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96percentdone · 6 months

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Is Shouma really the trans rep y'all want? Someone who had no agency in their metaphorical puberty blockers and was forced and threatened into 'taking' them, hated it for years, and eventually decided 'yeah i guess it's pretty neat i'm still youthful but also but also fuck that guy who did this to me?' Is this not just a right wing talking point about how doctors are abusing innocent children with irreversible surgeries to trans their genders being with trans-positive paint? I think reclaiming transphobic narratives them can be powerful, but the context of Nirvana Initiative canon this doesn't feel like 'reframing conservative beliefs' so much as just. Doing their arguments beat by beat including the medical abuse part and saying 'its good actually we want this.'

I haven't seen works transformative enough that change the text so Shouma wasn't abused into the early stages of her transition, or that she was actually willing to take the abuse and deception once she learned about it to see if it could get her what she wants for her body, and her grievances are with the abuse alone. It's just treated as a given that canon is exactly as we know it to be, and the ends justify the means.

Maybe a controversial take, but I just think a lot of transcanons are poorly considered, genderbent or no. This isn't specific to aitsf, and I'm also not saying anyone who likes them are just as bad, even for the ones I don't like at all like this one. They are popular with trans people first and foremost, that would be a bizarre claim; I'm not your dad, fandom should make you happy, do whatever. My beef is that as far as I have seen, a lot of the popular ones in trans fan communities are done by picking some part of the text, ignoring the context it exists in, and then using that detail to justify the hc, even if the context flies against it, and without providing any new context to supplement or even replace the old one. We're just left to assume that everything else is the same still, and transitioning is often the focus of genderbent ones making it stranger. In the case of transfem!shouma, this style of creation just like accidentally leans into transphobic ideas, but even for characters where it's not doing that, they're still similarly thoughtless. Transmasc Kuranushi Mizuki has its own popularity, to distinguish her from Date Mizuki, but like...that's it. No one posts about what it would mean for his character, their life, it's an aesthetic decision alone. It means nothing other than the petty fan grievance or wish-fullfilment that inspired it.

That laziness is what I hate the most. Fandom is transformative, those transformations have the power to be extremely beautiful and compelling and meaningful. They can elevate the text into something more than what it was. I love that. I am a trans person who loves good art. That's why the way trans headcanons are made and portrayed is so irritating to me, because they feel low effort. People will say they have thought about them a lot, and maybe you have! But if all of that consideration is in a private discord server, that means nothing to me. I refuse to consider the merits of context I have no access to. If the context exists, put it in your work!! I just want better art than that.

Fandom wants to be taken seriously. It wants to be treated as art, and yet it also wants to be treated as just a fun hobby unworthy of criticism, but I don't think you get to have both. You cannot position your creations as art, your community as an artistic one worthy of respect, and yet its immune to the treatment all art and art communities get: criticism. I just want more thoughtful and considered fanworks. I want transcanons, even if they exist for a ship, or out of spite, or for fun aus and comedy fan-comics, to be taken just a bit more seriously and with more effort.

#hope.txt

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catgirl-catboy · 1 year

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I agree with you so much about Ryoma lol

He and Kaito would be explored better cause Kaito's blatant idolisation before knowing Ryoma being a pussy according to his idiotic beliefs are interesting, I would love to see more detailed exploration and more reaction about Ryoma's death. I hate how they forget it, fuckers.

And well now I need to ask the real question

Do you want to talk about our saviour and christ? *Intends to talk about ishimondo*

I really adore that ship and a detailed explanation or analysis for them from someone I like their opinions would be fun

Yeah!!! I wish Kaito's character flaws got explored slightly more than they do in canon. For all of Kaito's belief in Gonta, he certainly didn't attempt to help Gonta understand the investigation when he said he was struggling to read the monokuma file. It feels like Kaitos belief in others is usually rewarded, and the one time he's wrong in canon most of his angst is self-inflicted.

This isn't a criticism, thats what makes Kaito so interesting.

I am literally always down to talk about Ishimondo. Idk if this is like, a proper analysis, but its something that sticks in my brain a lot when I think about the ship.

Ishimondo may seem like a wholesome ship, but it is one of the most tragic stories in Danganronpa and fans don't talk about it enough! Because yes, I ship them, but Taka was also a brother figure to Mondo. Thats important.

Mondo almost repeated the worst mistake of his life. He confessed because he couldn't bear to live with the guilt of another brother willingly dying for him.

It really makes me wonder what Mondo would do if Taka's idea of dying in his place worked. Now, he has two seemingly contradictory legacies passed down to him and a desire to uphold both of them. I imagine Taka likely wouldn't even ask him to attempt to overwrite his grandfather's legacy, but Mondo would take it upon himself anyway.

This sounds slightly silly, since Mondo's whole thing is toxic masculinity, but I feel like another interesting way they could have proceeded post chapter 2 is for Taka to take a page out of Mondo's book and promise to keep the class together, at the expense of grieving in what would normally be a healthy way. Hell, you could even use Ishida as a concept here if you wanted.

This is more Taka and Hifumi that Ishimondo, but you could reframe the Taka vs Hifumi conflict as Taka not wanting Hifumi to repeat his mistakes. If nobody gets attached to anybody, then this killing game is easier.

I also like (it makes me sad) the idea of Mondo coming to see Taka as a surrogate brother to a degree, which is all kinds of fucked up. It might help him get over his canon guilt, but absolutely not in a healthy way.

Taka got his first friend, Mondo got his first friend back. >:)

That being said, Mondo's execution in particular was dogshit because there were tons of ways to include a lesson and they chose not to in favor of body horror + referencing a myth. If I were monokuma, I'd make the execution a race, and I'd have Taka strapped to the other bike. >:)

Hell, you can do the memey body horror thing afterwards to if you want, I just need my fix of phycological horror!

That being said, a lot of non-despair and pre-canon fics I've read for them (I've read like 99% of fic for them!) just re-create the sauna scene, which I don't think makes very much sense. Due to the high stress nature of the killing game, it doesn't make very much sense for it to happen twice. Also, there's so much potential variety on how the two of them became close! Do you have a personal headcanon?

Honestly, I can go on about them all day.

#ask tag #ishimondo #danganronpa #danganronpa spoilers

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dgcatanisiri · 2 years

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I've said before that each plot segment of Inquisition could have easily been spun out into its own game, and you know something? Building on that idea, I'm not entirely unconvinced that the REASON we've had to wait nearly a decade for a new Dragon Age game is BECAUSE they realized they had used up the plots for at least two more games way too soon.

Like, reframe things here. "Dragon Age Inquisition" is no longer the game it is. Instead, we're taking TWO of the plot threads it focuses on to center our story - the Mage/Templar conflict and the Orlesian Civil War. These are the threads that demanded attention going in - the prelude novels of Asunder and The Masked Empire centered on the final break of the Circles from the Chantry and the outbreak of the civil war, respectively, we consider those plot points locked in. Now they're the center stage.

Then, "Dragon Age 4" in this scenario centers on the threat of Corypheus, things related to the Blight and those revelations, the Grey Wardens latching on to the idiot ball, all things Venatori... I don't know, call this hypothetical "Dragon Age Blight," make it a big focus of learning about this.

And THEN we get Dragon Age Dreadwolf (...yeah, I really don't like that as one word...), deal with the Solas stuff then and there.

And, yeah, split the cast between these games as well, because some characters fit the different threads better than others. I mean, I'm also on record as finding Inquisition's cast bloated and unwieldy, to the point of having a much simpler time of things by not recruiting a third of the companions we get.

Just... It very much seems like Inquisition wound up being them throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck, only to realize too late in the development process that what stuck was more than they could handle in tandem. Which, yeah, I get the realities of development lock you in to ideas that may not really work but you don't have the time or budget to change that now you just make what you have work as best you can, but...

Well, it still makes for a lesser result. And that's what I've long said Inquisition is - its parts are greater than the sum of its whole. It's centered on moments, not the whole thing.

#dg plays dragon age

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drdemonprince · 2 years

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i feel that self-conceiving as a brat has unlocked for me a whole new understanding of all the traits about me that i thought were overbearing, controlling, annoying, needy, and overly sensitive. the idea that instead of tamping down my prickliest qualities or recasting them as some form of professional dominance i could instead just express them naturally and that some people might find them cute and attractive??? groundbreaking.

this is also a really interesting potential avenue for soothing my abject TERROR at being seen as ‘childish’ or ‘pathetic’ or ‘immature’. brats can just... be those things and it can be cute / provoke getting attention in a desired way rather than being a thing that makes you annoying as fuck or pushy and unlovable.

i said something kind of unnecessarily bitchy the other day, the kind of thing that used to set Nick off and really hurt his feelings deeply. i was always accidentally making observations in a really flat tone that sounded sarcastic/judgemental to him, and then having to spiral to apologize for it because he’d sulk and withdraw. but this time, the friend i said it to was just like, you’re such a brat. and then he sent me an animated gif of tinkerbell that said “spoiled brat” on it in glitter font. and it was like oh yeah. cute. im not a machiavellian control freak supervillain who is evil and cant help but hurt people and steamroll things. i’m a lil brat. thats a cute reframe.

my sister has been bullying me for being a brat my whole life, really! i used to not understand why even as the eldest child with 5 years on her she never fucking respected my authority, but lol i just never have actually had an authoritative energy im just a lil scamp >:( GOD i really am going to write an essay about being a brat, god help us all. i need to contemplate this orb a bit more but ... it is a new and maybe healing avenue for navel gazing, which i love. the idea that the qualities i have labored the most to hide or recast as useful and respectable over the years might be part of my natural appeal both sexually and platonically, thats fun to consider. i always thought being a brat was like, putting on a stupid performance of being difficult just for the hell of it, but its like no, everything that has gotten me called one so far, by a variety of people lately without prompting, is just me being myself

i understand how fucking precious and INSUFFERABLE it is when people start talking about how like D/s shit healed them but idfk man it’s fun to feel good and wanted and to have new ways to see myself and i am playing w it. rotating the cubes. wish there was a better term for any of this shit than brat tho i do hate it

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jeannereames · 3 years

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Hi, Dr. Reames! I just read your take on Song of Achilles and it got me thinking. Do you think there might be a general issue with the way women are written in mlm stories in general? Because I don't think it's the first time I've seen something like this happen.

And my next question is, could you delve further into this thing you mention about modern female authors writing women? How could we, beginner female writers, avoid falling into this awful representations of women in our writing?

Thank you for your time!

[It took a while to finish this because I wrote, re-wrote, and re-wrote it. Still not sure I like it, but I need to let it go. It could be 3xs as long.]

I’ll begin with the second half of the question, because it’s simpler. How do we, as women authors, avoid writing women in misogynistic ways?

Let me reframe that as how can we, as female authors, write negative (even quite nasty) female characters without falling into misogynistic tropes? Also, how can we write unsympathetic, but not necessarily “bad” female characters, without it turning misogynistic?

Because people are people, not genders, not all women are good, nor all men bad. Most of us are a mix. If we should avoid assuming powerful women are all bitches, by the same token, some women are bitches (powerful or not).

ALL good characterization comes down to MOTIVE. And careful characterization of minority characters involves fair REPRESENTATION. (Yes, women are a minority even if we’re 51% of the population.)

The question ANY author must ask: why am I making this female character a bitch? How does this characterization serve the larger plot and/or characterization? WHY is she acting this way?

Keep characters complex, even the “bad guys.” Should we choose to make a minority character a “bad guy,” we need to have a counter example—a real counter, not just a token who pops in briefly, then disappears. Yeah, maybe in an ideal world we could just let our characters “be,” but this isn’t an ideal world. Authors do have an audience. I’m a lot less inclined to assume stereotyping when we have various minority characters with different characterizations.

By the same token, however, don’t throw a novel against the wall if the first minority character is negative. Read further to decide if it’s a pattern. I’ve encountered reviews that slammed an author for stereotyping without the reader having finished the book. I’m thinking, “Uh…if you’d read fifty more pages….” Novels have a developmental arc. And if you’ve got a series, that, too, has a developmental arc. One can’t reach a conclusion about an author’s ultimate presentation/themes until having finished the book, or series.*

Returning to the first question, the appearance of misogyny depends not only on the author, but also on when she wrote, even why she’s writing. Authors who are concerned with matters such as theme and message are far more likely to think about such things than those who write for their own entertainment and that of others, which is more typical of Romance.

On average, Romance writers are a professionalized bunch. They have national and regional chapters of the Romance Writers of America (RWA), newsletters and workshops that discuss such matters as building plot tension, character dilemmas, show don’t tell, research tactics, etc. Yet until somewhat recently (early/mid 2010s), and a series of crises across several genres (not just Romance), treatment of minority groups hadn’t been in their cross-hairs. Now it is, with Romance publishers (and publishing houses more generally) picking up “sensitivity readers” in addition to the other editors who look at a book before its publication.

Yet sensitivity readers are hired to be sure lines like “chocolate love monkey” do not show up in a published novel. Yes, that really was used as an endearment for a black man in an M/M Romance, which (deservedly) got not just the author but the publishing house in all sorts of hot water. Yet misogyny, especially more subtle misogyny in the way of tropes, is rarely on the radar.

I should add that I wouldn’t categorize The Song of Achilles as an M/M historical Romance. In fact, I’m not sure what to call novels about myths, as myths don’t exist in actual historical periods. When should we set a novel about the Iliad? The Bronze Age, when Homer said it happened, or the Greek Dark Age, which is the culture Homer actually described? They’re pretty damn different. I’d probably call The Song of Achilles an historical fantasy, especially as mythical creatures are presented as real, like centaurs and god/desses.

Back to M/M Romance: I don’t have specific publishing stats, but it should surprise no one that (like most of the Romance genre), the vast bulk of authors of M/M Romance are women, often straight and/or bi- women. The running joke seems to be, If one hot man is good, two hot men together are better. 😉 Yes, there are also trans, non-binary and lesbian authors of M/M Romance, and of course, bi- and gay men who may write under their own name or a female pseudonym, but my understanding is that straight and bi- cis-women authors outnumber all of them.

Just being a woman, or even a person in a female body, does not protect that author from misogyny. And if she’s writing for fun, she may not be thinking a lot about what her story has to “say” in its subtext and motifs, even if she may be thinking quite hard about other aspects of story construction. This can be true of other genres as well (like historical fantasy).

What I have observed for at least some women authors is the unconscious adoption of popular tropes about women. Just as racism is systemic, so is sexism. We swim in it daily, and if one isn’t consciously considering how it affects us, we can buy into it by repeating negative ideas and acting in prescribed ways because that’s what we learned growing up. If writing in a symbol-heavy genre such as mythic-driven fantasy, it can be easy to let things slip by—even if they didn’t appear in the original myth, such as making Thetis hostile to Patroklos, the classic Bitchy Mother-in-Law archetype.

I see this sort of thing as “accidental” misogyny. Women authors repeat unkind tropes without really thinking them through because it fits their romantic vision. They may resent it and get defensive if the trope is pointed out. “Don’t harsh my squee!” We can dissect why these tropes persist, and to what degree they change across generations—but that would end up as a (probably controversial) book, not a blog entry. 😊

Yet there’s also subconscious defensive misogyny, and even conscious/semi-conscious misogyny.

Much debate/discussion has ensued regarding “Queen Bee Syndrome” in the workplace and whether it’s even a thing. I think it is, but not just for bosses. I also would argue that it’s more prevalent among certain age-groups, social demographics, and professions, which complicates recognizing it.

What is Queen Bee Syndrome? Broadly, when women get ahead at the expense of their female colleagues who they perceive as rivals, particularly in male-dominated fields, hinging on the notion that There Can Be Only One (woman). It arises from systemic sexism.

Yes, someone can be a Queen Bee even with one (or two) women buddies, or while claiming to be a feminist, supporting feminist causes, or writing feminist literature. I’ve met a few. What comes out of our mouths doesn’t necessarily jive with how we behave. And ticking all the boxes isn’t necessary if you’re ticking most of them. That said, being ambitious, or just an unpleasant boss/colleague—if its equal opportunity—does not a Queen Bee make. There must be gender unequal behavior involved.

What does any of that have to do with M/M fiction?

The author sees the women characters in her novel as rivals for the male protagonists. It gets worse if the women characters have some “ownership” of the men: mothers, sisters, former girlfriends/wives/lovers. I know that may sound a bit batty. You’re thinking, Um, aren’t these characters gay or at least bi- and involved with another man, plus—they’re fictional? Doesn’t matter. Call it fantasizing, authorial displacement, or gender-flipped authorial insert. We authors (and I include myself in this) can get rather territorial about our characters. We live in their heads and they live in ours for months on end, or in many cases, years. They’re real to us. Those who aren't authors often don’t quite get that aspect of being an author. So yes, sometimes a woman author acts like a Queen Bee to her women characters. This is hardly all, or even most, but it is one cause of creeping misogyny in M/M Romance.

Let’s turn to a related problem: women who want to be honorary men. While I view this as much more pronounced in prior generations, it’s by no means disappeared. Again, it’s a function of systemic sexism, but further along the misogyny line than Queen Bees. Most Queen Bees I’ve known act/react defensively, and many are (imo) emotionally insecure. It’s largely subconscious. More, they want to be THE woman, not an honorary man.

By contrast, women who want to be honorary men seem to be at least semi-conscious of their misogyny, even if they resist calling it that. These are women who, for the most part, dislike other women, regard most of “womankind” as either a problem or worthless, and think of themselves as having risen above their gender.

And NO, this is not necessarily religious—sometimes its specifically a-religious.

“I want to be an honorary man” women absolutely should NOT be conflated with butch lesbians, gender non-conformists, or frustrated FTMs. That plays right into myths the queer community has combated for decades. There’s a big difference between expressing one’s yang or being a trans man, and a desire to escape one’s womanhood or the company of other women. “Honorary men” women aren’t necessarily queer. I want to underscore that because the concrete example I’m about to give does happen to be queer.

I’ve talked before about Mary Renault’s problematic portrayal of women in her Greek novels (albeit her earlier hospital romances don’t show it as much). Her own recorded comments make it clear that she and her partner Julie Mullard didn’t want to be associated with other lesbians, or with women much at all. She was also born in 1905, living at a time when non-conforming women struggled. If extremely active in anti-apartheid movements in South Africa, Renault and Mullard were far less enthused by the Gay Rights Movement. Renault even criticized it, although she wrote back kindly to her gay fans.

The women in Renault’s Greek novels tend to be either bitches or helpless, reflecting popular male perceptions of women: both in ancient Greece and Renault’s own day. If we might argue she’s just being realistic, that ignores the fact one can write powerful women in historical novels and still keep it attitudinally accurate. June Rachuy Brindel, born in 1919, author of Ariadne and Phaedra, didn’t have the same problem, nor did Martha Rofheart, born in 1917, with My Name is Sappho. Brindel’s Ariadne is much more sympathetic than Renault’s (in The King Must Die).

Renault typically elevates (and identifies with) the “rational” male versus the “irrational” female. This isn’t just presenting how the Greeks viewed women; it reflects who she makes the heroes and villains in her books. Overall, “good” women are the compliant ones, and the compliant women are tertiary characters.

Women in earlier eras who were exceptional had to fight multiple layers of systemic misogyny. Some did feel they had to become honorary men in order to be taken seriously. I’d submit Renault bought into that, and it (unfortunately) shows in her fiction, as much as I admire other aspects of her novels.

So I think those are the three chief reasons we see women negatively portrayed in M/M Romance (or fiction more generally), despite being written by women authors.

------------------------------------

*Yeah, yeah, sometimes it’s such 2D, shallow, stereotypical presentation that I, as a reader, can conclude this author isn’t going to get any better. Also, the publication date might give me a clue. If I’m reading something published 50 years ago, casual misogyny or racism is probably not a surprise. If I don’t feel like dealing with that, I close the book and put it away.

But I do try to give the author a chance. I may skim ahead to see if things change, or at least suggest some sort of character development. This is even more the case with a series. Some series take a loooong view, and characters alter across several novels. Our instant-gratification world has made us impatient. Although by the same token, if one has to deal with racism or sexism constantly in the real world, one may not want to have to watch it unfold in a novel—even if it’s “fixed” later. If that’s you, put the book down and walk away. But I’d just suggest not writing a scathing review of a novel (or series) you haven’t finished. 😉

#misogyny in m/m romance #how to avoid misogyny writing women characters #writing complicated women characters #asks #writing life #writing advice

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mostgeckcellent · 3 years

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I'm here to ask about bibliotherapy!

First of all, I've literally never heard of it, so please feel free to tell me anything about it that you think would be helpful or cool for me to know!

Second of all... the fic writer in me obviously can't help but think about how it might relate to writing fanfiction. I'm not sure how to properly ask my question lol, but I guess I'd just be interested to hear any thoughts you have on a relationship there?

Becky!!! welcome to the Ren Isn't Working on Their Thesis Party!!!

So, I gave a brief overview (brief lol... brief in the context of my thesis is going to be very long indeed) of bibliotherapy in this ask, so I'm not gonna rehash All of it.

Instead, I'm gonna talk more about storytelling, because I think that's what's more relevant to the fic part of this ask. I'm also putting a readmore in now, because I've learned I can talk about this at length.

So, I'm gonna go ALLLLLL the way back into the fundamental theory for a second. Which means we're talking about Terence Deacon.

Human beings are the only species to use language. Now, language and communication are not the same thing. There are a lot of species that use relatively complicated methods of communication, with sounds that mean specific things. There are also species which have been taught to use human language (though there's a lot of debate there as to how much they're really using language, vs how much they've been taught to do a complex series of things in exchange for a reward). The fact is, using language isn't a matter of it just being too complex for other species to have evolved it - it just wasn't advantageous to those animals. Evolving language takes so much evolutionary energy - human infants are helpless for So Long, and so much hinges on their learning language. Here's the biggest difference, though, between how humans use language, and how animals can be taught to use language, whether they understand it fully or not: humans filter absolutely everything through language.

Here's where we get a little existential. Humans are a Language Species. Everything about ourselves is filtered through the lens of language; everything about how we perceive the world is through language. A gorilla can be taught that this word refers to food, or mother. To a human, that simple IS food, that simply IS mother. In that way, we require language in order to grow, as people. We have a lot of trouble conceiving of something we don't have language for.

What came first - humanity or language? Deacon argues you can't have one without the other. Language is fundamental to how we form the Self, and to how we connect to the world.

So, we need language. The way we use language is unique. I've been talking at you for like a hundred words now, when am I going to get to stories?

Well, now. Now is when I'm getting to stories.

Enter Joseph Gold. He says, okay, language is a fundamental, biological behaviour of human beings. Cool - let's take it a step further. It's not just language, it's stories specifically.

Stories are how we organize language. They provide lenses and frames for that language, and for the information contained within.

Now, in my last post I said I could talk about the difference between frames and lenses, but I wouldn't.

Guess what! I'm talking about it now instead. Imagine a picture. Whatever picture you want. Okay, now put it in a frame. It looks different, right? It might cut off something on the edges; it might flatten it better. A fancy frame might make you think about the picture differently than a frame made of popsicle sticks, or a dollar store frame. So, a frame, when we talk about literature, about stories, is the things in and around it that influence interpretation.

Take the frame off your picture, and imagine instead that you're holding a translucent sheet of coloured plastic in front of it instead. You can still see the original picture, but no part of it looks exactly the same; it's colouring directly what you're seeing. There we have the fundamental difference between a lens and a frame; a frame pushes you towards a certain interpretation. A lens changes directly what you see.

Everything has frames and lenses. Some of them are ones we arrive with; some of them are put there by others. Lenses tend to come from us; frames tend to come from other people.

Ren, I hear you say! This still isn't about stories!

I'm getting there.

Basically, every story has frames and lenses. Our lenses are informed by the things we've read before, the things we already believe, the things we've experienced. A hundred people could read the same book, hear the same story, and a hundred people will have taken something completely different and unique away from it, depending on what lens they're bringing to that experience.

And now I think you might see where I'm going with this when it comes to fanfiction!

A lot of research supports the idea that writing about your experiences can help process trauma, IF the person is in a place to be ready to do that. Forcing people to write about things before they want to won't work, just like forcing people to talk about things they're not ready for won't help. In my last post, I talked about how bibliotherapy is about getting you there. Reframing your trauma through a character can help you by proxy reframe it for yourself. It can make it easier to talk about.

Now, I'm not going to argue that writing fanfiction is a form of bibliotherapy. It's not. That doesn't mean it's not valuable! That doesn't mean you're not getting something out of it! It's just not actually a guided therapy, right?

But I think we can look at this theory and take a few things away from it regarding fanfiction.

1. everyone is going to interpret source material differently, they're going to connect to different things in it, and that's natural. We all bring our lenses.

2. writing fanfiction could very easily be a way of connecting with those narratives, and we will always bring something of ourselves into it, as writers. This is good!

3. given our tendency to connect to stories, given that stories are an inherent part of how we organize and take in information, fanfiction is such an intuitive way to grapple with the narrative presented to us via the fiction we consume

There's more, if I think about it. I'm sure it could be a thesis of its own! But those are the first things that come to mind, without really doing an in-depth analysis or taking a long time to think about it, I guess.

So, yeah! bibliotherapy, storytelling, fanfiction - I hope that answered your question! once again this is an absurdly long post.

#bibliotherapy #my thesis #thanks for the ask

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 3 years

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chin fucking up, amigo.

Titans 3.02

... eh?

SPOILERS ahead.

1. you know that music video for billie jean where michael jackson would dance along the pavement and the tiles would light up under his feet in different colours? yeah? me too.

titans hasn’t met a table top or a support arch that it doesn’t want to light up in a headache-inducing blue like the world’s most boring nightlight. i mean, i’m not an expert on lighting or cinematography or just... colour by any means, and the quality of the video i’m watching is poor given that i can’t access hbo max, but all the orange and teal and neon is making it very difficult to really differentiate between say, the batcave and the gotham police department and hell, the titans tower. i feel like there’s oftentimes a gap between idea and execution with titans, with gotham being this almost otherwordly hellscape with an aesthetic pulled from a gothic horror novel, but the colours and design just... leave it flat and dark and dull.

1.5. like what really frustrates me is that titans has a delightful mix of tones--the fights often remind me of schumacher-era batman camp, with the contrived quips and the start-stop rhythm and krypto just sallying in and ending the fight with a fucking SuperBark (tm) but in the same episode you have red hood just casually pulling out severed heads out of a duffle bag and desperate people blackmailed into killing themselves out of drug overdoses. I MEAN. it’s wonderful! but it looks all the same. it sounds Absolutely Bonkers on paper but on screen both Quip and Murder happen in the same washed-out blue and i wanted to be excited about the batcave, dammit!

2. things re: red hood have happened at such a breakneck speed that it feels like there’s so much that’s happened off-screen that we’re not privy to. a real proper mystery!

things that are intriguing about the red hood arc so far:

a) what was that chemical he huffed just before going to fight the joker? is it a regular old performance/adrenaline booster or is it something more lazarus-juice adjacent? if it’s the latter, i can’t imagine he got that much information from a lone chemistry textbook. and where is he getting the resources to set up his little chemistry lab? is somebody else orchestrating things behind the scenes?

b) the red hood persona, costume and mask, plus the elaborate plan he’s putting in place to both string along gotham’s rogues and enact his revenge against the titans seems too... fully-formed and elaborate to have been concocted in just a few days. how long do you think jason’s been planning this? just... stewing in resentment and building rage, dismissed and passed around and underestimated and realising that the power he thought he would get by being robin is no power, no protection at all, but something that’s left him even more vulnerable than before?

c) do we think that the scarecrow is at least partly behind this transformation? because yes, it was batman that set up this whole hannibal lecter-esque situation with him, and he would be irresponsible enough to have jason-as-robin go talk to him regularly regarding “~profiling~” criminals. it’s not too far of a leap to assume that scarecrow could’ve been manipulating jason at a very vulnerable time, and that he could’ve passed along some of his chemistry know-how, too.

d) ... or fuck, i wouldn’t put it past titans to introduce ra’s al ghul in a fucking ten second aside

e) anyway, the thing that won’t leave me alone is jason seeking out the joker not necessarily to fight him, but to orchestrate his own death. the whole thing has to have been part of a bigger plan. he broke batman with it, after all. and he’s starting to break the titans, too.

f) i love it! i mean, it does re-tread some of the storybeats we had with deathstroke last season (turning the titans against each other as revenge, etc) but it’s... tighter, this time, and at least for now seems better-executed. and as a red hood story it’s different enough to be really interesting, and i appreciate the ways in which its reframed the revenge story to focus on the titans rather than just the batman. like fuck everything up, i say! turn it on its head! slash the innards out of that sacred cow and strew it like garlands in the path of the Story You Want To Tell!

(and yes i am fully aware that by the time i post this review, there will be a whole lot more information out but if i come across like a fool then goddammit i will be a fool!)

2. i love how every season of titans starts off with, ‘oh dick, you thought you were settling into a role and a life and a pattern of relationships? well fuck you, here’s a terrible and traumatic thing, tons more responsibility, and circumstances that will lead you to uproot your entire life and move somewhere else.’ and dick’s just like, ‘well, ok. fuck you, but all right’.

can you imagine? the man was just settling into leading a team in sf and smiling for the first time in years, and now he has to deal with jason’s death, bruce experiencing a full fledged breakdown, coming back to a city that represents more bad memories than good, red hood, and a frightening new case that seems to be targeting him and his team. it’s a testament to dick’s growth that he’s not reacting to this stress like he did last year, shutting everybody out, making irrational decisions and experiencing sharp, short bursts of anger. (not to mention a full fledged psychotic episode.)

2.5. but i’ve also talked about dick performing a fair amount of unwarranted emotional labour for his team(s) in that he just lets them take out their frustrations on him and... does nothing. be it his team exploding at him for jericho (both in flashback and present-day) or donna and hank needling him for handling deathstroke poorly or barbara berating him for not handling the bank situation as well as she thought batman would though just the previous episode she had talked about how fucked up it was that bruce just expected dick to step up and replace him in gotham without any real notice. i mean it’s all perfectly understandable and sympathetic from their end--and i’m not trying to bash them here!--but hank, my man, the same chin you’re asking your amigo to keep up is the one that you punched last year and never apologised for. just sayin’.

2.75. @superohclair did a wonderful breakdown of what the ‘fear’ contract could imply here and there’s not too much i could add to that. it’s just really interesting that fear ended up being such a defining feature of their lives, albeit it’s the fear of seeming less than invincible in the face of bigger, more tangible fears. am i making sense? dick feared loss, and abandonment, and the more existential concept of turning into something that he didn’t want to. bruce so feared being alone that he’s scouting kids to replace robin within days of jason dying.

it also goes some way in explaining the tense sort of... restraint that bruce and dick show in the wake of loss and tragedy, like anything less than complete control of your emotions can lead to tragedy. it’s conditioning that dick couldn’t shake off when he was at his lowest in detroit, hating his legacy but unable to let it go either.

2.775. but i definitely appreciate the softness that dick displays with his team now, checking on them after a mission-gone-bad, welcoming back old members with no caveats or resentments (and kory’s delight in seeing hank back! hank and dick hanging out together and hank trying to prop dick up!), and appreciating their teamwork in solving cases. that’s always been the essence of dick as a person, and the beating heart of this show: flawed and traumatised people coming together to a place that will always be open to them, where they can be their worst and be supported still, allowed to make mistakes and grow from them. that’s family.

2.8. coming back to bruce for just a sec, it’s interesting how that gotham rogue was so certain when he said that ‘batman doesn’t kill’ but it’s not a rule that either jason or dick put much store by when they were robins. the ‘no-killing’ rule clearly didn’t mitigate dick’s fears about turning into batman and jason’s never been seeing giving two shits about it. it seems to me of a piece with bruce’s distant, second-hand sort of parenting that we see in dick’s flashbacks from s1 where the fear was never about personally disappointing batman, but taking lessons from him on finding a place in gotham’s hellish ecosystem and surviving.

3. kory having waking flashbacks! i don’t buy the bullshit parasomnia episode explanation from fake!HPG (because c’mon, justin has to be some sort of tamaranean ruse) because for one, you have to be actually asleep for that diagnosis.

(and here i was, hoping against hope that HPG would actually end up as the team’s therapist)

curiouser and curiouser! i wonder if these flashbacks are from the time between kory landing on earth and the beginning of season 1, when she was completely amnesiac? it’d be cool if the show was considering repercussions from that time, and if kory hasn’t gained all her memories back.

4. i just love the vibes between gar and conner and kory. gar Having Things To Do is only one part of my wishlist for him, however: other parts include having an actual story arc, and actually bonding with members who are not conner and kory. (dick! dick! hank! dick!)

anyway. time to move on to watching ep3 and seeing this family bond and nothing terrible and tragic happening at all, nope, nosiree.

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #dick grayson #jason todd #red hood #koriand'r #garfield logan #bruce wayne #his name is justin.#a byronic cupcake #a tragic jalebi #badass strawberry truffle #manic pixie pop tart

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recurring-polynya · 3 years

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Hey this is for our Redhead's bday. Its like a fluff and angst with a happy ending. Is it possible to make a Renruki based on Hanahaki disease? Do you know about this fanfic trope? Its like a person who doesn't know or think their love is requited, will cough up petals. They can only be saved with a confession or accept that they cannot be together with their love interest. I don't want it to sound too morbid. Let me know if its possible.

Wikipedia description for better understanding:

Hanahaki Disease is a fictional disease where the victim of unrequited or one-sided love begins to vomit or cough up the petals and flowers of a flowering plant growing in their lungs, which will eventually grow large enough to render breathing impossible if left untreated. There is no set time for how long this disease lasts but it may last from 2 weeks to 3 months, in rare cases up to 18 months, until the victim dies unless the feelings are returned or the plants are surgically removed. There is also no set flower that blossoms in the lungs but it may be the enamoured’s favourite flower or favourite colour. Hanahaki can be cured through surgical removal of the plants' roots, but this excision also has the effect of removing the patient's capacity for romantic love. It may also erase the patient’s feelings for and memories of the enamoured. It can also be cured by the reciprocation of the victim's feelings. These feelings cannot be feelings of friendship but must be feelings of genuine love. The victim may also develop Hanahaki Disease if they believe the love to be one-sided but once the enamoured returns the feelings, they will be cured. In some literature, other symptoms can be fever, uncontrollable shaking, loss of appetite, low body temperature, and hallucinations. Even after curing, with or without surgery, there can be irreversible damage to the lungs and, although very rare, in some cases the disease cannot be cured.

Ha ha ha, of course I have heard of Hanahaki disease, my brain is 100% rotted by fanfic.

I. hate. Hanahaki disease. It is probably my #1 most hated trope, up there with every single soulmate thing that treats love like some sort of inescapable destiny and strips the characters of any agency. To me, falling in love may be more or less involuntary, but the choice of whether or not to pursue it is the very crux of romance.

In any case, I was just going to... not do this one, except that I walked around mad for half a day and then wrote this up in, like, two hours. This sounds terrible, but this is actually an ideal day for a writer! I am really happy with how it came out! Thanks for the prompt!! I mean this with absolute sincerity!

Warning: Bad language, because Renruki aren’t any happier about any of this than I am.

Read on ao3 or ff.net

🌺 🌺 🌺

“How the fuck,” asked Rukia, “did you get that into my house?”

Sitting on Byakuya’s good tea table was a heavy green glass bottle of Rukongai’s worst rotgut. And two saucers.

Sitting cross legged and cross on the other side of the table was Abarai Renji.

“I told the captain it was necessary. Sit down.”

Usually, Rukia would take being ordered around like that as an invitation to call him names, but there was something angry and serious in Renji’s tone, so she sat instead, and let Renji pour each of them a saucer of something that smelled like lamp oil. Silently, they tossed back their drinks.

“You want to tell me what this is about?” Rukia asked as Renji refilled.

Without speaking, Renji pulled a carefully folded handkerchief out of his kosode and slid it across the table.

Rukia’s hands clenched into fists.

“Go ahead,” Renji said offhandedly, sipping his sake.

She didn’t want to. She knew what it would be. But she did it anyway, reached over and flipped open the handkerchief to reveal a handful of mangled, half-rotted flower petals. Hot rage ran through her veins. “Are you going through my trash now?” she demanded.

“No, I asked the captain to,” Renji replied coolly. “I assume he had someone do it for him, but he didn’t say.”

“Fuck you,” Rukia snapped.

Renji stared at her, his eyes cold and angry. “That night we camped in Hueco Mundo. Before we caught up with Ichigo and the others. You coughed up half a camellia and a good inch of stem in your sleep. I… figured we had more pressing concerns at the time, but I asked your brother to keep an eye on you after we got home.”

Rukia took a gulp of her drink. “Well, congratulations, Detective Abarai, you cracked the case. You’re so smart that I’m sure you know how these things end, so we don’t need to discuss it.”

Renji squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and then opened them again. “It doesn’t… it doesn’t have to be a death sentence, you know?”

“It’s complicated,” Rukia grumbled. “I’m not explaining it to you, but it’s not… solvable, and I can’t… I won’t give up. Not this time.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Renji continued, his voice quieter. “There are ways to… manage it. Live with it.”

Rukia’s brows furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a disease of the soul, y’know, not the body, which is why humans don’t get it. With a strong enough will, you can keep it in check. The key, the thing that really lets it get ahold of your lungs, is when you start to lose hope.”

“You want me to live in denial, then?”

“No, not quite. But there’s some… techniques. We live a really long time, Rukia. Things may seem one way now, but… but who’s to say how they’ll be in sixty or seventy years, right? I mean, it’s not easy, but if you can imagine sort of… jarring up your feelings and packing them away for later.”

“Like pickles.”

“Yeah, like pickles.”

Rukia finished her saucer and reached for the bottle.

“Another thing that works sometimes is to try to…” Renji gestured helplessly. “Reframe it. I’m sure you’ve read poems about courtly love.”

Rukia made a face. “I fail to see how reading old-timey thirst poetry about wasting away from wanting to sleep with someone else’s wife is going to help anything.”

Renji’s face took on a pained cast. “Yeah, I guess some of them are like that. But being in love with someone who doesn’t love you back doesn’t mean your life is...meaningless. There can be something really beautiful and noble and sorta romantic in and of itself about loving with no hope of reciprocation. That you can still be of… of service to a person, even if they never notice you.”

“Renji, that’s fucking nonsense,” Rukia informed him, topping up his drink as well. “Where do you get these ideas?”

“Or you can just really absorb yourself in some goal. Be so busy you don’t have time to worry about love. Time passes quickly when--”

“Renji, just stop. I know you’re trying to help, but I’m… I’m sick and no amount of made-up wishful thinking is going to make me better.”

Renji’s face rapidly cycled through a number of emotions, like he kept coming up with things to say and then biting his tongue instead. “It’s not fucking made up, okay? People have lived with it for years, you know. Decades. Fuck, Rukia do you know selfish this is?”

“‘Selfish’?” Rukia echoed incredulously. The alcohol was starting to hit, and it made her feel unmoored, a raft floating in a sea of her own grief and anger. What did he know anyway? He was married to his job and his duty. The truest companion, the most generous soul, so free with his heart to everyone he called friend, but he didn’t know jack shit about being in love. Renji was the most transparent person in Soul Society. If he had ever fallen in love, it would have been public knowledge. Maybe his heart didn’t even work that way. What the Hell did he know?

“Yeah,” Renji spat back. “Selfish and cruel. How can you love someone-- even if they don’t love you back-- and-- and-- let yourself die from it? What kind of a monster would do that? You can hold on, Rukia. You’re so strong, I know you can. Just… just listen to me, for once. I can help you.”

Rukia felt her eyes burning, so she grabbed the bottle and took a long drink from it until her whole face burned. “Fuck. Off,” she replied, slamming it down on the table.

“I won’t,” Renji growled. “Ichigo cares a lot for you and it would kill him, Rukia, you hear me? You can’t do this to him, or-- or the rest of us, either.”

Rukia stared at Renji uncomprehendingly. The room was starting to swim. “What the fuck does any of this have to do with Ichigo?” She suddenly felt very tired, so she folded her arms and put her head down on them. “You fucking dumbass.”

#renji's birthday 2k21 #my writing #why isn't there a camellia emoji?? i used hibiscuses because they kinda look like camellias but imagine they are camellias #i think the primary driver behind me writing this was just an excuse to get back on my camellia bullshit

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stray-tori · 3 years

Text

TPN S02E09 - Initial Thoughts (anime-only)

[ Reaction video w/ captions/subs ] we collectively have a breakdown about the pen, please enjoy it pff-

... hmmm... yeah I... ain’t feeling it. I think my tpn feelings overall are carrying this more than anything pff. I didn’t hate it, it was just...... mediocre... like if this wasn’t tpn, I probably would have dropped it at this point.

BUT IT IS TPN SO LET’S GIVE SOME THOUGHTS.

. Random thoughts I don’t want to re-arrange

when Emma was like “share your pain with us!!”, I liked how Norman turned to Ray like “Ray. help. tell her I’m right” kind of like Ray did in s1 pfff-

Norman cried the words he didn’t allow himself to say in s1 :( I’M EMOTIONAL. it might not be the icing on the cake execution wise but GOD MY HEART. And knowing he’s going to die to it’s just- (well not if the pen has something to say about it but more about that later)

where- wheres my trio hug :((( RAY HUG THE CHILD NOW

it’s interesting that while Emma got the entire emotional speech spotlight, only Ray got a reaction shot to “I won’t live long”?? equivalent.... exchange...?

I thought Norman had a seizure when he broke down in front of Emma and Ray and I kinda wish he had because while it’s good to have him say it outright (a win for communicationnn), imagine THE ANGST. “I want to live with yo- *coughs up fountains of blood*”.

So. yknow that hideout Cislo or Vincent referenced when talking to Emma and Ray. Yknow where Norman hid the children they stole from farms, making it look like demons did it? ... w-what about them? will we see them? Are they getting left behind? it would have worked for Norman’s plan, since all they had to do was stay put and wait for demons to be yeeted. But now... he’d have to take them all too. But... I doubt we’re gonna introduce a bunch of new designs and characters? Or are we? Who knows. I don’t. I have unreasonably amount of protecc feelings for those children I’ve never even seen haha- WHERE ARE THEY. I mean... the plan rn is to immediately use the gate right? or is the plan to eradicte the GF farm staff and higher ups? I guess if thats the plan it might work. Or I guess the plan is to save Phil for now???

the idea of Sonju just... slicing his arm and throwing it at demons in a loop sounds so funny to me please someone make that.

I liked that Mujika turned to the lambda kids after giving a cup to the demon children but then we didn’t see their reaction or anything and then it cuts to the temple??? that was weird. was there sth missing there? confusion.

I also like Isabella remarking "[a radio] was supposed to be there" regarding the shelter, because it further heavily implies they know of the shelters and just let them be. Which further confirms that they should have just reframed the shelter and had the kids escape from it quickly but oH WELL.

I really liked demon Emma apologizing and Norman's reaction to that. it was a sweet little moment and like, the realization of apologizing for something that she didn't do but is aware of and all that. Cycle of hatred and all that shiz hell ye. Ik the anime won't rly delve into that but I kind of relish in the angst potential of the village - sure it was undone but some were still eaten and died and transforming people back won't bring those back. So, that’s some hella terrifying implications for families; and I'm assuming Norman is aware of those so. guilt time! not that he wasn't aware it was bad but yeah- I teared up at that moment :<<

I feel like this season really does its best when it’s doing the whole two worlds/species angle. Mujika and Sonju, the village, demon and human Emma... all that stuff.

I wish we had gotten more time (god this is really the season’s downfall) thought to see Vylk talk to the GF kids more often. it’s implied he told them not to hang out there before but I would have liked to have him show up a few more times before that but yeah. Runtime very RIP.

I also feel like CW is bending over backwards to put cliffhangers at the end of episodes. that was already a problem in s1 when they had Phil come in when Don and Gilda were in Isabella's room. it was obvious it'd be a copout but they still did it. I'm just wondering why we had to have Vincent disagree with the group to this extend (and if the shock value might play a part in that). we have 2 more episodes, why are they introducing more plot threads? Just streamline it you dofuses. I just don't know what good can come of it unless it's like an ultra big brain move to help them?? (and then we're back with the forcing cliffhangers thing) - if it's actual conflict, this'll just make things more confusing and clustered, and we don't have time for that right now imo. But who knows maybe it plays into something I just don't understand yet and it'll work out somehow

. Animation flow kinda dead.

I felt like this episode was kind of... awkwardly executed whenever something that was a slightly dynamic movement happened?

The whole bit while Emma is walking up to Norman could have been better, but it’s passable, except that a lot is spelled out for us.

But then she takes his hand really weirdly in a far away shot with bad inbetween timing?? what is that haha-

Or him collapsing is cut really weirdly. you barely really see it, you just kinda piece it together from Emma’s reaction and her catching him.

Most facial expressions are good though, which is arguably the more important part in this scene. I feel like a better execution just would have elevated it even more.

The only one I felt was really awkward in its entirety is Barbara’s scene with the children demons. I felt like that was in particular kind of stiff and the cut between the child and her was too sudden and felt jarring. TPN anime doesn’t really do that sort of stuff a lot, so imo it’s kind of “??” when they do it. With Norman it was too, but that at least had a good transition over to it (with bg and fg panning) and nice animation. Barbara’s just kind of switched. Tbh don’t switch it out, and as the child screams, switch over to her facial expression as her own voice fades into the scream? I think that would have done it too and also be low effort.

I think it’s moreso the flow of the shots than the actual shots though? it’s a bit too fast paced and sometimes missing inbetweens (like the wild demon eating sonju’s hand is literally just 2 frames) - it’s very weird. It’s jarring, but I can’t really explain why.

I’m sorry for the staff, I’m sure the production hasn’t been easy. maybe with the bluray release we’ll get some updated animations/inbetweens.

Some appreciation though:

as mentioned, most of the facial expressions, even if the body language was a bit stiff.

the cut from the trio talking to the eye-transition of the demon and the following breath animation looked nice. Also his arm regenerating!

Sonju smirking as he cuts his arm off, what a bastard

they didn’t have to show Vylk’s arm regenerating casually while they’re talking but they did.

. the lambda crew

If only I cared about you guys. Hahhh it’s just... introducing characters so close to the end is just. A mess. A recipe for disaster.

Where has the anime’s “show off the younger kids” angle gone? I thought they were always pretty good at that. but they haven’t really contributed anything since the whole tidbit about the older children always eating less for them. And even then it was just Lani and Thoma.

Potentially, what segments we saw in the shelter will come back for the GF raid thematically but I’m just... EH?

. the cure pen

at this point, just stick a syringe part at the end of the stick and just inject it and it’s gonna solve everything probably.

I just don’t understand why that needed to happen. Assuming they go to the human world, it’d be perfectly acceptable for me for medicine to be so advanced that it’d be able to like, lessen their symptoms and significantly improve their lifespan.

Don’t just... REMOVE their struggles. It’s okay to not be normal and cured. it’s okay for their lives to be impacted by it going forward. In fact, I’d much prefer that.

(added in later) OH wait they literally spell out why the cure being in the pen is meaningful - because it opens up a path where they can live through not having annihilated all the demons - it's essentially the moral "reward" for not killing them. Since they probably wouldn't have gotten it if they did that. I still think it wasn't needed and the blueprint on its own would suffice for another pen-convinience moment but I kind of get what they're going for, I just don't think it's worth it . In their case, going to the human world (while they don't know it) means having more medical expertise at their disposal which they can then use to survive. UNLESS they're actually not welcome over there and have to hide or something, in that case... that might be hard, true. I guess I'll come back to think about this once it's over. For now, it feels kind of unearned and it wouldn’t even have to be this way in my eyes which makes it somewhat worse.

But good, let’s say in-universe you need it NOW, then at least don’t put??? the medicine??? recipe??? INTO the hologram.

What if they just checked the GF blueprint and Norman goes “hey, Vincent... do you think this [database/archive room] could have some data on our experiments?” - Norman said he tried to develop a drug to help them but the supporters who had that data were purged. but... they had Smee to help them too. But SOMEHOW, a dude from 15 years ago just HAS the cure??? (at least let Norman develop it himself and have the data be just THE DATA and not the recipe).

It might still check out somewhat??

15+ years ago, James Ratri was assumingly still the gatekeeper since the switch to Peter seems somewhat recent considering his big "era of James has ended" speech.

I guess the implication is that just like Smee => Krone => Norman, a supporter all that time ago gave random person the pen when they escaped.

When Vylk found him, he also had just the data medium of the pen (not the entire pen), so maybe the farm thought they eliminated it and that’s why they didn’t change their methods to not work with those drugs anymore? It's still a bit curious that their experimentation hasn't changed at all in 15 years but maybe that's because they keep killing the smart people instead of making them scientists to research for them :D

Somewhere since those 15 years, Smee gave Krone the pen (probably a few years before she got to GF?), which means that at that point the gate the keyword "future" sent them to, was still in tact when Smee gave Krone the pen. Maybe WM wasn't discovered yet at that point?

then WM got discovered, James was chased. He made that phonecall update and was probably eventually killed, along with the human location (and likely bunkers since they knew a radio was supposed to be there, begs the question why they didn't remove it) being discovered (the one with the future keyword) and the gate there being destroyed.

The problem is just that it can make sense when you think about it for way too long and assume things in good-faith, but it still feels unearned.

Maybe I would care more or this would feel a little more earned if we knew ANYTHING about that person? They seemed fairly young, so it’s probably not Minerva/James Ratri. The “hope” talk reminded me of the book in the shelter, but I’m not sure if that checks out either? The cookies were rotten but not completely. I know cookies hold out relatively long, but would they rly not be completely rotten after 15 years? I MEAN. Maybe not. Who knows. I tried to google it but didn’t find anything.

But anyway. That tidbit is going into my “shelter kids OC project” I guess.

But even if the worldbuilding makes sense, I think the data set in itself makes little sense?? How did they find that pen part? Did a supporter give it to them? Why do they have the cure? Clearly their group of escapees wasn’t doing too hot (#help) and they seemed relatively young too so they probably couldn’t have worked in the farm.

Were the shelter escapees lambda escapees? but if that was the case, wouldn’t the WM group have secured the cure information more properly than in just one pen (maybe it was and those were just destroyed, to be fair) - it’s just WEIRD to put the cure for Lambda experiments on the same blueprint as the GF layout??? that makes so little sense.

Plus, why would you send them to GF, when it’s so secured and all that, and not just send them to the human support place our GF kids were sent with the “future” keyword, which had a gate. Maybe it didn’t exist 15 years ago (that the humans had control over it, that is), but even then it seems weird to me to imply to send them to GF instead of one of the other gates that existed. I mean. The “future” location’s gate wasn’t destroyed when Krone got the pen right?

I’m guessing maybe it was meant as help for escaping? But then again, why the cure? I guess if they met lambda experiments? I’m just confused.

Also: do we just accept that the layout of GUARDS and SECURITY MEASURES has not changed in 15 years???

*sigh* welp. Still looking forward to seeing some stuff with Isabella hopefully. Time... is not on their side and it shows. Neither run-time wise nor production wise.

#tpn anime #tpn s2 #tpn anime-only #tpn #tori talks #tori has opinions

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librarycards · 3 years

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Hi! I've really appreciated reading your views on the education system and higher education in general, and I don't exactly have a question about that but I guess I am asking for some tips on reading dense academic text. basically I desperately want to consume this book called Authoring Autism, by Melanie Yegeau published in 2018 but it feels so inaccessible to me as someone who hasn't attended college and learned how to read shit like that. it's about neuroqueerness and neurodivergence as an---

identity presented in a queer theory framework and seems like something that would really be up my alley as a queer/trans autistic person and I guess I'm just pissed that it feels hard. do you have any tips on learning how to read academic text and actually stay interested and enjoy it while readily absorbing the knowledge therein? maybe this is a big ask and not something you really have an answer to, but I'm still curious as to your thoughts on it! thx for reading!

hey! this is a really good question, and you’re right that i don’t have one right answer for you, but i can try to give some of the advice that worked for me.

first off, on academic texts and specifically on the yergeau, which i’ve read & adore –– they’re often hard, and authoring autism is dense; this stuff is harder when you aren’t practiced in engaging these type of texts. this is actually my first recommendation –– practice! the *only* reason i feel accustomed to spending time with dense scholarly work is because i’ve done it a ton of times before and i have a plan. there are definitely different degrees of difficulty in various texts, too; you, for example, might want to start with liat ben-moshe or margaret price in terms of Mad/critical ND studies, as i think both are easier accesspoints than yergeau’s highly specific (and also largely unfamiliar to me) rhetoric studies language.

but, yeah. practice! it’s helpful on several levels to start with the seminal texts, not least because there’s also a ton of work by other people elucidating them, and often study guides and questions to help you figure out what’s going on. for example, i’m in a reading group tackling the entirety of Capital this term, which is incredibly challenging for someone (me) unfamiliar with economic theory -- luckily, there are a ton of study guides out there, lectures, videos, and more experienced people in the group to explain terms to me, and i find myself better and better able to understand Marx through all these different interlocutors. even “in my field,” like, you’d best believe i’m reading derrida with at least 3 other tabs open at any given time to cross-check and make sure i’m Getting It.

also, there’s the fact that yergeau themself is building on multiple traditions, but especially w/in queer theory –– these are way easier to get and get through quickly having built up knowledge of heavy hitters like butler, foucault, sedgwick, halberstam (who is cancelled but unfortunately still important in the field), and others. i know some professors of queer studies/gender studies have syllabi up online for intro courses, i’d check out some of those, as well as the bibliography of Authoring Autism, for an idea of who you can read with before turning back to yergeau.

reading shorter chapters, essays, and articles feels more doable in one go than a whole book, and you have a better sense early on of what an argument is going to be (check the abstract and the end of the intro for a “roadmap”). from here, it might be easier to work up to an entire work. with whole books, especially if the topic is unfamiliar, spend a lot of time with the intro, take notes on the structure and organization of the book, the methodology, the examples the author notes from the jump, the terminology they lead with -- taking notes in general is CRUCIAL imo, and having a little base of keywords and ideas to move through the rest of the chapters with is so helpful. also, the intro will have a little summary of every chapter as well as the main argument of the text, which is helpful if you feel lost anywhere in the middle. remember that most of these academic books are composites: they’re built out of dissertations and collections of papers and presentations first given separately. they’re bound for a reason, but can usually be read as standalones.

so we have practicing, chunking, and note-taking so far. i’d also go a step further with the note-taking: a helpful assignment i’ve had in the past is to write a precís, or a general summation of what a text is about, what is it doing, what arguments the author is making, etc, for a given book. these are no more than a paragraph or two. i believe in the saying that “if you can teach it, then you really know it,” and that principle also works for the precís -- if you can get a book down to its bare necessities, it means you really know what it’s doing. think after each chapter you read, could i write a precís on this? can i use 5-7 sentences to sum up what the author is doing? if it feels jumbled, go back to your notes, go back to your highlighted sections, and try again –– and remember that every time you re-read is NOT (NOT!!!!!!!!!!! EVER!!!!!!!) a sign of incompetence, but rather a dedication to the author’s work and a respect for their time and knowledge.

i really want to stress that. struggle, reengagement, rereading, changing perspective....these are very, very good things. necessary. it is completely normal and healthy to have a hard time with scholarly work, even work about one’s own experience. contrary to what a lot of people assume, just because a book is in [ x ] studies doesn’t mean [ x ] is going to understand it; this often comes as a rude awakening when people enter queer studies classes believing it to be an easy A simply because they also happen to be queer. these fields are built on decades / centuries of intellectual tradition that no one inherently Knows, any more than being part of a lineage means you know every single person in your family. what really matters here is a curiosity and dedication to take up a text day after day with the same critical, compassionate eye with which you took up the project of neuroqueer self-determination that brought you here.

lastly, relatedly (and most challengingly for me): accept that you’re never going to understand 100% of anything, ever. as a professor of mine says, give up the patriarchal, colonial desire to “master” a text, to make it submit to you its full, transparent meaning. not only is it not going to happen, but it’s a violent relationship to have with knowledge, both to yourself and your “object.” learning is a lifelong process (hence the importance of re-reading) and Authoring Autism, etc. will stick around regardless of when you’re able to tackle it and in what capacity. i definitely relate to the anger and frustration at feeling “incompetent” in the face of a difficult text, but i try to reframe it as an opportunity to learn, like i’m on a new date and listening to someone tell me about their life for the first time. i won’t get it all on the first try but if it catches my interest, i’ll stick around.

idk if any of this was helpful, and please feel free to message with any other qs, i’m really really really really passionate about ensuring scholarly work is available to those outside the academy & that everyone has the opportunity to engage with it so please consider me a resource in all regards!!

#ask #mosslibrary #ref #academia

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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How TCM Resurrects Plan 9 from Outer Space for Ghoulish Table Read

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UFOs are often visible, but not always. Sometimes they make noise, sometimes they are silent. If you’ve never seen a flying saucer, that is proof they are everywhere. This is one of the many amazing things we learn in TCM’s upcoming table read of Ed Wood’s masterwork, Plan 9 from Outer Space.

We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aero-plane, the telephone, the electric light, vitamins, radio, and even television. But it took a while to get the joke about Plan 9 from Outer Space. Written and directed by Edward D. Wood Jr. in 1959, it was a little-known independent film with a direct line through directors who carried on the DIY-filmmaking spirit like John Cassavetes, Melvin Van Peebles and John Waters. The Cult of Plan 9 began when Ed Wood was posthumously awarded a Golden Turkey Award for Worst Director of All Time in 1980. Though this has been disputed.

Turner Classic Movies is the go-to channel for prestigious films. You can always count on a showing of The Treasure of Sierra Madre or The Public Enemy, or Citizen Kane. But top prize in the Golden Turkey awards carries its own prestige.

“This isn’t ‘Plans One Through Eight from Outer Space,’” Jerry Seinfeld proclaimed at the Chinese restaurant in a 1991 episode of Seinfeld. “This is Plan 9. The one that worked. The worst movie ever made.”

The SF Sketchfest presentation was adapted for the stage and virtual stage by former The Simpsons writer, and self-proclaimed Ed Wood superfan, Dana Gould. He and his Stan Against Evil co-star Janet Varney have been acting in live staged reads with a revolving cast of eager comic actors for over three years. The Zoom production also features Kat Aagesen, Bob Odenkirk, Bobcat Goldthwait, Oscar Nuñez, Deborah Baker Jr., Maria Bamford, David Koechner, Jonah Ray, Paul F. Tompkins, Baron Vaughn, and Gary Anthony Williams. The miniature visual effects, which are by no means just cardboard cutouts, were done by Mike Carano, and the sounds of musical accompaniment came out of Eban Schletter.

Laraine Newman is the narrator. She brings Gould’s adapted stage directions to such vivid life they can reanimate the dead, which is a key element of the actual plan at the center of the cult movie. Originally titled “Grave Robbers from Outer Space,” the film marked the last appearance of Bela Lugosi, who had also acted in Wood’s 1953 feature Glen or Glenda.

Lugosi’s footage for Wood’s unmade film “The Vampire’s Tomb,” was repurposed for Plan 9. Lugosi died of a heart attack on Aug. 16, 1956. To complete the film, Wood cast his chiropractor, Tom Mason, who in spite of his professional familiarity with the human skeletal structure, somehow believed he could mask the fact that he was much taller than the horror icon by pulling his cape over his face.

The table read of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space is part of TCM’s Classic Film Festival weekend, which runs through May 9. For easy comparisons, the original film will air directly after the event. Dana Gold and Janet Varney spoke with Den of Geek about refurbishing the low-budget cult classic, and how, like their predecessor, they proudly spared every expense on its new décor.

Den of Geek: I watched the table read a second time while playing Plan 9 in another window, and I just have to say, recreating those sets must’ve cost a fortune.

Janet Varney: Yeah, just like it cost Ed Wood a fortune.

Dana Gould: That’s the genius of, of Mike Carano. All those things were this big. You can see, I have the Bela Lugosi statue and the saucer. What he did was so amazing, and it really brought [the production] up to be better than it had a right to be. When Janet and I discussed doing this on Zoom, we were like, “Well, how do we take the limits of Zoom and turn them to our advantage? Why is it on Zoom?” By doing it, one, it allowed us to get a cast that we might not be able to get. Got people in different places. Maria Bamford was in Minnesota. Bob Odenkirk was in Vancouver. So, we could get people that normally we couldn’t get. Doing it in black and white helped. And then what Mike Marano did, it made it something unique.

Janet Varney: I would just also add, as a tribute to Ed Wood, we’ve never had anyone that we’ve asked to do the show who hasn’t wanted to do the show. Whether or not they’ve been in town for the live version, every person that we love that we’ve asked to be a part of the cast at one time or another is like, “Oh, my God, I need to do that. I want to do it. When is it? Please say it’s not a date I’m out of town. Please say it’s not. Will you ask me on the next one?”

Everyone knows this movie. And the idea of getting to step into its shoes in any kind of iteration is really exciting for every single person that we’ve ever asked.

Dana Gould: And it’s great to see how different people play different parts. Joel Murray plays the General different than David Koechner plays the General. Bob Odenkirk plays Eros differently than Patton Oswalt plays Eros. It’s always great. And Janet and I, we don’t want to know what you’re going to do. Just do it.

For this production, you assembled the all-star team. But were you ever tempted to use the same kind of players Wood used: wrestlers, tap dancing accordion players, chiropractors, and radio psychics?

Janet Varney: That’s a great question. I feel like we also have pretty good access to all those folks. So maybe that will get the next variety version. Because our friend, Jim Turner, is just about to do a fundraiser for the kind of variety acts who have been struggling in this last year, because of the many myriad things that they do.

So, I actually love that idea, Tony. And you’re right, it would be a totally different experience. That’s an interesting idea too, because we do come at it with a bunch of people who love the movie, but there’s also some major winking going on, as all the comedians and actors try to lean into being: “It’s my first time on stage, maybe my first time saying words,” really playing that up.

In the future, do you hope to see this performance eviscerated on Mystery Science Fiction Theater 3000?

Dana Gould: That would be great. If they did this.

Janet Varney: Especially because Bill and Kevin have done it. They have been in our production of Plan 9. Bill had been what Laraine [Newman] did. Bill did the narration at a show, at SketchFest, and it was great.

Dana Gould: I would like to see Jonah making fun of himself.

Janet Varney: Yeah. Let’s get meta. Our fans can handle it. Fans of MST3K can handle it. Plant 9 fans can handle it. Everybody could handle it.

I know I’m paraphrasing Seinfeld, but as the person who’s trusted with Plan 9 and all that comes with that, did you get to see the first eight plans from outer space?

Janet Varney: And are you allowed to talk about it if you did?

Dana Gould: Exactly. What were they?

Janet Varney: So many questions.

Dana Gould: So many questions.

Were the first eight plans rejected?

Janet Varney: Or were they all executed? And I use that word purposefully. Were all of those plans executed and they didn’t have great results?

Dana Gould: That’s a drunk man at a typewriter, “Plan 9 sounds good.” I remember showing Plan 9 to somebody who’d never seen it before. And they turned to me afterwards and said, “Did he not have any friends he could have shown this to and gotten notes?” He didn’t have those kinds of friends.

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What are some of your favorite mistakes from the movie?

Janet Varney: Oh, God. I was going to say Dana had mentioned that the first time he saw the movie was on a video cassette that Tom Kenny and Dan Spencer, and Bobcat Goldthwait showed him. And I was actually going to ask, did you think it was the tape glitching at the end when the monologue goes from, blip to [makes a noise]? And you’re like, “Wait a minute. Back that up, hold on. Is somebody going to fix this?”

That’s definitely one. That’s a spectacularly new, weird problem in a movie that was not a consistent problem. So, you’re like, “Wait, how did that happen one time, in this very, very overt way?” So good.

Dana Gould: From the very beginning, it’s like the first time you saw William Shatner do “Rocket Man.” I remember, I had a party at my house, and I was working on The Ben Stiller Show, and everybody was there. And back then, there was no YouTube. You would just have these cassette tapes with all of the weird stuff that you had collected on it, like the farting priest and all these weird things that you had, and “Rocket Man.” And I remember showing “Rocket Man” at this thing and Bob Odenkirk just shouting at my television, “You’re a grown man. You’re a grown man.”

I always thought Shatner gave the same line reading for “Mr. Tambourine Man” as he did for “Kahn.”

Dana Gould: Yes, he did. He did. He had a couple of tricks, and he used them. Yeah. There’s one direction he doesn’t get a lot, “You want to just try one big? You want to just see how it goes?” “Take the chains off and let it rip?”

Was some of the background music in this reading, especially the oxidation bit, inspired by The Simpsons?

Dana Gould: That’s all Eban [Schletter, the musical accompanist], you have to ask Eban. But again, that’s great, especially the Solaronite song. Necessity being the mother of invention, that is a brutal chunk of dialogue for anybody, a thankless, brutal chunk. And every time I give it to Paul, I say, “I’m apologizing ahead of time. I give it to you because I don’t want anybody else to do it. Because if it was anybody else, it would be death.”

Eban came up with that. And we were just like, “Maybe we can break this up. Maybe there’s a way to break this up.” And then Eban came up with that kind of thing. And it is one of those things that I love, that it’s like a mutant. It’s grown into its own weird thing to solve its inherent problems. You can’t describe it to anybody. It’s just like, you have to see it.

I used to remember describing Kevin Meaney, the comedian. I used to just tell people, “I can’t describe what he does. You just have to see him, but then you’ll know. You only need a minute, and you’ll get it. But I can’t describe it to you.” That’s really a good analogy.

Laraine Newman, I believe, steals this as the narrator. How much of that is improvised and how much of that is written by you? Because I know that you wrote the stage directions.

Dana Gould: It’s written, but Laraine, I call it “newscaster flat.” Laraine knows how the notes need to be played. It’s like the Wrecking Crew, you have a guitar behind you. I don’t know what Tommy Tedesco is going to play, but I know it’s going to be good. I don’t know what Carol Kaye is going to play, but I trust it. It’s the same thing. It’s a murderers’ row, and I wouldn’t have the gall to tell them what to do.

Janet Varney: It takes a very specific kind of confidence as a performer to be that deadpan. It’s such a specific skill. And it’s a skill, I think, born out of a type of bravado and expertise that’s all just tightly contained in this tiny space, where she’s not trying to sell any of it. And that is the genius behind what she does is just letting it lay out there like that. I mean, it’s hard.

When you have something that you know is funny and you would be laughing yourself, if you were listening to someone else read it, it’s so hard not to want to sell it. Like, can I make this even funnier? And she’s like, “No, I need to take it all the way back, to the back of the house just like, who me, who me? I’m just reading these things.” And it’s just so brilliant.

Dana Gould: This is a person that did sketches on live television with John Belushi and Bill Murray. So she definitely knows where her center of gravity is.

Janet Varney: That’s right. Well said.

Dana Gould: And yeah, again, unflinching. And that takes, as a performer, just like a little inside baseball, a lot of control and to really, to have control of your own ego, to know that I’m going to get what I want by stepping way back. I mean, Sterling Hayden is the only person I’ve ever seen blow Peter Sellers off the screen. And he does it just by, he’s like a statue, but there’s so much weight to it.

In the original movie, I love the “Criswell Predicts.” So I wanted to ask, Janet, do you get asked to do bathroom readings?

Janet Varney: I would if asked, I would love to. That’s one of the things that’s great about Ed Wood in general too, is just having this a sort of fascination with the occult and that kind of thing. And the way that it fits into camp is so appealing. And so, yeah, I would very happily jump back into some bad psychic practices if I could. Hopefully, I will someday.

Dana Gould: And an unerring dedication to Wicker furnishings.

Janet Varney: That’s right. Always that. Paula and her wicker.

Because the table read is done during COVID and everyone feels an immediacy to Zoom calls, were you ever at all concerned about an Orson Welles’ scenario, where the residents of San Fernando Valley will believe they’re under attack by flying saucers from outer space?

Janet Varney: If only.

Dana Gould: Yeah. That’s the least of our problems out here. I don’t know when you visited last time, but the walking dead, they’re around.

The table read of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space airs on Friday, May 7 at 8pm on TCM. Plan 9 from Outer Space airs at 9:30pm.

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giurochedadomani · 3 years

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Tell me your name, is it sweet? He said, my boy, it's Dagger

“I still don’t know why the fuck you think it’s such a bad idea”.

It’ll be easy and fast and welcomingly bloodless, for a change. Primo’s fairly sure about it. He’ll just have to show himself to be very thankful by the dinner’s invitation, very impressed, make signore Mazza feel special, get him talking. While the mayor’s son has taken quite a liking to him as of late, it’s fairly clear that he’s much more enamoured with the sound of his own voice. Primo can convince him to give them the construction contract before the desserts arrive.

Primo’s used to weaponize his beauty. Leonardo doesn’t like it at all. Awkward conversations ensue.

Continue reading on AO3 or under the cut.

“So, you’re going. Tomorrow, I mean”.

It takes a moment for Primo to tear his eyes away from the planes of Leonardo’s back, and more concretely from the reddish mark he’s very pleased to have left on his neck. It takes another moment for him to register what the other’s exactly talking about. He tips his head back when he does it, lets the smoke out in a sigh.

“I still don’t know why the fuck you think it’s such a bad idea”.

He has used the same strategy in the past more times than he cares to count.

Leonardo pulls his shirt over, and Primo ignores how disappointed it makes him feel seeing him getting dressed. He pulls himself up a little, lights out the cigarette against the ashtray of his nightstand. He centers his frustration on the non committal sound with which Leonardo answers him.

“You don’t have to coddle me”, he insists. “If I’m being an idiot, I want to know that I’m being an idiot”. At the lack of an answer, he calls him out: “Leonardo”.

“...It’s a clever idea”, Leonardo concedes, despite himself. It makes Primo relax a little, because he knows his ideas are clever, but it’s always. Very nice to hear Leonardo saying so. Besides, it means that Leonardo’s on board with the plan. He’s pretty sure he can do about anything as long as he has him at his side. He can work with this. He’s just got to figure out what the other’s reserves are. “I just”, Leonardo continues. It’s baffling to Primo that he’s being so hesitant with him of all people, especially when not even half an hour has passed since he has made him come in quite a spectacular manner with those same hands he’s fumbling with his buttons with. “I think you give the guy too much credit. He might have no actual saying in who takes the contract”.

“He’s daddy’s boy through and through”, Primo counters, slowly. “He’s not the one signing the contract, that’s true, but if someone can put a nice word on us so the mayor does it, it’s him”, they’ve talked about it, extensively, had decided to approach Mattia Mazza because of that on the first place, in fact: “You know it”.

Leonardo clearly bites his tongue. It’s still not enough to prevent his… anger? What? From showing when he points out: “You’re assuming that his father values his opinion, that he’s capable of swaying him of all people, and that he’s, I don’t know, going to remember to do so”.

“You of all people should know that I can make myself pretty unforgettable”, Primo interrupts, very calm on purpose, his usual arrogant grin on his face. He knows that it’s fair, that Leonardo has a point, that he’s pretty much not the most charming person in any given room, and that he more often than not comes off as way too intense if not downright rude. He’s not about to admit it, though.

It seems to be exactly the wrong thing to say because Leonardo doesn’t rise up to the bait. His shoulders slump and he looks… sad, of all things, for some strange reason.

“A lot of things can happen before we sign the contract”.

What the fuck does he mean by that.

Primo forces himself to set his wounded pride aside, tone down the haughty smile. He wasn’t aiming for this. He doesn’t want Leonardo to leave his house sad after the nice, very pleasant, very satisfying evening they have had. He pulls his legs closer, gesturing the other so he sits down and he gets a better look at his face.

“Look, we’re not getting him on board with the whole plan. We’re just using him as means to an end. You don’t have to like the guy”, he gives a little shrug. “I don’t”.

Leonardo’s head snaps back to him and— it’s that it? Fucking really?

“You think that I actually like him”, Primo says. Leonardo opens his mouth, closes it, frowns, looks away.

Primo doesn’t like Mattia. He thinks he’s very snobbish, in a terribly boring way. But what if he did like him. Would that cloud his judgement, is that what Leonardo is insinuating?

“He’s, ah, younger”, Leonardo says, very quietly, after a beat.

The implication falls onto Primo like an overflowing cup. Tap, tap, tap and then he sees it clearly. He supposes it does boil down to it. To the fact that Mattia is younger than Leonardo, that he’s also taller, and leaner, and certainly better built, under that stupid, ugly suit two sizes big. That under that ridiculous snobbery he believes himself to be so modern and fashionable. It’s not Primo liking him what bothers Leonardo so much, it’s— “You think that I like him better than you”.

He snorts, waiting for a punchline that turns very sour when it doesn’t arrive. He reframes the conversations they have had together with the guy, Leonardo’s silences, his clipped tone, his very business like answers. He tries to think back to which moment was the one that made Leonardo believe that he’d change him. How long has he been turning a blind eye on this?

“So, yeah. I just. I wanted to know if you’ll go”, Leonardo tries to circle back.

Primo doesn’t let him.

“What, exactly, did you want to know? Whether or not I’m going to end up fucking him after the dinner?”

Leonardo recoils as if slapped, and Primo would feel remorse, he would, but it pisses him off to no end that they are talking in circles, given that this is clearly what the other wants to know.

“It’s your business”, Leonardo grits out after a moment, in the very same snippy tone he had used in their conversations together with signore Mazza. It stings. He counts Leonardo in, in whatever the hell he decides to do, every single time. It’s how they work, it’s how all of this works. Does he really think that he’d just go out, spend the night in someone else’s house, without discussing it beforehand with him? Besides, why in hell would he decide to go out with anyone else, especially that idiot of signore Mazza?

He likes Leonardo. He really likes him.

“So, you’re telling me that you wouldn’t mind”.

“I’m not saying anything”, Leonardo snaps back. And then he catches himself. And then he says something that makes Primo’s stomach twist unpleasantly: “I know that I have no right”.

Primo is brutally reminded of every single instance that he has seen Leonardo and Regina being intimate with each other through the years, the lingering looks in the middle of rooms, the brief kisses out in the open and feels the familiar, well worn twinge in his chest he hasn’t learned to ignore yet. He’s allowed to be close, now. He’s very welcomed. Leonardo doesn’t withhold his touches, not with Regina or with him. This is not a competition. Leonardo has made it clear to him, he has said so openly and often and—

He sighs.

“I—”, he grunts something that’s halfway to a curse. “I like you”. Not bad, it doesn’t sit perfectly once it’s out of his mouth, doesn’t quite finish describing what he means by that, but it seems to make Leonardo relax a little, the first time he has done so since the start of the conversation. He’ll take it. “I like the good, and whatever shit you’ve got in your head that ought to be the bad. I’m not going to—”, he hates himself, his life in its entirety, but most of all how painfully hard is to find words for this, “I won’t fuck Mattia. I don’t like the guy, don’t want him that way, and anyway I’m not going to start. Suddenly going out with. Guys. Because it’s not part of the deal, so”, whatever his line of thought was continuing fades in obscurity, given how Leonardo is looking at him. He makes a florid gesture with his hand, hopes that it conveys enough information.

“The deal”, Leonardo repeats, slowly. Maybe an earthquake could swallow the whole building before Leonardo actually makes him detail what he means by that. Maybe lighting could set his apartment on fire. “And you’re happy with it? The deal?”

Primo lets out a breath that he didn’t realize that he was holding when Leonardo doesn’t pick at his words. He observes him, the little smile with which he has asked the question, his dumb salt and pepper curls, still the very mess he has made out of them during sex, how very ridiculous he looks on his bed, with his shirt half undone. He thinks to hell with the rest, you’re mine and nods, slowly.

The tension bleeds away. Leonardo smiles wider.

“It’s late”, Primo says, suddenly, because he cannot quite believe that he actually managed to get the whole speech out, but the possibility that Leonardo might still decide to ask some more about it makes him want to fling himself out of a window. He says it before having a clear goal in his mind, his brain taking a moment to catch up. “It’d be better if you showed up in the morning, bring Regina breakfast and all”, it’s what he ends up deciding for. He says it very casually, adamantly ignoring how his heart beats faster when he does it. And, because he wants to highlight it, wants to make it so very clear Leonardo doesn’t have any more doubts about it. “We can go to Alessandro’s café in the morning. Figure something else out”.

He knows the mayor gets visited by high class prostitutes, has pictures to prove it. He also knows Mattia’s dealer, how much in debt he is. The mayor’s wife is the great mystery in his little family picture, but he also knows that he goes to the beauty salon every Saturday morning like clockwork. They can get that construction contract. One way or the other.

“That, we can do”, Leonardo agrees. His shirt hits the floor.

#trust fx #primo nizzuto #Primo x Leonardo #me @ me: stick with a single fic it's not that difficult #my brain softly: n o

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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I just read that after Tarantulla raped Dick they were going to marry?! WTF DC THIS IS NOT A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPP is this true?

Yeah, in the issues following Blockbuster’s death and the rape, Dick was a total and complete mess, and Tarantula pretty much spent the next several issues taking advantage of his emotional state. She encouraged him to get drunk to feel better, and tried to use his more vulnerable drunken state to do a number of things which included targeting villains like Copperhead for the sake of her own personal agenda and almost getting married at a chapel. I believe she’d gotten a marriage certificate and everything, and the only thing that kept that from happening is right before it did, Dick got a call from Bruce summoning him back to Gotham to help with the War Games storyline, and the city-wide gang war that had erupted.

(I honestly can’t remember if it was outright stated or textualized in the issues, but it was heavily implied that there was sexual interaction between Dick and Tarantula during this period…..I don’t want to call it them having sex, because Dick wasn’t in a coherent state of mind to be making the choice to have sex based on his normal priorities. My personal interpretation has always been that Dick let Tarantula drag him along from place to place during this time and ‘consented’ to having sex with her because he was kinda trying to….retroactively reframe what she’d done to him on the roof in issue #93, if that makes sense? Like, my take is that Dick was heavily in denial at this stage, and was kinda trying to convince himself that if he made the ‘choice’ here and NOW to have sex with Tarantula, then he could from there kinda convince himself that what had happened on the roof wasn’t any different. Like ‘well maybe I didn’t technically consent at the time, but see, I’m having sex with her now, and that means I probably would have anyway if my head had just been a little clearer.’ Make no mistake - I’m DEFINITELY not suggesting that this in any way makes what happened in #93 any less of actual rape, and there’s no interpretation IMO of the later scenes between them where Dick was making full use of his own agency rather than just unhealthily trying to cope with something he was still trying to process as him having been victimized by rather than a willing party too. It was all just messy as fuck, is what I’m saying. And Tarantula, whatever she thought she was doing, was very much manipulating the fuck out of Dick at his most vulnerable moments through all of this).

Tarantula went to Gotham with him, and even ‘helped’ the Batfam due to the fact that Bruce kinda just….took the fact that she was accompanying Dick and he wasn’t protesting it as a sign of him vouching for her, instead of like….the fact that Dick wasn’t remotely in the right state of mind of to be making healthy decisions, and was pretty obviously on a path to self-destruction. He was extremely reckless throughout the War Games storyline, getting shot in the leg by cops without it even phasing him, heedlessly risking his own life in order to go after Firefly (who just a couple weeks earlier had been hired by Blockbuster to burn down Haly’s Circus), and he basically gave the impression that he didn’t really care if he got both of them shot by the cops while he was going after Firefly - to the extent that it freaked Firefly out and he was yelling wtf are you doing, you Bats aren’t supposed to act like this.

In the immediate aftermath of the War Games storyline, while still recovering from a gunshot wound in his leg, Dick left Gotham again without a word to anyone, just leaving his Nightwing costume abandoned in the Cave. He went back to Bludhaven, with Tarantula following him, and there he turned both himself and Catalina in for the murder of Blockbuster. (He turned himself in as Officer Dick Grayson, who’d been fired from the force before Blockbuster’s death, and basically presented himself as a cop who’d gone rogue rather than implicating himself as Nightwing, so as not to draw any heat back towards the rest of the Batfam by association). He was in jail for like a day or two, but then his former partner and now the captain of the precinct, Amy Rohrbach, had him released and said she refused to let him throw his life away out of guilt for something he didn’t even do.

(She’d known his identity for some time, and its the reason he quit being a cop, she told him he had to choose and it was a conflict of interest….BUT the very night Blockbuster died, she came to him, knowing what Blockbuster had been doing and how he’d been targeting everyone Dick loved in his civilian life, and she offered to give him his gun and badge back so he’d be ‘covered’ if he had to shoot to kill Blockbuster in their inevitable confrontation. Dick refused to take them though.)

But anyway, when Amy made it clear that she wasn’t going to sit back and let Dick throw himself on his sword out of misplaced guilt for a murder he hadn’t actually committed, and was willing to drag herself down with him if he pushed it, Dick was released and he continued to spiral….and this is when he came up with his plan to infiltrate the mob and then from there the Society of Supervillains as Renegade. He first worked as an enforcer for the mob, nicknamed “Crutches” for the fact that he was still on crutches due to his leg injury, but this didn’t stop him from being effective….and then once he got what he’d wanted out of that he progressed to developing the Renegade persona and working for the Society and with Deathstroke. Basically, all of this was part of a plan he’d come up with to ensure Bludhaven’s safety in the longterm, without his presence….he was explicitly counting on not being around to protect Bludhaven himself, mostly because he didn’t deserve to be in his eyes, and it was heavily implied that he was at least passively suicidal at this time and was enacting this plan as kinda a form of ‘getting his affairs in order.’

Basically, the idea was he used his infiltrations to get leverage over the various mobs and make deals with supervillains notorious enough to ensure other villains obeyed a decree to stay out of Bludhaven….and ultimately his plan was to have Bludhaven become a kinda ‘no-fly zone’ for supervillains, the mob and superheroes alike, a city that was left alone for its citizens to live without outside interference. He’d gotten the leverage he needed to keep the mobs from operating in Bludhaven and had a supposed agreement with Deathstroke to keep the villains out….when Slade went back on his word and cooperated with the rest of the Society to drop the nuclear supervillain Chemo on Bludhaven and destroy the city just before Dick managed to bring his months long plans to fruition.

So, this is why if you’ve seen me post about the Blockbuster stuff before, I tend to say I hate how its been boiled down and reduced to just the rape on the rooftop by Tarantula. Yes that was bad enough on its own, but there was SO MUCH SHIT being thrown at Dick from EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE, simultaneously, with no reprieve. Everything he was working towards was systematically thwarted and dismantled in both his civilian and superhero lives and nothing was going his way, and nobody anywhere was showing up to help him, and he truly was at rock bottom, and I hate hate hate people thinking he only has one or two major traumas in his life because that was like….a good year long exercise in misery for him. He canonically spent months undercover working within the mobs and the Society to try and make his plans happen, months surrounding himself by the worst of the worst and convincing himself all the while that he BELONGED among them. That was part of why he was doing what he was doing, make no mistake…..he fully believed at the time that he’d become no better than them.

And its why I loathe Bruce’s ultimate ‘pep talk’ to him, when Dick was finally recovering in the Batcave after Superman flew him out of radioactive, destroyed Bludhaven, where Dick had RUN BACK INTO in an attempt to save as many people as he could. “I can forgive you for Blockbuster’s death, if you really need me to, but I can’t and won’t forgive you for losing sight of the value of your own life.” REALLY, Bruce? Like, what the fuck is that? First off, why the fuck would you make that conditional like “if you really need me to”….if you think your son needs to feel you’ve forgiven him for something that wasn’t even his fault, just SAY THAT, without qualifiers. But…how the hell do you expect him to keep sight of the value of his own life if YOU’RE NOWHERE TO BE FOUND WHEN HE MOST NEEDS SOMEONE ELSE TO REMIND HIM HIS LIFE HAS VALUE???

Ugh.

So eternally annoyed with the non-resolution to all of that.

Oh, and also keep in mind that in comic book time, relatively speaking, all of this is not that long after Dick killed the Joker and Bruce like….walked off and said Dick needed to figure out how to live with that on his own. With them pretty much never actually resolving this, or addressing how freaking much of the fallout from Blockbuster’s death and his bystander role in it was probably Dick overcompensating for still feeling like he’d disappointed Bruce and betrayed his ideals by killing the Joker, and that Bruce hadn’t and wouldn’t forgive him for that.

He thought he was responsible for Blockbuster’s murder because he was already convinced he was a murderer, because nobody after Last Laugh just went to him and said “Look, who the fuck cares what Bruce thinks, it was the fucking Joker, he murdered your brother and was trying to murder your other brother, anyone who says you were wrong to kill the fucker can fuck off.”

But I mean, hey maybe that’s just me. LOLOL.

#rape cw

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dgcatanisiri · 4 years

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*sigh*

I’m complaining here and just need to vent.

I will NEVER understand how people can cite TLJ as flawless, the best of the trilogy, the best Star Wars period... Absolutely NEVER.

Well, I can understand SOME audiences, given how it refocuses its time, focus, and attention on the white boy they can woobify, rather than the women or people of color in its cast, but... The people I often hear this from are people who supposedly are conscious of the issues of representation. Who argue against the rise of fascists and authoritarians, but then turn around and call Kylie Ron a character who deserved better.

Maybe it’s who you think is the main character of the trilogy - I came out of TFA, and I saw Finn and Rey as the central characters, and, really, in that order. FINN was the character that the plot hinged on. His choices drove the plot advancements - he chose not to fire, he chose to escape, he chose to go back for Rey, he chose to take up that lightsaber, he was making active choices through the plot, so that while it was Rey who had the climactic final fight of the movie, it was still sparked because of Finn’s actions. Rey mattered to the story, but Finn advanced it with his choices.

So to have TLJ sideline him, knock him down from his position as the leading man of this trilogy to a comedic C-plot that even those who LIKED TLJ say was a bit of a plot tumor... That’s an unforgiveable sin. To do that WHILE elevating Kylie Ron to the position it kicked him out of, to make HIM the leading man, after introducing him to us with mass slaughter and the murder of Han Solo? That is, in my view, unconscionable. That is saying we reward being a neo-natsee. Based on his actions in TLJ and TRoS, that is saying that a last second change of heart is all it takes to become a hero, even after years of evil and fascism, without actually TRYING to make a genuine difference or owning what had been done.

Like, yeah, I’m a fan of Anakin Skywalker, but I am fully aware that, once he submits to Palpatine, he has crossed the line and cannot just casually come back from what he’s done. It’s not that his redemption came at the cost of his life, it’s that redemption IN LUKE’S EYES came at the cost of his life. Luke believed in that good, but to the galaxy at large? To LEIA, his daughter? He will always be Vader. Luke may make a distinction, but he’s probably the only one who would. And yet, when I look at how much TLJ wants us to sympathize with Kylie, it is trying to present him as teetering between light and dark - when the climax of the last movie was him making a decision between them.

Unfortunately, we in general have this habit of not just believing that villainous, antagonistic characters can and should be redeemed, we also want to justify the sunk cost we have put into these ideas. Some people do deserve redemption. But the other side to that coin is that some DON’T. Some people make their choices and must live with them. More importantly, even if they say that they want to change, their victims are NEVER under any obligation to accept their redemption.

But that’s what TLJ wants us to do - to believe in the idea of redemption, even as it makes it clear that Kylie doesn’t even WANT it. He MAKES his choices. But, because those among THE AUDIENCE want his redemption, that ends up being guaranteed by the narrative itself. Of course we’ll redeem him by the end of the trilogy, don’t worry. You can downplay everything he’s done, you can reinterpret his actions as self-defense or consented to, you can ignore the damage he does to the actual heroes, you can reframe everything to believe he was always the true hero of this trilogy, don’t concern yourself with all the things we’ve established that he did knowingly and intentionally that are evil, we’re just going to pretend that the things that happened on screen didn’t happen.

And I haven’t even started on the logistical issues - I’ve been over before how the First Order of TFA and the First Order of TLJ are two different organizations in terms of scope, scale, and power, how Holdo is a bad leader who Poe was right to act against, how the “Rey Nobody” “reveal” was done more to subvert the audiences expectations rather than give this character a genuine arc and emotional catharsis... I’ve made this post long enough as is, look through my “the last jedi critical” tag for more details on my problems with all of that.

TLJ is a mess. It’s a standalone film shoved into a trilogy, and any problems someone may have with The Rise of Skywalker? Can be traced back to the way that this movie left things. I can only hope time will be more and more unforgiving with it, because it is the place this trilogy derails.

#dg rambles #dg gets pissed #the last jedi critical #i'm really starting to think i need a 'dg is exhausted' tag #because i'm really getting tired of repeating this #and yet i keep seeing all these takes on tlj that it's good #when as a writer myself #i would call this AT BEST a first draft script #and would demand that it be rewritten before anything else #and i can't believe it made it through to production and premiere untouched

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mittensmorgul · 4 years

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They are filming ep15 right now (Cas and Jack are working alone on a case) and the fact that Misha will miss one more ep due to his contract makes me think they dropped the empty deal arc. I just cant see them playing it out when they have to set up Jack to be the God killer, Cas to fix heaven, Amara plotline in 4 eps. Plus Dabb implied that Michael!Adam would also come back to defeat God in some form. Thoughts?

hmmm...

*does math in my head* *admits this is dangerous*

So we know that Misha is scheduled to be in 15 episodes this season, leaving five he will not appear in. So far, he has not been in 15.04, 05, and 10. Of the remaining unaired episodes (including the ones he’s already filmed, but haven’t aired yet), that leaves two more that he won’t be in.

And yeah, I really don’t think there’s time to explore the full weight of that deal, especially given that the entire cosmic situation has shifted since he made it. I mean, even the fundamental REASON Cas made it was so Jack would not end up in the Empty. And then Jack... ended up... in the Empty... Kind of a dick move for the Shadow to still try and cash in on that deal, right?

I just think it’s more a factor of them having committed to end the series at the end of s15 that led to the reframing of the deal, you know? If they had intended to go on for a s16, I think it would’ve been heavily dealt with in s15, or even in the back half of s14, but instead things needed to happen to accelerate dusting AU!Michael off the table to make room from Chuck to get all uppity with the story. :’D

They could bring it up as a potential way for Dean and Cas to deal with the rest of their communication issues. Like Cas could tell Dean about the deal, and Dean react to it with a Normal Amount of upset, because it IS reasonable to be upset to learn your best friend literally sold his own happiness in exchange for what he thought would make you happy, you know? Worst Gift of the Magi AU ever. All Dean wants is for Cas to be happy, but he’s willing to trade “enjoying that in a peaceful, not world ending life” and stand by Cas’s side through all their battles to make that happen. All Cas wants is for Dean to be happy, and he’s literally willing to sacrifice his own happiness and life to make that happen.

I think this was at least partly delved into in 15.09, with the very real threat of Cas having taken on a Mark like the MoC, which would eventually drive Dean to a point where he would’ve had to lock Cas in a ma’lak box forever, effectively losing Cas forever. It wasn’t the Empty deal, but the Empty would’ve never been able to collect, because Cas would’ve never been happy after that, you know? But again, I personally think that deal went out the window the moment Jack burned up his own soul to kill AU!Michael. Because I don’t think the Empty ever really wanted Cas... I think the entity was biding its time until everything was ready to bring ALL of Jack to the Empty, as we saw in 14.20... There was a bigger game afoot, and we don’t entirely know what that is yet.

Is Billie’s plan really to kill Chuck? Or is she, like Death always has, pushing at the Winchesters (yes, including Jack and Cas) to do something specific with no intention of them actually DOING the thing, but knowing that Cosmic Level Nudge will set into motion an entirely different sequence of events? Because Death... can’t act directly. Billie has come closest to just saying it outright, in 12.06, and this was before she ascended to that Bigger Picture View of Creation:

Mary: How would it work?Sam: Mom?Mary: You just kill me again?Billie: Reapers don't kill people. Rules.

So many rules... and Billie is so, so good at working around those rules. Even better than OG Death was. 6.11 is still a prime example of how Death functions.

DEATH So, if you could go back, would you simply kill the little girl? No fuss, no stomping your feet?DEAN Knowing what I know now, yeah.DEATH I'm surprised to hear that. Surprised and glad.DEAN Yeah, well, don't get excited. I would have saved the nurse, okay? That's it.DEATH I think it's a little more than that. Today, you got a hard look behind the curtain. Wrecking the natural order's not quite such fun when you have to mop up the mess, is it? This is hard for you, Dean. You throw away your life because you've come to assume that it'll bounce right back into your lap. But the human soul is not a rubber ball. It's vulnerable, impermanent, but stronger than you know. And more valuable than you can imagine. So... I think you've learned something today.DEAN Want to know what I think? I think you knew that I wouldn't last a day.DEATH I have no idea what you're talking about.DEAN I lost. Fine. But at least have the balls to admit that it was rigged from the jump.DEATH Most people speak to me with more respect.DEAN I didn't mean --DEATH We're done here. It's been lovely. But now I'm going to go to hell to get your brother's soul.DEAN Why would you do that for me?DEATH I wouldn't do it for you. You and your brother keep coming back. You're an affront to the balance of the universe, and you cause disruption on a global scale.DEAN I apologize for that.DEATH But you have use. Right now, you're digging at something. The intrepid Detective. I want you to keep digging, Dean.DEAN So you're just gonna be cryptic, or...DEATH It's about the souls. You'll understand when you need to.

Just like Billie’s command to Dean about the Ma’Lak box in 14.10:

Billie: And just look at you now. Do you remember visiting my reading room? The shelves and shelves of notebooks describing the ways you might die?Dean: Yeah. Upbeat classics.Billie: Well, it's the funniest thing, but they've all been rewritten. They all end the same way now -- with the archangel Michael escaping your mind and using you as his vessel to burn down this world.Dean: All of them?Billie: All of them. Except one.

Except... ALL of those books... were wrong... even that one that said the ma’lak box solution was the thing... And I think Billie was HOPING to get that EXACT reaction from Dean We’ll Find Another Way Winchester. But if she hadn’t TOLD him about that one anomalous book of fate, Dean wouldn’t have known to even TRY. And in doing so, in attempting to build that box, his loved ones realized something was super fishy (lol I didn’t intend to make an undersea pun, but there you go) with Dean, and stepped up to support him until out of nowhere, a wildly unexpected solution presented itself. BECAUSE Dean drew strength to keep Michael contained beyond the original prophesied ends... Because Billie “interfered.”

I don’t think Death actually KNOWS what will happen after she shakes up reality, you know? She just knows where to apply pressure in order to force a rewrite of destiny. This was also the entire point of 13.19-- the things you CAN change, versus the things you can’t. And how to give just the right nudge to set those changes in motion.

Well, that went off on a tangent... >.>

Point is, I don’t know for sure that Jack will end up as a God Killer (I mean even in a practical sense, the ONE THING the CW has ever said was that they were not allowed to kill God... I assume that hasn’t changed and am basing my own personal expectations accordingly...). So I’m thinking that whatever the final plan will look like... we haven’t seen it yet. Okay, now back to the point... Cas’s Deal with the Empty.

So regardless of the why (because I try to avoid using a doylist rationale like Misha’s contract or the remaining number of episodes in order to justify narrative choices, because no matter how you slice it, that’s Bad Science right there...), I don’t really see the Empty deal as a threat to Cas anymore. Unless Cas is destined for a tragic end and will be sucked into the empty in the series finale-- which, again, would mean that DEAN would also never be able to be happy, because it’s been explicitly established in text that Dean can’t be happy without Cas, and again, I don’t think the series CAN have a tragic ending, so it’s so unlikely I’m not even bothering to consider it. Except... Cas might not know that because of everything else, his own happiness won’t spell his doom, you know? Which leaves some interesting possibilities on the table for really cool CHARACTER stuff instead. Cas’s fear of finishing that conversation with Dean that Dean’s Purgatory prayer began, for example... because heck that’s treading really dangerously close to words that could make Cas happy... And could be holding him back from continuing that dialogue now, at least for a few more episodes of tension between them.

They may just bring it up again as a WTF Cas? How could you not tell me? moment, just to demonstrate that Cas and Dean truly HAVE resolved their interpersonal conflicts, by having Jack confirm that the deal is null and void because of his arrangement working with Billie and the Shadow now. Or even Cas himself already knowing the deal has been nullified when it’s mentioned in conversation, allowing them to finally have a conversation about what would make them happy, using Cas’s continued existence as a prime factor in Dean’s happiness, and Dean wanting him to stay to be a prime factor in Castiel’s happiness... I think this could be a really interesting way to use the fact that the deal had existed at all could spark that revelation, you know?

But again, all of this is just theory at this point. I could be 100% wrong about all of this. But as you said, with only 9 episodes left (and two of them theoretically not even including Cas... and heck they could do a speed run through the Empty for one of those episodes too... I have no idea what they have planned), I don’t think it’s going to be a long, drawn-out ordeal, you know? They’ve refocused all of the character arcs back into the main story now, and they’re all converging on what will eventually be the series finale, not flinging them all out in opposite directions to generate drama and angst, you know? Different point in the story, different options available to wrap up open threads.

#spn s15 speculation #spn 15.11 #castiel winchester #Anonymous

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