#the worst part might be that I may have over-romanticized my feelings to where they’re no longer accurate.

[kitsune-kaos]

I hope I find love soon so I can stop feeling things for people who I can’t be with/don’t want me

(Anyone have any advice? 🥺)

#as much as I want to wish I could tell them how I feel #I know it won’t do me any good. it’ll just ruin the friendship I’ve maybe built #I know I can’t be with them and I regularly have to convince myself of this. yet the feelings still haven’t gone away #maybe it’s my own fault. maybe I need to force myself to let go? I just don’t know how #I don’t know how to make sure my intentions are pure. I try to. but there’s still some ounce of love that seeps out #and it’s fully unrequited #the worst part might be that I may have over-romanticized my feelings to where they’re no longer accurate. #but I’ll never know cause I just keep it secret from them #personal #rambles

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Okay but I would LOVE to here your heretical opinions on Padame if you ever want to share them or any of your other views on star wars prequel characters. Your character analysises are INCREDIBLE and really fun to read <3

Oh boy, are you sure about that? Well, the ask has been made so here, we, gooooooooooooooo!

Padme’s one of those strange characters who appears as one thing but in actuality is quite different. Because she appears as the first thing, and it’s something people really like, most people accept that at face value and if she’s not always consistent--well, she came from a series of screenplays written by George Lucas.

Padme comes across as a very noble, kind, and courageous character who is also quite politically savvy. At fourteen, against all odds, she saves her planet from invasion when the Senate did nothing, secured herself an ally in the chancellor (nevermind him being secretly Palpatine), and even after relinquishing her title as queen remains a major player in the senate for years and is seen as enough of a threat to warrant several assassination attempts (one so bad she has to be guarded by Jedi and sent home to Naboo for several weeks). 

And I’m not saying she’s not any of these things. Padme is very courageous, is one of those odd politicians who... believes she stands for what she believes in (more on this later), and has a remarkable political career.

However, she’s also romantic to the point of being completely and utterly delusional, self-centered, and frankly a little nuts.

(Yeah, you knew you were waiting for me to say something terrible, WEREN’T YOU?!) Right, so what’s wrong with Padme?

Well, if you look closely at a few of her choices, the ones that never seemed to make much sense, then you can look at her other choices and... Well, it all sort of comes together. 

That’s right, I’m talking about “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”.

Attack of the Clones we have the very lackluster and strange romance of Anakin and Padme.

On Anakin’s end, his infatuation with Padme makes a lot of sense. She was part of the party that rescued him from slavery, she was very kind to him, and was the prettiest girl he’s ever seen in his life. Ten years later, always having harbored a crush on her memory and keeping it alive through whatever news he hears of her, she’s grown into a very beautiful woman and Anakin is by chance introduced back into her life. I get why Anakin falls head over heels for Padme, I’ll get more into this later and how their relationship has some major issues (aside from the obvious), but I understand why he marries this girl out of nowhere even when it could get him thrown out of the Jedi. (As an aside, since this is more of a Padme post, I think Anakin was spurred on in part also by the death of his mother and his massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Anakin’s life was flipped upside down in a very short amount of time, one of his great emotional ties is suddenly gone, and I think he has this internal crisis that culminates in him deciding to marry Padme. Without this, he and Padme may have become lovers, but I don’t think he’d marry her).

On Padme’s end... it’s a little less clear. Anakin has grown into an attractive young man, yes. Take out all of George Lucas’ dialogue, and maybe Padme finds Anakin very charming. However, Padme secretly marries a Jedi she’s known for three weeks. Now, I’d be a bit more forgiving of this, love is love and we can’t always think rationally, but there’s some other things.

Unlike Anakin, Padme hasn’t been spending the past ten years romanticizing her memory of Anakin Skywalker. When they met in Phantom Menace, Anakin was not only five years younger than her, he was nine-years-old. To fourteen-year-old Padme, Anakin was not then dating material and was instead this poor boy in slavery. Which means while Anakin has build up justifying this rapid romance, Padme really doesn’t. What this means is that her romance with Anakin reads a lot more like a romantic fantasy. Cute dashing bodyguard shows up, saves her life, through contrived circumstances they’re sent back to beautiful Naboo where they spend time together, only cute bodyguard is a Jedi and can’t marry, which makes their love excitingly taboo! 

Everything Padme does, before and after this point, lends itself to this overdeveloped sense of romance. Padme wants to be whisked away, wants to have this secret unsustainable marriage with a man who cannot be married, she’s in love with the idea of being in love. Given how little time she spends with Anakin, how little they really know of each other, I’d say she’s more in love with the idea of Anakin than Anakin Skywalker himself. And this isn’t a bad thing necessarily, or at least not a grievous flaw, however, that’s not all. 

Padme chooses to marry Anakin knowing he murdered an entire village of men, women, and children. She marries him almost immediately after the massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Note, she does not learn about this later and have to come to terms with it, she is right there. She is on Tatooine with him and sees him go to do it and then return. 

Padme doesn’t take it... particularly well, that said, she also seems to shove it under the carpet immediately. She, first, marries Anakin within days after this event. She second, never really has a “holy fuck, Anakin” conversation with him. And worst yet, she never confesses to anyone else. Padme is a hypocrite and willing to sacrifice everything she believes in, albeit I believe unwittingly, for her romantic fantasy.

She tells no one about what happened. An entire village was brutally massacred, those who are already poor and oppressed and have no voice, by a man who is supposed to be a protector of all people in the galaxy. I’m sorry, Anakin, but if Padme was who you think she is then she would have to tell the Jedi Order at the very least if not the Republic. Instead, there are no consequences, only Anakin’s descent into guilt and madness as three years pass with it festering in the back of his mind.  Padme does not stand for the poor, for the people, or for justice. She only does so when it does not conflict with her own interests, i.e. her actions regarding the invasion of Naboo. More, I do not believe Padme has the introspection to realize this about herself, she never realizes that not narking on Anakin was very very very bad. Three years pass and she lives the whirlwind romantic fantasy that she and Anakin both want. They’re secret lovers/spouses, meeting up at the oddest hours of the day and... This is three years of this ridiculous affair. Three years to come to terms with the fact that something must change. And then the kicker, Padme gets pregnant, and this is where the extra delusional comes in.

The child should have been a signal of the end. There can be no more secret now. Padme is having a child, presumably out of wedlock, and even if space is very very very different from our society I imagine this would be quite the scandal that could even get her thrown out of the senate. I believe Padme mentions as much to Anakin. More, Anakin is no longer a lover, he is now a father. What’s supposed to happen now? They raise this secret child, instructing them that Anakin is only a father in private, never in public?

Anakin and Padme briefly flirt with the idea of Anakin leaving the order. Anakin even wants to do so, but it... never happens. Now is the time it absolutely should happen. Yes, Anakin’s a big part of the war effort, but he could at least start talking to the Order and they could decide if it’d be a slow or fast exit. 

My theory, Padme’s too in love with the fantasy. Anakin leaving means he’s no longer a Jedi, it means he’ll come to Naboo, be unemployed and be around. Anakin visiting will no longer be this romantic, fraught with the danger of being found out, passionate, short lived event for Padme. It’ll become real life. He’ll be a real, ordinary man, she’ll be a real, ordinary, woman, and that spark of romance will be gone.

I don’t think Padme wants that. 

Which is why, even with the child on the way, we see Anakin and Padme continue to play out this ridiculous secret lovers fantasy. And then, of course, Anakin goes insane off screen.

Padme is told that, once again, Anakin has murdered dozens of children. Of course, this is a terrible thing to be told and she can’t process it. She needs to find Anakin and confront him, but people always criticize Lucas here and feel it’s out of character for Padme to have run to Anakin in sobbing hysterics with no plan of enacting vengence.

Frankly, I think it’s very in character. She did nothing about the Tuskens, remember? I think at the end of the day, the murder of the Jedi children means very little to her. What hurts Padme the most is that the fantasy of Anakin she married is not real. The Anakin she married would never murder the Jedi children, betray the Republic, or do any of what he’s done. And I think Padme only has that strong, iron, will when she knows the world she’s in. With the Trade Federation, her stance was obvious. Her people were being oppressed, butchered, and invaded. In this case, the world she knew no longer exists.

The Republic is gone, perhaps hasn’t existed in thirteen years, as it turns out the senator who had always been her biggest supporter was a Sith Lord. The Jedi are gone, children murdered by Anakin while those in the field are picked off by their own clone soldiers. Padme’s world has fallen apart, and I think that makes it much harder for her to be the girl we saw in Phantom Menace. In time, perhaps, she would have joined the rebellion but... I do think Padme might have also given into despair.

So, yeah, that’s Padme for you.

#ask #anon #padme amidala #star wars #star wars prequel trilogy #anakin skywalker #anti anidala #anti padme amidala #are you sure you wanted this rant?

[ash-rabbit]

An Autopsy: Mag200 Last Words

I will preface this by saying that, one (1) this is my opinion, and that I am at best ambivalent towards Martin and Jmart. And that this influenced the emotional impact of the episode for me, and likely many other viewers.

Additionally, I don't have a transcript open so we're going off memory. And spoilers below, obviously.

I. Everything that I wanted to see

1. Jonah

I'm very glad he showed back up and was coherent. That was definitely a highlight since bastard he may be, but he's my favourite.

I would have liked to hear him monologue or give a statement, but I don't mind Jon cutting things short. It's deserved, and I'm sure Jon was sick to death of Magnus' voice anyway.

I really liked how his last words were so very scared and vulnerable. "I don't want to die." and then Jon's retort of "Neither did they" before going through with it was excellent.

Being the vessel for the eye being like a wonderful dream was also very good, because I can only imagine that it would be similar to Jon's nightmare walking for someone who actually enjoys the suffering of others.

Something that was odd was that I could swear that it contradicts 193, where Jonah was referred to as nothing but a husk when serving as the eyes conduit. I had thought that meant his sense of self had been eradicated and he was nothing but his eyes for all intents and purposes. Clearly not. So I suppose all those fics where Elias survives and is aware of everything after Jonah gets gouged out of his skull are still plausible, seeing as Jonah still remained, even after being crushed beneath the weight of his eldritch patron.

2. Jon doing his own thing

I said this after 198 and 199, but I though the Web's plan was dumb, and everyone completely misunderstood the Trolley Problem, because just like the average Tumblr user, the Archival assistants are illiterate. But I suppose that happens when you have two influencers, a cop, and a high school drop out debate ethics. I'm just saying Tim with his anthropology degree would have called bullshit on their moralizing, he might not have disagreed with that plan of action, but he wouldn't have tried to justify it.

3. Jon going through with the 193 plan

Technically a merger of point 1 and 2, but it had Jon having a completely decent plan for once. It worked for the most part, it was cathartic and wholly satisfying to watch for him as a character.

As stated in 193 the conduit position is meant for him, so he doesn't suffer any ill effects outside of becoming a bird in a gilded cage, but he already spent the series as that. And it wasn't as if Jon hadn't been acting as a conduit with the constant statement taking anyway.

3.b a late addition to this but why does Jon need to keep taking statements?? It feels entirely superfluous in a fear saturated landscape, unless it was the Eye really wanting that Archivist pupil.

II. What Didn't Hit, or the Deflated Souffle

1. Jon and Martin

Hinging the emotional weight of a finale on a couple doesn't work if you don't have any feelings invested in the couple. I didn't care for Martin from the moment we were introduced to him in Season 1, and my interest to become invested in Martin was ignited and subsequently extinguished within Season 4. I find Martin hypocritical and self righteous and it's a bad mix for me personally. I didn't like his character trajectory over Season 5, so Jmart did nothing for me across the Season.

The misquote of LotR also just doesn't do it for me. It's sort of romanticizing the whole Romeo + Juliet thing, which is always not good. I think being unable to live for Jon undercuts any growth Martin could have gone through since in season 4 he was running a suicide gambit, and I think if he had been able to live as a person at the end of it, he would have come out a stronger character.

2. The Knife in the Gut

So Jon went through with his actually good plan, and Martin acts like its the worst possible thing. Jon is mostly himself, more himself then across Season 5 for the most part actually. But it's treated like the worst betrayal, and then Martin has the gall to go "we expected this so we're burning the Archives at this very second"

Like okay?? You're mad he went behind his back, even though everything previously stated had your plan set up to fail from the get go. It just made me irritated at Martin for being short sighted.

Worse then that was how quickly Jon caved to Martin and saying fine kill me and go through with your plan. And then Martin did it. They condemned countless dimensions because when Martin show sup and say anything contrary to Jon, Jon's spine disappears. It defeated the purpose of Jon going behind their backs in the first place. Though I'm glad Martin wasn't there when Jon spoke to Jonah.

I think the damnation of countless realities should have been framed as a tragedy, and not as the heroic thing. So I guess it's just fridge horror now. The framing just, it really doesn't work for me here, I was horrified by the moral ramifications and how it's the one thing Jon didn't want to do, to have more people face the same horrors he had.

3. The Archives are Burning: One of the Best Paying Academic Institute's is in flames.

So Jon was called the Archive by Jonah, and it never felt like that meant anything. We don't know if the burning Archive affecting Jon was because he's the Archive or if it's because burning knowledge hurts him as burning Gerry's page did.

Also I'm just against the burning of centuries of knowledge in general, that was probably the part of the episode that hurt. Cursed or not, the Magnus Institute seems to have incredibly pay for a research institute of all things, I mean a flat in London and it can pay for a care home? I know biology researchers who make around minimum wage at best. I'm just saying, I would work there despite everything the series has laid out.

4. The Girls Started a Fire

I don't mind that they survived, but they blew up a gasline?? And survived, no Helen to save them, but they survived.

It's weird.

5. Back to Business as Usual

So they ejected all the fears into other universes and everything is back to normal. But I have questions!! How are people's state of mind?? Are some people catatonic from constantly experiencing constant fear? The Admiral is fine which is great but, there's so much mental scarring that even with a fix it band aid slapped on, the whole population is mentally fractured at best. I don't have the words to elucidate, but it bothers me.

In Sum

The finale didn't hurt me. Which in and of itself hurts. I signed up for a tragedy/horror, and it felt like the romance shift undercut a lot of character growth and impact. But that's because I don't like who Jon and Martin are when they're together, and that's a normal thing to fell around new/codependent couples.

I was hoping for something that was soul crushing for the characters, but death isn't really the worst fate, and I suppose it's grim if only because they made the selfish choice. Which is weird, for Jon at least, he stopped making selfish choices after Season 2 for the most part and was punished every time he did something that was necessary for his continued survival in Season 4. I have thoughts on the statement dependency being a food thing more then an addiction thing but I'm ending it here.

The series is good, but I'll probably just relisten to S1-4 only, I don't care for romance or apocalypse settings, and 160 is a good stopping point if you want a soft tragedy of sorts.

#Mag 200 #the magnus archives #tma #mag 200 last words

[random-thought-depository]

In another post I wrote:

“Like … right now I’m planning out a story I intend to write in January; it’s supposed to be a kind of deconstruction of the Fremen mirage, and very much one of the thoughts going into it is “yo, a Proud Warrior Race would be a horrible society to live in or have as neighbors, we shouldn’t romanticize them!” and yet … I feel that the “bad guy” culture in it is much better, from a literary viewpoint, for me having given some thought to the material base of their society and how that would shape their culture. I could have just written them as flat edgelordy-grimdark barbarians, but thinking about their culture in materialist terms gave me a more complex and nuanced picture that I think will make for a more interesting and nuanced story and a fictional society that feels more interesting and human and alive.”

So, I want to infodump a little about this fictional culture I’ve thought up! I decided to split my infodumping into three posts, of which this is the second. In my previous post, I talked about the material conditions and subsistence strategy that shape this culture. If you haven’t read it already, I suggest you click that link and read my last post before you read this one, as it’s important context for what I’ve written here. In this and my next post I’ll talk about these people as a culture instead of just as an economy. I was originally going to make this whole thing two posts, but there’s so much stuff that could go in the culture part I decided I better split that up. In this post I’ll make a broad outline of the less “where does the food come from and where does the sewage go?” aspects of these people’s social structure, try to give you a general picture of how their society works. In my next post I’ll try to give you a more intimate “human” picture of what these people’s lives are like and what sort of people they are; talk more about relationships and attitudes and so on.

History and context:

The ancestors of these people were abducted from Bronze Age Earth by imperialistic aliens and used as basically slaves and slave-soldiers by these aliens. Some time in the last millennium BCE these imperialist aliens and their enemies blew each other up in the interstellar empire equivalent of a nuclear apocalypse. In the aftermath of this war the alien civilizations never really recovered, but the descendants of the human slaves built their own interstellar civilization, and the space nomad raiders I’ve been talking about are one branch of that civilization (the surviving aliens now mostly live on a small number of their planets that avoided destruction during the big ancient war, while nowadays most inhabited worlds in local space are populated more-or-less entirely by humans). There’s complexity here I’m not going to get into now, but as I said in my previous post, a significant point is these space nomad raiders I’m talking about mostly interact with other humans; the foreigners they interact with are mostly other humans, and the victims of their raiding are mostly other humans.  The location of Earth was lost in the chaos of the big ancient war, and Earth continued its independent cultural development (i.e. real history) and was isolated from the rest of the setting and the rest of humanity for about 3500 years or so, with re-contact between Earth humanity and the rest of humanity happening maybe around 30 years before the story I’m planning to write (which takes place some time in the twenty-second or twenty-third century CE).

The story I’m planning takes place against a background of a utopian-ish future Earth society that was in the process of colonizing the solar system fighting an “alien invasion” of these space nomad raiders.

Gender weirdness:

These people went straight from Bronze Age to space age, they completely missed the Enlightenment etc., and their former alien masters had little interest in giving them a more “progressive” culture (and were kind of too starfish alien to even really think in those terms; e.g. they were genderless hermaphrodites, so why wouldn’t they more-or-less just shrug and accept a Bronze Age human’s ideas about human gender?). So, to us these people’s culture would look like a strange mix of the very primitive and the space age, with the two combining in strange ways.

These people have strong gender roles and no concept of gender equality in the sense we think of it. Their society still runs on a “men are warriors, women are non-combatants who at best get patronizing protection and at worst are part of the spoils the men fight over” paradigm. Most younger men are more-or-less full-time warriors; their lives are more-or-less completely dedicating to raiding, defending the community from raids, and preparing for doing these things. If they survive long enough to become too old to fight they usually “retire” and then spend their time doing maintenance work on the weapons and passing on their knowledge to the younger generations of warriors and warriors-in-training. Women do most of the non-combatant work.

This might sound like a recipe for a rather brutal patriarchy, and in a way that conclusion isn’t wrong, but... This means women are doing most of the work of keeping the space habitat running. And remember, much of the labor of keeping a space community alive is specialized skilled labor; the sort of work where trying to extract labor through simple brutality wouldn’t work well. Women are most of the machinists and the repair technicians and the nuclear reactor operators and the doctors and so on. As I said in my last post, you really don’t want to anger the person who fixes the machine that makes the air you breathe, one of the people who tend the nuclear reactor that provides energy to your community, or the person who might do surgery on you. So this is a society with lots of female power (which coexists with horrifying institutionalized abuse of other women).

Now, in my last post I stressed how a society like this will be labor-limited and want to make efficient use of labor, so you may be thinking that having half the population be full-time warriors sounds extremely inefficient. And it would be! But that’s not what these people do. For one thing, that’s a simplification of their system; there are gender-variant male eunuchs and enslaved men who do “women’s work,” and as I said retired warriors do maintenance work on the weapons and raiding ships. But what really helps in making their system viably efficient is their population isn’t 50% male. This is where it gets weird.

Remember when I said earlier that a small almost-self-sufficient space community would have tightly controlled reproduction? Among these people, there’s a powerful order of priestesses that does that. They regulate reproduction to prevent over-reproduction or under-reproduction and to minimize the effects of inbreeding ... but they’ve also spent the last couple of thousand years doing eugenics and genetic tinkering on these people. Partially they’re into creepy fascist trying to breed superior warriors stuff, but also at some point they fiddled with the human meiosis process to give these people a naturally unbalanced sex ratio. I’m thinking they got it to the point where something like 60% of the children born among these people are female. The sex ratio among adults is even more skewed because of higher male early mortality rates, a tendency to ritually kill male captives while keeping female captives, etc.. This gives maybe 20% of the adult population being active warriors (remember, the retired warriors are mostly functionally maintenance workers until they get too old and feeble to do that too), which is probably still inefficiently big but manageable.

So these people have some of the social structures and cultural attitudes of a patriarchal society, but they’re a society where men are a minority and masculinity is defined by doing something socially prestigious but economically marginal (and, incidentally to this point but important to understanding their culture, they’re a society where warrior vs. almost everything else is heavily gendered).

Tribal warrior barbarian hordes IN SPACE:

Another aspect of these people being a weird mix of the extremely primitive and the space age is that they have advanced technology but they are basically a patriarchal clan rule society.

The basic social unit of this society is the patrilineal kin-group, i.e. the patriarchal clan. Inheritance is patrilineal and marriage is virilocal; when a woman marries she moves into her husband’s family’s dwelling, she becomes part of her husband’s clan, and her children “belong” to her husband’s clan. Because social kinship is basically unilineal, these clans become quite big; a normal size is thousands of people (and that’s if you don’t count non-kin dependents). A typical habitat community contains maybe five or six of these big clans. Usually the most powerful clan (usually the biggest) is the “royal family” and exercises hegemony over the habitat, while the other clans are allied to it in an arrangement similar to feudal vassalage. Attached to these clans through various vassalage-like and slavery-like arrangements are a large number of non-kin dependents, who usually make up the majority of the community’s population (more on them later). These clans are very much families in the Mafia sense of the word. So, I said earlier that the mobile space habitat community is the basic political unit of this culture, but most of those communities are more like five or six allied big Mafia gangs/families in a trench-coat.

The social glue of this society is blood ties, marriage, vassalage, slavery, and other forms of what can broadly be called fictive kinship style relationships. The line between marriage, vassalage, slavery, and other forms of fictive kinship is often blurry - indeed, these are basically Earth Western concepts that I’m imposing on this society to communicate what it’s like; these people would not carve their own social reality at the places I’m carving it by using these terms. As I said, this is a clan rule society; your social position is basically entirely a question of who your relatives and in-laws are or who you are affiliated with or owned by; the concept of an individual having legal rights (or even really legal personhood) separate from their clan affiliations basically doesn’t exist.

Status and rank within a clan is mostly hereditary, though it’s mediated by gender and age, and there’s also a significant “meritocratic” charismatic component (e.g. a younger son of a previous patriarch who’s a distinguished warrior and popular with the cousins may be chosen for leadership over a less distinguished and less popular older son who all else being equal would have been ahead in the succession order). The clan overall functions as a disciplined hierarchical organization with a delegation of authority and duties that’s orderly enough to be more-or-less functional (patriarch bosses around his brothers and sons, who boss around his cousins, who boss around their cousins, etc.), but there’s a significant amount of jockeying and potential for overlapping conflicting authority within that. Note: I’m making this sound like a basically male hierarchy, but remember that this is a society with lots of female power, the wives of high-status men tend to be high-status themselves and often have significant power bases of their own, so high-status women are very much big players in this.

These communities are economically egalitarian but socially inegalitarian. Your clan leader isn’t much richer than you; he probably has some servants and a somewhat bigger apartment and somewhat nicer clothes and furniture and somewhat better food and so on, but that’s about it - but he can control your life in more-or-less the same way your parents controlled your life when you were 14, you must show him deference, and if he wants almost any sort of favor you’d better give it to him. Power in this society isn’t about having stuff, it’s about being respected and obeyed.

The clan is responsible for the conduct of its members and your conduct reflects on your clan, so this is an “honor culture” where reputation is very important; you can expect to get killed by your own relatives if you harm or embarrass your own clan badly enough, and on the flip-side if you do something heroic your whole clan gets a boost to its reputation and “soft power” by association with you. Between this and what I said in the rest of this section, this is a society where most people (of any gender) have little personal freedom.

One thing these people mercifully mostly don’t have is the spiraling inter-clan blood-feuds that often happen in clan rule societies on Earth. You really, really, really don’t want gloves-off open gang warfare in a space habitat. So, these people have developed powerful social mechanisms for resolving disputes before they get to the blood feud stage. Unfortunately, these dispute resolution mechanisms themselves include lethal violence, i.e. there’s a tradition of often lethal dueling. These basically controlled murders are a significant cause of male early mortality among these people, so in that sense this is a very violent society even internally, before you get to all the violence they inflict on outsiders. However, this violence is very gender-asymmetric; among these people the taboos against killing women are stronger than the taboos against killing men, and there are especially very strong taboos against killing female skilled specialists (doctors, engineers, etc.). Ironically, as a consequence of the way male eunuchs and enslaved men are considered not really men, they are more-or-less grouped with the women for purposes of these taboos, so they are often actually safer from intra-community violence than higher-status men are.

This basically fits with men in these communities doing something that is prestigious but economically marginal; they get some prestige and power and privilege, but they are treated as disposable, and you can interpret the dueling as them having internalized this collective judgment on them. Mind you, it’s mostly not the same people getting both ends of this deal; it’s mostly the high-status men who get the “prestige and power and privilege” end of the deal, and the low-ranking warriors tend to get more of the “treated as disposable” end of the deal. Though in fairness this society is one with an idea that a leader is supposed to actually lead in battle, so high-status men often do take the same sort of risks as their subordinates (on the other hand, the strong hereditary element of power in this society means it trends toward gerontocracy, so the guys at the very top are often “retired” from direct participation in fighting).

In my previous post I said that humans usually prefer sharing or trading to violent theft because violent theft means risk of injury or death. That’s kind of true of these people, but with these people there’s an internal social pressure that acts in the opposite direction. In this society, heroic deeds in battle reflect positively on your clan and increase its prestige and “soft power,” and also because of the charismatic “meritocratic” component of their hierarchy impressing people by performing heroic deeds in battle is one of the few avenues of social mobility available to men in this society (note: “heroic deeds” in this context often means things like pulling off some particularly audacious heist; things that directly benefit the community if they succeed, so in a sense this is a smart incentive system). So this society will have a lot of ambitious young men who at least kind of want battles to happen so they have opportunities to prove themselves, and clan leaders will similarly often want battles to happen so they have opportunities to increase the prestige and influence of their clan.  Also, individuals and clans who contribute to a successful raid often get to keep some of the loot or have the right to control how some or all of it is distributed, and that makes raiding tempting to people who aren’t satisfied with what they have in the status quo even if the community as a whole has enough resources. So this is a society that’s likely to be more violent than is “rational,” if you define “rational” as “acts like a hive mind instead of like an actual human community made up of people who have their own goals.” Their whole social structure basically reflects that sort of dynamic; their warrior class is probably inefficiently big, but masculinity and participation in the raiding have become so entwined that they can’t shrink it without facing ferocious resistance from people who have their whole identity invested in being warriors; you can’t take somebody who’s been literally raised from birth to do one thing and has their whole sense of self-worth bound up in it and just casually reassign them to a different job (I’m thinking the man = warrior thing started when these people were slave-soldiers + logistical support “camp followers,” and survived a transition from “we’re an army with some ‘live off the land’ short-term self-sufficiency capacity” to “we’re space nomads who use violence as part of our survival strategy”).

“Women’s spaces” and non-kin clan dependents:

Societies with very strong gender roles often have lots of homosociality, and these people very much fit that pattern. Because women do most of the productive work among these people, most of the habitat community’s work-spaces are female majority spaces that the male warriors don’t directly interact with much (there are male eunuchs and enslaved men working in there with the women, but in these people’s gender system those hardly count as men, and anyway the women outnumber them quite solidly). So, basically, this society has a more-or-less separate majority female social world that has its own social networks, its own strong affiliation/friendship groups (mostly work gangs), and its own centers of power.

Being a clan-based patriarchal society, these people also have a marriage system that’s kind of a bad deal for women (patrilineal and virilocal marriage strengthens male-centered social networks while disrupting female-centered social networks, and makes wives vulnerable to abuse). This is a society where patriarchal family institutions coexist with a semi-separate female-majority social world and lots of female power, so a lot of women respond to the former by never marrying. If this was a more conventional patriarchal society this might mean lots of childless spinsters, but this is a society where maintaining high genetic diversity is a community survival imperative and where a female majority population and high female homosociality makes it easy to create all-female cooperative child-care arrangements, so the result is lots of unmarried mothers.

Note: “unmarried” may be a simplification here, I’m thinking there might be a sort of “marriage lite” where the woman gets some of the benefits of marriage (e.g. her husband has “honor code” obligations to protect her and her children from harm and take revenge on anyone who harms or kills her or one of her children) but she and her husband keep separate residences and her husband and his kin have no authority over her. But if this status exists it’s basically a formal recognition of a boyfriend/girlfriend type relationship and the woman can “divorce” the man whenever she wants. Possibly the line between boyfriend/girlfriend and husband/wife in this culture is fluid (IIRC in a lot of past societies all a heterosexual couple had to do to be considered married was live together and call each other husband and wife, and I could see the sort of “marriage-lite” I’m talking about here being similarly fluid, though since the couple not living together is part of the point of it the details of how it works would have to be different).

Children of unmarried (or “married lite”) mothers are for purposes of clan affiliation considered to have no father. This means they’re by default more-or-less outside the clan system, especially if the mother doesn’t have a patrilineal descent connection to one of the local clans (e.g. if she’s an abductee who was taken in a raid). Because being an unmarried (or “married lite”) mother is a better deal for the majority of women, offspring of unmarried (or “married lite”) mothers are usually a majority of the habitat community’s population. So in a typical community of these people, the local big clans dominate the community politically but are actually a minority of the community’s population.

I’m thinking the way this is usually handled is legally fatherless people legally directly “belong” to the “king” (the leader of the community’s most powerful clan). But in practice legally fatherless children are usually raised by majority-female cooperative child-care groups in majority female social spaces that have a lot of independence, and if they’re female they’ll usually spend their entire lives in those spaces and follow the same reproductive strategy their mothers did. So the effect is to strengthen the semi-separate social world character of these female majority work-spaces.

That’s how it works with legally fatherless girls and women, with legally fatherless boys and men things are more complicated. If you’re a legally fatherless boy among these people you spend the first 11-12 years of your life with your mother, and then you’re given various aptitude and fitness tests, and if you fail you’re left with your mother to be raised to be a worker, and if you pass you’re taken away from your mother and given to a group of legally fatherless warriors and retired warriors to be raised by them and if all goes well ultimately become one of them. It’s a bit like what the Spartans did, though thankfully the training is actually significantly less nasty than what they did in the agoge; I’ll talk about it more in my next post.

I’ll generally talk more about the details of what life in this society is like in my next post!

#my writing #worldbuilding #warning: long #cw: slavery #cw: sexism #cw: rape #Artemis of the airless vastness

[fontofmercy-archived2]

Rethinking The Unkiss: Sansa Stark and Trauma

“The Unkiss” refers to the (confirmed as intentional) inconsistency in Sansa’s recollection of her interaction with Sandor at The Battle of Blackwater. Many fans interpret that this inconsistency is a sign that Sansa is romantically interested in Sandor, but I would like to offer a different perspective. The perspective of Sansa not as a self-insert for adult women who are attracted to Sandor, but as the traumatized child she is in canon.

I’m not going to explain in depth that Sandor is verbally, physically, and sexually abusive to Sansa because that is just blatantly in the text; it’s not a debate or a theory, it’s a canonical fact that Sandor is Sansa’s abuser. Just because he had a few good moments and is arguably a little better than other abusers doesn’t change that. There is a great meta that does explain that though if you want a refresher: https://stardyng.tumblr.com/post/181474608232/a-song-of-birds-and-burns-anti-sansan-meta by @stardyng

1.) First things first, let’s just take a look at the actual scene:

“The blood masked the worst of his scars, but his eyes were white and wide and terrifying. The burnt corner of his mouth twitched and twitched again. Sansa could smell him; a stink of sweat and sour wine and stale vomit, and over it all the reek of blood, blood, blood.

"I could keep you safe," he rasped. "They're all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I'd kill them." He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. "Still can't bear to look, can you?" she heard him say. He gave her arm a hard wrench, pulling her around and shoving her down onto the bed. "I'll have that song. Florian and Jonquil, you said." His dagger was out, poised at her throat. "Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life."

Her throat was dry and tight with fear, and every song she had ever known had fled from her mind. Please don't kill me, she wanted to scream, please don't. She could feel him twisting the point, pushing it into her throat, and she almost closed her eyes again, but then she remembered. It was not the song of Florian and Jonquil, but it was a song. Her voice sounded small and thin and tremulous in her ears.” - A Clash of Kings, Sansa VII

Does that sound like a girl who wants to be kissed? No. That is a child who is genuinely afraid for her life. She thought he might kiss her (planting the seed for the false memory) and she wanted it to be over. It is clear here that Sansa is disgusted by and terrified of Sandor, not attracted to him.

2.) Sansa does not have adult desires

Sansa Stark is not an adult woman fantasizing about kissing someone she likes. Firstly, she is not an adult. Even if child sex was the accepted social norm in ASoIaF (it’s not, it’s a rarity and frowned upon) that still wouldn’t change the fact that children’s sexual development is based on their brain development not social norm. Children who live in locations where child sex is the norm are not adults, they aren’t magically ready for sex just because adults think it’s normal to rape them. The reader cannot analyze Sansa’s sexuality as if it is developed, it is not. Her sexuality is premature and being warped by prolonged abuse.

Secondly, Sansa is not fantasizing about kissing Sandor, she’s not actively choosing to indulge the thought because it’s pleasant; she truly believes that the kiss happened because her brain altered the memory without her conscious knowledge. Sansa’s memory of The Battle of Blackwater is a trauma memory and cannot be treated as a normal memory. For a child to be restrained and held at knife point by an adult who is threatening to kill her and verbally belittling her, for a child to truly believe she may be murdered, is a trauma. There is no child in the world who is “mature” or “understanding” or anything enough to not be traumatized by that.

Let’s look at when Sansa thinks about The Unkiss, because it’s not when she is daydreaming for fun and certainly not for arousal:

“If I close my eyes I can pretend (Sweetrobin) is the Knight of Flowers. Ser Loras had given Sansa Stark a red rose once, but he had never kissed her . . . and no Tyrell would ever kiss Alayne Stone. Pretty as she was, she had been born on the wrong side of the blanket.

As the boy's lips touched her own she found herself thinking of another kiss. She could still remember how it felt, when his cruel mouth pressed down on her own. He had come to Sansa in the darkness as green fire filled the sky. He took a song and a kiss, and left me nothing but a bloody cloak.” - A Feast for Crows, Alayne II

Here, Sansa is being nonconsensually kissed by Sweetrobin and tries to think about Loras (who she was attracted to). If Sansa’s memory changes were a result of her desires, she would have remembered Loras kissing her but she can’t because none of her memories with Loras were traumatic and therefore she remembers them correctly. It is trauma that causes Sansa’s memories to be warped, they are not warped by Sansa’s desires.

Now, let’s go back to right before the above quote so I can further explain why Sansa’s Unkiss memory coming up here is not her using it as escapism:

“Before she could summon the servants, however, Sweetrobin threw his skinny arms around her and kissed her. It was a little boy's kiss, and clumsy. Everything Robert Arryn did was clumsy...” - A Feast for Crows, Alayne II

Anything that reminds a PTSD survivor of their trauma can be a trigger, and what Sweetrobin does here is almost step-for-step what Sandor did at The Battle of Blackwater:

“Then something stirred behind her, and a hand reached out of the dark and grabbed her wrist.

Sansa opened her mouth to scream, but another hand clamped down over her face, smothering her.” - A Clash of Kings, Sansa VII

Sansa is suddenly grabbed and prevented from calling out...then kissed without consent? It is not uncommon for trauma survivors to imagine the abuse that’s happening to them happening in a “better” way or even just in a different way so it feels more under their control. That’s what Sansa is doing, Sweetrobin triggered her and she thought of a romantic version of BoB. Another example:

"Oh, yes. He died on top of me. In me, if truth be told. You do know what goes on in a marriage bed, I hope?"

She thought of Tyrion, and of the Hound and how he'd kissed her, and gave a nod.” - A Feast for Crows, Alayne II

Here Sansa is feeling uncomfortable and trying to feel like she has more experience than she does. Notice that she doesn’t think of Littlefinger or Sweetrobin here even though they’ve both already kissed her, and she glosses over Tyrion’s groping: because those were sexual traumas that really happened, it’s easier to imagine The Hound. A kiss that was “cruel” and unwanted like the rest in her life, but one that is at least under her control because she subconsciously knows it’s not real.

3.) Why The Unkiss?

So, I’ve established that Sansa’s change in memory is a result of trauma and not her desires, and that she doesn’t remember The Unkiss in positive context, but why would she remember the trauma as a kiss at all?

If The Unkiss were real, it would have been Sansa’s first real kiss. It would have been a kiss before Littlefinger’s molestation began. Sansa inventing The Unkiss was not because she wanted Sandor to kiss her, nowhere in the scene is that the case, but because when Sandor is safety far away from her the memory is a convenient way for Sansa’s brain to kill two birds with one stone; to establish autonomy over her sexuality and to repress the trauma of that memory.

I’m no expert in the human brain, but I am a psychology student and I do know a lot about trauma and I know that the human brain loves convenient compartmentalization, especially when someone (like Sansa) is in a situation where she’s captive and unable to escape danger. From a psychological standpoint, Sandor’s assault is the ideal opportunity for Sansa’s autonomous first kiss to have occurred because no one else was there during that interaction, Sandor is far away, and she told no one about it. That event is a secret place in Sansa’s mind, a perfect place to hide a little piece of autonomy from other abusers such as Littlefinger.

If The Unkiss were real, it also would have happened in place of the most traumatic part of the memory when Sandor puts the knife to her throat and she thinks she’s going to die. Look back at the scene and you’ll see Sansa thinks Sandor is going to kiss her right before he puts the knife to her throat.

I could not find one single line where Sansa thinks about Sandor putting the knife to her throat, where she thinks about her mind going blank with terror and internally begging for her life. Instead, Sansa remembers the kiss and the cloak and the times Sandor protected her because that’s easier. Sansa clings to the parts of that night that are easy to romanticize, that are not actually linked to her feelings of terror and violation.

4.) Other SanSan “evidence”

Beyond The Unkiss, other “evidence” of SanSan all boils down to Stockholm Syndrome. Sansa has been a captive most of her storyline and no one around her is truly on her side. Anyone, especially a child, who is trapped in a dangerous environment with no one on their side is going to cling to anyone who can offer any relative safety even if that means compartmentalizing the abuse they’ve inflicted.

Sansa does this with every single one of her abusers. To say that there’s something romantic and genuine about her Stockholm Syndrome symptoms towards one abuser but not all the others is just pure bias.

Sansa thinks of Littlefinger as being half-Petyr who is her friend and half-Littlefinger who does deeply troubling things. She despises and fears his sociopathic behavior, but she still has to think of him as her protector because if he’s not then she has no one.

Sansa looks on Tyrion’s moments of protecting her and ignores the fact that he forced her to marry him and groped her. Tyrion isn’t as bad as the other Lannisters and she doesn’t have a choice but to be around them so she ignores all he’s done that harmed her.

Sansa thinks about the times that Sandor protected her and his Knight’s cloak and ignores the fact that he made her fear for her life and was constantly abusive towards her. If Sandor can’t protect her, none of the other Knights will and so she minimizes the terror he’s caused.

Sandor is no different. It is not romantic longing for Sansa to “wish The Hound were here” because she doesn’t want to be beat. That’s just survival.

I don’t know how to end this but please stop reducing my girl’s arc to “saving” some abusive man from himself. Sansa Stark is a main character, Sandor isn’t, and her arc is so so much more than becoming a consolation prize to a man who literally abused her as a child ok bye.

#my meta #ch: sansa stark #asoiaf meta #anti sansan #sansa defense squad #sansa stark

[beyondthecosmicvoid]

"What you're talking about is manifest destiny."

"You can call it whatever you want, Tom. The fact remains that if the human race needs to do something to survive and lower orders don't have the power to stop us, we will prevail. It is not right ir wrong, it is just the way things are. You've got to stop projecting human motives and es onto other organisms. Everything is merely what it is. A mongoose that tries to steal a cobra's egg isn't evil -- it is just trying to survive. But the cobra is trying to survive too. And if it catches the mongoose in its nest, there's going be a fight. Fortunately for the mongoose, it has faster reflexes and a more efficient metabolism. Whether that's fair or not isn't event part of the equation -- it's simply the way things are."

"Yeah? Try telling that to the cobra. But for the sake of argument, we'll ignore the question of ethics. Still, all you're saying, Scott, is that it's all right to do whatever we want. To exploit any ecosystem, any species -- as long as we don't run into anything big enough to kick our butts."

"If you want to phrase it that way. Yeah. That's the way nature works."

"Sure, on tutoring disks, but not in the real world. Every part of an ecosystem is dependent on every other part. It's that interdependence that makes interfering with existing systems so chancy. Even the smallest components are vitally important."

“Who could have guessed that millions of ‘killer bee’s could spring from a handful of escaped African bees? Or that a few Brazilian fire ants could make the Southeastern portion of the U.S. virtually uninhabitable in just over seventy years? And what about the ‘oil-eating’ bacterium the gene-splicers at the petroleum companies developed to clean up their spills? Remember how they thought they had it completely in their control?”

“Come on, Tom, the oil would’ve dried up sooner or later anyway, and I hear the new repro-inhibitors they’re using are making a substantial dent in the fire ant populations. Sure, we suffer setbacks, but we’ll always find ways around the problems that nature throw at us.”

“Will we Scott? I’m not so sure, mankind never seems to learn. We get our hands slapped on a regular basis, but we still can’t seem to keep them to ourselves. The tighter the grip we try to get on nature, the more nature pushes through the cracks in our technology. And with some of the things we’re encountering in the settlements, we have no idea what kind of trouble we may be letting ourselves in for by messing around.”

“Well, so far we’ve done okay. On all of the life-supporting planets we’ve come across. The worst thing we’ve ever encountered has been the ‘blood willies’ of epsilon INDI TWO. And I hear they’ve got a vaccine for that now. If I were you, I’d put my faith in science and stop worrying about the bogeyman. And I’d watch what I said around the corporate types, Tom. All any of them care about is their jobs, and you’ll make them nervous with talk about problems that don’t exist yet.”

“I don’t care. This is my last long haul. I’m getting out while the getting’s good. All of the monkeying around the corporations are doing out in the settlements may not bother you, Scott, but it does me. We’ve had a long run of good fortune –longer than we’ve deserved there’s a major league turd coming down the pike, mark my words--- and I don’t want to be around when it hits the fan. I’m telling you, we shouldn’t be messing with mother nature. She’s a real bitch. We have to learn to work with nature. This reliance on technology is getting to be too much for me, Scott. It’s no longer a means to an end. It’s become an end unto itself. We use it like a wall between ourselves and our surroundings … between ourselves and who we really are. We’ve come a long way in the past three thousands years but I can’t help feeling that we’ve lost as much as we’ve gained.”

“So what’s your solution Tom? Give up modern convenience and go back to stone knives and squatting in caves?”

“You’re reaching for extreme again, Scott, but that just might be what it takes to put us back on the right track. And I’m not talking about austerity or deprivation. I’m talking about the challenge of putting away the crutches of our technology and going back to relying on our own strength and cunning. These days we’re so insulated that we make heroes out of anyone who dares to face up to a challenge. But it wasn’t always like that. Life of death challenges used to be an every day thing and real men didn’t wait for adventure to come to them. They rushed out to meet it not like the generals and corporate heads these days who send out the little guys to do their dirty work. It used to be that a man’s standing as a leader was determined by how he handled himself in the face of danger.”

“Yeah, yeah – very nostalgic, Thom. Very macho. But it’s not very practical in this day and age. Can you see a bunch of corporate VPs duking it out for the right be CEO? Or maybe you and me going at each other with knives to see who gets a better pilot’s rating?”

“Hey, every culture observes its own rituals for establishing status. Look at the infighting and back-stabbing that goes on at every level of our society. And we’re still fighting over the same things: property, leadership, territorial rights. The only difference is our methods have become more subtle, less direct. Somehow the old ways seem more honest.”

“You’re an idealist, Tom. What happens when the wrong guy wins? Then you’ve got the neighborhood bully calling the shots: You’re back to pack mentality.”

“There are checks and balances in every system, Scott.”

“Yeah, but your way leaves them all up to individual initiative! Without some kind of sanctioned avenue for dissent. A guy would have to be a real hero or a real fool to butt heads with the chief.”

“So? Are things really so different for us? You’re the one that’s always telling me to watch what I say around the desk jockeys. Where’s my ‘sanctioned avenue for dissent’? At least if I bust a gay in the chops, he clearly understands that I don’t like what he’s doing.”

“There you go with your idealism again. You’re trying to romanticize this into two tigers brawling to determine dominance or rights to a favorite hunting area. In the same situation humans would just kill each other. We’ve ‘out-grown’ the instinct for species preservation that prevents that in the lower orders but we haven’t truly grown into the morality that you’re so fond of citing, Tom. The society we’ve built isn’t perfect. Granted. But it works, probably more because of our level of technology than in spite of it. How many guys wouldn’t want to trade their boring, earthside job for yours: a job made possible by technology? But if you want to get back to nature, there are ways to do it. Go on one of those ‘wilderness’ safaris to Alpha C. I understand the gene-splicers now have something that almost looks like an elephant. Or, if you want real adventure, sign on for a hitch as a ranch hand at our next stop; plenty of fresh air, hard work, and not much else. Maybe that’s your idea of fulfillment. Though I can’t imagine anyone envying you the job. Me, I can get enough adventure from the vids. God bless modern technology!”

                                         (...)

“You’re awfully quiet, Tom. What’s the matter? YOu mad at me?”

“Huh? Uh, no Scott. I was just thinking.”

“Look, I know you said it as a joke. But maybe I should go on one of those safaris or sign on as a ranch hand. Maybe it’ll turn out that you’re right, and I wouldn’t like it. But I should at least give it a try. A change of scenery might be just what I need ... Get back to the land and living things ... Get some adventure and uncertainty back into my life. Did i ever tell you that I went hunting once? I had an uncle who was wealthy. He took me qual hunting when I turned fifteen -said it wuold make a man of me. But all I could think about was how big my shot gun was, and how small the birds were. I guess I oculd understand the potential for excitement in the hunt, but for me the thrill was missing. The contest seemed so lopsided. I wondered what it would be like to hunt something that was capable of hunting me. The challenge. The Danger. To put yourself on an equal footing with nature, that’s got to be the ultimate thrill! To risk everything on your own skill and strength ... I mean, look at what we do for a living - access the computer, punch a few buttons - all of the work is done for us. Anybody could do this job, with the right training. I guess that’s what I meant by m anti-technology tirade. It’s not that technology is evil in and of itself - but once in a while we have to put it aside and do something to remind ourselves that we’re alive - prove that we can accomplish something by relying solely on ourselves. I can’t help but think an experience like that would change a person. Maybe not in a way that other people would notice, but it would be something you’d carry with you for the rest of your life.”

“I know what you mean, Tom. Kinda like the first time you get laid, right? Did I ever tell you about that? I was at this party, see, and ...”

“Oh, brother ...”

   ~ Conversation between Tim & Scott from ALIEN VS PREDATOR #1

^It’s this type of existentialism that makes Dark Horse comics and other graphic novels set in the ALIENS/PREDATOR universe some of the best stuff in science fiction. It has a little bit of everything. Philosophy, cosmic horror, with occasional degrees of theological abstraction.If Disney wants to add more money to their pockets and wants to be true to their motto of inclusion and so on, keep this universe. Don’t erase it. Everything that it preaches, are in these comics. Not only that, but there is also a diversity of ideas where it subtly criticizes every school of thought via different characters and storylines. These are the types of stories that attract every fan, regardless of what their politics are. It’s entertainment, pure escapism (without preaching or self-serving, shaming BS) and world-building at its finest. And it remains respectful of ALL the ALIENS/PREDATORS films, while still offering something new.

Take Tom and Scott’s conversation here. These are two space truckers, blue collar workers like those from the first ALIEN movie, that are bringing up two very interesting points. They don’t fit into any neat box we assign a certain ideology. BOTH of these guys make good salient points. There is also a reason why the first issue of the AVP series starts with this conversation of technological dependence vs the old ways that Tom keeps going back to. While these two argue to disprove the other’s point and defend their own, we catch a brief glimpse into Yautja (Predator) society. It is a violent hierarchy where might becomes right. This is the type of meritocracy that Tom keeps defending. At the same time, it is also opportunistic and more technological advance to the point that they use their technology and survival instincts to hunt other species they deem worthy. This is done at the back of other species they consider inferior or worth risking for the ultimate hunt to prove their worth. Everything that Scott defends is part of the Yautja culture -with the obvious exception of divisions and over-dependence on technology and a corporate conglomerate controlling every aspect of daily life. Then there are the Xenomorphs (aliens). They are the other that is constantly being used as a coming-of-age rite for the predators, It’s an interest dynamic which hasn’t (yet) been explored in the films. This, among other things, makes this universe one of the most fascinating in the science fiction and horror genre.

#alien vs predator #graphic novels #comics #yautja #predator #alien xenomorph #one of the best openings in comic book history #science fiction #scifi horror

[apenitentialprayer]

(1/4) First I'd like to apologize for the length and controversy of this ask. Feel free to ignore. I've struggled with homophobia, both internalized and externalized, for the past few years, and social media has made it worse. The more open and celebratory the community becomes, the more flagrant and obnoxious they seem in my mind and the more I want to distance myself from them. The worst thing about it all is that I feel very disingenuous when talking about the subject.

I put on this front to appear far more tolerant than I am, because while I whole heartedly believe that same sex sexual relations go against Scripture, I also know homophobia doesn't solve anything and is probably just as sinful. I have had countless conversations in my head where I tell myself that although same gendered sex is never valid, SSA individuals will always be valid as people. But whenever the subject comes up I just go down this wrathful spiral in my mind, though I never voice my opinions to anyone nor do I verbally insult people because of their orientation. I know that my anger is hypocritical considering the likelihood that I might be bi, which is why I said earlier that this may be partially internalized. But every time I see posts on how the church should accept gay marriage, or how the bible was just mistranslated, or emphases on queer subtext and the like. I grow increasingly more bitter and angry at how this is all being normalized and romanticized. I also tire of people saying it should be embraced because it is part of human history, but so are things like adultery and incest. I don't want to waste my time thinking about this, I don't want to hate others, I don't want to wallow in wrath, I don't want to be hypocritical in case I am indeed SSA. I've had this conversation in my head so many times, but I'm just so exhausted.

It’s sounds to me, and if I’m wrong about any of this let me know, that you’re coming from a place of hurt, and confusion, and anxiety about the state of the Church. That is what I’m gathering from the ‘wrathful spiral,’ the need to have ‘countless’ conversations with yourself, and the bitterness you feel towards queer theology (I really hate that word, by the way; its nature as a slur is ingrained into my subconscious, and it’s weird hearing my younger siblings use it in casual conversation). If I’m wrong about any of these points, feel free to correct me. Ironically, you’re concerned about the length of this message, and I’m concerned about the lack of information I have using just these messages. But let’s start with you, and work our way out, huh? There’s a concern here about hypocrisy. Don’t worry about it in this case. I’m hearing “might bes”, and even if those “might bes” turn into “probably ares” or “definitetly ams”, that still wouldn’t make you a hypocrite. You’re trying to live your life in accordance to what you believe to be right, and that doesn’t make you a hypocrite. It means you’re struggling, like everyone else. I’m glad you acknowledge homophobia is probably “just as sinful” as what we’re talking about, because that might make what I’m about to say more tolerable to you (I might get flak for this, but frankly, I’m kinda expecting a lot of flak for this whole post from all directions anyway): it’s probably a good thing that homosexuality is getting normalized. I believe (and I can’t believe this is something that will be controversial to some people; maybe it’s just the wording of the last sentence that will be, I don’t know, but I don’t know any other way to phrase it right now) that a world where people don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, being alienated from family members, or getting bashed (or worse!) is unequivocally better than the world we have lived in where those were all common. And we still haven’t reached the point where that doesn’t happen. My mom fears for the safety of my sister, and we live in New York City. Because a few years back, in New York City, of all places, a lesbian couple had a cup of steaming hot coffee thrown in their faces for being openly affectionate in public. That’s an abomination. Getting to the point where no one has to be afraid because of whom they are attracted to is imperative, in my opinion. And if that means that we have to deal with people outside calling us bigots for standing with the Church, and if that means we have to put up with people both within the Church and without trying to pressure the Church into getting with the times, well, that’s a price worth paying, I think. Christians have had it good for a really long time. Maybe too good, and for too long. We were able to crush those who threatened to put an end to us having it good. And if it comes down to choosing to crush more people to keep up the facade of a Christian society or becoming one of several minorities in a pluralistic society, I know the option I’m going for. But let’s talk about what that means for us Christians who are trying to live out the teachings of the Church as best as we can, huh? I think we can divide this into two parts that I’m concerned about; your exhaustion about the subject, and your bitterness towards the normalization. Let’s talk about that exhaustion. I don’t know what your situation is. But I’m in a place of constant tension; I have friends who are LGBT, I have family that is LGBT, and I love them all. And I... am anxious that one day some of them may decide that I don’t, at least not in the way that they need me to. And, frankly? That’s enough for me. I’ve got enough of that tension in my life, I don’t need to go out and pick fights over what the Church should and should not do. You’re having these internal conversations, and you’re feeling drained? Stop doing it. If you catch yourself working yourself up, take some deep breaths, and try to change subjects. The Church is a big Girl; she can take care of Herself. Not every single member has to be able to handle questions on every single little issue. If you can unplug from the issue completely, do that. You don’t need to exhaust yourself on hypothetical conversations, or Christians being mad at the Church hierarchy, or people interpreting the Bible in ways you don’t approve of. Sometimes, we have to take a step back. And I really recommend that, because this next part is something that we, as Christians, absolutely cannot take a step back from, no matter how exhausted we are: recognizing the inherent dignity of every person we encounter. You said you’re feeling embittered and angry and hateful, and try to distance yourself from people? That’s a no go. If you want a piece of advice? Stop seeing “them” as a coherent community. Because they’re not. They’re a multitude of people with various perspectives, and insights, and gifts to give to the world, with attraction (and the way the world reacts to that attraction) being the only thing that ties them together. It is unfair to judge a person based off of how “flagrant” or “obnoxious” you feel other members of the community are. After the Eucharist, your neighbor is your closest encounter with God. And remember that, while sin is sin, no excuses, there are sins that are only partially incompatible with love (there may be love mixed in with the sin), and there are other sins that completely incompatible with love. And hatred is the big one in that latter category. I don’t know if any of this is helpful. It might not be. I don’t know, it could just be a 2am rant. I hope it’s worth something, because I might get cancelled for this. So, sooooo cancelled. :P But if you want to keep sending anon messages to get into more specifics, feel free to. Or, better yet, if you want to message me for easier communication, don’t be afraid to do that either. I’m going to pray for you. I hope you pray for me, too.

#asks #homophobia #RIP me #I'm on the verge of begging people not to reblog this btw

[nona-gay-simus-main]

Top 10 Worst Tropes in Romance - Part 2

Disclaimer: This is MY opinion, you do you.

Part 1: Here

1. The Child Partner

I’m not talking about literal children, because duh. What I mean is the a person who needs their partner to emotionally parent them.

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like the whole point of a romantic relationship is to be with an equal. You’re supposed to be teammates, best friends, and lovers.

Of course, I'm not including cases where one partner is disabled or chronically/mentally ill and needs the other to take care of them - that’s an entirely separate thing. 

I'm referring to people (usually cishet men), who constantly need their partner to manage their moods and emotions. They always have some ~trauma~ to manipulate the partner into staying in the relationship in order to keep reassuring them, confirming their self-esteem, and even doing their cooking and cleaning, as if they aren't abled adults with two functioning hands.

That shit sucks!

Imagine doing that for someone all the time and then also trying to have a kid (or multiple kids) with that person. Not only will you be taking care of your actual child; but also - your partner-child. Stop normalizing lazy, emotionally stunted men. That shit ain't cut no matter how hard his abs are or how big his dick is.

2. “I’ve been in love with you since the first moment we met.”

I don’t know what it is about this trope, but it shows up in many romances and it always makes me uncomfortable. How the hell are you supposed to react to that? 

Oh, you’ve been in love with me since the first time we met? Yikes, my dude.

You can’t even fall in love with someone that fast anyway. You're not in love with the person, you’re in love with your idea of them!

The only acceptable version of this is the one where it’s more along the lines “I thought I might fall in love with you if I spent any more time with you.” But other than that, I really don't understand why this is a thing?

3. Lust = Love

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prude. I’m perfectly fine with couples who have loads and loads of sex. I’m also perfectly fine with casual sex and friends-with-benefits and any other consensual arrangement between adults.

I just get tripped up when pretty much all a couple does is have sex. They have little in common outside of sex, spend little time together when not having sex, and don’t share any hobbies, interests or even conversation topics. Or worse, when they aren’t having sex, they’re fighting. 

If you want your characters to get laid, that’s cool. But if you want me to believe they are also falling in love - you’re gonna have to try a little harder.

4. BDSM = Abuse

Yes, abuse happens under the pretense of BDSM, but BDSM is NOT inherently abusive. It only happens within pre-established boundaries and safe words and with explicit consent. The only people who claim it's abuse, are people who have a vested interest in controlling what women and queer people do with our bodies.

So I really, really hate it when people use “It’s just BDSM, don’t be so uptight” to justify their rapey, abusive love interest’s actions. If the submissive has not already consented, or their consent was obtained through manipulation or intoxication - it’s not meaningful consent.

BDSM is a lot more complex than some of the simplistic catchphrases we use to explain it to the vanillas, and we can discuss those complexities for hours, but at the one thing is definitely true - the Dominant only has as much power as the submissive is willing to give. If they (knowingly) cross a boundary or take power without the consent of the submissive, it’s not power exchange, it’s abuse, pure and simple.

5. "All women want him. All men want to be him"

Really? ALL women? Are you sure?

I hate to tell you this, but some women are exclusively attracted to other women. And some women aren’t attracted to anyone. Some women have low libidos, and some women just don’t prioritize sex and relationships for whatever reason. And some women are in happy, fulfilling monogamous relationships already.

And all men want to BE him? Did you know that some men are attracted to other men? They might want a piece of that too. Or perhaps, they just don’t value being some alpha douchebag and are happy to be their much better-adjusted self. That's a thing.

Can we let this cliché die already? Please?

6. Giving up your dreams for ~love~.

Oh man, this is the worst! And why is it nearly always the woman, who has to make a choice between her career and ~~~LoVe~~?

So many books/movies etc. start with this powerful career woman and then by the end reduce her to nothing but a trophy to her man. That’s not feminist, it just keeps perpetuating the same tired gender roles.

And I can’t help but think about the future of this relationship. What if it doesn’t work out? Then the partner who the dreams were given up for looks like a jerk, even if they never asked for this.

And even if it works out, the partner who gave up their dream job, or opportunity, or whatever, will always have this “what if” at the back of their mind. Over time, they may even end up resenting their SO, especially if things don’t work out for them career-wise.

Just such a bad trope all around. It’s not romantic, it’s toxic, and co-dependant and I want it to stop.

7. He treats everyone like crap ***but you***.

You know the limitus test to see if someone’s a good person? Look at how they treat people who are “beneath” them. Their servers, the cleaning lady, etc.

If this guy treats servers like crap, treats his friends and family like crap, treats everyone like crap, except for the person whose pants he wants to get in (or wants to keep getting in for the foreseeable future), why are we romanticizing him? He’s a selfish jackass.

You can have a grumpy (but ultimately caring and good-natured) character, that's fine. But if he only treats people like humans when it benefits him - that's not sexy, that's sociopathic.

8. Love Cures All

Ahhh, the worst of them all. Truly, having a character who suffers from mental illness or has a major trauma, but oh look, they got some cuddles from the love interest and now they are all good!

Just stop, please. It’s so damaging to the people who are going through this, to tell them that all they need to feel better is ~~~LoVe~~~. And if they aren’t getting better? Well, they just haven’t gotten enough ~~~LoVe~~~!

It’s also damaging to the partner - no one should have this much responsibility on their shoulders.

Obviously, the love of a partner, friends, and family can HELP with the healing process, but it’s not enough by itself. Get them some goddamn therapy, please.

9. Accidental Pregnancy

I don’t know about you, but for most people I know, myself included, accidental pregnancy would be an absolute nightmare, not something romantic.

Do you know how bad my entire generation is doing financially? And people use this as a plot device to strengthen the relationship?

Also, relationships get weaker after having a child, not stronger. Babies are cute when they are sleeping, the rest of the time they are crying, screaming messes. Yeah, why wouldn’t sleep deprivation and constantly hurting everywhere strengthen your relationship? 🙄🙄🙄

10. Violent Men

IRL, violent men are scary, not sexy. Even if the violence is never directed at the love interest, chances are that over time it will be. But even if it’s not, why would you ever want to date someone who has the emotional maturity of a pre-schooler?

Because after pre-school, kids tend to learn to solve their problems with their words. But I guess your love interest hasn’t matured past the age of 6, which coincidentally also leads back to the first trope on this list. Charming.

#write #writer #writing #writing tips #tropes #bad romance #bad romance tropes #top 10 #top 10 list #writeblr #writblr #mine

[thedracoimagines]

Changing Minds

Hey! Could you please make an imagine where Draco's friends - Goyle and Crabbe are bullying you everyday and Draco never knew but when he found out he started bullying you too because you were mudblood but then he saw you crying in the bathroom and apologized and he saw your cuts (self harm) and he told you he loves you and you were together. Btw YOU ARE AMAZING!!! I !LOVE! YOUR IMAGINES!

This one was a little tough, and I’m a little rusty, so forgive me. (Also, sorry about some of the missing stuff from this request - I’m not entirely comfortable with writing about some of this stuff, as per my own opinion it’s a tad unhealthy to romanticize it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to address these topics in a healthy way in my writing :) )

 ---

It was your last class of the day, and the one part of the day where you could actually breathe without worry. Arithmancy, while not the most stimulating of classes, was still the one class that you had without your tormentors.

You can’t remember a time when you weren’t constantly being bothered by Crabbe and Goyle. Their words that poked and prodded you in exactly the right way to make you feel wrong for even existing seemed like they had always been present. “What’s this mudblood doing dirtying our classroom, Crabbe?” Goyle had sneered in your direction this morning.

“Dunno, Goyle. Maybe we should do something about it before it ruins our school,” Crabbe had said back, shoving you in the shoulder.

You had given up protesting – it was potions, after all, and Snape had a tendency to take the Slytherin side – so you just sat there and let them use their hurtful words. You would show them, you thought. You were a witch, and no amount of fake mud in your blood would take that away from you.

Luckily, class had started before that morning’s events could escalate, but that wasn’t counting the rest of your classes. Or lunch. Or the hallways. For what reason were these pureblood idiots pestering you so insistently? Nearly driven to tears several times that day, you held strong and never let yourself believe in their sentiments that you were inferior just because of your parents.

And now you sat in Arthimancy, and you struggled over some problems but you eventually figured them out. You weren’t naturally the best at the subject by a long shot, but the fighting spirit in you was determined to prove to yourself that if you tried hard enough, you could do any Arithmancy question. It had nothing to do with your blood.

And the blonde-haired boy, who sat in the back of the room boisterously speaking to his fellow Slytherins throughout all of class, was none the wiser. For reasons unbeknownst to you, Crabbe and Goyle tended to leave you alone when Draco Malfoy was around, and so Malfoy was, to your knowledge, unaware of your existence let alone your blood status. So, you indulge yourself in a little crush. He may be a right prick, even if not to you, but he was a beautiful prick.

That’s why, as you were hurriedly rushing to finish the last Arithmancy problem after class was dismissed, you were surprised to hear him sneering in front of you. “So, the resident mudblood is having trouble with the real wizarding stuff, then? I’m not surprised that your brain is as inadequate as your blood.”

This was the breaking point. You looked up at the person standing in front of your desk. The one person who would be able to properly escalate your bullying has finally done it, and you can’t take it. Tears prick at your eyes. You liked him. You thought, maybe, he was different. That’s why it hurt so bad, and that’s why you got up and gathered your books. It’s why you shoved past the friendly Hufflepuff girl who was always happy to help you with a particularly challenging problem, and didn’t say sorry for fear that your voice might crack.

You found yourself in the second-floor bathroom, the ghost who you knew haunted the stalls nowhere in sight. Sobs shook your body, and you looked at your hands, the floor, the walls – anything to take your mind off of the thoughts swirling in your head.

Inadequate. Unable. Not good enough. Worthless. Trash. Mudblood.

It’s hard to keep these thoughts away. When talking about the history of magic in classes, learning about the etymology of the word “mudblood”, its meaning, its connotations, was easy. When you’re told in class that witches and wizards of noble blood thought for years that those who were not born to them were dirty and lesser versions of themselves, it���s easy to see as history. But when the people that are around you start calling you a mudblood, you start to associate it with what you learned in history class. And then you start to associate yourself with it, too. The worst part is that the people throwing this word around say it with such hatred, but they don’t even know the full extent of what they’re saying. They don’t know about the history of the word, and they don’t care about it. You’ve seen them – Crabbe, Goyle, even Malfoy all sitting in class barely keeping their eyes open. This is your history, but it can’t just stay history. What a bunch of pricks.

You breathed heavily over a sink, finally starting to calm yourself down. It was then that you realized that you weren’t alone.

“What are you doing crying in a bathroom for?” asked a voice filled with as much confusion as concern.

“What do you want?” you asked defensively, rubbing the tears away while turning to face the intruder. “Are you here to call me a mudblood again, or will you just outright tell me that I’m inept, Malfoy?”

The blonde looked at you with a look that you’ve never seen on him, and one that you weren’t sure how to interpret. “You are crying,” he said, as if he didn’t believe it.

“Thanks for that,” you respond dryly.

“I didn’t mean to make a girl like you cry,” he started.

You feel a sudden surge of anger. “Well what exactly did you expect, you prat? Throwing around a word like mudblood isn’t going to make me fall in love with you.”

“Love…?” He looked confused. “Y/N,” he reproached, “Crabbe and Goyle told me of your… heritage this morning. Unfortunately for them, I don’t think I can approve of their efforts to bully you in particular.”

You weren’t sure where he was going with this, but you were curious to see. Perhaps… Could she be getting a proper apology, from a Malfoy no less? “And why not me, in particular, then?”

“Because it was too late,” he said sheepishly. “I’ve already grown fond of you. And try as I may to make it go away, there is nothing I can do that makes my blood boil against you. You’re not a pureblood, but for some reason I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t naturally disgusted by you-“

“Thanks,” You said sarcastically for the second time that day.

“I just mean that, I can’t hate you. I don’t know why. I do know now, though, that this means that perhaps it was not the most smart of me to call you a mudblood, so I want to apologize.”

You looked up into his eyes then – when did he get so close? – and saw something genuine in them. How had you made so much of an impact on someone that you had only seen for one class period, and for only brief, accidental caught stares? Thinking back, you seem to remember that sometimes when you would look back to catch a glimpse of his smile, it seemed like he had already been looking at you first when your eyes would accidentally meet. Maybe it wasn’t just wishful thinking. And from his words… maybe he was different, after all.

“Please,” he said, taking you out of your train of thought. “Forgive me. I… I need you to forgive me before I say anything else.”

Curious by his faltering voice, and feeling suddenly like giving second chances to pretty boys, you met his gaze once again. “Okay,” your voice feels small and weak from crying. “I can forgive you, I think.”

Malfoy nodded. “What I was going to say was that I want to know…” his voice trailed off as you watched his eyes search your face. He swallowed. “I want to know why I’m okay with you. And I want to know how much I’m okay with. And…”

He paused, took a deep breath, eyes moving back to look into yours. “I want to know if maybe I’m okay with you, I can be okay with other who are… like you.” The uncertainty in his voice on the last two words – he wanted to say mudblood, you were certain – were outshone by his stunning admission of open-mindedness. From the stories you’ve heard, this seemed quite out of character.

“I…” you weren’t sure what to say. Here was the person who you had first had a crush on, then hated, and now… Now you weren’t sure how you felt, but he laid all of his feelings out on the line for you. You know how he feels. You have the power to strengthen his heart and open his mind to a world that, to everyone else, it seemed like he intensely hated. Maybe there was just a curious boy under the mask of this hateful man. Maybe he just needed some love to change his heart, and some friendly debate to change his mind.

Your mind was set, and you tried to hold back a smile as you crafted the perfect response – one that would lighten the mood and hopefully make the person standing in front of you feel less awkward for admitting something that was clearly difficult for him to do. “I did always have a little crush on you,” you finally admitted cheekily. “And, if I can forgive you, then maybe there’s a chance you’re telling the truth, and maybe you can love a mudblood like me.”

“I am telling the truth,” he said earnestly. Then, you felt his fingers against yours, and suddenly he was holding your hand, at first hesitantly and then with more confidence. “And maybe one day I can love you.”

You suddenly laughed. It all felt like a cheesy story about a boy and a girl who hate each other suddenly seeing each other in a new light. Except, they never really hated each other. Maybe they just misunderstood. Maybe they just liked to listen to the whispers around them a little too much. Either way, it wasn’t a story. It was you, and it was him. And you decided that the perfect ending – rather, the perfect beginning – would be to steal a quick kiss off of the boy who was maybe invading your personal space a little too soon. It was nothing serious, just a peck.

He didn’t seem to mind though, because after the initial shock, you thought you saw a hint of the smile that you liked to steal glances at in Arthimancy (Qnly this time, you got to see it up close. Yes, it was even more beautiful from three inches away). “Now, what do you think we should to do Crabbe and Goyle to teach them a little lesson about bullying my girl?”

#draco imagine #harry potter imagine #Harry Potter #draco x reader #draco malfoy #draco malfoy imagine #masterlist #request #rq

[honeylikewords]

why don’t you take your old posts down if you don’t want people liking them?? not being rude just curious.

Well, I actually have considered that. And, in some cases, it does seem like the best option, specifically regarding the old Grady posts, which I am sincerely considering taking down, and because of that, I answered a similar question to this one back when I was explaining why I don’t write for Grady anymore. 

The thing is, there’s also a couple of reasons not to do that for other cases. For example:

1. I don’t want to just get rid of my old work; I sometimes actually like the things I used to write, so on a certain level, I like being able to look back and see them and remember the pieces and enjoy them again. I guess I could just copy-paste them into a Google doc and archive them for myself that way, but it’s nice to have this blog in its entirety for me to look through on my own.

2. Some of these old posts seem to be the way people find my blog and then get interested in other things. I sincerely doubt I’d have any followers at all if I hadn’t posted Frank stuff, and if I didn’t still have it up now. While I’m not at all caught up about having a droves of followers, what I do care about is still getting interaction on this blog-- meaning people talk to me, I talk to them, I get anons that give me fun ideas to write and exercise with-- and it seems that one of the ways that people get interested in my blog and, by extension, the newer work I’m making is through these old posts.

3. I don’t necessarily hate or despise Frank Castle or Jim Hopper or even Shane Walsh (though out of the three, he’s the one I have the hardest time finding any remaining love for), nor hate the content I made for them. 

When I made that content, they were still good, rich, interesting characters with loveable sides to them (and, for Shane, I hadn’t watched every single one of his episodes, knowing full well that he only got worse with time, so I quit while I was ahead), and I know that, for many people, they’re only invested in that good side that we knew before they got progressively worse through their shows. 

I still hold nostalgia for early seasons Frank and actually do still like Hopper on some levels, and, heck, when Shane made that return on TWD, I was incredibly excited and it did re-light a small candle in my heart for the work that Jon did on that show, so I also understand that, for some people, they’re still running on those early-season-mindsets, the mindsets where they loved that character, and they don’t want to let that go. And I also understand that it’s a scale of badness and that these characters are not necessarily “entirely canceled”, and that there’s a lot of nuance in my opinions on these characters, and nuance in how other people look at them or try to reconcile early incarnations of them with their later downfalls (a la Daredevil season 2 Frank versus Literal Friend To A N*zi In Punisher season 2 Frank).

But the problem is that I get frustrated by the fact that A) people seem only interested in content for aggressive white men, B) people continue to seek out content for these aggressive white men after they have done incredibly reprehensible things within the most recent incarnations of their stories (for example, getting a huge influx of Frank fans immediately after season 2, meaning these people SAW him do all the horrible, horrible things he did in season 2 and still found him attractive and fetishized him for those self-same horrible things) and C) my very vanilla, SFW, loving, gentleness-focused posts for these characters get reblogged onto violence fetishizing blogs, serial killer blogs, IRL shooter blogs, etc, which violates not only the site policies, but also violates my work and my own feelings, horrifying me to think that my art is being consumed for its adjacency to sexualized violence. 

4. I actually still like Frank. I do. And I wish I could still write for him. But when I step back and look at the whole picture, I realize that if I did continue to, it would just be ignoring the problems created by his story and adjacent fandom, willfully ignoring the worst realities of this media and its biases, and what I want now is for people to be able to critically engage with that and know that it’s wrong to continue glorifying the violence and excusing the bigotry embalmed into the corpse of what used to be a good show and character. 

So I leave up my kinder, gentler posts to hopefully combat the masses upon masses of other posts that sensationalize, glorify, and deify his violence and aggression, hoping that maybe it’ll draw people into the conversation we need to collectively be having about the way we look at male characters, the way we look at violence, and the permissions we give to white (or white-passing) characters regarding violence and abuse that we don’t give to non-white characters.

That mentality is applied across the board to all the other characters.

5. Honestly? One day, I could come back around to these characters. Right now I’m at a stage in my life where I find it too difficult to reconcile the badness of the most recent incarnation with the good parts I saw earlier, and I also am trying to avoid seeming like I condone, excuse or turn a blind eye to these bad things by continuing to apologize for a character. But I might not always be in that stage, and may be able to someday articulate a more complex and nuanced understanding of media consumption and creation, and so I want to have these pieces of what I used to love about them still available to me if I ever change my mind. 

And what bothers me isn’t necessarily that people enjoy those old works-- they’re left up for that reason, so people (myself included) can enjoy them-- but rather that people engage with them uncritically, or without a conscientiousness about what it is, exactly, that they’re consuming. When I see people reblogging my old Shane posts, ones about family and healing and kindness, and then see on their blog that the other things they’ve reblogged are about him being brutal, violent, aggressively sexual, or demeaning towards women, it makes me aware that, in some way, people consider my content complicit with and equitable to content that allows for, excuses, or even adores and romanticizes the worst, most vile parts of characters like Shane or Frank or whomever. 

I know there are good fans out there. Good, critical, thoughtful fans who have been able to think about what it is they’re consuming and like parts of it anyway while simultaneously denouncing the bad parts. That’s what media consumption is, a lot of the time: balancing what we love about it with calling out what we hate about it. So I leave my posts up, hoping to find those thoughtful people who love what I love about it but also understand what there is to hate about it, too. But it worries me over and over that people continue to just glorify and digest abuse and violence as if it’s good, sexy, enticing, complex, or passionate, and that these people find my works and think that my work is aligning itself with these glorifications and digestions of wickedness.

[Obligatory line break!]

At the end of the day, though, I keep the posts up because they used to make me happy and they seem to continue to make other people happy. They get people to engage with this blog and hopefully find other, healthier things to enjoy. They’re not really even necessarily bad posts, sometimes, but when I post about being frustrated that these old posts are the only ones getting attention, what I’m frustrated with is the online cultural fixations on characters who seem to be nothing but aggressive white men. I’m frustrated not by my work, nor by people enjoying it, but by the awareness I have that this enjoyment can be connected to a tacit (or even outright) endorsement of white male violence. 

So I don’t take them down in the hopes that people will find my blog and engage with me about stuff I care about, stuff that I like to write nowadays instead of from however many years ago. I don’t take them down in the hopes that people will read them and be happy, or read them and see a more nuanced perspective on what makes a man attractive (which, 100% of the time on this blog, is gentleness, sensitivity, protectiveness, and kindness). And I like having these old pieces of my work to reflect on and learn from, and hopefully do better in future.

It’s a little like preserving a time capsule, in a sense: I may not like or need the things that were originally put into the capsule, but it’s sometimes nice to remember what they meant to me back then, and what they could mean to me some other day.

I know this response got ungodly long, so please don’t think of it as me roasting you; I promise, it’s not. It’s just me trying to articulate and explain how complicated it can be to negotiate the space between loving something-- for example, the work Jon did as an actor who I like and appreciate-- and the things there are to hate about it-- such as the detrimental portrayals of and subscription to hypermasculinity, violence, and white supremacy that can be found in this most recent Frank Castle iteration-- and why I have such a complicated, frustrated relationship with my old posts.

#long post #messages #anonymous #sorry this got so long and complicated! it's just a long and complicated problem in and of itself

[kashidoodles]

Permission to use above images and personal story were granted by my friend, Faith, pictured above.

In honor of my friend who is not on tumblr, and since it is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, I want to spread awareness through her story. Please share this!! <3 

I know this site has some issues occasionally where maladaptive coping mechanisms for mental health issues are sometimes romanticized. But the truth of people like Faith is that these ways of dealing with your feelings and the person you become is not your friend. I’m paranoid posting this because I don’t want people to think I’m trying to get attention by using her recovery story, because a lot of media portray (inaccurately or in bad taste) eating disorders for that reason and I would never try to add to that. I also didn’t want to put her picture up in case I trigger anyone, but honestly, this was and is her reality. It’s a lot of people’s realities and I think it’s an important part of her story. There’s a lot of kids on tumblr that are exposed to people’s personal soap boxes, some of those people mean well, some don’t, but regardless of intentions they can and will influence others. This can include introducing, enforcing, reinforcing, or romanticizing unhealthy or extremely harmful ways of dealing with mental health, seeking validation for their feelings, or body image issues. 

I don’t want to see anyone try to abuse negative tactics in general, but especially because they saw someone else doing it and making it look like a positive thing.  And I want to say that I’m SO proud of her for recovering (spoiler alert lmao) and being the strong woman she is. I’m inspired every day from her perseverance, intelligence, and her entire view of the world. We’ve been through a lot together, and when something bad happens to me she always asks what I’m doing to cope first and foremost (and when we lived together she’d shove a chocolate bar under my bedroom door lmao) She taught me to be more like me, embrace myself the way I wish I had known how to my entire life, including my flaws and quirks. I learned how to function through my own negative feelings, how I can help myself (and not pretend my mental health issues don’t exist) because of her. I didn’t even know I needed to recover from past abuse and traumas until I talked to her. I owe her so much, I’m a significantly better person because of her being in my life. And to think she was almost never in my life at all is terrifying. But that could be someone else’s reality, so it’s important to me that people understand eating disorders.  I know this is a lot of words, but please reblog this!! <3 <3 I truly believe her story should make it’s way around both for awareness, and as a light to those that eating disorders affect!! <3 

Faith’s Story (Written by her on FB, again, permission to post on tumblr was granted by her):

“Since it's National Eating Disorder Awareness week I just wanted to raise some awareness for eating disorders and share my story- I debated heavily whether or not I wanted to post this. I don't like throwing my dirty laundry out there and I don't want people to think that this what this is. I'm not looking for anyone's attention, pitty, or validation; I don't need it. I'm happy and healthy now, that's what matters. I posted this to raise awareness about eating disorders, what they're about, and to give hope to anyone else struggling. I suffered from an eating disorder from a fairly young age, triggered by an abusive parent. But even after the parent was removed from my life I was still left with the eating disorder. I used restriction as means to control the memories, flashbacks, and trauma. Focusing on superficial things like my weight and calories was less painful than thinking about what had happened to me. It felt like I was constantly in and out of treatment during my teenage and young adult years. I always went through treatment with it feeling like it wasnt really helping me, and me just waiting for it to be over. After my last bought of treatment I accepted that I would never fully recover. I was physically stable and healthy and living a normal life, but I was still mentally controlled by my eating disorder everyday. No one expected me to get better. I didn't expect me to get better. I learned to live with it. I felt my family was always on edge waiting for the relaspe that would be the end of it all. And deep down in my head I figured one day my eating disorder would eventually kill me; and many times I hoped it would. I accepted the fact that my eating disorder would always be my evil little pal who was always there for me. It wasn't untill I met my current boyfriend that it all changed. He got me into the life of health and fitness. At first it was incredibly difficult. I was surrounded by triggers, and always came home from the gym crying because I saw myself in the mirror or I thought people were judging me. But he kept supporting me, keeping me motivated to fuel by body to help build muscle and support workouts. I was fortunate enough to have supportive friends who were there for me at my best and my worst. Slowly, going to the gym became easier, working out became less triggering and eating became more rewarding. I can now proudly say that I am fully recovered. It definitely didn't happen overnight but as years went by I continued to heal in ways I didn't think we're possible. I am way above my target weight and happy with my body. I know my eating disorder would have been horrified to see what I have become and I'm glad because I would have never found happiness with that attitude. I never thought I would learn to love and appreciate my body and what it can do. I never feel guilty about eating, I can enjoy any kind of food, and I don't feel bad about it. I learned how food could FUEL my body, and help me accomplish new and better goals. I'm not triggered or bothered my mirrors or reflections. I did what I and everyone else thought was impossible; I recovered. I'm not posting this to say that my journey is the way for everyone, but to say that full recovery is possible. There's a way for everyone to recover, and it IS possible and you ARE worth it. Whatever you are going through, the potential to overcome it is within you, no matter how hopeless life may feel. I would also like to add that eating disorders come in ALL shapes and sizes. You cannot tell how healthy someone is just by looking at them. Only 10% of people diagnosed with eating disorders are actually underweight. Being at a normal, or above average weight does not make an eating disorder any less serious; eating disorders can still kill those who appear healthy. Anorexia is not the only eating disorder. So is bulimia, binge eating disorder, EDNOS (eating disorder not other specified) and more. I understand comparison photos are controversial because they can spread the stigma that eating disorders can be visably seen, so please don't let this post steer you in that direction. My photos are here to share my story and apart of me embracing who I have worked so hard to become. If anyone has any questions at all, is struggling, or just needs someone to talk to my inbox is ALWAYS open. If you're worried you might have an eating disorder please feel free to take this free, anonymous screening test- https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/screening-tool “    And as she said she is always willing to talk to anyone, so if you would like to just message me and I can get you into contact with her <3

#National Eating Disorder Awareness Week #NEDA #NEDA week #Eating Disorders #Eating Disorder #ED #Awareness #TW #TW eating disorders #tw eating problems #tw eating habits #tw eating disorder #Eating disorder recovery #tw body dysmorphia #tw body image #tw underweight #tw food #tw food mention #tw eating mention #tw eating disorder mention #tw weight #tw weight mention #tw abuse mention #gosh I think that's all the tags I can think of hope I didn't miss any #if I did please let me know!!

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Who Watches The…oh never mind

by Wardog

Thursday, 12 March 2009

Wardog opens a can of worms very very carefully indeed.~

As my comments in the playpen may recently have indicated, I was not entirely impressed by Watchmen. It doesn't help that people, however vaguely, connected to it are going around saying things like this and it also doesn't help that I read Watchmen for the first time three days ago. I understand that Watchmen is something that the sort of people who are inclined to be passionate about comics are passionate about; perhaps if I had been less busy being an embryo in the 80s when it first came out I might have felt the same way. But Watchmen is dated dated dated. I'm not saying it's not interesting and that it doesn't have merit, but reading it is rather like reading those 18th century novels that are completely consumed by the terror of the incipient collapse of Civilisation As We Know It because of the French Revolution. I'm not saying those novels aren't interesting or don't have merit either ... but you do read them with one eyebrow slightly cocked and think to yourself as you go "oh how quaint."

Quaint may seem an odd term to use in connection to a comic renowned for being gritty and real and, like, totally Dystopian and literary man; but I felt the same about V for Vendetta. Watchmen'spreoccupations, as far as I see it, are Cold War anxiety and Wanking About The Nature and Form of the Comic Genre. I'm not dismissing the impact of Watchmen, nor its power to have shaped (and to some extent validated, insofar as books with pictures in them can be validated) the genre, but the point is the Cold War is over and the genre has been shaped. There are, of course, wider themes to engage us - "about the nature of man, or vigilante justice" if you absolutely insist but bear in mind you can get those better done elsewhere - but Watchmen is so utterly bound up in itself, so defined by the form it takes, that ultimately it's little more than an extended navel-gaze about comics, albeit a moderately interesting one.

The movie, of course, is such a slavish adaptation that it barely merits the term adaption; watching it, therefore, is like watching somebody gaze at somebody else gazing at their navel. In bullet-time. Being now at a noticeably remove from the navel, this is quite dull.

To force myself to give credit where it is due, there is a lot to like about the Watchmen movie. It is stylishly and lovingly done. Everybody looks and sounds exactly like you'd want them to look and sound. The level of detail is mind boggling and the special effects, right down to Dr Manhattan's flapping blue dong, are fabulous. The changes they've made are spot on: I'm really glad they took out the giant squishy squid aliens. Because they are made of stupid. I loved the opening credits where they distill the ponderous backstory into a succession of imaginative and striking images. When the film was engaging critically with the Watchmen comic, it had real potential. Unfortunately, critical engagement gave way to abject drooling adoration about 2 seconds after the credits ended ... and the rest of the film is little more than a panel-by-panel, word-for-word recreation of the comic, bar a few subtle alterations to the way characters are perceived, which I shall talk about presently.

I suppose this is where we get into "what is an adaptation anyway" territory. For me the clue is in "adapt" - I think a process of adaptation is an act of transformation and interpretation. You stay true to the spirit of the original but you accept the fact that what works in one medium does not work in another. The Harry Potter movies are splendid examples of failed adaptations: they're little more than monorail tours of the main attractions of the books. They don't stand up on their own, they have no merit on their own, they are, in fact, shit and pointless. But you can also see this kind of failure going on in a more low key way when people throw plays at the screen and end up with peculiarly static, oddly awkward films (Closer, The History Boys, An Ideal Husband, The Libertine). Again, to be fair, the Watchmen film does almost stand on its own: they've managed to enforce some coherence on a notoriously fragmentary text. But this is mainly because it's identical to the text, right down to the cringe-inducingly stilted dialogue and voice-overs that read beautifully but sound terrible. And as far as I'm concerned if something is identical to the original, right down to the dialogue and the visuals, you might as well just read the original and be done with it. Alan Moore himself apparently said: "My book is a comic book. Not a movie. It's been made in a certain way, and designed to be read in a certain way: in an armchair, nice and cosy next to a fire, with a steaming cup of coffee."

The other problem with such a rigid approach to the text is that it leaves no space for acting to be anything other than simulacra. When you go and see a performance of Richard III, you don't stare at the actor playing Richard and think to yourself: "Wow, that's awesome,

he looks totally like him

." But the only scale for judging the actors in Watchmen is how far they resemble the characters they're playing - the answer to this is, for the most part, "lots." But it's still a really shallow way to engage with a performance.

Now this is when I'm going to play dirty. I know I've just leveled the criticism that the film brings nothing new to the table, being merely a moving version of the comic book. And now I'm going to complain that it also missed the point, or at least a point. I know you might think this is a direct contradiction and that I can't say the film is not enough of an adaptation for me and then whine about a possible misinterpretation but ... hey, look over there,

a fluffy kitten, being cute

. Seriously though, for what it's worth, I don't actually consider this a misinterpretation as such - the film was too fanboyishly clingy a parasite to have anything as measured or sensible as an interpretation - I think it was more an act of mis-translation, in that everyone was so concerned with bringing every fucking element of the comic lovingly into motion (apparently

there's going to be a DVD

of Tales of the Black Freighter - no thanks) that nobody ever bothered to pay attention to what they were doing.

If I had to sum up Watchmen in a glib and pretentious way (why would anyone ask me to do that?), I'd fall back, as I'm sure others have done before me, on quoting Yeats: "the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity." Now, perhaps I got the wrong end of the stick and I know the friend I saw the film with disagrees with me, but I thought the film valorized Dan (and to a lesser extent Laurie) in a way that reduced the impact of the story. In the comic, Dan is anti-heroic: he is middle-aged, impotent, flabby and passive. He is "the boy next door" in the worst possible sense. His niceness, like his Nite Owl costume, is a mask for his essential weakness of character. Despite being in love with Laurie, he makes no attempt to forge a relationship with her, not because he is "just too nice" but because he is "just too pathetic"; he wins her, if wins it can be called, simply by being around to pick up the pieces after her relationship with Jon falls apart horribly. Laurie, of course, is equally broken but has the virtue of being hot - just as all of Dan's behaviour is controlled and limited by compromise, her decision to be with him is a compromise as well, the rejection of the strange and the challenging, youthful dreams and romanticism, for the safety of the everyday and a man whose abject inferiority makes you feel good about yourself. In the comic, their relationship is very much the cleaving of the desperate and worthless: that they go out and do minor heroic things (like saving some people from a fire and springing Rorschach from a prison he is already escaping) after they shag for the first time is an indictment of their behaviour. They seek, and find, validation with each other, yet the validation is based on their joint illusions i.e. that they are people even remotely capable of changing the world. The movie portrays their civilian-saving / prison-breaking exploits as a return to their true heroic selves; the comic uses scenes of stereotypical heroism to reveal Laurie and Dan as the self-deluding, play-acting fools they really are.

Similarly, in the comic, when they are confronted by what Ozymandias has done, Dan and Laurie slink off to a corner of his ruined facility and shag. Dr Manhattan finds them asleep on Nite Owl's winter cloak, looks at them with mingled pity and affection and goes off to confront Ozymandias with the futility of the atrocity he has committed ("nothing ever ends"). Again, this is hardly a celebration of the human spirit in the face of calamity. Confronted by their own profound impotence and the destruction of their carefully constructed charades, they take refuge in the mundane, fleeting affirmation offered by physical pleasure. In the movie, this scene is gone and, instead, Dr Manhattan's final act is to kiss Laurie goodbye - as if he, too, is asserting the value of human relationships as an antidote to Armageddon. (Personally, I'm with Rorschach on this one). In the aftermath of Ozymandias's destruction, the movie gives Dan a line about how he's been tinkering with Archimedes and it'll soon be ready to go, the implication, I think, being that he and Laurie will resume their super-hero lifestyle.

One of the more interesting aspects of the comic is the intersection between public and private identity. One of the questions it asks is why anyone even on polite nodding terms with sanity would "dress as an owl and fight crime." The answer, of course, if its five heroes are anything to go by, is: "they wouldn't." Rorschach is clearly batshit nuts - and for him, Walter Kovacs is the disguise he wears. I've always liked the way that when he confronts Dr Manhattan, it is Walter who dies, not Rorschach. Dr Manhattan has no choice but to be a super-hero but then he is barely human, or anything like it, any more. The Comedian is a fucking psychopath who uses the flamboyance offered by a costume to give outward form to his moral dysfunctionality. Ozymandias also belongs to the Special Club. And Dan and Laurie both use it as a way to escape the disappointments and failures of being merely themselves. Unfortunately the movie inadvertently engineers a reversal of this: Laurie and Dan end up re-discovering their true super-hero selves, whereas in the comic they are ruthlessly forced to confront their inadequacies as human beings. If I was feeling uncharitable I would say this symptomatic of the typical geek fallacies - Watchmen is constructed as a super-hero comic without heroes, attemping to make Dan heroic undermines both the force and interest of the story.

The overall effect of which is that you get a film that is at once a tediously faithful rendering of the comic while somehow contriving to miss the point entirely.

Grats guys.Themes:

TV & Movies

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Comics

,

Watchmen

~

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

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)

Arthur B

at 14:59 on 2009-03-12Playing devil's advocate: while I agree that Dan and Laurie are given an easy ride by the film (perhaps because they're the characters the audience is most likely to identify with), I don't think it completely derails their characterisation to have them go back to vigilantism. I don't have my copy of the comic with me, but I seem to remember mild hints in their final conversation with Sally that they might be getting into some action whilst they spend their time on the run in Ozy's new order. Like I said in the comments on Dan's review, I read the armageddon plotline as an indictment of the passivity of superheroes; crimefighters are essentially reactive, fighting society's symptoms without trying for a cure. (The grotesque scale of Ozymandias's crimes is, of course, the flip side of the argument: a cure might be more harmful than the disease itself.) In the movie, I saw their return to crimefighting as a retreat; there's no suggestion that they're seriously trying to expose Ozymandias, they're just dicking around beating people up to capture their rapidly-fading youth.

But that said I do agree that it's problematic that we are expected to identify with those specific characters in the first place; Dan and Laurie's capitulation and passivity are meant to be character flaws that are just as serious as Rorschach's fanaticism, or Dr Manhattan's nigh-autistic detachment, or Ozymandias's fatal combination of the two.

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Guy

at 15:44 on 2009-03-12I think I like the comic more than you do, Kyra, but I am very impressed by your elucidation of its themes... and it does seem likely that I should go into the film with low expectations. I would like to say I would refrain from seeing the film at all, especially now that I've read Hayter's idiotic letter... but maybe if I go see it in the third week or something I can feel that I've spited (?) him in some way.

I think I read the meaning of the Dan and Laurie characters a bit differently than you do, though. To me, they are essentially sympathetic characters, and a big part of that is their realisation in the end that, actually they're not all that important or powerful, and whether or not they're OK with that, they have to live with it, the way that millions of ordinary men and women do. This in contrast with Rorshcach, who has a kind of absolutist integrity that won't allow him to refrain from doing what he believes is right (even when it's totally futile, or worse, seriously destructive) - a quality he shares with heroes from all kinds of stories - but that "integrity" also makes him, as you say, a psychopath.

I think my favourite moment in the comic is the bit where Ozymandias tells Dan to grow up. It does raise a question for me about what counts as "growing up". Ozymandias thinks that he is the grown up, because he is the one prepared to make hard choices, cross moral boundaries in service to the greater good, &c &c... and that Dan is still a child playing at super hero, making oversized toys and not really doing anything... which is basically accurate. There's a reason that remark cuts Dan. But I think... there's something interesting, something a bit complex, about the question of what actually growing up means. The way you put it above where you say that Dan and Laurie are ruthlessly forced to confront their failings and inadequacies as human beings... I guess to me it seems that that is part of what being a grown up is: a person who has confronted their failings and accepted them. Which then, in a funny kind of way, ties in to the whole Ozymandias crazy plan, which in a sense is about forcing humanity as whole to grow up in spite of itself. Which... yeah, I don't know, for me that theme doesn't date, because we are to a large extent living in a world run by men (arguably, madmen) who act as they do because they believe they are being grown-up on behalf of the rest of us, because ordinary people don't really understand what the world is like and need them to make our hard choices for us. And of course I hate the idea of someone else making my hard choices for me, but it doesn't take long to find examples of people who you genuinely feel glad are not being held totally responsible for themselves... but I think at this stage I may be less responding to your review than I am just rambling. ;)

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Wardog

at 16:06 on 2009-03-12I feel like I'm validating Wankstain Hayter by saying this but I like the comic more retrospectively for some of its concepts. I didn't actually enjoy reading it all that much (not, though, because it is Out Of My Comfort Zone, man, and much of it, as I said, strikes me quaint and alien. And, again, at the risk of saying anything that could in any way chime with anything That Moron has ever said - Watchmen does inspire some interesting disccussion.

In the movie, I saw their return to crimefighting as a retreat"

Because the crime-fighting they do in the film is so massively glamorised - the bit where they kick-ass their way into the prison for example - I personally didn't get this vibe. But I think it's an arguable point.

But that said I do agree that it's problematic that we are expected to identify with those specific characters in the first place

Yeah me too - they obviously thought they were most normal of the bunch. Sigh. As Guy says below, I think perhaps they are the easiest to identify with because they are flawed in a lowkey very human way (i.e. they are rubbish and self-deluding) but identifying with them is an uncomfortable process because I'm sure we'd all rather be Dr Manhattans than Dans. (Although secretly I'm convinced we all want to be Rorschach - there's something utterly compelling about fanatics).

Thanks for your comment, Guy, I didn't find it rambling at all, I found it fascinating. I think my reading of Dan and Laurie is perhaps unnecessarily (and perhaps even unsupportedly) harsh. The thing is, although I said something about them having to face up their failings ... I don't think there's ever really a point they accept them or learn to operate with them ... which, as you say, is what most grown ups do. To be fair, I don't think I have accepted my failings or learned to operate with them *either* but I don't dress up as an owl and fight crime... =P Dan and Laurie seem to constantly be engaged in processes of retreat, compromise and distraction: for them sex serves exactly the same purpose as super-hero costuming. It's a cheap way to use someone else to make you feel better about yourself. They don't *deal* with what Ozymandias has done, and what it has shown them about themselves, they run away from it and bonk.

Which reminds me - sex is such an unfailingly negative force in Watchmen.

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Arthur B

at 16:17 on 2009-03-12

Because the crime-fighting they do in the film is so massively glamorised - the bit where they kick-ass their way into the prison for example - I personally didn't get this vibe. But I think it's an arguable point.

I think it's glamorised

at that point

because before the big reveal Dan and Laurie are convinced that they are Making A Difference, and the audience is meant to believe the same; we haven't had Ozymandias hit them (and the audience) with the revelation that they're not actually achieving anything beyond putting Rorschach back on the streets for one last round of psychosis before he goes to the Antarctic to explode.

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Arthur B

at 10:21 on 2009-03-13There's a very interesting article about the film's financial prospects

here

. I'm wondering whether this isn't the precise article that Hayter was responding to with his open letter.

Short version: There is a very real possibility that just about everyone who was interested in seeing

Watchmen

went to see it in the first week it was out, and ticket sales will slump by the second or third week. There's a growing consensus that the film was too faithful to the comic, which hurt it, and that this is one of those rare situations where there was

too little

studio involvement in the production process.

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Andy G

at 11:33 on 2009-03-13I haven't seen the film, but I did read the comic over the weeked. I had quite a negative reaction to Dan in the comic - his angsty, hand-wringing inadequacy doesn't really excuse the very dubious things he does or condones. I think he appears more sympathetic perhaps because he is the character who it is easiest to identify with for the average reader.

The guy who wrote the Stan Lee version of the comic made the plausible prediction that the film would unironically wallow in the violence as something cool, and rather the miss the point. Does that happen?

I wasn't sure about it having dated though. I mean, even in terms of the Cold War stuff, there are still nuclear weapons and stupid human beings. Though it's perhaps not exactly the story you'd choose to tell now 20 years on. I kind of felt the same about Frost/Nixon.

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Dan H

at 11:35 on 2009-03-13God the comments on that post are full of wank.

I really wish people would accept that "this movie is too long" is actually a valid criticism.

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Gina Dhawa

at 17:32 on 2009-03-13I'm not so worried about

Watchmen

feeling dated because, it addresses old concerns in a fairly familiar way. It's still set in the eighties after all. We're not worried about the same things anymore, but I'm pretty sure we can appreciate the fear of The Other, which is something that I think the film does very well with choosing to frame Dr Manhattan instead of having the original ending.

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Robinson L

at 20:30 on 2009-08-15*deep breath*

Funny, I never got the impression that I was reading/watching something particularly dated either from

V for Vendetta

or

Watchmen

. True, the cold war is over, but the threat of nuclear war hasn't exactly gone away, and the various nations are being just as much jerks to each other as they were back in the 80s.

I loved the opening credits where they distill the ponderous backstory into a succession of imaginative and striking images. When the film was engaging critically with the

Watchmen

comic, it had real potential.

Really? I loved the opening credits, too, but I didn't consciously get the feeling that they were engaging critically with the comic. Would you care to expound a little more on

how

you felt they were critically engaging with it?

I thought the film valorized Dan (and to a lesser extent Laurie) in a way that reduced the impact of the story.

Interesting argument. I admit I handed considered this interpretation of Dan and Laurie from the comic book, although it makes perfect sense.

Thing is, I find that even if it does muddy up the discourse, the story is

improved

by the movie's presentation of Laurie and especially Dan.

My reason? Because in the comic, both Dan and Laurie were dull, dull

dull

. I didn't love them, I didn't hate them, I was apathetic towards them. In the movie, at least, I felt there was something there to engage with emotionally.

And even if it was a deviation in character, I found Dan actually coming out and

telling

Adrian “You haven't idealized mankind but you've... you've deformed it! You mutilated it. That's your legacy. That's the real practical joke” very cathartic.

I also didn't get the same "massive anti-climax" feeling from the movie as the graphic novel.

Although secretly I'm convinced we all want to be Rorschach - there's something utterly compelling about fanatics

Oh god. I'd almost rather be the mass-murdering ego maniac or the spiritually incompetent big blue guy than that monster. I've got the fanatic part down just fine, it's just that I find the "kills, tortures and abuses people" and general misanthropy just a liiiitle bit repulsive.

As a matter of fact, I don't think I particularly identify with

anyone

in

Watchmen

... maybe because the only characters in it who have any sort of strength to their convictions have such a misanthropic, nihilistic view of humanity. I certainly wouldn't want to

be

any of them.

Which reminds me - sex is such an unfailingly negative force in Watchmen.

Interesting point.

I really wish people would accept that "this movie is too long" is actually a valid criticism.

Totally, although for myself, I find if I say "this movie is too long" what I mean is "this movie already annoys the hell out of me and will it please get to the end already." If a movie manages to keep me engaged/entertained (as

Watchmen

did) I'm prepared to go along with it for much longer than 2.5 hours.

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Arthur B

at 20:56 on 2009-08-15

True, the cold war is over, but the threat of nuclear war hasn't exactly gone away, and the various nations are being just as much jerks to each other as they were back in the 80s.

I think nuclear conflict is still a danger, but the

kind

of nuclear conflict presented in

Watchmen

has become almost impossible. Which isn't to say it won't become a possibility again, but it's definitely on the back burner. Limited exchanges between recent entrants to the nuclear club seem more likely than large-scale human extinction events.

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Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 17:06 on 2010-03-10Necromancy ho!

@the issue of datedness and the nuclear arms race

After reading through the article again, I kinda get what you were saying, Kyra. The theme didn't really date the comic for me, partly because I've always got one foot stuck in nuclear war fiction, and partly because I found it easy enough to read the nuclear symbolism as a symbol of an unstoppable force of annihilation that none of the characters are capable of understanding, something that can be applied to many eras and contexts.

Still, it does date the movie. IIRC, Paul Greengrass was attached to the project for a while, and he was making noises about moving it to a contemporary War on Terror setting, which I don't think you could really do without totally rebuilding the story, simply because, while we may be as scared in 2010 as we were in 1985, our fears are coming from different places and take different forms. In the '80s, we assumed that the silos would open and all humanity would die screaming. Nowandays we just assume that life is going to continue getting shittier and shittier and mor and more incomprehensible, with extinction as a vague possibility we suspect may be denied to us.

Did what I just write make any sense?

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https://profiles.google.com/elzairthesorcerer/about

at 20:09 on 2011-05-17This is kind of off-topic, but what are the names of some of those 18th century novels you mentioned? I would like to read one.

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Wardog

at 20:38 on 2011-05-17There aren't specific texts that deal *explicitly* with it - I just meant that you can infer a background level of social anxiety and uncertainty, even in books that seem to be about entirely other things. I guess that isn't very helpful. Also it occurs to me I meant 19th century novels. I hate that thing, I always get my centuries confused. Novels written after 1800 are 19th century novels. It makes no sense! But I mean, it's there in Persuasion, or Daniel Deronda, for example. Middlemarch. Vanity Fair.

#Ferretbrain #Watchmen #Alan Moore #Comics #Wardog

[babyboyoonie]

Helloo can you do one where yoongi has an eating disorder and all the members try to help him in their own way and are really protective and worried for him and one of them finds out first tho then they help him if that makes sense?? 💝💖💝💖💝 thank you if you’re still taking requests and you do this

Hellooo!  ♥ just a lil warning from lil old me thou; i’m sure you already know it but i’m mostly addressing this to young writers or readers: eating disorders or any other illness are NOT something to be written easily about (if you haven’t experienced it, then researches are more than due) okay? not to be romanticised either; i personally know about the situation i’ll write here, and more, so this is why i’m giving a warning. this may be fiction but words are words, be careful with what you do with them. (:

+++ i’ll answer the three others requests sitting on my inbox then they’ll be closed for a lil while~ you all know how much i get carried away, it takes me so much time i can’t finish ‘Sold My Halo’ or ‘Sorry did I roll my eyes out loud?’ which is a SHAME because those works are my pride and joy kndkn

anyway!! grandma’s going to stop rambling

here you go, my dear, ♥

Yoongi’s secretive. About a lot of things, and particularly, his love-hate relationship with food. It’s just—it’s just the way he is. He talks, he really does. Keeps to himself or in the back most of the time. Regrets it on some happenings, and so he tries to talk more. Stumbles over his words, but speaks with so much assurance people barely take notice of it. He’s good with words, practiced for years into putting them on beats and music. But he still struggles with speaking them aloud, even if the heart’s into it. He doesn’t want to come off like—like some sort of mysterious, emo guy, but that’s still what happens. He’s not…he’s not really like that. It’s just that he struggles with talking about himself. If it’s about present actions, or music, or work, then he has no troubles with it. But it does take years for him to talk about his struggles, the things that are in his heart, the things about him.

It took time for the other members to discover who he truly was. And even then, as close as they were, there are still parts of him he hasn’t totally shared. It’s not on purpose. Just…that’s the way he is, that’s just Yoongi. Things people would talk about like traumatic—he’ll keep quiet about it for years, until he’s able to speak lightly about the matter. His shoulder…he didn’t made a big deal about it. Interiorized it, until it was just…something that happened. Until he could only see the good, where it lead him. Until the fears could be shut down quickly, and the pain—numbled.

The boys though—they get worried. Really worried. So Yoongi keeps the others incidents for himself, refuses to speak about them until the right time. Right time which could be in months, or years, he doesn’t know.

He tries to hide it. Actively so, for once. He’s not a secretive person on purpose—but for this, for this weird relationship he has with food and refuses to put a name on, he does keep quiet about it.

The thing is, no matter how discreet he tries to be, someone finds out. It shouldn’t be surprising, really. They’ve been through so much, the seven of them, one of his bandmates was bound to find out.

Hoseok had been suspicious for a while, but it’s Jimin who confronts him first.

Corners him before he can hide in his room, and says—“hyung, have you eaten today?”

Yoongi tries to not look like a deer caught in the highlights. He fails, if Jimin’s frown is anything to go by. He thinks about lying. But, as much of a good actor as he is, there are things that can’t go past his friends.

Especially Jimin.

He slowly shakes his head “no”, tries to go past the other man to his room, but Jimin bullies him against the door and pines him with a serious glare. Jimin’s all about soft heart and endearing actions for everyone, but there are subjects he doesn’t joke about. Gets angry, too. Perhaps because he’s been there before.

Yoongi feels worst. His denial to talk about it, especially with Jimin.

“hyung,” the other man says, gentler this time. It’s soft, more like a wake-up call, and after minutes of stubborn silence, Yoongi drags him to his room and closes the door behind them.

They stay there—stay there for hours. Don’t say anything to the other members, because Yoongi’s not quite ready. Their friends get worried, suspicious, but still comprehensive. Yoongi’s never been more grateful. It’s only after a long while of just laying on the bed, curled against Jimin’s chest, that he dares to open about, about why his food intake is so—so weird.

“I don’t do it on purpose. I swear, Minnie,” he whispers, quiet and anxious, and Jimin hums gently for him to keep going. So he does. Closes his eyes, and speaks, because Jimin’ll understand. “I spent—spent so much time not being sure whether I would eat or not. It became…became optional, you know? I don’t hate eating, I, I…I—really, like food, I promise. It’s, just—ah…I could go on for so long without it…I eat because you make me. Because Hoseok brings me food when he knows I’ve been locked up for too long. But…I…food’s fine, but I, I don’t like eating that much. I’m so sorry—”

Yoongi hates talking about himself. Carefully thinks about the things he’ll say, calculates before, whether he’s ready to share or not. He doesn’t want to make a big deal about…about this, about him. He’s just…just Yoongi. And whether he has troubles eating doesn’t define him, he’s fine.

Jimin—Jimin reassures him. Tells him, in the secret of his ear, “you’re fine, hyung, you’re fine, perfect,” smooths his hair back and plants soft kisses all over his cheeks, his nose, his forehead. That’s when Yoongi realizes he’s crying. Why the fuck is he crying? Jimin kisses him harder, on his lips this time, holds him tight and then lets Yoongi silently cries in the hollow of his shoulder. “You’re okay, doing so good, baby. But we—we’ll try and eat more, okay? You’re gorgeous in all times but, but I just—I want you to be healthy.”

For a while, a long while, Yoongi doesn’t answer. It stretches on for days, in which Jimin carefully observes him, ticking more and more the suspicions of the other boys. Yoongi’s fine. He is. But…he might have some problems. Small problems, meaningless problems. But it makes Jimin sad and the boys, poking his slightly hollowed cheeks with a frown. He doesn’t want them sad, ever.

He insists on being okay. But relents to…to whatever it is Jimin wants to try on him. To help him, which is silly, because Yoongi’s fine. It’s not his fault he can’t keep food in his stomach. He doesn’t mind eating, but it’s not necessary, and Yoongi can do without. Jimin looks more and more upset when Yoongi admits it one day, and he—he doesn’t know what’s wrong with that.

Yoongi swears he’s okay.

He is.

(He isn’t.)

He’s fine. But does end up accepting Jimin’s hand. Hoseok’s too, and then Namjoon, and then it’s Jin, Taehyung, and Jungkook. He doesn’t exactly spell it out words by words, the way he did with Jimin this one night. And, and he doesn’t need to. They figured it out, already, so long ago.

But because Yoongi refused to talk about it, because he closed off when the subject came on the table—they didn’t push him. He goes along with a lot of things, obeys to orders silently because he doesn’t mind (likes it, to be honest), but pressuring him into something he doesn’t want to do is the best way to break his trust.

And so, they’re careful. This part of him, so secretive, this strange relationship with food consumption—or the lack of it, thereof—the boys seem to have understood it well. To his surprise. They…they’re discreet about this…this whole business of helping him.

It’s in Namjoon’s and Hoseok habits on not being too far away, whenever he locks himself in his studio. In their presence when it’s time for lunch, for dinner, and their patience with the time he takes to eat. The light conversations, the jokes and smiles and laughter, to hide the fact they won’t let him skip a meal if they can help it.

They’re discreet in—in Jin’s way of pushing his hair back whenever he throws up, upset stomach refusing any amount of food after being empty for so long. He used to feel just as empty, before, but now he’s…he feels strange. Doesn’t know if it’s good, or bad. Just sure it has something to do with the way Jin cuddles him at night. Tight, so tight, and with immense care.

Jimin and Taehyung and Jungkook—they come at him together, and Yoongi can never escape them. They’re a menace by themselves, but together, Yoongi’s pretty sure they’re unstoppable. But…they’re careful. Jimin’s all about understanding gazes, the one to stop them whenever he sees Yoongi’s getting too upset. Taehyung’s gentle, incredibly gentle. A cool balm on open wounds, smiles powerful enough for Yoongi to want to—to get better. Whatever it is that he has. And Jungkook…Jungkook paints the sun behind his eyelids on rainy days. Jungkook’s good, so fucking good to him. Sweet, the sweetest, the softest, in his encouragements. In “oh, you’re doing great hyung!”, stranded with his moon-made smiles that make Yoongi sees stars.

He—

Maybe, just maybe he’s not totally okay.

But the boys don’t make a fuss in front of him, know that he hates that. Hates that, that he might have a disorder. And so they don’t make a fuss, and more than anything, they don’t romanticize it. Yoongi…He can admit he’s not totally okay, but it isn’t anything to be fetichized, and he’s glad they don’t.

They don’t picture him as the kind of ill, skinny man who has to be cured with love or some bullshit like that. Yoongi’s grateful. Loves them so, so.

His boys are just—here when he needs them, help him in times he can’t take care of himself.

That’s all Yoongi wants.

(That’s all Yoongi needs.)

#writing this made me upset #but it was cathartic too #so I guess it’s okay #hope it was what you wanted anon!! #warning: eating disorder #Yoonjin #Yoonseok #Namgi #Taegi #yoonmin #Yoonkook #yoongimagines

[jaeheekangisimportant]

hey why do u hate v?

I knew I was going to get this question again eventually and I guess I can’t put it off a second time so, let’s do this

I’m putting it under a read more for a few reasons. One, it got very long. When I rant I really rant, and I wanted to be thorough because if possible I don’t want to have to discuss this any more after posting this, but knowing this fandom that won’t be possible. Two, while I think it’s safe to assume that most people have played his route already, there may be some who haven’t and there are spoilers in this. Three, there is mention of abuse in this so heads up

All right, so there are quite a few reason why I don’t likeV as a person

He convinced a scared teenager (Saeyoung) to join a reallysketchy intelligence agency that destroyed any chance he might have had athaving a normal life, and also required him to abandon his very vulnerable anddependent brother that he loved more than anything. You can say that V wastrying to protect Seven, but honestly I can’t believe that there wasn’t abetter option here. The whole scene where V is convincing him that this is notonly the right decision but the only one to be made just… it’s honestly socreepy and manipulative and it doesn’t sit well with me

The only reason Seven was okay with leaving Saeran in theend was because V promised to take care of him. Well, V couldn’t be bothered todo his job apparently, because WOW. There are two ways of looking at this

V knew that Saeran was being drugged,brainwashed, abused and manipulated for literal years and did/said nothing about it, which is disgusting

V didn’t know that Saeran was at Mint Eye, whichis better but not by much, because it still proves that V was negligent enoughthat he lost track of where Saeran was for years, despite his promise to Sevento look after him. If V was actually taking his promise to Seven seriously,Rika shouldn’t have been able to do anything without V finding out and puttinga stop to it

I was always inclined to think that the first one was whathappened, and the V route confirms that yeah, V did know that Saeran was atMint Eye. And once again, V says nothing.Seven asks him about Saeran directly at one point, and V lies to his face. That part was so appalling to me I don’t knowhow anyone can just be okay with it. V was not protecting anyone but himself bylying to Seven. He knew that if Seven found out about Saeran, Seven would neverforgive V, and V wouldn’t deserve his forgiveness honestly

Even if it was about protecting Seven, there were stillbetter ways of handling this than lying and covering it all up. Like, how aboutcalling the police and saying “hey, my ex fiancée started a fucking cult,please help”?? What was V’s long-term plan for dealing with Mint Eye exactly??Things did not have to get as fucked up as they ended up being if only V hadsaid something to literally anyone!! Saeran could have been saved years earlierthan he was, and not only Saeran but all of the other people who got suckedinto Mint Eye!!

V’s route is supposedly about him fixing his mistakes, butlike, that wouldn’t have counted for much for me anyway, because there’salready a canon story. V fucked up in the canon story, there’s no fixing itnow. It is what it is, I don’t know why I’m expected to be less mad at himbecause there’s an in-game au now where he makes up for it. And the other thingis, he doesn’t actually make up for any of his mistakes in his route! He keepslying about Rika and the cult until he’s forced to stop, and he keeps lyingabout Saeran throughout the whole thing. He doesn’t even seem to care that muchabout Saeran, he cares more about the girl he’s been talking to for like a weekthan about the abused and vulnerable kid that was left in his care. He says toRika once or twice something like “don’t hurt that boy” (can’t even say his name ffs), but it’s always tacked on as like an afterthought. Everything gets taken care of without V really doing anything so like, what exactly did he fix??

I stopped playing the route after Saeran died on day 10.It upset me so much that, even though I was like two chats away from theending, I couldn’t keep going. I was struggling to get through the route to begin with and Idefinitely should have quit earlier and saved myself a lot time and salt, butSaeran’s death confirmed a big problem that I had with the V route, and itconfirmed that Cheritz was aware of that problem but put the route out anywaybecause fans insisted. V and Saeran’s happy endings are not compatible. Becauseagain, if Seven knew about Saeran he would never forgive V, and therefore Vcould not have his truly happy ending. I see fan art sometimes of post-secretendings au with both V and Saeran happy and alive and in the RFA and um, yeahguys that would never happen. Even if V lived, he would not be able to live inharmony with Saeyoung and Saeran. For V’s happy ending to happen, Saeran has tobe out of the way and Cheritz knew that, and that’s why they had to kill himoff in this route. And I say fuck that, because if I have to choose betweensaving V and saving Saeran I’m always going to pick Saeran without hesitation

So okay, there’s another thing I dislike about V and um. Iknow I’m treading on thin ice here but listen, I really never liked the way Vtreated Rika. Please, do not take this as me defending Rika!  I think both she and V are awful people andmutually unhealthy partners for each other, and I think both of them would havebeen better off if they had never met. Rika ultimately ended up doing worse andI would never say otherwise, but!! this rant is not about Rika it’s about V(and really no one needs it pointed out to them what Rika did wrong) and I’mstill allowed to think that the way V treated Rika was all kinds of fucked up

I don’t like how V treated Rika, because he never treatedher like a person. He treated her like she was this beautiful tragic angel thathe could fix and make into an art piece. He romanticized her suffering and hermental illnesses and basically encouraged her to be her worst. I’m not sayingthat makes what Rika did V’s fault, of course Rika is ultimately to blame for her own terrible actions, butI’m also not going to pretend like I don’t think the way V treated her wasgross and like I don’t think it contributed at all to Rika’s state in the end.He literally says at one point that when he met her he saw her as a blankcanvas that he could paint and make beautiful I mean?? How do talk about aperson that way?? Honestly if anyone ever spoke to me about my mental illnessthe way V spoke to Rika about hers, that would be so poisonous to me and itscares me just imagining it

Again, Rika’s certainly no saint and I hope none of this comes off asme defending her or saying V is to blame for what she did because that’s reallynot what I want to do. But, Rika was not the only thing wrong with theirrelationship. I always bristle at the way people make Rika out to be thishorrible she-devil and V this innocent cinnamon roll because that’s really notwhat was happening there. V did and said some awful thing to her as well. Theyboth brought out the worst in each other and they’re both at fault, to varyingdegrees

Oh yeah, and lying to Rika’s friends that she committedsuicide was really fucked up too, whatever his reasons were for doing so. Noone seems to want to talk about that but um… seriously dude wtf

And yes I understand that V was going through somethingterrible and that he is a victim of Rika’s abuse as well, please don’t @ meabout this. I’m not saying that I don’t feel any sympathy for V at all, or thatI don’t understand him at all. But I’m sorry, I just can’t see it as an excuse.It’s not an excuse. V dragged down multiple people with him and I don’t have tobe okay with that, and I also don’t have to go into my own personal historywith abuse to prove I’m qualified to have this opinion so don’t @ me about thateither, please

So!! All of that is why I hate V as person, but here’s why Iwound up hating him as a character

While I was suspicious of V from the moment I startedplaying (Yoosung Kim was RIGHT he was always right damn it… he was very wrong about Rika but he was so right about V so jot that down), and I later cameto think of him as a bad person, I was completely ambivalent to him as acharacter for a long time. I could never understand why people were so enamoredwith him because as far as I could see he had no discernible personality asidefrom being cryptic and loving Rika. Even after playing his route, I still don’tthink I could give someone a description of his personality that was longerthan like, three sentences. The only time I ever take interest in V is when it’sin relation to other characters, but V on his own just doesn’t interest me atall. I think he’s boring

What got me to hate him as much as I do now, though, ishonestly the fandom itself. I couldn’t stand that unironic “V did nothing wrong”attitude because he did so much wrong!! So much!! And I couldn’t stand thatpointing out anything wrong that V did resulted in huge arguments and peoplecalling you a bad person and I just!!! Ugh why is the fandom like this!! So myambivalence slowly turned to bitterness and spite over time and now here we arewith V being my most hated character in the game. I wouldn’t mind V so much ifpeople were more open to accepting criticism of him. I wouldn’t mind V somuch if people could like him without acting like he’s never done a thing wrong

#ask #anon

[chalcid]

2: The Birth Of A Friendship (Disappear)

Monday morning, I hauled myself out of bed early in the morning and packed up for school. Mom and Tilly were still asleep, heck, even the babies were silent, but Dad, unfortunately, was up.

He stepped in front of the refrigerator.

"Aren't you going to say good morning to your father," he asked.

I screeched incoherently at him in reply. Morning-me is not articulate.

He shook his head in disapproval but allowed me to retrieve my leftover burger and fries from the fridge.

I bounced on my heels as my food heated in the microwave as my dad, no doubt, was trying to summon every bit of 'How to make polite conversation with your teenager' he half-heartedly learned at some point.

"So... I heard you had a bit of trouble on your dive," he said awkwardly.

I didn't look away from my leftovers.

"You know, it's always good to be at your full magical capacity before you enter a dangerous situation."

I snorted. The microwave beeped, and I retrieved my food.

"Good chat, Merika," he told me "Have a good day at school."

I glanced at him, mouth full of burger. He grimaced.

Tilly opened the door to her bedroom, fuzzy pink bathrobe trailing behind her like a cape. "Have a good day at work, sweetie," she told my dad, kissing him on the cheek.

"Thank you," he told her, sighing like he was a man that actually did something tiring.

...

"Hey, good morning," Trite said brightly.

Poseikion scooted over to make a space for me on the bench.

I plopped down on the bench and swung my bag onto my lap "Remember the Unit 3 Test half-a-vase?"

"Not strongly," Poseikion responded.

"I think I found the other half yesterday," I informed him "The color doesn't exactly match, but it's about the right shape and a similar pattern."

"How exciting," Trite said absently "Where's Pacifinos?"

"Probably having trouble finding a shirt that matches the cute skirt she got this weekend," Poseikion sighed "She's going to miss the bus. I'll go talk to her."

"Tell her to go with something black or white," I suggested.

"I will," Poseikion replied, with a dramatic flourish of his coat as he slipped back inside the house.

"So," Trite said awkwardly.

"What?" I replied.

"After school, do you want to head down to the beach and throw chips at the seagulls," Trite asked.

"When have I not wanted to throw chips at seagulls?" I cackled. "Maybe we can train them to be our spies. Or adopt one and keep it as a pet."

"Love your line of thinking, but there's no way my parents would go for that," Trite beamed.

"Ugh, parents," I sighed dramatically "They're the worst."

"I thought your parents kind of just let you do whatever you wanted?" Trite asked.

"They do," I said, too quickly. Trite did not look convinced. "I mean, they still do. But Tilly just moved in and with the divorces and my new half and step-siblings...it feels weird. I dunno, the family used to be a small part of my life but now it's trying to take up more space."

"Well, you can't expect too much from your loser parents," Trite sighed.

"Of course," I agreed.

Poseikion and Pacifinos hopped out the door. I could hear the bus pulling up.

"Wow, love the skirt, where'd you find it?" I said brightly.

Pacifinos twirled "The community garage sale. They've got some good stuff there if you know where to look."

"Neat, very neat," I said, just as the bus pulled up.

Pacifinos and Trite began to tell some story, but I was still thinking about my family. And then, unprompted, my brain decided to remind me that "The demons are calling the sharks to their capital in the west"

I shuddered.

Avoiding home was always a good plan, but avoiding the western bays might be an even better one. ...

It was difficult to get through my morning with so much on my mind, but the math problems, as ridiculous and pointless as they may be, helped distract me.

That didn't mean I didn't eagerly await lunch.

At long last, the bell rang, and I dashed down the halls to the smelly cafeteria. Edonia was already there, absently picking at her sandwich as she stared at her book, brow furrowed.

"Reading anything good?" I asked her.

She looked up from her book "Oh, just another romanticized 'founding of Ilcodeux' stories," she told me "Only this author is apparently convinced that Madeline Haddock and Lord Elias were in love. I mean, it's pretty obvious looking at records from the time that she and Daphne were basically married."

"Ugh, that's the worst," I said supportively. The triplets sat down next to us. "Hey, you know a lot about magic, right? Would it be possible for demons to call a bunch of sharks? Like, magically?"

"Mm... maybe," Edonia said, pulling another book out of her backpack "You could check with an actual demon, though. Don't you have art class this afternoon with Deyanira?"

"Yeah, but like?" I said "I don't know her? And the magic capabilities of demons is a weird topic for a first conversation. So could I maybe have some recommended reading instead-"

"Hey!"

I turned around, momentarily terrified, before realizing it was Casey. "Oh hey," I turned to my friends and smiled. "This is the girl who pulled me out of the ocean yesterday."

Casey cringed "Um... I'm actually... not a girl," she said "She/her non-binary. I'm not really out to my family, so..."

"Oh, of course," I said "My apologies. This is Casey, the person who pulled me out of the ocean yesterday."

Pacifinos grinned "I love your hair," she told Casey.

"Oh, thank you," she said "My cousin cut it."

Awkward silence.

"Oh, shoot, if you want your flannel back, I don't have it with me," I informed her "But I could run by your place this evening and drop it off. I washed it. Is that okay?"

"Oh, that's so nice of you," Casey said. "I actually came over here to ask... well, uh.. this is going to sound kind of awkward, but I didn't catch your name?"

"Merika," I said dramatically "Merika Saltwaters."

Casey's face lit up "Like Prince Edociel Saltwaters?"

"He's my great great great grandad," I said. "I get asked that a lot. Anyways, do you want me to drop off your sweater later today? Is there a good time for you?"

"Sometime around five should be good," Casey told me "My house is 207 Ghost River. As the name suggests, there are ghosts, and they do come out at night."

"Are they friendly?" I blurted.

"Yes," Casey replied "They'll probably tell you all about the history of Ghost River if you asked."

"Hm. I'll have to add that of my list of things to do," I said. "Well, it was lovely talking to you, Casey."

"You too," she grinned at me. She had a lot of teeth.

She skipped off and I returned to my sandwich.

"You made a friend," Trite commented.

"I did," I said "Well, I think she's my friend. A fellow lover of topics adults find morbid, at the very least."

"Does she want to be a mortician or something," Poseikion said, scrunching his nose.

"No," I replied, "An explorer."

"What is there to explore," Trite asked.

"The Beyond," A couple of us whispered.

"Ah," Trite said "My mistake."

The bell rang. I stuffed the rest of my sandwich in my mouth and swung my bag over my shoulder "Bye guys," I said incoherently.

"See you in art class," Pacifinos said quietly.

...

I knocked on the door to 207 Ghost River. Ghosts in old-fashioned clothing danced to fiddle music. Down the river, little children were playing with an alligator. That didn't seem safe but who am I to judge?

Distant thumping from inside the house as someone raced down the stairs. Casey threw the door open, winded.

"Here's your flannel, washed and dried as promised," I presented the flannel to Casey.

"Oh, thank you," she said. "Wait, did you mend that rip?"

"My step-mom probably did that. Is that a problem?"

"Oh, no, I was just surprised," Casey said, pulling the flannel on.

"I'll thank her for you," I said politely.

"Would you like some pie," Casey blurted.

"Sure," I said.

Casey gestured for me to enter the house.

"Shoes on or off?" I asked politely.

"On is fine," Casey said absently. Three adorable little floofy dogs ran up to us and began to pant with delight. Casey tossed them some dog treats.

"Who's a good doggy," I whispered "It's you. All of you are top-notch doggos."

Casey led the way to the kitchen.

"Casey," her mom yelled, "No pie before dinner."

"It's not for me," she defended "I figured Merika would like a slice."

"Merika?" her dad asked.

"She means Decimus's kid," Casey's mom answered.

"Oh, her," he replied.

Casey handed me the plate. "What do you think?"

"It's excellent," I said. "Peach?"

"Yes," Casey's mom replied.

"Yum. Thank you."

"It's no problem, sweetheart," Casey's mom said. "I make too many deserts for the seven of us anyway. Casey, why don't you show your friend your work?"

"She'd probably think it's boring," Casey mumbled.

"Depends on what it's on," I said truthfully.

"Well, okay," Casey said. "Upstairs."

I followed her upstairs, the trio of floofballs following us. A fourth one greeted us at the top of the stairs. It was smaller than the others, and light grey.

"Good dogs, all of you," I whispered.

"I'm trying to build a boat," Casey informed me.

"Very cool," I remarked. She opened the door to her room.

There were two beds, so presumably, she only occupied half the room. One wall was plastered with boat designs, mathematical calculations, fish sketches, and to-do lists.

"Oh, wow," I said, "You have been through a lot of designs, haven't you?"

"Yep," Casey said dejectedly "Nothing works. I actually got to the point of building a full-sized model last month but it sank."

"Wow," I said "You know, you can check out old boat blueprints from the library. I've got a whole list of books about boats that might help."

"Oh," Casey said, "Um, thanks."

I admired her boat drawings for a moment longer. If that sketch was pulled off the page and onto the water, there's no chance it would float, but it was made with such love.

"Well, thanks for the pie and the boat discussion, but I should head back," I said politely "See you around?"

"Yeah," Casey agreed.

We really had no idea.

#wip disappear

[arplis]

Arplis - News: How Medal Of Honor: Above And Beyond Goes 'Above And Beyond’ For Veteran

s Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is a VR experience rooted in real-life World War II history. Immersive and highly interactive, the game on its own is an enjoyable experience, but what many might not know is how positive of an impact it has for veterans and shining a truthful light on American history.  For those that may not know, the VR Medal of Honor experience from Respawn Entertainment allows players to step into the role of an agent of the Office of Strategic Services during WWII in a ravished European setting. It offers an enjoyable multiplayer experience alongside a stunningly fleshed-out single-player campaign that offers an honest representation of those moments in war not often explored; the quiet before a mission, the realization that "we're at war" that many soldiers feel in and out of moments of reality — even the easy camaraderie that comes with knowing the person beside you will defend you with their life, even when sometimes the price is just that.  I recently sat down with game director Peter Hirschmann to learn more about the game after playing through the campaign and some of the PvP. As a veteran myself, hearing how the team went 'above and beyond' for veterans and their stories, while also providing meaningful experiences meant to educate without romanticization meant more than many will ever know.  For players, they aren't just getting a game, they're also getting a documentary experience with in-depth short films diving into the stories of real World War II vets, taking them back to the places that have impacted them the most, and listening to their stories with open hearts and open ears. With the Gallery, players can unlock over 90 minutes of real-world experiences of eight surviving WWII veterans. Unlock a mission, unlock an actual piece of history, making Above and Beyond emotionally raw and more than just a game.  "The youngest combat vet from World War II is in their nineties," the director tells us, driving home the idea that first-hand accounts of what actually happened are becoming more and more distant. "The youngest is in their nineties. That means they were teenagers. Gil, who is one of our future guys, was 19. He was a 19-year-old kid on a tank. "Gil tells an amazing story about going through the Harz Mountains on a Chaffee tank. He's in the back and this little boy jumps out and stops the convoy and asks for help. They have to tell him, 'No, we can't take you with us. We're going to a battle. We're going to the next town. You need to stay here. Someone will be along soon'. They drive away and Gil talks about the haunted forlorn look in this little boy's face, just standing on the side of the road as they all rumbled down."  It was upon hearing Gil's story that the team realized that the amazing potential for education and closure if they could bring Gil back to that location. Being 93, there were concerns, but the organization Honor Flight helped make this a reality with the consent of the veterans themselves and with the upmost care. Ensuring that all involved were comfortable, cared for, and safe, the team embarked on one of many journeys explored throughout this entire process tied to Above and Beyond.  For Gil, it was going back to a camp he liberated at 19, a place that he never returned to until this documentary went into production. The team took other surviving veterans to familiar places as well, each given the opportunity to tell their story in their own way, in their own time. Sometimes even giving them a chance to tell their tales to close family members for the first time ever. The documentary houses so many incredibly powerful stories. Stories that show the friendship that endures war (and forms because of it), the losses that come with it, and the side not often seen in mainstream media: the human side. The quieter danger, the moments of reflection, and the parts of history that are a very close reality to many still with us.  One story centers around David, taking him back to a moment in time where he lost his best friend Smitty. Upon returning to that spot, he met with Smitty's family to honor a promise made when the pair entered into he war together, a promise to visit the other's family should one of them fall. David met with his family, telling them their story in a way that was incredible beyond words.  Click here to watch embedded media "When they get there, the mother, who lives there, said to him: "David, this is a hat I made for you." Throughout the rest of our time, he never takes it off. It was this floppy straw hat that she wove herself, and he ever takes it off again the entire time. It's so wonderful. After, they invite him to their home and it's hard for me to talk about it because you can get a little emotional," Hirschmann says tearfully. David, who is "the funniest guy I've ever met," continued to share his story and that of his friendship with Smitty where eventually they find his friend's grave. Out of respect, the team stood back and gave him a moment of privacy as David spoke with Smitty for the first time in decades, laying a picture of Smitty's parents on the grave, and saying his farewells.  The photo, in particular, was important because Smitty's family never visited the grave. "The mom was too distraught. They never came because back then families had a choice to either let their loved ones be buried and turned in Europe; either one of the big cemeteries in the Netherlands or in Normandy, or to be brought back and repatriated. Smitty's mom was so devastated that when it came time to make that decision, Smitty's dad was like, 'No, just let him stay resting in the Netherlands.' The mom was brokenhearted the rest of her life. So for David to go to that grave site and lay a photo of the parents was just, I mean, God, it's hard to recount." The team then took at 360 shot of the gravestone, allowing viewers a chance to witness, and be a part of, a moment of closure with David, a way to pay respect in a powerful way. That being said, the team's most important goal was to capture the emotional truth of these stories without exploiting them, so we made sure that nothing in the game was taken directly from these tales.  Click image thumbnails to view larger version                                                                                                                As a veteran that took part in operations overseas with Operation Enduring Freedom and New Dawn, there is a comraderie that is hard to explain to someone who has never served. These are people that could die, these are people that could watch you die, and everyone's survival is dependenant upon trust. That trust is paramount when building these relationships, and that trust is something that Respawn wanted to convey in the game as well. It's more than just dramatic monologues of existential crisis, it's the small moments when joking about the crap food in the chow hall, or "where did my socks go"? It's the small moments that mean just as much, and it is those small moments that are reflected not only in the game, but in between the lines of the stories being reflected in this documentary series.  Another aspect that Respawn wanted to make sure they paid special attention to is how they portrayed the war. Too many times in war games, the "bad side" is either dramaticized for flair, or romanticized for ... some other reason. There are no occult substories, no quests of endearment. This is the tale of a real war with a real enemy and while that enemy housed real human beings, the ideal that acted as a banner was dangerous, harmful, and evil.  "If you're embellishing the Nazis, if you're embellishing the third Reich, you're reading the wrong history books," says the director emphatically. "So just to make sure we're staying true to that, that's important. For players, and for us, embrace that it's a game. Then to lean into which we haven't done in one of these WWII games, lean into some bad and sad things do happen to the characters, it's all part of a bigger picture." Without falling into any inaccurate tropes, there is the underlying theme of there will be consequences. "As much as that comraderie and that love and being united in a common purpose and fighting against legitimate evil, which is what the Third Reich was, that doesn't steeple away from the fact that there is going to be a price. There are going to be consequences no matter how noble your intentions are. So again, we kept the firewall there between what the vets were telling us and what we were learning and even Colette for godsakes, who was a teenage girl, member of the resistance. There's nothing in Colette's story that transfers over except the fear of the Gestapo and how collaborators were the worst. Just getting those elements into the story without being one-to-one to the story details, but touching on these sort of through-lines. That was the goal. "We made them in parallel," he adds when talking about how the tales of these veterans inspired the game without being an exact replica. "The stories were fuel for us to make the best game possible, because if we just put it out the gallery on Steam and on Oculus store, we might get some nice marks. There might be one or two articles about, 'Oh yeah, you can watch these documentaries.' People would probably look at it as some sort of educational thing. So the game is the hook to get you in. I mean, the whole point is to have fun, but the game is there to get you in the door and to maybe trigger some empathy that, 'Oh, I do want to go hear the real thing.'" That was also a big reason behind the decision to go VR. In VR, everything is a little more real. You are picking up the gun, you are holding your hands up in surrender. You are there. This added yet another layer of complexity to not only the campaign of the videogame itself, but also to the empathetic layers of the documentary itself. Humanizing people that survived a horrific time, a time that was a reality and a cornerstone in our history. "It's all about creating empathy. If you come out the other end of it, knowing more about WWII, which is always one of our secret goals, knowing more about what happened, because it still echoes in our life today, but then really having hopefully some actual empathy for the sacrifices that these guys made. Every player today is different, but if a typical player is a 19 to 24 year old, I don't mean to stereotype, but they're hearing from the folks that were doing these things for real when they were their age. Seeing what others did at their age, knowing some of the horrors they faced, the friendships they made, and the harsh pillars of history, is hopefully a powerful connection. At the end of the day, this was created out of the hope that there will be more empathy." It was a special moment where I could share some of my own stories with the director and tell him from a place that understands how much the level of care that went into this project that means. As a veteran who has lost many friends, as a veteran that has been in positions where I was so sure I was going to die, it's easy to get lost in the more gimmicky representations of war. Does it bother me? No, not really. I'll play every Battlefield game, I'll play every Call of Duty; they're entertainment, that's what they are. But that doesn't mean that this very meaningful and purposeful representation doesn't mean an incredible amount. Everything about Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond felt real. It felt like it was coming from a place of compassion, and coming from a place of honesty. It never felt cheap, it never felt gimmicky, it didn't feel manufactured in the slightest.  When speaking with the game's director, it was easy to see that the passion for empathy and knowledge was there. This wasn't a rush to get buys or pre-orders, this wasn't a play on emotions for a more consumer-driven objective; this was love and respect and real human experience. Respawn did not use these veterans' experiences to sell a game, they used a game to tell their experiences. That nuance makes the world of difference and helps to ensure that history isn't lost, but also that it's not being retold with rose-colored glasses.  Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is available now for HTV Vive, Valve Index, and the Oculus Rift. You can also play it with the Oculus Quest as long as a Link cable is present. You can also learn more about Honor Flight, the veteran-focused group that helped make this documentary a reality, right here. 

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/how-medal-of-honor-above-and-beyond-goes-above-and-beyond-for-veteran