#(personally I find it worse I have more difficulty with footnotes than I do with text walls)

[cesium-sheep]

@crippled-sheep​ I don’t know that I feel up to an actual back-and-forth so it may require further revisiting, but I did want to more clearly explain my actual point of disagreement from the other day while I have the (many, many) words for it.

so first a point of clarification, I strongly strongly prefer the term “neurodivergent” over “neurodiverse”. I know they’re nearly identical and probably come from the same linguistic root but neurodivergent pairs much more clearly with neurotypical, and “neurodiverse” has “handicapable” vibes to it for me. neurodivergent (or neuroatypical, which is harder to parse and less ideal) also still has a connotation of Weird, divergence rather than diversity.* my primary issue with broadening “the neurodivergent/neurodiverse community” to cover the entire mental illness community is that “the neurodivergent community” already meant something specific. the term is already in use. and it’s really really valuable for autistic/adhd folks (and folks with other closely related disorders by internal experience, not by behavior, behaviorists can kiss my grits) to be able to find each other easily. we’re not being offered a replacement term and there wasn’t one already in use, so as an autistic person who required access to community in order to figure myself out, it feels very much like nt mentally ill folks going “mm, no, ours now” and actively taking something away. (also see how useful a quick recognizable distinction is even in this sentence.)

if we had a replacement term in common use it really wouldn’t bother me that much! I’d still have some qualms with it** but I probably wouldn’t bother raising a fuss directly when other people used it.

it’s kinda like how the nonbinary community has moved away from using “nb” as a shorthand for ourselves, because we were told that the black community had already been using nb to mean non-black presumably longer than we’d been using it to mean nonbinary, so our use was causing unnecessary confusion and potential distress.*** broadening “neurodivergent” to mean the whole mental illness community and its offshoots/relatives causes unnecessary confusion and distress, as it was already being used to mean something more specific and losing that specificity breaks up community and muddles meaning (which distresses me lol).

I absolutely do think there should be a destigmatized umbrella term available for the broader community! which I did say even in my initial dissent. but I don’t think it should be chosen by actively taking away from a subcommunity, and I also don’t think a word change will magically fix any prejudice against mental illness. based on my own experiences as an ad hoc practitioner, a mentally ill person, and an advocate, I feel efforts are much better directed at destigmatization of existing community terms rather than finding (appropriating) one that might be more mainstream palatable and pouring effort into widespread adoption while leaving the subcommunity it was appropriated from in the lurch.****

tl;dr: the only actual point of disagreement I have is over recent appropriation of This Specific Preexisting Term as the umbrella term due to the additional harm I see from it compared to using the preexisting umbrella term of “mental illness/disorder”. everything else you said about community and subcommunity and representation I genuinely totally agree with.*****

I hope that makes things a little clearer, even if we still disagree about the relative levels of harm between the two.

---

* (and I don’t think using “neurodivergent” for one and “neurodiverse” for the other would work, as others will definitely struggle to parse the distinction. to the point where I genuinely couldn’t remember which one you used in the original context until I scrolled back to look. you were using “neurodiverse” and I was using “neurodivergent” and we both proceeded as if it was the same word.)

** (mostly demedicalization of some genuine potentially medical concerns to a degree that smells suspiciously like unexamined internalized ableism, which will significantly negatively impact people’s willingness to seek proper support and potential treatment at a time when we already have tiktok folks going “oh there’s nothing wrong with you you’re just a ~star child~” or whatever to audiences of millions. “oh I wouldn’t benefit from medication or therapy or other forms of treatment/support for mental illness I’m just ~neurodiverse~” yknow? which to be fair in my current usage of nd isn’t generally the case, we’re very big on medication and other supports for folks who would benefit from it even though there’s a very strong push for total demedicalization of autism in particular.****** I just feel that’s how I often see it used by people outside that subcommunity.)

*** (altho there is an even older use as a shorthand for “nota bene” often used to highlight important context, which I’ve picked up from friends that have done academic writing and very nearly used a couple times when writing this :v still think the black community wins custody of that one through a combination of both precedent and priority, especially given the “nota bene” use is generally very distinct contextually and not in direct connotative competition.)

**** (like how the disabled community as a whole is pretty firm about using the term disabled, or the chronically ill community is pretty firm about yes really I am Sick.)

***** (I think, to clarify the original original point of contention, the reason most people use “neurodiverse” to mean “autism and adhd” is because. that’s already the subcommunity term that was in use. we’re focusing on our subcommunity because that’s always been what we mean when we say neurodivergent. and the fact that usage is actively in flux seems to be causing distress and confusion for those who mean the broader usage as much as it is for those who mean the more specific usage. there absolutely should be community and resources for the broader usage gathered under an umbrella term, but I just would really prefer it if a different term could be used, such as the preexisting “mental illness/disorder” umbrella. because while I don’t think the specific usage has any distinct priority over the broader usage, it absolutely has precedent, and ignoring the precedent causes harm in excess of the harm I see in deferring to precedent.)

****** (but not the common secondary disorders that can come from existing as an autistic, importantly - I think the distinction is mostly just “treatment” for autism is generally far more harm than good, with some exceptions that are focused on functioning in a neurotypical world rather than actually treating symptoms. which is generally not the case outside of autism, at least for modern outpatient treatment of the mental disorders I’m familiar with as an ad hoc practitioner. also I’m so sorry for putting a footnote in a footnote lol I just have Many Opinions and A Very Large Character Limit)

[beyondconfessor]

The Infernal Contract [13/16]

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Lilith/Zelda Spellman

Summary: It would be so easy to stay, Zelda realised. Wait it out, but she couldn't. If there were a chance in Heaven that she could save Sabrina from such a fate, she would take it.

N.B.: Also posted on AO3

Zelda sipped at the cup of tea, watching as Hilda shuffled around the kitchen. She pulled down the biscuit container and began setting half a dozen out on a plate, before looking over her shoulder at Zelda.

"You've got a look," Hilda said, with an ill-advised chuckle before wringing her hands. "Has he done something?"

"Honestly, sister. Not everything is about Faustus."

"Well, no, I suppose not." Finally, she sat down at the kitchen table, setting the plate of biscuits before her. "You do look quite worried, which is making me worried."

"It's Sabrina," Zelda said. Before pausing to sip at her tea. She still didn't feel it was right to say it out loud. Lately, there was a horrible feeling that someone was watching her. Since Faustus had taken Lilith's ring, since she'd gone down those tunnels of the mines, Zelda felt as if she needed to keep looking over her shoulder.

"What about Sabrina?" Hilda urged.

"There's a prophecy," Zelda began, feeling the anxiety gnaw at her belly. It seemed like a rather large can of worms to open, but so be it. She couldn't speak about it with Lilith, despite how much she wanted to.

When had the woman become her confidant?

Zelda shifted her thoughts away, focusing on the issue at hand. She began by first advising of the footnote prophecy––while misleading her sister to think she'd found it herself––before going on to explain the mosaic found in the mines, fabricating a lie that she'd overheard the children speaking of it.  

Hilda paled, but she kept her lips pressed until Zelda finished speaking. "Well," she said. "I mean, you always thought she was special."

"Yes, well, I had thought she was special as Edward was special, not prophetically brought to bring the end of times." She placed her teacup on the saucer louder than intended. Pulling her hand away, Zelda felt her right thumb reach for her ring finger, only to find it empty.

She needed to find that ring.

"What do we do?" Hilda asked her.

Zelda drew in a breath, feeling the strain in her lungs, "I don't know," she admitted.

"Oh Zelds, is this why you've been so...?"

Zelda looked at her sister, watching the woman's lips press together as she began bumbling around her words, circling over the topic, but she knew what the subtext was in Hilda's flustered speech. Was the prophecy the cause for her distance and agitation? It wasn't, and once again, she felt a need to drum her fingers against the wood of the table or wring her hands or have a cigarette.

Instead, she lifted the cup of tea and sipped the hot beverage.

Lilith had left her at the entrance of the mines. The two of them had glanced at each other. Worldlessly vowing to not speak of what had transpired, and yet Zelda felt it like a heavy stone was sitting in the pit of her stomach.

It'd shattered her view of the Dark Lord. Centuries of devotion now wasted, making her feel all the more idiotic. And worse, underneath all of that had been her promise to follow Lilith––rejected.

It would ruin you. Lilith had looked terrified at that moment, desperate for her to understand. Could it be that the witch cared for her? No, that would be ridiculous. What could she offer the witch that a thousand lovers before hadn't?

"Zelds?"

She looked up at her sister, realising that she'd missed some question. "Pardon?"

Hilda sighed. "I said, what do we do? We can't just sit and wait."

"No, we can't. The final perversion is to be suicide. Thankfully, Sabrina has enough self-preservation to avoid that. But I admit, I am afraid, sister, you know as well as I that prophecies always find a way. What if I'm missing something?" Her hand shook as she felt her eyes prick.

Hilda's hand came over hers, holding it warmly with her soft smile. "We'll figure it out. Isn't that what you always say? We're Spellmans," she teased. "Whatever this is, we'll save Sabrina, keep Him locked to Hell, and you can go back to your life."

Except it would be without Lilith. And what would happen to her if His plan failed?

Zelda didn't mean to get so upset, but it was all unravelling before her. She could feel her throat swelling with emotions, with her fear for Sabrina, her family, and Lilith. It felt as if she was balancing on the tip of a sword, and whichever way she stepped, someone was going to get hurt.

"Zelds?" Hilda called, squeezing at her hand. "What is it, tell me?"

She had unintentionally found herself wrapped in the woman's thrall, and she couldn't even bring herself to say anything to her sister.

Zelda paused, closing her eyes until she felt the swell of emotion cease. "Nothing," she said, pulling her hand away to clear her throat. She blinked and felt her expression smooth back into a façade of confidence. "You're right. We're Spellmans. We'll sort this out."

Hilda gave an inquisitive look but smiled at her nonetheless. "Right, well, we just need to figure out how not to let the prophecy happen, right?"

It was easier said than done. Zelda looked at her hands before lifting her head, realising how quiet the house was. "Where's Sabrina?"

"Oh! Ah...I'm not sure. She said something about seeing her friends."

Perhaps it was time Zelda admitted that she knew what was going on to them all. She felt her skin crawl at the idea, but the charade had gone on for long enough. "Well, we should summon her and Ambrose first. We'll all need to be involved in this." Zelda pushed back and then thought of Prudence. She needed to search for her, too, ensure she and her siblings were safe.

Ambrose was easy enough to convene. He came and sat down at the table as they called to Sabrina with difficulty. Briefly, Zelda filled him in on the prophecy as Hilda tried to send for their niece. She'd only informed him of what laid in the mines before Hilda admitted she couldn't find Sabrina, let alone summon her home.

"Let me do it," Zelda said, stepping back in the kitchen to give herself enough room to project her psyche to her niece.

Briefly, Zelda found herself projecting to the Greendale woods, finding herself surrounded by the tall trees, but if Sabrina was there, she could not see her.

She brought herself back to her body and frowned at Hilda, who shrugged in return. It wasn't uncommon for projections to fail if you didn't have a clear idea where someone was likely to be. The Greendale town was large enough that trying just to say 'somewhere here' could lead the magic to just pop up in a general area of where the intended person's magic had touched. But their familial connection with Sabrina had previously been enough in the past.

"Maybe we should contact one of her friends?" Hilda offered. "She might be with one of them."

Zelda went to agree before noticing that Ambrose was sitting at the table with sudden agitated energy. Pausing, she turned to inspect him, watching at his eyes purposefully danced away.

"Out with it," she demanded.

"I––" he began, mouth opening as he began to stutter around whatever lie was on his tongue.

"Now," Zelda demanded.

"Sabrina and I may have tried to complete a Mandrake spell," he admitted, dropping his eyes.

"You what? What on earth gave you that idea?"

"We...knew of the prophecy, Auntie. And Sabrina was terrified of becoming the Dark Lord's puppet, so she thought that if she rid herself of the magic, she'd become useless to him. We didn't think it had worked, but if it had...it would make sense as to why you can't find her."

"Because there's two of her," Hilda said. "It would make––"

"Of all the reckless things!" Zelda shouted, watching as her nephew flinched away. "Do you have any idea of what you've done?" Zelda felt the room shake before she closed her eyes and settled the anger. It was done, she needed to move on. "Has she––did she murder the mandrake-self?"

"No, no, we woke up, and the mandrake was still a root. We thought it hadn't worked, but..." he trailed off.

"When?"

"Yesterday," Ambrose said. "I tried to warn her against it, but she was adamant. She would have done it without me or someone else, Auntie."

"By trying to help her, you may have done the very thing that you were trying to avoid," Zelda spat. "Why didn't you come to me?"

Ambrose opened his mouth, but no explanation rose. He closed it again, looking defeated. Zelda already knew the answer.

Sabrina didn't trust her. And in turn, he didn't either, despite everything that she'd done for this family.

Zelda turned on her heel, walking out of the room. If Sabrina hasn't murdered her self, then there was still time. She could hear Hilda and Ambrose chasing after her, but she didn't have time to deal with their ideas. With a wave of her hands, she teleported from the Spellman Mortuary to the front steps of Lilith's home.

The wash of magic spun her, but as she settled, grounding herself, Zelda raised her hand and rapped her knuckles on the front door.

When the door opened, Zelda didn't wait. She launched into an explanation of Sabrina's stupidity to rid herself of magic, as summed up by Ambrose, before explaining that she couldn't find her.

"If she knows the Mandrake is out there, she'll finalise the prophecy and––"

"Come inside," Lilith said, interrupting her. Zelda paused, feeling the agitation subside from the injection. Come inside, why would she come inside? They had urgent business to complete. "Zelda," Lilith spoke, a small smile on her lips. "Why did you come to me?"

"Because I can't find her, and you're-" the most powerful witch to exist, Zelda felt the words catch in her throat, they rose and fell in her mouth, laced thick with a deeper meaning. "You're Lilith."

"I am. Mother of Demons, Satan's Concubine, the Dawn of Doom, first wife to Adam and so-on we could go. The only title that remains important here is that I am the Dark Lord's. Whatever you want me to do, I can not go against His will. Not when it seems His plan is coming to fruition."

Zelda's chest tightened. "So, you're just going to let Him destroy us?"

"He won't. You mean too much to Sabrina. He wouldn't risk alienating her unless He thought the risk outweighed the reward."

Zelda felt her mouth part. Trying to find arguments in her head shatter. Lilith wouldn't help her. Couldn't. "Find her, and I'll stop her from completing the task," she decided, looking up at the woman. "Just tell me where she is. Please. You can have whatever else you want from me, but I will not let my niece become some child-bride!"

Lilith smiled at her. It was honest and soft and mournful. Zelda didn't care if the woman pitied her; she needed to save Sabrina.

"Please, Lilith."

Lilith reached out, taking Zelda's hands in hers and tugging her forward until she'd passed the threshold.

The door shut with a click, and then the woman's lips were on hers. Soft and pliant. There was a desperation to it, a hope that compelled Zelda to respond, melting into her until it heated, and Lilith's hands were running through her hair, and Zelda was clutching at Lilith's waist, holding her firm to ensure she was real.

Zelda's back hit the door, their kiss breaking as they stared at each other, a breath apart.

It would be so easy to stay, Zelda realised. Wait it out, but she couldn't. If there were a chance in Heaven that she could save Sabrina from such a fate, she would take it.

Lilith stared at her, her hand coming up to cup her jaw as she brushed her thumb across her cheek. Zelda leaned into the touching, wished it didn't hurt as much as did.

"Stay with me," Lilith said to her. "You can be mine in Hell while He rules over the Mortal Realm."

"Is this your price?"

Lilith's face hardened, "It's me asking you to forget your fool's errand and stay with me."

"Lilith," she whispered, feeling herself tug at the choice. Had she not once dreamt of such a placement when she was young and had naive ideals of romance? "I won't be yours, or anyone's to own. You know that."

"We could guide Sabrina, teach her how to rule. I promised you that once."

Were they both to look at the surface of the opportunity, if they pretended that the Dark Lord was merciful, then the chance to run away to Hell may have been tempting enough. But Zelda didn't need to say anything for Lilith's hands to drop from hers, eyes closing with defeat. "She's near the clearing. Where her baptism occurred."

"Thank you," Zelda said, giving her a last look before she exited from the house.

Zelda rushed through to the clearing, pushing through the brambles and vines that coiled out at her. The forest was pulling her back, determined to keep her from whatever was occurring.

She tugged at the vines, ripping them away from her, and finally made it to where Sabrina's baptism had occurred.

There was Sabrina, and in her lap was the other, Mandrake Sabrina.

She was too late.

Zelda looked from her to Nicholas Scratch, who stood at the stone altar, eyes wide open with relief as if this had solved everything, and Zelda felt as if her world had finally cracked apart.

"Aunt Zee?" Sabrina questioned, looking up at her. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to prevent this, but I can see that it's too late."

Sabrina sniffed, wiping the tears from her face as she gently placed the Mandrake self on the ground, closing the eyelids, so she at least looked peaceful. "I had to do it. I know you're angry, but I had to. I had to get rid of my magic. There's a prophecy and-"

"And the final act for it to come to fulfilment was a suicide," Zelda said, walking over to where her niece shakily rose to her feet. "Sabrina-" she paused as thunder cracked from the lightning striking down behind her, onto the altar. There was a pulse, and then magic reverberated through the air. Even Nicholas looked askance as his eyes went from the stone to the mandrake Sabrina and finally to Zelda, feeling the dark magic swell against their psyche.

Zelda grew nauseous at the touch. It was oily, infernal magic that all witches and warlocks had felt at least once in their life when they signed the Book of the Beast.

"But––no," Sabrina insisted. "No, I did the right thing. I got rid of my magic. The prophecy can't come true because I'm mortal now! Auntie, I'm mortal, I did all of this to...to..."

"I know," Zelda whispered, bringing her niece into her arms. The moment her arms went around to hold her, she felt the sobs shudder through Sabrina.

"I'm mortal. I did all of this to save them. Save everyone. I'm mortal!" Zelda held her for a few moments, feeling the guilt weigh heavily on her self as Sabrina repeated over and over again. And finally, when the sobs softened, Zelda pulled back and looked to Nicholas Scratch.

"Let's go home."

----------

Zelda handed a glass of whiskey to Sabrina because, at this point, what did mortal laws matter? Before she took a sip of her drink, letting the warmth of it slip down her throat, through to her belly. It was mid-afternoon, over two hours had passed since lightning struck the alter.

The room was silent. Nicholas sat beside her niece. Ambrose said on the armchair, and Hilda stood beside her, looking at the mess.

No one had spoken since they'd deciphered the different stories from Sabrina to Nicholas to Zelda. Now they looked around each other, drinking in the information and allowing the weight of it to settle.

Zelda felt her hands shake as she thought of what would happen next. Lucifer would walk the earth (in His angelic form). Sabrina would marry Him, or rule beside Him, or whatever He had planned. The Mortal Realm would go to war and inevitably lose against the Dark Lord, becoming His new kingdom as the demons flooded over every street.

"How did you know?" Sabrina asked, breaking the silence. "How did you know about the prophecy?"

Zelda brought the glass to her lips, finishing the contents in a single shot before she set it down on the table. Lying was what had got her into this mess, and yet she knew if she told the truth, Sabrina would never look at her the same. None of them.

"Mr Scratch," she said, starting in the middle of her story as if was the beginning. "He came to the house with a book of prophecy detailing what was to happen. I erased his memory––not realising the consequences he would face––and tried to find a resolution while keeping you ignorant." She gave him a brief, apologetic look.

"Why would you do such a thing?" Sabrina asked.

"Why did you keep the initial prophecy from me?" Zelda asked, raising her brow. "We were trying to stop it from occurring. I thought that keeping you in the dark of the exact premises of the prophecy would prevent you from completing it. I was wrong."

Sabrina's jaw clenched, but the anger softened, likely realising it didn't matter either way.

"Can you undo it?" Nicholas asked.

Zelda walked over and reached out, touching the boy's head. She found were her spell laid and pulled at the thread, undoing the woven magic. Stepping back, she looked down at Nicholas with a raised brow. "Did that work?"

Nicholas frowned, his brow pinching. "I'm not sure," he admitted.

"It will likely take time," she said, stepping back to where she'd been previously. "I am sorry, Nicholas. I had thought it was the best thing at the time to keep everyone safe."

Nicholas looked away, frowning to himself.

"So, Auntie," Ambrose said. "Why was suicide the last thing Sabrina needed to do? In terms of prophecy, I would have expected self-sacrifice rather than suicide. A proper blood spilling."

"It's not a sacrifice if she knows she can be resurrected," Zelda said. "And suicide was the final act because it was the last of the Nazareth perversions. She'd already done everything else, as I would understand."

"What do you mean?" Sabrina asked. "I didn't do anything knowing it would unleash Hell on Earth."

"No, but the exorcism, curing blindness, going to mortal purgatory, raising the dead, they're all perversions of the Nazareth's holy acts," she explained. "Knowing it or not, you did every act of your own accord."

"No, I didn't," Sabrina said, her face shifting into fury. Zelda realised her mistake too late as her niece's anger became focused on the one person Zelda wished it hadn't. "All of those acts, every last one of them was guided by Ms Wardwell. She had me complete the perversions. She's working for the Dark Lord."

Zelda pressed her lips shut, willing for another drink to appear. She shouldn't have said anything.

"We can't let her get away with this," Sabrina said, looking around at the room with sudden confidence in her voice that had Zelda panicking, knowing where it was leading to. "We have to-"

"What, Sabrina?" Zelda snapped, breaking the chain of thought before anyone else rallied behind her. "If she's working for Him, what will you do? Right now, you're about to be married off to the Dark Lord. It doesn't matter what Lilith has done. We need to focus on protecting you. Saving you." Zelda drew back, and then realised her mistake, feeling the words claw at her throat.

Unholy Hell.

"Lilith?" Sabrina echoed. "What do you mean, Lilith?"

Zelda drew a breath, feeling the room turn to face her with sudden interest. "No," she said, though it was a ridiculous response. "I meant nothing by it. It was just a slip."

"Auntie?" Ambrose questioned softly. "Do you know something we don't?"

"Aunt Zee," Sabrina hissed, pushing to her feet. "Are you working for the Dark Lord, too?"

Zelda felt panic claw at her chest as she took a step backward. "Absolutely not!"

"I mean, you cursed Nick, and you've been strange these last few weeks. Since Rome, in fact. You and Father Blackwood...you're both working for the Dark Lord and Ms Wardwell?"

"No, it's not that at all!" she defended. "Sabrina, I am not working for the Dark Lord, or with Faustus. I've only ever-"

"Then tell me what's going on," she said, fury growing in her. "Because right now, you look pretty guilty, and I think we all know something has been going on."

"Auntie," Ambrose asked. His voice was warm and calm, and Zelda looked to him, hoping he would be a voice of reason. "Have you been...having an affair with the Dark Lord?"

Sabrina's nose wrinkled, staring at her with unveiled disgust. "That's why you were so strange after your wedding night. You and the Dark Lord- I mean, I heard rumours but-"

"No!" Zelda panicked. "No, not the Dark Lord. I swear it. He has nothing to do with this."

"But you have been having an affair?"

Zelda drew in a breath. Every part of her wanted to run, but if she did, she knew it would only further concrete the idea of guilt. Splaying her hand on her stomach, she bit her tongue and closed her eyes, finding herself recalling the familiar prayer for strength.

"I struck a deal, an infernal deal. But it had nothing to do with you or anyone else. It was just a simple transaction between two consenting adults."

"Zelda," her sister whispered, making her horror known. "Did you promise your soul to the Dark Lord?"

"For the last time, it wasn't with the Dark Lord!" she said.

"It was with me," Lilith said, standing in the doorway beside Zelda. Sabrina rose. As did Ambrose and Nicholas Scratch, moving to defensive positions. A defensive barrier rose between them, but Lilith tilted her head, staring at Zelda. "I bet you wish you'd taken up my offer now."

Zelda narrowed her eyes, disliking the woman's choice to flirt with her. It was an inopportune moment, and she didn't find it cute.

"What offer?" Sabrina demanded.

Lilith smirked. "Nothing of your concern. That's between your dear Aunt and me," she said, giving a meaningful look to Zelda.

"Lilith," she warned.

"You're Lilith?" Sabrina inquired. "Why...?" her brows pressed together, and then Zelda saw the moment it clicked. "You're screwing the Dark Lord's mistress?"

Lilith's eyes opened wide with mock shock. "Such vulgar language. Honestly, Zelda, I thought you were teaching her the proper etiquette of being a young witch?"

Zelda could feel her frustration rising and yet knew the woman's cauldron stirring was due to their current situation. They were all afraid. And if Lilith was here, then Zelda knew it was for one reason only.

She looked to Lilith and watched as the woman's eyes softened in an apology, her expression otherwise perfectly neutral. It confirmed Zelda's fears, the Dark Lord had summoned her here to take Sabrina, and now she must play the obedient servant.

Zelda felt her mouth dry as her heart sank. The last few weeks had flown by, and Zelda felt herself wishing she'd spent more time speaking to Lilith. They were on the precipice of doom, and all she craved from Lilith was a few more hours.

Maybe she cared more than she thought.

"Gross," Sabrina said as looked between the two of them, her face twisting in the same disgust as she had before at the idea of the Dark Lord, which Zelda took personal offence to. Lilith was far more an attractive option. At least she wasn't trying to make some claim over Sabrina.

"If the deal wasn't about Sabrina," Nicholas asked, "then what deal did you two make?"

Zelda looked to Lilith, who looked back at her, her smirk only growing wide with mischief at the current situation. "Shall I tell them?" she asked, "Or will you?"

"Honestly," Zelda said, folding her arms and looking away from the woman. "It's nothing interesting and completely unrelated to our situation, so perhaps we should direct focus on-"

"No," Sabrina said. "I want to know."

"Believe me, you don't," Zelda said.

"Tell me."

"Your Aunt," Lilith said, apparently having enough of the back and forth, "wanted more power. I wanted...well, let's just say I quite enjoyed crashing the pre-wedding evening and decided that I wanted her all for myself."

Zelda looked away from her family, feeling her face burn at the sudden focus. Though she wasn't one to feel ashamed of engaging in sexual acts, it was another thing to have it aired out like laundry in front of others. Whatever acts she participated with Lilith should have remained between the two of them.

"But she's married," Sabrina said.

Lilith rolled her eyes, looking to Zelda with a pointed stare. There was a brief, shared moment between them. Both of them knowing that Zelda had about as much interest in Faustus as anyone else in that room.

Zelda looked away and raised her eyebrow at Sabrina. "You should know better than most that monogamy isn't something most witches stick to."

Sabrina's mouth fell agape, and Zelda sighed, looking away.

"If we're all done with my sex life, can we move to the problem at hand?"

Sabrina's eyes narrowed to Lilith, "As if she's not apart of the problem?"

Admittedly, there was a lot of catching up to do with that regard, and Zelda wasn't sure where to begin.

"Oh, no," Lilith said. "She's quite right to be upset." Turning to Sabrina, she reached out a hand, as if to compel her to follow, "The Dark Lord's summoned you. You will need to come with me."

"I certainly will not!"

"You will," Lilith said. "Because if you don't, He'll come for you and destroy everything and everyone in his path. It won't be pretty, believe me."

Sabrina paused, twisting her face before she conceited stepping forward, "All right," she said as if agreeing to a Sunday Lunch.

Zelda turned her head sharply, a protest rising as a cacophony rose across the room as everyone but Lilith and Sabrina, objected to her leaving.

Turning on her heel, Sabrina looked around at them. "I have to face Him."

"She's right," Lilith said, raising her eyes to Zelda's. There was no promise of safekeeping, and it only caused the agitation to grow in Zelda's stomach. The idea of her niece, facing the Dark Lord alone. There were too many unspeakable actions that could occur.

"Sabrina, be rational," Zelda urged. "You are no match against the Dark Lord."

"At least let me come," Nicholas said.

Lilith's eyes rose to him, a strange, knowing smile on her lips. "If you wish." Before turning to Sabrina. "You can bring your familiar too if you so desire."

Sabrina looked to where Salem sat, curled up in the corner of the room on a chair. The familiar lifted his head, mewling softly as all eyes turned to him. For a moment, Zelda wanted to interject herself and follow Sabrina, but she knew Lilith wouldn't allow it.

Walking over, she picked up the cat and placed him into Sabrina's arms. "Whatever you think of me," she said. "I would never turn on you. Everything I did was with this family's safety in mind." She paused before standing up straight, holding back the anxiety that twisted inside of her. "Now, come home safely. Please. If not for me, then for your Aunt Hilda and Ambrose."

Sabrina looked at her, a strange mix of emotion in her eyes as Lilith placed her arm around her and Nicholas' shoulders. Once again, the woman looked into her eyes, a soft nod, a promise to at least try. And then they disappeared.

Zelda pressed a hand to her mouth, moving to a seat as she sat down. There was still much to worry about, afterall Prudence was still missing. The Dark Lord had returned to his celestial form, and the future was uncertain. She had no idea what would happen to Sabrina but wished only for her safety.

"What now?" Ambrose asked.

Zelda looked up at him, her heart beating fast in her chest as nausea twisted in her belly. As much as she wanted to believe there was hope, she felt very lost in what their next move should be.

They could ward the house, but what good would that do them? Lilith could still bypass it, and they couldn't stay in there forever. Eventually, they would need supplies.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know."

Hilda and Ambrose both looked to her at a loss of words, before Ambrose made some excuse to rush off to read up on books and Hilda just looked to her. "Zelda, why didn't you say anything?"

She looked to her sister's face, feeling her throat swell at the much-too empathic expression. "Hilda, I'm already buried in enough guilt. I don't need to be reminded of my failings. If I could take it back, I would never have stopped Nicholas. Maybe things would have been different. Maybe Sabrina would never have..." she trailed off, holding back the sob that rose. She wouldn't cry. Not over this. There was too much to do.

"Yes, well, that. But I mean...why didn't you tell me about...the deal you made."

Ah, Zelda realised as she blinked away the tears. Of course, her sister would focus on the hidden truths between them. "It was no one's concerns but mine."

"It seems that you...maybe...care for her?"

Zelda shook her head, laughing. "Of course I do. I've worshipped her since our Mother first read the Satanic bible to us." How could she not? A woman who fled the garden, fled paradise, in pursuit of her power. Who scavaged the wastelands, survived them for years even before the Dark Lord rose her up. The first witch, forged out of spite and determination to survive without the False God's grace.

How could she not worship her, desire her? She was everything Zelda admired in witch kind.

Hilda gave her a knowing smile, reading more in-depth into the adoration than she should. "Since your wedding?" she inquired.

"Hilda, forgive me, but I do not wish to discuss this with you or anyone for that matter."

"Oh, yes, sorry," Hilda said. "Well, at least now everything's out in the open."

"Before our doom," Zelda said. She sighed, feeling a headache grow. "Sister, will you help me with something before Sabrina returns?"

"Of course."

"Prudence has been missing, and I'm...concerned that Faustus has done something. I've provided as much protection as I could, but it's been a few days, and she hasn't returned from whatever ghastly mission he's sent her on."

"Well, there are a few location spells we can use. How about I put a spot of tea on, and we can begin with the basics?"

"Thank you." She paused, looking at Hilda. "Truly. Thank you."

[argentdandelion]

No Soul Necessary: Flowey’s Happy Ending (Part 1)

Introduction

Warning: This post necessarily covers Flowey’s dark, traumatic, and sad backstory.

In many works, Flowey gets a SOUL in a Post-Pacifist timeline, and is often “restored” back to Asriel with a Boss Monster body. Sometimes, it is implied this is only way for Flowey to be happy: that it is impossible to save him, too, so long as he is a soulless flower.

Yet, as the Flowey and PTSD series shows, having a soul is neither necessary nor sufficient for Flowey’s happiness. For one thing, six human SOULs apparently wasn’t enough for him to regain love nor compassion; he only got that after absorbing six human souls and the souls of almost every monster. More importantly, though gaining a soul might make it easier for him to be happy by letting him feel love and compassion again, it wouldn’t solve all his problems.

And Flowey has a lot of problems.

Well-Supported by Canon

These aspects of Flowey's suffering are well-supported by canon.

Guilt, Regret, and Self-Loathing

After the God of Hyperdeath fight, Asriel understands if Frisk cannot forgive them, and understands if Frisk hates them. He acted “so strange and horrible” and hurt many people; Asriel believe she has no excuse for what he had done.

If the game is started up again after everyone goes free, Flowey (despite presumed soullessness) says he can’t “go through with it again” (do the same actions to achieve that ending) if the world was reset, so whoever he’s talking to must erase his memories, too. He seems guilty or ashamed at his actions: he talks about the power Chara was “fighting to stop, the power that I wanted to use” (presumably the power of SAVE) with an expression that might be shame.

Furthermore, several prompts in for the flowerbed speech, Asriel discloses he’s blamed himself for the decision to not kill the humans attacking him the whole time. Apparently, a sense of guilt and self-loathing at himself for failing Chara and getting himself killed was why he adopted his “kill or be killed” view. Yet, after seeing Frisk (it’s unspecified when; it could be at the flowerbed itself) he doesn’t regret his decision anymore. He said he did the right thing, and he can’t regret hard choices forever.

Lack of Love/Compassion/Empathy; Difficulty Forming Relationships

Flowey cannot feel love nor compassion; it is likely anything approaching empathy eludes him. This is a major impediment to feeling fulfilling relationships. Indeed, the idea he couldn’t feel anything (loving) for anyone made him “despondent”, until he eventually coped by making himself a callous manipulator who didn’t (emotionally) need anyone.

Flowey’s difficulty in forming relationships is a similar problem. Solving others’ problems distracted or amused him for a while, but it didn’t really make him happy. His lack of love and compassion, as well as his ability to rewind time, led him to become estranged from others. People were reduced to sets of numbers, lines and dialogue.

Unable to feel love and compassion, Flowey's life was surely less happy than before. The closest Flowey could get to fulfilling relationships was just amusement at others, and with time he grew tired of it. He himself likes to think “there’s someone out there...someone that I won’t get tired of.” There’s only one person (Chara) he cares about anymore, and yet he says (with a sad expression) that he couldn’t really care about them.

Despair

Given how close they were, Chara’s death alone would have been enough for Asriel to fall into a deep depression. Yet, his suffering is only multiplied by several layers of trauma from the plan and its outcome.

Flowey/Asriel believes that, in refusing to kill the humans attacking him and getting killed himself, he “failed” Chara. He expects Chara to be mad at him for this.

Flowey discloses that, when he woke up as a flower, he “couldn’t feel anything for anyone.”1 He spent weeks with Asgore, trying to vain to feel love. Eventually, Flowey became so distressed at his failure he quit and run away. He went to Toriel, but even she couldn’t make him “feel whole again”. He became despondent: he decided to didn’t “want to live in a world without love anymore—a world without you, Chara”. He spent weeks with Asgore, trying to vain to feel love. Eventually, Flowey became so distressed at his failure he quit and run away. He went to Toriel, but even she couldn’t make him “feel whole again”. He became despondent: he decided to didn’t “want to live in a world without love anymore—a world without you, Chara”. Flowy then tried to “erase himself from existence”.

He discovered his power of SAVE after this, starting ‘Pacifist Routes’ of his own and solving others’ problems flawlessly. Their companionship amused him, for a while. But, as he repeated time, he found them predictable; without compassion, he grew estranged from others and saw them as just lines of dialogue and numbers.

He killed everyone in the Underground, just to add novelty to his boring life. But eventually, he grew tired of that, too. He was surely very lonely and thought his existence pointless, but the very things he had lost (and gained) with his new life as a flower trapped him in despair.

Extrapolations

While recurring elements in works set in a Post-Pacifist timeline, these aspects of Flowey’s suffering aren’t so well-supported in canon.

Body Dissatisfaction

A recurring element in fan works is Flowey’s dissatisfaction or distress at his new flower body, and its limits.

In the Genocide Route, Flowey shows fear and helplessness at realizing he can’t feel his arms and legs and how his whole body had turned into a flower. If he had some choice in form when absorbing six human SOULs, the fact he had two big, clawed arms may very well be a compensation for his long-lost limbs. As soon as he absorbs the equivalent of seven human SOULs, he takes a body identical to his old Boss Monster one, and says: “Finally. I was so tired of being a flower.”

In some cases, it’s hard to tell whether Asriel/Flowey is dissatisfied by what he is or who he has become in that new body; he might conflate the two and separate his existence into two identities.

Flowey is neither human nor monster, but a soulless, nigh-necromantic magic flower whose existence is utterly unprecedented. After attacking Flowey, Toriel calls him a “miserable creature”. Flowey describes himself and who he thinks is a soulless Chara as “creatures” as well. In his flowerbed speech, Asriel calls Flowey not a “he”, but an “it”, and tells Frisk not to think of Flowey as Asriel, saying: “I just want you to remember me like this. Someone that was your friend for a little while.” (It’s unclear whether he means “as a Boss Monster” or “as someone compassionate”)

Parental Separation

Even in works where Flowey gets a soul, "becomes Asriel", and has Frisk as an adoptive sibling as a sort of Dreemurr Family 2.0, things just aren't the same. Chara is still dead, and Asgore and Toriel are still estranged/separated.

It must have been a shock for a newly-awakened Flowey to go back home and find Toriel’s old throne under a sheet, and to search for Toriel for so long only to find she’s as far away as possible from Asgore. Realizing his parents, who used to be such sickening sweethearts, have separated and no longer love each other is bad enough. Knowing that they separated over Asgore’s declaration of war, which only happened because Asriel and Chara died, just makes things worse: Flowey might believe it’s (indirectly) his fault.

While Toriel and Asgore are probably not technically divorced in Undertale, Flowey could have reacted in a comparable way to the kids of divorced parents. After all, kids developing mild depression after their parents’ divorce in a common response. In fact, this “mild depression” can get worse; according to Helpguide.org, some of the symptoms, “frequent violent and angry outbursts”, “withdrawal from loved ones”, and “disinterest in loved activities” sound like things Flowey would do.

Uncertainty He Even Deserves Happiness/A Second Chance with a Boss Monster Body

In several fan works, Flowey/Asriel sometimes believes he doesn’t deserve happiness, and/or a second chance with a Boss Monster body. Regardless of form, he might believe he doesn’t deserve happiness because of all his terrible deeds, and also think he’ll only bring misery to others.

To this end, he might regret going up to the Surface with Frisk, or even seek isolation. Indeed, only Frisk knows Asriel broke the barrier, and Asriel spends the rest of his short existence as “himself” by the flower patch in the Ruins, apparently unnoticed. He doesn’t want his parents to know he was alive again, and won’t go up to see them, because he thinks it would just break their hearts. Furthermore, in some works, Flowey lives an isolated life in the Underground as a sort of prison sentence for his Flowey Run crimes.

While Flowey cannot feel love nor compassion, it’s still possible he could feel guilt and regret. It’s possible he remembers what it was like to feel love and compassion, even for a little while, and wants Frisk and the other monsters to be happy even if he cannot.

He’s certainly capable of feeling irritated at people, so presumably he meant an inability to love anyone and, perhaps, a flattened and incomplete emotional range in general. ↩︎

[halfgap]

Some extensive, tangly headcanons / extrapolations of canon regarding Beau and her parents under the cut... extremely wordy and still not Complete (I always have more to say about this kid!)

I doubt her family is anything akin to nobility or aristocracy. Sure, they own a winery in Kamordah (a town renowned for its fine wines) but from Beau’s comments about her father’s desperation to impress the Empire higher-ups, I get the sense that Beau’s parents are sorta the Wildemount equivalent of ‘New Money’. They accrued their wealth through being very industrious and growing their business into something presumably quite successful, but despite being financially secure her father more than anything still wants very badly to gain the respect of More Important People.

Beau says her father “made a lot of sacrifices” in an effort to impress those people, and tbh that could mean anything from “devoted his time to brown-nosing and working instead of to his family” to “literally selling out close friends/family to the Reapers to gain Empire goodwill.” He also probably let the Crownsguard deal with some of Beau’s law-breaking in the past instead of bailing her out, considering Beau’s strong personal reaction to Toya being left with the Crownsguard.

I’m thinking her father is a very intelligent guy who values book smarts a lot. Marisha’s implied on Talks that he made Beau study a lot of crap (even before the Cobalt Soul) which he insisted would be valuable, and Beau is kind of pissed whenever that education actually does come in handy during her adventures today. I think her knee-jerk rebellion against All Things To Do With Her Father is why Beau insists that she hates studying, hates books and history, is TOTALLY a jock and NOT A NERD AT ALL, even though it’s become apparent that her natural curiosity does extend to a lot of nerdy things and she retained a lot of useful stuff from her studies. She loves learning, period, but it’s that thing where you don’t want to enjoy something that your asshole parents forced on you since a young age.

From a meta perspective, abusive parents are too often depicted as ignorant & uneducated with nothing of value to offer to their kids. In reality, perfectly intelligent + highly educated people can still VERY MUCH be abusive. They can have good taste in books or music, they can instill some savvy business acumen in their kids, etc.. Beau likely owes a lot of her education & cunning to her dad. Part of him probably did have her best interests at heart. That doesn’t mean he’s any less of an abusive shithead.

As far as I remember, Beau’s never actually said she hated her parents. There’s clearly a lot of resentment & anger there, but she also makes a lot of excuses for her parents: she says her father’s “not a bad person,” says he could have even been a good father if he made different choices, repeatedly calls him “protective” (as opposed to “horribly controlling and overbearing,” which I think is more accurate tbh), and admits several times that she herself was “a rebellious dick” and how that contributed to her parents’ rejection of her. Beau doesn’t hate her parents and hasn’t claimed to hate them; I’d wager instead that she cares about them despite everything and *still* craves their acceptance and approval (something Marisha supports on Talks). The bulk of Beau’s feelings toward her parents are HURT, not HATRED.

That just makes her whole situation a lot sadder, imo. In ep.1 she comes off as a rebellious drifter who ran away from her rich asshole parents, but in fact she’s a rebellious drifter w/ nowhere to go because she was utterly rejected by her parents *twice*. She disagrees with everything they stand for & won’t change herself any more for them, but she no doubt still cares about them (god, it’s her very nature to care deeply about Everything she touches); she’s just utterly convinced that they don’t give a single damn about her.

Somewhat related- as a child, at least, Beau did try to be what her parents wanted. This is made apparent by Marisha’s playlist commentary and some of her TM answers. Moreover, Beau has the ‘Prodigy’ feat, which I bet only stoked her parents’ expectations of her, expectations that kid!Beau would naturally strive to meet. But as Marisha rightly points out, when someone’s held to an impossible standard like that of the “The Perfect Daughter,” eventual rebellion is inevitable. From personal experience, I can say after trying so hard for so long, failure is addictive. Once Beau gave up trying to be the perfect, obedient kid who was still never enough, she probably found comfort in and clung deeply to her new role as the Problem Child, the Disappointment, the Slacker.

This always confused me but... Beau was only w/ the Cobalt Soul in Zadash for a few months. It’s possible she was at some other training monastery prior to that, but from Marisha’s early-campaign TM comments about “suddenly & recently becoming a monk” and a lot of other confusing shit Beau’s said, it sounds like Beau was only with the Cobalt Soul during that short time she was in Zadash...? And I can’t imagine it’s been THAT long between her running away, and her meeting Fjord and Jester in Game 0. Zeenoth still seems familiar enough with her when finding her in Ep.4 that I think Beau probably only ran away a few months to a year ago, at most? (Enough time for Beau to have wandered through a lot of places in the Empire at least, since she says in Ep. 8 or so that she’s traveled a lot within the country.) Beau is currently 22 or 23, so working backwards, that means Beau was abducted by the Cobalt Soul when she was probably 20 or 21. A young adult. Not a rebellious teen getting sent to boarding school.

I guess it might make sense that an unmarried young daughter is still in the authority of her parents at that age (although gender politics in Exandria have always been ‘???’ and sorta inconsistently represented so...) But it’s more significant that Beau stayed, living under her parents’ roof, doing the bookkeeping for the winery... I don’t know if she was staying purely to continue profiting off her bootlegging operation w/ her family’s wine, or if because even after all that Teen Rebellion she never fully escaped her parents’ influence over her and her own buried desire to earn their respect/affection. I’d say it’s leaning towards the latter, with her using the former as an excuse to herself (or maybe the thought of leaving just. Never even really occurred to her. Which I wouldn’t be shocked by tbh.) Either way I think it’s interesting that she herself never left that small town she hated & that family she resented, until her dad blatantly kicked her out via monk abduction.

I don’t know where I’m going with this other than saying that Beau is a twisty, painful mess of contradiction who nevertheless makes deep sense to me (& hopefully others) in a way impossible to articulate...?

uh I meant to talk more about her mom but prior to more recent episodes the only thing we knew of her is when Beau said “My mother always said nothing in life is free.” Now we also know she gave birth to a son Very Late & once wouldn’t let Beau have a pet rat, but Beau’s overall difficulty with/reluctance to talk about her mother can mean a lot of different things. Two possible interpretations are : a) in some twisted way Beau was a lot closer to her dad, as in... he was a bigger influence on her, more involved in her life and thus in more conflict with her, and her mom has always been more a footnote.. or b) maybe Beau actually had a more.. tender relationship with her mom than she did with her dad (not saying much tbh) which only made her ultimate rejection sting 100x worse to the point that Beau hates even thinking or talking about it.

You could go a lot wilder with the theories here (maybe her mom was the ‘bad direction’ that misguided her dad..? etc) but I think the above two are most reasonable and what I usually go with right now for the sake of simplicity

As for Beau’s personal hang-up with tarot cards, and the (possibly unrelated, but probably related) Mysterious Beliefs of her dad that made him so “protective” and intent on isolating her... that shit is too open-ended and I can’t land on a solid theory yet asjdjsljfjf

Also very conflicted about the whole MY PARENTS WANTED A SON thread but I won’t get into that here

I’m Very Behind on CR and have only caught clips and tidbits of episodes 43 onwards so please talk to me about Beau and let me know if there’s any other interesting hints she’s dropped in recent episodes or if any new info has contradicted these long-held, rambly inferences I just listed

[fantasyrat]

So... doing this again? Eh, Why not?

So, yesterday I came on Tumblr in the hopes of finding some art to help build a fan forum (currently obsessing over the ADoriBull ship and well as Love Nikki Dress Up Queen) I’m working on when I notice two replies to an old reply I did last year. Well, I tend to feel obliged to thank them and thought little else of it. Then the I noticed in my feed that OP, winterywitch, decided to throw a tantrum when it’s been weeks... months even since our exchange. So it left me a bit bewildered. So, being my curious self, I looked into it and decided to respond and maybe even do a bit of a mental analysis. First thing I saw was this.

Oooh my... The lack of self-awareness is strong here. So, I go a bit further and wouldn’t you know it, this apparently got them in such a tizzy she had to rant about it.... but not actually reply to what was said even though she writes as if they’re arguing with someone else. Curious... For a bit of convenience sake, I took the liberty of taking a screenshot, highlighting and numbering certain bits of her rant. Not all. The rest I will address in quotes.

So, to start, we’ll so by the numbers.

(1) - If you took the time to look at my original response I never claimed to be an anti-sjw. I was simply pointing out the issues with the community and the blatant hypocrisy the willfully chose to ignore. And this image you have of me frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog is just silly plain silly as one can see by my original response. I can admit it was a while ago and I have learned more about choosing my words more carefully. Be that as it may, this image you have in your head of me being some primal beast with no thought save destroy the enemy is completely ludicrous. 

(2) - So, you are admitting you are a troll then? If that’s so, why do immediately contradict yourself with number 3?

(3) - And that is your opinion if that’s what you truly believe. However, terminology is not evidence of one's mindset, principles, and beliefs. There are people whom I have personally known who are wise, kind and intelligent individuals but they have difficulty in eloquence. And now I ask for evidence. Where are the anti-sjw trying to pass laws to silence those like yourself? If you’re speaking purely of people on the internet mocking you then, I’m sorry, but they have the right to do so and you have a right not to listen and to choose to be happy despite what others say.Meanwhile, Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn go to the UN on this matter claiming that random comment like ‘You're a liar’ ‘You suck’ and harassment and the basis for censorship. And if a bill got passed for such things, the line would be blurred. And that can lead to serious issues. That’s why people are pushing back because they know once that line is drawn than the 1st amendment is doomed.Now, being fair, you’ve probably not been hearing this from more reasonable sources who have the same knee-jerk reaction that you’ve shown time and time again to have. However, I highly recommend getting out of Tumblr or Twitter. It’s not a reliable source of information. Try opening your mind a bit and go a bit of research on the history of the first amendment.If not for the 1st, Thomas Paine would never have been able to write The Age of Reason or Frederick Douglass The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. These are only two of many books that helped shape the nation and it’s thanks to the 1st Amendment.So when we see people complaining about the use of some word and trying to ban it, people rally around to nip it in the bud before the problem gets worse. I personally don’t care what you say, you have the freedom to say it and I would defend your freedom though I disagree. But when people are actively trying to turn those opinion into law, it needs to be stopped before it gets worse.

(4) - Minor note; using a cliche allegory doesn’t help your argument. I’d highly recommend avoiding it in the future. This is not malicious. This is simply advice from one human being to another.Now, to the quotes because... oh boy...

even now, you're interpreting me picking apart your sources as some kind of horrific oppression and as sjw buzzword-filled rants, but that's because you don't see "sjws" as people, you see them as an object to use in some epic pwn fantasy to get attention online

*sigh* What you’re saying, what you’re feeling right now is called projection. It’s not I seeing you as inhuman, but you see me as an inhuman monster. Therefore, since in your mind I’m not human, I’ve fair game for you to be wicked, cruel and vile to by hurling insults because let’s face it. It’s easier not to see the humanity of another person behind a computer monitor. Try taking a deep breath and reread your rant. All you’ve done is exactly what you accuse me of. Assume I’m doing this for internet fame... How would that even work exactly? I’ve no interest in it. also it's been two entire real-life years, you need to grow up and let go of this online oppression fantasy. Let me repeat what I said earlier: ‘So, yesterday I came on Tumblr in the hopes of finding some art to help build a fan forum (currently obsessing over the ADoriBull ship and well as Love Nikki Dress Up Queen) I’m working on when I notice two replies to an old reply I did last year. Well, I tend to feel obliged to thank them and thought little else of it.’ I don’t have many posts on my Tumblr, so when I return, I see old ones and sometimes they have new developments. I responded to them, not you. If anyone needs to grow up it’s you. You were barely a footnote in my mind when I responded. And then that was it. But then you replied to my reply to them. Seems like you’re the obsessed one here. Now, I won’t bother to quote the entirety as it’s simply inane jibberish with horrid grammar and punctuation only a toddler would spout in a hissy fit and that is far beneath me, and anyone wants to read it, it’s there above. However, I will point to one thing.

someone used their free speech to criticize your flawed argument Funny that... that you didn’t reply to another who I thanked for their generosity.

You see, I’m normally a very reasonable lady. But it’s hard to be reasonable when someone is so unreasonable. You promote critical thinking, but don’t dare apply it to yourself. So, I’m doing you a favor. After looking at the things you’ve written and said, and if your age on your page is correct, you may want to seek some help. If you have already, get a second opinion. I’m not an expert by any means, but I have noticed some patterns that could possibly be symptoms of Histrionic Personality Disorder Here’s a link to more information: https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/histrionic-personality-disorder Now I’m not saying you have this, but as one human being to another, I’d advise you to look into it.

[mirroredtranslations]

Karen Ogre - Chapter 8

Wazamonogatari – Nisioisin p. 161-167

[Previous Chapter]

Come to think of it, I ought to have worked out a plan for any bear encounters that might have happened while I was asleep—I mean, there were none, but I wouldn't have been shocked if there had been.

Not just bears.

I hadn't caught sight of any yet, but in such a densely forested area as this, there must be snakes, too; I would be utterly lost if I encountered a venomous snake. There's no hope for a cell phone signal this deep in the mountains—no way to call for a rescue.

Exhaustion had made me relax my guard. I've got to stay focused.

I washed my face and cleaned my body in a nearby stream (learning how blessed I was to have hot water), and looked out upon my second day, refreshed.

I think I cooked the rice better than I did yesterday.

Can get used to anything, I guess.

Though it wasn't clear whether I'd gotten used to the preparation technique, or just the taste.

So I'd thought the hike would have to be easier than yesterday's... but that was not to be.

That is to say, I'd forgotten something.

It had completely slipped my mind.

Three mountains comprise the Three Ouga Mountains—the second of those mountains, Senshin Peak, had a vastly different landscape compared to Oniai Mountain.

I had a preconceived notion that the name “Senshin Peak” meant that the trees on the mountain were mostly made up of conifers, but upon closer examination (I had done some preliminary investigation, but it had simply slipped my mind), I learned that the “shin” in “Senshin Peak” did not refer to the needle-like leaves of conifer trees.(1)

It'd sure be great if it did.

The “shin” in “Senshin Peak” referred instead to “rocks as sharp as needles”. In other words, Senshin Peak was what they call a “rocky mountain”.(2)

It was certainly no coniferous forest—there were hardly any trees growing at all.

As such, today's leg of the journey would seem to be more like rock climbing than mountaineering.

To traverse the rocks, I used three-point support(3) to crawl over their surface, which required me to have free use of both hands. As such, I unfortunately had to leave the Japanese sword I'd received from Blond Bun-san, which I was using as a pole, at the mountain's edge.

I'd wanted to tie it to my rucksack and take it with me, but it's a naked Japanese sword—if I fell over, it could very well cause a terrible tragedy... I've got to remember to retrieve it on the return trip.

There'll be bears on the return trip too, after all.

So, after burying the Japanese sword in a shallow hole I dug under a tree, I set out upon Senshin Peak. In simple terms of physical effort, this one looked to be harder than yesterday's.

Could say that the level of difficulty went up on account of my progression to the next stage.

You need to use your whole body for rock climbing, and honestly, I hadn't brought enough rope—once again exposing my lack of preparation.

However, unlike ordinary mountaineering, with which I had basically no experience, I had some experience with bouldering(4) and similar attractions as part of my training; as a result, I could keep a small degree of mental composure.

A little bit—but even so.

What I know is weapons and strength.

Tsubasa-san's line, “I don't know everything, just what I know,” is modest and humble, but at the same time a brazen boast; I haven't seen her in a very long time now, but she'd probably be able to succeed magnificently and without incident at this Zen dialogue-like problem of “meeting yourself”.

What I need right now.

Is to know myself.

To know Karen Araragi—hmm.

I still don't get it.

I'm just not seeing it.

By acting alone, with just my own strength to go on, in the wilderness, I'll get an opportunity to reexamine myself... If that was Master's intention in encouraging me to bathe in a waterfall, well, having come this far, I could understand that. But it's not like I was born in a forest, and don't I want to live on a mountain either.

I don't think that clinging tightly onto these rocks represents my true self. My true nature is a girl who attends high school and takes classes, or maybe, a girl who attends a dojo and throws punches.

That's me.

I'm much closer to my true self when I'm messing around with my big brother or playing with Tsukihi-chan than when I'm fighting bears.

If I'm supposed to find myself...

I feel like I could do that at my house. No need to bathe in a waterfall deep in the mountains.

Well, no doubt I'm thinking these thoughts because I'm having a tough time rock climbing.

When you're weakened, your thoughts weaken too; I should come up with a reason to take a rest.

Thinking bad thoughts is no better than sleeping.

So, I should stop grumbling, shut up, and graciously take a rest.

I'll understand when I bathe in the waterfall.

I'll think of this as one of Master's trials for full mastery. I might not know myself, but I do know what kind of person Master is.

She doesn't lie, and she doesn't speak carelessly.

And she isn't someone who will tell you to do something you can't do—because Master instructed me to seclude myself in the mountains, this harsh traversing is something I ought to be able to do.

She also told me to turn back if I couldn't do it... but setting that aside, I continued single-mindedly climbing Senshin Peak, clinging onto the bare rock.

Although I had more experience with this than yesterday's leg of the journey, I had no choice but to be careful, thinking of how unlikely I was to recover from making a mistake.

Falling onto sharp rocks would result in far worse injury than falling onto soft dirt. Concentrate, concentrate. I shouldn't let my mind wander.

On this mountainside, it's all I can do to stay alive.

Unbothered by any detours I had to take, I maintained the safest route I could, and aimed for the summit.

Considering how, if I were to get hurt, Master would also be implicated since she's the one who gave me instructions, it's really not just my own problem.

And for the sakes of the people who believed in me, I have to keep on living.

But even though I had every intention of being as careful as possible, there's a limit on what a person can do—that is to say, I could only get so much knowledge from imaginary training.

That, too.

Is a case of “I don't know everything, just what I know.”

The bouldering you do indoors is not the same as rock climbing done outdoors. Of course it isn't. But I had viewed them in the same light.

Careless as careless can be.

Um, what I mean to say is, this is outdoors, so of course there isn't any air conditioning, and there isn't a roof to block the sun.

No roof to provide shade.

As time passed, more and more brilliant light from the sun poured down from directly above me.

I'm not worried about sunburn, of course.

I have enough feminine sense to put on sunblock when going outdoors.

My body was slimy all over from the sunblock I borrowed from Tsukihi-chan.

That's not it—the issue was the bare rocks.

It was the rocks.

“So hot!”

Maybe the rocks had changed under the scorching light of the sun; the crevice I'd reached for felt as hot as a frying pan.

Hot enough to fry an egg.

Even a former Fire Sister couldn't withstand it.

Not only did I reflexively pull my fingers away, but my whole body recoiled as well. There was nothing I could do.

Trying to regain my balance made me lose my balance even more. Far from three-point support—this was zero-point. A perfect score of zero points.

This is bad. I'll fall.

Onto a sharp mountainside, no less.

It's as if I'm falling into the Needle Mountain in Hell.(5)

Senshin Peak.

It would be great if I could get away with just bone fractures. But I'm going to get skewered here.

It was absolutely not the time to be imagining that, but my body froze up; I don't have trypanophobia,(6) but for some reason, I got stuck in the phrase “stabbed by needles”.

Both body and mind.

Got stuck.

O-oh.

Like a revolving lantern was flying around inside my head.

What is this feeling?

Is this how it feels to die?

No, no, it's too soon to feel like I've reached enlightenment—I'm not even halfway toward my goal of bathing in the waterfall, and moreover, I won't necessarily die from being skewered by a rock.

It could be worse than bone fractures, but not bad enough to kill me.

In the worst case, I'll be pierced somewhere in my torso; unable to move, but also unable to die quickly, I'll suffer unimaginably, my body will get roasted from the inside out from the heat of the sun-scorched rocks, and then I'll finally die... Ugh, my imagination is way too vivid!

Then.

“'Twill be dislocated!”

Immediately after hearing that voice, a sharp pain shot through my shoulder. With a crack, all of my body weight fell on my extended right arm.

I mean, it might not have been my shoulder that held up my whole body, but rather my wrist; or perhaps it was a tiny palm, like an autumn leaf, that firmly grabbed my wrist.

A tiny palm.

The owner of the palm that caught me just after I fell was a little blond girl with a bob cut, who appeared to have been rock climbing while hidden in my shadow.

[Next Chapter]

Footnotes: (1) “Senshin” (千針) here means “thousand needles”. I've elected to use partial transliterations instead of literal translation of the mountain names, for brevity's sake. (2) A mountain where the bare rock is exposed. (3) Three-point support is a climbing strategy in which three of your four limbs are always holding onto something to prevent falling. (4) Bouldering is a form of rock climbing where you scale—wait for it—boulders. Artificial climbing walls that simulate bouldering are apparently common in climbing gyms. (5) A place in Buddhist hell; a mountain covered in needles. (6) Trypanophobia is the fear of needles.

[gentlyouttatime]

hoping this readmore works. i have asterisks for some footnotes but they're just side thoughts:

I was listening to a gaming podcast where the conversation took a quick detour into accessibility in gaming. as a brief note before I get into my main point, I think there's a lot of conflation in these kinds of discussions between accessibility, difficulty, and approachability. In very simplified terms, what I mean by each is:

accessibility as mechanical features or settings that make aspects of a game less complex, easier to interpret, or require less precision

difficulty as in the challenge a game presents to players that can sometimes be internally modified (think of game difficulty modes that don't always explain what has changed to make the game more or less difficult)

approachability as how players "get into" a game, through both the extensiveness of any tutorials and the willingness to allow for experimentation by the player (as in whether there are penalties for not understanding)

These all, to varying degrees per person, are aspects of "enjoyment."

The thing that really prompted this post was when a host, while discussing engagement with the mechanics of a game the show was reviewing, he almost said, "not everyone deserves to-" then quickly corrected himself to "not everyone has to experience the story of [game title] to have a complete life" and that there's a certain point where you could just watch playthroughs, and asked "what are we trying to preserve at that point?"* But it's that split second where he said "needs" that stood out to me. Later, a host said that if you're clearing mechanics out of the way to play a game that you're "not getting much out of that." The following discussion blended takes on accessibility, difficulty, and approachability in a really frustrating way. And honestly: hearing all of this really sucked! It immensely impacted my enjoyment of that episode. I had to stop a few times before continuing (and I started drafting this post over my lunch, haha). Because as someone who had to look up let's plays for games on systems I knew I’d probably never own but desperately wished I did, I can say with complete confidence that let's plays are different than playing a game for yourself. Whether the person uploading it is an active presence through commentary, or they miss something you see that they could have collected, or don’t do a side quest you want to see, or don’t see the solution to a puzzle you’ve figured out, none of it is the same as playing, controlling, and experiencing the game yourself. And if you mention the things that you've noticed, what do these kinds of backseating comments get you? "Go play yourself or find another let's player who plays how you want." haha! imagine that. what a conundrum :)

Back to the point. It’s a kind of protectiveness and unexamined ableism that typically fuels these kinds of comments. I say “unexamined” because the person making the comments doesn't always intend to be ableist when making these comments. Ableism in general is so pervasive in gaming spaces when it comes to the idea of perceived changes, usually from the perspective of non-disabled people. The idea that developers are "forced" or bullied into including accessibility features is laughable, because there's a noticeable difference between featured that were planned from the beginning and features that are added later (which can take time) or worse, tacked on as an afterthought. Developing accessibility features from the beginning can be difficult if one is inexperienced in doing so but shows commitment to including disabled people’s needs and perspectives from the beginning. Delays show us we’re not your priority. And again, right now, the assumption of most developers is that able-bodied people are playing their games**. These assumptions about who is playing games and how they are playing them faces pushback from players who don’t fit that presumption that can appear aggressive or hostile (and imo, that’s good /genuine) because people are against the idea that it's fine if something isn't for them. But people want to be included. Accessibility features only make a game more available and approachable to other people. And because not every disabled person has the same access needs as other people with that same disability, the wider the scope of these accessibility features and the more customization players can have of their own experience, the better.

Anyway, that podcast specifically is having a more focused discussion about accessibility with an expert in their next episode and I hope that the hosts who made comments that felt ignorant and exclusive can learn how to confront the underlying assumptions about accessibility in gaming in the future.

* If you look at tabletop rpg twitter, there are constantly similar discussions about what it means to appreciate or engage with a game's mechanics and whether or not it means you're "actually" playing that game. Like, for example (and I really enjoyed jay dragon's thread on this: link), if you're playing dnd, and you have a session (or many sessions) where no one makes any rolls, are you still playing dnd? And does that mean that you "really" want to play dnd, as opposed to some other system? It's fascinating and I think that the conversations in the tabletop gaming space and video gaming space should happen in conversation with each other when it comes to game design in general.

** Besides the assumption of able-bodiedness, you may or may not also notice the pervasive assumption of right-handedness, something that also infuriates me on occasion. As an example, consider how Skyward Sword HD took away the left-handed motion control option for Link's sword.

kind of sucks how ableism permeates discussions of a hobby i really enjoy

[erraticfairy]

Is Your Childhood Blueprint Holding You Back?

Do you find you don’t deal with situations or relationships as successfully as you’d like? Do you feel depressed, anxious, or think negative things about yourself, others or the world? If so, it could be that your blueprint is holding you back.

You can think of your blueprint as everything you felt, saw, thought, touch, tasted, laughed or cried at. Millions of experiential data points creating your unique map of how the world works. But a map created before you are cognitively mature enough to understand or handle difficult situations.

Because this blueprint comes from the cause and effect on a child mind there can be limitations on how we now see the world. If we had good mentoring, a stable view of ourselves, and satisfying relationships, then it’s likely we’ll have a healthy blueprint. However, if we experienced poor mentoring, a negative view of ourselves, with less than stable relationships, then our blueprint could be more dysfunctional. Leading us to see the world as unpredictable, uncaring and even traumatic.

These are simplistic extremes for sure, and most people’s lives are far less black and white. However, the point is the same: no matter how the creation of our blueprint happened, it will influence our adult decision-making for the rest of our lives. If this blueprint is mostly dysfunctional, it can leave us vulnerable to mental health issues unless we take steps to change our reoccurring unhealthy responses.1

Our blueprint is important because it plays an integral part in everything we do. Without being aware of it, every day your brain is constantly using your blueprint to predict your environment by following pre-programmed, default responses for familiar tasks2 : how you cook dinner, how you eat, drive, order your coffee, etc. It doesn’t matter the situation, you’ll have a response ready: In this situation you will = think this, feel this, and act like this. And most of the time this is okay. But what happens when we come across a situation that our younger self couldn’t deal with in a healthy way?

Let’s say you had difficulties feeling worthy and appreciated as a child and one day at work your boss shouts at you in front of your colleagues? How do you respond? Well, that’s up to your old blueprint. In less than a second your brain is accessing how you managed similar situations in the past. Maybe it accesses the time you were 12 and a teacher shouted at you in front of the class. You cried and the shame you felt was painful. So, now in front of your boss, your blueprint tells you to “stay quiet and shut down your feelings.” So, that is exactly what you do. Your old responses leaving you helpless in the face of an aggressive other.

If you think you don’t manage certain situations or people well, it might be time edit your old blueprint. To do this, I encourage you to reflect on any given situation you struggle with. Once you have a situation, park any preconceived notion you have about yourself. It doesn’t matter if the situations were wrong, or unfair, the goal is to examine your thinking, feeling, and behaviors analytically. You want to discover whether your blueprint helps or hurts you. What responses you want to keep and which to replace.

Here are six questions to get started.

Is this my typical response in this situation?

Have I reacted this way before (i.e. is this habitual responding)?

What event from my past does this situation/person remind me of?

Does my current reaction help me or hurt me?

How would I prefer to respond/react to this challenging situation?

What do I tell myself that stops me from responding in this healthier way?

Now you have this new information, you can get to work on practicing your new responses. With time, effort, and practice, these new habitual responses will happen naturally. But be aware, you might have another hidden habitual response that stops you from making these changes “just in case” things get worse. And it’s this cycle of wanting to change but fearing change that keeps many people stuck in the same blueprint.

It is worth acknowledging a lot of our old blueprint emerged as self-protection. Created during a time when being turned down by someone you had a crush on hurt to the core. Or when kids laughing at you felt like the most shameful experience you could ever imagine. As children a lot of things seemed like the end of the world, but as adults they’re not even close. If a person you like turns you down, that’s okay. If other people laugh at you for making a mistake, you’ll survive just fine. You really don’t have to follow the same program over and over, you can change it.

Breaking old habits is hard, but creating a new adult blueprint will help make you more confident and robust in the face of all life’s challenges.

Footnotes:

The Role of Repetitive Negative Thoughts in the Vulnerability for Emotional Problems in Non-Clinical Children. Broeren S, Muris P, Bouwmeester S, van der Heijden KB, Abee A. J Child Fam Stud. 2011 Apr; 20(2):135-148.

Default Mode Contributions to Automated Information Processing. Vatansever, D, Menon, DK, Stamatakis, EA. PNAS; 23 Oct 2017; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.17

from World of Psychology http://bit.ly/2N9wcPE via theshiningmind.com

[psychotherapyconsultants]

Is Your Childhood Blueprint Holding You Back?

Do you find you don’t deal with situations or relationships as successfully as you’d like? Do you feel depressed, anxious, or think negative things about yourself, others or the world? If so, it could be that your blueprint is holding you back.

You can think of your blueprint as everything you felt, saw, thought, touch, tasted, laughed or cried at. Millions of experiential data points creating your unique map of how the world works. But a map created before you are cognitively mature enough to understand or handle difficult situations.

Because this blueprint comes from the cause and effect on a child mind there can be limitations on how we now see the world. If we had good mentoring, a stable view of ourselves, and satisfying relationships, then it’s likely we’ll have a healthy blueprint. However, if we experienced poor mentoring, a negative view of ourselves, with less than stable relationships, then our blueprint could be more dysfunctional. Leading us to see the world as unpredictable, uncaring and even traumatic.

These are simplistic extremes for sure, and most people’s lives are far less black and white. However, the point is the same: no matter how the creation of our blueprint happened, it will influence our adult decision-making for the rest of our lives. If this blueprint is mostly dysfunctional, it can leave us vulnerable to mental health issues unless we take steps to change our reoccurring unhealthy responses.1

Our blueprint is important because it plays an integral part in everything we do. Without being aware of it, every day your brain is constantly using your blueprint to predict your environment by following pre-programmed, default responses for familiar tasks2 : how you cook dinner, how you eat, drive, order your coffee, etc. It doesn’t matter the situation, you’ll have a response ready: In this situation you will = think this, feel this, and act like this. And most of the time this is okay. But what happens when we come across a situation that our younger self couldn’t deal with in a healthy way?

Let’s say you had difficulties feeling worthy and appreciated as a child and one day at work your boss shouts at you in front of your colleagues? How do you respond? Well, that’s up to your old blueprint. In less than a second your brain is accessing how you managed similar situations in the past. Maybe it accesses the time you were 12 and a teacher shouted at you in front of the class. You cried and the shame you felt was painful. So, now in front of your boss, your blueprint tells you to “stay quiet and shut down your feelings.” So, that is exactly what you do. Your old responses leaving you helpless in the face of an aggressive other.

If you think you don’t manage certain situations or people well, it might be time edit your old blueprint. To do this, I encourage you to reflect on any given situation you struggle with. Once you have a situation, park any preconceived notion you have about yourself. It doesn’t matter if the situations were wrong, or unfair, the goal is to examine your thinking, feeling, and behaviors analytically. You want to discover whether your blueprint helps or hurts you. What responses you want to keep and which to replace.

Here are six questions to get started.

Is this my typical response in this situation?

Have I reacted this way before (i.e. is this habitual responding)?

What event from my past does this situation/person remind me of?

Does my current reaction help me or hurt me?

How would I prefer to respond/react to this challenging situation?

What do I tell myself that stops me from responding in this healthier way?

Now you have this new information, you can get to work on practicing your new responses. With time, effort, and practice, these new habitual responses will happen naturally. But be aware, you might have another hidden habitual response that stops you from making these changes “just in case” things get worse. And it’s this cycle of wanting to change but fearing change that keeps many people stuck in the same blueprint.

It is worth acknowledging a lot of our old blueprint emerged as self-protection. Created during a time when being turned down by someone you had a crush on hurt to the core. Or when kids laughing at you felt like the most shameful experience you could ever imagine. As children a lot of things seemed like the end of the world, but as adults they’re not even close. If a person you like turns you down, that’s okay. If other people laugh at you for making a mistake, you’ll survive just fine. You really don’t have to follow the same program over and over, you can change it.

Breaking old habits is hard, but creating a new adult blueprint will help make you more confident and robust in the face of all life’s challenges.

Footnotes:

The Role of Repetitive Negative Thoughts in the Vulnerability for Emotional Problems in Non-Clinical Children. Broeren S, Muris P, Bouwmeester S, van der Heijden KB, Abee A. J Child Fam Stud. 2011 Apr; 20(2):135-148.

Default Mode Contributions to Automated Information Processing. Vatansever, D, Menon, DK, Stamatakis, EA. PNAS; 23 Oct 2017; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.17

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/is-your-childhood-blueprint-holding-you-back/

[talkingsquidphd]

Review: Jason Mittell, “Complex TV”

Entering my third year of grad school feels like leaving behind the comforting Shire of coursework and term papers and striking out for the Mordor of dissertation writing. The overall plan is clear – chuck the ring in the volcano, write a book people want to read – but standing in the doorway needing to take the first actual steps of such a grand undertaking has me asking stupid basic questions like:

Imagine my relief when I picked up Jason Mittell’s Complex TV and was rewarded with not only a model of the kind of monograph I aspire to write, but also an encouraging glimpse behind the scenes of an ambitious book-length scholarly project.

Mittell closes Complex TV with several pages admitting the project’s challenges and limitations. Big on practicing what he preaches – more on that later – Mittell decided to publish his scholarly project on serial TV serially, making chapters available online for perusal and critique as they were written. This practice, says Mittell, came with both rewards and challenges:

“Of course, this openness also meant that when I ran into trouble, anyone could see it… my nine-month hiatus felt like a very public failure, letting down readers through my stalled momentum and providing visible evidence of the all-too-common instance of an academic missing publishing deadlines. But such failure can be extremely productive, as the chapter I was struggling with transformed radically during my break…” (352)

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard someone speak to the difficulty and emotional strain of book-length academic writing. But it was, unbelievably, the first time I’d heard it couched in a kind of “it gets better” context – not a disheartening exposé on the part of someone who, for better or worse, went ABD, but a frank admission of specific failures from someone who got through it and whose work I admire immensely. Less “how the sausage is made,” more “getting a peek behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.” As someone who worries regularly about academia’s tendency to dehumanize its practitioners, it was also comforting to me to see Mittell find space to share these personal reflections in a major academic publication – another aspiration to add to my dissertation checklist.

It might feel odd to start a review with the book’s closing words, but the structure of Complex TV – one of the book’s primary innovations – actually encourages its readers to experience its chapters in virtually any order they like. Why? Formally, Complex TV takes on the tall order of using the form of complex TV itself to tell its story – striking a balance between rewarding intense audience engagement and accumulated knowledge and welcoming audience members who have engaged the material out of order or less religiously. Naturally, the result of a monograph whose chapters can be read in any order is an argument which doesn’t strive towards a single unified thesis beyond ‘complex TV is a thing and takes many forms.’ Instead, the book sets off little Big Bangs in a number of undeveloped galaxies of TV criticism, giving the impression of a cartographer starting in the center of a map and fleshing out in all directions rather than an explorer breaking the next ten feet of a particular trail. Again, the idea of opening up new arenas of thought sounds a lot more appealing to this budding scholar than picking a niche scholarly hill to die on.

[This is how I picture the book’s structure. There are many points of overlap between the chapters and a central point which they all touch on, but each has its own substantial claim to a unique arena of thought.]

The other half of my unabashed love for Complex TV comes from its take on fan engagement. Not only does the book consistently argue that a range of fan practices are both valid and valuable, it does so as a cornerstone of its argument rather than as a tokenized afterthought or a discreet footnote. Mittell’s definition of complex TV itself is built largely around the idea of the “operational aesthetic” – the “conscious accumulation, analysis, and hypothesizing of information concerning how the story is told” (169). Picture this familiar scene: I recently sat down with a couple friends and discussed the most recent finale of Game of Thrones, analyzing (no spoilers, I swear) an extended shot of a particular character pulling a face. Combining character analysis (“this seemed out of character for him”), plot analysis (“the last scene he was in involved X, and he had no clear reason to be in this scene”), and formal analysis (“they put in two lingering shots, they wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t important”), we came to certain conclusions about what this strange expression foreshadowed. Just like that, we had engaged with complex TV through the operational aesthetic.

To anyone who’s been a serious fan of something televisual for a long time, this probably sounds a lot like just being a serious fan of something. As a superfan of Korean dramas, you might “accumulate” information about a drama’s characters by memorizing their birthdays and blood types, “analyze” a touching bit of banter between the female lead and the second male lead, and “hypothesize” that the second male lead is finally going to get the girl this time. (He isn’t.) But the key to Mittell’s argument is that this metatextual and reflexive behavior is no longer the stuff of obscure fan sites and hobbyhorse email newsletters, left up to the fickle chance of unexpected hits and cult followings. These days, shows are being designed to elicit this kind of engagement from anyone and everyone, and the operational aesthetic is consequently rearing its head everywhere from the water cooler to the front page of Reddit.

[And people like Anderson from Sherlock, long shunned by the daywalkers, can be open about their obsessions instead of turning their office into one big conspiracy wall.]

This blanket affirmation of fan practice allows Mittell to do some fiddly and impressive work on fan engagement. In a particularly excellent chapter on Lost and the evolution of its integral and infinitely complex fan wiki, Mittell navigates a very tricky line, productively distinguishing transformative fan practice (such as fanfiction) from supplementary fan practice (such as recording a show’s canon information in a wiki) without hierarchizing one over the other. Especially intriguing was Mittell’s discussion of “spoiler fan” culture – folks who collect leaked info, surf fan theory forums, and engage in furious analysis in an attempt to “spoil” the show and its secrets for themselves as early as possible. In Mittell’s view, spoiler fans are the operational aesthetic taken to its most extreme conclusion, an exaggerated version of what complex TV definitionally asks of its viewers.

The spoiler fan discussion felt particularly relevant to the ripple in the complex-TV time-space continuum that was Westworld, HBO’s 2016 prestige TV remake of the old Yul Brynner flick. The show inspired a bustling Reddit community which rather controversially pieced together all of its many twists and turns well in advance through a pooling of information, interpretation, and theory. Some considered this a failure on Westworld’s part, assuming that the purpose of a prestige show is to keep even its most dedicated viewers baffled and guessing until the last second. Are they right? Did Westworld underestimate the operational aesthetic and the dedication of fan sleuths, making its twists too obvious to a careful observer? Or was it masterfully designed to reward spoiler fan practices while preserving the show’s mysteries for the non-spoiler-fan audience – a complex TV ideal? The jury, it seems, will remain out for some time.

[The Man in Black is basically a spoiler fan trying to unlock the secrets of Westworld’s operational aesthetic.]

Acting as a further ally to the fan community, Mittell helps validate fan scholars and scholar fans in a chapter urging critics to let evaluation back into the realm of criticism. Sentiments that get a lot of play in student term paper conferences – “I don’t care if you like the book or not, I care what you think about it” – have kept simple statements of appreciation out of contemporary literary criticism to a large degree. Mittell argues that feeling free to declare one’s basic, personal appreciation of a text in the context of criticism would spare us a lot of essays along the lines of “thesis: why Mad Men is great, not because I have a personal reason for liking it, but because of these brilliant universal objective formal things it does, and anyone who disagrees just doesn’t understand its formal, structural, objective genius.” Consciously or unconsciously, Mittell’s call for evaluation in criticism helps free scholars of the popular from a deadly professional catch-22. As a fan scholar, you can choose to hide your fan investments in an effort to ensure your work will be taken seriously as ‘objective’ criticism, but this will inevitably perpetuate the idea that fans are unwelcome in academic discourse, and it might invalidate your work if your investments are later discovered. Conversely, you can declare your fan investments from the start, have a certain subset of the academy consider your work invalid as a matter of course, and proceed through your career feeling like you have something to prove and an extra swamp of unfair assumptions to wade through. If and only if personal fan investment, appreciation, and evaluation shed their stigma in the academy will fan studies fully bridge the gap between academia and fandom. Calls to action like Mittell’s are the baby steps necessary to get us there.

In addition to these broad choices, smaller charms cemented my esteem for Complex TV. Included alongside the holy trinity of prestige television (The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and The Wire) were analyses of Battlestar Galactica, marking the encouraging entry of an sf show into the old boys’ club of mimetic TV that invariably gets play in TV scholarship. To accommodate the invitation to read in any order, each individual chapter had a clear but flexible structure (genre history, general principle, broad survey of short examples, then a case study of a particular show or two and its relevant phenomenon). Finally, Mittell’s affect is clean and conversational, never afraid to straightforwardly signpost where other academic writing might waffle. Take chapter one, sentence one: “This book’s main argument is that over the past two decades, a new model of storytelling has emerged as an alternative to the conventional episodic and serial forms that have typified most American television since its inception, a mode I call narrative complexity” (17). Let’s hope that in short order, I’ll have a sentence this clean and clear poised to incorporate my disparate interests into a dissertation. In the intervening time, I’m sure I’ll keep coming back to Complex TV for inspiration.