#and contribute to boundary violations later on

[justagirlsearchingforamuse]

I still don’t get how people can critique Warren and yes I can understand the red flags that he may have but it’s also like people are fine and willing to give Nathan, VIctoria, and even David a chance despite doing some fucked up shit. I’m not saying excuse what Warren does, some of the stuff he does can be pushing boundaries a little bit, but he’s never intending to hurt or violate Max’s boundaries. For me, I question why we can give Grace to Nathan, yes he’s mentally ill and it always must be considered when you look at his actions as well as the fact he’s manipulated. However it can never erase the pain or the damage he has done to many women, it’s fine to humanize him and give him grace but what stops you from giving Warren the same grace?  Victoria bullied Kate and maybe even recorded the video of her when she was under the influence of drugs, she tries to get many people to see the video, actively bullies Kate during class, and largely contributed to Kate’s depression and later suicide. But she later apologizes and seems regretful of what she has done and she doesn’t deserve to be drugged as well but what allows you to give her grace? Not to mention she and Nathan can break into your room and mess up your room? Victoria is not what she seems, even appearing to be geeky, and other things but the image or persona she portrays is still a hurtful one. The game humanizes her toward the end however, many of her actions are hurtful, vain, and selfish, but I don’t see people dragging her through the mud due to many of the hurtful things she does. Many people give her grace but when it comes to Warren, someone who likely was being bullied by her at one point, we don’t give him grace? I’m not saying this to say well look at what they did, I’m saying that people choose and continue to ship Max with people who have hurt her or violated her boundaries but Warren is different? You can dislike Warren, but as I replay the game I realize he’s just a teenage boy who does some stuff I understood made people uncomfortable but also I don’t hold it against him. Many people bring up things like the nightmare sequence which imo everyone was acting fucked up, everyone was literally Max’s worst fear of what they could be. For example, Chloe continues to remain hurt about Max leaving without a word, that she will betray her, that in her hurt she will hurt Max back. It’s a nightmare, why is Warren’s behavior in it taken as truth when no one else’s behavior is taken as a red flag in it especially Chloe’s. I agree that Warren has some problems, I didn’t like that he watched Kate’s video or how he clearly favors Max over Brooke and will drop her so quickly for Max. He struggles with boundaries, however, you can say that about most teenage boys, even then when people view Warren as a stalker in return they take away credit from Max. Treating her as though she can’t tell him if she’s uncomfortable with him, or if she doesn’t like him, that she can’t express to him how he makes her feel. Especially in a game where she’s dealing with a lot of creepy dudes, David, Nathan, and eventually Jefferson. I’m just saying this because I’m realizing that I don’t understand the people who can villainize Warren for behavior that yes is weird and cringe but they can give Grace to people who spend most of the game going against Max, who spend most of the game violating people’s boundaries. I just ask that if you are willing to give these characters grace, think about giving Warren grace as he has done weird things in relation to Max but it cannot take away from the good he does for her. 

#warren graham

[transgayhawkeyepierce]

Camilla Nygaard was an interesting antagonist for Della, in the unique way she simultaneously spoke in words of solidarity, while flexing her power over Della; undermining her by violating her boundaries in their interactions. In their first private meeting, Camilla is shown continuously pushing Della into essentially talking smack about her partner, which is both extremely unprofessional and something only Camilla can do as the person who holds the most power in the conversation. It's a display of her position of wealth. However, she is simultaneously uplifting Della, encouraging her, and recognizing her contributions, in which Della feels inspired by. In their second interaction, Camilla puts Della in several strange strained conversational positions, and even forces her to fetch her a drink like a servant instead of a guest. It's these small demeaning gestures while speaking like a friend, that illustrate how little she really thinks of her. It is also is implied that Camilla is going to want to own Della through blackmail later in the season.

Even in their last confrontation, Camilla is still speaking in "as women in this society" solidarity-esq language to Della WHILE hatefully threatening her with her knowledge that Della is gay. Here is a woman who is uniquely successful, fighting to stand with the men in her business, and seemingly using her position to uplift other women, and she turns out to be a complete monster. All words of kindness to Della a cruel manipulative ploy. How devastating.

#perry mason hbo #della street #as a woman in this time period Camilla understands how starved of acknowledgement and opportunity other women must be #and uses it as her weapon because she's an awful person who does not give a fuck

[maximus-02]

Twitter's Censure of Donald Trump: Navigating Free Speech and Democracy in the Digital Age

In today's digital world, where social media platforms significantly influence political discourse, Twitter's decision to censure former President Donald Trump brings critical questions about free speech and democracy to the forefront. This blog post explores whether Twitter's actions were an infringement of free speech principles or a necessary step within democratic values.

The Escalating Conflict Between Trump and Social Media

President Trump has openly accused Twitter of infringing on his free speech. This accusation came after Twitter fact-checked his tweet about mail balloting and later restricted the visibility of another tweet related to the Minneapolis protests. Trump's long-standing tension with Silicon Valley tech giants escalated, culminating in a complex legal battle and concerns over the future of online free expression. The situation heated up when Twitter took action against his tweet for glorifying violence, prompting Trump to vow retaliation against the platform (Phillips 2020) (Romm & Timberg 2020).

Debunking Trump's Free Speech Violation Claims

However, Trump's claims of a constitutional free speech violation by Twitter don't hold up for two primary reasons:

Twitter's Status as a Private Company: The First Amendment protects against government censorship, not actions by private entities like Twitter. As a private platform, Twitter has the right to manage its content, including tweets from the president, under its own policies. This content management autonomy is safeguarded by the First Amendment (Phillips 2020).

Platform's Right to Content Regulation: Twitter can regulate its content as it sees fit, in line with its terms of service. If dissatisfied, users, including President Trump, can migrate to other platforms (Phillips 2020).

Trump's Countermeasures and Their Implications

The issue's complexity escalated when Trump signed an executive order to increase federal oversight of social media companies' content moderation practices. This legally questionable order suggests social media companies are exceeding legal boundaries in content regulation despite laws protecting them from liability. It has been criticized for potentially inviting government interference in private businesses, raising First Amendment concerns (Phillips 2020).

Silicon Valley in the Political Crosshairs

Trump's actions, perceived as a strategy to energize his base, exploit the tech industry's vulnerabilities, such as past failures in handling disinformation and privacy issues. This strategy has led to declining public trust in the tech sector, particularly among Republicans. It frames Silicon Valley as an electoral adversary(Romm & Timberg 2020).

Case Studies from Southeast Asia

Reflecting the global impact of social media in politics, various case studies from Southeast Asia highlight its influence:

Cambodia: Prime Minister Hun Sen's strategic use of social media during elections, including deleting his Facebook account to avoid suspension and shifting to platforms like Telegram and TikTok (Fitriani & Habib 2023).

Thailand: The Move Forward Party's general election success is partly attributed to leader Pita Limjaroenrat's effective use of Instagram (Fitriani & Habib 2023).

Indonesia: Expected trends in the upcoming presidential election include using political bots and buzzers, reflecting the adaptation to a young, tech-savvy demographic (Fitriani & Habib 2023).

Malaysia: The Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) leveraged TikTok in its campaign strategy, significantly contributing to its general election success (Fitriani & Habib 2023).

Myanmar: The National Unity Government's (NUG) use of social media for public communication and awareness amidst criticisms of propaganda and misinformation (Fitriani & Habib 2023).

The Dilemma for Tech Companies

Tech companies now face the challenge of moderating content while fending off allegations of political bias. Trump's focus on alleged discrimination is part of his broader strategy to address perceived censorship, such as hosting a White House summit. The recent executive order could bring about significant changes in the digital landscape and raise questions about the government's role in regulating online speech (Romm & Timberg 2020).

Social Media's Role in Politics and Its Double-Edged Sword

Social media's importance in politics is underscored in Southeast Asia, where platforms are used extensively for political campaigns. While social media expands the reach of politicians beyond traditional media and allows for tailored messaging, it also raises issues like echo chambers, political polarization, and the spread of misinformation (Fitriani & Habib 2023).

Mitigating the Risks of Social Media in Politics

To counter these risks, educating the public about online misinformation is vital. Encouraging social media companies to actively remove false content and promote transparency in moderation policies is crucial for maintaining social media's integrity as a tool for democratic engagement (Fitriani & Habib 2023).

Conclusion

In conclusion, Twitter's censure of Donald Trump opens up a broader discussion about the responsibilities of social media platforms in public discourse. As we navigate these complex issues, the balance between protecting free speech and maintaining democratic values in the digital realm remains a topic of vital importance.

References

Fitriani, & Habib, M. (2023, August 10). Social Media and the fight for political influence in Southeast Asia. The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2023/08/social-media-and-the-fight-for-political-influence-in-southeast-asia/

Phillips, A. (2020, May 29). Analysis | no, Twitter is not violating Trump’s freedom of speech. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/29/no-twitter-did-not-violate-trumps-freedom-speech/

Romm, T., & Timberg, C. (2020, May 29). Trump’s growing feud with Twitter fuels free-speech concerns. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/29/words-president-matter-trumps-growing-twitter-feud-fuels-free-speech-concerns/

#mda20009 #week 5 #digital communities

[drippinart]

#BTS #Celebrities #FanObsession #Jungkook #K-pop #Privacy #Safety

[zooterchet]

How to Write American Civics (A Brief History)

Police, Criminals, Lawyers, and the Mob:

The archaic police code, worldwide, was invented in the Steppes, by the Scythians, split between Isaac's sons, Gog, and Lam's sons, Magog, the prior the testament to the dead, the latter the legend of lawful codes.  This way, you would not be able to summon an army, based on a claim of title, from those already passed, through the speedy and fair dispensation of the deceased's property, to those arranged by deceased as heir, otherwise moving to 'the estate', public domain, without taxed edifice supporting.

It spread throughout the Old World, taking root firmest, in Egypt.  Egypt, is where we see the original police code develop, before the time of Christ, the Numidian swordsman, the modern army code, called police code, through Jewish literature, replacing the Irish convention, later finding root in Britain and its colonies, past, present, and future, the concept of freedom from force and manipulation being the ambition of police to protect in all citizens, hence police would make money, as well as those they protected (the support for a military force, through spies recruited from families and tracked in academic contributions, the mutual protection of act from theft of segmentation; a loss to freedom, was a victory for the military state, hence lawyers would control more and the common man would control less, defeating the point of office of any cop).The criminal code, meanwhile, shaped by Egypt, before the military code of Judas the Beggar, the police code also imbued from Egypt, Christ's act of rebellion against the draft and the conscript and the legacy theft of a state or person as taxed dispensation of control of government, is a separate consideration.   

Criminals, are expected to live under women's bounds and boundaries and bonds, existing for maternity; hence, Christ tricked Judas the Beggar, into being a homosexual, as well as any concerting, in the rival cop codes of Russia, Eastern, Central, Southern, and Western Europe, save France (Irish), Britain (Irish), Spanish (Irish), Ireland (Irish), and Denmark (Irish) cop codes.  These nation-states, allow a large measure of crime, as long as the crime, doesn't serve division by lawyers, hence it is returning control, to those in public population, the prohibition of a legislature, the default position for any behavior, never the legalization to allow a practice; hence, anything may be legal, once lawyer of court is removed, the American code as well, in all of the United States; the contrary, through our British roots, is treated as foreign intelligence, a practice targeted for violating the basic codes taught in highschool civics, the tradition of education - as opposed to secret societies, forbidden, as internationalist, foreign, paramilitary, or hired lawful society outside of tax burden allowed under legislature.

The final consideration, is mobsters.  When in practice of illegal police or legislative law, inside America, American police encourage membership in the Mob or Mafia, to determine which press or military or police or professional edifice is targeting a free practice of association in America.  The Mob, is run under the standards of German anti-Semitism; prostitution, that given granted title of woman seeking male on rebound, for a date and sex, then returning to pursue a relationship with men, to avoid diseases, forced marriage, and legal entrapment, with a lesbian identity forbidden to have sex with other women or to raise children, the purpose of the female's evasion of the male homosexual label (designed to kill a serial killer, by refusing to vary definitions of gay as pleased) as female, female bigemy, called pederasty to women in America (the woman's act of force or conjoinment of sexual relations with other women, the act upon men known as 'slack', the term for a poorly jawed woman with a mental homunculus of her teeth arching forward, hence they jut out their jaw when displeased, a hysterical personality).

So you can see that the American tradition, follows Isaac and Lam, of the Irish and British traditions, whereas our criminal traditions, follow French legal statutes prior to Napoleon, placing legal traditions contrary to the status of form through American Jews, with the consideration of the Mob as anti-Semitic in the German intent, run by female psychiatric victims, female-to-male transgenders, through police undercover brokers as official representatives.

[your-dietician]

North Korea fires artillery shells near border with S. Korea

New Post has been published on https://medianwire.com/north-korea-fires-artillery-shells-near-border-with-s-korea/

North Korea fires artillery shells near border with S. Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired artillery shells near its sea boundaries with South Korea late Tuesday, a day after the South began annual military drills to better deal with North Korean provocations.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement early Wednesday that North Korea fired about 100 shells off its west coast and 150 rounds off its east coast. It said the South Korean military broadcast messages several times asking North Korea to stop the firing, but there were no reports of violence between the rivals.

South Korea’s military said the shells didn’t land in South Korean territorial waters but fell inside the northern part of the maritime buffer zones the two Koreas established under a 2018 inter-Korean agreement aimed at reducing front-line animosities.

It’s the second time North Korea has fired shells into the buffer zones since last Friday, when it shot hundreds of shells there in its most significant direct violation of the 2018 agreement.

South Korea’s military said North Korea must halt provocations that undermine peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. It added that it is boosting its military readiness and, in coordination with the United States, is closely monitoring North Korea’s moves.

Hours later, an unidentified spokesperson for the North Korean People’s Army’s General Staff issued a statement describing the latest artillery firings as a response to the South Korean artillery training that it claimed took place earlier Tuesday at a border area. Seoul didn’t immediately confirm it had conducted such artillery drills on Tuesday.

“The enemies should immediately stop the reckless and inciting provocations escalating the military tension in the forefront area,” the North Korean military spokesperson said.

The North Korean spokesperson also lashed out at the South Korean military for kicking off an annual 12-day field exercise on Monday, calling it an invasion rehearsal. South Korea’s Defense Ministry said the training is aimed at improving operational capabilities to counter various types of North Korean provocations and that an unspecified number of U.S. troops will take part in this year’s drills.

The North’s artillery tests draw less outside attention than its missile launches. But its forward-deployed long-range artillery guns pose a serious security threat to South Korea’s populous metropolitan region, which is about 40 to 50 kilometers (25 to 30 miles) from the border with North Korea.

In recent weeks, North Korea has conducted a spate of weapons tests in what it calls simulations of nuclear strikes on South Korean and U.S. targets in response to their “dangerous military drills” involving a U.S. aircraft carrier. North Korea views regular military exercises between Washington and Seoul as an invasion rehearsal.

North Korea has test-launched 15 missiles since it resumed testing activities on Sept. 25. One of them was an intermediate-range ballistic missile that flew over Japan and demonstrated a range capable of reaching the Pacific U.S. territory of Guam and beyond.

Some foreign experts say North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would eventually aim to use his expanded weapons arsenal to pressure the United States and others to accept his country as a legitimate nuclear state and lift economic sanctions on the North.

———

Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.

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See more AP Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

Read full article here

[sfnewsvine]

North Korea Fires Hundreds of Artillery Shells Near Border NBC Bay Area

North Korea fired artillery shells close to its sea boundaries with South Korea late Tuesday, a day after the South started annual army drills to raised take care of North Korean provocations. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Employees stated in an announcement early Wednesday that North Korea fired about 100 shells off its west coast and 150 rounds off its east coast. It stated the South Korean army broadcast messages a number of instances asking North Korea to cease the firing, however there have been no reviews of violence between the rivals. South Korea’s army stated the shells didn’t land in South Korean territorial waters however fell contained in the northern a part of the maritime buffer zones the 2 Koreas established below a 2018 inter-Korean settlement aimed toward lowering front-line animosities. It’s the second time North Korea has fired shells into the buffer zones since final Friday, when it shot a whole lot of shells there in its most vital direct violation of the 2018 settlement. Inside hours of South Korea testing a submarine-launched ballistic missile, North Korea stated Thursday that it had efficiently launched ballistic missiles from a practice for the primary time, underscoring a return of tensions between the 2 nations. South Korea’s army stated North Korea should halt provocations that undermine peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. It added that it’s boosting its army readiness and, in coordination with america, is carefully monitoring North Korea’s strikes. Hours later, an unidentified spokesperson for the North Korean Individuals’s Military’s Common Employees issued an announcement describing the most recent artillery firings as a response to the South Korean artillery coaching that it claimed came about earlier Tuesday at a border space. Seoul didn’t instantly verify it had carried out such artillery drills on Tuesday. “The enemies ought to instantly cease the reckless and inciting provocations escalating the army pressure within the forefront space,” the North Korean army spokesperson stated. The North Korean spokesperson additionally lashed out on the South Korean army for kicking off an annual 12-day subject train on Monday, calling it an invasion rehearsal. South Korea’s Protection Ministry stated the coaching is aimed toward enhancing operational capabilities to counter varied sorts of North Korean provocations and that an unspecified variety of U.S. troops will participate on this yr’s drills. The North’s artillery checks draw much less outdoors consideration than its missile launches. However its forward-deployed long-range artillery weapons pose a critical safety risk to South Korea’s populous metropolitan area, which is about 40 to 50 kilometers (25 to 30 miles) from the border with North Korea. In current weeks, North Korea has carried out a spate of weapons checks in what it calls simulations of nuclear strikes on South Korean and U.S. targets in response to their “harmful army drills” involving a U.S. plane service. North Korea views common army workouts between Washington and Seoul as an invasion rehearsal. North Korea has test-launched 15 missiles because it resumed testing actions on Sept. 25. One in all them was an intermediate-range ballistic missile that flew over Japan and demonstrated a spread able to reaching the Pacific U.S. territory of Guam and past. Some overseas consultants say North Korean chief Kim Jong Un would ultimately intention to make use of his expanded weapons arsenal to stress america and others to just accept his nation as a reliable nuclear state and raise financial sanctions on the North. Related Press author Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report. Supply hyperlink Originally published at SF Newsvine

#SF Newsvine

[threewaysdivided]

So we all know how you feel about season 2 of Young Justice so how would you go about fixing all the flaws that happened over the course of the time skip and are there any episodes in season 1 you would have done differently? Also love your Deathly Weapons story and look forward to the next part.

First of all, thank you! I’m happy you’re enjoying Deathly Weapons and I’m super grateful for how much patience everyone has shown about me disappearing down into the writing mines for years at a stretch - especially to all the readers, commenters and artists who’ve come by to say hi during those long barren periods.

Chapter 18 (#19 counting the prologue) is now in full draft version with about 80% in final draft and the last few scenes currently in revision, so with luck I might get the next update out this month (touch wood).

Now, to your questions:

Any episodes in Season 1 that I would have done differently?

Honestly, not really. Or at least not on a whole-episode-rewrite level.

I think most of Young Justice Season 1 is incredibly solid, even in the slower and less substantial episodes/ scenes. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, narrative is more than just plot, characters and thesis; it’s also stuff like pacing, framing, tone and emotional texture, and for what they are I think those scenes and episodes contribute pretty well - usually on top of doing some pretty decent character work by themselves.

That’s not to say YJS1 is perfect by any measure, but a lot of the issues I have are entirely the kind of polish stuff that you’d expect from the first season of a show still finding its feet.

The biggest things I would want to change are:

I would tweak the writing of the Light specifically around the episodes Welcome to Happy Harbour and Humanity. The reveal of T.O. Morrow’s plan is that he wants his Red Androids to drive humans extinct and repopulate the planet with a robot army, which doesn’t really fit the Light’s stated goal of evolving humanity. I would either cut the scene from Welcome to Happy Harbour that implies T.O. Morrow is a part of their plan and just let him be an independent antagonist like we see in a few other episodes, OR I would add a scene in Humanity to clarify that the Light were using Morrow for their own agenda a la the Injustice League (perhaps in hopes of turning Red Tornado or even just confirming that the Team is operating from Mount Justice) and that Red Volcano’s ultimate failure is something they anticipated or even planned to cause themselves if necessary. Looking at Season 1 in isolation I do understand why the first scene is there; Welcome to Happy Harbour is only Episode 3 and at that point they’re still trying to establish a sense of the Light lurking conspiratorially as a presence behind every curtain. It’s one of those minor things that’s understandable on its own but, with the context of the later seasons, kind of feels like ominous foreshadowing in hindsight.

I’d also potentially want to adjust the dynamic between M’gann and Conner in the episode Terrors.  In the context of just Season 1 it’s mostly fine – their relationship having some light friction around boundaries/ consent is interesting and could have been built into a future arc.  But in light of what actually followed, the way this episode has M’gann reveal something personal about Conner to a stranger without his permission, only to then frame Conner as wrong for reacting angrily and have him beg her to come back without addressing it because “don’t leave me, please, I need you” feels like a red flag for what would become a pattern of later entries routinely forcing Conner to just ‘get over’ or even accept blame for moments where M’gann is written to violate his trust.  Were it me, I would either add some extra lines toward the end of the episode to have both of them recognise that (although well-intended) M’gann’s choice of action was inappropriate and Conner is allowed to feel upset (even if he was a little harsh) OR leave it as-is but make resolving the issue of boundaries (especially as a character flaw of M’gann’s) a key focus for them in a follow-up story.

In a similar vein, I question the addition of Rocket/Raquel in the last two episodes. It’s not that she’s bad, it’s just a really late point in a season to be adding a new character. She doesn’t have any established emotional connection to the rest of the Team or the reveals that follow and, outside of a couple of scenes that use her powers for minor problem solving, she doesn’t have much narrative utility. (And sure, she shows up as a cameo in Revelations but so do a bunch of other characters who never meaningfully come back). Were Young Justice’s canon not trapped in The Bad Place and, had some actually competent showrunners created later seasons where she had an arc and proper function, they could have justified it but, again, with the context of what we did get: ominous foreshadowing in hindsight.

Apart from that, I think I would have liked to see a bit more animation fidelity in places. Little tweaks to things like expressions and maybe a few background idle/ breathing animations during group shots. There are some moments where facial features get a little bit slide-y, and characters can freeze into being these wall-eyed mannequins while waiting for their turn to talk. (There’s a couple of points in Denial’s elevator scene where Artemis just turns into this vacant cardboard cut-out when she’s not speaking and it’s kind of hilarious: she has become one with the elevator music.)

But on the other hand, I get why it’s like that. Animation is really complicated, especially in 2D where every little change or addition can mean an entirely new set of drawings; which means asking the animation/lighting/compositing/VFX team to make and implement those drawings, which means spending more time and money… at some point there’s diminishing returns and only weird nerds like me are going to notice or care. It’s flawed but mostly in that kind of charming way where it reminds you that even really good art is made by human beings trying their best. And, when it wants to, Young Justice’s animation can be really good, so I’m glad they put the resources there instead.

How would I fix all the flaws that happened over the timeskip?

Boy howdy, this one is going to be a doozie.

For the sake of people just tuning in: I have some significant frustrations with Invasion (and really all post-S1 content). To this day, Young Justice remains the only show where I adored rewatching one season, only to turn around and consciously think “I don’t want to keep watching, this feels like a chore” on the next. Back when things were still mercifully cancelled I poked at Invasion a bit, identified a couple of surface-level annoyances, and let it go because one great season and one flop is still 50% excellent (and hey, maybe there were production problems, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt).

And then the revival happened and OH NO. I have been sucked down the rabbit hole of trying to understand how deep the problems go and why they’re so infuriating ever since.

Here’s the resulting master post (I know, I have a master post, good grief) of my analysing various problems across YJS2+.

With that as context, the challenge in answering your question is that there’s no singular problem with Young Justice (well… there is but we’ll get there). It’s more of a Russian nesting doll of interlocking problems; smaller things that point to bigger things. So trying to “fix” all the flaws ends up feeling a bit like Sisyphus with his rock - as soon as you get on top of one it rolls right down another slope into a fresh quagmire of issues.

What I think I’d like to do now and I was going to say ‘with your permission’ but it’s my blog and none of you are here to stop me so this is a hostage situation, I’m so sorry is use Invasion as kind of a case study/ writing exercise. Go through the problems layer by layer, suggest some possible ways to address them and see where it leads us.

Alright.

Let’s take our boulder and get rolling, shall we?

Before we really get into this, there’s an idea I’d like you to consider:

Constructing a narrative is about making choices. Nothing in a narrative “has” to happen and, at the same time, nothing just spontaneously manifests by itself. Good fiction creates the illusion of being a window through which we experience pieces of another living world, but in reality what is presented by the text is all that exists. Everything has to be consciously constructed: from the events of the plot, to the backgrounds, to individual footstep sounds. A drawing intersecting another drawing on a screen does not make noise; someone deliberately adds that in. If a tree falls in a forest and the creators don’t depict it, it doesn’t even fall.

An example: Let’s look at the Toy Story Movies’ credit-scene “bloopers”. These aren’t actual bloopers - real bloopers would be stuff like the animation breaking, or textures not rendering, or the engine going haywire; things that would disrupt the illusion of life. What they actually are is bonus scenes that the creative team actively wrote and developed on top of the rest of the movie, to help support the illusion that these characters are real and continue to exist outside the story rather than being CG-rendered polygons that disappear when the program switches off.

The flipside of this, though, is that the creators have near-ultimate power over what does happen. The sky could be blue one day and chartreuse the next. Wally’s hair could change colour every five minutes. Zatanna could be a different nationality each episode. Superboy could speak exclusively in limericks. It’s not complete power - licensing agreements, executive mandates and the physical limitations of time/tools/team/budget do create restrictions and force certain things - but outside of that, anything they decide goes. Good narratives tend to make effective and efficient choices; choices which fit cohesively with what has already been established and with what is planned to happen later, which create a sense of causality that the audience can follow, which don’t break the explicit/implied “rules” of how things work, and which don’t demand a lot of additional work/choices be made just to facilitate them. This is why I have limited patience for people who try to defend stories by claiming that ‘X’ “had” to happen. No, it didn’t. The creators could have chosen anything; they decided that ‘X’ should happen, and had they chosen a different option, it would have become canon instead.

With that said: to business.

I want to make it clear; there are things I like about Invasion. I like that they continued Red Arrow’s personal narrative and that it was Jade and Lian who ultimately helped him break out of his self-loathing and find the original Roy (although it is frustrating that he drops from the story immediately after that).

I like some of the new additions. I like Jaime and Bart, and I think Jaime’s arc about developing a partnership with his Scarab is one of the strongest personal narratives throughout the season. I like the Runaways, and especially how Virgil was written. I like Green Beetle. These characters are entertaining; the animation team and voice actors created good moment-to-moment chemistry between them and they’re written to play off each other well.

There’s also a lot of potential in the ideas if developed further. Beneath his bubbly persona there’s a lot of layers to explore in Bart’s experience as a time traveller interacting with a world and people that in his own are long-destroyed and dead. I like the idea of him developing new relationships with the present-day Neutron and Blue Beetle despite already “knowing” them in another form. I like the potential between Jaime and Tye; two old friends independently and unwillingly empowered by outside forces, learning to navigate and live in their new environment. I like the concept of the Runaways; a group of teens abducted because they were unwanted/ neglected/ overlooked, who find a place with each other - being led by Virgil, a kid from a loving family who was grabbed by mistake. There’s interesting things to explore in the idea that each meta-ability in some way reflects the individual meta-human’s surroundings; especially since most of the Runaways are multi-ethnic, and particularly for Tye as the grandson of an Apache chief. You could make some fascinating commentary about a world where the lines are blurring and “superpowers” are increasingly being held by “regular” people, rather than just mythologised costumed culture heroes and aliens, and where aliens are becoming an increasingly normal aspect of everyday life.

Like I said, there’s good potential there.

It’s just…

I would have liked them better if they’d been in their own show.

The immediate problem is that these elements barely engage with the existing narrative of Young Justice. None of the new characters have emotionally significant personal interactions with the original cast. Nor do they or their journeys function as cinematic/ thematic/ character foils or parallels to the original Team. The mole plot and Bart/Jaime’s plot never seem to intentionally feed into each other; nothing Jaime and Bart do really contributes to the reveal in Summit, and nothing the original Team do really contributes to defeating Black Beetle on the Reach ship. While there are some minor convergence points in service of problem solving for one story or the other, it rarely (if ever) feels like both groups are actively working together in service of a mutual overall goal. They are connected primarily by virtue of existing in the same show.

Here we have that Scope Management problem I’ve mentioned before. We now have two functionally independent casts and storylines competing for less total screentime than the first season (Invasion having only 20 episodes to Season 1’s 26). Any screentime given to one comes as the opportunity cost of that screentime not being used to develop the other. It’s narratively inefficient, and the result is that even the good things end up feeling underbaked.

There’s also an issue with how the Reach fit into the structure. Invasion likes to frame their defeat as something that “broke the Light in half” but the more you think about it, the more that’s revealed to be untrue. The Reach were never fully-integrated partners of the Light; both organisations held each other at arm’s length, and both ultimately saw and treated the other as disposable. Indeed, the thing that drives the final wedge is the Team revealing that the Light had always planned to double-cross. And then the final climax happens because the Reach were intending to double-cross right back by attempting to destroy the Earth. In fact, you could argue that defeating the Reach was always part of the Light’s own plan, and that the Team’s actions in Summit simply altered the method and timeframe by which that plan advanced to its next intended stage.

Which is itself a problem because the presence of the Reach is most of the justification for these new characters existing in the story in the first place.

I’d like to introduce two concepts from game design:

Accretion Accretion is a design phenomenon (usually in MMOs and perpetual games) where instead of patching, improving or removing mechanics and systems that are becoming outdated, unbalanced, exploitable or broken, the developers choose to simply build and layer over unrelated new mechanics with the aim of replacing and outmoding the systems that already exist. The old Extra Credits team did a video on this if you want to learn more.

The Sidequest Problem In his God of War Retrospective, Hello Future Me identified what he called ‘the Sidequest problem’: where the designers establish a story goal but then (rather than creating future goals/stakes for the player to progress past it and on to) they instead have the player encounter a sequence of arbitrary obstacles and problems that mostly exist to obstruct progress to that main goal until the obstacle is removed. The issue being that, while this approach extends playtime and gives the player a lot to do, the things that happen don’t necessarily feel like they’re moving the story forward. This is similar to the “filler arc” problem in early-2000s TV anime. In order to continue airing episodes while waiting for the publisher to release new adaptable material, the show writers would put the ongoing story into stasis by inventing an unrelated/ unconnected original antagonist or problem which they could divert the cast into a story about overcoming without changing the status quo on either side.

As they exist in Invasion canon, the Reach represent a choice to add a disposable secondary antagonist who can be knocked down without much advancement to the central conflict. It’s effectively a canonical “filler arc”.

The overarching structural issue with Young Justice is that every season Accretes new Sidequests rather than progressing the existing narrative goals.

There’s also the broader Scope Management issue that (even excluding the characters required by the ‘Sidequests’) Young Justice introduces a ridiculous number of characters per season. Most end up in the same position as Rocket: no properly established emotional connection to the existing Team, no personal motivations giving them agency in the plot, little to no narrative utility outside of a couple of scenes of minor problem solving. They seem to have been added mostly as references but because they hang around longer than cameos they divert time and development away from the narratively significant characters. Again, it’s an inefficient choice with a high opportunity cost.

So, how could we fix this?

The broader Scope Management issue is pretty simple. Just take out any characters who weren’t set up by Season 1 and who aren’t relevant to the Sidequest. So, outside of Jaime, Bart, Neutron, Green Beetle and the Runaways that leaves us with: Beast Boy and Arsenal, and then Batgirl, Bumblebee, Lagoon Boy and Guardian if we count the cameos as foreshadowing. That’s already a lot more manageable. Plus Bumblebee and Beast Boy’s powers are useful for specific problem-solving, and between them, the original Team, the League and the Sidequest cast they should be able to cover most of the critical roles in driving missions. And, by reallocating more time and jobs to them, you give them more opportunities to resonate with the audience and become narratively significant on their own.

I say simple but functionally it means we’re already re-writing most of the season (or at the very least re-animating and re-recording all the scenes with switched-out characters, which is pretty similar) .

The next step would be to address the Sidequest problem, which we could do in two ways.

Option 1: We could give the conflict actual long-term significance by making the Reach properly important to the Light, rather than just a tool whose loss they can shrug off. This could be done by making the Reach actual full partners, or by shifting the Light’s plan to a stage where they still need the Reach around for a while longer: either way losing them should represent a setback that the Light has to re-strategize around. Ideally we’d also like to fold the two casts and plots together more, which I think could be done using Bart. Even more than the Light, Bart is the one who understands what’s really at stake, so he has the motivation to encourage/ steer everybody he can towards working together against the Reach. You could also have Bart interact more with Wally; something that would work both because of their shared tie to the Flash legacy and because Wally is in on the Mole plot. Perhaps have Bart trying to bring Wally out of retirement because he believes Kid Flash is important to the future - which would add more weight to him taking up the mantle later - and since Wally “questions objectivity” and is skilled at detecting fakery (thanks to years of being Dick’s best friend) he might be the one to realise that Bart’s bubbly persona is a front and that something more is going on.

Option 2: Since we’re already functionally re-writing the season anyway, we could fix the Sidequest problem by simply lifting it out and making it into its own separate show. Remember nothing has to happen in a narrative; we could easily have another answer to the sixteen hours that doesn’t involve the Reach, letting the Mole plot and Red Arrow take centre stage again. Meanwhile, that Sidequest - the Reach coming to Earth to stealth-abduct humans for experimentation, Bart coming back from a future-apocalypse to stop them, Jaime finding the Scarab and learning to work with it to become Blue Beetle, liberating Neutron and the Runaways, freeing Green Beetle, and eventually defeating Black Beetle and driving the ambassadors off - doesn’t need to be bolted onto the side of Young Justice. You can write new reasons and ways for these things to happen in their own separate universe. And honestly that story would be better for having the breathing room. The “bond” that allows Jaime and Scarab to defeat Black Beetle feels incredibly barebones in Invasion. With the exception of Virgil, the runaways barely have a fully developed personality between them. Those more nuanced sides of Bart beneath his comic-book-personality act hardly get a look in. It would all be improved by having the space to be its own thing.

For the sake of simplicity let’s go with Option 2. Cut the padding, drop the Sidequest, get the focus back to the original cast.

Wait, where did our boulder go…?

Have you noticed that the Mole plot doesn’t actually progress the long-term conflict either?

We finish Invasion with barely more understanding of the Light’s structure and goals than when we started. When Kaldur is first revealed to be working with them, he’s apparently not trusted enough to have access to their inner secrets. Then, when he is finally brought into the fold after destroying Mount Justice, he gets immediately brain-blasted by Miss Martian and the plot pivots to solving that problem instead. Despite what you’d expect from a mole story, we don’t get to see the how the Light operate in their own environment; the dynamic between the individual members, any points of tension/ disagreement, what each one personally hopes to gain from the alliance. Even outside of the inner circle, Kaldur doesn’t interact with the Light’s wider network of resources and allies - he spends most of his time on the Manta-sub. They barely discover anything, and most of what they do learn is only really useful in knocking down the Reach.

So this is its own form of canonical filler. The conflict still isn’t progressing. It feels like wheel-spin.

Of the story threads in Invasion, we have a Sidequest and this. The only thing that actually moves meaningfully forward is Red Arrow’s personal arc, and he disappears from the story once Arsenal is introduced.

And this is something that persists into the revival at Outsiders; by the end the Light is still incredibly undefined.

It also indicates a weird lack of faith - or even tacit admission of failure - on behalf of the creators. Young Justice is supposedly about “generations” but, rather than letting each entry be a new story about a new generation, they never let go of the original Team. It’s like the showrunners weren’t confident that the audience would accept a whole new cast - or perhaps aren’t confident that they and their new production teams could create characters and conflict as compelling. The result is a lot like the “keep watching and maybe you’ll find out” problem that Hbomberguy so thoroughly criticised in BBC’s Sherlock. The original Team is always there, doing things that might one day progress the existing conflict, but really it’s just a hook to keep you going as the show subjects you to a Sidequest.

An aside: the revival’s blatant nostalgia-bait This is why I'm retroactively annoyed with the Outsiders trailer and how it put such heavy focus on Wally despite him barely being a presence in that season. It's why I was infuriated with the Outsiders fever-dream scene and how it sacrificed any opportunity to meaningfully reflect on Dick and Wally's friendship in favour of a shallow attempt to tug on our nostalgia for Season 1 (to the point that they play the original theme-song, despite it never being used in-show or musically associated with the Team before this). And it's why, despite having already dropped canon, I was still thoroughly irked by how heavily the Phantoms trailers used imagery from the first season when emphasising the next season's supposed return to focus on the original cast. These scenes and trailers speak to how consummately dishonest and insincere Greg Weisman is being as show lead. It reveals that he and the revival team know full well that attachment to the Season 1 cast and their story are the primary source of engagement for most of Young Justice's audience. But, instead of reciprocating that passion by progressing the story, they tease them in false-promise trailers and emotionally exploitative scenes as a transparent attempt to pander back into good graces; even though they clearly have no intent to deliver and (as we'll discuss later) even if they did, any possibility of actually continuing that narrative is at this point long gone.

The other problem is that, because it still drags the original Team through the time skips and plot events, it’s not quite a filler arc. They aren’t in stasis waiting for their turn again - they’re still making choices and doing things that reflect on their characters. And because the show has them do substantially negative things in service of “intrigue” and “drama”, it can accidentally make them seem unsympathetic and callous. And then incompetent when the lack of forward progress gives them no end to justify their means.

So let’s give them an end.

The Team don’t necessarily need to move against the Light in Invasion but they should at least retrieve some significant information. This is, nominally, an espionage show; things like objectives, in-group dynamics, individual motivations, alliances, favours, resources and supply-lines are all important pieces that have value in future problem solving and could act as the foundation of later strategies.

But here’s where we hit a smaller (at least for now) problem: The Light don’t actually have a plan.

The show likes to pretend they do - they’re always lurking in the background, putting fingers to their noses to make their anime-glasses keikaku gleam - but once you stop to examine it, it starts falling apart.

Let’s unpack the Lights “plan” In Season 1 we learn that the Light exist in opposition to a “calcified status quo” which they believe the heroes have helped to create and are enabling to persist; and that their goal is apparently to drive humanity into what they see as “a new stage of evolution”. (Keep that “status quo” bit in the back of your mind for later.) At no point do we learn the details of what this “new stage” entails, or what systems they intend to have replace the current status quo; although by virtue of them being the antagonists and our protagonists being Heroes we can infer it will be worse than (and probably not solve any of the actual problems with) the existing one. By Season 2 we know that the “plan” has something to do with meta-humans, as well as lowering public perception of/ faith in the Justice League, and that their partnership with the Reach is apparently in service of this.

However, this doesn’t really line up.

Season 1 effectively communicates the idea of the Light as meticulous planners taking steps toward a specific goal; on rewatch you can see how the main events of multiple episodes serve as cover for them assembling the pieces of their final weapon. The Team stop Amazo and the Fog, but Ivo and Roquette’s nanotechnology go on to be used in creating Starro-tech - along with the Echidnoderm piece, which Downtime’s attack serves to move to the surface so that it can be stolen during the panic in Misplaced. I especially like the jump-cut that happens right after the trigger phrase ‘Broken Arrow’ in Targets, concealing the period when Red Arrow is pumped for information and likely given the directive to infect the League.

And yet the primary plan that this is in service of involves waiting four-to-five years in hopes that that right aliens are lured to Earth. It’s almost like they’ve gone fishing. They don’t take any on-screen steps to capitalise on the disorientation of the League in the aftermath of the Starro attack, and they don’t carry out any other attempts to attack the heroes or alter the status quo over the intervening years - there’s not even evidence of them making preparations. The only sign of activity is early in Team Year 5; when they go after a magic Tiamat statue as justification for a tie-in game that IGN rated 4.8/10 as “a bland, unsurprising action RPG that has little to do with the series’ continuity or mythology.” (And for anyone wondering; yes, Greg and Brandon were the lead writers on this.)

A smarter strategy might have been to use the 16 hours to implicate the League in some kind of corruption or racketeering on either Earth or in the immediate planetary system; something that would more directly damage their public image and could allow the Light to gain open support and resources by positioning themselves as defenders against the League as a potential threat. Plus, the Light have access to Project Cadmus. Any facility capable of conducting full live cloning is capable of comparative DNA analysis, and any organisation able to entirely replace Roy and steal clone-quality DNA samples from Superman should have no problem gathering DNA from other known meta-humans. The only benefit the Reach bring is the mass-meta-gene-tracer distributed in their drink, and the Light actively sabotage that as part of their double-cross.

Then the plan becomes even less sensical in Season 3. We learn that Vandal Savage is apparently the first meta-human, and has been motivated to form various iterations of the Light throughout history in order to evolve humanity as part of an old pact with Darkseid where they would conquer the galaxy together and then have Earth and Apokolips fight for rulership. Vandal has, apparently, known about the return of Apokolips for millennia; long before the formation of the current status quo or the heroes who supposedly “calcified” it. He’s also confirmed to have known Klarion - who in Season 3 is revealed to be able to activate meta-genes with magic - since the days of Ancient Babylon. Yet he did seemingly nothing to change the course of history or make use of those tools until 2010 - and even then the plan he picked involved passively waiting around for another five years despite intentionally doing things that would put Earth back on Apokolips’ radar.

The whole thing is an Idiot Plot: it requires every member of the Light to be actively and obviously bad at basic planning, strategy or project management. It completely defangs any impression of an organised conspiracy; they exist purely to contrive the illusion that movement-to-moment events, Sidequests and plot-happenings have a greater long-term significance. And in “justifying” internally inconsistent things, the show reveals that there is no coherent creative plan for the Light beyond bog-standard villainy-in-opposition.

Unfortunately, for the creators this is a feature and not a bug; Greg Weisman has openly said he doesn’t want to end the show. If the Light never have a clearly defined plan or internal structure then the Team can never come up with a counter-strategy that will stop them for good. Of course, he could always have had the Light be executing multiple different plans, or be the first in a chain of bigger, badder, baddies for the Team to tackle, but that would require him to get off his ask blog and actually think about the story for more than 10 minutes.

But anyway, let’s give the Light a plan and a structure.

Let’s give Kaldur a proper briefing on their mission statement and at least their current plan once they bring him into the fold. Let’s give him some time to interact with them and learn about their internal dynamic; where the alliances are and who might be persuaded to break away if the incentives were right. Let’s have him observe the coming and goings of mooks from different parts of their wider network. Let’s properly foreshadow their suspicion of him and why (even after “killing” Artemis) it was necessary to take such as drastic step as destroying the Mountain. Let’s give Artemis a chance to offer her own insight into proceedings as someone who grew up among villains. Maybe we could have some suspense around them finding ways to deliver updates and warnings to the others, or even subtly sabotaging a move before it gets someone hurt. When Dick and Wally are fighting, let’s have Dick actually spell out the strategy and stakes.

Now, even if the Team doesn’t take direct action, the conflict is advancing on the information side. It sets up potential for future strategies and justifies the actions they had to take to get there.

So, fixed?

Oh no, not again.

The premise of the of the Mole plot represents a huge contradiction in continuity between seasons.

To an audience watching the seasons back-to-back, the Team has just learned how to work together and trust each other. After the reveals in Usual Suspects we know all of them to be trustworthy. In Alpha Male we see how secret-keeping about a potential mole damages their ability to work together. There is no justification within the show for why Conner, M’gann and Zatanna were excluded from the plan. And the problems that leaving them out causes are extremely foreseeable by the characters. In Failsafe they all experienced the fallout of a situation where they thought Artemis was dead. In Image they watched M’gann brain-blast Psimon into a coma. It’s another Idiot Plot- it requires the characters to be incompetent.

Not only that but this Idiot Plot only works if several characters are written to act directly against their previously stated motivations and values: if Dick is willing to "sacrifice everything for the sake of the mission", if Kaldur is wiling to unquestioningly follow his orders like a soldier, and if M'gann is wiling to casually abuse her powers in a way that hurts people she cares about. There is no acknowledgement or in-show explanation given for why these characters are suddenly acting like the Bizzaro-versions of themselves, despite how badly it damages their arcs.

Plus, if you’ve just come off the back of Season 1 and watching the Team repeatedly express a value of anti-secrecy and getting angry at being lied to over much lower stakes then the whole plan looks super hypocritical.

Then, to make this plot “dramatic” and “intriguing”, the characters are written to do some really callous things. Artemis “dying” is a known source of trauma which the plan forces members of the original cast to re-experience. Blowing up Mount Justice renders M’gann and Conner homeless (and probably destroys most of their earthly belongings). When Dick is questioned by Wally in the aftermath, he responds with an incredibly demeaning and invalidating jab about Wally’s “precious souvenirs” instead of giving an answer. And again, the fact that this doesn’t actually progress the narrative in canon makes their behaviour even harder to swallow.

The five-year timeskip and lack of backfill don’t help either. For five years the Team has known both that the Light exist and that they’re dangerous enough to take control of the Justice League. And yet the audience never sees or hears any sign of them having made meaningful attempts to investigate or address this during that time. You could almost be forgiven for thinking that they spent four years procrastinating before panicking and rushing into the first scheme they came up with like it was a college assignment the night before submission. Oh, and the characters too!

There is no chain of causality from Season 1 to Invasion. It’s a narratively inefficient choice because justifying it requires a lot of additional work and choices - and in the absence of the story doing that work the burden gets shoved unreasonably onto the audience.

So let’s do the work.

Let’s use the extra time we’ve given ourselves on flashbacks and conversations. Show the audience that the Team has tried multiple times to investigate and stop the Light, but been frustrated at every turn by their ability to disappear into the shadows and hide behind layer-upon-layer of proxies. Let’s take some time to explain how M’gann became so cavalier about using her powers invasively; pushed further and further by the situation and the others as they became more frustrated, or maybe overcompensating for a time when holding back caused things to go wrong. Let’s have people speculate about the reveal that Black Manta is Kaldur’s father, and how it broke the trust between Aqualad and Aquaman.

Why don’t we add some scenes properly showing how Dick was, and still is, devastated by the death of Jason. Hear more about how Tula’s loss rattled all of them and crushed Kaldur. Perhaps have a conversation between concerned League members where we realise that the Mentors have gone too far in the opposite direction; treating the Team too much like adults instead of offering the support and guidance that grieving adolescents needed. Actually explore Wally’s reasoning for leaving; how he became disenchanted by years of minimal progress and heavy losses, eventually persuading Artemis to walk away with him so that they wouldn’t have to see (or make the others watch) anyone else die a pointless death. Let us understand how, to Dick, that felt like being abandoned by his best friend (explaining his petty meanness during Darkest), and how the loss of the person who “questions his objectivity” impaired his judgment.

Let us realise that the Mole plot comes not from stupidity but as a last resort - that it’s the only strategy Dick and Kaldur think might work, and how at this point they’re so emotionally compromised by survivors’ guilt and a fear of losing anyone else that they truly believe keeping the others in the dark is better than sharing the danger between them.

Give the audience a way to understand that what we skipped over was 5 years of increasingly desperate times, which have finally called for desperate measures.

Now we have causality. An emotional and logical through-line that the audience can follow from how it started to how it’s going.

And with that… are we done? We’ve trimmed the scope to a level that’s manageable, we’ve built the plots into something that actually progresses the conflict, we’ve created an understandable sense of continuity from Season 1 to Invasion. That’s everything.

… Right?

HECK.

So this is where we get to that singular problem and why it took so many ding-dang essays for me to reach it. It’s like that footprint scene from Godzilla - the underlying problem is so big, so fundamental and at the same time so beginner-level basic that you have to step a long way back to realise it’s even there. And then you see that all the other problems are nested inside it.

As I said a million years ago in that first Scope Management essay, at its core most storytelling is about understanding. It’s about communicating ideas. It’s about answering unspoken questions.

And one of the biggest, most basic storytelling questions seems to have never been asked by Young Justice’s showrunners or answered by the series as a whole:

What is this story about? What are the core ideas, themes and values that it speaks to?

For the showrunners, the closest answer we’ve gotten so far seems to be: It’s a superhero spy show that will go on forever and has Secrets and Lies and Generations.

But that isn’t actually an answer. “Superhero” and “spy” are genre descriptors. “Secrets and lies” and “generations” are story elements, patterns and/or motifs. All of these have collections of commonly associated themes and ideas but unless you narrow it down and start engaging with those ideas to create a thesis, they can’t actually tell you what Young Justice is about.

The problem at the root of every other problem with Young Justice is that it doesn’t have an actual narrative. It’s only an illusion of story. Once you peel the surface layers back, it’s not saying anything.

But one season did.

There is one season of Young Justice where that season’s Production Team seems to have genuinely thought about and constructed a story which answers that most basic question.

No prizes for guessing which.

So, what is Young Justice Season 1 about?

Well, it’s about trust and collaboration and respect. And specifically that open communication, trust and information sharing are the most valuable tools both interpersonally and in a world of deception and espionage.

Once you notice it, it pops up everywhere: in the explicit dialogue of both Team and League members and in incredibly loud subtext. The Team initially formed to show their mentors they could be trusted to handle more than just being tag-along kid sidekicks. The unit is always most functional when they collaborate honestly and their effectiveness is always threatened when one or more of them is noncommunicative or actively keeping secrets. The Team is finally able to outmanoeuvre the Light for the first time in Usual Suspects because Artemis, M’gann and Conner choose to share the personally painful strategic information they were being blackmailed over - trusting that their friends will accept them for who they are and giving the group the big-picture understanding needed to approach the conflict on their own terms.

When assessing proposed candidates in Agendas, Wonder Woman states that the most important criterion for Justice League membership is:

And to fill the gap between the seasons in a way that justifies Invasion, you would have to look at that theme and say:

No.

You would have to say: It doesn’t last. You would have to say: Only children can believe in that. You would have to say: This world and the things they will go through are so bleak as to break and beat that trust and collaboration out of them.

This is what I mean when I say that post-Season-1 Young Justice feels cruel. That it feels like a tragedy.

But, hey, maybe that’s the solution. Should we frame Invasion as a tragedy?

Maybe.

Well, except…

Firstly, this would likely feel tonally and emotionally misleading. As mentioned in the zombie-fic post, part of storytelling is setting expectations - and one of the expectations a first entry sets is the general tone. That isn't to say that tone can't shift over time - many series become more solemn and less lighthearted as the story develops towards the final conflict - but a large, unexplained tone-shift can feel like a deception, especially if a series gives no way to reasonably anticipate it. And this is particularly true if that tone-shift swings more cynical.

Season 1's tone is, on the whole, Hopepunk. The world of Earth-16 is not fair - it can be corrupt, characters can die, things can go traumatically wrong - but it is also a world where that trauma is treated with respect, and where hope, collaboration, trust and progress are possible. It is a world where Artemis can find new family, where M'gann can find community, where Conner can be more than a weapon, where Wally can come to appreciate helping people, where Dick can realise he wants to choose better, and where the Team can forge something powerful. But to get from there to Invasion, you must be cynical about all those things. It's brightly-coloured Grimdark.

It's also just a generally poor idea to write a sequel about how your strongest theme is wrong, because it insults the intelligence of your audience. It asks them to believe something and then turns around and tells them they were stupid for believing it. (In Invasion's case, on top of already calling them stupid by asking them to swallow a double-dose of Idiot Plots with a side-serve of canonical filler.)

The second problem is how this shift in theme impacts the long-term conflict. And to talk about this properly I want to run through a couple of ideas about the nature of conflicts and fights in stories:

One way to consider ‘fight scenes’ - and conflict more broadly - in stories is in terms of two narratives:

The Technical/ Strategic narrative is the physical and logistical actions involved in winning a fight/ solving a problem. It’s the blows of a sparring match, the parry-and-riposte of a duel, the movement of chess pieces on the board. In terms of a wider narrative, it can be the strategies and physical steps the characters will use to solve the main “problem”. This also isn’t limited to just physical confrontation. In the show Leverage the strategic narrative of each episode is mostly behavioural and psychological; the con and what they do to make the mark fall for it. In the Alex Rider series the strategic conflict is very literal; they’re spy stories about retrieving tactical information. Plenty of Mysteries run entirely on the technical/strategic conflict of clue-gathering and puzzle-solving.

The Emotional/ Ideological/ Thematic narrative typically provides the underlying thrust of a conflict, and usually expresses the themes and ideas of the larger story. The surface level “technical” conflict becomes a proxy for the deeper emotional arcs of the parties involved, for clashes in their personal worldviews, or for a symbolic conflict between the themes each represent. It gives the parties personal stakes and often provides the deeper answer to why the fight is happening beyond just “because plot”. It’s often where the mind games happen. It’s where the “fight” becomes more of a thematic debate. And - while it’s common for the ideological victor to also win the technical conflict for emphasis - where the two diverge, the ideological/ thematic victory usually feels like the “true win”. (I would recommend Super Eyepatch Wolf’s videos on Fight Scenes and “Non Battle” Battle Series if you want a deeper discussion of this.)

An example: The Todoroki vs Midoriya match in My Hero Academia’s Sports Festival Arc is a great example of divergent technical vs emotional narratives. The technical fight is a fairly low-danger (but impressively animated) superpowered sparring match to see who advances to the next bracket of the competition. But the important emotional conflicts come in Midoriya trying to live up to All Might’s expectations, and his disagreement with Todoroki’s plan to become a hero using only one half of his power in order to spite his father. Over the course of the fight, Midoriya convinces Todoroki to embrace his power as his own and become a hero on his own terms; costing himself the technical conflict of the match as he’s not able to withstand Todoroki going all-out. But in winning the ideological conflict he takes the true victory: earning both Todoroki as a long-term ally, and All Might’s approval for sacrificing a personal win to help someone in need.

The reason I bring this up is that main antagonists typically play an important role in the story’s overall Emotional/ Ideological/ Thematic narrative. Often they represent some combination of the following: 1. An ideology the protagonist(s) opposes 2. A counterargument to the protagonists’ ideology 3. A symbolic obstacle representing something the protagonist(s) must overcome as part of their personal journey 4. A thematic foil to the ideas the protagonist(s) represent within the story

Another example: Avatar: the Last Airbender's Firelord Ozai is an excellent example of a multi-layered main antagonist.  As Firelord/Phoenix King, Ozai is the "final boss" in the series' overarching strategic narrative of stopping the Fire Nation, as well as an extremely dangerous opponent in the immediate technical narrative of his fight with Aang. But he also represents fire (or, at least, fire’s destructive and consuming sides) and the disruption of balance within the thematic narrative of elemental harmony that the Avatar exists to maintain. Ideologically, Ozai's brutal colonialism and rigid belief in "respect" through domination and fear is a direct foil to Iroh and the Gaang's values of harmony, growth and love. In Aang's personal journey, Ozai is the final obstacle on the path of accepting his role as the Avatar; something Aang must fully embrace and make peace with in order to energybend properly and end the fight without killing. As the heir of Sozin, Ozai also carries the legacy of the Air Nomad genocide; a source of pain and grief that Aang must confront as The Last Airbender. And, as both the Fire Nation leader and an abusive father, Ozai is (however indirectly) responsible for all the pain and oppression inflicted upon the rest of the cast; who - in supporting Aang to get to this point - are granted justice by proxy. Aang vs Ozai is not the strongest technical fight in A:TLA (let's not pretend rock-ex-machina didn't happen) but, in culminating so many thematic/ emotional narratives, it makes for an incredibly powerful climax to the series.

In Season 1, the Light don’t have their own distinct ideology beyond the vague stance of opposing the “calcified status quo” revealed at the very end. In isolation, though, that’s kind of okay (especially for a first season). It would be more interesting if they eventually revealed a specific worldview that could be interrogated, but so long as the Team develop their own paradigm and operate in a different way to their mentors (keep that in the back of your mind for later too) then they’ll naturally counter the status quo argument anyway.

What’s more important is whether the Light represent a symbolic antithesis to the themes and ideas represented by the Team. Which, in Season 1, they do.

It’s unclear whether the members of the Light actually trust each other on a deeper level (although just based on the characters you can probably assume they don’t) but they do collaborate effectively - in comparison to the Team slowly figuring it out - and their secrecy and ability to hide behind proxies is what makes them so hard to unmask, anticipate and bring to justice. Even more importantly, the primary way they attack the Team is by sowing discord, distrust and misinformation. As Kaldur himself points out, Sportsmaster’s mole reveal is a play to create dissent, anger and lingering suspicion between members. Artemis, M’gann and Conner each have a personal fear/shame/secret used to blackmail them into acting against the interests of the group. The Light repeatedly attempt to drive wedges, and the Team is finally able to gain the upper hand when they fully trust and work together in spite of it.

And herein lies the problem.

In Season 1, the Light act as an effective thematic foil to the show’s core ideas of trust, collaboration and communication. But properly connecting Season 1 to Season 2 requires a story about how that theme is wrong. Which means that Invasion’s Team are also an antithesis to those original ideas. Trust is for fools, secrets and lies are the only reliable way. The heroes and the Light are thematically in agreement.

So, now what’s their conflict about? What ideas does it advance? Are we advancing at all?

As presented in canon, Invasion removes the closest thing to a proper thematic conflict that the series had set up.

Any ideological conflict is likewise in shambles. The Team has never really had a driving ideology or set of values beyond “don’t treat us like children/sidekicks”. But - in time-skipping them forward five years to Nightwing being his own hero and other members joining the League - the show has had them literally grow out of that. And the mole plot itself contradicts any anti-secrecy values previously expressed. So now the Team primarily exists to react to the Light. But (as mentioned) the Light’s stance against the “calcified status quo” is mostly a villainy-in-opposition pretext to throw sidequests at the Team. So the two oppose each other just to oppose each other: purely “because protagonists vs antagonists”.

Which leaves only the technical/strategic narrative to drive the story forward. And since the Light doesn’t actually have a long-term plan, and most of the “moves” and “counter moves” on both sides have been a series of illogical, unpredictable, internally inconsistent “decisions” that mostly exist to provide in-the-moment “drama”, the show doesn’t offer much by way of meaningful strategic conflict either.

So, how do you fix this?

Well, you don’t.

You can’t.

The premise itself just doesn’t fit.

We finally got our boulder to stop rolling but now it’s shattered into pieces and we’re completely stuck.

Great.

Hopefully you’re starting to appreciate the complexity of the challenge when it comes to “fixing” the flaws in Invasion. Even just improving the more surface-level issues would require huge swarths of re-writes and restructuring (and then re-drawing, re-recording and editing all of it).

And to truly solve the root problem… you’d have to start over from scratch with an entirely different story.

But there might have been another way.

A revival: The saving throw that never was

When news of the revival first dropped, I was curious but mostly tepid about the idea. Even before doing the analysis, I could feel that there were deep structural problems with Invasion, which left me concerned about the direction of the series (especially after the follow-up announcement of yet more characters and yet more time-skips). And considering what we got and my now well-known “oh god, oh god, please just let the poor broken thing die, it’s suffered enough” reaction to it… yeah.

But I didn’t want to dismiss it out of hand. Because I think there was the possibility for a different third season to (while not erase) at least address Invasion’s issues in a satisfying manner and bring the story back somewhat more on track.

So, how might we go about doing that?

First, let’s go back to what we’ve already figured out. We know that the main appeal is the characters. We know that the narrative was strongest when it spoke to ideas about trust/ collaboration/ communication with a generally Hopepunk tone. And (stealing again from the zombie-fic post) we know that, based on Season 1, audiences could reasonably have the following expectations:

Obvious questions get answers

Emotional consequences are acknowledged and addressed

Main characters have consistent internal motivations that are addressed/ explored/ reinforced in-story

Pre-existing comic book knowledge should not be required to understand the story.

Right, let’s start putting pieces together.

First thing’s first: No More Time-Skips and No New Characters that aren’t do-or-die narratively essential. The cast-scope by Invasion is already wildly overstretched to the point of barely holding together. Adding more while creating yet more holes to backfill is not only inefficient, at this point it would be actively detrimental to the basic structural integrity of the narrative.

An aside: we need to talk about the time-skips Let’s be real here: The time-skips in Young Justice’s canon do not serve a narrative purpose. They aren’t there to accelerate the plot through slower periods that would be more effective if summarised or communicated through flashback. Nor do they exist to facilitate mysteries around learning how things changed so drastically from one entry to the next. What they are is a cheap and lazy contrivance that allows the writers to pile on characters and disregard continuity without doing the work of narratively justifying those inefficient choices. Now if a new character comes out of nowhere or an established character is acting against their prior characterisation, well it’s because “a lot happened in the time-skip” and “it’s not Greg and Brandon’s fault that the audience don’t know”… about events they could never have been aware of because Grandon never actually did the work to make that information available anywhere within either the main or extended canon material (which, remember, is a choice on their part), and are now just obviously lying about in attempt to “well actually” their way out of a legitimate criticism. It’s amazing what you can creatively achieve when you have absolutely no respect for the time and intelligence of fans sincerely trying to engage with your story as its own text!

With that said, let’s bust out some bandages. I think the two main patch-jobs our hypothetical Season 3 would need to perform are addressing the contradictions, and giving emotional consequences to events.

The break between seasons left a lot of obvious questions in need of answers. The mole plot doesn’t make sense based on Season 1 and how/why it was conceived is a complete mystery in canon. Most of the character changes are big enough to feel inconsistent without an explanation. In particular we need to address the obvious conflict between Dick’s explicit Season 1 character realisation that he doesn’t want to be a person who’d “sacrifice everything for the sake of the mission�� and him doing exactly that in Season 2. And we also need to continue the narrative threads of the new major characters Invasion brought on board.

How to go about this?

Well first of all, I would frame Invasion as a narrative darkest hour. The point where everything has gone wrong, where the heroes realise how far they’ve fallen… and from which they can start building back up.

The inciting incident for this hypothetical realisation would be pretty obvious - just use Wally. He’s a founding member of the Team, he’s the best friend who questions Dick’s objectivity, he’s part of the same Flash lineage as Bart, and he just died. That’s an event that should have serious emotional fall-out within the narrative.

And this would also be a great vehicle for backfill because death/grief stories (at least good ones) usually involve a lot of introspection and retrospection. It’s when characters start to look back on the journey they shared with the person who passed; to think about who they were, what they valued and what that relationship meant to them. It would be a prime point for both Dick and the Team as a whole to realise they’re going down a path they don’t want to be on - a path Kid Flash never stood for - and scenes of them discussing or flashing back to how they reached their current point would pull double-duty in backfilling missing information and context to bridge the seasons.

Wally was one of the characters most strongly written to call-out internal secret-keeping across both seasons, so he would be an effective way to pull the show back on theme as well; have the remaining Team members re-affirm their commitment to honesty, trust and collaboration in honour of his memory.

In the context of being a revival, this would also show respect to the fans. Wally was a widely-beloved major character and his death during Endgame was a huge bombshell for the fandom. I personally know people who dropped the series over it. People’s desire to see if Wally would come back (and to get closure if he really was gone) formed a massive part of the thrust behind the revival campaigns. And remember, it was those fan-campaigns that convinced DC that reviving the series would be financially worthwhile. Greg and Brandon didn’t resurrect Young Justice: the fans did. And a lot of those fans were motivated by Wally. So centring a major emotional arc around him would be a nice way of paying that effort back.

Another aside: Oh Wally, what did they do to you? This is, I think, why some fans now believe Greg Weisman hates Wally as a character. I don't believe this: I think Greg is just a deeply incurious and insincere writer, who neither understands nor particularly cares to understand how other people think and feel, who primarily sees these characters as tools to play out whatever scenes he personally thinks are “cool” or “clever” rather than as fictional people who real people care about, and who mostly values the audiences' attachment to them as something he can use to extract emotional responses and bait further viewing. But, in the face of such open and sincere love and passion for a character, that kind of dishonest lack of caring can feel a lot like hatred. Especially when combined with the bitter sting of the trailer (which clearly understood what fans wanted when it teased the promise of Wally so heavily) turning out to be a bald-faced lie.

As for the Light’s plan, we could have some of the proposed reflection do additional work as a form of “retroactive foreshadowing”; having scenes whose surface-level purpose is to give on-mission flashbacks about Wally or the Team over the missing five years, but which also reveal that there was more going on in the background. Invasion sets up the idea that Darkseid is coming but I think it would be enough for a third season to go back to Season 1’s approach; letting the character arcs take focus while cutaways to the Light reveal more to the audience and keep viewers very aware of the impending threat that the Team need to get themselves sorted out in time to face. And Season 1 already established the New Gods as a group of characters that we could use in an episode or two should we decide to have Apokolips send any advanced guards just to keep things interesting.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of fallout from Invasion that could be used to build the central plot thread of an intermediary season aimed at stabilising a new status quo while setting up for big climactic conflicts in a fourth or fifth season (and realistically 4-5 seasons is about as far as you expect the average story-driven original animated show to travel). The challenges posed by a world reeling from the Reach’s betrayal and dealing with an increased population of metahumans could easily create a central story core that spoke to ideas of collaboration and accountability as the Justice League rebuilt and re-earned public trust in the aftermath.

Ideally, this would also have space to continue the narrative consequences of Invasion for both the original cast and the new main characters of that season. You have the mole plot thread and the challenge of healing broken trust, not only within the unit but especially between Kaldur and the people of Atlantis; many of whom would have sincerely believed he had turned on them, and would take more than just an assurance from Aquaman to fully sway back. We could check in on Red Arrow, find out what paths he is considering after finally recovering Roy at the same time as learning that he has a potential family who are entirely his own. For Bart and Jaime there are the personal consequences of the Reach’s defeat. Bart could finally allow his “act” to slip, while processing the consequences of having successfully erased his own timeline and his feelings over still losing Wally. Jaime could be dealing with the backlash of having publicly outed his identity and acted as a prominent public spokesperson for the Reach while under their control. The Runaways could be helping with clean-up on the metahuman situation, while figuring out their own values and stance on working with established heroes.

And the good thing is that these threads already have interconnections. Kaldur rebuilding trust in Atlantis would tie into the Team rebuilding more broadly. As a member of the Flash lineage (and the new Kid Flash), Bart would slide easily into any major arc about Wally, linking him to the original Team. Bart in turn connects to Jaime and the Reach, who in turn tie into the Runaways both by association and through Tye and Jaime’s existing friendship. And Jaime also potentially opens some interactions with Green Beetle.

What I’m suggesting is not a perfect solution, nor is it the only solution. Some of the structural problems from Invasion can’t be undone. But, with a bit of thought, they could be alleviated. We can’t reverse the cast-scope issue but we can reign it in by not adding more, and focus it by forming the most narratively important characters from the existing seasons into a “core ensemble” that the other additions can orbit around (kind of like how Justice League: Unlimited managed to stay relatively stable by holding onto the Original Seven as a central pillar and having at least one of them as a reference point in each episode). We can’t undo the 5 year time-skip but we can find narrative reasons for characters to reflect, bridging the gap for the audience. We can’t erase the contradictions between the seasons, but we can acknowledge and build a story to address them. We can go back to answering obvious questions and following up loose threads. We can course correct towards the themes and tone that originally resonated. We can give weight to emotional consequences and trauma. And we can show respect to an important central character whose death emotionally impacted a lot of fans.

But Outsiders doesn’t do any of that. And what it does…

I know I’ve belaboured this point in other posts but I have to stress just how thoroughly and systematically Outsiders destroys the narrative.

In terms of the Original Cast: Outsiders directly writes Nightwing to act exactly like Batman and treats it as a positive despite that being explicitly what Dick never wanted to become; all of Kaldur’s ongoing personal arcs have been dropped or forcibly resolved off-screen and he keeps making the same bad decisions, proving himself unfit to lead; M’gann has been repeatedly written to do harmful, disrespectful and manipulative things toward Conner and others for “the drama”; Conner is routinely lied to and treated not much better than he might have been at Cadmus while being constantly victim-blamed and forced to forgive that mistreatment; Artemis has lost her characterisation to Greg Weisman’s misogynistic inability to write women, being defined by her biological family and brother-in-law at the cost of her agency and connection to the Team; Wally is written to coward out of the Life before dying in a twist that was not properly built up to and after which is treated with no respect or gravitas beyond cheap knife-twisting; Zatanna is a grief-riddled Deus-ex-Magicka who manipulates Artemis in service of another pointless “twist”; Red Arrow has had all his personal arcs similarly dropped/ handwaved off-screen; and Rocket remains undeveloped and irrelevant.

In terms of the Central Conflict, the Light are proved utterly correct: by Outsiders the Original Team are callous, hollow husks of their former selves, who have replicated a worse version of the same status quo the Team originally formed in response to. Dick, Kaldur and M’gann’s Anti-Light are a new upper echelon of older heroes who keep even more secrets from the next generations, who exclude the new generations far more strongly from knowing their plans, who give them even less reason to trust or communicate with them, and who do so for less just, less honest and less narratively justified reasons than their own mentors' understandable (if condescending) desire to shield the proteges from the parts of the Life they may not yet have been equipped to face.

Not only that but their constant lying with the intent to control others, and refusal to hold themselves accountable for those actions goes directly against both the League's stated heroic ideals of "Truth, Liberty and Justice" and Red Tornado's conclusion that caring is "the human thing to do".

By the end of Outsiders, even the existence of the Team itself is undone; decommissioned into the exact kind of safe training space that the Season 1 characters were desperate for it never to be.

You can’t come back from that. The damage is now too deep, too extensive and too entrenched.

The closest thing Young Justice has to an ongoing thread across the seasons is this singularly joyless piece of miserable nihilism that the showrunners are attempting to wrap up in faux-intellectual trappings via twitter thread.

With Outsiders, any actual narrative set by Young Justice Season 1 is over. By their own standards the Team have lost, and lost entirely.

The show can “go on forever” now, because whether they actually progress to defeating the Light no longer matters. The only winner here is Greg.

But these problems didn’t begin with Outsiders.

The Vanguard

I think it would be a fair assessment to say that the Young Justice Revival has been divisive. The passionate part of the fandom is now split into two main camps; people who defend it, and people who dislike it for various reasons. But within that latter camp there are also two tents; people who think the original entries were uniformly good, and people who only really like Season 1.

I want to repeat what I said before: With the right writers and the right focus a different revival could have salvaged something decent, if maybe never quite as brilliant, from the series.

But that still would have left Invasion as the weakest link.

The reason I can’t like Invasion (and why I eventually broke DW away from everything post-S1) is that Invasion is the vanguard of every problem that ultimately killed the series for me.

The problems in Outsiders did not spring spontaneously into being with that season (apart from the rainbow capitalism so transparently, ignorantly insincere that it swung all the way back around into being bigoted). It just doubled down on everything that that was already breaking or broken.

And, in so doing, it snuffed out once and for all any embers that remained of the white-hot potential Season 1 originally promised.

In order to truly fix the issues with Invasion you would need to go back to that deepest root problem. To ask the questions that the showrunners seemingly never did.

What is this story about? What are the core ideas, themes and values that Young Justice speaks to?

But once you do that, you realise that Invasion is so misaligned to the answers Young Justice Season 1 gives that in order to create something cohesive and contiguous with it, you would basically need to re-write Season 2 from the ground up.

Remember, nothing has to happen in a narrative. There are only more-efficient and less-efficient choices.

And if you have to re-write Invasion whole-cloth anyway, then the most efficient choice would be to wipe the slate back to the end of Auld Acquaintance and start over. To write the show that Young Justice Season 1 set itself up to be.

The show that gave us this:

#scattered thoughts #young justice #young justice critical #YJ essays collection #young justice: invasion #graphic depictions of boulders #writing analysis #will-zeke-thomson #3WD answers #This probably isn't the answer you were looking for but it was the only way I could think to properly explain it #congratulations on de-railing my evenings for almost two weeks (but also thanks for the excuse to rewatch while screencap-hunting) #this is what I mean when I say that I don't think the showrunners were the ones who made YJS1 what it was #YJS1 isn't subtle about those themes and yet Grandon clearly weren't paying attention and only saw 'secrets and lies are cool' #I cannot comprehend the depths of wild incompetence it takes to contradict the core of your own story that badly #As the post probably makes quite clear: I have no respect left for Greg Weisman as a writer #and I am willing to lay at least 80% of the blame for Outsiders at his feet #because there is a clear and concerning pattern of this happening when he gets full/majority control over a story #and those patterns include some deeply gross (and at times outright bigoted) treatment of female and queer characters #(plus hints of abuse-apologism/victim-blaming and casual racism/diet white-supremacy... because why not fill the entire incel-bingo card?) #as well as a general disregard/disrespect/condescension/entitlement/contempt towards established canon and fans trying to engage with it #He is at best the same as Steven Moffat #and at worst a less-skilled imitation-Joss-Whedon #Given a talented editing and directorial team to do re-writes and enforce consistency he can produce a passable story #but left on his own he demonstrably lacks the skills and creative mindset to carry a long-term narrative or lead a project #over a decade of industry experience and he's still making the same basic beginner-level mistakes #Greg Weisman critical

[undignifiend]

Been thinking about my oc Warden again. Might play with his design a little more, too, we’ll see. In the meantime, here’s some notes on him:

Warning for vague naughtiness and safe vore mentions below the cut. ;)

+++++

+Excuse me, officer, that’s my Emotional Support Creeper

+The chillest, chonkiest, and most well-adjusted of all my Trollhunters ocs by a long shot.

+For those new to him, he’s a changeling who runs a lucrative side-business where he uses his big troll form as a “one-of-a-kind lifelike animatronic run by cutting-edge AI tech” for “simulated” experiences with human clients. Proceeds go to the Janus Order, but he keeps a cut to keep his cover smooth and occasionally indulge in luxuries. He meets all kinds of people, and enjoys interacting with them in contexts where they aren’t frightened (or truly frightened). Gives amazing aftercare and massages (whether anything spicy happened or not, if that’s what a client wants. It’s not all spicy, but he does enjoy indulging such whims, within his own limits).

+He’s got strict rules to keep people safe in these instances (repeat customers mean more money and connections). He can get rough if they want, but he has his own limits as to how rough he’ll go. Will pin people (not enough to crush them) and make them recite The Rules (discussed later) if they try to ignore them because “he’s a machine, he’s not real”. That’s his first warning. Any subsequent violations terminate the session. No refunds.

+Disaster Bi/Pan. Very romantic and enjoys making clients (and partners outside work) feel thoroughly cared for. Doesn’t get attached as easily as he seems to, but when he falls, he falls hard.

+Has a weakness for stories about superheroes with secret identities. Will occasionally do vigilante work, and covers his tracks carefully.

+Diligent about his hygiene. On one hand, he sees it as respectful to his Familiar to keep his human form clean and good looking. (Though this sometimes looks like vanity to those who don’t know any better. He really is quite vain about his troll form, though.) And on the other, humans tend to be far pickier (even if less sensitive) than trolls about smell, and his side-business model relies on reassuring them that they’re in a safe, clean, relaxing environment.

+In his human form, he plays one of the bartenders and bouncers for a hotel near the wilderness that is classier and more successful than anyone paying attention to it would suspect, given its somewhat remote location. It sees just enough traffic (including private events and conventions) to maybe justify it, and he contributes some of his earnings to helping the place thrive. It’s his cover, where his clients meet him face-to-(human)-face, so he’s invested in keeping it respectable, which also helps encourage clients to come back for more. He also drives his clients to the even more remote caves (warded by enchantments that disguise signals to give false reports of where they actually are to any tracking devices or scrying attempts) where the scenarios take place, and drives them back to the hotel afterward. Before a session, his human form takes the client(s) to the room where the session will occur, and he “leaves to monitor the AI” through an off-limits passage that loops through a fake “control room” to another, bigger passage for his troll form to enter from.

+The humans working at the hotel have an understanding with him, though they don’t know what he is. He occasionally departs to see to this “side business”, and so long as nobody questions or talks about it, or puts a tracker on his car, or any shenanigans like that, he contributes a cut of his pay to the hotel. It also helps that he’s a dependable and amiable co-worker, and no one around him has suspiciously vanished yet.

+Still, some employees feel like it’s a deal with a devil. He’s been there long enough that it’s starting to become apparent that he either uses a damn good moisturizer, or he doesn’t age. That, and he’s preternaturally strong and fast. On the rare occasions that fights break out, he ends them quickly, and his injuries recover fast despite his avoidance of hospitals. He’s getting to the point where he’s going to have to start fresh elsewhere soon.

+More relaxed in his troll form, but for different reasons than Dezoka. He sees his human form as borrowing his familiar’s image, prefers to treat it with dignity, and doesn’t take disrespect to it lightly.

+Before his current business model, he used to rob banks as an outlaw. Proceeds also went to the Janus Order to help fund their operations.

+Primarily relies on his size, strength, and situational awareness in (and before) combat. He’s not an especially skilled fighter compared to Dezoka, Ulvek, or Zahnn, (he’s a bit out of practice since his outlaw days, and it’s been a long, long time since he’s had to contend with the Darklands) but he’s resilient, observant, and hits hard.

+Loves to eat people (in all the fun ways). His stomach can double as a portable high-security safe holding cell. Not a big fan of keeping prisoners that way. He’ll bitch and grumble, but he’ll still do it if he thinks he has to. Prefers willing participants. He’s kinda spoiled on them, and the idea of someone trusting him enough for it makes him really happy, and is his favorite indulgence.

+Where that particular bit of physiology is concerned, I’ve been thinking of designing a group of trolls with this trait and figuring out how his particular safe vore shenanigans might work. Warden’s stomach lining is peppered with many thousands of specialized, regenerating cellular nodes that exchange O2 and CO2 gases from his own bloodstream for his “guest’s” benefit, so suffocation isn’t an issue for anyone inside so long as Warden can keep breathing. His stomach also contains a mild acid that won’t do much more than gently exfoliate and disinfect open wounds (it’s got a pH of about 4 or 5, which I think is typically alright for skin anyway). The acidity ramps up in cases where a high amount of necrotic tissue is detected, to digest it before it rots further, and to kill any infection that might in turn infect him. This can also damage any living tissue still attached to the dead stuff, which will hurt for anyone still alive (so it’s not a good treatment for seriously injured folks), but after the dead tissue is eaten away, the pH will return to a more neutral zone - but remain acidic enough to keep open wounds disinfected as a guest’s body recovers. His stomach can also mildly aid recovery through gentle contractions to massage a guest and improve circulation while they’re curled up in there. But he will use his hands a lot, too. He loves being full and holding people this way.

+‘The Rules’ (including safe words) are customizable and negotiated before a session is even paid for, both for clarity’s sake, and “for programming adjustments”. All involved decide what they want and what their boundaries are. A client can change their mind if they decide they don’t actually want to do something, but Warden will not agree to any last minute additions that involve a safety/trauma risk. For example, if a client decided that they want him to swallow them whole, they can change their mind mid-session if they’re too nervous to go through with it (and can change their mind back again if they decide that they actually feel ready). But if they ask him to do it during a session where that was not planned, he will decline. Reluctantly. Even if it's safe, he understands it can also be really terrifying for those who aren’t ready, and he prefers to err on the side of caution where that’s concerned. Fearplay is great, and he loves playing up the role of a wicked, cruel predator - but that's the sort of thing that has to be discussed first so the client knows they have the power to stop it if it gets too intense.

+How to convince him that you’re Evil Incarnate: He has a sweet tooth and a serious weakness for foodplay and stuffing. It’s the most effective way to tease the daylights out of him, so he always gets a bit nervous when this comes up in establishing a session’s Rules. Doesn’t fluster easily, but just thinking about this will do it. Especially loves it as a prelude to vore. Will also do this without vore, but it’s kind of a struggle to hide just how wildly hungry and desperate that leaves him. He’ll be a professional about it, and he won’t violate The Rules or try to pressure a client/partner no matter how desperate he gets. Stuffing himself silly doesn’t fix it, either, it just leaves him delirious and aching for live, warm squirming in his stomach. Belly rubs and mouthplay are the cruelest little cherries on top. If he thinks his client/partner knows what they’re doing to him, he’ll be ticked off, but also impressed and intimidated. Either way, he won’t be able to stop thinking about them and wanting to take them somewhere nice and hold their hand and move in together and sappy stuff like that. And eat them, of course. He’ll lose a lot of sleep over just how badly he wants to eat them.

#safe vore #changeling oc #vague naughtiness #character notes #roleplay notes

[tenaflyviper]

Just stumbled upon the work of Emily Youcis, and I'm not quite sure what to make of her. She's apparently alt-right, but so much so that it almost seems like an act for the sake of controversy.

"Alfred Alfer" is clearly the product of someone with deep-seated issues, or someone trying way too hard to be "edgy". I love dark humor and horror, but particularly the first two episodes of her work are transparent attempts to invoke disgust: Gross for the sake of being gross, and awash in painfully annoying repetition meant to convey mental illness. To her credit, it is unsettling, which is likely the point.

Around the third episode is when a wild narrative appears. There's honest development. As a VA, when actually taking on important dialogue, Emily does an admittedly decent job. There's a twisted but interesting dynamic between traumatized dog "Alfred", and his alter ego created out of hatred, passion for revenge, and a thirst for power.

Emily does exhibit a genuine knack for incorporating music into her work in a purposeful way. Her choice of a G.G. Allin track in one short continues to speak of her white nationalist leanings (which do seep into her work later on, but again--it's so over the top that it comes off more like parody, which again leaves me to question the validity of her affiliations).

On the one hand, the extreme taboos and deviancy in her work might be seen as "cringe" to many nowadays. It's easy to take it at face value, and dismiss it as such. On the other hand, there are the seeds of something legitimately different and compelling there. Her work is a descent into madness that somewhat justifies its actions. When the titular pooch begins delving into necrophilia (which is...not held back in the slightest. Again, this is some truly warped animation) the implication is that he--not unlike Jeffrey Dahmer--just wants someone to love him, and never leave.

Emily has showed marked improvement in animation, style, and technique over time, including branching out into other mediums (I'm as-yet unsure if this is only her doing, as there are others listed in the credits). She had apparently been working on a full "Alfred Alfer" film, and released it in chunks on Newgrounds (in no discernible order). From what I've seen, there is real talent at work here, but between the subject matter and the creator's personal views, it's hard to know how to feel about it.

"Alfred Alfer" makes Salad Fingers look like a Disney cartoon. Does it go too far? Oh, yeah. Like... I could definitely do without the scenes with "The Littles" and Alfred's other imaginary friends sexually violating him (scenes which are simultaneously sad, considering the "playhouse" is supposed to be his escape/comfort/safe space, yet even there, he isn't safe from abuse). If the aim is to disturb, it is certainly accomplished in spades. In the end, one gets the impression that Emily herself may be carrying a few personal demons.

I cannot fault the highly graphic and disturbing nature of the material, as it has a purpose. Her unsavory beliefs notwithstanding, I support the right of art to take dark turns into even darker territory, even into unimaginable places--hence why I defend the work of such auteurs as Fred Vogel, Marian Dora, Gaspar Noe, and other directors known to dabble in extreme cinema.

What instantly sets Youcis apart from these others is the dedication to not just filming, but animating atrocity, giving it an entirely different impact. Animation has no boundaries--nothing to stop it from becoming as depraved and inhumane as possible. It's also the medium least expected to do so (that's not to say no predecessors exist--Mike Grimshaw is one animator that springs to mind, as does the infamous Mike Diana, who contributed an animated short to 1999's Hospital Brut). I could go on longer about Mike Diana, but his most controversial work was on the comic book page, and goes far beyond Youcis in terms of graphically disturbing content (which he was famously prosecuted for in 1994).

Reviewing material like that of any of these creators is walking a fine line: "Why would you watch that? Why would you want to see that?". That's harder to answer. Morbid curiosity, perhaps? "Do you support the acts portrayed? Do you support the artist's ideology?" Christ, no. I myself am more fascinated by the fact that someone allowed it to escape from the confines of their brain, and leak out into "polite society". Better yet--what made them even think of such things? What does that say about them? About US? And how do you approach content whose creator's values not only clash dramatically with your own, but are ultimately harmful to society at large?

I suppose that's a conversation for another day.

#Emily Youcis #Alfred Alfer #TL;DR #Blood #gif

[dweemeister]

Elmer Gantry (1960)

Upon the publication Sinclair Lewis’ novel Elmer Gantry in 1927, an eruption of outrage ensued. The novel, a Juvenalian satire of evangelical Christianity in the United States, drew invectives from evangelical groups and high praise from literary circles. Despite its popularity among American readers, Elmer Gantry’s content long prevented American studio executives from even considering the film adaptation rights. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), from 1934 until 1968, enforced the Hays Code, a guideline for censorship, on all films made by the major American studios for theatrical release. Here is what the Hays Code says on religion – this section was never amended for the entirety of the Code’s existence:

No film or episode may throw ridicule on any religious faith.

Ministers of religion in their character as ministers of religion should not be used as comic characters or as villains.

Ceremonies of any definite religion should be carefully and respectfully handled.

The 1960 film adaptation of Elmer Gantry, released by United Artists (UA), directed and written by Richard Brooks, and featuring one of Burt Lancaster’s most electric performances of his career, violates the second and third part of this section and, arguably, the first as well. By the late 1950s and early ‘60s, enforcement of the Code was beginning to wither – boundary-pushing non-American films (which were exempt from the Code), television, and evolving behavioral and cultural norms in the United States contributed to its eventual demise. One of the beneficiaries was undoubtedly Brooks, whose output around this time – including Blackboard Jungle (1955), The Professionals (1966), and In Cold Blood (1967) – reflects the relaxing standards of Hollywood’s self-imposed censorship. Of the films Brooks made in this period, Elmer Gantry might be the most complete, excoriating, and cinematic.

Elmer Gantry (Lancaster) is a garrulous, ruthless, and ambitious con man who invokes Scripture to hock whatever he is selling. His shtick is effective, as his energetic sermonizing tends to break down the resistance of most. One day, curious about a traveling evangelist tent show passing through town, he encounters Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons). Gantry, taken by Sister Sharon’s virginal piousness and her fairness, convinces Sister Sharon’s assistant, Sister Rachel (Patti Page), to join their traveling group. Sister Sharon is impressed by Gantry’s – or “Brother Gantry” – orations, and she adjusts her own sermons to complement his. Where Gantry decries the congregants as sinners, Sister Sharon promises salvation through repentance. As time passes, Gantry’s presence in this itinerant ministry becomes the talk of the Midwest and Great Plains. Sister Sharon and Gantry begin to attract new congregants and onlookers’ horror, alike. The sermons become increasingly theatrical, writes the cynical big-city newspaper reporter Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), who is torn by his admiration of Gantry’s façade and his revulsion for hucksterism. Meanwhile, sex worker Lulu Bains (Shirley Jones) – who once knew Gantry when he was aiming to become a minister – is about to make an unexpected reentry into his life.

Character actors round out the cast of this motion picture, including Dean Jagger as Sister Sharon’s manager, Bill Morgan; Edward Andrews as businessman George F. Babbitt; and John McIntire and Hugh Marlowe as two reverends. Rex Ingram (1936’s The Green Pastures, 1940’s The Thief of Bagdad) cameos in an uncredited appearance as the preacher of a black congregation.

Elmer Gantry never feels like a 146-minute movie, as it moves through its scenes with fervorous pace thanks to some excellent performances and crisp filmmaking (more on both later). Brooks’ adaptation covers less than a quarter of Sinclair Lewis’ novel – Lewis allows its plot to unfold over the course of several years – and takes liberties in deleting or rearranging characters and plot points to fit neatly in a movie adaptation. Like the novel itself, Brooks’ adaptation ends without clear moral or narrative resolution – albeit at an earlier point in the novel. The character of Lulu Bains does not reappear in Lewis’ novel until after the events depicted in the film. To provide Elmer Gantry, the character, with the immoral backstory lost on a moviegoer unfamiliar with the novel, Brooks integrates Lulu into this film adaptation. On a surface level, that appears to deprive Lulu of her own characterization, agency, and backstory, but Brooks allows the character (and Shirley Jones) the space to portray and develop her complicated feelings – a stew of trauma, bitterness, and love – for her current life station and towards Elmer Gantry.

Reverential low-angled shots from cinematographer John Alton (1951’s An American in Paris, 1958’s The Brothers Karamazov) during the revivals make Sister Sharon’s tent seem cavernous, a fabric cathedral without need of stained glass, marble statues, flying buttresses. Looking slightly upwards at Sister Sharon’s of Elmer’s faces (at times with a Dutch angle), the film elevates the two above the masses listening intently on what they have to say, imbuing their scenes with striking imagery that draws the viewer’s attention. The decision to shoot the film in the 1.66:1 screen aspect ratio – wider than the Academy standard, but not as much as the widescreen standard sweeping through American filmmaking at the time – constricts the audience’s peripheral vision, forcing one’s focus on the speaker’s body language, rather than any miscellaneous activity occurring behind or to the side of the speaker.

As for the speakers or, should we say, actors, there are stupendous performances across the ensemble. For his turn as the eponymous lead, Burt Lancaster, known for his vigorous performances, provides Elmer Gantry with vigor aplenty. Modeling his performance off of the behavior of baseball outfielder-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday, Lancaster struts around the tent during revival meetings, his upper body animated in conversation and salesmanship outside those meetings. Even in stillness, Lancaster’s physicality swaggers, brimming with euphoria – his most private moments abound in sexuality molded by what his character might call the love of God. Even Lancaster’s haircut appears to be defying gravity more than usual in Elmer Gantry. The sweat on his brow, within the 1:66:1 frame, feels as if it is about to seep through the camera. As he delivers his lines, Lancaster masters the complicated beat – accelerating with certain turns of phrases and strategic pauses for emphasis – and wildly varying volume of Elmer’s sermons. “Love is like the morning and the evening stars,” he intones as Gantry (that is his signature quote), somehow making us believe in such bromides and other simplifications he sells to the revival’s attendees.

Jean Simmons, as Sister Sharon Falconer, is a clear-eyed minister who nevertheless falls – or, perhaps, “seduced” – for Brother Elmer’s pontifications. In her own way, Sister Sharon Falconer is as ruthless as the man who wheedles his way into her company. Simmons, retaining her British accent, speaks like a patrician but, as Sister Sharon, reminds all that even the poor, the downtrodden, the sightless, the hard-of-hearing can know the munificence of Christ. So different is she from Gantry that when the latter begins to aggressively court her, the scene elicits squirms. Not because the scene is poorly acted, but that Simmons and Lancaster (with assistance from Brooks’ screenplay) have developed their characters so masterfully that Elmer’s pretense-free seduction feels straight from an Old Testament story that invariably incurs God’s wrath. Their characters convince themselves of their mutual love, even though Gantry is probably incapable of loving and Sister Sharon cannot view love outside how she might interpret it through the Bible.

In the aisles or the congregation’s peanut gallery are Arthur Kennedy and Shirley Jones. For Kennedy, as the reporter Jim Lefferts, this is a dress rehearsal for the similar but more biting role of Jackson Bentley in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Like Bentley was to T.E. Lawrence, Lefferts views the work of Elmer Gantry and Sister Sharon with a cynical lens but, to some degree, each finds a professional need for the other. As Lulu, Shirley Jones crackles with a sexuality essentially nonexistent in American movies at this time. Upon Lulu’s introduction, she tells her fellow sex workers her past experiences with the minister now stealing newspaper headlines:

LULU BAINES: He got to howlin’ “Repent! Repent!” and I got to moanin’ “Save me! Save me!” and the first thing I know he rammed the fear of God into me so fast I never heard my old man’s footsteps!

With this suggestive language that would never have been tolerated by the MPAA a few years earlier, Jones delivers her lines with shamelessness, slightly colored by a modicum of romantic trauma that reveals itself later. Jones is not in Elmer Gantry long, but her presence, her character’s raw contradictions deepen the tragedies that seem to follow those entranced by a former seminary student now returning to preaching his idea of gospel.

André Previn’s unsettled score to Elmer Gantry leans heavily on brass dissonance and rhythmically complex string runs in the few instances where there is no dialogue or diegetic music. Though not used often, Previn’s music lays bare Gantry’s motivations of lust and profit, a man devoid of internal meaning and one who craves sensation. There are moments throughout the score where it seems like a Coplandesque Americana sound is begging to burst free. But Previn, more than capable of composing such music and considering the narrative to this adaptation, knows better than to let those tendencies escape. The raving strings and blaring brass bury melodicism, which is left for the jazzy interludes that accompany Lulu’s scenes (jazz at this time was considered scandalous by many Americans). Previn’s score might not suit those longing for free-flowing motifs, but the technical skill required to play, let alone accomplish the musical phrasing he intends, some of the passages he writes for Elmer Gantry are stunning.

Earlier in this write-up in reference to the Hays Code, I mentioned that Elmer Gantry villainizes and makes comic characters out of religious figures, in addition to portraying the events at Sister Sharon’s revivals as debauched, deceitful. But does Elmer Gantry “throw ridicule on… religious faith”? Probably not, although those who despise religious belief in and of itself might disagree. Given Sister Sharon’s modesty and her less-fiery diction early in the film, probably not. Brooks does not expand upon what Sister Sharon’s congregation looked or sounded like in the months of years before Elmer Gantry’s arrival. Instead, Brooks’ movie targets individuals seeking to make economic and personal empires of organized religion – and Elmer Gantry, whose ravenous pursuit for money and women, is the man to defile Sister Sharon’s ministry. Only once he ingratiates himself to Sister Sharon, Gantry begins to emphasize what sounds suspiciously close to the “prosperity gospel”, which broadly states that faith in God and religious donations will lead to material wealth and physical wellbeing. The prosperity gospel is not scriptural. But it is a central tenant of numerous evangelical traditions.

Like Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, and the Falwell family, Elmer Gantry is the byproduct of the United States’ Third Great Awakening, which also resulted in Prohibition and the State of Tennessee’s decision to prosecute John Thomas Scopes for teaching human evolution in a public school. Sinclair Lewis, like Richard Brooks and his cast for Elmer Gantry, warn of profiteering “prophets” that remain a fixture of American life. From the mid-1950s to the mid-‘60s, the major Hollywood studios were prioritizing epic movies such as Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959), and George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) – spectaculars intended to check the perceived threat of television to moviegoing. A film like Elmer Gantry that disparages religious ministers – even unethical, villainous ones – released during this time was nothing less than a landmark. Adapting a work by one of the great American writers of the twentieth century, Richard Brooks, with no small assistance from a cast topped by Burt Lancaster, results in a venomous film including one of the great characters of American film history. The book is almost a century old and the film is just past its sixtieth anniversary, but Elmer Gantry’s power endures. Elmer Gantry’s dialectic continues, even with evangelical Christianity akin to the homilies of Elmer Gantry supposedly on the wane.

My rating: 10/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Elmer Gantry is the one hundred and sixty-fourth feature-length or short film I have rated a ten on imdb. 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.

#Elmer Gantry #Richard Brooks #Burt Lancaster #Jean Simmons #Arthur Kennedy #Shirley Jones #Dean Jagger #Patti Page #Edward Andrews #Sinclair Lewis #John Alton #Andre Previn #TCM #31 Days of Oscar #My Movie Odyssey

[wtf-triassic]

Nothosaurus

By Tas Dixon

Etymology: False Reptile 

First Described By: Münster, 1834 

Classification: Biota, Archaea, Proteoarchaeota, Asgardarchaeota, Eukaryota, Neokaryota, Scotokaryota, Opimoda, Podiata, Amorphea, Obazoa, Opisthokonta, Holozoa, Filozoa, Choanozoa, Animalia, Eumetazoa, Parahoxozoa, Bilateria, Nephrozoa, Deuterostomia, Chordata, Olfactores, Vertebrata, Craniata, Gnathostomata, Eugnathostomata, Osteichthyes, Sarcopterygii, Rhipidistia, Tetrapodomorpha, Eotetrapodiformes, Elpistostegalia, Stegocephalia, Tetrapoda, Reptiliomorpha, Amniota, Sauropsida, Eureptilia, Romeriida, Diapsida, Neodiapsida, Sauria, Archosauromorpha?, Archelosauria, Pantestudines, Sauropterygia, Eosauropterygia, Nothosauria, Nothosauridae, Nothosaurinae 

Referred Species: N. mirabilis, N. cristatus, N. cymatosauroides, N. edingerae, N. giganteus, N. haasi, N. jagisteus, N. marchicus, N. mirabilis, N. tchernovi, N. yangjuanensis, N. zhangi 

Time and Place: From 242 million years ago until 208 million years ago, from the Ladinian of the Middle Triassic through the earliest Rhaetian of the Late Triassic

Nothosaurus is known from all over Eurasia and North Africa, to the point that it’s pointless to list all the locations. Just assume that if it’s the Mid or Late Triassic of the Tethys Sea, Nothosaurus is there.

Physical Description: Nothosaurus is an iconic Triassic marine reptile - to the point that we had to include it, or else we would have violated some sort of rule of paleontology. Nothosaurus was about 4 meters long on average, but could reach up to 7 meters in length. It had a long, streamlined body, with a long neck and a long tail. Its head was narrow and filled with long and pointed teeth which interlocked together when the mouth closed, forming a tight trap. Its forelimbs were longer than its hind limbs, and all of its hands and feet had webbing between the long toes. In a lot of ways, it looked extremely similar to later marine reptiles to which it was closely related, like the Plesiosaurs and Pliosaurs, just with hands instead of proper flippers - however, current evidence indicates that the Plesiosaurs and Pliosaurs evolved from an ancestor of both groups, and Nothosaurus is just a Triassic offshoot. It had capabilities for diving in the water, though it also was still adapted for life on the shore. 

Diet: Nothosaurus primarily ate fish and other marine animals, including other marine reptiles. 

Behavior: Nothosaurus was semi-aquatic, spending a lot of its time both in the ocean and on land. On the beaches and shores it would rest and sleep, and then turn to the ocean for most of its everyday life. Diving for food would have been most of its daily activities, going after juvenile reptiles and large fish in the water and diving in order to reach it. It probably would have paddled with its webbed feet, and undulated its body to some extent to help propel forward. It may have been at least somewhat social, living in groups and colonizing the shores together before going for group dives for food. Interestingly enough, Nothosaurus was basically like a reptilian seal, coming up to shore to rest and sit with its relatives. Whether or not they would have given birth to live young is uncertain; while their close relatives, the Plesiosaurs, did; they retained enough land adaptations to allow them to lay eggs on the shore. More research as to their physiology is needed in order to determine that aspect of their life history. Trackways have been attributed to Nothosaurus, which may show that they rowed their paddles on the sea bed to shake up small animals trapped underneath; this would have allowed Nothosaurus to capture the invertebrates between its long teeth and hold onto them so they could not escape. 

Ecosystem: Nothosaurus lived throughout the early Tethys sea, and was a common feature in many communities throughout this growing body of water during the Middle and Late Triassic. It would have stuck to the coasts for the most part, but still ventured out into deep and open water. As such, it’s rather difficult to list all the different animals it lived alongside - it’s found in Bulgaria, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Jordan, the Netherlands, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Switzerland. So just, assume that a marine creature from the Tethys during this time lived with Nothosaurus rather than not. 

Other: Nothosaurus has been treated as, unfortunately, a wastebasket taxon - it was discovered early enough in the history of paleontology as a science that many similar animals were just dumped into this name without any specific studies done. So, determining the factual relationships from this mess is still being worked out; in fact, it seems that this genus is paraphyletic, with many close relatives of Nothosaurus being more closely related to some species than to others. So that’s fun! 

Species Differences: The varying species of Nothosaurus tend to differ based on where and when they lived, rather than any particularly notable differences. There are some differences in size and limb proportions as well, but in general the differing species of Nothosaurus would have had very similar ecological roles. 

~ By Meig Dickson

Sources Under the Cut

Albers, P. C. H., and O. Rieppel. 2003. A new species of the sauropterygian genus Nothosaurus from the Lower Muschelkalk of Winterswijk, The Netherlands. Journal of Paleontology 77(4):738-744. 

Albers, P. C. H. 2005. A new specimen of Nothosaurus marchicus with features that relate the taxon to Nothosaurus winterswijkensis. Vertebrate Palaeontology 3 (1): 1- 7. 

Brotzen, F. 1956. Stratigraphical studies on the Triassic vertebrate fossils from Wadi Raman, Israel. Arkiv foer Mineralogi och Geologi 2(9):191-217. 

Chrzastek, A. 2008. Vertebrate remains from the Lower Muschelkalk of Raciborowice Górne (North-Sudetic Basin, SW Poland). Geological Quarterly 52:225-238. 

Diedrich, C. 2009. The vertebrates of the Anisian/Ladinian boundary (Middle Triassic) from Bissendorf (NW Germany) and their contribution to the anatomy, palaeoecology, and palaeobiogeography of the Germanic Basin reptiles. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 273 (1): 1 - 16. 

 d'Orbigny, A. 1849. Cours Élémentaire de Paléontologie et de Géologie Stratigraphiques [Elementary Course in Paleontology and Stratigraphic Geology] 1:1-299. 

Haas, G 1980. Ein Nothosaurier-Schädel aus dem Muschelkalk des Wadi Ramon (Negev, Israel). Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien 83:119-125. 

Haines, Tim, and Paul Chambers. The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life. Pg. 64. Canada: Firefly Books Ltd., 2006 

Hinz, J. K., A. T. Matzke, and H.-U. Pfretzschner. 2019. A new nothosaur (Sauropterygia) from the Ladinian of Vellberg-Eschenau, southern Germany. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 

Jiang, W.; Maisch, M. W.; Hao, W.; Sun, Y.; Sun, Z. 2006. Nothosaurus yangjuanensis n. sp. (Reptilia, Sauropterygia, Nothosauridae) from the middle Anisian (Middle Triassic) of Guizhou, southwestern China. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie, Monatshefte. 5: 257–276. 

Jiang, D.-Y., L. Schmitz, R. Motani, W.-C. Hao, and Y.-L. Sun. 2007. The mixosaurid ichthyosaur Phalarodon cf. P. fraasi from the Middle Triassic of Guizhou Province, China. Journal of Paleontology 81(3):602-605. 

Klein, N. and P. C. H. Albers. 2009. A new species of the sauropsid reptile Nothosaurus from the Lower Muschelkalk of the western Germanic Basin, Winterswijk, The Netherlands. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 54(4):589-598. 

Lin, W.-B.; Jiang, D.-Y.; Rieppel, O.; Motani, R.; Ji, C.; Tintori, A.; Sun, Z.-Y.; Zhou, Min 2017. A new specimen of Lariosaurus xingyiensis (Reptilia, Sauropterygia) from the Ladinian (Middle Triassic) Zhuganpo Member, Falang Formation, Guizhou, China. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 37 (2): e1278703.  

Liu, J. 2014. A gigantic nothosaur (Reptilia: Sauropterygia) from the Middle Triassic of SW China and its implications for the Triassic biotic recovery. Scientific Reports 4: 7142. 

Lu, H., D.-Y. Jiang, R. Motani, P.-G. Ni, Z.-Y. Sun, A. Tintori, S.-Z. Xiao, M. Zhou, C. Ji and W.-F. Fu. 2018. Middle Triassic Xingyi Fauna: Showing turnover of marine reptiles from coastal to oceanic environments. Palaeoworld 27(1):107-116. 

Münster, G. G. 1834. Preliminary news about some new reptiles in the shell limestone of Baiern. New Yearbook for Mineralogy, Geognosy, Geology and Petriology 1834 : 521-527. 

Palmer, D. ed. 1999. The Marshall Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals. London: Marshall Editions. p. 72. 

Rieppel, O., and J.-M. Mazin. 1997. Speciation along rifting continental margins: a new nothosaur from the Negev (Israel). Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences Série IIA, Sciences de la Terre et des planètes 326:991-997. 

Rieppel, O. 2001. A new species of Nothosaurus (Reptilia: Sauropterygia) from the Upper Muschelkalk (Lower Ladinian) of southwestern Germany. Palaeontographica Abteilung A 263:137-161. 

Sepkoski, J. J. 2002. A compendium of fossil marine animal genera. Bulletins of American Paleontology 363:1-560. 

#nothosaurus #nothosaur #sauropterygian #triassic #triassic madness #triassic march madness #prehistoric life #paleontology

[rosalind-of-arden]

Tota Est Gratia: A Great Library Fan Appreciation Project

As you all have probably heard, Rachel Caine was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. This project is a Great Library fandom collaboration to show her how much we appreciate her work. In keeping with the themes of the series, the goal is to show the power and immortality of her writing.

The end result will be a book, or at least a booklet. What else could it possibly be? That book will contain a collection of messages describing the impact that the Great Library series has had on us and the parts that we have found most meaningful. I’m leaving this open-ended to allow for a variety of responses, but here are some options:

Choose a quote from the series and write about why it speaks to you.

Write about a favorite character, setting, plot, theme, scene, chapter, or book.

Write about the influence the series has had on your life.

Write a thank-you note.

In addition, I will also include creative and related work, so long as it is NOT fanfiction. In particular, I would love to have visual elements to add. Options:

Fan art

Moodboards and other visuals

Playlists

Lesson plans and class activities

Scholarly essays (or book reports/homework!)

Poetry

Links to audiovisual materials

Please DO NOT send:

Fanfiction. This is a boundary violation for authors.

Anything including negativity or hate toward anyone. You are welcome to say that you like this series more than any other media, but please don’t bash other media in the process.

Bigotry of any sort, including but not limited to racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. As Wolfe made very clear in Ink and Bone, the Great Library does not tolerate any of that.

Adult content. It’s a YA series, so keep things PG-13 rated.

None of these have to be long. Short messages are as welcome as long contributions. The goal of showing appreciation is what matters. Feel free to be creative with formatting, fonts, colors, visuals, etc., just please give credit where credit is due if you incorporate any words or images that you did not create yourself.

You don’t have to produce anything new. Feel free to send in work you have already done if it’s relevant!

I will note that I am not especially talented with visuals, but I will attempt to design the final document in a way that is aesthetically pleasing, or at least professional and readable. I will not edit or change the content anyone’s work, but I may adjust fonts, spacing, etc. to make things fit neatly on pages. If there are formatting elements of your submission that you feel especially strongly about, make a note of it and I will do my best to maintain those.

All submissions will be due no later than Saturday, October 17th. Send your work either to my inbox or in a reply to this post. Work may be sent as plain text, links to online content, or Google docs (make sure to set sharing so I can access it!). Basically, if it can be sent to my Tumblr inbox or you can link it, I will take it.

I will compile everything into a single pdf document. Thanks to @thelonelyrainbowenby, we have a contact for Caine’s assistant, who can pass it along. I will also share the final document here on Tumblr, and I would be grateful if anyone active on Twitter, Facebook, etc. could share it there as well. Let’s show how much we appreciate Rachel Caine’s work!

#the great library #Rachel Caine #fandom project #Tota Est Gratia

[potestessemagishomosexualitatis]

LAOFT but make it a pregnancy romcom

okay so this is based both on this post and my pre-existing idea that gage witches can reproduce through magical parthenogenesis (self-cloning) and roman is a clone of abby and therefore a trans guy

so: let’s re-write laoft as a fairy tale pregnancy romcom

first change: virgil never got cursed. however, shortly after greta’s death, durant somehow tricked him into a semi-permanent banishment/exile from wickhills. trudi and may assumed his disappearance was grief-based and by the time they got concerned the trail was long cold.

so now, when roman is planning to make a deal for logan’s freedom, he instead semi-accidentally manages to summon virgil back instead, breaking his banishment.

roman makes a deal for logan’s freedom in return for his firstborn. not to keep, virgil assures him, but for virgil to be godfather to (he might still be missing trudi & may, oops)

however, virgil first has to win back his forest. it takes several years for him to do that, although in the interim he and roman meet sporadically in the clearing in the woods. as soon as he learns about logan and patton’s situations he insists on meeting them and helping to teach them about magic whenever he can

so basically, the entire group is a complete mess of pining and unrequitement angst

everyone thinks that different subsets of their friends are together and therefore “taken” and/or uninterested and/or unsuitable

roman thinks that l&v are endgame as the Fae Power Couple but that patton is pining for logan and would never choose roman over him

logan thinks that p&r are borderline-already-dating (and still has the immortal angst thing) but that virgil is way out of his league because Fae Politics

patton is aware that they all have a thing for each other but feels like he is out-of-place as the only non-magical being and fears that he doesn’t contribute anything to the group and he’s scared that if things change it will end with him being left behind

virgil is completely enamoured with all of them but would rather die than make them feel even 1% pressured and is thus physically incapable of making a move. also has no idea that the other three aren’t already dating.

this is where we’re at when virgil finally manages to help logan shake off the last threads of eirwen’s control

“my half of the deal is complete,” virgil says. “i guess there’s no reason we have to keep meeting up. unless you’re planning on having that baby any time soon.”

roman laughs, of course. but in the back of his mind he imagines having a baby – having virgil’s baby, a child for the two of them to share, and… well. that’s very much not a thought he minds having.

and thus, six weeks later: a positive pregnancy test.

roman, who is very much still a virgin: what the actual fuck.

roman now recalls the conversation with virgil and it takes on a very different tone. he assumes that this is his side of the deal which – was not what he expected, but okay that’s what you get with fae, clearly he and virgil misunderstood each other.

of COURSE he tells pat and lo fairly immediately, the only reason he doesn’t tell virgil is because he assumes it’s virgil’s fault

roman does not realise how describing the situation as “virgil’s fault” will sound to the others because roman does not have the sense god gave a goose

he does notice that the others seem shocked/upset but assumes they, like he, are pissed at virgil’s violation of boundaries (don’t get people pregnant without asking first! even if roman is… kinda into it, actually.)

logan & patton of course think that ro & v made the baby the old-fashioned way

patton is completely gut-punched. change has come without his permission and it doesn’t include him, he only just manages to hold it together long enough to make supportive noises.

logan of course is doing the “this is fine it is perfectly reasonable they can do whatever they want what do you mean i’m growing whatever-flowers-symbolise-jealousy everywhere”

virgil notices that EVERYONE is pissy and roman is showing symptoms and puts two and two together and gets twenty-five, i.e. assumes it’s an unplanned pregnancy between the three of them and there’s some dispute about what to do about it

(roman hasn’t even really thought about that, because even though he’s only about 19-20 there is a part of him that craves family that says “yes, this is what i want”)

(he hasn’t really thought about a plan because he just kinda… assumes that lo & pat & v will always be there for him. and also he would fight a grizzly bear armed with a spoon for this child already so even if they aren’t he will make it through on sheer Gage Stubbornness)

roman puts off telling may with the excuse that “she probably already knows” because he doesn’t want her to be disappointed in him

but everything is really weird and brittle in the friend group now and roman is Struggling a bit

and now he suddenly gets very scared that he might actually lose his friends and be alone raising this baby

(okay except mamaw but that’s Different, obviously)

roman breaks down one day b/c hormones and feeling overwhelmed and of course does it in the most awkward possible place: all over logan

logan is panicking a lot but he is trying his best to comfort roman and then roman sobs something about “didn’t even get to do the fun part of making babies -”

wait what

so roman explains the whole magic deal thing and logan is like Oh Okay I See, There There

two minutes later: logan kicks down virgil’s door like WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO

virgil has never seen logan so pissed and he is genuinely a little scared

logan starts giving him the talking to of his LIFE and of course virgil has. no idea what he’s talking about.

fortunately this very quickly becomes apparent to logan who calms down and catches virgil up on the situation.

and okay, now everyone is very confused because Where Did This Baby Come From???

but you know what, that’s 3/4 of the group up to speed and we’ve barely had any misunderstandings so -

logan gives patton a call and says something about how they have to talk about roman’s baby and something about magic and pat is like “you’re a part of this?” and logan is like “of course i am”

patton’s worst fears confirmed: all three of them are involved, and he isn’t part of it. isn’t powerful enough for them, just a weak little human -

he hangs up the phone immediately because he doesn’t trust himself to speak any more

logan and virgil are FLIPPING OUT about the mystery baby. roman is pretty chill about it actually and gets downright pissed if either of them gets too close to insinuating that maybe the pregnancy is too dangerous…

also virgil is now fussing over roman so much “stress isn’t good for you right now” “you telling me that every five minutes is not helping my stress levels”

no-one really notices that… they were expecting patton to be joining them… several hours ago…

when they do realise there is a small argument of who should go over: roman: “i think he’d rather hear this from you, specs” logan: “you’re being ridiculous. he clearly prefers your company” virgil: “uhhh…. does it make a difference? aren’t all three of you… y'know?” ro & lo: “we’re WHAT NOW”

so yeah virgil spills the beans that they’re all hearteyes for each other and the other two are like “oh fuck” and go to patton together

(virgil stays behind… of course he does. he’s always the one left behind.)

logan and roman go to patton and tell him how important he is and roman winds up giving a big speech to both patton and logan about how he can’t imagine raising this baby without either of them there and he knows it’s a lot to ask but -

of course they are both on board. they have been since the moment roman told them the news.

(although logan makes a comment about how much he’s going to miss when he goes away to college, he’ll have to defer a couple of years -)

so yeah, a round of love confessions followed by a round of “uh. and virgil too, right?” “yeah of course.”

they all fall asleep crammed together in patton’s bed, finally at peace again.

mamaw comes to pick roman up the next morning like “you can’t stay out all night without telling me, not in your condition”

roman is Busted, of course she already knew, and she invites all four of the boys over for tea that afternoon to explain the Gage Parthenogenesis Witch Magic thing

(may does NOT know who the “father” is and would rather die than ask)

when she explains that it’s triggered by the witch wanting to have a baby badly enough, roman gets very very blushy and then goes outside and virgil follows and roman explains that it was the conversation they had about the deal that triggered all this

logan is like 5% jealous that it wasn’t him or patton but roman quickly points out that he’s had years of practise suppressing those thoughts about the others but much less exposure to virgil

virgil is Surprised Pikachu at roman’s confession

the others are Surprised Pikachu at his surprise

everyone gets together

roman gets fussed over and pampered for the rest of his pregnancy (to the point where he sometimes threatens to stab his loves if they don’t give him breathing room)

he gives birth to a healthy baby girl, linda, who very clearly takes after all four of them so that’s okay then. and is also a fae somehow, not a witch (shh its magic)

may grumbles a little about not having a Witch Heir and roman’s like “hey, we can do it all again in a few years”

and the others? are very okay with that.

#tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors #laoft #love and other fairytales #lamp #my fics

[mbti-notes]

Greetings, I am a 75 year old grandma. I am writing because my grandson who is in his 20s won't work. I have been involved in mbti for many decades. I'm an ENFJ. My grandson is still living at home well into his 20s. When I tell him to get a job (over many years) he just tells me to cut him off and that he will be fine without a smartphone and sweet foods. He is very bright. Graduated with a 3.7 from University. He tried various interests, but nothing sticks. Do I kick him out? Its not my nature

[con’t: The actions I've taken to help my grandson is to show him various resources like holland code, personality theory, etc. so that he can find some direction of where to commit. Instead he just takes the holland code over and over again, and happily shows me that his interests vary everytime he takes it. Same with personality theory. He goes on your blog all the time to prove that he doesn't fit anywhere. Based off of that statement he sounds like IxFJ. My grandson resembles Ti loop (IFxJ), but he does not resemble any other aspect of being an FJ. He is relatively well decisive when it comes to everything in his life. The only issue is getting a job, getting on a path, but he rejects this. If he at least helped around the house it would be something, but he can be quite selfish and uncaring, yet at other times very caring. It vacillates. Anyway, please help if possible, I am perplexed.]

WRT His Type: 

I can’t draw a conclusion about his type without a full type assessment. Everything you’ve described is quite consistent with INFJ and Ni-Ti loop. It seems that you don’t understand tertiary loop very well. Ti loop is an unconscious repudiation of feeling, responsibility, and eventually, conscience. It amounts to a refusal to be the things that make FJs good and admirable people. Basically, the more severe the case of Ti loop, the more arrogant, narcissistic, and callous the INFJ becomes. 

If the INFJ is only at the stage of trying to suppress the vulnerability of feeling life, there is still a fair chance for them to turn their life around by developing better emotional intelligence to address the emotional immaturity. If the INFJ has reached the point of refusing personal responsibility, they will be preoccupied/obsessed with finding any excuse, and even creating enemies, to blame for the poor state of their life. At this point, they are impervious to facts and don’t respond well to advice. If the INFJ loses all self-awareness and manages to convince themselves that they are “special” and not subject to conventional rules and ethical boundaries, then the time for you to distance from them is nearing, as chronic Se grip will set in and produce reactive, aggressive, or extreme behavior. 

To get out of Ti loop requires genuine humility and reconnection with feeling life. The INFJ must take full responsibility for their decisions, correct the big mistakes that they have made in life, and atone for all the harm that they have caused. He does not seem to be capable of this at the moment. I explain Ti loop not to be an alarmist, but to give you a realistic view of how destructive tertiary loop can be, what rock bottom looks like for INFJs, and the signs to be wary of. If the relationship with him ever reaches a point where his mindset becomes toxic and harmful to you, it is important that you move to protect yourself.

WRT His Problem: 

Getting someone in the right frame of mind to make a change and tackle a big problem is very tricky business because you don’t want to try and fail too many times. If you’re correct about Ti loop, then the more times you try to help and fail, the more likely he is to retreat further into himself (and delusion). To avoid applying the wrong solution, it’s best to do some “intelligence gathering” first so that you understand the problem properly before proceeding.

Neither of you has gotten to the bottom of his “block”, i.e., the actual obstacle that is getting in the way of his advancement. You can’t solve a problem if you can’t identify the cause(s) of it. The cause can be internal, external, or a combination of factors. Getting him into aptitude/personality studies seems like a logical approach to the problem. However, this assumes that the underlying cause of the problem is that he doesn’t really know himself - is it, though? It’s not clear to me, from what you’ve said, that this is the root of the problem. There isn’t enough info for me to draw any conclusion and I don’t wish to speculate wildly about what his problem might be. He seems to have some deeper psychological issues going on. And this lack of knowledge about his motivations is probably the reason that you’re both having difficulty pinpointing his type.

Therefore, the first order of business is to examine the problem in depth to figure out what the true cause of it is. Is the nature of the employment problem practical, psychological, educational, social, etc? Once you have an accurate grasp of the problem, then think on the right solution to it, or get help from someone with the expertise to determine the right solution. Note that if he is already at the point of avoiding responsibility and making excuses to manipulate reality, he himself will be blind to the real problem.

WRT Your Decision: 

The last point I want to make is about you and your feelings. It sounds like he is suffering from some form of arrested development because he still has the mentality of a child. Academic GPA means nothing without emotional maturity and life skills. His behavior indicates that he depends on you but is also spoiled in taking your support for granted. This means that the more you try to support/help him, the more you may be enabling his unhealthy behavior and preventing him from becoming truly independent. 

It is in his best interests to learn how to be a responsible adult because he will not always have someone to lean on in life (especially since Ti loop is very destructive to relationships). This should happen sooner rather than later, because the longer someone stays stuck in a rut, the harder it is to change, as inertia deepens. This is especially true in terms of employment because doors close and opportunities gradually dry up the older one gets. For the sake of his continued personal growth, he has to learn how to face up to his life’s problems and resolve them. But it sounds like he’s not willing to do that without being compelled to. He explicitly said to cut him off, which is basically like telling mama bird that he’s not going to jump off the tree and fly until he gets pushed off. Push him. Yes, he could have some psychological issue going on, but he’s also using your support to avoid facing up to it. If this is true, then you need to step BACK and allow him to step up for himself.

Should you kick him out? I understand that, from your perspective, this path would be the last resort, because it would violate your moral sensibilities and perhaps damage the relationship. But the fact that you’re at the point of considering it means that you’ve been dealing with this situation for far too long without making any progress. Please take some time to address how much this situation stresses YOU. Otherwise, your feelings may eventually boil over and possess you to do something you regret.

The fairest approach to this situation is to treat him like you would treat anyone else. In other words, stop giving him preferential treatment, especially if he doesn’t appreciate it and thus doesn’t deserve it. (Preferential treatment is reserved for people who are putting in their best effort but still falling short due to factors beyond their control.) If he wants to live under someone else’s roof, he has to contribute his fair share, as any adult would be expected to do (rent, bills, food, etc). If he wants to use/share your space, he has to help with cleaning and maintenance so that the workload is fairly distributed, as any adult would be expected to do. If he wants to have a relationship with you, then he has to reciprocate to make the friendship equal, as any adult would be expected to do. If it were anyone else, you would draw lines and boundaries about what kinds of behavior you would tolerate, wouldn’t you? I hope you would. If you're a doormat, it makes your relationship dynamic with him codependent and even more unhealthy. 

**A healthy relationship must have boundaries. Personal boundaries must be respected to justify continued investment in the relationship. If someone doesn’t respect your needs and boundaries, they don’t respect you, and they’re proving themselves unworthy of your continued effort. Until someone proves that they are worthy of your trust and support, it is best to maintain emotional distance from them, for your own safety and psychological well-being.**

It’s time for you to step up for yourself and how you feel. Make your needs and desires matter just as much as his, which means drawing the lines, setting the boundaries, and enforcing the rules that you need for honoring your existence. Yes, it would be nice if everyone just knew how to respect each other, but that’s not the case. If a relationship is hurting you, then it’s necessary to practice proper self-care and correct what is wrong. It’s not about being controlling but about respecting you and what is yours. If he can’t abide by your rules and boundaries, he is an adult and free to set his own rules elsewhere. Don’t forget that if you let him walk all over you, you’re implicitly confirming to him that exploitation is normal and acceptable relationship behavior.

1) Devaluing your needs is a disservice to yourself and puts you in the backseat of this relationship to be hurt and exploited, and 2) devaluing your needs is a disservice to him, because taking advantage of your generosity allows him to continue on with unhealthy behavior. I’ve given a few possibilities above and it’s up to you to take the path that you think is best for both parties.

#enfj #enfj relationships #helping #parenting #relationships #boundaries #self care #ask

[a-woman-apart]

Astrological Compatibility

After experiencing all that I have this year, I definitely believe that astrology does play a role in compatibility, in the sense that astrology is a pseudoscience based around how time of birth, planetary cycles, and place of birth affect personality. It was developed by human beings at a time when scientific methods of interpreting data were not developed to where they are today. 

If we take a look at how this might play out from a more scientific perspective, think of the “nature vs. nurture” argument. Nature applies to traits that develop either from genetics or during fetal developmental. Nurture applies to external social and developmental factors that contribute to personality after birth. 

There does seem to be a correlation between what season and month people were born in and certain personality traits. It is definitely true that levels of sunlight can have a huge impact on human health and development, but light exposure and seasons can be vastly different across the globe (especially in moving closer and farther away from the equator), which is probably why detailed astrological charts involve looking at birthplace. 

It also provides perspective on why there are differences between the Western and Chinese Zodiacs but there are still some similarities in the way traits are applied. For example, in the Western Zodiac we have “Earth, Air, Fire, and Water” and in the Chinese Zodiac we have “Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water” because human beings across cultures understand how valuable these elements were to our survival. 

Human beings are pattern-seeking creatures, so it isn’t any surprise that they personified these elements and began correlating them to aspects of human personality. It was just another way of trying to make sense of the world, and I am not surprised that when astrologers examined the natural world and the cosmos (as better astronomical tools became available) they began to make connections between children born in certain seasons and certain personality traits, and I don’t believe the correlation is completely nonexistent. 

The issue we see is that some people tend to think that personality is a fixed thing, and that when someone is born a certain way [nature] their traits are entirely resistant to change [underemphasizing nurture]. 

Even if astrology can offer us some predictors about how a person’s character might develop, we have to remember that personality has nothing to do with whether someone is a “good” or “bad” person. Some people may be more or less outgoing than others, more or less athletic, more or less organized, more or less playful, and more or less “nice” than other people, but that has nothing to do with their morality or ability to be a good romantic partner, friend, sibling, or parent. 

The strength of a relationship is almost entirely dependent on the values of the parties involved.

Whether “star-crossed” or “star-aligned”, the strength of peoples’ relationships is entirely dependent on whether or not they are based on honesty, mutual respect, and compassion. We all know that some people we love have habits that may occasionally-- or frequently-- grate on our nerves, but our choice on whether to continue living with and loving that person is rarely just down to personality. 

We all have that person in our lives with a grinchy, McScrooge disposition, but we love them because they keep their word and you know deep down that they’ve got a good heart even if they don’t always show affection as easily as other people do. 

We also all know someone that is the life of the party, loud, fun, almost obnoxious in their zest for life, but we wouldn’t trust them as far as we could throw them when it comes to any major responsibility. But we still love them anyway. 

And with have to admit to ourselves, that sometimes love is not enough.

Love is never an excuse to allow someone to run roughshod over your boundaries, devalue your ideas, and monopolize your time. Love alone will not save any relationship where either party lacks respect, trust, and compassion.

After ending many relationships this year (including one that I held in very high value) I found out that it isn’t about personality. “Ugh, she’s such a Virgo!” is not a mature answer for why you can’t get along with your best friend, boss, or mother. 

I know that Kati Morton used to say “some relationships are bad recipes” and I don’t really believe that anymore. I don’t really believe that people share mutual blame like that for why things fall apart. It’s fine to admit that someone annoys you or gets on your nerves, but when there is that much bad blood with someone you used to be associated with, I think that boundary violations-- either on your part or theirs-- are to blame. 

I used to lean towards a belief in “star matches” but now I truly believe there are no incompatible signs.   

I know that I tend to lack romantic chemistry with most of my fellow Air nomads, but I always have amazing conversations and a kind of instant connection. I know that from experience, Water signs are amazing listeners. I know that I tend to have a shared drive with so many Earth signs, and that Fire signs have a unique capability to humor and delight. 

Fire signs can also burn your whole life down if you let them. Water signs can be secretive and vindictive. Earth signs can be so stubborn that they won’t admit a single flaw. Air signs can be unreliable and aloof. 

But guess what? So can everyone, because we all have aspects of each element inside of us. Leaning a certain way does not make us more or less bad or good. It just makes us human. 

As I reflect on my experiences this year, I am far more interested in how systems of meaning develop, than the systems themselves. Astrology, just like religion, was developed by humans who desperately wanted to provide an explanation for the mysterious workings of the cosmos, our planet, and the human heart. I think whether or not astrology is “real” is far less important than the history and traditions associated with it. 

Each of the signs in the Western Zodiac has a unique mythological creature and story attached to it. It was only this year that I found out that Capricorn is represented by a half-goat, half-fish creature (essentially a mergoat), and I learned that my sign (Libra) was only introduced into the zodiac later, because there was too much intensity going on between The Virgin (Virgo) and Scorpio (the Scorpion, duh) and Libra was brought in to balance things out. That is the reason why Librans are the only members of the zodiac family to not be represented by a living creature. 

I also found out that this might’ve been part of it because human beings have been liking the number 12 for a good minute, so we had to even out that odd 11 sooner or later. In my numerological deep dive I also found out that Romans were freaked out by the number 17, because it was written “XVII” and that, along with the fact that it was a weird prime number, really upset their sense of symmetry. In general it seems humans are not fond of numbers that cannot be divided by anything other than 1 and itself. So 9 is in, but 13 is out, and its probably more this, rather than the fact that we don’t want a snake sign in the Zodiac, that so many astrologers soundly refuse to recognize Ophiuchus. Obviously we make an exception for 0 (both a number and not a number) and also 1 and 2.  

I “wiki-walked” more and found out that a number of prominent musicians have superstitions regarding numbers, probably because our profession is way more about keeping time and counting than most people realize. 

Also, it’s been fascinating to find out about “the ages” which require incredible math to calculate. We are apparently just beginning the “Age of Aquarius” and a lot of changes that were predicted using past data seem to be “coming to pass.” 

Full disclosure: you can’t use astrology to predict the future of the planet anymore than you can the future of your relationship.

I use astrology to help me understand the past, but I do not trust the validity of horoscopes because it is impossible to know the future. I have developed a saying “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it echoes.” Economists, political analysists, climate scientists, and other experts in their field do not make their predictions based on “hunches” or mysterious esoteric knowledge, they make their predictions based on interpretation of data, and even if these predictions can be incredibly accurate, they are not completely infallible. 

In other words, you aren’t going to experience relationship troubles during “Mercury in retrograde” unless you expect and believe you will, or some other unrelated event causes it. The only difference then is that because you were hypervigilant, you shifted your own behavior in a way that exacerbated the issues, i.e. “a self-fulfilling prophecy.” 

If your marriage or friendship is failing, “astrological differences” likely aren’t the main culprit. Similarly, you should never dismiss your intuition that something is wrong just because your horoscope said, “You will find true love in December” and that is when you found it. That’s called a coincidence, and they’re everywhere. Trust yourself and trust your instincts. Your own personal patterns matters much more than what a stranger or an algorithm has predicted about you. Don’t try to “follow the signs”, test things out and see if things you find in your chart actually line up with what you’ve been experiencing. 

I really do believe in some kind of carnal divinity, a common life-energy that is connecting all living beings to one another. Don’t let your natural light and vitality be dimmed by people who enjoy burying their own light under a bushel. It isn’t a matter of “good” and “evil” in so many cases, but it really is about what kind of life each person wants and/or is willing to tolerate. 

That beings said, welcome to Sagittarius season! I hope you all find your inner flame archer and ride on your metaphorical horse legs right into your destiny. 

#moon sign in Sagittarius #star sign compatibility #history of astrology #toxic relationships #setting healthy boundaries #horsocopes #why you're not star crossed you just have a shitty relationship #loving yourself #time to centaur it up in this place