#or that just created NEW problems in an attempt to remove certain canon problems | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bookwyrminspiration · 3 years

Text

Shattered Upside Down

A kotlc wings au

summary: When the world begins to crawl with unnaturally made monsters, the Keeper crew continue to fight like they always have. But a wrench is thrown in those plans when they themselves become less than human.

Chapter 1: The Descent

Word count: 7k

warnings: mild fantasy violence (nothing more than in canon), swearing

taglist: listed at the end beneath the cut, but let me know if you want to be added or removed

!!! Y’all!! It’s finally here!!! And you might be thinking, Quil they don’t have wings. To which I say: be patient!! this is a multi-chapter fic! this is just the groundwork <3

ao3 link here

or read beneath the cut

It was comical, really, just how quickly their security had crumbled into unbridled, ravaged chaos. They had relied on the extravagance of the Neverseen, always too brash, too bold, too eager for attention. They were self-sabotaging. They revealed their plans a moment too soon, wanting the world around them to see the cunning, the thought, to know which moments were their last.

And they’d played the part so clever, it hadn’t crossed a single mind that they were gracing more than one stage. That even when they weren’t putting on a show, they remained ingenuine.

The Black Swan had thought them comical storybook villains, all talk and poise. And then they’d slip, underestimating you and letting you swoop in last second, tossing wrenches in their gears and bringing them up short. A hero. Classic and overused, but a hero nonetheless.

It had been ludicrous to entertain the notion they could be capable of anything greater, anything deadlier. That they wanted to be stopped again and again. That they wanted to build the Black Swan’s confidence in themselves, wanted to be broken and bruised and battered and defeated again and again and again.

Because then who could consider them a threat?

Who would look for them, frail and scattered as they were?

They had all been lured into a false sense of security, taking the first deep, fulfilling breaths they’d had in years. And each day it came easier. Every passing second without disturbance relaxed their bodies and eased their minds. It had been months and months, long enough they felt safe. Actually safe. The idea was laughable now, but it had been true. The Neverseen were gone, dead and buried.

But villains work best from the grave.

The Ruewens noticed the shift first, although if you asked either of them they wouldn’t be able to tell you quite what it was. The subtle gleam gracing the teeth of each new animal they took in, each creature becoming more violent and vocal, tails thumping just a touch harder against the ground.

It was only a coincidence that seven times in a row the creatures were “uncharacteristically rough and wild for their species.” It only became worrisome when the docile creatures began to growl at anyone’s approach, even the ones that had already been tamed.

Then it all went to shit.

Absolute

fucking

shit.

You wouldn’t have been able to tell from the outside; it was surrounded by one-way glass. Look through and all you’d see were splotches of amorphous green, running streams, sunlight soft and secure. But the view from inside was a completely different story. From inside you could see the creeping mold and blood caked along the sides of streams, the marks in the trees and the torn roots, ash where the sun had burned too bright, rusted mist raining down.

What a nightmare they’d made of paradise.

Except, somehow, the Lost Cities themselves had ended up on the outside of the glass, content to pretend the creatures roaming the hills were only a problem if they were near you, which they weren’t. So what a pack of rabid unidentifiable beasts attacked? They hadn’t been here, so it wasn’t a problem.

Then it became a problem.

The creatures moved closer, working their way through the land, ravaging their way towards the Lost Cities. The elves blinked and they were surrounded. Crystal castles tumbled into sand, stone pavement was ripped from the ground, trees torn and shredded, dripping with infection.

They’d had no choice but to leave it all behind. There’d been backlash of course, despite it being in everyone’s best interest. Those who were so attached to what they had, what had remained a constant in the past millennia of their lives that they were fully willing to risk themselves for it. There was no doubt though, that had they been allowed to remain they would’ve regretted it the moment those creatures came to their door, the ones they’d refused to believe were their problem.

So they’d all moved below ground, deep enough they couldn’t be reached. Every inch of surface available to them was dangerous, so they’d gone beneath it. The dwarves had graciously worked to hollow out living space for them all, creating entire kingdoms beneath the sand. And now they were much more powerful, carried more weight with each step, the responsibility they’d risen to clinging to them and eating them respect no one could deny.

They’d all be dead without them.

Not everyone was in one place, a few spots underground scattered throughout the world and it nearly impossible to travel between them. Light leaping didn’t work underground, and it was an incredible risk to brave the surface for a single leap. Once everyone had been settled, they’d stayed there. And they were still there.

I mean, what else could they do?

It had taken them a bit to work out just where these volatile creatures had come from, the ones now spanning the entirety of the world--although the humans were still unaware. Something about the pollution and overall vibe of the forbidden cities kept the monsters away from them.

A few had suggested moving to the forbidden cities as an alternative to living underground, but the disgust for the places quickly killed that idea.

The Black Swan was adamant that somehow the Neverseen had to be behind this. The organization had been the only enemy they’d ever had--and they were right, in a way. Despite months of silence, of nothing, of security, they must’ve done something.

But how, was the question.

Perhaps it would’ve been better had the question never been answered, if they’d all remained ignorant of what had been hidden right beneath them. Certainly, there would’ve been more resistance had every single elf shoved underground been kept in the dark.

But alas, illumination came tied with a silver ribbon.

One of the smaller creatures, really not much larger than a candle, had slipped into the residences, stirring up a ruckus in its frantic attempts to escape as it realized it was trapped below ground. It had been caught in a corner, hunched over away from the lights. The entirety of its body had been shaded by the large mushroom cap covering its head. It was only on closer inspection they realized the red, dripping mushroom was attached to its head. The rest of its body was disproportionately small and warped, grooves scorn into the skin.

They had been taking it back towards a small air vent--so they could release it onto the surface--when they’d seen the small clasp. It was imperceptibly small, silver in color, piercing the underside of the mushroom cap. It was a tag. An identification tag complete with a pin number.

If that hadn’t been enough proof that the creatures had been intentional, the symbolic eye entwined with a sturdy chain would’ve been enough. Their hearts stopped dead. That eye was unmistakably the Neverseen’s symbol, but that chain…

It was clearly another symbol, the two mixed. But--

Fuck. The creature in their hands had grown panicked and impatient, the space they’d thought was its body leering open to reveal rows upon rows of stubby teeth, all sharp edges and imperfections. They’d nearly dropped the creature in their panic to shove it into the air vent, closing it quickly behind as the sharp, tiny stomps faded as it climbed further and further away.

That creature had been created intentionally and the Neverseen had been a part of it, that much was certain. But there was someone else. Another force out there with enough influence and power to corrupt the entirety of nature’s balance, able to rewrite the story of evolution, and they were represented by a chain.

But who was it?

No matter how shallow her breaths, the overwhelming stench of musk and mold continued to coat her tongue and turn her stomach sour. Sophie exhaled slowly; it would do no good to dwell on what she couldn’t change. The rest of them weren’t faring much better, but the thin cloths over their faces provided a sliver of relief.

Sophie, Fitz, Keefe, Biana, Dex, Tam, Linh, Marella, Maruca, and Wylie. More people than they’d usually risk bringing on a mission, but it was a necessary risk for one of this magnitude.

She assumed the thick scent was coming from the swaths of unidentified plant life gorging it way up the sides of the tunnel, clinging to wet, crumbling rock and glowing faintly blue in the light. At the very least it provided slight illumination of the tunnel ahead, along with the branching pathways they occasionally crossed that likely led to collapsed rooms and dead ends. Mere months ago she would’ve been anxious over the thought that the ground above her would give way and crush them all in moments. Now, however, months living underground had made the ground above her a comfort more than anything. If there was enough soil between her and the surface, the creatures that roamed freely couldn’t get to her.

Although that didn’t exactly apply when they were heading straight into the breeding facility; the heart of the creatures, their origin, where they still poured out in lucrative amounts, a constant supply keeping the surface a hazard.

We’re only about a half-mile away, Dex informed them. He spoke into their shared mental space, kept in place by Sophie and Fitz’s combined efforts, eliminating the need for out-loud conversation. Some of the creatures--especially the ones that liked the dark--had particularly keen hearing, and the closer they got, the riskier any noise would be.

Her head snapped to the side as Biana skidded for a moment on a patch of gravel, sucking in a sharp, silent breath as she caught herself. They all winced, pausing to listen if the sound had caught the attention of anything nearby.

Biana didn’t bother to apologize, they all knew it was inevitable and unavoidable--and it couldn’t be undone.

Remember the plan? It was Fitz’s voice echoing through their heads this time, although it felt like he was trying to whisper despite it being mental. They all nodded in response, and Keefe patted his pocket, bulging with the same explosives they all carried.

Sophie cleared her mind, running through the plan--which she’d done so many times by now the exact words were likely permanently etched into her brain. At the end of this system of tunnels--which Dex was navigating them through--was the breeding facility. This breeding facility was where the creatures on the surface were created, and where they were still coming from. Old and new types alike. Sophie had a basic outline of the facility--it had been difficult enough to find the location, buried deep beneath the earth, getting specifics was impossible--and the areas they were to hit. Everyone had a stash of explosives, black cubes small enough you could wrap your fingers around them. They’d get in, set up the devices, get out, and detonate them once they were a safe distance away.

It was supposedly simple, but everyone had their own speculations about what could possibly go wrong; the most likely was that they would be caught in the act.

The tunnel began to widen, opening into a large cavern; but, as they looked up, they realized it hadn’t always been. Pillars rose around them towards an arching ceiling, carved designs gracing the stone. It appeared this place had once been a grand room, almost reminding her of Victorian castles, but the floor had collapsed into rubble, green vegetation covering nearly every inch.

Linh rotated her hand as she fluttered her fingers, seemingly almost absentmindedly. The leaves rustled faintly, in response to her call. She said nothing for a moment, and Sophie’d almost forgotten about it when Linh spoke up.

I wonder how these plants are able to flourish so far underground, seemingly on their own. A memory from only a few seconds ago flashed through the mindbubble--Keefe’s nickname that had stuck-- and as Sophie watched it she could feel the body memories of Linh tracing the water through the roots of the plants and into the ground, trying to find a source large enough to sustain this vegetation.

Linh shook her head, nodding to herself and to assure the others she remembered their goal, their mission. The reason they were here.

Adrenaline hummed through Sophie’s veins as she began to survey the walls, the bases of which were a good ten feet above her head. She could sense the rest of the group doing the same, but it was Tam’s searching shadows that found the entrance.

It was nearly buried in a corner, obscured by mounds of rock and swaths of green, but it was there.

Sophie briefly sent out a wave of consciousness into the mindbubble, assessing her team and assuring they were all prepared. They seemed to be, although Linh still seemed to be ruminating on the water in the room, fingers rubbing together rhythmically.

Releasing a slow breath, she crawled into the hole, small enough she couldn’t have even sat up comfortably. If Dex’s directions were to be trusted, this hole would lead into an old ductwork system in the back of the facility, and from there they could drop down and continue as planned. The ground was jagged against her palms, but at the very least her hands were slightly protected by her gloves--the same black everyone was wearing now. They must’ve donned them before crawling in behind her-including Linh.

It’s dead ahead, she said, having spotted the reflection of the ductwork up ahead. She couldn’t imagine it led to anywhere particularly important in the facility, as the air it would’ve brought in was absolutely foul. Whatever glistening substance coated her hands and soaked her knees was going to linger.

She came to a stop at the edge where the rock gave way to rusted metal, but a moment was all she allowed herself. Bracing, she slowly lowered her hand and weight onto the ductwork, hoping it would remain silent.

A small thud resounded as the metal bent, but that was it. She gave the clear to the group and continued forward, already wishing this part were over. The duct was significantly smaller than the already cramped tunnel, but at least the tunnel had glowing fungus to light the path. This was pitch black and tiny, requiring them to shimmy on their elbows with only the light of their pendants to guide them. She wasn’t good enough at night vision for it to help, and she wasn’t going to waste energy trying. She needed to save everything she had.

The group continued forward with bated breath as they searched for an opening in the pathway, everyone eager to escape this claustrophobic nightmare. It’ll be over soon, she reminded herself, but when Biana echoed back, Soon, she realized she’d spoken into the mindbubble. Her cheeks flushed for a moment, but it was quickly put out of her mind when she saw a change in the lighting up ahead.

There’s something coming up, she transmitted, hushed. Don’t know what though. There was palpable hope in the air; they were all wishing it was the opening they’d been waiting for, but no one wanted to be let down if it turned out it wasn’t.

Sophie attempted to maintain the quickest pace she could without making sound, but in her urge to get to that possible opening, she nearly kicked the side of the duct. The person behind her--likely Marella, she hadn’t looked--sucked in a breath as everyone froze.

After only a moment's pause, she began forward again, now at a much more reasonable pace as the shift ahead was confirmed to be a vent.

She came to a stop before the slits of the vent, peering down into the room below, sending out a sweep of her consciousness to see if she could hear any thoughts indicating people nearby. Determining it was clear, she slipped the small multipurpose tool from where it’d been stored in her sleeve and began to undo the screws. It made an awful groan when she tugged off the grate, and she gripped it tight in one hand as she gently slid out face first, catching herself and levitating the rest of the way down.

The ground was surprisingly further than she’d been expecting, a good thirty feet from the vent in the ceiling to the dusty ground. Her landing left footprints in the dust, but if everything went according to plan the place would be crumbling long before that would become a problem.

The rest of the group slowly drifted to the ground, emerging from the vent one-by-one in a way that almost made Sophie want to laugh. The fear curdling her blood was enough to keep it in her throat, though.

There didn’t seem to be anything in this room besides storage, discarded crates stacked surprisingly aligned, towers reaching up towards the ceiling. Brushing her fingers over the top of a nearby crate, she saw it had a label.

Curious, she tried to read it. Unfortunately, it was either written in ancient elven or some sort of cipher she didn’t understand. Still, she not only wanted to know what was inside, she needed to. If this was something that could be used to create more monsters, it needed to be destroyed.

As she set about opening the case, the others assumed their positions. Dex was already working on something in the corner, hacking the security system so they could monitor the cameras and place them on loop. Biana was near the door with Fitz, who appeared to be mentally scanning the nearby area for thoughts.

She grunted as she pushed the lid open, bracing it on her shoulder as she peered inside. Her stomach squirmed uncomfortably, and she very quickly closed the crate before anyone else could peek inside. She didn’t want them to see that.

This room has got to go, she whispered into the mindbubble, and while she could feel their curiosity, they didn’t push the issue. Wylie only nodded, removing one of his explosives from his pocket and wedging it between a few crates near the center of the room.

We’re clear to move ahead, Fitz said, and Dex seconded him, holding up his modified imparter. It appeared to connect directly into the camera feeds, where he could switch between different cameras and assess their surroundings.

As we move I’ll be placing the cameras each group is near on a loop, but try not to linger; it’s not a guarantee. Sophie nodded, and Dex passed his imparter near the door, which clicked unlocked.

The door pushed open, presumably by the now-invisible Biana, and they all filed out into the hall. It seemed to hit them all then, that this was truly happening; this was high stakes. At any moment they could be caught, but if they succeeded the entire place would hopefully fall on top of itself, burying these horrors permanently.

The halls were all the same murky, metal grey, as though trying to imitate the stone it had been carved from. Faint gouges could be seen in the walls, and the lights were flickering balefire, every few feet another ball of flame was placed, providing inconsistent illumination.

Sophie went left with Biana, Linh, Dex, and Maruca; Fitz went right with Keefe, Tam, Marella, and Wylie. They’d done their best to disperse abilities across the groups, but it still left each one lacking key assets. But that was unavoidable.

Biana--with Sophie’s help--ensured that their group remained visibly undetected, and she was grateful they had practiced moving in sync back home, otherwise, everyone would’ve tripped over each other. Systematically they made their way through the facility, not actively trying to hide evidence they’d been there but not going out of their way to make it obvious. The intention was that the plan would be executed and the place would be falling long before anyone would notice anything, so speed was their true ally.

Each explosive placed had the lump of anticipation in her throat rising steadily higher. This was truly happening. She kept reminding herself that in just an hour this would be over. However it ended, it would be over.

Footsteps sounded off to the side, and the group froze, pressing themselves into the corner of the room. Similar to all the others, it was stacked high with crates and racks of vials nearly up to hip height, organized this time by color. Sophie had placed her explosive underneath one of the vials, clearly visible to anyone who walked into the room.

Now they could hear voices as well, murmuring sharply as they came closer and closer to the room. Sophie could hear Biana’s pained gasps in the mindbubble, exerting extra energy to keep all five of them expertly hidden. Her fingers were clamped around Sophie’s own, nails digging into Sophie’s skin as she shook with the exertion.

There was a window in this particular room, so even a moment's slip could reveal them to the figures they watched stop in front of the glass. She memorized their faces, and could feel the others doing the same. A man with curling black hair and light brown skin, talking to someone much shorter than him, who looked to be no more than a child in a frilly gown, hair tangled and red. They were clearly having an argument of some sort, the girl stomping her foot dramatically.

Please don’t come in here. She wasn’t sure which of them had said it, but they’d all been thinking it. Biana would’ve if all her energy wasn’t going into keeping them invisible.

Is something wrong? Their anxiety must’ve been enough to send the message throughout the entirety of the mindbubble, not just their group, and Keefe’s concern echoed throughout their heads. When he got no response the others started chiming in, which at least meant they weren’t in any immediate danger if they had the luxury of checking in on them.

The nails dug further into her skin as the man outside the door sighed, swiping a keycard and unlocking the door, shoving it open with his shoulder as he continued to scold the girl.

“Absolutely you may not--” he began to say, one foot through the door frame, yet he still hadn’t looked, eyes on the girl. The voices in her head went silent, the adrenaline flooding her system drowning her alive until it was only that man and the explosive on the table, ever so visible.

He began to turn, eyes moving inside the room, door fully open as he stepped in.

The girl screamed. She screamed in frustration and stomped her feet and darted down the hallway, barely avoiding tripping on her elaborate gown.

The man’s attention whipped after her and he snarled something incoherent, stalking briskly after her, the door thudding shut behind him.

He left behind a thick silence, and it took a full thirty seconds before Biana’s grip on her loosened, a faint panting coming from the empty space near her as Biana swayed slightly, leaning heavily on whoever was next to her.

They lingered only a few more seconds, just barely enough for Biana to regain her composure. It was imperative they move on as quickly as possible; they had no clue when that man would be back, but it was certain he would return before they'd blown the building.

As they left she took a brief moment to hide the explosive, somewhere that wouldn’t be so easily visible for when that man returned. It would buy them time, hopefully.

Work quickly, Sophie transmitted, sending the message echoing towards the others. That had been much too close, and her urgency must’ve been obvious because she could feel the others perking up.

She could see her group’s minds lingering on that little girl, the one who’d thrown a tantrum and saved their lives. They’d known, theoretically, that there were people in this building, not just supplies and serums and whatever else created monsters, but they’d reasoned their way through the guilt. Anyone in the building was actively harming the planet and helping produce those creatures in some way; they were all complicit, so the world would be better if it were rid of them. That was something they could deal with if it saved their families, their friends stuck underground as the world above was ravaged.

That little girl was just that: a little girl. She couldn’t have been older than five; she played no part in these deadly games, yet she’d pay the same price.

Sophie hauled them through the hallways, ducking into a particularly shadowed corner away from the balefire light, the rest of her team slightly dazed. Someone's memory of that feisty girl lingered in the mindbubble, a silent question, hesitance. She could feel the other group somewhere else in the facility stop dead at the sight of her, dread tightening their stomachs as their minds cycled through the possibilities. How many just like her were hidden somewhere within these walls, unaware of the horror and grief surrounding them, coating the floors and washing through the halls; how many?

There’s nothing we can do about that right now, she transmitted to everyone, desperately trying to return them to their senses. They couldn’t do anything with everyone in such a state, clouded minds and stumbling limbs, and her panic alongside her upbringing fraught with human horror gave her enough lucidity to be the leading voice of reason. Perhaps they’d abandon the mission--although that was a last resort. They’d already gone to so much trouble--but they couldn’t do anything just standing about, practically begging to be caught.

Their minds sharpened, and someone gave her arm a reassuring squeeze, telling her they were there and they were okay. She exhaled quietly, glancing around anxiously to double-check they’d remained undetected.

Sophie was almost certain she could feel the heavy, fluttering pulses of her friends reverberating through the air as they continued on, jumping at each faint sound. Their near disaster had sombered the group, and they all appeared infinitely more aware of their surroundings, expecting someone to appear any moment.

They weren’t communicating exactly, but when they’d gotten down to their last two explosives she mindlessly reached out into the mindbubble, searching for Fitz and the others. She could feel rather than hear his response, although he seemed to be just as distracted. The others in her own group placed the last two as she scanned the surrounding space for thoughts; they made their way through the halls, peering through windows into the rooms--which were surprisingly abandoned. Apparently, the storage units were not a priority when it came to security.

Or they were guarded by something much more sinister than mere guards. The gouge marks in the walls seemed to leer at her, more ominous than they’d been a moment before.

It turned her stomach, thinking about just how expansive the facility was. It appeared infinite, spanning several stories above and a few below them, each floor impossibly tall and wide. They’d made their way down about two flights, targeting the structural supports of the building so everything would be crushed in the downfall. She intentionally kept herself from thinking about that little girl.

There’s the rendezvous room, Dex said, and Sophie shook herself internally, pulling the group forward. When they’d first come up with the plan, they’d intended to retrace their steps and exit the way they’d come, but it was deemed too high of a risk to sneak back up through the floors of the facility, and they had instead designated the room ahead as a meeting spot. It, too, had large enough vents to crawl through, which eventually made their way to an opening that should allow enough sunlight down for them to leap away with; although, if that didn’t work, they could always work their way through the vents until they’d completely retraced their steps.

Like electricity jolting through water, Fitz reached out to her, giving her a direct line to him to allow her to track his location more easily. The tether between them led to just around the corner up ahead. They were coming from opposite sides, and if you knew exactly what you were looking for you could see a large shadow creeping unnaturally against the wall, so crisp it was practically imperceptible despite her knowing where to look.

Sophie’s group made it to the door first, and Dex’s hands shook slightly as he crouched down to fiddle with the lock. He swiped his imparter across it, but nothing happened. She watched him work through his own eyes, peering through the mindbubble as he let them in. The tension grew as the others caught up to them, Tam’s shadows spreading over them slightly, enough so that Dex could disconnect from the chain, lighting the strain on Biana.

She could see him gnawing slightly at his lip as he tapped on his imparter in quick succession. Someone began breathing deeply and slowly, and she started to scan their surroundings again. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t let them be caught off guard.

Marella shook out her hands, sparks flickering between her fingers, growing with each passing moment that door refused to open. The veins in Wylie’s hands shone for a brief moment as he clenched his fist, the shimmer fading as he relaxed his fingers, glancing around.

There’s a different lock on this door, Dex mumbled, mental voice sounding faintly panicked, as though he were putting effort into sounding in control.

Yeah, no shit, Keefe grumbled, but there was a tension lacing the words that shouldn’t have been there.

Just give me...a...little longer. I think...I’ve got it.

Each pause was accentuated by a small tap as he lost his train of thought, fiddling with the locks. Cold dreaded settled itself in the center of her stomach, reaching dripping tentacles about and curling them around her insides, squeezing tight as the oxygen levels in the room seemed to dip-- and the problem didn’t appear to be the kind she could fix with a few deep breaths.

There was virtually nothing they could do but wait for him to finish, and it was agony to sit there, eyes frantically pacing the gouged walls hoping no one was approaching. Fitz’s mind reached across the mindbubble towards her, and she let him in, pooling their energy together to send pulsing waves of consciousness out around them, searching the nearby areas.

With each pulse that passed over them, the thoughts of their friends flared for a moment before dimming as it passed, but there was no one else nearby. No other flashes of thought near them that they could identify.

Wait.

There.

Fitz made a muffled sound of distress, and she could see the others’ heads snap up towards the both of them.

Shit, they transmitted. Opening their minds, they showed the others what they’d found--or rather, what was about to find them. A few halls away were thoughts, approaching quickly in their direction.

Holy shit they’re close, Biana breathed. And she was right. Normally, they’d be able to detect someone this close clear and simple, but there was a haze over their thoughts that she’d never seen before. It was as though they’d made their thoughts invisible, and she’d only barely been able to see through the deception.

There was nothing to be done about it, however, except fervently hope Dex could open that goddamn door before that person walked around the corner and saw the conglomeration of shadows and a door opening on its own. Which would happen in approximately...thirty seconds.

C’mon, I’m so close, Dex strained, mental voice shaking.

Footsteps echoed just a few moments away, and she began to bounce in place, squeezing her fingers so tight she was surprised the bones didn’t snap.

GOT IT, he cried, wrenching the door open as the lock unlatched. It was a race as everyone scrambled into the room, the footsteps and their hidden thoughts growing closer and closer each second. She couldn’t even think through the adrenaline, her arms shaking so badly there was nothing but the colors in front of her and her goal.

The door clicked shut behind them, just as the person rounded the corner.

They’d made it. Her breath came out in harsh pants, and none of the sounds around her made much sense, but she just couldn’t take her eyes off that door.

FUCK, Tam yelled, and as a force field flickered into place around them, Sophie finally turned around.

To find a room full of various guards, all of whom were staring back, malice and shock glimmering on their faces. But what was even worse were the caged creatures behind them.

Viscous pale syrup dripped from vats spread throughout the room, pulsing with thick spiderwebs of veins and mucous. Her stomach dropped as she tilted her head back to see them more fully, vaguely humanoid but distorted. Limbs stretched out like sticky candy, skin close to wreaking, appendages ending in blunt bone creeping its way out of the body. Hair floated around them in the thick substances, matted and black and shining.

They seemed dormant, but their appendages twitched in time to their thunderous heartbeat, sending waves throughout their liquid enclosures.

That was all she had the chance to see before the guards closest to them pulled out their melders.

Everything seemed to be moving at twice the speed it was supposed to be, throwing her completely off her rhythm.

Maruca stood in front of them, arms spread wide as she held a force-field around them all, Biana had let go of her, choosing to spend her energy in a fight rather than vanishing them, and it was as they broke contact that she realized just how much of her energy Biana had taken.

She swayed on her feet for a brief moment, casting out her mind and trying to get a sense of how many there were in this room that appeared infinite.

Rows of vats spread farther than she could see, although not all seemed to be occupied. None of them should’ve been. They’d gone out of their way to ensure they’d stay far away from any creatures, no matter the potential benefits. There was nothing that could be done against them.

Maruca grunted as pangs clattered against the force field, trying to find a way through. Sophie’s breathing quickened as she realized she couldn’t feel the presence of anyone in the room. It was although she was entirely alone. She couldn’t feel Fitz next to her, or anyone under the force field, and she couldn’t detect anyone outside of it.

There was an ominous silence, despite the shouts of the people around her. Security personnel were murmuring into communication devices, alerting others of a “disturbance in sector 34, room B12.” But no one in her group said a word. They’d learned not to. They spoke in the mindspace however, hysterical and screaming.

This was not the room they were supposed to be in.

There was nothing they could do as warning lights began to flash around them, strobing effects searing her eyes as alarm bells tolled, shrill and vibrating.

It couldn’t have been more than five seconds since they’d walked through that door.

She steeled herself, drawing on that knot of power she kept stored beneath her ribs, feeling the energy channel from her chest towards her head, building and building until almost painful. But she couldn’t release it. She couldn’t attack through the force field, and Maruca couldn’t drop it because then those melders would hit them head-on and they couldn’t withstand that.

Everyone else was in a similar predicament.

Then it got worse.

She didn’t think it could get worse.

How could it get worse?

The creature in the tank seemed to be reacting to either the lights or the sounds--it didn’t really matter which. What mattered was that it was moving; it was opening its gaping maw and screaming within that tank, air bubbles shooting their way towards the ceiling and lingering, a never-ending stream as its body began to buck and thrash sporadically, sharp limbs colliding with glass.

The cylindrical vat cracked, a spiderweb of broken veins spreading from the point of impact, growing with each collision as it began pounding against the glass.

The muffled sounds it made were absolutely horrible, and she slapped her palms over her ears, grimacing. But what truly stopped her heart was the sound of falling glass, wet and raining down, clattering about and bouncing off the force field.

Because now the creature was loose.

The figures who had been attacking them now swore, looking back and forth between each other before darting out of the room; their weapons still raised despite them being little threat beneath their bubble.

The door latched behind them, and Sophie seemed to come to the horrifying reality at the same time as the others.

They had no way out of this room.

SCATTER! Maruca screamed as she dropped the force field, and everyone complied, darting around the room, trying to get out of the way, hoping hoping hoping that creature wasn’t the exceptionally violent kind, and that it would leave them alone.

All of the creatures they’d encountered so far had been aggressive in some way or another--some simply left you alone unless you got close, others would attack on sight. They’d started a notebook to keep track of all the kinds they knew about, but this one was entirely new.

The only solace that could be found was that it seemed to be the only one that escaped its tank, the others appearing undisturbed.

Watching it from behind a stack of crates, Sophie could see it growing more and more agitated, banging its appendages against what seemed to be its head in distress, a warbled screech piercing the air as it began to flail about.

She ducked at the distinct sound of tables and boxes being crushed as the creature stumbled, tearing at the ground. She began to frantically search the room, looking for something--anything--that could help them at all. There had to be another exit, there had to be something they could do.

Her eyes met Keefe’s across the room, and for the strangest moment, she wasn’t concerned about the creature killing them all, or the guards capturing them and holding them hostage, or their explosives going off when they were still in the building. She was just worried he could feel her panic and it would be too overwhelming for him to concentrate.

Wait.

That was it.

Her mind clicked the pieces together and she sank to the floor, pressing her back against the shelves embedded in the wall behind her, putting her fingers to her temples. The creature was overwhelmed and overstimulated, and it was reacting poorly. She’d never tried to communicate with or inflict on any of the creatures before...but she’d never had a reason to.

She just hoped it would work.

Using that gathered energy, she reached out towards the creature, a mental hand fumbling in the dark. But it appeared she couldn’t...find it. There was just...nothingness...wherever she reached.

Opening her eyes slightly, she squinted up at the creature, which was still stumbling around in response to the overstimulation. The visual helped her narrow in on its mind, and as she reached for it she began to realize... its mind was the silence. She hadn’t been able to detect the mind of the people in the room or her friends because this creature’s mind was so incredibly silent; it broadcasted a blanket over everyone nearby.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING, someone hissed into the mindbubble. But she was so far gone that it barely registered as more than a gentle, far-off whisper.

Desperately trying to control herself, Sophie began bringing forward peaceful, calmer memories; she had to reach further back than she’d expected; life hadn’t been particularly relaxing as of late. Finally, when her head seemed to overflow with calming vibes, she sent them out like a shockwave around her, a ripple in the empty.

Anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention could identify the exact moment the wave hit the creature. Its spine went rigid, snapping straight as its head jerked up, their gazes meeting. Each noise fizzled out in the same instant. No one dared breath in that poignant silence, the space almost empty now, and for the briefest moment, she wished that it weren’t so empty, so quiet.

Her wish was answered.

There was no warning as the creature’s head cocked to the side, staring her down with those empty, glistening black eyes, no warning as it lunged towards her.

Well FUCK, was the only thought in her head as it careened towards her, stumbling as though it’d only learned to walk that day, which it might have.

Its movements were uncoordinated, but that didn’t make them any less violent as the tables around them crashed into each other as it crashed onto all limbs, moving with such speed it could cross the room in less than a blink.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. Her friends were screaming, but she couldn’t make a sound. Her eyelids were fluttering shut as that suffocating silence pressed in closer and closer.

The creature was charging straight towards her and she couldn’t think. It lost its balance, coming down hard on top of her, but its limbs were too long to crush her, and instead, it was crashing into the shelves behind her and crushing glass and breaking rock and its own bones and she. Couldn’t. Think.

Crystal shattered behind her as the shelves were wrenched from the walls, the creature desperately trying to right itself, shrieking that inhuman sound. Vials began to rain down behind her, crashing on the hard floor.

The noxious scents of the spilling bottles began to flood the room, visible gases blooming from where the colors mixed, sizzling and bubbling on the floor. The creature bucked its head, scrambling away, limbs bashing the floor as it dashed far, far away into the hollows of the room.

The silence was back, but this time it was accompanied by fumes and watering eyes as everyone pushed to their feet, stumbling and coughing.

We havetoget...Dex began, eyeing the frothing liquids….out ofhere. He was standing so far away. How had he gotten there? She might’ve been nodding her head, agreeing with him, but without the adrenaline, everything was...so slow...and the floor seemed liquid and plush.

She couldn’t see who began coughing, their whole body wracked in a fit as the vapors became so thick she couldn’t see. It occurred to her too late to try holding her breath, her eyelids fluttering as she stumbled a few steps, but she didn’t actually know where she was going.

A thud sounded behind her, and she turned, the room seeming to lag as she did so. Biana. It had been...Biana. She’d made the sound. Her body was crumpled on the ground, unconscious. That should’ve sent a spike of alarm through her, telling her to move. To go. Get out.

But she couldn’t think. And the others quickly followed, a series of thuds echoing throughout the space as one by one, they succumbed to the fumes.

Sophie was still standing, and she briefly made eye contact with Dex--why was he so far--watching him fumble with his imparter. An explosive rumbling sounded in the distance, growing stronger and closer with each moment her eyes remained open. She was upright only long enough to see Dex fall before she felt her muscles give, and she crashed down hard.

Wings AU Taglist:

@loudnerdfest @rainbowtay-11 @cadence-talle @pyrokinetic-loser @ahecktonoffandomsinoneblog @itstiger720 @loverofallthingssmart @cowboypossume @jolieharkness @wings-of-hell-and-beyond @shellyseashell @blossomjenniie @imaramennoodle @booknerdddddd @akotlcblog

#that might've been confusing to read #but you can always ask me questions about the au!!#and now i can answer them more because you actually have some content lol #also can I say i hate formatting #cause I do #anyways please give me your thoughts because I've had this au for so long it feels like it doesn't exist outside my mind #so i'd love to know what you think of it #kinda apocalytic if i do say so myself #anyways ill stop now but thanks for readingggg #no clue how many chapters there'll be but definitely at least a few more #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc wings au #kotlc fic #my writing <3 #shattered upside down #oh also yea it has an actual name lol #tw swearing

36 notes · View notes

dweemeister · 3 years

Photo

NOTE: This is the third film released theatrically during the COVID-19 pandemic that I am reviewing – I saw Raya and the Last Dragon at the Regency Theatres Directors Cut Cinema’s drive-in operation in Laguna Niguel, California. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

As Raya and the Last Dragon, directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada and written by Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim, made its theatrical and streaming bow, the United States was grappling with a wave of highly-publicized hate incidents towards Asian-Americans in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This spike in racially-motivated verbal abuse, assaults, and homicides began with the pandemic and, frustratingly, had only been receiving national attention in these last few weeks. Despite the nation’s racist origins entwined with chattel slavery of black people and its continued unequal treatment of minorities including Asian-Americans, I am not qualified to say if the U.S. is “more” or “less racist” than other countries. But I can hardly think of any other people that interrogate racial inequality and oppression as much (and as publicly) as Americans – an undeniable strength. There was no way Raya and the Last Dragon’s cast and crew could have anticipated the film’s fraught timing, but the film provides a much-needed, positive, and heavily flawed, action-adventure romp drawn from Southeast Asian cultures.

The very notion that Walt Disney Animation Studios was attempting to craft a film using an amalgam of Southeast Asian cultures stoked my excitement and dread. Southeast Asian cultures – including, but not limited to, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam – are often lumped into those of East Asia (China, Korea, Japan), which dominate Asian-American depictions or Asian-influenced media in the United States. What gave me pause is that Disney’s track record in films featuring non-European-inspired characters and places inspired by non-European cultures is mixed. Aladdin (1992) and Pocahontas (1995) are aggregations of (and indulge in stereotypes towards) Arabs and indigenous Americans alike, especially in their presentations of “savagery” (Pocahontas in particular is guilty of false equivalences).

Cultural aggregations in fictional settings are not insensitive, per se. Yet, Disney’s stated intentions on this film are undermined by a voice cast ensemble almost entirely composed of actors of Chinese and Korean descent – you can bring up Adele Lim’s response to the voice casting controversy all you want, but her response contradicts the film’s promotion. Amid its gorgeous production and character design, Raya manages to avoid the worst mistakes of its Disney Renaissance predecessors. But its hero’s journey is too cluttered and too littered with the anachronistic and metatextual jokes plaguing the last decade’s Disney animated features.

Five centuries before the events of Raya and the Last Dragon, the land of Kumandra saw its people live in harmony with dragons. That relationship, however, would be devastated by the appearance of the Druun – a swirling, purple vortex that turns living beings into stone. In the conflict against the Druun, the last dragon, Sisu (Awkwafina), makes a fateful sacrifice to save Kumandra by concentrating the dragons’ collective power into a magical orb. Soon after, Kumandra’s five tribes – Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail, and Talon (named after parts of a dragon) – fight amongst each other for control of the orb (Heart eventually gains possession of it), effectively partitioning the land. In the present day, the Heart tribe’s Chief Benja (Daniel Dae Kim) proposes and hosts a feast-summit to discuss and heal Kumandra’s divisions. Benja has taught his daughter, Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), the ways of a warrior and the necessity for Kumandra’s tribes to realize their oneness. At the feast-summit, Raya befriends Namaari (Gemma Chan; Jona Xiao as young Namaari), the daughter of Fang Chief Virana (Sandra Oh). Predictably, Namaari betrays her new friend in an orchestrated ploy to pilfer the dragons’ orb for Fang. Just as the Druun make a surprise invasion of Heart, the botched heist sees the orb break into five, and each of the tribes makes off with part of the orb. It will be up to Raya to recover the other four pieces of the orb, lest Kumandra succumb to the Druun.

The film’s screenplay is, charitably, a mess. Though Qui Nguyen (primarily a playwright) and Adele Lim (2018’s Crazy Rich Asians) are the credited screenwriters, Raya’s phalanx of story credits (mostly full-time, white employees at the Disney studios) suggest studio interference. Raya seems as if it is trying to cleanly differentiate certain tribes as based on a certain Southeast Asian nation. Instead, it comes off as a brew of mish-mashed parts (this problem extends to the otherwise stunning animation). With the exception of those from the militant Fang, the bit characters from the various tribes do not behave any differently from the members of other tribes. The partition of Kumandra, five hundred years before the events of Raya, feels like as if it had never existed for lengthy stretches in this film.

After Kelly Marie Tran, as Raya, narrates the mythology and history of Kumandra in the opening minutes, the film’s structure tethers itself predictably to the monomyth. The fracturing of the dragon’s orb into five parts sends Raya onto a tedious adventure: the physical travel to a new part of Kumandra, introduction of a sidekick (all of them are comic reliefs), an action setpiece involving a necessary assist from new sidekick, and the integration of that sidekick into Raya’s ever-growing party. Lather, rinse, repeat. To squeeze the four other tribes into the film’s 107-minute runtime and set up a climax and resolving actions results in a frantically-paced movie. Almost all of the film’s dialogue is subservient to its structure, the hero’s journey. This disallows the viewer to learn more about our lead and her fellow adventurers. In arguably the most important example in how the dedication to story structure undermines the characters, take Raya’s repeated mentions to her newfound confidants that she has difficulty trusting others. Six years have passed since the day of Namaari’s betrayal and Raya’s discovery of Sisu. How has Raya’s sense of distrust evolved over time, and how does it manifest towards those of other tribes? Does it appear in moments without consequence to her quest, in gusts of casual cruelty? In terms of characterization, Raya is showing too little and telling just the basics – a dynamic that also applies to the film’s most important supporting characters.

Ever since Tangled (2010), the films of the Disney animated canon have increased their use of metatextual and anachronistic humor (e.g. Kristoff’s comment about Anna’s engagement to a person she just met in 2013’s Frozen and Maui’s Twitter joke in 2016’s Moana that still makes me gnash my teeth when I think about it). Invariably, the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has seen its brand of pathos-destroying humor bleed into the Disney animated canon and Star Wars. Like so many films in the Disney animated canon, Raya takes place in a fantastical location in a never-time far removed from the present. From the moment Raya meets Sisu, the circa-2020s humor is ceaseless. For Disney animated movies set in fantastical worlds, this sort of humor suits films that are principally comedies, such as The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) – a work that owes more to Looney Tunes than anything Disney has created. Instead, Raya’s comedy will suit viewers who frequent certain corners of the Internet, “for the memes.” Do Disney’s animation filmmakers believe the adults and children viewing their films so impatient and unintelligent about human emotions? That they will not accept a scene that deals honestly with betrayal, disappointment, heartbreak, or loss unless there is a snide remark or visual gag inserted within said scene or shortly afterward?

Raya seems like a film set to portray its scenarios with the gravity they require. But overusing Awkwafina’s Awkwafina-esque jokes and a DreamWorks- or Illumination Entertainment-inspired infant causing meaningless havoc will subvert whatever emotions Nguyen and Lim are attempting to evoke. These statements are not arguing that Raya and Disney’s animated films should be humorless, that Disney should stop casting an Awkwafina or an Eddie Murphy as comic relief. Instead, Raya is another case study in how Disney’s brand of ultramodern humor is overtaking their films’ integral dramatics. Raya is noisy, clamorous – no different than anything Disney has released in the last decade, save Winnie the Pooh (2011).

Production designers Helen Mingjue Chen, Paul A. Felix, and Cory Loftis have worked on films like Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Big Hero 6 (2014), or Zootopia (2016). Each of these films feature glamorous, near-future metropolises or sleek digital worlds. Where the tribespeople of Kumandra might not be behaviorally-differentiated, the color coding, lighting, and biomes of each of the five lands comprising Kumandra ably distinguishes Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail, and Talon from each other. As if taking cues from the production designs of Big Hero 6’s San Fransokyo and, to some extent, The King and I (1956), it is difficult to pin down specific influences on the clashing architectural styles within the lands, in addition to the unusually empty and cavernous palaces and temples and varying costumes. As picturesque as some of these lands are, the art direction does not help to empower the characteristic of the tribes and their native lands. Nor does James Newton Howard’s thickly-synthesized grind of an action score, which prefers to accompany the film’s excellent combat scenes rather than stake a clearer thematic identity for its own. Howard uses East and Southeast Asian instrumentations and influences in his music, but, disappointingly, they are heavily processed through synthetic elements and are played underneath the film’s sound mix.

Character art directors Shiyoon Kim (Tangled, 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and Ami Thompson (2017’s MFKZ, 2018’s Ralph Breaks the Internet) embrace the (generally) darker and varying skin complexions of Southeast Asian peoples. The skin textures are among the best ever produced in a Disney CGI-animated feature, and the variety of face shapes – although still paling in comparison to the best hand-drawn features – is a pleasure to witness.

The number of films starring actors/voice actors of Asian descent (all-Asian or majority-Asian), animated or otherwise, and released by a major Hollywood studio makes for a brief list. Raya and the Last Dragon joins an exclusive club that includes the likes of The Dragon Painter (1919), Go for Broke! (1951), Flower Drum Song (1961), The Joy Luck Club (1993), and Crazy Rich Asians (2018). Among those movies, Raya is the only entry specifically influenced by Southeast Asian cultures. Its cast may be headlined by Kelly Marie Tran (whose skill as a voice actor is one of the film’s most pleasant surprises), but most of the roles went to those of Chinese or Korean descent. No disrespect intended towards Gemma Chan, Sandra Oh, or veteran actress Lucille Soong, but the majority East Asian cast only serves to further monolithize Asians – as the amalgamated story, plot details, and production design have already done. I will not second-guess any fellow person of Southeast Asian descent if they feel “seen” through Raya. What a compliment that would be for this film. How empowering for that person. But the life experiences of those of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent are markedly different. Disney’s casting decisions in Raya – all in the wake of the disastrous Western and Eastern reception of the live-action Mulan (2020) – have revealed a fundamental lack of effort or understanding about the possibilities of a sincere attempt at representation.

To this classic film buff, the discourse surrounding Raya strikes historical chords. When Flower Drum Song was released to theaters, the film was labeled by the American mainstream as the definitive Asian-American movie. Opening during the height of the American Civil Rights Movement, the film (and the musical it adapts) looked like nothing released by Hollywood (and on Broadway) at that time. In that midcentury era of rising racial consciousness and the lack of opportunities for Asian-Americans in Hollywood, the marking of Flower Drum Song as the absolute pan-Asian celebration was bound to happen – however unfair the distinction. Even though Rodgers and Hammerstein (two white Jewish men who made well-meaning, problematic attempts to craft musicals decrying racial prejudice and social injustices) composed the musical and zero Asian people worked behind the camera, those labels remained. With some differences in who wrote the source material, The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians have followed Flower Drum Song’s fate in their categorizations. Will Raya? Time will be the judge, the only judge.

Before time passes judgment, we have some present-day hints. Though not released by major studios, the quick succession of The Farewell (2019) and Minari (2020) point to an experiential specificity that Raya attempts, but never comes close to achieving. Whether through aggregation or specificity, Hollywood benefits from the perspectives of underrepresented groups. Widespread claims that Raya too closely copies Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008) reflect that dearth of East Asian and Southeast Asian representation in American media. For too many, ATLA is the Asian fantasy. These simplistic observations and bad-faith criticisms (one could rebuke Disney’s vaguely-European princess films on the same principles, but I find this as lazy as the bad-faith ATLA criticisms) also suggest a lack of understanding that Asian-inspired stories are drawing from similar tropes codified by Asian folklore and narratives centuries old. If one reads through this reviewer’s write-ups, you will find an abiding faith in the major Hollywood studios – past, present, and future – to be artistically daring and to genuinely represent long-excluded persons. Many might see this faith as misplaced. But even in the major studios’ flawed attempts to depict underrepresented groups, like Raya, they concoct astonishing sights and form moving links to the cinematic past.

Assuming you have not skipped to this paragraph, the write-up that you have read may seem scathing to your eyes. Raya is no Disney classic – there has not been one for some time. However, I thoroughly enjoyed my first viewing of Raya. After a few weeks’ worth of keeping my agony private over the recent uproar over attacks on persons of Asian descent in America, it was a surreal experience to see even an amalgamated celebration of Southeast Asian culture. Over this last year, we have lost people and things that emboldened us and ennobled us. In this season of unbelonging and otherizing feelings for Asians in America, Raya’s timing is fortuitous. It is emboldening and ennobling.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#Raya and the Last Dragon #Don Hall #Carlos López Estrada #Kelly Marie Tran #Awkwafina #Izaac Wang #Gemma Chan #Daniel Dae Kim #Benedict Wong #Sandra Oh #Thalia Tran #Lucille Soong #Alan Tudyk #Qui Nguyen #Adele Lim #James Newton Howard #Disney #My Movie Odyssey

15 notes · View notes

bushybeardedbear · 3 years

Text

So I've been considering writing and posting this little issue I've had with something. Sorry to anyone following me who doesn't care about MLB. And sorry to anyone who doesn't want discourse on their dash. I will tag accordingly...

So, all that said...

The Native American Miracle Box

Is it just me or is it a little problematic?

So, on the surface it's great to see it. It's using Native American symbolism and mythology. It's establishing that other cultures communed with and harnessed the Kwami. (Though, one could argue the Miraculous in general actually enslave these god-like beings but that's a whole other can of worms I don't want to open...) Jess being a Native American hero, wielding the Miraculous of Freedom. Its all superficially really encouraging, inclusive and nice.

But, this is a big but.

There's a huge period of Native American history where one would assume access to Super Heroes might have been a little useful.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the historical events, because I'm not. I'm not going to pretend I speak on behalf of or in replacement of anyone anyone else, because I don't. If anything, my ancestors may well have been complicit in the acts I'm referring to. So if I'm wrong, call me out on it. If I'm misrepresenting anything, do the same. I'd much prefer other more relevant voices than my own be talking about this and to be listened to. I'm only saying this because to my knowledge, nobody else seems to be talking about this.

This isn't an easy topic, but America is founded upon genocidal colonialism. There's no two ways about it. Indigenous populations were murdered on a vast scale. The effects and marginalisation that resulted are still a part of people's everyday struggle. I'm fully aware that something like a cartoon talking about genocide and the lasting effects it has might be a little outside its remit, but there seems to be something inadequate about the way Miraculous Ladybug simply removes the Native American Miraculous from the equation and in a completely dismissive way.

So, based on what little information is out there, we are to believe that at some point in human history, some Native American people became aware of, communed with and created tools to harness the Kwami. In the centuries that followed, nothing was done with them. And then in around about the 16th century, these ancient powerful artifacts were just for no given reason or cause scattered around the world somehow. Then, it wasn't until the American war of independence that one of these artifacts were first used. By a white man.

Tell me its not just me that sees this as somewhat problematic?

Imagine if this was for example a hypothetical Jewish Miracle Box. Arranged in a box shaped like the Star of David and with Miraculous forged by Moses to free his enslaved people. And somehow, let's say around the 1920s, the box and its contents just conveniently go missing just before a major historical event involving Jewish people.

Wouldn't that be rightly seen as a bit messed up?

Even writing that hypothetical makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

So, isn't the Native American Miracle Box a very close parallel to the scenario I just laid out? Disappearing just before the colonisation of America happened? Or am I being somehow unfair and over-analytical? Please, if I'm talking nonsense, tell me so.

So, to my mind it feels a little like these new Miraculous have the trappings and essentially superficial decoration of Native American Culture. The most recent hero to weild them, also Native American. On the one hand that should obviously be applauded. But in the context of the Canon ignoring or marginalising the struggles of Native Americans and essentially using the peoples and cultures as decoration, isn't that a kind of clueless cultural appropriation? A kind of Colonialist attitude to the various Native American cultures as a kind of way to score points for appearing superficially inclusive?

Did Thomas Astruc or any of the Miraculous staff ask any indigenous peoples or groups for input before including this, for instance. I don't think for a moment it was actively malicious. Just, honestly a little thoughtless.

Though I suppose it's easy enough to argue that the integration of these super heroic power items into world history is in general not a great idea. Is this actually part of a larger trend of lazy world building written from the point of view of someone far removed from the historical horrors he's pushing his magic toys into?

It's one thing to argue maybe Sun Wukong, Robin Hood, the Pied Piper or other apocryphal and legendary figures held the Miraculous. Legends don't have a real world impact beyond the imaginations they spark, their place in the cultural zeitgeist. But when real world history is an issue, maybe you should have made an active choice to make your entire setting into its own historical reality based in mythology?

A similar issue to the historical problems of the Native American Miracle Box popped up in earlier episodes. Whilst not explicitly stated, it was strongly implied that during WW2, Master Fu guarded the Chinese Miracle Box from The Axis Forces. Preventing them from falling, he says, into the wrong hands.

So, why would Fu at no point consider that choosing heroes at this critical point in world history might not have been wise? Was it somehow morally wrong to intervene in defeating an ideology that threatened millions of people? Could any of the Miraculous in the hands of the Allied Nations have been considered the wrong hands given the enemy they were facing?

The issues are only compounded when you consider the Miraculous have existed in one form or another through all of human history. Yet its only now that they factor. We have to consider that either the Miraculous are always conveniently not available when certain conflicts happen or that they were indeed used but changed nothing meaningful.

If you're going to say these ancient relics have existed and been used for centuries, why not go the extra mile and examine how they've changed history? If you don't want to ever deal with the real world history, then perhaps only have the items show up in the modern day? It's the Half and Half response of "they only matter when it's easy to say they matter" that invites discussion of odd choices in the writing.

Maybe my willing suspension of disbelief for MLB is just shattered after season 3 was so... Unsatisfying?

Whatever the case, I'm just wanting to vent, put my thoughts out there and say that maybe attempting to insert new mythology into the existing world history and YET not having any impact on world history seems like its poorly thought out and best and deeply insensitive at worst.

#Discourse #miraculous ladybug #Miraculous Ladybug Discourse

9 notes · View notes

whoson1st · 4 years

Note

Are you in the official King Falls server at all? Just trying to get an idea of what's going on and who knows what's going on

Hoooooo BOISE.

So, long story short, yes. Yes I’m in the discord, yes I know what’s going on, and it’s all really, really stupid. I think that there were mistakes made on a lot of fronts, but I also think that the end result is, in a lot of ways, a long time coming.

I haven’t been responding to things I’ve seen on social media for the most part, and wasn’t REALLY keen to respond to this, but there’s also a lot of misinformation happening due to hurt feelings. There’s plenty of abridged accounts of what’s going on, and I’m pretty sure you know that. I’m taking this question on good faith that it’s genuinely asking and not setting me up to get torn down but...honestly, either way, I don’t care. I’m not on tumblr much these days anyway so it doesn’t really matter, and internet drama is just….it’s always dumb. But there’s a lot of “evidence” being put forth that is out of context or in bad faith, and the people who are being the loudest are a whole lot of the problem, so I’ll put in my account and opinions.

Anyway, I’m putting everything under a cut because it’s...a lot.

So first off, full disclosure, I used to be a mod on the discord. I left the team at the beginning of the year of my own volition because I’m an adult with a job and a life and things to take care of that aren’t that and needed a break. I’m still friends with all the current mods, and talk to them regularly, as well as being on good terms with the cast and creators. Just in case you’re dead set on hating any of them, you should know that. I try to keep a pretty good perspective, and I’m a little more removed than I was a few months ago, but I won’t say I’m totally free of bias either. If that’s what you’re into, just go ahead and skip this.

This all started with a piece of fan art, which honestly should be a clue as to how petty this all is. The fanart included The Dirt in a BDSM outfit as part of a larger work, and it was posted in the fanart section of the discord. It was bordering on NSFW, and the artist maybe should have asked the mods and/or put it behind a spoiler tag--which is probably as far as the mods would have gone had they been consulted, because it was 1) part of a larger thing and 2) canon compliant (it’s Jacob Williams, what do you want?). Neither of those things happened, people complained, the art was taken down. Then Kyle Brown, one of the writers, retweeted the copy that had been uploaded to twitter on his personal account--his account, not KFAM official--and someone complained that it made them uncomfortable and was not safe for work. Another cast member, Trent Shumway, replied that twitter isn’t a safe for work site, which it’s not. Which then led to both Kyle and Trent being socially crucified for not taking more care in what their followers see on their personal accounts on an open social media platform that is not dedicated to any single person or work.

It was already stupid. Really, really stupid. Especially since this is not a SFW podcast. It never has been. Everyone remember the third episode with Archie’s pomchies? And I know that certain aspects of that make people uncomfortable but if you are choosing to listen to the show regardless of that, it’s on you. An artist isn’t going to repaint something because you’re not a fan of green. And the SFW rule on the server has always been “within the guidelines of the show”.

So then, someone made this post that has since been deleted but I’m including mostly because if other people want to go ahead and pull receipts, I’m also going to.

Before I go ANY further with this, I want to say this: this person has been a problem for a LONG TIME. Months, at least, since before I left the mod team, and is honestly part of the reason being a mod became so difficult for me. They have displayed a pattern of abuse of the mods, the creators, and other members of the community on both twitter and tumblr, and have made people on the discord server uncomfortable enough that they either don’t participate or have left completely. This one person. And they have a bully squad behind them. And it sucks. But in the end, it was always decided that we couldn’t police what people did on their individual accounts or single someone out who hadn’t technically broken guidelines in the server, despite numerous complaints, because the mods and creators want to make everyone feel that they’re included. This decision was made...numerous times. After multiple incidents. For months.

I had my own issues with this decision, but that’s neither here nor there, and doesn’t really matter anymore. Because that post was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Kyle, misunderstanding the term, took it as a threat. Not hard to do, given the already heightened emotions, the tags, and this person’s history. So the person was immediately banned. The fact is, even without misunderstanding, that’s a really shitty post. That’s hating one a writer and a cast member and still wanting to pretend they have nothing to do with the THING THEY CREATE because this person doesn’t like what they said on twitter.

Following that, one of their friends--who had also been a longstanding problem--attempted to start a knockdown dragout in the general chat with one of the mods over this, and was upset when the mod in question first said they’d be happy to talk on DM but not on the server, and then ignored them when they repeatedly tried to carry on the argument.

Then they lit a candle in the channel the banned person had pitched a fit in order to form, as if the person was dead and not just a jerk. And then they made this post:

They also got banned, because OBVIOUSLY. Again, misunderstanding or not, that’s a horrible way to deal with it. You can’t possibly expect to call someone an illiterate fuckwad and still want to be included in spaces they created, much less EXPECT to be.

And then several other people who were attempting the same nonsense publicly. And then invites were taken away when the mods got word that there was a possible plan in the works to spam the server. And there’s a weird campaign to EXPOSE THE CREATORS FOR THE ASSHOLES THEY ARE.

And that’s...about where things are at now. A lot of people are upset and hurt across the board. And it sucks.

Here’s the thing. Mistakes were made. Kyle misunderstood Death of the Author, and has a tendency toward knee-jerk, unedited reactions. The mods should have been more on top of the problem and not let it fester. There were ways that this could have been mitigated and done better. There always are.

But this was always going to happen in some fashion.

Podcasts and podcast communities are not new anymore, folks. But it still seems like people have a hard time grasping their actual level of involvement in the creation because of how active some creators are. You’re free to say whatever you want, but you are not free from consequence. And you’re not exempt from being wrong. This isn’t just a matter of the creators of KFAM--or any work, to be honest--not being able to take criticism, this is a matter of people thinking that their criticism is 100% correct 100% of the time, and the entitled attitude that comes with that. KFAM isn’t perfect, I have my own criticisms of it, because I have criticisms about basically everything under the sun, so it’s not just blind following. But it is trust in the creators and the people around them to find the best way to tell their story, to the see their problems and strive for better. And we’ve literally seen that happen in KFAM, in changes made to Walt, in Emily’s storyline, in Lily’s...everything. In the addition of “guys, gals, and non-binary pals”. They’re trying. They’re not perfect, but they’re not deaf. They’re also not obligated or beholden to everything their audience says regarding their story.

The whole argument that they can’t take criticism is undercut when it’s being made by people who think that everything they say should be taken as gospel, and treat every instance where someone disagrees with them as a personal attack. The scope of hypocrisy here is just...breathtaking.

Also, when not withstanding some nonsense attacks, they’re all genuinely kind and friendly. I already admitted some bias here, but seriously, they go out of their way to check on people and respond to people and lift people up. It’s total horse dookie to act like they don’t care about their fans.

And as for the discord--god, just get a life. The mods there work SO HARD to make everyone feel included, to encourage participation, the create a positive environment for people to talk about the things they love and make friends. They have meetings and spreadsheets and calendars and work together as a team and with Kyle to keep the place working smoothly even though there’s FIVE of them running a HUGE server. The person who was initially banned was forever complaining about the discord and how the mods ran it, even while some suggestions they had were implemented. But that discord has like 1500 people in it, gang, it’s not about what one person wants all the time. And that person has their own server anyway so just go be unhappy there and leave everyone else alone. It’s what you were doing anyway.

TL;DR: There was a lot of manufactured outrage over something incredibly dumb, and some misunderstandings, and resulted in actions that had been looming for a long time and just finally popped off. Kyle and the mods aren’t perfect, but they aren’t the villains. The people who were banned have a history of negativity and bullying that led to the decision to remove them.

If anyone takes anything from this, please let it be that it’s a GODDAMN PODCAST. If it makes you angry, if you don’t like it, go watch a movie. Eat a snack. Knit a sweater. Take a nap. Listen to a new music album. Literally anything. There’s so many things to do in this life that aren’t LOOKING for things to be upset about.

Remember the golden rule, and don’t be a dick.

#kfam #King Falls AM #drama llama #I blocked out names because if you want to know you can find them #but I'm not here to call out names #because I just don't give enough of a fuck about them to deal with them later #and this is all really dumb and overblown #Anonymous

55 notes · View notes

80alleycats · 5 years

Text

Dee Day Thoughts and Analysis

Preface: For those who don’t know, I’m a homoromantic asexual woman of color (mostly black).

Anyways, unlike many folks on Tumblr, I did not have too much of a problem with this episode. It did feel kinda..”eh”...and it could have been much better, but I had some laughs and laughed more with this episode than last week’s episode.

Here are my thoughts on the controversies of the episode. They might help some hate the episode and/or RCGMegan less:

1. Yellow/Brown Face – When I first saw those costumes I was like “Oh, we’re doing that again.” But it didn’t surprise me too much. This has been a part of the show for a long time and the racist caricature characters are “old” characters (i.e. known to the audience and not new caricatures created for shits and giggles), so I’m kind of shocked that people are so shocked by this.

I love RCGMegan, but RCGMegan are just…white as fuck. As a person of color, my standards are low for white people. (I HATE that this sounds racist but y’all know what I’m talking about) Like, I can’t even be mad about it. I’m just glad that there were attempts™ to point out the racism and the shittiness of Dee’s characters, which is something they’ve always done as well.

I think RCGMegan really meant well. It’s PURE SPECULATION but it’s possible that that’s why they hired Pete Chatmon, a black man, to direct the episode. White people sometimes think that if they add a person/people of color to their group and they don’t say “PLEASE DON’T DO THIS THIS IS FUCKING DUMB” what they are doing is okay.

And even though this is PURE SPECULATION on my part, I think RCGMegan’s wellmeaningness is one of the reasons that Pete Chatmon chose to do the job and posted on Instagram that he had a good experience working with RCG and co.

I think RCGMegan were attempting to be “silly classic hijinks” Sunny but also “woke” Sunny but they are…white as fuck and sometimes just do not “get” it. (I get the vibe from interviews that they mentally/emotionally separate the show from themselves and from reality.) I hope they learn to chill out with the yellow/brown/red face one day because, even ignoring the racism issue, it’s SO BORING, but I don’t expect them to because…they are white as fuck. Some white people figure it out and stop doing awkward shit. But some just…don’t. Especially when they have a long history of doing questionable things.

For a person of color to be a fan of this show, we/they have to accept the nature of this show or just stop watching it. Those are the only real choices and both choices are valid.

I’ll admit that I think the “Asian driver” joke was actually somewhat funny because the purpose of the joke was to highlight the phenomenon of white people acting like they aren’t racist when they actually are and are too stupid and delusional to realize it (i.e. benevolent racism). I love attempts™ at highlighting benevolent racism because of the subtle and insidious nature of it.

2. Predatory Gay Mac – I get where people are coming from, but I feel like Mac’s homosexuality wasn’t the joke. I feel like the joke was that Mac was being a goofy idiot who happens to love Dennis, but can’t always express it properly. (example: Mac trying to get Dennis to get on stage with him so he could maybe kiss him…which is the kind of harebrained scheme you’d expect from a goofball 1st grader with a crush and not a full-grown 40 year old man)

Mac’s behavior in this episode was similar to Charlie’s messy over-the-top behavior towards the Waitress in previous episodes.

There was also the dual joke of Mac trying to “one-up” Charlie and so veering into accidental innuendo territory. (example: Mac repeating the comment Charlie said to Dennis about wanting to get in Dennis’ pants)

Also, it’s canon that Mac is often gross when it comes to sexuality in general and I think they were playing with that as well (example: the social network episode where Mac asked the distraught woman about where to find her leaked nude photos).

Everyone in the gang is gross when it comes to sexuality. I feel like a lot of fans forget that Dennis and Dee are canon rapists who usually rape the opposite sex (and Dennis has literally sexually assaulted Mac before even though he considered it a prank). Being an equal member of the Gang, I’m not surprised the writers decided to pass the baton to Mac this episode and even then Mac’s behavior in this episode was fairly tame (in the context of this show LOL).

And FINALLY, even though Dennis protested Mac trying to get them to kiss, I never got the vibe that Dennis was extremely uncomfortable. I think it was just supposed to be a typical “Dennis is annoyed at Mac because Mac is being stupid” reaction. Mac gets on Dennis’ nerves sometimes, but Dennis loves and accepts him and all his weird and stupid behavior. I don’t believe it’s even possible for Mac to make Dennis extremely comfortable. Like, these two are pretty much a hivemind…

3. Charlie and Dennis Kiss Scene - I TOTALLY GET THE DISCOMFORT WITH THIS. And while the second kiss was actually a surprisingly good kiss (Charlie and Glenn can ACT), the scene wasn’t really funny. It was just like “Why? What am I supposed to be getting from this?”

One criticism I’ve seen is that the scene was saying two men kissing is gross (i.e. homophobia). But I don’t think that was the purpose. It honestly reminded me of the awkward attempted kiss scene between Mac and Dee when they were playing characters in one of the lethal weapon episodes.

Another criticism I’ve seen is that Dee (who, as we know, raped Charlie) forced two child abuse victims to kiss. VALID CRITICISM. But when it comes to the characters: they just don’t give a shit. Charlie still hangs out with Dee and considers her a friend (which is COMPLETELY different than how he sees Uncle Jack). Dennis loves her and hangs out with her. Notice that they were more concerned with coming across as homophobic (which is so, so stupid but typical of them) and they hated that they had cheese breath.

And keep in mind that even though it was Dee Day and they were “supposed” to do what she says, they didn’t have to. They treat Dee like garbage 364 days of the year with little remorse and she always come back to them. I feel like the implication is that they CHOSE to do the kiss, considered it gross but didn’t consider it a big deal, and would not compare it to their child abuse experiences.

Dee’s behavior analysis: The previous season’s Mac/Charlie/Frank orgy with the Dennis doll that she watched permanently fucked her up. Like, she knows she’s making the Gang uncomfortable, but she’s lost the ability to comprehend how abnormal her behavior is. Boundaries are gone in her mind. In her mind, she’s simply teasing them and they’ll be fine no matter what happens.

I know people identify with the characters because of their personal experiences and I get that. I get that people have strong feelings about these characters and it’s totally understandable and valid. But I think we have to be careful not to project too much on the characters and instead try to keep in mind how the characters are instead of how we think they are. Like, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has a ton of dark elements, but it’s a relatively upbeat show that often doesn’t take itself too seriously.

This is PURE SPECULATION but I got the vibe from the second kiss that “someone” (possibly Megan?) wanted to do a CharDen scene but needed to do it in the spirit of IASIP (awkward situations + the Gang willing to do anything if they are passionate enough about it) and that scene was the result. It’s also possible that it was the result of some kind of RCG “in-joke” that they didn’t realize might not translate very well on the screen to certain audience members.

At the end of the day, I think it was just supposed to be a goofy “lolwut the Gang is so wacky” scene and it’s not meant to be psychoanalyzed the way certain things on the show are.

4. Dennis Without His Make-Up – I get people’s concerns about this. But the show has occasionally made fun of Dennis’ self-esteem issues concering his looks throughout the show, so this is nothing new. I feel that the scene was designed to make you feel sorry for Dennis, but also it was supposed to just be classic Sunny. Like him hitting on the congresswoman wasn’t just funny because he looked “off,” but because he just kept saying weird and awkward shit to her (similar to the scene in Season 13 where he was trying and failing to hit on the fantasy baseball woman).

And keep in mind that the rest of the Gang kept reassuring Dennis that he looked fine even after the scheme, which was sweet. The same cannot be said about Dee. She’s received a lot more abuse from the Gang and only scraps of affection and reassurance from them to the point where she always lights up when they show her basic kindness. If Dee (and we) can handle Dee’s abuse, Dennis (and we) can handle Dennis’ abuse. And, as mentioned above, he did not have to remove his make-up. He chose to do it and he chose to deal with the consequences of that. But he’ll be fine.

5. There was not enough focus on Dee – 100% agree. Nothing else to add. LOL.

#iasip #iasip season 14 #iasip spoilers #dee day #rcg #megan ganz #pete chatmon #musings meta headcanons #god level fandom posts

252 notes · View notes

voiceofghilannain · 4 years

Text

The Voice of Ghilan’nain: Introduction to my Blog

My beloved subjects: This is my first post on this blog so I will take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Gerasimos (though Jerry is what I usually introduce myself as out of courtesy, as both my name and surname sound like gibberish to most people). I’m a 23-year-old male biology student currently studying in Greece, and an aspiring entrepreneur with quite a long way ahead until I make that dream come true.

Before I introduce you to this blog, I would like to say a few more words about myself. I am a firm believer in education (scientific, technological, and financial) and I do enjoy learning new things, especially if they can be used to solve problems. I am interested in astronomy, biology with emphasis on plant biology, game design, and video game art. I also enjoy walking outdoors, cooking, relaxing at a beach while stargazing, talking about politics and money, teasing the cat (my friend, not the feline pet) and playing video games.

In regards to the latest subject, Bioware’s Mass Effect was the first RPG game I ever played. Though it took me a year to appreciate it due to its lackluster gameplay and limited weapon options, I eventually managed to see it for what it was rather than what I wanted it to be. I played through the trilogy with a dictionary next to me as my English skills were laughable back then. It was through Mass Effect and later Halo that I built my English skills, with the later giving me the opportunity to be part of a great community filled with incredible members such as Haruspis, Covenant Canon, HiddenXperia, LateNightGaming, and Halo Canon. I also had my ride as part of the Halo Archive community, with wonderful discussions and theories throughout the years, and I was fortunate enough to watch the community grow from 40 to over 2000 members and survive several crises until its eventual collapse. During the three or so years that I was part of the Halo Archive (known there as Faber of Will and Might), I got to see video games as far more than just games and develop a passion for delving deep into the lore of video game franchises and their extended media. It is for this reason, that I would like to take a moment and thank every member of the Halo Archive for the incredible conversations and debates we had during that time and particularly Haruspis, whose incredible analyses partially inspired me to start this endeavour (You can visit his blog by clicking here: https://haruspis.blog).

It was during the end of my first year at University that I got into tabletop gaming, but it took several years for me to discover the existence of Dragon Age. Eventually, both the release of disappointing games, like Halo 5: Guardians and Mass Effect Andromeda, and toxic fans caused my interest in these franchises to wane and the Halo Archive to fade. This caused me to search for new franchisees to fall in love with and this is how I got into the world of Dragon Age, starting with Inquisition. THE Dragon Age Setting is currently my favourite fantasy setting and the reason I started making “my own” tabletop RPG for it in order to play Inquisition with my friends. I used the quotation marks in the previous sentence because I started by homebrewing for the Official Tabletop DA RPG with each update and homebrew rule making it more and more distinct from the RPG it derived from and pushing it closer to the feel of the games, with mechanics like Barrier, Guard, Status Effects, Critical Hits, the addition of several dozen warrior, rogue and mage abilities and spells, the removal of the stunt mechanic, the introduction of sustained abilities and many more features.

I have always found Medieval English themed settings and happy worlds boring and dull. I don’t see fiction as escapism from problems but as an opportunity to do things I would normally be unable to do, such as setting foot on alien worlds, standing against the Covenant as they kill billions in their genocidal campaign or simply playing as an elf that throws fireballs at sleeping targets in the midsts of a death cloud and then paralyzing them or scaring them to death by casting Horror. Due to my bias against the classic medieval fantasy setting, Ferelden is the least interesting part of the Dragon Age setting for me. I do enjoy the extravagant gold and blue themes of Orlais, the Necropolis of Nevarra, the villainous city of Kirkwall, the Blighted Anderfels, the decadent Rome/Byzantium inspired Tevinter cities, the war-torn Seheron, the pirate heaven of Estwatch, the exotic Rivain and Par Vollen, the assassin filled Antiva and the mystery of the tainted Black City far more than the mostly bland Ferelden. It is thanks to these locations and their stories that, for me, Thedas trumps any setting with a million races each worth half a page of text or settings made for adventurers that go on a killing spree to get rich within a fixed world that refuses to change.

Thedas is a continent that never stops changing. Old feuds are resolved and new conflicts emerge. Racism, blood magic, squandering nobles, the blight and other horrors make the life of most people in the setting a challenge at best and a nightmare at worst. Within the span of three games, the setting has changed dramatically and the world has moved forward. Thedas is thus very different from what it used to be when Dragon Age Origins released. Being dynamic and reacting to player choice is a very important aspect of the setting, which is both a testament to Bioware’s own talent and the setting’s innate simplicity.

Thedas’ richness doesn’t derive from an army of races or from endless classes and deities, but from its smaller scale, with fewer races and emphasis on the dynamics between their societies and the struggles that various groups, societies, scholars, nations and individuals face. With fewer things in the setting, there is more room for them to be fleshed out and explored in depth. Furthermore, Thedas has a rich history, exposed to players mostly via codex entries written from an in-universe perspective. This allows events to be portrayed differently depending on whose perspective they have been witnessed by, encourages fan discussions and theories, turns new contradicting information into a quest for the truth that often results in revisiting old passages and finding new meanings after certain revelations. Unlike most fictional universes, Dragon Age’s lore takes effort to extract and while this might not be for everyone it has kept the community far more engaged and alive throughout the years.

Thedas is a land full of mysteries filled with danger. The Horror of Hormak, the Black City and the Blights, the Old Gods, Arlathan, the curse of Nahar, the Pyramids of Par Vollen, the Kossith, the ships from beyond the Volca Sea, the Executors, the history of the Dwarves, the Second Sin, the Cekorax and many more are all shrouded by the element of the unknown, which drives the curiosity, fear, dread, nostalgia and most feelings associated with them. It is elements like these that make me want to write about and share with others stories set in this world, whether official or my own.

Thus, after several months of thinking about it, I decided to create my own blog about Dragon Age. The Voice of Ghilan’nain is a blog named after my favourite Elven Goddess, Ghilan’nain, with me acting as an echo of her guiding voice through the world of Thedas. Just like She focused on creation, so will this blog focus on the things that can be, the transformation of what exists and the discussion of content that many people don’t talk about, navigating through the darkest, deepest and most obscure parts of the lore in search of stories, characters, creatures and their potential, expressing it either through my analyses or through attempts at poetry and short story writing. I will also make some posts that serve as feedback for Bioware on issues regarding gameplay mechanics, UI and story and if people are willing I can provide a few builds or ideas for DMs who want to introduce their friends to the world of Thedas through tabletop gaming. With that said, I hope you enjoy reading my future posts and I am looking forward to your feedback, suggestions and comments.

And now the melody begins, calling you to the depths of darkness:

Na melana sah’lin, La mala suledin nadas. Vir’enfenim ghilana Sulevin’an. Ma garas mir renan La ir las mir enansal.

#ghilannain #thedas #thevoiceofghilannain #bioware #dragonage

4 notes · View notes

clonerightsagenda · 5 years

Note

The epilogues look terrible and I don’t want to spend my time reading them... but I love + trust your judgement and your takes on things. Could you summarize them? (No pressure if you don’t want to)

OK, it’s been a few weeks since i read it, but I will do my best.NOTE: This is probably not comprehensive and definitely not objective. As a supplement, I did some poking around, and the MSPA wiki has some bullet points. I also eventually found another summary on tumblr, albeit by someone who also didn’t like it, so it is probably biased as well.

ANOTHER NOTE: Those content warnings weren’t a joke. Below are references to sexual content, assault, suicide, sexism, transphobia, character death, and probably some other stuff.

WHAT HAPPENED:

In the prologue, Rose summons John to inform him that he needs to defeat Lord English right now, or they will all experience terrible consequences. These are mostly meta consequences you can interpret as ‘if we don’t produce new Homestuck content on its 10th anniversary, everyone will give up on this franchise for real, and also canon doesn’t seem stable when the big bad never got beaten’. John goes to visit Roxy and Calliope before he leaves and is given the option to eat either meet or candy. This represents a choice he is supposed to make, and that choice creates two timelines.

In MEAT, John travels back in time and gathers three 16 year old versions of his friends. They confront Caliborn in the battle he represented in his Masterpiece and are sucked into the house juju. Vriska activates it, but not before being pulled into the black hole. Rose and Jade die immediately, with Rose’s body being destroyed and Jade’s falling into the black hole, because why should women get to fight the story’s biggest misogynist. Dave lands a solid hit on English before having his head bitten off Mami from PMMM style. John gets chomped on as well and a gold tooth ends up embedded in his chest. Davepeta appears and drags the wounded LE into the black hole. John finds his father’s wallet, retrieves his car, and slumps inside. Terezi appears, in bad shape after a long time wandering the ring. She seems confused at his state (explained because in CANDY she has been texting that version of him for years). She removes the tooth from his chest and they have sex.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Dave and Karkat have avoided talking about being a relationship for seven years, while Jade harasses them about becoming a threesome. This is explicitly tied to her abandonment issues but also she is referred to as a slut so like. Don’t love that. Jane is running for president, and Dave thinks this is terrible because she’s a woman fascist and doesn’t understand the economy and Karkat should run instead. Other shit is happening but I lost track. Rose is ill because she’s becoming her ‘Ultimate Self’ and seeing all timelines. Dirk claims he’s overcome the same problem and offers to help her but ends up controlling her and revealing he is the one actually writing this narrative. There is a bit where the narration starts addressing the reader directly and then turns orange which I admit is genuinely cool and might have been interesting if done with characters I didn’t actually care about.

Dirk amps up controlling the narrative, directly forcing people to do and think certain things. (For example, he sequesters Rose away in his workshop and tells Kanaya via narration she believes Rose is better off with him, and she uncomfortably agrees without understanding why she thinks that.) He supports Jane’s bid for the presidency, even though she wants to crack down on trolls because they are naturally violent and reproduce too fast. Everyone tries to get Jake’s endorsement because he’s popular, which includes Jane attempting to seduce him in a very uncomfortable scene.Then Jade slips into a nice coma, because it’s not Homestuck without Jade losing her agency, and alt!Calliope starts using her as an avatar to take control of the narrative away from Dirk. They have some back and forth arguments before he is pushed out which, again, is genuinely clever but would be more enjoyable without all the edgy bullshit. Dirk eventually tricks alt!Callie and sedates Jade, taking back control of the story. Jane wins the presidency. Also at some point Meat!Roxy and Callie ID as nonbinary and start using they/them, and narrator!Dirk freaks out about it and misgenders them a lot, which is character assassination bc everyone knows Dirk is a trans icon. Anyway. Dave and Karkat have an awkward talk about their relationship where they keep dancing around things and Dirk tries to force Dave to kiss him. Dave gets frustrated because he’s aware someone is trying to make him do something (like with the Aimless Renegade), and eventually yells at Dirk to get out of his head before kissing Karkat. Terezi brings John back to Earth, and he begins to fade, since apparently LE’s tooth was poisoned with something more powerful than god tier that makes you irrelevant. Possibly a meta commentary on the hero or story not being needed once the big bad is gone. Terezi is sad about this and listens to him bleed while she smells him die. Then Dirk contacts her via narration and implies he can help her. She gets a text (later revealed to be Vriska). Dirk gets a spaceship from Jake after forcing him via narration to grovel about how much he loves him and then rejecting him and flying away with Rose and Terezi in tow. Jade wakes up long enough to tell everyone Dirk’s gone bad before she gets repossessed and starts pointing in his direction, prompting everyone to give chase.

There is a final scene that will make more sense later, so I’ll add it later.

CANDY

John decides not to go fight LE. Roxy is delighted, and they began dating. Calliope tells John it is time to let Gamzee out of the fridge. Gamzee pops out and claims he is redeemed in a long speech making fun of sloppy redemption arcs. He then proceeds to be terrible for the rest of the story.Candy essentially satirizes Harry Potter epilogue style fics. Jane marries Jake (it’s implied she essentially roofies him with the trickster lollipop) and has Gamzee on the side. They have a son named Tavros. John and Roxy have a son named Harry. Rose and Kanaya adopt a troll clone of Vriska and name her Vriska. Jade, Karkat, and Dave are all dating, but Dave and Karkat are miserable. Dirk kills himself when he realizes the timeline went off kilter. Jade’s corpse from the Meat timeline crashes to earth, and in the middle of the funeral (which was genuinely a good scene) she sits up, possessed by alt!Calliope. Alt!Callie sequesters herself on the old meteor, now landed, and explains to Aradia and Sollux that this timeline is a dead end and she is protecting it from the influence of the prince. She also, in a parallel to Dirk’s reveal in Meat, talks about how every narrator has an agenda even if the text is formatted to make you not realize that.Jane becomes a fascist dictator and begins oppressing trolls. Karkat eventually get sick of being in a trio and runs off to be a resistance leader, including getting a sick eye patch (reference to Summer Teen Romance). Meenah stole the Ring of Life from Meat John and lands in the session; she and Karkat begin dating. Other ghosts begin falling from the sky as well, and Gamzee converts them to his redemption religion.John feels like something is really off. His only solace is texting Terezi a lot, and he seems closer to her than he is to his wife. He and Roxy break up for a while and then (non-romantically) reconcile. Jake eventually leaves Jane and takes Tavros with him. Jade and Dave become rebels as well, then Dave meets a hologram of Obama, who helps him attain his ultimate self, putting his soul in a new robot body.

Oh, also Vriska falls out of the sky, has hatesex with Gamzee, kills him, and then talks with Rose and Kanaya’s Vriska about how she loves Terezi. Then she texts her, as seen in the Meat timeline. Isn’t Vriska 13 and Gamzee an adult at this point? Probably. There’s a lot of questionable age stuff in this.

I’m sure I missed some details. Can you tell I’m losing steam.

Anyway, the two last chapters of each section reference the other storyline. At the end of Meat, Lord English’s body falls out of the sky, and alt!Callie (still in Jade’s body) devours it, becoming powerful enough to battle Dirk. Candy!Davebot arrives and he and Aradia jump into the black hole in pursuit.At the end of Candy, Dirk’s ship nears a new planet where he intends a new game of SBURB to be played. Rose is in a robot body serving as his handmaid essentially, and Terezi’s also on board.

TAKEAWAYS:

There are a lot of different interpretations of the epilogue. A mockery of the two extremes of fanfic. Andrew Hussie continuing the theme of ‘all authors are tyrants by nature’ and using his self-insert to display how he hates his own story but also can’t stop telling it. Dirk trying to create conflict by making himself a villain because otherwise they’ll lose relevance and disappear. Musing on how being arbitrarily labeled 'grown up’ when you’re not ready (aka handed godhood by a game that doesn’t understand people) can fuck you up, and there is no single winning screen in life. Just a big old meta experiment on unreliable narrators. I can see where some of this is coming from, but frankly, I found it disturbingly sexist (even if it is intended to be so for effect). A lot of the sex and violence felt over the top and graphic just to be #ow the edge rather than serving any narrative purpose. Also, authors can do what they want with their texts, and they’re allowed to write tragedies, but after Hussie’s self-insert informs Caliborn that the most important stories are about friendship and teamwork and the fandom (that I’ve seen anyway) really responding to the bonds between characters, it felt cruel. That’s my feeling. Not everyone shares it. But hey, I’ve got my solution.

#Anonymous #homestuck//#bluh bluh huge bitching alert

59 notes · View notes

pass-the-bechdel · 5 years

Text

Dollhouse season two full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (thirteen of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

44.96%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Eleven, six of which had a cast of 50%+.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Eighteen. Twelve who appeared in more than one episode, five who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty-three. Twelve who appeared in more than one episode, four who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Rubbish. As with the first season, the show suffers seriously for having no moral compass, it indulges in misogynistic violence and voyeuristic sex crimes as a mainstay, and any attempts to critique its own content are marred by hypocrisy and excuses (average rating of 2.76).

General Season Quality:

Also rubbish. While the majority of the cast are doing a fantastic job despite flimsy, problematic material, and there are a bare few episodes that could be considered good, altogether there’s no cohesion to the story, it lurches and fast-tracks and skips over anything that seems like it would have been a good concept to explore, and in the process it manages to lose any semblance of being about something. It’s just an excuse to stretch some acting chops on different kinds of character templates, and even that, it did badly.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

...so. I guess it’s a ‘nevermind, then’ on the exploration of any of the show’s own invoked themes re: personhood et al. I really thought they did more in that arena, but outside of a handful of single scenes sprinkled across the series, they really never did dig in to their existential concepts or anything that could approximate a broader narrative purpose beyond ‘let’s get Eliza Dushku to embody common sexual fantasies’. It’s ok to do some prompting of meta discussions for the audience and then leave them to fill in the blanks with their own musings, but not at the expense of bothering to say anything about your own subject matter. If you don’t have anything to say, then don’t ask people to listen to you. Keep your gross rape fantasies to yourself (or share with your therapist, damn), and leave the storytelling to people with a story to tell.

Everything that was wrong with season one is still entirely intact in season two, they fixed zero of their problems - they’re still fetishising and excusing rape, shamelessly objectifying and brutalising women, steeping the series in misogyny for no discernible reason, failing to achieve a basic moral underpinning to their content, underusing their quality acting assets while over-using their worst ones, and of course - as above - completely ignoring the need for a cohesive purpose to their own story or even just a ground-level sense that they knew what they were doing (or at least what they WANTED to be doing) with the arc of the narrative. Indeed, not only were all of the first season’s flaws intact, but season two even managed to make many of them worse! Off the top of my head, I’m not sure they made a single good character decision in the entire season, but I’m gonna save that conversation for the full series review so that I can properly compare the changes from one season to the next; there are plenty of other sins in season two to keep me busy for now. The lack of a moral anything (compass, backbone, compunction, whatever you want to call it) became a much bigger problem as the show attempted to escalate the scope of conflict with outside forces - largely, the Rossum corporation who runs the Dollhouses in service of their E-vil Plans - despite its own characters having committed all the same atrocities variously and knowingly, and the sketchy characterisation did a poor job of convincing that some magical moral something-or-other had taken hold between the seasons to give these characters new ethical dimensions that aren’t just blind hypocrisy. But, the biggest flaw of the season - relevant to all other issues but most especially to the lack of a central narrative theme or sense of meaning behind it - was the arc of the...’story’ that the season told. It was a Goddamn disaster, kids.

Pro tip: if you happen to, say, make a tv show that performs badly in the ratings in its first season, but you score a second season anyway, and you’re not confident that you’ll ever get a third...don’t try to jam all of the possible plot you imagined for a long-term series down into one season. It’s also probably a good idea to NOT end your first season with an ambitious flash-forward to an apocalyptic future which you are now irrevocably committed to bringing about in your regular narrative in spite of having only thirteen episodes to do it; a problem compounded by the inclusion of ‘flashbacks’ within that flash-forward, depicting events that you have now made canon only to turn around and nullify your own story by changing your mind about how to have it unfold (in the course of insisting on trying to make the whole thing unfold immediately, with plot that should have taken at least half a season to be explicated instead being fast-tracked into the subplot of a single episode). Don’t do that. Especially, don’t do that if you’re gonna ditch any kind of meaningful character arcs or thematic discussions or anything which would give your story a sense of purpose or cohesion or a mission statement of any kind (have I mentioned that yet? It’s mildly important to storytelling). Choosing to roll out a series of rapidly-accelerated plot events with all the nuance removed for streamlining is patently useless - you’ve removed everything that would make those plot events have value. That’s assuming that there were character beats (beats! Not beatings! This show has an excess of the latter; criminally few of the former) or narrative explorations or conceptual deliberations or somesuch in the original plan, anyway, and the first season did not do a great job of suggesting that there were (just...a better job than season two did). At any rate, better that you spend your time well and sadly never get to conclude the story like you wanted, rather than screwing over your own idea trying to just deliver the cliff notes. Cui bono?

Let’s consider what we got this season: thirteen episodes, and the first three are total Imprint of the Week fodder. A certain amount of episodic adventuring is expected, yes, but it’s a good idea to actually inject some useful plot machinations in there at the same time, and the first three episodes were very weak on both the one-off plot and the inclusion of significant long-term detail. The first two episodes are especially bad for being boring, inconsequential, and failing to capitalise on any interest drummed up by the end of the previous season; both also include teensy extra scenes of Senator Perrin pursuing his investigation into the Dollhouse, though neither creates any tension or interest around it, they literally just amount to ‘here is a guy, he’s gathering evidence’. It’s not exactly a thrilling or detailed introduction to the ‘Dollhouse plant in the government’ plot which comes to a head in a two-parter a few episodes later and then never impacts the story ever again. The story has no chance to build before it’s over: it’s introduced, it escalates, it’s nonsense, and then it’s done (the fact that the entire plot turns out illogical in the extreme really, really steps on any attempt at relevance or use). If you’re not gonna try and make the plot thread at least functional, why waste two whole episodes on it? You’ve only got thirteen, and you already wasted the first three!

I say they wasted the first three episodes, but arguably, it’s more than that: episode four was ‘Belonging’, with the unfortunate decision to explain how Sierra came to be in the Dollhouse by expanding on the existing rape narrative with her abuser, Nolan, and while the episode in itself mostly works (in spite of itself, really), it’s not of any long-term importance outside of some character building/expansion, which is not a complete waste of time but, also, is not turned to a particular purpose. We didn’t need to lose an entire episode on this; we could have built and expanded upon character while dealing with some meaningful plot content, instead of indulging that ol’ rape obsession some more. Similar flaws exist for most of the other episodes of the season - though not entirely useless, spending an episode on an unfocused and largely meaningless Alpha visit in ‘A Love Supreme’ or fast-tracking through Victor’s backstory with the overly-ambitious and ultimately irrelevant military tech in ‘Stop-Loss’ is not a good use of the limited time the series had left to tell its story. And then there was the terrible ‘Meet Jane Doe’, which gave us a time-skip and a bunch of rushed plot to do with Echo learning to master the many personalities composing her identity while Topher mocked up a doomsday device out of thin air back at the Dollhouse: the single most excessively stupid example of what should have been at least a half-season’s worth of plot, instead crammed down into a ridiculously contrived subplot in a single episode. If you’re gonna try and tell several season’s worth of plot in thirteen episodes, you gotta COMMIT, man: hard plot, every episode is essential, every one of them advances your central narrative in some significant way even when it appears you’ve just done an episodic plot, it’s all vital to the endgame. Don’t think you’re gonna tell a few years of story in three episodes, and spend the rest of the time on fetish fantasies. Don’t be that stupid.

As I noted when it happened, ‘The Attic’ is the only genuinely good episode of the season, and not least because it’s the only episode that does a passable job of making it seem like the plot has actually been going somewhere, for a reason, and with intention. It’s still very much a too-little-too-late situation, and the episode does all the heavy-lifting on introducing the puzzle pieces to complete the plot at the last minute, rather than having any of those pieces seeded at an earlier point in the series (the way that pre-planned things in a story that is going somewhere for a reason usually are). It gives us a last minute mystery to solve - who is Rossum’s shadowy founder? - though that turns out to be a very ill-advised mystery (for the calibre of the reveal, for the stupid convenience of having a shadowy founder to rail at, and for the obvious pointlessness of pretending that there’s a singular Boss Battle to be had that will magically dissolve the power of the corporation and its various pre-established players (Harding, Ambrose, and now the addition of Clyde 2.0 as well as ‘the founder’)). It also gives us a final mission - to take out Rossum’s mainframe - though that turns out similarly ill-advised in a more low-key way, since ‘we took down their computers’ is a patently idiotic way to ‘win’ (it’s laughable to pretend that any of the characters could be fooled into thinking that blowing up the Tucson facility would be anything more than an inconvenience to a global medical research corporation with thousands of employees and billions of dollars in resources and a trillion opportunities to store information on non-networked computers or on paper or in any of their numerous potential ‘legit’ published scientific proofs, etc, to say nothing of the fact that the physical tech and the people who built and used it are all still there, and yep, so are all those other Rossum higher-ups and probably even the founder himself, waiting on a harddrive to be put back into play). It all makes for an incredibly weak finisher to the ‘main’ plot, and that’s before we pointlessly bounce into the future again to show that, oh yeah, it WAS all meaningless and our characters are fucking morons who made no difference to anything with that explosion-y mainframe bullshit! The potentially-clever game-changer idea of including the flash-forward to the Thoughtpocalypse at the end of season one becomes a mistake now, when it calls for the waste of the finale on concluding a whole wild story development that the show never got a chance to actually develop at all. Eek. This is not how you storytelling, y’all.

Heavy sigh. Honestly, I really, really thought this show would give me more to talk about, because at first glance it looks complex and stocked with conversation starters and potentially polarising content. Upon analysis, however, the complexity is a sham, the show itself starts no conversations, and the content lacks the nuance necessary to create oppositional interpretations. Ironically, it turns out as empty as the dolls are, simplistic, lacking the self-awareness to reflect on itself and the basic comprehension to fathom morality. It has no personality, no drive, and though at times it shows glimmers of understanding that there could be more to its existence than catering to shallow pleasures, ultimately it never focuses well enough to follow that anywhere. Even its transgressions are bland and predictable, worth calling out - as aggressive misogyny and rape fetishisation always is - but not worth picking apart in detail (because - shock horror - it’s not morally complicated and full of shades of grey, it’s just bad and wrong: it’s very simple and easy to follow, Whedon. Get therapy). If the Dollhouse is all about giving people what they need, well, I think I know what Joss Whedon needs: to shut up, and leave the show-creating to someone who hates women less, and knows how to string an idea into an actual story, more.

#Dollhouse #Dollhouse season two #Bechdel Test #female representation #full season review

4 notes · View notes

themonsterblogofmonsters · 5 years

Text

Monsterblog Guides: How OP is too OP?

Previously - Monsterblog Guide: HP Spell Creation

So, this is a debate you sometimes see in comments. Not always, because some people love power fantasies and I’m not going to tell you not to write what you enjoy... just to remember that just because you enjoy it doesn’t mean it makes for a realistic story. If you wanna write a power fantasy, write it - you don’t need to justify it.

If, however, you want to write something with incredibly powerful characters this debate is going to happen - how overpowered is too overpowered?

1. How many rules are you breaking?

Most universes have rules. As in “you literally cannot do this because that’s not how this world works”. In HP, for example, you cannot raise the dead. Time travel is limited. You cannot create love with magic. Food cannot be conjured. These are rules. This isn’t to say you can’t find ways around these things - rules being bent rather than broken - but if you’re breaking rules then you need to consider why and how.

Why are you breaking them? Is it necessary to the plot? How are you breaking them? Could it be done another way - one which doesn’t require breaking rules?

2. What rules are you bending? How? Why?

... Yeah, how and why are gonna come up a lot.

Anyway... some rules you can get away with breaking or bending. In Sacrifices food can be conjured because we didn’t know of that rule yet and also the one who usually did so was Harry, who the story had established was incredibly magically powerful in a world with magic as a semi-aware entity. That certain rules might bend for someone bearing so much of it makes sense. In Arithmancer’verse (rec post to come, believe me) Hermione doesn’t conjure food so much as use Arithmantic equations and magic closer to alchemy to combine together existing elements in the environment to create food.

There are ways to bend the rules that works within canon. In Sacrifices the rule was bent because we didn’t know it was a rule, because Harry is sufficiently powerful that rules might conceivably bend for him and because its part of the thematic points regarding freedom from bindings - Harry conjures food rather than eat food prepared by enslaved House Elves. In Arithmancer’verse its alchemy rather than transfiguration or conjuring which sidesteps Gamp’s laws entirely, and is necessary due to circumstance, pushing Hermione to try more extreme applications of previous alchemic attempts.

These things, ideally, shouldn’t just be rules bent because you want things to be awesome. They should make some degree of sense and serve to further the plot and your themes.

3. Balance. And. Limitations.

I don’t feel like I need to go over this much again. I’ve already written the Guide for Balance & Limitations - how to keep characters becoming stronger without a fight ever seeming unfair or pointless. You can just read that. If you don’t want to...

Basically: if you can, make sure that one character becoming more powerful doesn’t remove the entire plot. You can’t just make a character so powerful that nothing is a problem anymore unless you’re writing a total power fantasy - and if you are, thats fine. If you’re trying to write something that’s not a total power fantasy, then you need for there to still be conceivable conflict. Arguably, even writing a power fantasy you need some sort of conflict so the characters have something or someone to exert power over.

4. Mod, you’ve said this before!

I know. But then, I was saying it in the context of keeping this balanced and making sure there’s sensible limitations on things. This is talking about whether or not the power you’ve given characters makes sense.

5. So... how OP is too OP?

There’s a few criteria for that, in my book. I’d invite others to make their own lists. For me, though, the list is as follows:

Does the power given remove conflict?

Does the power given make no sense with the existing canon, be that canon-canon or, in the case of AU fanworks, the new universe rules?

Has the writer created something that doesn’t exist in the established world solely for the purpose of making the character more powerful?

Has the writer purposefully broken established canon in order to make something go the character’s way?

Is the character able to get away with anything they want even if it makes no sense?

Is this power something that just this one character has and no other characters have any way to counter it or otherwise fight back with equivalent abilities of their own?

If these all get a yes, then, in my book, I think it’s too OP. This isn’t to say I might not enjoy it - there’s plenty of crack stories that work along these lines that can be quite enjoyable - but I do think that it can be detrimental to a story if mishandled.

#Monsterblog Guide #Monsterblog Guides: How OP is too OP #How OP is Too OP

29 notes · View notes

oc-rehab-centre · 5 years

Text

[HNK Rant/Review] Travis Akasaki Aizawa

Hello guys, gals and other gendered pals~

So, it has been awhile since our last post on this site - but it’s about time for another one, in my opinion. This is mainly because I’ve found myself getting quite irked with a certain OC who seems so incredibly out of place in the fandom he is meant to be in - Houseki No Kuni.

This OC is “Travis Akasaki Aizawa” or White Sapphire, and is owned by Travis Akasaki Aizawa on Amino. We’re going to discuss what makes this character seem so out of place, the major flaws of this character - and the lessons we can learn from this OC.

Artist: Nagis (Ibispaint)

Part 1 - Biography Analysis

There is not that much information in Travis’ bio on the Land of the Lustrous Amino - but what is there is... not the clearest and full of errors. I don’t know for certain if the user’s first language is English, so I won’t give too much thought to the awkward sentence structures and typos.

Nick Name: Travis

Full Name: Travis Akasaki Aizawa

In the Houseki No Kuni universe, gems do not have ‘given names’. Sure, in some cases - they have nicknames, like Alexandrite who goes by human nicknames like Alex-chan and Lexi-chan, but for something as random as Travis Alasalo Aizwa, let alone Travis seems completely out of place and irrelevant. It does not relate at all with the type of gem Travis is, which is apparently a mix of Opelite and Sapphire. The creator revealed that Travis’ name was given to him by his Sensei - which doesn’t make things any less random and out of place. since the name is a combination of Western and East Asian names, and adds literally nothing to his character.

Gen species: MixtenGem (not a normal species)

*inhale* Okay, no. This breaks the canon immensely. I cannot stand when in universes with very set species - when people introduce new ones. In Houseki No Kuni, there are three (humanoid/sentient) species: the Gems, the Admirabilis and the Moon People. While I can understand that a Mixtengem is likely a subspecies of sorts - the creator’s explanations of it not only show a poor understanding of science and chemistry, but is just a strange mish-mash of lore from various fandoms. I would suggest just completely omitting this idea, it detracts from the OC more than it adds, and there is really very little that makes this character appealing to a Houseki No Kuni fan.

Gem: Opelite+Sapphire

Age: 49800 years old

I have no problem with the gem - but the age, holy fuck, that age... That is a little much, even for a gem. The timeline for Houseki No Kuni is rather obscure, we don’t know when the humans spit into the three canon species, but this is older by the canon gems by a long shot. Yellow Diamond is the oldest Gem we know the age of and they are just shy of 3,800 years old at this point. I would recommend making Travis closer to the age of the known gems, if anything.

Hardnes: 7.2

This is a very strange hardness, considering Opalite has a hardness of 5.5-6.5 Mohs and Sapphire has a hardness of 9 Mohs. This number is not even between these gems. Maybe the parts of Travis which are Opalite should be 5.5=6.5 while the Sapphire parts are 9. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with the Mixtengem thing, in all honesty, I couldn’t understand the logic after reading through it a few times.

Work partners: Nagisa, Ray

I’m imagining these are more of those Mixtengems. Same thing applies - this idea of human names is a very out of place trait.

Team: Team 2 (The Protector)

Like: Ray,Zero,Hosuh,Cryaotic,Nagisa, Daniel,Yusei,Stampy,Sam,Jett,Grian Sensei,and Vera

Dislike: lizzy,Amy,and Steveen (because they betray him and they become one of the lunarium team)

Alright. Let’s talk about some of the names here. I’m sure some of these names look familiar. Cryaotic? Grian, at the very least? I didn’t have to do much research to find out these names - and let me say, this was my immediate reaction:

For those who haven’t caught on - some of the characters listed here - are YouTubers. Yes - YouTubers. It is quite obvious that Travis’ creator is incorporating their love for YouTubers and the YouTube fandom into their OC. I just... It is bad to use inspiration from other fandoms for an OC of a specific fandom. This is like - making an OC for Sword Art Online with a character named “Naruto”. (Just trying to make a reference that makes sense.)

The YouTube Fandom and the Houseki No Kuni Fandom are just two fandoms that should not blend when making an OC for one universe. Sure, a YouTube x Houseki No Kuni crossover/AU could work - but do not put an AU into your OC’s canon biography!

I’ve got no beef with the YouTube Fandom nor the YouTubers, but they are out of place in this OCs biography.

Job : Day guard/ morning patrol, help the other find herbs , and report (some times help Nagisa)

Notes + Summary

And, that is all there is to this character’s biography, really. Here are some of the major flaws, I already discussed but will discuss again.

When creating an OC for a specific fandom, you should try to make sure everything about that OC is relevant to that universe. Travis is a perfect example of what I like to call a “Frankenstein OC”, which is pretty much an OC which borrows certain elements of their character from other fandoms in a very blatant and obvious way. All OC creators get their inspiration from somewhere, but when the sources are obvious - it can detract from the character.

Travis’ concept of Mixtengems needs serious improving upon. The chemistry and the science behind it lack knowledge and the concept seems a little less than well thought out. I do not like this idea of a new species, because it breaks the canon rules of Houseki No Kuni so much. I would suggest completely abandoning this idea, and making the character just a regular gem, like the canon characters and like most HNK OCs.

Travis’ name can just be his gem type. It would certainly help him fit a little better into the universe if the creator just sacrificed the name.

Remove the YouTuber references! This is a Houseki No Kuni (version) of your OC, so the characters in his biography should not be from the YouTube Fandom!!

It doesn’t help that the creator of this OC seems to use Travis in multiple universes. I’m scared to see just how many irrelevant references there are in the other versions of Travis’ bio - but believe me, with Travis in the Houseki No Kuni universe, he definitely does not fit.

Overall, I think this OC deserves a final rating of 2/10. Their creativity and attempts to create an original story line and concept of a new species in the series are admirable, and their artwork is lovely and illustrate their OC quite well.

Apart from that, however, the character is so estranged from the canon rules of Houseki No Kuni and includes a variety of elements and characters pulled from other fandoms.

Ciao!

#OC Review #Houseki No Kuni OC #Land of the Lustrous OC #hnk oc #lotl oc

6 notes · View notes

finallyindigo · 4 years

Text

“The Snare” Captures How Women Internalize Trauma

About two thirds of the way through The Snare, Elizabeth Spencer’s seventh novel, the protagonist, Julia Garrett, has the following exchange with her uncle, Maurice (who speaks first):

“Don’t let the past pile up, darling. It’s bad, but it’s gone and we can’t help it. Think of the wake of the boat.”

“Oh, no, that won’t work . . . it’s all around . . . around. . . .”

The line is quintessential Julia, whose every word seems matched not just to the present moment but to a personal inquiry or revelation. In this scene, she is specifically grieving the sudden death of her former lover, a wealthy (and married) Mississippi man named Martin. More broadly, though, she is articulating the root of her existential problem��the thing that, in the course of 400 pages, carries her to the brink of self-destruction—which is that Julia cannot, perhaps does not want to, escape her traumatic past.

Spencer’s gift for characterization reaches enviable depth in The Snare. On the surface, Julia Garrett is a society girl who pursues fulfillment in the seedy underbelly of post-war New Orleans. But this overarching plotline is anchored by the protagonist’s interior turmoil, which is both nebulous and rife with conflict. We spend a lot of time in Julia’s head, reflecting on her past and watching her cobble together abusive events with survivalist instincts. Chief among her preoccupations—what prompts her routine flashbacks and uncertain streams of consciousness—are her abandonment by her father and her relationship with her great-uncle and Maurice’s father, Henri “Dev” Devigny.

Though long dead at the start of the book, Dev is the subject of Julia’s love and revulsion, the figure who inspires her to consider herself both a vibrant, sensual “creature” and a whore. For Julia, Dev is “a constant heavy sun along the horizon of her spirit self,” both illuminating and blinding, comforting and oppressive. The implication is that Dev sexually manipulated Julia from the age of six, but Spencer never states this explicitly. Rather, she hews to the intimate third-person perspective that dominates the novel, an authorial choice that creates narrative tension and feels authentic to the way many women process sexual trauma. Julia cannot name what happened to her, so Spencer resists rendering it in categorical terms.

Spencer, who died in December, at age 98, had a penchant for writing characters who are concerned with their pasts. Frequently, they conduct themselves within their own historical contexts, recalling family sagas and ancient grievances amid ordinary affairs—an engagement party, a Christmas pageant, a vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Often, they are Southern, reflecting Spencer’s own heritage as a native Mississippian, and as a person who, like me, was born into a cultural obsession with bearing and unravelling legacies. Early in her career, critics likened her to Faulkner, though she resisted the comparison, citing her subject as the sole similarity. In 1989, she told The Paris Review, “If my material seems like his, as I say, it must be that we are both looking at the same society.”

Read it: Ekosistem Digital

When she left the South—for Italy and, later, Canada—her fictional landscapes shifted, too, though her interest in familial burdens and societal constraints remained constant. For some readers, it was this focus that cemented her as a next-generation Faulkner. Others saw glimmers of Henry James in her tales about Americans abroad. As I make my way through her astonishing body of work, I find myself thinking most often of her friend Alice Munro, so penetrating is her insight into female experiences of complex class structures and rigid social mores.

And yet, despite the fact that her name often appears in grand company, and despite her prize-winning canon that includes nine novels, a memoir, and six collections of short stories, Spencer is largely overlooked in contemporary literary circles. Her best-known work is The Light in the Piazza, a novella she published in 1960 and later called her albatross. “It probably is the real thing,” she said. “But it only took me, all told, about a month to write, whereas some of my other novels—the longer ones—took years.”

Her trauma exists in the backdrop of her quest for self-actualization, an honest reflection of how many women move through their lives.

The Snare is one such novel. It was published nearly five decades ago, but I first encountered it late last August, while entrenched in a reading cycle that seemed pulled from a graduate seminar in #MeToo-era literature. Piled with books like Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise, Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, and Julia Phillips’s Disappearing Earth, my desk signaled my devotion to contemporary examinations of gender and power. In this sense, I was primed to appreciate The Snare as a significant book, one that explores female identity with nuanced precision, and one that captures the messy and prolonged impact of sexual trauma. Immediately, I was drawn to Spencer’s deep exploration of Julia Garrett’s psyche and the way she wields narrative ambiguity to convey the detachment and confusion with which many women internalize abusive events. For all the broadening of conversations around sexual violence that has occurred over the past two years—for all the brilliant books I’ve consumed that deal explicitly and painfully with the subject—I am aware that navigating the aftermath of such a trauma is confusing and, often, intensely private. As she considers the qualities that separate her from her upper-crust society and propel her toward an electric yet dangerous and ultimately violent lifestyle, Julia Garrett struggles in isolation to understand her past. It is not surprising that Dev finds his way into her tortuous musings. “What was it Dev, the old man, had said?” she thinks, at one point. “‘Passion is what you’ve either got or haven’t got. . . .’ Out of such scraps she had stuck her own truth together.”

In many ways, The Snare is a feminist novel, far ahead of its time in its handling of female sexuality and desire, as well as the influence of early and unwanted experiences. Among works aimed at deepening mainstream discussions about sexual exploitation, it becomes essential reading; but one cannot claim the subject as the book’s central concern. Probably, this is why I like it so much. What occurred between Dev and Julia slinks through her mind, never revealing itself as a certain memory and yet never receding completely. Her trauma exists in the backdrop of her quest for self-actualization, which strikes me as an honest reflection of how many women move through their lives.

It is worth noting that what is so potent to the contemporary reader barely registered with the book’s initial critics. One needs only a cursory grasp of cultural history to imagine why. The Snare was first published in 1972, a year before the term “domestic violence” entered the American lexicon, and two years before Barnes v. Train attempted to tackle workplace power dynamics. Issues of child sexual abuse hardly resonated in the public consciousness and would not garner substantial legal attention until the enactment of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, in 1974. Spencer’s novel incorporates these themes to varying degrees, usually with the type of subtle probing that suits the introspective Julia. Specifically, Spencer’s deliberate blurring of Julia’s past trauma elicited confusion among reviewers in an era when Americans had, at best, an inchoate appreciation for the sexual autonomy of women and girls.

The novel received a lackluster review in the New York Times and a misogynistic one in Kirkus Reviews. (What the Times described as narrative complexity Kirkus labeled as melodrama, declaring that The Snare was not far removed from “Southern belle lettres.”) The Georgia Review picked up on the necessity of Spencer’s painstaking attention to her protagonist’s history and interiority—elements the Times alternatively described as “the novel’s most damaging flaw”—but determined that the structure was too elevated for the book’s thematic content. This, too, has a sexist ring, considering the great extent to which female desire propels the storyline.

The blurring of Julia’s past trauma elicited confusion in an era when Americans had an inchoate appreciation for the sexual autonomy of women and girls.

Among these pieces of criticism, what was largely agreed upon was the plot. In great or spare detail, each described the events of the book in a similar fashion: Julia Garrett, the adopted niece of Maurice and Isabel Devigny, a respectable New Orleans couple, is tired of her well-bred lifestyle. She seeks excitement with Jake Springland, an aspiring musician and somewhat ambivalent disciple of a religious zealot. With Jake, Julia enters a world of late-night jazz shows and drug dealers and, soon, murder. The novel begins in the 1950s and spans at least a decade, thrusting a clash of societal standards into the backdrop of Julia’s experience. (Her roommate, Edie, a girl from “some dusty little dried-up town,” is her prudish foil.) Julia is, as the book’s title suggests, resisting the snare of the stifling and polite realm in which she was raised; but she is caught nonetheless by a confluence of her own impulses.

The preeminent Spencer scholar, Peggy Prenshaw, further elucidated the central themes of The Snare in 1993, when she wrote an introduction to the book on the occasion of its paperback release. “Julia Garrett,” Prenshaw writes, “seems a misfit, a woman enlivened by sexual experience and nearly destroyed by it, a woman bored by status-seeking and acquisitiveness, whose indifference brings her to the edge of hunger and homelessness.” She goes on to explain that the novel’s setting in New Orleans mirrors Julia’s seductive power and dueling instincts. Like Julia, Prenshaw says, the city is steeped in manners and tradition, but beneath its glossy exterior it is an exotic, indulgent place.

Prenshaw also references the novel’s mixed critical reception, noting the issues reviewers had with narrative ambiguity, but she does not fully explore the resonance of this authorial choice with the book’s violent plot points. Spencer’s rendering of Julia’s darkest moments is frenetic and fragmentary, allowing certain mysteries to rest in the reader’s mind as uncomfortably as they do in Julia’s. In these scenes, the events are clear, but their details are often foggy, punctuated by an image here, a sensation there. We see, for example, the flash of a blade held to Julia’s neck and glimpse, through euphemistic language, the shame she associates with what follows. As in, “After that . . .” and “I’m just going to call it an awful headache.” For Julia, what is contained in the words that and it is unspeakable, even as it holds dominion over her identity.

Crucially, vagueness distinguishes Julia’s memories of her relationship with Dev. Speaking of her protagonist in 1990, Spencer said, “Her early experience with her guardian mentor, . . . a French Cajun man who may or may not have seduced her, had a profound effect on her.” Prenshaw interprets this effect decisively. “The indisputable fact seems to be that Julia does not regard the relationship with Dev as injurious. If corrupting, it was a necessary and inevitable introduction to the ‘crooked world.’” This statement aligns imperfectly with my own impression, because it ignores the yearning that is so critical to Julia’s idea of herself. She does not want to regard the relationship with Dev as injurious. She wants to imagine it as inevitable.

Spencer makes clear that, for Julia, it is easier to live with a terrible thing when it is remembered indistinctly. Julia’s past with Dev haunts the novel because it is essential to how she views herself, and yet she is unable to define it. Violence and sexual exploitation pervade her adult life, too, and yet she never names it as such. Rather, she absorbs it all with a pronounced detachment, as though each experience is the logical conclusion of who she is in the world. After the doctor for whom she briefly works as a receptionist chases her around the office, she thinks: “. . . life was more peaceful than not with him, now that he’d made his pass.” After Jake Springland, her musician boyfriend, rapes and beats her, she thinks: “Why didn’t I find somebody good?” and then concludes that “she hadn’t because she hadn’t wanted to.” She is kidnapped twice, thanks to her association with Jake, and subjected to torture. After the first time, she thinks: “It was something in me . . . Something that wanted to go down forever, to hit the absolute muddy bottom where there’s nothing but old beer cans, fishhooks and garbage.” After the second time, she thinks: “She would gladly live like an animal, simply, instinctively, for the day only.”

For Julia, it is easier to live with a terrible thing when it is remembered indistinctly.

Julia’s enthusiasm for New Orleans and its various vices—her sensual and subversive nature—is palpable and seemingly within her control. From the start she is an intelligent woman who knows her sexual power. But as we navigate the conflicting aspects of her mentality, we learn that her empowerment is marked by shame. At times, she reduces herself to her sexuality. Dressing for a courtroom gallery: “Might as well try to de-sex herself, she thought, as stamp out her natural looks.” Her early sexualization by Dev forms a critical aspect of her identity and self-worth, convincing her that she is incongruous with anything virtuous. She thinks, “The idea of goodness beckons forever to those who can’t have it, but once they catch up to it by luck or accident, they immediately feel uneasy, restless, miserable.”

This vivid interiority is what is largely missing from any summary or critical analysis of The Snare. How Julia decodes her own experiences is a vital aspect of the novel that seems only to have puzzled reviewers in 1972 and failed to thoroughly engage scholars in the following decades. I only learned of the book because several people recommended it to me. Each had read my work and assumed I would appreciate Spencer’s meticulous characterization of Julia Garrett. But at some early point in my first reading, Julia began to resonate as more than a technical feat. We are wildly different people, and yet I identify with her tendency toward self-examination through imperfect recollections. I possess the kind of memory that blurs even the recent past. It recalls the worst things dimly and everything else with rosy nostalgia. This has the effect of making me suspicious of my negative or painful emotions. I am unskilled at relaying the detailed origins of my deepest wounds without a large amount of ambiguity. Spencer captures this deficiency, too. After Jake assaults and abandons her, Julia says, “I don’t think I was even born a virgin.” Her effort to make sense into the plainly nonsensical seems to me like an inherited impulse, something derived from generations of cultural stagnation around gender-based violence.

Months before her death, I spoke with Elizabeth Spencer over the phone. She talked about the months she spent in New Orleans, researching the novel’s setting, and recalled her use of narrative ambiguity as the deliberate choice I had assumed it was. And yet, I absorbed from her a sense that her fixation on Julia’s past diverged from my own. “I don’t spend too much time psychoanalyzing,” she said. I felt somewhat disappointed by her answer, at first. So much of Julia’s persona appears drawn from an intellectual understanding of the functional ways in which human beings process trauma. But maybe Spencer’s more intuitive approach is what accounts for her novel’s brilliance. Perhaps her resistance to determining direct cause and effect is what allowed her to craft such a complicated and authentic character. Julia is not whittled into a particular set of psychiatric ailments, and her interior current is rich and evolving, never cyclical, never wholly diminishing. Spencer allows her protagonist a limitless quality, that of a woman constantly interpreting and reinterpreting her place in the world through her experiences. Who among us isn’t?

About the Author Caroline McCoy’s work appears or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Blackbird, Lit Hub, The Bitter Southerner and others. She has received residencies and fellowships from Crosstown Arts, in Memphis, and Emerson College, where she earned her MFA in 2019.

Source: electricliterature.com/the-past-is-present-in-the-snare/

0 notes

nyxelestia · 7 years

Text

Racism in the Teen Wolf Fandom

[This post originally tagged several people I was directly addressing, as I was expecting it to mostly be reblogged by them and their followers, with maybe a small handful of people I asked to take a look at this post even bothering to read this behemoth, let alone share it. However, a lot more people than I expected paid attention to and shared this post, including a blog that dedicates itself to highlighting racism in fandom. In the interests of preventing "raiding"/dogpiling behavior against the people I addressed this post to, I have removed their handles.]

tl;dr - I don't actually believe any of you are racists, no more than I am, than we all are by virtue of being raised in a white-centric culture, internalizing the attitudes expressed by our media and community, and carrying those attitudes with us into fandom. But that is all the more reason we need to address bigotry in our communities, no matter how passive or benign or minor, because that is the only way to engender change in this fandom, in fandom in general, and in ourselves. I take issue with your guys' posts and meta not because I think everyone should worship Scott - hey, he's not my #1 fave either - or because I think he is perfect (no one is, perfect characters are boring). I take issue with the fact a lot of your logic, meta, and analyses rely on the same racist arguments that permeate mainstream media. I object to the casual dismissal of canonical events, and the way headcanons and assumptions are treated as canon when analyzing the show (especially when they are overwhelmingly skewed a certain direction). And I object to the fact every attempt by myself and many, many others to point all of this out is often met with little more than dismissing everything with the vague claim that we're "too sensitive" and "see racism everywhere" and "are only using buzzwords". I don't think any of you are racists, but I think all of you have utilized or enabled racist rhetoric when talking about Scott (and several other characters, but primarily Scott, for reasons I explain down below).

I'm temporarily disabling anon - either one of you, or one of your followers, constantly fills my inbox with misogynistic slurs every time I speak up against bigotry in fandom, and I just do not have the time to IP block each one. I just got this lovely one just yesterday:

(I and everyone else who talk about racism in Teen Wolf fandom are accused of "using buzzwords", while I'm getting anons who accuse me of misogyny while calling me a cunt. Yay irony.)

If you want to yell at me, do it under your own name. And yes, out of all the people circle-jerking on the original post, I blocked the one who used name-calling now, and has demonstrated some remarkably immature behavior in the past. If bhadpodcast is going to act and post like I blocked them, I might as well actually block them and save myself the headache. They can still relay messages to me through one of you. The rest of you have demonstrated yourself to be open-minded and willing to listen to logical arguments in the past (or I don't know you well enough to assume that you'll ignore my words and skip straight to the name-calling) which is why I've tagged you.

This is a rodeo I've ridden before, and while I can always hope for change, the reality is that I have already expressed all of this in meta before, and that I've spoken to most of you directly about all of this. I'm familiar with the arguments you make, and I'm tired. So it's going to take pretty much all of my self-control to do this, but no matter what you reblog, I am not going to respond. I'm not going to get caught up in the tactics of deflection and distraction, I'm not going to let you draw me into petty arguments on isolated comments and use that as an excuse to ignore the overwhelming majority of this post, and I'm not interested in rehashing arguments I've already had a dozen times over with almost all of you at one point or another.

If you actually read this entire thing and have an honest rebuttal to something I stated below, and its something that is based in the canonical source material, is not contradicted by other canonical source material, and is not contingent on a headcanon, my Messenger is open. Otherwise, it's been good talking to you, and I'm sure we'll be talking about all of this again, soon enough. But I am stating my piece and peacing out, because I need to save up my energy for the next time this wank comes around - and given the way fandom has shown itself to act in the past (and the fact racism has been around far, far longer than television, letalone fandom), that is not an 'if', but a 'when'.

Below the cut:

1.) Yes, Scott is a character of color, I don't care what country you're in.

2.) The fact that most of the racism in Teen Wolf fandom comes in microaggressions does not make it less racist.

3.) Actors and characters are held to tremendously disparate double standards and this is a huge problem, probably the biggest one.

4.) Racism of Teen Wolf fandom is highly reflective of racism offline/in the "real world".

On Scott actually being a character of color

Now, first and foremost - I don't really care what country you are from, Scott is a character of color. I get that some of you come from backgrounds where someone with his complexion is coded as white, but ignoring the fact that 1.) internalized racism is as much of a problem as external racism and 2.) most of ya'll have your own serious problems with colorism and race (where do you think America got it from?), the reality is that you are watching an American TV show, filmed using Amercian actors and and in a setting whose populace is designed to look American. On top of that, most of you have consumed plenty of American media before Teen Wolf, or media that reflects/contains the same problems with colorism and racism as American media.

Even if you did not perceive Scott as white on your first watch, the majority of the target audience did, a significant portion of your meta still used logic and arguments saturated in racist rhetorical history (American racism and otherwise), and many of your character delineations still fell along racial lines (i.e. which characters you headcanon as being secretly evil or having ulterior motives, and which ones you headcanon as secretly not being as evil as they act). As this article points out, the actual TV show has a pretty sketchy history when it comes to its treatment of non white, non male characters - granted, it's nothing new, most TV shows do this or something like this, as does most media in general. But "everyone else does it" and "it's always been this way" has never been an excuse before, and Teen Wolf doesn't get to start now.

On top of that, even if you personally came from a country with no ties to or influences from Western racism at all, you are still engaging in a fandom that is largely rooted in America, with American racial preconceptions, and dealing with American racial norms. Much of my issues with racism in your posts, meta, and reponses is not that an individual is immediately being racist, but rather are perpetuating racist misconstructions.

i.e. Stiles gets struggles on a test, and it's because he has ADHD, so/and he's still a genius, which is reinforced by all the times outside of school. Allison openly admits to having had to repeat a year before and failing a class now, and it's attributed to familial and superantural stress. But Scott gets a bad grade, he's an idiot, and the idea that he "never" does anything outside of school. You aren't going to call Scott stupid because of his ethnicity. But by taking away situations in which he has demonstrated intelligence and cunning and attributing it to someone else, you reinforce anti-Scott fans' rhetoric that Scott is an idiot who can't do anything, most of which traces back to racial stereotypes about Latino boys in the American education system. This is just one of many, many examples.

I understand why you feel like the fact you didn't code Scott as white on your first watch means you don't and can't possibly have racist attitudes towards him or express it in meta. But the thing is, bigotry is rarely about you individually, it's almost always about how you connect to and relate to a broader tradition of oppression and marginalization. There is not a single English-speaking or European country that does not currently have problems with racism and colorism, and while the nuances of how racism manifests varies from country to country, the traditions, media trends, and social habits do not - which is why the fact that people from different countries perceive characters' a little differently based on their appearances, the underlying rhetoric and logic is still the same.

Teen Wolf Fandom Racism

In the post this came clusterfuck from, the person I was responding to literally says, 'the hero is not a hero, and the villain IS the hero'. The fact that she didn't actually say their races doesn't change the fact all the positive attributes or successes of the character of color were projected onto white characters, while supporting the idea that the character of color is evil. She literally removed the character of color from the story, by claiming that the adult werewolf is actually the "teen wolf". AUs are fine and dandy and dark AUs are a lot of fun. But we call them AUs for a reason. The show itself is one created by people, not some documentary about real life events. The story presented is the story intended, and the post is one which undermines that story in order to demonize a character of color, while also deifying white characters, in a way that is contingent of separating the character of color from his own story and plastering his story onto white characters.

It's a not-so-micro microaggression. Just because you don't intend a certain bias, does not mean you are not acting it out or perpetuating it. Just because you are not intentionally judging someone on the basis of race, does not eliminate the fact you (and I) were raised in a very racist culture, and especially in a racist media environment, and express racialized judgments without intending it. We all do this - up until her library scene with Mason in Season 5, I was doing this with Kira all the time. And I've also fallen prey to the tendency to sideline Boyd. When I recognized that I ponder the stories of white characters who has as much screen time as him or even less so, I strove to change that.

This article explains the way fandom treats characters of color and how erasure manifests in fandom, and very specifically #3 in to one of you whose meta I was responding to before. The article is primarily about shipping, but it also specifically addresses the demonization of Deaton, and other characters of color, in the Teen Wolf fandom, and puts these into the context of fandom racism in general, not just Teen Wolf. In particular:

When characters of color are distanced from their triumphs and relationships in canon via headcanon, photo manipulations/edits, or simply not being written or drawn into fanworks, it’s an attempt to minimize the importance of the character. Whether or not it’s a subconscious or conscious distancing, the fact of the matter is that fandom does this on the regular and it usually only benefits white characters (and largely white fans) because it takes importance away from the few characters of color that the canon gives us.

This is literally erasing a character of color and replacing him with a white character, who the fuck thought this was okay? I get that this was a Stiles-centric event, but if you can smoothly switch out heads and paste in characters, then you can damn well make your own banner pulling together all the characters independently, without erasing the character of color and pasting a white character over him.

On top of that, the post points out how much racism in fandom manifests as separating characters of color from their white friend.

Take a look at the finale of Season 2. We never once see Stiles' reaction to Gerard (he wasn't even there, yet). Only edited for size and brightness, here is Stiles' entrance to the scene - after Gerard has already collapsed from the mountain ash:

Incidentally, the show never explains how Stiles actually knew to go to this warehouse in the first place, and at the the beginning of the scene, it was Scott, Chris, and Isaac who arrived here first, setting the location for the finale. There are a lot of possible explanations for all of these. But fandom only treats one as if it were canon, while rarely or never mentioning the other, equally likely, possibility. Why? Because that creates a separation between Scott and Stiles (despite/especially because of the fact the season literally ends with the two of them goofing off together).

The very ending of the season is about Scott and Stiles playing lacrosse together after Scott respectfully walks away from Allison when she breaks up with him, but how many post-S2 fics start out with Stiles feeling lonely because Scott abandoned him for Allison? We see Stiles discovering the alpha symbol and learning about the alpha pack at the same time as Scott at the beginning of Season 3A - yet why do so many people talk about Stiles helping Derek look for them over the summer as if it were canon? (In the interest of demonstrating full disclosure about our own mistakes, even I used to think this, just because it appeared in fanfic so many times. It wasn't until my second watch of S3 that I realized Stiles hadn't canonically been helping Derek look for Erica and Boyd, or known about the alpha pack beforehand.)

(Sloppy gif is sloppy. Derek and Scott were talking about alphas, so Derek actually said "A pack of them." This conversation was interspersed with cuts from the Braeden and Alpha Pack fight scene, so the awkward jumps are from cutting those out.)

This unconscious racism also manifests in how fandom treats actors of color in the fandom, and in Teen Wolf fandom.

Dylan O'Brien made a joke about violating native law and taking advantage of sacred land for his own personal humor, and fandom largely forgot about it in a week. Tyler Posey makes a joke about being gay, and fandom still rails at him over it. Tyler and Dylan should be held accountable to the same standards. Both of them made a stupid, shitty joke, and both apologized pretty quickly. Only one of them is still being taken to task for it.

One Tyler calls Sterek twisted and bizarre, the other Tyler calls Sterek disrespectful. Only one is taken to task over it, and it's the one who was routinely harassed about this ship, whose character is almost systemically marginalized from his own TV show, and whose character's death was being advocated to make another character into the lead of the show.

For those who want more quantative evidence

The number of fanworks about Scott compared to Stiles and Derek is ridiculous. On its own, in the context of a fandom that wasn't so otherwise racist or engaging in racist rhetoric and behavior, I'd buy that it was because there are many reasons why someone could identify with Stiles and Derek more than Scott. But most of the reasons people profess for identifying with Stiles - complexity, mental illness, etc., - are also attributes that apply to Scott's character, which means if you eliminate the things that are same, the racial difference becomes much, MUCH more prominent.

This is before getting into the fact that if you go into the Scott McCall tag right now, most of the fics (based on other tags, and summaries) aren't even about him, but about Stiles and/or Derek. Out of the 10 results in the first page when I just checked, only 1 had a summary that wasn't about Stiles or Derek. And it's really hard to take "Scott is just not that interesting" too seriously when I see how many people have forgotten really engaging scenes and stories with him, and how often people think a scene between him and either Stiles or Derek was actually between Stiles and Derek - and not him - in the show. People erase Scott from his own story, then claim he has no story.

Other Prominent Examples and Points of Contention

We live in a culture that romanticizes white pain in media, and dismisses the experiences and pain of non-white characters. Western audiences are trained and predisposed to dismissing characters of color, their experiences, their pain, and their development - or to taking these experiences and projecting them onto white characters. People are culturally trained to romanticize white, male suffering (which they do with Derek and Stiles), and dismiss men of color or their needs or pain (which they do with Scott).

To put it more bluntly, people will make a hundred gifsets about Stiles crying in the waiting room, but barely a dozen of Scott crying into his mother's arms. There are a hundred gifsets of Stiles conning Derek into a striptease in the first season, but barely any of Scott admitting he'd made a mistake in accusing Derek of murder, and trying to fix it. Does anyone remember that while Stiles and Derek were paralyzed on the floor of the police station in Matt's rampage, Scott had been shot? I've seen hundreds of gifs and images made of Stiles and Derek's pool scene - but I can't remember ever seeing a gifset about Gerard torturing Scott after that, stabbing him and holding the knife in while threatening his mother. And oh, hey, do you remember what Scott was dealing with during the pool scene?

No one is actively racist against Scott, but the implications that he's never changed, that he's never suffered, that he has no story, etc. etc. that so much of the anti-Scott meta is built upon - those are because people just dismiss his experiences and his story, without ever once actually thinking about it. They dismiss it when they watch it, and then again when they make a million gifs about Stiles and Derek's experiences, yet only a fraction as many about Scott's experiences.

This post illustrates my point quite nicely.

It's a pair of gifs from the first season about the boys after Hunters show up at the school, with feel good tags about Stiles "swooping in to save Derek". But here's the thing, those gifs have been edited to cut out Scott from the scene. Scott was the one driving Derek's car to rescue them. *Scott was was saving Derek too.* They were BOTH saving Derek's ass in here, but the gifs are edited to only show Stiles, and the tags only talk about Stiles. If you didn't actually watch this scene yourself, you probably wouldn't know that Scott was even there, let alone the fact the scene was primarily between him and Derek, not Stiles and Derek. How often do we see characters of color in critical roles get dismissed as "support staff"? Scott is "just" the getaway driver, so he's not important anymore to this scene, he no longer exists, only Stiles does.

(This can be a cute Sterek moment, but it can also be a cute Scerek moment and McHaleinski moment. Stiles and Derek actually have the least interaction in this scene, and Stiles is literally in the backseat and mostly in the background of the scene, which is focused on Derek and Scott.)

So now a lot of people are seeing this gifset, and not just internalizing those feel-good tags - they are internalizing the idea that it was only Stiles saving Derek, conveniently forgetting that Scott was even there. On top of that, the ensuing dialogue involves Scott admitting he made a mistake in accusing Derek of murder when he thought Derek was dead, and trying to fix the problem - but how many meta accuse him of never changing, admitting his mistakes, or addressing problems that he caused?

And this is just one example, from the very first season.

On top of that, that scene was also where Stiles and Derek find out the symbol Derek was investigating was on Allison's pendant. The next scene is Stiles pushing Scott to ignore Allison's need for space, in order to get that necklace - but Scott is the one who is blamed for "emotionally abusing her/manipulating her" for trying to reach out to her. I'd bet money that if Scott had decided to respect Allison's space, fandom would be decrying him for not helping Stiles and Derek hunt down an actual killer just because he didn't want to make a teenaged girl he barely knew a little uncomfortable. :|

Other Double Standards

Scott is called an abuser for levels of interpersonal violence that Stiles and Derek are constantly excused for it. Scott lies, and is called manipulative, Stiles lies, and he's just trying to protect people. People in fandom say that Derek is "violent, but not abusive", despite recurring acts of violence against relatively vulnerable characters who are under his care, yet they call Scott an abuser for all of two instances of lashing out at Isaac over something stupid.

Alan Deaton gets headcanons painting him as evil because he withholds information from the main characters. Stiles withholds information from the other characters, and he's just traumatized and scared.

Marin Morrell said if no other solutions to the nogitsune problem was found, then she'd kill one teenager who they already have confirmed is the source/host of the villain, in order to protect the rest of the town from the definite threat. Derek nearly murdered an innocent teenager, hoped for and attempted to engineer the death of another teenager, and dragged three more teenagers into a violent situation which they had little understanding of because he needed a pack (the alpha pack didn't come until later). But he is not called a villain at nearly half the rate Morrell is, if at all outside of the anti-Derek fandom. (Side note: neither of them are villains. Both of them are stuck dealing with the actual villains who've forced them into shitty situations. My problem is that while neither of them are villains, only one of them is repeatedly called and portrayed as one in fanworks.)

Boyd probably fares best, by virtue of barely ever getting mentioned in fanfic or meta, even in comparison to Cora or Erica (who he had about as much screentime as).

Fandom compares Scott to a rapist for using Derek's body against his will in order to save Allison's life. But where were they when Liam tried to kill Scott for his girlfriend, and Scott takes a few weeks to feel safe around him again instead of welcoming him back with open arms right away?

By the way, wanna know why fandom rarely gifs the scene of Scott forcing Derek to Bite Gerard with the actual dialogue?

Because you can't compare Scott to a rapist for using Derek's body against him when we see that he's only doing it because the villain is holding someone hostage and threatening their life, and you can't claim that Scott never apologizes for anything if you see him literally apologizing for what he's doing to Derek. And I'd bet even more money that if the reverse had happened, fandom would have decried Scott for letting Allison die "just" so Derek wouldn't have had to Bite someone he didn't want to, and called him a murderer for it.

People castigate Scott for successfully setting a broken leg when it was technically illegal, but I don't see any posts castigating Stiles for interfering in police investigations, violating people's privacy and boundaries, or interfering with an active crime scene/body search.

People call Scott a murderer because Theo killed Tracy and Josh on another character's information - not even a suggestion, just information - yet Derek actively sought to violate a girl's bodily autonomy and got her killed as a result. (I don't think he is a murderer for it - I think that if he isn't a murderer for Paige's death, then it's as ridiculous or even more so to claim that Scott is responsible for Theo's victims.)

Scott isn't perfect, no one on this show is, because perfect characters are boring. But only Scott is considered evil and villainous for not being perfect, while white characters' flaws are celebrated. Scott is derided for not being held accountable, but not only are the instances where he is held accountable erased, white characters' actions are constantly excused or justified without anybody screaming about their lack of accountability. Fandom hates on Scott for not verbally apologizing for things, but no one makes hate posts about the fact Stiles and Derek never verbally apologize, either. Fandom holds Scott up to an impossible standard while having little to no standards for the white characters. They use "he's the main character/protagonist/hero!" to justify the double standard, but then try to claim he ISN'T the protagonist or hero to justify giving his story to a white character - in the instance at the beginning of this post, a white villain no less - and casting him as the villain.

Main Points

I like darkfic as much as the next person, but that doesn't erase the fact that the process of making Scott a villain (as in, claiming Scott is actually a villain in the context of canon) is contingent on the racist traditions of separating a character of color from their own story, wiping away that characters' story, and romanticizing the struggles and personal strifes of white characters (often in the process of "giving" the character of colors' stories to them).

This problem isn't unique to Teen Wolf. Just about every fandom is racist, and many (if not most) of their media sources are even more racist than Teen Wolf. If anything, one thing Teen Wolf fandom has going for it is that, while it still has a lot of sexism and misogyny, it seems to have less so than most other, similar fandoms. Though the biggest point of comparison is the Supernatural fandom, so that might not be saying much.

The difference is that in other fandoms, the main characters are white, and most of the surrounding characters are white, too. Characters of color are always secondary ones. A Netflix show was the first time an MCU production had a non-white character as its lead. But in Teen Wolf, the main character is a character of color, and he's still getting treated the same way as secondary characters of other fandoms, if not even worse so.

I don't think any of you, as individuals, are racist. But I do think that all of you, as individuals, never examine racial biases in your media consumption or analysis. This leads to you microaggressively expressing racist attitudes in your meta, passively perpetuating racist stereotypes and tropes, and - however unintentionally - enabling racism in fandom.

I was also asked if I admit to my own biases, so here it is: When it comes to analyzing Teen Wolf (and making judgments about the show and the characters therein), I don't care about people's headcanons, or fanons, just the source material. The show was written by written by over a dozen people alongside Jeff Davis and produced by MTV, it did not magically appear out of thin air, nor is it a skewed documentation of some "real" story or "real" events. I believe in holding the characters' to the same level of accountability, and the same standards, as each other. If this makes me biased, then yes, fine, I'm biased.

I also know that none of these problems are unique to Teen Wolf fandom, and that actual Scott stans have also justified his poor decisions, and hated on Stiles and Derek. Some of you might remember me getting blocked by some Sciles BNFs for saying "Derek's not a rapist", and I've lost track of the number of times I'd try to reblog a Stydia or Stalia gifset, only for it to turn out I can't, and most likely this comes from my past of pointing out misogyny in those fandoms.

Meanwhile, Sciles fandom slathers heteronormativity onto the pairing as much as Sterek fandom does, and the fact that it's being done on an interracial relationship actually makes it a little worse than when it's on the all-white Sterek ship (but that's a can of worms for another day). Female characters like Allison, Lydia, Malia, and Kira are constantly utilized as little more than talking plot-devices or fag-hags in fandom unless it's explicitly about them, and they are reduced to caricatures instead of characters even more than the most underserved male characters of color, like Boyd. For all of them, I went onto their character tags, and I didn't find a fic summary that was about them until I got the second page, which is worse than Scott having only 1 out of 10 in the first page.

But the sheer amount of Scott hate outpaces hate of all the other characters combined, and the sheer amount of fanworks about these secondary characters outpaces the fanworks about the main character. And yes, every ship and character's fandom sent rape and death threats to the cast and crew over their stupid ship or character. But the amount leveled at Tyler Posey from Sterek fans, even before he finally snapped and made an unprofessional comment about it, is tremendously higher than all the other kinds of hate - especially when compared to the fandom's reaction to the Tyler Hoechlin also saying a negative comments about Sterek.

Fandom does not exist in a vacuum.

The attitudes by which white characters' trauma and experiences are used to justify their violence while characters of colors' victimizations are dismissed, is the same logic used to defend cops who "just reacted" or "panicked", while blaming young children of color for "getting shot" by not behaving 100% correctly. The logic by which a white characters' abusive behavior and characters of colors' abuse are dismissed, while the white characters' abuse and the character of colors' abusive behaviors are exaggerated, is the same logic for which white rapists are painted as "merely making a mistake" while a black shoplifter is painted as a bankrobber in the making.

And the logic of calling someone who explains all this an "ableist troll" for pointing this out is the same logic used to pit marginalized peoples against each other in an effort to maintain the status quo - why do you think racism between racial minorities exists? And the logic of claiming someone is just "exploiting real tragedies" to talk about racism in fandom only makes sense if you assume all fans are white, and therefore none have ever been or will be touched by racism or racial violence in their real lives, and only bring up race to prop up fictional characters. (Yes, these are why I blocked bhadpodcast.)

Some of you can choose to walk away from racism, you can talk about it in fandom and that is the only place it will ever affect you directly. Not all of us get that luxury. Some of us have to confront racism in our daily lives, and sometimes, the racism online and the racism offline start to look and sound the same.

And I will apologize for one thing on the post that started this: my tags in my initial response were needlessly aggressive. I had to deal with racism in my real life, and then I came home, and see echoes of that exact same racism in a fandom post, and I over-reacted in the tags.

The logic by which a character of color is erased from his own narrative, derided as a villain, and replaced by a white character, is the same logic that is used in professional environments to judge who has "worked hard" and who hasn't (and thus, who gets promoted and who doesn't). Maybe, if you've never experienced racial bias in the work place, these seem like problems worlds away from each other, but they are not, these are two different manifestations of the same subconscious bias. When I came into fandom and saw someone I consider close to a friend regurgitating the exact same illogic as one of my workplace superiors, I snapped.

When I say that fandom doesn't exist in a vacuum, this is what I mean. The same attitudes and judgments of people that exist in offline life - based on their physical appearance, their skin tone, their heritage, etc. - follow us into fandom, whether we like it or not.

I acknowledge I should've been a lot calmer about expressing my frustrations with that post. I probably shouldn't have answered so soon after work-life problems and just before I was supposed to go to bed. I tell people all the time to hold back on topics which are personal to them and wait until they are calmer to address it, and here I went and ignored that. I took out my anger on athena via those tags, and for that, I am sorry.

But it's also the only thing I'm sorry about. I still stand by my notion that the post I was responding to was very racist, and the fact that the characters' races were never brought up in the post itself does not change that.

#teen wolf fandom meta #teen wolf fandom problems #teen wolf fandom #scott mccall defense squad #pro scott mccall #but also pro derek and stiles and everybody #except the villains #i'm basically anti anti-ism #i can get why people might not realize that though #racism in teen wolf fandom #racism in fandom #references to #misogyny #racism #long post

220 notes · View notes

zanytimetravelenthusiast-blog · 5 years

Text

DFY Suite Review Discount And Bonus

DFY Suite Evaluation - Are you looking for even more knowleadge regarding DFY Suite? Please go through my straightforward review concerning it prior to choosing, to examine the weaknesses and also staminas of it. Can it be worth your time and effort as well as cash?

Introducing DFY Suite

The Step-by-Step Guide to Syndicating Content (Without Messing Up Your Search Engine Optimization) (Part 4)

When we began republishing material from the Kissmetrics blog on websites like Entrepreneur as well as Search Engine Journal, we saw the referral traffic pick up (we got nearly 9,492 site visitors a month), while the natural traffic dropped after Google turned out the Panda update.

We shed 225,418 site visitors from Google monthly.

To set about solving the problem, we connected to the submission network sites we were syndicating web content with and asked for that they add the rel= canonical tag.

However:

This was fairly a long time back. Web content submission had not been as mainstream as it is now. Remember, Google's formulas keep obtaining smarter. So, certain, utilize web content submission, however utilize it with treatment. Always demand that the publishing websites utilize the rel= approved tag.

Method # 2: NoIndex

When an article( web page) is identified as "NoIndex," Google's DFY Suite search engine crawlers do not index it. And, when a blog post is not indexed, it won't appear in the online search engine results.

Basically, you're getting rid of the syndicated copy from the index.

So, when you reach out to sites concerning syndication, ask them if they would certainly want to make use of the "NoIndex" tag for their version of the content. By doing this, you will not shed any type of organic internet search engine website traffic and also you'll protect your original material from getting outed perform by your republished material.

As the NoIndex tag is a regulation for the internet search engine to not index a page, you can't make sure if it's followed fully or partially. Between the rel= approved as well as the noindex tag, constantly push for the rel= canonincal tag since Google is terrific at translating the rel= approved tag. If your content submission companions do not consent to either of the above 2 choices, request a clear attribution and also a back links to your site.

Pointer:

Let your initial material get indexed prior to republishing on third-party sites. Take into consideration waiting for a week or two after publishing your DFY Suite blog post before pitching editors with republishing requests.

Step # 5: Syndicating web content on a recurring basis

To make use of internet content syndication better, you should do much better than a one-timer.

That's how you maximize content syndication-- by becoming regular submission companions with the BIG authors and making use of a submission network.

When a publisher approves your submission demand, try to arrangement a routine arrangement. You must function to guarantee that the publisher republishes several of your content each month (or week or as often as you would certainly like).

Buffer involves with the editors of the different sites it republishes on. Here's the e-mail they send out for pitching their finest blog posts (weekly).

The material syndication caution:

You need to be a great writer to succeed at material submission. If you aren't recognized to be a great author or if you do not run a prominent blog, my ideal suggestion for you is to guest post for a site that has an excellent submission network. That way, when you guest message, the website will pitch your post to its biggest publisher companion websites.

Obviously, your chances of obtaining republished will certainly raise significantly.

It holds true that the 3rd party site will just link back to your guest message as well as not to your own blog site, and now you'll have something to describe when you connect to get your very own blog republished.

DFY Suite Evaluation & Overview

Vendor: Joshua Zamora

Item: DFY Suite

Release Date: 2019-Aug-29

Release Time: 11:00 EDT

Front-End Cost: $47-$ 67

JV Page: https://www.socialleadfreak.com/dfy-suite-review/

Niche:

What Is DFY Suite?

DFY Suite Is Our New Platform That permits your consumers to get top quality content syndication for their video clips or particular niche websites WITHOUT needing to do ANY of the work themselves.

There is NO software to download or install

There is NO account development needed on their part

There is NO having to deal with proxies or captchas

There is NO challenging tutorials they need to view

How Does DFY Suite Job?

ACTION 1: Login to our online platform

STEP 2: Submit the URL they intend to have syndicated

STEP 3: Strike "submit" as well as we'll get to benefit them right now

DFY Suite Funnels

OTO 1: Lock-In Credits on Month-to-month Basis

OTO 1 is gon na be the capability to lock-in the debts on a regular monthly basis at the affordable rate being used throughout launch. If they wait till later, credits will be a GREAT DEAL extra pricey.

We've done credit-based launches numerous times and also they work REMARKABLY well for lasting payments.

OTO 2: DFY Indexer System

Right here your customer will have the ability to supercharge their projects by unlocking our DFY Indexer system so that their projects get executed our proprietary web link indexer so that their syndicating carries a MUCH stronger strike.

Every search engine optimization marketing professional understands the power of getting web links indexed. The even more of your syndication that Google has the ability to understand, the stronger your campaigns will be.

This is a NO-BRAINER offer.

OTO 3: Special Offer for MyVideoSpy

MyVideoSpy is our effective system that permits your consumers to reveal untapped specific niches, evaluate their competitors, accurately evaluate just how much web traffic they can get from their target specific niches, and also much more!

It's the IDEAL fit so they can finish the ENTIRE Search website traffic circle.

OTO 4: Access to Video Principal

Video clip Principal is our membership site of over 1200 done-for-you video clips that they can use today to start securing web page 1 video clip positions. We'll be removing the requirement for them to create video clips by doing it for them also!

With this upsell, we cover ALL the bases! Syndication, particular niche study as well as video creation.

DFY Suite Final thought

"It's A Large amount. Should I Invest Today?"

Not only are you getting access to DFY Suite for the very best rate ever before provided, but additionally You're spending entirely without danger. DFY Suite consists of a 30-day Refund Assurance Plan. When you select DFY Suite, your fulfillment is ensured. If you are not entirely pleased with it for any type of factor within the initial thirty day, you're entitled to a complete reimbursement-- no question asked. You've obtained absolutely nothing to lose! What Are You Waiting on? Attempt It today as well as get The Following Perk Currently!

#DFY Suite #DFY Suite Review

0 notes

finejump20-blog · 5 years

Text

SEO Terms Glossary

One of the reasons that SEO is getting a bad reputation in some circles is that the terminology so casually used by providers of search engine optimization services is sometimes so obtuse and inscrutable that it might seem as an attempt to throw dust in the client’s eyes.

On the other hand, no one can argue that saying “We’ll improve your bounce rates” is infinitely more efficient and succinct than claiming that you’ll: “Ensure that your users don’t leave your site before interacting with a particular element on a page they’ve reached your site through, before lingering for a while, or before visiting another page.”

If you’ve hired an SEO agency and aren’t quite sure of what exactly is it that you’ve been promised, or if you are an SEO agency looking for a third-party provided elaboration of your offer, this glossary might be able to help you out.

0-9

301 (redirect) – 301 is the HTTP status code describing a permanent redirection of traffic from one URL to a new one, with negligible losses in link juice.

404 – HTTP status code notifying that the requested resource (usually a web page) could not be found on the provided URL.

Above the Fold – The topmost part of a webpage, the one that is visible as soon as the page loads.

Affiliate link – Links leading to external webstores, and earning commission for each sale that they contribute to. For instance, link from a photography blog leading to a camera product page on Amazon, containing the ID which allows Amazon to easily track where the traffic that link is bringing is coming from, and to pay the commission.

Algorithm – Generally in computer sciences, a set of steps or rules involved in solving a problem. When mentioned in relation to SEO, usually refers to Google’s algorithm (more accurately set of algorithms) used to evaluate and rank web pages.

Alt text / Alt Tag / Text Attribute / Alternate Text – Text describing what the images on your web page contain. The text can be seen on image hover, and is used to explain the content of the image to search engine crawlers and to site visitors with impaired eyesight.

Anchor text – The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, describing its purpose or destination.

Authority / Trust – Perceived value of a website in terms of the number and source of relevant links it is getting.

Average time on site – A Google Analytics metric describing the amount of time users average on your site once they’ve reached it.

B2B – Business to Business, describing a business which is primarily offering its products or services to other businesses, institutions or organizations.

B2C – Business to Consumer, describing a business which is primarily offering its products or services directly to consumers, i.e. general public.

Backlink / back link / inlink / incoming link – A link to one of your pages coming from a different domain.

Black hat / Black-hat SEO – A set of, mostly outdated, SEO techniques aimed at manipulating and deceiving search engines instead of working with them and following Google Webmaster Guidelines. Much more likely to get you into trouble with Google than to help, even in the short-term.

Boolean search – Type of search that allows you to modify your query by adding operators like OR, AND, NOT and others. Typical Google search is a good example, except AND is implied, and therefore redundant, and NOT is replaced with a minus sign.

Bot / Googlebot / robot / spider / crawler – When used in this context, it describes a script or a program which indexes the known web by following the links it comes across, and sends the information back to Google.

Bounce rate – The percentage of visitors who’ve reached one of your site’s pages and left it without interacting with it further or visiting any of your other pages.

Branded keywords – Keywords containing your brand name.

Broken link – Any kind of a dysfunctional link, like the ones leading to pages that no longer exist, or the ones with typos in the destination URL.

Browser – Software you use to access the Internet – Google Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are some of the most popular web browsers.

Canonical URL – Page duplication, a frequent consequence of allowing for creation of dynamic pages, can lead to issues with duplicate content. Designating one URL as the canonical version of a page ensures that search engine crawlers know they need to treat that page as the ‘original’ and that they understand its relationship with the ones derived from it.

Cloaking – Deceiving both users and search engine bots by serving different content to each. There are a number of ways to do this, from making the text you want registered by crawlers and ignored by users (usually exact match keywords) the same color as the background it is displayed on, to hiding it behind images. Regardless of the chosen method, this black-hat technique is only attempted by those who don’t know anything about SEO, or don’t care about their clients in the slightest.

CMS Content Management System – Platforms and frameworks allowing webmasters to focus on the less technical aspects of building and running a website. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento are just some of the examples of popular Content Management Systems.

Content – Informative or entertaining materials that site visitors could benefit from. Videos of cute cats or detailed whitepapers, it’s all content, as long as it serves a purpose and answers a user’s query.

Conversion (goal) – Visitor action that benefits you and that can be tracked. From making a purchase, to simply signing up for your newsletter, there are a number of steps in the buyer journey that bring leads closer to the end of the funnel, and each of them could be treated as a conversion.

CPC Cost Per Click – The amount that the Pay Per Click Advertiser has to pay for each click that their ad receives.

Crawl Frequency – How often your site is crawled by Google’s spiders. Depends on its authority, update frequency, number and velocity of incoming links, etc.

Crawling – The process of discovering, indexing and (up to a point) classifying new web pages, or revisiting old ones. Carried out by bots, crawlers, spiders, or whatever you want to call them, it is constantly performed by Google and other search engines, but private crawls with custom bots are perfectly commonplace.

Dead link – A link that is no longer working, usually because the domain or the exact page it is leading to is no longer functional or online.

Deep link – Any link leading to a page that is lower in your site’s hierarchy than the home page.

Deep link ratio – The ratio of the number of deep links to your site compared to number of those leading to your home page.

Directory – When mentioned in relation to SEO or digital marketing, referring to online, usually publicly available lists of websites, businesses, organizations, etc. submitted for inclusion by the owners of the property, the general public, or discovered through manual or automated research and vetting by the owner of the directory. The ones most commonly discussed and sought after are directories of businesses servicing a particular area, providing a particular type or service, or those doing both and specializing in, for instance, IT services in New York. Vendors usually submit the business details themselves, for free or not, depending on the directory; and aside from getting their essential pitch and information in front of the customers who are likely to be looking exactly for what they are offering; they are getting their Name, Address and Phone information cited on a number of easily verifiable sources, helping their local SEO, and making it easier for Google’s algorithm to recognize them as an entity.

Disavow – A way to distance your website from links you don’t want to be associated with, at least when it comes to Google. It consists, ideally, of a detailed backlink portfolio analysis of your website; taking note of the links that you think might be harming your website; and trying to remove them on your own. The ones you cannot remove even after several attempts should be listed in a disavow file, that you should submit to Google, along with your reasons for wanting to disassociate your site from them.

Domain – Usually used when referring to the URL or the root domain of a website, including the Top Level Domain (TLD).

Duplicate content – One of the main reasons that Google started paying special attention to duplicated content were websites which were doing nothing else than copying others’ content, publishing it without permission or attribution, but still managing to rank. Even the most stubborn of black-hat SEOs have largely abandoned the ‘content farm’ approach, as these sites were known, so these days, more often than not, content duplication is accidental. Either caused by laziness or lack of precaution when allowing for creation of dynamic pages, while having content that can be found elsewhere on your site or anywhere online will make you less interesting to Google, you’d really have to overdo it to get your pages removed from the results.

Dynamic content – Showing different versions of certain pages to different users, based on their preferences, past actions or personalization data. That means that dynamic pages don’t have one basic form, but are created on the go when a user requests them.

Engagement metrics – Web metrics showing how involved your audience is with your site, how interested they are, and how driven to interact with it. This includes values like average time on page, bounce rate, pages per visit, time on site…

Ethical SEO – Search engine optimization practices which don’t go against Google Webmaster Guidelines, and are not meant to deceive the search engine and get a site ranking undeservedly, but instead aim to actually improve the site’s visibility through meaningful improvements of its technical aspects, its crawlability, UX and content.

Everflux – The perpetually changing nature of Google, its algorithm, rules regarding individual ranking factors, result pages layout and content, etc. Also sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to the same mercurial character of the Internet as a whole.

External link – Any link leading away from the site it is found on, so any link on your site that is not targeting one of your pages.

Fresh content – Refers to the tendency of newer content to rank better for certain keywords until that ‘freshness’ period expires, when it usually drops in rankings. It is mostly reserved for ‘query deserves freshness’ searches which are, at the time, spiking in popularity, making it reasonable to assume that users want current, fresh information.

Fuzzy search – A flexible type of search where the returned results don’t have to match the provided query exactly – Google’s SERPs are an example of this kind of search.

Google AdWords – Google’s advertising system giving businesses a chance to have their ad displayed in search results, for a price determined by the popularity of the targeted keywords.

Google Analytics – Google’s utility allowing webmasters to easily track their site’s performance, visitor behavior, and the efficiency of their marketing efforts.

Google dance – Most often describing the fluctuations in rankings of a site, or a number of websites, either caused by an algorithm update, or by the inscrutable micro-forces endemic to the search ecosystem.

Google Hummingbird – While often referred to as an algorithm update, just like Penguin or Panda, Hummingbird was actually a major rehaul of the entire algorithm, much closer to Caffeine when it comes to the scope of the changes made and their impact.

Google Panda – A string of Google’s search algorithm improvements, aimed mostly at improving the search engine’s understanding of the value of the content a site is publishing. The first version of the algorithm rolled out in February 2011, but it has been modified countless times since.

Google Penguin – A set of Google updates focusing on link quality and on the discovery of link schemes. First unrolled in April 2012, Penguin has since gone through a number of iterations and changes at one point becoming a part of the core algorithm and becoming granular.

Google Pigeon – Rolled out in July 2014, Google Pigeon update was aimed at improving the accuracy and relevancy of local results, among other things, by paying more attention to search proximity signals.

Google Sitelinks – Ever since 2005, Google has been showing additional links with certain suggested results, usually leading to site’s most important pages or categories. Since they vastly improve click-through rates, they are highly valued, and often given special consideration during the development of general site optimization strategies.

Google Webmaster Guidelines – A set of best practices recommended by Google, meant to guide webmasters in the creation and optimization of their websites. Adherence to these principles ensures you’ll have a crawlable, functional website, which focuses on users and delivers on is promises.

Google Webmaster Tools / Google Search Console – Rebranded into Google Search Console in 2015, Google Webmaster Tools allow webmasters to get data regarding their site’s performance in search, the backlinks it is getting, etc.

HTML – Hypertext Markup Language, markup language predominantly used for the creation of web pages.

HTTP status code – Hypertext Transfer Protocol response codes are sent by the server hosting the requested page and notifying the client from which the request was made of the current state/availability of the page in question.

Index – as a noun, a repository of sites and information on them that Google has managed to gather and organize; as a verb – the act of a site being added to that repository by being discovered by crawlers.

Internal link – Any link leading from one of your site’s pages to another (or, technically, the same) page on your site.

IP address – Internet Protocol address is the number associated with a device or a range of devices in a network, used to convey identity and location information.

Keyword / Keyphrase – one or more words entered as a query in search.

Keyword position / Keyphrase rank – The position in search results that a page occupies for the specified keyword.

Keyword cannibalization – A result of suboptimal keyword distribution and mapping, where a number of your strong pages are competing to rank for the same keyword, instead of each of them having their unique focus, i.e. pursuing different keywords.

Keyword density – The number of times a keyword is repeated on a page compared to the total word count of the page in question – usually expressed in percentages.

Keyword Not Provided – While webmasters were once able to use Google Analytics to check which keywords was their organic search traffic coming from, in 2011, Google stopped providing this info, allegedly in the interest of user privacy and data security. Interestingly enough, the data was only withheld from webmasters without active AdWords campaigns – those paying to advertise through Google’s service continued receiving keyword-related information like nothing ever happened.

Keyword research – Naturally, can refer to any kind of research that has to do with keywords, but usually describes identification of the most lucrative keywords for the purposes of organic or paid promotion, i.e. finding the keywords that would bring you relevant traffic and that you have a chance to compete for.

Keyword stuffing – Excessive and unnatural repetition of a keyword to get your site or a particular page to rank for that keyword. Disliked and immediately detected by search engines and users alike.

Landing page – The visitors gateway to your site, and your gateway to conversions. In a broader sense, landing pages are those that visitors are reaching your site through, in a narrower, those that you want the users to be reaching your site through and that you have optimized for that purpose.

Link bait – A page created to attract links on its own, passively. Most often, this is done by offering valuable, informative and citable content that people will share and reference on their own initiative.

Link building – The practice of improving a site’s visibility in organic search by expanding its link portfolio and exposing it to relevant audiences.

Link checker – Most often, tools you can use to check your internal links, but some of them, often appropriately labeled as backlink checkers, also allow you to check the links your site is getting from other domains.

Link churn – The rate at which you are losing backlinks to your site.

Link equity / Link juice / Google juice – the trust and authority passed on by a dofollow link coming from another website to the one you’re promoting.

Link velocity – The speed at which you are acquiring new backlinks.

Long tail (keywords) – Specific keywords or queries containing more words than the broader exact match. While having lower volume due to their nature, they are also usually easier to rank for.

Manual penalty – Unlike with automated, algorithm-based penalties, receiving a manual penalty means that an actual (Google-employed) person has taken a look at your website and decided it needs to be removed from search results.

Meta description – Text describing the page it is associated with, often (but not necessarily) provided along with the URL of the page being recommended in the search results.

Meta keywords – While search engines were more trusting of people, webmasters used this tag to inform crawlers of what the page is about. While you can still add meta keywords to your pages, since this has been abused by black-hats in the past, search engines largely stopped paying attention to these tags and people largely stopped providing them.

Meta title – The crawler-readable title of your page, and along with meta description, one of the most direct ways to let users and search engines alike know what the page is about.

Monetizing – Finding a way to make money off of something, in this context, usually a website.

Negative SEO – The practice of trying to get a site removed from the SERPs or to compromise its ranking by intentionally building suspicious and outright harmful links to it. While the ability to disavow links, along with the search engine’s growing competence in detecting foul play have made negative SEO mostly ineffective, some people are still trying to undermine their competitors in this manner.

Nofollow – A tag instructing crawlers not to pass on PageRank to the linked pages. It can be used in the link code, for individual links, or in the ‘head’ element of a page to designate all the links that the page contains as nofollow. While often claimed to be useless for SEO purposes, even though they don’t pass any link juice, they are still sending traffic your way, and are a part of every natural backlink portfolio.

Noindex – A tag used in the head section of a page to instruct crawlers not to index that page. The same tag could be used to prevent indexing of certain parts of the page, but since crawlers can be set up to ignore this tag, and since Googlebot is only interested in it when it prevents indexing of entire pages, most people don’t bother using it any other way.

Off-page SEO / Off-site SEO – Every action meant to improve a site’s position in organic search without making changes to the site itself. Link building, influencer outreach and creation of linkless citations of your business information are all examples of off-page SEO.

On-page SEO / On-site SEO – Direct modifications of your website, meant to improve its exposure. Some of the essential on-page techniques include meta elements optimization, page loading speed improvement, inner linking structure modifications, etc.

Organic link – If a tree falls down in the woods and there’s a happy lumberjack at its base, did the tree fall or was it cut down? This dilemma is at the core of organic links discussion. At its basest, this definition refers to links that were created solely for the purposes of identification, attribution, elaboration etc. in other words, links that the webmaster giving them felt an actual need to provide. By that definition, ‘pursuing organic links’ is an oxymoron, as solicited links are not completely voluntarily given, but they can still make more sense in certain contexts than in others. These days, the phrase organic links is most often used to describe links that don’t seem out of place and which meet the expectations of those following them, regardless if they were created spontaneously, or if they were negotiated.

Organic Search Results – Search engine’s recommendation of the pages it found to be the most relevant for the entered query. These suggestions are made based on the page’s technical optimization, traffic and engagement metrics, freshness, number of links leading to it, etc. and shouldn’t be confused with the paid ads also displayed on the search engine results pages.

PageRank – Part of the of the Google’s algorithm which assigns value to pages based on the number of links they are receiving and the number of their outgoing links. A rough estimate of this value, expressed on a scale from 0 to 10, used to be available through Google Toolbar, but since PageRank is now just a minor part in the overall algorithm, and since a lot of webmasters and SEOs have been focusing on it too much, Toolbar Pagerank is no longer supported since 2016.

Paid search results – The paid-for ads displayed at the top of search engine page results.

Penalty – Having your site or some of its pages completely removed from the SERPs, either manually or algorithmically.

Query – The string entered into the search box, in other words, the keywords and phrases you want to look up.

Rankbrain – A machine learning powered part of the Google’s search algorithm, claimed to be one of the most important ranking factors.

Reciprocal link – A link you got from a domain in exchange for linking to that domain from your website. While sites linking one to another are not necessarily suspicious, and might be just the result of actual partnership, overdoing it with this can land you in hot water with Google.

Redirect – Diverting the incoming visitors from one URL to another. There are numerous ways to change the destination a URL is leading to, most popular ones being the 301 and 302 server-side redirects.

Relevance – In the context of SEO, usually referring to topical connection between two sites, and the appropriateness of linking from one the other. For instance, a plumbing website could create relevant links on a home improvement site, but it would be out of place on a site about the string theory.

Reputation Management – A range of SEO, content marketing and related services focused on tracking the type of exposure a person or a brand is getting online, and trying to minimize the number of negative mentions in the top search results pages.

Retargeting – Visitors to your site who accept your cookies can later be identified on other sites offering advertising and presented with your ads. While this is the most common type of this technique, there are also CRM, email and search retargeting.

Robots.txt – A text file you can edit to easily modify what authorizations should different bots have when crawling your website, for instance which pages can they crawl or index and which are off limits on both accounts.

ROI – Return On Investment, how much you earned from a particular tactic or campaign, compared to how much it cost you to implement it.

Scrape – Crawling a website, usually with custom bots, and retrieving relevant information, including, for instance, the site’s inner linking structure, meta elements of individual pages, word count, etc.

Search engine (SE) – A program designed to search smaller or larger databases for the requested keywords. In this context, usually referring to internet or web search engines like Google or Bing which rely on crawlers for data gathering and complex algorithms for the assessment of individual pages to be returned as results.

Search engine marketing (SEM) – Describes promotional efforts meant to improve your site’s visibility in the SERPs, both when it comes to paid and to organic results. While some consider SEM to be a broader category also including search engine optimization, others only use the term search engine marketing when referring to PPC and other paid search campaigns.

Search engine optimization (SEO) – A range of web design, content creation, influencer outreach and social media promotion strategies meant to help make a site rank better for the keywords that they wish to pursue. The goal of SEO is to create a crawler-friendly website which visitors will enjoy and engage with.

Search marketing – A term encompassing both SEM and SEO, used by those who think that the term search engine marketing should refer only to paid search advertising, and not also include SEO.

SERP – Search engine results page, listing paid ads and organic search results that were estimated to be the best match for the entered query.

Site map – Usually a hierarchically or topically organized list of links to pages of your website that users are meant to have access to, and that you want to make as easy to crawl as possible.

Spamming – Can refer to a range of intrusive advertising techniques which offer no value but rely solely on brute force and quantity. From buying contact and lead lists and inundating the people found there with poorly targeted and composed emails, to squeezing in clumsily anchored links in pointless blog or forum comments, many of these techniques have been completely devalued, but new ones do crop up.

Static page – Pages the content of which is not dependent on session info or user requests, i.e. which are not created on the go, but saved in their final form, making them easier to index and display to visitors.

Top Heavy – Referring to sites which, according to the 2012 Google’s Page Layout Update have too many ads above the fold. Sites that were found to be too Top Heavy dropped in organic search results and even if they promptly responded, sometimes had to wait quite a bit before reclaiming their old positions.

URL – Uniform Resource Locator, or a web address is one several types of Uniform Resource Identifiers used to specify different resources, but most commonly, web pages.

Usage data – Information retrieved from various analytics utilities, detailing the way visitors interact with your site and its content. Often represented through various engagement metrics, like bounce rate and average time on page.

User generated content (UGC) – Content created by site’s visitors, instead of by its owner/webmaster/staff. Includes everything from forum and social media posts to blog comments.

Vertical search – A search focusing on a single category of content. The category can be determined by the industry or niche, content format, or anything else. Some examples include Google Image Search, specialized directories like Yelp, etc.

Web beacon – User behavior tracking method, often combined with cookies, relying on miniature, transparent images placed on web pages, which help gather information on the visitor’s browser type, IP, etc.

White hat / White-hat SEO – A collection of Google-endorsed optimization best practices, meant to improve a site’s visibility in organic search through legitimate tactics instead of through manipulation and spam. The only way to ensure lasting results with SEO.

Source: https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-terms-glossary-4495

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

0 notes