#just because some people are making respectful threads pointing out the root of an issue doesn’t mean that’s what everyone is doing

[pumpkinpaix]

mdzs fandom, diaspora, and cultural exchange

Hey everyone. This post contains a statement that’s been posted to my twitter, but was a collaborative effort between several diaspora fans over the last few weeks. Some of the specifics are part of a twitter-localized discourse, but the general sentiments and issues raised are applicable across the board, including here on tumblr.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve probably seen a few of my posts about this fandom, cultural exchange, and diasporic identity. For example, here, here, and here. This statement more directly criticizes some of the general issues I and others have raised in the past, and also hopefully provides a little more insight into where those issues come from. I would be happy if people took the time to read and reblog this, as the thought that went into it is not trivial, and neither is the subject matter. Thank you.

Introduction

Hello. I'm a member of a Chinese diaspora discord server - I volunteered to try and compile a thread of some thoughts regarding our place and roles in the fandom expressed in some of our recent discussions. This was primarily drafted by me and reviewed/edited by others with the hopes that we can share a cohesive statement on our honest feelings instead of repeatedly sharing multiple, fragmented versions of similar threads in isolation.

This was compiled by one group of diaspora and cannot be taken to represent diaspora as a whole, but we hope that our input can be considered with compassion and understanding of such.

For context, we are referencing two connected instances: the conflict described in these two threads (here and here), and when @/jelenedra tweeted about giving Jewish practices to the Lans. Regarding the latter, we felt that it tread into the territory of cultural erasure, and that it came from a person who had already disrespected diaspora’s work and input.

Context

The Lans have their own religious and cultural practices, rooted both in the cultural history of China and the genre of xianxia. Superimposing a different religious practice onto the Lans amidst other researched, canonical or culturally accurate details felt as if something important of ours was being overwritten for another’s personal satisfaction. Because canon is so intrinsically tied to real cultural, historical, and religious practices, replacing those practices in a canon setting fic feels like erasure. While MDZS is a fantasy novel, the religious practices contained therein are not. This was uncomfortable for many of us, and we wanted to point it out and have it resolved amicably. We were hoping for a discussion or exchange as there are many parallels and points of relation between Chinese and Jewish cultures, but that did not turn out quite as expected.

What happened next felt like a long game of outrage telephone that resulted in a confusion of issues that deflected responsibility, distracted from the origin of the conflict, and swept our concern under the rug.

Specifically, we are concerned about how these two incidents are part of what we feel is a repeated, widespread pattern of the devaluing of Chinese fans’ work and concerns within this fandom. This recent round of discourse is just one of many instances where we have found ourselves in a position of feeling spoken over within a space that is nominally ours. Regardless of what the telephone game was actually about, the way it played out revealed something about how issues are prioritized.

Background

MDZS is one of the first and largest franchises of cmedia that has become popular and easily accessible outside of China. Moreover, it’s a piece of queer Chinese media that is easily accessible to those of us overseas. For many non-Chinese fans, this is the first piece of cmedia they have connected with, and it’s serving as their introduction to a culture previously opaque to them. What perhaps is less obvious is that for many Chinese diaspora fans, this is also the first piece of cmedia THEY have connected with, found community with, seen themselves in.

Many, many of us have a fraught relationship with our heritage, our language—we often suffer from a sense of alienation, both from our families and from our surrounding peers. For our families, our command of the language and culture is often considered superficial, clunky, childish. Often, connecting with our culture is framed as a mandatory academic duty, and such an approach often fosters resentment towards our own heritage. For our non-Chinese peers, our culture is seen as exotic and strange and other, something shiny and interesting to observe, while we, trapped in the middle, find ourselves uprooted and adrift.

MDZS holds an incredibly important place in many diaspora’s hearts. Speaking for myself, this is literally the first time in my life I have felt motivated and excited about my own native tongue. It's the first time I have felt genuine hope that I might one day be able to speak and read it without fear and self-doubt. It is also the first time that so many people have expressed interest in learning from me, in hearing my thoughts and opinions about my culture.

This past year and a half in fandom has been an incredible experience. I know that I am not alone in this. So many diaspora I have spoken to just in the last week have expressed similar sentiments about the place MDZS holds in their lives. It is a precious thing to us, both because we love the story itself, and because it represents a lifeline to a heritage that’s never felt fully ours to grasp.

It’s wonderful to feel like we are able to welcome our friends into our home and show them all these things that have been so formative to our identities, and to be received with such enthusiasm and interest. Introducing this to non-Chinese friends and fans has also been an opportunity to bridge gaps and be humanized in a way that has been especially important in a year where yellow peril fear mongering has been at an all-time high.  

History

However, MDZS’ rise in popularity among non-Chinese audiences has also come with certain difficulties. It is natural to want to take a story you love and make it your own: that’s what transformative fandom is all about. It is also natural that misunderstandings and unintentional missteps might happen when you aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of the culture and political history of the story in question. This is understandable and forgivable—perfection is impossible, even for ourselves.

We hope for consideration and respect when we give our knowledge freely and when we raise the issue of our own discomfort with certain statements or actions regarding our culture. Please remember that what is an isolated incident to you might be a pattern of growing microaggressions to us. In non-Asian spaces, Asian diaspora are often lumped together under one umbrella. In the west, a lot of Chinese diaspora attach themselves to Korean and Japanese media in order to feel some semblance of connection to a media which approximates our cultures because there are cultural similarities. This is the first time we've collectively found community around something that is actually ours, so the specificities matter.

There is a bitterness about being Asian diaspora and a misery in having to put up a united front about racial issues. Enmity towards one group becomes a danger to all of us, all while our own conflicted histories with one another continue to pass trauma down through the generations. Many of us don’t even watch anime in front of our grandparents because of that lingering cultural antipathy. When the distinctions between our cultures are muddled, it feels once again like that very fraught history is flattened and forgotten.

Without the lived experience of it, it’s hard to understand how pervasive the contradictory web of anti-Asian and, more specifically, anti-Chinese racial aggressions are and how insidious its effects are. The conflation of China the political entity (as perceived and presented by the US and Europe) with its people, culture, and diaspora results in an exhausting litany of criticism levied like a bludgeon, often by people who don’t understand the complicated nature of a situation against those of us who do.

There is often a frankly stunning lack of self-awareness re: cultural biases and blind spots when it comes to discussions of MDZS, particularly moral ones. There are countless righteous claims and hot takes on certain aspects of the story, its author, and the characters that are so clearly rooted in a Euroamerican political and moral framework that does not reflect Chinese cultural realities and experiences. Some of these takes have become so widespread they are essentially accepted as fanon.

This is a pattern of behavior within the fandom. It is not limited to any specific group, nor does it even exclude ourselves—we are, after all, not a monolith, and we should not be placed on pedestals to have our differing opinions weaponized against one another in fandom squabbles. We are not flawless in our own understandings and approaches, and we would appreciate it if others would remember this before using any of us as ultimate authorities to settle a personal score.

It is difficult not to be disheartened when enthusiastic interest crosses the line into entitled demand and when transformative work crosses into erasure, especially when the reactions to our raised concerns have so frequently been dismissive and hostile. The overwhelming cultural and emotional labor we bring to the table is often taken advantage of and then criticized in bad faith. We are bombarded with racist aggressions, micro and macro, and then met with ridicule and annoyance when we push back. Worse, we sometimes face accusations of hostility that force us to apologize, back down, and let the matter go.

When we bring up our issues, it usually seems to come with the expectation that there are other issues that should be addressed before we can address ours. It feels like it’s never really the time to talk about Asian issues.

On the internet and in fandom spaces, Western-coded media, politics and perspectives are assumed to be general knowledge and experience that everyone knows and has. It feels like a double standard that we are expected to know the ins and outs of western politics and to engage on these terms, but most non-Chinese have not even the slightest grasp of the sort of politics that are at play within our communities. We end up feeling used for our specialized knowledge and cultural background and then dismissed when our opinions and problems are inconvenient.

As the culture represented in MDZS is not a culture that most non-Chinese fans are familiar with, we’d like to remind you that you do not get to decide which parts of it are or are not important. While sharing this space with Chinese diaspora who have a close connection to the work and the painful history that goes along with being diaspora, we ask that you be mindful of listening to our concerns.

Cultural erasure is tied to a lot of intense historical and generational trauma for us that maybe isn't immediately evident: the horrors of the Pacific theatre, the far-reaching consequences of colonization, racial tensions both among ourselves and with non-Chinese etc. These are not minor or simple things, and when we talk about our issues within fandom, this is often what underlies them. This is one of the first and only places many of us have been able to find community to discuss our unique issues without feeling as if we’re speaking out of turn.

With the HK protests, COVID, the anti-Chinese platforms of the US election etc., anti-Chinese sentiment has been at the forefront of the global news cycle for some time now, and it is with complete sincerity that we emphasize once again how important MDZS fandom has been as a haven for humanizing and valuing Chinese people through cultural exchange.

Experiencing racial aggression within that space stings, not just because it’s a space we love, but because it feels like we’ve been swimming in rapidly rising racial aggression for over a year at this point.

Feelings

This is a difficult topic to broach at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. Many of us have a wariness of rocking the boat instilled in us from our upbringings, and it is not uncommon for us to feel like we should be grateful that people want to engage with something of ours at all. When we do decide to speak up, we’ve learned that there is a not insignificant chance that we’ll be turned on and trampled over because what we’ve said is inconvenient or uncomfortable. When it is already so difficult to speak up, we end up second-guessing and gaslighting ourselves into wondering whether there really was a problem at all.

We’d like to be able to share what we know about our culture and have our knowledge and experience be taken seriously and treated with courtesy. This is a beautiful, rich world built with the history of our ancestors, one that we too are trying to connect with. When we find it in ourselves to speak up about it, we would appreciate being met with consideration instead of hostility.

We don't have the luxury of stepping away from our culture when we get tired of it. We don't get to put it down and walk away when it’s difficult. But if you're not Chinese or Chinese diaspora, you get to put this book down—we'd like to kindly request that you put it down gently because of how much it matters to all of us in this fandom, regardless of heritage.

What we are asking for is reflection and thoughtfulness as we continue to engage with this work and with one another, especially with regards to how Chinese issues are positioned. When we raise issues of our own discomfort, please take a moment to reflect before reacting defensively or trying to shut us down for spoiling the fun—don’t deprioritize our concerns, especially in a fandom for a piece of Chinese media. We promise most of us are not trying to start shit for the sake of a fight. Most of the time, all we want is acknowledgement and a genuine attempt at understanding.

Our hope with this statement is to encourage more openness and understanding between diaspora and non-Chinese fans while we navigate this place that we’re sharing. Please remember that for many of us, MDZS is far more intense than a typical fandom experience. Remember that the knowledge we have and research we do is freely and happily given, and that it costs us both materially and emotionally. Please don’t take that for granted. Remember too that sometimes the reason for our discomfort may not be immediately evident to you: what seems culturally neutral and harmless might touch upon specific loaded issues for us. We ask for patience, and we ask for sincerity as we try to communicate with one another.

We are writing this because there’s a collective sense of imposed silence—that every time the newest round of discourse crops up, we often feel as if we’re walking away having created no meaningful change, and nursing new wounds that we’ll never get to address. But without speaking up about it, this is a cycle that will keep repeating.

This is not meant to shame or guilt the fandom into throwing themselves at our feet, either to thank us or beg for forgiveness—far from that. We’re just your friends and your fellow fans. We are happy to have you here, and we’re happy to create and share and play together. We just ask to be respected and heard.

Thank you. Thank you for listening. Several of us will be stepping back from twitter for a while. We’ll see you when we get back. ❤️

* A final addendum: here are two articles with solid practical advice on writing stories regarding a culture other than your own.

Cultural Appropriation for the Worried Writer: Some Practical Advice

Cultural Appropriation: Some More Practical Advice

The thread on twitter is linked in the source of this post. Thanks everyone.

#mdzs #mdzs meta #the untamed #the untamed meta #cql #asian diaspora #chinese diaspora #race #racism #mine #mymeta #once again my tag failing me because this is a collaborative work #but! for the sake of organization #statistically average #cultural appropriation #cultural erasure #what else do i tag this im so wired

[billiejean485]

Well peeps - I think I finally reached my turning point regarding Miraculous Ladybug. I've made a decision to leave for the time being.

I have no reasons left to focus on it the way I did up until Ephemeral, and I am just making myself hang onto the old ones that made me so dedicated to the show in the first place.

I probably won't turn my back to it 100% until the Sentimonster Adrien thing is completely resolved, meaning that I will watch the new eps and probably write posts about them too. If a miracle happens and I end up being able to accept or even like what the canon has in store for us, then I'll come back and continue where I left off.

And what does that 'continue' mean: means I'll pick up the fanfic I've been writing since June and go back to being an active fan.

That fanfic meant a hell lot to me: it was my comfort, my emotional relief and something I could spend almost all of my time on, now that I got retired (yup, you read that right - I got retired at the beginning of my 30s, because of my health issues). I knew of course that it was plain fan work, but as someone who wanted to be a part of other people's works and even a writer one day, it was at least a very good practice. I'm not taking this hit personally, because it's always a shot in the dark with fan fiction - but boy, have I never thought having to give up on one could hurt this bad.

Speaking of which, if I really have to drop it and forget about it, I hope I'll find a right moment in the future where I'll be able to share my ideas, concepts and what I already wrote and made regarding it.

Some may wonder why I just can't keep working on it regardless of the canon. I just can't. For the life of me, I can't go against it, and I rarely could - canon material was always something I put above everything else, what I'd try to respect and relive in my fan works, as a tribute - and also, as a way of bringing myself and my readers back into the original world. So now that I can't find anything to be dedicated to... it lost it's purpose.

I still hate that they've (possibly) made Adrien be a Sentimonster. Part of the reason why so many of us in the fandom liked him as a chara since the first season is because we believed we got a perfect little 'Disney Prince' we rarely or never get in other media; having that turn into a lie is well... disheartening.

Of course, it's always a push to make a character perfect, and maybe we should've seen that as a warning sign. But honestly - it depends from the creator. We could argue that characters like Disney Princesses got away with being perfect for the longest time, though I personally don't think I've ever seen a perfect character (that isn't a Mary Sue/Gary Stue). If you want relatability, you gotta add some flaws. And Adrien as a human wasn't really all that perfect himself - especially if you view him from the Chat Noir side of his persona. He was perfect in that attempt to be a perfect human - but all of that has been tossed out the window now for good.

Heck, I'm not even an Adrien Agreste stan - I liked his alter ego more and mostly for artistic purposes. But knowing that that Chaton has never been a human to begin with and that can disappear with a snap of a finger or a destruction of the object with an Amok is so disappointing. Like I said before - if I knew he was just a magical being, I wouldn't have gotten invested. It's just not my cup of tea.

And don't call me out on being a Senti-hater. I'm not. I was rooting for Sentibug and all the others staying alive as much as the next person; it's just that I was living in this POV on Adrien that got completely crushed.

I sound just like Marinette did in Ephemeral. Well, if that is to be taken as a foreshadowing for all of us getting to accept him in this new light... I just hope we'll all manage to do so.

As for my fanfic... Sadly, I can't bring up anything without giving spoilers - and, like I said, I'm hanging by that last thread of hope that the climax of the canon won't disappoint me and that I'll work my way around it somehow. All I can say is I'm pretty much in the same pickle there as in real life.

I know most of you are probably wondering why I'm making such a big fuss over it, and also why I keep bothering everyone without giving anything to actually look at... As I've stated, I just can't. And it's killing me, because if you knew the deatails, you'd totally get why I was this taken aback by the SentiAdrien reveal/teaser.

So... see ya in the following days. At least I can take a mental break now from the constant spoilers and all the jazz (though I Followed too many MLB dedicated blogs to not get them on my timelines, so maybe I'll end up taking small breaks from Social Media as well). I'll look for something else I might find interesting. I won't go back to Transformers just yet, as I feel I still need a break from that too.

... Maybe this whole post ends up being a 'false alarm' and something makes me stay - though I doubt it. It just feels like the right choice to avoid MLB for now.

Good luck with your personal emotional roller-coaster on the ride this show is providing! Hope that most of us will end up satisfied with what the creators have in store.

... I regret coming back to the fandom, at least at this point. I came for the fluff - not the angst and the depression Ephemeral gave me. 😞

#miraculous ladybug #personal post #adrien agreste #cat noir #chat noir #miraculous ladybug season 4 #miraculous ladybug spoilers #spoilers #ephemeral #sentimonster adrien #sentiadrien #senti adrien #sentimonster #sentimonster theory #billiejean485 #miraculous ladybug fandom #ml ephemere #miraculous ladybug ephemeral #miraculous ladybug fanfiction #mlb fanfiction #fan fiction #fan art #mlb fan fiction #miraculous ladybug fan fiction #miraculous ladybug fan art

[hualianff]

Thinking about XL who used to be an heir to one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the world, “Xianle Tech.” When his family’s business was still thriving, XL attended a lot of charity events to meet with clients and cultivate important connections he would have to uphold as future CEO.

Everything seemed to be going according to plan, XL developing a respectable name for himself as he began business school. Once he graduated, XL shadowed his father at work, learning the ropes of how to run a successful company that competed with the best in the world.

However, the success was never meant to last.

Only three years down the road, XianLe Tech suffered a major setback when reports spread that their new product line caused harmful explosions after little use. After paying millions in indemnification for the damage customers experienced, another scandal revealed XianLe Tech had been profiting off of unpaid labor.

Within one month, the world XL had grown up to know crumbled all around him. And he could do nothing about it. All the “friends” XL had disappeared within a blink of an eye. No one wanted to be associated with the family who had resorted to dirty practices for their advantage, which is incredibly ironic considering the business industry is all about networking and using others as stepping stones to achieve selfish goals.

Nevertheless, XL understood that it had been wrong, that he and his parents were wrong to disregard the roots of their manufacturing process. XL wasn’t aware of his privilege up until now, but he sure as hell would learn how to combat this systematic inequity, somehow salvaging what he had left along the way.

XL becomes a social worker who is a Youtuber on the side, educating his viewers about class injustices, homelessness, poverty, and the same exploitation of lower-class resources that led to XianLe Tech’s downfall. He also incites them to engage in random acts of kindness whenever they can. He doesn’t have a huge subscriber following, doesn’t make money off of his videos. XL is just glad that some people watch his videos. He hopes he can make a positive impact on their lives, no matter how small.

After all, XL is a firm believer that despite the world being a scary and lonely place, having at least one person let you know you are cared for is enough to make a difference–is enough to save a life.

***

“I am sorry, but we cannot serve you at this moment.”

“But we talked on the phone a few hours ago. I have a reservation,” XL says calmly. He holds up his phone with the confirmation page pulled up. The waiter doesn’t even glance at the screen, sniffing as if XL is nothing but a nuisance.

“Still, we don’t serve people like you,” he says, eyeing XL’s outfit with distaste.

Ah, so it was an appearance issue. XL quickly looks around at the seated guests, catching sight of wrists adorned with miraculous jewels and pricey wristwatches, bodies clothed with expensive fabrics no doubt imported from overseas. The same aura of practiced prestige and sophistication lingers in the air.

XL doesn’t even have to glance down at his ripped jeans, cream-colored sweater, and flimsy white jacket to know he sticks out like a sore thumb. He internally sighs, slightly regretting taking SQX up on their recommendation to try out The Red Thread. If XL knew he would’ve been barred from in-dining eating, he would not have placed a reservation in the first place.

But XL doesn’t want to give up just yet. He still has a lot to learn about class discrimination and prejudices; if XL were to walk away now with his tail between his legs, it would be giving power to those who claimed superiority and unjust treatment in the first place. Instead of allowing this waiter to brush him to the side like a pest, XL stands his ground, adjusting his beige handbag on his shoulder.

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Could you please elaborate?” XL asks in a breezy tone. A sense of amusement bubbles in his gut when the waiter looks visibly annoyed.

“Sir, we don’t mean to be unaccommodating. However, there are standards in place that were set by the CEO himself. We are simply abiding by his standards,” the waiter says, presenting the matter like he had no choice but to turn XL away.

“Is it a money problem? Because I assure you I can pay for my meal, if that’s what you’re worried about,” XL tries again. The waiter narrows his eyes, making XL gulp nervously. He unconsciously twists the hair not pulled back in his half-bun.

A few more waiters gather around them, ready to jump in if things get too heated.

“Oh, I’m certain the former heir to XianLe Tech can afford our service,” the main waiter sneers unkindly. XL’s breath catches in his throat upon being recognized. The probing eyes suffocate him, probably taking into account how renowned he was years ago and thinking how far he has fallen to come to a Michelin-starred restaurant dressed like this.

XL feels himself losing steam.

“But we are asking you to leave. It’s up to you whether or not force will be necessary.”

“It’s not right to refuse service when there is no valid reason in doing so,” XL says, more desperate this time.

“You do not pass the dress code,” another waiter pipes up. “You are not fit to be here.”

The main waiter now walks towards XL, a grim expression on his face.

“Wait, I’d like to speak to your manager, if they’re here–”

“I am the manager. Don’t make things harder for yourself,” the manager replies brusquely. He stands tall in front of XL, an intimidation tactic used to make XL back down. XL’s face heats up as he realizes he’s caught the attention of other customers as well. He’s like a trapped animal being told to scram in the presence of merciless predators.

It’s not a nice feeling, not at all.

Humiliation seeps into XL’s bones. It’s been a while since he was last scrutinized by the general public, and while this is only a handful of elite gathered in a medium-sized building, the burden weighing down on XL feels like that of the weight of the world. He needs to escape. He needs to breathe. Because only then can XL continue saving himself.

Right as XL decides it might be time to let the reins go, he hears the whooshing sound of the doors opening. He doesn’t turn to see who has entered, but the surrounding staff who were observing the exchange go deathly silent. Their faces automatically mold into a mask of obedience, posture tightening up.

***

He is one of the oldest orphans in the orphanage. His age alone makes him fit for this task, and if he does it right, he can earn money as well as the good graces of his caretakers. He can do it.

He must. He must survive.

But there are so many people. So many plates and tables and silverware. Everyone is so tall, so big, so important. It’s been three hours, and his feet have developed blisters. The bruises from a couple days ago still throb. When he smells all the rich aromas coming from the kitchen, from the plates he carries upon both hands, his stomach growls.

He feels light-headed. Too many people, he thinks. Too much talking and boisterous laughter. He wants to leave but he can’t. He won’t be paid until the end of the night, after clean-up.

He continues to work.

And then it happens. It’s too fast. He wasn’t looking where he was going, just staring at the floor as he rushed to the kitchen. But he has bumped into another person, and judging by the clothes he wears and his pleasant scent, this person is very important.

He can only stare at the mess he’s made. There are gasps of shock and horror around him. He can’t breathe. He wants to disappear. To die, just freaking die already. He will never make it out if he can’t even complete mundane work like this.

As he’s ushered into the kitchens by the older male, he prepares for the yelling, and possibly the hits. They never come. Instead, he’s cleaned up by the older male, who asks a couple questions.

He answers them willingly.

“What is your name?”

“It’s nice to meet you, Xiao Hong-er. I’m Xie Lian, you can call me gege, okay?”

“Everyone makes mistakes, Xiao Hong-er. But they will never define you. As long as you remain true to yourself, you can achieve anything you set your heart to. Do you understand?”

“I believe in you.”

When gege left through the kitchen doors, back to the adult world, back to being important, another older male walks in. The other male frowns, then says one word.

“Fired.”

***

“What is going on here?” An authoritative voice demands, sending powerful vibrations through the air. The hairs on the back of XL’s neck stand up as the new person comes up from behind him. This must be an important figure.

The manager answers that a customer–who isn’t even dressed according to the standards–has been causing trouble. Already beyond mortified at the turn of events but refusing to let it show, XL slowly meets the newcomer’s eyes as he is acknowledged.

The man is tall, at least a head taller than XL. He’s broader too, dressed to the nines just like the other waiters and customers in the restaurant. His skin is hauntingly pale, slivers of ink peeking out from underneath the dress shirt he wears, top three buttons open. XL does not allow his gaze to waver as he instantly labels this guy one of the most handsome men he’s laid eyes upon, and it makes his heart stutter.

XL shoves down these uncalled for thoughts and refrains from giving any of his emotions away.

The most peculiar thing is the eyepatch settled upon the other man’s right eye. XL makes it a point not to stare too much. The eye left uncovered regards XL with interest. XL feels shivers run down his spine at that, steeling himself for the harsh words that will be directed towards him once more.

So XL finally bows his head and lowers his eyes.

“Never mind. I was just leaving. Sorry to be a disturbance.”

An awkward silence follows. The staff doesn’t say anything, but their faces are victorious at the prospect that XL has finally caved in. On the other hand, the taller man’s eye widens, and he only regards XL for ten more seconds before anger becomes noticeable in his gaze.

XL feels his stomach drop.

He goes to make his exit, except a large hand on his shoulder prevents him from turning around. XL looks at the taller man with confusion. The eye-patched man says only one word, expression solemn.

“Stay.”

As XL processes this with raised eyebrows, the taller man now glares holes into the manager who had spoken in the first place. With a click of his tongue, loud and clear, all the staff rushes back to their places, getting back to work. This includes the manager, who ducks his head to avoid the hostile energy of who XL now assumes is his boss.

“Sir?” XL addresses quietly as all the eyes that were once staring at him go back to their own business. The taller man now fully turns to face XL, hand slipping off XL’s shoulder.

“Sorry about that. I didn’t realize such standards were put into place since my departure. I’ll ensure there are consequences for the staff that has disrespected you tonight,” he says firmly, never breaking eye contact. This makes XL’s skin crawl, makes him feel alive. The other man holds his hand out, seemingly shrinking himself to fit XL’s comfort. “I’m the owner of this establishment, by the way. You can call me San Lang.”

XL is utterly speechless for a second, automatically taking SL’s hand and shaking while simultaneously admiring his undeniable attractiveness.

“M-many thanks, San Lang. I didn’t mean to cause such a commotion...” XL feels himself blush as he takes note that their hands have been intertwined for an absurd amount of time considering they’re strangers.

“I tried telling them I had a reservation, but they wouldn’t seat me—“

“They rejected your reservation?” SL questions sharply, dropping XL’s hand and curling his own into a fist.

XL bites his lip, nodding. He can practically feel the waves of irritation rolling off of the owner. “But I suppose I didn’t realize how high-scale this restaurant is. I mean, I’ve heard many great things about the food...”

When SL doesn’t say anything, the corner of his lips turned downwards, XL quickly backtracks in panic, realizing what he said must’ve been offensive.

“I’m sure your restaurant still holds true to its reputation, haha! I suppose...maybe I should’ve thought to dress more formally so this wouldn’t have happened,” XL says.

However, SL is already shaking his head. When he speaks, his voice is hushed, words tumbling out in a smooth baritone voice that XL could listen to for hours.

“No. None of this is your fault. Please don’t take whatever my staff has said to heart. They are the ones mistaken and they will be held accountable. Forgive me for disappointing you...?” He trails off.

“Xie Lian,” XL offers helpfully, offering a small smile.

“Xie Lian...” SL says slowly, as if testing the name out and decidedly liking the way it sounds. He whispers something else under his breath that XL can’t quite make out. XL chuckles at that, now wondering how old SL is. He doesn’t look any older than XL himself, perhaps even younger. Just the mere fact that SL is this young and so successful, XL is the one in awe.

They stand at the entrance of the restaurant in a brief silence, just staring at each other. XL assumes it’s time for him to take his leave. His reservation doesn’t matter much anymore, not like he wanted to dine and be served by the same people who looked down on him because of his underdressed self.

But before he can, once again, announce his exit, SL steps a little closer, a curious look in his eye.

“Say, Xie Lian, seeing as this was such a disservice for your night, would you be interested in going somewhere else? I know a few places that have just as delicious food,” SL offers, tilting his head innocently. His long hair is tied into a low ponytail, but his side bangs fall gracefully across his face.

“Wouldn’t that be showing me your competition?” XL asks good-naturedly. SL smirks at that.

“Competition doesn’t matter when the food in question is high quality,” he answers, holding his hands up while shrugging. “You came here for a satisfactory meal, and I’m saying I know a place or two that will be just as pleasing. If you’re up to try it, just say the word,” SL continues casually, arms now crossed in a way that makes the fabric of his long-sleeved dress shirt bulge.

XL is flattered by such an offer. He looks one last time at the inside dining room, the fancy tablecloths and expensive-looking candles, and the lavishly dressed customers who sit with their backs rod-straight, fingers pointing here and there.

It’s honestly a no-brainer. XL allows himself to smile graciously, nodding. “I would greatly appreciate it. I’m merely looking for dinner. Anywhere is fine.”

SL returns the smile, one eye crinkling at the corner. He seems relieved at XL’s response, and promptly goes to grab his coat that he had thrown at a waiter upon entering.

XL’s eyes widen at the bold, maple-red long coat SL puts on, accentuating board shoulders and his slim figure. XL puts aside his self-conscious thoughts of his ratty, second-hand clothes. SL gestures for XL to walk out the doors first, typing away at his phone, most likely making a last-minute call for a reservation.

XL thinks that for once in his life, luck seems to be on his side. What could’ve been a night of total humiliation and shame turned into a nice meal with a new friend. XL pushes the doors open with a newfound sense of happiness, completely missing the way HC makes a neck-slicing motion at the staff on his way out.

(HC)

(How To Piss Off Your Boss)

#TGCF #heaven official's blessing #hualian #xielian #huacheng #shiqingxuan #muqing #cerdrabbles #hualianau #hua cheng was beaten then thrown out of the orphanage after coming back from the charity even with no money #he was taken in by an older restaurant owner who taught him a lot of the basics of cooking #hua cheng has many scars from abuse including the loss of his right eye #he covers his scars up with tattoos #you best bet hua cheng is like gordon ramsay #you best bet xie lian and hua cheng go on many dates

[beebrainedstudios]

A Few Notes About ADSOM’s Writing/Themes Type Stuff

Because I’m in the mood to ramble and have a few opinions about some smaller things in the series that I actually think are really cool/smart writing. This is all personal opinion and is based on a bunch of half-formed thoughts and realizations, so if you disagree or think I missed something, please know I probably did, I’m just jotting this down for fun and have not fully explored all these concepts yet. They just seem neat at first glance. Also, other books have probably done some of this stuff too; I’m not saying Schwab is the only one who’s done any of this stuff, I’m just saying that it’s cool that it’s in ADSOM. 

- First of all, props to Schwab for Alucard. I know there have been plenty of authors who have brought new characters in later in a series with no prior warning, but I have rarely seen one so immediately popular and gripping in a trilogy as Alucard except for Finnick from the Hunger Games. Alucard’s introduction doesn’t come at the cost of another character (as in, he’s not there to make someone who’s supposed to be bad look even worse) and his arc doesn’t supersede anyone else’s. He’s great, and the fact that he is generally considered part of the main group despite being introduced a whole book later is awesome and a testament to his character. 

- Sort-of connected to the previous point, but I think one of the reasons Alucard works so well is that he doesn’t have a giant arc. Everyone else in the series has a fairly complex internal conflict going on (excluding Lila, but she still has a long arc even if it’s shallow) and Alucard does too, but his is one that suits his shorter presence in the story; he doesn’t have to become king/learn to stop running from responsibility/change allegiances every five minutes. He just has to figure out how to confess a painful secret to several people who aren’t willing to listen. Schwab, especially in ADSOM, isn’t afraid to give characters different size arcs at different times; if you graphed them all, it wouldn’t be a bunch of near-identical lines that could be mistaken for one, it’d be a bunch of crazy curves that start and end at different times and reach different heights. When authors who have larger casts do this, it instantly makes the story twice as engaging. Alucard’s just a good example of this.

- I know this one’s a bit more controversial, but Kell/Lila actually has a lot of narrative potential for Threads of Power. In the main series, it’s framed against Rhy/Alucard, which is already an established relationship (even if it took a break) where the two characters know each other well; this is why, once Alucard can confirm he never meant to leave, the two get back together relatively smoothly and happily. Their relationship is much more matured than Kell and Lila’s, which is why Kell/Lila’s chemistry can sometimes read as a little strange (at least to me), and why I don’t think it’s necessarily a perfect relationship just yet. Lila is a very strong personality with a bit of a demanding streak; Kell in turn has a massive problem with caving to others and refusing to stand up for himself (I’m gonna talk about this later). Left unchecked, this will become a problem, but if addressed in Threads of Power, it can lead to two really engaging arcs with Kell learning he does not have to be everyone’s emotional punching bag and with Lila learning that it isn’t enough to just stay in a relationship- there has to be give and take, something she hasn’t demonstrated well yet. Maybe they’ll even take a break in Threads of Power to give the pair time to mature (I’m personally rooting for Alucard and Kell to somehow get stuck together while Lila gets stuck with Rhy). IDK, I think Kell/Lila is cool, especially when taken as a work in progress over a fully fledged relationship.

- This is part of the previous point and part of the following one, but I think the fact that Kell’s personality and problems are largely focused on his tendency to avoid conflict is a really cool idea for a protagonist, especially a man (note that I’m not calling him weak here). This may not sound like Kell’s personality, but let me explain. Kell is insanely noncombative, and almost everything he does to try and solve a problem reads to me as him actively trying to avoid confronting someone about it. “I don’t feel like part of the royal family because I have no princely attributes despite being one in name, and while I acknowledge I’m lucky I still can’t get rid of these feelings”- Smuggles instead of talking to the Maresh (he tried with Rhy and Lila and look how that turned out). “I’m feeling pent-up because I almost died multiple times in less than twenty-four hours/have trauma and am being punished with isolation/no longer even being called a son despite the fact my magic acts up when this happens”- Competes in the Essen Tasch instead of talking to Maxim. “I hate you because you hurt my brother’s feelings when you abandoned him and I had to pick up the pieces”- Consistently antagonizes Alucard instead of really confronting him/letting him explain himself because that would mean that Kell’s ingrained-trained protectiveness of Rhy has caused another problem. Kell is a character who seems very proud and sure of himself, but when one looks closer, he actually has very little confidence. He has no self-respect, and that sets him up great for his narrative foil- Holland.

- Holland and Kell have a complex narrative relationship as two very well developed foils, and a lot of this has been addressed by the fandom before, but one of the most interesting points I haven’t seen much of is their thematic exploration of respect vs pride. Holland is a character who doesn’t like himself- this much is obvious- but while he takes no pride in his own actions, he has an insane amount of self-respect. He has to be literally forced into following another’s will, he doesn’t let other people’s opinions get himself down, he gives as good as he gets always no matter how hard it is. Holland has to be beaten into submission, and even then he simmers with righteous anger over it because he knows he should get to make his own choices. Holland has self-respect; I may hate myself, but that doesn’t mean I will let you disrespect me. 

Meanwhile, Kell is a people-pleaser who puts on a facade of confidence who never actually uses it. Kell has pride in himself- in things like his magic, his coat, his wit- but he doesn’t actually have a lot of self-respect. He folds to anyone who is more demanding than him (AKA everyone else in the series), and the other characters abuse this constantly. Rhy, whether he means to or not, uses his influence over Kell to keep him from standing up to the Maresh over their constantly-shifting parenting positions. Maxim and Emira use their affection and respect like bait to get Kell to do what they want even when he’s uncomfortable. Lila can yell at Kell about his upbringing or accuse him of overprotectiveness (sometimes fairly, sometimes not) and Kell will simply stop talking. Kell just lets this happen; he doesn’t ever stand up for himself because he has been convinced things are usually his fault. I may like myself just fine, but I will let you walk all over me because it’s not my place to stop you and I’m probably the problem and also I shouldn’t have wanted XYZ in the first place. It doesn’t matter how much Kell debates with himself if he started the conflict or if he rails against the way he’s addressed- as long as Kell isn’t respected by his loved ones or the people around him, he won’t respect himself, and that is simultaneously really interesting and really, really sad. 

- Also on the Holland and Kell front, Holland using Kell as the metaphorical scapegoat for his issues makes perfect sense, especially since I think he actually knows he isn’t in the right. Kell is often in places where Holland is at least uncomfortable and at worst in pain, and he is the tangible representation of Red London, the world Holland hates most of all. I’m convinced Holland’s brain put two and two together, which is why Holland often punishes/hurts/hates Kell for Red London’s systemic issues even when it is obvious to everyone involved Kell isn’t to blame. Holland lashes out at Kell in their first meeting because he’s offended that Red London is successful and White London is not; this isn’t Kell’s fault. He blames Kell for a)killing him and b)killing the Danes and stealing his vengeance; this also isn’t Kell’s fault. He even seems to get a little bit of satisfaction over the idea of sicking Osaron on Red London through Kell, despite the fact that making a deal with Osaron wasn’t Kell’s idea either; it was Holland’s (Kell didn’t have a choice to kill him and didn’t think he’d survive, but Holland still seems to interpret it as Kell banishing him to Black London, even though he would absolutely do the same thing in his shoes). Holland is a very angry person and Kell is unfortunately put in his way a lot, but I still think it’s neat that the very-rational Holland seems to have an awareness that this behavior isn’t fair/has unfair intentions but still is unwilling to stop anyway. He’s using this grudge as a coping mechanism and that feels really realistic to me.

- Minor point here, but the knowledge that eye color and stuff is incredibly varied and changes with magic use makes my little artist heart very happy indeed. 

- I’m a big Osaron fan, and one of the things about him that I think is really cool is how completely unconcerned with revenge he is. Yes, he holds grudges against the Antari, but he doesn’t seem to care that he got locked in Black London for centuries. He has taken no personal offense over it, and that makes him seem even more inhuman to me- Holland spent like six hours in Black London and he carried that grudge for ages. Also, his complete certainty that he was not going to repeat the Black Plague in Red London is hilarious to me- he’s like a dog that keeps knocking its toy somewhere it can’t reach because it doesn’t compute that repeating the same action will always have the same result. Surely this won’t go wrong again, Osaron thinks, as the world once again starts dying off. He’s kind of an idiot, and I love that.

- The fact that Kamerov is both a knight and silver themed during a time when Rhy is throwing himself into his role as the Golden Prince may be unintentional, but is still cool nonetheless.

#i may reblog this later with more if i have any other revelations #but for now this will do #adsom #a darker shade of magic #shades of magic #ve schwab #agos #a gathering of shadows #a conjuring of light #acol #adsom theory #adsom headcanon #bee rambles #alucard emery #rhy maresh #kell maresh #lila bard #holland vosijk

[magnificent-buckless-butt]

@charmollypii asked about why I/we hated Walker so much and oh boy, lemme me research all my previous posts about John because there's a lot to say here. Baseline: John Walker is a meh dude but most importantly, he's the worst Captain America.

About John: I call him a meh dude because he's not actively trying to be an asshole or a racist or smth like that but he doesn't strike me as particularly aware of his privileges as a white straight American man. He'd be my co-worker, I'd work with him without problems, I'd just feel not interest in talking with him about serious/political issues. Like I said, a regular white straight dude.

The problems arrive when he carries the shield.

It's very telling how his 5 seconds of screen time in ep 1 were enough for me to hate him. As long as he walked down the stairs, I thought he could be a good guy, good soldier obeying the orders, just trying his best. And then he winked. This is what made me hate him. This is a condescending "don't worry, daddy's here" kind of wink. This is a "look at me and cheer" kind of wink. And you don't accept to be Captain America for the fangirls.

It was Lemar who said the show went with the shield. Took me some time to realise it doesn't. Sure, Cap was a propaganda doll at the beginning (and in some measure, during Avengers 1) but it had stopped a long time ago. The band, the autographs, the posters... I wouldn't mind the gov doing that but the fact that John took an active part in it was just a no. He didn't only agree to put on a show, he also agreed to hand back Cap's image to the gov propaganda.

Now, on to everything that just didn't sit well at all with me.

His costume. There is somewhere a really good and lengthy thread about it that I'm not good enough to repeat so I'll just say this: the star is on his shoulder and not on his chest. He cares more about the title than doing the right thing.

He brings a gun to a fight. Again, Steve used to do it but it was during WWII so in a middle of a fricking war and yes, the shield can and has been used to kill but it's about the symbol, the message. Steve entered a fight with a symbol of protection, not attack. In a way, showing there can be a peaceful outcome. Walker cancels that image by carrying a gun.

He calls Bucky "Bucky." It's true Bucky has expressed the desire to be called that way but it's rooted in reclaiming a sense of identity. When Walker uses it, however, it feels like over familiarity. Think co-worker using your child's nickname to address them. It's condescending if not patronising.

Right in that same vein, he said "wingmen" when addressing Sam and Bucky. He might be "Cap," he's not Steve. What has he done to earn their respect? To even consider they can be his wingmen?

Still going on with that, he has no humility. It's true, Sam and Bucky don't know who they're fighting either. But he's talking to two Avengers. About enhanced individuals. Clearly, they know more about what's the best way to handle the situation than he does. And yet his attitude is "join my team" instead of "can I assist you?"

When Sam is trying to do the right thing (eg talking to Karli in ep 4), he ignores him and talks to Bucky instead. Remember when I say he wasn't actively trying to be a racist? Well, he got a Black sidekick and he asks Bucky, a white man, if he's going to "let" (really important choice of word here; he's discussing Sam's rights to action) his Black partner act.

He couldn't take a beating from non enhanced people. "They weren't even super soldiers." This is possibly the most acute difference between Steve and him and even between Sam and him. Steve was physically limited but he wanted a chance to do his part. He only wanted to have the strength to stand on his legs long enough to be of some use. Sam, compared to the super soldiers, is also physically limited. But contrary to Steve he's healthy enough to fight. And that's what matters to them. For Walker, however, being healthy enough to put a fight, to simply try, was not enough. He wanted to be stronger. He wanted to "put himself above everyone else" (in Zemo's words).

His whole interaction with the Dora Milaje. Remember when I said he's not actively trying to be a racist or misogynistic? Doesn't mean he wasn't both throughout that whole scene. (I won't develop because there are really good posts on that but basically talking about "pointy sticks" and touching a woman without her consent.)

The way he murdered the Flag Smasher: the fight was over, Nico was not a threat, neither to him or the population around them (no bomb, Rumlow style). He was also begging for his life. Walker didn't kill him, he murdered him.

He clenched on the shield. Steve showed us on two separate occasions that being Captain America is doing the right thing to the point that it can mean letting go of the shield. (Walker is literally making a new shield for himself as if that was the only thing he needed to be Cap, to make sure he was the one doing the right thing).

He lied to Lemar's family. To protect his ego. To avoid thinking about how he handled the situation, how he did not follow Sam's advice.

Finally, he's basically responsible for the Flag Smashers being that much of a danger. They started out as criminals (robbing banks or stealing supplies) but Walker's persistent refusal of talking with them and instead his constant use of violence as first and only solution could only lead to things escalating and getting out of hands.

Damn, that was long. Let's try a tl;dr: it's because Walker is a meh dude that he makes the worst Captain America and it's because he's supposed to be Captain America that he can't allow himself to be a meh dude.

You don't choose the perfect soldier to be Captain America, you choose a good man. And that's Sam Wilson for you.

#tfatws #tfatws meta #tfatws theory #john walker #not my captain america #god this took so long to write #and i might have forgotten things #feel free to add your thoughts

[pluraldeepdive]

Mid-continuum VS. Median

Disclaimer: This is a post covering a deep dive of archived events that took place in the past. DO NOT harass or send hate towards anyone mentioned.

Introduction

Mid-continuum was an early label created on the Internet sometime in 1996 by a plural named Vickis. Many individuals, both dissociative and non-dissociative, felt drawn to this term and it became quite popular. Unfortunately, it also ended up grabbing the attention of the anti-DID/OSDD movement. Later in the 2000′s, an anti-DID/OSDD organization coined the term median to replace mid-continuum. Median became more popularized, and mid-continuum subsequently fell out of usage. This post will be going over what I discovered while deep diving Internet archives regarding this subject.

The Precursor to Mid-continuum

In 1997 and earlier, many of the DID-focused websites at the time, such as Astraea’s Web, were spreading around a psychological model known as the dissociative spectrum (or continuum). This older model was conceptualized by Braun in 1988. His model suggested that dissociation lay on a continuum from normal experiences (daydreaming, zoning out, etc.) all the way to polyfragmented DID.

Archive of article by Joan A. Turkus, M.D. (1997)

Proof that this article was shared on Astraea’s Web.

Note for readers: Sources on this post do not reflect up-to-date research and treatment on dissociative disorders.

What was the Mid-continuum?

1. It was based off of the psychological model.

At the time, many individuals in the dissociative community felt drawn to Braun’s dissociative continuum model. One individual in particular, named Vickis, came up with a term for people who identified somewhere in the middle of this continuum. They called it mid-continuum dissociation or just mid-continuum for short. They called those who identified under the label mid-continuum dissociatives. Vickis eventually created a webpage dedicated to this concept called the Wonderful World of the MidContinuum.

2. It was created for dissociative folks.

It was sometime in 1997 when Vickis announced their new webpage to alt.support.dissociation, a Usenet group that was created for people with dissociative disorders. In their message, they stated that mid-continuum folks were dissociative folks who did not fit all of the DID criteria. 

You can find an archive of this message here.

You can find an archive of the mid-continuum webpage here.

On their webpage, Vickis explained that mid-continuum was a label for anyone who felt like they had dissociated parts and fell somewhere in the middle on the dissociative continuum model. A quote from the homepage:

“Everyone dissociates. At one end of the dissociative continuum is ‘normal’ or ‘common’ dissociation that nearly everyone engages in[...] At the other end are the behaviors that characterize ‘classical’ multiples, who may have large numbers of very distinct insiders with little internal communication, serious difficulties with time loss, amnesia, and so on.

Between these two extremes, there is a lot of gray. Ranging from having different ‘roles’ that you live out in different situations, to having an ‘inner child’ or ‘inner children’ with varying degrees of separateness, to having ‘ego states,’ ‘parts’ or ‘fragments’ that don't seem to be whole people, to having some but not all of the diagnostic criteria for what is now known as DID[...]”

3. It was created out of respect for folks with DID.

At the time of mid-continuum’s coinage, the DID diagnosis was still usually called MPD or multiplicity in the online dissociative community. Several people, including Vickis, believed that it was disrespectful to call themselves multiple if they didn’t have DID. This seemed to be another reason why Vickis coined the mid-continuum. They believed that calling their own experiences multiplicity would minimize the struggles of those who experienced DID.

From their essay on the subject (archive here):

“[...] someone elsewhere in this thread said something like ‘I don't want to call myself multiple because I don't want to minimize the sufferings of those who are really multiple’. And I can really relate to that. That's why I say I'm not-quite-multiple usually. Because I don't lose time and never have, I can't possibly know what that's like... I don't have barriers that prevent communication between parts... I don't have the struggles that people who are further down the continuum from me have, and I would never want to minimize their issues by claiming that my own are the same.”

4. Mid-continuum folks often had OSDD.

A lot of Vickis’ writing on the mid-continuum reminds me of OSDD (formerly DDNOS). It makes me wonder why they did not mention it more. The only mention I could find was made in 1999, where Vickis offhandedly expressed that mid-continuum folks usually ended up diagnosed with OSDD if seeking a diagnosis. (X) It’s likely that they didn’t mention it more because there wasn’t a lot of recognition for the disorder back then, and Vickis also seemed to prefer less clinical labels for themself.

The Precursor to Median

Over several years, mid-continuum had gained quite a bit of popularity across the Internet. Many anti-psych websites began to take issue with this due to mid-continuum’s origins. For example, many psych-related words such as DID, alter, and host could be found listed as derogatory to empowered and natural multiples on Dark Personalities. (X) Mid-continuum was unfortunately subjected to this as well. “Since many people feel the idea of a continuum to be inaccurate, many are seeking a new term instead of mid-continuum,” Dark Personalities stated. It wouldn’t be long before some anti-psyches tackled this challenge.

What was Median?

1.  It was created to replace mid-continuum.

In 2003, the natural multiplicity organizations Lancers & Pavilion decided to take action. (Read my post on Lancers/Pavilion here.) They stated that it was a mistake for the mid-continuum to be based on psychology and dissociation. (X) Furthermore, they seemed to be a bit perturbed that Vickis believed multiplicity was exclusively caused by trauma. (X) As a way to right what they saw as wrong, they came up with the term median to replace mid-continuum. (X)

On the Pavilion website, Astraea’s Web wrote an essay on the midcontinuum and why they came up with the median label to replace it. You can read that essay here. This excerpt sticks out to me the most:

“It's important to allow the concept to be inclusive of everyone who fits, regardless of past abuse history or origins, much as is currently being done for 'multiplicity.' With its roots in the abuse-dissociation model, midcontinuum is too limiting; it is no longer useful to us. Median creates a certain measure of psychological distance and gives the concept a fresh start, without the dissociative baggage of the past, and embraces all who feel they are more than one.”

To summarize, mid-continuum was a label that was created by dissociative folks for dissociative folks. Non-dissociative anti-psychs decided to replace it because it wasn’t useful or inclusive enough for them, and it was too psychological. That’s why they came up with median.

2. It was created to exclude people with DID/OSDD.

The Lancers/Pavilion did not intend for people with dissociative disorders to use the median label. Their philosophy was that people with DID/OSDD could not actually be plural, multiple, or median. The organizations believed that only “functional” and “non-disordered” individuals could be plural, multiple, or median. If a person with DID/OSDD was able to function up to their standards, then Lancers/Pavilion considered the person to no longer have DID/OSDD.

More can be read here. 

And also here.

3. It was meant to be more vague than mid-continuum.

Unlike the mid-continuum, which viewed plurality on a psychologically-backed linear continuum, the organizations presented plurality as a more loose idea. From the archived essay on Pavilion:

“Midcontinuum is helpful, but it's rather too limiting. One can dispense with the dissociation bits at once, but you're still left with plurality as a linear continuum, with singlethood at one end and multiplicity at the other. The concept is thus two-dimensional.

It's probably much more realistic, given social and personal diversity, to think of plurality as a sphere, with a potentially infinite number of points; and, to remember that at different times in one's life, one may reside at any of those points, or at no fixed abode. Postmodernist notions of identity as fluid and nonlinear may be helpful in understanding this. If you experience yourself as selves, but feel that your others are not independent of yourself, you can probably describe yourself as median.”

Their descriptions of plurality and medianhood are extremely vague and unclear. Due to all of this, it’s no wonder to me that people with DID/OSDD ended up identifying with the concept anyways, despite the organizations’ intentions.

Median & OSDD

Before ending this post, I wanted to mention that I have met many folks with OSDD who have previously identified as median systems due to the misconception that it was a synonym for OSDD. I remember, when I first joined the online community, someone told me that “median system” was actually coined by people with OSDD. As you can read above, this definitely isn’t true. If you have OSDD and you identify as median, that’s fine, but I still occasionally see people spreading misinformation about it which is why I felt that it was important to include this note here!

#syscourse #long post #median #midcontinuum #mid-continuum #anti-DID tw #ableism tw

[hd-wireless]

🎶 H/D WIRELESS FEST - REVEALS 🎶

At last, the day you’ve been waiting for! It’s the REVEALS! 

Come check out the talented people who created your favourite Wireless fics and artworks!

Massive thanks once again to all the 54 creators of our 64 works (yes some people created multiple works! Special mention to cloudlesslysky who wrote FIVE fics!). And thanks also to all the readers, betas and supporters of H/D Wireless! It’s been a bumper year!

Without further ado...

🎶 H/D Wireless Art 🎶

📻 Stuck on the Bridge Between Us (G)  by pygmy_puffy @pygmy-puffy

🎵 Song prompt: Talk Me Down by Troye Sivan

🎵 Summary: finding the courage within themselves to be vulnerable, so they can stop hurting the other and start loving each other as they so deeply want and need to

📻  So Let's Dance, Take a Chance, Understand Me (T) by Dazed_and_Inked @dazedandinked

🎵 Song prompt: T.Rex, Get It On

🎵 Summary: The War is over and everything has changed.

After a few of years of travelling around the world, Harry decided to move to Muggle London, looking for peace and a place where the scar on his forehead doesn’t have a meaning. His new flat is in a perfectly normal neighbourhood close to the centre, quiet during the day but full of students at night.

He really likes the small bar down the road, a place that serves cheap, awful drinks and plays good old classics. It’s always crammed with people talking, laughing or dancing along with the riff of electric guitars.

From the first time he crossed the threshold, Harry thought it was perfect, the right mix of noise and warmth to be alone without feeling alone. Just what he needed.

He couldn’t imagine that someone else was there for the very same reason, looking for a place where the Dark Mark was only a tattoo.

Blame it on the alcohol, on the music or whatever you want, but when Harry’s eyes landed on Draco’s slim figure, swaying on the dancefloor, something warm and inexplicable possessed him. 

📻  The Pass (T) by julchen_in_red @julcheninred

🎵 Song prompt: The Pass, by Rush

🎵 Summary: Draco, lost in darkness, seeks a guiding light.

📻  If you knew… (T) by gnarf @gnarf

🎵 Song prompt: Young Folks from Peter Bjorn and John

🎵 Summary: The war had left scars on all of them.  Some were obvious. Some only if they looked closely. But the worst ones were those they couldn't see. Those that were hidden inside.

📻  an ode to the boy i love (G) by nettleforest @nettleforest

🎵 Song prompt: Animal - Troye Sivan

🎵 Summary: an evocation of vulnerability, trust and tenderness

📻  Home Sweet Home (G) by gnarf @gnarf

🎵Song prompt: Radioactive - Imagine Dragons

🎵 Summary: In the middle of a Zombie apocalypse Harry made it his main goal to find a safe home for Draco and himself.

📻  Turn back time (T)  bt erlasart @erlasart

🎵 Song prompt: If I Could Turn Back Time - Cher

🎵 Summary: Draco's had a rough few years, if that's what you call falling in with a bad lot, attempted murder and a close brush with death. Now facing the weight of his misdeeds, Draco tries to pinpoint when it all went wrong.

📻  Time to Get Out (T)  by SoldSeperately @secretartlair

🎵 Song prompt: My House - PVRIS

🎵 Summary: A few years post-war, Pansy convinces Draco to go on a night out at a muggle club. They run into some familiar faces.

🎶 H/D Wireless Art and Fic 🎶

📻  A Different Kind of Meaning (E, 17k) by p103 @p103 (art by Zigster)

🎵 Song prompt: Outnumbered - Dermot Kennedy

🎵 Summary: The ceiling doesn't hold any answers, but there are cobwebs scattered across the corners with shadows tangled in their threads. The rug against his back is rough and scratchy, threadbare and devoid of colours other than various shades of brown. Harry takes it all in, absorbs the dingy and depressed state of his home. There's a pointed moment of decision, a note about to be played, a silence about to end, and then he rolls to his feet and sets to cleaning.

It's the first constructive thing he's done in years. 

📻  Keep Holding On (M, 33k) by gnarf @gnarf (fic) and MaesterChill @maesterchill (art)

🎵 Song prompt: Welshly Arms - Sanctuary

🎵 Summary: After the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry and Draco both fall into their own battles with their mental states. Draco is sent to Azkaban, and Harry turns to drinking, hoping to forget.

Months later, Harry visits St Mungo’s new ward on request of a friend, only to find Draco in a deep vegetative state.

Not willing to give him up, Harry stays by his side, while simultaneously dealing with the Ministry's newest grand idea to make everything worse.

Making new alleys, and losing old ones on the way, would hopefully be worth it in the end.

📻 Fic : Modern Love (E, 61k) by tackytiger @tackytigerfic

📻 Art : Our Love Song (G) by chachisoo @creeeee

🎵 Song prompt: Modern Love by David Bowie

🎵 Fic summary: Harry Potter, of all people, knows that life isn’t always fair. And no one gets to be happy all of the time. But surely there’s something more—something better—than a rubbish Ministry job, and a lonely old house, and that feeling that everyone out there is doing a better job of living than Harry is.

And it really doesn’t seem fair that Draco Malfoy is back in Harry’s life, all of a sudden, and even though he’s wandless, and living with Muggles, and making his mother cry with his lifestyle choices, he’s happy. So what's he doing right, that Harry isn’t?

Because things don’t really change, do they? And if Harry can’t be happy, he’ll settle for a good night’s sleep, some posh antiques, and the opportunity to find out what Malfoy has been up to for all these years.

And that’s what starts it all.  

🎵 Art summary: Harry and Draco enjoying a Sunday morning bus ride in London.

📻  For the Thousandth Time (T, 14k) by bluefay @thesleepiesthufflepuff (fic) and mehroomiyat (art)

🎵 Song Prompt: Lucky by Aurora

🎵 Summary: When Draco's wand refuses to work after the war, he turns to Harry for help. 

📻 Fic : Returning Tides (E, 24.5k) by Zigster @zigster-ao3

📻 Art : Love Will Tear Us Apart (G) by Zigster @zigster-ao3

🎵 Song prompt: Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division 

🎵 Fic summary: 

Is my timing that flawed? Our respect run so dry? Yet there's still this appeal That we've kept through our lives

🎵 Art summary: Art piece to accompany the fic ‘Returning Tides’, based on the song claim, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' by Joy Division ***** Harry's brooding while straddling a motorbike. Need I say more?

📻  That Sweet Sweet Craving (E, 33.2k) by TheUltimateUndesirable @ultimateundesirable

🎵 Song prompt: Bleeding Out by Imagine Dragons 

🎵 Summary: Harry is miserable living a lie because he thinks being a gay role model is wrong. Fake dates raising money for a charity that ends up putting him in a situation he had never expected. Draco Malfoy appears back in his life by some odd chance trying to flip his world upside down and he isn't sure it's a good thing. Malfoy always worked that way to him. Mental health issues, sex, escaping, and that sweet sweet craving of happiness.

🎶 H/D Wireless Fic 🎶

📻  Follow the Water (T, 38.2k) by xanthippe74 @xanthippe74

🎵 Song prompt: “Follow the Water” by Calexico/Iron & Wine

🎵 Summary: Harry Potter’s life is fine. Maybe a little dull and predictable, but he shouldn’t complain about that, right? When he unexpectedly finds himself at Luna’s house one afternoon, Harry gets invited to join the secret wonderland that she’s creating with a surprising group of friends. Maybe a summer outdoors is just what a former hero needs to bring some zest back into his life.

📻  Life goes not backward (T, 8.8k) by shealwaysreads @shealwaysreads 

🎵 Song prompt: Daughter by Loudon Wainwright

🎵 Summary: Harry still isn’t used to gifts, but this one is different.

A story of coming home, finding safe ground, and the wild courage of putting down roots.

Leaving one life behind isn’t always a sacrifice, and sometimes the greatest good comes from embracing the people you love. 

📻  The Way We Used To Love (E, 5.3k) by Zzzara @big-draco-energy

🎵 Song prompt: 'Used to Love' by Martin Garrix & Dean Lewis

🎵 Summary: Is there hope when what is not enough for the one happens to be too much for the other? 

📻  but if you close your eyes (T, 3.3k) by cloudlesslysky @cloudlesslysky 

🎵 Song prompt: Pompeii by Bastille

🎵 Summary: The New Magic Order is trying to take over Wizarding Britain. They're not the Death Eaters, but they're not any better either.

The lines of alliance have shifted, but Harry is still on the front lines working tirelessly to stop them.

📻  Haunt the corner of my eye (T, 23k) by harryromper @harryromper

🎵 Song prompt: Echoes of You - Marianas Trench

🎵 Summary: Harry’s life is very much on track. After a successful career as an Auror, he’s set to become the youngest ever Minister for Magic. But strange things are starting to happen at Grimmauld Place. Items he doesn’t recognise are appearing left and right, and somehow he never feels quite alone. There’s only one thing Harry knows for sure: it has something to do with Draco Malfoy.

📻  Now that the spring is in the air (T, 5.7k) by cloudlesslysky @cloudlesslysky 

🎵 Song prompt: Seasons in the Sun by Westlife

🎵 Summary: A surprise attack in Diagon Alley leaves Draco struggling to make peace with the fact that he won't live long enough to experience his own wedding.

📻  Seven Days to Monday (M, 11.7k) by static_abyss @static_abyss

🎵 Song prompt: Say Something - A Great Big World

🎵 Summary: There are seven days before Harry has to meet Draco for the final signing of their divorce papers. It's been months and the surprise at finding nothing but more cold sheets and an empty pillow next to him still catches Harry unaware. He doesn't know where they go from here. Whether it's possible to go anywhere after everything that's happened between them.

📻  Blond Brew (E, 30.4k) by MicheleBlack @micheleblack

🎵 Song prompt: “Blondes” by Waterparks

🎵 Summary: A blond roast with soy milk makes Draco's morning, but a pair of green eyes makes his week.

📻  A Series of Nonsensical Events (T, 12.8k) by CoffeeCurse @coffee-curse

🎵 Song prompt: My Gospel by Charlie Puth

🎵 Summary: Malfoy is up to something. When Harry and the other Aurors are called into a Gringotts break-in and find him the culprit, Harry’s at a total loss.

But things only get weirder from then on.

📻  Ignore the Truth (E, 2.6k) by static_abyss @static_abyss

🎵 Song prompt: Dangerously - Charlie Puth

🎵 Summary: "Longtime on-again-off-again lovers Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy were caught in a compromising position in one the Ministry's lifts yesterday evening. While fans of the couple are optimistic, there's still doubt as to whether or not this particular reconciliation will last. When asked directly about the nature of his relationship with Draco Malfoy, the Boy Who Lived had simply this to say, 'Fuck right off, we're busy.'"

- The Daily Prophet, "Love Is In The Air," 28th Oct. 2005.   

📻  Your Daddy Knows (You're A Flame) (E, 27.8k) by Ladderofyears @ladderofyears

🎵 Song prompt: Babyfather by Sade (2010)

🎵 Summary: It's just over a week until Draco's twenty-fifth birthday party and Harry Potter is a busy wizard. Amongst all the excitements of fatherhood, work and friends, Harry realises something special about his husband Draco. He is pregnant with their second, much wanted baby.

There's only one problem: Draco is entirely oblivious to the fact and seems determined to remain so. 

📻  Don't search me in here (E, 6.7k) by Sassy3 @sassy-sassy3

🎵 Song prompt: Gone - Charlie XCX & Christine and the Queens

🎵 Summary: Draco spotted him in a corner, crowded by Ministry employees. He looked like an animal, trapped in a cage. He had a strained smile on his , and his eyes were looking everywhere else than on the people in front of him.

Draco can’t quite help himself, watching Potter from afar. Just out of curiosity, of course. He’s happy with his life, nothing is missing, and if he’s lonely it’s entirely by choice. 

📻  I Can Be Your Lighthouse (T, 4k) by orpheus87 

🎵 Song prompt: The Lighthouse by The Used

🎵 Summary: When Harry gets called to investigate reports of Dark magic, the last thing he expects to find is an almost unconscious Draco Malfoy. After multiple instances, he resolves to find out what's going on.

📻  Drop Everything Now (T, 21k) by parkkate @parkkate

🎵 Song prompt: Sparks Fly by Taylor Swift

🎵 Summary: After accidentally bonding himself to Malfoy, Harry finds himself in an utterly precarious situation… 

📻  No one fucks with us (T, 3.3k) by Laura_Sinele @laurasinele

🎵 Song prompt: NFWMB by Hozier

🎵 Summary: Draco Malfoy wonders for how long has Harry Potter been a terrifying force of nature. Harry Potter thinks Draco Malfoy has been a badass MF all along. If the world has to end so they can have some peace and quiet, be it. They'll set it on fire.

📻  Will You Stay with Me? (M, 10.2k) by EvAEleanor @eva-eleanore

🎵 Song prompt: ‘Run’ - Daughter

🎵 Summary: Ten months ago, Draco had found none other than Harry Potter blindly drunk and bleeding outside a Muggle pub. He'd brought him home and hasn't left his side ever since. He looked after him, took care of him when yet another nightmare plagued him. 

Harry is sure that Draco will leave him at some point, and he can’t let it happen. He can’t have another person leaving his life unexpectedly. So, Harry forces him to leave — after they spend one last night together.

📻  until the sun has changed the colour of my hair (T, 4.9k) by cloudlesslysky @cloudlesslysky 

🎵 Song prompt: Jag saknar dig mindre och mindre - Melissa Horn

🎵 Summary:  Draco's life has been one big mess ever since Potter broke up with him. He doesn't want to see his friends, he's too ashamed to see his parents, and his apartment is one giant mess. He's constantly prepared for disaster, and spends his time either alone in Muggle parks or in his apartment. But one day... One beautiful day... He will forget Harry, surely.

📻  Love Found (E, 7.5k) by peachpety @peachpety

🎵 Song Prompt: I Found, by Amber Run

🎵 Summary: During Harry’s sixth year, Draco Malfoy joins the Order as a double-agent and continues with his task to get the Death Eaters into the castle as assigned by Voldemort. Draco succeeds with his mission the evening Harry returns from the caves with Dumbledore. The boys reunite on the Astronomy Tower and, with the Death Eater’s arrival, are forced to engage in a fight, driving Harry to come to terms with his feelings about true friendship and romantic love.

📻  On the Third Day He Took Me to the River (M, 14.4k) by pixiedustatsundown @pixiedustatsundown 

🎵 Song prompt: 'Where the Wild Roses Grow - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds ft. Kylie Minogue'

🎵 Summary: This is a story of two lonely young men falling in love.

This is a story about dreams and duty, about witches that give purpose to the one and doom the other.

You think you know how the story goes, but this is a different story, and it doesn't end well. 

📻  (When They Only Hear You Whisper) I'll Be Loud For You (T, 2.8k) by VeelaWings @veelawings

🎵 Song prompt: There for You - Martin Garrix/Troye Sivan

🎵 Summary: Potter must have been having nightmares again. He was restless in his bed across the room. Moonlight shone through his open bed curtains and highlighted the contours of his body, the grimace on his face blatant. His thick blanket was kicked down, one leg still covered by his twisted sheet, the musk of his sweat pungent in their small dorm. Low grunts accounted for the majority of the noise he made, but it was peppered by the occasional groan or unclear shout of words. However, ‘No,’ was always clear.

Draco hated it. 

📻  The Interview (T, 17.3k) by Cibee (Cibeeeee) @cibeewastaken

🎵 Song prompt: Just Say Yes - Snow Patrol

🎵 Summary: One interview had Draco realizing how naïve he was for thinking he deserved Harry. 

📻  Lookalike (M, 1.4k) by Zzzara @big-draco-energy

🎵 Song prompt: 'Lookalike' by Conan Gray 

🎵 Summary: When you look in his eyes, Do you think of mine? And when you look at that smile, Do I cross your mind? I know in your head You see me instead 'Cause he looks a lot like I did back then Baby, don't lie, He's just a lookalike... ©

📻  As Fascinating As a Slap Bracelet (T, 13.2k) by acupforslytherin @acupforslytherin 

🎵 Song prompt: Have It All - Jason Mraz

🎵 Summary: Who would have thought that a wacky little Muggle toy would lead to an unlikely friendship between Harry and Draco? Not Harry, certainly.

Who would have thought that this friendship would bloom into something more? Well, Ron, for one. 

📻  If Sex Is the Drug, Then What Is the Cost (E, 3.8k) by EvAEleanor @eva-eleanore

🎵 Song prompt: I Almost Told You That I Loved You - Papa Roach

🎵 Summary: For quite some time, Harry has been seeing Malfoy. Well... Actually, he's hired Malfoy, to keep him company, in his bedroom. It's only sex — honestly — and since Malfoy is the best, he's the only person Harry wants. That's all it is, right? 

📻  I Grow Fonder Every Day (M, 21.6k) by Drarrelie @drarrelie

🎵 Song prompt: One and Only by Adele

🎵 Summary: Draco still doesn’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, sharing a flat in Muggle London with Harry Potter.

It’s all Draco’s ever wanted — more than he’d ever wished for. And if it entails suppressing his inconvenient feelings for the man, so what? He’s perfectly happy with his life as it is, perfectly content with just having Potter close and enjoying his company.

That is, until one Friday evening at the beginning of April when the end starts. 

📻  How Can I Live Without you? (G, 2.2k) by ununquadius @ununquadius 

🎵 Song prompt: "So Far Away", by Avenged Sevenfold

🎵 Summary: After Draco's death, Harry wonders how can he live without the one he loves when he's so far away.

📻  Following the Arrow to Your Heart (E, 10.9k) by goddessofthehearth 

🎵 Song prompt: Give Me Love by Ed Sheeran

🎵 Summary: After the war, Draco is recruited into the Department of Love (aka Cupid's Arrow). His job is to bring together witches and wizards whose magical signatures are only compatible with each others' (essentially soulmates). As they all learned during training, Cupids are chosen because they do not have soulmates.

Six years later, Draco's convinced himself that he's perfectly fine with not having a soulmate. But his latest client turns out to be Harry Potter, and he's forced to reconsider in light of his old feelings.

📻  cos I only need your name to call the reasons why I fought (T, 6.6k) by cloudlesslysky @cloudlesslysky

🎵 Song prompt: War, by Poets of the Fall

🎵 Summary: Ron and Hermione leave the Horcrux hunt, leaving a hurt Harry behind.

But at least Draco is still there with him.

📻  Madness (M, 10k) by tigersilver 

🎵 Song prompt: House of Fun by Madness

🎵 Summary: A desperate search for contraception all around Diagon Alley.

📻  Between Myth and Man (E, 16.2k) by slytherco @slytherco 

🎵 Song prompt: Why'd you only call me when you're high? - Arctic Monkeys

🎵 Summary: Draco, lost and a little broken, navigates post-war reality convinced that people like him should not be allowed to make their own choices. To solve the problem of his self-sabotaging tendencies, he starts taking a few drops of Veritaserum every morning.

A story about the complexity of choices, repressed desires that come to the surface when we least expect them, and the utter hopelessness of truths built on a foundation of lies.

📻  stay awhile (stay here with me) (T, 3.1k) by panicparade @panicissharp​

🎵 Song prompt: I like me better - Lauv

🎵 Summary: "Then when?" Harry tries again. He's not sure if he really wants to see the photo or if he just wants to keep talking to Malfoy. This Malfoy, who is so different from what he was expecting. In his Muggle jeans and smartly pressed sweater, with an air of vulnerability around him that Harry isn't used to seeing, Malfoy looks approachable in a way he never has before.

Harry stops his fidgeting as Malfoy looks up to meet his eyes. Through the hum of the crowded pub, he has to strain a little to hear him. "Maybe," Malfoy starts, hesitating a little but never breaking eye contact, "one day?"

📻  All it needs is messing it up and stars (G, 5.9k) by a_reader_and_writer @harrypotterfanfictionwriter

🎵 Song prompt: Tongue Tied by Faber Drive

🎵 Summary: After the war all the Malfoy's came off with light sentences. Now during 8th year Draco is finally free to be himself and date his crush; Harry Potter. Or at least so he thought..

A letter from his father rips that happiness away.

But maybe in the end it will take just a bit of messing up and some stars to get that happiness back.

📻  I'm gonna let it happen (E, 12.3k) by tomoewantsdolls @tomoewantsdolls 

🎵 Song prompt: Florence + The Machine - Shake it out

🎵 Summary: And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope It's a shot in the dark and right at my throat 'Cause looking for heaven, found the devil in me Looking for heaven, for the devil in me Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me

📻  I feel it in my bones (M, 6.3k) by cloudlesslysky @cloudlesslysky

🎵 Song prompt: Radioactive - Imagine Dragons

🎵 Summary: Harry’s heartbeat is loud in his ears as his heart pounds in his chest. His lungs burn as he pants for air. His legs are screaming in protests as he continues to push them to their limit, forcing himself to run ever faster.

📻  Born in the U.S.A. (M, 9k) by KittyCargo @kittycargo

🎵 Song prompt: I'm on Fire by Bruce Springsteen

🎵 Summary: “You need to come home, Draco.”

“What? Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, I just have an opportunity for you, and you need to come home to take it.”

When Draco's mother insists he comes home, he drags his feet and convinces his friends to take a road trip.

📻  just tell me when it's alright (E, 23k) by M0stlyVoid @bonesliketambourines

🎵 Song prompt: Teeth, Lady Gaga

🎵 Summary: Harry’s been fighting tooth and nail for any bit of normalcy he can get his hands on. He’s sick of feeling like something’s wrong with him, tired of feeling different. He thinks he’s finally gotten to the root of it, and has settled into a routine that makes him happy. Naturally, that’s when Draco Malfoy walks back into his life and upends it once again. Has Harry bitten off more than he can chew with his former rival?

📻  The Courting by the Pureblood Who Only Has Five Milligrams of Romantic Intelligence and Thinks He’s Real Smooth (T, 19.4k) by Cibee (Cibeeeee) @cibeewastaken

🎵 Song prompt: Cupid - Amy Winehouse 

🎵 Summary: Draco could grab Potter and shove him into a stall before proceeding to suck his soul out of his dick, but secretly, deep down, in the part of Draco that he will never admit to anyone, he is (everyone pauses to shudder) a romantic. Potter is not someone Draco wants a one-off with. Potter is — Draco’s beloved!

So Draco decides to boldly go where no one has gone before: to put himself through scrutiny; their friends’ teasing and pranks; unsound romantic advice from a house-elf; wearing pretty clothes; all to try and win Potter’s heart through courtship.

(An unnamed ginger bastard can be heard yelling from afar: “This is actually a detailed guide on how not to court someone!”)

But who cares about the opinions of redheads? Literally no one.

📻  What Will We Do With a Drunken Harry? (E, 4.9k) by Thunder_of_Dragons @thunder-of-dragons

🎵 Song prompt: "Drunken Sailor" by The Irish Rovers

🎵 Summary: A victorious Quidditch match, a claimed Quidditch Cup, and a wild House party can mean only one thing. Will the aftermath lead to one excruciating hangover in the morning, or will it perhaps lead to something more?

📻  Though Your World Is Changing, I Will Be The Same (E, 15.9k) by hephaestiions 

🎵 Song prompt: Slave To Love by Bryan Ferry 

🎵 Summary: “I shower after work,” Harry had told him once when Draco had asked what cologne had such longevity as to be effective after a full day of gruelling Auror work. 

“For me?” Draco had asked. Teased, just a little. There had been a smile lingering on the edges of his consciousness, threatening to traipse onto his mouth. 

“For Ginny,” Harry had said, voice flat. “She hates it when I come back sweaty and crackling with other people’s hexes. Did you know magic has a smell? I didn’t until she told me.”

–

It's all fun and games, till somebody falls in love. Given his luck, it's obviously Draco who has to go and do it.

📻  I Can't Help Falling in Love with You (NR, 4.8k) by readdreamwrite26 @readdreamwrite26

🎵 Song prompt: I can't help falling in love with you - Elvis Presley

🎵 Summary: Harry stood up and set his hand out to Draco. “Dance?” “I didn’t know you danced, Potter.” “Hm, I’ve danced a lot in my time," Harry replied smugly. “How do I know you won’t step on my feet?” “You don’t, but I think the risk will be worth it.”

📻  Searching For a Place to Hide (T, 12.5k) by Erin_Riwen @erin-riwen

🎵 Song prompt: Love Will Keep Us Alive - The Eagles

🎵 Summary: After the war, there were threats against the Malfoys. Needing them kept safe until the trials are over, the Ministry puts them in protective custody but a murder attempt proves there’s a Ministry leak. Desperate, the Ministry decides a safe house is best, but who to trust to keep it secret and keep them safe? Narcissa calls in a life debt, the Minster calls in a favour and Harry Potter wonders why his life continues to hate him. 

Along the way, the Malfoys learn how to be a family again, Harry learns that some things are not how he thought and maybe never were, and the touch-starved boys discover that they may be each other's forever answer.

📻  Isolated Thunderstorms and Scattered Showers (T, 21.3k) by triggerlil @triggerlil 

🎵 Song prompt: Iris - the GooGoo Dolls

🎵 Summary: Post-war, Harry needs space. Everything is too much all at once, and time and time again, he finds himself pulling the invisibility cloak over his head, just for a bit of peace.

Returning for eighth year is hard, especially when you're considered a war hero, and your name is Harry James Potter. It's just that things go a little wonky when Harry starts following Malfoy, and finds that he can't (or doesn't want to) stop.

📻  Kiss It Better (E, 1.5k) by articcat621 @articcat621

🎵 Song prompt: Kiss It Better by Rihanna

🎵 Summary: When Harry's injured, Draco knows there's no place he'd rather be than by his side.

📻  (shut up and) dance with me (T, 7.9k) by punk_rock_yuppie @punk-rock-yuppie

🎵 Song prompt: Shut Up and Dance - Walk the Moon

🎵 Summary: Four dances Harry and Draco share.

📻  In Love with the Ferret (E, 21.9k) by Pineau_noir @pineau-noir 

🎵 Song prompt: I'm Yours by Jason Mraz

🎵 Summary: Harry has never been the most observant bloke. Sometimes to the point of him not realising his feelings for a particular pointy, pale git. And it's not his fault if literally everyone else knows about said feelings except for Harry and the git in question. So it's really not his fault, when faced with the scope of his feelings, he suddenly has a hard time talking to one Draco Malfoy. Or looking him in the eye. Or not being a total weirdo around him.

There's nothing to do but take the advice of his friends and try to woo Draco over dinners with friends, Ministry cases, and an unfortunately named Italian restaurant.

Harry just can't stop the flutter in his chest when he sees Draco smile.

📻  Dance with me? (M, 8.2k) by Aylaar @accioxanxiety

🎵 Song prompt: I Wanna Dance With Somebody - Whitney Houston

🎵 Summary: Draco had given up on love, until one day sitting outside the usual gaudy cafe he frequented 'people watching' he spotted Harry Potter lurking, a suspicious Draco investigates and a series of events ensue.

📻  The Cupid Incident (E, 12.6k) by meandminniemcg @meandminniemcg 

🎵 Song prompt: Can' Get You out of My Head - Kylie Minogue

🎵 Summary: Draco gets into the way of a potions attack and can't get Potter out of his head.

📻  Carouse (E, 19.9k) by Drarryismymuse (Hatchersn) @drarryismymuse 

🎵 Song prompt: Dead by Madison Beer

🎵 Summary: Carouse (verb): To drink plentiful amounts of alcohol and enjoy oneself with others in a noisy, lively way.

Harry finds himself using alcohol in increasingly dangerous ways to cope with the stresses of life. When he is put on leave from work to sort out his issue, he instead falls head first into a lively club scene where he can drink and fuck his worries away. That is, until a certain blond from his past reappears and throws off his entire routine.

Massive well done to all these talented creators - you’ve made this fest utterly spectacular! Take a bow!!

🎙️ Don’t forget to check out the Playlists:

Youtube

Spotify (Provided by @eva-eleanore​ Thank  ypu so much!)

#HD Wireless #hd wireless 2020 #hd wireless reveals

[rekteddd]

Planting The Seeds of Turbulence

Consolidating my thoughts from my Twitter post over on Tumblr. If you want a TLDR vers, this Twitter thread is the way to go laughs.

Chapter 3 of Choujin X felt like the most "TG-esque" one for me so far. It felt nostalgic because it was about setting up the scene for future issues. Particularly Azuma and Tokio's friendship. In Chapter 3, we see the post-mortem from the first chapter's events:

We know Tokio turns into a vulture-esque Choujin, destroys their pursuers, and escapes with Azuma. And Azuma seems to have no physical changes / reactions from taking the serum.

In fact, Azuma descends into a slump from discovering that his blood tests and his appearances were normal. He's disappointed that he has no Choujin powers (at least, not yet). From his point of view, someone as high-spec as him, coming from an elite family background, not getting dope powers is probably blasphemous. This is further reinforced by his hero/saviour complex that was introduced with his debut in Chapter 1:

The key here that really plants the seeds of turbulence is that Azuma feels, perhaps for the first time, inferior to someone. Coming from a well-known background in police-work (though we have not seen too much of it), justice is a big part of his life, his very identity. He constantly gets applauded for being bold, brave, courageous, and he is always likened to that of a lion.

One thing we can read into about the lion symbolism is that, lions are always associated with their pride. Their ego. Azuma is definitely prideful, and his pride here is taking a hit from not being granted so-called "powers" even after the Choujin injection. In Chapter 3, Azuma also has the thought that, perhaps your Choujin abilities are derived from a subconscious image you desire:

Think his theory is justified (I mean, just look lmao)! But also, what does that mean for Azuma then, who turned into...

... oh wait. Nothing happened.

The relative deprivation sets in. Comparing himself with his best bud, who was always kind of his lackey, because even though it was never much of a matter, Azuma was in every-which-way better than Tokio. And the high expectations people have around him that affects his own self-image, that he ought to be blessed with success and power. Not to mention, it was thanks to Tokio's powers that saved their asses in the first place! In that moment, wrapped up in these thoughts, it is understandable for Azuma to feel inferior and frustrated to snap at Tokio.

But little does Azuma know, it is precisely Azuma's presence that made Tokio accept his vulture self in the first place! To Tokio, even if the impression of the vulture is pathetic and lowly, it is kinda cool because Azuma thinks it is. Azuma redefined what a vulture could be, shifted his perspective, and thanks to that, Tokio was okay with his self-image association with the vulture. Following Azuma's "you are who you desire" theory, Tokio accepts himself as a vulture, enough to desire it and become a Vulture-type choujin.

In Chapter 3, we see Azuma let out his pent-up frustration at Tokio. "For once in your life, why can't you think for yourself!" He yells. And Tokio doesn't even rebut his criticism. That's because what Azuma says is bulls-eye. It's true. We see Tokio respect, admire, and really be by Azuma's side always. And if we take it a step further, it holds true in the symbolism level too. Vultures are scavengers, they always leech off the lion's kill. Something like that.

Therein lies, the very root of the tension of Azuma and Tokio's relationship to come. How will they navigate this issue as things go? So far, there's hope. Azuma regains his composure, and he regrets yelling those things, and calls for Tokio, just barely missing him. But it's okay, it's not too late to fix this.

But also, moving forward, this definitely is going to be something worth coming back to and analysing.

Perhaps Azuma, fearing his insecurities will ruin their friendship, continues to bottle it up, and potentially turning to bad influences to seek greater power? Like Sasuke lmao. Someone on Twitter mentioned the possibility of him joining the "dark" side seeking mentorship with the known "baddies" like Chandler Hume or the masked man.

As for Tokio, the challenge he has to navigate, in my opinion, would be how to "think for himself". Not rely or depend on anyone, or Azuma. Knowing how important Azuma is to him, these words are definitely going to weigh heavily on his mind, and influence his behaviours moving forward. But to some extent, it's also kinda futile... because if Tokio is going to be independent he is also effectively listening to Azuma, relying on Azuma's feedback to make his decisions once again.

Finally, while re-reading the chapters to write this, these panels and dialogue are definitely major sus to me. Possibily as foreshadowing. I swear, this is going to come back and bite my ass one day...

#choujin x #some more thoughts! #ishida sui #tokio #azuma #azuma higashi #tokio kurohara #choujin x analysis #getting brainrot out and i miss posing stuff on tumblr like this! #manga

[theramseyloft]

What is your opinion on The Crazy Pigeon Lady on youtube? Also I'm sorry for what you're going through, hope you get through it just fine.

OohI looked her up, and thus far like her over all.

We have a few differences, but they are thus far location relevant.

In the first episode, she discusses the difference between a pigeon and dove from a purely taxonomical and linguistic stand point, with out any apparent regard for the possibility that the person asking may have been asking about how to differentiate between the different domestic species.

It may not have dawned on her that that was a possible aspect of the question.

She is in the UK, where all white pigeons are colloquially referred to as Doves, and colored birds referred to as Pigeons, giving rise to the common misconception that colored and white pigeons are two different species.

In regards to whether or not pigeons are dirty, she defines ferals as “Formerly domesticated, now wild birds” which is not true in North America, because there are no wild populations of rock doves for ferals to get any fresh infusions of wild blood from.

There are unaltered, still wild native Rock Dove populations in the UK with which ferals can interbreed, making them at least some degree of genuinely wild there.

Her answer concerning pigeons as a disease risk was accurate and thorough.

I’m going through their pigeons as pets series, presently.

Episode one revolves around why some one might want a pet pigeons that is very detailed and largely accurate.

She is not correct in Ringnecks or other species of doves having similar temperaments to pigeons, or in them being more than minorly social (other columbid species pair bond exclusively and do not flock year round the way domestic Pigeons do).

I like that she differentiates Pigeon vs. other columbid species cooing. ^v^

I also like that the why you would want one is followed by “here are some potential issues to consider to make sure this will be a good pet for you before you get one.”

She goes into cleaning, briefly, but succinctly.

And a bit about social needs and commitment.

And considering whether or not you want to breed.

Great introduction, with minimal inaccuracy.

Episode Two is focused on selection and aquisition of the bird.

Ooh! She begins by discussing pros and cons both of purchase from breeders and adopting from a rescue.

Most of the pros from a breeder are excellent and correct, but she does mention among the cons “A pigeon purchased from a breeder takes a home away from a rescue, so consider that if that’s important to you”, which is not true, as people choose to go to a breeder or a rescue for entirely different reasons.

A particularly excellent con she mentions of going to a breeder is that breeders tend to breed in very large numbers, and probably won’t have spent any real time getting to know any individual bird, so the individual’s temperament may be a bit of a crapshoot.

This is something we ae trying to change, but is still very much true of the vast majority of pigeon breeders, and is a fantastic point to consider for looking into the acquisition of a pet.

Their pros and cons of adopting from a rescue were accurate and balanced.

And acknowledging that it is a responsible action for a first time pigeon owner to take time to consider whether or not they can care for a traumatized, disabled, or special needs bird is something I greatly appreciate.

She goes from here into pros and cons of different types of pigeons, categorized as Exhibition, performance, utility, and rescue.

Her assessment that healthy performers can’t or should not be kept indoors (only disabled or geriatric individuals) is inaccurate.

As many of you have seen from my own birds, Homers and Rollers can be perfectly happy indoors, so long as they are not caged in anything smaller than a pigeon proofed room.

It is not a requirement that they be allowed free flight outside to be physically, mentally, or emotionally healthy.

Interesting side note: Apparently, meat pigeons eaten in the UK are more often sourced by hunting than farmed, so commercially bred utility birds are not much of a thing there.

She also goes into whether to start with a single bird or a pair, in excellent detail.

She also lays out that housing and a carrier to bring the bird home in should be prepared before going to get the bird.

She discusses checking the claenliness of the breeder or rescues loft (I like that she specifies to also check a rescue’s cleanliness, rather than assuming a rescue will be clean because it is a rescue.)

Her advice to talk to the breeder or rescue is excellent.

And she goes into a lot of detail of what warning signs to avoid while trying to select a healthy bird.

Going into detail about what healthy poop should look like is an excellent and often overlooked addition that I am especially pleased she has not missed.

She even goes into sexing, meds, and vaccinations.

The discussion of acclimating a  new bird to the changed environment is excellent.

One week is WAY too short a time to isolate a new bird from previous residents. Most pigeon diseases take two to three weeks to develop symptoms, so my minimum quarantine is four weeks.

Their acclimation advice otherwise is fantastic.

Episode three focuses on enclosures and equipment.

Fantastic point was made that there is not an indoor cage large enough for a pigeon to live in full time, and flight time outside of it is a must for several reasons.

Considerations for what type of enclosure of what size in what location is excellent.

Planning for enclosure maintenance is excellent.

Would have liked for her to have shown the enclosures she uses for her birds, but the descriptions are detailed and accurate.

She includes that perches need to be flat on top and not too crowded or numerous.

Pleased by the recommendation of at least one brick. ^v^

I would not advise lining a pigeon enclosure with a towel, because of the ease with which strings can be picked out of place with their claws in the course of just walking over it, which could tangle around the toes and cut off circulation if the string comes free of the towel or break the toe if it doesn’t, and the tangled bird panics.

Fleece is a safe alternative that doesn’t come apart in full threads and will not tangle this way, if you like the idea of a fabric floor.

She details news paper, puppy pads, wood shavings, and sand accurately.

LOVE that she detailed deep ceramic ramekins as being ideal for water, while preferring shallower ones for food and grit.

aaaand there she goes into what to use to feed greens. >v<

Pigeons cannot digest anything but seeds. 

Please do not feed them greens, roots, tubers, stems, flowers, or fruits. 

Yes, there are nutrients in those things, but they do the pigeon absolutely no good if they cannot process those items to get to those nutrients.

This is a very common misconception stemming from parrot care.

The discussion of carriers is succinct and accurate.

Gram scales, claw clippers, measuring equipment, and bath dishes were also discussed in excellent detail.

The next does into diet, and I expect to do a lot of yelling about the addition of veggies. >v<

But, at this point, I think I’ve sampled enough to give a verdict.

The vast majority of what I have seen on care of pet pigeons is accurate, and she breaks things down in perfect detail for beginners looking into getting their first pigeon.

There are a few linguistic and location-specific differences between UK and North American pigeons; things that apply in one that do not in the other. For example, meat pigeons being bred for consumption vs hunted, and whether or not ferals can accurately be described as Wild or semi-wild.

One potentially dangerous bedding material being recommended, one misconception about recue versus breeder, and further perpetuation of a very common dietary myth are the only inaccuracies I have seen so far.

This woman pays close attention to her birds, and they are comfortable and happy in her company, which speaks volumes for her relationship with them.

Her advice for starting to build a relationship with a newly acquired bird is absolutely spot on.

If you, or any of my other followers, would like me to continue reviewing her care series on pigeons as pets, or any other pigeon related content, you are welcome to submit videos for commentary in my ask box.

I greatly respect blogs like @is-the-owl-vid-cute and would not mind providing a similar service in regard to pigeons.

[captlok]

Pacifism Isn’t A Character Trait

Or: MLK Day is Upon Us so Let Me Do You a Learn

Or: As An Aang Stan I Got a Bit Over-Zealous But Lemme Explain Why For A Hot Minute

Plus some History and Tumblr commentary that even non-ATLA fans can chew on

And by ‘hot minute’ I do mean this is going to be a long meta, so strap in.  For those of you who just might be tuning into this debacle, I, a person who has not used Tumblr, much at all, except for the last half year, ran into some trouble. 

If you wanna skip the whole TLDNR interpersonal stuffs and get straight to Why Aang is the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread, I will embolden the relevant parts, and italicize the crit of Korra, if you want that alongside.

I was excited that ATLA was seeing a resurgence due to the Netflix remake. I wasn’t even trying to apply any steep expectations for it. (learned not to do that the hard way with the last live action adaption, and to a much lesser extent, ATLOK, since it had good . . . elements, *ba dum tsshh*) 

So, these are a couple aspects of the issue: (1) Even on the internet, I am extremely introverted and until recently mostly came for content, not socializing. My main online interactions thus far have been in forums and artist-to-artist on DA. Tumblr is still very strange to me because it splits up its ‘threads’ so you can’t see all the replies if a certain pattern of users responds in their own space. I’m not even 100% sure it’s in chronological order, and replies are not nested next to each other so you can look in the comments and someone will be replying to something you can’t see in that window. And also since it is a bizarre hybrid of a blogging system, posts are somehow considered ‘owned by’ or an ‘extension of’ OP in a way forum threads are not. (2) ATLOK was good in a cinematic and musical way, to be sure. It also had some good concepts. I can go into it just appreciating it for the worldbuilding and be somewhat satisfied. But the execution was terrible. I was on AvatarSpirit.Net for years, and If I had maintained my presence on ASN to current day and had gotten around to downloading their archive now that the forum is dead, I would include some links to other peoples’ detailed analyses on just how flawed both the plotting and Korra’s frustratingly flat learning curve was especially in the first two seasons. But, that is a task for another day, and only if people are interested. 

No, what I’m addressing today, on the issue of Korra as a writing exercise, is how Mike and Bryan said specifically they wanted to make her ‘as opposite to Aang as possible’ and in so doing, muddied the central theme of the original ATLA series.

Now, again, I was mainly an art consumer for my first major round of ATLA fandom. Tumblr is an alien beast to me. But, after I write my first major Aang meta, talking about how amazing it is that he has the attitude he does, and how being content in the face of this overwhelming pain and suffering is an ONGOING PROCESS and an INTENTIONAL DECISION and not a simple PERSONALITY TRAIT, I start hearing that Aang gets a lot of hate from the fandom. Now this would be bad enough if it were merely people not liking his crowning moment of pacifism because they don’t understand the potential utility (I’ll elaborate on that in another post) or the ethics involved.

Aang is easily the most adult member of the Gaang. But he apparently gets hate for his few moments where he actually acts his age, a preteen, and maybe kisses a girl in a historical timeframe in which ‘consent’ discussions were probably nonexistent. Even in the present day, we are still practically drowned in movies that reinforce this kissing without asking trope. And even some female bodied people complain that asking kills the mood! But somehow he is responsible and reprehensible for this, even though the first time she kissed him back. I’m only going to get into the pacifism discussion today, but that was just another layer of annoyance bouncing around in the back of my head.  Other peoples’ crit of Korra that was stewing in my subconscious, plus this Aang bashing, which thankfully I had not directly read much of, made up the backdrop of gasoline for the match that set it off.  Even that seems a pretty melodramatic way to phrase what I actually said, which was: Aang, on the other hand, lost dozens of father figures and was being steamrolled by Ozai who was gloating about genocide TO HIS FACE, yet he still reigned in all that quote, ‘unbelievable rage and pain’ (The Southern Raiders). We Stan Aang, the Superior Avatar. No I did not f**king stutter. #AangSupremacy In another meta, someone complained that I was too defensive of Aang as a character and didn’t apply literary analysis enough, which I quickly rectified.

What set this off? Someone was kind of indirectly praising the line from Korra,  “When I get out of here, none of you will survive” To them it was emotionally resonant or whatever, and I have to point out that no, it was a martial artist not having control of their state of mind, as is the bedrock of the practice. It was never addressed by the narrative, which is a severe oversight.  I had a conversation with someone in the chats, making this distinction between Korra’s character traits and life philosophy. If she were to kill people while enraged and she was fine with that, that’s one thing. But if she regretted it, that’s a whole other kettle of fish. People argue that she comes from a warrior culture, unlike Aang.

Never mind that warrior monks are a thing. That’s what Shaolin monks are. You can be a pacifist and skilled at fighting. Those things are not mutually exclusive, which is the whole point of Bagua, Aang’s style.  And also, Katara’s style. 

That’s one reason I like Kataang so much- their congruent styles. Both of their real world martial arts are dedicated to pacifism, even though ATLA specifically doesn’t spell that out for Katara and her learning arc. 

There was a meta where someone briefly tried to argue that knowing “martial arts” is against pacifism. No. Quite the opposite. I’d argue that you are not a true pacifist unless you know exactly how to handle yourself if someone attacks you.  If you are not in a position to make conscious decisions about how much force to use, rather than merely operating on survival instincts, that is not pacifism. Or at least, not any energy or effort towards pacifism as a practical everyday tool.  I’ve made a few attempts to learn some tai chi and aikido, and it’s improved my physical and mental health, but some other things have gotten in the way. #lifegoals

I’m not going to tag the unfortunate soul whom I was replying to, because they’re probably tired of all this, but I’ll be sending them a PM to say that I’ve made this into a different post, because as I mentioned before, threads are somehow considered “owned” by OP, so it’s been pointed out to me that I should separate it.  I also said, I have basically ZERO respect for Korra uttering violent threats when the writers already minted a far more emotionally devastated and yet still resilient and centered character earlier in their franchise. People always try to excuse away people who genuinely like Aang more.  As if it’s just nostalgia or whatever. For me, no, it’s absolutely not. It is respect for a character who stands toe to toe with real people who are kind in the face of overwhelming injustice. (I have another meta on that). 

Both OP and people in the chats try to make excuses that she wasn’t raised as a pacifist, and that would be fine if they had addressed it with Tenzin and she had stated outright that she was rejecting pacifism and mind training. As it is, we are left with this nebulous affair where the lines between ideology and personality traits are blurred. 

We are told she “has trouble with spirituality” but what does that even mean? Does she have trouble with focus? Does she have trouble relating to the canonically real spirits? And pacifism specifically nor inner peace that it flows from is never even talked about as an extension of spirituality, which is canonically tied to airbending.

“Aang didn't have to deal once with the loss of his autonomy in atla” OP claims.

This was after I had noted that Aang was getting kicked around by Ozai and was most likely going to die.  Similarly, someone in the chat rejected the idea that a 12 year old trapped in a stone sphere that is heating up under a cyclone-sized blowtorch feels powerless. 

Sorry but that’s flat out ridiculous.

No one wants to admit that both of these people were faced with similar situations, and when push came to shove, one showed his LIFE PHILOSOPHY through conscious effort, and the other was abandoning the basis of martial arts, which is, no matter what the situation, keep thinking. Hold the panic at bay. Non-attachment would have served her well in this situation. Tenzin should have told her this. Before, or afterwards. It should have been addressed in the writing.  

People see this as “bashing” Korra, and oh well, can’t help that. If I think the writers didn’t follow through on their themes, that is my concern.  OP said I was “offended.” No, not really. 

I wasn’t offended by the post itself, or its commentary. Thought I made that pretty clear.

This is not dramatics. Let me be blunt.

As a ideological pacifist, and an actual practitioner of meditation, based on Buddhism, NOT just the fan of some show, I am for calling out writers who write one way from the survivor of genocide, and then stray from that ‘thoughtless aggression is immoral no matter HOW hurt I am’ to ‘let’s not address this character’s aggression in the narrative whatsoever.’ OP attempted to derail by accusing me of being racist or sexist against Korra. Also ridiculous. It honestly should have set me off more, but it didn’t. 

Meditation is about reigning in your emotions. Managing your anger when it gets out of hand, and digging down to the roots of it. Being responsible for your own behavoir. Acknowledging ownership of your own actions. Not blaming anything YOU DO on anyone else or any circumstances in your life. Like an adult, or should I say, an enlightened adult.

Or at the very least, that is the ideal ypu strive towards while being imperfect in the present.

. . .

Now.

I’m going to quote a passage in a Google Doc of mine, even though I’d really prefer if you asked to read the whole thing, with context.

“What do humans do when it is necessary to, or greed makes a nation want to recruit?

They go to the army to get trained, right?

Granted, having someone scream and get spittle on your face is, in the grand scheme of things, poor preparation for having bullets whiz past your chest and grenades shatter your ears. And, what do you do to prepare you for the pain of getting your leg blown off? Hopefully, nothing. Like taking a test where you only got half the study guide. But, it’s about the most ethical way to go about it, right?

Not everyone even sees action. So any more more extensive mental preparation for physical pain than that, and you’d have people definitely protesting.

Well, as it turns out, pacifistic protestors themselves, if they were in the right time and place, also very intentionally do this type of mind training. Except, when they did it, they actually did sit still and took turns roughly grabbing each other and throwing each other down and in some cases, even kicking and bruising each other.

Turns out, those pacifists are, in some ways, more hardcore than the army.

Why is this?

Because a pacifist’s aim, unlike a unit, who wants to gain the upper hand in a situation, is to grit their teeth and grind their way through all those survival instincts, and totally submit.

In this, they aim to get the sympathy of the public, who clearly sees they are not aggressive, or a danger, no matter how much the footage is manipulated or suppressed.

In this, they hope to appeal to their attacker’s better nature.

Make them stop and think, wait a second, are these people a threat like we’re told they are? I’m attacking someone who’s letting me beat them up. Or a bunch of people. All forming a line, and letting us peel them off. Or sitting, and bowing their heads. If I’m on the ‘right’ side of things, the law, why am I doing this?

It’s not like a bully, who’s just a kid.” They’re more self-aware.

And might I add the situation influences a pacifist’s actions too. There’s no reason to let a single or a few random attackers beat you up if you can evade or disable without permanent damage.

Pacifism is a dynamic set of responsive actions informed by values. Not a proscribed set or a checklist.

But in terms of organizing against state power, and recording wrongdoing, which unlike during the Civil Rights can happen from all angles from smart phones nowadays, these are the motivations.

“So, the pacifist knows this, and that’s why they go through all that trouble of training themselves to, not only submit, but not turn tail and run, either.”

See, a character trait is something like being a morning person, or ways of handing information, or a given set of emotions a character feels. Once you cross over into actions, you must make the distinction of whether an impulsive character agrees with their own uncontrolled actions, or is embarrassed or remorseful. Those are life philosophy. Now sure, one type of person or character may be more likely to subscribe to pacifism, but there is no gatekeeping on what you have to feel or how you look at things. You can be easygoing, or feel all the rage in the world, but as long as you at least attempt to have a handle on those desires and feelings to where they do not cross into actions, you are still doing the work of metacognition, which is what martial arts and its accompanying mind training are for.

It’s what we see Aang do.

He’s informed us, during the Southern Raiders, on how much rage and pain he feels.

Pain points, TRIGGERS, that were directly struck at when Ozai gloated over him.

He joins with all the past Avatars for several moments, and just like every other time he is in the Avatar State, he is enraged. He wants to exact revenge on the unrepentant grandson of a baby murderer.

We see it when he turns his head away, face still screwed up in anger.

For another example, I could cite my difficulties in being aware and reining in my tongue sometimes. I know the roots of these issues and I seek to let them go.

It’s just that process takes way longer than Guru Pathik would have us assume.

In fact, I would even say that Aang’s portrayal throughout the three seasons is not strictly a realistic representation of at least the sad side of grief. I addressed that a little when I talked about real life figures. But what it IS, is a metaphor that cuts very deep to the heart of pacifism. As I showed in that Doc . . . There is no limit of suffering a pacifist is willing to go through, internal or external, for the preservation of peace.

This was demonstrated during the Civil Rights, and with Gandhi and all his followers beforehand, inspiring them. The pacifists’ method of swaying hearts is probably the reason BLM exists in such numbers as it does today. Will the types of narratives that correspond with their full stories of the way they collectively planned and trained for and approached conflict make it into fantasy media? I’d say, probably not. For a host of reasons.

It could be hoped for, I guess.

But we DO have Aang.

As for myself, whether speaking sharply is an “action,” per se is up for debate- certainly it doesn’t seem to violate the non-aggression principle put forth by the vision of a “stateless society.”

For another example, let’s take my explanation at the beginning. I am examining how circumstances affected my actions, and now am attempting to fix it, if indeed it needs to be fixed. 

At least one person said that it not so much what I said, but how and when I said it. I don’t actually think I’ve said anything “wrong” per se. So I have to figure it out. 

[I’m considering splitting up this next part into a second post, as it only slightly relates to pacifism itself and is just kinda some more commentary on Tumblr itself- Tumblr discourse, as it were]

[I’ll put more brackets when I’m done in case you want to skip this part as well]

An interesting social difference between Tumblr and other places is this command you often get, “don’t chat/reblog/message me back.”

This is interesting for several reasons. For chats and reblogs, other people may be following the “conversation,” so it’s actually pretty rude and presumptuous to tell a person not to respond to whatever you said, because other people watching still may be interested in your take.

In a forum setting, if someone involved in a conversation doesn’t have anything left to say, usually they just don’t respond.

This method would work perfectly fine for Tumblr, but for some reason, maybe its super odd format, probably due to the “ownership”/“extension of self” I mentioned at the beginning of the essay, people don’t tend to do this.

Now, in comment sections, sometimes you’ll run across an amusing sort of “mutually assured destruction” where two people both say this to each other. You’d better stop responding. Omg just give up. Why are you still arguing. Etc.

But see, no matter where this behavoir pops up, and no matter who starts in on it, those who do this usually want to have the last say on the matter.

Instead of merely not replying, they want to assert verbal control over the conversation.

Tumblr, in its weirdness, is also sort of like a mutant comments section. You can post comment section threads as your own post.

Which is one reason why I’m puzzled when people say ‘don’t read the comment sections’ when Tumblr is so popular.

I’m an oddball in that I browse comment sections for fun.

Probably due to alexithymia, I didn’t really comprehend the emotional toll it takes on many people, so the warnings to “stay out of comment sections” read to me like “hey don’t eat that dessert.” After I’m done with the ‘meal’ of an article or art, I like to see what lots of different people have to say about it. The fluff. Anything vitriolic I either blip over, or extract anything useful, or if I judge the person is reasonable enough, I might engage.

Sometimes I mis-judge on how reasonable someone is, and I shrug and move on after being cussed out or whatever.

In this, I suppose I succeed much of the time in being a verbal pacifist.

[But let’s get back to the more serious stuff.]

We’re talking about what is done in life or death situations, here.

For myself, I may in the near future be working more with dangerously mentally ill people. I’ve had a little exposure to it through various means. Nurses are obligated not to retaliate against patients, and those who have, have been fired in some situations. Again oddly, this is not primarily what triggers my anxiety. Unfortunately enough, this requirement has also resulted in nurses getting seriously injured and violated. I hope to influence whether “no harm” techniques such as tai chi and aikido and arm locks may be allowed. The voluntary philosophy I was luckily already on board with is enforced by bureauacracy, directly relevant to my potential profession.

Were someone to get involved in a dangerous profession, such as a police officer, their moral duty would also be to own up to any spur of the moment anger or fear they acted on. 

It’s just that their bureaucracy acts differently, in excusing their actions.

Ideally, they would be taking steps far in advance, to avoid this often-cited fear of death reaction. As training pacifists like Aang do. 

And yes, army people are trained differently than police officers because the army, often, even when threatened, is supposed to avoid engagement or deploy deterrents that are non-lethal almost all costs, unless ordered otherwise. Whereas American police are given pretty much complete discretion and often not taught de-escalation techniques. Even police from other nations are better trained in that regard.

Enter the ironically named @avatarfandompolice whose account description should really speak for itself. Combative, dismissive, and their attention-hungry bread and butter is to find people they think it’s acceptable to ridicule.  They basically tried to say trauma was a valid excuse to take out your anger on other people, and in this situation, potentially kill. 

Now, does this hold up in the real world? Yeah, sometimes. Especially if some law breaker or law keeper has not been given the anger management tools, they perhaps could be excused, or better yet, rehabilitated.

But especially if anyone finds themselves in dangerous situations, or intends to put themselves in such, it falls to them to do this preparation.

As an aphant, I am at a bit of a disadvantage, compared to an average martial artist, being unable to visualize an attacker. But I still attempt it.

As the main “police officer” of the world- the coincidentally blue clad figurehead that is supposed to keep order, it is apparently fine for Korra to not do the work Aang did to keep level. To blow it off as too much trouble: clearing the First Chakra of fear. For herself or others. And its resultant anger. Had she had access to the Avatar State, the authority figure pretty much would have killed people.  This is what the “fandom police” and a certain chat goer ultimately support. Maybe they didn’t understand it that way, and since the second had blocked me, they will also never see this explanation. Unless I were to share it in Google Doc form I suppose.

So, I responded. “Remember kids, you are not responsible for your own behavior if you have the excuse that someone else did something bad to you.” A frighteningly common sentiment on this site.

When it’s low stakes like CAPSLOCKING or internet fights, that’s not such a big deal. But what happens if this attitude leaks into the real world? This isn’t even about Korra or Aang anymore, it’s about toxic mindsets. I didn’t know fans taking pro-Korra posts as anti-Aang was a common in the fandom. I’ll say again I’ve only just gotten really active on Tumblr like the past few months. This is about pacifism itself. MLK and his hardworking, training followers (yes some of them sixteen and POC and not super-powered like Korra) facing down firehoses and staging sit-ins long trained for would shake their heads at this defense of reactionism. 

Pacifism is not a Personality Trait.

It is deliberate actions and preparation taken over a period of time.

Then the “fandom police” tried more of this, and these two conversations ensued, the comments with another user resulting in the title and main thesis of this essay:

https://captlok.tumblr.com/post/638777472806273024/avatarfandompolice-response-to-my-independent

https://captlok.tumblr.com/post/638806142933467136/the-plight-was-not-what-i-was-getting-at-it-was

#atla #lok #atlok #atla meta #pacifism #martin luther king #civil rights era #history #blm #mlk #mlkday2021

[the-blue-fairie]

A while back, I made a post about how there are at least three different interpretations of Frozen 2′s ending and how they can ALL be justified by the text of the film to some degree. I’m bringing that up again because I saw a post with people who have different opinions on the ending discussing the matter, one who considers the ending a separation and dislikes it and one who considers that there is no separation.

The thing is... I think both sides are right, if that makes any sense at all? Because they’re both looking at different aspects of the text. In the same way, I think that the people who consider the ending a separation” and feel that separation is a good thing are also pulling from aspects that are in the text.

Everyone’s interpretation is rooted in the text to some degree, but also colored by their own feelings and the way they approach the text.

Now, I realize when I made my post about there being different interpretations of the ending, I was trying to be as neutral as I possibly could be and I didn’t bring up my full opinion on the matter. That was because I was striving for neutrality in that post, but since I’m bringing this up again, I might as well share my opinion so that others understand what my take is and don’t start speculating that I’m trying to play all sides or something.

As I said in my first post, I feel that “the sisters did this together and are still bound by love even if they are moving forward on individual paths” is closest to what the film wanted to say. I believe the filmmakers wanted to establish that there is no separation and that the sisters compliment each other and can still work and enjoy life together why being on individual paths. I feel that this was the film’s intent and I value and appreciate that intent.

But here’s the thing. I also feel that isn’t what the filmmakers actually wrote. I know that was what the filmmakers were trying to build towards, but I feel there are loose ends in F2′s narrative that make those other interpretations possible. And I’m NOT saying that to bash Frozen 2. I recognize that crafting a film is a difficult process where you have to keep countless pieces and plot threads in mind, as well as keeping your target audience in mind and the studio heads above you in mind. And I have great respect for the filmmakers and the effort they put into creating this piece of art. The fact there are going to be loose ends is inevitable and I don’t want to sleight the filmmakers and their craftsmanship. But  for me personally - I can’t simply judge a film based on its intent when some of the loose ends bother me.

When some fans (either fans who criticize the film for dividing the sisters and don’t like “separation” or who celebrate the film for dividing the sisters and do like “separation”) point out that “Elsa and Anna didn’t really do this together - acting in common cause, yes, but not working together or approaching the situation from the same wavelength and talking things out together,” I kind of feel that.

When some fans talk about how Anna didn’t get the chance to air her anger at Elsa, I also feel that. Keep in mind, I’m not anti-Elsa or “Elsa-critical.” I love Elsa as a character dearly. But I find it clumsy on a storytelling level to introduce a conflict between the sisters (and a moment where even Olaf becomes angry, highlighting its seriousness) and then not resolve that conflict. I know, I’ve read people’s explanations saying that Anna is too overwhelmed by emotions to feel anger and that the sisters can talk things out at a later date easily enough because the torn fabric is already mending with their reunion (and I agree with that, actually)... but that doesn’t change the fact that a plot thread is left kind of up in the air, to be resolved at a later date. Saying that something makes sense in-universe does not address the structure of the film.

So I sympathize with people who have issues with the ending. I’ve seen Anna fans say she got the fuzzy end of the lollipop by not being able to express her anger, regardless of how much sense people might argue it would make sense in the moment. And their feelings are valid because the film introduces a plot thread and then doesn’t tie it together by the end - or, if we feel it tries to tie it together by having Elsa say, “You saved me,” and validate Anna, does it in an abrupt  and rather rushed way. The film would have worked much better, I feel, if they included the deleted scene of Elsa showing Anna their parents, which would have been a clearer gesture of healing and also given Anna some much needed emotional closure. (At the same time, I personally disagree with certain folks who have an overly negative take on Elsa or try to paint her as a “bad sister” across the franchise. Making such an argument doesn’t hold water when you look at all the different films and shorts of the franchise.) And I’ve seen Elsa fans express frustration because they see Elsa’s behavior as unearned. And, while I wholeheartedly reject individuals who degrade the Northuldra or go outside the text of the franchise to make their points, I feel it is valid for some people to feel that the conclusion comes across as somewhat unearned. By that point in the film, we are racing towards the credits because the filmmakers only have an animated film’s runtime to work with. So things don’t get the proper time to breathe. And while again, I recognize that is all part of working within the constraints of an animated film and laud the filmmakers for doing the best they could in their circumstances, I also feel that abruptness ended up being detrimental to the finished project. 

In my personal opinion, the sisters still have a lot they need to talk through together and process - and that’s what rubs me the wrong way about the ending. The film frames its ending as a resolution to the conflicts it introduces. And on one level, it works - Elsa and Anna are both able to come into their own in some distinct and beautiful ways. But on other emotional levels, certain things are left hanging. We don’t get to see the sisters process together the conflicts that have arisen between them. You could argue that their stepping into their own gives them personal senses of closure... but that’s not the same as being able to talk out and address together the emotional conflicts that F2 introduces to further its plot. And even though you’re right if you argue, “But in their new positions, Elsa and Anna both have the time and opportunity to address those issues together!”, that’s not the same as the film addressing the issues that it sets up. That rests resolution on a hypothetical Frozen 3 which as of this writing doesn’t exist.

Although the film’s ending frames itself as a resolution to the conflicts it introduces, it does not resolve all of those conflicts, particularly the emotional ones between the sisters. And even if we consider the ending of the film as a new beginning, the film doesn’t really do much to foreshadow the future resolution of those conflicts.

So F2′s ending leaves me kind of cold. I don’t dislike the ending on principle the way some people do. I KNOW what the filmmakers were going for. (I even really like what the filmmakers were going for. That’s why I love delving into the new status quo in fanfiction.) I just don’t think they fully achieved that. 

And so I feel the film’s conclusion isn’t earned - or at least, isn’t as well-earned as it could have been. Again, I respect the filmmakers for what they were trying to do. I just don’t think they succeeded.

And I feel that people are within their rights to critique the film’s flaws - as long as they are not being hostile to others about it. And, of course, people are within their rights to love the film and celebrate the things it does beautifully.

I hope I manage to do both, critique and celebrate. 

#frozen #frozen 2 #discussion

[bigskydreaming]

Something to keep in mind with a lot of fandom or fic critical stuff is like.....causation and correlation are two distinct things, and they’re not always both present in like, the reason someone might have an issue with a thing.

What I mean by that is, sometimes there are fanon or fic trends that people take issue with BECAUSE of a certain root problem. They dislike this end result in fic, because it is derived from this specific cause, and that cause and effect are the issue in their mind. 

BUT sometimes there are fanon or fic trends that people take issue with because the problem isn’t like....due to a specific cause and effect, rather, the problem is a thing always going hand in hand with something else that IS a problem in someone’s eyes.

For instance, its no secret I think abuse apologism, intentionally or not, is a big problem in Batfam fandom. This is why I have a huge issue with fics who make direct reference to story events from canon that include clear and unequivocable abuse, like NTT #55 or NW #30....in the sense that they utilize the FALLOUT from these scenes, they pick up the story thread of what Dick did in the aftermath of these scenes, those actions and choices that were his direct REACTION to the ACTIONS of others........BUT many of these fics fail to acknowledge those actual inciting actions themselves, because they don’t want to portray Bruce as abusive or acknowledge that depiction. 

However, by removing the inciting action, but keeping the ensuing reactions, they PIVOT the conflict from being born of Bruce’s actions and that Dick was reacting to.....to now have Dick in the driver’s seat of that conflict, with what were originally his reactions to harm done to him now taken out of context and repurposed as its OWN kind of inciting conflict, that other characters then react to as though he’s the problem.

This issue is one of causation. Its a textbook example of abuse apologism where the abuser is by default protected via their defenders removing them from the context of the abuse entirely, and pivoting the focus to be JUST on the abused, making their reactions entirely divorced from the REASONS they’re acting that way. The problem lies entirely in writing Dick as the aggressor in these situations, with the direct CAUSE being not wanting to write him as the one justifiably aggrieved.

Now compare and contrast this with something like Dick being a jerk to Jason when he was Robin, or similar situations where a time when Dick was the injured party in one respect like, coincides with a time where Dick is heavily hyped up as being the offering insult or injury to someone who has nothing to do with whatever happened to him.

The issue I have here is one of correlation. Its not a simple cause and effect thing in play here, but there is still connection between say, a heavy focus on what a jerk Dick is (without much basis for that ever happening) and at the same time, a deliberately light focus on Bruce’s role in Dick and Bruce’s dynamic at the time and what very much did happen in events directly referenced, and which are then in turn referenced as being a big part of Dick’s mood without ever letting this truly come into focus.

See, the issue here is still purely between Dick and Bruce, but there’s a correlative effect in what’s going on between Dick and Jason......as the more people are focused on what Dick is or isn’t doing in his dynamic with Jason, and THAT being the focal issue....the less people are thinking about or invested in what’s going on between Dick and Bruce, even when there’s nominal acknowledgment that that’s the real root of the problem overall.

Of course, then sometimes correlation BECOMES causation. Because the more a trend builds and builds, without acknowledgment or discussion of related issues, the more the unacknowledged connection causes problems in and of itself, and it all loops back in on itself and feeds a never-ending cycle of cause and effect and correlation and avoidance that literally can only ever be broken by just.....critical thinking and direct analysis.

You might think I was building to a point here, but hahaha jk, not really. Tbh this is mostly just me trying to break down a fandom phenomenon into bite-size pieces to present for consideration, because the only real point here is like.....this shit is complicated. It SHOULD be complicated, as anything that pertains to not just liking certain characters and interacting with them, but also interacting with their STORIES and the real life problems they’re mirroring and the resulting behaviors that stem from them, like....should be. 

The problem with treating story-telling (as either a reader or a writer) as escapism, is that story-telling doesn’t exist TO be a form of escapism. Its often utilized as such, or aimed to be used as such, but story-telling is at its heart just......a means of talking about the human condition. Life. How we interact with it.

And thus, even though some stories very much DO work to provide escapism from life and its problems.....some stories very much will NEVER work as such, because you can’t escape from life’s problems by way of....stories that are meant to be examinations of life’s problems. 

(Something that’s particularly an issue with discussions of fiction vs reality. You hear a lot about how fiction isn’t reality, or how fiction does affect reality, but something we really need to talk about more is how some peoples’ fiction IS some other peoples’ reality. Like it may not be the equivalent of writing someone else’s personal memoir, but there needs to be more serious acknowledgment that when writing something that is abstract for you, personally, as in outside your realm of personal experiences because it pertains to aspects of identity or marginalization or lived experiences that aren’t a direct reflection of your own......these topics are not REMOTELY abstract for someone whose very real identity or lived experiences or oppression IS directly reflected in what you’re treating as simple fiction born of your imagination and nothing more. And thus how you interact with what you’re writing and reading and treating as nothing more than fictional, someone else is interacting with as something that’s a lot more real than that, feels a lot more real than that, that’s more personal than abstract). 

But anyway like, escapism isn’t a one-size fits all kinda deal, and CAN’T be. Because the things people want to escape from, the lives that they’re escaping from, and what they need to escape from it vs what will never allow them to escape from it because it will actually just be more examination and awareness of the reasons for their own want for escapism in the first place....none of these things are one size fits all, and that’s why fandom and fanfic are never ever ever going to be a one-stop shop for escapist fantasy the way too many people in fandoms try and treat them as.

And at a certain point you either gotta like, get on board with the fact that life is complicated and there IS no easy breakdown or solution to or discussion about extremely complicated topics like this, and that’s just the way it is so level up already and start treating it as such.....

Or you can do the other thing, which is double down on digging your heels in and pretending there is a simple, shallow, superficial way of dealing with or acknowledging super complicated shit, with that usually just being.....avoiding treating it as such.

Which is the part that tends to lead to perpetuation of cycles of bullshit and feeding directly back into a feedback loop of acknowledging fallout of issues without ever acknowledging the instigation of issues and whoops look at that, a pointed point crept up on me after all, myyyyyyy baaaaaaaaaad.

[a-shakespearean-in-paris]

Thoughts on The Last of Us Part 2

This critique is spoiler heavy, so tread with caution. I also talk about more than the game. However, non-spoiler opinions: (and again, I want to stress this is my opinion)

This game does not have the same DNA as the first last of us. That’s not a total strike against LOUP2. Yet the first game succeeded so well in creating a relatively simple road trip narrative that was rooted around character growth, with the provoking questions it raised comknf naturally. TLOUP2 revolves so heavily on the message it’s trying to send, that the character and narrative writings suffers to mold around the parable...which doesn’t fully even succeed in that regard. Environments and game play however are pretty solid, and if you liked those aspects of the first game, they outdid themselves here, so you’ll probably like this game’s go around. Does it make it worthwhile to play? That’s a case by case basis, but I have to say that exploring the world made me want to continue the game. And if anything, I’d say this game is a relatively easy platinum trophy to collect. And despite this very long critique where I really dive in, (because that is what I do, it’s in my nature.) I’m glad I played, because I had an enjoyable experience.

anyway, on with the nitty gritty. Please keep in mind that even as I seem harsh, I did not hate this game. Aspects of it pissed me off , and I think it’s broken in a lot of respects, but certainly not a failure of design, game build, and acting.

When I think of the perfect sequel, (and please, bare with me) Shrek 2 comes to mind. It expands the world in a meaningful way, introduces new characters that seamlessly fit in with the dynamic, lets the established characters have more growth without cheapening what happened in the first part, and stays true to the core DNA of the first film. I’m not saying that all sequels need to follow this formula, (I love Silent Hill 2) but The Last of Us 2 was not a fulfilling sequel in any of these regards. Joel and Ellie in the first game, as well as the other characters, felt like real people who made decisions that made sense for their characters. In this game, we have a clumsily patched together narrative that is simultaneously simple and yet far too much for it to handle. This is not a narrative-driven story, but a parable about the dangers of revenge. And while not a bad parable to tell, I could easily pick up Moby Dick or a myriad of other works that detail the “revenge is all consuming and unhealthy” narrative. Now, was LOU particularly new with it’s story? No. But the characters made it worthwhile and fresh. Additionally, the narrative of this game is so riddled with hypocrisy that the parable it’s trying to tell almost misses the mark.

Before further diving in, I also want to talk about one more detour as a preface: Game of Thrones season 8 (and please, bare with me again.) My biggest issue with season eight was how unearned everything was. Most egregiously and infamously, Dany and Jaime’s fates was not rooted in her past actions, therefore making their fates make sense, but rooted in the final outline Benioff and Weiss had. The writers had a plan, and they made the characters fit that plan no matter what, no matter that the characters had grown and changed and had arcs that didn’t make sense with the final plan, leaving a lot of people, including me, note how unearned everything was. LOU2 feels similar. Druckman had a plan, and he made the characters fit that plan, no matter how many gaps in logic there was, no matter how unearned it was. Joel dying the way he did was not very Joel-like as established in LOU. That man noticed an ambush right on sight as he was driving with Ellie into Pittsburgh, while this Joel walks right into an ambush and let’s himself be cornered by a group of unknown people. Maybe you can say that he got softer living in Jackson, or the storm gave no alternatives, but it reads to me as more as Druckman needed Joel to die to set off his plot.  

And with that, now’s a good time to talk about Abby, because rather than being an organic character that fits seamlessly into the narrative, she feels inelegantly shoved into the game to fit the message and parable. In the prologue we learn little about Abby and are forced to run away and learn about the game mechanics with her, and most players are here to continue Joel and Ellie’s story, so cutting away to this new character away from Ellie is intrusive. You as a player may have also have heard Druckmann say Ellie was the only playable character and purposely avoided the leaks, so you’re bamboozled as well. It gets worse after we shift to Abby for a good ten hours after Ellie kills Owen and Mel. We’re supposed to feel compelled to play as Abby for a ten hour needlessly complicated side quest when the game jarringly cuts to her...even though she mercilessly beat Joel with a golf club and just shot Jesse, who, IMO, is one of the most likable new characters (and also one of the many minority characters in the LOU franchise that serve as props to the main characters and ultimately meets a sad end, but that aspect of the game is worthy of a whole other post.) 

Playing as Abby for as long as you do at the halfway point is a tough and unearned pill to swallow, not helped by the fact that we know how this long extended flashback is going to end, so the stakes are never high. No matter what happens, Owen, Mel, Nora and Alice are going to die, and Abby is going to find Ellie. Furthermore, you’ve spent a long time as a player buffing Ellie with supplements, upgrading weapons, and using her arsenal. Suddenly, you have to rewire you’re playstyle and get used to new weapons. They’re not totally different, but I can see how going back to square one when you’re halfway through the game can put a player off really quickly. I read the leaks so I knew this was coming, but I had no clue how bloated this section would be with the meandering plot and WLF/ Seraphite conflicts that still somehow aren’t explained well enough. In Abby’s section, plot things and character development things go at such a hyper speed, with relationships developing mega quickly, that I had a hard time believing it, especially compared to the first game when relationships took time and were earned. I think the sex scene is a good metaphor for this section of the game as a whole. they talk, talk, talk about unrelated things, Abby pushes Owen, and then they randomly have sex. which by the way, was done pretty tastelessly in my opinion. ND could have just cut away when they started making out, or if you absolutely had to hold the frame, if you really had the actors to do that in mocap suits, maybe make the situation more morally grey...because it is morally grey. Owen has a baby on the way with another woman. What a way to endear these two characters. I’m not one who gets squeamish with sex in media, and I understand the game’s M rating has a warning. But when you cut away a love scene between two women before things get too heated, but have no problem with showing that, I’m going to raise some eyebrows. 

Abby’s section is like an overly complicated side quest in the larger narrative, with missions that have little to nothing to do with Ellie, so watching Abby’s story play out doesn’t feel like a meaningful look into the character and world we don’t get as Ellie, but an overtly complicated way ND created to get us to like Abby and invest us in her found family. But it took a whole game and about a full year for Ellie and Joel to be father and daughter, and by the end of Abby’s section we’re expected to believe she and Lev have that same bond. It’s so glaringly apparent that they were trying to mirror Ellie and Joel with Abby and Lev, but they banked so hard on us as the player assuming and understanding that aspect, that the development wasn’t cultivated well enough for me. I think more time was needed--especially since you don’t even meet Lev and Yara until you’re an hour or so into her story. Abby’s section feels like a whole other game was tacked on, and not a piece of the puzzle that neatly fits into the larger narrative.  In fact, both Lev and Yara feel like tacked on props to make Abby more likable. 

However, ND is inconsistent with this likability factor, because there are key elements to Abby’s writing that don’t make her endearing to the player. Unlike Ellie, who is visibly shaken with each kill, Abby displays no regrets whatsoever. She doesn’t have any qualms killing her fellow WLF soldiers later in the game, but more infuriating for players, she has no regrets about killing Joel. She does it, and she moves on. The game even seems to celebrate her, with some of her friends saying he deserved worse, despite the fact that  Ellie was on the floor crying and begging for her to stop. (BTW Mel is pretty hypocritical to me. At one point she says she regrets taking part in Joel’s murder, but during it, she wanted Ellie killed. Then later says Joel’s death was too brutal...even if he deserved worse? It’s just another thread of inconsistency in this game.) 

Abby not thinking things through when Ellie is crying on the floor before Joel’s murder is another example of characters making strange, if not outright bad decisions because Neil needs his plot. Abby could have put the pieces together, realized Joel wanted to save Ellie because clearly they care about each other, and yes he did a bad thing and killed her father, but if there’s a crying girl on the floor, maybe he did it because of love. (Or she could have just killed Tommy and Ellie because what’s stopping her from thinking they won’t want revenge like she does? But again, Druckmann needs his plot.) 

But no, Abby is merciless, and then suddenly in her POV chapters she’s pretty cool to Yara and Lev and wants to help them out. And yes, they saved her from death...but Joel saved her from death too. It could have been so interesting if Abby and Joel were forced to work together longer, maybe she meets Ellie, and then she’s conflicted about extracting revenge. But okay, fine. She takes her revenge and the game moves on. Okay. But Ellie, who I remind, is vilified and punished by losing Dina and the baby in the game, has regrets and is shaken up by her revengeful deeds, while Abby, who is also pretty bad, gets rewarded. If Druckmann wanted to really write a revenge parable, it needed to be clearer that revenge didn’t make Abby happy or fulfill her. If that would have happened, and if time was taken to develop the Lev and Yara subplot, it could have been interesting to see Abby’s story.

Ellie’s characterization in this game is a point of contention for me as well. Some reviewers have said she makes decisions that are so outlandish it’s akin to Dany in GOT season eight, and I don’t disagree. Now, the game implies Ellie continuously puts herself at risk, leaves her friends, and sets off on a near suicide mission because she has PTSD from what happened to Joel, along with a lot of guilt for not patching things up to him. Druckmann and Halley Gross even confirmed in an Indie Wire interview that Ellie has PTSD. Now, there are so many negative stereotypes against people with PTSD as outlined by Psychology Today and other sources. There’s misconceptions that they’re violent and dangerous, and it can’t be treated. I don’t think Druckmann was outright suggesting Ellie went on her rampage of revenge specifically because of this, in fact I think the truth of the matter is he wanted to say something deep and artsy with this game, and Ellie and Abby are props to the message. (Supported by pre release statements of ND saying they wouldn’t call this game fun--it’s art.) That being said, this equation doesn’t sit right with me. More broadly I don’t like the fact that Ellie has been a prop in this game so Druckmann can say something deep (tm) especially when the last game did such a good job molding her character and honoring her in an organic way as the plot moved forward. The way they used her here just didn’t feel right.

Also, like to mention Ellie didn’t go to Santa Barbara to meet Abby again until Tommy’s major guilt trip at the farm, which was a wildly out of character moment in itself. But again, in this game, there’s a script, and we needed a way to trigger Ellie’s journey to Santa Barbara. But looking at the first game, Tommy berates Joel for the lengths he went to to ensure their survival, even saying at one point “it wasn’t worth it.” Now Tommy is all of a sudden going to not take the high road and demand Ellie extract revenge when he can’t? Heck, when Abby had Tommy pinned to the ground in the theatre he told her to go and save herself. When tommy came to her after Joel’s death he actively tried to talk her out of going to Seattle. Now maybe you can say that “oh Abby shot Tommy and now he’s relationship with Maria is in shambles...” but it didn’t compute with me. (And damn, can anyone be in a happy romantic relationship in these games?) But again, Druckmann wants a final fight, where the biggest waste of opportunity is squandered. We could have had a moment where Ellie and Abby talk it out, maybe Ellie telling Abby that she cared for Joel despite what he did (though ho boy, more on that later.) and Abby realizing hmm, maybe what I did was kind of morally grey and we’re not so different at the least. If this parable was going to work, Abby had to have an epiphany about her own deeds in addition to Ellie, and Ellie can’t be vilified while Abby isn’t. 

This game also cheapens the last game’s ending. Joel’s morally grey choice at the end part one is rendered into an indisputably bad choice, because he took away Ellie’s choice. Are we forgetting the fireflies, and Jerry, Abby’s dad that we’re supposed to like, (based on the flashback, which, BTW didn’t work for me, I think Jerry’s an ass) weren’t giving Ellie a choice either? The ending of TLOU asked some fantastic questions about the nature of love without forcing it, and this game completely does away with that ending via telling us how bad Joel is and how he wronged Ellie. I can’t really replay the first game now without thinking of how the sequel cheapens that ending. Overall, the message and thought-provoking questions in LOU came naturally with Joel and Ellie’s development. It was elegantly done and expertly crafted. However, this game is so focused on it’s message and so focused on being an art house drama, that not only do the characters bend to fit the message, but it’s rudely it’s beaten over your head with the final shots of a lone guitar. However, playing through the game for me, seeing the cracks, the message fell flat. Want to tell a parable like this? Go ahead, but make sure it’s delivered well , paced well, and crafted well. I don’t think this game succeeded in any of those regards.

As others have stated, the game is needlessly dark, and though there are moments of calm and light, they are not as frequent as the first game, and all but dissolve toward the end of the story. Obviously ND couldn’t help the current situation of the world the game was released into, but I am tired of this trend of dark narratives and SuBerTing ExpECtatIons that Thrones also pulled, and the easiest, laziest tactic media has used lately to get people talking about their stories: doing things for shock value. Expectations were maybe subverted and there was definite shock value by having Joel die at the beginning, but the events that follow are so bizarre and unearned with Ellie’s vilification and Abby’s “redemption,” that I’m not mad that he died, I’m mad he was fridged to make way for this sloppy mess of a story.  And I have to point out that so many of us had a feeling Joel was going to die in this game, that frankly my expectations would have been subverted if he lived. 

Now with this segue, I think now I should probably mention the elephant in the room: the pre-release footage. Images were altered to make players believe Joel meets Ellie in Seattle, but we know now that it was Jesse. Sony was banking on the fact that fans of the first game love Ellie and Joel so much, that they used their relationship to sell the game and pretty much deceive the player. The fact that the game is very much not about Ellie and Joel’s further development is not only deceptive, but kind of cruel. Games are expensive. People pre-ordered this game expecting one thing and got another. Doesn’t sit right with me. If Sony/ ND had faith in Abby’s story the secrecy wouldn’t have been necessary, but keeping her out of the marketing save for one time, with Druckmann out right lying at one point by saying you only play as Ellie, it just proves that someone in the marketing department had no faith in Abby. Now, I think this is all rooted in anti-spoiler culture, and no doubt that had a big impact on this game and the marketing behind it. Though this is another, albeit related rant, I am tired of the current climate of “keeping the secrets and remaining spoiler free.” Sure, spoilers can ruin some surprise, and it’s not cool to needlessly spoil something for someone, but spoilers should not ruin the experience of seeing a story unfold. We all know the damn ship is going to sink in Titanic, and a lot of people love that movie. Heck. I played the first LOU completely spoiled. I wanted to see what the fuss was about and read the Wiki page. I still cried, I still fell in love. I get maybe wanting the player to be surprised that Abby has such a big section, or even that’s she’s playable, but when Abby’s story can make or break how you feel about this game, I raise some eyebrows at the marketing.  

As I said, I did read the leaks when they came out. Why? Well, I’m not averse to being spoiled and GOT kind of burned me before. I am glad I read the leaks because knowing what to expect certainly eased things for me, and got me used to playing as Abby in a way that going in blind wouldn’t have. It was easier for me to bunker down and accept playing as her, but her story is so needlessly bloated and has nothing to do with Ellie’s up until the end. Her section solely exists just to get the player to like her. As I outlined however, the fragments in her story are broken and don’t come together to form a flattering picture. Sure in her sections you get some, albeit, minimal context to the goings on of Ellie’s chapters and the whole WLF/ Seraphite conflict, but not much to make it interesting or illuminate things further. A lot of it was there just to make you feel like crap for the things you were forced to do as Ellie. Alice was a good girl wasn’t she? Shame on Ellie for killing her in self-defense! And I understand the flashbacks were supposed to mirror Ellie’s flashbacks, but part of me rolled my eyes as I realized I was enduring a damn flashback within a flashback. What kind of a meta world, and an uncool one at that, is the game in? (Heck at one point Abby said “fucking video games” so IDK) I think the game could have been better if you played both sections concurrently--some of Abby’s, some of Ellie’s instead of having an entire flashback to play through as Abby. But I can only guess the game did it this way because of good old spoiler culture and they only wanted early reviewers to talk about certain things. (Heck early reviews pre release had an embargo. Reviewers were forbidden from mentioning anything in the last half of the game.)And truth to be told I think Abby’s sections needed a huge overhaul. Actually I think the whole story of the game needed a huge overhaul, but that’s probably apparent from this long diatribe. However, I maintain that this was the Last of us sequel ND wanted to tell, the crafting needed to be improved.

So what did I like? Well, I liked exploring the world and I liked the ease of the beginning of the game, and...the boat section was kind of cool? now initially I thought Ellie’s romance with Dina seemed pretty rushed, but as you play the game, you realize they’ve known each other for a long time at this point, and it makes more sense. The two have a lot of chemistry that makes the relationship feel more authentic, especially as you roam Downtown Seattle. Playing as Ellie and exploring Seattle was my favorite parts of the game. I really liked the semi-open world section at the beginning, though it didn’t mesh well with the rest of the linear narrative. I hope in future games ND does do something similar and makes the whole game have pockets of open-world esque exploration throughout, and not just one part

I tore Abby’s section apart a lot, but there was also good stuff going on there too. I did Yara and Lev a lot, just wish there would have been more time to develop them. The hospital chapter was wild and fun...the most effective horror chapter in the game, with a big ass monster straight out of Resident Evil. Even if it was gross. And of course, the environments were downright breathtaking, and exploring Seattle made me want to continue. The Aquarium was my favorite location overall, as I found it beautifully rendered and a good focal point for the game. I also find it super fitting Abby and Ellie have their first fight in a theatre. It’s almost like Druckmann’s trying to make a point about how violence is a commodity...kind of like us playing this really violent game and they’re using violence to sell it to you, even though the game punishes you for doing actions you have no say in.

I may have been a tiny bit sarcastic there, but I did enjoy the Ellie/Abby fight, and even if I knew the outcome, it did a great job of putting me on edge. I really didn’t want to hurt Ellie, but seeing how Ellie fights from the other angle was pretty interesting. After that fight however it was pretty draggy to have to do it again in Santa Barbara as Ellie. On a related note, there were too many brawls like that in the game. You have no weapons, just fist brawls twice with cult randos as Abby and then two with Ellie and Abby in the game. Could have trimmed those down, because they kind of wore out their welcome. And while we’re at it, good grief the ending DRAGGED. Maybe that was done on purpose to prove the lengths Ellie will go, but I wasn’t a fan.

Look, a part of me can kind of appreciate what ND was trying to do with this game, I just think that the execution was poor, and a lot of small specifics of things that happened in the game were done in poor taste. Pieces of the puzzle didn’t fit a cohesive whole, and the message is pretty grim and broken because of hypocrisies in the narratives. A lot of people are saying its an apocalypse game, of course it’s going to be dark and nihilistic, but the first game wasn’t nihilistic. It was hopeful, and benefited from the simple story it told. Druckmann always said Part 2 would be a hate story, and that’s fine, but I think it was just so committed to that idea the game suffered and became manipulative. I think now we’re now entering a debate about “can video games be art and have messages?” or “should video games just be fun?” and I really think video games can be art. However, there has to be something in the game that makes you want to continue, and that something is usually “fun.” Video games aren’t like movies. We’re not voyeurs that watch. We’re actually in control of the characters. That has an impact. 

if you read all of this, I commend you. thanks! Really needed to pound out all my thoughts and now I can (hopefully) move on with my life.

#tloup2 spoilers #tlou2 spoilers #the last of us part 2 #the last of us part 2 spoilers #I just want to write this and be done because I'm tired #this got long #lou2 #tlou2

[fanfic-scribbles]

one missing body: my own

Fandom: MCU Captain America/Avengers

Summary: Bucky finds his arm in England, his feet in Thailand, his tongue in Romania, and his heart in Brooklyn. OR Bucky does “Eat, Pray, Love” his own way.

Quick facts: Romance – Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes – [No Reader-Insert at all]

Warnings: Slight dissociation at points (sort of?), body issues, kind of angsty, hopeful ending

Words: 2698

A/N: This is a relatively short thing for how long it took me to write. Oh well. It’s one of those things where I had to realize it wasn’t going to be as good as it was in my head, but it still turned out better than my resignation allowed for. I’m glad I got it out and I like re-reading it, and that’s enough for me. And because I constantly forget to do this: this is MCU set after CA:TWS and ignores everything past that. (Except for one thing I partially stole from CA:CW. Partially.)

   ~

He rattles as he pulls i- no, the train rattles. Or maybe it’s the station. He is unsteady on his feet but it feels familiar. Loud sounds crash in his ears while the ground falls– pulses– underfoot– no footing–

“-ate; are you all right?”

He blinks. The station is quiet again. Nothing shakes, and he unclenches his fist. One of the rowdy drunks from the other end stands in front of him, only sober enough to squint in concern, face still flush and breath coming out in heavy sour waves. He– Bucky, he doesn’t want to admit it but he likes it– could kill the man in an instant. It would take maybe half a minute to take care of the other three, a minute for the station agent and businessman, and then maybe two more to get all the cameras.

He has a memory that blurs into another, two men, fifty years apart in time, each handing him a gun and telling him to do what needs to be done. Or maybe he is the gun being handed over. He is made of metal, after all. Bolt. Chamber. Sights. Muzzle. And trigger. That’s all that matters. All that–

“I’m fine,” he says, voice low. It doesn’t sound like his, doesn’t sound like it comes out of him, but he feels it in the back of his head and the base of his throat. “Thank you.”

“Yeah. Yeah, all right,” the man says, hesitating. He looks around and then…holds out a small card. Nonverbal command words don’t work on him, not anymore. And the embossed letters and pen-scratched numbers are unfamiliar. Bucky stares at it and the man leans in and whispers too loud. “I don’t know how long you’re here for but he helped my mate and he wouldn’t care where you’re from. All the same hell, right?”

“Right,” Bucky lies, because he has lived through many hells and all of them have been very different. But he takes the card (left hand, gloved, unnoticeable and unmemorable and he moves it but is it really his?) and puts it in his pocket. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” the man says and goes back to his friends.

Bucky looks down and stares at his hand for a moment. His fingers flex, independent of his own thoughts, and the ground seems to move under him.

He looks around for somewhere to sit but the closest bench has the businessman on it. It will have to do. He strides over, forcing his movements to be slow and light (heavy, purposeful, meant to terrify and stop but not now, not now). The station agent gives him a friendly smile and watches him until he sits. The business man scoots aside but nods in respect and goes back to reading his paper with tired, unfocused eyes. The businessman is not afraid. None of them are afraid.

He puts his hands in his lap, stares down at his gloved fingers and flexes them. Both sets move the same, in response to his commands. They curl, and flex, and even ripple up and down, one after the other.

He is the light bulb that flickers nearby, here but not fully, conspicuous but ignored; in and out and off and on. The weight of weapons sit like ghosts in his palms. Experimentally he mimes a finger on the trigger in his left hand, and holds an invisible knife in his right. But he stays the imaginary execution on both counts and allows his hands to fall open, fingers slack. Inactive.

How does a light bulb hold a gun, anyway?

~

He is in Thailand now, stuck in a resort area near tourists up too late and waiting for the small hours of the morning when he can slip away unnoticed. The sand is cool under his bare foot and because his other boot isn’t broken it makes him feel even lighter on that side. Uneven.

He frowns and shucks the other shoe, tossing it on top of his bloodied, ripped jacket. It’s a shame– he liked that jacket. And the shoes. The cold sand is interesting though; it rolls over his feet like tiny little beach balls. Beach balls? Beach balls. The term is familiar but it holds no meaning for him. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to.

Grains of sand shift and slide everywhere as he moves his feet under and through. Earlier in the day there had been a child who had jammed his small, flat feet in the sand and proclaimed himself “stuck,” theatrically pulling at his legs until his friends ran over and mimed pulling him out.

But the granules slide over skin, sticking to nothing. He is not stuck. His feet are rooted to nothing, held by nothing. One lifts, his toes curl, and he slams it down, making tiny brown beach balls scatter. And then he lifts it again.

He can set it wherever he wants.

For now, he stretches his leg out, leans back against his arms, and waits.

~

Sound is generally unpleasant. Everything is loud and the focus he once had that allowed him to pick out piecemeal conversations seems to be gone right now, or else scattered amongst his shattered mind like everything else he’s supposed to be.

Lahore is not much different from other cities when it comes to sound, but he’s found some respite in a park. The noise spreads out and the talking is so distant he doesn’t feel compelled to follow the threads. It’s all nothingness in the background; birds and people and cars somewhere beyond.

Laughter– loud, nearby– makes him flinch so hard the seat of the bench begins to give in his grip. It’s a man and he’s still laughing, so loud that it’s all Bucky can hear, except that it isn’t; there’s a laugh in his head that sounds just like it and that is all he hears, that laugh, the faintest pressure of a thin arm wrapped around him as they stumble out onto the still-wet street together and quickly uncouple but stay close, so close…

He blinks and loses the image of scattered cars, the faint whiff of fresh rain and road, and stares out at grass and a young father running after three children with a baby in his arms, all of them shrieking and laughing as he continues to laugh and chase after them.

Bucky is shaking, nauseated by the jolt of past to present and the hole in between, but he shuts his eyes and loosens his grip on the wooden seat and listens to the family’s laughter until it becomes something else. Something new.

After that, the noisy road becomes a background thrum and the birds don’t seem so bad. And even when they are, he can find that special laugh in the back of his mind and he pulls on that bell even though it makes him want to shake because they have taken so much from him but somehow they didn’t take that, and things are starting, starting, to make sense.

~

“Are you going to buy?”

The man’s tone is rough, suspicious, and makes Bucky shrink back. It reminds him of orders in a variety of voices, an assortment of languages, but the derision always, always–

He leaves the store, allows his feet, legs, to carry him away. He always tries to supervise his body closely, especially when it does this. He watches for unconscious memory, ready to intervene in case it takes him down a familiar trail. Thankfully there is no prescribed path, no recognizable tread; only wandering through people while the noise they make buzzes around him and fills the air with static.

He finds himself in marketplace that is unfamiliar on the surface but familiar in a way that lets him breathe. He skulks through the crowd, hunched, “preoccupied,” hiding in a way he can deny. He knows how to do this, knows how…to…

He doesn’t know why he stops, but he stares at the fruit on display. There are people here but the crowd is less, and the two women behind the stall are busy with other customers. Maybe friends, by the way they converse, but he doesn’t care.

He stares at nothing and pretends to be seriously considering some oranges. He licks his lips and thinks of…snow. Before he can pull away from that thought, he realizes it isn’t the same. Small limp flakes falling from the sky into scattered piles of dirty white sludge. Small candles in a cold room curled up under blankets with one other body, almost as cold as the air, trying to provide heat.

“Steve,” the name comes, murmured, lips tongue and teeth conspiring and committing the name into thin air. It closes his throat and opens his chest and he breathes, watches it all waft away in the cold.

When the young woman eventually comes over to check on him he says “please” and “how much” and “thank you” with a voice that feels shaky and new and old and smooth and wrong and right and his.

~

He sees it in sepia, in his mind’s eye, and sees it in much less color in front of him. It’s an old block building in a surprisingly quiet Russian neighborhood, drab and lifeless for all the color it has taken from him. Bucky sucks in a breath, spits out a curse and hits seven buzzers in quick succession.

The door unlocks. Bucky doesn’t yet move to go in. He looks around, eyes skimming past cracked paint, past the paved lot with scattered dead vegetation, past the street in disrepair and buildings and empty spaces that go on and on into the night poorly lit with barely functioning streetlights. He searches past them, staring into the distance, looking for somewhere far away from here.

He rests his left hand on the handle, hesitates, then slams the door open so hard it embeds itself into the wall behind it. He strides into darkness too deep to see anything, and he is grateful for it as images flash in front of him regardless of the time of day, or year, or decade. In darkness there was screaming, enclosure, pain. In darkness there were brushed lips, whispers that felt warm against his ear, a small body he did his best to warm and be warmed by.

Secrets, all of it, but he knows what he prefers as he knocks open a blocked passage and descends a narrow set of stairs into his own personal hell.

~

He finds his fingernails when his hand grips a wall during a tight turn and they grind uncomfortably against the stone; his eyelashes when snow falls and tries (and fails) to settle there; his sense of humor when a guard sees the bloodied bodies of his colleagues beside the still-breathing body of the man who put them there and throws himself off the side of the building.

(He finds a sense of shame at that. Just a little one.)

He finds his smile in China when a young woman catches his pen before it hits the floor and hands it back to him; his sense of smell when his nose crinkles in a smoke-filled building in Japan; the stinging annoyance of a paper cut in New Jersey.

He loses his breath while sitting on a bench in a familiar-unfamiliar-unknown park in New York. He finds a way to stumble forward on legs that do not want to move on a tree-lined street in Brooklyn. He re-discovers fear on a stoop at 0214.

~

Some days Steve Rogers feels like Iron Man– not Tony Stark, the genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist, but like the suit that said man puts on when the heavy lifting needs done. It’s those times he forgets himself, forgets that he isn’t what he was and there’s no going back to it. It shows uncomfortably well in how many alarm clocks he’s had to buy. His friends think he’s really grumpy when he first wakes up. He doesn’t correct them– it’s less embarrassing than to admit that he doesn’t know how to gently push a button when the alarm is dragging him out of another nightmare. That he still expects to struggle to get his massive comforter off of him. That he’s watched inhaler commercials with great interest because maybe he should– except, no, he shouldn’t, because he doesn’t have to, won’t ever have to, not anymore.

It’s not all bad. Before this body he used to think he could catch a fist, only to have his own bony knuckles slammed back into his face, but just last week he caught a grenade and threw it so high in the air it didn’t hurt anyone. A pencil moves through his fingers now as easily as it did in 1939. His face is still recognizable enough; so recognizable that Bucky could know it just as much as he did then, his own face twisting into panic and fear and–

Steve throws his arm over his eyes and lets it rest, heavy, while he breathes in and out and in and out. His brain is still too loud. That’s something he wouldn’t have minded changing. He puts his hand down at his side and sighs, wondering if it would be better if he was just the brainless muscle a surprising amount people think he is. The way they sneer isn’t so different, talking about how they can see where the Hulk came from when they think he can’t hear them, different at least in their secrecy from the bullies who looked down at his breathless body and joked about how Davenport had the right of it–

Something isn’t right. Steve blinks and sits up, stilling himself and listening carefully. The window is shut but Steve can hear the single scuff of a shoe against pavement right outside and then…nothing. The curtain is open just a slit, allowing a thin line of streetlight and Steve creeps along the floor, the single eye that can fit that field of vision flitting around, scouting wherever he can, until he decides he’s clear enough and leans up so he can look down at the street.

Steve freezes. There’s a man in front of his building, fidgeting but otherwise doing nothing but staring at the door with his hands buried in deep pockets, no hat to hide that dark hair, and no sense of shame or impropriety when he lifts his head and steely eyes pierce right into Steve’s soul.

Steve hesitates, not wanting to leave his window for fear of losing sight of him– if he could figure how to leap out in a way that wouldn’t potentially scare Bucky he would deal with every noise complaint thrown at him. But Bucky is here, Bucky can see him, Bucky is…still there. Steve mouths ‘wait’ in a vain hope but Bucky nods and that’s all he needs to scramble to his feet and run out of the room, down the stairs, almost breaking the banister when he uses it to swing a turn to the front of the house and he’s still moving even as he rips the door open and skids to a stop right in front of…

“You stayed,” he breathes.

“You asked,” the other man says, his voice rough. He winces and shrugs one shoulder. “Sort of.”

“Are you…”

“I don’t know.”

Steve frowns. “You don’t know what I was going to ask.”

Bucky snorts. “I got two guesses. And either way…” Bucky opens his arms as if presenting himself. Steve stares at his face, doesn’t look away at anything, not at Bucky’s chest, pockets, belt, not even at the left arm as it falls to his side.

“Do you want to…come in?” Steve asks, unable to keep the twinge of hope out of his voice.

Bucky hesitates for a moment, stares at the ground under his shoe for several seconds, and then takes a step forward.

~

Steve finds deep sleep for the first time in a long time. Bucky finds dreams in a large bed with a firm mattress. They both find peace and comfort as they each curl around a body that is not their own.

#bucky x steve #stucky #steve rogers x bucky barnes #captain america fanfic

[zuzuslastbraincell]

Ty lee (i feel like i havent seen many of you ty lee thots)

honestly love her!! tbh i don’t have many that others haven’t said more clearly and more interestingly

Why I like them

she’s a character with lots of hidden motives, depths, and complexity, who guards her true thoughts and opinions quite closely, but simultaneously *is* what she advertises herself as: a happy-go-lucky girl. like i don’t think her cheerfulness and her enthusiasm for auras and spirituality is entirely inauthentic - it’s just that she’s adept at using her own enthusiasm to mask her real feelings and thoughts. like there’s a lot to her there.

Why I don’t

i mean, she props up an imperialist coup of ba sing se by stealing the disguises of warriors who honour the avatar. objectively not good. 

Favorite episode (scene if movie)

oh, the beach, hands down. we finally get to see a glimpse of what troubles and upsets ty lee, and how she struggles. we also get to see her angry, instead of hiding negative emotions through evasion.

Favorite season/movie

book two. oh sure book three adds depth and complexity but we barely see her. book two just has so many good lines and moments - the clumps or tufts debate, the first time we see how devastating chi blocking is, the match against the kyoshi warriors (underrated), all the stuff with the drill... classic honestly.

Favorite line

okay if i’m honest “you’re not prettier than us!” at the kyoshi warriors cracks me up. i know it’s a line that is almost definitely written by misogynists who believe beauty/prettiness is central to girls/women and how they see themselves and how they should see themselves, but when you remove that context it’s just so jarring and it screams baby gay to me, or some kind of issues that need to be sorted out.

Favourite outfit

oh she looks great as a kyoshi warrior! love her there :)

OTP

okay i love mailee and tysuki equally for different reasons.

mailee i love because the whole concept of love being about communication and building your own language and finding ways to speak only to each other is key to it, especially given the toxic environment they are in s2-3 with azula, they’re incapable of being honest with words and have to communicate in other ways. but also i think there’s a lot of good angst potential. as well as hiding it from azula, they have so little time to themselves, and are so often surveilled, that it is difficult to ascertain each other’s feelings. they’re not sure of whether they can trust *each other*, and there’s a sense of them wanting to reach out and confirm but not being able to... this is complicated further by mai’s relationship to zuko, which does ty lee read as genuine or as one of azula’s manipulations? when mai betrays azula for zuko, does ty lee ever expect to be loved back? the idea of them together is super sweet like goth/pink gfs rights but there’s depth there... complexity

as for tysuki, it’s like... this is very much an *interpretation* of how it could go down, but i love the idea that ty lee is able to find a sense of home and belonging and identity and selfhood in the kyoshi warriors, to build roots, to not just find herself but build herself, despite her expectations that it’d last six months to a year. and i love the idea of suki having an equal, who can take her in a fight, who can help her shoulder the difficulty of teaching and organising but brings some levity and mischief and fun back, after it feels like the war has sapped it out of them with responsibility after responsibility. i think suki’s groundedness could be exactly what ty lee needs and i think suki could do with a partner who can pull her own weight but also, make her smile. i like the idea too of ty lee really finding a place to call her home after all of the mess in the fire nation between her family and azula, away from all of that... it’s a little idyllic, but it’s what she needs. 

Brotp

oh ty lee & zuko!! there’s potential here, for sure. like zuko would need to see ty lee as more than ‘azula’s friend’, but they’re both emotional people who are outspoken about how they feel - it’s just zuko’s earnest and honest and wears his heart on his sleeve, whereas ty lee uses her reputation of ‘wearing her heart on her sleeve’ to hide it, & similar to how i think zuko’s inability to lie/emotional honesty is a big comfort and help to mai, i think it would similarly help ty lee. i really love the idea of these two in particular being able to talk about being hurt by azula together and help each other heal. but also i just like the ‘unlikely friendship’ dynamic of these two, and the possibility of zuko being able to overlook ty lee’s reputation to get to know her for real. they’ve both been overlooked/undervalued in their respective families, and both left the fire nation because of it (albeit in very different circumstance), are both well travelled and very independent for their respective ages, there’s definitely ‘on the road’ stories they could share, and both have struggled to find themselves in different ways. there’s a lot of common threads.

also i think ty lee & aang would be wonderful as well :) i think a lot of aang’s initial gaang - zuko, katara, and sokka - would probably want to head home after their adventures in the war, and i imagine aang ends up finding new companions to travel with. i like the idea of ty lee, after the kyoshi warriors, being one of these.

Head Canon

she’s a lesbian! :^)

just based off ‘the beach’ episode mainly, and how reluctant she seems around boys in that.

Unpopular opinion

hmmm i don’t think i have any?

A wish

asides from being happy and contented in general? would love to see her join aang’s second group of companions. i think toph, ty lee, aang, & potentially two new characters would be a really fun (and chaotic) little crew :^). also would just love her to realise the brotp potential with aang and zuko as outlined above, and get to date a nice girl of some kind.

OH I would also love more family background on her & exploration of the possible air nomad heritage ty lee theory, i’d love to see some of that. would make aang’s relationship even more meaningful (but potentially, complicated! having heritage doesn’t necessarily mean you’re part of that group).

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen

being azula’s designated healer and makes-her-redemption-arc happen. i already outlined today why that’d be bad for zuko and i think, while their relationship is different, it would be a negative experience for ty lee as well. azula is her peer, a peer who has hurt her quite deeply through the manipulation she pulled to get ty lee to give up her dreams and come along and uses manipulation as a primary way of interacting with people (even if like, i think they might have had a genuine friendship as kids, that poisons a relationship quickly), then tried to kill mai when turned against her... like, ty lee has good reasons to want to stay away from her, and honestly ty lee needs to heal as well, needs time and space. she should not be responsible for her well being full stop, but especially in this situation. i’m not ruling out the possibility of reconciliation but ty lee and azula would need to ‘hard reset’ their relationship and that would mean plenty of time apart, azula coming forward with apologies, azula making amends, and slowly, over time, building up trust. but honestly, even if azula is genuine in wanting to make amends, i’m not sure risking her wellbeing for that process would be best for ty lee anyway - i’ve personally cut people off in my life for my own wellbeing for less (although really what decision is best depends on your personality outlook how comfortable you feel your support network etc. a multitude of factors). regardless of your interpretation of their dynamic, ty lee does not exist for azula, and should not exist to further her character development but also as a character in her own right at this point.

5 words to best describe them

cheerful, chaotic, complex, perceptive, pink! 

My nickname for them

“prettier than you <3” (after the kyoshi warriors line, but with a pink heart emoji because of course she would, but also because it’s just funny, lol. ty lee has a mean streak)

#ty lee #sorry this took aaages #sissyspacex123

[lananiscorner]

I went through your Jason Todd tag and it made me consider the importance of fan content. People rag on fanon a lot but when canon's constantly flipping around, what else can people do? Continue to consume official content that makes them sad in the wrong way? I swear fan creators put more respect and love into their creations than most official ones AND aren't hampered by executives or producers. Plus, they try to complete their story threads along with cleaning up "canon"'s messes

Thank you for your ask, Anon.

I genuinely do believe that a lot of the ragging on fan content has its roots in three things:

Creators feeling over-protective of their work. You see this a lot with creators who say that seeing fanart or fanfic of their products is like watching someone hurt their children, to which all I can say is 1) YOU let your child out into the wild to interact with other people. What were you expecting them to do? Exist in a vacuum? 2) Your child is still there. Unharmed. It always will be. Block/mute functions exist for a reason, if you don’t want to see a specific type of content.

So much of fan content (especially fanfiction) being produced by women, POC, queer people and other marginalized fans, which makes the perfect milkshake that brings all the bigots to the yard.

This weird focus that our society has on everything having to be accurate and perfect to be worth something, which in terms of fanfiction means  “if it’s not 100% accurate to canon/well-written it’s trash”.

I will fully admit that I was, in the past, guilty of point 3. To some extent, I still am. I see plenty of stuff (especially from the Darksiders fandom) cross my dash that internally makes me go “nooooooo, that’s not how this works at all--we know from scene X in game Y that it actually works like Z!!!!!” But there is a time and a place for that sort of pedantry (namely when you are publishing official works for a franchise, such as, say, an artbook to go with the game), but fandom IS. NOT. THAT. TIME. I learned that lesson the hard way. Back when I was 16 or so I used to write MSTings about other people’s fics without their permission, roasting the hell out of their grammar and spelling and plot issues and what not in the firm belief that I was doing fandom a humorous service. I look back on those MSTings now and I cringe. If I could go back in time and sit my teenage self down for a good long talk on what fandom is actually for, I would.

Fandom and fan content is first and foremost a deeply personal, transformative way of processing content that moved you enough to care about it. This world we live in is incredibly flawed and plagued by systemic issues that none of us have any way of fixing all on our own. I could think of far worse ways for someone to find a tiny speck of wish-fullfilling enjoyment in their life than drawing E-rated Jay/Dick or writing about the Four Horsemen going to Hell to bring their human S/O back to life by wrestling their soul out of Lucifer’s grasp. Once again, Block/Mute functions exist for a reason. As a teen I thought “Don’t like, don’t read” was just a silly cop-out. Turns out that’s just healthy boundary-keeping. Who knew?

P.S.: There are absolutely fan creators who put more thought and respect into their works than paid professionals. I’ve argued this point before, so I’ll just give it a quick mention here: comic book creators in particular can stick any negativity towards fan content where the sun don’t shine, because unless THEY were the ones who invented the character, they are doing the same thing fan content creators do, except they are officially getting paid for it (and who you know and which demographic you belong to unfortunately tends to be just as important in getting those jobs as... you know... actual talent. See point 2.)

P.P.S.: Proof-reading that last paragraph of mine before the P.S. actually reminds me that I pulled that same argument with my parents when they were critical about me getting into cosplay and going to conventions at age 14 lol (I think my exact words to them were “all we’re gonna do is dress up and play out a few sketches--would you rather have me go to the club and get smashed like most of my classmates?”)

#asks #Anon #fandom #fanon