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slytherin-team · 4 years

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I thought it would just be easier to put this in it’s own post - some bullet points for why I unironically ship Snape and Petunia:

- the potential set-up is irresistible! Also, who wasn’t shocked when it was revealed that Snape and Petunia of all characters knew each other as kids?! I see Snape as an ultimately good person. I can’t say the same for adult Petunia but I have a lot of sympathy for child Petunia, and frankly I think adult Petunia should have been written more grey and nuanced like Snape. The Dursleys overall were a little too cartoonish and bland. It’s been said that “there’s more to Petunia’s character than meets the eye,” and that should have been shown more.

- speaking of the potential set-up - it allows for so many avenues to explore in fanfic! For example, stories where teen Petunia and teen Severus get together in Cokeworth, or the two of them coming together as adults, or stories of them raising Harry together instead of Petunia and Vernon, etc. Like there’s just so many different ways it could happen and it could range from a really, positive enlightening relationship to a really toxic or torrid love affair, and all of those could be great and interesting stories.

- we don’t get any on-screen muggle/wizard romances and that would have been interesting. I also like the idea of Petunia being with a wizard and feeling more included in the magical world and I like Severus with a muggle, maybe living a quiet life away from all the death eater stuff, kinda returning to the muggle world but in a new, positive way

- Petunia and Snape are both extremely insecure as kids/teens. Petunia never feels good enough compared to Lily and Severus never feels good enough compared to wealthy pure-bloods like James Potter. Petunia claims that her parents neglected her and favored Lily. Severus was neglected by his parents (my personal headcanon is that his mother loved him but was so beaten down by Tobias’s abuse that her health and state of mind prevented her from being a good mother). Petunia and Snape look down on each other when they meet, but actually they have more in common than Snape and Lily. Petunia can probably understand him better than someone popular and loved like Lily.

- In the movie Snape has that line about Petunia being jealous because Lily is special and she’s ordinary. This gets at the heart of Petunia’s insecurities. But here’s the thing - Snape and Petunia, who both feel that they’re not special- could be special to each other. Snape is attracted to power because he wants to be in control and not weak, which leads him down a dark path. He didn’t need the death eater stuff - he needed someone he could confide in. I always imagine him as domestic and a homebody at heart - just brewing potions in his basement or reading books in his armchair. He wants to regain a sense of control over his life but he doesn’t seek prestige to the same degree as Lucius Malfoy and has nothing but contempt for showy people like Lockhart. Petunia is also very domestic. I like the idea of her cooking and humming to herself while Snape brews his potions.

- they both suffered a lot in their youth and I just wish both of them could be happy as adults. They’re two of the most bitter, regretful characters in the series and I’m a sucker for shipping two bitter assholes together and seeing them bring each other joy lol

- They both found James Potter to be arrogant and off-putting and nothing brings two people together like the hatred of a third party.

- Again, I like how it’s easy to imagine them in a secure, happy, domestic partnership or in a really fucked up torrid affair. There’s not a huge amount of fanfic about these two but of the ones I’ve found, writers usually create either something really romantic between them, where they come together and are special to each other, or something really toxic that makes for a terrible relationship but very fun reading

- Pride & Prejudice/ “the folly of first impressions” - if you like this sort of thing, well then, you can see how this ship is appealing I’m sure

- I love it when two characters seem like opposites on the surface (Snape is greasy, unkempt, a wizard, has dark hair and dark eyes, meanwhile Petunia is neat, clean, a muggle, has blonde hair and blue eyes) but are actually really similar (both of them are precise, have a lot of pride, hurt the ones they love in order to protect their own egos, seem to love the home and the hearth, take pride in their work, have a complicated relationship with Lily, Petunia feels she’s not as good as Lily, Severus feels like he’s not good enough for Lily, are spiteful, in the DH memory scenes, they are both shown to spy and snoop around a lot, they grew up in the same town, etc)

- I love Snape and Lily as friends but I have never been a snily shipper. I don’t see them as compatible in that way. Also, I’m personally not a fan of friends -to -lovers, give me enemies-to-friends-to-lovers over the former any day.

- If any atla fans are reading this - I ship Zutara, not Kataang, so this might explain a lot as well.

- the potential Snape and Petunia romance just has so many classic elements. the folly of first impressions/ pride & prejudice thing mentioned above, two misunderstood people coming together, or two people who misunderstand each other at first then come together later, the romeo and juliet potential because of the war, etc.

- They remind me of Xellos and Filia from the anime Slayers, which was the first enemies-to-friends-to-lovers ship I really fell in love with, and they even physically resemble these two as well. Filia is a prim and proper blonde, always drinking tea and acting self-righteous. Xellos has long hair that falls into his eyes and is thought to be evil by nature yet we only see him do good in the series. Although he has a sharp tongue. This relationship is not canon either and never comes to fruition in the series but it’s heavily hinted at.

- it’s super corny and cliche but I love the whole beauty and the beast parallel, and also the hades/persephone vibe that this ship evokes

- If Petunia was a witch - she’d totally be a slytherin and I have legitimate reasons for this that have nothing to do with her being a “villain” character. Self-preservation and protecting the in-group while being cautious of outsiders are important slytherin qualities. The defensive, on-guard way Petunia acts when Snape first appears, shows her being protective of her little sister. The snobbery she exudes is reminiscent of Narcissa’s Malfoy’s snobbery, looking down on outsiders to protect or maintain the in-group basically. Petunia’s pride and the way she protects it, insisting she really didn’t want to go to Hogwarts after all, shows that self-preservation and preservation of her dignity are important to her. Pride, pride, pride! We see this in how she painstakingly tends to her home and family as well. She always wants to make a good impression and be the best.

- Nothing against Dramoine shippers but I’m not a fan of that ship. I don’t like putting the racist bully with the person he’s racist towards. Okay, so then why Snape and Petunia? Petunia can pretend to hate magic all she wants because of her jealousy but at the end of the day, she’s Lily’s sister and has magical heritage even if she’s not a witch herself. Likewise, Snape can call people with muggle parents “mudbloods” all he wants but that doesn’t change the fact that he himself has a muggle parent and literally wouldn’t exist if not for that muggle parent, as awful as he is. So, this is different to me from a pureblood supremacist and a muggleborn or muggle romance, because I don’t see either Snape or Petunia as racist, but rather, as self-loathing, and while it may not be healthy, I’m a sucker for pairing two self-loathing characters together. Also, I think character growth for both of them requires accepting the two worlds - muggle and magical- and their relation to them, and I feel like being together could keep them from going down dark paths (with Severus, Petunia can stop resenting the magical world and feel more included in it, and with Petunia, Severus can appreciate the muggle world and stop seeing every muggle as his awful father)

I can’t believe I just wrote all of this but I’m super into this ship recently and have a lot to word vomit about it. enjoy.

#hp meta #hp analysis #hp ships #severus snape #petunia

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sumsmasterpiece · 4 years

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The Lesson I Learned From The Todoroki Family

WARNING: long rant about my personal life on the bottom. Super long post!

The Lesson of Today = Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a very interesting emotion that I feel is very misrepresented most of the time in the media. Horikoshi has brilliantly shown the many different faces that forgiveness can take form.

Shouto

Shouto’s journey to forgiveness is very believable for someone who is young and had gone through the trials of abuse and neglect. He started off in the series as very fearful and grew to be very petty and angry towards his father. His anger blinded him to the only good thing in his life to be forgotten until it took someone (Midoriya) to remind him of his past and to take a new perspective on how to live his life. He is also a great character because he doesn’t just magically accept Endeavor after he accepts his fireside and even admits that he probably will never fully forgive his father. He also held his hatred for his father that he never blamed his mother for scaring him. Later in the manga, it took some again making him see how he views his dad (Midoriya again) that he was already taking strides towards forgiving his father and wasn’t even realizing that he was.

Fuyumi

Fuyumi represents the hopeful family member. Now this will be speculation because we haven’t really seen her side of the story much but from the short scenes that she is present you can see a girl who wasn’t accepted into the family and was forced to grow up really fast for her family. I don’t know if she fully forgives Endeavor but we can safely say she wants her family to move in the direction of coming together again.

Natsuo

This character will probably hold on to his hatred for his father until the day he dies. Again much like Fuyumi, we don’t know much about his childhood and what he experienced growing up, but from what little information that has been given it safe to say that he at least heard of what was happening with Touya and Shouto and then the “death” of Touya he forced onto Endeavor. Natsuo shows that he loves his family so much, but he can’t just forgive and forget like how he sees Fuyumi doing because he is just ties those negative emotions to the man Endeavor himself. So much so that he won’t even acknowledge Endeavor as a father but as his hero name. He even tells Endeavor that he can’t forgive him.

Rei

Rei can be seen in one of three ways.

1. There is the lense of a domestic abuse victim where they forgive their abuser because they feel they were the cause of the change in them and not the other way around. (mental manipulation and torture)

2. Self-forgiveness for what she did to Shouto not only as a person but also as a mother. That fear of never being forgiven by your own child the one that a mother loves unconditionally.

3. Forced forgiveness (this falls a little in my headcanon of Rei) I feel that Rei was raised in a household where the process of marriage was permanent and divorce was seen as being a failure and basically not an option. As a wife, it was her duty to do what she can for the family system and be strong and I think she felt like a failure for breaking down (even though that totally not true but the brain and abuse does crazy shit).

Dabi/Touya

Dabi is the example of physically doing everything in your power to separate yourself from what you hate so much. His story can go many different directions because until the reveal is made we have either an actual death sibling that Endeavor pushed too far or pushed him too far to the point that his way of forgiveness is to kill it and be rid of the feelings of resentment all together.

Endeavor

The process of being forgiven is a process that I would not enjoy going through. It’s one of the story elements in the My Hero that I appreciate. Endeavor became one of my favorite characters because he is taking steps to realize he messed up and is doing right by his family (better late than ever...? God I’m going to get so many hate comments). But he wouldn’t have been my favorite character, in fact I hated him when he first was introduced in the anime, it only took me reading the manga and seeing the development where I started to see why this character was important and how he is necessary to the plot of My Hero. It’s smart writing to have so many different ideologies and people to represent them but it’s also is even better writing when you have a character with an established ideology and starts to question it and begins to change. Because people in the real world are not stagnant or just one thing or one representation because that's what humans are, complicated. If Horikoshi just wrote it where magically all of the Todoroki family magically forgave Endeavor for becoming the Number One Hero and then he gets a scare on his face and declares he going to change, I would absolutely have hated it, but now he is showing that people (even if they are in the same family) can forgive and move on with their lives at different paces than others. And no matter how much one family member or person tells you that you need to just forgive them so you can move on with your life or vice versa you don’t have to do that either.

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Personal Life Story

Let me start by saying that I had nowhere near the horrid childhood that Shouto or his siblings had ever gone through. However, I know that all people's trauma and pain are all relative and no one's sorrows or pains are worse off than others. That being said, I have a very strain relationship with my biological father (or how I like to refer to him as the sperm donor). He (in my eyes) is why a person should never be a parent when they are emotionally not invested in the lives of their children. My parents got a divorce when I was 2 and I never learned the true reason behind the divorce until I turned eighteen. My mother did her damnest to keep the truth of what really happened and to make sure I had a relationship with my father and things were okay with my dad until I turned 15. Up until that point, it was a decent relationship with my seeing him every Tuesday and staying with him every other weekend but I automatically could tell the difference between him and my mom. He would tell me lies and bash my mother, blaming her and her family for the entire problem in the marriage and why it ended. Growing up, I believed that I was part of the reason that they got divorced, that I was too much of a strain and just tipped things too far. But my feelings started to change about my dad was with my first stepmom. I literally turned into Cinderella whenever I would go over on those weekends and I would beg my mother not to let me go because she was so mean and vindictive and my father just never did anything about it. He never protected me or stood up for me and I think that was when my resentment for him began. Eventually, they got a divorce and things were decent until he started dating again. He would date women with baggage and need to be taken care of with children. The worst was when he’d have them move in and when they break up they’d take stuff of his. The final straw that caused me to final say I had enough was when one weekend I went over with his almost wife number 3 and she had two children who were significantly younger than me. Now there was an unspoken rule in his house that no one was allowed to go into my room because that was my space and I’m not there all the time to keep an eye on it. But for some up godly reason, he let these kids use my toys and let them defile and destroy and mark up my toys and then telling me that I should let it go because they’d just wanted to have fun. It wasn’t even that my toys were ruined (or that I’m just super picky and particular with how my things are and should be) but it just felt like a disrespect on me as a person but worst of all me as his daughter.

I should probably mention now that my father suffers from bipolar depression and I know that sometimes that it is a horrible thing to go through, I also know that he doesn’t get help and doesn’t want help. He hated being on medication some stopped taking them and never went back on them. He is also a very sad man. He is the type of guy who is trying to find love for himself through someone else.

It’s been 6 years since I last spoke or seen my father. In the beginning, he’d try to contact me through Facebook then contacting my friends through Facebook to force them to tell me to contact him. The worst was when he was on wife number 3 she messaged me a nasty message saying that I needed to grow up and to talk to my father. Sometimes I find it laughable that I can act more adult than him. Ever since then I have just been harboring this anger and hatred and wrath and grief and guilt over this man that is my father.

The reason this ties back to the Todoroki Family is that my mother has been preaching to me about how I need to forgive him and that I would feel so much better with my life if I just forgive him. But I don’t know how to go about doing that. A part of me has just felt this way for so long that I don’t know how else to feel. Another part of me feels that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness because in my mind if I forgive him than it excuses all that he did to me and that he can go through the rest of his life feeling that I was wrong and he was right. There was a point where I felt such resentment and anger that I didn’t care if he was already dead and I’d never known about it. I felt like I would be glad to be rid of him from my life.

I’m at the point now that I have thought about forgiveness and honestly, that is the most that I can do up to this point. I am afraid that I’ll become like him someday. I have his depressive tendencies as well as his anger and I am so afraid that I will treat people the same way he treated me. I’m afraid to become the monster that he is.

Basically, what I’m saying is that I’m kind of in a Natsuo and Shouto place in my life. And honestly, that’s okay. Forgiveness is something that needs to be done at a person’s own pace and it has to be something that you truly believe with your whole heart and being. Because if it isn’t, then the break of those emotions won’t be clean and you will be in a weird limbo.

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Thank you for reading my Ted Talk. I hope this made sense.

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perpetuallyfive · 5 years

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some thoughts on Endgame

I always find it a lot easier to write very long rants about things I dislike than praise about things that I like. It just feels like the good things are obvious, you know? So compiling them in lists feels a little pointless.

It’s why I haven’t written anything about Endgame yet. I honestly thought Infinity War was pretty average at best, so the fact that I fucking loved practically every single minute of Endgame kind of caught me by surprise. It checked so many of my boxes that it’s almost hard to even articulate.

So much of what was good about it honestly felt almost inevitable.

Mark me down as pretty confused then as I read some of the negative responses. Like... obviously, I’m just being dense. Nothing exists, especially on the internet, without some negative response. And I don’t even mean that in a pithy way. People are really different and what works for one person doesn’t work for everyone.

Which brings me back to my earlier point.

Just because I thought some of this stuff was obvious or amazing doesn’t mean everyone did, so here are a few observations, in an unordered list:

The way that time travel works in the movie is deliberately left a little vague, in my opinion, to allow wiggle room for the multiverse moving forward, especially as they expand into streaming services.

They do however clearly say that you cannot change your own past. Bruce says it. This means that Steve absolutely is not in our timeline, whatever the writers might say about it now. He’s not. In our timeline, he knew Peggy married someone else. That’s in his past. He cannot change his past in his own timeline. Therefor he cannot change who Peggy marries in his own timeline.

Seriously, he’s not in our timeline. They’re just wrong.

This means you have a million possibilities in fanfic for all the things Steve did that sent out ripples in his own new timeline or the many multiverses he could have created. It’s a fucking candy shop.

Try not to be too hard on the writers for having no idea what they’re talking about, I guess; it’s hard writing characters that are way smarter than you.

Am I less than charitable toward the writers because of their dumb takes on Natasha in defending why she’s not a part of the funeral at the end? Yes.

Just put a fucking second wreath there, god damn, would it have been so hard.

Framing Nebula’s storyline as a bad thing, which I’ve seen a few times now, is frankly insane to me. She isn’t, as the daily dot put it, killing herself. She missed her chance to save her sister five years ago and has regretted it every since. The second Gamora is at stake this time, she makes it clear that she would sacrifice anything (even someone who looked like her), to prevent losing her sister again. That’s great shit!

I am bummed we don’t get original Gamora back, but I’m also intrigued by the soft reset this does on her relationship with everyone in the Guardians. I wonder what their plans are with that in Vol 3. In many ways, her healing process away from Thanos was sidelined in the first two films and this allows the possibility of reframing that as more central to the focus in the third. Fingers crossed.

More Gamora and Nebula in general but especially in Guardians 3 please; I might threaten to retroactively like this movie less if this is the last we get of this much attention on their relationship, please and thank you.

The problem with the MCU crossover movies is they have to exist as two things at once. They have to be a movie that works as its own thing with good timing, pacing, structure, and an end that feels conclusive. They also have to pay off minor characters that mainstream audiences might not care about, as part of larger world building and the stories shared across an entire universe. Endgame, in my opinion, did a much better job of it than Infinity War or Ultron. (it’s hard to compare it with Avengers, when the scale was much more intimate.)

No but really, I don’t think a lot of us in fandom have an appreciation for how many people don’t know any of this shit we take for granted. A shocking number of the people I have spoken to IRL who are entirely apart from fandom didn’t even know what “on your left” was a reference to and were actually a little confused by that moment.

Just think about that and understand the levels this movie has to operate on at all times. It’s almost enough to make me feel bad for the writers, except they still said dumb shit about Nat, so I’m good.

I did actually love all the more subtle callbacks, like Natasha’s necklace and T’Challa knowing Clint’s name, but the direct quotes were pretty great too, especially Steve’s reaction to “I could do this all day.” Super charming.

Another awkward thing about the crossovers is they have to try to level the playing field slightly and there are some Avengers who are just way more powerful than others. Carol was disappointingly absent, but she’s also insanely OP. It’s why Thor got depressed and it’s why the Russos now say that Hulk will have limited use of one arm. They nerfed some of the classic Avengers, but kept Carol full powered just off in space. That’s preferable, so long as she gets more screen time later and jesus please fix the wig. Or just do the actual haircut now that it doesn’t have to be a secret.

Please dear god the hair is great in concept but seriously if there’s anything about the straight agenda ruining Endgame it’s how borderline soccer mom they managed to make that hair look.

Natasha deserved better and I think we can all agree on that, but here’s hoping that her prequel is deliberately designed to echo the destination we know she’s headed toward and to give her a better resolution more in line with what she deserved. I want to believe that they didn’t give her a full ending entirely because they knew she still had a movie coming up and didn’t want to create that sense of finality that might keep audiences from seeing it. Here’s hoping they can make it work.

Like specifically with very different writers, please. Hopefully a woman. You’ve maybe heard of them before, one of them wrote Guardians, the movie that nobody thought could work and fucking made it work. Yeah.

Tony and Steve were always headed in opposing directions at the end of their arc. This has been covered. Tony went from living selfishly to living selflessly. He went from a playboy bachelor, to a husband, to a father. His one priority when he decided he had to save the world wasn’t even himself, it was specifically keeping his daughter in existence. He went from a selfish dick with daddy issues to someone whose only priority was being a dad.

it was perfect. Like people can say otherwise... but they’re wrong.

I’m an expert on this, clearly. Tony’s death was perfect.

THEY FINALLY GAVE ME RESCUE. I loved everything about it, from Tony planning it carefully for a long time -- like obviously I think it’s because he was customizing the design to be more in line with Pepper’s wants and values, like it is in the comics -- to the fact that it actually does look more defensively focused but still super capable in battle. I want to watch this movie a billion times, honestly, but this scene in particular. I need to know everything about what her suit can do.

Steve was always going to end up settling down. We don’t actually know what he did in his own timeline -- again, IT’S NOT OURS -- so there’s a chance he was still a bit of a troublemaker, but honestly the five years seemed to take a lot out of him. He doesn’t always need a war, and that actually is forward momentum and growth. I get that some people are against the idea and think that getting to be with Peggy was somehow a step back, but I’m not sure I buy that.

Tony taking out the arc reaction at the end of IM3 wasn’t actually about him erasing his trauma or leaving it behind, and Steve getting to be with Peggy doesn’t erase his growth. It was part of it.

Theoretically Sharon was always an option, except the audience (and fandom) response to her was pretty terrible, so actually she wasn’t.

And not to just keep harping on points made in an article that I think is frankly pretty terrible, but Steve going back to the past instead of settling in the present wasn’t about compulsory heterosexuality so much as it was about a franchise that is going to keep making movies needing to keep the next decade of films in mind.

If Steve is still around in the now, that will always linger as a nagging question. The same way that people can’t shut up about where Carol was for the last decade, Steve hanging around in retirement refusing to help would hang over the next phases of movies like a cloud. Putting him in the past lets him live (which he deserves) and clears the slate.

Let Steve rest but, more than that, dear god won’t you please let Chris Evans rest too.

This goes back to how these movies, especially the crossovers, have to work on almost too many levels and it’s frankly shocking that they manage to do it and still have moments of sincere humanity and sweetness.

Like I’m not going to try to oversell it, but seriously fucking think about the fact that one of the most successful blockbuster movies of all time actually has quiet moments where people talk about trauma, loss, parental abuse or neglect, failure, and depression.

Hey remember when the movie gave us acknowledgement of Rhodey and Nebula’s disabilities? In the possibly going to be most successful movie of all time, they had characters with disabilities say how they’re different now but it’s okay, they work with what they got, and they bonded over that and it was so fucking shocking for me and BEAUTIFUL. Just a reminder for us all that THAT happened in the movie that may actually pass Avatar to become the MOST SUCCESSFUL FILM OF ALL TIME.

Just allowing another moment to let that sink in while I try to wrap this up (for now).

ps I can’t believe this movie made me have nice thoughts on Ultron, which I fucking despise with most of my being.

Actually I might have to take back every nice thing I said, just because of the Ultron thing. How dare you, film.

But still lol at the fact that even talking about Ultron for a few seconds was enough to make Tony Stark pass the fuck out. Hard same, Tony.

LOOK OBVIOUSLY I LOVED MORGAN STARK. I AM EXCITED ABOUT MORGAN STARK. SHE IS A PRECIOUS PERFECT ANGEL AND I LOVE HER.

SHIT.

So this is a totally incomplete list but here you go. Some of my thoughts on Endgame.

#avengers 4 spoilers #avengers endgame #avengers endgame spoilers #marvel

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plac3h0lder · 7 years

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Later Chapter Summary (Don't have to post, just review and please give me your honest opinion)

Warning: This chapter summary contains blood, suicide mentions, HIV references, and angst. If you are uncomfortable reading this, it is understandable and I do not want to offend anyone

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On an rainy April evening, Dib is home alone (Dad is working over hours and Gaz is off at Zim’s house since they are dating). He is geniunely happy, watching TV and eating Chinese take out. He then hears the doorbell ringing and he answers it. It is Fox, crying and shaking her head in denial. She then begs Dib “Please tell me you don’t have it”. He is confused and asks what she means. She then tells him that Jessica told her that he has HIV and is angered at him for not telling her in the beginning. He then tries to tell her that Jessica is lying, but Fox screams at him for being dishonest, breaks up with him, and tells him that she hates him (she feels shocked afterwards).

After Fox leaves, Dib goes upstairs and starts writing a suicide note to his father and sister and other friends. Afterwards, he runs hot water in his bathtub and takes off his coat. He takes out a pair of scissors from his drawers and starts cutting himself with a smile on his face.

When Gaz comes home later on that night, she notices that it’s too quiet and investigates the house. She then goes upstairs and find Dib in his bloody bathtub with open slits from his arms. Her heart drops and she calls an ambulance to come and pick him up. While the ambulance drives Dib to the hospital, Gaz goes to her father’s office and attempts to see him. She blocks off his workers and security and angrily confronts her father about what happened. Professor Membrane brushes the incident off (he doesn’t really like Dib anymore due to him being Bisexual and has once even sent him to conversion camp) and orders for Gaz to leave now. When she does leave, Gaz sees a stone and throws it at a window, screaming that he never cared about her and Dib. She then runs to the hospital with tears running down her face.

The next day, Fox notices that Dib is absent and later on overhears Gaz talking to Zim, Keef, Tak, Gretchen, and Zita that they will visit him at the hospital after school. She then shows up at the hospital with a vase full of roses and asks what happened to Dib. Gaz explains everything to Fox, but then she blames her for making Dib’s last minutes of his life miserable (Spoiler: Don’t worry. He will survive). Fox then tries to tell them that she never meant what she said to Dib, but Gaz shuts her down by saying that she can’t take her words back and that she has done nothing but made their lives more miserable when she came into their lives. Everyone agrees with her (Including Tak and Zita and Keef) and walks away from Fox, looking at her with anger.

Fox then drops the vase of roses and smiles blankly. She walks out of the hospital with the same expression, but when she gets to the isolated part of town (where her base is located at), she deactivates her disguise and goes to the bathroom in tears. She looks at her reflection in disgust and punches the mirror, making her fist bleed. She then gets a baseball bat and starts smashing everything in sight, screaming that she is sorry to Dib. After her meltdown, she packs a bag, gets Snowflake, and burns down the base. She then collapse to the ground in tears, saying that she is sorry for everything and that she wishes to go back and take back everything she has said to him.

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(A/N: Please forgive my cruddy writing on summaries. I can write stories way better than summaries. So, what is your HONEST opinion?)

//... HONEST opinion? Well.. If you’re asking for my critique, I’ll give it.

I will be going off the actual canon to the show/comics. If i were to go off my blog, that’d be INCREDIBLY WEIRD/CREEPY because there’s a bit of ME in all of my Muses, so I’ll stray from that.

I’m not big on the idea of Dib and or/Fox having a sexual relationship as implied. Considering Dib is still canonly a child, it makes me very uncomfortable. If this is in an older!AU, go ahead, but i still feel... Personally bad about it. But hey, this is just my opinion. I also don’t see Dib being the type of person to be into that stuff whatsoever. (I would highly recommend removing any kind of sexual activity from any story you write/become involved in if you’re a minor. Not my life, not my call, but even so, it’s illegal and i just want the best for you.)

Next. Considering Fox is an Irken, i don’t see why she would be concerned with HIV or any kind of human disease seeing as how Irkens versus humans both have very different illnesses and cures. Not to mention that Irkens canonly don’t have any kind of genitalia, i also don’t really see how any kind of sexual activity could be possible. But, whatever you headcanon, i suppose.

Next. For Dib to give literally everything up because he lost one person seems a little?.. Off. He still has his career, Gaz, entertainment and full life ahead of himself. To be so unbelievably dedicated to one person that he tried to kill himself seems incredibly OOC and just plainly unrealistic and like an unbalanced thing for him to do.

Next. I feel like Professor Membrane would care a lot, a lot more for his children than that considering they’re all he has to give for the future. Without them, he can collapse under his own castle in a matter of seconds. There wouldn’t be hope for the future generations of science, nor would there be anything to look forward too after he gave up his position. Not only this, but the fact that Dib’s bi.. I just don’t feel like he as a father would care? He doesn’t care too much that he’s into the paranormal, he doesn’t try to convert his mind to real science, he just heavily encourages it.

Next. If Dib were to create a relationship with an Irken, call me crazy or ship-delusional, but i feel like if it were remotely ANY IRKEN, it’d be with Zim. Reasons are, they’ve known one another. They literally need one another to be satisfied. This is shown and displayed more than once in both the show and the comic. The other reason is that Dib may have hopes that he could change Zims mind about the earth dominating thing. Even if it’s not a relationship, it could be a friendship. I don’t see him just saying ‘okay I’ll date you’ to some female Irken who just shows up into his life.

Next... The overall story.

Listen, buddy. ..This.. Entire thing.. Is just a mess, i feel?.. Don’t let me discourage you, if you like it you keep writing it, and don’t you DARE let my words get in the way of that. But, for me, it’s.. WAAAY too edgy. I get that angst is a lovely topic and should be appreciated, but, this gives me a vibe that yells ‘I’m trying to be serious and sharp as a razor blade.’

That’s.. Not really a vibe you want your stories to give people. It sounds like all the ‘high tech’ computer gaming gear in the form of an IZ fic. An angst story doesn’t need to include every single tragedy that could ever occur to be angsty or sad. In fact, the simpler, smaller stories are usually the more deepening. I mean... If i wrote both of these on an article title, which would sound more emotional?

‘Kid attempts to runaway eight times after incredible school bullying and parental neglect.’

‘Kid gets abused and neglected after family hears of their eighteen suicide attempts after public embarrassment. Family gets together before the child ends it in front of their entire family at thanksgiving dinner, causing them to blame themselves and each other.’

One seems straight to the point and realistic, other seems over done and jumbled. You don’t need a severely depressing story to make the readers severely depressed. It just kind of makes them sigh, roll their eyes and claim it’s cheesy. When people read angst and sad fics, they just want a snack. And it’s your job to make sure you don’t use too much baking soda.

For you, hun, if you’d like to make this a public story, I’d suggest fixing it up and using a bit of references. There are many mary sue-ish focuses here and there, very unlikely events, everything moves too fast, I’m sorry. But, this is my honest opinion.

However! If you’re writing this for fun, please continue to do as you do! Write for you, don’t let anyone else control that! But.. If you want to make it public, you know...

Just.. Tone down on the baking soda, okay?

#TW #Trigger Warning #Suicide #Suicide TW #HIV #HIV TW #Long Post #Self Harm #Self Harm TW #Panda-Mun #submission

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mrsteveecook · 6 years

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meal trains for coworkers in crisis, I have more experience than my resume indicates, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Meal trains for coworkers in crisis

I’ve appreciated your consistent message that gifts should flow downward, not up, which makes a lot of sense for holidays/birthdays/happy occasions. I’m curious about your thoughts on meal trains (or other forms of support) in times of crisis — is that in a different category than regular gifts? It feels different, but it definitely has all the same problematic potential in terms of lower-level staff feeling pressured to participate and to spend money and their free time on their higher-earning bosses.

I wonder how personal relationships factor in to this question. I work closely with my bosses in a workplace of only 15 people, and would absolutely participate in a meal train and be grateful for the opportunity to show support to any of my coworkers. But I have a friend who is in a big workplace who just participated in a meal train for a very high-ranking coworker. The recipient is in genuine need of support, but it seems troublesome that it’s coming almost entirely from subordinates, many of whom have very little or no personal relationship with the recipient (who is apparently very well-liked, so surely many of the meal train participants really did want to help out, but the invitation to participate went out broadly).

And where do meal trains for new parents fit into workplace gift-giving? That’s not quite a crisis, but still, many new parents really do need that kind of support too.

I do think that helping people in times of crisis is in a different category, and that the normal rules about workplace gifts flowing downward, not upward don’t apply. If someone loses everything in a fire and their coworkers who are lower in their work hierarchy want to contribute to helping them, I think that’s a case where we’re suspending normal workplace etiquette rules and shifting over to fellow-human rules.

That said, as you note, you’ve still got to keep an eye on it to make sure that there’s no pressure for people to contribute. The second there’s pressure to give, it triggers power dynamics, and now we’re back into workplace etiquette territory again. So I think if you want to keep it squarely in “help a fellow human in crisis” territory, it needs to stay pressure-free.

Meal trains for new parents are a different category. That’s not quite crisis but more normal life happening. I actually think a full-on meal train would be a bit much for most workplaces … and if the workplace wants to do something, a better choice is to send over pre-made, purchased meals paid for by the employer. Individual coworkers who are close to the new parent also might choose to do something helpful on their own, of course. (But where a bunch of people really want to do a meal train, I’d say they really need to ensure people aren’t pressured to participate, that the people signing up aren’t all subordinates. It’s also worth looking at whether they’re helping out new parents while ignoring anyone without kids who goes through a similarly trying time.)

There’s also a whole separate question here about whether everyone would want a meal train from their coworkers, but that’s a separate post.

2. Boss called employee and pretended to be from Child Protective Services

I am writing this on behalf of a friend, who I’ll call Wendy. Wendy works for a company that provides daycare, a perk for her. By all accounts, she seems to be a decent mom. One day at work, she received a call claiming to be from Child Protective Services accusing her of abuse and neglect. She was on the verge of a breakdown when the caller laughed and revealed herself to be her boss, Winnifred. Winnifred laughed over the “joke.” Wendy was shaken and disturbed, and wound up mentioning it to another coworker. Winnifred later called Wendy to her office and wrote her up for gossiping and taking the incident so seriously. Wendy has been advised to go to HR, but fears to do so due to possible retaliation. Could Wendy be fired for escalating this?

In theory, yes. In practice, it’s very unlikely, especially since HR is highly likely to intervene once they know the situation. The bigger risk is that she’ll face more subtle retaliation from her boss.

But she should go to HR anyway, because this is so egregious. It’s outrageous that Winnifred played this “joke” in the first place (although I hesitate to call it a joke because there’s nothing funny about scaring the crap out of someone and making them think their child could be taken away from them). But the fact that Winnifred then took formal action against Wendy for being upset about it takes this from “very bad” to “truly villainous.” If Wendy’s HR people are at all decent, she should tell them what happened.

3. We’re supposed to write our managers’ comments for our performance reviews

We got notified our annual performance reviews were upcoming this week. An interesting addendum to the notification reads: “This year we would like each employee to write up their manager’s comments, in addition to completing their own employee comments for each question. Our aim in doing this is to minimize the amount of administration involved for each of the line managers, who may have multiple employees’ reviews to write up. Each employee will need to take notes during their review, writing them up within the attached Word document, before returning them to their line manager. The line manager will then review and amend their comments, before copying and pasting them into the Manager Comments section of each employee’s review.”

Regardless of company size, this seemed odd to me. If a company employs an HR system, surely managers should expect a certain amount of administrative work — and an increase in that work when annual performance reviews are in progress? And wouldn’t a manager be expected to have the requisite time management skills to factor this extra work into their schedule? Not to mention, having to take notes for your manager while your own review is in progress is surely a questionable practice?

This is messed up. When I first read it, I wondered if they were doing this as a way to ensure that people process the feedback their managers are giving them — since saying “write this up and send it back to me” is a good way to check for alignment on important details. But if that were the case, I assume they’d say so — and besides, if they want to make sure that people get the right takeaways from the meeting, they could easily ask that people come up with 3-5 action steps based on the meeting, or something like that.

Instead they’re making it sound like it’s just a time saver for managers — which sends the message that managers can’t be bothered with something that’s actually quite important. (And yes, writing evaluations is time consuming and can be a pain. It’s still a really important part of the job.)

Either way, it’s a pretty awful idea. You want to be really focused and processing during an evaluation meetings, and while taking notes can definitely be part of that, you don’t want to be so focused on writing down every detail that you can’t engage in a real conversation. There’s also something a little demeaning about it, frankly. This is problematic all around.

4. I have more years of experience in a skill than my resume indicates

I have recently been applying to a lot of places, and I want to make sure I am not messing something up. When applying to jobs on sites like Indeed, often they will have a little questionnaire asking, for instance “How many years experience do you have doing X?” The answer to that may be something like seven years, but my resume shows only four of those years, as three years of that experience was before what would appear on my resume. I feel like they ought to know how a disparity like that would happen, but I worry sometimes that they might see that it doesn’t match and think I was lying. Thoughts?

You should put the full number of years of experience you have — but then you also should give them a version of your resume that reflects that experience as well. If they’re asking about years of experience in X, that means that they really care about experience in X … and so you’d want it on your resume as well as in the application questionnaire. If that older experience is from 2003 and your resume only goes back to 2008 and you really don’t want to have to list your llama wrangling job from 2006 that you got fired from (or most other jobs pre-2008, because you’re trying not to clutter it up with less relevant stuff), you can just add a section toward the end called “Additional Relevant Experience” and list the relevant job there (without the other older jobs).

5. How to reconnect with an old interviewer when looking for a job

During my undergraduate degree, I participated in a co-op program where I had several paid work terms as part of my degree. I was fortunate to attend the largest co-op school in the world, so the volume of job opportunities and subsequent interviews was typically quite high. Even in circumstances where I didn’t get the job, it was great to connect with different interviewers and get a buttload of experience. During my last work term hiring cycle, I had an interview with a person we’ll call Joe, who worked in a local office of a major company that is primarily dedicated to product development and innovation. I didn’t secure the position (lack of experience in that specific role), but he followed up with afterwards to tell me what a stellar candidate he thought I was but they required someone with more technical expertise. He included several resources I could use to strengthen my abilities and offered to introduce me to a recruiter at another major company. He concluded the email with “Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions or if I can be of further assistance.” This all happened in March of 2017.

I am now doing my master’s and, as a part of my program, I have to lock down an internship in May 2019. I’m still really interested in the work that Joe does at his office and I want to reach out to him and see if they’ll have any opportunities available. However, I don’t know if too much time has transpired and he won’t remember who I am. It also feels like I’m already doubting myself if I start an email with “I don’t know if you remember me but….” and I want to appear confident. How would you suggest I approach this?

You absolutely can! It’s possible that he won’t remember you, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be receptive if you refresh his memory and it’s still totally okay to do. You might even send your email as a reply to that helpful email from him last year so that he has the context right in front of him, and open it with something like, “You interviewed me last year for an X position and were kind enough to explain later that while you needed someone with more technical experience for that job, you’d be open to talking in the future. You also generously sent me some really helpful resources (below, to refresh your memory). I’m writing now because…”