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#anyway. lots of feelings. i think ultimately he struggles coming to terms with his mistakes solely because he is suppose to be proud and
antianakin · 2 months
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Maybe it's my personal bias, but a dark Ahsoka trying to get back in to the WBW because the whole mess from Anakin and then never actually processing her feelings, grief, anger etc leading her to thinking she can "fix" everything by "saving" Anakin. Not really thinking of the repercussions.
And have it be that she isn't trying to change the timeline for selfless reasons, but because she wants Anakin back. That misplaced sort of blame that comes when you over idolize someone. It was only Palpatine's fault, she tries to believe, Anakin wouldn't have done this all unprompted.
In trying to get back to the WBW having her actually process her emotions and the events and realize she's putting herself and her former master on pedestals to cope. Gradually working on herself.
Or not. Idk having Ahsoka unhealthily cope with grief in a way almost paralleling Anakin (trying to cheat death for Padme and failing anyway) sounds cool to me. Or maybe I'm just exhausted.
This would certainly make a real cool AU! The one thing making me hesitate is that she explicitly says while in the WBW in Rebels that Ezra can't save his master just like she can't save hers and never shows any real inclination towards trying to use it to save Anakin. So if you went with this concept, you'd have to figure out why she changed her mind on it or you'd just have to pretend like that moment didn't happen.
But in general I think that the idea really works! Like, I wouldn't want her to actually MAKE IT to the WBW or anything, I don't want any weird time travel shenanigans for her to mess with, but I think the idea of her TRYING to get back to it so she can fix Anakin, or fix what she did wrong or something could be a really interesting goal for her to have throughout a season where she's dealing with her Anakin feelings. Especially if we assume she's slightly fucked up from Malachor and its Sith bullshit in addition to her regular emotional struggles.
And in the she has to give it up. Like maybe she finds a way to do it, a way to open one of those doors, but doing so would have some sort of consequence and she has to choose between her selfish desire to "save" Anakin and fix what she believes are her own mistakes, or keeping that particular consequence from happening. Maybe people she's grown close to over the course of the story will be killed or put at risk if she opens the door, and she has to let it go, let ANAKIN go, in order to protect them.
That version of Anakin is gone, he's dead, and the version of him that exists now is clearly unwilling to be saved, at least by her, and all she can do is accept that and move on. Let go of her guilt, let go of her fears, just... let go. MAYBE her choice to leave the Order spurred him down that path, but maybe it didn't. Maybe Anakin made his own choices based on things entirely unrelated to her. Maybe if she'd been there she could've helped him, but maybe she'd have just been killed with all the rest. She'll never know and she has to come to terms with that before she can move forward with her life. She might've left first, but Anakin left her, too, and he took everything else she loved with him when he did.
In an ideal world, this would lead Ahsoka to do a lot of reflecting on her past with Anakin as she tries to figure out how far back she'd have to go to "save" him and she realizes just how dark he already was when she knew him and ultimately realizes that HE WAS DARK WHEN SHE MET HIM. There were things that happened to him, things he'd probably already chosen to DO, long before she'd met him that were already taking him down the path to darkness, things she'll likely never know or understand. But it allows her to see Anakin so much more truthfully than she'd ever done before. No longer does she view Anakin through the rosy lens of childhood hero worship, she can see how often he struggled with his own darkness and the ways it impacted their relationship, the way it's continuing to impact her NOW.
There were good moments, and she'd loved him, but he was dark long before she knew him and that's something she HAS to accept about him if she's ever going to let him go. There were things Anakin did to her that weren't okay, there were things Anakin taught her that were wrong and caused her to start down her own darker path, and until she can recognize that Anakin FAILED HER, she'll never be able to find her way BACK. She'll never be a Jedi until she acknowledges this very important and vital truth about Anakin and her apprenticeship under him. He WASN'T a good master and he WASN'T a good Jedi. He was sometimes a good PERSON, but he'd ultimately decided to leave that behind, too. He wasn't the person she'd thought he was and unless she wants to become him, she has to acknowledge where he made mistakes so she can keep from making the same ones herself.
So yeah, I think this idea has a LOT of merit and could definitely be a very interesting path to take Ahsoka on!
#star wars#ahsoka tano#anakin critical#anakin skywalker critical#anti anakin#anti anakin skywalker#god i hate ahsoka claiming he was a 'good master' in the ahsoka show#i think there is a difference between ahsoka acknowledging he had goodness in him and they had good MOMENTS#and ahsoka acting like he was genuinely a good MASTER#they aren't the same thing nor do they have to be#she DIDN'T know anakin#she DIDN'T understand him#and a lot of what anakin taught her is what has caused her the most pain#anakin's teachings are what ultimately led her on a path away from the jedi#anakin's teachings are what cause a rift between her and the jedi#personally i feel like instead of having ahsoka apparently thinking only negative things about anakin#and then having to decide no actually he was good#i would've had her go the OPPOSITE direction to follow up on her rebels personality#ahsoka REFUSES to accept the truth about anakin and wants to save him because she doesn't think he'd have ever chosen this#not without some kind of mind control#and on that path she has to recognize that actually anakin wasn't that perfect kind master she'd chosen to see him as#anakin had darkness and attachments and he struggled with it A LOT#and it was anakin's failure that left her floundering#and she'll only be a jedi herself when she can see anakin for WHO HE ACTUALLY WAS#he was selfish and he was greedy and he was irresponsible and insensitive and impatient#he was a bad teacher and until she can acknowledge that she'll always be walking a path AWAY from being a jedi
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kitkatt0430 · 1 year
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Hi! I've been making my way through your Neighbours and Butterflies series since you posted a snippet of Chrysalis, and I'm really enjoying it!! I’ve just finished Rampage now. All the references and extra characters you've woven in—Frost, Black Lightning (!!), Oliver (!!!)—mental health being acknowledged (!!!!) (I love the Arrowverse shows, but they're. not the best in that regard :/). I also love how you've written Eobard. And Singh knowing!! 1/3
I really like how you’ve written that whole story with the old captain and Ralph!! I’m not the biggest fan of salt, but I understand it here, and really appreciate how you've handled Joe (/gen! I really hope that doesn’t come across as offensive!) Oh, and Roy Bivolo!! (clarifying Bivolo because we have like three Rays and two Roys) I loved that episode in canon mostly because of the crossover (read: the Olivarry! :D), but I really liked how you’ve characterised him here and developed him. 2/3
I think the backstory you’ve given him is really cool too!! The only tiny thing I didn’t like was his use of the term “Asperger’s”, as that’s a bit outdated. (Again, I really enjoyed the fic and your worldbuilding and hope I’m not being too rude by saying that! /g) Anyway, thank you for writing and sharing this lovely series; I’m off to read the next parts! ♡♡♡ 3/3
I completely forgot to say that Len finding the bugs is so fascinating!! (and for anyone reading this, I'm talking about cameras and microphones, not insects!) ♡
Took me a bit to get around to these, but first off thank you so much for all the lovely compliments Anon. :D It's always great to hear from someone who enjoy's my fics.
I think one of the things I really enjoyed about the Arrowverse was how interconnected it all really feels? It was a bit stilted at first and took some growing into, but they took something that I previously associated the most with Star Trek or CSI - an interconnected tv-show verse - and really set the bar high. So it's always fun for me to try and maintain that interconnection in my fics.
And yes, so many Rays and Roys in these shows. And the number of Noras in the Arrow-verse... or even just on The Flash alone. They've definitely averted the one Steve limit, that's for sure. :D
Joe is definitely one of those characters that I love, but sometimes in a bit of a tough love sort of way since the man does have his flaws that he struggles with. And I do like to give Barry and Iris the space to call him out on those, which can be a bit of a balancing act to write sometimes. But ultimately what I like about him so much is that he genuinely loves his children and wants the best for them - so he expects the best of himself in being there for them. It doesn't always work out and sometimes he goes a little too far in one direction or another (overprotectiveness with Iris, being too much of a friend than a father w/Wally at first) but how much he loves his kids is just really nice to see. And this series in particular was one where I wanted the low points of his S1 behavior called out with while giving him plenty of space to learn from his mistakes and actively do better. Writing his PoV for the Thanksgiving fic was a lot of fun.
With Roy Bivolo, I think if I were to write that fic now then I'd leave out the word 'Aspergers'. I know more about it's history now and... yeah. Not great. It's something that I might address later with editing. Or I might address it in universe? But... i'm more likely to edit and leave a note about it. My reasoning at the time was that when Roy most likely would have been diagnosed, it's a term that would have come up as part of his autism diagnosis - if not the official diagnosis itself. I wanted to show Roy's experiences with autism as being notably different from Jerrie's once I finally have her show up - admittedly not for a while - and to have part of that being their experiences with being diagnosed itself. And while that still stands... I can still have them demonstrate their varied experiences as being diagnosed-autistics (Hartley is definitely undiagnosed but he masks too well for his own good and I haven't actually mentioned that in text yet and dunno when I will) without having to continue using the term aspergers. So thank you for reminding me that I do need to figure that out when I return to this series.
Len finding the bugs was a lot of fun for me to write. I knew I wanted to give Len more to do in the series, but also that a bit of a teaser/cliffhanger would be fun to do too. (I am a bit of a mad scientist cackling maniacally when I write cliffhangers. ^_^ ) And that epilogue scene was an excellent place to indulge both impulses. There's also now a direct line from Len finding those bugs to Len deciding he needs to do more to protect Barry and that'll be something Barry both appreciates and is annoyed by in turns as the series progresses.
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girlucifer · 3 years
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“tell me you love me
...because i don’t think i could handle it otherwise.”
one of my favorite quotes in the game is when lucifer and the mc are alone, where they choose to hug him after they returned to the devildom, and he whispers how he wants the human to tell him they thought of him everyday they were away- not of his brothers, but of him alone. because he ‘couldn’t handle it otherwise.” i love that soft, wanting aspect of lucifer, a side we don’t really see often. i wanted to expand a bit on this, so here is a small fic, lucifer x gender neutral mc, under the cut!
word count: 1200 or so
tags: lucifer x gender neutral mc, obey me! angst, fluff, romance, tension, slow build, spoilers*** for lesson 20 and below  
they knocked on the study's door that towered over them, its very aura dominating, fearsome- behind this door leads to him and his gaze, as sharp and red as the thin thread that ties the two together, cutting and suffocating. his gaze always lingered in the human's mind behind closed eyes, behind closed doors- his gaze, red as blood, as marks left on their neck after a daring evening alone, as red as the human's heart that beats wildly as they raised their hand to knock upon the door. warm firelight spilled through the crevice underneath the door. they knew he was inside- he had been avoiding them ever since the night they spent together- this much, the human could tell. he was a hard one to decipher; he always had a sort of cloudiness hovering over him, always a bit restrained, a bit hesitant. he would look over his shoulder, never wear his heart there. it wasn't until that night the human must've said something small, something innocent, an accidental graze of fingertips, a mistakenly seductive glance. parted lips, inching noses... he had revealed what really lurked in the depths of his soul with shallow gasps and light moans, interlocked fingers across black silken sheets.
the smell of wooded musk lingered in the air- his candles were lit. the forest from home, the human thought- he always seemed to smell of fresh orchards. it was fitting he'd smell of such, after all, the human reflected, as every moment with him seemed akin to taking a bite of a fruit from a forbidden tree- he was the first prince of hell, second only to the devil himself. lucifer, a name feared throughout the human world just as much as the underworld- a taboo name, malevolent, a name called by the evil and wicked. the human remembered the fear that took hold of their heart when meeting the brothers- six demons stood behind a particularly shining one, his presence far more immutable than the others. lucifer, the morning star. poison to the soul, pomegranate seeds to the tongue. they knocked once more- the door finally opened.
their eyes met immediately, as the human drew closer to him. he sat on one of the small couches that accentuated his study, holding a glass of dark, almost jet-black liquid. the top two buttons of his dress shirt were undone, his tie hanging down his chest, his collarbone just slightly exposed- enough the have the human avert their gaze, face flushing as if exposed to something far too indulgent. without another word, lucifer took another glass, pouring demonus for the other as they sat besides him. he reached out his hand, to which the human accepted the glass. no words were exchanged as the two drank silently, the human stealing glances towards the demon. the lit fireplace quietly danced behind him, his silhouette outlined with the warm orange color, flooding his features. in his light, he almost seemed holy, heavenly, like a fragment of his previous celestial incarnation was shining through.
"you're avoiding me."
"is that what it seems like to you?" his lips balanced on the edge of sneering and smiling. then like a flicker of one of the candles dotting his small study, he turned his head, downing the rest of his liquor.
"do you think... do you think I can be a bit selfish and ask you to listen to me? I might say things that don't quite make sense, or run off on long tangents, or maybe circle back and say nothing of any use. but maybe, maybe I'll say what I need to and we'll both be better off. could you? could you listen to me?" he reached out his hand, it wavering every so slightly before falling short just inches of the human's fingertips.
"my life is simply full of mistakes. just, utter grievances, embarrassments, all plunders on my part. I never acknowledge them- I'm the first prince of hell- I take pride in everything I do, even the mistakes. but, by heaven and hell, I regret so much. the fall- one of my most grand achievements, inspiration to renaissance painters, punishment to god-fearing populace, martyrdom to revolutionaires, but to me- a failure. the death of my sister... meant the death of me, my brothers. the one person who didn't deserve a single hair on their head harmed- they lost their life for my stupid, arrogant cause. at least, out of that wrath towards myself, satan was spawned, and seeing him grow to be a wise, powerful demon, it gives me solace that something came out of my foolishness. but, lilith's death could never be repaid. I remember thinking that, over and over, as she laid in my arms, her lifeless corpse... growing cold. lord diavolo, he saw the despair in my eyes, my heart, and he offered a resolution. something that just maybe, maybe I can redeem myself, if it meant lilith could have a chance at normal life. a life as a human, as a daughter, a lover, as a mother. if she could live in bliss for thirty-odd years, well that's all that I could ask for. my undying loyalty for all of eternity... a small price to pay for knowing she smiled one more time before my pride got her killed. but, after millennia, it's hard to remember what it was all for. living day in and day out for the prince, to subject myself to bootlicking work, to be a puppet to the most powerful demon in the devildom- what an ironic fate for the avatar of pride. some nights, I forget what it was all for- the pledge of allegiance to the demon king, twisting my brothers to do his bidding, locking belphegor away, spending nights in here," he raised his arms, drawing attention to the stuffy room, paperwork stacked atop his desk like endless buildings across the horizon. "it's all for lilith, it's all for her- like a mantra in my head every time diavolo asks for a kiss upon his boots, every time he embraces me with a whisper of an order to my ear. but, its just words- something to tell myself, lest I go insane. I never did have that closure that she did live her life, a grand life, full of love and happiness. I had no idea what had become of her, how she met her humanistic fate. until..." he trailed off, his hand clenched, knuckles white.
"until me," the human finished for him, their thumbs circling around each other as they looked down, intently focused on the wood flooring. "yes, you're living proof she lived, she loved. you're... comfort to me, that at least once in my miserable life, I had made the right choice." he raised his hand, brushing his fingertips across the human's cheek, a strand of hair falling over their eyes. like gravity, their very souls the source of attraction, the two inched closer, slowly, bit by bit, a journey to a land of milk and honey. his face was flushed- either from the demonus or because their faces were so close, they couldn't tell. lucifer took the fallen lock of hair, tucking it behind their ear, a soft smile gracing his features. "could you kiss me? kiss me once and tell me i'm doing fine? that lilith would be proud- that my brothers are too? tell me you love me. tell me, because I don't think I could handle it otherwise." and the human closed the gap between their lips, kissing him again and again and again.
#im sorry if this doesnt make any sense. my explanation -->#i think lucifer holds a lot of insecurities on how he conducts himself. he has made extremely questionable choices. all stemming from his#committment to diavolo. naturally he must regret somethings perhaps everything#but in some ways. things arise to right the wrongs- to provide meaning to his blunders. for example#satan's circumstances of his birth. he is only alive because of lucifers intense wrath towards the events of the celestial war#as well as lilith having a second chance to live as a human and to love as a human/love humans = only possible bc he accepted diavolos#proposition#anyway. lots of feelings. i think ultimately he struggles coming to terms with his mistakes solely because he is suppose to be proud and#righteous in his decisions. but with the human... the human only came down to the devildom due to the decisions lucifer had made#its due to the fact he allowed lilith to be reborn as a human#that he helped lead the revolt against god. that he didnt betray diavolo. it all culminated into the human mc being born being raised being#brought to the devildom#and naturally. if he can gain the love of this human. if the human can kiss him and mean it. it had all been for something---#anyway im in love with morally gray characters especially them finding solace in loving another. i wrote another fic#just like this  of kent sdv LMAO i love his character......... i wrote how he feels evil due to his past crimes as a soldier#but if the farmer... life herself can find it in herself to love him. to forgive him.. he can forgive himself#anyway. lots of thoughts! thank you for reading if you did.. <3#obey me!#obey me lucifer#obey me mc#text
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s0ym1lk · 2 years
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I finished Disco Elysium last night and have come to the conclusion that it is, ironically, about learning how to honor history while also letting it go.
Disco Elysium is set in a world drowning in history. You spend the whole time walking through a bombed-out city, exploring walls where people were lined up and shot, bunkers filled with propaganda, and monuments that were put up and torn down and put up again. The layers upon layers of history that you dig through in every encounter just overwhelms you.
Harry Du Bois is likewise drowning in his own personal history. When you start the game, you literally wake up in the 'ruins' of Harry's own personal country - the room he'd wrecked on his multi-day bender prior to starting the game. He clings to an outdated music style and an outdated celebrity that he models himself after. He worships his ex so much that his brain turns her into a god.
It's no surprise that the most joyful parts of the game are ones in which history is erased or made irrelevant. Harry's relationship with Kim, for example, has no history to it at all. While Kim knows that Harry is a self-destructive asshole, based on the aftermath of Harry's bender that he's able to witness, Kim also begins his relationship with Harry from a point where he's fundamentally a different person, who can and does make different choices than old Harry would havea. Every time Harry's past comes up, Kim is able to relate to him in a different and more positive way, simply because the old Harry and the new Harry are different people. Contrast this with Harry's interactions with his old partner Jean. Those interactions are really depressing, because they're so one-sided - Jean is left to shoulder all of the pain Harry caused to him, but when he tries to lash out, Harry doesn't understand. For example, when Jean tries to pull a mean prank by dressing up as the reporter Harry drove away, the joke goes completely over Harry's head, because Harry doesn't remember his past OR his old partner. Jean is stuck in a cycle of trauma and abuse that he's trying to perpetuate with his actions. Harry literally can't remember enough about himself to be a part of that anymore. That's why his relationship with Kim works so well in comparison - he can leave his past behind and become a better person who has healthier relationships.
Another place you see this quite well is in the storyline for the dance club at the church. The church itself reeks of history, and not in a good way. It's abandoned, worn-out, broken, and it has a giant stained-glass window of a woman who blanketed Elysium in terrible history and destroyed it, then convinced everyone that she was a saint. The history in that stained glass literally towers over you and forces you to cower beneath it. When you help the teens turn the church into a dance club, you disrupt all that. The power and sanctity of the church's history doesn't totally disappear, because the church is still there, but it fades into the background as it's overtaken by a new history. That new history extends to everyone present. It covers the teens, all of whom are either running from a bad past or leaving the people they were behind(you'll notice Disco Elysium has a lot of characters who have become different people than they used to be). It covers Harry, who has struggled to let go of the cool person he was in the days of disco, but ends up not just writing the new anodic music but busting a move to it. It covers Soona the programmer, who's trying to essentially come to terms with her history at Fortress Accident and move on from it. It's a really powerful image, to find the seed of the world's destruction in the church and to be concerned about that, but to then turn it into a bass track and dance to it joyfully anyway. Sure, the end of the world is coming. That kind of sucks. But in this joyful moment, who cares?
Look at Harry's former relationship with Dora. You spend all this time being triggered by things related to her, like chewing gum, the Dolores Dei references, and near the very end of the game finally have a dream where she turns into a god and leaves you. Harry is obviously an obsessive person. He obsesses about Dora and turns her into something larger than life, even though she tells him frankly that she's just a regular woman. Harry tries to cling to that history by getting her back. He gives her figurines that he remembered she would like. He tells her he's a better person and that they can make it work. He can try to kiss her. He can beg her not to go. She leaves anyway. Despite Harry's desperation, you can tell as the player that this is an unhealthy relationship, and that it's good that Dora left him. You can also see how her leaving triggered Harry's descent into brokenness, and how he never truly recovered from it because he couldn't let go. I don't think it's a coincidence that Harry only manages to face this history after he loses his memory. Some of that past had to be scraped away before he could face the truth and overcome it.
Finally, the reveal of the killer absolutely drives this point home. The whole game follows the traditional detective novel arc, where every detail is a Chekhov's gun leading to one big conclusion. The footprints, the eighth Hardie boy, the drugs, the smoker on the balcony, all of it. And the kicker is that it does all come together - but not in the way you want it to. Because most of the clues are smoke and mirrors. The killer is a sad old man you've never met before hiding on an island, clinging to (you guessed it!) the past. He's drowning in history and can't let go of it. If he feels totally irrelevant to the rest of the game, that's because he is. He doesn't matter! The world let go and moved on without him. The game strongly implies that it was this moving on, and not the old man's politics, that cause him to commit the murder. When he pulled the trigger, he wasn't really thinking about moralintern supremacy or being loyal to the communist revolution. He simply couldn't watch two people steeped in history choose to let it go and find happiness together in moving on. So he killed the merc in a fit of jealousy. Everything else you track down in the game is just people trying to mitigate the consequences of that murder by protecting each other.
History is important, and paying attention to it is how we learn from our mistakes. But what Disco Elysium doesn't want people to do is to get so obsessed with the past that we get stuck in it. You can't live in a bombed-out city or a trashed hotel room forever. You have to let it go.
You may ask, what about the pale, and the end of the world? To me, the game is literally manifesting existential dread as a parallel to the player's own understanding of our world and our limited existence. We know the world will end at some point. Elysium knows it literally - it's being slowly swallowed up bit by bit. We as the players know it metaphorically. We know that we get 100 years, give or take, to live. We know that the planet is slowly being destroyed. In a way, that's our history too. And so the game says to you, it doesn't matter. You should care, but don't get so caught up in caring that you forget to live. Ultimately it doesn't really matter that the world is ending. What matters is something smaller and more personal - that you care about the people around you, that you try to help where you can, and that you dance to anodic dance music while you have the chance.
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cappymightwrite · 3 years
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What are your thoughts on Ned Stark ?
Hi!
I have conflicted feelings on Ned. Probably just below Stannis, he's the Westerosi man most in need of therapy, in my opinion. Actually, that's an interesting comparison — Ned and Stannis, which I know has been commented on before. They're alike in many ways, in terms of reserve etc., which makes the fact that Robert saw Ned as his true brother all the more painful to Stannis (though of course this is never explicitly stated). But anyway, back to Ned.
There's certain things I struggle with in regards to Ned, even though I understand the reasoning behind his actions, or rather, inaction. So, it makes thinking back on him in a wholly positive and fond light somewhat difficult, as I suppose it must be for Sansa in a way, as well as for Jon, once his parentage is revealed. I don't wholly dislike him though, I actually value him a lot, I just take issue with:
Him never apparently trusting Catelyn enough to be honest about Jon's parentage (+ the way he avoids telling Jon, to some extent)
No matter how loving they were... there is this unresolved (and now forever unresolved) barrier at the heart of their relationship, an unequal exchange of trust, which was within Ned's power to lift, to make fully mutual. But he didn't. Now, he had his reasons, self-sacrificing and seemingly honourable as they may appear, and certainly the narrative required this secret to be kept. But even so, in terms of how I regard his character? It rubs me the wrong way because he never gave her the opportunity to sympathise and fully understand him, he cut himself off from that. And yeah, maybe it might not have improved Jon's situation all that much, but he never gave Cat the opportunity to think of him differently, in a way that wasn't dictated by the social mores of their world:
It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally, in bed one night, Catelyn had asked her husband the truth of it, asked him to his face.
That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her. "Never ask me about Jon," he said, cold as ice. "He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. And now I will learn where you heard that name, my lady." She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne's name was never heard in Winterfell again.
Whoever Jon's mother had been, Ned must have loved her fiercely, for nothing Catelyn said would persuade him to send the boy away. It was the one thing she could never forgive him. She had come to love her husband with all her heart, but she had never found it in her to love Jon. She might have overlooked a dozen bastards for Ned's sake, so long as they were out of sight. Jon was never out of sight, and as he grew, he looked more like Ned than any of the trueborn sons she bore him. Somehow that made it worse. – AGOT, Catelyn II
"It was the one thing she could never forgive him" — yeah, me too honey! Ok, sure, we don't know for sure if Cat might have "overlooked" Jon's uneasy place in their household "for Ned's sake", if she knew he was actually her nephew — the world would still believe him to be Ned's, so to outward appearances the awkwardness is still there. And yeah, we don't know if she could have "found it in her to love Jon", but the truth certainly would have made it far more likely! But Ned decided that it had to be this way, that only he could participate in carrying this secret. So, I hurt for Cat AND Jon really.
I get why he doesn't tell Jon the truth. I understand his warped logic, how the trauma of his past informs this sort of self-punishing mentality of I must keep this honourable promise made of love till the day I die even though to the outside world it will appear as a stain upon that very honour... and to punish myself further for failing Lyanna I will never unburden myself to anyone, this is my cross to bear alone. I understand that, it's very manpain-y. But the problem is... it doesn't just punish Ned, it punishes Cat and Jon, and his other children too! Because they are by no means blind to this elephant in the room of their parent's marriage, and it's hard to rationalise:
He looked at her uncomfortably. "My aunt Allyria says Lady Ashara and your father fell in love at Harrenhal—"
"That's not so. He loved my lady mother." – ASOS, Arya VIII
Your father loved your mother, but he also had a child with another woman, whose identity he would never talk about. Your father loved your mother, but his dedication to this secret ultimately trumped being fully honest and open with her. It's hard not to feel that Ned's present came second to making up for the "sins" of his past. This is why he desperately needed therapy, lol, because (to take a line from my Byronic Hero meta) Ned's "traumatic past informs his present life," and to the detriment of that present life and those present relationships as well. But hey, that's the tragedy.
Also, I think his whole I'll tell you the truth when I next see you to Jon is really sketchy, because when exactly might that be, Ned? An avoidance tactic if I ever saw one. But really, I don't think he'd be emotionally equipped to have that conversation anyway... he might have said he'd tell him someday, but deep down, I'm sure he hoped he may never have to. And then he conveniently dies, taking the secret with him (or so we think)!
Allowing the death of Lady
Bran's wolf had saved the boy's life, he thought dully. What was it that Jon had said when they found the pups in the snow? Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord. And he had killed Sansa's, and for what? Was it guilt he was feeling? Or fear? If the gods had sent these wolves, what folly had he done? – AGOT, Eddard IV
"And for what?" Yes, quite. I don't really have much to say on this... I think this passage speaks for itself. There's probably some other things I could talk about, but those are my main two gripes.
That being said... what I value about Ned are his words of wisdom
The thing about Ned, for me, is that despite the unmaliciously meant pain he inflicts on his loved ones (which I do understand the reasoning behind, the trauma that informs it etc)... he's still ultimately a figure of hope to me, a notably flawed, but no less significant, ideal within the narrative too. And I think you need that — we need the memory of Ned as readers, and so do the Starklings. So, I love him more for what he represents, rather than his parenting and lacklustre husbanding skills. I value the fundamental truths he emphasises through his words, and the legacy of those words, embodied within his children.
For example:
"Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm. Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa… Sansa is your sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you… and I need both of you, gods help me." – AGOT, Arya II
Honestly, people can "squabble" about which Stark sibling is more important, more this, more that, till the cows come home. But that's what it is... "squabbles", and it misses the mark completely about why the Starks are the heart of the series. They are the Starks, plural. They may be different from one another, but they are "pack", and come winter, (TWOW, to be exact), once reunited they will "protect one another, keep each other warm, share [their] strengths", because those are the values Ned taught them.
These are the things to remember, despite all the hellishness. This is why Ned's death wasn't in vain, it wasn't an edgy twist, or the first whiff of grimdark... because his legacy didn't end with him, it lives on, it is felt throughout the series, right up until the most recent book:
"Be that as it may. My father sat where I sit now when Lord Eddard came to Sisterton. Our maester urged us to send Stark's head to Aerys, to prove our loyalty. It would have meant a rich reward. The Mad King was open-handed with them as pleased him. By then we knew that Jon Arryn had taken Gulltown, though. Robert was the first man to gain the wall, and slew Marq Grafton with his own hand. 'This Baratheon is fearless,' I said. 'He fights the way a king should fight.' Our maester chuckled at me and told us that Prince Rhaegar was certain to defeat this rebel. That was when Stark said, 'In this world only winter is certain. We may lose our heads, it's true… but what if we prevail?' My father sent him on his way with his head still on his shoulders. 'If you lose,' he told Lord Eddard, 'you were never here.'" – ADWD, Davos I
I love this line so much, and I love that it comes from Ned, that just as we are gearing up to head into the darkest parts of the series (because Winds is apparently going to be very dark)... we have this light, this hope, this "what if we prevail?" And it's connected to this repeated refrain about the certainty of winter — "in this world only winter is certain" vs. "winter is coming" — which is closely tied to Ned as a character. So, yes, "winter is coming", but don't be decieved into thinking that that spells disaster, that no warmth can be found, for there is always darkness before the dawn, just as there is always a winter before the spring... and in the winter the wolves shall "keep each other warm", they will "prevail."
In conclusion
Whatever his flaws and mistakes, and there are several, at the end of the day... I will love Ned for giving us hope, for reminding the readers, and characters, of what is really important — to take strength from your loved ones, to give them strength in return, and to not give into despair, no matter how harshly the snows might fall and white winds blow. Yes, it's not certain whether they'll live, but likewise, it's not certain whether they'll die either... and that's where you find the hope, the light against the grim dark.
So, for me, he's a character who makes my heart sink, but then he makes it swell again. That's the duality, and it's a choice which you put most stock in... I'll choose the hope he inspires every time ;)
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calliopecalling · 3 years
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Queen of the South 5x03 Debrief
Alright. I’ve been marinating on this long enough and I’ve had a few days to relax a little and get over my initial Game of THrones PTSD response to this episode. Thank you to all of you who helped talk me off the edge the other day, lol. I think I’ve moved on from my Daenerys-plot-line panic.
THAT SAID.
I’m still struggling to understand how betraying Marcel was in-character for Teresa. There are so many other ways that they could have portrayed her downward tailspin into queenpin crisis than having her so quickly betray one of her CORE values that they’ve spent four seasons building up. Or at least, spin it for the audience so that it looks like that’s what it is--a huge betrayal of her core values. I mean, she’s been having to betray her values from Day 2 of linking up with Camila, shall we take a quick inventory? Like she tried to say the associate of Lopez’s who was trying to steal from them should go free and quickly learned that’s not how it works (a moment I circle back to below, btw). Over the last few seasons, she:
held the innocent maid hostage
killed the Leon brother who, mind you, James set up to betray
kidnapped and traded in the life of Rios to work with George
stole from the innocent cashier at the horse race who James then killed (and lectured her about how it was totally necessary to kill him)
turned on Lil T’s uncle without actual proof and got several of his men killed in their gunfight
sailed away without Guero and then didn’t try to find out what had happened to him
ordered Kelly Anne killed (but let Camila live?)
tortured and killed Marcel’s guy Bobby for no reason
turned Javier in to the Judge in order to protect her business
And that’s just skimming the surface; I haven’t even gotten into everything. In fact one of my least favorite scenes in the series is her basically putting her own life (and James’s, Pote’s, George’s...) at risk to free La Pena’s sex slaves, because it just felt inconsistent to me with her growing smarts and reluctant ability to compromise in order to play a long game and hold onto what matters most. Like, the gal knows this business isn’t for saints. What makes her different, and ultimately successful, are her instincts, her intelligence, her honesty and transparency, and her ability to own up to her mistakes. People trust her because of a combination of these things--she commands respect and loyalty because of them. And historically, when she’s been forced into corners and had to compromise in order to survive, we’ve gotten to see her figure out ways to take accountability later.
But this time it feels different. Which, I argue, it didn’t HAVE to be. Betraying Marcel in the grand scheme of things really isn’t the worst thing. He’s in the business too. He’s not the innocent maid from season 1. Pote was the first one to suggest it--push it, even, as the only choice she had--at the beginning of the episode, and even Kelly Anne looked like she was grudgingly agreeing by her face. Couldn’t turning Marcel in and letting him know they’d work out a plan to get him out be consistent with her character (and ultimately just a part of the reality of the business)?
But no, they had to make it an out of character thing by planting this whole James speech about how trustworthy she is right in front of it for contrast. I totally agree it was shitty. I also think it was dumb because (1) Pote’s reason for why Boaz shouldn’t be turned over was that he was too unreliable and might leak to the feds but SO WILL MARCEL IF HE FEELS BETRAYED, and (2) literally she’s just showed Boaz that he can get away with murder and won’t face consequences because she needs him too much so... I don’t see anything good coming out of that. How many notches do you think she’s dropped now in his respect for her? Like I fucking love Boaz’s character right now, he carries every scene he’s in, so I’m happy to see more of him, but that just felt really out of character for her. But not in the way the writers tried to show. It was out of character because it wasn’t actually in line with what has always guided her decision-making. And, I think that SAME decision could have been spun in a way that didn’t seem quite so out of character. She could’ve made the decision with her usual integrity and intent to follow through on a plan.
Instead they’re going down a “she’s going to be betraying her core values in a major way” path and I don’t love it. I think there is PLENTY of material to work with to show her going dark and to give us worry for her soul without going in this direction and it just feels a little bait-y. Even just turning away from anything resembling emotion; taking coke to deal with stressful decisions (turning in Boaz could’ve stressed her out to the point of using, too...); etc. could have provided room in the story for her to go dark. So I don’t know. It felt like it got super heavy super fast and I don’t like it when TV shows try to shock the audiences just for the sake of shocking us. She’s a complex and interesting enough character as it is without having to endure some major personality twist.
(Also, I get that James is supposed to be a character whose perspective totally changed on everything after Teresa came into his life; but the guy had no qualms about killing totally innocent people for the first two seasons of the show, so you can’t convince me he doesn’t also in SOME WAY “get” the realities of the business and the tough shit they have to do. That said, HIS FACE when the police came in and how the poor guy had to just stand there and watch. Good acting there. I don’t think his heart broke in disappointment, though. I think he felt let down, yeah, but I think he’s gotta be worried about her now. Worried for her heart and hopefully understanding a bit more about what it is she knows about herself that she’s wanting to protect him from by not being together with him. This isn’t a thing where he really has a leg to stand on in terms of like, feeling betrayed by her himself.)
Anyway, wow, this is getting long and rambly. Point is I don’t love this story-line but I’m hoping that by introducing it early enough in the season, they’ll find a way to have it turn around again. I hope there’s a redemption arc that is less “Teresa becomes a villain and then James rescues her soul” and is more “Teresa is put in the position of making one impossible decision after another, slowly crumbles, and has to crawl her way out of the darkness with the help of people she loves.” I don’t want to be led to hate her by season end. I want to still love her and root for her. The way they wrote the betrayal in this episode really doesn’t make her that lovable and I think that could’ve/should’ve been handled differently. I’d love to hear other opinions about that!
Other random thoughts:
where is George?! George, come back
I really would’ve loved to have seen the Judge under Teresa’s thumb for at least ONE episode, or a HALF of one episode, before getting decapitated
speaking of, that scene WAS pretty golden... the head in the box, the cop moving the box... lolol
James looking all “who, ME?!?!?!?!?!” when Marcel calls it like it is that he’s in love with Teresa... sorry bud, that look would not win you a poker game, you’re going to have to mask your feelings a LITTLE bit more if you’re trying to convince anyone you actually aren’t aware you’re in love with her
the pregnancy story-line - how is Teresa going to react?!?!?!
and Molly’s acting was great in that emotional scene with Pote
but much as I love Pote, I’m really not into it from his perspective -- Hemky’s acting isn’t working for me maybe, or it just feels way too OOC for Pote to be all gushy about the baby
I’m also pregnant right now so I’m like Kelly Anne how are you in the first trimester and not like FALLING OVER WITH EXHAUSTION all the time because that’s been my own and everyone I know’s first trimester experience lol
I missed Oksana in this episode too
I ALMOST FORGOT James’s car chase! That was great. So many great season 1 callbacks so far and we’re only in episode 3.
I also felt like the decision to let Boaz go was a callback to Camila’s very first lesson to her about Lopez’s associate... wrong decision, T. Wrong decision.
I love Marcel’s character, and Alimi Ballard, a lot and hope we still get to see a bunch more of him this season
By the way, I’ve decided to stop speculating about how this is going to end. I don’t want to theorize about whether Teresa actually dies or not, and if so, whether it’s James who kills her, or whether maybe Pote will actually die so that it can be KA and Pote who don’t get the happy ending leaving room for Teresa to get hers, or whether Teresa will become the villain of the season and we’ll all hope she dies, what have you. I don’t want to watch any of the episode promos because they don’t help me not freak out and I especially don’t want to see any leaks about anything coming up. I’m scrolling past things that are obviously spoilerish because those things are not helping my blood pressure this season lololol. YES I TAKE THIS SHOW EXTREMELY PERSONALLY.
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itsclydebitches · 3 years
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Godddddd I'm so upset that I dislike yen this much, doing main quests in skellige and Freyas ppl were doing stuff and she again disrespected other cultures with Geraly being against, "I may be inhumanly beautiful" I know she's meant to be confident but wowww. She's not confident and worried for Ciri she just comes off arrogant and selfish and vain. Like, fuck.
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The ultimate mood, anon. My Witcher fandom life would be so much easier if I enjoyed Yen ... but I just do not lol. Remember how I mentioned that things were going to get even worse than her stealing and using a potentially dangerous artifact? Yeeeaah. She also resurrects Ciri's friend to torture him for information, all while destroying another sacred garden to get the power to do it! It's not even a "She's so evil and I love it 😏" situation for me because the game tries so hard to convince us that she's still The Best. Geralt's sexy soulmate, Ciri's adoring mother, the baddest bitch around who gets things done and does it with an effortless confidence... all while ignoring how horrific her actions and attitude are. Oh sure, other characters speak ill of her at times, but considering how much Geralt is written to adore her, no matter what you choose, that's all undermined. I love morally gray/evil characters, but I've never enjoyed them when the text refuses to appropriately acknowledge that side of them. Nothing is more frustrating to me than a story that frames disliking a character as the unambiguously wrong thing to do, especially when the text is piling up reasons to dislike them and, as a result, ignoring or shrugging them off their actions as not that bad. Yen is a rather extreme example of that for me. Despite her attitude, her choices, and other characters outright going, "Why do you like her?" the story as a whole works under the assumption that it's correct to like her anyway because Geralt loves her. And he loves her for... reasons.
They do meet before the wish, but only just. Major "The Last Wish" spoilers in this paragraph, so feel free to skip. Basically, Geralt and Dandelion run into trouble with a djinn, he goes to Yen for help since she's a sorceress (first time meeting her), he instantly falls for her because she's gorgeous and such (there's an elf there who is also madly in love with Yen. Men just... fall for her, instinctually), she heals Dandelion, Geralt agrees to pay her, but Yen has already decided on the payment she wants. She takes control of Geralt's mind and forces him to attack the town to seek revenge on those who have insulted her, resulting in him waking up in prison awaiting execution for "his" crimes. Meanwhile, Yen has gone after the djinn for herself because power/trying to regain her ability to have a kid. Geralt escapes, finds her failing to master the djinn (an attempt which btw has endangered the whole town) and despite what she's done to him, Geralt tries to get Yen to escape with him. She refuses, set on capturing the djinn even though it's obvious she can't. So as a last resort he uses the final wish to bind their fates together, saving Yen from the djinn in the process. Aaaaaand then they have sex.
So yeah, their rocky relationship is one of the main reasons why I can't enjoy Yen. For some their tumultuous history is evidence of realism, for me it's evidence that they're not actually very compatible and they're only together because a) that's the fantasy trope: protagonist men get together with the hot sorceress and b) because the magic is literally ensuring that they can't escape one another. I mean, canonically their fates are tied together by magic and canonically they spend about 20 years swinging between passionate love and fearsome fights... but there's supposedly no connection between these two things? No chance at all that they keep coming together because magic is drawing them rather than because they actually want/should be together? I wrote a meta a while back about the short story where they meet, which includes a present day scene where Geralt is criticized by another character — Nenneke — for running out on Yen. Thing is, he tries to explain that he left because she was "too possessive" and this is... flat out ignored. By both Nenneke and the fandom. There's a strong trend of ignoring Geralt's words in favor of a pro-Yen interpretation of events. He says he left because she was too possessive and she treated him like ____ — he's not allowed to finish the sentence and say what she treated him like because Nenneke interrupts him, saying she doesn't care about his version of events. Major yikes imo! She turns a claim of being possessive into Geralt not being man enough to stick around. The fandom likewise turns this into a case of Geralt getting cold feet and running out because he's a bastard who hates commitment. Likewise, Nenneke and the fandom claim Geralt is trying to get Yen money as a way of appeasing his guilt for leaving, he claims he's doing it simply because he still cares for her — even if he doesn't want to be with her — and knows she needs it. Geralt's words are frequently dismissed, in the same way others characters' opinions of Yen are dismissed. Any mark against her is treated as either a lie, or a convoluted claim that they don't really know her... never mind that an understanding of why she may act this way doesn't excuse the behavior itself. (Plus, the whole "Yen had a horrible upbringing, so of course she struggles being kind" perspective always fell flat to me when so many, including witchers, had horrendous upbringings too. The whole point is this world is a mess and most everyone suffers). It's supposedly true love, yet if someone came up to me and went, "I magically tied my fate to this woman to keep her from getting herself killed and we've spent the last couple decades having what many would term a rocky relationship, to put it kindly. I left once because she was too controlling. She once cheated on me. I likewise hooked up with others during our frequent breakups. A mutual friend used magic to get me to have sex with her — also while my lover and I were broken up — and though I view it as a dumb decision I'm happy to forgive her for, my lover is ready to commit murder because again: possessive. A lot of the time we're only a family because of our daughter. I once thought she'd horrifically betrayed us both. She didn't, but it says something that I was so ready to believe it, huh? Hmm? Permanently separated? Of course not! I love her. We're destined to be together after all :)" I'd be like, "Uh... you sure about that, dude?"
Not that Geralt doesn't make his fair share of mistakes in the relationship — he absolutely does — but I don't think it helps his case that he's immature in other ways and, frankly, that he's a very strong, badass witcher. It's easy to turn the hints we get about their relationship into a simplistic "emotionally naive man can't give the poor woman the commitment she wants" situation. Given Geralt's status as the badass fighter of the tale, it's likewise easy to dismiss his admissions of her being "possessive" and his general discomfort. He's the man. He's the witcher. If he's making any claims about how Yen isn't treating him well, they must be excuses, or exaggerations, because real men, especially physically powerful men, would do something about that — a something that's not sneaking out in the middle of the night. A lot of people read Geralt leaving as the ultimate proof that he's an immature bastard who doesn't deserve her. I read him leaving and think, "What were you trying to get away from? What was going on that made you think you could only leave by sneaking out without a word?" To me, that doesn't read as someone who felt safe, comfortable, and respected enough to do anything but slip away and try to wash his hands of things. And I'm not just pulling this "Geralt is at least somewhat afraid of Yen and isn't comfortable establishing boundaries with her" reading out of my ass. When Yen wants Geralt to kill the golden dragon for her and he refuses, saying he doesn't care anymore, his thoughts are:
He expected the worst: a cascade of flames, flashes of lightning, blows raining down on his face, insults and curses. There was nothing. He saw, with astonishment, only the subtle trembling of her lips. Yennefer turned around slowly. Geralt regretted his words.
And everyone is like, "See! Yen has improved so much. Geralt nearly made her cry, but she's supposed to be the bad guy here?" Meanwhile, I'm going, "Uh... anyone want to unpack why he expects fire, lightning, insults, curses, and blows to his face for telling her no? Why he's astonished that she wouldn't use her magic against him? Anyone think that Yen refraining from attacking Geralt when he refuses to murder on her command is a pretty low bar? No? Just me?"
Geralt and Yen's relationship makes me uncomfortable and a great deal of that discomfort derives from how much of the Witcher fandom shrugs off the fictional warning signs. I mean, I post primarily about RWBY. We watched a man in that show try to sneak away with his kids when his villainous wife planned to use them for a eugenics plan... and the fandom still blames him for that, refusing to admit that he was in an abusive relationship. Because that doesn't happen to men, right? I'm not saying it's the same for Geralt and Yen, simply because they are written to be soulmates. An abusive relationship was, quite obviously, never the authorial intent. However, I am saying that the a "This isn't a healthy relationship" reading is there, it exists as an interpretation, and both the story and fandom's tendency to dismiss it is something that hasn't helped me enjoy Yen's status as an otherwise well written, complex character. Their equality supposedly stems in part because they're both so flawed, yet each time I see a list of Geralt's supposedly equal faults they're... lacking imo. "Geralt bound himself to Yen without her consent." Yeah, to save her from dying from the djinn she was trying to enslave, after she refused to leave, while her actions threatened a whole town. "Geralt ran off without a word." Mmm hmm, anyone care about why? And my personal favorite is a scene you may not have gotten to yet (or may not get depending on your choices), but suffice to say, Yen is supposedly justified in physically attacking Geralt if he dares to challenge her in any way. That's the main takeaway across the fandom: If Yen is pissed off, you must have done something to deserve it which, in the relationship deliberately written to be "stormy," is something that sets all the alarm bells in my head off. Honestly, it kinda makes my skin crawl to go, "Geralt didn't deserve that" and get responses back of, "Yeah he did because he [insert basic human action here]." The Witcher world is hard and cruel, absolutely, but that doesn't mean I personally enjoy seeing an equally messed up relationship presented as something that's enviable in its flaws. "That's actually true love because the magically bound man who often expresses discomfort with his lover, written by a male author with a very iffy perspective on women, says it's true love." Crazy theory here, but... maybe it's not?
Idk, lots of rambling on my end tonight! For me, Geralt/Yen reads as something rather tragic which, in a canon that unironically upholds the relationship, and in a Yen-adoring fandom, doesn't make enjoying her character any easier. I keep coming back to Witcher 3, the comics, the show, even the books going, "Maybe I'll like her this time?" but nope, still trying lol.
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theotherace · 3 years
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What was the dunebabies childhood like? I remember you saying Taang won't be bad parents, how does the dunebabies see their mom and dad? Did they have a permanent place to stay?
The kids' most permanent home is Appa's saddle, because travelling both kinda comes with Aang's job and is in both of their natures. He does travel alone, too, if whatever conflict he's been called to solve or look at is too dangerous to take the kids or if it's a quick, close-by thing, but mostly, where one Beifong is, the rest can be found easily. Which doesn't mean, of course, that they have no place they'd call home outside of that. They visit their grandparents a lot, and every kid has their own room at their house. They stay at the Air Temples (and most often the Southern) regularly. Aang and Toph have friends in all four nations that always have a bed over (and, in Zuko's case, probably an entire palace wing). So no, the family doesn't technically have a permanent place to stay at, but they have a lot of ... well, homes, all over the world.
The kids don't mind the travelling, for the most part. Kavi and Bumi love absolutely every second of it, and Tenzin, while he enjoys visiting his grandparents and having all his stuff in one place, also couldn't really do without it. Asha and Norbu don't resent their parents for the travelling, but it's also not a decision they'd have made for themselves. They treasure the experiences they make and wouldn't have wanted to miss them, but they do better when staying at just one place. Less stress. They enjoy life more when it's a little more predictable.
(And now a cut, because this got so long. Thanks for the ask, by the way! Feel free to send me more, haha.)
Bumi probably has the least idealized view of his parents growing up. He's the oldest, a lot of things still have to be figured out with him, and they're lucky he's a responsible kid by nature and not a big trouble maker at all, because he'd definitely have had ample opportunity to screw around. He babysits his siblings when Aang and Toph need to be away for an afternoon (they don't leave him alone with them much longer than that, though), and while he admires them both greatly, all the great things they've done, he also realizes pretty early on that ... well, ... they're people. And people make mistakes and people aren't perfect. His expectations of them aren't as high as his siblings', I think. He loves them very much, but they can be scatter-brained and impulsive at times, and he probably wishes that weren't the case. He loves living all over the world. He doesn't appreciate the planlessness of it all.
Norbu admires both his parents greatly. He loves hearing their stories, he loves watching them bend and learning from them, and he's an absolute Momma's boy who follows Toph around whenever he can. His parents are a source of inspiration for him, people who took destiny into their own hands, who endlessly support him and his dreams. Plus, they saved the world once and continue doing so all the time. Yeah, they're pretty awesome. He's the boy who goes around bragging about his parents. He's an easy kid to handle, not very demanding, easily satisfied, he likes being left alone with his projects every now and again, and I think that probably colours his perceptions of them greatly. Attention having to be divided by five doesn't bother the boy who doesn't like receiving too much of it, anyway. If he needs some extra time with either of his parents, he's not afraid to ask for it, and they usually give it to him as quickly as they can.
Tenzin looks up to especially his father. He loves Toph, too, of course, but growing up, he really just wants to be like Aang. Unfortunately for him, he is not the most naturally talented bender, and Aang, who things always came easy to and who is otherwise only really teaching Norbu at this point, who picks up quickly on things, and helps out with Bumi, who is unconventional but talented, and Asha, who bends just like her mother, isn't quite equipped to handle that. He tries, of course. They both try. But Tenzin is a stubborn kid, and there's ultimately only so many times you can hear: "We all learn at our own pace" before exploding because it feels like you're not moving at all. Tenzin admires his parents, but he also resents them, especially as a teen, because it feels like they're not trying at all, it feels like they're holding him back (when really, they're keeping him from running himself ragged), it feels like they don't want him to achieve his dreams and goals like they always preach. He'd have benefited greatly and definitely needed more attention than they were realistically able to give him. Their relationship suffers greatly when he's in his teens, because they don't quite know how to reach him and he makes it seem like he doesn't want to be reached in the first place. Ultimately, he makes the decision to move to the Northern Air Temple when he's sixteen, and while Aang and Toph aren't necessarily excited about him leaving (feels like they're losing him), he does get their blessing as long as he writes at least once a month. And this move does them all a lot of good. Tenzin isn't only surrounded by insufferably talented benders anymore, he can more fully immerse himself in his culture, and there are teachers around who aren't his father, who can help him improve in ways Aang and Toph couldn't. They talk it all out, eventually, and he knows they always tried their best with all of them, but he's never quite as close to them as he was as a kid or as his twin still is, and he's closer to Toph as an adult than to Aang. Doesn't change that he loves them, though.
Asha grows from a tiny admirer of her parents into a somewhat moody teenager deeply annoyed by the fact that all people ever want from her is to ask about her parents. She's a social butterfly, she likes to make friends, and it's disheartening when every third new buddy she makes actually is just curious about Mom and Dad and doesn't care about her at all. She absolutely vibes with Aang and she loves Toph, no questions asks, but she wishes they were just two randos sometimes. Life would be easier then. It's maddening, and for a while, it definitely builds some resentment, which is talked out after a lot of cold shoulders and silent treatments. Other than that, she's pretty cool with her parents. Sure, they're annoying sometimes, and sure, it would be nice if they didn't have to divide their attention by five kids and the rest of the world, but they're both annoyingly supportive (trying to rebel doesn't go well when Mom's like: Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Let me get your brothers, we'll make a family day out of it), and while she understands Tenzin's plight a little better than Norbu does, she still doesn't really ... get it. She doesn't think her parents are perfect, but she knows they'd do anything for all of them, because I really think that's something Aang and Toph would tell and try to show their kids all the time.
Kavi has it best in terms of attention. He's the baby with quite an age gap between himself and all his siblings (twelve years younger than Bumi, seven/eight years younger than the twins and Asha), so everybody's always looking after him, Mom, Dad, and all the big siblings. He's a Momma's boy like Norbu and admires his father almost as much as Tenzin does, at least as a kid, and he enjoys hanging out with the both of them like no twelve-year-old should. They've learned a lot about being parents by the time he comes around, they've raised four kids before him, after all, and even if every kid is different, he absolutely benefits from that. They're more relaxed with him. They know what's okay and what isn't. Relaxed is a fairly good word to describe his relationship with them, honestly. He loves them and they love him and he knows he can always fall back on them and they know that he's a good kid who they can trust to make good decisions.
So ... conclusion of all this, is that I think Aang and Toph would try to give their children to best childhood possible, and sometimes, they mess up while doing that. Kavi and Norbu probably come closest to calling them perfect. Tenzin always knows they love him, but sometimes, love isn't quite enough. Sometimes, you do your best and your best isn't enough. And I think that's something Aang and Toph would have to realize, especially with Tenzin, but really with all of their kids. Some things they just can't give them, and that's okay, but I think they'd struggle a bit with admitting to themselves that maybe somebody else could help their kid better in this situation than they can.
The dunebabies have a good childhood, filled with lots of adventure and lots of love and lots of imperfections, and they maintain a good relationship with their parents throughout their lives, even if there are some ups and (occasionally very low) downs.
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calliecat93 · 3 years
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ST: The Next Generation S3 Watchthrough Episodes 14-17
A Matter of Perspective: So we have Riker being accused of murder and Picard and the others having to piece together the events to find the true story. We have a bit of a unique way of accomplishing this as they use the Holodeck to recreate the various accounts… which causes a problem. Not everyone’s accounts line up. They may feel like they’re telling the truth, but may be remembering things wrong, going off second-hand information, misunderstanding wich affects the testimony, and all that fun stuff. Now we know that while Riker can kill if he has to, he likely didn’t commit murder (or do anything like force himself on a woman like the one recreation protrayed), or if he did there would be a reason for it. It sucks to see Riker int his situaiton and Picard wanting to believe his First Officer but having to follow his duty as Captain and with the evidence mounting against Riker… yeah.. So it was fine. Nothing to really complasin about, but nothing to really praise eiher. I guess it shows how messy it can be to get to the truth with so many people believing different things which causes so many muddled up accounts. We never get the true story (though Riker’s is probably the closest to the truth), but we get enough to prove Riker innocent so yay~! Just a solid episode all in all. 3/5.
Yesterday’s Enterprise: YAR! OH MY GOD!!! So in this episode, we end up in an alternate timeline where I guess the Bad Ending of The Undiscovered Country occurred and Starfleet is at war with the Klingons. Only Guinan can tell that something’s out of place. Yar is alive, Troi and Worf are gone, Wesley’s an actual officer, and they have found the believed to be destroyed Enterprise-C. They even bring back the movie-era red uniforms for the Enterprise-C crew. Yar pretty much gets far, far more material to work with than she did in her one season which I guess is how they convinced Denise Crosby to come back for it since I think that’s why she quit in the first place. I still feel very conflicted about her death in Skin of Evil. The senselessness cetianly added to the cruel reality, but left me upset to see her character thrown away like that. Here she will die again no matter what, but this time she decides to let it be on her terms and do something that will at least matter. The whole episode is darker than usual due to the war, allowing them to get away with killing characters and the Enterprise-C’s lose-lose situation is just… it’s just depressing. All while Guinan is trying to convince Picard that this whole reality is wrong, and he’s understandably struggling with being told that what he knows is his reality and life is fake. Guinan watching Yar, knowing that her being alive is wrong, also added ott he unease and lets Yar piece together that she didn’t survive in the true timeline. Seriosuly, Whoppi Goldberg is always awesome, but she was amazing in this episode. The only real downside is because this is an alternate timeline that essentially gets wiped out of existence, the impact is minimal and while Yar got a much better sendoff … it doens’t change that the real Yar is dead and her death was empty (though Guinan asking Geordi about Yar to know more about her was an excellent end note). It holds me back from giving this a perfect score, but this was still an excellent episode and at least shows that even in death, even in another reality, Yar was very much a part of the Enterprise and that she mattered. Clearly the writers realized that they made a mistake and did what they could to make some form of ammends, and I can respect that. 4.5/5.
The Offspring: Data’s a daddy! I thought this sounded kind of silly when I read the description… but Dear Lord this broke my heart. I just wanted to hug Lal through this entire episode. She was just created and experiencing life and already has her own feelings and thoughts, like not liking the other children treating her as different. Data is trying his best and overall I think that he was as good of a parent as he could be. He genuinely wanted to raise Lal, he educated her and even enrolled her in school, went to Crusher for parenting advice, and I think that he truly loved her as any good parent would for their child. It makes the ending just utterly heartbreaking and how the admiral who comes to check things out being just feels so God awful. Hell the fact that they consider taking what is essentially a young child away from her parent without taking her feelings into account just because she’s an android already exceeding Data’s funcitons essentially because of prejudice and claiming to know better than the parent/father who is clealry not abusive or anything like that… yeah, the allegory hits hard. Data having to say goodbye to Lal as she died… yeah that hit me hard. I cried. That was just… God I don’t even know how to describe it, but it hurt. The episode has it’s issues. Like while I do like that Lal was allowed to choose her own gender, it’s a painful reminder that no one could even consider non-binary an option. I also felt like Picard was off in the first half since while he does ultimately defend Data against the admiral and I understand his concerns about Data not telling anyone and how Starfleet will react, him acting like Data even able to fathom wanting a child or if Lal even counts as a child just feels… horribly dickish. At least Troi was on Data’s side, and liek I said Picard did ultimateley defend Data and his and Lal’s rights so that’s good. And while I get that Data views himself as unable to feel… he clearly did love Lal and I need to keep reminding myself that we didn’t have the understanding of neurodivergence or the like back then, but I legit cannot tell what the show is triyng to say concerning Data’s ability to feel. Can he? Or can he not? They only allow one or the other. Still, the episode was sweet in a lot of ways and just brutal/sad in others and just a painful reminder of the prejudice against Data/androids that The Measure of a Man illustrated. Hopefully, happier things for Data are on the horizon. 4/5.
Sins of the Father: So after that heartbreaker, lets do more father-related stuff but time with the Klingons! This time we have a Klingon, Kurn, working on the Enterprise as an acting FIrst Officer and not only does it turn out that he’s Worf’s unknown brother… but that Worf’s father was accused of treason and thus he and his family are facing dishonor, hence why Kurn is there. Until that revelation it looked like we were getting the reverse of A Matter of Honor, but when that twist comes in? Ho boy… As the oldest son, Worf has to face the challenge that will either clear his family or end in his execution and of course Worf feels bound to do so. This certainly was something. We get to see the Klingon homeworld, we plunge straight into Klingon politics, and damn is it intense from the moment we warp to the planet to the very end. While we sort out that Worf's father wasn’t a traitor… unfortunately the one whose family was is in a high position of power who tries everything possible to keep the truth from coming out. It’s a whole conspiracy and Worf is forced to accept the dishonor just to prevent the planet from plunging into Civil War. It’s clear that no one, not even the other Klingons like this and knows that it’s wrong… but they turn their backs on him anyways. Worf even forces Kurn to do so so that he won’t have to suffer the same fate when the truth about his identity becomes known. It reflects on Worf’s character, his honor and devotion to his family despite them being either dead or only just finding out that he had a brother at all. Not to mention to the Klingon Empire since he’s also allowing it to save them from war. But it’s also just so cruel that he and his family got scapegoated all because of one asshole to cover his own family’s dishonor, especially since we’d watched Worf trying so hard to uphold the Klingon ideals and beliefs despite having grown up among humans. Now he’s been shamed by his people and viewed as a non-entity, which may be even worst than mere dishonor. IDK if this plot will continue in TNG or when he joins DS9, but I hope it does because Worf didn’t at all deserve this. It makes me respect his character so much more though and Picard was freakin’ badass as well. At least in the meantime, he has the Enterprise crew standing by him. 4/5.
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wild-aloof-rebel · 4 years
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By no means do I want to invite discourse onto your blog, so please do not feel at all obligated to answer, but I was wondering what you thought of the titular happy ending. Obviously, it's sparked a lot of debate, and your takes are always so compassionate and articulate and insightful. Have a lovely evening regardless, and thank you for everything you've contributed to this fandom!
a few things to start… first of all, thank you for asking this in such a non-confrontational way. i haven’t seen much of whatever debates are happening as most of it has managed to stay out of my inbox this time thankfully (i hope i’m not jinxing myself by responding to this lol), though i feel like i can assume the shape of some of the broad strokes of it. i say that just to mean that this shouldn’t be taken in any way as a response to any particular posts/people but just as my general thoughts on the ep. and of course, as i always try to remind everyone, my opinion certainly isn’t the only one that matters, and everyone is entitled to feel however they feel about this (or any other) plot line on the show. i’m certainly not the be-all, end-all of schitt’s creek opinions, nor do i want to be.
anyway, let’s talk about the happy ending…
the first thing i do any time that there’s something on the show that seems to throw people off in some way is to take a step back and try to think about what that particular scene/plot was trying to accomplish. and honestly, the first goal of the show is always that it wants to make you laugh. it’s a comedy. while it means a lot to those of us who love it so deeply and have watched it so carefully, and while there are certainly moments–more and more frequently throughout the years–of great depth and heart and drama, it is still at its core a comedy, and some scenes are really just meant to be a laugh and not hold some kind of earth-shatteringly deep revelation, and i honestly think this is one of them. 
i mentioned in some of my speculation earlier this season that i thought we (def including myself there) were in danger of trying to connect too many plots in a way that the show historically hasn’t really done, and i think that some of the negative reactions to this may be the same kind of thing, that we sometimes take things too seriously on a show where historically most of the plots of most of the eps aren’t really meant to be that serious. think about “love letters” for instance. so many people were (and still are) upset about how patrick reacts to the robbery, and sure, i get that he could have been nicer and considered that david and stevie didn’t know the robber didn’t actually have a weapon and that they were frightened, etc etc etc. but also, it’s a comedy. it wasn’t supposed to be some kind of treatise on the right and wrong ways to respond to traumatic situations; it was supposed to be funny and that’s that. the characters clearly have moved on by the next time we see them–david doesn’t seem to be harboring some kind of resentment for the way that patrick responded–and we shouldn’t take it any more seriously than they do. 
the show is actually really good at telling us what’s serious and what isn’t, if we just listen to it, and it’s definitely telling us this particular plot isn’t meant to be That Serious. patrick, despite having his understandable initial wtf kind of moment about it, has already by the end of the scene accepted that it was a miscommunication (and one of his own making at that–i mean he does leave the cash and the note, plus he tells david specifically before he leaves that “it’s all taken care of and i’ve told them we need you calm today, so just let them do their job,” so he recognizes once he starts thinking about it just how david could have thought this was what he intended to happen), and he’s already thinking about how some day down the road it’s just going to be yet another story that’s part of their history. he’s clearly still excited and happy when we get to the wedding. he obviously still chooses to marry david that day. so while any of us personally may have reacted differently in this situation, the show is telling us that patrick ultimately isn’t particularly bothered by what happened, that this isn’t supposed to be taken as some kind of serious, make-or-break moment in their relationship. it’s really just supposed to be funny–something to help break up the heavier emotions of the episode. now we may personally disagree on whether or not we actually find it funny, but that seems to be most of the intent either way.
if you do want to take it somewhat more seriously though (because i mean that’s what we do in fandom right? lolol), i think you have to look at it in the context of what this season has been trying to accomplish with their relationship. season 4 is all about those tentative first steps of falling in love. season 5 builds on that to give us all these hallmark relationship moments. season 6 then lets us see what life looks like when the romance isn’t quite as new, when you’ve found enough safety in each other to allow yourself to be seen at less than your best, to make mistakes, to disagree, to explore, to fight when you need to, to know that you can get it wrong sometimes because your partner will always be there to catch you if you fall, because you’ll fall together and pick each other back up, again and again. that’s what love looks like long-term. that’s what marriage looks like. and that’s what this season has given us a taste of.
for example, david, though he’s embarrassed by The Incident, still comes back to patrick’s apartment at the end of the day, allowing himself to be more fully seen (and thus more fully loved) in the light of patrick’s understanding. patrick, who we know has struggled with always trying to make himself be the person other people want him to be–the perfect boyfriend, the perfect son–lets himself crack open a bit, allowing those truer, messier emotions to spill out, letting david actually see his frustration about the spray tan because he knows by now that it won’t scare him away. in these ways and more, season 6 is about how love goes beyond romance, how it builds a space where we can be our true selves, how there’s a stability in that which takes time for you to build together. if something like this had happened earlier on in their relationship, i could see it being A Big Obstacle for them, but at this point, it’s barely even a bump in the road, already well on its way to being a funny anecdote they’ll trot out years on down the road, when they’ve both had a bit too much wine at one of their monthly dinner parties with their friends, the two of them talking over each other as they compete to tell it better. they’re solid enough that a miscommunication like this isn’t going to derail them. 
like dan said to entertainment weekly, their relationship is “founded on something much deeper, much more substantial, much more respectful… their sex life [is not] something that is always what’s defining loyalty in their lives.” and while that may not be how some of us feel about our own sex lives and the role of sex as it relates to loyalty or intimacy within our own relationships, it is pretty clear at this point that for david and patrick, sex can just be sex sometimes. they were obviously interested in entertaining the possibility of a threesome with jake earlier this season, and as david points out in that episode, jake is the perfect candidate for something like that because there will be no emotional intimacy tied to it with him. the same thing goes here. there is no threat to the intimacy and stability of david and patrick’s relationship because of this mishap, so ultimately it’s something that’s easy for both of them to just wave away.
and that’s really what i feel like a lot of the disagreement probably comes down to at the end of the day, too–for a lot of us, this wouldn’t be so easy to wave away. we all have our own lenses through which we view the world, which means that when we see other people’s relationships, fictional or not, we tend to judge them based on our own standards. and while that certainly might mean that whatever is happening may not be something we want in our own relationships, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily wrong for whomever is actually in them. it’s tempting to put our own views of sexuality, loyalty, monogamy, happiness, whatever onto david and patrick’s relationship, but at the end of the day, what actually matters is how they view their own relationship, and the show is telling us that they’re both happy with exactly where they are. so many of us see something of ourselves in one or both of them, and so seeing them make a choice that we ourselves might not make can be a hard thing to reconcile, but it still doesn’t make it the wrong choice for them. 
ultimately if david and patrick both are clearly happy in their relationship and don’t view this as a big deal, who am i to say otherwise?
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dillydedalus · 3 years
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april reading
oh yeah this is a thing. anyway in april i read about uhhh.... first contact (twice), murderers on skis & victorian church politics
the yield, tara june winch a novel about indigenous australian identity and history (now and throughout the 20th century) in three narrative strands. imo the narrative strand that consists of a grandfather writing a dictionary of his language (wiradjuri) in order to prove a claim to some land is by far the strongest, but overall i liked this quite a lot. 3/5
land of big numbers, te-ping chen a solid short story collection focused on modern china and young(ish) chinese people, both in china and the diaspora. i particularly liked the stories that had some slighty surreal or speculative elements, such as one about fruit that strongly evoke emotions when eaten and a group of people stuck in a train station for months as the train is delayed, which imo use their speculative aspects in effective (if not super subtle) ways to talk about society. 3/5
the pear field, nana ekvtimishvili (tr. from georgian by elizabeth heighway) international booker prize longlist! a short, fairly depressing read about a 18-year-old girl at a post-soviet school for developmentally disabled childred (but also orphans, abandoned children & other random kids) who is trying to get a younger boy adopted by an american couple. there seem to be a lot of novels set at post-soviet orphanages etc & imo this is a well-executed example of the microgenre, with the pear field full of pears that are never picked bc they don’t taste right as a strong central image. 3/5
the warden, anthony trollope (chronicles of barsetshire #1) ah yes, a 6-part victorian series about church politics in an english town, exactly the kind of thing i’m interested in. not sure why i committed to at least the first two entries of the series but here we are. despite this lack of interest (and disagreement with most of the politics on display here) i found this quite charming; trollope has a gift for an amusing turn of phrase & making fun of his characters in benevolent ways. 3/5
the lesson, cadwell turnbull first contact scifi novel set on the virgin islands, where an alien ship arrives one day. the aliens seem benevolent & share helpful technology, but also react with extreme violence to any aggression. they claim to be on earth to study.... something, but it’s never entirely clear what. the book makes some interesting choices (like immediately skipping over the actual first contact to a few years in the future, when the aliens are already established on the islands) but i thought much of it was kinda disjointed and confusing. 2/5
the heart is a lonely hunter, carson mccullers look, i get it, it’s all about the isolation & alienation (& dare i say loneliness) of 4 miserable characters projecting their issues on the central character singer, who is kind and patient and also deaf and mute, thus making him the perfect receptacle for their issues without really having to connect with him as a person and how that isolation hinders them socially, artistically, emotionally, politically, but like... i didn’t really like it. i didn’t hate it but i just felt very meh about it all. 2.5/5
acht tage im mai: die letzte woche des dritten reiches, volker ulrich fascinating history book about the last week(ish) of the third reich, starting with the day of hitler’s suicide and ending with the total surrender (but with plenty of flashbacks and forwards), and looking at military&political leadership (german and allied) as well as prisoners of war, forced laborers, concentration camp prisoners, and everyone else. very interesting look at what kästner described as the “gap between the not-anymore and the not-yet.” 3.5/5
firekeeper’s daughter, angeline boulley) i’ve been mostly off the YA train for the last few years, but this was a really good example of contemporary YA with a focus on ~social issues. ANYWAY. this is YA crime novel about daunis, a mixed-race unenrolled ojibwe girl close to finishing high school who is struggling with family problems, university plans, and feeling caught between her white and her native familiy when her best friend is shot in front of her and she decides to become a CI for an fbi investigation into meth production in the community. i really appreciated how hard this went both with the broader social issues (racism, addiction) and daunis’ personal struggles. there are a few bits that felt a bit didactic & on the nose (and the romance... oh well), but overall the themes of community, family, and the value of living indigenous culture are really well done & i teared up several times. 4/5
the magic toyshop, angela carter i love carter’s short stories but struggle with (while still liking) her novels so far. this one, a tale of melanie, suddenly orphaned after trying on her mother’s wedding dress in the garden, coming of age and awakening to womanhood or whatever. carter’s really into that. it’s well-written, sensual as carter always is, and the family melanie and her siblings are sent to, her tyrannical puppet-maker uncle, his mute wife and the wife’s two brothers, both fascinating and offputting (& dirty) make for an interesting cast of characters, but overall i just wish i was reading the bloody chamber again. 3/5
barchester towers, anthony trollope (chronicles of barsetshire #2) (audio) lol tbh i still don’t know why i am committing to this series about, again, church politics in 19th century rural england, but it’s just so chill & warm & funny (we love gently or not so gently - but always politely - mocking our characters) that i’m enjoying it as a nice little trip where people do some #crazyschemes to gain church positions or fight over whether there should be songs in church or whatever it is people in the 19th century fought about. it’s very relaxing. there also is a lot of love quadrangleyness going on and that’s also fun. trollope has weird ideas about women but like whatever, i for one wish mrs proudie much joy of her position as defacto bishop of barchester, she really girlbossed her way to the top. 3.5/5
semiosis, sue burke (semiosis #1) i love spinning the wheel on the “first contact with X weird alien species” & i guess this time we landed on plants! plant intelligence is interesting and the idea of plant warfare is really cool. i do like the structure, with different generations of human settlers on the planet pax providing a long-term view but this allows the author to skip over a lot of the development of the relationship between the settlers and the plant and locating the plot elsewhere, which i think is ultimately a mistake. i might continue w/ the series tho, depending on library availability. 2.5/5
one by one, ruth ware a bunch of start-up people go on a corporate retreat to a ski chalet in the alps, avalanche warning goes up, one of them disappears, presumably on a black piste, the rest get snowed in & completely cut off when the avalanche hits and then they get picked off *title drop* (altho really not that many of them). nice fluff when i had a miserable cold (not covid) but fails when it tries to go for deeper themes... like an attempt to address classism and entitlement sure... was made. also like what kind of luxury skiing chalet does not have emergency communication devices in case internet/phone lines are down...  i’d have sued just for that. 2/5
fake accounts, lauren oyler the microgenre of ‘alienated intellectual(ish) probably anglophone person has some sort of crisis, goes to berlin about it’ is my ultimate literary weakness - i almost never really like them, they mostly irritate me & yet i can never resist their siren call. this one is p strong on the irritation, altho at least the narrator does not ascribe much meaning to her decision to go to berlin after she a) discovers her boyf is an online conspiracy theorist (probably not sincerely) and b) gets a call that said boyf has died, it’s really just something to do to avoid doing anything else. but other than that it’s so BerlinExpat by the numbers, like she lives in kreuzkölln! put her somewhere else at least! there is one scene that elevates the BerlinExpat-ness of it all (narrator asks expatfriend for advice on visa applications, expatfriend assures her that it’s really easy for americans to get visa, adds “especially now” while literally, as the narrator remarks, gesturing at the falafel she’s eating) other than that, the novel is.... fine. it’s smart, but not really as smart as it thinks it is, which is a problem bc it thinks it’s just sooo incisive. whatever. 2/5
the tenant of wildfell hall, anne bronte this is reductive but: jane eyre: i could fix him // wuthering heights: i could make him worse // wildfell hall: lmao i’m gonna leave his ass anyway i enjoyed the part that is actually narrated by the titular tenant of wildfell hall, helen (which thankfully, i think, is most of it) because the perspective of a woman who runs away from her abusive alcoholic of a husband is genuinely interesting and engaging, while gilbert, the frame story narrator who falls in love with helen, is.... the worst. i mean he’s not the worst bc the abusive husband arthur is there and hard to beat in terms of worseness, but he’s pretty fucking bad. imagine if helen had found out that gilbert attacked her secret brother over a misunderstanding, severely injured him & LEFT HIM TO DIE & then (when dude survived & the misunderstanding got cleared up) apologised like well i guess i didn’t treat you quite right! she’d have to run away from her second husband as well! poor girl. 3/5
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Since I am currently very deeply invested in Hogwarts Mystery, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time developing my version of Jacob’s Sibling in my mind. I’m kind of proud of the character I created, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to put her out there in the character universe of Hogwarts Mystery OCs.
Now, full disclosure, I’m not an artist. I don’t have any beautiful drawings attached to give you an idea of what I’m visualizing (at least, not any I drew). More or less, this is just going to be a bunch of word vomit about the character I’m crafted, and I’ll probably go back and edit it a bunch of times as I think of more details. If it isn’t too much trouble, I’d love to hear people’s opinions of her! Thank you to anyone who reads, and I hope you like her as much as I do!
BE WARNED THAT THIS CHARACTER SHEET CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR HOGWARTS MYSTERY.
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FULL NAME: Helena Winifred Bancroft.
NICKNAME: Most people call her Nellie; only her mum calls her Helena. She also occasionally gets Nel, and Jacob used to call her Pip, short for Pipsqueak. Her and Rowan also had unique nicknames for each other, with Nellie calling Rowan “smart girl” and Rowan calling Nellie “sweet girl.”
DATE OF BIRTH: March 11th. She’s a Pisces.
BLOOD STATUS: Half-blood.
FAMILY: Nellie’s family consists of her mothers, a pureblooded Auror named Juliette and a muggle school teacher named Carolyn, and her half-brother Jacob. (Juliette is mum, Carolyn is mama.) Both her and Jacob’s respective fathers were muggle men that Juliette was involved with in the past, and neither are involved in their lives. The Bancroft bloodline is matrilineal, and while not necessarily famous, prides itself on producing particularly powerful witches.
BACKGROUND: She grew up in a small coastal community, where she was an avid swimmer, frequent visitor of the beach, and overall just a total water baby. Her family was comfortable financially, but chose to live fairly humbly, and Nellie was content with that. While she occasionally played with the local muggle children, most of Nellie’s time was spent either following Jacob around like a little shadow or playing with the fairies that lived in her mama’s garden. (She spent all her time telling them how pretty they were, so they tolerated her.) Unsurprisingly, she was a bit of a loner.
HOUSE: A proud Hufflepuff, just like Jacob.
DREAM: First and foremost, to find Jacob. However, in the long term, she’d really like to own a Hippogriff sanctuary and work as a breeder (with entirely moral methods, don’t worry). They’re by far her favorite creature, and she wants to spend the rest of her life working with them.
DEEPEST SECRET: That she wonders all the time if Jacob is worth saving. Growing up, he was her best friend and her hero, and there was no one she loved more. But watching how he changed in the last year or two prior to his disappearance, and hearing some of the stories at school, she honestly wonders if the loving brother she remembers exists anymore. And if he doesn’t, is the boy he left behind someone she wants to bring back? 
She’s also been hiding a growing resentment toward her mum. While Jacob’s disappearance took a toll on them all, she sometimes feels like her mum’s put so much of her emotional energy into missing Jacob that she doesn’t have enough left to love her anymore, and she secretly hates her mum nudging her to find Jacob, even if it’s at the cost of her own happiness and safety.
...sometimes she wishes it had been Ben.
MOST TREASURED OBJECT: For years, it was her seashell locket, a gift she’d gotten from Jacob for her sixth birthday, with the little sculpture Barnaby made her for their Valentines Day date coming in at a close second. Now, it’s a spare pair of Rowan’s glasses, which Nellie had kept on hand since their first year, given how often Rowan misplaced hers.
WAND: Nellie’s first wand is ten and a half inches long, made of pear wood with a unicorn hair core. Her second, which she purchases in her fifth year, is eleven and a quarter inches, with an alder wood base and a phoenix feather core. Lastly, her third, which she gets after she graduates and keeps for the rest of her life, is ten and two thirds inches long, built from beech wood, and possesses a unicorn hair core.
PATRONUS: An African Bush Elephant.
ANIMAGUS: A Kooikerhondje dog.
BOGGART: Jacob’s corpse, shambling towards her like a zombie, sobbing about how she failed to save him.
BEST MEMORY: Jacob trying to teach her spells when he came home for his first break in his first year of Hogwarts. She would’ve only been five—they’re six years apart—so it’s a faint memory and she couldn’t do any of them anyway, but it was still happy enough to stick with her.
WORST MEMORY: The year Jacob disappeared, their mum mandated that he come home for breaks. (He’d been staying at school the past few years, but with everything that was happening, their mothers wanted to keep an eye on him.) He was on edge the entire time, bitter and aloof, and when Nellie tentatively tried to get him to play, he exploded at her about wasting his time. In that moment, his face twisted and red with rage, his tall, lanky body looming over her, Nellie didn’t recognize her brother at all, and that scared her more than anything. For the longest time, that was her worst memory.
Now, her worst memory is being in that forest grove, staring down at Rowan’s unmoving body, her gaping mouth and empty eyes. Even decades later, Nellie has dreams about it. Certainly, no memory will ever be worse than that one.
QUIDDITCH: After being trained by Skye, Nellie played as a Chaser for two seasons and a Beater for one, before retiring to a reserve chaser. There just wasn’t enough time, and she didn’t really have the competitive spirit for it. However, she remained friends with Skye, Orion, McNully, and Erika, and still enjoyed training with them to keep her skills sharp.
GREATEST STRENGTHS: Nellie is an overwhelmingly compassionate person. Her mama likes to joke that Nellie could spend all day waiting for a scoop of her favorite ice cream, and she’d still offer it to the first gloomy person she saw on the street. (Basically, if there’s a little pink heart next to a choice, that’s the one she’s making. Empathy is definitely her highest stat.) She never fails to go out of her way to help people, even if it’s to her own detriment. She just has a very warm energy, which makes it easy for people to feel safe confiding in and depending on her.
GREATEST WEAKNESS: Unfortunately, Nellie’s compassion is a bit of a double edged sword, and she can be guilty of stretching herself too far trying to please everyone and, subsequently, letting herself fall to the wayside. She’s also embarrassingly naive (a negative consequence to her desperate belief in the inherent goodness of people), and has a tendency to get a little too emotionally invested in things. She also stakes a lot of her personal value in her ability to keep others happy—if she isn’t capable of keeping those she loves safe and content, she feels she has no value at all.
APPEARANCE: In short, Nellie is about as far from intimidating as any one person can get. She never surpasses five feet tall, nor does she develop past her scrawny adolescent physique. Her face is round, with a little button nose and big ocean blue eyes. She’s covered from head to toe in freckles, and has a slight case of buck teeth with a tiny tooth gap, though nothing she considered worth getting braces over. She also has a scar on her thumb from the time her mum tried to teach her how to whittle. It didn’t go well.
However, her most defining physical characteristic is her hair. Curly and sandy blonde, she grew it long for the first fifteen years of her life, only cutting off the occasional inch to keep it healthy. It was very carefully maintained, because although Nellie doesn’t consider herself a vain girl, she loved her hair, which grew to reach her thighs at its longest. It was the only feature of hers she considered genuinely and objectively beautiful, and she prided herself on it. In the summer after her fifth year of Hogwarts, she chopped all that treasured hair off into a bob, her only reasoning being that it was more practical. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that Rakepick had grabbed her by her exceptionally long braid when she’d tried to run to Merula’s aid in the Buried Vault. 
STYLE: Nellie dresses exactly how you’d expect a stereotypical Hufflepuff to dress. She favors bright, pleasant colors, likes embroidery and floral print, and values comfort over anything. Her current favorite outfits both involve overalls, with one consisting of denim overalls with embroidered butterflies on the chest pocket and a white t-shirt, and the other being a pair of faded overalls that she personally painted with flowers, despite being an absolutely terrible artist, and a yellow turtleneck. She pretty much always wears a pair of light weight, embroidered boots, and is never seen without her seashell locket.
VOICE: I picture her sounding similar to AnnaPantsu. There’s a reason she was able to make the choir, after all! (Even if she ultimately surrendered her spot to Merula.)
BEST SUBJECT: Unsurprisingly, Care for Magical Creatures. Her kind nature and respect for all magical beings makes her a bit of a natural. She’s also proven herself to have a knack for Divination. She’s no Seer, but she’s pretty good at deciphering omens and swears that she does sometimes see visions in crystal balls. She’s also decent at Transfiguration.
WORST SUBJECT: Anyone would suck at Potions if Snape spent the entire class glowering at them the way he does at Nellie! It’s awfully hard to focus when your professor is breathing down your neck, staring dismissively into your cauldron like you’ve already made a mistake. She also just has a really poor memory, so any class that requires her to follow a sequence of meticulous steps is going to be one she struggles with. She also has difficulty in History of Magic for a similar reason—all of those dates and names just go in one ear and out the other.
BEST FRIEND(s): Rowan. Nellie loves every member of her eclectic group of friends dearly, but Rowan was her first friend, and will always, always be her dearest. For whatever reason, they just clicked perfectly, and completely got each other. Her death changed Nellie irreversibly. For at least a year after Rowan’s death, Nellie wore the spare pair of glasses she’d kept for her everywhere. Even once she stopped, they were almost always in her bag. Nellie was eventually able to manage again, but she never really moved on.
The runner up was undoubtedly Bill. He completely adopted her as (yet another) younger sibling, and they never quite lose that closeness, even when Jacob comes back into the picture. After all, Jacob can’t replicate the experiences Nellie had with Bill. While he was doing his part to protect Nellie as best he could, and that’s admirable, it wasn’t him that was by Nellie’s side throughout every trial she faced at Hogwarts. It was Bill, and Jacob would never be able to imitate the connection that gave Bill and Nellie.
In the wake of Rowan’s death, Nellie also develops a surprisingly close friendship with Erika Rath. They’d already been developing a friendship, but Rowan’s passing was the catalyst for them growing closer. During one of her training sessions with Erika (which Erika had told her she could sit out of, given the circumstances, but Nellie insisted), Rowan’s glasses fell off, and cracked. The damage was minor and entirely fixable, but Nellie had a complete breakdown, allowing herself to cry for the first time since Rowan had died. And Erika sat there with her, holding her tight, the entire time. While the rest of her friends were tiptoeing around her, not sure what she needed and scared of saying the wrong thing, uncomfortable in the face of such overwhelming grief, Erika took everything Nellie threw at her in stride. The fits where all Nellie could do was scream and cry, the anger that had her beating her fists against the ground and snarling threats brutal enough to make her sick, the guilt that left a hollow pit in her stomach and made her wish it had been her instead. Every ugly thought, every wave of emotion, Erika stuck with Nellie through them all, keeping her grounded her during a time where she felt she could completely drift away. It’s impossible to describe the sort of bond that gives people.
WORST ENEMY: For a while, it was Emily Tyler. With Merula, at least she has qualities that Nellie can respect—her ambition, her bravery, her fierce determination—and they’ve had a few moments where it feels like some genuine bonding has occurred. She may not approve of a lot of Merula’s behavior, but at least she can sort of understand her. But Emily Tyler is just so superficial and mean spirited, and Nellie simply can’t stand her. Now, though, it’s easily Patricia Rakepick.
LOVE INTEREST: Barnaby Lee, though not at first. Nellie housed an absolutely fierce crush on Skye Parkin for a while, but it quickly became apparent that Skye didn’t return her feelings. To Skye, Nellie was like the sister she never had, and Nellie didn’t want to jeopardize that. There was also some sort of tension going on between her and Merula in their fifth year, but nothing ever came of it. After the events that transpired in the Vault, Merula decided Nellie wasn’t worth the trouble. It’s one of her biggest regrets. 
Barnaby was actually crushing on Nellie long before she had any romantic feelings for him—ever since that first duel, actually, when she completely whooped his ass while apologizing after every blow. (A scene I actually explored here.) It took a little while, but Nellie eventually fell for Barnaby’s good heart and noble nature. He may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but he never fails to make her feel cared for. He can make her laugh when nobody else can, and although she’d loathe herself if he got hurt for her sake, it honestly feels a little nice to have someone trying to protect and take care of her for once, instead of the other way around. They also both love magical creatures, so a lot of their “dates” just consist of them hanging around the Care for Magical Creatures paddock and feeding whatever they find. Random little fun fact, Nellie’s pet name for Barnaby is just to say “Barnaby dear” as though it’s one word, and it never fails to make Barnaby feel super giddy.
PETS: Whoo boy, Nellie’s pets. First and foremost, there’s Astrid, her Lesser Sooty Owl. A remarkably intelligent bird, Astrid is usually found occupying the rafters above Nellie’s head, watching over her like a worrisome mother. She usually sleeps in Nellie’s dorm, rather than the owlery, and has a habit of picking at knots in Nellie’s hair (and, surprisingly, Rowan’s as well) with her beak as though she’s trying to straighten them out. 
While she adores Nellie, Astrid is notably less fond of Klepto, her mischievous Niffler. If Astrid is like Nellie’s mother, Klepto is like an obnoxious toddler, always causing trouble and fussing for her attention. He’s remarkably clingy, enough so that Nellie’s taken to hiding him in the dorm rather than keeping him in the grasslands. (She can’t help it! He throws a fit if he can’t sleep pressed against the soles of her feet!) 
Then there’s Flora, a particularly slothful fairy who has taken to riding in the pockets of Nellie’s robes, content to spend the rest of her life being carried around and lavished with compliments and sweets. Her and Astrid have a sort of tenuous truce, since they both have a bit of a fierce streak when it comes to defending Nellie. 
There’s also a Hippogriff and a Common Welsh Green on the grounds, both of which Nellie is determined to befriend, but that’s still a bit of a work in progress at the moment.
FUN FACTS:
• Nellie ends up going grey—or white, rather—fairly early. Her hair’s almost entirely white by the time she turns thirty. She’s insecure about it for a while, then decides to just embrace it. It looks elegant, and Merlin help the person who tries to tell her otherwise.
• Given how incredibly physically affectionate Nellie is and how much she adored Rowan, it’s no surprise that she almost always kissed Rowan on the top of the head when saying goodbye. Just like she did in the forest grove, chest tight with anguish but eyes painfully dry.
• Barnaby and Nellie are married by the time they’re twenty. Maybe it’s a result of almost dying young on multiple occasions, but Nellie wasn’t keen on waiting. She didn’t want to take the risk of never getting the opportunity.
• Nellie has always wanted a big family. After how fractured hers became when Jacob disappeared, that desperate desire only increased. Fortunately, Barnaby, with his tiny, miserable family, wanted to create a large, happy one just as badly.
• On that note, they end up having five daughters: Ivy (Ravenclaw), Jade (Ravenclaw), Miri (Hufflepuff), Aurora (Slytherin), and Rowan (Hufflepuff). Many were surprised Nellie waited until her last child to name one after Rowan, but the truth was, she just wasn’t ready. She’d always known she wanted to, but it always felt too soon.
• As a frequent visitor to the Burrow, Nellie grew close with all the Weasleys. She actually babysat Ron and Ginny a far bit after she graduated Hogwarts.
• Bill and Jacob never get along. Though Bill can logically understand that Jacob was trying to protect Nellie, he can never really forgive Jacob for the distress he put Nellie through. And while Jacob understands that Nellie needed support and he wasn’t there to provide it, some part of him resents that Bill stepped into his role as Nellie’s brother.
• Although they were once close as sisters, Nellie and Skye’s friendship definitely changed for the worse in their sixth year. The drama surrounding Nellie getting trained and befriended by Erika all occurred in the month leading up to Rowan’s demise. Having Skye—someone Nellie considered a close friend—be so caught up in her own grudges and jealousy that she called off their friendship in a fit of anger not even a week after Rowan had died, while Erika—a friend she had only just started to make—acted as her rock throughout the whole grieving process, really changed Nellie’s perspective on Skye. To be fair, Skye did eventually apologize, and they picked up the pieces as best they could, but things were never the same.
• While Nellie focused more on the changes her friends went through after the events in the Buried Vault, there’s no denying that she changed as well. She hardly slept her entire sixth year. She cut off all her hair, and she jumped with every loud noise. Her naivety, one of her defining traits, withered, and left only wariness behind. She went from trusting everyone, to trusting no one. Then Rowan’s death came, and she crumbled completely. For a long time after it, she couldn’t function at all.
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Thank you to @treebels​, for the lovely artwork.
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foxmagpie · 4 years
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GG 1.02 Asks
Questions from @pynkhues found here.
Did I participate in rewatch? No. Am I going to answer the questions anyway? Yes!
3. This episode features Beth’s iconic! gamechanging! monologue! Do you think Rio was intending to kill the girls? And if so, at what point in Beth’s speech do you think he changed his mind?
I actually think Rio was intending to kill the girls whether or not they delivered? I always thought it was weird that he wouldn’t accept the eBay auctions as them meeting his quota for paying him back, because like... they did? And I don’t think it’s all that weird that they didn’t cash out and just give it to him in money-form. One, I think they knew the bids could keep getting higher (which might please him more) and two, I think that it’s possible that it would take a few days for that kind of money to process. So I think Rio considered them rotten eggs regardless of their ability to deliver—he wanted to get his money back, but was planning to kill them either way. 
I think he changed his mind once Beth called him an idiot. I think the other points she makes causes him to pause, but not ultimately to change his mind. Beth’s right that that kind of violence in a peaceful white picket fence suburban neighborhood would draw attention, but Rio’s never made a point to care much about making noise, and there’s really nothing tying him and his boys to having a motive for that murder (Boomer coming forward would be dangerous for himself, as he’d be drawing attention to F&F’s affiliation with the gang). 
I think Rio simply liked Beth’s spunk. Since she (technically) delivered, kept her mouth shut, and then went toe-to-toe with him, there was just enough there that made Rio’s curiosity get the better of him.
4. This episode also introduces Marion to us! What do you think of her? And knowing how her story ends in 3.08, what do you think of her arc and her relationships with Boomer and Annie respectively
I think Marion’s casual and blatant racism rings true for other people I know that are her age, and I think her coddling of Boomer (and the consequences of that coddling) are so deeply disgusting, but while I think we get to see her learn and grow from the latter mistakes, I don’t like that she’s ever held accountable for her racism? Like, Annie doesn’t even sort of push against that, you know? It seems like a weird character note to include if they never really do anything with it, besides, like, sort of play it for laughs? 
I like Annie’s connection with her and think it reveals a lot about how she’s a caretaker and deeply empathetic person, but I do wish we’d seen Ruby push back against Annie excusing her racism. I think Annie treats Ruby pretty poorly in this episode by kicking back and leaving Ruby to be the only person to hold up the ruse of them being housekeepers. 
7. This episode seems ambiguous about Greg and Nancy’s roles in Ben’s life up to this point. How long do you think Greg and Nancy have been together, and how close do you think Ben is with them at this point?
The pilot has Annie refer to Nancy as “the girlfriend” and in this episode, Annie can’t seem to recognize which house is Greg and Nancy’s. It also includes Nancy sort of, like, laying out rules for how Ben exist in the house (like taking off his shoes) and trying to get a sense of what he likes to eat (like pico de gallo). I believe this is also the episode where Annie comes over and lays out that Ben still needs a nightlight and sort of his normal routines/needs.
My guess is that Greg and Nancy have recently moved in together and sort of committed to each other, and that’s the prompt for Greg to sue Annie for custody? I think Ben had a good relationship with his dad, but he spent a majority of his time at Annie’s, and that dynamic is shifting now that Greg is “settling down.”
I saw @bathroombreaks point out that it might seem like Greg and Nancy have been married for a while because they do IVF which implies that they tried and weren’t able to get pregnant for a bit, but I wonder if they just went to a genetic counselor from the get-go? Nancy seems very organized like that, and I do get the sense that she’s a bit older than Greg, so I think that might all track if they got married in early season 1 and immediately started trying to expand their family—starting with getting more time with Ben.
8. Do you think Beth ever went back (or thought about going back) for Dean’s grandmother’s ring?
I don’t think she has ever even remembered it after Dean asked her about it this one time, haha. 
10. Has Beth ever seen a dick pic before?
@missmaxime has scarred me for life by suggesting that Dean has sent Beth dick pics before, so thanks for that.
I now firmly believe that Dean took them and used the same exact picture to send to his wife and his mistresses. 
I think Beth always refused to engage with sexting, though (but would, in a theoretical future, do so with Rio). 
11. Is Greg still in love with Annie at this point in the series? Or does he fall in love with her again later in the season? Or not at all?
I think Greg loves Annie and never really stopped, but I don’t think that it’s an active thing that he thinks about? They’re not really on good terms and I think they had a messy relationship and divorce, mostly because they were too young to be thrust into those responsibilities. I think when they hook up later in the series, it reawakens those feelings and magnifies them, especially because they’re in a different spot than they were when they were much younger and struggling more—but I still think they are far away from being at a spot where they could healthily be together.
12. That! Hook! What do you think made Rio go back to Beth’s house? What do you think made him take a chance on her?
I think he left her house knowing that he wasn’t letting her off the hook for the money, and he sat and thought about how he wanted to cash in on what she owed him. I also don’t think that he needed her to go to Canada at all? The warehouse scene seemed to show that he had operations in-house that didn’t require that (relatively small) amount of cash—or at least had many other methods to get it into the country. I think he was impressed by her in that speech and saw she had some steel and resolve. I think he went home, sat on it, and figured out how he could best utilize her. I lowkey think Canada was a test to see if she could deliver and how invisible she could be. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Big Mike was instructed to refuse her to see how resourceful she would be. 
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benbantz · 4 years
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Week 17 with long term Covid
Hello to anyone reading this, those I know and those I don’t.
Had Covid 19 now for 17 weeks (or suffering after effects of covid, how ever you want to word it.) Point is had/have Corona and it’s still kicking my arse.
So since my recent facebook update (after being pretty quiet on social media for a while) a couple of peeps have messaged me asking about my symptoms and stuff as (apart from the first 2-3 weeks) I haven't really gone into any detail I just sort of say 'having rough week' or 'things flared up again' etc etc. Without going into too much detail about anything specific. So for anyone interested, and because people have been curious and asking - and as you’ll see is far to detailed to explain person to person (and want to spread the word about long haulers as a lot of people struggling) So it’s just easier for me to have it in one place. For myself more then anything. And if you get anything out of it then that’s great.
Things are just starting to come out about long haulers in the media and on the news and I know people are interested to learn a bit more about it all. So while I’m having a not too bad a time last couple of days I’d thought it’s a good a time as any to go thru all my symptoms. Get them typed out for first time.
And maybe it will be helpful to someone who randomly comes across this post - (thou please don’t use as a guide), every case is different, a lot of similarities   and cross overs , but ultimately different  Just because someone you know might be having a rough couple of days or experiencing a couple of these symptoms it could be something completely unrelated to covid. (Make sure you check with your GP or call 111 if you think you have covid symptoms long term or otherwise.) I am not a Dr.
Here's a list of everything been going on with me over last 17 weeks.           Some experiences have been completely new to me so very hard to explain , some descriptions may sound a little odd , but hopefully you get idea of what I mean! (Also sorry for any grammar mistakes....I dropped out of English A level)
Those who come across this and don’t know me personally know that while this is a (mostly) serious (but hopefully uplifting) post I’m very sarcastic and use dumb humour to deflect from how shit life is at the moment! :-) 
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So first thing of the bat I'll explain is I've realised in recent weeks it's been easier to think of it as good and bad days/weeks rather then getting better/worse (as in first 10 or so weeks when I thought of it as 'it's getting better' and got in that positive mindset, the kickbacks have obviously beaten the piss out of me mentally as well as physically, as I've had about four big relapses now where I thought I'm on the right track, having a good couple of weeks then bam, I seem to go back to square one for no real apparent reason. So when I say bad day I'm describing when everything amps/flares up again, A few more symptoms go up and the volumes up on high,and likewise a good day is when things seem to be moving in right direction again and I get a bit of a break.(So now I just appreciate them when they come and try make most out of them.) A good day isn’t a symptom free day by any means, it’s just better then the bad ones.
OK so on to my symptoms.
Specific Areas
Chest - Since the first evening it kicked of early March my chest has felt like a giant has had his hand around it - that’s non stop, constant (told you my explanations were weird.)
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On the better days it's a very light grip I can get on and do things to a point, but I am always aware it's there. On a bad day it's grip tightens and he squeezes (or  his fingers press into a couple of key areas - been pressing on my back a lot last few weeks.) - That’s been non stop and has not gone away since beginning. Thou I do believe its starting to ease a little. 
- Chest pain - A shooting pain in my chest (slightly different from description above, feels more like its needles on inside of body. Thankfully these are uncommon, they pop up if I push myself a bit too far one day or if I’m having rougher week.(And it’s not heart related)
Lungs/Breathing - Haven't felt like I've taken in a full lungful of air since beginning, I take a deep breath but only feels like I'm taking in 80- 85% ish (on a good day) 65- 75% ish (on a bad day) - This is week 17 numbers btw,  take maybe 10-15% off when it was at worst. I think the best way I can describe it is it feels like there’s a filter or a sieve/strainer at top of lungs, on a good day there’s more spaces available to breathe thru (but still there’s a filter) and on a bad day more spaces close and I'm breathing thru less.
 *Thankfully bar the first week where I had to get paramedic out, I haven't been gasping for air, I've certainly had to just lay and just concentrate on only breathing a few times because the filters have closed up a lot more (in the night mostly) especially where my bodies relaxed and I've woken and panicked short of air. Yes that’s as terrifying as it sounds.
- The air I do take in doesn't feel clean or fresh (best way I can describe it is when you go to a zoo and they have a indoor Rain Forrest/safari area .... very that lol) That was constant the first 12 or so weeks (even when getting fresh air outside) thankfully that’s eased a little and not so prominent, still doesn't feel like I’m breathing in fresh air but its not so hot and stuffy and noticing the difference when I go outside now.
Throat/Mouth - Burning/inflamed mouth - This is by far been the most uncomfortable/hardest for me to ignore and just get on with day to day stuff, from maybe week 6 to week 14 it was pretty much non stop burning mouth and throat (Call my mum Khaleesi because I was spitting fire.)
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 Whole inside of my mouth and down my throat was just inflamed/swollen (felt like I had a golf ball stuck down there) and burning hot. The last couple of weeks its eased I don’t wake up with it (unless i’m having a flare up/bad day) It's still very on/ off but thankfully not constant like it was. And have since learned that high histamine foods make it worse - same with my chest and few other things,  (so choc, dairy, alcohol, fizzy drinks ...my diet essentially ) So have cut most of them down/out. Ice lollies have been my savior on hot throat days. - Marble in throat - Another hard one to explain, it feels like there’s a marble sort of sized ball of phlegm that I constantly need to clear. (OK maybe not that hard to explain - also sorry for the gross imagery.) But not enough mucus coming up to warrant the feeling, it’s irritating more then anything - but a few weeks ago was probs golf ball sized, so again improvement! - This sort of ties in with with the inflamed mouth, but the first thing to flare up on bad day is my tongue, feels tingly most of the time anyway but more so on a flare up/bad day.  - Same with my teeth / gums and the tingly sensation, (my teeth constantly feel like that sensation when you have some orange juice after brushing your teeth.) Sensitive/fuzzy I guess. Not particularly bothersome or concerning...just weird.
Nose
- This is probably one of newest ones, nose has felt hot(on and off)/bunged up for last few weeks. (But I know its not if that makes sense)  I guess you could say same as lungs - not breathing in a full nose-full of air either.  - sorry again for gross TMI but any mucus or boogers are clear (like almost see thru clear/never been cleaner clear)  - Phantom smells - A really odd one, I smell smoke and gas a lot, not just smell it, it feels like its in my nose and my mouth - especially smoke, almost like I’ve eaten it sometimes (non smoker in smoke free flat btw). Was a lot more prominent in first few weeks ,so much so that before I realised it was a symptom I had my carbon monoxide alarms checked because it was making me paranoid I could smell smoke/gas. A bizarre one for sure. Pops up randomly now and again.
Eyes - Last couple of weeks have been getting bit of blurry vision and sore or dry eye , I'm already blind as shit so hard to tell in terms of blurriness how bad this one is, but def finding it harder to concentrate on one thing for too long (but that sort of ties in with brain fog - which i'll get to) but pretty sure once this is done with and I go to opticians will likely need a stronger prescription (some other long haulers who never had eye problems before are now having to wear glasses) No idea if that’s a permanent one but hopefully i’m at peak of it.
Ears - My left ear has felt blocked pretty much since start (or like it needs to pop some days) Most the time I can ignore it but can be quite distracting if it kicks up a couple of dials.Which is likely why I get ear ache in same ear often as well.
*Also for most the things listed above it has always been worse on my left side of body, lung, eyes, ear, headaches.
- Tinnitus (correct word for ringing in ears right?) Usually kicks in early afternoon or on bad day. Varies on strength depending on the day I’m having.
Head/Brain - Brain Fog - So the sort of very basic science behind this is because my lungs aren't producing enough oxygen my brain knows this, so is lending them some to help out...but because of this it means I’m experiencing what is known as brain fog (I don’t know what its actually called, likely has a better more official sounding name) - my concentration is very low, i’m finding it hard to retain things and concentrate more then usual. (not been up to reading or watching something new for month or so as I just cant focus on it) Also been getting odd words muddled or confused (but the bar wasn't the highest with me on that front ha ha)
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 Been dropping things when I think I have them in my hand. I do however think this is improving (The fact that I have typed this out with just a couple short breaks so far is much better then two weeks ago when I couldn't even focus on a computer game for more then half a hour) so as my lungs improve so does this or vice versa on flare up. *Edit - This whole post has taken a couple of days to draft and type up, so not too bad in terms of needing breaks etc.
-I'm also constantly aware of my brain... like I can feel it all the time (I literally cant explain that any other way lol, I guess its just heavier at moment so I can feel it against my skull) best explanation I think you'll get from that one. - Have a headache most the time (so much so that I sort of forget it’s there.) Thankfully most the time there mild/low and I can forget or distract myself but like everything else if I'm having a bad few days it goes up a notch. Likely connected to the brain fog.
Stomach and Lower abdomen - Period pains - only way I can explain it, generally thought after nearly 10 years without them it was messing my body about so much I was getting  phantom periods. (I’m a transgender man, 4+ years on testosterone, for anyone I don’t know who comes across this) been there done that, brought the t-shirt.. then sent it back because it wasn’t for me!  Very strong and painful on and off for first eight weeks, get the odd twinge now and again but think that ones done with, thank the gods. - Stomach Pains - Few aches and pains on /off, and recently experienced what felt like needle/stabbing pain for short while in short bursts - and I only really mention stomach because I haven't had the widely publicised  'covid shits' (yet, touch wood... or cloth) So yay!
Heart - Palpitations - First 8 weeks was on and off most days to the point if I was sat still my heart would be palpitating. (I couldn't even sit and listen to music I enjoyed as it would make my heart go mad.) - When I do get the palpitations it sets most things off, so if palpitations do start I generally know I'm about to have rough couple of hours or days and can’t do much, for obvious safety reasons. Thankfully these have subsided a lot last 6 or so weeks. Still get them every few days but generally know whats setting me off and how to lower them down and they don’t last as long.
Hands and Feet - Skin been very dry last couple of months, cracking and peeling on hands and feet (ew)  - Pins and needles/ numb fingers and toes - Get this a lot, obviously very normal stuff but just find them coming on a lot more (especially if i’m holding something like my ipad, phone or xbox controller for a while) Fingers feel numb/puffy a lot too. (Likely also why I keep dropping things) - Also to tie in with skin, have had a on /off spots on chest, face and shoulders for few weeks, they all came up at same time, not irritant or itchy or anything, just there.
General/Other weird things - Voice - So this is one that frustrates me the most, I have had next to no voice for last maybe 10 weeks.  I just cant chat to people at moment. For first 4 weeks wasn't to bad (I even started a youtube channel to keep me occupied and distracted) but slowly week by week it went a little bit more each time. I can talk for short periods of time if I have to/choose to ,like its not gone completely, but it kicks up all the things I mentioned in my throat and mouth directly after. If the phone rings I have to decide if it’s worth answering, in doing so knowing i’m going to have a rough day or so after. Someday’s I feel it's better then others like couple of weeks ago, chatted to my brothers online on xbox for half an hour or so for the first time in weeks, and caught up with a friend on phone for 10 minutes...but a couple of days later everything flared up again. So it's still trial and error and just being patient with my voice. (I'm quite confident no long term damage is being done now as few people in group i’m in reported there voice just eventually got better over time.) Definitely the symptom I’m having to be most patient with. - Fatigue and tiredness - My days now are normally diddily done by 4-5, (except if its a bad day then most of the day is a write off) No matter how little or much I've done, by 5-6 my body and mind are exhausted. As someone who has insomnia, pre covid I would maybe have 1-2 all nighters every ten or so days sprinkled in with 5-6 days of at most 3-4 hours sleep. In the last 17 weeks I have had just 3 all nighters, and maybe just under ten 3-4 hour sleeps. Otherwise i’m getting at least 5+ hours a night. This is the one covid thing I'd like to keep please lol.  I think it's easing a little (most the bad night sleeps have been in last month) and on good days tiredness is kicking in a little later, or it's taking me a little longer to drift off. But generally am cream crackerd a lot of time, especially if I push myself too far on a bad day. - Loss/Increased appetite - This sort of ties in with what I mentioned earlier about different foods causing set backs, the first 6 weeks I had no appetite and lost a bit of weight (I do put a lot of this down to extreme worry and stress thou)  Then I went thru a phase of being very hungry for a few weeks and put most of the weight I had lost back on. I'm somewhere in the middle now, probably because I know most of anything I eat will set me back a little (because as mentioned fussy git = high histamine diet) so i’m cutting portions (otherwise known as the amount of cheese I add to everything!) and cutting out all most junk food (you’ll never part me from my crisps!) and non healthy drinks.  
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- Bloated and dehydration - This one I sort of put in pencil because it could be covid related but I also think it could be side effects  from the brown asthma inhaler I was prescribed to help with breathing. I’m still undecided as it pops up especially when I was using inhaler more but it does happen days after I’ve last used it. At it’s worse I was getting up to pee a lot! because I was thirsty all the time. So of course was just very bloated around the belly. 
*Also talking of peeing, (Great segway Ben) number 1′s and 2′s have been very different then normal, urine thicker and bubbly,and smells/is coloured different,   (same with 2′s) Also have a completely different body odour at the moment,(pungent) having to use deodorant twice as much as normal. - Admit it your life’s a little bit better now you know that information.
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- THE HEAT! - I touched on this with my mouth and nose being on fire, but for the first 10-12 weeks I did not go a day where at least a couple of things were not burning hot ,like hot to the touch as well, not just inside...(very different experience then having a temperature). Extreme heat in one very specific part of body. Ears, forehead, cheeks, chest, back, nose, mouth,throat to name a few of prominent ones. Over time they have faded (if something does feel hot now its generally not hot to the touch anymore.) Maybe on a bad day a couple of things will burn up. (But in saying that, been calling today a good day but nose is quite hot) but point is its better. - Mood swings/Anxiety - While i’m fairly confident anything emotional has stemmed from experiencing...well everything you've just read. Rather then it being its own symptom (thou I have had days of uncontrollable crying, days of anger..that perhaps outside of covid I would still of had one of those days but just not to such a extreme, I think with everything going on its just amped that emotion and anxiety up.)  it's obviously been very stressful and anxiety inducing. That’s only calmed down in last week since finding the facebook group of other people going thru the same thing. I'm now seeing that people are slowly improving, i'm seeing I've not been going mad and it's all very real and not just happening to me. So the bad days are easier to deal with now and not hitting me emotionally like a ton of bricks anymore. I honestly couldn't see the end of the tunnel two weeks ago but can see it now (even if I take a step forward one day but then 2-3 back another...I see it still.)
*Mushy moment Alert - A good a place as any to include while I'm talking about emotion  - Even thou she probs wont see this,but want to mention my mum. She’s been my rock thru all this, she messages me at least twice everyday without fail, since day 1. Even thou I know she's been worried sick about me herself, she's reassured and calmed me down on the harder more stressful days. I dread the mornings when things have gone downhill a bit and having to tell her ,because I know she'll worry, but after a few texts we both end up sort of reassuring and calming the other down. (especially in the earlier days when it was really bad, scary, new and unknown.) When it was really getting me down for a while and I wanted nothing to do with anything covid related and just stay in bed and pretend this wasn't happening to me, she dug out the articles and tips and things to help or give me a boost. (Not to mention all the coming and going she and my step dad have done for me last 4 months and taking care of my shopping for first 9 or so weeks...because I was a useless mess of a human)       I know it’s basic mum stuff but this would be 10x harder and lonelier without her. Random detour I know but can’t talk about my covid experience and recovery without mentioning her.
Almost looking forward to sending her the first  'Everything normal today' text as much as I look forward to experiencing it....almost. ;-)  
Amount of Symptoms On A Typical Day
On a good day - (when I think virus was at it's worse in the first 10-14 weeks) - 4-6 symptoms ( 2 or 3 cranked up to a medium or high otherwise on mild)
On a bad day - At peak/worse - 6-10 symptoms (throat, chest and no voice on high volume, maybe a couple of things like palpitations and brain fog, heat on medium/high, other weird stuff on mild/low)
Good day  - Now 17 weeks in (excluding my voice which is still a medium to high issue most days) - 3-4 Symptoms on low to mild - usually there’s something still simmering on a medium always ready to turn up to a high if I push it too much in terms of walking or talking. (often my chest) Bad Day (Now) - 4-7 Symptoms - 1 to 3 on medium (maybe a couple will kick up to high on first day of a flare up, but generally now for shorter periods of time.)Everything else on mild or low.
So there has def been improvement in last 6 weeks, i’m sure it wont all be plain sailing and I know/prepare to expect another 'flare up' and then a bad few days. But recently instead of the bad days being 2-3 weeks of it constantly, the duration is getting shorter each time (last bad few days was just under a week)  So things are slowly improving, and i’m sure in time so will the amount of symptoms and the strength of each symptom.
I've probably missed a couple of silly/odd little things that have gone on (likely because they were so early on or very brief (or I’ve forgotten) -  fever and nausea to name a couple. When I got my notes together these were the main ones that came to mind. Quite a lot actually sitting back reading them, and I think the scary (but good) thing is, x-ray came back fine, bloods came back fine.  People have had MRI's, camera’s down there throat, most coming back fine. Covid just not showing up on any tests(unless someones suffered further complications with something) - hence why a lot of people struggling to be taken seriously by there GP's or even loved ones who think there just 'exaggerating’ or its just ‘anxiety and stress'...no living with all what you just read causes anxiety and stress Mary! 
But yeah could waffle on, once its definitely gone and I breathe and look back I can perhaps get a better overview of everything and give you better analysis of all that’s gone on. I get asked 'so when do you think it will be gone?' almost as much as 'are you better now?' To the first question, meh I don't know, I'm now into month 4/week 17 (well month 5 if I include last couple of days of Feb when I believe I caught it and had the very mild cold early March) still a lot of things going on with my body, some new things could still pop up, so instead of saying 'I think it will be gone by..'  ,like I did in the first weeks. I'm just taking it week by week (or day by day if it kicks up a notch) not making any big demands of myself or my body, doing what I can each day....but not pushing it. Instead of the sad, anxiety inducing thought 'when will it go' or the one all us long haulers worry about a lot ‘Will it ever go?’ I now try to think instead  'it will go!.'
To any fellow long haulers I say hang in there, keep fighting, trust your body and that it will get better. Take it day by day. Stay as positive as you can when everything 'flares up again' after a couple of weeks of good progress (easier said then done I know) but know it wont be forever as much as it feels like it is. Don’t be afraid to ask for help (I hate going to Drs would much rather just 'get on with it' , but from pestering a little I got a blue inhaler which has helped me a lot day to day,and had x-ray and blood tests which also put my mind at ease when they came back clear. So don’t be afraid to ask to get these things checked if you’re worried. I've been lucky with my GP's thou who I think have generally believed me and taken me seriously and I know not everyone is getting that help or respect. I think it’s really not helped us that in the early days people were stubbing their toes and thinking they had caught covid and calling their Dr’s (I’m exaggerating but hopefully you get my point lol), so if you do get a not so helpful interaction, be patient,explain yourself or try again with another Dr, remember a GP will only advise you symptom by symptom and not as a whole.   Anyway I’m repeating stuff you already know by now lol.   
Stay positive. Stay hopeful and stay safe.
To anyone else, believe us, know this is very real, and that it absolutely sucks. Its not just anxiety or in our head. We're not exaggerating - in fact most of us are probably playing it down or just not elaborating on things for an easy life and because when someone asks 'are you better now?'  it's easier to just smile and nod and answer 'getting there slowly' because the truth is...well what you just read lol. (And I'm a particularly mild case...next to no coughing, no spells in A and E, a breeze for a lot of other people with long term) Keep yourselves safe (most long haulers have no previous medical /problems/conditions. Some ,myself included, have weakened immune systems due to a long term health condition. A unlucky few are fighting another long term medical illness as well as covid. I'm lucky in that I have no dependants (except 4 easy to please gecko's) and was not working prior to catching it - some are having to deal with all this and be full time parents, or have been to and fro with their jobs (thinking there better then relapsing after going back). There’s mums messaging on behalf of there young kids who have it, lots of young people (one of the lads that co runs the group is 22 I believe), there's athletes/health fanatics used to running miles every day been completely knocked of there game unable to even walk to end of road some days. People of all age ranges. Point is anyone can catch it, it might not just be 'a couple of rough weeks' It might take over half a year for you to recover from.  This myth that it's short and sweet, or a walk in the park if your young and healthy needs to be squashed because its just not accurate. 
If not for my mum and our family and the facebook group I found, (Positive path of wellness - Covid UK Long Haulers) I'd be struggling, really struggling. It's scary, brutal and lonely. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. The virus is still out there it has not gone. Keep sanitising hands and wear a mask in busy places!. - Tell the guy who's life this has been for 17 weeks, why wearing a mask in public places, to keep yourself and others safe from catching this nightmare, is a inconvenience for you Karen...go on, I'll wait...
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Maybe you can help prevent yours or someone else's next few months from being even worse. x
Was going to just make this a one time post on tumblr account but if it’s a help to anyone (especially fellow long haulers) I’ll post some other bits and bobs when i’m up to it. (thinking of doing a post about things/products etc that I think have been helping me. If that’s useful to anyone) Or just some positive/ funny things to keep spirits up. Keeping it all positive and upbeat as possible.
So I’ll see if anyone reads this first and go from there
So I guess in conclusion ...lol I’m just joking, this post is really done now, go back to your lives, this garbled mess of self woe (worlds smallest violin is back in its case now), sarcasm and naff humour has taken up far too much of all of our days already. Go peacefully amongst the things. :-) 
Stay safe everyone x
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cosmicmoved · 4 years
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HEADCANON for SUMI
actually, this is a headcanon for karam too but this specific post is more sumi-centric so maybe i’ll talk about the karam end of things later. for now, though, it’s sumi’s turn bc i don’t talk about her enough (:
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Okay, so I’ve decided to drag Sumi into Karam’s plotline for no reason besides that...I Wanted To but it also helps his plotline make more sense if he has a sort-of go-between character like Sumi in there somewhere. This post will explain what that means and why I’ve come to this decision! Until now, Sumi was kind of just her own character and she wasn’t really tied to any plot besides her own but I didn’t really know what to do with her beyond her backstory. I think this was definitely limiting her as a character so I’d like to use this chance to give her more direction! So, from hereon out, she’s going to be part of the Karam plotline! She’s still her own character but I like making my muses know each other bc,,,idk,...it feels like a more complete universe in my head. Anyway, with that out of the way, I’ll get on to explaining the story behind this connection! Full disclosure though, I’m sticking it under a Read More because it got kind of lengthy. I did TRY to be more succinct but maybe it’s about time I just accept that I’m not capable of that /:
First off, a lot of stuff might be setting or verse-dependent. I guess I’ve written stuff where these muses aren’t strictly based in one country and there’s always the chance of one of them moving somewhere else for the sake of a certain plotline? But the fun thing about rp is its fluidity so I’m going to try and stop getting overly concerned about details that don’t really matter too much. Sumi travels a lot. Maybe Karam tags along sometimes. Shit gets vague. It’s fine. ASDFGHGFDS......
To keep things simple, Sumi is the one who first found Karam when he wound up in the city after his forest was destroyed -- or, rather, she was the first person to try and help him. Other people had likely found/seen him but ignored him one reason or other (he would’ve been pretty dishevelled and tbh,,,probably naked bc what the fuck is he gonna wear clothes in the forest for). As I’ve said before, Sumi can tell when people aren’t human. Her senses aren’t especially strong so she can’t always place what somebody actually is, only if they’re a human or a ghost; she doesn’t have an inherently ability to sense what somebody is but, because she’s spent so much time learning to separate living humans from the spirits of the dead, she’s developed the ability to tell when somebody is neither, even if she can’t say for certain What they are. Because it’s a feat of applied knowledge and not a natural ability, mistakes happen. Now, Karam is a spirit. Not remotely human, despite his appearance. Still, long story short, Sumi mistook him for a ghost and, despite her charging humans for help with their ghostly issues, she’s often willing to help a ghost in need free of charge (because um...ghosts don’t have money). When she found Karam, he was in a state of obvious distress so she assumed he must have been a pretty new ghost, the sort who haven’t at all come to terms with the fact that they are, y’know, dead. Much to her shock, he wasn’t dead and was instead very much alive and tangible but still very much in need of help. More in need of help than she’d expected, in fact.
Sumi has always been the sisterly type so it felt natural to reach out a hand to somebody in need, mostly out of the goodness for heart and because she felt bad for him but also partly because Karam reminds her a little bit of Chulsoo, her late brother (despite being much much older, Karam looks about the age Chulsoo would be if he were still alive) with whom she is in no longer contact despite his being a ghost because he decided to use the afterlife to See The World until he was ready for Sumi to exorcise him. Yikes. That’s another story for another post. She was able to offer Karam a place to stay, a spare room in her apartment (where he’d start this new experience by staying in his room for a fortnight straight, only leaving to slink his way in and out of the bathroom), and help him make sense of a new and confusing world. First, she would offer him her brother’s old clothes to wear and then she would eventually resign herself to the reality of the situation and agree to buy Karam his own clothes, letting him pick out what he liked but also giving him tips wherever possible (financially speaking, this wasn’t her smartest move but she has a guilty pleasure in clothes shopping and the knowledge that she was doing it to help somebody else made her feel better about the whole thing).
In fact, she helped him get tidied up in general. Let him pick out a hairstyle from a pile of magazine and used her experience with hairdressing to replicate it for him. Maybe it’s because Sumi’s rather vain herself (and proud of it, mind you) but she’d fully believed a good start for Karam was to help him discover his own image and use that to regain confidence. Well...that, and the fact he’d looked an absolute state when she found him and she was of the firm belief that it was a shame for him to be wasting his pretty face on dishevelled hair and ill-fitting clothes that hung off him. But, really, Sumi sees her image as the ultimate form of self-expression. The way she styles herself is her way of telling the world who she is --- and, for someone who spends so much time with ghosts, looking as bright and lively as possible means a lot to her --- so she believed that helping Karam with that sort of thing might help him with this strange transition into a new world and come into his own. Yes, she was aware that this plan might fail and Karam might have been distinctly uninterested in his own looks but it ended up working out well. Karam is slow to warm to most very human things but he picked up on this quite quickly and was very willing to engage with it. For Karam, it was a matter of everything changing too fast and those changes being so overwhelming that making these dramatic changes over which he had full control, changes that he made himself and that weren’t forced on him, helped him to process the situation --- but I’ll talk about that in more detail another time, this is Sumi’s post.
Karam is very distrustful of humans and, although he trusts Sumi more than most on account of her having helped him so much, there’s a part of him that is paranoid it’s some kind of trick. Because of this, he tends to keep Sumi at an emotional distance. After all, despite her abilities, she’s still essentially just human and he’s been forced to regretting humans in the past (that is also another story for another time because, again, this is not Karam’s post so I won’t be going into details here). Although it’s frustrating, Sumi understands this and lets Karam keep his distance. She understands that he’s grateful regardless and she doesn’t want to cause any unnecessary discomfort. But, even besides that, their relationship is a little odd simply because they butt heads a lot. She kind of just lets him away with shit because she finds him endearing. Often, Karam won’t even stick around at her place. He’ll just disappear for days on end and resurface when he feels like it but it’s more about the choice to have somewhere he can return. Y’know, the illusion of home. 
Perhaps it’s because of that initial comparison she made between him and Chulsoo or perhaps it’s because he has such a young appearance but, despite the large age gap (wherein Karam is just under 240 years older than her), Karam brings out the big sister in Sumi. Maybe this is also why Karam doesn’t like her that much LMAO...............actually, he kinds of HATES it but asdfghgfd. In the time since she’s met him, she’s seen him struggle with things; she’s seen that he does have good moments and that he’s not intentionally rude in any way so much as he just has a hard time with certain social rules. She’s grown fond of him and feels that she has to try and help him out. Again, it’s hard to say if this is because of the time she spends helping ghosts or if it’s because he ignites the part of her that feels guilty for not being able to protect Chulsoo. It could just be that she’s sincerely worried about Karam. Maybe it’s a combination of them all, Sumi can’t quite tell for herself.
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marginalgloss · 4 years
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the republic of heaven
Back in 2000 when The Amber Spyglass came out I feel like there was not so much news in the world. At the turn of the millennium we seemed to be entering a more optimistic time. Tony Blair was elected in 1997 at the head of a liberal Labour government, and while it may be true that Blair would never be so popular again as he was in the opening years of his premiership, the Tories seemed hopelessly outdated by comparison. They were still the nasty party of old, while the country was ambitious, outward-looking, internationalist. Explicit racism and homophobia were no longer tolerated. We were Europhiles, but we weren’t part of Europe. There seemed to be a lot of money about.
At home there were occasional horrors — the murder of Jill Dando, the homophobic pub bombings in London, Harold Shipman — but they were somehow isolated, disparate, inexplicable. They were exceptional. There was the war in Kosovo, which set a template for liberal interventionism in years to come. The economy was trucking along; unemployment was low; for the first time there was a national minimum wage. I skim the headlines today and it seems like such a comfortable time by comparison. Perhaps I am remembering it wrong. But when the years to come would bring a spiral of endless war, recession, and one of the most significant declines in relative generational living standards, I’m not sure there is any need for rose-coloured glasses.  
Into this comes The Amber Spyglass, which is basically quite an optimistic anti-authoritarian novel. It was also the book which, for a handful of reasons, really brought Philip Pullman to the world’s attention. It was this which ensured that his name still lurks around the list of authors most frequently ‘banned’ in America, and which in the years after its publication would attract scores of avid cheerleaders and detractors. Inevitably most of those had no interest with engaging with the substance of the book itself. Instead, it became a sort of battleground: on one side, those convinced that religion was under attack from an educated elite; on the other, those who were committed to reducing the role of religion in public life, discourse, education, and so on. It is worth revisiting this typically excitable interview and profile by Christopher Hitchens for an example of how these novels were talked about. 
To call the novel ‘optimistic’ might seem surprising, because much of it is shrouded in scenes of gloom and suffering. But when I think of the tone of the novel as a whole, it is pastoral. When the world isn’t tearing itself apart the language seems more lyrical than in either of the two preceding books. Some of that is to do with the perspective, which now has at least three (and sometimes more) main characters to follow. This means that a sense of distance, of floating high above the many worlds of the story, becomes necessary. But it’s also that the reader has a sense that this book is going to be about the promised war against the heavens outlined in The Subtle Knife, and it’s likely the reader will also understand that this is a war that must be won. 
It feels like a world of binary opposites. Even characters who seemed villainous in the previous novels are here redeemed (at least in part) so they can be mustered against the ultimate figure of the ‘Authority’. A certain amount of good versus evil is likely in any book for children, but here things are now cast explicitly in terms of these two sides squaring up against each other. And taking sides is a matter of decision, not of belonging. This is a book where angelic figures can decide to fight alongside men, and where demonic harpies can be convinced not to consume the souls of the dead because they want to hear their stories instead. It’s plausible in terms of oldest storytelling traditions, where it is possible to talk one’s way out of anything — where the role of storyteller gives a person the ultimate kind of authority.   
Is the capital-A ‘Authority’ in these novels intended to be absolutely synonymous with God? I’m not sure. The book is explicitly anti-religion in the sense of being anti-church, but the forces of the Authority (and the being himself) do not seem to represent any kind of absolute power in the universe. The Authority is not omnipotent nor omnipresent, nor is he very much of a creator or a father-figure any more — he is a despot, but he is also somehow irrelevant. Like a shrivelled relic, he is vastly reduced when we finally meet him. The worst aspects of his regime seem like the calcified remnants of decisions long since made and now barely remembered, like the afterlife that has become a giant prison camp. In fact it’s the abolition of the afterlife, not the death of its creator, that’s the only really significant consequence of the fall of the Authority. 
So if God isn’t in the Authority, then where is he? In spite of the tendency for atheists to want to claim the author for one of their own, it seems like the heart of these novels is not in pure humanistic rationalism, but in a broader sort of pantheism. The idea of ‘Dust’ is the closest thing to a true divine presence here. It could be characterised as something akin to a spirit which moves through all things. It is ‘conscious’, and though it’s hard to determine what this means in practice, we know that it is not indifferent to humanity. It’s not like a host of little thinking homunculi (although Mary did have a whole conversation with it on a computer back in The Subtle Knife). But it wants to persist. It would seem to be the force that drives the Alethiometer. It has intentions.  
The counter-argument to this would say that Dust isn’t divine at all — it exists at the bleeding edge of science, and has nothing to do with faith. It’s a material thing. It’s not a spirit. But I don’t know that this is especially convincing. The books often try to equate Dust with quantum mechanics, but this doesn’t entirely seem to add up — these are particles which are somehow small enough to slip through gaps between universes, but big enough to see with the naked eye. Everything about Dust seems too convenient from an authorial perspective. It’s as though someone took everything indefinable and unique about evolved human (and non-human) consciousness and made it into a quantifiable thing and then said: there, without this thing we are no longer what we are. It’s an easy solution to the hard problem.
It the article linked above, Hitchens described the Alethiometer and Will’s knife as ‘tools of inquiry and struggle, not magic wands’. This is only half-right. Clearly they aren’t tools like a microscope or an X-ray machine. Both items are bonded to their owners through an innate sensitivity that has little to do with rational enquiry or rigorous method. The Alethiometer is even compared to the I Ching at various points. It seems wrong to mistake ‘inquiry’ here for the scientific method; it has much more in common with ‘negative capability’, a term which is actually quoted in The Amber Spyglass — the ability to pursue truth and beauty via one’s innate sensibility, to ‘see feelingly’ through a fascination with a sort of natural mystery, and not to depend exclusively on reason and knowledge.  
This leaves the reader in an odd sort of no man’s land between the armies who supposedly either adopted or despised this novel. A hypothetical arch-rationalist might find it difficult to accept all of what they find here without rolling their eyes at some of it. Negative capability does not sit comfortably alongside the scientific method as a tool, but nor does it have much to do with priests and popery. And yet it is a sort of inspiration, and in that respect I think it comes closer to a religious experience than it does a rational one.  
The problem with this is that it is not possible to get any sense from this novel of what it means to be religious, or to believe in a higher power, or to be ‘spiritual’ (choose your own euphemism). There is Mary Malone, but while I like Mary’s story here, her account of her early life in cloisters and later conversion/defection is unsatisfying. We have no sense of doubt, of anguish, of guilt — it is an all-too-straightforward seeing of the light. Will is arguably more complicated, more conflicted, but for the most part he never seems to have to make any difficult compromises. If he ever loses out on anything by abandoning his mother to travel through a whole set of alternate universes, we aren’t told about it. 
What if Will made the wrong call? What if he weren’t so trustworthy? He is, in a way, the lynchpin of the whole story. For all Lyra’s good intentions and inner strength, if it weren’t for Will, Asriel would have failed and nothing would have changed. So Will must be made to work. Yet it often seems as though he doesn’t want anything for himself, except perhaps to be with Lyra. It’s interesting to wonder what might have happened if Will weren’t quite so faithful (for want of a better word). 
But it’s inconceivable in the world of these books that anyone could possess negative capability and then use it for anything other than a pursuit of — well what exactly is being pursued, anyway? What is Asriel’s goal, above and beyond the overthrow of the Authority? There is vague mention of something called ‘the Republic of Heaven’ — a heaven on Earth, as it were — but today that phrase can only make me recall the idea of ‘Outer Heaven’ in the Metal Gear Solid games. It’s difficult to discern any latent irony lying in wait for the reader in this case. Will whatever replaces the Authority be just as bad, eventually? Perhaps, but again, the vibe of optimism in this novel is so strong it feels odd to impose doubt on it from elsewhere.   
The paradox of The Amber Spyglass is that while the explicit ‘moral’ of the novel is set against organised religion, it cannot help but describe the world in terms originally set by religion. (A very basic reading might declare the novel invalid for this reason, for much the same reason as a socialist might be declared hypocritical for buying a smartphone.) It isn’t just that there are angels, or that the story of Adam of Eve is central to the thing. It is the journey through the world of the dead and back. It’s the arc of redemption and overthrow. 
At times it feels like this book is re-fighting a battle that was begun hundreds of years ago in the English reformation. In the pursuit of humanistic knowledge, a godlike figure is re-cast in the guise of an Authority who can be overthrown, and cast out of our land, and even killed. And all for the sake of nothing especially certain, nothing at all new in political or ideological terms, except a sense that we would be more free — that we would be better off without. Is it better to eject the columns of the dead into a kind of oblivion than to consider any improvement to their position? I don’t know. Perhaps things seemed simpler twenty years ago. 
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