#but at the same time this doesn’t always justify his nonsense. his thought processes. he’s Uber hyper paranoid and not easy to reason with

[zeb-z]

Bad has so many reasons to be cautious, even paranoid, as anyone else on the island. From Federation nonsense to Dapper being kidnapped to the whole purgatory nonsense to whatever fuckass suit of armor “old friend” was setting up cameras in his house. But it compounds on his regular overly aware paranoid self to this state of hyper-paranoia. And as a demon who can and usually will lie, cheat, steal, and use sneaky underhanded tactics, he expects the craziest extent because he thinks of it, realizes it’s possible, and would use it himself. We saw this very obviously in purgatory - when he thought greens desperate last ditch effort to balance the scale was a super planned out tactic to tip the scale, so he did it first, all the hardcore base hunting, the spawn killing, there’s a reason every other tactic he used usually followed a main channel qsmp post with updated rules - all usually things he was surprised no one else thought of. But then this also piles onto the fact that he has to have things go his way, all the time, and that he’s argumentative as all get out, which led to the debate between him and Bagi yknow. Especially because he’s not just doing it for the sake of being right, he doesn’t think he’s paranoid, but that he’s exercising the right amount of caution.

So like. Listen dude. Yeah he’s got reasons to be paranoid. But his thought process around building vaults for separate cookie caches like they locked up the risus pills, only to scrap it because it’s not perfectly impenetrable, is extreme. His character has hardly been a leading example in someone who has reasonable reactions to things. And even when there isn’t his own children’s livelihoods potentially on the line, he has a need for control, and the most control he has is if he keeps the cookies in his inventory at all times. If he makes himself the sole point in which the others can get ones in a case of emergency, then he can control the variables. The problem is he’s unreliable about himself when he’s at his most rational and healthiest, and he’s far worse with the current memory and health issues he’s been mostly unaware of.

I dunno it’s like. There is never going to be a purely impenetrable base. And it’s not just a case of “Bagi just hasn’t lived through __ yet!”. Bad’s own logic about keeping the cookies on him at all times is flawed under his own logic, because Bagi is right - if someone has enough drive to break into separate secured cookie caches purely for the downfall of eggs, they more than certainly have enough drive to find a way to kill Bad and just take them from his inventory, or to just kill the eggs themselves. All it truly does is give Bad a sense of control, and soothe his paranoia.

#everyone let’s remember rurus’ tweet about bad NOT being in the blunt rotation. he would try to pluck cameras out of your eyes. and he will #make it seem like it’s the most reasonable thing to do in that moment #now this is more me complaining about shit I’ve been seeing on Twitter in the tags <3 love and peace but I’ve got beef #side note - to say the people who are commenting on qBad’s paranoia or this and that are all newcomers who just ‘weren’t there to experienc #-the dark times’ or ‘weren’t there for the egg deaths/nightmares’ like you are not immune to the way bbh can make something seem so #reasonable #he’s got his own reasons to be paranoid. and most everyone agreed that the base idea of a ‘cookie jar’ would need rethinking with security #but to say qBagi (or Jorge’s/other viewers) is shortsighted or naive. when qBad is THE definition of paranoia. of overreacting. like #qBad’s reaction extends from a mixture of care hyper paranoia and trauma response (which is half that hyper paranoia) #and he will pick and pick and pick until there’s nothing left to pick at #sometimes this is helpful. a lot of the time it’s not #and on the flip side it’s like y’all bad cares about the eggs to a ridiculous degree don’t be silly here okay. he does this because he care #even without a memory in his brain he calls them ‘little one’ and is gentle like. he cares #but at the same time this doesn’t always justify his nonsense. his thought processes. he’s Uber hyper paranoid and not easy to reason with #he’s selfish he can and will jump to extremes he’s overly controlling. and he’s the worlds most unreliable narrator #I’ve been saying this I’ll keep saying this he’s an unreliable narrator! this doesn’t make everything he says or thinks bullshit but you #cannot take what he says to himself how he justifies his actions etc etc in private at face value. unless he is making it EXPLICITLY CLEAR #he’s talking from a meta perspective as the creator of his character #you have to take his perspective with a grain of salt. because he will ‘I’m just a little guy and the world is out to get me’ his way outta #everything #there is a difference between reasonable caution from learned past experiences and overly anxious paranoid responses #idk I’m running out of steam sorry this is like a second post with the tags #and again I say this as a huge qBbh enjoyer lmao #mcyt #qsmp #q!bbh #q!bagi #z speaks

[isaiahbie]

Why Is The Bible So Long?

A friend recently asked me, “Can you tell me why the book of Ezekiel is so long?” He has a point. Have you read Ezekiel lately? The prophet does go on and on—and in some rather bizarre directions.

My first response was to ask if the same question could be asked about quite a few other books of the Bible. Do we really need 150 Psalms? Doesn’t the book of Proverbs repeat itself a lot? Couldn’t the message of Job be conveyed more concisely?

My second line of thought was that maybe a book is supposed to do more than just convey content. Maybe a book is supposed to have an effect as well as a message. Perhaps there are some “lessons” that need to be “learned” in experiential ways as well as intellectual ones. And that takes time. That would fit with our life purpose of “loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind.” Loving God involves far more than knowing things about Him.

Please hear me carefully. I never want to downplay the importance of sound doctrine and the priority of contending for the truth. I read systematic theology texts for fun! But I have to acknowledge that God inspired a Bible with long books that mix a variety of genres for a multitude of effects. The scriptures compare themselves to a two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12), food (Jeremiah 15:16), a lamp (Psalms 119:105), and many other images that imply something other than an encyclopedia.

I believe a case can be made for this idea from 2 Timothy 3:16-17, where God’s word tells us, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” I’m camping out on the words “training�� and “equipped.” Of course God’s word tells us what is true (teaching) and contrasts truth from error (rebuking and correcting). But it also “trains” us or shapes us or makes us into different people as a result of our reading it. We become “equipped,” not just informed.

So we need to ask all the standard Bible study questions of books of the Bible: What does the text say? What does it mean? How does it cohere with other parts of the Bible? How should we then live? But we also need to ask what this particular book is doing in me as I read it? At bare minimum, it’s perfectly justified to ask, “Why is this book so long?” We could also rightly wonder why a book is comprised of poems, or fantastic images, or narrative detail.

I’ll offer a few answers for some of the books of the Bible as I’ve dug into them and watched God “train” me through reading them. I need 150 Psalms because I don’t by nature (fallen nature!) praise God as my default mode. I don’t just need exhortations to praise God, rejoice always, exalt Him, and bless His name. I need the experience of doing so, modeled by inspired writers who craft sentences that seem alien to me. I don’t just need a dictionary to learn a foreign language. I need hours of conversation with native speakers.

Job needs to be as long as it is because I need preparation for times of suffering, not just theological answers to the why questions. I need to process the emotions of pain by eavesdropping on Job as he cries out to God. I need to grow tired of his foolish friends’ moralistic drivel so I’m not tempted to believe such nonsense when I go through the tough times. I have to work my way through such a long book so the experiential effect will be putting my hand over my mouth when facing God in the midst of difficult times. That can only come after wrestling through dozens of chapters of poetry and hearing God ask me over seventy rhetorical questions about my strategic role in creating the universe.

And what about Ezekiel? Why did he go on so long? For me, what strikes me most, while recently rereading the book, are two powerful messages: God does indeed judge sin and He will indeed restore sinners. Most of the book hits the first theme. But both get presented in forceful, repetitive ways. Put another way, I am struck by the otherness of God and the undeservedness of His mercy. More than other prophets, I think, Ezekiel creates explicit, emotionally gripping images. So when I read Ezekiel, I don’t just understand those truths, I’m punched in the stomach by them.

I think this is because both truths—as the Bible presents them—seem alien to the world in which we live. Most of the time, in most of our culture, God seems rather ordinary. He’s just like us, only bigger and more powerful. He’s reasonable, especially when it comes to accepting (even loving!) people “just the way we are.” But if that image is accurate, the gospel—the atoning death by God’s son to save lost sinners—seems rather bizarre. It certainly seems unnecessary.

To go back to my friend’s original question, the reason why the book of Ezekiel is so long, is that it needs to be in order to wake us from the slumber of our faulty, watered down, lame view of God. The book is long because it takes time to have its effect. It’s repetitive because we don’t believe it the first several (many!) times we hear it. And it’s graphic because we need to feel it far more than just understand it.

[doomstypewriter]

Excuse me while I panic

Hi, I'm back from finals, but my brain is kind of dead right now, so enjoy this silly two-shot in the meantime.

Word count: 996 | AO3

Summary: Roman needs to get on with the program, realise his crush on Virgil and ask him out, because it's getting ridiculous.

At least Janus thinks so. Everybody does.

A wild crush has appeared, except it was there all along, Roman is just dumb <3

“It’d be a pity if you got over yourself and told Virgil you loved him already. Not that I care about his happiness or anything”.

Roman turned to face the back of the room, where Janus was sitting with a lap full of Patton, who just shrugged in agreement with a quizzical smile.

The treacherous acceptance Patton showed after Janus’ out-of-the-blue comment almost made Roman gasp.

“I just said I want to hang out with him this week”.

“And marry him the month after that, I suppose” Janus retorted.

“Okay, first of all, nah-uh, and second of all, I’d have expected this outright attack for you, but, Patton, are you going to stand watching him bullying me?!”

Just when he was about to reply, Janus intervened again, pretending to be distracted playing with Patton’s curls.

“Not quite, let me rephrase that for you: bullying you into getting ahead in life”.

“Hello?” Roman gestured at himself, only to feel even more increpated by Janus’ glancing at him up and down. “I’m dashing at all times, it’s you who should be putting in the effort”.

As per usual, Janus smirked, unimpressed. He ran a finger, scratching lightly, up Patton’s neck. Underneath the cardigan, a pair of shoulders rolled in a contained shudder.

“I already have. You, though, have achieved nothing. Also, why am I detecting” Janus said, raising a hand to cup behind his ear, “a hint of defensiveness? Honestly… well… as honestly as the budget allows, I am saying this for your sake. Take notes or something, Roman”.

Roman’s weight shifted from one leg to the other, he crossed his arms and gasped, for real this time.

“Excuse me?”

“Excused. I’ll dictate it for you: number one, dot, Janus has made me realise my lack of ambition, comma, I will ask Virgil out”. Janus changed the tone for a second, considering. “Hmmm… let’s say, at once, sounds very you, doesn’t it? Blah, blah, no ambition, I’m very dim, I will ask Virgil out at once, full stop. New paragraph: number two, dot, from now on, comma, I shall listen to Janus’ advice, comma, because he’s so right all the time, full stop”.

Once Roman came out of his astonishment, he closed his gaping mouth and pursed his lips like a child.

“Okay, that’s it, you did this. I’m calling the nerd”.

Janus had no time to complain, as Logan was summoned immediately thereafter.

“Lo, are you okay?!” Patton stirred in place after seeing Logan’s looks.

There, in all bizarre glory, stood Logan, draped in a lab coat with some unidentified stains, knee-length black rubber boots, safety glasses with what dangerously looked like a speckle of blood and a pair of gloves holding a scalpel.

“Don’t worry Patton, he’s just been playing with Remus” Janus offered.

Logan examined the room quickly, then cleared up his throat and blinked himself into his usual attire.

“I was in the middle of something”.

“Clearly” Roman muttered sarcastically.

“What do you need?” Logan made a point to ignore Roman’s comment.

Janus smiled calmly.

“Roman just called you so you can prove him wrong”.

Before the prince could retort, Logan nodded with a vague hint of amusement.

“Well, I can certainly do that”.

“You won’t need to, because it’s him who’s saying” Roman paused and endeavoured to make his best impression of Logan, “falsehoods”.

Logan frowned and crossed his arms.

“That is to be expected, so what is the context?”

“He says I need to ask Virgil out because he’s always right”.

Roman went on saying something along the lines of ‘like, I like Virgil, but not like that. And he’s just implying I’m in love with him, and I would know because, hi, Roman, romance? And Patton isn’t even defending me!’. All of that, Logan didn’t listen to, deciding to speak plainly.

“That’s incorrect, Janus gets things wrong often, it is, in fact, a statistical improbability to be right all the time. But, to be fair, out of all of you, he holds a higher average”.

“Exactly, that’s what I said” Roman shook his hand forward as if to underline how justified he felt. A moment later he went quiet. “Wait…”

“No need. I’ll finish dispatching this soon. So, no, Janus is not always right, but you would do well to heed to his advice on this occasion, seeing how it would help resolve your feelings for Virgil”.

“What?”

“Thank you, Logan” Janus said.

Logan nodded, satisfied with a good job.

“No need, happy to help”.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Roman exclaimed. “I have no feelings for Virgil…” he reconsidered, “not like that!”

In a quick save, Logan hid his laugh with a frown and an inhale.

“Excellent example of being wrong, you’ll be a great help to Logan’s statistics” Janus grinned.

Everybody was looking at him.

Normally, he’d like that, because it was the natural order of things. At the present time, though, he felt paralysed by a sudden onslaught of contradicting feelings and thoughts. Unfortunately, all of these things running through his mind popped in and out too fast for him to process them as more than a jumble of nonsense.

That is to say, he drew a complete blank, cursing his ADHD.

“But-but… I’m not in” he started slowly, trying to organise his ideas.

Then, went down with the first thing to come out of his mouth because working under pressure is not his thing.

“Like, I spend a ton of time with him, but what do you know? And, honestly, you’re just jealous Virge pays more attention to me because he’s almost as great as me. By the way, Janus steals your crofters when you don’t look, someone has to say it, because we’re outing people’s secrets, except not mine’s ‘cause I’m not in love with…”

Patton stood up, knowing he’d have to help everyone brace themselves.

All at the same time, the following was spoken or shouted:

“Snitch!”

“He did what?!”

“Oh my... I’m in love with Virgil”

Next>>

Thx for reading. Reblog or comment if it made you laugh <3

Taglist: COME AT ME BRO, COME AT ME, write a comment and tell me to tag you for the next chapter, I DARE YOU /nm /lh /j

#prinxiety #romantic prinxiety #background moceit #ts roman #prinxiety fic #sanders sides #sanders sides fic #prinxiety fluff #humor #in this house we stan janus sanders #ts janus #ts patton #ts logan #roman has adhd #doomstypewriter #doomywrites

[vaguely-concerned]

X-men Evolution; the great 2021 rewatch liveblog

exactly what it says on the tin, about halfway through the show I had TOO MANY FEELINGS and had to start writing some of them out haha (gets quite gambit & rogue/gambit heavy in the latter half, Because of Who I Am as a Person)

- this is my childhood’s x-men, my formative experience with them, and I’m happy to report that still seems like a good thing. the little eleven year old within me gets to geek out and have a good time with the characters and the surprisingly good animation and writing, adult me gets to CACKLE at regular intervals at the fashion/technology/absolute bonkers hot garbage comic book nonsense they use to justify a storyline every now and then, it’s been a good time 

- I was like ‘ah well it is super dated it probably won’t be quite the same now’ and then rogue’s HAIR did the THING in the opening and ‘it’s all coming back to me now’ started playing in the background... the little baby queer in me swooning across time and space

- such a good beast, both his design and the writing, my heart aches for him all the time. he’s just so passionate! about being a teacher! helping young humans learn the stuff they’ll need in life! the most wonderful nerd man, just let good things happen for him

- I’m going to go ahead and assume that rogue’s ‘crush’ on scott is more of a deeply complex psychological process about desiring normalcy and intimacy and trying to figure out if she’s queer and dealing with her emerging sexuality and latching on to the first and best safely unavailable and nonthreatening older boy to project these issues onto rather than actually being a real thing, because I respect her so much as a person and I cannot bring myself to imagine she’s honestly attracted to a man who has POSTERS OF CARS on his bedroom wall. (I’ll give jean a break just because she seems to have a longer deeper history with him that might counteract some of that libido-kill, and also she’s a jock so lol)

like I am very sorry but can u imagine being a teenage girl with any interest in a boy with model cars in his bedroom when gambit’s swanning around being a much, much, much worse choice on almost every possible level but in a teen girl kryptonite kind of way? inconceivable  

(I drag scott quite a few times in this and it’s not because I don’t love him, it’s just his tragedy to be the most draggable man in the world)

to be fair by the time gambit shows up that whole Situation has mostly played itself out I suppose but still  

- toad’s design is so ineffably brilliant, I can’t quite tell you why but that ugly cute charm has really stuck with me, he’s one of the characters I remembered the best to this day just visually

- poor evan... he truly never had a chance, did he, they just saddled him with the most 90s teen bullshit they could come up with like he’s some kind of ‘what adult writers think teens like’ frankenstein’s monster ;______; it’s not your fault honey

- poor poor POOR storm, she gets one focus episode and they were like ‘we’re going to make an episode so racist -- ‘

I’m still STUNNED at how bad it was, but undeniably I laughed hysterically to the point that my neighbours were probably worried when that dude was earnestly like ‘He [stunningly breathlessly racist caricature of a ‘witch doctor’ guy] has stolen her powers, and he’s going to use them to take over Africa!!!’ fhajsdlfhsakjldfh oh really? tell me more, like how the fUCK this could be on television within my life time fasdlfhsdkjfhsad f  just... fahjksdfh

- it’s a testament to gambit’s appeal as a character that his charm can survive what they’ve done with his hair and beard choices in this one fajskfhs regrettable but true I still fuckn LOVE him and in my highly biased yet Correct opinion he should have been around much more. get you a man who manages to stay hot through sheer Vibes even with a bowl cut

- aw scott/jean is kind of sweet in this show even if it’s taking them forEVER to get there, I like it 

- it’s very nice of rogue to not mention magneto’s romantic daydreams and nostalgic memories about charles xavier after touching his face that one time... or maybe her brain did her a service and repressed it, there’s some stuff you shouldn’t have to know about your father figure   

- the danger room is the very definition of ‘why do we even have that lever’ and I wonder what the fuck prof x does to have enough money to replace everything that gets busted all the time

- I’d say that a lot of the writing holds up surprisingly well! (but some of it is also incredibly inexcusably racist in ways that beggar belief, so... not full marks here) the characters have distinct voices and their arcs are set up and delivered on solidly for the most part, and there’s a lot of love showing through in small moments that are just there to have a funny/interesting thing to say about the characters and how their powers work separately and in combination. listen, sometimes I get so thirsty for like. basic goddamn competency in storytelling, let me have this

- ugggggh why is there captain america in my x-men have I not suffered enough... very very funny when prof x goes ‘sounds like you knew rogers personally’ and logan is like ‘I did ;)’ *all the students ganging up on steve rogers* “did you fuck our teacher, captain america?!”

- fskadfhas WHY are you showing me hot young-ified magneto’s ass fksjahfskj charles is not even here to see it, what a tragic waste erik 

- ...I was sort of kidding before but uh I think logan genuinely did fuck captain america (or at least wishes very much that he did lol)

- wanda can have a little watching the world burn. as a treat for the way every single adult in her life has fucking failed her (’aren’t they treating you well here’ professor x she’s in a straightjacket)  

- poor rogue tho can you imagine finding out after your biggest crush on a girl yet that she’s your fucking MOM in disguise... I would break out in cold sweat every time I thought about a boob forever after

- well seems like they really just had all that homoerotic rivalry stuff between quicksilver and spyke in their first ep only to never do anything with that again ever?? I mean even without the gay undertone that seems like a dynamic you spent most of an episode setting up writers what the hell haha

- dslhfkasjlh GAMBIT THERE HE IS MY BOY IS ON THE SCENE THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! I don’t even care about his awful hair situation or the fact that his eyes are wrong here (coloured contact lenses, maybe, for a watsonian explanation? though he’d probably have to get them made special, considering he needs the sclera and the iris covered up in different ways, I’ve seen some comic panels indicating he has been known to?)

(cute little detail: when he shuffles the cards the first time we see him he ends with removing the top card to show the ace of hearts beneath <3 foreshadowing baBEY he’s a... good-ish boy deep down. hey he tries okay shit gets complicated sometimes lol) 

- cracking UP at gambit perched cheerily on the edge of a crate dispensing cards in the middle of the battle... he’s like ‘eh it’s a livin’ sfsajkhf remy stop working for supervillains just because you had nothing to do on a thursday afternoon and they said they’d pay you

- I’m guessing magneto must have imposed a strict order of silence on these guys or something because I cannot imagine any other reason for him to shut up, especially once he notices rogue is a QTE (or, far more likely, they hadn’t settled on any voice actors for the new characters until next season haha. it is kind of odd that they’re all keeping up near monastic silence, though, even sabertooth lol) 

- WHAT an epic first meeting for us rogue/gambit fans here... first his shadow like there’s fireworks going off behind him lighting him up and then he gives her the fuckn king of hearts and she’s so enchanted by his dumb handsome face she doesn’t even notice it’s about to blow up in her hands and it all happens in heavily meaningful silence afjsdfjashjk no wonder this ship ingrained itself in my hindbrain  

yeah look smug while you can remy she’s gonna have you on your knees one day and you’ll be happy about it lol

- god storm is so COOL, everything just fading out of focus when she really gets going... give her more screen time, show!!

- mystique is every person... this person... that person... that bird... that cat... that wolf... I’m not even sure she’s not also me... are you sure she’s not you? 

- holy fuck I respect the hell out of the decision to just... blow up the entire status quo in a season ender, I only vaguely remembered that (actually in general I appreciate how good the continuity is -- buildings and places that get damaged in battles need to be repaired or rebuilt, it makes the consequences feel more real even when no one gets seriously hurt. where they get the money to restore scott’s car and logan’s motorbikes every time they go cablooie is still an open question tho lol is it credit card fraud, professor? is it telepathically acquired blackmail???) 

- I first watched this when I was nine or so, so it’s a real experience to go from my starry eyed intrigued ‘oh my god... they’re teenagers’ to my horrified adult perspective of ‘oh my god... they’re TEENAGERS D:’

that goes double for the brotherhood boys honestly, I’m here with tears in my eyes like ‘I’m sorry the system has failed you so badly you’re all just a bunch of dumb kids whose caretakers clearly fucked up spectacularly’  

like lance is always waiting for mystique to come back because she’s the closest thing he has to a safe parental figure, may we speak about how crushingly depressing that is 

- rogue is so ready to throw hands at literally any moment and for that I love and treasure her immensely (I think getting to see her be so surly and unreasonable and sometimes difficult and jealous, like any teenager, meant a lot to me as a kid who was not really allowed to be any of these things, this version of the character has stayed with me so deeply. she holds on so fiercely to her right to feel what she feels and be what she is even when it’s ‘ugly’ or unreasonable, which I think plays in really interestingly with how her powers involve getting invaded by other people’s thoughts and memories to the point of overwhelming her own sense of self and the fact that she clearly has a lot of self-loathing and self-consciousness and confusion about her identity as well. I love her so much)  

- oooof this is the ‘the gang experience a microaggression’ episode huh (well more like macroagressions really)

hits a bit different with adult eyes and perspective huh

- hearing jean sound almost like a child when she says ‘that’s so unfair!’ somehow has me like ;______; -- she has to be so adult and responsible all the time, and having her be reduced to the kid she still is and should get to be in front of this awful awful man she could squash like a bug with the flick of a thought... ugh I’m Big Sad (it is funny that jean seemingly plays Every Sport tho djfhaskj)

- MY BOY IS BACK!!! this time with the duster coat and his eyes the right colour, im so happy (too bad about the subdued colour scheme tho; I adore his dumb bright pink getup with my whole heart)

it’s kind of adorable that he takes the time to take the bullies aside and go ‘I know these guys can’t wreck you without getting expelled, but I think you’ll find no law set down by god or man would stop me from doing so whenever I wanted to. so piss off and leave them alone’ lol he’s looking out for them, in his own way

- in this episode: remy lebeau wrangles some kids while looking bored yet mildly amused the whole time. what the fuck does magneto have on you for you to agree to this level of babysitting duty buddy

- fun detail I noticed b/c when I get a fave I hyperfixate: he gave rogue the king of hearts before, but he ‘introduces’ himself to the brotherhood here (lol) with the jack of hearts, probably to symbolize he’s here as someone who works for magneto in this setting and not as his own man? it’s a demotion he’s given himself there, anyway, might be he’s not very pleased about his current position huh 

- I like it when rogue and kitty team up, they’re not very effective together but their squabbling is so cute and non-aggressive 

- pietro is what draco malfoy would be if I ever found malfoy interesting to watch for even one moment, every time quicksilver talks I’m like ‘what wonderfully insufferable thing is going to come out of your mouth this time you little shit :’)’

- a) why are scott and logan shirtless for this scene? I am not complaining on the logan side of things at least but why and b) I laughed so hard I almost fell off my couch when scott asked logan if he’d ever been in love and he was like ‘once. she was the most beautiful bike I ever saw’ falsdfhaskjfhsakjlfhasklhjfd THE BEST VERSION OF WOLVERINE EVER, ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES 

- mystique’s sheer dedication to being a petty bitch is kind of inspirational tbh, almost makes me want to go on a completely bonkers and extra crusade of personal revenge myself  

- oooh they’re doing some genuinely cool things with vision/lack of vision in this one (it’s the scott left on his own in the desert without glasses one btw) even visually, dang! I’m so sad this show didn’t get more seasons than it did, honestly, it deserved it

- hell yeah jean wreck her, go get your man with the suspiciously specific clothing damage normally done to female characters 

awww :’) okay yeah they’re super sweet, I love the tiny loving animation details like how he leans his head against her and her stroking his hair away from his eyes

- nooo don’t bully evan leave my t0tally r4dical sk8er boy alone :(

- I love the running joke of people fleeing in blind panic only to reveal that what they’re running from is kitty’s cheerful well meaning little face fskfaskh 

- scott and jean are already peak married after officially being together for one episode and it’s adorable, and they just stone cold threw logan under the bus, rip wolverine we hardly knew ya

fjasdlfasldfhslajdkfhsadkjlfhsdkjalfhsdakfh h jean establishing herself as the alphabitch of this relationship by throwing her man to the wolves right after dsjfhaskjfhaskjhfsakjdhfaskjhfaskdhfskjahfskdajhf get smarter or get volunteered scott 

- ...eyepatch lady is so hot ngl

oh evan went to the place hank used to go to calm down ;________; (honestly he’s kind of won a place in my heart just by being a pretty normal teenage boy haha)

- jesus fucking CHRIST can you imagine being storm having to look her sister in the eye as she tells her ‘I lost your only child, he’s *vague gesture* somewhere in the sewers we think’ this poor woman

- amanda the self admitted monster fucker you are so VALID (I love her and her family’s design so much tho!)

- it’s so cool that even in his human ‘disguise’ kurt’s fingers follow the shape of his actual hand beneath it rather than moving like a five fingered hand, it’s such a lovingly consistent little detail 

- magneto and mystique in a breathless race to see who can be the shittiest parent... tune in next week for yet another parental nadir (also some low-poly gambit appearances in this one, for those at home keeping score (me), he’s in the background looking like someone drew him with their eyes closed fakjldfhasd look how they massacred my boy)

- someone please teach the brotherhood boys about consent huh

- jean ‘soccer mom before her time’ grey and her SUV dfhakjlhds :’)

- im sobbing rogue baby girl i’m so sorryyyyyy, this voice actress is so good, my parental instincts suddenly kicked into overdrive hearing the crack in her voice :( (bb me was right tho rogue centric episodes ARE the best episodes. that tension between ‘do I identify witn this character or am I crushing on her?? both???’ now has the fun new addition of ‘oh god oh no you are a baby I want to shield you with my body from everything trying to hurt you’)

- mystique is like ‘so you see despite you telling me you never wanted to see me again I completely disrespected that and posed as a friend your age, manipulated you by offering you the mirage of direly needed emotional intimacy and belonging and added some sprinkles of homoerotic tension to it just to massively worsen your already existing grievous psychosexual trauma and identity issues... out of love’

god go jump in a black hole you fucking monster 

- there’s some very interesting and quite subtle subtext about the people she’s morphing into and what that says about her mental state/how it shows off some of her emotional baggage with the rest of the team. it’s like she’s switching between people/powers that fit the purpose as if she’s going through cycles of fight/flight (and then bursts of freeze where she’s herself, which is... so sad)

- this whole episode is hurting my heart but rogue at full power is undeniably epic  

 - ‘professor x get your goddamn act together and get this poor girl some fucking tHERAPY’ challenge

- SAFE PAPA LOGAN ;_____;

- EYYYYYY opening straight on My Lad, I cannot stop winning!!!!! 

fasdfhsad disintegrating the window with a smiley face... remy I do love you more than my heart can bear honestly, hello may we speak about the fact that his urge to be a little shit is so deep and strong it survives mind control (that little breathed out ‘hiah!’ as he vaults the fence too dsakfjsd)

hahaha and he does up the coat fhsalfdsaj 

- magneto dismissing other telepaths like ‘puh-lease, your Meaningful Looks have got nothing on my ex-husband’s’ 

- :’) rogue and kurt sibling timeees

- say what you want but this pyro guy’s got job satisfaction in being a creepy arsonist with a weird recurring horse theme (well at least twice but still weird)

- I love how beast is the kindest man to ever walk the earth but also straight up savage, this man drags people so hard their ancestors wince in their graves

- gambit taking the time to complete the guard’s game of solitaire -- this episode is giving me everything I want. u little disgrace mr lebeau

and THEN he takes the spider out in the most hilariously bonkers way my heart is so FULL

(I love that when magneto moves by he looks startled and has to quickly move his head out of the way to avoid getting kicked in the temple too that’s a fun detail)

I’m so INTO how this sequence shows off that his greatest strength isn’t even his powers (which are pretty straightforward, really, he makes go boom, longer time and bigger thing bigger boom) but that he’s clever and creative and always extremely ready to be the most harebrained-bananapants-extra-in-a-deceptively-laidback-sort-of-way person in the room (I actually have some genuinely Deep Thoughts about how his whole character does a really interesting thing with having the straightforwardly destructive nature of his powers yield to what his nature as a person is, and how using the playing cards play (heh) into it, maybe I’ll write it out some day. just the fact that he could use anything, but he deliberately chose something that adds style and playfulness and corny charm to it and that also limits the damage of the explosions compared to if he habitually used something with more mass... I find it fascinating how much he’s made a story around himself with it and how deeply it shows he does have a good heart, at the end of the day, in almost a metatextual way. he doesn’t want to destroy things or people, he’s at worst (and best lol) a thief.)

- I honestly have literally no memory of white nick fury (which seems so weird now isn’t it funny) in this series from when I was a kid, he clearly did not make an impression on me lol

- mr wolverine ‘assigned canadian at birth’ x-men 

- oh man I dig the androgynity of x-23′s outfit (even tho they had to compensate with the long hair, which... kind of doesn’t make sense in-universe but does on a design level because it’s a crucial thing that she’s a female clone of logan so yeah okay fine whatever have your arbitrary gender markers if you must haha)

ooooooh that’s actually really clever, they make her gender gradually more obvious as she unravels through the episode and her outfit changes -- first the mask coming off, and then her jacket opening to show her silhouette more clearly, that’s cool!  

- my god what really sets this show apart is how much it invests in little character and relationship moments, it’s just so fucking GOOD! it gives laura looking in on those moments such depth and weight because it’s new to her but established to us as an audience, this is how you make found family devastating people (storm growing bonsai trees is so charming too haha) 

- ooof this is honestly quite harrowing 

SHE’S SO SMALL COMPARED TO HIM I’M CRYING (at least that part of his genes translated over faslkfsjdh short king, I say this with all the love and support of a fellow short monarch)  

- tabitha seems to just be running around doing precisely whatever the fuck she wants and you know what I support her even if she is an asshole her father left her a bunch of trauma and no fucks left to give 

- still thrilled about professor x explaining the spider key fuckup to magneto after the fact like ‘magnus you dumb bitch this is why we split up’ 

- awww kitty has anime and movie posters on her wall and sleeps with a stuffed toy :’)

-          remy                           rogue

                              🤝

doing completely unnecessary parkour around the brotherhood living room seemingly just for the hell of it... I’m not saying soulmates but fucking soulmates 

- fhsadkjlfhsakjldfhsadjkfhsdajkfh just as gambit’s soul-level need to be a little shit survived his bout of mind control, rogue’s deep and urgent desire to kiss gambit full on the mouth survived hers I can’t breathe

she looks so pleased with herself too GOOD FOR YOU GIRL at least get something out of this other than more trauma 

also not only the fact that he’s smart enough to figure out what’s going on (though he’s only partially right about who’s behind it. I do so enjoy gambit/mystique deep and sincere antipathy as a constant across all universes tho lmao pure wlw/mlm hostility) but also that he keeps fending her off like he’s not trying to hurt her even though she’s in nigh on unstoppable and invulnerable terminator mode... awww 

- gambit having absolutely no patience for wolverine and sabertooth’s bullshit macho-off and consistently being this little biker trio���s one brain cell is adding years to my life with every passing moment

his voice is a little different in these scenes too, a bit softer and less like he’s trying to impress someone, it’s nice

- hank: well I barely recognize any of these (completely made up) ‘ancient egyptian hieroglyphs’ but from what I can make out -- *proceeds to infodump a perfect coherent narrative* fjdhfak  

listen this whole thing is such nonsense on so many levels, I’m just turning my brain off so I won’t have to think about it okay, the compulsion to put ancient aliens in egypt haunts us as a culture 

- I am CACKLING about gambit in the snow after having to listen to these two chucklefucks ooze testosterone at each other for hours

he started out taking it in good cheer and is now reduced to ‘dieu would both of you just jump off this fUCKING mountain please’

- ah. a little oops-a-daisy there, we seem to have unleashed the apocalypse. please stand by (they really don’t pull their punches with the season cliffhangers in this show haha)

- opening the season on gambit’s merrily grinning face is the easiest way to gain my favour. yes good this season may commence 

baby u r my

 ANGELLLLLLLL

(he’s so cute here tho haha I think it shows the design isn’t unsalvagable, just get him better hair and stubble more like logan has and you’ve basically got it) 

love his exasperated eyeroll when the dude gets spooked (by his eyes? or just the general weirdness?) too

he’s just trying to keep this crazy family of evil mutants together and unmurdered by one another until they’ve managed to avert the end of the world, bless him  

- oh NO rogue’s LIP wobbles my hhhhhheart ;____; such a good animation detail to put in

- like... I know kurt is just a sad scared teenager with a lot of shit going on and all the adults are too busy averting the end of the world to help him... but buddy maybe don’t ask your sister to wake her abuser (who forced her to kickstart the end of the world!!!!!) when she feels utterly unsafe even with her statue version around huh

- ...wanda is good and I want only good things for her. and for her dad to be disemboweled for what he did to her both the first time around and when he forced her to forget I mean what 

- magneto throwing an epic satelite-slinging tantrum b/c ‘no I am the biggest sexiest strongest mutant of the pack :(’... erik fucking get over yourself 

- yes boys absolutely go along with a plan suggested by a dude who looks at you like this 

nothing bad can come of this surely asdfkhsa

- lance’s quarter of a braincell always trying to go ‘hey wait, maybe... not do this???’ and it never helps lol

- in this episode: Logan Has A Bad Day 

...some very specific bondage positions he’s held in here, I am sure this episode awakened something in someone once upon a time lol 

- logan shielding x-23 with his body... im fine it’s okay I’m not crying don’t look at me

- afsdhlsdfjasdlk those sure are some ‘scottish’ accents flsadkjhkdsjahfsd

- scott relieved to finally be able to cede the position of ‘charles xavier’s least favourite son’ to someone else fjsaklfhsajd (poor scott it’s not your fault honey)

supremely cowardly to suggest there is an ex-wife involved rather than charles slutting his way around the british isles back in the day but okay

- kurt with a cold is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. it’s okay kid it’ll get better soon

- ...is there an implication here that professor x is naturally blond. because I am losing my entire little mind about it (i mean he at least has to carry the gene, as does this lady?)

ETA: upon doing some research into this I can indeed confirm that charles xavier does seem to be naturally blond, and after this knowledge I will never be the same 

- “listen, dracula” fskdafghasd oh scott you sweet baby angel I love you

- I know jean’s abilities are a bit ‘as strong or as weak as the plot needs right now’ at this point (so you can have the setup for what’s going to happen with them eventually and she’s basically invincible ;____;), and normally I’m cool with it but god I want her to just squash lucas like a little bug

- ewwwww please don’t ever say ‘daddy’ like that again

- ...what the fuck is even going on this episode’s a mess 

like okay the split personality thing could be something but the way it’s done... what just happened lol

- MY BOY EVAN IS BACK! with a real glowup too (...though kind of weird how he suddenly looks like a grown man)

- augh scott’s eyes are so pretty oh my god ;__________________________;

- that episode in the first season where evan makes the ‘this is my new family!!’ video is so sad now (also, again, his poor poor parents) 

- time for: life affirming road trip with gambit (involuntary) faskljdfhaskjd

stunt therapist remy lebeau 

- I mean the way he goes about it is batshit insane and it’s very much secondary to what he’s actually up to but this is the first time rogue’s sounded genuinely hopeful and confident and like herself in like a season <3 

- he is disconcertingly pleased about her nearly throwing him off the train, and may I just say I agree it’s so nice to see rogue with her old fire back 

- the first time I watched this it was of course dubbed into norwegian, so I had no idea either of these characters were southern lol (though to be fair I probably wouldn’t have had much context for what it meant exactly either, I was like ten at the time and not too interested in america) I seem to dimly remember the norwegian voice actor did a little more of a ‘french’-tinged accent for gambit all over tho haha  

- you know what respect where it’s due, pyro dude knows to live his life for the lols and one has to admire his sociopathic dedication to it

interesting that he, too, seems to have fucking hated magneto -- I wonder if the implication here is that he kept all the acolytes in line with blackmail or by keeping something/one hostage? (except sabertooth maybe he’d just have to say ‘you get to fuck shit up and fight wolverine’ and that’d be enough)

- fsdakfhsd he’s so focused on her he doesn’t notice that guy about to hit him fkafhsa 

- fuck everything else except whatever the hell these two’ve got going on

- it’s weirdly cathartic to have rogue have a conversation with someone who was not happily adopted as well, I don’t think kurt like. gets it because his parents loved him unconditionally and still do 

birds of a feather motherfucker  

- fun detail: when the x-men team are on the shore and logan is sniffing around scott is stepping in something and trying to wipe it off his boots in the background

- when he wakes up after passing out from the touch he’s smiling even though she’s standing over him looking like the rage of god outlined by the moon fsajfsa well the last time he passed out like that it was from a kiss, maybe he still has some hopes and dreams in that direction lol (also he recovers from the tumble down the hill first and is checking on her before accidentally brushing her cheek with his hand, which I thought was sweet) 

and it was in that moment he knew he fucked up *passes out*

- ‘I can explain’ can u remy. can u  

- did it ever even occur to you to just. ask her. to help you. I mean I know it didn’t but like rogue’s always one second away from throwing hands with some bully and is stupidly ride or die, if you’d given her the puppydog eyes she would have crumbled immediately (fair enough I guess this entire episode is telling us he’s not from a background where he has much experience with people just helping him without a price haha) 

- his eyes glowing when he’s angry or upset or using a lot of his power is undeniably cool as all hell. I’m just saying it would be Big Sexy if they sort of flickered with light in moments of genuine vulnerability okay  

- his coat... his coat is what makes the Silhouette tm and I could not be happier about it 

- another parent of the year contestant enters the running lol “hey remy have you ever considered that you’re more of a walking bomb factory than a person? that’s certainly how I think of you hahaha c’mon kid let’s go” 

- the running joke of jean luc getting dollar signs in his eyes seeing the other mutant powers and gambit being like ‘nO!!!!’ and pulling him along is amazing haha

- from the way he looks when he touches rogue accidentally and the way he talks to his dad I’m sort of getting the feeling this gambit might actually be a bit younger than he looks?

here too -- idk why but it’s making the ‘wait is he baby???’ alarms go off in my head haha. very early twenties at most. 

- and we’ve officially seen him with all the face cards in the heart suit folks! (yes this is the sort of thing my brain notices no I don’t know either)

- poor logan running his ass off this whole episode in a panic and then she’s like ‘nah he’s fine (in several meanings of the word ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ) please put him down’ hfaskfsda

- rogue without makeup!!! her eyes look so naked like this haha <3

- oooh here’s a really interesting thing that tickles my brain a bit in this specific part of the scene where gambit frees his dad -- the part where he’s leaning against the door frame waiting for jean luc, who’s about to suggest using the opportunity to ruin the rival gang from the inside rather than slipping away while they still can

from his expression here he knows what’s about to happen, what jean luc is about to say, and it’s clearly a ‘man who thought he’d lost all hope loses last additional bit of hope he didn’t even know he still had’ sort of situation. he KNOWS what jean luc is like, and it still hurts that he really, honestly can’t give him even this, can’t appreciate that remy’s already done all this shit for him when he extremely didn’t have to, without immediately (no really, it took him less than ten seconds to go there? jesus) demanding more.  

remy tells him “I’m just here for you” and jean luc does not understand it. remy seems to be sincere in this motivation -- rogue certainly thinks so, having experienced it second hand and found enough at least emotional merit in it to decide he was worth saving even after all his bullshit (lol a bit of a running theme maybe. I think it’s very telling that after she absorbed mystique she was like ‘what the FUCK you’re a fucking monster’, and after she absorbed gambit she went ‘you did the wrong thing for the right reasons’ after she got over the first wave of outrage) 

there’s also what he says as he stands there: “You don’t need me for that”, with the distinct implication that jean luc would only keep him around because he has a use for him and for no other reason -- and then jean luc shamelessly doubles down on that by specifying that it’s not even him he’s got a use for as such, just his powers. that’s some kicking puppies level of deliberately missing the point, it’s almost impressive in how cheerfully mean it is haha

this idea of using people is really important in this episode because remy’s doing basically exactly the same thing to rogue to begin with; it doesn’t really matter to his plan that it’s her that’s with him through this, just what her powers are. (I think it’s  p r e t t y  solidly implied that he does actually like her a lot outside of that too and maybe there is some comfort in having her around for this, but mostly he’s behind a smokescreen of lies through the whole thing sooo I doubt he’s even aware of it, honestly)     

but then it does matter that it’s her when she comes back for him, even after what he did. and unlike jean luc he understands what that means, that she did that for him, and that she didn’t have to. and instead of asking her for more, in return he gives her the thing it’s been established is what he considers the most valuable thing he has; his ‘last card’, the thing he’s credited with keeping him alive many a time, basically. it’s gone from using to mutuality, a tentative place of friendship, and at the end of the day he is a different man than his adoptive father, with a capacity for selflessness and love he lacks. which is of course some of the same stuff going on with rogue and mystique too, except rogue acted from a more fragile and unstable place and did something she regrets, or at least has a LOT of doubts about now, and she found some catharsis in helping someone make a different choice in a similar situation. man there’s some Stuff going on under the surface here haha

(by the way it’s a weirdly... meaningless yet intensely meaningful thing, the gifting of a symbol? of an idea? but he’s putting something very crucial of himself into her hands, is the subtext, and he expects her to understand, which she also does seem to do. at the beginning of the episode he’s proving that he’s seen something true about her -- “You’re such an unhappy girl”, knowing where she comes from, the way she’s mourning her lost confidence and autonomy with her abilities -- and here she’s proving she’s seen something true about him. :’) I wish this show had gone on long enough for this dynamic to progress, it’s really interesting and touching)   

- gambit dragging himself up onto dry land seeing someone approaching (to help?!): :D

gambit seeing that it’s logan and the look on his face: D: 

- rogue using her powers so confidently and fearlessly in this episode tho!!!! 

- *me crying* and then her FAMBILY comes to take her home and he says he’s looking out for her too and kurt still loves her even though they’re having a conflict thing between them and she’s finally able to use her powers without so much fear again and --

- ...did I just watch some baby lesbian love at first sight shit right now???  

- okay last two episodes let’s go

- HELL YEAH STORM (I love that she’s like ‘don’t give me a dumb order like that and I won’t have to disobey it’ too sdfjsaj) her voice has such command I’m usually very much not the ‘step on me’ type butttt

- y’know I feel like apocalypse’s main fault across all versions I’ve seen of him is that he’s like an immortal superpowered god king and he’s not even sexy. like at least make him hot if he’s going to be insufferable in every other way 

- also callout post for apocalypse: one time he made gambit into the Horseman of Death... and didn’t even make him sexy!!! you were handed remy lebeau, supreme bi disaster slut of the x men universe, and you couldn’t even make his brainwashed superpowered evil side hot?? a beautiful stubbled twunk with glowing red eyes and extremely charming :> face practically delivers himself into your hands and you do that to him???? I mean I’m sure apocalypse did some other bad stuff too but that was the worst one

(comics are so dumb y’all) 

- having to watch jean cry is emotional terrorism!! ;___; she has such older sister/mom energy, whenever she gets sad and helpless it hurts 

- oh, OH so PROFESSOR X you’ll make into a hunk and ~*strategically*~ rip his clothes to show off a nipple and a flawless pec in a way that makes me extremely uncomfortable because he’s like The Dad??? apocalypse you are rotten to the core this is unforgivable 

- so wait wanda never actually gets her real memories back. what the FuCk I hope that was a dropped storyline because they ended the show tragically prematurely rather than like. the plan

- why is spyke calling storm ‘storm’ show that’s his auntie o!! >:(

- as a society we need to acknowledge that apocalypse looks like a fucking clown

- ooooh yeah I have been thinking that this show’s greatest visual weakness so far has been not having a visual way to show telepathy/battles of the minds, but this is a pretty cool way to do it! better late than never

- I’m so happy rogue gets to end this herself, since she was forced into starting it against her will, it’s just nice and neat storytelling

- YEAH FUCKING TELL HER KURT AND ROGUE I AM SO PROUD OF YOU and she has the temerity to look pissed off oh my god

the only valid thing mystique has done in her entire life is be in love with destiny. literally everything else she gets up to is a travesty. like I know objectively she’s hot but my loathing for her stops me from even appreciating it. I do enjoy loathing her tho so please don’t change her haha

(a bit odd to have kurt’s attitude to her swing so much but I’m just going to assume he and rogue had a good long conversation after ‘cajun spice’ and that he understands what’s going on better now)

- this last part is such a cruel tease faskdfhsdaj ‘here are all the cool-ass things we had planned. sucks you never get to see it huh’ im devastated 

- magneto without his helmet and playing charmingly with children like charles is going ‘well at least I saved my marriage finally’ fsadkhfjsd (honestly tho I would be super interested in seeing how they’d redeem this magneto because he’s been a real bitch the whole time lol) 

there’s an interesting thing here where magneto looks down at wanda as the last thing he does on screen before this epilogue part (yeah I hope it fucking haunts you forever what you did to her erik you absolute piece of hot garbage) and the last thing charles does is look at jean b/c he knows what’s going to happen to her and it breaks his heart... Dramatic Parallells  

- just the hint of jean as the phoenix has me in full D:D:D: mode tho maybe I wouldn’t have survived it

- gambit in the last groupshot with his arm around rogue ;^) I mean I’m sure they’re headed for some turns and roundabouts along the way but what’s that thing she says as her wedding vow, that she’ll always find her way back? anyway that got me in my heart

- man I really wish this show had been given more seasons, we were barely even getting warmed up here :’(

#x men evolution #x men #gambit #rogue x gambit #aaah this is like therapy for me... just dumping all my emotions into a tumblr post and then let them go into the ether #I am now wondering if I'm desperate enough to go all the way back to the x-men animated series (which I've never seen before!) #like am I willing to go there for more Contente. time will tell I suppose #happy tag #...this is very long #MAN why can't I channel this dumbass energy into fiction writing I'd get so much DONE

[vices-aand-virtues]

As we make our way into the final episodes of Younger, I have some Thoughts™️

1. I have seen a lot of talk about how Liza would be better off alone than with Charles because then she is right back where she started when the series begins. Though likely is part of her thought process, this is incorrect for a couple of reasons. First, Liza is in a completely different place in her life than she was when we first met her. She has a fabulous career in publishing and, even when they’re not together, the support of Charles. She doesn’t have a baby at home to take care of; Charles’s daughters are old enough to be relatively self-sufficient in terms of not needing someone to watch over them all the time. Then we have to look at all of this together and realize this, the second point: Liza didn’t think she could + wasn’t allowed to have both a career and a family most of her life. Now she has seen that she not only can do it, she’s great at it. She is extremely successful and loves her work, but still has time for her daughter and form/maintain a solid relationship with Nicole and Bianca. She still makes time for the things that are important to her outside of work. She gave up part of herself to stay at home and be just a wife and just a mom for almost two decades. Then she gave up some of herself to maintain her lie. Now she’s thriving at work and fully and openly herself for the first time in YEARS. For to have a brilliant career with more to come AND a wonderful partner/husband/whatever is a WONDERFUL resolution for her based on where she started.

2. To have this much Liza/Charles tension and back and forth and more “will they won’t they” AGAIN, after waiting 5 seasons for them to get together, just over one full season of them actually together, only for them not to end up together is absurd and makes no sense. Liza has had this entire season to accept that she and Charles are donezo and move on, but she hasn’t, and not for lack of trying. It’s more clear every episode how drawn to one another they are despite themselves. To put them through all that for a contrived “girl power” ending would be a huge disservice to the characters and the show.

3. Speaking of, I’m exhausted by “girl power” endings of late because they’re inorganic and forced. It’s supposed to come across as empowering for a woman to choose her career over love or a relationship, but it’s actually just a sexist take from the opposite end of the spectrum. Women can have both!! We are 20 years into the 21st century!! A woman can PRIORITIZE her career over romantic entanglements, but women don’t — and shouldn’t!! — have to choose at this point. We already know that Liza isn’t defined by her relationship to a man. We know she is a strong woman who isn’t afraid to ask for + take + go after what she deserves. I don’t need to see her choose her career because she is already thriving! She does not have to be alone for X number of years so she can get her career on track. It’s there. She’s on the journey. What would benefit her most would be something she hasn’t had before — a steady and fully supportive long-term partner. Imagine what it would be like for her to finally be married or lifelong committed to someone she is wildly in love with, who is wildly in love with her, who also fully supports her career, is her biggest cheerleader, who believes in her and sees her talents more clearly than anyone else. Hello!!

4. Liza is clearly still very in love with Charles and vice versa. In the past, when her relationships have ended, the desire to get back together was pretty one-sided. It wasn’t, like, super easy for her to get over, but she made peace with it and moved on. That has yet to happen. She just can’t let Charles go completely. She is trying to be supportive of his relationship and assures him she just wants him to be happy, but we have heard her say more than once that she is still in love with him, and her actions are pretty indicative of that as well.

5. Until S7, Charles has always chosen Liza. Even given the current circumstances, he still keeps choosing her in a different way. He knows she is on his side. He knows she is great at her job. He knows she supports him. No matter their relationship status, he knows those things to be true. That’s why he always takes her up on any offers she makes to him in S7 — because he knows who she is. He chooses her to be his work partner or support system or his sounding board. And she allows herself to be chosen; she ASKS to be chosen. He doesn’t have to accept and she doesn’t have to offer, but they do it anyway. It’s a conscious daily choice they continue to make.

6. Charles would never in a million years marry Quinn because she wouldn’t be a good stepmother to his daughters. We may have seen ~some~ dimension from Quinn, but ultimately she’s a ruthless, manipulative, conniving snake. She’s fake and primarily has a “what’s in it for me” attitude. There’s no way Charles would want that to be the example his daughters live with, and honestly I don’t think Pauline would even allow it. If he thought Liza’s baggage created complications for his custody, I cannot even imagine the turmoil Quinn would cause. Quinn is a loose cannon. Pauline is a little bit of a bitch when it comes to Liza, but she’s smart enough to know/see who Quinn really is, and with Liza, it’s at least “the devil you know.”

7. It would be completely nonsensical for Charles and Quinn to get married/end up together because a) we barely know her and b) he was just proposing to Liza. From both a logical and writing standpoint, it doesn’t make sense. It would be some piss poor storytelling for that to happen. On the flip side, it would make sense for Josh to end up with Clare, a late-entry side character, because we have known her longer and know they have a history. The same can’t be said about Charles and Quinn. If Quinn hadn’t become so involved with Empirical, if she had just been another author, her relationship with Charles would be about as meaningful as his relationship with Rhada. But since we see her through Liza’s eyes and we see her be an annoying presence at Empirical post-Charliza split, it seems like a bigger deal than it actually is.

8. Putting her back with Josh at this point would be a worse ending than Game of Thrones. It would be a twist that came out of nowhere that writers would justify by saying the signs were there all along. Liza more than once has made clear that she has chosen Charles over Josh. She has showed us that’s the case. For her to suddenly have an epiphany with two episodes left, especially considering how little shared screen time they have, would be total fanservice and a complete regression from all the growth they BOTH have had. It’s also, like, not fair to Josh to keep waiting on her and hoping she will come back? He deserves some reciprocity and stability too?

9. We have seen only the benefits when it comes to Charles being impulsive in matters of the heart...until now. I totally understand his heartache at her counter proposal and I, personally, think she’s being stupid. But regardless, I think for him to just walk away from their relationship at that point was a pretty knee-jerk reaction that he didn’t think through. And I think his pride is a little hurt over his perception of her not WANTING to marry him, so instead of trying to work it out or compromise, he’s digging his heels in. He jumped into a relationship with Quinn, which was clearly impulsive. Rational, level-headed Charles would not have done that. In fact, he laughs off the suggestion of it in S5 and says the iconic, “divorced moms from Jersey are more my style.” I believe cooler heads will prevail.

10. I REFUSE TO BE VICTIM TO ANOTHER SHIP WHOSE TENSION AND FEELINGS WERE TEASED AND BUILT UP OVER 5 SEASONS ONLY FOR THEM TO BREAK UP OVER SOMETHING STUPID AFTER ONE AND A HALf SEASON AS A COUPLE AND THEN GET BACK TOGETHER IN THE LAST 5 MINUTES!!!! I WILL NOT!!

Anyway Team Charles 4 Lyfe. Here’s hoping these idiots in love stop being idiots and start being just IN LOVE.

#younger tv #youngertv #charles x liza #liza x charles #charliza #younger season 7 #Liza Miller #charles brooks #team Charles #personal

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

hot take: Louis and Violet's "friendship" is one-sided and poorly written. The only reason its considered a "brOTP" is because the fandom writes the friendhsip better than Telltale did.

I mean... you’re not wrong, anon, hahaha.

In fact, I totally agree that their friendship isn’t well developed within the game, and because of that, it feels one-sided. 

They have the chemistry of two friends who care about each other, but the game doesn’t feel the need to show or develop this further than light banter and a couple of mini-monologues from Louis and Violet when you save them, monologues that don’t even add up with the character actions...

Both card games are great. They get along well there, but the rest of the time? Ehhhhh....

If Violet isn’t putting Louis down to his face, she’s doing it behind his back, and Louis doesn’t trust her enough to even tell her why he wants to board up the back wall later instead of right that minute, which means he’s probably not as open with her as we once thought. 

Violet’s so pissed about Marlon that she can’t be bothered to take in the fact that Louis is mourning/traumatized from his death, which results in her calling him names, degrading him in front of others, and shit-talking Marlon right in front of him, which he does call her out for. Because Louis is still processing everything about what Marlon did to the twins and Brody and why AJ felt the need to shoot him after he gave up, he’s just as angry and upset and doesn’t know what to do so he votes to kick Clementine and AJ out, even if he knows that he doesn’t actually hate them or really want them to leave. He doesn’t know what he wants, he’s just all over the place. This pisses Violet off because she wants them to stay for her own more selfish reasons which blind her to the fact that AJ murdering someone, even someone like Marlon, the way he did is bad.

They’re both on the extreme sides of this, and they’re both wrong. Just gonna throw that out there-- Louis and Violet are both wrong here. I lean more in Louis’ favor than Violet’s because I don’t agree with Violet’s idea that AJ did nothing wrong, but ultimately kicking Clem and AJ out isn’t the best choice of action here. But that doesn’t mean AJ is justified in what he did and he needs to know that. 

After all the nonsense, these two spend two weeks bickering about this and that while under the stress of raiders wanting to take them away. Because of that they never reconciled and don’t do anything close to that until the card game. Nope, they’re just arguing because Violet won’t shut her mouth and listen and Louis won’t open his mouth and be honest. 

Communication is their biggest struggle.

Then where the imbalance really starts to shine through is when you play both routes, and see that what Louis is telling us about Violet isn’t exactly what the game portrays. He talks about how if he needed her, Violet would be there,  meat cleaver in hand, ready to protect him... buuuuut when you save Violet, she completely forgets that Louis exists once we get on the boat. She never asks if he’s okay or how he’s doing, and when she reunites with Clementine after the cave scene, she has nothing to say about him losing his tongue. The most we get out of her is that weak little “Lou” that’s honestly just.... pathetic. And she certainly does nothing to help or protect him after he's tongueless, bleeding out, and can barely walk, choosing to stay with Minerva instead. 

It doesn’t help that she seems to be facing him with a cleaver more times than protecting him with it. Y’know... after AJ shoots Marlon and Louis is distressed and everyone’s looking at Clementine, Violet pulls out her cleaver on Louis and the others and steps in front of AJ... who the group isn’t even looking at and wouldn’t even attack. So, good job there. 

If they wanted this to make sense without it coming off like Louis and Violet’s friendship is one-sided... maybe have her ditch the ex-girlfriend who tried to murder Clementine and help Louis get off the boat? Oh, that messes up your “we gotta have Louis save Clem on the beach and Violet to crawl up shore no matter the player choice” nonsense? Oh, my bad, you’re right. We’ll just settle for it being bad then. 

And the thing is... Violet’s talk about Louis isn’t entirely accurate, either, though it does appear more so than Louis’ talk about her based on his actions. She talks about how Louis actually cares about people, which IS true. He’s proved many times that he cares about and values those around him more than he does himself. Unlike Violet, he does ask if she’s okay when they’re stuck on the boat and will tell Clementine that her eyes aren’t infected. He’s also the one to hold her hand and guide her back to the group after the explosion. 

And we all know how honest he is about his feelings with Clementine after they start a relationship, which makes Violet’s idea that when Louis cares about someone, he doesn’t just feel it, he says it. 

But the idea that he’ll just always say how he feels, scream it, sing it isn’t.... quite there? Okay, how do I explain this... he’s honest and loud when he’s pissed or distressed, but when he’s not...? Louis isn’t open with how he cares about others he doesn’t have the same deep connection with unless he’s stressed, upset, or has quiet, one on one time with them, and even then it can be hard for him to come out and say it because he feels like they’re not really hearing him. Y’know... like every conversation he has with Violet ever. 

I mean, Louis barely shares anything significant with Clementine until they go hunting and he tells her about how he believes they all have one thing: this moment, and as if realizing he’s shared too much, he switches his persona back on and pushes her away back over to Aasim. He does a little friendly flirting but even that doesn’t always come the easiest [like when he asked if she ever had a boyfriend] and it doesn’t become more serious until much later. 

Then we don’t get much from him and his feelings for her until the talk in the quiet talk in the dorms, then he opens up more about Marlon after the two-week time skip during shooting practice, and eventually breaking down the entire wall and being open and vulnerable with her in the piano room. But it takes effort to get there, and it’s quiet. That’s the thing-- he’s not shouting anything or singing or whatever because that’s the persona. When he sings Oh My Darling to Clem in ep1, it’s cute and fun and all, but it’s not as real as when he sits down and plays Don’t Be Afraid in ep3. That’s quiet, emotional, and more him, and the only time the group is sitting down and actively listening.

This makes me believe that Violet truly thinks that Louis is loud and always honest about his feelings is based on the outer wall of his that she sees every day rather than what’s beyond the wall... if that makes any sense. Hell, the same could be said for him. You could argue they’re both just seeing what the other wants them to see. 

So this whole thing makes me wonder if these two just don’t really know each other the way they think they do.... which is interesting. Like, with everything said, I don’t actually doubt that they care about each other and have their own ways of showing it, I’m just throwing doubt at the game for not expanding on this friendship outside of banter and the verses thing they got going on. 

So yeah... brotp within the game itself? Probably not. But that’s fine, we have a community that goes them justice to help fill the void. Fanon brotp Louis/Violet is enjoyable and I love it. :) 

#asks #twdg louis #twdg violet #twdg clementine #twdg marlon #twdg brody #twdg minerva #twdg aj

[tundrainafrica]

Title: Division of Labor (2/?)

Summary:  

“The past years, we have noticed a lot of our fresh high school graduates knew nothing about responsibilities the that awaited them outside high school and even college. Many students do not master budgeting, taxes, household planning, loans and we hope to raise a generation who can navigate the adult world without the consequences of bad decisions they are bound to make going in blindly…”

Paradis High school starts a program incorporating adulting into their curriculum and Hange and Levi are paired together.

Note: From request of @a-golden-hearted-snk-fan. See this link for the request

Other Chapters: 1 3

Link to cross-postings: AO3

"This doesn't make any sense."

Jean had always been one of the more vocal ones in the classroom when it came to inconvenient developments. More often than not, people had just brushed off his complaints and banter as an inevitable part of his personality. That was one of the few times everyone else agreed with him.

The rest though just sat silently in the classroom while both Erwin and Shadis went out of the room, to get what was supposed to be their "kids."

Having taken classes on reproduction and health growing up, most if not all the people in the room already knew the amount of money it took to raise a child and the importance of contraception.

Oddly enough though, the number of kids was decided at random, only justified by the fact that they would never know how many dependents they'll have to care of one day.

"Every single one of you will be faced with the prospect of taking care of a dependent one day, maybe for a few years, maybe for decades," Erwin had explained. He had a natural charisma in the way he carried himself and spoke that made everyone in the room aware of their own tendency for altruism. Everyone had somebody in their life, they probably would have dug into their savings to support be it a mother, a sibling or a close friend.

They were all silently doing their own reflections of who that person would have been as Shadis passed around sacks of flour at random.

"Just be lucky you don't have to do this in real life yet. This adult experience is fucking watered down already. If we could simulate the pain of childhood or the stench of a dirty diaper, we would. " Shadis' words were a stark contrast to Erwin's.

Either way, everyone was too distracted by the number they were getting and the whole prospect of having sack babies in the first place to even react to his words.

"We initially thought of using actual eggs or flour but if you're going to be taking care of this for the whole year…” Erwin fell silent for a second. “That would be disgusting."

The sack was definitely much lighter than what Levi had expected. He squeezed it, noting the firmness of the sack. It was stuffed with cotton. They thought some of it through at least.

Erwin turned on his projector, looking undisturbed by the awkward silence in the room. "By the end of this month, these are what I expect from all of you," He started. "An overview of career plans, a meal plan, a house design based on real estate prices around the area and a breakdown of house responsibilities."

He moved his tacky pointer towards the line on meal plans. "Every two weeks you and your partner go to the supermarket, assess grocery prices and submit me a list of groceries you would buy and a meal plan based on that for the family you have with you. Remember, you are still limited by your wage and each sack represents an extra mouth to consider when you make the meal plan. I will be sending a more detailed version with the deadlines and a prescribed format through email.”

The class was silent for a time. The only notable sounds coming from that room were the scratching of pencil and paper and a few sighs. Hange was taking notes next to Levi while the latter wondered why she even bothered when Erwin was going to send the rest of the information through email after all.

Erwin spent a good few seconds taking stock of everyone in the room before letting out a subtle sigh of his own. "Don't look too overwhelmed, these assignments will be incorporated into all your other classes anyway. Just don't expect teachers from other subjects to spoon feed you though. As much as possible we want you to learn to work with it independently."

                                         Division of Labor

Regardless of what Erwin said, everyone was left overwhelmed anyway. The prospect of having to deal with that heavy of a workload and having that performance affect their chances at college had people spending their precious one hour of lunch time with their partners.

Despite his generally antisocial personality, Levi was rarely alone for lunch. Most days he spent his breaks with his classmates Petra and Oluo. Sometimes Gunther and Eld from the other section would join in. That was unless he felt particularly compelled to spend a lunch break alone. It was as if everyone silently agreed to use that short hour to discuss and strategize with their partners. Levi did not even have time to protest that trend, as his own friends filed out of their seats with their partners, not even bothering to ask if he would be joining them for lunch.

Or did they even need to ask? Hange was right next to him, already taking out her lunch and looking at him expectantly. “Let’s go?”  

“Wait, who said we were having lunch together?”

Hange gestured subtly at the already empty room, as if to ask him “what else?” Levi cursed himself for even complaining about groupmates who never pulled their weight. At that moment, an overly enthusiastic groupmate seemed more unbearable and Levi almost wished he could have gotten a lazy and uninterested groupmate instead. At least then he’d be able to decide for himself when to start working.  

They sat on one of the picnic tables in the school courtyard, Hange with a boxed lunch and Levi with his homemade sandwich. Their two sack babies were stacked up to the side of the table.

"So what do we name them?" Hange asked.

Levi grabbed one of the sacks from the pile and propped it up on his lunch bag, an attempt to use that empty slate of a sack as a guide to imagining what should be a face.  With that, Levi could pretend they were at least kind of living and maybe they did deserve names.

"Flour," Levi suggested. His attempts to see life in faceless sacks came out fruitless.

"Let's try to be a little more creative Levi."

"Why do we even have to give names to these things? They're not even alive. Like nobody is gonna press charges if I stabbed it right now anyway."

"Because they're grading us,” Hange took out a permanent marker and carefully drew a smiling face one sack. She made sure to add a few lines of what looked to be bangs. As she went for the other sack, Levi could not help but notice the goofy smile that appeared on her face.

Levi narrowed his eyes. "You're enjoying this?”

"We’re here. Might as well enjoy it right?" Hange shrugged." If you're not gonna name them. I will." She propped the one she had just finished drawing on, up on Levi’s lunch bag. “This is Flora.” She continued drawing on the other sack. “And this is Fauna."

The names sounded to Levi like science terms he had learned too long ago and had wanted to forget. They flew into one ear and out the other within seconds and Levi had settled for internally naming the sacks the first thing he thought of when he saw Hange's artwork: “ugly bangs” and “eyelash.”

He made sure not to tell Hange though. She seemed way too enthusiastic about her naming choices.

                                         Division of Labor      

Although Levi did have a natural talent with numbers, this potential remained untapped through most of high school. The most apparent reason for this being the fact that the person teaching them Math, at one of the most important times in their high school life was an utter prick.

That utter prick of a Math teacher during their sophomore year made a comeback as their teacher for their junior year. He did not look too happy about it either. Levi at least shared that same sentiment.  

"So I'm supposed to be teaching you guys about taxes but really, believe me, you won't really use half of this shit, just hire an accountant.” Zeke Yaeger propped his feet on the teacher’s table, not bothering to even explain the table of tax rates he had flashed as a powerpoint slide next to him. “ Or... just get an employer, they’ll calculate it for you anyway.”

“Do you mean get a job sir?” It was Marco who so politely asked the question.

“Get a job, get an employer, same banana.” Zeke answered, in between gulps of coffee.

Somehow everyone knew that getting a job would probably be not as easy as the phrase “get an employer” implied it to be. Zeke was their teacher though and he probably knew much more than they did, given the decades of work experience he had in his belt.

“Don’t we need to know how to calculate our taxes based on the table?” Armin asked. He looked to his partner Annie who seemed to be furiously taking notes.

Zeke looked once again at the board for a few minutes before slamming his cup on the table, spilling out some coffee in the process. “Just remember, if your employer promises you 70,000 dollars a year, don’t be surprised when you end up taking home 50,000 dollars coz of some bullshit about the government needing money, insurance and retirement.” He rolled his eyes. “Not like we all live that long to enjoy that  K410 nonsense anyway.” He added bitterly, adding some venom on that part about that string of numbers in particular.

“If we own a business, how do we file them?” Annie asked.

“No one needs to know how to do this. Besides, you’re all in high school. Don’t stress yourself over this. Like I said before, just get an accountant.”

“What if we can’t afford an accountant?”

“Then don’t own a fucking business.” Zeke rolled his eyes. “Fine… Look, I didn’t prepare for that question, gimme a sec.”

The class watched as he closed the powerpoint, quickly opened an incognito window and went on google.

How to file taxes as business owners?

Zeke stared at the next few pages for what seemed like minutes, before clicking on one particular page.

“So yeah, it looks like you just fill out this form and send the money to the tax office.” He shrugged. “Your generation grew up with ipads glued to your faces. I’m sure you’re way better in googling shit than I am so yeah, just google the rest of what you need. Free period until your next class, now go talk about your fake taxes or your fake house or something.”

                                          Division of Labor

Even with the free period Zeke had so generously given them, no one was able to start anything until they got home. It was eight in the evening when Levi opened his school email to find the information on their next tasks, which was sent only a few minutes ago.

September*

Week 3

Housing plan (Wednesday)

Housing Design (Wednesday)

Daily routine

Meal Plan

Week 4

Breakdown of Responsibilities

*Unless otherwise stated, please submit output by Friday of said week  

Levi did not even have time to finish scanning through the guide to their housing plan task as his computer started to slow down, unable to take the quick scrolling. He soon realized it was not the scrolling that had made the computer so dysfunctional. On the lower right of his screen, he saw the notification.

Hange Zoe

New Message

The badge next to his messaging app, quickly rose from 12 unread messages to 26 to 45. Even the screen looked unable to display the messages properly. Wanting to save his computer from anymore torture, Levi grabbed his phone from his bed side and called his partner.

“If you have a lot of things you need to tell me, call .” Levi said, not even bothering to wait for a hello from Hange.

“Oh great! So you did get the messages! For a while I was wondering if your messenger app was broken.”

Levi looked back at the screen to see that the badge next to his app was already displaying a “99+.” If his application or his laptop was not broken then, it might break when he opens the application.

“What the hell are you sending anyway?” Levi asked, delaying the inevitable of having to open the messaging app.

“Links to houses for the housing plan,” Hange answered matter-of-factly. “Unless you’d rather I just say the links out loud for you to type it in the browser yourself.”

With a part of him so nervous at the possibly of his computer hanging or even breaking, Levi had ended having to slam his finger on his mouse when he opened the messaging app. He looked away not wanting to see how his computer tried to process the 99+ messages.

He lay on his bed opening the file on his phone.

“So, since I’m working freelance, I pretty much have a work from home job so we can live anywhere. We have two kids, so what do you think of a three bedroom house?”

“A ‘house house?” Levi looked around at his own living space which his uncle rented for him. He lived in a studio apartment and the concept of living in a house, even in a simulation seemed too unrealistic. “Like a house, with two floors, and multiple bedrooms?”

“And a garden!” Hange said excitedly. “So Flora and Fauna can run around.”

It took Levi a few seconds to comprehend that Hange was discussing their flour sack babies running around an imaginary garden. Levi was sure Hange was not an idiot though and had decided to at least entertain the expensive option of a fully furnished three bedroom house with a sprawling garden.  “And, how were the prices?” Levi walked back to his computer to see that most of his messages had already loaded.

“Well, I found some for 1500 dollars a month, others for 1800 dollars a month. I earn 3600 dollars a month apparently, so I don’t think spending half of it on rent would be too much right?”

“I mean, it’s your wages right?” Levi replied. In truth, a part of him just did not want to go through all one hundred houses Hange had linked him too on the messaging application just to decide on a house.

Hange sent a picture of a split level house, with a wide front garden. “This is my favorite! It comes with a large backyard. And it only costs 1800 dollars a month!”

Only 1800 dollars a month. Levi almost choked. The words “only” and “1800 dollars a month” just seemed too absurd to his ears that someone saying it so casually had him speechless even if Hange was talking about a three bedroom house with a sprawling garden. He cleared his throat. “You’re the breadwinner.”

“Okay! Let’s design the house! I’ll move to my laptop.”

For some reason, Levi had a bad feeling about the listing Hange had shown him. He quickly brushed it away as it came, attributing it to the fact that he never really grew up with enough money to entertain the idea of spending on luxuries. He lived with less than three hundred dollars a month after all, all funded by his absent uncle.

Hange had seemed confident with her decision though.

I’ll stick to what I know best. In the end, Levi decided to leave the larger purchases to Hange. Hehad confidence only in his ability to manage a household. Maybe he would be able to contribute then.

#levihan #levi ackerman #hange zoe #levi x hange #fanfic

[koalas-koalas-everywhere]

Can’t believe I wrote a fic about my shitpost. Can’t believe it’s the first thing outside of schoolwork that I’ve finished in years. Outrageous. Anyway, here’s fanboy!Matt for your enjoyment.

G-rated. Gen. 2,799 words. Follows Daredevil and Spider-Man comics continuity. If you clicked the link, you know what’s coming.

So it’s Spring of 1962 and everyone’s talking about a new sensation, some masked guy who does flips on TV. It sounds dismissive, but that’s exactly what intrigues Foggy and Matt about it the most - it sounds like gymnastics and lucha libre rolled into one, which doesn’t usually get this much attention outside of the Olympics. This guy, though. Apparently, he’d made some waves after beating a big name wrestler in an exhibition match. Well, to be honest, Matt doesn’t know how big of a wave, exactly, because he found out from his dad, who found out because he ran in those circles. It could be that the average person hadn’t known anything about this “masked wonder” or his fight, until that TV host started using it to promote his upcoming appearance at his show. 

Foggy and Matt missed it. They were on their last year of college, and had the work load to prove it. Besides, watching TV wasn’t their favorite pastime, even though Foggy had become a pro at narrating by then, and Matt’s dad had cultivated a healthy disdain for staged fights in him, which he had assumed was what the show was going to be about. So they were caught on the wrong foot the next day, when it was all anybody at campus would talk about. Apparently, there hadn’t been any fighting at all. It had been more like dancing, said some star-eyed students.  Or a circus act, said their jealous partners. Even ol’ reliable Battlin’ Murdock had verified, with a certain “well, I’ll be damned” lilt in his tone, that, if there had been any trick to it, it was good enough to fool him and worth the while for that alone. Matt ended the call, shared a “look” with Foggy (the one that they’d practiced with the intention of unsettling clients, witnesses and prosecutors alike one day, which had been Foggy’s idea once he’d noticed Matt’s uncanny ability to locate people and angle his head their way to make it look like he could actually see them) and agreed to watch this “Spider-Man’s” next appearance. Luckily for them, after his raging success, another show was scheduled a night later, so they didn’t spend much time out of the loop. Also, they’d hired a commentator to explain to the audience (and thus, further impress them with) each of the stunts that their man pulled and assure them of their difficulty, which was always a plus to a blind guy “watching” a TV show.

Matt confessed to some excitement. He liked gymnastics. He liked to do them, of course, but he also liked it when others did it, especially when it was only described to him and he had to reconstruct the image out of his own muscle memory, the remembered sensations of coiling and pushing and tight breathing and weightlessness. That is, he liked it if it was described right, which this commentator didn’t do. He’d start well enough, saying, for example, that the spider guy was doing a forward somersault, but then he’d correct himself and say it was an aerial walkover. Or that he was doing a scissors leap, but he’d change it to an aerial cartwheel but horizontal? What even was that? It didn’t sound possible! Even the commentator didn’t seem to know. Matt had to assume that he was trying to compensate for the spider guy’s sloppiness by making up stuff and that, judging by the crowd’s and Foggy’s reactions, his efforts were paying off. Maybe this Spider-Man guy had some sort of sight-based, charismatic showmanship he was missing out on, he sneered in his mind.

(What Matt didn’t know, of course, is that he was right, and “this Spider-Man guy” wouldn’t know gymnastic training  or form if it bit him in the butt. His thought process during all of it was more along the lines of “if I flip now, it’ll leave them all gagging!” And it did! Everyone except for the blind guy who couldn’t see it to believe it and thought he was at just the beginning of what promised to be a very frustrating show.)

Then it happened. Matt was sitting in disgruntled silence while Foggy described the guy’s “web”, which had aided him in his latest pirouette, thinking that everyone who’d paid to attend was getting scammed, when the commentator’s narration reached a near feverish pitch as he followed the latest string of stunts. The spider guy switched to multiple handsprings in a row, sometimes adorned with round offs or cartwheels or a random flip that was neither here nor there, but it was obvious from the change and the audience’s sudden tension that he was working up to something. Right when Mat was wondering just how long the stage was, the commentator announced a sudden leap forward into the air (twenty feet up? How could anyone buy this?). The commentator’s voice grew alarmed in a split second, screams came from the public just as Foggy’s breath caught and his heart rate accelerated. Matt returned to his previous thoughts — sloppy— a showman not a gymnast— no more space on the stage— and lunged for the remote. Like Hell were they going to watch a man get killed on TV. 

He might have made it in time, if he hadn’t had to rely on others’ reactions, so much slower than his own and oh-so-much slower than Spider-Man. As it was, a brief struggle with Foggy over the remote that ended with them falling off the couch was enough to let him hear a thud… and the crowd go wild with applause. He thought, well, that’s callous, before Foggy’s gasped out, “He landed on the!”

And he was much better at judging Foggy’s emotional state (and morals) than that of strangers on a screen, so he knew, “Wait, he’s alive?”

“He’s standing on the!”

“He’s alive?!” he repeated.

“He’s on the! He’s crouching on the! Now he’s! Oh! Oh! He’s crawling! Oh! Oh… er, I get the spider thing now. That’s creepy. He’s, ha, he’s creeping. He’s a creepy-crawly.”

“Fog, what the hell? He can’t walk?! Is there a doctor to help him?!” How could everyone be so happy with a man so hurt he was crawling? Was it the relief that he hadn’t died making them loopy?

“No, Matt.” Foggy grabbed his shoulder and shook him. “He’s crawling down the wall!”

“Do a flip!” came a shout from the TV.

“Well, no, I can’t do flips up here, Max,” came Spider-Man’s voice. Gasps. “I’ve gotta toe the line!”

“He’s only got a toe on the wall, he’s got that leg folded behind him and holding the rest of his body parallel to the wall, now,” Foggy explained, awed. Through a mind hazy from the shock, Matt recognized that it would have been a very bad pun… if Spider-Man hadn’t been defying the laws of physics as he made it.

“Wait, actually, I can!” Thud and applause. “But only once!”

The act proceeded to something very much like a talk show, if talk shows were regularly interrupted by the guest pulling stunts like pirouettes or tricks with his webbing or lifting the host’s chair, host included, with the tips of his fingers. More or less what he’d been doing all along, except now Matt believed it.

“Wow,” he said slowly. “What a showboat.” Sprawled on the floor of Foggy’s living room, he knew. He would go to one of Spider-Man’s acts in person, one day.

He pestered Foggy with questions. Asked him for details where the commentator, only there to explain the technical aspects of the stunts and not to function as a disability device, wouldn’t cut it. Asked him to describe the stage. The set-up. The audience. The man himself.

(“Uh, average? I mean, muscly, but lean, not too imposing. Average height, a bit taller than the host, maybe? Then again, I don’t know how tall the host is… Looks like a spider.”

“How can he look like a spider as tall as a man and average at the same time?!”

“Well, no, he’s dressed like a spider.”

“Like—”

“No, no, forget that, not like a spider… a spider motif! Yeah, it’s a skin tight suit with webs drawn on it, with boots and gloves like that, too. Uh, plain pants and stuff. A mask all over his head, with more webs and blank, creepy, buggy eyes! Oh, and web armpits! Sort of like a flying squirrel. Do you think he’ll fly?”

He didn’t.)

By the end, once they were already back at campus and going to bed, Foggy seemed to have gotten over the childish wonder and commented, “could’a been all smokes and mirrors, y’know. Invisible ropes.”

Matt smiled and told him that he hadn’t seen enough to form an opinion either way. Foggy grumbled a bit and said something about mimes and muscle control before falling asleep.

Matt’s smile didn’t go away. He knew. There was no smoke, no mirrors, no invisible rope beside those webs. Spider-Man was the real deal. He was like Matt.

It was very embarrassing to become the intended target of those “don’t try this at home” messages. At least, he’d confirmed the relative possibility of Spider-Man’s most ambitious gymnastics feats. That is, that some of them weren’t possible for human beings. He supposed it was a good thing that people thought he was so helpless that he could explain his sprained wrist away as the result of a simple stumble on a sidewalk, and not a failed attempt to recreate that scissors leap/horizontal aerial cartwheel. Then again, knowledge was its own kind of reward, because he’d found out that some of Spider-Man’s tricks were possible, especially for someone with Matt’s pinpoint precision, reflexes and control over his own body. He just had to let go of caution and trust his senses.

Over the next few days, he didn’t miss a single one of Spider-Man’s shows. On TV, of course. Following through on his plans to go to one live was a luxury he couldn’t afford as a Columbia law major, not on his schedule and not on his dime. He loathed the thought of asking his dad for more money when he was already putting him through college, if he’d even agree instead of urging him to forget that Spider-Man nonsense and focus on his studies. It’d be hard to justify such an expense when, as far as he knew, his son wouldn’t even be able to tell what was going on. How to explain that he’d be able to follow the act better that anyone else there? Or the sheer need to stand in front of someone and sense their otherness, the way only like can recognize like? There was no way. He’d have to wait until he had his own job and no one to question him on his expenses.

One of those plans of mice and men. Not a month later, Spider-Man was making headlines for a whole different reason. He’d caught a murderer. Apparently, a home burglary had gone wrong and in a turn of events that only the man himself understood, he’d ended up bringing the culprit to justice. People’s minds went to the Fantastic Four, naturally. What did they have to say about a new superhero? Would he join them? Would he work solo, like that one scientist who gave himself ant powers? Could he be trusted with public safety? Was it even his plan to turn to fighting crime or was it a one time thing? Would his act continue? Tabloids said no, Maxwell Shiffman, Spider-Man’s producer (the most embarrassing part of the whole affair for Matt — having learned the name of a tv personality), said yes. Matt didn’t know what to believe. Of course, the news would make that assumption without any proof. What better way to cause drama, after all? “Everything stays the same, same old, same old” wouldn’t sell. But it wasn’t like Shiffman would admit the loss of the greatest tv sensation of the decade so easily. Anyone could be lying, or wrong.

As it turned out, they were both right, after a fashion. Spider-Man took to crime fighting, but he did go back for one last show, which Matt missed because it hadn’t been advertised as such, at all. After that, though, no more. Full-time do-gooder, was he. Matt wasn’t really bitter, but he’d admit to a bit of disappointment. Oh, sure, it was for the best, he was glad there was someone out there helping people. Still. He wished he’d gotten the chance to meet the now-hero.

He wasn’t quite thinking of that missed opportunity when he decided to buy tickets to his dad’s fight soon after, but the experience had left the lingering impression that it was best to grab your chances while you had them. He definitely didn’t spare half a thought to Spider-Man in the following months. It wasn’t quite outside of the realm of possibilities, though, that maybe, just maybe, when he devised his billy club and his preferred method of travel, some part of his subconscious flashed back to Spider-Man’s webs and thought, “that’s the way to go”.

There were also other people like them running around by then. Iron Man. The X-Men. The Avengers. A wizard, or something? There were rumors about people who knew people who knew someone who’d seen a Norse God fighting rock aliens going around, but Matt was a Catholic, so whatever. 

It would figure, though, that with all that new variety, Spider-Man would still be the first other superhero he’d meet, and that it wouldn’t be as Daredevil, but as Matt Murdock, blind lawyer and seemingly attempted murder victim. It was a bit of a let down, t he way it went down. He could have dealt with those crooks. He’d wanted to. Then again, maybe it wasn’t the feat he should judge but the form - it was all over and done in a minute, and it had taken Spider-Man longer to wrap the four of them up than to take them down. That was impressive. He couldn’t help but feel a bit cheated, though.

Boy, would he change his tune not one day later. Spider-Man, in an actual circus act! It was everything he’d hoped it’d be, if he ignored the part of him that had grown a little too much in the last year to appreciate it as he might have, back then. It even distracted him from the Foggy/Karen situation for a bit. Spider-Man had a whole host of apparatuses now, which made his act even more impressive, according to Foggy. The poor guy tried to keep him on the loop, despite the noise of the frenzied crowd, but he had enough trouble keeping up himself. Spider-Man’s movements were quick and fanciful and playful. Matt was sure he was making up the routine as he went, often changing his mind mid-air. His private chuckle every time he pulled a particularly complicated stunt (which were most of them), or thought of a new joke or trick with which to drive the audience to bits made engendered a sense of rapport in Matt. He acted like there was nothing more enjoyable than hurtling himself from beam to unsteady circus beam several feet above the ground, and he got it. God, did Matt get it. He had to resist the temptation to go up and have a bit of fun on the tightrope himself.

Not for long, though. He got his chance on the stage, sure enough, as he half tried to save a hypnotized Spider-Man, half tried to escape him. Despite the advantage of a clear mind, he barely made it by the skin of his teeth. Then, Spider-Man’s sincere gratitude and kind of corny promise that “a Spider-Man never forgets!” suddenly brought home how young he was. Barely older than he’d been when he’d been blinded and got his powers. He was so caught up between this realization and an odd feeling of validation, like he’d been officially accepted into the ranks, that he almost gave his super-hearing away with a careless comment. 

His insights didn’t change the fact that, when the other hero benched him so he could take his pound of flesh, clever little Matthew just went back to his seat. After all, who else could say they’d gotten two live shows from the Amazing Spider-Man?

He couldn’t resist a small barb, though. “I couldn’t have done it much better myself.” Yes, the guy was cool and all, but they were peers now. No need to get mushy.

#Daredevil #Matt Murdock #Foggy Nelson #Spider-Man #Peter Parker #comics #fan fiction #Matt can have a little a parasociality #as a treat

[devintrinidad]

Charlastor Week #5: Date

“Why, pray tell, are we here again?” Alastor fingered his binoculars as he gazed at the scene below them. On his face, his usual smile was pinched and wavered so slightly when he caught a glance of something that he would rather not look at. “From what I can see, our presence is not needed.”

“Because,” Charlie stressed as she, too, adjusted the binoculars that rested on her eyes. “We need to make sure that Angel Dust is okay.”

Alastor sighed and set his binoculars to rest on his chest, the straps of the binocular allowing him to do so. He tapped Charlie lightly on the shoulder, careful to not allow his claws to accidentally dig into her clothing.

“I may not be the most knowledgeable concerning…. whatever this is, but I assume our neighborhood spider knows what he’s doing. After all, doesn’t he do this for a living?” He gestured towards the aforementioned spider demon who, if one were to look closely, was smiling contently in the presence of another. “I know that you’re worried about your first patient, but isn’t this an invasion of privacy?”

Charlie fumbled for words as she tried to justify what she was doing. On one hand, she truly cared for Angel. She loved him like a brother and she knew that he felt the same for her. It had taken a while, a few years in fact, but Angel went from outright sabotaging gangster to a harmless, annoying prankster. His tendencies for evil were curbed and he was, for the lack of a better word, almost angelic. Perhaps this year, he would be eligible for an appointment from a few angels from Heaven. Of course, it would be a slow process, but Charlie knew that he had it in him. As for this current situation, well…

Could you blame Charlie for being so careful? She didn’t want Angel to be corrupted by the common sinner or worse, she didn’t want him to get his heart broken after months of therapy about his self-esteem and purpose in life.

Therefore, it was up to Charlie and whoever was willing to help her, to make sure that Angels’ progress was heavily monitored.

In this case, they were monitoring Angel’s date with a newbie who had fallen into Hell only a few weeks ago.

“Come on, Al! I thought you were all for entertainment no matter how unethical it may seem.”

“That, my dear, applies to murder, cannibalism, and general discontent. This,” he grandly gestured to the scene below, “is trivial, and frankly, disturbing.” His eyes widened in disbelief as he adjusted the clarity of the binoculars’ lenses. “What are they doing with their mouths?”

Charlie gasped and did the same. “Oh my gosh!!!” She squealed with happiness. “They’re kissing and they look so happy together and—“

Alastor clapped a hand over her mouth, which caused Charlie to look up at him in question.

“Careful, dearest. Do you really want all of Pentagram City to know that you’re stalking one of your patients? I may not care about the hotel’s main theme, but it would hinder our business.”

“Ugggghhhh, fine, “ she answered, though her voice was heavily muffled by the hand that was held over her mouth. She pushed Alastor’s hand away from her own before magicking her binoculars into a pocket dimension for safe keeping. “Since it appears our presence isn’t needed, what do you want to do?”

“The Princess of Hell in want of something to do, with me, the infamous Radio Demon? Why—“ He placed a clawed hand over his heart, a mocking look on his face. “—I haven’t felt like swooning ever since my mother last pinched my cheeks!”

“Har de har har.” Without warning, Charlie took hold of Alastor’s elbow and steadily guided him in the opposite direction of Angel’s date. All the while, she ignored how Alastor’s radio static gradually began to feel less like a radio tuning into different channels and more like a satanic ritual gone wrong.

There was a lot of screaming and moaning of the damned.

“Lighten up, Alastor!” Charlie tugged him even closer as their footsteps went from a casual stroll to outright running. “This is gonna be fun!”

Alastor’s smile tightened in annoyance.

~~~

“When I said that entertainment applied only to murder, cannibalism, and general discontentment, I didn’t mean that the general discontentment should apply to me.”

“I don’t know… I feel like this is plenty entertaining.”

“My dear, I’ve lured hordes of demons into the pitch darkness of insanity just by hearing my broadcasts. Don’t assume that you are the sole exception.”

Much to his dismay, instead of the fear that Alastor craved, Charlie merely nodded at his little spiel and politely—politely!—booped him on the nose.

Twice.

Charlie and Alastor were seated at a small cafe that Vaggie and Charlie used to frequent before life at the hotel became too hectic. Inside, there were demons that were punished for lower level sins: theft, suicide, being a disturbance to the rest of society, etc. The patrons were often undisturbed and polite, at least when compared to the rest of the denizens of Hell. In fact, when the hotel had first opened, most of those who had frequented this establishment had actually gave a thought into joining the redemption business. Not all were redeemed, however, but everyone was in a work in progress.

As it were, Charlie was entranced by the newer additions on the menu while Alastor was nursing a mug of black coffee. His arms were crossed in front of his chest, his feet tapped nonsensically on the hardwood flooring, and his smile was strained at best.

“I feel like I want to order,” Charlie announced as she snapped the menu shut. She assessed Alastor’s position and the fact that his menu was busy acting like a coaster for his coffee. Like always, his eyes were trained on hers—creepy, but not as much as when they had first met. “What say you, Al?”

He gave a long suffering sigh before gesturing towards the soup section on his menu. “Probably not the most palatable of choices, but it will have to do.”

“Food snob,” Charlie lightly teased. “You won’t like it until you try it.”

He arched an eyebrow, his foot ceasing its tapping. “Does that apply to this situation?”

“Kind of? Look, it’s been a while since we’ve had some downtime without business hanging over our heads. Why not just have some fun for a couple hours before we start filing our taxes and whatnot.” Charlie stirred in some sugar into her tea and inhaled the inviting aroma. “I mean, if Angel can go on a date, then why not us?”

Alastor’s radio static, which had been a low murmur for the majority of time they had been staying at the cafe—at Charlie’s request, of course—suddenly stopped. The dead silence, which had been foreign to Charlie ever since the Radio Demon had shown up at her door, had most of the patrons that were brave enough to withstand the Radio Demon’s presence running. However, Charlie had been more than acquainted with Alastor at this point—at this point, they could be considered friends—and she simply took another calming sip of her tea. Gone were the days where she felt socially awkward and shy around her dear friend. A perturbed Alastor was still an Alastor that didn’t have the means to hurt her. She was too powerful for that, anyway.

Besides, Alastor looked like he had sucked on the world’s sourest lemon than angry.

Which was obviously a big improvement.

“Would you care to repeat that, Charlie?”

“Fine. I’ll rephrase it.” Charlie leaned forward into Alastor space, causing him to jerk backward and away from her. The radio silence continued and Charlie couldn’t help but smirk at Alastor’s… lack of bravado. “You. Me. On a date. Now.”

Alastor blanched at that and for a moment, Charlie almost felt bad.

But this was Hell, she was the Princess of all of Hell, and she would be damned if she didn’t feel a little vindicated for all the times that Alastor had scared her in the past. Revenge was sweet whenever she was serving it.

Soon, the usual radio static resumed, although it sounded like he was flipping through channels before settling on something that sounded like slow jazz.

“Trying to lift the mood?”

“Were you requesting that we go on a date right now or…” Alastor almost sounded embarrassed. He fiddled with the tie that was wound tight against his throat and his ears, cute little things they were, had lain flat against his head. “… are we already on one?”

“Depends. You get to decide. Either way, we are going to enjoy ourselves.” With that note of finality, Charlie turned back to her tea and enjoyed the sweetness that settled gently against her tongue.

Alastor’s ear’s seemed to shudder against his head before he, too, took a sip of his preferred drink.

“A date.” He shook his head at that colloquialism, a disturbed look on his features. “Back in my day, we would call it courting and it was usually the gentleman coaxing the dame and not the other way around.”

Charlie shrugged. “It’s the twenty-first century and counting. You either get with the times or you’ll eventually be left in the dust.” She giggled quietly to herself. In a voice no louder than a mouse’s whisper, she said, “I’m older than you, but you’re acting like an old man.”

Alastor’s ears twitched in irritation. “I heard that, dear.”

“I would be surprised if you didn’t. Now, about that date?”

“I should have known that you wouldn’t forget.” Alastor drummed his fingers atop the table. The jazz that was playing in the background seemed to grow  little distorted and erratic the faster that Alastor continued his little drumming session until—

“I suppose we might as well make the most of our time spent right in the here and now.” He still looked a little perturbed, but the jazz had returned and the smile that was on his face was one of gentle consideration. He had agreed. “But please, nothing untoward and violating the five—“

“The five foot rule,” Charlie chimed in, looking like she had won a million dollars worth of gold. “Don’t worry, Al! I got your back! It’s not like I would make you do anything that would make you uncomfortable.”

“This farce of a date says otherwise.” Voice dry, Alastor hummed a few bars of an old musical number he heard when he was a boy and proceeded to stand from his seat. Any demons that had not left the vicinity began to run out the doors or fall unconscious to the ground—staff included. “However, I suppose that I must bend one of my rules just this once.”

A little worried that she may have pushed his buttons a little farther and harder than what was necessary, Charlie also stood up—albeit, a little too hastily so that her seat toppled to the ground.

“Alastor, what are—“

He took both of her hands in his and smiled a smile that was fit for one of the most mischievous imps in all of Hell.

“What is a date without a little entertainment?” He whistled low under his breath and immediately, there was a change in lighting, scenery, and even the table that they had occupied appeared to be heavily laden with food. “Care for a dance, my dear?”

Charlie looked in awe at their arrangements before pulling in Alastor close so that their bodies were flush with each other. She could feel both of their bodies melding into each other as their feet seemed to know what to do.

“It would be my pleasure, Alastor.”

#charlastor week 2020 #charlastorweek2020 #charlastor week #charlastorweek #charlastor #chalastor #charlie magne #alastor #hazbin hotel #devin trinidad #devintrinidad #devin trinidad author #devintrinidad author

[sharinluna]

Chapter 16 Analysis - The Greatest of These is Love

I try to stick to the canon English version text as much as possible. But in this analysis I had to take some liberties and merge my own translation, because sometimes Elex translation just doesn’t fit with the purpose of my analysis. So please excuse me.

1. Hades’s Reset Plan

A Black Swan member called Hades is trying to put his Reset Plan to action.

Hades: Complete slaughter is the highest respect one can pay to a civilization. Not everyone is fit to become an Evolver. This world belongs to us, and those low-level creatures that do nothing but breed had lived too long.

The rest of Black Swan is skeptical about this plan however, calling it “a powerless clown’s ridiculous trick.” However, Hades thinks the Reset Plan should be carried out because “the previous operations were too slow.”

We can speculate here that what Hades’s trying to do is considered unreasonably aggressive and nonsensically radical even to Black Swan. Hades wants Ares to work with him, but Ares maintains a “Let’s see how well you do on your own first” attitude.

2. Flu Investigation

The news on the TV was talking about a new, mysterious flu that was sweeping the city. The presenting symptoms were the same as regular flu: cold, fever, weakness. They’re calling it a flu, but none of the current antibiotics or cold medications are effective against it. There haven’t been any deaths, but the number of infected has been steadily increasing. The national laboratories have all been working to find a pathogen, but to no result. The virus is spreading faster than anything, and lack of information is making people more worried.

Perry from chapter 15 had this flu. It seems that this strange influenza is spreading. When Yōurán arrives at her office, she overhears the security guards talking and gets suspicious.

Guard A: Did you hear? Smitty got sick. His wife said he couldn’t remember her.

He didn’t even remember his own wife… How is that a symptom of a flu?

Gavin is away and Victor is in the future. Lucien turned Ares on her and Kiro is missing. Yōurán consults the only Evolver she knows: Dr. Song(the Evolver doctor from chapter 13). They figure out the truth of this flu.

Yōurán: Demographics typically vulnerable to diseases like the elderly and small children only make up a small percentage of the infected. Most are in their primes.

Usually, the elderly and small children who have weaker immune systems are the likely target for the flu. But this time, it’s the opposite. Healthy, young people are getting infected by this new flu instead.

Dr. Song: That’s right. Aside from that, I’ve found that out of all the infected, not one is an Evolver. My guess is that the virus is selecting based on genetics.

As the both women figure out, the virus is intentionally infecting healthy, strong, ordinary non-Evolvers.

Later, Yōurán goes to visit a flu patient.

His file said he’d been in a coma for about 10 days, during which he got up once as if sleep walking and tried to assault bystanders with a blunt object. His symptoms were the same as Perry.

She uses her powers to see the man’s future to get the next clue.

I saw him fallen on the ground, his face pale, his eyes about to bulge out of his head, his entire body shaking.

Pretty familiar with Perry at the end of chapter 15, right?

Let’s link their findings with Hades’s Reset Plan. I’m going to guess what Hade’s Reset Plan is in four steps.

Step 1: Hades spreads the virus.

Step 2: The virus infects healthy non-Evolvers who are likely to survive the symptoms.

Step 3: Some people manage to overcome the virus by “evolving”, aka attaining Evol genes and becoming Evolvers. Those who cannot form Evol genes or cannot handle the process die.

Step 4: All non-Evolvers are dead and only Evolvers are left on this earth.

3. Two Conflicting Feelings.

News: Lucien Bioscience Research Center announced a press conference for tomorrow regarding a new reagent targeting the recent flu outbreak.

It had been a long while since I’d heard that name. Ever since that day he disappeared from my life. I asked myself once, did I hate him? But the answer was no. This world is not black and white, and I won’t judge people using just one perspective of right and wrong.

Even though Lucien “betrayed” Yōurán in chapter 13, she can’t hate him. Still, it hurts so much that she doesn’t want to think about him ever again. But that alone tells us that she has lingering feelings for him yet.

I didn’t know what I was running away from. Was I scared to hear those doubts I’d already heard straight from his mouth? Did I want to avoid confirming that this virus was connected to him, so that my rational mind wouldn’t be able to connect the dots? Or was it… that I just didn’t want to face him?

She has two conflicting feelings. She wants to go to the conference and see Lucien again, but at the same time, she wants to stay far away from him to avoid dealing with all this.

In flight or fight, Yōurán has never chosen the former. She decides to go to the press conference regardless of what the consequences might be.

4. The Press Conference

The press conference is my favorite scene in chapter 16 nay, the entire End of Abyss arc. Sadly, I saw a lot of translation errors in this part and some word choices were just not adequate. So please excuse me if some of the quotes are not exactly word-for-word of the Elex version text.

Lucien: I wish that more people would be test subjects. The advance of science is a continuous sacrifice. And deaths and injury along the way due to mistakes are inevitable.

I couldn’t help but worry for him. What was Lucien trying to do speaking cruel truths so frankly? For him, this was all perfectly reasonable. An unpleasant feeling welled up inside me. I wanted to get out of here.

Notice here that Yōurán doesn’t exactly think that Lucien is wrong. She just thinks that he is being cruel. She said earlier that she doesn’t hate Lucien based on the fact that there’s no one correct principle of right and wrong. However, his nonchalant attitude of accepting inevitable deaths as “reasonable” is what upsets her.

Yōurán: I want to ask Professor Lucien a question. What is this “sacrifice” you speak of?

Lucien: Physiological death.

Yōurán: That is to say, it’s normal to sacrifice the minority for the whole of society?

Lucien: Yes. I personally wholeheartedly agree with this statement.

It’s easy to misunderstand her stance on this because Yōurán is against sacrifice in general. But she doesn’t say that sacrifice should be forbidden at all costs. However, a society that demands individual sacrifice to maintain itself is problematic.

Lucien: Like the classic Trolley Problem. Choosing left or right will both land you in a moral quandary. But in reality, whether it’s for societal advancement or not, many people will be eliminated for a variety of reasons, by death or other means. So whether we want to face it or not, survival of the fittest is an eternal principle of existence. It’s what keeps humanity going.

Yōurán: In your eyes, is life so capricious? All life forms should be respected. Every one of us is doing their best to survive. It’s what every person desires and deserves. Their will to keep on living is their right. And you can’t deprive people of this.

Lucien talks that the survival of the fittest is the principle, while Yōurán talks about the natural rights that all people are inherently born with. Every individual on earth have a right to live. She is asking Lucien: Are you so readily throwing that out the window for the continuation of the rest of society?

Yōurán: Maybe you didn’t notice, but there are hospitals full of critically ill people. They may be comatose, but their consciousness still cling to life. Kids in foster care, the broke and homeless, they’re all struggling to survive.

I was confused at first when she said this, but now I understand what she is saying. There may be some volunteers for Lucien’s research, but believing that all test subjects will be willing participants is naïve.

Realistically, homeless people, those who can’t afford continued medical care, or people who have little to no financial support will be the ones who’ll be so-called “volunteers” for this experiment. While the rich sit back and wait for the cure to come out that’s based on the lives of these unfortunate sacrifices. Sacrificing these people with low socioeconomic status to sustain the rest in the name of “survival of the fittest” is a form of discrimination.

Lucien: You have a point. But you speak from the point of view of the minority, and therein arises the paradox. People cannot think in purely logical terms. That is a property of the divine. From primitive society to today, humanity has been sacrificed in political struggle, and died on the battlefields of war. But for some of these people, that sacrifice has been pointless. Fairness is not the only principle. As a cornerstone of civilization, survival stands above all. If it can bring incredible progress, then that sacrifice shouldn’t even require their permission.

But to Lucien, all of that throughout the history of wars and political struggle can be justified in the name of survival. He goes further and says that for survival, people should be sacrificed even against their will.

Sidenote: My thoughts.

Figuring out what’s right and wrong is always difficult and there’s no one right answer. But I lean more on Yōurán’s side. Historically, researches like Lucien’s have always been unethical. We should outgrow the necessary evil of human subject research.

“Sacrifice the few for the whole” is a touchy subject. In reality, many people in position of power or the majority have used that logic to justify their oppression of the minority. And many times humanity chose to sacrifice a small part of their society instead of looking for an alternate solution because it’s more efficient or faster.

Even if sacrifices are unavoidable, the attitude of how you treat people to be sacrificed is important. Do you respect them and feel guilty? Are you careful not to treat them as mere tools for a goal? Did you try your very best to minimize the sacrifice? Did you keep looking for other options until there was absolutely no choice left? I’m afraid that Lucien’s answers for these questions would be all negatives. He is too practical. He doesn’t care about sentiment. If it’s a way to solve problems efficiently he just does it with no emotional attachments, because they are a hindrance to achieving what has to be done.

But when it comes to these matters, maybe we need some hindrances that come from our conscience. Maybe feeling regret is the courtesy we owe to the people we killed so that we could live. Being indifferent to sacrifices is worse than the sacrifice itself. Reluctance and hesitance should always be accompanied when deciding whether we should sacrifice or not. Because when sacrificing a part of us becomes too easy, we will keep chucking out bits and pieces until there is none of us left.

5. Trying to Sever Ties (and Failing)

The conversation between the two becomes more personal at this point.

Yōurán: If… the person to be sacrificed was you, would you be willing?

Lucien: I would. If it meant allowing humanity to take a great stride forward, I would happily do so.

Yōurán: And what if it was someone important to you?

But Lucien just looks at her, not answering the question. Thinking that the unspoken answer is “Yes”, Yōurán falls into despair. At this point, she gives up on him.

Yōurán: Thank you for your answer, and good luck with your research, but I could never support your beliefs. Because in my heart there’s something that will always be more important than survival.

In chapter 16, Yōurán tries to sever all ties with Lucien, but she still has lingering attachments. I already said this in my chapter 15 analysis. The importance of “bonds” is a key element in her nature. No matter how hard she tries, her connection to Lucien can never be cut. Even if it pains her, she cannot bring herself to discard it.

Yōurán: My relationship with Professor Lucien is purely for business, and in the future Miracle Finder will have a new program consultant. I ask that everyone focus on the press conference. Excuse me.

Later she founds out that she left behind the pen Lucien gave her. She can’t abandon it and goes back for it, but when she’s found it she gives it back to Lucien.

Lucien gave her the pen as a way of giving his heart and she is giving it back to him. But because of what happened in chapter 13 he understands and accepts it back.

However, he’s not so accepting that he’s losing yet another connection with her: an excuse to approach her again. Probably the last one left.

Lucien: I just learned I’ve been let go from Miracle Finder. Is it out of line to ask for an explanation?

Yōurán: You’ve strayed from the principles that Miracle Finder strives to uphold. In my mind, the Miracle Finder is about justice and tolerance.

Lucien: Very understandable. I accept your explanation.

Yōurán refuses him because their principles are complete opposite. Lucien accepts her decision but this time she’s the one who’s hesitant to let him go.

Yōurán: Wait! Are you connected with this recent flu?

Please, oh please let your answer be no.

She is just desperately clutching at straws here. She knows what the answer is.

Lucien: Yes.

Hearing those words, something came crashing down in my heart.

Confirmation that she and Lucien are walking different paths.

6. Even if I Had the Gift of Prophesy

Lucien: The justice and goodness you uphold, has it gotten you the results you want? Is that what you think is more important than survival? I’d also like to know, in the face of what you value, would you sacrifice someone important to you?

In the press conference, Yōurán asked Lucien if he would sacrifice someone important for his survival of the fittest belief. Here Lucien is asking her the same thing. Would she abandon someone important to her to uphold her belief of what’s right?

Before she can answer, she is attacked (by Hades) and Lucien instantly pulls her into his arms protecting her.

An instant worry and fear flashed in his eyes, as if… he was afraid of losing something precious. But that look vanished instantly.

Time seemed to have jumped back to a month ago, when he was still Lucien. At that time he was also holding me tight like this… protecting me.

Yōurán: Are you alright? Thanks for saving me.

Lucien: I was just ensuring your safety.

Yōurán: My safety…. is needed in your plan, right?

Lucien: Of course. I don’t engage in worthless endeavors.

The last time we faced off, the people dressed in black also said to make sure I was alive. It was always like that. So all those times he protected me before was also like that.

To Yōurán, it seems like Lucien is saving her just because he needs her alive to use in his scheme. That his feelings for her were not real.

Lucien: Now, answer my question.

Lucien was still blocking my path. I couldn’t see his face clearly through the haze. Maybe this haziness was for the better.

To Yōurán, Lucien’s true intentions has always been vague since chapter 13. Does he care for her? Or was all that a lie? Him giving mixed signals in chapter 16 certainly doesn’t help. 

In the end, she decides to go along with this vagueness. She cannot abandon her principles nor can she abandon her ties with Lucien. Without the haze, she would have to face the fact that Lucien is blocking her “path” her belief. In ambiguity, she doesn’t have to choose one for the other.

Yōurán: I wouldn’t. If I had the gift of prophesy and knew all kinds of secrets and knowledge… If I had faith to move mountains, but didn’t have love, then none of it would count for anything. The truth of this world unfolds itself for people only through disappointment and suffering. Even if the light’s source is put out, I’d still try to keep my own shining. No matter how difficult, or how dark it gets. Or how foolish or ridiculous. Someone very important to me once taught me that, and I’ll never forget it.

Lucien first quoted The Corinthians in chapter 13 “For now we see through a glass, darkly.”

Now, Yōurán is quoting lines from The Corinthians too. “If I had the gift of prophesy and knew all kinds of secrets and knowledge… If I had faith to move mountains, but didn’t have love, then none of it would count for anything.”

It’s delicious irony that Lucien is the one who taught her to keep following her own principle when he himself is against it.

In this scene, Yōurán’s greatest strength shines in her words. She may not have powers to move mountains, she may not have all secrets and knowledge. But she has faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. Against all odds, she will never stop pursuing the light.

7. Despite Everything, My Heart Still Goes out to You

In a flash, an unlikely person popped into my head. Why would I think of him? The next image in my mind was the anxious way he looked at me during that danger just now. I closed my eye and decided to take a chance. That he’d save me, that what I’d seen in his eyes was really there.

After their confrontation, Yōurán faces danger in a deserted alley. She remembers the fleeting moment when she thought she saw genuine fear in Lucien’s eyes and decides to gamble on that to ensure her safety. 

Also, even with her multiple tries to sever Lucien from her heart, in times of danger, her thoughts automatically go to him. At the least, Ares said that he needed her alive for his scheme.

And she won in this gamble. Because he did come for her.

Yōurán: Did you really come to save me?

Lucien: I am a man of my word.

Yōurán: Is that also for your goal too?

Lucien: Yes.

Although I had guessed it, hearing it from his own mouth made my heart sink.

Lucien is only telling the half-truth here. His heart truly yearns for her and wants her to be safe. But he doesn’t tell her that, letting Yōurán think that she is just a means to his end.

Meanwhile, Yōurán is still wavering between seeing him as Lucien and seeing him as Ares. Her head tells her that he is her enemy Ares, but her heart keeps pining after Lucien, the gentle scholar who asked her to teach him how to love in New Light Date.

But we already know what her answer will be. She subconsciously keeps reaching out for him.

Lucien: Why aren’t you asking me about what just happened?

Yōurán: But you’re bleeding…

She just saw Lucien kill a man in cold blood(well, it turns out later that this was just a dream and not real but still) but instead of being scared she is worried that he is injured.

Hades thinks that Yōurán is Ares’s weak spot and tries to use her to threaten Ares into working with him.

Lucien: You think the weak spots I let you see, are really weak spots?

But Lucien is one step of Hades. He already knew that Hades would try to get to Yōurán and devised a way to get back at him.

Lucien: Remember the exit I told you about. Cross over. Don’t hesitate.

My heart sunk like lead, and a sudden, intense feeling of dread welled up, almost to my throat.

Lucien: Now, leave my side.

Yōurán: No! You…

Lucien: Do as I say. I will find you.

He spoke in that familiar old tender tone, and then the next second, he shoved me away.

Yōurán: Lucien!

Lucien turned his head and gazed into my eyes. His eyes were as before, tender as the falling tide. There was even a hint of a warm, crisp smile, the likes of which I never saw before.

This smile is probably the most earnest expression he made to her. Pure and sincere with no hidden sides.

I’d never imagined I’d face a situation like this with Lucien. I ran on, and the sound of fighting in the distance grew more intense, along with my tears. I kept telling myself, Lucien would be fine. He was clearly my enemy, only saving me for his own purposes. I had resolved to be done with him… So why does it hurt so much?

I stopped, my trembling body simply unable to take the next step. My heart felt like it was being ripped apart. I couldn’t breathe as if someone was gripping my heart tightly.

As she is running towards the exit that Lucien told her, Yōurán keeps telling herself, Ares is my enemy. I shouldn’t be connected to him anymore. But her heart, her reasons for going on in life, are based on the bonds she’d formed with others, including Lucien. How can she cut that lose when he’s a part of herself?

8. Will You Sacrifice Someone Important to You?

Hades: Ares, I’ll give you one last chance, join me. I will create a world different from today’s, for Evolvers’ only. Advanced, free, beautiful. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted to see?

Ares: Fool. That world will never exist. An advanced civilization can never be created. It can only be reached by selection and evolution. Your so-called creation is just an excuse to hide your incompetence.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, Ares is telling Hades that he thinks the Reset Plan is stupid. Eliminating non-Evolvers won’t stop the struggle of survival of the fittest.

Yōurán: Lucien!

All in an instant, looks of shock, doubt and disbelief came over him, as well as a joy that he hadn’t shown before, mixed with the others.

Lucien is showing many emotions here. Shock that she still hadn’t left the dream. Doubt whether he is seeing her for real. Disbelief that she would abandon her safety again. And Joy. Pure, primitive delight that she still cares for him enough to throw her life out for him.

Lucien: Why didn’t you listen? Don’t you even care for your own life?!

This is the first time that Lucien ever yelled at Yōurán. (erase the True Love Date from your memory) This is one of the scarce times that Lucien loses his cool and reveals his true emotions raw and bare.

I yelled back at Lucien in a tone I never knew I had.

Yōurán: Liar! You had no intention of coming to find me, did you?! You deceived me every time! This time I’m not falling for it!

(By the way, I would put Yōurán’s words in capitals if I were the translator, to emphasize the yelling when she’s usually soft-spoken.)

I love that Yōurán didn’t put up with his I’m-only-saving-you-for-my-goal nonsense. I love that she saw through Lucien acting like Ares and forced out the truth that he truly loves her. I love that she was more upset that he lied about him being safe than the fact that he lied about him being part of Black Swan.

I’m sorry, but if I just go and let you take all the danger, I’ll never be able to forgive myself. Even if we are enemies. I still want to prove to you that even in the darkness, I’ll persist in my faith.

In the end, the question is he Lucien or is he Ares didn’t matter. That he was her enemy and have opposing beliefs from her didn’t matter. All that mattered in the end was that Lucien was the one who taught her to keep pursuing her light, and she was the one who taught him how to love. The unbreakable bond between them.

Lucien: Yōurán, Do you want to know my answer from the press conference?

Finally, finally, Lucien answers truthfully to her questions in the press conference. The first time he didn’t evade her questions regarding his feelings with silence.

Lucien: I won’t. I won’t sacrifice someone important to me. That is my answer.

I am infinitely glad that Lucien said this to her, and also infinitely mad that she forgot this in the end.

Lucien grabs her hand, and Yōurán sees a vision of Lucien’s past memories.

A white moonbeam appeared instantly before my eyes, solidifying into a blade, striking at me. A split second later there was a rupture, and a black liquid flowed from my pupil. For a moment, color was restored to my vision. I saw a pair of bloody eyes flicker past me. Then it was all black-and-white scenes of the TV tower, the park, the research center… As well as, a black-and-white me.

This makes me think that Lucien lost his ability to see Yōurán in color when he stabbed his eye in chapter 13. If he could still see her in color, he would have noticed her coming back for him earlier. He lost his only color in the world for her.

9. Hazy Like a Fog

Yōurán: Lucien, you’re hurt!

Lucien: You knew it was dangerous. Why did you come back?

Yōurán: Because you saved me. I couldn’t just abandon you.

She came back because Lucien is part of her. When he gets hurt, she gets hurt too. When he dies, the part of Yōurán that belongs to Lucien dies too. She cannot break the tie that pulls her towards him.

Lucien: I saved you because it’s better for me if you’re alive.

He seemed to always be stressing this point.

Yōurán: So why did you tell me the direction of the exit and make me leave by myself… Why didn’t you go with me? Didn’t you consider your own safety?

(Yōurán: Don’t play dumb with me, mister. I know you love me.)

Then she learns that all of this was part of Lucien’s plan. That her coming back for him had no influence in it.

Had he planned all of this?! And he didn’t tell me! All the while I cried like a fool, agonized over decisions, and left myself be vulnerable again and again! Liar!

KR translation is a bit different here.

I cried endlessly like a fool, I kept making choices endlessly, and I endlessly took out and looked at my feelings(heart) and agonized over them! Liar!

Notice the repetition of “endlessly” is used to describe the depth of what she felt before she made her decision to come back for Lucien. I would love to know what JP and CN translations are.

But still this liar hadn’t hurt me once the whole way though… My heart overflowed with loss, grief, doubt… a complex wave of emotions.

Again, her emotions regarding Lucien becomes a complicated mess.

A large hand suddenly covered my eyes, feeling slightly cold.

Yōurán: And I’ll forget everything that’s happened here too?

There was a long pause, and then I heard Lucien’s soft voice.

Lucien: yes.

Then I felt his finger tremble a bit, and my heart trembled with it.

Yōurán: Lucien… what kind of person are you really… Why even though we are enemies, do you always save me risking everything? Why do you always push me away again after saving me… Why can I see the futures of other people, but not yours…

Whenever she tries to discern Lucien, she is met with a vague fog. She got his answer to the question: Would he sacrifice someone important for his goal? But more questions came up that would never get answers. Even the one answer she got is about to be taken away from her.

10. Back to the Real Owner

Lucien carefully took out a pen from his pocket and placed it in the girl’s hand.

I said before that Lucien’s pen means Lucien’s heart. Yōurán tried to give it back to Lucien.

Then he leaned over and whispered into her ear:

Lucien: Next time, don’t rush into danger by yourself. Especially, on my account.

This scene reminds me of the end of chapter 15 when Gavin whispers to unconscious Yōurán to wait for him to come back. It hurts that she doesn’t receive the final messages they send to her before they leave her.

11. Again, Alone with Only a Memento

Just like in the end of chapter 15, Yōurán wakes up in her room alone. But this time, she forgot what has happened to her.

Large beads of sweat fell from my forehead. I opened my eyes to a pitch black ceiling. Black-and-white images were scrolling through my head. Too bad those images were like photo negatives and too blurred to make out.

I remembered I was being followed on a street. How was I waking up in my house all of a sudden? There seemed to be a chuck missing, but I couldn’t put a finger on it.

Although she doesn’t remember it, everything she felt still remains in her heart.

When I thought of Lucien’s name again, an intense feeling of grief and longing washed over me.

Because you can’t erase feelings even when you erase memories. PTSD patients sometimes forget what they went through that caused their trauma, but they can still feel the pain and suffering they felt. But they don’t know why they are hurting.

This was when I seriously began to worry about Yōurán. In real life, she needs professional help.

In chapter 16 she tries to put a distance between Lucien but fails utterly and admits to herself that she can never stop caring for Lucien. But after all they went through, her memories, her decisions, her revelations are gone. She feels empty, and sad.

She is only left with Lucien’s “Iridescent” pen. Just like with Gavin and his ginkgo bracelet.

12. Conclusion – This Love Hurts Like Hell, but It will be Worth It.

The press conference and chapter 16 in general depicted what I love the most about Lucien X Yōurán relationship. Their love goes very deep. Enough for Lucien to not hand her over to Black Swan and enough for Yōurán to trust him despite suspecting that he has hidden agenda.

Still, their ideas about humanity and morals are different and they clash. I like that none of them is abandoning their principles for the sake of love. I like that a female character has enough agency to have her own opinions that contradicts that of the male love interest. Instead of passively accepting the thoughts of her lover.

Their continued war of words. This is how the thoughts of great philosophies are made. They both stand firm in their ground. They’re on opposing sides and will battle each other ferociously. However, they still love each other and would go to great lengths to keep each other safe. Can you imagine the euphoria when despite all hurdles their love triumphs all in the end?

“No degree in love’s progress was left untried by our passion, and if love itself could imagine any wonder as yet unknown, we discovered it.” – Historia Calamitatum

#mlqc #mlqc analysis #mlqc lucien #mlqc chapter 16

[mathematicianadda]

Mathematical play with young children

I was recently asked for my advice for encouraging maths play with a young child. I should start by saying I’m not qualified to talk about this with authority – I teach mathematics, but to undergraduates. The closest thing I have to relevant experience is playing with my son who is nearly 5, so I can share a little about that.

So how do we encourage mathematical play with my son? I don’t mean to get all philosophical, but what is maths really? Many people think maths is numbers and counting, which is true of course. Maths is built on arithmetic like literature is built on spelling and handwriting, so it’s important but not the whole picture. Maths is also patterns and shapes, structure and order, classifying objects and their properties, … and it can be very playful.

Through nursery and his start at school, I’ve never been concerned with teaching my son things he will later learn at school, because he’s a bright boy and already knowing what the teachers are covering is a recipe for switching off his love of learning and making him misbehave in class. But I think there is a lot that can be done to strengthen his deep understanding in ways that won’t interfere when he comes to learn times tables, or whatever. (There are some caveats here: I’m not totally sure what is on the National Curriculum, and he sometimes plays his own way into curricular topics, as we’ll see with multiplication later.)

I have never done anything very structured. Mostly we played, often following his lead, somewhat inspired by things I’d seen on the #tmwyk hashtag on Twitter. Here I’ll waffle through a few suggestions.

First and foremost: watch Numberblocks on CBeebies. We weren’t big on TV or screens when he was young, and still aren’t really, but Numberblocks is amazing. You must start with episode 1, which introduces number 1, and go from there. Episodes are only 5 minutes long. It quickly introduces numbers 2-5 and then has adventures with them, then 6-10, and so on. It taught him loads about numbers and also gave him a context to understand arithmetic operations. Later episodes gave him a serious interest in big numbers. I suggest you don’t rush through, rewatch earlier episodes if needed before moving on, and definitely watch together and try to talk about the ideas. Look for the numbers around the house. When an episode introduces 3, ask how many groups of 3 things you can find around the house, etc.

I think the best thing we did for him was buy a set of 100 Mathlink Cubes. These are coloured cubes which join together. He used to spend a lot of time playing with these on his own and with us, making the Numberblocks characters and taking them on adventures, counting them, making colour patterns with them, making shapes with them. Then Katie Steckles kindly bought us Kyle D. Evans’ book Here Come The Numbers, which goes into how to arrange numbers in squares and rectangles, and raises the issue of numbers that can’t be arranged like this, even naming these primes. This gave him a really effective way to understand how numbers work. I think it’s good he has developed his own understanding of how blocks can be arranged into squares and rectangles, even if he doesn’t know he’s multiplying. It also gave him marvellous insight into spacial awareness and symmetry by building shapes, copying shapes I’d built, etc. He still uses the blocks, mostly to build space ships for his other toys to have adventures in – always with a lovely pattern of colours and a symmetric shape. He also plays with magnetic tiles, pattern blocks and Cuisenaire rods, but the Mathlink cubes came first.

There’s a concept called number sense, which is an understanding of how numbers work, their order, magnitude, etc. which can be helped by counting objects, asking which pile of objects has more in it, counting things in groups, etc. Sometimes we’d count number blocks, or match other objects to number blocks, or just count objects directly. How many socks does he have? How many teddies are coming to the tea party? etc.

It’s good to practice counting by chanting numbers in order, using books (although books always stop at 10 and I’d always count to 12 because time uses 12 and I don’t want him to have an uncertainty about 11 and 12) or counting objects, and trying to learn that you tap the objects as you count them in 1-to-1 correspondence. He could tell the time to the nearest hour from an analogue clock when he was 2 by recognising which numbers the little hand was between. He went through a period where he loved doing dot-to-dot puzzles, which are about joining the numbered dots in the right numerical order. At one point nursery were keen that he learns he can count abstract things that aren’t physical objects as well, so we used to count processes. How many parts are there to the morning routine (brush teeth, wash face, put clothes on, …)? How many stages are there to cross the road (hold hands, stand at the edge, look one way, …)?

But while you’re counting, you can also talk about the properties of objects and the patterns they form. We have made ‘object graphs‘, which is where you classify things according to some attribute you decide on together and group the objects accordingly. For example, I grabbed a couple of handfuls of Lego and we arranged it by colour (so x axis colour, y axis frequency, though I didn’t use that language). This is exploring the properties of objects and classifying things. Then we counted each group to see which colour we had the most of. We’ve also done the same with different kinds of toys – Star Wars, dinosaurs, cars, etc. You can arrange the same objects using different classifications, which gets into how the same object can have multiple characteristics – this green dinosaur has two legs, but the other green dinosaur has four legs, etc. All this thinking about properties of objects is very mathematical. We used to play I-spy long before he could read by e.g. “I spy with my little eye something that’s red/round/tall/etc.” Again, classifying properties of objects. Just recently, we’ve played with #vehiclechat, which proved to be good fun thinking about definitions and classifications.

There’s a good pair of books called How Many? and Which One Doesn’t Belong? The latter in particular is amazing. The idea is that there are four objects and each has a plausible reason why it could be the odd one out, so there is no wrong answer but it’s just about talking properties and justifying your answer. My son really enjoys coming up with a reason for each of the four objects in a Which One Doesn’t Belong? Recently he has started making his own Which One Doesn’t Belong? puzzles from pattern blocks.

My son made these and asks “which one doesn’t belong? And how many times can you turn them?” He has some pretty strong ideas about what you’re likely to say! #wodb #patternblocks pic.twitter.com/37mQ4wbwG7

— Peter Rowlett (@peterrowlett) May 3, 2020

Apart from this, I am quite serious about maths being interlinked with other areas, especially at this age. We explored patterns by reading poems or story books and talking about words that rhyme, and making up nonsense words that rhyme with real words, etc. He asked what it is called when two words rhyme at the start, so he became a little boy with a good sense of alliteration. We’d play games on the walk to nursery where we’d take turns to say a word and the other would have to say a word that rhymed or alliterated with it. One day I told him about palindromes and he became obsessed, spotting them, inventing nonsense palindrome words, etc. This playing with language is good for his language, of course, but also it’s about patterns and properties, so it’s building that good foundation on which maths can grow.

This is just some rambly thoughts, but I hope it was interesting and helpful.

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[aquagenesis]

This is by no means a vent post or anything I just need to discuss topics and ideas.

It’s so bizarre how, for most of my life, I did have psychotic tendencies and explicitly schizophrenic symptoms.  I would get disoriented on a school bus and want to make a big show of it; storm up to the bus driver in a fit of rage and demand to know where I was being taken.  I would ask incoherent, nonsense questions in class that would get me a resounding look of “what the fuck are you talking about”.  Friends in particular would always take the time to step in and allow me to re-phrase what I was asking because they would learn to understand sometimes information is jumbled in my head, which I am not aware of.

It happens on here too, though I’ve gotten better at it.  What begins as a cohesive argument in my mind eventually spirals into a whirlpool of me repeating the same three things, the same three points, the same three everything while pretending it’s something different.  Because I have voices in my head that take over and make it hard to focus.  I thought everyone heard voices, because how else do you process information?  But for other people, it’s not voices.  Not ones they can hear, at least.

The only thing that ever stopped me was, incredibly, what I think my paranoia was.  I was too afraid of making a scene because I thought, assuredly, they’d always tell me they were going to kill me.  I would stand up to assert myself only to get pulled back down in my own head with “if you cause problems, you will die”.  I thought that was survival instinct.  I prided myself, in fact, on my survival instincts because of things like that.  Because I believed every person who utilized and prided their autonomy was doomed to die for their arrogance.  How can you exist so unabashedly in life when you know death is something you cannot hide from and cannot know the origin of?  Standing up for yourself is putting yourself in harms way; the lines between “what is paranoia” and “what is formative child abuse” are too blurred for me to even care “which one it is” because they’re both the same.

It’s just knowing I was so schizophrenic.  Knowing I was so blatantly delusional; I’d get called delusional all the time because I wasn’t living in reality.  My original self was already forced to be so separated from its body because of infant-aged trauma when I felt “normal” it already wasn’t me.  Every time I’d stabilize myself in a deeper level of my own psychosis I’d get punched down through another one, like a personal version of Dante’s Inferno.

Of course I developed a dissociative disorder.  How else was my psyche supposed to survive losing family members who cared about me, how else was it supposed to survive losing everything.  The personality I shifted into to appease my conditions were never good enough; they never protected me enough.  It’s so fucked up my brain already had to put me in another reality to cope with not receiving basic physiological needs as an infant and then had to shatter and reform reality after reality because anything was better than living in real life but nothing protected me enough, nothing justified anything enough, nothing could make me feel like I was living how I was meant to.

And then I wonder why I got so deep in it.  I wonder why that’s all I knew.  It was.  Living in delusion was the only thing that kept me from being suicidal, because it made me believe something grand was meant for me at the end of it all.  I only broke down because, after everything, after five years of eviction and homelessness, there was still only despair ahead.  Now I’m 26. an entire high school education away from 30 but abysmally depressed I had to spend all this time helping myself, and continue to, in the vain hope one thing would ever happen to me to make life worth it.

All I needed was to be pushed into reality, to be shown and taught nothing happened to me in some grand plan.  All I needed was a therapist who would listen for long enough in my Anime Tragic Backstory to tell me, “Hey man, that was fucked up, but it’s not like you have to forgive them.  You don’t have to be tortured by anything.  You can leave other people; you can leave them too.”  But therapists are no longer trained to listen to trauma and try to work out anything formative that could have happened to someone.  I didn’t know I was schizophrenic.  Nobody cared enough to tell me I was unless it was through the “well...you have The Disorder.  we have to keep you to make sure your SCARY PSYCHOTIC EPISODE--you’ve seen American Psycho, right?--doesn’t make you do that to yourself or someone else.” lens of “take this medicine and it’ll fix something you don’t think is a problem, because psychosis deludes the brain into thinking it isn’t delusional”.

And there was nothing anyone could have done; my untreated schizophrenia prevented me from being able to work.  My delusions would go unchecked, people wouldn’t know I was stretching the truth and neither did I.  Through the lens of insanity I doomed coworkers to bitter rivals, others to beloved friends, and still others to unworthy of my respect with nothing in between.  My life was a grand path to luxury and respect from the bottom of the earth; who wouldn’t be adored to know me?

I would tell people time and time again I was schizophrenic, I was psychotic, I experienced delusions.  I was cast as “the good outcome” of a psychotic condition and my experiences, the only true part of my life, were chalked up to “well there Luke goes with his silly little rants again”.  I was abandoned to spiral because I was “okay”; I didn’t experience delusions where I thought I was God (anything remotely attached to that was different, I said it was different), my psychosis never drew me to suicide.  Everyone else who claimed they were schizophrenic were automatically compared to me and regarded as “good” or “bad” with no regard to what was swimming around in my brain.  If I didn’t have a god complex before (I did, but I said I didn’t, so there’s no blame here), I certainly developed one then.

But I knew I wasn’t someone to be compared to, because I did experience delusions where I thought not that I was God but some higher being, I was drawn to suicide at the drop of a hat.  But then I couldn’t admit to those things being so much deeper than they were, because everyone else who experienced these things were “bad” schizophrenics.  I was supposed to have this together; I knew I had no right to judge people with my same condition because I knew I was no better than them.  If I had a best friend I’d known all my life, I would probably go to them with my ever-wavering mental condition too.  That’s what I craved; the ability to tell someone about what was happening to me.

And it’s not like I ever thought I was entitled to people, you know, listening.  I never expected anyone to look me in the eyes and tell me “Hey buddy you know you don’t really seem in reality” because if someone said that to me I’d probably freak out and doom them to “Bitter Rival Plus” for the rest of my life.  It was the attitude that I was redeemable because of how well I handled everything, the way I never let my symptoms show, the way a one-time freakout seemed more preferable to everyone else but me because “at least he only got that bad once”, as opposed to the risk of smaller breakdowns more often.  I lost my ability to realize I had control over myself because the admittedly bad symptoms everyone else experienced, which I did too, never were offered support.  I was told a story of a mutual once-friend who threw herself off a roof in the midst of a schizophrenic breakdown.  The pitilessness of it all told me I would never find sympathy in admitting my faults.

It’s hard because if it were depression, if it had been depression, this would have been solved eons ago.  Anyone can go to a friend and talk through a depression; nobody can go to a friend and talk through a psychotic episode without your companion growing frustrated as you’re unable to grasp reality.  Once is fine, twice is annoying, thrice is overwhelming.  I can feel it just as anyone.  Nobody wants to talk to crazy people.

And what do people think that does, exactly?  Do you think your delusional friend can really have a talk once, be told they’re psychotic, and immediately know?  How do we have thousands of articles dissecting every aspect of anxiety, from work to generalized, but none to tell the everyman that “psychotic people suffer from a condition that prevents them from differentiating reality from fantasy”.  or, we do tell people, but it still follows the same rules of once is fine, twice is annoying, thrice is overwhelming.  Depression is a mental condition that causes extended states of misery.  Anxiety is a mental condition that causes extended states of stress.  Psychosis is a mental condition that causes extended states of, well, delusion.  Someone who wakes up already delusional is not going to be able to tell you “when it started”; everything has always felt this way.  Now that they can see clearly, because they feel energized (because they are delusional), “nothing is wrong” and they are left to spiral into whatever rabbit hole they fall into.

If we know it’s harmful to tell people with depression and anxiety to “get over it”, why are psychotic people different?  Why is it so hard to go into a relationship and be told, explicitly, “I have a psychotic condition”, and follow through as you would anyone else?

“Because psychosis is different.”  No further context needed.

#hi guess who it is #it's me and i'm complaining about ment of illness loves #not mine just in general #you know. my lifetime topic of psychosis.

[beybladeimagines]

I loved your recent headcanon of the team in their early 20s, thank you so much for that! I have a question Regarding hiwatari corp, I'm currently reading the manga beyblade rising, I'm confused, Kai's parents have been around all along? Voltaire isn't as evil as we thought? Maybe I'm being dim, but are you able to explain what hiwatari corp actually seems to do? And info regarding Kai's parents? I always thought voltaire was evil, so I'm confused why Kai would work for him. It's been years!

Mod Note: Yeah, when the manga revealed that Kai actually has a pretty decent connection with his family, I disassociated for like five minutes, because that lowkey makes no sense and contradicts so much of what we’ve seen. Let’s try to make some sense out of the chaos, shall we?

Let’s start with Hiwatari Enterprise. For the longest time, it’s remained a mystery. I’ve had to do some digging around to figure out what exactly it is. From what I’ve seen based on popular discussion, it’s apparently assumed to be a Japanese military company. But, if you ask me where in the manga it states that… I have absolutely no idea. Even “military company” is rather vague, because that could mean anything. Do they make steel, weapons, chemicals, electronics, etc.? I’m just going to weave together my thoughts.

So, let’s entertain the idea that it is a military company. I would argue that makes a lot of sense, because it explains the whole dynamic between Voltaire and Boris, Boris’ quest for domination, the entire existence of the Abbey, and the militarization and resocialization of young boys to become soldiers. Voltaire may not be serving in the military, but because he often engages with military officials through meetings and deals, he’s already familiar with the process of establishing order, of breaking people down, and of calling the shots from behind the scenes. As for what Voltaire’s company actually makes, I would like to venture a guess that it deals in electronics / devices. This would explain the massive amount of training resources that were found at the Abbey and that many of the boys were subjected to. Hell, I’d even argue that some of those boys were testing out Hiwatari Enterprise’s devices before they were deemed safe for use or even safe for the public. They were actual guinea pigs in a multitude of ways.

Fast forward to when Voltaire gets arrested and Boris manages to escape punishment. Even though Voltaire wasn’t really…doing anything, because of his connections with the military, I imagine his detainment was prioritized. Many would probably argue that Boris was simply “following orders” but in reality, law enforcement would most likely prioritize the man who is literally responsible for making devices for the military (due to that insane amount of prestige) instead of the man who did the physical, mental, and emotional abuse all at once. Gotta love the law’s priorities. 

Now, let’s talk about Kai. Why would he work for him? In a world where Voltaire apparently isn’t arressted, why would Kai go back to his abuser? We’ve got a couple different routes we can go here. Let’s say we’re following the anime’s canon. Here, Kai isn’t working for his grandfather; rather, he full on replaces him. The reason I argue that Kai would return to the company is because he knows that that’s where all of his trauma started. Kai is interested in dismantling the very thing that broke him in the first place. It’s as if he’s stepping back in time and getting a chance to start all over again. He gets to be the one in a position of power and he gets to put things back on track without involving blading. He feels as if he’s righting all of the wrongs he was exposed to. It’s not like Kai really even cares about the business aspect of things, but I do believe he wants to be seen as a real leader by others.

Now, let’s conceptualize the mess that is the manga’s canon. If Voltaire is still around and Kai decides to work for him, I imagine it’s because he wants to distance himself from the Bladebreakers. Kai had essentially embarrassed himself a multitude of times through his acts of betrayal. If we’re conceptualizing things with a dark twist, I’d say this act serves as the last chance for him to regain control or dominance, or to finally be seen as the best. I imagine that the longer someone is around a being as manipulative as Voltaire, they start to embrace the same problematic qualities and justify their desire for destruction. In Kai’s case, maybe he wasn’t so willing? Maybe it’s a case of manipulation. Or, maybe he’s just trying to keep the family together and stable (financially, maybe?) so he decides to do something he wouldn’t normally agree to. 

In this case, I’m going to let ya’ll decide what you want to believe, because it really does depend on the canon you choose to follow and how much you want to focus on the grim reality that is Kai’s life. 

Yo, but let’s talk about Kai’s parents, because they’re confusing too. I wrote headcanons before about Kai’s mom. Essentially, when Kai decided to be as hateful as Voltaire it tore her apart, and yet, we don’t see her standing up to Voltaire when he was telling Kai about how his dad chose blading over him. But, I imagine that moment was confusing and hard for anyone. Her husband just stood up to his father, but his father has made their life pretty stable, but his father is also imposing a problematic rhetoric onto her son, but also…you have no idea where the hell your own husband is even going and what he plans on doing. I imagine she regrets that day and it’s the first thing she thinks about when she wakes up every morning. 

As for Kai’s dad, well… Kai has a hard time swallowing his pride and I believe he gets that from his dad. I think his dad knew he contributed to fucking up his own son’s life by not making many attempts to clear the air. But because so much time has passed, he has no idea if he should even bring the trauma up or act like everything is fine. I imagine he tries to act like everything’s fine and tries his best to win Kai’s affections. He pops back into Kai’s life rather unexpectedly, but Kai is ready to forgive him. He got the truth and although Kai struggles to understand and truly come terms with said truth, I think he just wants his family back, because lord knows his friendships aren’t stable. It takes a while for Kai’s father to actually address their past, but I think everyone in that household is just ready to be a family again. They have missed so many years together. Kai is so fucking tired of being bitter. This doesn’t even involve blading or being the best. This involves having someone to come home to, this involves unconditional love, this involves receiving a form of support that is absent of jealousy. He needs family now more than ever and I think everyone is determined to rebuild as well.

As for Voltaire being portrayed as the strict grandpa that’s suddenly welcomed back into the family, I-… I don’t get it. It’s completely out of character. I mean, my goodness. This entire time we thought Kai didn’t have a family or if we thought that he did, we assumed they were abusive or something… Now that we found out they actually love one another, I can explain that - easy peasy. But Voltaire being reintegrated into the family picture? And not arrested? You got me fucked up. I can’t even conceptualize a rational justification for that nonsense other than they rewrote the canon and in that canon, apparently Voltaire did nothing wrong. I might need some time to think that part through, anon. But I hope everything else made a hell of a lot more sense!

#beyblade #beyblade imagine #kai hiwatari #headcanon #Anonymous

[dahniwitchoflight]

Candy 24-28

Yeah interacting is one way of putting

I think the closer Meat and Candy come to eachother though the closer they’re both gonna self destruct

“It will stay here for millions more years, where it will remain indefinitely on a barren, desolate Earth C, waiting to host a single cherub child, chained to its bedroom. But for now, it hosts these three.”

Alright so Earth C doomed to failure confirmed, it needs to be a barren desolate wasteland if it’s gonna be the literal planet for Calliope and Caliborn’s birth

oh my god.

That’s why Gamzee raised the baby cherub

what seemed so out of character for someone like Gamzee to do so long ago now makes perfect sense

He thought it was his role to raise Caliborn in that stupid ass LE/Dirk philosophy

Aww, Terezi’s dying ):

Aradia and Sollux are acting as Alltie’s like, double attendants?

Is that like, a flipside of Gamzee’s whole mirthful messiahs thing where he is on LE’s Side?

I mean, Aradia is pretty 8D and Sollux is pretty D8 as characters

That was a really good conversation from Terezi and John

It really does like, firmly solidify to me that Terezi and John retconning the fact that Vriska died to Terezi’s sword way back then was absolutely the incorrect way of handling things

it’s the cornerstone for how things have been ripped apart all this time since then i think

when it first happened, it was tragic and necessary and developed the characters into a certain way of being

Terezi’s got depressed and into a bad state of being, so now, we’ve been given the flipside and shown what would happen if Vriska had been spared in that moment

and the answer is

the same goddamn thing, Vriska leaves her, Terezi can’t get closure from it and her life spirals downward from there

except here were sort of shown what might have been her saving grace, an actual system of support from someone she cares about, and someone she can support in return

what an actual relationship is actually supposed to be

the reason why constant relationships didn’t solve her problems everytime she made new ones is because they were relationships built solely on whims, feelings, maybe some physical passion

but none of them actually offered any actual support or companionship

wanting to love someone really really hard and wanting to be loved by someone really really hard doesn’t solve your problems no,

but having someone to help you through those problems and work on them with you does actually help solve problems

I think that’s the key difference here in asking “which relationship would “”fix”” Terezi” the answer being the only actual two-way relationship she might have ever had

Channel change time for Karkat

and an alive Meenah, I forget how that happened in Meat but eh

anyway next page

“But if he doesn’t care that much, and there’s nothing to it, then why does he do it? Why does he seem to put care into the nonsense he badgers her with? He supposes he could ask the same of many features of his life. Why does he care? Why does he put the time in? When you can’t shake the feeling that nothing here has much intrinsic meaning—or rings as “canon,” to drop a term he has to admit has worn out some welcome in his vocabulary—how does one justify even leaving the house? “

that phrase there, “Nothing Here has much intrinsic meaning -or Rings as Canon” feels like a double meaning

on the one hand, John is saying nothing in this world feels like it’s actually real

on the other hand, the phrase can be read as “There are no Rings of Canon in this world” as physical objects

and we just got done seeing a page about the Life Ring

I wonder if those rings are not also imbued with some idea of not just Life, but canon?

and if that’s the case

maybe the two rings really are each half of what would become the house juju cursor thing

going on with the symbolic metaphor of two opposite objects mutually self destructing and creating something new

maybe when you destroy both rings by bringing them together, in the wake of their destruction would form the original plot hole - the cursor juju, a literal canon shaping hole in the plot

it’s kind of like the idea of two similar dimensional things coming together to make a higher dimensional thing, themselves seemingly being removed from those lower dimensions in the process

like, what happens when you fundamentally merge two perfectly identical 2 dimensional circles?

you get a singular 3rd dimensional sphere and no more 2d circles

so what happens when you merge two 3rd dimensional circular rings? 

a literal 4th dimensional “hole” in canon where they once were

that’s my thinking anyway

anyway back to John having a breakdown over Terezi’s death

man Candy sure is something, I can’t really decide which one I found more interesting Candy or Meat

I felt like there was maybe more to react to in Meat, but there’s interesting bits in Candy as well

oh damn though ten year time skip on the next page O.o

oh fuck we skipped the war and gone straight to the dystopian nightmare havent we

their curfew is 13 minutes after midnight??? that’s so odd, also that makes it either 12:13 or 00:13 however you look at it

oh look, It’s JohnVris 2.0

huh, Karkat and Meenah got a love story out of it too

Now I wanna see a photoshop of like, Big Boss or whathisface from metal gear but just like trollified and with karkat’s horns

So Candy is definitely representing this idea of a character’s potential for the kinds of story arcs they might have, no matter what ends up happening

John stepping into his dad’s shoes and becoming a loving husband and father

Karkat becoming a revolutionary against a twisted tyrannical planet

these individual story beats all fall in line with their characters and what they might have been, had sburb never have been involved in their lives in the first place, is what I think

Roxy pops out a baby and become a mom after having a romance with a dashing young man is basically Rose’s Mom Lalonde’s storyline

Rose eventually becoming a key figure in a rebellion on a tyrannical version of earth is the same story here on Earth C as it was in the history of Roxy’s original planet as HER Mom Lalonde

but its the context of the story that makes it different or not

but these core tenants of the kinds of things and choices all these characters would do doesn’t really change all that much when you strip them down into their simplest forms

so in a way, even though nothing here is canon, it’s giving the audience and idea of what the story would be like if it was canon, how characters might react or grow up to be and the potential they have for doing certain things

but doing that also takes away all the nuance and symbolism of why it’s relevant and important for each story, and context matters intensely

John seems to reconcile with Jade and Dave if he’s the best man at their wedding

and if Dave is marrying Jade and John’s here and their all okay and it’s being held at Jake’s mansion....

no their making it clear theyre siding with Rose and Kanaya, but not as much as they could be I guess

Damn Roxy, I expected better of you, really? But she’s honestly just trying to gravitate towards the thing that makes her personally the happiest, with no regard to how she’s throwing everyone under the bus, p selfish of her

and for real, she’s with the people she always considered her closest friends

Jake’s actually the one going against their grain the most, but that might be because the closest person to him is already dead, and then his runner up is viewing Jade as his alt universe grandma. his channel with Jane is ruined and well, Jake wasn’t close with Roxy or Callie

people just value certain relationships over others sometimes

damn this one ends on a really somber note though

extremely filled with nostalgia of missed potential

Candy is where nothing went right for anyone technically

Oh shit it’s real Vriska, who fell into the black hole in Meat yeah?

Yeah with the way shes screaming about needing to see what happens when you beat the final boss it’s that Vriska hoo boy

hilariously channeling the desperation of the people who read this when it first dropped no wonder though

I am noticing in Candy that despite more and more history being generated, I have less and less to react to

that one line though about what the passage of time must feel like to immortals, that feelings of what used to feel like a day now only feels like a couple hours, what used to feel like a week now feels like a couple days

time gets faster the more you live it

pretty soon a day will be but a blink of an eye for people like John

#Homestuck #Meat or Candy

[anditendshowyoudexpect]

There remains a stigma attached to the word ‘breakdown’, when actually it’s a very legitimate response to life in the early twenty-first century. We are not designed for the non-stop world we live in, the pressures put upon us, and those we bring upon ourselves. For young people, especially, those pressures are becoming ever more intense. Social media, the battle for jobs, the speed with which we judge – it’s a lot easier for kids now to be made to feel inadequate in so many different ways. I worry about what any child picks up in their subconscious just through their daily interaction with the world. Societal pressure has got worse for children, and I hope my own experiences will make me better able to help my children tread that difficult path.

*

Billie was magnificent as Rose. I knew she was good at the time but looking back now I can see her absolute brilliance. It reminds me how much we loved working together, which is palpably obvious on screen. Actors work at chemistry; it doesn’t just come with a snap of the fingers, but we were fortunate enough to have something there from the start. We were also professionals and knew how to achieve on-screen banter. What truly amazes me is I know how nervous Billie was at the start. She thought I was some big serious performer and she didn’t have the belief in herself as an actor. She proved herself, of course, to be way better than any of the rest of us. Her luminosity on screen comes from herself, not those around her, and instinctively she made Rose exactly the person she should be. When Doctor Who won a BAFTA for Best Drama, it was Billie for whom I was truly delighted. The reception she got when the show was screened made any lingering reservations on her part about her ability evaporate. It was admirable in her that she had zero arrogance that she could do it. The work she has done since has shown her to be worthy of every accolade that comes her way.

Watching our characters now reinforces what I concluded at the time: Russell enjoys writing more for women than he does for men. If so, I’m glad – there’s been a lot of writing for men. Rose arrives on screen fully formed, one of the strongest female characters of any show of any year, painting a solid line leading directly to Jodie Whittaker. If you think about it, the relaunch in 2005 was actually the chance to create the first female Doctor. Why not do it then? Perhaps, really, we should be looking back on Billie Piper not as Rose but as the Doctor.

*

The attitude exists that, in the relationship between producer, director and actor, they are the adults and we are the children. I agree, actors can behave like children, they can be spoilt – but not this one, and not a lot of others I know. A working relationship can’t operate on a basis of master and servant. If a director, or anyone else on set, comes in and has bad manners, then chances are they’ll hear from me.

This idea that actors can be manipulated and pushed around to suit the agendas of others irritates me. On Shallow Grave, prior to the shoot, myself, Ewan McGregor and Kerry Fox lived in a flat together for a week. We rehearsed, read scenes, and got to know each other. I considered it to be a budgetary and practical arrangement, but after the film came out Danny talked about it as being a social experiment, which I objected to because to me it was like the director playing God. If Danny wanted to conduct an experiment to gauge our reaction and interaction to one another, he should have told us. Had I known, I would doubtless have gained something from the situation. Danny, I expect, would argue otherwise, that the actors wouldn’t get it. Well, I’m more intelligent than that. As it turned out, Danny’s plan was counterproductive because all it did was give myself, Kerry and Ewan a week to realise we didn’t like each other very much and didn’t get on. We had entirely different backgrounds, approaches to acting, and sensibilities. All three of us were also very, very ambitious and insecure with it. Danny would probably argue that that tension then manifested itself on screen. I think that’s bollocks. This idea of pitting one actor against another is dangerous, manipulative and patronising. The film would have been better without all that nonsense.

I’m not alone in feeling dismayed at misplaced directorial interference. Anthony Hopkins once arranged for the cast of Frankenstein to go for a Chinese meal during rehearsals. Anthony received a message from Francis Ford Coppola: ‘Francis doesn’t want you to go for a Chinese meal,’ it read, ‘because he feels it would break the atmosphere.’

Anthony Hopkins’ reaction was simple – ‘Bollocks, we’re going for a Chinese meal.’

*

In a way, Let Him Have It was an example of the British film industry bowing to American values. I hate Forrest Gump. I would like to burn every single copy of that film for the way it treats both mental health issues and women. A sexually free female character who ends up with AIDS? That tells you everything. I wanted to make an angrier, more polemical, more complicated film about a young man who deserved more than just to have the label ‘simple’ pinned to his lapel.

*

That presence, that intensity, that some people, not just Peter, have identified again comes from growing up, like most working class children, with the institutional message, ‘You’re stupid’, as did my father, as did my brothers. If you’re working class in this country, you may be able to shovel shit or push a trolley, but, ‘You are thick. You do not emote.’ ‘You are thick. You are not worthy of a decent education.’ Those central messages of unworthiness become so ingrained that they are self-perpetuating. Come up with a big word and not only are you mocked – ‘Oh, where did that come from?’ – but you mock yourself. So yes, I am intense, and that’s because there’s a lot of fierce concentration on trying to be articulate, rather than that laid-back public-school attitude to intellect that some people seem to have.

*

My dad had definitely shared with me a very visible masculinity. His appearance and actions shouted standard maleness, but the way I viewed him was different. It seemed obvious to me that, at his core, causing his outward behaviour, was a great femininity and vulnerability. My view of maleness was formed from how tyrannical my dad could be and yet how gentle. Through him, I learned to accept that the two things could coexist. I too have a masculinity allied to an intensely female side. Perhaps the difference is I’m aware of it. Dad, I think, found his sensitivity a source of conflict. For many years, I was the same. I resented it. I resented the part of me that made me different. If you are a late-twentieth-century male, traditional working-class, you are not going to like that side of yourself. I wanted to be black and white. I didn’t understand that it is the sensitive side that offers true insight in life – intuition and empathy.

*

Similarly, there’d be no bunches of flowers from Dad – none of that – and he didn’t like dancing – he was too self-conscious, too embarrassed – so Mum would always dance with somebody else.

I once went into my mum and dad’s room and saw a book, The Sun is my Tormentor, a Mandingo-esque novel of love and adventure, by Mum’s side of the bed. Seeing my mother in middle age and her desire for romance moved me deeply. It made me cry. I felt for her emptiness and also because I knew there were greater romantic novels that, because of her conditioning as being unworthy of such literature, she perhaps felt she couldn’t venture into.

*

We wrapped the production on Friday, had a party, and then on Saturday morning I’d arranged to go to Old Trafford with my dad. I was really looking forward to it – and he turned up with the season tickets from two years before. I’m disgusted with myself thinking about it now, but I gave him a bollocking. I was pissed off because I couldn’t go to the game. More than that, though, I was pissed off because he had dementia. That is shameful on my part, but genuinely that is the case. Maybe that shame is something others in the same position will recognise, an occasional presence of a selfish internal voice, one that so desperately craves ‘normality’.

I put my anger at his illness down to coming straight off the back of Flesh and Blood, with its fictional narrative so unflinchingly similar to my own non-fiction life. Amid that emotion, present as he always was whenever me and my dad knocked heads, was that little boy who was frightened of him. I definitely harboured residual anger towards him, a straight reflection of the anger he’d exhibited towards me. Sounds harsh, but he was getting back the temper he taught me. I was in control now. I’m not proud of that, and I’m not saying it’s right, but that’s how I justified it to myself.

I looked into his eyes and could see him trying to process what was going on. He was staring at the season tickets, semi-computing that they were the ones from two years ago, while trying to work out what the situation meant, and what should happen next. For ten seconds, my peripheral vision was blacked out, blinkered. All I saw was this big, fierce bird-like face looking around lost in confusion. I put Dad on the bus home, the route being familiar to him, and walked away. I rang later and explained to my mum what had happened. And then I started crying. I cried for four hours. That night I had a date with my girlfriend. I told her about it and cried all over again. I broke my heart like I’ve never broken my heart since. That moment of seeing his confusion had left a mark – not a bruise, but a deep, lasting weal. Until that point, I’d understood intellectually that my dad had dementia because we’d been told. But emotionally I hadn’t understood it at all. And then there, in the street outside Old Trafford, I’d been given a window into somebody going mad. Becoming demented. That’s the truth of it – demented. It’s a shocking word. We used to talk about demented dogs, and we shot them. When we say dementia, there’s no hiding the truth. It means people are demented. We can dress that up however we want, but there’s no denying the naked reality beneath. That day I had been presented with the stark vision of a man floundering in a maze of his mind’s own making. Not knowing who and where he was. And I’d just been horrible to him. And he was my dad.

*

Esme asked me the other day, ‘Daddy, do you like Mummy?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘when me and Mummy met, we fell in love and had you. Having two children very quickly is hard on parents in a relationship and then Mummy and Daddy started to not like each other. Now, Esme, as you’ve seen, we are trying to be friends.’

As a child, I would have liked that level of honesty and candidness with my parents, but it was no more part of Ronnie and Elsie than it had been their parents, and so on and so on before. I completely understand that the openness switch was neither at their fingertips nor was it socially reinforced. Emotion could hold a working-class child back, make them unready for what was to come – what they were for. I am thankful to have been given the opportunity to have a more grounded relationship with my children. Before Albert and Esme, playing football, wrestling, doing a crossword or mock-boxing with my own dad were the happiest things I could ever imagine in my life. They go right to the heart of me. Now, I have a new happiness with my own children. And it is a happiness born of honesty.

The blight on that happiness is that I don’t live with them. I know I’ve yet to come to terms with that fact. This book will help, the increasing distance from the hospitalisation will help, but it’s something that will always hurt inside. The legal system could certainly help deliver balance for parents and children involved in separation and divorce. Hopefully, we are in the dog days of the Victorian view of men and women and their role in their children’s lives, which has led to institutional and historic bias. In the twenty-first century, an authentic emotional relationship can come from a man as much as a woman.

*

I wanted to throw a spotlight on the generations, the millions and millions, for whom ‘success’, defined as anything other than the basic survival of themselves and their family, was a concept of which they were denied to the extent that they were chained, leg, wrist and neck, to an institutionally blessed mindset of zero expectation. To those in charge of those institutions, the working class is as it describes. A production line of workers, nothing more, nothing less. People? With character, hope, intelligence, ambition? Forget it. Get back in your box and shut up.

I was asked a few years ago to go on the BBC genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? I agreed and they started looking into my family tree. It says everything that the project went nowhere. They tugged aside the leaves on those branches and concluded, ‘Nothing to see here.’ Generations of working-class people dismissed. Individuals with their own hopes, dreams and stories. Not army generals, industrialists, vaudeville singers, but factory workers, farm labourers, cleaners, nothing in any way ‘sexy’ enough for TV.

No doubt if someone like me had popped up in the dim and distant, all would have been good. But why? My father had all my abilities, linguistically, physically, and then some. So, no doubt, did generations before him. I get that my life has been far more fulfilled than my father’s and those before him, but for me that makes him the far more interesting story. What do I know of life? I’m not driving stacker trucks all day at Colgate-Palmolive and then going to Bulmers and driving stacker trucks there all night. I’m not cleaning floors in a launderette like Mum. And yet how often is the story of the working class ever told on TV? I don’t mean the dross that is soaps. I mean properly told? The answer is less and less. Working-class stories don’t fit in boxsets. They don’t make money. They don’t fit the business model of selling to global TV. And yet they are the lives that talk to me, define me. They are the lives I find endlessly fascinating.

Christopher Eccleston, I Love the Bones of You

#christopher eccleston #i love the bones of you #books #such a honest sincere book he wrote #i love him even more for it #i want to quote every sentence #and i would if i wasn't listening to audio #dw #mental health

[alwaysbewoke]

"You know, he's only mean to you because he likes you!"

Cast your mind back to the playground. Aaron and the other boys are playing tag, and he won't let you join in. The louder he insists, the harder you try to insert yourself, the situation escalating until Aaron sticks his leg out and you go flying. If he was trying especially hard to embody a cliche, he might even pull your pigtails. So far, so normal. Kids are cruel and weird. As a kid yourself, you're doing a pretty weird/normal job of processing the exclusionary nastiness ... until you hear from Mom that sometimes being treated badly is actually a good thing. "You know, he only does that because he likes you!" she says, spinning the meanness as a compliment.

Even worse, you're at that age when you can detect that "He likes you" means something different here, even if you're not quite sure what. There's an implicit idea -- perhaps in part because you don't understand -- that it's a special condition of feeling. As such, it entitles its "feeler" to a whole different criteria for good and bad behavior.

Mom is trying to prepare you for something she knows you won't understand, that soon boys are going to start acting strangely, that you're about to spend the rest of your life misinterpreting each others' motives. But "He's mean because he likes you" is such a tragic and bizarre introduction to the idea. It's like having your driving instructor begin the first lesson with "Remember, sometimes pedestrians scream because they're happy!"

Even if it seems harmless on the playground, wait until high school, the workplace, cohabiting relationships, and marriage, hoo boy. He's calling every three minutes because he loves me. He hits me because I drive him to it, his passion overflowing as violence. Even if it's true that the boy on the playground acts badly because he has a crush and this is his weird preteen way of processing it, that doesn't need any reinforcing.

"Why don't you have the party here? I'll pick up some snacks!"

You're somewhere between 13 and 18 and you are going to have A Party. It's been weeks in the planning stages. Someone's big sister has been coerced into doing the booze run. Someone's parents have been stupid enough to OK a get-together and leave their house at your collective mercy. The stars have aligned, the fates are in your favor, and this is the most excited you've probably ever been. A whole evening of unsupervised, uncomfortable, elated nonsense!

The prospect has practically had your teeth chattering. What do you wear? He'll be there. Which song will be playing when your sparkly hair clips convince him to kiss you instead of Charlotte? What is the right ratio of soda to vodka?

Of course, hearing your mom's cheerful "Why don't you have the party here?" is nothing compared to the obviously life-ruining "You're going to that party over my dead body" or even "Be home by 11." But therein lies its stealthy power. You could justify a teenage tantrum over your attendance being vetoed altogether, or even a curfew, but how to rebuff the thinly veiled bid to oversee proceedings disguised as an innocent offer to host? You are suddenly playing a subtle, deadly game.

How to articulate that any amount of meddling would crash the imaginary ecosystem of this social event, where everyone likes your shoes and laughs at your jokes? Or that you're both too old andtoo young for the kind of party where snacks play even a supporting role? How to refuse categorically without letting on that homey safety is kryptonite to a Successful Evening? You wriggle quickly and smilingly away. "Oh, Lila's parents will be home. They've already taken care of everything." Now you can only pray that she doesn't call to verify this.

"I'll leave you lovebirds to it!"

This one is said when a young girl is about to be left alone with a young boy, regardless of relationship or circumstances. Maybe he's the weird son of Mom's friend from work. No! Don't leave us to it! He breathes through his mouth!

At that age, it seems incredible that she can't pick up on how much you don't want this to happen. The intensity with which adolescent feelings are felt (I've never hated anyone as much as I hated my math teacher) would lead you to believe that they can be felt by anyone in their orbit. A teenager in love is one thing, and should be as legible as Times New Roman to anyone paying attention. A teenager seething with disgust, though, is strong as a poltergeist. How can she not know?

So while you can't believe that your mother would think you're enjoying the way her boyfriend's nephew is eyeballing your braces, she's only thinking of you when she suggests the two of you take a joint trip to the corner shop. You walk as far away from him as the pavement will permit. You shudder when the heavy breathing intensifies after bumping into each other, fumbling by the till. This will happen again and again. "Oh, here's the offspring of my roommate from college. When's the wedding, amirite?" How to break it to her that you're more interested in his sister?

"You know you can always talk to me about your sex life! I remember when your father and I first got together ..."

This invitation to spill your beans probably crops up before you even have any to spill. Sure, there's a whiff of something. Maybe she's caught you gazing at a classmate at school pickup. Maybe you tell too many stories about Amy's brother when you come back from her house. "Amy's brother doesn't listen to that band." "Amy's brother said he liked my jeans." "Amy's brother, Amy's brother, Amy's brother Amy's- brother, Amy's brother."

Anyway, someone told your mother that it's important to be open about these things. She wouldn't want you to develop a complex, would she? What better way to ease your discomfort than "I remember when your father and I first got together." WELL I REMEMBER WHEN I DIDN'T HAVE TO PICTURE MY PARENTS HAVING SEX.

"You can always talk to me about your sex life" just serves to highlight your lack of one, which is especially bruising when sex is all you think about -- tinging the corners of your heavy-breathing dreams, chronically manifest in your peripheral vision, but just out of reach. Knowing too much about it will recontextualize innocent fantasy into something scary and dirty. Hey, you've seen people making out in films. That lingerie ad. Then there was that video clip Paul sent round the class. You got through 12 seconds before switching it off like a scary movie.

Of course, these scraps and gaps have generated so many questions that it's hard to know where to start. And your mother would be more than happy to explain "why people make those noises" and that no, you don't "stand on your head to stop getting pregnant." But you will refuse these invaluable pointers. The final nail in your pre-adolescent coffin would be to hear that your parents were at it more than you are (not hard, but still unfair). Sex isn't sex yet, but what it is belongs to people your age -- fumbling, yearning, et al.

You'll get over this, but it's a hard pill to swallow that is offered A) when it is most crucially needed and B) when you couldn't be less receptive to it. Give it ten years, and you'll be calling her after every bad date.

"Are you sure you're happy? By the time I was your age ..."

You're cleaning up together -- look how responsible you are! -- after a family dinner. Back in the home you grew up in, and moved out of, just for the evening, or maybe the weekend. Either way, this is you as a proto-adult: feckless as ever, but somehow funding a life beyond the cocoon. Conversations like this are sprung when handwork is available. You don't have to look at each other, there's a time limit imposed by the activity, and silences can be filled with industrious scrubbing, etc. Variations include "How's the novel coming along?" and "Why don't you call Childhood-Friend-With-Whom-Your-Relationship-Ruptured-Very-Painfully-Somewhere-Along-The-Way?"

"Are you happy?" is the killer, though. Amidst a lifetime (or at least an adolescence) of cringing every time your poor mother tries to join in or make your life easier, this is the splinter beneath a thin nail built from half-truths and self-trickery. The end of that WMD of sentences is some version of "by the time I was your age, I had you and your sister," "I'd met your father," or "I'd already started working at [place she'll be working at until retirement]."

She asks because she worries about you, but that just means that managing her worries is another thing you've failed at. Answering in a way that will ease her fears isn't easy when the truth is you're not single out of some concerted effort to make peace with yourself before launching into a relationship, or renting because you "like the flexibility." That you are, in reality, lonely and poor.

On the one hand, maybe Mom doesn't know what a digital marketing account manager is. On the other hand, maybe that is not a job anyone sensible wants in any sincere way. Maybe she just doesn't recognize how, even though your boyfriend is always hungover at family lunch and doesn't pick up when you call on a long weekend, he's actually really artistic and authentically himself. Maybe your latest diet looks like an eating disorder, your latest phase a personal crisis -- and then again, maybe it is. God, Mom, you've sent me down a spiral! "I'm doing fine!" you'll say. And some day, you'll probably get that same answer from your own kid.

ladies, thoughts?