t want to talk about Sally. He wasn’t even that impressive.”

Five pauses in his writing for a second, “I am calling him Sally every day for the rest of my life and especially when I sit at the Slytherin table holy fuck.”

“He sucked at arithmancy.” Dolores offers with a shrug, “And his charm work was mediocre.”

“And yours was better?” Five asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Please,” Dolores scoffs, “I could cast circles around him.”

“Teach me?” Five asks, because he’s never been one to discard any leg up or resource.

“I’m just a painting.” Dolores says, frowning. “I can’t actually cast spells.”

“You don’t have to. Just explain them.”

“Oh,” Dolores bites her lip, “Oh. I don’t think anyone’s really cared about what paintings know before.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be the first.”

“Just for that I’m teaching you the shitty ones first.” Dolores tells him.

Five doesn’t tell anyone about her. He doesn’t tell anyone at all about the chamber, though he initially wanted to go down there to set up a spot for him and his siblings to gather. But it ends up being a place he can just go and escape to be by himself - because not many people know how to get down there.

“You know I’m not real.” Dolores tells him one day, when he’s trying to tackle the curses on one of the hidden rooms. 

Five shrugs, “You seem pretty real to me.”

“I’m just a painting. An imprint of someone who died years and years ago tied to paint. I’m - ”

“Two dimensional?” Five asks with a grin, and she swears at him colorfully for his cheek. “Look, Dolores. I never knew whatever version of you walked among us mere mortals - though I’m sure she was appropriately terrifying - so I don’t care about that person. I know you, as you are. I don’t care if you aren’t ‘real’ or whatever. Does it matter? I like talking to you.”

Dolores is silent for a long while after that. Five turns his attention to his notes while she thinks - sometimes she needs a moment to process. 

“Hey Five?” She asks, only continuing when she hears him hum. “Can you figure out how to destroy a magical painting?”

He looks up at her, a question in his eyes.

“I spent - I was down here for a really long time, Five. Alone. You’re going to leave Hogwarts one day, and you’re going to get all old and gross and wrinkly and then you’re going to die. But I won’t, because I’m not alive. I just want - ” Dolores trails off, looking frustrated. “I just want to know if it’s something even possible.”

Five considers this, and then he shrugs. “Yeah, okay.”

“Just like that?” Dolores sounds shocked, but Five just nods. 

“Yeah. It’s your immortal not-life, I figure you should get a say in it, right?”

Dolores is quiet after that, but when Five goes to leave, he hears he whisper a quiet thank you. Five only offers her a smile as he mentally carves out time to raid the library and maybe the Ravenclaw common room for information. 

I think Five keeps her company until she’s ready to let go (unlike the actual show where he lets her go). I dunno it’s just a really sad and poignant side story in Five’s life about letting go and mortality and agency and choice and what it means to be a person and how to live and how to die

Five and Dolores’s relationship is really complicated in the show so I wanted it to ALSO be really complicated in the wizarding world oof so yeah there you have it in this particular hp au Dolores is a painting in the Chamber of Secrets of a teenage girl who is just a little too smart and just a little too sentient and just a little too lonely

#funkierdionysus #hp au #tua/hp crossover #five hargreeves #hufflepuff!five #five is assimilated into the great badger fold #five makes hufflepuff friends!! #he sneaks around and is dramatic and makes mischief! #five probably finds so many secret passageways he isn't supposed to know about #i just feel like the castle would like five as a whole tbh #purposefully lead him towards shit #dolores is a painting and it's very sad #klaus still has nightmares but five tries to help #five is boss at ancient runes and arithmancy #i feel like wards would be a specialty because it's kind of like maths? #wards are sort of equations shush

[ariesgender]

Character Analysis: Asuka Langley Sohryu

disclaimer:

this was originally written by @ritsumaya​ in 2014 but most of the post was lost due to them deleting. (and that was devastating personally as their meta posts were amazing. we lost the equivalent of the nge library of alexandria) this is what i’ve been able to salvage / copy over from various archives.

i will edit / delete this post and relink it to their own if ritsumaya ever decides to reupload this again themselves.

also, if you’re not interested in reading this essay, press J on your keyboard to advance to the next post on desktop. if you’re on mobile... i’m so sorry.

onto the original text:

Buckle up. It’s time to go on a massive analysis of Asuka Langley Sohryuu, or How Most of the Casual Fandom Gets Her Wrong.

Featuring!

The importance of pilothood to Asuka.

Her relationships with Kaji, Shinji, and Rei.

The meaning of the “Hell Kitchen” scene in End of Evangelion.

An explanation of histrionic personality disorder.

And so much more!

Warnings for suicide, gore, choking, mentions / allegories of rape and pregnancy, discussions of mental illness, thanatophobia, menstruation, nudity, basically any trigger warnings for Evangelion etc. etc. 

It’s also very long, clocking in at twelve thousand four hundred forty-seven words. If I miss anything, let me know.

I’m limiting the discussion to Sohryu, from the anime series, rather than Shikinami, from the film series, because Shikinami is a wholly separate character that bears only a physical and superficial personality resemblance to Sohryu.

Okay, so lets get goin'!

As part of the Contact Experiments, Asuka’s mother, Kyouko Zeppelin Sohryu, was stripped of part of her soul, specifically of the “motherly” part. Rather than the tragedy of Yui’s full absorption into the EVA, NERV believed that they could activate the EVA whilst still keeping the mother alive. They didn’t intend to be complete monsters, you know.

Other than Rei and Shinji, explicitly selected from the beginning, Asuka was the first non-Gendo-essential pilot to be chosen out of the candidate pool. Note that none of the students at Shinji’s school has a mother, as Kensuke points out in the fourth episode because NERV has harvested their mothers’ souls in case a pilot is required. She clearly had talent and she intended to use it.

(By the way, the facts that Unit 00 and Unit 02 are Adam-based and do not possess full souls explain the rapid increase in Shinji’s synchronization scores. Asuka is indeed the best pilot; what occurred prior to the actual sync in End of Evangelion was mostly out of her hands.)

Unfortunately, the removal of part of her soul drove Kyouko insane. She began to talk to a small doll and take care of the doll in place of Asuka. In the meantime, Asuka’s father began an affair with Kyouko’s doctor, whom he would later marry.

By the time Asuka becomes the Second Child, she is absolutely desperate for her mother’s affection. She’s willing to break down rules and dismantle the world if it means that her mother will look at her. Just once. Just one look at her.

Her mother, having gone insane without the possession of the entirety of her soul, goes, well, insane. This has a horrific effect on young Asuka. Firstly, Asuka despises dolls. Secondly, and more importantly, Asuka has a desperate desire for attention, a desperate need for isolation, and a desperate ambition to prove herself independent. She doesn’t want to depend upon anyone ever again. She doesn’t intend to ever be put in the position of killing herself for anyone, ever again.

Quick recap: because her mother paid attention to a doll instead of her, Asuka became simultaneously starved for attention but also terrified of becoming dependent upon anyone. As a result, Asuka focuses her efforts on becoming akin to an adult.

But, because society is fucked up, Asuka interprets growing up (for a woman) as being recognized as an adult by others. She also internalizes this by staking all of her worth upon her skills at piloting the EVA. In fact, the neural interface that links up the pilot to the EVA is a part of her typical design, to the point where, during Asuka’s version of the “step out naked from the shower” scene, she apparently showers with them on. Neither Shinji nor Rei, nor the other two pilots seen briefly in the anime, do the same. Only Asuka. While Shinji and Rei also stake their worth on piloting EVA, they do not do so at the visual intensity that Asuka does.

Now, I want to get a common misconception out of the way. Contrary to how quite a few fans would “diagnose” her, Asuka is not narcissistic. A little bit of the opposite, in fact: Asuka suffers from histrionic personality disorder, which can better be likened to dependent personality disorder in terms of root cause. Kaji’s another example of someone who has a histrionic personality; however, he is functional: While his personality contains histrionic elements, he does not have histrionic personality disorder like Asuka does.

Let’s take a quick look at the symptoms and behaviors associated with HPD. For this, I’m going to use Wikipedia, because we only need a basic overview (since we’re not actually diagnosing so much as comparing a fictional character’s personality):

Provocative (or seductive) behavior

Relationships are considered more intimate than they actually are

Attention-seeking

Influenced easily

Speech (style) wants to impress; lacks detail

Emotional liability; shallowness

Make-up; physical appearance is used to draw attention to self

Exaggerated emotions; theatrical

Using the mnemonic device PRAISE ME, we can examine some of the common elements of HPD. To generalize and paraphrase, whereas someone suffering from narcissistic personality disorder would actually believe themself to be better than anyone else, someone with histrionic personality disorder would only present themself as better than anyone else, while actually, internally, hating themself and so on and so forth.

Asuka very visibly refers to herself as the best pilot and takes sincere pride in that distinction. Likewise, she takes pride in the distinction of herself as the most popular girl in school, as when she notably calls herself that while speaking to Shinji. Yet, as we all know, Asuka in reality hates herself, which she repeats over and over again, especially over the later arcs of the series. But before we start a case by case analysis of HPD, let’s go back to her backstory.

Even before Kyouko actually performed the contact experiments, she did not pay much attention to her child, in the same manner of Ritsuko’s mother or Misato’s father, raising a child starved for attention.

Kyouko was driven insane by only having part of her soul within her, and Asuka’s father left to have an affair and marry the doctor. While Asuka appears very vicious and angry as she watches her mother coddle the young doll, she nonetheless is happy to see her mother and continuously attempts to perform to capture her mother’s attention.

Subsequently, Asuka became a pilot, and she informed her mother. However, her mother decided to commit suicide. In those final, chilling moments, we see the mother asking for Asuka (the doll) to commit suicide with her. Asuka’s response is forever etched into the memory of anyone who watches the scene:

She agrees to commit suicide along with her mother as long as her mother does not abandon her. While Asuka does not actually end up committing suicide, the experience shocks her to the core (pun not intended): She was perfectly and completely willing to die for the sake of someone else. At the funeral, Asuka tells herself that she will now become an adult so that she never has to depend upon anyone, ever again. Of course, being neglected as a child is one of the theorized causes of HPD. In order to compensate for the attention that she never received as a child, Asuka says that she’s going to be become an independent adult, and yet she decides to become an adult via external validation (a major theme of EVA, that: external validation will never actually assist you in attaining your own happiness; validation and love must be built internally up, in the entire idea of “How can you love others if you never even learned to love yourself?” and so on, but that’s another post for another time).

There’s a two-fold issue with her reasoning: first, she considers adulthood as sexual maturity. Herein lies a major crux of the issue, especially with regards to her relationships to Kaji and Shinji. Asuka can’t wait to grow up. In her impatience she intends to validate her attainment of adulthood via the validation of men around her, because such is what society taught her, and such is what her experiences with her father abandoning her mother and remarrying taught her (I would argue for a closeted lesbian Asuka myself).

Prior to arriving in Japan, Asuka and Kaji have an extremely telling exchange on the boat. Chronologically, this takes place just before episode eight. We begin with Asuka talking about Misato, saying that Asuka didn’t like Misato very much (this will be important for later, concerning Asuka’s relationship with Misato and her own relationship with herself). Kaji informs Asuka that she’ll probably make lots of new boyfriends in Japan and that the Third Child (e.g. Shinji) is a boy. Now, here’s the interesting part about that implication: Asuka has had boyfriends in Germany. And many of them, according to Kaji, as Asuka goes from boyfriend to boyfriend seeking validation and becoming increasingly frustrated when that doesn’t actually make her feel better.

Note: Kaji, and I, don’t literally mean “boyfriends”, but boys interested in Asuka as they are when she arrives in Tokyo-3. She is validated by the sheer number of people interested in her even as she snubs them and acts superior, but nonetheless none of them actually makes her feel validated. Remember that Asuka goes from the sole pilot in Germany to not even the best pilot in Japan, and consider how that works into the attention she receives and so on. Whenever I mention her “German boyfriends” again, keep this in mind: effortless boyfriends that she could make. Realistically, any attempts at dating would have gone down akin to the whole thing with Hikari’s friend—the unwanted boy stranded at a roller coaster.

Actually, this is an important point: Just like how Misato utilized sex in order to fulfill herself, so too does Asuka in a manner of speaking. However, the reasoning behind Misato’s and Asuka’s “deriving pleasure in lieu of actual happiness” is significantly different. Misato has wild sex because, as she explains, it’s nice to be needed, even if physically. Asuka does so because she herself wants to be validated. She doesn’t want to be “needed.” She wants people to pay attention to her and for her not to have to care about them, in essence. She wants to be “needed” but not in the way that Misato does (in an actual need) but in a manner that causes people to pay attention to her without her having to “need” them back. Misato wants a two-way street and settles for being needed physically when she can’t have said two-way street. Asuka wants a one-way street and when that still doesn’t make her happy, because that doesn’t exist, she can’t handle it.

Note: When I refer to Misato’s sexuality, I refer to the sexuality that Asuka sees, from her point of view / perspective. Misato, as revealed in her talk to Kaji, hasn’t actually been having wild sex, but Asuka assumes her to (and continues to assume that into Instrumentality).

Other analysts have pointed out the Three Faces of Eve / Three Faces of Adam symbolism that is repeated over and over again in EVA, from the MAGI supercomputers to Kaji-Gendo-Fuyutsuki. I won’t go too far into depth here, but essentially, Kaji represents the young, virile male; Gendo represents the cruel, warmongering male; and Fuyutsuki represents the old, wise male. It’s akin to the seven stages of man poem written by Shakespeare, and it’s also another post for another time. The most vital part of this is that Kaji represents the young, virile male, who is clearly the most sexually desirable of the three. Unlike the random boyfriends whom Asuka ensnares easily and who would probably go for anyone, Kaji is a Grown Adult. He drinks; he smokes; he has lots and lots of sex, and if he is interested in her, then surely Asuka will become the True Adult.

And so Asuka, inappropriately, attempts to seduce him.

Of course, he rejects her advances, because while Kaji is not the ideal guardian (as he has never truly been able to nurture positive relationships), he is neither a pedophile nor a hebephile. Unfortunately, to Asuka, this isn’t merely a rejection: It’s a denial of Asuka’s status as an adult. Kaji tells her, “You’re still a child.”

There is literally nothing that could cut Asuka more deeply than being called a child, because being a child is what almost killed her, what actually caused her to agree to commit suicide with her mother, driven to insanity. She can’t stand the thought of being dependent, of being a child. She’s going to grow up quickly now, isn’t she?

To reiterate: Asuka doesn’t actually love Kaji. Well, perhaps she does have a puppy crush on him, in the manner of young girls to attractive younger men (and, arguably, she probably has more of a hetero-compulsory “crush” on him than on Shinji).

I want to point out the entirely childish way that she says that. “Kissing, and even the stuff after that,” which is basically something repeated in some form or fashion by every sub upon which I could get my hands (to properly analyse EVA, I watched it using several different subs, from the official English release to crappy direct translations to fansubs, such that I could get a sense of the show overall, where one sub might mistranslate a given line). She can’t even start to talk about sex. She’s not actually ready for sex.

The framing of this shot is very interesting, because we’re treated to a full-frontal cleavage shot of Asuka. Now, Asuka has the smallest breast size of the three “EVA girls” (ugh), but in some of the other shots, such as the “Wall of Jericho” moment, her breasts look larger. On the other hand, in this shot she looks almost entirely flat-chested. The usage of the simple white bra simply furthers this point: She’s not an adult. She’s still a child, barely having grown out of her childhood, trying to become an adult far too soon. Now, she wants to become an adult in order to never have to become dependent upon anyone again. And yet, when she’s rejected instead of validated, she reverts back to her original basics of need:

Yeah. Look at her. Look at her, because her mother never did, because her father never did, because her mother substituted a doll for her, because at the end of it all, she feels like she doesn’t mean anything to anyone. And for that, she hates everyone. She hates other human beings. Most of all, of course, she hates herself.

So here’s the set-up: Asuka seeks validation for her becoming an adult, so that she can be independent and never have to depend on anyone again. This is what she tells herself on the outside. In reality, she craves attention. And this is why she hates herself, because of the paradox between her inherent hate of humanity and desire for isolation, and her desperate need for people to look at her because of the attention that she never received as a child.

Kaji rejects her. Ah, but a new contender rises upon the horizon: The Third Child. Shinji. Who is the only other boy around who is also a pilot, and a good one. When Kaji, the Actual Adult, fails her, she moves on to try to seduce Shinji, because he’s a good substitute (as a saviour of humanity and so on).

And speaking of Shinji, it’s about time to get into Asuka’s adventures in Japan.

Now interestingly enough, at the beginning of episode nine, wherein Asuka finally arrives in Japan, we get this interesting, prophetic exchange of students talking about Asuka:

It seems to me from this that there’s a clear implication that Asuka undoubtedly made sure to carry herself so that the rumour would be true: She wants people to think that she matured early. And this, remember, is prior to us really getting a sense of who Asuka was, so it’s interesting to see the writers throw us this early tidbit. Of course, the other students reply pretty forcefully that she’s probably just here out of a broken heart.

Now, at first, Shinji is not that happy to see Asuka. After all, she has been little but abusive to him. On the other hand, Asuka, who clearly thinks of herself as gorgeous (and the student body would agree), immediately responds to his unease by hurting him. Off to a great start.

The point of this, of course, is that Asuka is only interacting with Shinji because he is the Third Child; in much the same way, Asuka only interacts with Rei because Rei is the First Child and for no other reason.

Afterwards, at the apartment, Asuka is apparently convinced that Shinji is about to be dunked into the trash. She barely gives him a second thought, instead remarking about how he’s going to be replaced. And, of course, because she doesn’t see him as worth her time.

We also take this opportunity to remind our viewers of the man about whom Asuka truly cares, being Kaji, complete with a small heart and all.

We also in this sequence see a rather interesting line from Asuka:

She remarks upon the fact that the Japanese do not have locks on their doors, and there’s really no way to barricade them, either. In essence, anyone can come and go through the doors as they please.

Now, think back to the Arael fight for a moment and to Asuka’s insistence that the angel not look deeper into her mind or dig deeper into her heart. Asuka only wants others to see the “outer shell,” the “gorgeous Asuka,” the perfect Asuka. Later on in this episode, Asuka complains about the fact that her Japanese debut made her appear “uncool.” She is obsessed with the idea of projecting only the best to others. Hence, the concept of simply allowing anyone inside frightens and irritates her. There’s no sense of privacy. While for the rest of her life in Germany, Asuka was able to keep her inner self locked away, in Japan, she will no longer be able to do so the same.

Oh, hey, remember what I was saying about Asuka having a fairly small breast size? Check out the screencap above. Compare it to the scene on the boat, and you’ll see what I mean.

Speaking of this sequence, Asuka is challenging Shinji, because, just like in Germany, she intends to validate herself through the use of local boys. Now that Misato has confirmed for Asuka that Shinji is not being replaced, Asuka is suddenly interested in him, since he’s a fellow EVA pilot and a saviour of humanity. His standing means something.

And so she offers the “challenge”. The Wall of Jericho, by the way, fell. She’s trying to get Shinji to want her, trying to get Shinji to desire her and give her attention so that she can laugh at him and ignore him, thus validating. Just like how Asuka’s initial response was to put him down, here Asuka attempts to create a relationship in which she is in the superior position via emotional weight.

When Shinji fails to respond, she decides to take matters a step further. She lies down next to him with her breasts in full view. He’ll have to reply to this. Not to mention the fact that she was having nightmares.

Either way, she falls asleep. Shinji panics, his gaze focused on her breasts (Shinji’s attraction to Asuka is almost entirely if not entirely sexual in nature, as we’ll see when we get to End of Evangelion and so forth), and he decides to take the bait, as Asuka thought he would. He prepares to kiss her, but in the quiet of the night, Asuka reveals the true self that she has never wanted to reveal:

Even though Asuka wants nothing more than to become an adult, she’s still a child. She can’t wait to grow up (even in the screenshot above, you can clearly see her breasts), but she cannot escape the sheer levels of dependency and need for attention that her mother’s lack thereof left. Deep scars gouged into her psyche. 

Her need for attention drives her for the next few episodes, too, as well as her need to absolutely be the best. In the ninth episode, she’s able to “synchronize” with Shinji, showcasing her capability to do so, and yet they still suffer the breakdown above (because you can be functional externally without being functional internally, like most of the adults on the show). In the tenth episode, she can’t stand the thought of Shinji not paying attention to her when he glances over at Rei in her swimsuit and so not only points out her breasts but also calls back to him to watch her jump. Later on, she would rather die in the volcano than fail the mission. In the subsequent episode, she gets even with Shinji by taking the hit, because she can’t stand the thought of not being number one, of not being the person upon whom people depend and to whom people give all of their attention (similarly, she takes charge of the group during the blackout), and so on.

And eventually we end up at the infamous asushin kiss, the kiss which many fans of asushin herald as a great proof of the canon nature of asushin. Let’s take a look, shall we?

In the beginning of the episode, Asuka tries to call Kaji again, this time pretending that she’s being sexually assaulted in an attempt to get him interested. If that’s not desperation on an incredible level, then I don’t know what is. Later, she goes on a date with a boy, but she apparently skips out on said date because she claims that he was boring (read: not as high in her internal standing as Shinji or the master of validation, Kaji).

Misato goes on a date with Kaji. Technically speaking, she has gone out with Kaji and Ritsuko, but Asuka clearly processes this as a date between Misato (whom she doesn’t entirely like) and Kaji. At this point, Asuka is clearly somewhat uncomfortable with these proceedings, because Misato, an adult is being validated, whereas Kaji has left Asuka in the dust.

At this point, Asuka turns to the other boy in her life whose body and validation are mostly immediately accessible to her: Shinji. She asks him what he thinks Misato and Kaji are doing, at which point he tries to get out of the conversation. Then she inquires whether or Shinji’s ever been kissed. He says that he hasn’t, and she pushes him. But take a look at her face: When she asks him, she doesn’t seem to be happy or even content, but rather melancholy, wishful. She’s thinking about Kaji and about validation.

Note: Asuka is also a teenage girl, and she’s probably not being so calculating here as the presentation of my analysis would appear. Part of this is just simple experimentation, and she is probably drawn to Shinji in the typical “allosexual boy and girl existing within an environment at their age” type of way. Nonetheless, let’s move beyond that and see the kiss within the framework of Asuka’s overall arc within Evangelion.

Shinji doesn't look too happy at the prospect of such a kiss.

When he refuses, Asuka prods him. Asuka has become excellent, as I mentioned, at turning her hate of humanity into a weapon: She drives a stake into his heart, pointing out the death of his mother and asking him if he’s scared. At the defilement of his mother’s name, Shinji responds that of course he’s not scared of a little kiss, and Asuka stands up. Threateningly. She’s taller than him, and the shot of her coming towards him is framed in a manner that is more threatening and towering than romantic.

As Shinji and Asuka approach one another, Shinji takes on a faint blush (considering that he thinks Asuka hot, there’s little surprise here), while Asuka looks more serious than anything. She hesitates in kissing him and tells him to stop breathing. Him being human, apparently, distracts her on some level.

She then grabs his nose and kisses him suddenly. They stay that way for a while without moving, locked in a fairly awkward kiss.

Poor Shinji can’t breathe, and he begins to turn red, then blue, as Asuka literally suffocates him.

Now the first time that I saw this scene, I thought that this was a simple erection joke, with Shinji balling his hand into a fist in order to cover up the, ahem, tenting in his pants. And perhaps that was Shinji’s initial reaction (after all, he’s a fourteen-year-old boy and he’s kissing an exceedingly attractive young woman to whom he is obviously sexually attracted, whose breasts he has seen before, and to whom, as we later find out, he masturbates to). But as the kiss goes on without break:

Poor Shinji literally begins to suffocate. He’s turning blue from an utter lack of breath. He’s not exactly having fun. Finally, unable to stand the rather deadly lack of breath, he pulls away from Asuka, gasping, and starts to pant heavily, relieved that he’s not actually going to die from asphyxiation.

To Asuka, however, this is more than a rejection. There are a lot of things happening in this scene: First of all, kissing the Third Children didn’t actually make Asuka feel better. Second of all, Shinji clearly had no idea what he was doing and was incapable of pressing forward with Asuka, instead standing there until he could no longer stand it and stumbling away. Hence, he’s not exactly a virile “player” like Kaji and is lower on the “validating” list for Asuka. Third of all, he didn’t continue and he actually left her, implicitly rejecting her. Fourth of all, no, he’s not Kaji. Picture this from Asuka’s perspective for a second: While the man of your dreams is on a date with a woman whom you don’t like very much, you kiss a boy, and you continue to kiss that boy while thinking to yourself, ‘Why don’t I feel happy yet? Why don’t I feel happy yet? How long do I have to wait to feel happy?’ Then the boy you’re kissing abruptly breaks away with you and starts gasping for breath, obviously relieved that he’s no longer kissing you.

It’s not like you were just rejected by Kaji. You were just rejected by the Third Child, a regular fourteen-year-old boy of the sort that you could get by the bushel in Germany and most of the least aggressive boys you’ve ever seen in your entire fucking life.

Asuka turns away and runs to the bathroom to gargle.

Asuka immediately tries to save face by pinning the blame on Shinji, because of course her upset-ness has nothing to do with the fact that she’s just suffered one of the worst rejections and least validating experiences in her life and everything to do with Shinji being a bad kisser (hint: it’s the other way around). Asuka’s not an adult. Asuka’s still a child, and when push comes to shove, she responds her own failings by blaming Shinji. When Shinji pointedly asks Asuka what’s wrong, Asuka shoves it back in his face and proclaims that she’s upset because she kissed him. Which is true, but not in the way that she means for Shinji to interpret events.

All of this, by the way, is framed within the context of Kaji and Misato reconnecting after a departure of eight years, a true kiss of love to contrast this muddled kiss of two teenagers failing to communicate.

Later on, Kaji arrives home at last, Misato in tow. Kaji puts Misato to bed, ensuring that she’ll be all right, and walks out. Asuka immediately jumps on the chance and seems to be in much better spirits after seeing her dear Kaji-san again.

Kaji kindly declines the offer, pointing out that he needs to go home, and Asuka insists. Shinji might be useless trash, but surely Kaji will save the day.

Unfortunately, while Asuka might be putting the uttermost “deredere” that she can around Kaji, he refuses and quits the apartment, leaving Asuka standing by herself. And notice how utterly heartbroken she is in the subsequent shot, while she makes an important observation:

This, the smell of lavender, of course, is a callback to an earlier part of the episode, right before Asuka’s date with Hikari’s friend, wherein Asuka asks Misato if she can use Misato’s perfume. The program going on in the background, by the way, is seemingly about a former couple arguing, with one of them declaring that (he) still loves (her) and the other one saying that it’s impossible, that (she) isn’t the person that (she) once was, and that it took (her) three years to forget (him). Of course, the immediate analysis is that this relates to Misato and Kaji’s relationship. But could it also refer, perhaps, to the fact that Asuka is trying desperately to become something she isn’t, e.g. the idea that people and time can’t turn back to what they once were?

At any rate, Asuka requests that she use Misato’s perfume, and Misato refuses her.

“It’s not for kids,” Misato says, implying blatantly that Asuka’s just a kid and that she’s an adult and hence can use the perfume. Naturally, Kaji validates Misato. Yes, Misato is an adult; yes, Misato is worthy of receiving Kaji’s love and attention.

Asuka isn’t.

Asuka’s a child, unworthy of the perfume and unworthy, it seems, of Kaji’s attention or affection. In later episodes, Asuka continues to try to draw Kaji’s attention, such as when she barges into his office only to find out that Toji has been selected as the Fourth Children, and when he shuts her down yet again.

Far from the romantic kiss that most fans of asushin seem to consider this occasion in EVA, the kiss is one of those moments wherein we’re reminded that Shinji and Asuka don’t understand one another. Shinji can’t think of why Asuka is upset. Asuka doesn’t care about Shinji and is only using him to validate herself, rather than out of any actual romantic reasoning beyond the sexual tension faced by allosexuals of their age.

(Now, I’m going to do a bit of a topic change so that I can talk about Rei and Misato, and how they relate to Asuka.)

In the beginning of episode nine, we see Asuka, as I mentioned earlier, considering herself to be the best of the best. She asks Shinji where the First Child is and proceeds to speak to the First Child.

When Asuka approaches Rei, her shadow covers the book that Rei is reading. The First Child responds by shifting the book, as if Asuka’s presence doesn’t bother Rei whatsoever and Rei couldn’t care less about Asuka. In other words, the opposite of the attention that Asuka seeks.

Now, a word on the framing of this scene. They’re outside, in public, surrounded by students. Asuka is extremely popular and a new student. Literally everyone is staring at Asuka and Rei when Asuka loudly declares herself to be the Unit 02 pilot. Now, notice that she specifically refers to Rei as the pilot of the prototype. Before Rei has even said a word, Asuka is immediately setting up the First Child to be inferior.

There are students everywhere. Asuka has put Rei, who clearly doesn’t care, on the spot. Rei, very rightfully, asks why.

Now, Asuka doesn’t reply that she wants to be friends with Rei, or that she finds Rei interesting, or, in reality, anything that one would normally say. No. Asuka responds:

'Because it’d be convenient, in lots of ways.’ Of course, Asuka is understandably simply being Asuka. Asuka doesn’t really know how to interact with other people except by establishing herself as dominant and very clearly and obviously setting up a one-way relationship in which they pay attention to her and she gives the appearance of not giving a shit about them. However, let’s give Asuka props for reaching out to Rei. Asuka doesn’t want to strike up a hatred of Rei, which is something that people tend to miss: Asuka doesn’t just walk around looking for conflict. She genuinely tried to become friends with Rei.

Unlike everyone else at the school, however, Rei doesn’t care for Asuka’s status. Rei doesn’t really care about anything at all.

Asuka is pretty dumbfounded at this. 'If I’m ordered to, I will.’ Instead of trying desperately to become an adult as Asuka is doing, Rei is essentially akin to a robot from Asuka’s perspective, simply waiting for orders.

Asuka thereafter refers to Rei as a doll. As we know, Asuka hates dolls, because her mother spoke to a doll and because she agreed to take the doll’s place and kill herself with her mother as long as Kyouko didn’t stop being her mother. And so Asuka comes to associate Rei with everything that she hates: a doll only capable of listening to its master, utterly dependent upon its master for everything, completely unable to think for itself. Actually, the entire willing to die thing comes back to bite later, as we’ll see in the all-important elevator sequence.

At any rate, from this initial issue and fracture within their relationship, Asuka actually does try to reach out to Rei a few more times. For example, in the episode with Sahaquiel, Asuka is the one to drag Rei to dinner with herself, Shinji, and Misato; she even foregoes what she was originally planning in order to go to a place where Rei, a vegetarian, would be satisfied. Similarly, after the attack with Matarael, Asuka good-naturedly responds to Rei’s philosophizing, not even insulting or making fun of her for it, but responding in an Asuka-like way. And so forth.

Asuka does have her reasons to dislike Rei, however. For example, Asuka believes that Rei is the favorite, as she explains during the black-out, calling Rei a “wondergirl”. Rei, of course, replies that no, Rei isn’t the favorite; Rei knows that quite well. But from Asuka’s perspective, Rei is the favored pilot, which is partially why Asuka dislikes Rei, because Rei is essentially taking—from Asuka’s POV—the title of “best pilot.” Rei and Shinji actually. But we’ll get to that.

To some extent, Asuka also dislikes Rei because Asuka perceives Shinji as trying for the First Child even as he avoids her like the plague. While the love stuff / love triangle stuff doesn’t really affect Rei and Asuka’s relationship, it is important to warrant a mention: Kaji doesn’t validate her; Shinji only cares about her for her body (he also cares about her as a friend, but Asuka rarely sees that, and we’re looking at this from her perspective) but seemingly cares quite a bit about Rei. It’s a matter of validation, and it’s another reason that Asuka dislikes Rei.

Okay, so to recap: Rei is a doll; Rei has attracted the attention of a boy whose Asuka was unable to capture in a way that suits her; Rei is willing to die for others; and Rei is favored as a pilot above Asuka.

As we know, as the series progresses, Asuka slowly loses her synchronization rate while Shinji starts to catch up, culminating in “You are number one!” at the start of episode sixteen. Asuka places her entire worth upon being a pilot, because she has nothing else. Her mother died just as Asuka was selected to become a pilot. Asuka decided never to cry again and put forth her everything into being a pilot. She became the pilot of the first combat-ready unit and achieved the highest sync rate of all. She cares so much about piloting and about looking good while piloting that she wears, as I mentioned, the neural interface headset at all times, even in the shower.

And then Shinji takes over.

Now, for a bit of EVA science, I have to mention that the reasons behind the sync rate were partially her fault and partially not. On one hand, while Unit 00 and Unit 02 are based upon Adam and contain within them only partial souls, Unit 01 is based upon Lilith and contains within it a full soul. Naturally Shinji is going to outpace all of them. The other fact, which is “her fault” (insofar that it could be avoided) is a result of the whole validation / mental unraveling thing.

Asuka does not take well to Shinji becoming number one. Rei, however, doesn’t seem to care. This boils over in the infamous elevator scene. Asuka and Rei are going down for a while when Rei tries to speak to Asuka.

Rei explains that Asuka has to open her heart to EVA, to which Asuka responds very negatively, exclaiming that of course she opens her heart to EVA. This is untrue, of course: Asuka keeps her innermost thoughts and feelings locked away, even from her mother / the EVA (in fact, part of her entire breakthrough in End of Evangelion, as we’ll see later, is due to the fact that she finally revealed her innermost self during her actual suicide / subsequent desire to live and so on). Rei genuinely reaches out and Asuka rejects the First Child, illustrating both of their developments: how high Rei has come, and how low Asuka has fallen.

She singles out Shinji as the root cause of these issues, because she’s no longer number one. She always perceived Rei to be the favored child, and now Shinji is also the favored child by the numbers.

Asuka refers to Rei as a mechanical puppet (translated as a doll in other subs, to further the point), stressing the entire idea of how much she hates dolls. In fact, Asuka even compares herself to have “lost her edge” because of the fact that she’s sunk so low so as to be comparable to a puppet, to a doll.

Asuka doesn’t actually believe herself to be above Shinji and Rei. Asuka pretends that she does as a defense mechanism. Many on Tumblr could probably relate, the entire “yes I am perfect / yes I am garbage” thing. She pretends that she’s the best because it’s easier than actually accepting herself, and she seeks for others to support this. Unfortunately, the rest of the world seems to have a different belief, and as someone with HPD, Asuka cannot handle that.

When Rei continues to try to genuinely help her, Asuka desperately screams out:

She expects for Rei to assure her that of course not, of course the First Child is capable of making her own decisions and of course the First Child would not simply die if ordered to do so. And why? Because Asuka doesn’t want to believe that she actually could have died had her mother told her to do so. Since Commander Ikari is essentially Rei’s equivalent to a parent / guardian, it’s a direct comparison. To Asuka’s shocked horror, Rei admits that the First Child would die if ordered.

Asuka slaps Rei. Asuka is personally offended at Rei’s words, because the First Child’s decision preys upon her largest fear. Asuka is capable of committing suicide and as such she’s terrified of the thought of herself actually killing herself for any reason.

Rei confirms her fear. Rei confirms that an excellent pilot, loved by the world, at the top of the game, favored (from Asuka’s perspective), and even validated by Shinji, would still be willing to die if ordered. Like a puppet. Like a doll.

Later on, during her entire mind break with Arael, Rei saves her. Rei, the doll, the culmination of everything that Asuka fears, saves her. Asuka believed that she was an adult, believed that she could handle anything by herself, but at her lowest low, while all of her fears are dredged out by Arael, the mechanical puppet doll—the thing from which Asuka has been trying to escape forever—saves her.

In the end, Asuka isn’t independent. Asuka is dependent and unable to save herself. And Asuka, at the end of the day, is saved by the most (from her point of view) dependent doll of all.

It’s a slap in the face (sorry, babe). It’s a complete destruction of everything for which Asuka stands. Arael utterly destroys her and what saves her is the thing that she hates most.

But more on Arael later. First, it’s time to discuss her relationship with Misato.

I’ve already covered most of her relationship with Misato in sections above and in sections below, so consider this to be a quick recap: In essence, Misato represents what Asuka both wants and doesn’t want. Misato is a validated adult woman who has sex and wins the "Kaji Bowl". Asuka wants to be like Misato on the surface because she wants to be akin to Misato in terms of being an independent adult (she kisses Shinji partially because she believes, rightfully, that that’s what Kaji and Misato are doing on their date). And yet Asuka is disgusted by Misato; she’s disgusted when she asks if she’ll grow up to be like Misato, and she shames Misato for all of the sex. She doesn’t actually want to be Misato; she doesn’t actually, deep in her heart want to grow up.

(Back to validation / etc.)

Speaking of the Arael incident, now is an absolutely excellent to go ahead and recap everything that has happened thus far. Prior to the Arael sequence, we see Asuka trying to call Kaji yet again but being unable to do so, followed by her noticing that Shinji is talking to Rei. Note the yoking of Kaji and Shinji yet again: When her primary focus is unavailable (Kaji), she turns to the secondary substitute (Shinji) of validation. This time, she interprets him speaking to the First Children as herself having lost. She barely reacts to this. Having been pushed out of place in terms of both being the top EVA pilot and in terms of validation (she used to be with Kaji and her German boyfriends all of the time, but all of that has left her), she’s crumbling down.

At the beginning of episode twenty-two, known rightfully in the fandom as the “Asuka mindfuck” episode, Unit 01 has essentially been put into stasis due to the fact that she managed to consume Zeruel’s core, therefore making herself an actualised god. SEELE, which has no time or patience for Gendo’s shenanigans, places Unit 01 and Shinji on the bench. Asuka is sent out to investigate, confront, and defeat Arael. She knows what’s at stake in this encounter. She knows that, most likely, her reputation and status as being able to pilot at all rides on this. And hell, if she’s lost her status in terms of validation, then she can move past that and continue to ride on the waves of her being the best EVA pilot. She can climb back.

As a perfectionist (something also common to HPD), Asuka won’t allow herself to look bad.

However, Arael starts to probe deep into her mind. After the attacks of the other angels, Arael doesn’t seek to harm anyone (indeed, other than Asuka, they don’t actually hurt anyone else, and even in the case of Asuka, it’s less of a malicious attack and more of a child attempting to probe a small animal and not realising that a shovel is not the best tool with which to do so).

Misato orders for Asuka to retreat. But to Asuka, retreating from what she perceives to be her last chance at the spotlight is paramount to utter failure, to death. To walk away now, to run away now, will be to lose the attention forever.

She can’t have that. In a very Shinjiesque moment, she resolves not to run away.

When Arael continues to probe, we get the same thing that Asuka has always said: Asuka can’t stand others looking into her mind, her heart, her soul. Asuka very carefully cultivates this external image that is oh so easily broken to reveal the depressed, suicidal child within. Arael, who is capable of literally ripping out all of Asuka’s worst memories and repressed self, is Asuka’s worst nightmare, so of course this is the angel that unintentionally rips her from the inside out.

Actually, I’m going to take a random quick aside to say that the animations of characters in Evangelion putting their faces in their hands are some of my favorite of the series, if not anime in general, because the way that the hair bounces up and moves. I’d make some gifs, but just capping everything and writing analysis is taking enough. Back to the analysis.

The worst part about all of this is that everyone else is hearing this. While we don’t know if the things that Asuka says in her mind to Arael are heard by the people in Central Dogma, it’s not impossible and is actually quite likely, what with the fact that she’s screaming all of her words with everything that she has.

Keep that in mind, given what we’re about to see her say. Picture her, after coming out of this nightmare, being fully aware that not only did she actually have a breakdown, but everyone heard her break down, audibly, crying and broken, and since saving the world is clearly a public event, something like this would likely be reported on the news as well to some extent (of course SEELE and NERV would massage the information, but the important part is that Asuka would think that it’s everywhere).

Arael starts out by reminding Asuka of her childhood: how her mother used to always work at Gehirn and never particularly had time for her daughter or her husband (which is a parallel between Asuka to Misato, as well as to Ritsuko, but I could write a completely another post about Asuka-Ritsuko parallels and the rejected love interest archetype that repeats itself again and again in Evangelion); how her mother finally became mother-like after being driven insane by only having a piece of her soul within her; how her father came to have an affair with her mother’s doctor and abandoned her mother; how her mother in turn abandoned her for a doll; how she agreed to die if it meant that her mother would not abandon her; how her mother actually committed suicide; how Asuka decided that she would never cry again (important). All of this, according to her, is something that she never wanted to think about again.

And of course not. She’s supposed to be the perfect one. She’s not supposed to have a backstory like this, not supposed to suffer and cry like this, not supposed to be this wounded attention-seeking child inside.

Most horrifyingly of all, the apparition of her mother-doll doesn’t recognize Asuka. In the ultimate blow to Asuka, who is so fiercely independent and craving of attention, the mother-doll asks who she is.

Because who is Asuka? The outer shell that she puts out (and that much of the fandom gobbles up), or the broken Asuka?

So we have an Asuka confidently introducing herself, complete with a little hair motion there to emphasize her beauty and to bring the attention to her with a large fanfare; an Asuka immediately putting others with her standard catchphrase of “あんたバカ?” / “anta baka?” because anyone who might possibly see through her must be placed in a subordinate position immediately, since Asuka has to be at the top, has to be the one to whom attention is given; an Asuka smugly talking about her “chance” to show off her piloting skills and hence gain attention; and, finally, that shot from the boat scene with Kaji. So look at me. That sexualised, sexualised shot that actually shows off just how young and unprepared she is.

Asuka claims that this isn’t the real her (which is true, because it isn’t the real her).

Immediately she’s dumped into a horrorscape wherein she seeks a figure whom she recognises as Kaji. She begs for Kaji (here, representative of all validating figures in general) to save her from this mindless crowd. She wants to stand out. She’s wearing her pilot outfit to emphasize her piloting skills as being a reason that she can rise out of the rabble. And yet that alone can’t bring her from the monotonous crowd that threatens to consume her: She begs for validation to save her, but it doesn’t, just like in real life.

Now, quite a few fans (I’m looking at you, EvaGeeks) ascribe Asuka’s line asking what Shinji is doing in her nightmare to be with romantic intent (e.g. she’s thinking of him because she likes him romantically). But not quite. The shot below pans from Kaji to Shinji, because it’s not about Shinji but about yet again yoking Kaji to Shinji. She can’t have Kaji. She can’t even have Shinji, and Shinji is a memetically beta, passive boy with very feminine qualities.

Worse, Shinji has a very apathetic Rei-like expression here. He just doesn’t give a shit about this. And him not giving a shit about her is what breaks her. She needs attention. She needs someone to pay attention to her, because she relies on other people for her happiness.

After this nightmare, we’re treated to the following shot of the true Asuka, usually the same line as from her earlier trying-to-be-an-adult look at me shot, but this time, as a crying child (and she told herself that she would never cry again, too):

The next shot is Asuka, naked, by herself, while Arael speaks to her, asking her if she’s lonely. Asuka, however, rejects Arael (whom she perceives to be her younger self). Basically, Asuka would be happier if Asuka accepted who she was and tried to build up based upon her own happiness rather than the false happiness from others (which ties into another Evangelion message concerning not relying upon false confidence, as Shinji does throughout the action arc only for everything to come crashing down on him during the incident with Leliel), but Asuka rejects that. Instead of admitting her weaknesses, Asuka repeats her maxims to herself, because they’re all that she has, even if they’re false and won’t make her happy (much like Shinji’s “I mustn’t run away”). All of this over Arael asking if Asuka ever loved (her mother).

Because if Asuka didn’t love herself, clearly she can’t love someone else, as she tells Shinji in End of Evangelion (by that point point, she’ll have figured out how to love herself, as we’ll see).

By the way, please note that the child Asuka’s hairclips are designed deliberately to evoke Unit 02’s four-eyed design, because Asuka isn’t merely rejecting her past self, but also her mother / Unit 02’s soul, which is why her synchronization plummets so intensely. In contrast, when Asuka accepts her failing and her mother as of End of Evangelion, she manages to sync well enough to go berserk, but we’ll get to that.

Of course, Arael, much like Leliel before them, isn’t having any of this shit.

So Arael completely and utterly rips up Asuka while Rei destroys them using the Lance of Longinus, which results in Asuka lying there, shell-shocked, in the plug. She’s curled in on herself in fetal position (what with the womb symbolism of EVA and all) even while she tries to reject all of her mistakes thrown up in her face.

And at the end of it all, she calls out to Kaji. There’s a reason that fans refer to Arael’s actions as a “mind rape” (a term I personally hate): Asuka says that she’s been defiled. The presence of the angel having reminded her of all of her faults from which she can’t escape has defiled her. Moreover, she failed in her “final attempt” as a pilot. She’s done and she knows it. There’s nothing there left for her.

And worst yet, of course, is how she was saved. Just like in the elevator, what ultimately saves Asuka isn’t herself or her independence or even her skills at piloting, but the doll, the doll who would die if the parent analogue ordered death. Not only is Asuka herself fucked over, but the very ideals upon which she has built her entire world are fucked over.

After this, Asuka is essentially finished. Shinji stands there, unable to do anything whatsoever. In the following episode, when Rei needs back-up, Asuka is completely unable to help her but simply sits there, entirely desynchronized from EVA. She’s useless. No one needs her whatsoever (except for the fact that they do; Shinji and Rei care about her as friends, and everyone else very much cares for her well-being, as we see in episode twenty-four and in End of Evangelion).

Following this, she apparently runs away and manages to do so without anyone interfering. Part of this is because Misato believes that Shinji and Asuka should be able to make their own decisions, which is an excellent parenting strategy except for the fact that she goes too far. Just as how Shinji ran off in the fourth episode only to be barely found by Kensuke and later by NERV agents, Asuka leaves, clearly with the intent of suicide.

Some people argue exactly how she intended to commit suicide. Some argue that she did so by slitting her wrists (hence her sitting in a bathtub), while others point out the fact that she clearly hasn’t been eaten for goodness knows how long, considering the clear shading at her cheeks, the prominent ribs, and the thigh gap that is far wider than even her typical skinny anime girl look. This scene isn’t fanservicey. It’s horrifying.

We also see her clothes neatly folded up next to her, which is something very common in suicide cases. She’s in the bathtub because a) that’s also a place associated with suicides and b) her entire “I hate everyone” scene (see below, just after this section) takes place, of course, with her standing over the bathtub. Throughout Evangelion, water comes up again and again, as a general aesthetic choice that encompasses life, happiness, escapism, thought, the inner world, all of that; here, Asuka is in an empty bathtub entirely dry, symbolizing the lack of life. In fact, the bathtub, and the entire house, is broken. Useless. No one would come to look at such a decrepit shack, which, of course, is the point.

Asuka doesn’t die, however. She survives because NERV agents find her, just as they did with Shinji. As we know, Asuka ends up in the hospital and is later placed in Unit 02. She’s surprised to find herself alive and so on and so forth. We’ll get to that in End of Evangelion.

Asuka’s part during Instrumentality is pretty much review at this point, so I’ll just leave the screencaps here and allow you to draw upon what you’ve learned from the rest of this to drive home the points that I’ve been making all along.

You know, Asuka and Shinji aren’t that different at their cores (heheh). They both rely upon others for false happiness and end up getting smacked in the face for it until they learn to rely upon their own happiness, at which point they can begin to understand each other.

(Ahaha, the doll Rei telling her off again, because Rei understands her even if Asuka doesn’t want Rei to understand her. Check out that character development for Rei, by the way. The sheer amount of development from the Rei that we see in the first episode, incapable of even understanding the feelings that lurk within the soul, to the Rei we see here and in End of Evangelion, gently guiding Shinji and the rest of humanity through Instrumentality and rejection thereof.)

In the case of the Second Children, Instrumentality simply repeats what we already know what her in explicit detail for those who missed it.

Confounding all of this seeking of validation is the fact that Asuka, in reality, wants to be isolated. Underneath the HPD and underneath that flirty, lively personality with which she seeks attention, Asuka is hostile in a manner that keeps others away from her. When she’s alone, and sometimes when she’s particularly upset, she hates humanity and she’s cruel. I don’t mean cruel in the “anta baka?” sense, but in a sense that Asuka can transform her own hate for herself into a deep fuel with which to destroy others.

Here, she laments having to so much as interact with other human beings. She doesn’t want to use the same toilet or wash her underwear in with Misato and Shinji’s, wherein Misato and Shinji represent the people that inhabit the world around her. Interestingly, both the toilet and the underwear reference are very personal. Asuka has no issues “sharing” that flirty outer shell that she has created, but everything that lies within is hers and hers alone. Most of all, however, she hates herself.

In this sequence, and throughout this episode, Asuka complains about suffering from menstrual cramps. She mentions that she doesn’t want to be a mother (her dislike of being a mother and yet menstruating in contrast to Rei’s mother-like qualities and lack of menstruation is a topic worthy of its own post) and that most of all she hates herself, again. There are many reasons as to why Asuka would not want to be a mother. For instance, there’s the obvious fact that her mother committed suicide, which surely has left a sour taste in Asuka’s mouth (a taste, we find, that appears during the nightmare sequence with Arael). But there’s another aspect of motherhood: the idea of sharing your body and later your entire life with another human being. And that, I think, is the aspect of motherhood that terrifies Asuka most.

In End of Evangelion, Asuka is surprised to discover that she is alive when she awakens deep below the lake, uttering, “I’m … alive?”. As I mentioned earlier, Asuka killed herself because she did not believe that she held any worth to anyone. She talks about how no one will look at her now. Without the validation of others, she has nothing, and there is no purpose to anything. However, deep within the bowels of the EVA, Asuka finally synchronizes with the partial soul in Unit 02.

Here, she discovers two things: first, that her mother is always watching over her and protecting her and consequently will act as a constant “source of light” for the attention that she requires so desperately, and second, that the A.T. Field is in fact what separates the walls of human hearts. But instead of replying in a negative manner in the way that Kaworu did in episode twenty-four or in the way that Shinji did at first, Asuka is overjoyed at the news.

She has her A.T. Field. She has no need of anyone else, because she, her inner self, will always be protected by an impenetrable barrier. To Asuka, who represents the true extreme of human isolation (in sharp contrast to the true extreme of human union represented by Rei), the A.T. Field is more than a blessing. Instrumentality, by contrast, would be the greatest curse that Asuka could experience. Wielding this A.T. Field, Asuka is capable of destroying both SEELE’s forces and the EVA Series, until the S2 engines allow the MPEs to regenerate. And here the battle takes a turn for the worse, in the worst possible way.

As seen in the fight with Arael, Asuka associates both her success and her defeat in a sexual manner, specifically because she associates her subconscious sexually. Just as she commented that Arael’s exploration into her mind had resulted in her mind and herself being “defiled”, so too does her ultimate defeat in End of Evangelion feature heavy sexual symbolism.

Firstly, she is stabbed by the Lance of Longinus, in context symbolically transformed into a phallic weapon. The MPEs themselves, whose appearances are also quite phallic, produce anti-A.T. Fields which later aid in bringing about Instrumentality. They attack in unison rather than independently, and hence they represent everything that Asuka despises so much. All of them swarm her in a ritualistic (and here come the trigger warnings, guys) gang rape. They descend upon her, violate her, mutilate her, and leave. Notably, if one looks past the gore, one will observe that the damage done to Unit 02 almost makes the EVA appear pregnant, with the swollen at the stomach, or as if the EVA is in process of / has just given birth. There’s that fear of pregnancy, rearing its ugly head.

This is only exacerbated by the shot of Asuka screaming and grabbing her abdomen.

Naturally, it’s merely an injury. But the styling of the injury looks very much like that whole pregnancy thing. The EVA Series, representative of all which Asuka despises, has assaulted her and rid her of the very isolation that she so craves. When she manages to reactivate the EVA, going berserk for the first time in the series, the MPEs respond by piercing her with multiple phallic weapons, leaving her not quite crucified so much as stabbed, dominated, conquered repeatedly. Not in the relatively clean crucifixion, but as messy and horrible as possible.

Why, then, do the MPE cause her such an ultimate humiliation? Because even though she has identified with her happiness in human isolation and her happiness with her A.T. Field, she did so within Unit 02. Part of Evangelion is the rejection of the mother and of the womb-like plug and of standing by herself (because from within the womb, we can filter reality in a manner that causes the Hedgehog’s Dilemma). Hence, the narrative punishes Asuka for going about human isolation in the “wrong manner”. When she rematerialises herself in the last moments of End of Evangelion, she is doing so without EVA, the EVA having been destroyed. Shinji chokes her because Asuka cannot escape human contact. As part of the resolution of the Hedgehog’s Dilemma, Asuka must understand that she ultimately must interact with humanity, but she also now understands, loves, and accepts herself.

At this point, presumably a quantum Rei appears to collect Asuka’s soul. We don’t see her again until the pre-Instrumentality sequence. Just as a random aside, but I’d like to take the opportunity to point out that the Adam-Lilith complex, who appears as the person with whom the soul-to-be-harvested wishes to become one, took on Kaworu’s appearance for Shinji, not Asuka’s. Anyway: we next see Asuka while she and Shinji are “attempting” to communicate.

While Instrumentality is in its opening stages, we have this wonderful sequence of shots between Shinji and Asuka, with Shinji painted in the blue traditionally associated with masculinity and boyhood and Asuka painted in the pink traditionally associated with femininity and girlhood, neither of which particularly suits either one. While Asuka yells at him for not understanding her (and very rightfully calls him out), we’re treated to a series of flashes of Shinji’s eyes, sad and drooping, coupled with obviously objectified shots of Asuka.

Shinji doesn’t care about Asuka at this point except for her body (note that these shots don’t contain her face; of course Shinji does care about Asuka as a friend, but in terms of their strict ego-to-ego communication to one another, here’s what we get):

While Shinji gives himself half-defenses, Asuka points out that he literally just used her for her body. He can’t handle the actual living, breathing Asuka and so focuses on a projection of her made inside of his mind, a projection that would lie there two-dimensionally while she does nothing at all. [Anno looks directly at the camera like in The Office]

This climaxes with Asuka thrusting her chest into Shinji’s face (note the lack of her face in the first shot, cutting off her individuality and will in favor of simply offering her body, which could be any body at all, to Shinji) on the Hell Train.

She has realised that validation renders her, like Misato, as simply a body, when what she wanted to be validated as an individual. Now that she loves herself (regarding the entire “accepting her mother and isolation” bit above), she can validate herself and doesn’t need anyone else (hence, human isolation), but she also understands what Shinji is feeling.

We see Asuka next in the Hell Kitchen. Now, the Hell Kitchen is Asuka’s equivalent to Shinji’s Hell Train, which we just witnessed about.

The Hell Train is where we meet Shinji multiple times as he struggles with his mental thoughts and feelings. The train, because on a train one is surrounded by people yet constantly alone (just think about that shot from one of the initial episodes, wherein we see Shinji listening to his music on a steadily emptying train) and because, while a train ostensibly has a destination, one can technically remain on a train forever, being merely moved from place to place to some destination without exerting any force of one’s own. In this manner, the Hell Train represents both Shinji’s inherent issues (his avoidant personality disorder, the hedgehog’s dilemma, and the idea of drifting through life without purpose) and his current state.

Asuka’s hell is the Hell Kitchen. First of all, it’s Misato’s kitchen. Asuka wants nothing more than to grow up and become independent already, and yet there she is, sitting in the kitchen of the guardian upon whom she is dependent. Second of all, it’s a kitchen. The kitchen is the heart of the home, heavily associated with dependency and, dare I say, motherhood. Yeah. It’s definitely Asuka’s hell, and yet one from which she isn’t entirely able to escape.

There are also two vital aspects of this scene that deserve. The first one is pretty obvious and most people have noticed it: Asuka and Shinji are wearing the same outfits that they wore during the kiss sequence described earlier, a major aspect of a case in which Asuka was not validated. The second one is less obvious: The seemingly random broken coffee pot that spills across the floor is actually symbolism lifted from the scene in which Shinji informs Asuka that her beloved Kaji is dead, another major aspect of lack of validation. To recap: the symbols in the Hell Kitchen remind Asuka not only of her consistent inability to actually become independent but only of her failures in validation as a sexual adult.

(Above is coffee cup during Instrumentality [rewatch the scene if you don’t believe me]. Below is the coffee cup from the Kaji’s death revelation scene.)

Asuka exists in this pre-Instrumentality state completely isolated. Here, she’s happy. There’s no one. She’s by herself and she can’t imagine a better existence. Then Shinji pops up out of nowhere (note that this is prior to full Instrumentality. In episodes twenty-five and twenty-six, we see the slow progression of Instrumentality, and they mention that Instrumentality had been ongoing for months if not years, as people’s egos interacted and slowly stripped down to the very essences of their beings). He runs over to Asuka and offers to stay with her forever, offering her his help.

Too little, too late.

While Asuka sought validation in the past, after her experiences with the A.T. Field, she no longer has any need whatsoever of Shinji’s validation. Hence, she tells Shinji to leave her alone. After this, all Shinji says is “Help me,” because even his initial offering of assistance to her solely hurt her, and In reality, he was being selfish and merely attempting to get her to help him. He wasn’t there for her when Asuka needed him.

As Asuka points out, Shinji doesn’t need her. Shinji just needs someone. And Asuka doesn’t simply want to be someone; Asuka wants to be, well, herself, specifically. She wants to be valued for who she is, not because circumstances left her the least of all evils, especially for Shinji, whose first choice, per Instrumentality, was Kaworu anyway.

Asuka calls him out on his bullshit. Asuka points out that he doesn’t love himself, because she’s been there. She hated herself, but through the understanding of her mother and her A.T. Field, she’s okay. But she is rejecting his presence. She is rejecting him entering her mind, because she wants to be by herself. She wants to be isolated.

He continues to ask for help. She refuses. I’m going to interject right here one second and say that Shinji repeatedly, brokenly, whispering and then yelling, “助けて” / “Tasukete,” while Asuka calls him out (the framing of the scene would make it appear at first that Shinji is the protagonist and Asuka is the antagonist, but if you pay attention to the words and emotions, it’s the opposite). Instrumentality is her worst nightmare: As the literal symbol of human isolation, she can’t take the intrusion.

And so, in the act of causing Instrumentality to occur (by becoming one with Kaworu), Shinji chokes her. Shinji murders her in the process of Instrumentality because Asuka cannot stand the thought of being erased, of being one of many. And yet Asuka merely stares at him, apathetically, as if she could not care less about the proceedings if she tried. Shinji is killing her, and she still doesn’t give a fuck about him now that she no longer needs him to validate herself. (The opening ceremonies of the Komm, susser Tod sequence relate this is to Akagi Naoko choking Rei I.)

I’m going to point out one thing before we move on: this shot.

In this shot we see two very important things: Shinji on the ground and the coffee cup on the ground. Shinji and Kaji. The two men from whom she attempted to receive validation. And she says, “How pitiful,” not at them so much as at herself for needing validation from them. She’s moved beyond that now.

Instrumentality goes on. I’m not going to talk about the original drafted version of the live action sequences, because they were excluded from the final product and I don’t find them worthy of being analysed myself. Typically, when I analyse extraneous material, it’s because the material was cut due to censorship. In this case, however, there didn’t appear to be any censorship involved. So, I’ll just jump right in to what’s probably the single largest misconception about End of Evangelion.

The ending is 100% optimistic hopeful happy, even happier than EoTV / the original anime ending.

No, really.

Rei and Kaworu explain to Shinji, and the audience, that every single being that has the will to come back, will come back.

(Holy shit, just look at those visuals. [wipes brow])

Contrary to the (asushin-friendly) interpretation of the “new Adam and Eve”, Asuka and Shinji will not be stranded together on the beach forever. Rather, every lifeform that wishes to come back from the LCL can come back. Poignantly, we hear Yui’s often-repeated quote again:

That’s the message of Neon Genesis Evangelion, gentlefolks: Even if you’re at the very brink of suicide, even if you’re at the very brink of escapism, as long as you have a will to live, you can return. What does that mean for Asuka?

Shinji’s the first back simply because he was in control of Instrumentality, thanks to both Rei and Kaworu (and Yui) deciding to place the future of the world into the hands of a depressed, avoidant, suicidal fourteen-year-old child who was capable, deep within his heart, of choosing to life. And the very second one back is Asuka, because, again, Asuka represents ultimate human isolation. Asuka represents the strongest will to live out of anyone. Asuka is driven to suicide when the external validation she had set up fails around her. But then she sets up her own internal ones. And now, now, she is the girl who screams, “I don’t want to die,” the girl who declares to her enemies that she’ll kill them all, the girl who reaches for the sun and is laid low by powers outside of her control.

But LCL? Perfectly within her control. And thus she exits first, exhausted from the process of having to reform herself, akin to Shinji in episode twenty. Shinji notices her. Between the quantum Rei sent out at the instant of the Third Impact and the sudden appearance of Asuka, Shinji is terrified for a moment that he somehow is still in Instrumentality. Hence, he chokes her.

(*Disclaimer: I need to say, right now and right here, that I am not defending this nor the earlier choking of Asuka. Shinji is violent and misogynistic, and what he did was completely wrong. Which is part of the reason that the thought of Shinji anywhere near Asuka romantically causes my hackles to rise, because they harm one another on so many levels.)

If Instrumentality is truly over, then Asuka should be able to feel pain. And she does. After apathetically staring at Shinji for a few seconds, Asuka touches his face, indicating that she now understands his pain and that she can feel her own, confirming that Instrumentality happened but is over. Shinji stops choking her, but observe his fingers jittering over her throat here. If you watch the actual film, you’ll notice that there’s an extended shot of his fingers shivering as he decides whether or not to continue strangling her.

Interestingly enough, in this final shot, we see Shinji straddling Asuka in a manner akin to a (cis) woman straddling a (cis) man lying down. In fact, they’re much exactly mirroring the Shinji-Rei allegorical sex scene from just a few moments prior. Gender roles swapping, morphing. Becoming more attuned to their actual selves.

He breaks down crying, partially out of relief that he has rejected Instrumentality and that he is again alive, and partially out of disgust at himself. Likewise, Asuka says her famous line, “気持悪い“ / “Kimochi warui,” which can be translated as “How disgusting,” or “I feel sick.” What’s interesting here is that depending upon the translation, Asuka might actually be referring to herself, or to Shinji, or to both of them. I’m inclined to take on a more general interpretation. Asuka has this sick feeling because she has just crawled up onto the shore, reforming herself entirely via her mind from the LCL, only to find none other than Shinji with her once more. But she’s also saying it in regard to the pathetic state of humanity: herself, injured, having failed; Shinji, sobbing over her. And so on. A disgusting feeling, in general, at the proliferation of life once again.

Because that’s something else about Evangelion. Anywhere can be heaven, but not necessarily so. Still, I would argue that this is the most uplifting of all endings, because life will return to normal, and this time, Shinji and the others will be far better equipped to pursue their happiness.

If you have any questions, comments, or dissents, please message me! This was all basically a very bang and rush job, so I’m certain that it’s not perfect, and English isn’t my first language. Still, if you managed to read all of that, Congratulations!

#neon genesis evangelion #nge #asuka langley sohryu #evangelion #nge meta #asuka meta #tw: pregnancy #tw: gore #tw: suicide #tw: menstruation #tw: rape #i formatted it a bit for readability just to be transparent lol #nge spoilers #anti asushin #long post

[lesbian-kyoru]

Oh, my gosh, I love your Akigure AMV! I love all the Akigure stans in general that are kind of converting me (I’m ready for my cult initiation now!)! I was wondering what your favorite Furuba ship and character were.

awww thank you so much, i’m so glad you enjoyed my amv 🥺💕 and YES it’s wonderful to welcome a new akigure stan!! those are some great questions and took me awhile to think over hehe (also some spoilers were necessary for my answers, i hope that’s ok with you!!)

so for favorite ship, i feel like this is a really predictable answer lol but i gotta be honest, it’s definitely kyoru!! i’ve always been a fan of slow burns, and i think fruits basket really has one of the best ones that i’ve read. a big thing for me in a romance is i always always need to see the development of feelings from both characters; it was obvious that kyo had a crush on tohru pretty early on, and i was initially worried that tohru would just kind of...fall in love with kyo too because he likes her and he’s the tsundere lmao. so i really appreciate how takaya crafted tohru’s arc of very slowly realizing and struggling with her feelings for kyo, and also gave a dozen reasons why she fell in love with him (not that love is all logic and reason, but i mean writing-wise everything makes sense and adds up!). other things i love about them are how they seem like an opposites attract pairing but actually have a TON of similarities and some fascinating parallels in their arcs (just wrote an essay about that the other day lol). and besides how well they work narratively, i just love how soft they are with each other, how they can be vulnerable and raw with each other in a way they can’t with anyone, and how they genuinely enjoy spending time with each other. 🥺

favorite character was a bit harder to decide (i’m letting down the kyo stans😔), but ultimately i have to go with the QUEEN miss tohru honda herself!! i just love how LAYERED she is. on your first pass through the story, it seems like we really don’t see how complex she is until beach arc at the earliest, but rereading you can actually see clues scattered everywhere that she’s not as unfailingly optimistic as the facade she presents, and i love that shit. i just think her character arc is so damn compelling—her moving from a passive protagonist, just learning about the family and trying to please everyone, to a boss ass bitch protagonist who is actively trying to dismantle the cycle of abuse—aka going FERAL and trying to break an ancient curse? all while coming to terms with her own deeply repressed grief and learning how to move on from it in a healthy way? and finding someone who she can drop her carefully-crafted sunny disposition around and just be a damn mess, her real self, in front of? and going through the realization that she doesn’t have to be a perfect self-sacrificing being, and that it’s okay to do what she wants and prioritize her own needs!! furuba has its problems for sure but that’s some feminist bullshit right there and i ate that shit up!! truly no offense but people who think tohru is one-dimensional or boring don’t have eyes!!! jk jk but just...she really is an amazing protagonist. after watching anime after anime where every female character exists to further the main dude’s arc or WORSE to get “strong female character scenery” points, finding fruits basket made me so happy because look!! it’s a story about a WOMAN!! and she’s well developed!!! and she starts off already knowing how to care for others, but by the end learns how to care for herself. she doesn’t exist to just fix a man, she has so many facets and really learns to love and value herself through a very healing, reciprocal, and healthy relationship. god i promised myself i wouldn’t cry on main while talking about tohru today but here i am. 😔✋🏻

but yes, those are my faves!! honorable mention for ships would be akigure, yuchi, and one-sided kimi/kakeru (trust me read this spicy fic and You’ll Get It), and then for characters it’s kyo, akito, shigure, yuki, and the stuco clowns!! in summary i really just love everyone. 🥰

#ty for the ask!! <3 and i will answer your other one ASAP as well ajdjsjd sorry im so slow!! #kyoru #fruits basket #tohru honda #kyo sohma #ask #long post #zoe.txt #fruits basket meta #fruits basket spoilers

[ratttttttttttttt]

hi i hope this is okay to ask, but i was wondering how do you start recovering? do you find a therapist, or should you just do it yourself, or ..? sorry i hope this isn’t triggering or anything 🥺

Omg no you’re totally fine, I don’t mind talking about this stuff at all! I will say the most important step to “start” recovering is to accept that your choices are 1. Recovery 2. (if you’re one of the very few anorexics that can repress their reactive eating) Lose weight and eventually die 3.(if youre not one of those few anorexics) Yo-yo your weight for years while destroying your digestive system and either die or live the rest of your life Incredibly unhealthy and probably in pain (both mental and physical).

I know it sounds really harsh but that is the reality of anorexia, and many other eating disorders (bulimia and EDNOS for sure, and depending on how it effects you othorexia as well) too. If you want to be able to be healthy and live your life without self hate, anxiety, and guilt eating away at you, you need to recover. The good news is, recovery often is physically fairly easy for people. The bad news is it is emotionally and mentally much less so!

Once you get to the point where you have decided to recover, I recommend you start giving in to your reactive eating episodes (if you get them) and set alarms and reminders to eat at specific times. Make it something you really love the taste of if that helps! Or make it something that takes a long time to make, so you can use the prep time to hype yourself up and be ready to eat once it’s finished. Eventually, if you get back up to eating when you are hungry you will go back to not wanting to eat when you’re full and not having reactive eating episodes anymore (this can take a long, long time depending in how long you went not eating enough). Additionally try your best to not let yourself go hungry, for me feeling hungry was a huge trigger to keep not eating and could set me back by days or even weeks.

While the most basic part of recovery is getting yourself to eat when you are hungry, dismantling the unhealthy ideas about food and weight that often build up during the course of an eating disorder is, imo, just as if not more important. Destroy the idea of “good” vs “bad” or “healthy” vs “unhealthy” food. All food has nutrients, and you need balanced amount of those each day. If you get all of your fat for the day at once from some donuts it’s just as healthy as gettting it spread out through other foods. Additionally, not eating “healthily” is not a moral failure. Health has nothing to do with your morals. Weight is the same. I could honestly write an entire essay on these topics so feel free to ask about it more if you want but I am cutting myself off now so this doesn’t get too horribly long lol.

TLDR: Start recovery by deciding to recover, taking steps to increase your food intake and to get rid of toxic ideas about food, weight, and health that you’ve learned.

Note: I know everybody says this but recovery is not and does not have to be linear. I spent months in what I call “pre-recovery” where I would decide to recover in the morning, then change my mind and not eat anything but breakfast. After that I went through a phase where I would stick with recovery until I gained 4-5 pounds and then fall back onto old habits again. The most important thing is that you come back to it after every relapse and that you keep trying. Relapse does not make you a bad person or a failure- it is absolutely normal, and simply another part of recovery you will have to deal with.

Feel free to send me asks/dms if you want to know more about any of this or want any tips I’ve learned through my recovery!

#oh wow this needs a lot of tags hold on #ask #anon #weight ment #weight tw #calorie ment #(i think?) #calorie tw #recovery tips #recovery #anorexia ment #anorexia tw #ed ment #ed tw #relapse ment #relapse tw #food ment #food tw

[qqueenofhades]

So, it’s Friday evening, and it turns out I have more thoughts about things that happened this week. I almost never do Discourse on this blog, on whatever subject, but sometimes even your friendly local depressed historian gotta say things. If you’re not in the mood for a long-ass meta-y text post, just keep on scrolling, no hard feelings.

In the wake of the Notre Dame fire, which obviously a lot of us were upset about, and profoundly relieved that it did not end up being completely catastrophic, the usual spate of posts began to pop up, alleging that people only cared about Notre Dame because of the loss to Western/European/Christian history, that nobody had been this upset about the National Museum of Brazil or the outbreak of arson at three black churches in Louisiana in the same week, and so on. I don’t blame anyone for making those posts, because I know they cared about those issues and wanted to ensure that their importance was communicated, especially when something major like Notre Dame was getting all the airtime. However, I couldn’t help but notice how that followed the same pattern as all Woke Tumblr Discourse (tm). An event happens, people express reactions to it, and are then attacked or indirectly shamed for not expressing reactions to another event. Or there’s the usual cycle of “nobody will care about this because it’s not happening in America”-style posts, or passive-aggressive insinuations that “you don’t care if you don’t reblog this.” And -- I say this with the greatest kindness possible, because I know, I know you guys care -- it’s... not helpful.

The culture of Tumblr and other left-wing sections of social media often rests on enacting performative wokeness, on showing that you care about the most Progressive (tm) issues, or that you have thoroughly scrutinized your fandom tastes or political beliefs for anything Problematic and/or can prove yourself to an imagined moral standard (and there have been some great metas written on how this essentially replicates conservative evangelical purity culture, with the goalposts switched). This is why we keep having to circulate (and doubtless will have to do so with increasing frequency) those posts reminding the left not to eat its young and flame all prospective Democratic challengers to Trump in 2020 to a crisp before the right wing, which is only too happy to let us do the work of sabotaging ourselves, even gets a chance. This is also why you see the posts responding to said angry “nobody cares about this!” posts, in which people mention the fact that not visibly reacting to all the (vast and terrible) injustice in the world does not mean they don’t care. The world is a big place. So is the internet. I can guarantee you that people do care, and just because you didn’t see immediate evidence and response to it when you opened up your Tumblr dash is not proof of a collective nefarious conspiracy.

Take me, for example. I am a thirty-ish academic and historian who considers myself well-informed and literate in current events. I read national and international news every day to find out what’s going on (because I live in England, the answer is Brexit, and the status is Failed). And yet, there are plenty of things that I only hear about for the first time on Tumblr, often attached to one of those “nobody cares about this!” posts. And you know what? I do care. I care a lot. And I’m guessing that most other people do as well, because no matter how it may feel, the majority of individuals are fundamentally decent people with basic empathy for others, even if our whole system is a nightmare. But the urge to demand why nobody is Discoursing about this issue (again, among a vast and exhausting sea of them) needs to take a few fundamental things into account. 

First, the American media (as a large portion of readers are relying on) simply does not report this stuff. Look at what’s happening in that godforsaken country right now; does it really seem like the kind of place that’s eager to tell you about Brazilian museum fires or black-church arson? I’m someone who makes a conscious effort to read the news no matter how depressed it makes me, and I still miss tons of stuff, because it’s not there. The Western media reported on Notre Dame, people knew about it, and were upset. But when those of them who did not know about the National Museum of Brazil learned about it, they were also upset. We can definitively say now that the National Museum was a bigger and more irreplaceable tragedy in terms of what burned. But we were also apparently 15-30 minutes away from losing all of Notre Dame. You can be upset about both these things. You can express empathy for the history lost in both cases. There is not a greater moral value attached, and you’re not racist for caring about Notre Dame if you heard about it first (unless you’re only upset about Notre Dame for reasons related to race or perceived cultural superiority and are peddling vile conspiracy theories about Jews and Muslims intentionally burning it down, in which case you are a racist). Almost everyone who learned about the National Museum fire was just as horrified.

2019 is a hard and monstrously unfair and tremendously difficult place to live. The internet has made exposure to both all the information and no real information at all simultaneously possible. Not everyone can display active engagement and empathy with every tragedy everywhere. People have jobs, lives, kids, work, school, other commitments, mental and physical health to look after and even when they read the damn news, there’s no guarantee whatsoever the news is going to report it. If they haven’t made the conscious effort to search out every scrap of terribleness that exists in this hellworld, they.... really should not be shamed for that. If they don’t care even after they learn, that’s another debate. But again, in my experience, most people do. But if they are first exposed to it by someone claiming they won’t care, that makes them less likely to engage with it, and to want to enact meaningful change. Firing wittily sarcastic takedowns at easy targets on echo-chamber liberal Twitter is one thing. We all enjoy a good roast and venting our frustration at times. But as a long-term engagement strategy, it’s going to actively backfire.

I talk a lot about being a teacher, and my experiences with my students, but it’s relevant again, so here goes. The kids in my classes come in believing some pretty strange things, or they flat out don’t have a clue even about what I consider basic historical knowledge. If my reaction was to shame them for not knowing, when they have expressly come to me to learn better, I’m pretty sure I’d be a bad teacher. My strategy, whenever a student can actually be nudged to answer a question, is to pick out whatever correct thing they said. Even if the rest of the answer is wrong and we need to work through it, I start by highlighting the part of it that was right, and to build their confidence that I’m not just going to tear them down when they respond. Freshmen are scared of not knowing things and to be made to look like an idiot, so I try to assure them that I’m not going to do that and I will constructively engage with their contribution and treat it seriously. You can then move to dealing with the other parts of it that may not be right, or even Mmm Whatcha Say side-eye. It is a long and often frustrating process and sometimes after reading their essays, you wonder how much of an impression you made. But if you actually want to get people to care about things, you can’t mistake Ultimate Wokeness or Look How Progressive/Anti-establishment/Enlightened I Personally Am for the simple requirement of being a decent person. You can have the greatest and most necessary beliefs or value systems in the world, but if your response to people is to lash out at them even before they begin the conversation, you’re setting yourself back. And I know that’s not really what you want to do.

This should not be interpreted as some wishy-washy “everyone just needs to be nice to each other!!!” kindergarten-playground-rule. I frankly think the whole system could use a good nefarious dismantle, and you sure as hell don’t get there by mistaking insipid moral equivalence for necessary action. But accepting the existence of people different from you, and considering how you want to engage with them, and understanding that issues are complicated and people are flawed, is a fundamental part of being a mature adult (and this has nothing to do with chronological age; there are 15-year-olds who are plenty more mature adults than 50-year-olds). I honestly do love the desperate desire to make people care, and that, for the most part, is why people who identify as liberal or left-wing do so, because they want to (and they do) care. But it’s also why they can be bad at winning elections and getting into meaningful positions to enact this change. The right wing stays on message and sticks together. Even if they absolutely hated Trump, plenty of Republicans held their noses and voted for him anyway. The left did not do that. The greatest virtue of liberal thought, i.e. its determination to include multiple perspectives, has increasingly reduced it to smaller and smaller camps where only the purest survive, like some kind of ideological Hunger Games. It might be great for making yourself look good to your hall of mirrors, but.... not so good for actually doing something long-term.

Once again, this is not to blame anyone for being upset and worried about things, for wanting people to know about them, and so forth. But I am gently-but-firmly suggesting, in my capacity as old, salty, queer spinster academic aunt, that perhaps you consider how you start the conversation. Once again, it’s my experience that most people want to know and want to care, but there are countless factors that mean not every bad thing in the world will be acknowledged everywhere by everyone at all times. You can care about different things for different reasons. That is okay. You can care about something because you have a personal connection to it. That is also okay. You can not care about something because you just don’t have the capacity and are emotionally exhausted and there’s so much shit in this world that you have to compartmentalize and set boundaries. That is also okay.

For example, I was obviously very upset about Notre Dame, and still am, though I’m relieved it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Am I happy it’s going to be restored? Yes. Am I unbelievably angry that a half-dozen of the elite uber-rich could just suddenly throw billions of euros at it for its restoration, when it had to struggle for years to get funding for crucial renovations? Yes. Do I feel as if that if the vaults have suddenly been opened to restore one major European Christian landmark, it’s incredibly heartbreaking that that level of instant capital just won’t be addressed to actual endemic, long-term issues like global warming and social inequality and the Flint water crisis and whatever else, and that this is a sad and troubling message for our society in many ways? Yes.  All of these things exist together. And I imagine most people feel the same way.

In short: I realize this is the internet, and therefore just is not designed to do that, but maybe we can give each other a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt, and think about how we would like to educate and engage those we come in contact with, whether virtually or in reality. We can do it wherever and whoever we are, with anyone that we meet, and I wonder what it would be like if we did.

#hilary for ts #history #notre dame #Le Discourse #anyway yes #i just felt like it needed to be said #nothing particularly original perhaps #and it has been said before #but still #long post