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liquidstar · 3 years

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I feel as if many people, myself included, have been having problems with the way “critical thinking” is conducted in fandom circles more and more. Which I’d say is a good thing, because it means we’re thinking critically. But still the issues with the faux-critical mentality and with the way we consume media through that fandom group mentality are incredibly widespread at this point, despite being very flawed, and there are still plenty of people who follow it blindly, ironically.

I sort of felt like I had to examine my personal feelings on it and I ended up writing a whole novel, which I’ll put under the cut, and I do welcome other people’s voices in the matter, because while I’m being as nuanced as I can here I obviously am still writing from personal experience and may overlook some things from my limited perspective. But by and large I think I’ve dissected the phenomena as best I can from what I’ve been seeing going on in fandom circles from a safe but observable distance.

Right off the bat I want to say, I think it's incredibly good and necessary to be critical of media and understand when you should stop consuming it, but that line can be a bit circumstantial sometimes for different people. There are a lot of anime that I used to watch as a teenager that I can’t enjoy anymore, because I got more and more uncomfortable overtime with the sexualization of young characters, partly because as I was getting older I was really starting to realize how big of an issue it was, and I certainly think more critically now than I did when I was 14. Of course I don’t assume everyone who still watches certain series is a pedophile, and I do think there are plenty of fans that understand this. However I still stay away from those circles and that’s a personal choice.

I don’t think a person is morally superior based on where they draw the line and their own boundaries with this type of stuff, what’s more important is your understanding of the problem and response to it. There are series I watch that have a lot of the same issues around sexualization of the young characters in the cast, but they’re relatively toned down and I can still enjoy the aspects of the series I actually like without it feeling as uncomfortable and extreme. Others will not be able to, and their issues with it are legitimate and ones that I still ultimately agree with, but they’re still free to dislike the series for it, after all our stance on the issue itself is the same so why would I resent them for it?

Different people are bound to have different lines they draw for how far certain things can go in media before they’re uncomfortable watching it and it doesn’t make it a moral failing of the person who can put up with more if they’re still capable of understanding why it’s bad to begin with and able to not let it effect them. But I don’t think that sentiment necessarily contradicts the idea that some things really are too far gone for this to apply, the above examples aren’t the same thing as a series centered solely around lolicon ecchi and it doesn’t take a lot of deep analysis to understand why. It’s not about a personal line anymore when it comes to things that are outright propaganda or predatory with harmful ideals woven into the message of the story itself. Critical thinking means knowing the difference between these, and no one can hold your hand through it. And simply slapping “I’m critical of my interests” on your bio isn’t a get out of jail free card, it’s always evident when someone isn’t truly thinking about the impact of the media they consume through the way they consume it.

I think the issue is that when people apply “Critical thinking” they don’t actually analyze the story and its intent, messages, themes, morals, and all that. Instead they approach it completely diegetically, it’s basically the thermian argument, the issue stems from thinking about the story and characters as if they’re real people and judging their actions through that perspective, rather than something from a writer trying to deliver a narrative by using the story and characters as tools. Like how people get upset about characters behaving “problematically” without realizing that it’s an intentional aspect of the story, that the character needs to cause problems for there to be conflict. What they should be looking at instead is what their behavior represents in the real world.

You do not need to apply real-world morals to fictional characters, you need to apply them to the narrative. The story exists in the real world, the characters and events within it do not. Fictional murderers themselves do not hurt anyone, no one is actually dying at their hands, but their actions hold weight in the narrative which itself can harm real people. If the character only murders gay people then it reflects on whatever the themes and messages of the story are, and it’s a major issue if it's framed as if they’re morally justified, or as if this is a noble action. And it’s a huge red flag if people stan this character, even if the story itself actually presents their actions as reprehensible. Or cases where the murderers themselves are some kind of awful stereotype, like Buffalo Bill who presents a violent and dangerous stereotype of trans women, making the character a transmisogynistic caricature (Intentional or otherwise) that has caused a lot of harm to the perception of trans women. When people say “Fiction affects reality” this is what they mean. They do not mean “People will see a pretend bad guy and become bad” they mean “Ideals represented in fiction will be pulled from the real world and reflected back onto it.”

However, stories shouldn’t have to spoon-feed you the lesson as if you’re watching a children’s cartoon, stories often have nuances and you have to actively analyze the themes of it all to understand it’s core messages. Oftentimes it can be intentionally murky and hard to parse especially if the subject matter itself is complicated. But you can’t simply read things on the surface and think you understand everything about them, without understanding the symbolism or subtext you can leave a series like Revolutionary Girl Utena thinking the titular Utena is heterosexual and was only ever in love with her prince. Things won’t always be face-value or clear-cut and you will be forced to come to your own conclusions sometimes too.

That’s why the whole fandom-based groupthink mentality about “critical thinking” doesn’t work, because it’s not critical. It’s simply looking into the crowd, seeing people say a show is problematic, and then dropping it without truly understanding why. It’s performative, consuming the best media isn’t activism and it doesn’t make you a better person. Listening to the voices of people whom the issues directly concerns will help you form an opinion, and to understand the issues from a more knowledgeable perspective beyond your own. All that means nothing if you just sweep it under the rug because you want to look infallible in your morality. That’s not being critical, it’s just being scared to analyze yourself, as well as what you engage with. You just don’t want to think about those things and you’re afraid of being less than perfect so you pretend it never happened.

And though I’m making this post, it’s not mine or anyone else’s job to hold your hand through all this and tell you “Oh this show is okay, but this show isn't, and this book is bad etc etc etc”. Because you actually have to think for yourself, you know, critically. Examples I’ve listed aren’t rules of thumb, they’re just examples and things will vary depending on the story and circumstance. You have to look at shit on a case-by-case basis instead of relying on spotting tropes without thinking about how they’re implemented and what they mean. That’s why it’s analysis, you have to use it to understand what the narrative is communicating to its audience, explicitly or implicitly, intentionally or incidentally, and understand how this reflects the real world and what kind of impact it can have on it.

A big problem with fandom is it has made interests synonymous with personality traits, as if every series we consume is a core part of our being, and everything we see in it reflects our viewpoints as well. So when people are told that a show they watched is problematic, they react very extremely, because they see it as basically the same thing as saying they themselves are problematic (It’s not). Everyone sees themselves as good people, they don’t want to be bad people, so this scares them and they either start hiding any evidence that they ever liked it, or they double down and start defending it despite all its flaws, often providing those aforementioned thermian arguments (“She dresses that way because of her powers!”).

That’s how you get people who call children’s cartoons “irredeemable media” and people who plaster “fiction=/= reality!” all over their blogs, both are basically trying to save face either by denying that they could ever consume anything problematic or denying that the problematic aspects exist all together. And absolutely no one is actually addressing the core issues anymore, save for those affected by them who pointed them out to begin with, only for their original point to become muffled in the discourse. No one is thinking critically because they’re more concerned with us-vs-them group mentality, both sides try to out-perform the other while the actual issue gets ignored or is used as nothing more than a gacha with no true understanding or sympathy behind it.

One of the other issues that comes from this is the fact that pretty much everyone thinks they’re the only person capable of being critical of their interests. That’s how you get those interactions where one person goes “OK [Media] fan” and another person replies “Bro you literally like [Other Media]”, because both parties think they’re the only ones capable of consuming a problematic piece of media and not becoming problematic themselves, anyone else who enjoys it is clearly incapable of being as big brained as them. It’s understandable because we know ourselves and trust ourselves more than strangers, and I’m not saying there can’t be certain fandoms who’s fans you don’t wanna interact with, but when we presume that we know better than everyone else we stop listening to other people all together. It’s good to trust your own judgement, it’s bad to assume no one else has the capacity to think for themselves either though.

The insistence that all media that you personally like is without moral failing and completely pure comes with the belief that all media that you personally dislike has to be morally bad in some way. As if you can’t just dislike a series because you find it annoying or it just doesn’t appeal to you, it has to be problematic, and you have to justify your dislike of it through that perspective. You have to believe that your view on whatever media it is is the objectively correct one, so you’ll likely pick apart all it’s flaws to prove you’re on the right side, but there’s no analysis of context or intent. Keep in mind this doesn’t necessarily mean those critiques are unfounded or invalid, but in cases like this they’re often skewed in one direction based on personal opinion. It’s just as flawed as ignoring all the faults in the stuff you like, it’s biased and subjective analysis that misses a lot of context in both cases, it’s not a good mindset to have about consuming media. It’s just another result of tying media consumption with identity and personal morals. The faux-critical mentality is an attempt to separate the two in a way that implies they’re a packaged deal to begin with, making it sort of impossible to truly do so in any meaningful way.

As far as I know this whole phenomena started with “Steven Universe Critical” in, like, 2016, and that’s where this mentality around “critical thinking” originated. It started out with just a few people correctly pointing out very legitimate issues with the series, but over time it grew into just a trend where people would make cutesy kin blogs with urls like critical-[character] or [character]crit to go with the fad as it divulged into Nostalgia Critic level critique. Of course there was backlash to this and criticism of the criticism, but no actual conversation to be had. Just people trying to out-do each other by acting as the most virtuous one in the room, and soon enough the fad became a huge echo-chamber that encouraged more and more outrageous takes for every little thing. The series itself was a children’s cartoon so it stands to reason that a lot of the fans were young teens, so this behavior isn’t too surprising and I do believe a lot of them did think they were doing the right thing, especially since it was encouraged. But that doesn’t erase the fact that there were actual real issues and concerns brought up about the series that got treated with very little sympathy and were instead drowning out people’s voices. Though those from a few years back may have grown up since and know better (Hopefully), the mentality stuck around and influenced the norm for how fandoms and fandom people conduct any sort of critique on media.

That’s a shame to me, because the pedestal people place fandom onto has completely disrupted our perception on how to engage with media in a normal way. Not everything should be consumed with fandom in mind, not everything is a coffee-shop au with no conflict, not everything is a children’s cartoon with the morals spoon-fed to you. Fandom has grown past the years of uncritical praise of a series, it’s much more mainstream now with a lot more voices in it beyond your small community on some forum, and people are allowed to use those voices. Just because it may not be as pleasant for you now because you don’t get to just turn your brain off and ignore all the flaws doesn’t mean you can put on your rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and pretend that fandom is actually all that is good in the world, to the point where you place it above the comfort and safety of others (Oftentimes children). Being uncritical of fandom itself is just as bad as being uncritical of what you consume to begin with.

At the end of the day it all just boils down to the ability to truly think for yourself but with sympathy and compassion for other people in mind, while also understanding that not everyone will come to the same conclusion as you and people are allowed to resent your interests. That doesn’t necessarily mean they hate you personally, you should be acknowledging the same issues after all. You can’t ignore aspects of it that aren’t convenient to your conclusion, you have to actually be critical and understand the issues to be able to form it.

I think that all we need is to not rely on fandom to tell us what to do, but still listen to the voices of others, take them into account to form our opinion too, boost their voices instead of drowning them out in the minutiae of internet discourse about which character is too much of an asshole to like. Think about what the characters and story represent non-diegetically instead of treating them like real people and events, rather a story with an intent and message to share through its story and characters, and whatever those reflect from the real world. That’s how fiction affects reality, because it exists in reality and reflects reality through its own lens. The story itself is real, with a real impact on you and many others, so think about the impact and why it all matters. Just… Think. Listen to others but think for yourself, that’s all.

#see i told you guys id find that essay and post it for real. i wasnt kidding.#good luck inbox of mine :praying:

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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The thing that feels disingenuous about Miles answer about Ironwood is that he was part of the writing staff that framed the general as a cool character to start with. I do think that the signs about Ironwood's evil were clear since V2 and in V7 he was an outright dictator from episode 1. Nonetheless, he was still consistently framed as a cool character, someone you can trust and rely. You don't get to blame the fans for liking a genocide if you was the one framed him as cool in the first place.

I actually don’t think being cool is the problem. If we’re satirizing and/or making a statement about the toxic masculinity that leads to something like a dictatorship, then being “cool” is a crucial part of that. People don’t leverage the power they have by looking lame, they do so by appearing desirable, enviable, awesome. Being in the military is supposedly “cool.” Being a white guy with a giant gun is supposedly “cool.” Having power over an entire nation is supposedly “cool,” etc. If you only make such characters look revolting — even when they are — then you miss one of the main recruitment tools for this kind of rhetoric. Any version of Ironwood that’s meant to make a point about the dangers of following someone like him needs to make him look “cool” and then deconstruct that, pointing out the ways in which this cool veneer is a lie meant to pull you in. To do otherwise is to claim that evil people are always easy to spot. Making your villains “uncool” implies that the people who do appear cool in real life must be fine then. That good looking, charismatic leader is great. Why would I look critically at his actions? He’s too cool to be evil.

My personal problem is not that “They made the dictator look cool and we can’t possibly expect the audience to tell the difference between someone who is truly good and someone who is just using various Cool Points to skate by” because that would be the point of such a character — the work the show needs to do. My problem is that RWBY didn’t do that work. At least, not to the extent they needed to. Rather than making Ironwood a truly heinous character (prior to Volume 7 ‘s shooting, I mean) and allowing the audience to learn how appearing cool can’t hide that, they just made him good person. Straight up. Flawed, absolutely, but no worse than any of the other character on screen, particularly post Volume 6 when our heroes are frequently putting people in danger, seizing power, telling lies, keeping secrets, and generally acting in the ways we’re supposedly meant to condemn Ironwood for. Since talk of Miles’ vid last night I’ve seen three separate “Ironwood was always bad, idk how people can miss the signs” posts and those people are half right. There 100% were signs we were meant to pick up on. The problem is RWBY then went and deconstructed those signs. Ironwood didn’t just bring an army to a peace festival, he brought an army to an event he had good reason to believe wasn’t peaceful — and he was right. Ironwood didn’t wrest control from Ozpin (using a series of checks and balances that exist for this very purpose...) because he has an obsession with being in control, he did so because he honestly believed Ozpin was putting people in danger — and he was right. Ironwood didn’t step up post-Fall because he arrogantly believes he’s the only one capable of saving Remnant, he did so because he’s actually the most qualified: a fully trained huntsmen leading an Academy (like Ozpin) with an army and knowledge of this secret war. What, was Ironwood supposed to read the script and wait for the group of dropout teenagers to arrive and save the world instead? To say nothing of how his power and responsibility are framed as sacrifices, not something he sought out. Ironwood doesn’t want to be the sole ruler here. His desperate relief at having allies again proves it. Good setup for the rise of a dictator would have been Ironwood being cagey with his information and exerting control over the group... not telling them everything, not giving them more power, not letting them keep the Lamp, not taking arrest off the table so as to keep them in line, and generally doing the opposite of everything he did do to share that responsibility and power. RWBY got very good at giving us the first half of these red flags — he has an army, he’s stubborn, he’s hurting Mantle, etc. — but then time and time again introduced a context that changed that flag dramatically: they are fighting literal monsters, he’s no more stubborn than our title character, hurting Mantle is a consequence of a plan he thinks will help the whole world and our heroes back this. Those who insist that Ironwood was 100% a villain in the making (or a villain already) prior to shooting Oscar are working from their assumption of what his archetype represents, not what RT actually put on screen. Because RT is just really bad at writing a dictator character. They didn’t have the skill to manage someone who only appeared good on the surface, let alone a character with the complex nuance of wielding “coolness” to their advantage, which is why in Volume 8 they had to resort to cartoon villainy with literal, evil spotlights. It’s not that the audience is too dumb to pick up on those red flags, it’s that RT couldn’t manage to plant them without continually introducing valid justifications. You can’t say, “Bringing an army is a bad thing. Look at this dictator coding!” without me going, “Yeah, except in the fictional world you created an army does not represent the problems it does in our real life societies. This isn’t a guy amassing soldiers to go after oil, he’s trying to protect people from monsters. Not even metaphoric monsters acting as stand-ins for a minority group. Literal, evil monsters!” RWBY ignores its own context and a good chunk of the fandom ignored it too.

The problem with that (besides the general frustration of someone ignoring parts of canon to forward a particular reading) is that the fandom’s go-to claim is that everything is meaningful — and it’s a reading the writers very much support. Fans do not, as the above attests, push for a simple reading of, “Don’t think too hard about it. Just take the surface reading and run with it” which, while still frustrating, would have at least been a valid stance. Rather, they insist very strongly that nuance and depth are what drive the show. From the song lyrics to a tiny detail in the opening, everything is important and if you don’t accept that then you can’t appreciate RWBY’s complexity.

“Okay,” I said. “Then in that case Ironwood coming around to Ozpin’s position is meaningful too? Glynda — one of our best and most faultless characters — supporting him is meaningful? Flipping his gun, defending Weiss, Qrow writing to him, the group working with him for months on end... all of it is meaningful to his characterization? You said so yourself.”

“No, no, no,” comes the reply. “He’s just bad. But he’s also nuanced. He’s tricked you into thinking he’s a good person by acting kind sometimes, by getting support sometimes, but none of that is true. His actions are what matter and his actions are simplistically bad.”

“Ohhhh. So then does that mean this story is really about the creation of a villain?”

“Huh?”

“Well, Ruby. She’s ‘nuanced’ in the same way. She acts kind sometimes and gets support, but her actions are terrible. She endangered an entire city because she couldn’t wait to see if Ironwood got his letter. She condemned Ozpin for keeping secrets about Salem and then kept those same secrets just two days later. When the kingdom was under attack she sat around drinking tea, crying on a staircase, just hoping someone would come fix things for her — all while actively sabotaging the one person who was trying to save people, even if that action seems silly to us (let’s fly really high). So if we’re looking at the impact of someone’s actions outside of their intent, as we just did with Ironwood, then she’s a bad guy too, yeah?”

“No! She’s the hero!”

“... these characters don’t know she’s the hero from a meta perspective. If we’re supposed to judge the meaning of RWBY based on these details — ”

“But it’s not just the details. It’s also the allusions. Everyone in RWBY is based on another person or character. It’s very complex and that inspiration drives their story, so if you don’t have that information it’s no surprise you’re confused. For example, this is why Penny had to get a human body. That’s what happened to Pinocchio!”

“Oh! So then Ironwood is destined to be a good guy!”

“What?”

“Well, you just said the allusions drive their stories, right? The whole point of the Tin Man is that he always had a heart and just needed to realize that. So clearly — “

“No! He’s supposed to be a classic dictator, he’s only bad!”

And ‘round and ‘round we go. RWBY’s writing is atrocious yet the fandom pushes this narrative that it’s all a complex, multi-layered story that requires taking every part into account to understand the “real” message... but when you try to do that with certain characters like Ozpin and Ironwood it’s, “No, actually, they’re just simple archetypes of Bad Men.” Nuance exists for the bees, but not other ships. It exists for the characters fans like, but not the ones they don’t. And RWBY’s inspirations have to predict the ending for this character... but not that other character. It’s a nonsense grab bag!

Fans are right that Ironwood had a lot of red flags to set up this downfall. Fans are also right that those red flags were severely undercut, thus reversing their impact. Fans are right that Ironwood becomes a 100% bad guy who kills because he can and threatens to bomb a city. Fans are also right that this characterization feels absurd for Ironwood, both in terms of his morality and his intelligence (how does bombing Mantle help you now??) Ironwood is badly written. He was badly written in 7 and 8, if he was always meant to be a dictator in the making then he was badly written in 2-6, and he’s conclusively badly written when it comes to lacking a backstory and a canonical semblance — two things are are supposedly driving all of this characterization. That’s the answer: not that he’s good, or bad, but that RWBY can’t write a consistent character, let alone a nuanced one, so it’s no surprise the fandom can’t decide on anything. What’s there to decide on? It’s that nonsense grab bag. In a different show I think making the dictator appear cool would be a crucial bit of commentary, but RWBY doesn’t have the skill to pull that off.

#rwby #rwde #mymetas #Anonymous

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luninosity · 3 years

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Okay, so, some Falcon and the Winter Soldier thoughts (will have some spoilers) for episodes two and three. General non-spoilery comment first: I feel like these were both *okay* episodes - neither as good as the first, but I didn’t dislike them, either. I’m still really curious to see how we’re going to wrap this all up in three more episodes; it doesn’t feel like we’re halfway done yet!

Okay, more spoiler-y notes below the Read More, not in any real order, just as I think and type. I’ll probably forget some things, but for now, here’re some thoughts...

--I like ep 3 slightly more than ep 2, mostly because of Zemo!

--I actually really love Zemo here (I liked him in Civil War, too): complex, sardonic, enjoying poking at people, a villain we do feel sympathy for even as he’s still sharp enough to remind us that he is a villain. Daniel Bruhl has always done a fantastic job flipping between calculated cruelty, wry humor - the whole “I am a Baron” moment was great - and pain that for him is still raw, about the loss of his family. (Some things’re awfully cliche - look, the supervillain’s playing chess and reading Machiavelli in his cell? really? - but, y’know...sure. Why not. We expect some cliches in the superhero genre, and this is an inoffensive one.)

--also Zemo dancing. That’s it. That’s everything.

--moving on from that: I’m also really liking how they’re writing John Walker. He does have charm, and there’s a certain amount of sympathy - especially as we see him worrying about filling the Captain America shoes, in ep 2 - but we’re also getting this really subtle sense of wrongness about him. He’s clearly vindictive and angry when things (and people) don’t act according to his mental script for them, and he’s willing to use his name and power to do things like get Bucky released...which in context and given our sympathies for Bucky is a good thing, but...it’s also an indicator of his willingness to do what he wants, because he can. (To be fair, Steve Rogers also often did that! - but Steve earned our trust, both in narrative and character. From his first introduction to WWII leadership experience to all the Avengers stuff, Steve consistently acts to protect people, and he’ll also listen if someone else has a good idea or if someone needs to talk, like with Wanda.) So I’m really liking this slow-fuse character development.

--mixed feelings about Sharon. I love that the show’s acknowledging how much she sacrificed for our main heroes, with no reward. On the other hand, she also clearly knew the consequences that could happen; she said as much at the time. The level of bitterness seems like a lot. But I’m also interested in everything we still don’t know about her - if she’s not the Power Broker herself, she’s obviously Up To Something. So that should be fun.

--hey, look at that X-Men location, with Majipoor! Also a nod to Wolverine’s favorite bar there, I think?

--I love heist and disguise plots!

--I also really like Bucky’s having to revert to the Winter Soldier - Sebastian Stan does it so brilliantly, with so many layers of emotion: not wanting to, loathing it, recognizing the necessity, shutting off all emotion and just coldly doing it, hurting but covering it up...just fantastic, and you know I love some hurt/comfort, and this seems like such a great set-up for emotional hurt

--but! this also seems like...a weird plot hole, kind of? Bucky’s pretty famous at this point, right? I imagine the criminal underworld knows he’s been pardoned and deprogrammed, right? or do they assume Zemo, with his knowledge of Hydra, still has some special control over him?

--along the same “this seems like someone didn’t think this through” path, Sam, you’re a professional, turn off your phone on a mission. Oh my god. Face-palmingly stupid - and I think somewhat lazy writing, as the writers plainly needed a giveaway, and went for the first idea they had. Even if it made a main character look incompetent.

--the Flag Smashers and Karli are...fine. They feel very Generic Marvel Villain - not the big space alien type, but the other type, the “I have a personal loss and motivating pain so I’m a little sympathetic but also Clearly Evil, watch me kill civilians so the audience won’t ever find me TOO sympathetic” type. Meh. Fine. Zemo’s more interesting, but...fine.

--Anthony Mackie is such a fantastic actor - every bit of his reaction to the Isaiah Bradley reveal is so good. The anger, pain, frustration, ferocity...heartbreaking. Actually that whole scene is so good - his emotions at discovering this secret history are palpable, and it’s so painful, because we also understand why Bucky would keep the secret - as someone who knows about pain and trauma and being experimented on, and knowing Isaiah wants to be left alone - we feel really deeply for both characters here, and it’s great.

--I actually liked the abrupt swing from the Isaiah Bradley encounter to the casual everyday racism of the cops on the street - is it subtle, no. But it’s not meant to be: it’s meant to be standing up and shouting about how not that much has really changed, and about how pervasive racism is. I know some reviews were all, “this was just too much!” or “too forced!” but...look, it needs to be shouted sometimes for people to hear.

--Bucky’s notebook being Steve’s, oh, ouch, my feelings. If I had the time and energy to write fic...

--(also, if I had the time and energy to write dark!fic: where’re my fics in which Zemo’s implication about the Winter Soldier “doing anything you want” gets played with? what or who does Bucky have to do to keep the undercover charade going? so many Bad Wrong Kinky power dynamics and explorations of consent and what this would do to Bucky’s head, here, and honestly I’d totally read them all, just saying.)

--Sam and Bucky together...I don’t know. This is one of the elements that I’m not actually a huge fan of, but I think it’s partly a personal genre / sense of humor thing that’s not clicking for me, personally, again. Like...

--I don’t find people shouting aggrievedly at each other to be funny? I’m not sure why it is.

--I mean, I get that they’re doing, like, eighties buddy cop movies, but...it got old really fast then, and it’s not something we needed to bring back. It’s not clever, and it’s...well, shouty and annoying.

--(I say this as someone who genuinely likes the first two Lethal Weapon movies...but the significant difference is, I think, we’re also shown in both those movies that Riggs and Murtaugh care about each other. They don’t want to be partners initially, and they don’t get along initially, and they do argue over tactics**...but they immediately feel responsible for each other and act to protect each other even as they argue, because it’s the right thing to do and we’re shown moments of them awkwardly trying to connect, because they both have that deep sense of...protectiveness...that makes them Good People - like, if they learn something that the other person needs to know, they tell each other. They protect each other’s families / love interests. So by the end of the second movie, with that fabulous character death fake-out, Murtaugh’s initial shock and grief is real and powerful and painful, and so is his genuine relief when the worst isn’t true - and it’s all earned.) (**however, they tend to argue tactics *before* jumping in - “is it 1, 2, 3, go on 3? or 3, then go?” And then once that’s established, they go ahead. That makes a difference as far as...well...competence and teamwork!)

--(Sam and Bucky, as far as I can tell, don’t do the above, and just...maybe shouldn’t be working together?)

--I also don’t find grown men acting like my youngest nephew, when he’s having a temper tantrum, to be funny. Staring contests? Random insults? Sulking in silence? Oh, grow up.

--(Also, yes, writers, we see you with the “couples therapy” and “get closer and make your legs touch” and “landing on top of each other as they hit the ground” moments. I, at least, personally, am very tired of...I don’t know that I’d call it queerbaiting exactly, but this idea that we’re supposed to find these moments funny...because why? Because, ooh, they’re two men getting close to each other, physically or emotionally? Why is this a thing we need to draw attention to? Do you think you’re doing some sort of fan service? Please either make Sam/Bucky happen or stop doing this.)

--both Sam and Bucky are highly competent and professional agents, or they should be. They should know how to work in the field - even with people they may not like - and adapt to shifting strategy, make best use of available assets, include people in the plan, etc. I can’t help but compare this to something like, say, Leverage, which also has a team who mocks each other and makes jokes but clearly absolutely respects each other’s capabilities, has a plan going in and tells everyone what the plan is, and adapts (and trusts each other to adapt) on the fly as necessary, and does it all without random insults about someone’s (PTSD-related) staring and “robot brain”.

--one of the very specific moments that bothers me a lot is the ending of the therapy scene (yay for showing heroes in therapy! but also I’m pretty sure she’s...not a great therapist?). Bucky finally opens up and says something real, about his own self-doubt and wondering whether Steve was wrong about him....and Sam just...brushes it off and goes, “we’re done here,” basically. Not only does that feel wildly out of character for former counselor Sam, it feels cruel. I really deeply dislike that moment the more I think about it. Makes me want to scream.

--Sam insults Bucky way more than the other way around. It’s starting to feel very one-sided (it’d be better if more clearly reciprocal, though it’s still not a dynamic that’s my favorite), and again, feels out of character - maybe this is Anthony Mackie’s sense of humor, but Sam isn’t Mackie, and Bucky isn’t Seb, and it reads as...a weird unbalanced power-trip thing to me. And also out of character for Sam, who can be sarcastic (”If you guys eat that sort of thing,” about breakfast, when Steve and Nat have randomly shown up at his door) but that’s not the same as just throwing unprovoked insults at a person who’s trying to recover from trauma, and a lot of those insults seem to center on things that were done to Bucky, that he had no choice in (the staring, the arm, etc), and that feels....it just feels mean, to me. Make fun of things he’s had a choice in / can do something about, if you have to - hair, clothes, liking “old people’s games” like gin rummy or pinochle, not knowing who Beyonce is, I don’t know, there are so many options that aren’t cruel! Do that instead. Let Bucky have a good comeback for once, too!

--the action scenes are action scenes. Also fine.

--Sam might be right about destroying the shield, and the show may even be (unintentionally?) setting that up as the best outcome, but that’s a problem for the future, Sam; get it back first. Also it’s a problem you caused by giving the shield up - did you really trust the government to leave it unused in a museum? You’re not that naive.

--overall, it’s...a perfectly fine show, so far, I think? Solid, and interesting, but not great. I think some of what doesn’t work for me is because it doesn’t work for me personally, as far as the shouty insult-heavy action “comedy” bits that I’m not enjoying, but I think they’re doing what they aimed for with it, so in that sense, I guess it’s working? There’s a lot of really cool stuff around the edges - John Walker, Isaiah Bradley, that Dora Milaje stinger, the bigger world of a history interwoven with racism and superpowers, the chillingly effective use of Bucky’s past - but I wish I liked the central Sam-Bucky relationship more. Individually they’re wonderful - they’ve both had such powerful scenes dealing with family, trauma, and consequences - but I feel like, in the effort to do the buddy comedy dynamic, the writing has just made me really sure that they actually genuinely don’t like each other? To such an extent that if they show any affection / caring / interest in each other in the last three episodes, it won’t be believable. (I mean Sam and Bucky, not Mackie and Seb. Mackie and Seb’re adorable.)

--I just want to think about Zemo dancing some more.

#the falcon and the winter soldier #tfatws spoilers #spoilers #fatws spoilers #thoughts

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lizacstuff · 3 years

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Liza that 3rd fragman 👀 "if I was born a 100 times I'd fall in love with you everytime" Eda saying this is their last obstacle and nothing can separate them, serkan's "I'll be right back, close your eyes I'm here" If this isn't all a red flag for shits about to hit the fan then I don't know what is LOL (but also how cute to Edser look and them telling each other they love each other very much 😭😭😭)

That fragman is both the SWEETEST and the MOST OMINOUS thing I’ve ever seen. ALL AT ONCE.

Friends... we’re gonna go through some things. That being said, everything is going to be great. These writers have been solid so far, and I have faith they have come up with something really interesting to increase the longevity of this show. And I don’t know about you, but I’m prepared to go through some things if it means keeping Eda and Serkan for longer. (I heart them)

This show is about Eda and Serkan and their love story, at it’s core it’s a comedy, it will all lead to happy things, but... yeah, buckle up!

I have a lot of asks both about the fragman and last ep, so I’m going to answer a bunch under the cut.

Anonymous said: The fandom theories about episode 28 have gotten so wild that I literally think the most shocking thing would be if they actually got married and were not separated (emotionally or physically). What if the earlier painful episodes were to make us believe that things couldn't possibly go right in 28 and it's a reverse psychology trick?

You could be right! I like your thinking. I checked on twitter and I had to back away slowly. The juvenile temper tantrums were too much for me today.

Look, I think it’s clear something big is coming. It has to, there has to be something that shakes up the show. Some of the theories are more upsetting and catastrophic than others, but the writers won’t do anything that dings either character or their love for one another. Whatever happens will showcase the connection between these two and the chemistry between the actors, that’s the point of everything, and anything that does those things is gonna be a-okay with me.

@jan31 Hi Liza. Do you think we are going to see the wedding in 28 or they will leave it on a cliffhanger for next week. Lots of theories going round mainly cos of Neslihan saying new dimensions coming in episode 29, which could just mean married life etc. I have seen suggestions of memory loss, it's all a dream since episode one. I would personally love Eda to wake up like in episode one but for it to be a total turn around and she is the boss and Serkan the employee. Eda being robot yildiz appeals to me!!! I know it will never happen but leave me here with my dreams!!

I started the day at 90% sure they’ll be married in 28/29, but now I’m down to like 30% that they’ll get married in these episodes. I really, really want them to get married before whatever happens happens, because every scenario I can think of for this reset or starting again, seems like it would be better if they were married.

However, the shooting spoilers from today, make me question that. Namely the videos where Hande appears to still be wearing the ring on her right hand. We shall see, that could be for many reasons.

Honestly, though, I wouldn’t hate a memory loss storyline. Seeing one of them (and Serkan’s line in the trailer makes it seem like it might be him) lose their memory and have to fall in love all over again? There are worse fates for a shipper than getting to experience that all again but in a different way.

Anonymous said: Your response to the fandom drama anon was so good, it's exactly how I feel. While I don't know what the old posts that were like are (that's shady as fuck) I did see all the other drama go down and wow. The actresses def need to stay in their lane and some of the fans, hoooo boy, it's obvious they're young based off their reactions alone. Had to unfollow some people once I realized what they were like. Also some of the IRL shipping reminded me of col*fer stuff, reading into everything and blowing it out of proportion (which then gets picked up by paps....). But you're right in that at least the show related drama is tame compared to OUAT. But still, people being too careless even while they know the paps see everything and harass Kerem and hande (omg did you see the video of hande the other day stopped in the van and she looked so overwhelmed 😔)

You’re referencing this post here about yesterday’s drama.

Today Neslihan made it worse by addressing everything and claiming she didn’t like all those Hande-bashing posts because... wait for it... she was HACKED. Oy. Hackers got in and went back two years to like gross posts about Hande? Sure, Jan. While I don’t believe that for a second, I guess that at least gives her cover with Hande so they can all pretend it’s true and move on so it’s not awkward on set. But, yikes, she needs to consult a publicist, she took a narrative that was circulating in certain circles in fandom and made sure all her followers were aware. Not very savvy.

As for the paps coming after Hande, yes I did see her in the car, she did look overwhelmed. Back off vultures!!! That’s why I think Kerem sometimes throws himself to the wolves so that doesn’t happen. She always handles them like a pro, but you can tell she’d rather be anywhere else on earth than talking to them.

The pap stuff is worse than I’ve seen before, they’re like vultures circling for any conjecture (sometimes made up out of thin air) they can turn into a question and blame fans. OUAT actors dealt with nothing like this. Also I can’t believe they never ask about the show. Like after last week? They could legit ask about the sex scene which probably would have given them some angle on the actors that they wanted, (especially since it was too hot for Turkish TV) but they let that pass them by, and instead asked the same questions about being together that they never answer. Dumbasses. They are not only awful people, they are awful at their jobs.

In Van, the paps pay off crew members for info, they always know more than fans. Also I don’t remember stars of my shows getting this level of tabloid attention before. Except for on Riverdale, Lili and Cole generated that level of interest, and while I didn’t pay terribly close attention to them, I feel like they rarely talked to the paps, were just photographed. Also I don’t suspected the CW of calling the paps on them, but I suspect either the network or production company of sometimes calling them on Hande and Kerem.

Anonymous said: Do you think it’s weird that they didn’t touch the kidnapping at all in either trailer? They might not have filmed it in time for the 1st one but certainly the 2nd. And I’m definitely not complaining about the ones we got because its like a fairytale but the kidnapping was the cliffhanger...? 🧐 I think they should’ve just left the princes storyline at “he went back to his country” but then they didn’t so......

If they’d left his story at just going back to his country, then the Prince really wouldn’t have served his purpose. He was brought on to cause some sort of trouble, so they probably need him to cause the trouble before he goes, lets hope it ends with this kidnapping!

And to answer your question, yes, I do think it’s weird that neither trailer touched on it. On any other show I’d think it was a huge red flag, but on this show maybe not as much because a) there’s obviously a lot of romance in this episode, it’s not crazy that they are focusing on that to draw people in with the promos b) this show likes to do cliffhangers that end up being no big deal, that happens a lot.

Who knows it could turn out to be a big deal that shapes the rest of the episode in some unexpected way (Eda’s captured the whole episode and she’s dreaming about wedding prep, or... who knows) but I think it’s more likely that they resolve in the first 5-10 minutes and then move on. Since we know from the summary (not that I trust those) that Serkan goes on the bachelor weekend, it feels like the Prince is taken care of prior to that. I don’t think he’d leave her alone for a second if there was a chance the Prince was still a threat. Perhaps Babaanne is pissed he tried to kidnap Eda and tells them she’ll handle it herself???

Anonymous said: Semiha not being in the promo is highkey suspicious. The actress is promoting the episode lol. She's about to Evil Queen this wedding ceremony but you know what, I'm fine with whatever she has planned if they end up married at the end of the day. What's funny is that since a lot of fans these days will assume that there will be shocking negative plot twists, not actually having one here would be a plot twist so I hope the writers keep them together for whatever's next haha

You’re not wrong, at this point, having this wedding take place would be a shocking twist for all of us! As for Semiha... hmmm... it will be interesting to see what her reaction is to Eda being kidnapped by her pick of suitor. Serkan Bolat might be the son of the man indirectly responsible for her parents death, but he would never hurt her. Take note, Grandbag!

Anonymous said: Do you mind sharing your speculative scenarios?

After the trailer today, I don’t know if I can even remember some of them.

Memory loss

Grandma forces Serkan to choose between Eda and his company/wealth, he chooses Eda and they start over from scratch with nothing

Time jump

AU starting over, showing a different path they might have taken together

Dream

These actors playing different characters in a new story

I don’t think the last three are likely, but they did spring to mind after some of Neslihan’s teases.

Anonymous said: So this show doesn't get like fantastic ratings (it actually seems to be on the lower end compared to all other dizis airing) but the social media engagement is off the charts. Why is that?!? Is the show just extraordinarily popular internationally? or that this is a "shipping" show? I'm floored by the numbers - its like no other show/fandom is even trying

The ratings were terrific during the summer. But to your point, it has a huge fandom both in Turkey and internationally, but it’s worth noting that most of those charts you see where it beats every other show in every imaginable social metric is just for Turkey.

It’s one of those lightning in a bottle situations where you get the right property and the right actors together at the right time and magic happens. And, for sure, the number one reason is the shipping. Shipping drives fandom engagement, and a fantastic ship with a juicy, fun, tropey love story is what this show offers. It also offers up two extremely attractive, talented, likeable leads with off-the-charts chemistry (plus the added speculation about an off-camera relationship that has intrigued more than a few fans, tabloids and gossip sites and fueled interest) who have done a good job of building the fanbase through their social media engagement. Plus the timing is part of it as well. I don’t know about you, but this show hit the spot during this pandemic and the horror of 2020. We all needed this escape.

Anonymous said:Do you think something happened in the writers room after the backlash of 25 and fan disappointment after Ayse's announcement? I feel like a switch flipped and now we're in fanficland with how much good content we've gotten in these last two episodes. Like I thought maybe they should wrap up the series soon before the characters got completely off the tracks but they may be finding their groove now and I'm interested to see what their next twist is after they can write out Balca/Seymen.

I don’t know about a switch flip, this show has been fanfic land since the first episode! The tropes! That is how I described it to multiple people when I first started watching: an AU fanfic come to life.

As for the writing changes, no, I don’t think backlash after 25 affected 26 or 27, because 26 was already 90% shot, and 27 already written. However, I assume they themselves could tell that 25 got just too dark and had strayed pretty far from the DNA of the series. While I didn’t think it was bad, it was not fun to watch and this show ought to be fun to watch.

Let’s hope, however, that the backlash affects future episodes in that they know what works... and what doesn’t. The last two episodes definitely felt reminiscent of the first batch of episodes. Light, funny, romantic. If they can keep that tone... I’ll be thrilled.

Anonymous said: i didn't realize how much i missed "together" edser until watching 27.. it's been so long since they were "officially" together and we also had such few episodes of it.. ppl have been comparing it to 12 and while in some ways i agree, edser are always so different here than they were there. 12 was them navigating their new relationship.. they were more shy and finding their footing.. here they are very much established, as they should be after knowing their love for so long in comparison to 12!

Yes, it was lovely. You know I’ve preached a lot about how even though Eda and Serkan were broken up, they’ve still been together all this time. And it’s true, but there is something about them truly being together that is magical. We never got enough of that the first time around (a writing mistake in my opinion) and they’re so good together it’s lovely to watch.

Anonymous said: Serkan not asking for help from Balca when asking his team for help with the marriage gifts preparations and refusing her offer of help when she asked made me so happy. Good job Serkan! He's learning! She's not trustworthy!

Yes, that was a good moment. And he was eyeing her very warily when she offered. The thing I don’t understand is how has no one caught on that she’s working with Babaanne? That entire office is filled with nosy people, has no one remarked on the number of times Balca has gone up to the office or they’ve disappeared for lunch at the same time? Come on Leyla! Come on Melo! Notice these things!

Anonymous said: Fingers crossed that we finally make progress towards getting rid of Seiman & Balca now that all the girls were drugged and Eda was put in the car in the last episode. Unless Seiman has a change of heart and takes Eda back inside before anyone wakes & the guys get there then the show has to address it. Although I do not think Balca is going to back down unless Serkan straight up tells her he has zero interest in her and never will. Totally fine if that happens in the next episode.

Will Balca backdown even if she’s humiliated like that? She’s so delusional I’m not sure. What I am sure is that she’s dangerous. This came in before we saw the other two fragmans that have no mention of the kidnapping. Hard to picture how that is so easily resolved. Unless she frees herself (which seems unlikely in her groggy state) or maybe Melo’s future boyfriend is able to stop it before they get far? Or I don’t know. I just know that I want to see Serkan lose his mind and all the other characters see Serkan lose his mind and then I want it to be over. LOL.

Anonymous said: As much as I am loving everything Edser, I cannot wait for Seiman, Balca and Grandma to be gone. And I am even more annoyed to think that the show might try to redeem all 3 characters. All 3 of them are truly awful people and no need to waste air time trying to make the audience think any different. Just my opinion...🤷🏻‍♀️. Show please finally expose those 3 for the psychos they are and get rid of them.

Bye bitches! I don’t think there’s any redemption for Balca and Seiman. They both have poisoned/dosed people, hard to come back from that. And there is no need to redeem them because neither is compelling enough to be a long-term character. But maybe Granny, we probably will see a redemption arc for her.

Anonymous said: i know you were worried a few weeks ago that with ayse leaving as writer, we probably wouldn't have the same sort of comedy as previous episodes... but istg the whole kiz isteme scene, especially with chef alex, had me almost crying with laughter. especially when serkan off the cuff just goes "well if that's an option..." to everyone misunderstanding alex "wanting" ayfer for 2 nights and then eda ready to beat him with the flowers he bought her... comedic gold lmao.

SO GOOD! I was thrilled to see that sort of comedy, the sort of comedy we’d come to expect, from these writers. I think it bodes very well indeed!

That scene was amazing. I know Neslihan said that much of it was improvised. Probably that line from Serkan (since Serkan is SO out-of-his-mind in love I’m not sure he could even joke about having Eda only two nights a week! LOL) was improv from Kerem, and Aydan asking about the other nights, and Seyfi bringing up the weekend. And Eda’s very Hande-esque “Ser-KAN.”

I just love rewatching that scene and checking out everyone who is breaking character and just losing it. Cagri most of all. He’s blurred aback there but you can see Ferit spends the whole time laughing or trying to stifle a laugh. Reminds me of Cagri in the scene in 18 when they’re watching the security footage he was losing it in that scene as well.

Anonymous said: i'm scared - I think they are really about to give us all of these happy EdSer scenes only to have something happen RIGHT before the wedding ceremony due to Babaanne. Based on the last episode, I don't think there's any chance of a breakup (knock on wood) but what if Serkan gets arrested, goes to jail for 2 years, and we get a time jump?

This was sent before the last two teasers, so yes I think something is gonna happen. We shall see! I don’t really think Serkan going to jail for 2 years is in the cards, at least I hope not! Besides if Babaanne did that she would have no hopes of ever reconciling with Eda, so that seems unlikely she’d follow through and leave him there for so long a time.

Anonymous said: With the last week's sex scene, they did a lot of fade outs but the scene was basically still there so it wasn't much wasted effort for the actors. But for what they're teasing in episode 28 - idk how they can get away with showing them in the shower at all if Serkan lifting Eda with her clothes on had required blurring? Is Eda dropping her robe even pushing it? It's intriguing indeed.

Great questions. We’re 36 hours from finding out (well I'm longer than that because I wait for the English subs, hee hee) All I know is I want to see these scenes.. one way or another!

#sen cal kapimi #edser #Sen Çal Kapımı #sck spoilers #sck specualtion #sckask #sck episode discussion #asklizac #Anonymous

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incarnateirony · 4 years

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Something tells me you're right about TFW not ending up together. I somehow feel like they're gonna do a Fast and Furious 7 ending. That was one of the most beautiful "farewells" between two characters I've ever seen. It's Vin Diesel's character Dom and Paul Walker's character Brian doing one last race against each other for good old time's sake. Before they eventually both drive in the opposite direction, Dom continuing the "old life and Brian quitting to live a "normal" life with wife and kids

Yeah, basically something like that, but super mystical at the same time. I mean, I keep saying it, I’m not anti-TFW together, but they’ve been gonging into our head letting go and moving on. Hell, as it is, “Move On”, while formerly associated with ghosts crossing over in the show, has come out of Dean and Cas’ mouths both this year, if framed differently. The last few seasons have been beating us over the head about what the point of life is if people die, and what to do when they pass, even. And I keep FLAGGING at the goddamn lighting in the church. Or the order of who inherited what philosopher’s stone in what order. I just. Keep seeing it.

Like yes the show is about family, but it’s also about growing up. And part of the point of it is knowing how to let go and let people move on. Now, that doesn’t mean let them rot in eternity alone in the nothingness, but that does mean letting them be with their family, as when they left Mary in heaven at peace with John, but this large scale where people aren’t divided, like-- I literally don’t see any other way this is going to shake out, and Sam just abandoning his life or making Eileen give up hers to chase dean into heaven or wherever the fuck also just doesn’t vibe right, and they’re NOT bringing back a romantic interest just to pitch that in the toilet. She exists for a reason. She’s something to go back to.

And what up with Jack? They’ve already made it clear he’s not ready to rule in Chuck and Amara’s absence. Like even in the text. Are we gonna keep the cycle of dumping parental bullshit on kids, or are we going to let the next generations that got each of the philosopher’s stones keep going on in life a healthy way if people pass on, to have a chance to live and build their own stuff while making the world a better place for people to be led into crossing over to heaven? Like. I just. I can’t grasp this idea where everyone wants them to all end up together on the final shots even if we all theoretically want it. Eventually they would reunite after a life. But they’re all on different development paces and I would rather the characters be honored than packaged in a bow for a feel good for the fandom tbh.

It’s kinda like Cas says, it’s a part of growing up. There’s a certain maturity in the story if this really does end up being how it pans out. It’s about their legacies, and it’s about eventually meeting them on the other side, but also about not getting caught in entrapments of tug of war over it. Not abandoning anyone to their depression and feelings of worthless void, making sure that in the end, even if end is eternity, they’re all there, together; but nobody’s in a rush to get there or join them. IE: No suicidal idealizations, just parting in peace, and not having to choose between peace and freedom. Learning to let go and keep living is a moral that both affects real people with real loss and is even a form of counseling I would dare to say this fandom desperately needs.

A world where Dean doesn’t die at the end of a gun as he projected, but still gets that ending he said he wanted for Sam to live a life with kids and grandkids until he’s old and bald. A world where Castiel knows he is loved, and has chosen humanity in its truest form, even if it’s as an eternal soul, and is with someone who came and loved him and wanted him there, didn’t just need him. A world where Jack had parents that loved him, and still one to guide him to the end, not shoving ridiculous responsibility on him, that he can carry on the torch of. His turn with the keys, along with Sam. A world where nobody chooses between that peace and freedom, a world where man reigns supreme and can be with everyone they’ve ever lost, not sorted like cattle in pens. A world where people still have choices to make on earth, but new horizons even once passing into death.

I really don’t know why anyone would want to wedge them at one side or the other as a bundle with that potential framework there. In THEORY I want TFW together. In practice, I don’t think I do. Eventually, they all would be. But there’s still stories left to tell. Just in a different way, with a different fatherbrother and a different son.

We’ve been told it’s bittersweet, it’s sad but proud, and it’s rewarding.

---

...I think about dad all the time. I’m in the driver’s seat, dad’s riding shotgun. But there are no shotguns. He’s teaching me how to drive. ... And we pull up to the house, the family house and he says... perfect landing son.

---

Yeah, you did some messed up things. But you fought for us, you loved us, that’s enough.

My whole life you’ve protected me, it’s the only truth I’ve ever known.

When i think about you, and I think about you a lot, I don’t think about our fights.

Go, be happy.

I’ve got him.

---

I saw you, back there. You’re ready for this.

To die old and fat and bald with a wife and kids and grandkids.

That is my perfect ending.

You’re not a kid anymore, and I can’t keep treating you like one.

Now you are a grown--overgrown man, and I am incredibly proud of you.

See you on the other side, brother.

----

(Of Dean: “He’s gonna be okay, right? I mean, it’s Dean.”) Humans burn bright but for a very brief time. And eventually, they’re gone, even the very best ones. The point is that they were here at all and you got to know them. And when they’re gone, it will hurt. But that hurt is a reminder of how much you love them.

---

...What do you think our legacy’s gonna be?

...What am I leaving behind besides a car?

...Your turn, you drive.

(Of Cas: “What do you say?”) Sorry. You say you’re sorry. You (know) there’s somewhere without sadness. Pain. You say goodbye.

I think it’s time for me to move on.

Without Chuck-- we’re free to move on.

---

Now even removing Eileen or Jack as inevitable ties, let’s just ask... where is this narrative in Dabb era for Sam. Or, more accurately, who are the ones left to learn to move on each time?

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dajokahhh · 3 years

Text

Alright, time for some pretentious sociological-esque rambling. This is gonna be long as hell (its 1822 words to be specific) and I don’t begrudge anyone for not having the patience to read my over-thought perspectives on a murder clown. CWs for: child abuse,

I think a lot of things have to go wrong in someone’s life for them to decide to become a clown themed supervillain. A lot of people in Gotham have issues but they don’t become the Joker. I think that as a writer it’s an interesting topic to explore, and this is especially true for roleplaying where a character might be in different scenarios or universes. This isn’t some peer reviewed or researched essay, it’s more my own personal beliefs and perspectives as they affect my writing. I think villains, generally, reflect societal understandings or fears about the world around us. This is obviously going to mean villains shift a lot over time and the perspective of the writer. In my case, I’m a queer, fat, mentally ill (cluster B personality disorder specifically) woman-thing who holds some pretty socialist ideas and political perspectives. My educational background is in history and legal studies. This definitely impacts how I write this character, how I see crime and violence, and how my particular villains reflect my understandings of the society I live in. I want to get this stuff out of the way now so that my particular take on what a potential origin story of a version of the Joker could be makes more sense.

Additionally, these backstory factors I want to discuss aren’t meant to excuse someone’s behaviour, especially not the fucking Joker’s of all people. It’s merely meant to explain how a person (because as far as we know that’s all he is) could get to that point in a way that doesn’t blame only one factor or chalk it up to “this is just an evil person.” I don’t find that particularly compelling as a writer or an audience member, so I write villains differently. I also don’t find it to be particularly true in real life either. If you like that style of writing or see the Joker or other fictional villains in this way, that’s fine. I’m not here to convince anyone they’re wrong, especially not when it comes to people’s perspectives on the nature of evil or anything that lofty. Nobody has to agree with me, or even like my headcanons; they’re just here to express the very specific position I’m writing from.

The first thing I wanna do is set up some terms. These aren’t academic or anything, but I want to use specific and consistent phrasing for this post. When it comes to the factors that screw up someone’s life significantly (and in some instances push people towards crime), I’ll split them into micro and macro factors. Micro factors are interpersonal and personal issues, so things like personality traits, personal beliefs, mental health, family history, where and how someone is raised, and individual relationships with the people around them. Macro factors are sociological and deal with systems of oppression, cultural or social trends/norms, political and legal restrictions and/or discrimination, etc. These two groups of factors interact, sometimes in a fashion that is causative and sometimes not, but they aren’t entirely separate and the line between what is a micro vs macro issue isn’t always fixed or clear.

We’ll start in and work out. For this character, the micro factors are what determine the specifics of his actions, demeanor, and aesthetic. I think the main reason he’s the Joker and not just some guy with a whole lot of issues is his world view combined with his personality. He has a very pessimistic worldview, one that is steeped in a very toxic form of individualism, cynicism, and misanthropy. His life experience tells him the world is a cold place where everyone is on their own. To him the world is not a moral place. He doesn’t think people in general have much value. He learned at a young age that his life had no value to others, and he has internalized that view and extrapolated it to the world at large; if his life didn’t matter and doesn’t matter, why would anyone else’s? This worldview, in the case of my specific Joker, comes from a childhood rife with abandonment, abuse, and marginalization. While I will say he is definitively queer (in terms fo gender expression and non conformity, and sexuality), I’m not terribly interested in giving specific diagnoses of any mental health issues. Those will be discussed more broadly and in terms of specific symptoms with relation to how they affect the Joker’s internal experience, and externalized behaviours.

His childhood was, to say the least, pretty fucked up. The details I do have for him are that he was surrendered at birth because his parents, for some reason, did not want to care for him or could not care for him; which it was, he isn’t sure. He grew up effectively orphaned, and ended up in the foster care system. He wasn’t very “adoptable”; he had behavioural issues, mostly violent behaviours towards authority figures and other children. He never exactly grew out of these either, and the older he got the harder it was to actually be adopted. His legal name was Baby Boy Doe for a number of years, but the name he would identify the most with is Jack. Eventually he took on the surname of one of his more stable foster families, becoming Jack Napier as far as the government was concerned. By the time he had that stability in his mid to late teens, however, most of the damage had already been done. In his younger years he was passed between foster families and government agencies, always a ward of the government, something that would follow him to his time in Arkham and Gotham’s city jails. Some of his foster families were decent, others were just okay, but some were physically and psychologically abusive. This abuse is part of what defines his worldview and causes him to see the world as inherently hostile and unjust. It also became one of the things that taught him that violence is how you solve problems, particularly when emotions run high.

This was definitely a problem at school too; moving around a lot meant going to a lot of different schools. Always being the new student made him a target, and being poor, exhibiting increasingly apparent signs of some sort of mental illness or disorder, and being typically suspected as queer (even moreso as he got into high school) typically did more harm than good for him. He never got to stay anywhere long enough to form deep relationships, and even in the places where he did have more time to do that he often ended up isolated from his peers. He was often bullied, sometimes just verbally but often physically which got worse as he got older and was more easily read as queer. This is part of why he’s so good at combat and used to taking hits; he’s been doing it since he was a kid, and got a hell of a lot of practice at school. He would tend to group up with other kids like him, other outcasts or social rejects, which in some ways meant being around some pretty negative influences in terms of peers. A lot of his acquaintances were fine, but some were more... rebellious and ended up introducing Jack to things like drinking, smoking cigarettes, using recreational drugs, and most important to his backstory, to petty crimes like theft and vandalism, sometimes even physical fights. This is another micro factor in that maybe if he had different friends, or a different school experience individually, he might have avoided getting involved in criminal activities annd may have been able to avoid taking up the mantle of The Joker.

Then there’s how his adult life has reinforced these experiences and beliefs. Being institutionalized, dealing with police and jails, and losing what little support he had as a minor and foster child just reinforced his worldview and told him that being The Joker was the right thing to do, that he was correct in his actions and perspectives. Becoming The Joker was his birthday present to himself at age 18, how he ushered himself into adulthood, and I plan to make a post about that on its own. But the fact that he decided to determine this part of his identity so young means that this has defined how he sees himself as an adult. It’s one of the last micro factors (when in life he adopted this identity) that have gotten him so entrenched in his typical behaviours and self image.

As for macro factors, a lot of them have to do specifically with the failing of Gotham’s institutions. Someone like Bruce Wayne, for example, was also orphaned and also deals with trauma; the difference for the Joker is that he had no safety net to catch him when he fell (or rather, was dropped). Someone like Wayne could fall into the cushioning of wealth and the care of someone like Alfred, whereas the Joker (metaphorically) hit the pavement hard and alone. Someone like the Joker should never have become the Joker in the first place because the systems in place in Gotham should have seen every red flag and done something to intervene; this just didn’t happen for him, and not out of coincidence but because Gotham seems like a pretty corrupt place with a lot of systemic issues. Critically underfunded social services (healthcare, welfare, children & family services) that result in a lack of resources for the people who need them and critically underfunded schools that can’t offer extra curricular activities or solid educations that allow kids to stay occupied and develop life skills are probably the most directly influential macro factors that shaped Jack into someone who could resent people and the society around him so much that he’d lose all regard for it to the point of exacting violence against others. There’s also the reality of living in a violent culture, and in violent neighbourhoods exacerbated by poverty, poor policing or overpolicing, and being raised as a boy and then a young man with certain gendered expectations about violence but especially ideas/narratives that minimalize or excuse male violence (especially when it comes to bullying or violent peer-to-peer behaviour under the guise of ‘boys will be boys’).

Beyond that, there’s the same basic prejudices and societal forces that affect so many people: classism, homphobia/queerphobia, (toxic) masculinity/masculine expectations, and ableism (specifically in regards to people who are mentally ill or otherwise neurodivergent) stand out as the primary factors. I’m touching on these broadly because if I were to talk about them all, they would probably need their own posts just to illustrate how they affect this character. But they definitely exist in Gotham if it’s anything like the real world, and I think it’s fair to extrapolate that these kinds of these exist in Gotham and would impact someone like The Joker with the background I’ve given him.

I have no idea how to end this so if you got this far, thank you for reading!

#clown in command ; ooc #i've got a million of 'em ; headcanon

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shadowsong26fic · 6 years

Text

The Handler AU

As requested by @tigerkat24.

(I do also have fulltext for one scene in here, which will be posted and linked here in the near future, probably tomorrow, after I clean it up some.)

Right. So. A couple of notes before I get started:

1) This AU prominently features Lavinia, and also super self-indulgent. Gonna say that straight-out. This is me and my OC and a bunch of tropes I adore. It is not the most self-indulgent piece I’ve ever put together, but it’s probably up there. I say this because, while I am pretty much past the point as a fan/content creator/whatever where I’m ashamed of my self-indulgent BS, I understand that it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, especially when it’s as obvious as this piece is. And I like people to know at least in general terms what they’re getting into when they open a piece of mine. So, you know, bear that in mind as you move forward.

2) Because of the way I work/develop AUs/OCs/etc., there are certain personality traits/satellite characters/plot points that are common to all/most of Lavinia’s storylines (...yeah, it’s a Thing I do, with OCs yeah but also with OC-free AUs and AUs of AUs and ‘hey what if I changed this plot point here, or put OC B in this situation instead of that one, or stuck Canon D in...look, y’all have seen my Distaff variants, you know the kind of thing I’m talking about; I don’t always stop at a single layer of canon-divergence, but then there has to be a thread connecting everything, or it becomes a totally different story/character, right? ...I’m not sure I’m explaining this very well. ...anyway, back on topic). As a result, despite being an AU of a completely different AU, this outline is therefore somewhat spoilery for a future Precipice arc. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve hinted at where I’m going with her in the fic proper and/or bonus content, or at least I’ve tried to, (plus, I know I’ve mentioned some things here on tumblr about particular narrative/character tropes I like), so it’s probably not too surprising? Or, at least, I hope it’s not. If it is, I need to get better at foreshadowing… Anyway, it is still technically a spoiler. To the point where I considered sitting on this (and a couple related AUs) at least until a particular event from Arc Seven that makes said future storyline about as clear as it can be until it actually happens. But…I decided ehhhhhh, why not (plus this was requested). But, you know, if that is something you want to avoid, might be best not to read this outline until after Arc…nine, I think? Just as a head’s up.

3) This is essentially a Kallus-centric Rebels fic (though, as mentioned above, also prominently featuring one of my OCs). And, other than that one bit in the Valdemar AU I wrote a month or so ago, this is the first time I’ve actually written Rebels content. (…granted, I’ve plotted more things--the closely-related Pellaeon AU features Rebels stuff pretty heavily, as does the middle arc of the Valdemar AU, which started as ‘Anakin would do really well as a Herald actually’ and has now turned into a massive three-part kudzu plot of a niche crossover and I should really redo that outline properly at some point, plus a few other things…) Anyway, the point is, I’m not necessarily super familiar with the conventions/etc. of this part of the fandom, and I apologize for any off-voice bits.

Okay! Now that I have warned for spoilers, inexperience, and self-indulgent BS…welcome to the Handler AU.

Oh, one more thing I want to mention—because this is, as stated above, super self-indulgent, Kanan is still alive because I said so. He got pretty crisped in that explosion and therefore missed the final battle, but didn’t actually die.

(Imperial records may have listed him as dead for a while, because No One Could Have Survived That, but he did survive.)

(How? IDK, maybe Ezra actually was able to do something from the between-place in this version.)

(Point is, we still have Kanan.)

(Ezra and Thrawn are still on a road trip with a bunch of space whales, though.)

ANYWAY. On to the good stuff.

It all kicks off like two months after Yavin.

Some timeline notes:

Because timelining anything in Star Wars is A Project, I am making some executive decisions here.

We’re approximately a year after the Rebels series finale.

(Meaning Jacen is like 3-4 months old, depending on exactly how pregnant Hera was at the time.)

This is also about how long Zeb and Kallus have been explicitly dating.

(There was SO MUCH PINING going on for a while there.)

(But it took that long for either of them to actually do anything about it.)

(Kallus figured out pretty early on that he was interested, but didn’t really think he deserved this/had earned it yet/that Zeb could possibly be interested in him, and therefore decided to bury his feelings Like A Goddamn Professional Okay.)

(Zeb took a while longer to clue in, and then couldn’t figure out if this was just him or what--see above re: burying things; worked a little bit too well--plus he has his own issues to work through.)

(And then there were some frantic Confessions and so-glad-we’re-alive sex and…)

(Yeah, this is a thing now.)

(Exactly zero people who have spent any time with these two dorks at all are surprised.)

(As is so often the case, the last people to clue in that this was A Mutual Thing are the two idiots involved.)

(There may or may not have been a pool or three going.)

(Hera won at least one of them.)

So. Kallus has made himself useful wherever he can since openly defecting, really, but generally works analyzing intelligence reports and training field agents for potential undercover missions. Even if his specific information is getting more and more out of date (few, if any, of the codes, etc. that he knows are still valid at this point), some things aren’t going to change that quickly, and his background is useful here.

Anyway. He gets called in--

“We’ve been approached by a would-be double agent deep in Imperial territory; received three transmissions in the past few weeks. So far, everything we’ve been sent checks out/has been useful, but.”

“But you’re wondering if this agent is an ISB plant.”

“Exactly. She calls herself Vector.”

“She?”

“Yeah. The scrambler she’s using is doing its job, which means we can’t actually use a voice print to ID her, but vocal pattern analysis got us that much. And that she’s likely Coruscanti, Human, and under thirty. That’s about all we know.”

He goes over the data and the recordings from the first three contacts and nothing jumps out as a red flag/any of the tricks he’s familiar with.

On the first call, there’s some dancing around; as if Vector’s trying to make sure of who she’s talking to. What he’d expect from either a plant or a genuine defector, really. Not particularly helpful.

The other two are fairly brief/straightforward, and start the same way each time--This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it. Also not particularly enlightening, given the question he’s been asked to answer.

The data itself, though, is--interesting. Not easy to access, for the most part, and not necessarily all from the same source. Parts of it are the kind of thing ISB would use as bait, but just as much of it is not. Some of it provides useful context for intel the Alliance has received from other sources (some covert, some not), which is not the kind of thing an ISB plant would send.

So, he goes back to his superiors and tentatively reports Vector as probably genuine. He wants to be on hand for her next transmission, though, to be sure.

(He wonders, idly, who they had evaluate his initial transmissions like this, or if using an established codename and protocol was enough…)

(He’s Concerned it might be the second.)

(There are some worrying gaps in Rebel Intelligence’s security that he can only do so much to patch.)

Of course, there’s a slight problem with that. Vector’s transmissions haven’t exactly been regular--the second one came four days after the first, and then it was nearly two weeks to the third.

And when they do come, they’re very brief, so if Kallus is, say, busy with a training exercise on the opposite side of the base…

(Or otherwise occupied in a supply closet.)

(He does have, y’know, a life when off-duty.)

(...which is something that still sends him into weird brainspirals of “how did this happen” and “i don’t deserve this” and “when is it going to blow up in my face” on occasion, but that is a separate problem. One that he buries. Like A Goddamn Professional.)

(no that’s not a habit of his why do you ask.)

IN ANY CASE, this means that it ends up being her sixth message, close to three weeks after Kallus is initially brought in, before he’s able to listen in live.

(Transmissions four and five, after he reviews them, don’t really change his analysis, but still.)

Transmission six comes in while Kallus happens to be in the tiny corner of the current base that Intelligence has claimed.

It starts like the others did--This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it.

Once the file transfer initiates, he responds.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum.”

(Okay, technically, he probably should be using a different handle now, since it’s really supposed to be for field agents only and he isn’t one anymore. And there are similar shared code names for Intelligence agents primarily on base duty, or he assumes there are, but even after over a year of not using it, it’s still the first one that comes to mind. Reflexive, almost. And now it’s going to stick.)

There’s a beat of silence from the other end, and Kallus is briefly concerned that he misjudged the situation, that she’d going to panic and cut the transmission.

But, “I can’t leave the link open long,” she says.

(Part of him thinks she sounds...almost relieved? Like she’s been waiting to be challenged like this, and the longer things went on without a test, the more nervous she got.)

(He can understand that worry. That sense of just waiting for the other shoe to drop.)

(And, yes, other Rebel Intelligence agents probably could have tested her like this, and if he hadn’t been around as a resource they almost certainly would have, but given that he knows exactly what to look for, the Powers That Be had decided to leave it in his hands.)

“Of course,” he says, and asks her a few questions, rapid-fire.

(He’s less interested in the specific details of her answers--and he’s not really asking her questions about her identity--then how she approaches answering him. Not necessarily something he can explain, which is part of why he didn’t coach any of the other officers and get this taken care of on transmission four or five, but just trying to get a sense of her.)

(One thing he does is privately revise the estimate of her age--he thinks she’s younger than the previous guess, probably twenty or so. Sabine’s age, maybe, at the oldest. Which makes her even less likely to be a plant in his opinion; ISB wouldn’t put this much effort into setting up an agent that inexperienced, not on a mission this sensitive, even if she was inconceivably talented and precocious. As an in-person infiltrator, yes, absolutely; but for this many layers of intrigue...no, they’d want someone Experienced.)

She ends the transmission somewhat abruptly, after about five minutes, but he was more or less expecting that and anyway he has what he needs.

“Well?”

“She’s genuine,” he says. “I’m as sure as I can be of that.”

“Good to hear.” A pause. “...you’ve run undercover agents before, correct?”

Kallus shuts down the knee-jerk paranoid response as fast and hard as he can.

(There are almost certainly people in the Alliance who still don’t trust me but none of them are in this room. I know that. Calm down.)

“Yes, once or twice,” he says, cautiously. “For short-term assignments.”

“Congratulations. You just volunteered to be Vector’s handler.”

(Hence the name of the AU. AKA the one where Kallus adopts a baby spy who JUST HAPPENS to be Palpatine’s daughter.)

(...yeah, he didn’t really see that one coming.)

(...at some point, I should probably go through and outline Lavinia’s politics and her reasons for defecting in detail, but in the interests of focusing on Kallus’s end of things, which is much more interesting, a (hopefully) brief digression on the subject:)

(Lavinia was created and trained to be a spy/manipulator, to perform the kind of tasks and access the kind of information that Palpatine could as the avuncular Chancellor but cannot as Emperor, now that he’s thrown that mask away.)

(...apart from very specific, carefully staged moments, like with Ezra.)

(So, part of manipulating people means understanding them, which means Lavinia does a lot of research to put her targets into context, and in so doing comes across a wide variety of cultures/forms of government, at least in an academic context.)

(And that means that, once she starts thinking beyond “how can I survive until tomorrow” and starts thinking about broader impact/more long-range plans, it doesn’t take her very long to realize that her father’s government is...well, let’s call it deeply flawed.)

(What she does when she comes to that conclusion varies, depending on other circumstances--but she doesn’t necessarily defect right away. Mostly for practical reasons; in Masks!Verse, which this AU is a variant of, she has no Rebel contacts that she’s absolutely sure of.)

(Meaning, in this case, both “absolutely sure is an actual Rebel and not just sympathetic to their aims/politics” and “absolutely sure would be willing to work with me despite my parentage.”)

(And if she approaches anyone she isn’t sure of, it’ll get her or her contact or both of them killed. Defecting from a distance, while she can better protect her identity, has a much bigger risk of interception, which, again, would get her and/or her contacts and possibly a lot of other people killed. Or worse.)

(Basically, she doesn’t think defection is a viable option for her--there are some other reasons for this, but those play a distant second to these concerns.)

(But then Alderaan happens.)

(And these concerns carry a lot less weight.)

(It takes her a couple months to figure out how to make contact with Rebel Intelligence, let alone how to do it safely, but she starts working on it at that point.)

(...I think that’s the salient points here. Like I said, I have a fair bit more about Lavinia’s politics/etc. and the ways/extent to which she’s willing to defy her father in various AUs, but that’s enough for this one, I think.)

So, Kallus can’t really argue with the assignment (even if part of him kind of wants to? Not because he thinks he can’t do it, but because he’s concerned that being another deep-cover informant’s handler is going to dig up a lot of stuff he’d really, really rather keep buried.)

(Look, he feels like he’s finally found his equilibrium. He’s even, somehow, approaching happy with his life for the first time in what feels like forever which, guilt-induced brainspirals aside, he doesn’t want to give up.)

(Besides, handling Vector wouldn’t be his only responsibility, and if he does start losing that equilibrium, he’s not sure how much his other work will be affected.)

(On the other hand...)

(On the other hand, there are very few people who have done what he did and survived long enough to make it back to Rebel lines.)

(Oh, there are other deep-cover informants, sure; but the majority of them are plants inserted by Rebel Intelligence.)

(And while, even leaving aside the technicalities involved with Senator Mothma and others among the leadership who had previously served in the Imperial Senate, there are plenty of defectors--up to and including General Madine and some other persons of very high rank--for the most part, once they make that decision, defectors grab what they can and run.)

(The ones that don’t usually don’t survive as long as he did.)

(Or, alternatively, they don’t identify themselves to the Alliance or even necessarily work directly with them; they perform internal sabotage rather than espionage.)

(Those embedded defectors tend to last longer, but not by much.)

(Which means that he’s probably the only person--certainly the only available person--who has been where Vector is. Who better to help her?)

(As for his own issues...well, he is a Professional, dammit. He can damn well compartmentalize. He’s very good at that.)

(...yeah, this is kind of a running theme for him. Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s...very much not.)

(It remains to be seen how much it’ll help or hurt when dealing with Vector.)

So, he accepts the assignment, and goes back to his quarters to tell Zeb and collect a few things--given the irregularity of Vector’s transmissions, until he can talk to her again and set up a better protocol, he’s going to basically have to camp out in Intelligence.

(Which he’s not looking forward to, but it is what it is.)

Zeb is already there when he gets back--their current shifts don’t entirely line up, which is fine; they have at least a few hours overlap most days which is better than some pairs can say.

After several minutes saying hello...

“Did I miss anything interesting?” Kallus asks.

“That Skywalker kid came by a bit ago,” Zeb tells him. “Looking for Kanan.”

Kallus blinks, halfway through fixing caf for the two of them. “...aren’t he and Hera off investigating a potential supply line?”

(Which is, of course, far below Hera’s current paygrade, but she volunteers for that kind of mission on occasion. An excuse to spend private time with her family, while still technically being useful and not taking actual time off.)

“Yep,” Zeb says. “Apparently, this is the third or fourth time something like that has happened. They keep missing each other.”

"Well, I’m sure they’ll link up sooner or later,” he says. “Especially if Skywalker’s actively looking for Kanan.”

(He hasn’t actually met Luke yet at this point, but he’s heard the rumors. He has no real doubt of this fact.)

“Yeah, probably,” Zeb says. “I think Kanan’s been trying to track him down, too. He’ll be sorry he missed him.”

(...yeah, we’re going with Anakin-and-Grievous levels of contrived coincidence to keep those two from actually meeting for a while.)

(Partly because it’s easier than figuring out all the timeline/plot implications that might have (and I’m lazy, and that is the focus of another story), but mostly because I think it’s funny.)

Kallus nods. “...did he and Hera take Jacen with them, or...?”

(He hadn’t seen any evidence the baby had been left with them, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.)

But Zeb shakes his head. “Nah, Sabine has him this time. Why? Something going on?”

“I have an assignment,” Kallus tells him.

“Huh. Extraction?”

(Logical assumption--the bulk of the fieldwork he does now, all-hands-on-deck situations like Lothal aside, is extractions. Occasionally helping sell an insertion, but generally the reverse.)

“No, not this time,” he says. “The agent who reached out, the one I told you about--I’ve been assigned as her handler.”

(He has long since gotten permission to discuss at least surface generalities of his work with Zeb, and they both know where the line is.)

Zeb’s ears flick a little, and Kallus can practically see him weighing the same pros and cons that he himself did earlier--and probably several others he hadn’t thought of.

“So, I guess that means you’re camping out in intelligence for a while?”

“Unfortunately,” he says. “Of course, there is a difference between being on-call and being on duty. And my schedule technically won’t change.”

Zeb perks up at that and grins before kissing him. “Well, I’m sure I an find an excuse to be in the area. Sometimes. Just in case. You know.”

“Mm.”

Fortunately, call number seven comes less than a week later.

This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum.”

A brief pause. “Yes.”

“I’ve been assigned as your handler.”

(He figures the best way to deal with someone who’s probably twitchy and paranoid and otherwise on high alert is to be as scrupulously honest as he can. That doesn’t mean telling her everything, of course, but it does mean being straightforward, difficult as it is, and not outright lying.)

(If he can. So far, he can.)

Another pause. “I understand.”

(She’s hard to read on this one, whether or not she finds it suspicious. She might even be relieved again, that she’ll have a set contact point, rather than a whoever’s-available sort of situation.)

“There are some protocols I’d like to establish, for further contacts.”

“I can’t call at a set time,” she says immediately. “Or at set intervals.”

"I understand,” he said. “But I’m going to give you a more specific frequency to call.”

“Yes,” she says, and that definitely has a faint note of relief.

“Can you, if nothing else, send an all-clear transmission every two weeks?” he asks. “It doesn’t need to be at a set time, but so we can gauge--” whether or not you’re alive and uncompromised “--how concerned we need to be after a long silence.”

She pauses. “...I think so. Yes. I can do that.”

(Definitely young, he thinks, maybe even younger than Ezra--would be.)

“That’s all for now,” he says. There are others he wants to establish, of course, but those are the most important and her file transfer is nearly complete.

“I’ll be in touch,” she says; hesitates a second; “Vector out.”

(...well, she’s signing off officially now, rather than just abruptly terminating the connection. Progress. I think.)

He goes back to his quarters, and life settles into a new routine.

He keeps up his old duties--analyzing reports, training potential undercover agents, etc.--and also keeps track of Vector and her reports.

That last one proves...well, his early optimism wasn’t entirely misplaced?

Vector is very, very good at what she does. Her files are varied in their content, and sometimes not as useful as she might’ve hoped, due to timing or other resource concerns, but the quality of the work she does never comes into question.

But part of being a double agent’s handler is assessing how they’re holding up under the incredible stress of the position. And she is frustratingly vague when it comes to anything approaching anything personal about herself.

In addition, there are two additional protocols he wants to set up early on--first is a way for him to reach her.

“Just because I have access doesn’t mean I have influence,” she says. “I can’t seed disinformation for you. Not without getting caught.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

(Though, of course, he had considered the possibility--as well-positioned as Vector seems to be, how could he not?--but while he doesn’t completely rule out the idea, he files it away under “only as a last resort.” Better to leave her in place as long as possible.)

“But if there’s something specific we want you to keep an eye out for--or if we need to warn you about something...”

“Right,” she says. “That’s fine, then.”

The second, though...the second is where they run into real problems.

“I also want to establish an emergency signal. If you need extraction, or if you end up captured by Rebel agents.”

(He still wonders, sometimes, if staying behind when Ezra came to extract him was the right decision. It had seemed so at the time, but...)

(He’ll probably never know. And fretting about it doesn’t do any good.)

(knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to stop.)

“No,” she says.

“Vector--”

And she hangs up on him.

Exactly why she’s so reticent to establish something like that, he isn’t sure--he has some theories, but...

It’s frustrating, to be sure. Makes it harder for him to do his job.

(And it makes him worried about her--if she’s working without any kind of exit strategy, that likely means she doesn’t think such a thing will be possible. Which, on the one hand, shows her dedication to the cause, but on the other hand...on the other hand, if she thinks getting caught is inevitable, she might get sloppy with her own security and that might well turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

(The other alternative, that she doesn’t trust him, or the Alliance, with her safety if things do go wrong, is...well, probably more distressing, in all honesty.)

(Though not, perhaps, altogether surprising.)

He decides to seek Kanan’s advice on the problem.

(Kanan, after all, knows best what to do with unruly teenagers.)

(...well, so does Hera, but Hera’s advice would probably be less applicable/harder to apply to his specific situation. Also, she has better things to do than help him do his job.)

(Which is the other frustrating thing, that he can’t handle this by himself.)

Kanan’s advice is pretty straightforward--be patient, and don’t push her too hard. You can’t help her if she won’t let you.

(This is part of why I wanted him still around, incidentally.)

(Because there is something utterly hilarious about Kallus going to Kanan for parenting advice.)

(And that’s exactly what he’s doing.)

(Even if he hasn’t quite figured that out yet.)

So, taking this in mind, he backs off. A little bit. Decides to start from square one, and build a rapport, and go from there to get some of the other basics that he wants established.

Standard interrogation technique, technically. Not one favored by ISB, obviously, or really encouraged, but even they knew it had its uses.

Vector is still cagey about personal details, but she does start to soften a little as several weeks go by.

He brings up the idea of an emergency code phrase again, after about two months of this kind of sporadic contact.

This time, she says she’ll think about it.

Things hold in this pattern for about a year, and then Vector makes a call, as usual.

Or, it starts like a normal call, anyway.

“You probably won’t hear from me for a while,” she says, as the file transfer is wrapping up and they’re about to sign off.

“Are you in trouble?”

“No,” she says. “Nothing like that. And nothing related to the work we’ve been doing. But things are going to be...difficult. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to get an all-clear message out for a while.”

He doesn’t like this at all. “How long?”

“A month,” she says. “Probably. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. I’ll contact you as soon as I can safely.”

It is one of the longer months of his life.

But, as promised, the dedicated comm he has for her lights up eventually.

This is Vector. I have a data file for you.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum,” he says. “Good to hear from you again. Everything all right?”

“Yes,” she says. And she seems fine, and he breathes a quiet sigh of relief.

When he tells Zeb about it later, though, is where it gets...interesting.

“Glad to hear your kid’s okay,” he says.

“My--she’s not my child, Zeb,” Kallus says.

“Really.”

“....”

“Look, you talk about her the same way Kanan talks about Sabine, when she’s off blowing things up on Mandalore.”

“I...wait, really?”

“Yep,” Zeb says, and grins at him. “I mean, it’s not a problem. S’kind of what we do in this family, isn’t it? Take in strays. ‘Bout time you got in on it, really.”

Kallus just stares at him. “I...what.”

Zeb waves a hand in front of his face. “Alex. Babe. You all right in there?”

He shakes himself. “Yes, of course. Sorry."

“Ehh, don’t worry about it. I mean, it’d probably have been nice for the two of us to talk about kids in general before we started adopting our own strays, but--”

Really, sometimes Kallus thinks that Zeb likes the expression he makes when utterly poleaxed like that.

(He does. He thinks it’s adorable.)

(Also, Zeb figures this is a conversation they maybe should have, because they’re clearly both in this for the long haul and he saw this opening and...look, no one ever said Zeb was good at broaching delicate topics gently.)

“...do you?” Kallus asks, when he recovers. “Want children, someday?”

“I mean...yeah,” Zeb says. “If you do. I mean.”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” he confesses.

(Because long-range planning is hard; because they’re at war, because he’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop, because he doesn’t deserve any of this and planning for a future he doesn’t deserve is just--a little much for him sometimes.)

“But...yes,” Kallus says. “I think so, yes. I would like to raise children with you. Someday.”

Zeb’s response to that is positive and enthusiastic and leads to things they will definitely not be discussing with their hypothetical children ever.

It’s a month or two after that that Kallus finds out who Vector is.

(…well, for a given value of ‘finds out,’ anyway.)

He and Zeb are babysitting--Sabine is back on Mandalore; Hera is on duty; Kanan was supposed to be finally meeting Luke but there was an issue at the spaceport and he’s stranded for the next few hours.

(Like I said. Anakin-and-Grievous levels of contrived coincidence.)

Zeb has just put the kid to bed, and Kallus is watching the news.

“You’re still watching that?” he asks, nudging Kallus to make room for him on the couch and drawing him to lean on his shoulder.

“I’ve told you before, dear, knowing what the Empire is saying, no matter how different that is from what they’re doing, has its uses.”

“Especially if you know how their propaganda is constructed, I know,” Zeb says, and nuzzles his ear. “Just thought you were almost done.”

Kallus smiles faintly and leans into the caress. “I am, I promise. I’ll shut it off in a minute. I just want to--”

He pauses. Rewinds the feed. Pauses it--pre-recorded coverage of some public event the Emperor’s kid had been at, with the newscaster commenting on the progress of whatever “public works” project it was supposed to kick off.

“…what is it? Something she said?”

(...something to do with whatever this “project” is covering up?)

“Hush,” he says, fiddling with a few buttons and calling up a printed transcript and skims through it before sinking back against Zeb, letting out a breath.

“Babe?”

“I think I know who Vector is,” he says.

Zeb stares at him for a minute, then stares at the paused footage--frozen on the Princess’s face, icy and composed.

“…her?”

“Her,” he confirms.

“Why…?”

“Little things,” he says. “The way she talks, some unique turns of phrase. And she fits the profile--young, Human, Coruscanti, close to someone powerful but essentially a civilian herself…and…when Vector disappeared on me last month, that coincided with a period where the Princess was more visible than usual.”

“Karabast,” he mutters. “When you put it like that…”

“It’s all conjecture,” Kallus points out. “I can’t prove any it. Not without digging deeper--which, if I’m right, risks compromising her cover--or asking her straight-out.”

(Which, of course, would also be a bad idea. It would probably seriously damage the trust he’s spent the past year and more building, and it might not even get him an honest answer anyway.)

“Right,” Zeb says. “…any chance someone else could put this together?”

Kallus makes a face. “Unlikely,” he says, though he doesn’t sound totally sure. “The recordings of our conversations are kept as hard copies only, for security. Not uploaded onto any networked drives. And a very small set of people have access to those copies. I doubt anyone could put it together without that access. Still…”

(Someone dedicated enough, who managed to access one of those recordings, or intercept a transmission along the way, or compromise the lines of communication from the other side…)

“Kriff,” he says. “Anything you can do about it?”

“Not really,” he says. “Other than brief Draven and keep doing what I’ve been doing.”

“Yeah,” he says, and studies the picture again; glances over at the morose look on Kallus’s face; feels his ears twitching. “Huh. Never would’ve figured the Emperor’s kriffing daughter to defect.”

Kallus jumps a little, drawn out of his thoughts, then rolls his eyes and gives Zeb a fond, exasperated smile (which was really the point, honestly; to needle him into a better mood), and rather dryly points out, “There was a time you would’ve said the same about me.”

“True,” Zeb says, and grins at him. “Guess it just goes to show, people surprise you all the time.”

“Indeed,” Kallus says, then reaches over to shut off the feed and changes the subject.

Six weeks after that, Vector goes quiet again. This time without warning.

When her two-week check-in goes by with nothing, he’s immediately concerned. She’s never missed a check-in before, not without warning. He decides to give her a day, and then ping her himself.

(He generally avoids doing that--only when he absolutely needs to speak with her about something time-sensitive that can’t wait for her to reach out.)

There’s no response to his message, either.

He reports the missed check-in, of course. Tries again the next day. And a third.

Still nothing.

(He knows a rescue won’t be authorized--technically, they don’t actually know for sure who or even where Vector is, and if his theory is correct, they cannot make a run on Coruscant for one agent, especially not one as visible as Princess Lavinia.)

(He keeps telling himself that. Over and over again. As he tries a fourth and fifth time to reach her.)

“Zeb,” he says, after a third full week has gone by since the last time he heard from her. “I need you to talk me out of doing something stupid.”

“Uh, sure, babe. What’s going on?”

He explains the situation as briefly as he can. “And I am this close to staging a half-assed unauthorized raid on Coruscant to extract her.”

“...nah, if we’re doing an unauthorized raid on Coruscant, it should be a full-assed thing.”

That...that wasn’t really the answer Kallus was looking for.

(In hindsight, he thinks, as he tries to redraw building plans from memory and plan this stupid, stupid venture, he probably should have gone to Hera if he really wanted someone to talk him down. Or possibly Kanan. ...no, Hera.)

(...it could be worse, though.)

(he could’ve tried asking Sabine.)

Fortunately, before they can actually run off and get themselves killed--

(or court-martialed)

(or in trouble with Hera)

--Kallus’ dedicated comm chimes.

“All clear,” he breathes. “That’s the all-clear. She’s...she’s alive.”

It’s nearly another week before he hears anything else, but finally a real call comes.

This is Vector. I have a data file for you. Do as you like with it.

“Vector, this is Fulcrum. Are you all right?”

(she doesn’t sound all right; it’s hard to tell through her scrambler, but she seems strained.)

“Everything’s fine,” she says. “I apologize for the delay, but things are settled now. My cover is intact.”

Which is good to know, but not what he asked.

“And what about you?” he says.

She doesn’t answer right away.

“Vector?”

“I’m here,” she says. “And everything is under control. You don’t need to worry about me. Nothing that--it wasn’t anything to do with this, I was caught on the fringes of something unrelated. It won’t interfere with my work going forward.”

Which still isn’t an answer.

(He’s pretty sure the non-answer is his answer, though. Damn it.)

(He knows the risks. Better than most. And he knows she knows them, too. It doesn’t make it any easier to hear, especially knowing that there is kriff-all he can do to help her.)

Into the silence, she says, “I’m your asset, Fulcrum. Not your friend.”

“......”

“I’m just--” She sighs. “I’m your asset. Not your friend. It’s...we should both remember that. It’s probably better, in the long run.”

And part of him is hurt; part of him is annoyed that he is being lectured on professionalism by a damned child; part of him is worried again--he did finally talk her into an emergency code phrase, in case of capture or other disaster, but here she goes again, hinting that she doesn’t have an exit strategy.

(Not like I did, either, he reminds himself. Can’t plan that far ahead. Not when you’re doing this kind of work. And even when Ezra came for me--)

(He buries it. Because he is a goddamn professional, Vector’s reproof aside.)

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she says. “And I’ve had worse.”

“........”

All right, that he likes even less.

“Vector--”

“I have to go,” she says. “I’ll be in touch when I have something else. And I’ll do my best to warn you if I have to disappear again. Vector out.”

And, in the interests of “good Lord this thing is close to 6k already,” we’re going to skip ahead quite a bit, about a year and a half, to just after the evacuation of Echo Base.

For the first time in a while, the whole family (minus Ezra) is back on the Ghost together.

(Kanan, Hera, Chopper, Sabine, Zeb, Kallus, Rex, and Jacen.)

(They’ve all been in touch and met up fairly frequently, but they’re no longer a discrete cell and they all have their own, often separate, duties with the wider Rebellion. So, while the circumstances leading to it are awful, it’s nice to have an opportunity like this.)

Orders are to lay low, and make their way by a prearranged roundabout route to the fleet rendezvous five days later.

The first night, they mostly spend catching up and letting Sabine fleece them all at cards.

(Except Rex. Do Not Play Sabaac With Rex.)

(They had all forgotten that rule.)

Hera is sending occasional messages back and forth to Command, to confirm/make adjustments/etc., but otherwise things are fairly quiet after the frantic rush of the evacuation itself.

(Fortunately, none of them were injured in the escape. It’s happened before, when they’ve had to leave a base in a hurry. That was a week no one wanted to repeat.)

It’s their second night of drifting, and Kallus is just starting to fall asleep (Zeb is snoring beside him; the noise honestly probably should have been annoying but is genuinely comforting at this point, to the point where he has trouble sleeping without it) when his comm beeps.

It’s Vector.

More accurately, it’s her emergency signal.

He extracts himself from the bed and slips out into the hall to talk the call.

“Fulcrum.”

“It’s Vector,” she says, unnecessarily. She’s not using her usual scrambler this time, but a more standard vocoder, probably cannibalized from a stolen helmet. She sounds drained, and slightly breathless. “I’ve been burned. I got...I got away. I had more..." She stops, clears her throat. “I got away. I was able to remove my tracker and I’m as--I’m as sure as I reasonably can be that I’ve lost anyone following me by other means. I-I pulled as much raw data as I could onto a couple of portable drives on my way out, but I’m on a...I’m on a sliced public terminal right now, I don’t want to keep the line open long enough to send them in the usual way and I...I don’t know what the protocol is now. Please advise.”

“Where are you now?” he asks. There are so many other questions he wants to ask, needs to ask, both from a personal and a professional standpoint--is she all right; how did she get caught; how did she escape; how long has she been compromised--but they can wait until she’s been located and brought in safely. He sets them all aside, and focuses.

(Like A Goddamn Professional.)

“Ixaly,” she says. “I’m on...I’m on Ixaly.”

He closes his eyes, mentally traces their route through hyperspace. Ixaly is in this sector, it shouldn’t be far...yes. If he’s counted right--they’ll be doing a navigation stop shortly, and dropping out of hyperspace. From there--a few hours to Ixaly, unless he’s completely turned around.

“There’s a cantina,” he says, “in the Diira district in Central City. The White Shale. Can you be there in six hours?”

A brief pause; he can hear her breathing. “Yes,” she says, at last. “Yes, I’ll be there.”

“That’s the fastest I can arrange a pickup,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

(If he’s right about how close they are, it might not actually take him that long, but there’s a balance between getting to her as quickly as possible and budgeting in time for something to go wrong. He doesn’t want to risk being late and having her move on because she thinks he’s not coming. He may not be able to contact her if something goes wrong; not if she’s relying on sliced public terminals to reach out to him. And he has no idea when she’ll be able to make contact again, or how long whatever data’s on her drives will stay viable...so, six hours. He’ll have to trust her to stay alive that long.)

“I’ll be there,” she promises. “White Shale cantina, Diira district, Central City, six hours.”

“Exactly. You know how to reach me if there are any problems.”

“Yes,” she says.

“It’s almost over,” he says. “You’ve done well, getting yourself this far. Just hold on for a little while longer, all right?”

“I will,” she says; takes a breath. “I’ll see you in six hours. Vector out.”

The line goes dead.

Half a heartbeat later, he feels the familiar rumble of the hyperdrive cutting out, switching over to sublight engines.

He’s in his window now, he doesn’t have time--

As he heads for the Phantom, he runs into Kanan.

“...what’s wrong?”

“Vector,” he says, clipped. “She’s had to run. She’s not far--”

“Go,” he says. “I’ll let Hera know. ...take Zeb with you. In case you need backup.”

(Which he doesn’t really need, and it might well spook his contact if he brings a team--he has run extractions like this before, after all, and Vector is particularly cagey--but he nods.)

“I will. Thank you.”

“How long do we wait before sending our own rescue party?” Kanan asks.

Kallus does some quick mental math--six hours to the meet; going by Vector’s history, she may need some convincing to come along (like I did, until it was too late; but it’s already too late for her, isn’t it?); she might be wrong about having a tail; they might run into unrelated trouble...

“I’ll send word once we leave the system. If you haven’t heard from me in twelve hours, that’s when you worry.”

“Got it,” he says, and starts off towards the cockpit to update Hera, when Kallus realizes--

“Wait,” he says.

Kanan pauses, half-turns back to him.

“I don’t know who Vector is, not for certain,” he says, “but I have considerable circumstantial evidence that she’s Princess Lavinia.”

Kanan takes that in, then nods slowly. “Right. Thanks for the head’s up. I’ll pass that along.”

“Thank you,” Kallus says again, and the two of them separate--Kallus goes to wake Zeb and then get the Phantom prepped and underway; Kanan goes to tell Hera what’s going on.

(...and corral his son.)

(Jacen has developed this habit lately of hiding on the Phantom when he thinks it’s going somewhere Interesting.)

(Which is usually whenever someone other than Mamma is driving.)

(He likes going on Adventures with his various uncles and Auntie ‘Bine, okay.)

(They go on the best Adventures.)

(But retrieving one of Kallus’s deep-cover agents whose cover was blown like a week ago at most is maaaaaaybe not the best Adventure for a three-year-old.)

Fortunately, Zeb isn’t hard to wake and grasps the situation quickly. The two of them head for the Phantom--

And find Sabine sitting there waiting for them, spinning idly in the pilot’s chair.

“...Sabine--” Zeb starts.

“Whatever it is that’s got you two running around frantically when we’re supposed to be lying low,” she says, “I wanna help. You might need backup.”

On the one hand, Kallus is pretty sure they won’t. And his prior concerns about spooking Vector if he comes in with a team still apply.

On the other hand, Sabine is one of the best people to have beside them in a crisis, if things do go all to hell. She’s creative and generally carrying an array of weapons that defies the very laws of physics.

Besides, he doesn’t have time to argue with her.

“Fine,” he says. “But you follow my lead--both of you. Neither of you has been on an extraction like this before, and this is what I do. All right?”

“All right,” Sabine says. “Who is it we’re extracting, exactly?”

“A spy, working under the code name Vector,” he says. “She’s been feeding us intel for close to three years now. Her cover was compromised, and she had to run.”

Sabine nods. “Got it,” she says.

“And, if I’m right,” he says--because if he is, Sabine will have to know before they get there, “she’s the Emperor’s daughter.”

“...all right, then,” Sabine manages, after a moment of stunned silence. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

They detach, and the Ghost disappears behind them back into hyperspace as Kallus sets a course for Ixaly.

And now, since I’m sure y’all are wondering the same thing Kallus is--i.e., how did she get caught/how did she escape--let’s backtrack and leave Kallus’s POV for another brief digression--

It all comes down to a man named Vedric Greer.

Vedric Greer is a Royal Guard. He’s been in that elite unit for over fifteen years at this point, selected more or less straight out of the Academy.

He’s been the head of Lavinia’s detail since she was twelve.

(Before that, he had a variety of assignments; he never got stuck with Vader, for which he is profoundly grateful, but he guarded a few valuable objects/locations, and he was on Tarkin’s detail for a couple of years.)

See, here’s the thing about Royal Guards. They’re put through a lot of conditioning, both physically and mentally, to become living weapons who are absolutely loyal.

And he is. Vedric Greer is an absolutely loyal man.

The thing is, to be a Royal Guard assigned to any living being other than Palpatine himself--Vader, Tarkin, Mas Amedda, Lavinia, a few others--means to be equal parts bodyguard and prison guard. Such a Guard is at least partly there to protect his principal from external threats, of course, but if said principal steps out of line or he’s given certain orders, he becomes their jailer. Or executioner. Or worse.

When he’s assigned to someone like Tarkin, of course, that isn’t much of a problem.

But a lonely, precocious twelve-year-old kid like Lavinia? Who, whatever traits she may have inherited from her father, has them tempered by an actual conscience?

...yeah, it doesn’t take a whole lot for him to bond with her, just a little.

(Throw in the fact that he has a lover, an Imperial Archivist who survived Scarif by being transferred to Coruscant days before Tarkin blew it up...well. Maybe the cracks in his armor aren’t only to do with the little girl he’s been made responsible for.)

So. Vedric Greer is a Royal Guard, and that means he is a living weapon, and absolutely loyal.

But over the past seven years--and especially the last three--maybe, just maybe, that loyalty has started to shift.

(He doesn’t even realize it, at first; and when he does notice the traces of affection, of tangential loyalty in himself...well, he reasons that Lavinia is all but an extension of her father’s will, anyway. Right? And if he conveniently fails to see certain signs...)

(Reynard, his lover, knows way before Vedric does where this is going, of course.)

And then, one morning, his orders change, and all those little things come crashing down.

(It was such a simple thing that screwed her over; Palpatine seeds bait among his minions constantly, little nuggets of information so that, if there is a high-placed leak, he can track it back to its source right away. Standard counter-intelligence, really; and everyone, everyone, is under suspicion. Everyone is tested.)

(Lavinia is normally very good at spotting this sort of thing--she has a natural aptitude for espionage, she was trained by the best, and she puts just as much effort into surviving her father and completing her mission as he did into taking over the galaxy. How else would she have lasted nineteen years as her father’s daughter--let alone three as a deep-cover Rebel spy?)

(But this time--this time she missed it. And now he knows.)

And Vedric Greer has a choice to make.

It’s surprising, in the end, how simple it is.

“My lady,” he informs her, “you are undone.”

He helps her cut out the tracking device implanted inside her ribcage (which is also fitted with a killswitch, of course, in case she ever tried to slip her leash); she asks him to come with her; he refuses.

(He is not a Rebel. He is not disloyal.)

(What he is, is her protector. What he is, is--hers.)

“I’m so sorry,” she says.

“So am I,” he says, and, “Go. I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”

“Goodbye,” she says, and disappears.

He sends a brief message to Reynard--hoping he’ll know what it means (he will; he always knew this might happen), and prepares himself to meet his death.

(Or, at least, that’s what he believes is going to happen.)

(...look, as I said before, this is Self-Indulgent BS(tm). Like I’m really gonna let Greer die. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have no earthly idea how he survives but he does. Because this is my self-indulgent BS, dammit.)

Okay. Back to Ixaly, and the actual rescue/extraction mission.

(…by which I also mean forward, since it’s like a week later.)

Our Heroes reach Central City about an hour ahead of schedule. After a brief discussion, Sabine disappears into the district to be on-hand for immediate help, if needed; Zeb, who doesn’t blend in as well, will stay with the Phantom; Kallus of course goes to the cantina to find his contact.

He heads there more or less directly, taking in as much detail of the city and the specific neighborhood as he can.

He’s been here before, but it’s been several years; there is a garrison in place, but the occupation seems comparatively light.

Which means there’s a not-unreasonable chance that this will go smoothly.

(Of course, as soon as he thinks that, he starts coming up with all the potential problems that could still happen. For one thing, he or Vector or Sabine might be recognized…)

Security on the cantina itself; mostly local talent, just as it was on his last visit. This is a fairly middle-of-the-road place; just dishonest enough that he and Vector should blend, not so dishonest that they’re likely to get caught in the middle of any…unpleasantness. Part of why he picked this place. That, the fact that it isn’t particularly difficult to find, and is fairly close to his ideal landing site.

(Not the official port, naturally; while Kallus doesn’t doubt that they could bluff their way through, he’d rather not try it on such short notice. They’d landed the Phantom on the city outskirts, about fifteen minutes away by foot.)

In other words, things are about as well-situated as they could be, under the circumstances. He has three separate exit routes at least tentatively mapped out, of varying efficiency and difficulty.

(And, if it came down to it, Sabine or Zeb could create one for him, of course, but he’d prefer to avoid that if at all possible.)

(In any case, best to have backup plans; he’ll pick the best route of the three once he has a better idea of what Vector’s capable of at the moment.)

(He’s almost certain she’s hurt, and he doesn’t know how badly, and she’ll never actually tell him, so that’s the best he can do.)

Inside, the cantina is fairly crowded--which is a mixed blessing; on the one hand, more cover for their activities/conversation, but on the other, more people to see them.

It’s a varied crowd; mostly local shift workers, a few semi-legitimate traders and mid-level bounty hunters. Most importantly, though, there are no troopers that he can identify, even off-duty. Excellent.

He gets a drink (to blend in, primarily) and finds a table in the corner where he can keep an eye on the other patrons and watch the door without being obvious about it.

He’s not kept waiting long.

She blends in pretty well--she’s managed to dress herself in a slightly-outdated local fashion, one that helpfully comes with a cowl that doesn’t quite hide her face, but does enough to keep her mostly anonymous from a distance and make dodging any security cameras easier.

(A few other women in the cantina are dressed similarly; not many, but enough that she doesn’t really stand out.)

She doesn’t head straight for him. She weaves through the crowd for a minute, hesitates by the bar as if she’s considering something, orders a drink. Her attention drifts over the crowd; she doesn’t linger on him, but her hand twitches a little.

(Ah. She spotted him, then. Good.)

(He isn’t really surprised that she figured out which Fulcrum she was working with. And it does make things simpler--there are a few signals he could have tried, but there wasn’t time, when she called, to pick one of them and be sure.)

(An advantage, if a counter-intuitive one, to using the legacy code name with her, he supposes.)

She starts moving again; doing everything right--wandering as if she’s looking for a seat, gradually making her way to a small empty table next to his.

(The whole thing takes probably less than two minutes. It feels longer. Then again, it always does--this isn’t the first time he’s met a contact like this, and that never changes. Doesn’t matter whether he’s the first or second to arrive.)

He taps out a quick signal on his commlink--contact made, everything’s on track so far--and waits.

“I have a data file for you,” she says softly. “Several, in fact.”

He smiles faintly into his drink. “Well done.”

The way the tables are laid out, they’re sitting next to one another, both with their backs against the wall. It’s a simple matter for her to slide the two drives over to him, and just as easy for him to make them disappear.

(Leaving together discreetly will be a little harder, but he’s been doing this for quite a while. They’ll manage.)

“I have transport off-planet,” he tells her. “We should wait a few minutes, not get up right away, but it’s best if we leave sooner rather than later.”

She shakes her head. “I'm not coming with you.”

(He wishes he could say he was surprised.)

He doesn’t turn to look at her, as much as he wants to. “If you’re concerned about reprisals…”

“I’m not,” she says. “Not really. It’s just…not a good idea.”

...and in the interests of “good Lord this thing is probably pushing 10k and it’s not even the full fic it’s an outline,” I’m going to skip the rest of this conversation. Suffice to say, he’s right and she’s wrong, though she takes some convincing, but they leave the cantina together like fifteen minutes later. Also, he confirms that his theory as to her identity was correct somewhere in here.

Anyway, like I said, he talks her down, and she agrees to leave with him.

Once out of the cantina, he can get a better look at her, assess how badly she’s hurt.

(He knows she is for certain now; she’s breathing carefully, shallowly, and a little too fast--but he could only see her hands and the vague shadow of her cowl before.)

“Are you all right?” he asks; even though the answer is obvious; she’s favoring her left side and very pale.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she says.

A characteristic non-answer, but a step above denial. He supposes.

“All right,” he says. “Let me know if you need help.”

(There’s not much else he can do here and now, anyway; they have some supplies back on the Ghost, and she can get proper medical attention once they rendezvous with the fleet.)

“I will,” she says, which is something at least.

They make it two blocks before they run into a squad of stormtroopers.

It’s a routine patrol; and, even with a wounded asset to escort, it wouldn’t have been a problem under most circumstances. He could avoid the confrontation, or talk his way past.

But the squad sergeant stiffens in a particular way, staring at him.

“Karabast,” he mutters.

(You’d think, after all these years, this would stop happening so often. But, no, it’s still even odds that, out in the field, someone will recognize him.)

Lavinia takes half a step back. “I can--”

“They’re not here for you,” he tells her, then drags her behind cover a split second before the troopers start firing.

Then takes a minute to take stock.

This is...not an ideal position for a standoff. And while they might be able to fight their way through...

Best plan is to stay put, hold them off as long as they can, and call in Zeb and Sabine for backup.

Good thing I listened to Kanan, he thinks.

He takes out his sidearm, then pulls his holdout pistol from his boot and offers it to Lavinia.

But she shakes her head. “Father kept my focus narrow. I’d do more harm than good.”

“...right.”

Even less ideal. But it’s all right. He can handle this.

He takes his comm, switches it to the voice setting.

“Specter Four, this is Fulcrum. We’re going to need a slightly more dramatic exit than I planned for.”

“Copy that, Fulcrum,” Zeb says. “Could use an opening, Specter Five.”

“And to think you boys wanted to leave me behind,” Sabine says.

“Yes, yes, can we save the ‘I-told-you-sos’ until after we’re clear?” Kallus says, firing off a handful of shots to keep the squad at bay.

“She does have a point, babe.”

“Not on open comms, dear, how many times...”

(Honestly, the little bit of flirting is at this point half an inside joke, after the one time they legitimately forgot to switch channels, and half a way to quickly gauge how serious the situation actually is.)

(Plus, it’s fun. They like flirting.)

“Thirty seconds,” Sabine cuts in.

“Right,” Zeb says. “I’m headed to your position. ETA two minutes.”

“Copy. Fulcrum out.”

Two minutes, under these conditions, is a long, long time.

But, right on cue, thirty seconds later, there is a magnificent explosion, which gives them some breathing room, and then Sabine slides down the wall to land next to him.

“Not my best work,” she says critically, watching the cloud on the horizon, “but it’ll clear a path. Hi,” she adds, for Lavinia’s benefit.

“Hi,” she says, softly.

“...she doesn’t have a blaster,” Sabine says, turning almost accusingly to Kallus.

“Because I’ve never had one before,” Lavinia answers for him. “And this really doesn’t seem the time or place to learn.”

“Well, we’ll fix that later,” Sabine says.

“All right,” Lavinia says, then ducks down as Sabine positions herself better to start shooting back.

The next ninety seconds go much quicker, and then comes the welcome sound of the Phantom’s engines on approach.

It’ll have to be a quick exit, and for a split second, Kallus wonders about getting Lavinia up the ramp fast enough without Zeb actually landing--

But then he sees that Sabine has her jetpack.

(He has never been so pleased to see it in his life.)

“Take her,” he says, once the shuttle is in sight. “I’ll cover you.”

Sabine catches his drift right away, and nods. “Hold on,” she tells Lavinia, who blinks, but does.

And then they’re off.

Kallus just keeps firing at the troopers until, based on the noise it’s making, he judges that the Phantom is close enough that he can make the jump.

He’s--almost right.

He comes within half an inch of missing, then Lavinia’s hands shoot out and grab one of his wrists; Sabine grabs the other and the girls haul him on board.

“We’re good, Zeb, go!” Sabine shouts, while Lavinia drags Kallus the rest of the way in and slams the hatch shut.

We did it.

He takes a minute to catch his breath--he knows it isn’t really over; there’s still a great deal of work to do once they get back to the Ghost and then to the fleet proper.

But for now--they’re all alive, they’re all safe, they’re all at least as intact as they were when they got to Ixaly; the extraction was successful.

Kallus decides to let the rest of the problems wait, and take the win.

He picks himself up and heads to the cockpit, to give Zeb a quick hug and send word to Kanan and the others.

For all the drama and the worry when it started, today turned out to be a very good day.

And I think that’s a good stopping point, don’t you? There is definitely more, featuring (in no particular order) the worlds most #Awkward Road Trip; Kanan and Lavinia meeting; Kanan and Luke finally meeting; Zeb and Kallus adopting a kid or three; Lando; Jacen being precious; and so much more.

But, uh, see all my notes above about “how long is this thing now?!”

(And, again this isn’t even fulltext.)

(This is just the outline.)

...so, uh, yeah, if you made it this far, thank you and I hope you enjoyed my Self-Indulgent BS(tm). <333333333

#shadowsong26fic #shadowsong writes star wars #shadowsong writes self-indulgent bs #au outlines for the win #tigerkat24

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winchestersingerautorepair · 6 years

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Cas in 13x14: Whatever it Takes

Okay, here we go. First off, let me just say how well-done that episode was. I was bouncing off the walls last night with commentary and general flailing (I’m pretty sure I drove my casual-viewer watching buddy crazy) and I couldn’t wait to organize and elaborate on the notes I took into a coherent post. Coherent is the key word here, because I’m looking back at my notes and seeing some of them are not quite as insightful and well thought out as they were at 10:30 at night (For example: “Dean but not, you know.” Huh? What does that even mean, Maeve?)

Anyways.

Familiar Themes, New Context

So, Cas x Self Worth has been an important theme for a few seasons now --- and it has been well established that much of Cas’s self-worth stems from mission and his failures and successes on this front. While we have seen an exponential amount of growth from him when it comes to this (see resolution of depression arc as well as literal and metaphorical renewal,) 13x14 re-established Cas’s yearn for mission and purpose as well as the positive and negative implications this has for his character. I would like to point to the very title of this episode: “Good Intentions.” I know this title immediately brought Cas to mind for me as well as raise some red flags, because ‘good intentions’ never end up well, especially in Cas’s case. This is not to say he made some incredibly detrimental, immoral, irreversible mistake this episode --- because he didn’t, imo --- I simply point this out because it is key to interpreting his decisions and also helps to bring other examples of Cas’s good-intentioned actions to mind.

Now I will not deny some of Cas’s behavior and attitude reminded me of an earlier, more righteous and stoic version of the angel, but I was more struck by the the stark differences between Cas then and Cas now. In almost every other instance of “Cas on a mission,” he has removed himself emotionally from the situation (to the best of his ability.) He acts out of necessity, and does so with strategy and logic, and even when his actions aren’t solely objective he manages to make them appear so. While there have always been exceptions to this rule, I was blown away at how blatantly and unapologetically 13x14 threw away the Cas rulebook --- putting Cas’s actions and words in direct conflict, and taking a soldier who is usually cool and calculating and showing him as emotional and reactive. This conflict was so evident, in fact, my casual-viewing friend asked me what was up with Cas, and I didn’t have an easy answer: I was just as blown away as she was. Cas has been growing increasingly emotional these past few seasons, but I had not yet seen it in this context; I had gotten used to the depressed, docile Cas, and it wasn’t until this season and the re-emergence of the BAMF I remembered so well that I really grasped all at once how much Cas has morphed as a character.

And that’s not to say I haven’t noticed the exponential changes in his character over the last few seasons, because, well, they were exponential. I didn’t think he could still surprise me.

He did.

Go figure.

Conflicting Narratives

I cannot tell you how important this strategy is to telling Cas’s story --- the audience is familiar with several iterations of Castiel, so paralleling his current actions/behavior with those of an older version of Cas is perhaps the most effective way of showing character development. And holy mother of hell has he done some development. First off, I’ll explain what I found so striking about Cas this episode. We were essentially told two different stories: Cas from the Winchester’s point of view, and Cas from his own point of view. Take, for example, this exchange:

Dean: How are you holdin' up, Cas?

Castiel: I'm fine.

Dean: No, I just mean with, you know, everything you've been through. And I know you really wanna find Lucifer.

Castiel: No, it's not that. It's about --- well, it is that, but it's also I --- Dean, I was --- I was dead.

Dean: Temporarily.

Castiel: And I have to believe that I was brought back for a reason.

(Cas goes into his responsibility for Jack and preparation for war with Michael.)

Once again, Cas’s search for purpose and how it ties into his self-worth. This episode is full of examples of Cas’s eagerness to get something done which he voices most enthusiastically to Sam and Dean, and while his zeal was refreshing it did not surprise me, nor did in seem to surprise the boys. It wasn’t until the visual narrative took a sharp turn that I really zeroed in on Cas, and you may know the scene I’m referring to: when he rushed down to help Dean after he was magically choked, and we got seven solid seconds (yes, I counted) of Cas staring bloody murder at Donatello before they cut away.

Here’s where it gets interesting. When discussing what to do about Donatello Cas’s argument is presented as strictly rational, all of his points relating only to what will further them to their goal. But he’s angry, and he decides to take things into his own hands.

(After discussing Donatello)

Cas: Fine. (Cas leaves the room.)

Dean: Cas---

Sam: Hey, what are you doing?

Cas: What I have to.

As soon as Cas is away from the Winchesters, something changes. His determination stays steady, but his motive comes into question--- this is more than just taking the mission into his own hands, this is reactive and aberrant. His rhetoric shifts away from logic and strategy to one much more emotional. Something hit a nerve.

Cas: I'm sorry, but I'm not going to let you, or anyone, hurt the people I love. Not again.

(cue me, yelling at full volume into the abyss.)

Voila! Conflicting narratives! We have Cas, presenting himself as strategic and logical to the Winchesters, and we have a view of Cas behind the scenes that tells a whole different story--- somebody with a rash, all-too-human reaction to seeing someone he loves being hurt. Cas approaches protecting his family with the same ferocity he does any other mission, the difference being he is driven by human emotion, and not angelic duty, which begs the question: which rules his decision-making process? These scenes can answer that in part. While it can be argued Cas’s actions could have just been a means to an end (the end being finding out the ingredients to the spell,) this course of action was undeniably reckless, and probably unnecessarily dangerous. We know Cas was strong enough to overpower Donatello and I am certain could have found another way to get to this information, not to mention whatever he did to Donatello could have easily killed him as well. Not to say he isn’t impulsive, because he is --- but this impulse was borne out of love and anger and vengeance, a motivator much more associated with Dean. In my opinion, Cas was not intent on leaving Donatello with any capacity to function, mind-probe or not. It was seeing Dean get hurt that stirred Cas up, and it was the prospect of either Dean or Sam being hurt again that motivated him to take immediate action.

Why It’s Important

So, what does that mean for Cas? In my friend’s words, Cas is morphing. We know how far Cas can be willing to go for a cause, but much of Cas’s new cause comes irrefutably from a place of deep emotion --- while most of his missions have been rooted in protecting the Winchesters (whether or not he would admit it,) this is a somewhat new territory. We saw a few examples of reckless decisions made in devotion to the Winchesters last season, i.e. killing Billy, but the circumstance is what is important here. Cas is restored to his old, confident, smitey self, and yet it has not compromised his own humanity; in many ways, it has made it more obvious. Cas is no longer vulnerable and is still more human than ever, and that was on full display for us in “Good Intentions.”

But why is Cas putting up the front? Why is he presenting his actions to the Winchesters only in the context of logic and mission? The closing scene, in which Sam and Dean confront him about what he did to Donatello, Cas says he “did what soldiers do.” He writes off his actions as just hurrying along the process. He doesn’t address the emotional aspect of what he did, but the episode makes it clear to the viewer, much more clearly than they have done in recent memory, that there is much more going on in Cas’s mind and heart than he clued the Winchesters into.

Cas has come to terms with his love for the Winchesters (something can be said for him grappling with different emotions toward each brother, but I’m not going into that right now,) and he has much more emotional intelligence than he did last time he was at full power and consumed with mission, so I think misunderstanding of and unfamiliarity with human emotion will play much less of a role than it did in season 6.

I believe Cas is embarking on a character arc that will determine just how far he will go to protect his family.

(By family, of course, I mean Sam, Dean, Jack, and Mary.) And that has many implications. This subversion of early Cas will certainly give light to character growth as well as help resolve parts of his character (we are in the autumn of the show, after all.) It also has the potential to create problems. As we saw this week, Cas acted on impulse and subsequently put himself in danger (albeit not out of suicidal desperation, thank gosh,) as well as the friction he caused by side-stepping the Winchesters. I myself am most intrigued by the two different stories Cas is telling, and what that means for him personally (is it easier for him to rationalize his actions to others in the context of a mission? Is there another reason?)

I’ll leave this open for discussion, because I am more than eager to hear people’s thoughts on this.

But all in all this was an incredible Cas episode, as well as an important one. I’m excited to see where they go from here.

#wow that got long #alrighty #cas meta #spn 13x14 #spn meta #spn discussion #cas x self worth #cas x mission #cas x human emotion #my meta #long post #spn #cas #i think i tagged too much #argh whatever

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whovianfeminism · 7 years

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Whovian Feminism Reviews “Thin Ice”

Who gets to travel in time and space?

Doctor Who would probably answer that question with an enthusiastic “Anyone!” Perhaps not everyone should travel with the Doctor. But anyone* who has an open mind, a hunger for adventure, and the will to fight the most terrible things the universe can throw at you could travel with the Doctor.

But some fans have always been aware of the asterisk that comes after anyone*. Perhaps anyone could travel with the Doctor, but not everyone would be accepted wherever the Doctor goes. And Bill Potts -- our second black companion, our first (main) queer companion, and a woman -- is especially aware of the risks of traveling to the past. And she’s still not very sure of the man who’s leading her into danger with a cheshire cat grin.

Sarah Dollard’s astounding second episode for Doctor Who tackles both the personal and the political. “Thin Ice” addresses the risks of traveling through time when you’re from a historically oppressed group, delivers a pointed critique of modern pop-culture whitewashing, and also delivers a compelling character piece between the Doctor and Bill as she discovers what kind of person you have to be to travel with the Doctor.

Doctor Who has tried to explore the discrimination and oppression the companions could face while traveling in the past, but the results have often been lackluster. “Thin Ice” makes a deliberate call back to one notable conversation from the “The Shakespeare Code,” where Martha flags the danger she might be in while walking around Elizabethan England.

“I’m not going to get carted off as a slave, am I?” she asked the Doctor.

“Why would they do that?” he replied with clear shock and distress, as if he couldn’t fathom a reason why someone would do that to his Black companion. At best, this comes off as a type of well-meaning (yet still insulting) color blindness, as if the Doctor just doesn’t recognize why Martha would be concerned for her safety because he “doesn’t see” Martha’s race. At worst, this feels like a curious and dangerous blind spot in the Doctor’s encyclopedic knowledge of human history. Rather than engaging with the subject, it feels like "The Shakespeare Code” was trying to hand-wave it away and dismiss Martha’s concerns.

When Martha points out she’s not white, the Doctor’s response is hardly reassuring. “I’m not even human,” replies the alien who happens to look shockingly like a white man. He follows up with “Just walk about like you own the place, works for me.” Of course, that absolutely wouldn’t work for anyone who didn’t look like a white guy. It’s remarkably tone-deaf and dangerous to tell marginalized people to walk around with a sense of entitlement to avoid harassment. In my experience, that approach tends to lead to worse harassment.

"Thin Ice” approaches this conversation with much more respect for Bill’s fears. The Doctor doesn’t immediately put two-and-two together and realize that Bill’s discomfort with wandering Regency England has to do with her being black. But once he understands, he doesn’t try to invalidate her feelings. He acknowledges there may be trouble and lets Bill decide what she’ll do.

In “The Shakespeare Code,” the Doctor tries to put Martha’s fears to rest by pointing out two black woman walking ahead of them and saying, “Besides, you’d be surprised. Elizabethan England, not so different from your time.” It’s a another hand-wavey moment to dismiss Martha’s fears, but it’s also the only time we see black women at all. They vanish within seconds, unnamed and without a single line. The remainder of the story is dominated by white characters.

In “Thin Ice,” black women and people of color are a prominent, powerful presence. Kitty leads her band of street urchins and has a huge role to play in pushing the plot forward. If there was a Bechdel-style test for whether two women of color talk to each other without mentioning a white man, Bill and Kitty would pass. People of color are also prominently visible in the background of Regency London, and Dollard uses that as a way to make a critique of whitewashing in our modern pop culture. History has always been more diverse than our movies and TV shows have cared to admit.

In the midst of all this, the Doctor and Bill are wrestling with their evolving relationship from professor and pupil to Doctor and companion. And as Bill learns more about just how alien the Doctor is, their morals and values come into conflict as well.

The Doctor seems to be finding it difficult to step back from his role as a lecturer. Throughout “Thin Ice,” he treats every conflict with Bill as another opportunity to teach her a lesson. When she’s disturbed by the death of Spider, he treats her like she’s throwing a tantrum and tells her that he’s “never had time for the luxury of outrage.” When they are about to confront Lord Sutcliffe, the Doctor orders Bill to be quiet while he interrogates Sutcliffe and lectures her about her temper, confidently saying that “Passion fights, but reason wins.” But Bill’s not here for the Doctor’s lectures or for his posturing about reason vs. passion.

Which brings us to the truly incredible moment that the Doctor punches Lord Sutcliffe.

Narratively, this moment is absolutely earned. Viewers know that the Doctor is absolutely full of it when he says he’s never had the luxury of outrage. As Bill later says, he’s never had time for anything else! This moment puts that false choice between logic and passion in sharp relief. One is not inherently better than the other, and there are just some situations in which logic cannot win. There’s no reasoning with someone who’s that deeply, confidently racist. At a certain point, they just need to face the consequences of their actions and then be silenced.

“Thin Ice” was written and filmed long before Richard Spencer was punched at Donald Trump’s Inauguration, and yet it has managed to land squarely in the middle of the “Is It Okay To Punch Racist Assholes” conversation. The Doctor seems to fall firmly in the “YES” column. But the punch definitely seemed to touch a nerve with some. One troll on Twitter went so far as to say the episode was anti-white and that Doctor Who had been taken over by “SJWs.” 

First of all, if this is the first episode in which you think that Doctor Who is advocating for social justice, I have to wonder if we’ve been watching the same show. Second, I find the assertion that the episode is “anti-white” for portraying an accurate -- even relatively muted -- racist attitude by a white person is truly ridiculous. But I did find his discomfort with showing white people’s racism to be interesting.

Science fiction fans love their allegorical or metaphorical racists. Stormtroopers and Daleks are some of our most popular and enduring pop culture characters, and both are based to some degree on Nazis. But we like our villains to be larger than life figures obscured in costumes, and our heroes facing these villains to be overwhelmingly white. The evils these villains represent can then be a few steps removed from the real world. But there’s something to be said for pulling the racist out from behind the plastic mask or metal suit. Lord Sutcliffe’s racism is very human; it’s practically banal. Our TV shows shouldn’t just address racism allegorically or metaphorically, they should show the actual perpetrators and victims in our own world.

And, for the record, I’m totally in favor of the punch. If Daleks and Cybermen and all the rest should fear the Oncoming Storm and the Destroyer of Worlds if they attempt to harm others, then racists should be afraid that an angry Scottish man with attack eyebrows will punch them in the face if they spew their venom at anyone else.

Ultimately, this episode comes down to the value we place on human life. Lord Sutcliffe is the obvious villain because he places no value on any life besides his own. But for most of “Thin Ice,” Bill isn’t sure how much value the Doctor places on human life either.

Twice in “Thin Ice” the Doctor fails to look even remotely disturbed when people are killed right in front of him. His focus is more on retrieving his sonic screwdriver than saving their lives. And when he’s confronted by Bill he confesses that he can’t remember how many people he’s seen die -- or how many people he’s killed. Emotionally, this feels like the inverse to the moment in “Smile” where Bill realizes that the Doctor is the man who saves people. In “Thin Ice,” he’s the man who doesn’t always save everybody. Sometimes, he’s the man who kills them. He’s the man who makes the hard choices about who to save and who to sacrifice. And it’s his casual attitude towards the lives he can’t save that disturbs Bill more than anything.

But Bill and the Doctor find their equilibrium when they come together to solve the problem. The Doctor invites Bill to participate in his deliberations rather than telling her how to think, and leaves the final decision up to her. Logic and reason are both invoked. Risks are analyzed, lives are weighed, and a judgement is made on the value Bill and the Doctor place on all the lives at stake. They both make each other stronger when they work in tandem, a pattern I hope carries through the rest of the season.

#Doctor Who #Thin Ice #Reviews #Feminism #Whovian Feminism

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syekick-powers · 3 years

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i feel the need to write a long post about my experiences as an nb trans guy. i honestly feel like not enough people understand what that means. tw for mentions of miscarriages, deep discussion of transmasc dysphoria, and occasional mentions of sexual assault near the bottom.

my dysphoria didn’t really start until puberty. when i was a prepubescent child, i mostly felt okay about my body and who i was. did i have discomfort with how people perceived me? yes, but it was so heavily sublimated that i didn’t recognize it for what it was until years later. one of my earliest memories when i was a child was sitting in front of the TV in my grandma’s house watching arthur while my grandma cooked in the kitchen up the stairs. i was thinking to myself about gender, and i concluded that i must’ve been a boy, because that’s how i felt. i didn’t know anything about gender as genitals. i didn’t know anything about gender roles. i was a very young child with barely any conception of the differences between genders, and i still concluded i was a boy.

i didn’t think about that again for a long time. my mother, bless her, was obsessed with the idea of having a daughter. she told me over and over growing up how happy she was that i was born, how much she tried and tried to have me, how she had three miscarriages before finally giving birth to me. over and over and over, she insisted that she loved me specifically because i was “female”, because i was her “daughter”. this was a constant throughout my childhood, and when i was younger i didn’t fight it. because i didn’t really know anything about gender, and i let the adults decide for me because i didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what i was actually feeling.

would i have identified as nonbinary from childhood if i’d known what that meant? absolutely, i would have. once i knew the difference between penis and vagina, i always wanted to have both. i always wondered if that was weird, but i was too afraid of coming across as a freak to ask any of my peers if they felt the same way or if i was just a weirdo. i don’t necessarily buy into the “born in the wrong body” narrative, because my body is my body. i don’t always feel comfortable in it, but it’s still mine. i want to change it to make it fit myself better, because that is my right as a human being.

but i did have dysphoria. once i hit puberty, the changes my body was doing was enough to fill me with so much self-hatred. when my mom was telling me about puberty, she told me “now you’re going to grow breasts” and the very first words out of my mouth were “but i don’t WANT them!” my mother told me that the feeling of my breasts itching or hurting meant they were getting bigger, and to this day even the slightest unusual sensation around my chest gives me dysphoria. my greatest dysphoria was always around my chest. i never felt this pain when i was prepubescent because i didn’t have breasts. but when they started growing, i hated them so much. i just wanted to rip them off my body. they felt like alien parasites clinging to my skin, like fleshbags that had been stapled to my chest. every single time i felt them move or bounce i wanted to claw my own skin off.

but you know what? i had no idea what i was experiencing was dysphoria. my hatred of my body manifested as body dysmorphia. i felt ugly, ugly, ugly--but i had no idea it had anything to do with my gender, because ninety percent of the self-hatred i felt was because i was fat. that was the largest part of it--my family is descended from northern europeans, which means that our body types naturally favored carrying a lot of fat. when i was a young child, i was aromantic due to gender dissonance, but as a teenager i gradually realized i did want a relationship. but i was convinced i was just such an ugly “girl” that no one would ever love or even fuck me. i hated my body because it was fat, or so i thought. that was what i was convinced of, because it made enough sense.

the first clue that i had that i was maybe not just an ugly girl was when i started using the chatrooms on dA, aka dAmn. i entered a chatroom with a bunch of people in it and introduced myself, and gradually i became one of the regulars and even an admin in the chat. and since this was like a decade ago, the assumption on the internet was that most of the people who used the internet were men. people who came into the chat assumed i was a guy, just because that was how the internet was at that point. and when people came into that chatroom and assumed i was a guy... i never corrected them. i never proudly proclaimed “actually, i’m a girl.” i never acted offended or weirded out (though i was surprised that people didn’t think my alias sye didn’t sound feminine, because at the time i conceptualized it as a “feminine” name), and when people used he pronouns to refer to me, i always got a thrill from it.

eventually, however, i migrated off of dA and onto reddit. i was a fairly frequent reddit user in my later high school years, but i mostly interacted on the ragecomics subreddit, the vocaloid subreddit, and the queer subreddit r/ainbow. i picked out r/ainbow because during middle school i had been questioning my sexuality (at first i called myself pan, but then gradually i drifted to the bi label for a few reasons) and i’d heard that r/ainbow was a much friendlier subreddit, because a lot of redditors claimed that the r/lgbt subreddit had been taken over by tumblr SJWs, and since i was still overcoming a pretty serious case of 4chan poisoning at that point, i decided to pick the “friendlier”, less “SJW” queer subreddit. r/ainbow had pride flag flair (little icons you could put next to your username) and my first ever foray into identifying as nonbinary was changing my flair on r/ainbow to be a combination of the bi flag and the genderqueer flag.

now, i knew for a fact that my sibling also used reddit, and that he’d see my choice of flair sooner or later. eventually, we had a conversation about that, and he told me that he’d accept me and asked me about my pronouns and did all the accepting things he could, letting me know that he really cared about me.

my parents, on the other hand.... i didn’t come out to them for the longest time. i hate saying that i was “in the closet” because so many people use it to mean that the person doesn’t really know themself and that they’re just holding back showing everyone who they really are. i hated this idea that “being in the closet” meant you were being dishonest. so i never really considered myself “closeted”. but i didn’t tell people face to face that i was nonbinary. i was loud and out about it on the internet, but i never ever told anyone directly to their face that i was not cis. at the time, i was still not sure of what i wanted to do with myself. i’d just been introduced to the idea of not actually being a girl, and i was grappling with what that meant for me, what it meant for my self-perception. i’d had the identity of “girl” beaten into my head so much during my childhood thanks to my mother’s obsession with having a daughter that i didn’t know how to self-conceptualize any other way. i didn’t want to transition yet. i didn’t even want to socially transition. i was scared. terrified of what being trans meant. i went through a phase where i said i was “nonbinary but not trans” just because the idea of changing myself so drastically was terrifying, even if i hated my chest and hated presenting as female. (to a certain extent, i never really consciously presented as feminine. i had long hair, which meant that everyone assumed my presentation was “feminine”, even if i wore cargo pants and a leather jacket.)

but gradually, over time, my self-perception changed. i realized that part of the reason why i hated my appearance so much was because i was gendering my own features. my face wasn’t my face, it was a “female” face. my body wasn’t my body, it was “a girl’s body”. a lot of my ambient dysphoria came from just perceiving myself and my body in an inherently gendered way. over time, i trained myself not to see my own body as inherently anything. i didn’t have “a girl’s body”, i had my own body. i didn’t have a “girl’s” face, it was just my face. i still do experience dysphoria, mostly around my chest, but not nearly to the level i experienced as a teenager.

and, of course, with gender questioning, my sexuality questioning was also pretty intense too. one of the things i see a lot of queer cis people not understand is that the experience of being queer and trans is so much weirder than being queer and cis. you have no fucking idea how weird it is to grow up being attracted to men your whole life, loving how they look and their aesthetics and their voices and their bodies and everything--but just feeling so, so alienated at the idea of trying to be in a relationship with them. because of how they’d perceive you. because to them you’re just a girl, and boys are supposed to be the man of the house and women are supposed to be nurturing housekeeping mothers and how weird are you for being attracted to men and not wanting to be seen as a woman. because as a queer trans person, people assume you’re just a weirdo cis straight person with a fetishizing fixation on m/m (or f/f if you’re queer+transfem) couples. i remember when i first started using tumblr i saw a post from someone who said something like “i have read so much fanfiction now that i’m no longer attracted to men as a woman, but as a gay male” and the comments were just full of people screaming UGH STRAIGHT WOMEN ARE SO UGLY YOU GROSS FETISHIZING FREAKS HOW NASTY ARE YOU DISGUSTING SHAME SHAME SHAME and i, who had been reading m/m fanfiction and felt seen for the first time in my life, internalized such a huge amount of shame and self-disgust just from that post alone. any time i was attracted to a queer male character in a piece of media i hated myself so much for being a “fetishizer” because i wanted to be in a relationship with them, but couldn’t because i was just “a sad straight girl who turned gay men into a fetish”. never mind the fact that seeing m/m romance for the first time in my life made me feel seen and understood in a way that no m/f romance in mainstream media had ever made me feel. never mind the fact that i wasn’t even a girl in the first place. it’s nothing like being queer and cis at all.

i still remember the first time i came across gay male subcultures, and how different men with different body types would be categorized with various nicknames. i encountered the bear subculture, the group of men who were fat and hairy, and i felt something click. this, i thought. this is what i want to be. because i had spent so long thinking of myself as just an ugly girl, it never even occurred to me that there may be someone out there who would look at my body type and find it hot and sexy and desirable. my brain had been so drenched in a potent combination of self-hating misogyny, fatphobia, and transphobia that i couldn’t even consider myself sexually attractive at all. and then i found bears, and i realized that maybe someone could find me sexy and attractive, that i wasn’t just a failed girl, that someone could find me beautiful even with the body i had.

and it wasn’t just the whole “fat and still sexy” thing that struck me about the bear subculture, either, it was specifically “fat and hairy and sexy”. because one of the ways i struggled with gendered expectations as a teenager was the feminine expectation to shave. i hated shaving my legs and my armpits. i have moles in my armpits that make shaving without hurting myself impossible, and my leg skin is so bumpy that i couldn’t shave there without hurting myself either. no matter how much i tried, i would always, ALWAYS nick myself in the shower with the razor, and in the case of my armpits, sometimes the moles would get actually stuck in the razors and it would fucking hurt. and my mother constantly, constantly harangued me to shave, told me that women who didn’t shave were seen as dirty and unhygienic and gross. to this fucking day i cannot wear shorts in public because my legs are SO hairy and i am so terrified of someone handing me shit for not shaving my legs. i literally cannot bring myself to wear anything but full-length pants out in public no matter how hot it is because of how scared i am of someone insulting me for my leg hair because they assume i’m a woman. but the bear subculture? you could be fat and hairy and still be stunningly attractive. you could be chubby and totally covered in hair and still be a total sex bomb.

eventually, i found myself wanting to take testosterone. i thought of myself as trans, not just nonbinary. i started to become more loud and direct about my gender. i was still not out to people in my face-to-face life, but on the internet i became pushier and pushier about my identity. i felt more and more like i wanted to alter myself so i could stop living in this perpetual pit of frustration that was dealing with dysphoria. i wanted to transition, more and more, even if the social consequences of transitioning were severe, because the longer and longer i went allowing people to assume i was female, the angrier and angrier it made me to be misgendered. when i was a child, someone calling me “lady” was nothing. but as i got older, hearing someone call me “lady” made me want to fucking snap their neck. i wanted to correct them so, so badly every single time, even if outing myself put me in danger.

my mother forcibly outed me as trans to the PCP doctor i was visiting, which was extremely stressful and painful for me at the time--but it turned out that the doctor’s brother was actually a trans man, and as a result he was much more friendly to me about my identity than most other doctors would be where i was living in rural nebraska. i had been struggling up to this point trying to find a place to get testosterone. the first place i went to was super gatekeep-y, where they had a policy of not calling you back to schedule an appointment if you didn’t call them repeatedly and insistently, because apparently only calling to ask for an appointment once meant that you didn’t “want it enough” to be “really trans” (never mind the fact that i have terrible phone anxiety). the second endocrinologist i tried didn’t actually prescribe HRT. it just wasn’t his thing. i drove 100 miles in bad weather to see him and he didn’t even do what i needed from him. but then i talked to the PCP my mother outed me to. i asked him to help me find a clinic where i could get testosterone. he did a quick google search and dug up a gender clinic in denver, printed out all their information for me, and told me to give them a try. now, denver was a few hours drive away from where i was living, but i had friends in colorado who would let me stay with them, so i had no problem with finding time to go to denver. in september 2019 i scheduled an appointment to go to this clinic, and they gave me a date and time and i made sure to schedule a trip to see my friends around it.

the moment i went into the clinic, i could tell that i was somewhere that would help me. the staff was mostly made up of black and latina women who were very kind to me. the patients were largely obviously GNC, transfem and transmasc alike. one of the patients in the waiting room when i went in was a person who had the brightest, most HOT PINK mohawk i’d ever seen and was wearing a tricked out leather jacket. most of the patients were also not white. i filled out their paperwork, and eventually they called me back to see the doctor.

the doctor was a nice man. he was wearing a rainbow lanyard. when he walked in, he asked me a few questions about my gender (mostly clarifying questions about my pronouns, since i said i liked both he and they pronouns and he wanted to know which of the two to use for me), listened to me discuss my gender dysphoria, and told me they were going to do a few blood tests to check my hormone levels to make sure that i didn’t have any medical problems that would get in the way of HRT. he sent me to their in-house lab, and the phlebotomist was a beautiful black woman who had a lovely laugh. i waited for a while longer in the waiting room while they ran their tests. then the doctor spoke to me again and told me that everything looked normal enough and i was cleared to start hormones. he said they had their own built-in pharmacy in the clinic where they’d send in a prescription for T and fill it the moment the insurance approval came back. this involved more waiting, but i was so excited about getting my hormones that i didn’t care. my best friend/qpp was with me at the time (they came with me for moral support since driving in denver is so fucking stressful), and i was happy enough that i was going to get my hormones that i didn’t care even if i had to wait all day.

and then, the nurses told me that i was going to do my first shot that day. they took me back into a back room with a vial of T and a needle and taught me how to do the injection. it was subcutaneous injections, so i didn’t have to worry about doing the long, scary intramuscular needle, but i still warned the nurse that i was a needlephobe and that i’d probably need to hype myself up for it quite significantly. but i was in a fuzzy state of mind at the time, too sleep-deprived to really feel any kind of fear. so the nurse told me “just pinch a bit of skin up and inject the needle halfway at an angle” and i was just like “okay!” and stuck myself immediately. the nurse was genuinely surprised.

i walked out of that clinic feeling giddy and unbelievably relieved. for the longest time i’d experienced nothing but obstacles when trying to get myself hormones. and all it took was one appointment at this gender clinic to get the prescription i needed. i was overjoyed beyond measure.

and i noticed, after i started testosterone, that my gender changed too. before i started T, i considered myself mostly non-gendered. i wanted only neutral pronouns. even if i didn’t mind certain masculine terms, i still only wanted they pronouns. but the longer i was on T, the more masculine i felt. the more male i felt. and that, truth be told, did not bother me in the least. i feel comfortable in my skin now on testosterone, more than i had ever felt before. and i’m still changing. i’ve only been on T for about a year and 2/3rds or so, and bodily changes from hormonal transition take like 5 years to complete. i have a much deeper voice now, and i’m growing facial hair, but since i still have boobs and wide hips, people still assume i’m a woman. and even then, i’m happy as who i am. i’ll probably be happier once i get top surgery, but i’m still much happier with how i look now than i ever was as a teenager.

and you know what? i’m fine being a nonbinary guy. i consider myself both nonbinary, and s a trans man, because my gender isn’t wholly male, but i still feel comfortable being seen as “a man”. for the longest time i called myself “none gender with left boy”, but now it’s more like “guy gender with left eldritch.” i like thinking of my masculinity as inherently weird, like i’m some kind of odd colorful nonhuman creature that is man-shaped and has a deep voice and a flat chest but is still unmistakably nonhuman. i have a deep love and respect for the nonbinary community all those years that i identified solely as NB, but now i realize that thanks to the testosterone, i fit in somewhere else.

and let me tell you, it fucking hurts to be on tumblr, now realizing that i am, at least partially, a guy, and seeing how trans men are treated in queer spaces, both by t/er/fs and by other queer people, even other fucking trans people. it honestly feels to me like any time a trans man tries to speak about the specific experiences he has as a trans man, you have people either being like “you’re not oppressed because you’re a man so this didn’t happen”, or you have people being like “stop trying to dominate the conversation and take the focus away from transfems!”, or you’ll have t/er/fs either calling you a gender traitor or trying to indoctrinate you so they can brainwash you into detransitioning. and god fucking help you if you’re a trans man of color. MOC are already demonized enough for their identities; trans MOC get the worst of both worlds where they’re perceived as a threat due to being not white, AND due to being a man, AND due to being trans. it’s like everyone universally hates you for what you are, and refuses to let you speak about your problems because theyre 1) not “real” problems, or 2) you’re “stealing resources” from “the people who really need it” (i.e. transfems).

and this pisses me off so fucking much. i have no interest in playing oppression olympics with anyone, let alone my fellow trans people. i don’t want to claim that i’m “more oppressed” than transfems because by and large, i have led a fairly privileged life, and i recognize that. i know that i was lucky to be born to middle class parents who didn’t abuse/neglect me, who don’t hate me for being trans, who didn’t throw me out on the street when i came out to them. i know i am not more oppressed than others, even as a fat, queer, neurodivergent nb trans man--because i am white. because i was born to middle class parents. because i was not abused or neglected. i know this. i know it very well because my mother fucking raised me on a steady flow of “you’re so lucky to have us, you’re so lucky you’re not abused, so many other people have it so much worse than you do, you should be grateful we’re not abusing you.” and she did this so fucking much, in fact, that now i have a goddam complex of “everyone else has it worse than me so i should just shut up forever and never complain about anything because i have it so easy.” so when you have other people in the trans community itself playing the oppression olympics card, acting like focusing on anyone else aside from a very narrow group of people is “taking away resources” when it’s literally just trans men talking about what they experienced throughout their lives, i really don’t understand it. i don’t hate my trans sisters. i don’t want to pick fights with them over who’s had it harder. i want to stand in solidarity with them so we are united against the people who want to hurt and kill us. so when i see people acting like trans men are somehow “decentering the important people” when they literally do nothing else aside from just tell people shit that’s happened to them, i really have to wonder why they consider trans men to be less important to the conversation. over and over i’ve been fed messages that trans men are just secretly misogynists, that they just hate trans women and that’s why trans men get fooled into becoming T/ER/F/s. like, have you considered for a moment that maybe the reason why trans men and transmasc nbs get pulled into T/ER/Fi/sm is because so, so many trans spaces are SO FUCKING HOSTILE TOWARDS US??? AND THAT T/ER/FS MIGHT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS????

idk bro. the internet’s version of feminism is just hatred of men, of any and all kinds. it is just pain turned outward against people perceived to be the problem, who are not. so many people are like “trans men are just misogynists” but being fucking real with you, most of the people in my life who have mistreated me and been cruel to me over my gender are cis fucking women. ive heard so, so many stories from other trans men about how badly the cis women in their lives mistreated them because of their gender, their transition, their appearance. i hear stories about trans men being fooled into dating t/er/fs who then mentally, physically, and sexually abused them into detransitioning. even my own fucking mother, who raised me with this feminine expectation because she so badly wanted me to be her perfect “daughter”, reacted badly to me coming out as trans, because she confessed to me at one point that it felt like i was “rejecting how [she’d] raised [me].”

i want to be happy in my body. i want to be happy in who i am. but when casual hatred of men is so fucking condoned in queer (and even trans) spaces, it makes it really fucking hard to feel happy or comfortable in any of these places. at all. hatred of men doesn’t help anyone. it hurts trans men, who don’t need to be shit on so much just for being themselves and presenting in a way that makes them happy. it hurts nb people, especially those who are masculine-presenting or masc-of-center, AFAB and AMAB alike (since so many people see AMAB nbs as just “man lite”). it hurts trans women, both in and out of the closet, because it assumes that they’re male too and that they don’t know anything about female experiences despite being women themselves. it hurts cis men because it teaches them that people are going to assume they’re inherently threatening and violent and evil, even if they’re trying their best not to be any of those things, so why bother trying to be otherwise when people already expect you to be a violent, predatory asshole? and fuck, this whole bullshit of “men bad women good” doesn’t even help cis women either, because it fools them into believing all women are inherently safe, making it easier for female abusers to take advantage of them because “i’m a soft pretty girl uwu i could never hurt you like those bad evil dirty violent men could. how could i possibly hurt you. im just a sweet innocent girl uwu.”

like you can say “men aren’t oppressed for being men” all you want, but that doesn’t stop people from hurting and abusing and even killing trans men, queer men, men of color, neurodivergent men, disabled men, etc. and if you don’t believe that these intersections can intensify their oppression just because they’re men, then i really don’t know what to fucking tell you. trans men both queer and straight are shit on for being men because cis people see us as sad, broken failed women and other trans people see us as threatening and dangerous stealers of resources. cis queer men are shit on for not being “real” men and will be called things like “sissy” and “f*g” for not conforming to traditional cishet masculinity. men of color are seen as inherently threatening and dangerous just for existing as men and POC simultaneously. and disabled and neurodivergent men are also seen as “not real men” because they can’t perform to some arbitrary standard of able-bodied masculinity imposed on them by neurotypicals, for being “weird”, for not being “tough enough”, for their behavior being seen as threatening just because neurotypical people can’t understand what they’re doing, for having accommodation needs that people don’t want to meet because it’s inconvenient for them. sure, a white, cishet, neurotypical, able-bodied man is not going to be “oppressed” for being a man. this particular type of man will live a “privileged” life. but just acting like all men have no problems period and that their problems aren’t “real” problems just because they’re not women is NOT going to make men stop and go “wow maybe i’m being an asshole” when confronted about misogyny or whatever, it’s going to make them get defensive and double down. you don’t start a conversation with someone by telling them that their life was so easy and they don’t know what real problems are. if you REALLY want to open people’s eyes to misogyny (and transmisogyny), the way of doing that is NOT by shitting all over all men and acting like they’re all evil bastards who’ve never known what it’s like to be oppressed. and i hate how the phrase “not all men” has turned into an invite to be dogpiled and abused, especially when you’re talking about trans men or queer men or MOC, because clearly you’re just a dumb evil man trying to mansplain misogyny to the righteous, pure cis women who are clearly the only group of people on the planet who’ve ever experienced any kind of gender-based oppression at all.

i am an nb trans man. i am trans and nb and a man. and i am sick and tired of seeing trans men be mistreated. me talking about my issues is NOT “stealing resources” from transfems. me talking about my experiences with misogyny and toxic beauty standards is not “taking” anything away from anyone. i am not “dominating the conversation” just for talking about my life. i am not a threat to other trans people just for fucking existing as a man. i want my voice to be heard--not at the expense of others, but i’m tired of other voices being elevated at the expense of my voice. iim not demanding that all the resources be funneled to trans men. i’m not asking for trans women and transfems to be listened to and respected and validated less. i just want trans men to have an equal seat at the table. i just want us to be told that we are welcome specifically because we are trans and men, because our community should welcome all trans people. i’m not going to ever play oppression olympics with anyone because i will always, always lose that fight, but i don’t have to be the most oppressed person in a discussion for my voice to deserve to be heard. i have struggled my entire life with my identity, both gender and sexuality wise, and i am just sick and fucking tired of people telling me that i’m wrong for whatever reason for doing this or that or the next thing when i’m just existing as myself. i’m not fucking hurting anyone. i live a pretty blessed life compared to others, considering my parents and some of my other family have no problem financially supporting me while i grapple with my ADHD and depression. i’ve said this before and i’ll say it again: i’m not asking to take away resources from anyone. i just want trans men to be listened to and elevated too. our voices are also important. we contribute to the trans experience too. we go through systemic oppression too. and it’s not unfair or threatening for me to say “hey, i’m not trying to take away from your problems, but i also want to talk about what i’m going through and be validated for it too.” it’s not like by validating transfems, we cannot validate anyone else in the entire community. it’s not “mom says it’s my turn on the valid” here. we can uplift each other without taking from each other. and the amount of casually condoned hatred of men i’ve seen is fucking exhausting. it hurts every single time i see it. it’s fucking r/a/d/fe/m rhetoric too, this idea that all men are inherently bad. and seeing people espouse it uncritically hurts pretty much everyone.

i guess what i’m saying is, that i’ve had a long life journey to get to this point of being happy with who i am. and i refuse to let people tear me down for it just because they’ve swallowed too much t/er/f rhetoric to understand that this casual, pervasive hatred of men hurts everyone. it hurts trans and cis men. it hurts trans and cis women. it hurts nb people of all kinds, masc-aligned, fem-aligned, and unaligned, transfem and transmasc alike. it doesn’t do anything but wank the oppression boner of angry cis women who think that trans women/transfems are the root of all evil and that trans men/transmascs are just gender traitors that need to be raped and psychologically abused until they accept that they’re ��really women”. i don’t want to steal anything from anyone. i just want to be listened to and told that my experiences matter. and our community is really not doing that right now, and it’s bullshit.

trans men, transmasc nbs, i love you. i love all of us. we are not “dangerous”, we are not “threatening”, we’re not “stealing resources” just for fucking existing and asking to be heard. we are amazing people, choosing to fight for our identities in a world that would strip us of all our agency. we deserve to be happy. we deserve to be loved. and if no one else is going to do it, i’ll love us anyway.

#sye's babbles #trans stuff #extremely long rant pardon me

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