#But I’ve built my own version of their post canon at this point

[pzyii]

what’s the best part of the buffy the vampire slayer comics? The two times buffy calls willow “my hero”

other than that not much there to see

[a-god-in-crime-alley]

So I’mma do a quick rant on Tim and the whole “forever 17” thing people are always going on about.

Disclaimer: some of this is based on my own experience with how I changed as I got older and comments from people that I went months and years without seeing.

I’m AFAB so it’s not quite the same. But I’ve never been one to remember a skin care routine and have relied on good genetics and good hygiene to make this point.

When doing some calculations for another post (you’ve probably seen that post I reblogged about the batkids ages) it hit me WHY it doesn’t look like Tim has aged.

Sure it might just be a style choice because DC wants to keep a chokehold on their Teen audience with Tim. (Even though Damian is RIGHT THERE!!! DC stop making Damian look like Tim for the love of GOD!)

A lot of people don’t actually CHANGE that much from ages 16-24 as long as they are keeping to the same exercise routines and diets. With the exception of Tim’s Brucequest, he kept to a fairly stable routine for Years!

The reason most people change so much early on is because they drop off their usual exercise (gym class) and repetitive diet (school or packed lunch). So you see people’s weight fluctuating (this can have an effect of visible face shape) hair either thinning or thickening and skin either clearing or getting more acne.

Add this to Tim probably having pretty good genetics (his mom looked like she was maybe pushing 30 when she died but was probably closer to mid 40s. Both Janet and Jack were around 10 years older than Bruce, who would have been mid 30s at the time.)

Tim not showing any signs of facial hair can also be down to genetics. Some cis men just NEVER get more than a single chin hair, maybe a max of 5 sparsely scattered along their chin. Those guys usually just pluck them out. They never actually have to shave. Though I think we Have seen Tim shaving again one point. Can’t remember when.

Either way, it makes sense for Tim not to actually look his age in any more than muscle mass. He’s noticeably built compared to how he was when Damian was introduced. (When the artists are going for a more realistic art style.)

Then considering his most recent dimensional adventure to save Bruce after the shit with Failsafe, you see just how much older he looks next to his mother (from that universe) and she didn’t seem that surprised with how he looked. Meaning her version of him is probably around the same age, and anyone who read that issue can see she looked pretty young.

Add all this to the fact it’s Canon that Jason is 23! He’s only at most 3 years older than Tim but is probably closer to 2 years older. (With Jason being 15 going on 16 when he died. And Tim was 12-13 by the 6 month mark after Jason died and Tim became Robin.)

So in conclusion, DC needs to stop acting like Tim’s still a Teenager and acknowledge that he’s a lot closer to 21 (hell, if we go by proper calculations he SHOULD BE 21).

What I’m saying is give us Tim going out for drinks with his older brothers. Have him show up at Jason’s after something bad happens and ask if he’s still up for that drink (in reference to that one time Jason offered to get a 16 year old Tim into a bar.)

Give us Funny Drunk Tim shenanigans to balance out that Dick is a miserable drunk! Have Jason get stuck babysitting both of them because he’s the only one that can actually hold his alcohol. Have the Girls be watching and laughing from across the bar because they unintentionally had their Girls Night and the same place the guys had their Boys Night.

Please DC, I am Begging you!

[ilovedthestars]

Ghosts of the Pressy

Look for the green arrows, lovingly maintained. Follow them to the emergency locker, where its supplies are still neatly packed. From our hands to yours, down the generations, our proof against the future's trouble is still as functional, as ready as the hour we put it aside for you. —the past is no forgotten promise by lunaTactics

Short image description: [ID: Two drawings with the same layout and base layers, but different overlays. Both drawings are very tall, about a 1:4 ratio. At the bottom is Murderbot in a corridor of the Pressy, reaching for a life-tender in an emergency cabinet. The background fades up to a black, starry sky. The first version of the drawing has an overlay of blue text bubbles representing the feed, containing dialogue from Fugitive Telemetry with Aylen, Ratthi and Gurathin. The second version of the drawing is overlaid with a transparent layer of misty, otherworldly blue, affecting everything but Murderbot and the life-tender. Tahe upper part of the drawing is filled with a chain of transparent and glowing blue figures, representing the ghosts of the Pressy. Each ghost has their hands on the shoulders of the one who comes after them, and the final one in the chain hands the life-tender to Murderbot. At the very top of the drawing are the words “It is hope like yours that is our future,” a line from Verso’s fic. /End short ID]

Longer, more detailed image descriptions below the cut!

--

Sometimes you read a fic that you can’t get out of your head and you just have to make art about it.

the past is no forgotten promise by the wonderful Verso aka lunaTactics aka @grammarpedant gives me so many emotions, and of course the best thing to do with emotions is to make more stuff out of them! It’s been an entire year since I made this art and shared it on discord, but I’ve never put it up anywhere else! So here is my labor of love, the first Murderbot fanart I ever made and probably still the most ambitious that I’ve completed so far.

In addition to Tumblr, this artwork is now posted to Ao3, with a second chapter that contains some thoughts & musings about why I made this and the choices that went into creating it. You can find it here:

Below the cut is a full image description of all the detail you’d notice from looking closely at the artworks, as well as translations of the Preservation language (written in Aurebesh script) that appears in the background.

Long image descriptions:

Canon version:

From the top down, the background fades smoothly from starry black to the yellowish walls of the Pressy, which are scuffed and textured. Murderbot stands in front of a gray emergency supplies cabinet built into the wall, facing away from the viewer. It has medium brown skin and dark brown, slightly scruffy hair. It’s wearing a dark blue hoodie with the hood down, leaving some inorganic parts at the back of its neck visible. It reaches up towards the life-tender on the shelf.

The emergency cabinet has a glowing green sign above it, with text in aurebesh (an abstract sci-fi script, not readable to English speakers, although the text will be translated below) and arrows pointing down. The life-tender sits on the top shelf. It has a metal frame with a large bulge of folded material, and is labeled with a red tag in aurebesh. Other items sit on the shelf below, including medkits with the red plus symbol. The open door of the cabinet has a sign with a large green warning triangle and some text represented with black lines. The door is slightly scuffed and three lines of aurebesh text are graffitied on it in messy blue ink.

On the wall to the left of Murderbot and the cabinet is a large green arrow pointing to the emergency supplies cabinet, as well as a shiny metal plaque with aurebesh text. To the right of the sign, a sheet of transparent material bolted to the wall covers more blue aurebesh graffiti.

Overlaying the drawing and filling in the negative space in the top 2/3 are numerous text bubbles representing feed conversations. These contain dialogue from Fugitive Telemetry, transcribed below with notes on the visual appearance.(Slightly glowy light blue text, grouped into speech bubble or text message-like rounded rectangles, filled with transparent blue) SecUnit: I’m almost there. Just give me a fucking minute. Aylen: You know, swearing during operations doesn’t meet the professional conduct standards of Station Security. SecUnit: Because Senior Indah has never told anybody to fuck off. Aylen: You have me there. SecUnit: I’m going offline now. Aylen: Understood. Good luck. Disconnected.

(A gap, followed by a different style of text bubble which cuts across the entire width of the drawing. The top outline is formed by a horizontal green line that starts with a waveform representing a short burst of static or noise, and the bottom outline is the same but with the waveform at the end. The waveforms interrupt the first and last lines of text, showing the transmission being started and cut off abruptly. The bubble is filled with green static that bleeds outside the lines. The text inside the bubble is also glowy green.)

[caps] This emergency device alerts the port authority notification network and the transponder will send your location to [end caps]

(Another gap, followed by more blue feed bubbles with a new conversation)

Connection Established. SecUnit: I need help. Ratthi: SecUnit, what’s wrong? SecUnit: Which one of these things is most like an EVAC suit? Ratthi: Uh, are you up on the Pressy? The closest thing I see to an EVAC suit in there is a life-tender. But (overlapping the previous bubble to cut off the sentence) Gurathin: There, third shelf down, with the red tags.

(A gap in the feed bubbles which is filled with the main contents of the drawing, including Murderbot, as described above. The final bubbles are tucked into the lower left corner, behind Murderbot.)

Gurathin: Wait, why do you need it? What are you doing? SecUnit: It’s a Station Security thing, I’ll tell you later. Disconnected.

End ID of canon version.

Fic version:

All the elements from the previous drawing remain, except for the feed bubble overlays, which are gone. Instead, the corridor of the Pressy is overlaid with a ghostly blue mist, giving it a much more otherworldly atmosphere. Murderbot and the life-tender are the only things unaffected by the blue overlay, appearing more solid than their surroundings.

A chain of ghostly blue human figures fill the negative space above Murderbot. The last ghost in the chain is holding out her arms so that, although the cabinet shelf is still visible through the translucent overlay, she appears to be holding the life-tender and handing it to Murderbot. She is looking down at Murderbot and smiling gently. The figure behind her rests their hands on her shoulders. Each ghost in the chain smiles down at their successor with a hand or arm around their shoulder. Their appearances vary, and wear different styles of loose-fitting clothing. At the start of the chain of figures is Captain Makeba, looking down at the other ghosts and at Murderbot. She has short hair and wears a loose robe, and her arms are spread wide in welcome. There is a four-pointed star shining in the center of her chest.

Above the ghosts, in the black and starry part of the background, is a centered column of text with one word on each line. It reads, “It is hope like yours that is our future.” (A direct quote from the past is no forgotten promise.)

End long image descriptions.

Aurebesh translations: The glowing green text above the cabinet says “Emergency.” The metal plaque on the wall says “Station Historical & Environmental Management Preserved Site.” The label on the life-tender says “life-tender.” The graffiti on the wall covered with a clear protective sheet says “Here, you are loved,” a line from the past is no forgotten promise. The graffiti on the inside of the door is three names: RoundedLoaf, lunaTactics, lovedthestars.

(A note on Aurebesh: This is a script from Star Wars, which I was not previously familiar with. It was suggested to me by Sparrow on the Murderbot discord when I asked for ideas on how to portray the old Preservation language that Murderbot didn’t have a translation for. I wanted something that looked like a language, but wasn’t immediately readable by someone looking at the art. Aurebesh is a 1:1 substitution for the characters of the English alphabet, which had the added bonus of letting me hide some messages in plain sight.)

[curator-on-ao3]

Director's cut for Autobiography of Kristin Clancy OR a Voyager of your choice (of the 72 of them!!?!)

Whoa. I’ve written 72 Voyager fics? That’s … wow.

I so much appreciate this opportunity, @nab999, and I think I’ll talk about my girl, Admiral Kirsten “Sheer Fucking Hubris” Clancy. 💪 ❤️

Some quick facts:

After key aspects of The Autobiography of Kirsten Clancy burst into my mind like the Kool-Aid Man through a wall, I sat on the ideas for more than a year because I didn’t want to put in the time and effort the story would require.

Writing an entire-ass autobiography (not even a memoir) for a character who has, generously speaking, three scenes, is a bit much, even for me.

After I wrote this story that I hadn’t wanted to write, I wrote maybe a dozen ficlets spread across five other AO3 stories, plus a multi-chap (Kirsten Clancy/Katrina Cornwell) set in the same universe.

I am so damn glad I wrote this fic.

Look at this bookmark:

And this comment from a professional author (I don’t know how she found the story):

And this tweet from the actress who portrayed Clancy (whom I didn’t tag or try to attract attention from in any way but she somehow found out about the autobiography I wrote for her character):

And I’m gonna drop the link for my Women at Warp blog post about this story, too: https://www.womenatwarp.com/a-story-worth-telling-kirsten-clancy/

Writing this story changed me — for the better. The tight, self-aware point of view was a delicious challenge. Tracing the arc of most of a lifetime was an exercise in patience, even though parts of the story flowed as if the protagonist was whispering in my ear. And what a protagonist! Kirsten Clancy is flawed, foul-mouthed, and absolutely ferocious in her love and protection. She helped hold together the Federation that Jean-Luc Picard could have squandered in his dangerous optimism that led to the attack on Mars. She’s right, except when she’s not. And when she’s wrong, she sometimes she pays mightily for it.

Things I took special pleasure in:

A large, loving family (of origin and of her own creation) because those are under-represented in Trek.

A Starfleet that is not just accommodating but in fact truly helpful when it comes to marriage, family, mental health crashes (sometimes), mentorship, and other needs.

Expanding other minor characters like Sonya Gomez and Edward Jellico. The canon-nameless captain of the Melbourne who dies in Wolf 359 was critical for this story and I love her to this day.

Worldbuilding Mars, a planet we know relatively little about in Trek as opposed to Vulcan or planets in the Bajoran system. I used most of the little canon we have, then built from there.

The flaws in Clancy’s parents. I wrote them as American-style “patriots” who are baffled by their daughter but love her and work very, very hard to open their own minds to understand her and help her reach her goals.

The first original character that occurred to me for this story was Great Aunt Vivienne.

The first image that occurred to me for this story was Kirsten Clancy beaming home after the attack on Mars and crumpling into a loved one’s arms.

The last idea for this story as I outlined was the chapter with the Breen. I actually had two versions of the story for a while, one with the Breen and one without. I’m glad I kept that in.

A part that was painfully rewarding to write was Starfleet Command’s response during the attack on Mars. I modeled that after accounts I’ve read about US airline command center responses during 9/11. One of my “favorite” parts is the admirals arriving from their First Contact Day parties unprepared, out of uniform, running, running, running, Nechayev with her high heels dangling from her finger as she runs barefoot.

Oh, and on the other end of the funny-serious spectrum, Roux, the pilot of the first ship Clancy commands, the Barrie? He’s serial-numbers-barely-filed-off Gordon Malloy from The Orville. Because I can.

Thank you again and again for giving me a chance to talk this story that means so much to me, @nab999. ❤️

Want more information about a fic I wrote? Send me an ask.

[luna-light-eclipse]

Badge my beloved! Don’t know what you’re on about it’s perfect I love it.

Fun fact! This is the second time I’ve written something along the lines of everything goes wrong and you can’t fix it so I have experience! It’s also the form of angst that comes easiest to me. Mmmm tasty tasty inevitability.

No one wins here. Not the main character, not the enemy and not the ‘good guys’ which is what I think really makes something like this punch so hard. Wolf and Ghost are such tragic characters in canon that they’re the perfect subjects for this type of thing.

Also you are so right about phone typing being sucky for long form things. There’s a reason this took me so many hours. But ough I just couldn’t stop. And here I am, phone typing once more. I’m still rotating this AU in my brain in all its miserable glory. Makes me remember why I started writing and I really needed that recently so thanks.

-

@screaming-for-eternally

I’m doing it this way so I can minimise scrolling through long posts on my blog hope that’s ok-

Yes! Crow! I genuinely can’t believe I forgot to add him the first time because something about the opposition to his story when compared to the canon (in this version he’d be instead the person who was killed by the former hero went mad instead of hated for killing someone they care about-) The fact that he was in a unique position to clear Wolfs name is just mmmm icing on the cake.

Cayde totally prefers house light to the tower- it doubly helps that after Lakshmi’s very public, very gruesome execution (wolf made it dramatic to pull all the negative focus onto them- adding more onto them having given up on returning! Ouch) the Eliksni are kinda grateful towards wolf. Not that any of them ever bring it up to the humans but open secret and all that.

-

I’ve also been shaking more thoughts out of my brain for the past few hours so have this:

-Picture vanguard and allies returning to the tower unharmed and with wolfs body. And having to explain what happened. And telling Cayde about how wolf died, that they were calling his name and how they didn’t want to die and that at some point wolf had believed that they had wanted to die.

-Cayde being so utterly devastated. Exo’s may be unable to physically cry but you can hear it, all of the stress and loathing that had built up over the years being released in the form of all encompassing grief. The once carefree hunter vanguard now knelt on the ground with wolf in his arms wailing in loss and much like those who had watched wolfs death no one could comfort him because it was their fault and nothing was going to be ok.

-They look for wolfs ship and find Sundance tucked away safely into a box. Wolf had picked her up on the way to Cayde and never been able to return her to him. The ghost shell has been cleaned and it’s the only thing that’s been maintained in the ship.

-Wolf never knew if Cayde woke up

-Eido bugs Cayde for stories about wolf and it puts everyone on edge since Cayde’s been quiet and gloomy since wolfs body had been brought back and most of the anger had drained from him. Eventually he relents though because Eido is just too nice not to. She loves hearing about wolfs exploits and carefully records all of it so it can’t be forgotten.

-If Crow had accepted Uldrens memories the vanguard would have been too horrified to be angry at him. (Also Crows horror at his own actions was telling enough that they weren’t the same person anymore, neither Zavala nor Ikora could go through what they did to wolf a second time).

-Xur will say comforting words to wolf if they find him that week. The nine allow this, not because they care they just see no reason to stop it. Whether or not wolf actually hears what’s being said to them is debatable. It’s the thought that counts though.

-Wolf suffers audial and visual hallucinations. Do with that what you will.

-Ghost misses being held, they don’t push the subject though.

-Zavala attempts to apologise to Cayde. He gets punched for his efforts, Cayde tells him that Zavala ‘doesn’t deserve to soothe his own bruised ego’.

-The Eliksni sneak Cayde out afterwards at some point so he can get away from the increasing looks of pity, now for ‘how terrible it must have been to have no one believe anything you say’ hypocrites. Cayde now really hates being pitied. He’s happy to finally see a forest (and to also be away from people).

-The only reason wolf didn’t kill themselves (permanently) was because they cared too much about ghost to hurt them. There is just so much love in this gaurdian it’s so sad.

-Not even Savathun predicted this.

I feel mildly bad about not answering those asks yet BUT I've been really busy so I'm just gonna leave some old drabbles and other stuff I've collected here

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"There is nothing in any vex simulation or psion prediction that could keep me from being a thorn in the side of existence"

-YW, after coming back from the dead, in some probable AU I'll never write

---

“I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you. But, I’ll be fine, you can-” They hug him tighter as he starts to push away from them.

…They aren’t letting him go, are they?

“...Guardian,” he warns, “Put me down. Now.”

They only let out a garbled hum in response, perfectly happy to squeeze the life out of him.

“We do not have time for this- I will stab you, let-”

“You and what army, old man?” Even through the layers of harsh static, the smug edge to the Young Wolf’s voice was abundantly clear to anyone listening. They were as infuriating and stubborn as ever.

And Saint and that flamboyant Cloudstrider were not helping.

“We- We have work to do, you can show your affections later- Saint! Stop laughing!”

---

Crow: Why does The Guardian call you babygirl?

Sam Moleyn: how about we stop talking for awhile

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Ann, banging on the door: Guys! I need you to hide me! Noble, ushering her in: Ann, what happened?! Ann: G! I spilled bleach on their cloak- Noble, pushing her back out: Not a chance. You’re on your own. Ann: Wait- They’ll kill me-! Noble, slamming the door: Goodbye.

---

Wolf: STOP IT Wolf: STOP TALKING ABOUT BEING POSSESSED Ghost: i’m free real estate Wolf: YOU ARE NOT FREE REAL ESTATE-

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Crow: How do I get revenge? Ann: I am legally obliged to tell you ‘forgiveness’. Crow: Guardian, how do I get revenge? Ruin, “Godslayer”: I am also legally obliged to say ‘forgiveness’, but you- Noble, putting his hand over their mouth: I’m gonna stop you right there.

---

ALSO SOME LORE

Wolf is canonically a little shit but also terrifying. You love to see it

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Ann: Let’s apologize on the count of 3. Phyra: I didn’t do anythin- Ann: 1… 2… 3. Phyra: Ann: Ann: see, now I’m just disappointed in both of us Phyra: intense glaring

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"In the Age of Triumph, in the final battle, when the light began to wane, one stood. Burned by the embers of Armageddon, their soul blistered by the fires of hell and tainted beyond redemption, they choose the path of perpetual torment. In their ravenous hatred, they found no peace; and with fiery conviction, they scoured the Ascendant realms, seeking vengeance against the dark Disciples who wronged them. They wore the crown of the Iron Lords, and those that tasted the bite of their sword named them... The Young Wolf."

i don't know what i was on for this one, but I rediscover it every once in awhile and alter it a bit

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"He's all they've been thinking about, but he's going to have to get used to their absence. The flat will be quiet. The Tower, normal... Their bed, empty.

It's how things must be.

Things could be different in another life, perhaps.

But not this one.

They have to go, one day soon."

-on Crow-YW angst about Wolf's predicted death.

[bao3bei4]

fan language: the victorian imaginary and cnovel fandom

there’s this pinterest image i’ve seen circulating a lot in the past year i’ve been on fandom social media. it’s a drawn infographic of a, i guess, asian-looking woman holding a fan in different places relative to her face to show what the graphic helpfully calls “the language of the fan.”

people like sharing it. they like thinking about what nefarious ancient chinese hanky code shenanigans their favorite fan-toting character might get up to⁠—accidentally or on purpose. and what’s the problem with that?

the problem is that fan language isn’t chinese. it’s victorian. and even then, it’s not really quite victorian at all. 

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

fans served a primarily utilitarian purpose throughout chinese history. of course, most of the surviving fans we see⁠—and the types of fans we tend to care about⁠—are closer to art pieces. but realistically speaking, the majority of fans were made of cheaper material for more mundane purposes. in china, just like all around the world, people fanned themselves. it got hot!

so here’s a big tipoff. it would be very difficult to use a fan if you had an elaborate language centered around fanning yourself.

you might argue that fine, everyday working people didn’t have a fan language. but wealthy people might have had one. the problem we encounter here is that fans weren’t really gendered. (caveat here that certain types of fans were more popular with women. however, those tended to be the round silk fans, ones that bear no resemblance to the folding fans in the graphic). no disrespect to the gnc old man fuckers in the crowd, but this language isn’t quite masc enough for a tool that someone’s dad might regularly use.

folding fans, we know, reached europe in the 17th century and gained immense popularity in the 18th. it was there that fans began to take on a gendered quality. ariel beaujot describes in their 2012 victorian fashion accessories how middle class women, in the midst of a top shortage, found themselves clutching fans in hopes of securing a husband.

she quotes an article from the illustrated london news, suggesting “women ‘not only’ used fans to ‘move the air and cool themselves but also to express their sentiments.’” general wisdom was that the movement of the fan was sufficiently expressive that it augmented a woman’s displays of emotion. and of course, the more english audiences became aware that it might do so, the more they might use their fans purposefully in that way.

notice, however, that this is no more codified than body language in general is. it turns out that “the language of the fan” was actually created by fan manufacturers at the turn of the 20th century⁠—hundreds of years after their arrival⁠ in europe—to sell more fans. i’m not even kidding right now. the story goes that it was louis duvelleroy of the maison duvelleroy who decided to include pamphlets on the language with each fan sold.

interestingly enough, beaujot suggests that it didn’t really matter what each particular fan sign meant. gentlemen could tell when they were being flirted with. as it happens, meaningful eye contact and a light flutter near the face may be a lingua franca.

so it seems then, the language of the fan is merely part of this victorian imaginary we collectively have today, which in turn itself was itself captivated by china.

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

victorian references come up perhaps unexpectedly often in cnovel fandom, most often with regards to modesty.

it’s a bit of an awkward reference considering that chinese traditional fashion⁠—and the ambiguous time periods in which these novels are set⁠—far predate victorian england. it is even more awkward considering that victoria and her covered ankles did um. imperialize china.

but nonetheless, it is common. and to make a point about how ubiquitous it is, here is a link to the twitter search for “sqq victorian.” sqq is the fandom abbreviation for shen qingqiu, the main character of the scum villain’s self-saving system, by the way.

this is an awful lot of results for a search involving a chinese man who spends the entire novel in either real modern-day china or fantasy ancient china. that’s all i’m going to say on the matter, without referencing any specific tweet.

i think people are aware of the anachronism. and i think they don’t mind. even the most cursory research reveals that fan language is european and a revisionist fantasy. wikipedia can tell us this⁠—i checked!

but it doesn’t matter to me whether people are trying to make an internally consistent canon compliant claim, or whether they’re just free associating between fan facts they know. it is, instead, more interesting to me that people consistently refer to this particular bit of history. and that’s what i want to talk about today⁠—the relationship of fandom today to this two hundred odd year span of time in england (roughly stuart to victorian times) and england in that time period to its contemporaneous china.

things will slip a little here. victorian has expanded in timeframe, if only because random guys posting online do not care overly much for respect for the intricacies of british history. china has expanded in geographic location, if only because the english of the time themselves conflated china with all of asia.

in addition, note that i am critiquing a certain perspective on the topic. this is why i write about fan as white here⁠—not because all fans are white⁠—but because the tendencies i’m examining have a clear historical antecedent in whiteness that shapes how white fans encounter these novels.

i’m sure some fans of color participate in these practices. however i don’t really care about that. they are not its main perpetrators nor its main beneficiaries. so personally i am minding my own business on that front.

it’s instead important to me to illuminate the linkage between white as subject and chinese as object in history and in the present that i do argue that fannish products today are built upon.

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

it’s not radical, or even new at all, for white audiences to consume⁠—or create their own versions of⁠—chinese art en masse. in many ways the white creators who appear to owe their whole style and aesthetic to their asian peers in turn are just the new chinoiserie.

this is not to say that white people can’t create asian-inspired art. but rather, i am asking you to sit with the discomfort that you may not like the artistic company you keep in the broader view of history, and to consider together what is to be done about that.

now, when i say the new chinoiserie, i first want to establish what the original one is. chinoiserie was a european artistic movement that appeared coincident with the rise in popularity of folding fans that i described above. this is not by coincidence; the european demand for asian imports and the eventual production of lookalikes is the movement itself. so: when we talk about fans, when we talk about china (porcelain), when we talk about tea in england⁠—we are talking about the legacy of chinoiserie.

there are a couple things i want to note here. while english people as a whole had a very tenuous knowledge of what china might be, their appetites for chinoiserie were roughly coincident with national relations with china. as the relationship between england and china moved from trade to out-and-out wars, chinoiserie declined in popularity until china had been safely subjugated once more by the end of the 19th century.

the second thing i want to note on the subject that contrary to what one might think at first, the appeal of chinoiserie was not that it was foreign. eugenia zuroski’s 2013 taste for china examines 18th century english literature and its descriptions of the according material culture with the lens that chinese imports might be formative to english identity, rather than antithetical to it.

beyond that bare thesis, i think it’s also worthwhile to extend her insight that material objects become animated by the literary viewpoints on them. this is true, both in a limited general sense as well as in the sense that english thinkers of the time self-consciously articulated this viewpoint. consider the quote from the illustrated london news above⁠—your fan, that object, says something about you. and not only that, but the objects you surround yourself with ought to.

it’s a bit circular, the idea that written material says that you should allow written material to shape your understanding of physical objects. but it’s both 1) what happened, and 2) integral, i think, to integrating a fannish perspective into the topic.

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japanning is the name for the popular imitative lacquering that english craftspeople developed in domestic response to the demand for lacquerware imports. in the eighteenth century, japanning became an artform especially suited for young women. manuals were published on the subject, urging young women to learn how to paint furniture and other surfaces, encouraging them to rework the designs provided in the text.

it was considered a beneficial activity for them; zuroski describes how it was “associated with commerce and connoisseurship, practical skill and aesthetic judgment.” a skillful japanner, rather than simply obscuring what lay underneath the lacquer, displayed their superior judgment in how they chose to arrange these new canonical figures and effects in a tasteful way to bring out the best qualities of them.

zuroski quotes the first english-language manual on the subject, written in 1688, which explains how japanning allows one to:

alter and correct, take out a piece from one, add a fragment to the next, and make an entire garment compleat in all its parts, though tis wrought out of never so many disagreeing patterns.

this language evokes a very different, very modern practice. it is this english reworking of an asian artform that i think the parallels are most obvious.

white people, through their artistic investment in chinese material objects and aesthetics, integrated them into their own subjectivity. these practices came to say something about the people who participated in them, in a way that had little to do with the country itself. their relationship changed from being a “consumer” of chinese objects to becoming the proprietor of these new aesthetic signifiers.

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

i want to talk about this through a few pairs of tensions on the subject that i think characterize common attitudes then and now.

first, consider the relationship between the self and the other: the chinese object as something that is very familiar to you, speaking to something about your own self vs. the chinese object as something that is fundamentally different from you and unknowable to you. 

consider: [insert character name] is just like me. he would no doubt like the same things i like, consume the same cultural products. we are the same in some meaningful way vs. the fast standard fic disclaimer that “i tried my best when writing this fic, but i’m a english-speaking westerner, and i’m just writing this for fun so...... [excuses and alterations the person has chosen to make in this light],” going hand-in-hand with a preoccupation with authenticity or even overreliance on the unpaid labor of chinese friends and acquaintances. 

consider: hugh honour when he quotes a man from the 1640s claiming “chinoiserie of this even more hybrid kind had become so far removed from genuine Chinese tradition that it was exported from India to China as a novelty to the Chinese themselves” 

these tensions coexist, and look how they have been resolved.

second, consider what we vest in objects themselves: beaujot explains how the fan became a sexualized, coquettish object in the hands of a british woman, but was used to great effect in gilbert and sullivan’s 1885 mikado to demonstrate the docility of asian women. 

consider: these characters became expressions of your sexual desires and fetishes, even as their 5’10 actors themselves are emasculated.

what is liberating for one necessitates the subjugation and fetishization of the other. 

third, consider reactions to the practice: enjoyment of chinese objects as a sign of your cosmopolitan palate vs “so what’s the hype about those ancient chinese gays” pop culture explainers that addressed the unconvinced mainstream.

consider: zuroski describes how both english consumers purchased china in droves, and contemporary publications reported on them. how: 

It was in the pages of these papers that the growing popularity of Chinese things in the early eighteenth century acquired the reputation of a “craze”; they portrayed china fanatics as flawed, fragile, and unreliable characters, and frequently cast chinoiserie itself in the same light.

referenda on fannish behavior serve as referenda on the objects of their devotion, and vice versa. as the difference between identity and fetish collapses, they come to be treated as one and the same by not just participants but their observers. 

at what point does mxtx fic cease to be chinese? 

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

finally, it seems readily apparent that attitudes towards chinese objects may in fact have something to do with attitudes about china as a country. i do not want to suggest that these literary concerns are primarily motivated and begot by forces entirely divorced from the real mechanics of power. 

here, i want to bring in edward said, and his 1993 culture and imperialism. there, he explains how power and legitimacy go hand in hand. one is direct, and one is purely cultural. he originally wrote this in response to the outsize impact that british novelists have had in the maintenance of empire and throughout decolonization. literature, he argues, gives rise to powerful narratives that constrain our ability to think outside of them.

there’s a little bit of an inversion at play here. these are chinese novels, actually. but they’re being transformed by white narratives and artists. and just as i think the form of the novel is important to said’s critique, i think there’s something to be said about the form that fic takes and how it legitimates itself.

bound up in fandom is the idea that you have a right to create and transform as you please. it is a nice idea, but it is one that is directed towards a certain kind of asymmetry. that is, one where the author has all the power. this is the narrative we hear a lot in the history of fandom⁠—litigious authors and plucky fans, fanspaces always under attack from corporate sanitization.

meanwhile, said builds upon raymond schwab’s narrative of cultural exchange between european writers and cultural products outside the imperial core. said explains that fundamental to these two great borrowings (from greek classics and, in the so-called “oriental renaissance” of the late 18th, early 19th centuries from “india, china, japan, persia, and islam”) is asymmetry. 

he had argued prior, in orientalism, that any “cultural exchange” between “partners conscious of inequality” always results in the suffering of the people. and here, he describes how “texts by dead people were read, appreciated, and appropriated” without the presence of any actual living people in that tradition. 

i will not understate that there is a certain economic dynamic complicating this particular fannish asymmetry. mxtx has profited materially from the success of her works, most fans will not. also secondly, mxtx is um. not dead. LMAO.

but first, the international dynamic of extraction that said described is still present. i do not want to get overly into white attitudes towards china in this post, because i am already thoroughly derailed, but i do believe that they structure how white cnovel fandom encounters this texts.

at any rate, any profit she receives is overwhelmingly due to her domestic popularity, not her international popularity. (i say this because many of her international fans have never given her a cent. in fact, most of them have no real way to.) and moreover, as we talk about the structure of english-language fandom, what does it mean to create chinese cultural products without chinese people? 

as white people take ownership over their versions of stories, do we lose something? what narratives about engagement with cnovels might exist outside of the form of classic fandom?

i think a lot of people get the relationship between ideas (the superstructure) and production (the base) confused. oftentimes they will lob in response to criticism, that look! this fic, this fandom, these people are so niche, and so underrepresented in mainstream culture, that their effects are marginal. i am not arguing that anyone’s cql fic causes imperialism. (unless you’re really annoying. then it’s anyone’s game) 

i’m instead arguing something a little bit different. i think, given similar inputs, you tend to get similar outputs. i think we live in the world that imperialism built, and we have clear historical predecessors in terms of white appetites for creating, consuming, and transforming chinese objects. 

we have already seen, in the case of the fan language meme that began this post, that sometimes we even prefer this white chinoiserie. after all, isn’t it beautiful, too? 

i want to bring discomfort to this topic. i want to reject the paradigm of white subject and chinese object; in fact, here in this essay, i have tried to reverse it.

if you are taken aback by the comparisons i make here, how can you make meaningful changes to your fannish practice to address it? 

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

some concluding thoughts on the matter, because i don’t like being misunderstood! 

i am not claiming white fans cannot create fanworks of cnovels or be inspired by asian art or artists. this essay is meant to elaborate on the historical connection between victorian england and cnovel characters and fandom that others have already popularized.

i don’t think people who make victorian jokes are inherently bad or racist. i am encouraging people to think about why we might make them and/or share them

the connections here are meant to be more provocative than strictly literal. (e.g. i don’t literally think writing fanfic is a 1-1 descendant of japanning). these connections are instead meant to 1) make visible the baggage that fans of color often approach fandom with and 2) recontextualize and defamiliarize fannish practice for the purposes of honest critique

please don’t turn this post into being about other different kinds of discourse, or into something that only one “kind” of fan does. please take my words at face value and consider them in good faith. i would really appreciate that.

please feel free to ask me to clarify any statements or supply more in-depth sources :) 

[liesoverthec]

OG 911 Character Details from Canon Pt 2

Hi y’all I’m back! I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who reblogged the last details post - I sort of just thought people would like it and it would die, so to see it travel and hopefully reach more writers was so great so thank you again!

Details under the cut since I went a little crazy 😅 and if this is your first time seeing this, the first part, and any future parts, can be found under this tag here!

Quick note before I get to the details - always, ALWAYS take details from dialogue or plot over details from the set or props if they contradict each other. The writers have the ultimate say over what happens on the show/for the characters, so whatever they say goes, even if it goes against something props has already laid down (eg, Chim’s birthday, sorry Libra crew. He’s an Aries or a Pisces). So keep that in mind for the future in case some of these details I have which are from props/set are changed in the future, or if you’ve noticed something yourself!

Also if you have questions, I am MORE than happy to answer them, although if you leave them in the tags on this post I’m probably gonna lose them, so if it’s something you’d genuinely like an answer to, drop it in my inbox! Besides my standard “ask” tags, I’m also tagging asks about canon details with this tag here. Every time I make a big post like this, I’m going to link all the asks I’ve gotten since the last post, but if you’re looking for more info in the mean time, that’s the other spot to look!

Buck has a grill on his patio.

Eddie doesn’t hang Christopher’s art on the fridge - instead it is either hung on the corkboard in Chris’ room to the left of the door, or Eddie puts it in an actual frame and hangs it using a hammer/nails in Christopher’s room. All the Diaz family has on their fridge is a bunch of bendy people magnets. (I absolutely ADORE him putting all this effort into treating Christopher’s art like it’s something you’d buy from a professional artist).

Info on everyone’s ages can be found here. (Little more discussion of Chim’s situation here).

Albert has a bachelor’s degree! I don’t know in what though, except that it’s some field for which is a Master’s is useful.

Athena was in a sorority in college, Delta Sigma Theta. Their website describes them as “ ...a sisterhood comprised primarily of Black, college-educated women ... [that] considers the issues impacting the Black community and boldly confronts the challenges of African Americans and, hence, all Americans ”, which I love for Athena, and feel is very in-character for her at that time in her life!

Chim is an aviators dude. When he wears sunglasses, they’re always aviators.

Athena also wears nothing but aviators.

Bobby wears square aviators.

Eddie, on the other hand, always wears Wayfarers.

Buck either doesn’t really like sunglasses or he constantly forgets he owns them, since we’ve only seen him wear them once in 60 eps, in a move I’m pretty sure was ONLY for dramatic effect.

Hen’s sunglasses change style over the seasons like her regular glasses do, but she tends to like browline sunglasses.

Info on Christopher’s school can be found here!

There are two colors of dispatch polo, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhythm or reason for who wears what. Maroon - Maddie and Linda. Blue - Josh and May. Jamal has actually worn both maroon and blue, so it doesn’t seem to be TOTALLY set in stone although I’ve never seen anyone else switch. Sue is too badass to wear a dispatch shirt.

Both Bobby and Eddie drive 4 door pickups. Bobby’s is navy. Eddie specifically has a black, 2020 GMC Denali 1500 pickup truck (in case you want to specifically look up what the inside of it looks like or what features it has 😂)

Info on the 118’s medical certifications can be found here.

Correction to Eddie’s living situation from last post: no next door neighbors, but instead UPSTAIRS neighbors. (Pointed out by Abigail in this ask). Also since someone else was wondering the notes of the last post - no, there is absolutely no discussion on the show of whether or not Eddie rents the apartment or owns it. But based on the fact that it’s 1) LA and 2) an apartment, my guess would be he rents it.

When Maddie isn’t feeling like herself, she tends to straighten her hair rather than curl it. It seems to be more when she’s uncertain about her place in her own and other people’s lives, rather than just when she’s simply worried - eg it’s straight in 2B, when she’s uncertain if she wants to continue working as a dispatcher/is unsure about her relationship with Chim.

For work, Chim, Eddie and Buck all use black duffel bags with a LAFD patch on the top. Hen uses several different cute bags, and Bobby seems to have a plain black duffel bag.

Watches - Bobby, Athena, Chim, Hen and Buck all wear their watch on their left wrist (but Athena ONLY wears hers for work, she takes it off at home.) Eddie wears his on his right wrist, and Maddie doesn’t wear one.

Chim (and Maddie by default) literally still have the exact same couch as in the pilot. (Which means that Chim has cuddled Tatiana on that couch, AND Albert has had sex on it. TIME TO GET A NEW ONE, BUCKLEY-HANS 😂)

The 118 has five different rigs - the engine (E118), the ladder truck (T118), two ambulances and the captain’s truck. 95% of the time, when the team is chilling in the cab of a rig and chatting (eg the ‘stuck under a live telephone pole’ scene in Jinx), they’re in the engine, not the truck. (Which I personally learned recently are NOT interchangeable terms!)

Athena and Michael got married when Athena was 37.

If you’d like to give Maddie a full name beyond “Maddie”, you should use Madeline. (I know, I know, in 4x04 she says Maddie is the name on her birth certificate, and that you should never use props details if they contradict script details, but I always thought that was a super weird exchange in 4x04 which could be explained by Maddie getting a nickname since she was born when Margaret and Phillip, you know, actually loved their kids and showed it, so of course Buck doesn’t get one, and in 4x04, Maddie was trying to avoid the entire issue of why she got one and Buck didn’t. But! Do what you want, and use Madeline as the full version of Maddie if you’d like, since that’s what’s on the BOLO in 2x13 😂)

Athena’s call sign is 727 L30, but she doesn’t have a specific squad car - the number changes throughout the series.

Chim really likes chewing gum, but he’s the only one out of the entire family!

The station has an Xbox One S, and it’s white.

In the real LAFD, there are stations 1 through 114. To avoid confusion while filming on the streets (I’m assuming), our fictional LAFD never uses the number of a real station. So if you want another station for a fic, and you want something that would be real in OUR universe, use the numbers 115 and above. They’ve gone as high as 221 in our universe.

Battalions - station 118 is in Battalion 7, which is also not a battalion in real Los Angeles. The 118 has interacted w/ Battalion 1, which is a real battalion, but other ‘non-real which makes them more likely for our universe’ battalions include numbers: 3, 8, 13, 16, 19 and above.

S1 Buck knew the term Jedi, but based on context, didn’t understand AT ALL the context provided by Star Wars, so there’s another edge of his pop culture limits for you.

Chim is the most tech-savvy out of everyone, hands down.

Athena has a VERY active Twitter account.

Abuela’s house number is 8902. I don’t have a street name for you unfortunately though. :/

Athena’s favorite flowers are white roses. None of the other women are really flower people.

Michael likes to wear purple.

When they’re at a call, Buck does pretty much all of the stuff with the hammer and the saw. Eddie does all the work needed with the drill.

Harry goes to Meadowbrook Elementary.

Buck lives on the fourth floor of his apartment building, across the hall from Apt. 416. The lovely @lovelessmotel found this listing for what is more or less the apartment. What happened was: the set crew rented this apartment for the one episode at the end of s2 when Buck moved in, and then over the summer before s3 built their own set of it, and changed some things - eg giving him an island, and moving the sink to a second counter against the far wall, you can see the changes here in this amazing gif set by the awesome Austen, but the listing should let you click around a little more upstairs and figure out dimensions better than what the show provides!

When Athena and Hen go out to eat together, it’s always fast food burgers and fries.

Waffles are Athena’s favorite food, and tiramisu is her favorite dessert.

Every takeout we’ve seen Buck eat has always been in a Chinese food takeout container, and we know he likes Thai food the best. EXCEPT! The one time we see him eat takeout with Eddie and Christopher, they have pizza. So take from that what you will......

Eddie has a cell phone and a landline.

Chim is a shameless multiple texter.

Chim and Bobby sleep closest to the door in their respective bedrooms (both right side of the bed if you are standing at the foot, facing the headboard), and Athena and Maddie sleep furthest away from the door (left side).

Some canon last names for other firefighters at the station in case you wanna add more people to a fic - Mitchell, Sanchez, Serrano (woman), Porter, Meyers (woman), Maxwell, Voyta

Hen and Karen really love decorating their house with dark/red wood.

Karen is Mommy and Hen is Mama.

Bobby has a brother, and a grandmother, and that’s literally ALL we know about his family outside of Marcy and the kids.

Evidence points to Eddie being the oldest child in his family.

Karen has multiple brothers (no sisters), but no idea how many - just that one of them is named Trey, and one of them lives in LA and has kids. They might be the same brother and they might not be.

Both Hen and Athena are only children.

Athena has been on the police force for 30 years.

Christopher and Denny are the same age (born in 2011), and Harry is two years older than them.

Michael lives in apartment 308.

The bank in this universe is CalAm.

Hen and Karen have a picture of Denny, May and Harry on their fireplace mantel.

Eddie having a black thumb + a lot of plants in his living room = him buying fake plants bc he likes the aesthetic ™ or someone (cough Carla cough) is taking care of them for him.

The COVID timeline in OG’s universe is fucked up compared to the real world’s, so it shouldn’t be used as a way to measure time! They just throw it in wherever it makes sense for the story they want to tell (eg the vaccines in s4 ep 8), since s3 was both done before COVID hit but also airing while it was happening. It makes absolutely no sense for May to graduate in March nor for Chris to be going to what is specifically labeled summer camp, and the vaccine plotline was INCREDIBLY early, even for real life, so don’t use anything from that as a measure of time. I’ve found except in specific examples, eg the two tsunami episodes, it’s very safe to say every episode covers a week - fall holidays on the show line up with their real life counterparts, indicating about the same amount of time is passing for us and them.

On that note - Jee-Yun was born in late January, early February 2021. (Conceived in Pinned, which was end of March/beginning of April, meaning Maddie was around a month along at May’s graduation in May ➡ 42 weeks + 3 days from then = late Jan/early Feb. Which unfortunately means we most likely won’t see her birthday celebrated on screen. If we assume she was conceived on the date Pinned aired, aka the very sexy hotel scene, then January 21st or 22nd would be Jee’s birthday, depending on if she was born after midnight or not.

Buck has had at least one other Jeep between the one Maddie gave him, and the one he has now, which means that when he needs a new car, he is purposefully choosing Jeeps.

I hope this was all as interesting/enjoyable to you as it was to me! And just to repeat - I love answering questions so pls let me know if you have any at all ❤

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

Tagging: @buckbuckley

[oviids]

pls share some of your spn fic recs 🥺🥺

ok, a few things first:

followers and mutuals who do not have supernatural brainworms, kindly avert your eyes

i don’t normally rec or even read much fanfic any more but this is a CRISIS ok (cont.)

there is so. much. content for deancas out there and i have incredibly high standards, several ancient ao3 bookmarks, can speedread, and want to spare you guys the experience of wading through it all.

i also have a section for spn femslash since I was pretty into that back in the day (sadly a lot less fan content for this :/)

I don’t really like au’s or pure smut (I honestly usually just skim or skip those scenes) so if you’re mainly looking for that kind of thing this probably won’t be very helpful to you. jsyk.

i’m not great at describing stuff but i’ll do my best, i’ll also try and add tw’s when neccesary.

i wil try and keep updating this with any other decent fics i find, feel free to rec stuff too since i’m like 7 years behind.(edit 1/25/21) this is getting looooong so i’m going to start making another list on my spn blog rather than update this one

(edit 1/3/21) since this has gotten pretty long i’ve added rating/approximate word counts and marked my particular favorites with an asterisk.

Dean/Cas fic:

So Says The Sword*** - explicit/85k. FUCK its good...au/time travel where dean is not pulled out of hell by cas and says yes to becoming the michael sword. honestly could serve as an alternative to actually watching the show, if you want to get into dean/cas without actually doing that to yourself.

Fata morgana.*  - teen/6k, pst s9 finale. very bela centric and i love it, she finds cas looking for dean in hell.

Redemption Road -misc/600+k. an incredibly long fic from a collaborative writing group back in the day. canon divergent from the end of s6 on, has a cool take on godstiel and the leviathans, as well as the lovecratian mythos connection. ngl when i reread it i only made it about 28% in but imo the casual reader can actually stop around there, the rest concerns a lovecraftian apocalypse that is still good (i think i don’t remember it very well) but not required to enjoy the first half. if you prefer i have an ebook version i can send you on gdrive.

Someone Who's Feeling For Me* - mature/45k, s12. they run into lisa braeden and dean thinks cas is into her while cas thinks dean still likes her. treats lisa way better than the show ever did and the miscommunication is pretty funny rather than annoying.

a turn of the earth - mature/95k. time travel fic where cas from s10 keeps showing up in deans life from a few years before s1 to right before the hellhounds take his soul.  slow burn, good character study, and at one point cas punches the dad in the face and it rules.

On the Wings of War - teen/85k, canon divergent s5. dean accidentally becomes the Horseman of War. plays fun, fast and loose with biblical lore, michael has some rights.

Named - mature/95k, alternate s5. EXTREMELY blasphemous in a fun sexy way. manages to predict metatron almost to a T. there’s one major character death and its literally jesus christ, everyone is very sad about it and it sets the rest of the story rolling. an alternate interpretation of cas’ mission to raise dean from hell which had me on the floor. ngl its kind of misogynistic at points, but its from 2010 and tracks with late oughts-2010 spn (sorry anna the author did you dirty here:/).

The Girlfriend Experience - explicit/15k. uhhh i don’t normally rec or even read smutty stuff unless someone i know is specifically asking for it but this has stuff like sam trying to be a good ally and dean thinking holding hands with cas is ‘kinda gay :/’ minutes after having gay sex with him.

i crippled your heart a hundred times - explicit/19k, s8. cas confesses his feelings and dean spends a long time getting his head out of his ass about it. truly hits different after the actual confession, despite being written six years early it feels like its actually what could have gone down more or less if the writers weren’t talentless demons who hate us.

My Roots Take Flight** - mature/125k. reverse au where cas is a hunter and dean’s an angel...OR IS IT???? an alternate retelling of s4. tw for briefly being set in a psychiatric hospital/the hospital being mentioned somewhat frequently throughout the fic, plus more references to torture in hell and heaven than usual.

The One Thing You Can't Lose* - teen/4k.you know those posts about how cas is a super-strong super-tough ancient warrior but he just lets dean tug him around because he likes it? thats it thats the fic.

Hands, From Which All Things Are Built - teen/14k, post s8′s ‘goodbye stranger.’ cas is on the run with the angel tablet but keeps in touch with sam and dean by text, he and dean still manage to be terrible at Actual communication.

Autrement, Danger - or, The Account of an Exceedingly Long Day - mature/30k, post s11. a monster that takes the appearance of your soulmate leads to some wild miscommunications and dealing with years of repression, also dean gets to see cas’ true form which is always cool. tw for non-graphic mentions of underage sexual assault/sex work.

Down to Agincourt - mature/explicit/900++++k, endverse continuation. endverse!cas survives his encounter with lucifer and discovers another time-displaced dean from s7. i’ve only read the two of four parts but its really good, veeeeery slow burn, has a lot of fun oc’s and takes a rather surprising but (imo) entertaining and intriguing turn into Hellenic history and mythology. usual tw’s for endverse/endverse!cas but nothing graphic, it’s actually pretty light-hearted (relatively speaking of course).

Nothing Equals the Splendor** - explicit/8k, THEE finale fix it fic you’ve been waiting for! posits that the entire final episode was just a (very bad and lame) djinn’s vision.

like moses and batman and james dean - explicit/31k, post s8. explores dean’s trauma and internalized homophoba from his technically canon experience with sex work and its impact on his relationship with cas. the sex work itself isn’t really shown in any detail but it’s still a relatively heavy fic.

Crazy Diamonds - explicit/25k, s4/alternate s14. fresh-out-of-hell dean and dean from 10 years in the future are displaced from time and sent to each other’s present.

where the weeds take root - explicit/30k. au where the men of letters kick them out of the bunker and they accidentally move out into the country, get over their codependence and semi retire. featuring chicken coop building, sam volunteering at a dog shelter, gardening, and blissfully mundane domesticity.

No Resting Place - teen/6k. djinn dream fic, switches back and forth between cas’ dream of being married to dean and retired from hunting to the aftermath when he wakes up. tw for brief mention of suicide since, y’know, djinn dream.

any port in a storm - mature/52k. post s8 finale. cas and dean have to pose as a couple going through a rough patch for a case and actually deal with their emotional baggage, cas struggles with being human and metatron is up to stuff.

all this and heaven too* - explicit/7k. in the author’s own words ‘...a love letter to every trans person who ever projected onto Dean Winchester.’ absolutely unzipped me emotionally and theologically, its just. so good. tw for very brief mentions of internalized transphobia/dysphoria.

Because it is* - mature/6k, finale fix it. killing chuck does not bring back anyone back and the winchesters spend a very long time dealing with what they’ve lost, cas and dean SOMEHOW still manage to have signifigant communication issues even after the confession. tw for suicidal thoughts/brief attempt.

Vena Amoris and Other Old-Fashioned Bullshit* - teen/4k, s6. when cas fell for dean it automatically soulbonded/angel married them, shenanigans ensue when dean finds out during the angel’s civil war. funny and actually written back when s6 was airing so cas is still (or at least pretending to be) kind of an OP asshole which is fun.

Rinse, Repeat - teen/3k, s8. angsty character study of cas as he’s reprogrammed and trained to kill dean. not really dean/cas since its just cas’ pov of canon events but its beautifully written and ends with him snapping out of it through the power of love (also now a canon event!).

Emergence - explicit/59k, canon divergent after s11. dean meets a hunter he only recognizes as their friend claire novak’s missing father, but soon realizes he might be the answer behind the mysterious void in his memories and feelings (aka everyone’s memories of cas are completely wiped away for three years).

Cuckoo And Nest - explicit/10k, early established relationship/character study, cas tries to figure out how he fits into dean’s life and space in the bunker.

Build a Home* - teen/20k, canon divergent s12. sam and eileen are cute and turn the bunker into men of letters/hunters hq and everyone but cas moves in, mutual miscommunication issues and pining ensues.

Down in the River - teen/5k, early s8, cas prays to dean in purgatory while sam and dean try to figure out a way to get him out.

Teaching Poetry to Fish* - mature/52k, ?? BC through the entire series/canon divergent s14 and 15. retelling of crucial scenes throughout the shows timeline from cas’ pov, feat. actual fish and poetry.

the minor fall, the major lift - gen/4k, post confession/finale fixit. dean goes into the empty to save cas and runs into several old friends (and enemies).

With the Kisses of His Mouth* - teen/3k, gen later seasons. dean and cas keep kissing by accident.

Remaining Grace - explicit/109k, alternate s6. au where cas asks dean for help with raphael and dean, of course, does. tw for temporary major character death/semi-graphic depictions of alcohol withdrawal.

The face of heaven.* - teen/10k, au, dean is a regular guy and cas is a fallen star (think ‘stardust’, kinda).

Stories Are Made of Mistakes*  - teen/5k. newly human cas has trouble getting used to a human body and humanity in general, but still figures out that he and dean are A Thing before dean does.

Hurry Up And Wait - mature/21k, canon divergent s12. a fairyland and quite possibly LOTR related case comes up and dean goes full fanboy, mary is introduced to the wonders of the peter jackson adaptions, many references and comparisons (including between cas and dean’s ‘friendship’ and arwen/aragon). also charle is still alive and has just been doing fairy stuff this whole time.

There Are Many Things - explicit/28k, s9. cas is extremely lonely/touch-starved and trying to figure out this whole human thing, as well as where he and dean stand after being kicked out of the bunker.

It's A Long Life to Always Be Longing - teen/40k, post s11 finale. amara helps dean by putting him in a magical coma so he can finally get some much needed rest and show him possible futures for him, sam and cas. meanwhile sam and cas go on a roadtrip (or several) to find componets for a spell to wake dean up. really good sam and cas friendship, they actually talk about their shared lucifer trauma and stuff.

Non-Photo Blue - gen/2k, s4/5/alternate s5. fifty moments from cas’ memories of dean.

Tall Grass - explicit/57k, canon divergent post series. cas becomes the ultimate plant dad. feat the wayward sisters gang, cathartic character growth, fun oc’s, domesticity, and lots of actual botanical info-dumping.

on vessels - no rating/gen/2k. established dean/cas, cas tells dean about how he used to imagine what it would be like to have him as his vessel.

search for tomorrow on every shore* - teen/11k, post-finale (extremely derogatory). some angels in jack’s new heaven act out and dean gets temporarily resurrected in 2003 and runs into his younger self.

Architecture of the Minotaur’s Heart - explicit/45k, very canon divergent post s1. dean’s new house seems to have a life and mind of its own, while in his dreams he sees glimpses of a world and apocalypse that never came to be and an angel that looks strangely like his mysterious neighbor, cas. loosely inspired by the book house of leaves (which i highly recommend for fans of weird horror).

The Distance Of The Setting Sun - explicit/17k, post s5. established dean/cas relationship, team free will finally takes advantage of cas’ abilities to go on vacation around the world.

diamond star halo - teen/5k, s11. dean lets cas use him as a temporary vessel while he recovers from rowena’s spell, sam is a long-suffering third-wheel.

Make Known** - teen/16k, s6/7. dean struggles to understand how cas could have become his enemy and whether he ever truly knew him in the first place.

blunt little instrument* - mature/1.4k, post finale. dean finally confronts his father in heaven, very cathartic.

my heart a compass*** - teen/10k, post confession. the empty forces cas to re-experience his most regretted moments while dean tries to snap him out of it and bring him home.

A Crash Course in Someone Else's History - teen/11k, s6. cas from the very start of s4 is brought forward in time by s6!cas to distract the brothers from his and crowley’s plans.

The Cuckoo Father - mature/8k, s7 au. the woman who found cas in the river post-leviathans does not marry him bc he was sent to her by god or whatever, but actually identifies him as jimmy novak and sends him back to claire and amelia.

The Dead Dean Clause* - teen/5k, post alt s5 ending. team free will celebrates surviving taking down lucifer by getting blitzed, cas lies to a cop and gets an impromptu driving lesson. title/description sound dark i know but it’s actually very funny and light.

Suck It, Judy Garland - mature/20k, s12 (after the ‘i love you...i love all of you’ episode). cas and sam have to pretend to be a couple for a case and dean is NOT happy about it.

By Daylight and In Dream - teen/16k, s5. pre-dean/cas, dean invites cas to use his dreams to hide from the other angels. tw for very brief mention of a memory/dream of alastair sexually assaulting dean.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven - mature/22k, post-canon. an actually happy (if sometimes bittersweet) heaven endgame written several years ago, though some details are rather eerily similar to the show’s ending.

heaven is a place on earth* - teen/2k. dean’s pov of some of the times cas left him behind throughout the show, and one alternate ending where he finally gets to stay.

I Cleanse The Mirror - teen/20k, alternate s6. dean’s body is stolen by an ancient elemental and his soul has to hitch a ride in cas’ vessel.

an exploration of gender; angelic*** - mature/4k. *oscar isaac voice* lets get into angel gender politics!! aka cas is trans.

Zenith - explicit/33k, s9. after 9x06 an angry witch curses cas with the ability to see supernatural beings and human souls.

La cucina. - gen/3k, alt s9. dean goes wild helping a newly-human cas find out what kinds of food he likes, or the early s9 domesticity we deserved!

Dean Winchester, Cocksucker at Rest***** - teen/7k, post-finale. john and mary finally come over for dinner and john reacts to dean/cas in a rather predictable fashion. SOOOOOOOOO good omg, its so funny and a little sad and very very cathartic. part of a series that has a few other really good short fics.

The Way You Didn't Go - teen/5k, s15. coda to 15.09, dean has nightmares about the moc!cas timeline.

On Drowning - teen/28k. dean saves cas after he nearly drowns, they both try and deal with the physical/mental fallout (aka the fic where thee iconic “you only touch me when you think I’m dead or dying” originates). tw for realistic depictions of drowning/triage/misc medical information.

The Thirty-Six Questions That Lead to Love* - mature/13k. claire has dean and cas pretend to be her gay dads for a case and they play the titular 36 question game, get mistaken for swingers, and birdwatch, among other things.

Assorted F/F stuff:

Deep Breaths* - mary/ellen, au where mary said no to azazel’s deal and let john stay dead, still becomes a milf.

Like Rebel Diamonds - krissy/claire, they become hunter gf’s on the hunt for cas to kick his ass for taking jimmy. not-so-stealth dean/cas as well.

To Ash and Bone - anna/ruby, same author as the previous fic (p much all of her stuff is good from what i recall). au where ruby is a witch and helps anna when she’s cursed.

Holy Clockwork Angels - jo/ruby, STEAMPUNK au with very cool worldbuiilding.

At Day's End - jo/anna (my fucking KINGDOM for more jo/anna content, the dean/cas parallels are allllll there), au where they are both at the camp in the endverse and gfs.

these posts - ok so not actually a fic but i’m now obsessed with this hannah/meg dynamic.

Tagelied - mary/ellen, the true story of how ellen got into hunting before angels interfered.

Hell's Bells** - meg/abaddon, alternate s8/9 where meg survives crowley’s attack with sam’s help and teams up with abaddon (who she has a sk year old crush on) to take back hell.

The Ecstasy of the Rose - anna/ruby, anna travels back in time to escape heaven and becomes a signifigant part of ruby’s old human life.

Angel Underground - anna/jo, kind of an urban fantasy au with a very intriguing premise (sadly its very short, i’d love to see more if this ‘verse).

Clover, Flame - billie/mary, billie was always the reaper that showed up to take mary after her death(s) over the years.

Drag Me To Heaven - anna/ruby, a variant on the ‘last night on earth’ thing with dean.

Come Home* - jo/anna, canon-divergent au where anna is the new waitress at the roadhouse and helps jo set up a (probably not really) haunted house for halloween.

[tridaxpod]

i'm sleep deprived + spiraling a lil so this probably won't be nearly coherent as the version i've been writing up in my head But i've been thinking a lot abt some stuff greg has said about krika. if you know me you know that I treat bionicle canon very paradoxically, specifically when it comes to the different mediums its been adapted to and sources ppl have gotten information from; basically i treat the movies and novels as concrete, everything else less so, which i'm aware makes my takes very biased and subjective but point is i've never really cared much at all about what greg says. his forum posts are incredibly loose and "watery" to me, neither here nor there, never really truly sticking in my brain and impacting how I view the series. i don't dwell on them too much,

all except for his take that krika never truly cared nor was remorseful, and that he was just a "survivalist."

when i see a Farshtey Forum Post™️ i don't vibe with, i just mark it up to "hey i disagree with this interpretation" and move on, because that's all they really are to me, just different interpretations. while authorial intent is deeply important and often key to analysis, at the end of the day an author can't make you read a story the exact way they intended. but that's just it, this take on krika as a character has germinated in my head for days and i don't just disagree with greg, i think he's flat out wrong about his own writing here.

i'm aware that's a super ballsy and kinda pretentious thing to say, i promise i'm normally not that obnoxiously pedantic or whatever. i respect greg, i recognize his original intentions as an author even if i often find my own takeaway to be different, but this one time i just don't think he realizes that what he meant to write doesn't at all lineup with what we got in the character.

let's go over the traits of a survivalist:

a survivalist is defined as:

a person who tries to ensure their own survival or that of their social or national group. "a paranoid survivalist bracing for Armageddon"

now if you see his actions in-line with the aspect of being focused on the survival of a group, you could potentially argue that this absolutely applies to krika, but greg worded his characterization in a much more self-serving way, so i'll be approaching this from that angle.

krika's actions, while passive and ever erring on the side of caution (to an unsustainable degree i'll add), could more often than not lead to his destruction; and ultimately they did just that.

was siding with teridax an act of self-preservation? absolutely, but one i'd argue is understandable somewhat. i will admit that greg hit the mark with claiming that krika knew nothing good would happen to him if he defied his more ambitious brothers, but you know what would also lead to nothing good teridax’s rule? sparing miserix.

okay, yeah, miserix wasn't free, nor was he at all in safe conditions, but he was still alive. something he very much was Not supposed to be once teridax took over. krika was tasked with killing their former leader, and instead chose to leave him in a limbo state of sorts, a form of captivity where he could be killed, but could also one day break free. there's no other way to swing this, the mutran chronicles state word for word that makuta who opposed teridax's reign were hunted down and had their masks mounted to the wall as "reminders" of why one should remain loyal to teridax only. there must have been a time in krika's life where they spent every day walking by that wall and seeing the faces of the fallen brothers and sisters staring back, the glaring hole where miserix's mask was supposed to be mounted, a glaring reminder of his own defiance. someone interested in their own survival wouldn't do that.

a survivalist also, in my humble opinion, would not have tried to convince gorast of all beings that the plan will get them all killed. a survivalist wouldn't have tried to talk to a toa. not one built up to be as cautious and passive as krika is. there's also his line about how he has put so much pain into the universe, and now wants to put a strain of mercy out there. you could read that as self-serving i guess, but i don't feel that at all with it, it feels much tighter narratively-speaking when viewed from a lens of remorse.

so, that's what i'm ranting about here yeah? that i think krika was meant to serve in the narrative as this remorseful demon archetype? well, while i am making this post to argue that he Does fit the sympathetic villain mold, there's another i wanted to raise as well: krika is a dark mirror of the three virtues.

him choosing to not kill miserix, but to also side with teridax anyways despite knowing full well the dangers, and to try and save the other makuta from their certain deaths? it's a malformed sense of unity, if you ask me. a brotherhood is a brotherhood, no matter how far they stray from the light, no matter how hard they fall, and i think krika knows that. which brings me to my next point; duty.

this is where this is arguably gonna get into more subjective and headcanon-y territory, but whatever it's My unmedicated brain day and i get to choose the ramblings. but anyways, greg says krika doesn't regret being a makuta, and i disagree with this only...somewhat. i wanna point out some notable dialogue real quick.

"Once I was alive like you: solid and whole, needing no one and nothing. I was Makuta Krika, my name whispered in legends throughout half the known universe"

also, i can't find it for the life of me, but i think we all know his line about how gali should have been a makuta. to me, these lines paint a sense of pride in the brotherhood, but...not the brotherhood as we know them, instead in the brotherhood of the past. krika states that he has lost far more than time or treasure than the other makuta; he's lost what he was, what he was apart of, a strong and powerful group of creators who held the very ecosystem in the palm of their hands. krika is, for all intents and purposes to me, a nostalgic and mournful being. a ghost of what was. but what does this have to do with duty?

same principle as unity, i think krika still views what him and his people used to be as something noble, and feels a sense of loyalty to that. "you're too clever to be a toa."

yes, he acknowledges the flaws they have, i.e "toa were what we could only pretend to be", but compared to the other villains in the series i don't think "wanting something in return" nescesarily mean evil. terribly flawed, but not outright vile.

tbh, the sense of unity and duty in his character to me heavily overlap, mainly -- again -- in his treatment of miserix and in wanting to save the others.

but what about destiny?

simply put, i think destiny is the very core of their character.

in my time in the bionicle fandom recently, i've seen more posts portraying destiny in the series as a very grim thing, something fatalistic and looming. now, that's a narrative i don't personally agree with at all, however i will relent that it does fit krika horribly well. i think krika was incapable of seeing themself as having a fate beyond the brotherhood, an existence beyond them. they are sited as appearing sorrowful, hoping against hope, apparently even holding a sense of resentment for his own element:

"Take to the shadows. They are, after all, the prisons we have made for ourselves."

but they were so miserably passive. doing nothing big to spark change and aiding in spreading that darkness. why? because he saw it as his "place." his role in the cosmic order of things is a makuta, a fate he must follow through no matter what crooked path it brings him down. he even seemed to be passive to the fact that he would surely die soon, hence his line about what a makuta leaves behind when they die. a regretful, but resigned existence. united in duty, bound in destiny.

You are already doomed -- and that is perhaps the one thing you and I have in common

which, i suppose you could say does make krika just as bad as his brothers and sister; complicity is just as bad as direct violence, i know that to be fact. but there's one thing krika did, at the very end of his rope, that means a thousand words to me: trying to reason with gorast.

it's only one action, but it could have been the start of many. it's only one choice, but it's still a choice as apposed to just rolling over, one made in a group where those who spoke out had been hunted down like animals for doing so in the past. it could have been something bigger.

but it wasn't.

back on my soapbox about ill-fated destiny, krika ultimately seemed to have one. think about it, he's cautious his whole life, to avoid ending up like all those dead makuta, and when he's finally not he gets struck down. it's a tragic narrative, but an impactful one. it's a brutal fate, but still a sign that change can exist. i know greg has said some weird shit about redemption, but that leads back to my point about his forum posts meaning very little to me. he can say redemption is unobtainable, but the text itself, at least to me, says otherwise.

but that leads to me one last point which is that, i frankly disagree with any notion that the makuta were always evil. they were far from perfect, once again we track back to krika's speech to tahu, but evil? no way. i can't see miserix as a villain or "survivalist" for example. and, to be frank, "always evil" has some shitty implications and is something this community should ignore. i do think the text itself manages to avoid the pitfalls of this trope as the makuta have always read more similarly like ring wraiths from LTOR or the sith in star wars, but if we’re going to lean more into them being a species with a culture in fanon, any chance to avoid these aforementioned pitfalls should be taken. bionicle is first and foremost a LEGO series, we're given instruction manuals but also encouraged to let our creativity run free and uninhibited. which is precisely why greg's commentary means so little to me in the first place, which is why i have this stance on krika as a character. the story of the bionicle is presented as a legend, and no two people tell a legend the same way.

waxing aside, at the end of the day, i guess the easiest way to put all of this would be that i see krika as a narrative foil, as a dark parallel. he's a commitment to a destiny that ended in punishment, he's a duty to a long-dead cause, and he's a unity that lead to the mass death of a whole species. he's both a cautionary tale and a tragedy, one specifically framed in the building blocks and values of the matoran universe. but also, a sign that once, there was a light where there is now shadow. and krika may not be perfect, or even good, but something deep down inside still was. where there is darkness, a light will always shine. where there is destruction, there is creation.

and that is precisely why i love them as a character so, so dearly, and why they have remained in my top 5 for years.

[lucky-sevens]

carmilla basics

recently, there’s been a lot of discussion about mischaracterizations of dr carmilla, which has led to a lot of people asking how to understand her lore! being unsure about how to start with carmilla is a completely valid feeling, given that knowledge on her is far harder to gain than knowledge of the albums or the crew of the aurora. i’ve compiled this meta due to discussion on maki’s discord about this, and it has been betaed by @stolen-stardust! in this post, i’ll outline the basics; who dr carmilla is out-of-universe, a summary of who she is in-universe, and where to find the content centered on her.

more under cut!

out-of-universe, dr carmilla is played by maki yamazaki. maki’s website can be found here and her bandcamp can be found here (it includes the solo carmilla albums, as well as music unrelated to the mechanisms that i’d highly recommend). 

all the lore about carmilla’s relationship to the mechanisms has parallels out-of-universe. (from here on, i’ll use ‘the mechanisms’ to refer to the band out of character, ‘the crew of the aurora’ to refer to the band in-character, ‘maki yamazaki’ to refer to her out of character, and ‘dr carmilla’ to refer to her in-character.) the mechanisms were maki yamazaki’s backing band, meaning dr carmilla had the crew of the aurora as her backing band. during this era, the band was technically a separate entity from the mechanisms or from the solo dr carmilla albums, and was known as dr carmilla and the mechanisms. this band began in 2010 and split up in august 2012. (see ‘a brief mechanisms timeline’ by @wickedace, as well as further confirmation by maki on her server and on the mechanisms website.) due to the increase of mechanisms fans happening after dr carmilla and the mechanisms broke up, there are minimal records of this band. 

when they broke up out-of-universe, in-universe lore about carmilla leaving was established. the crew of the aurora’s official statement is that she was pushed out an airlock (x), though we know from maki that was untrue; possibly because they lied on purpose, possibly since lore has been retconned and diverged between the groups since. 

maki yamazaki then went on to create solo music as dr carmilla, much of which seems to be things that were written and performed in dr carmilla and the mechanisms but recorded as solo versions with changed instrumentals for the studio recordings. she currently has two albums and a single out as dr carmilla (as well as, again, unrelated solo music that i’d highly recommend), and is working on a trilogy of albums with a group of people as dr carmilla and the void quartet (official band name announcement here). due to this, as well as unrelated things like the death of byron von raum, talking about the mechanisms like they are completely over and have static lore isn’t really correct.

in-universe, dr carmilla is a lesbian vampire and the person who mechanized the crew of the aurora. 

to understand her lore, analysis and extrapolation is required. i have gone further into this here, where i organize her album exhumed and {un}plugged into chronological order. for now, i’ll write a basic summary. 

at some point (when she was younger than 30), carmilla became a vampire. this could have been, but is not explicitly, what her song alive, i cried, is about. she is one of only two vampires. the assumption that many people have made and that all my theories are built on is that the other vampire was her lover, loreli. this is supported by maki saying ‘dead needs further clarification’ when asked whether loreli was alive or not, suggesting that she was undead. however, there are other theories, the main one that i have seen being that the other vampire is rocket girl, the unnamed character carmilla is singing about in her song ‘rocket girl’, who we know has more lore about her that is currently unknown. for simplicity, i’ll write the rest of this meta with the assumption loreli is the other vampire. after she was turned, or potentially before, her relationship with carmilla turned toxic and abusive, which a few of carmilla’s songs are about, most notably pin cushion. 

carmilla’s home planet, terra, was already heading towards destruction, but something she did changed it greatly. (i’ve touched on one of my theories about it here). the main source we have on terra is here, which describes it as completely destroyed. this is likely after carmilla has already left. we know there were songs about the destruction of terra (see the tv tropes page) but they were not recorded and may have been retconned. carmilla destroyed one of terra’s moons, which is likely related. we know carmilla adopted aurora as an orphan and aurora was a moon of terra, which likely meant that the moon of terra that was destroyed was aurora’s parent and this was when aurora and carmilla first met. (more on this in my aurora meta.)   

from here, her lore gets fuzzy for a while. we don’t know what happened between her and loreli to make her strike out on her own or what initially led her to make the crew of the aurora immortal. we do know she had some kind of involvement in the bifrost incident (see my eldritch mechanisms meta), which some people theorize was before she met the crew of the aurora. we also know there were failed mechanisms before the ones we know. i’ve written about my theory that one was king cole, but the others are unknown.

we get more clarity when she meets the mechanisms. this is the lore most people know about and the lore with the most controversy. we know the mechanisms overall have very negative feelings towards her and that carmilla loved them and considered them her children. i won’t reiterate what has been said before on this subject; my older meta on carmilla’s relationship with the mechanisms is here and i feel that it analyzes canon thoroughly. there are a few discourse posts on tumblr about this; i was looking for one i had a memory of seeing that addressed and analyzed the situation and couldn’t seem to find it, but i’ll use @stolen-stardust’s, here, as an example. to summarize the actual lore for people who are very new and have no basis, she made them all immortal and lived with them on the aurora for a long time. 

after leaving the mechanisms, she chased after them for a while- or at least, they believe she chased after them- and watched the events of once upon a time (in space) with the toy soldier (see: the song eleven). my personal theory is after that she went back in time and buried herself alive with loreli, which i’ve talked about in my previously linked timeline meta. however, this is not canon. what is canon is that afterwards, her song exhumed happened, which mentioned her cloning herself; more on that here. she is currently travelling with the void quartet, her new (mortal-but-likely-eldritch) band, on the silvana (a spaceship that’s likely sentient and definitely has some strangeness going on with them), through the weird (an eldritch extradimensional space). more on this will likely come to light on the release of her new albums. 

with her out-of-universe and in-universe lore summarized, i’ll link some resources for finding out more!

studio albums

ageha (prototype edition)- bandcamp | youtube

exhumed and {un}plugged- bandcamp | youtube

singles

the city {nex:type mix}- bandcamp | youtube

eleven- bandcamp | youtube

live recordings (dr carmilla and the mechanisms)

lashings- youtube (with subtitles) | transcript

homesick- lyrics video | youtube | transcript

unrelated work

made in a day- bandcamp

wouldn’t it be nice 2b human?- bandcamp

transmissions albums- 01 | 02 | 03

miscellaneous

official in-character twitter

tv tropes page

photos- (x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x) (note that she’s a lot less pale than commonly depicted; please do not whitewash carmilla in your art.) 

as said on my about, there is a specific document with a lot of lore compiled that’s exclusive to the mechanisms discord and maki’s discord server; maki has said that she doesn't want it shared outside of the discord, as most of the lore is improvised and subject to retconnings, as well as having that ambiguous status that word of god always has. more on how to join the discord can be found here.

[baya-ni]

The Queer Appeal of Sk8

Recently @mulberrymelancholy reblogged a post of mine with a truly galaxy brain take about how Sk8 “is a show made for queer fans” and generally how sports anime often depicts love and relationships in a way that’s more accessible and relatable to ace/arospec people than other mainstream media does.

Just, *chef’s kiss* fucking brilliant. I urge you to read their post here (note I’m referring to the reblog not the actual post).

And basically, it got me thinking about this concept of Sk8 as a Queer Show, and the kinds of stories and dynamics that tend to attract queer audiences in droves, regardless of whether its queerness is made explicit or hell, whether that queerness was intended.

And that’s what I’ve been pondering: What are the cues, markers, or coding, in Sk8 that set off the community’s collective gaydar?

I obviously can’t speak for the community. So here’s what aspects of the show intrigued me and what, for me, marks Sk8 as a Queer Show beyond the subtextual queer romances: a punk/alternative aesthetic, Found Family, Shadow as a drag persona, and The Hands.

1.) The Punk Aesthetic

All three of the above screenshots are taken from Ep 1, and every single one of them depicts background characters. They’re nameless and ultimately unimportant characters, yet each of them designed so distinctly and so unique from one another, one could mistake each of them for the main character(s) of another story.

Of what little I know about Punk subculture, I do know this: that the ethos of Punk is heavily built around a celebration of individuality and non-conformity. Sk8 seems to have incorporated this ethos into the very fabric its worldbuilding, and the aesthetics and culture upon which it takes inspiration appeals specifically to a queer audience.

I don’t really need to explain why Punk has such deep ties with the queer community. For decades, queer people have found community and acceptance within punk spaces, and punk ideology is something that I think is just ingrained in the queer consciousness as both lived experience and a survival tactic.

Therefore, a show that adopts punk aesthetics is, by association, already paying homage to Queer culture, intentional or not.

Queer fans notice this- like recognizes like.

2.) Found Family

This also needs little explanation.

Too often, queer individuals cannot rely on their “born into” families for support and acceptance. Too often, we are abused, neglected, and abandoned by those who we were taught would “always be there for us.”

And so, a universal experience for queer people has been redefining the meaning of Family, having to build our families from scratch, finding brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers in people with whom we have no blood relation, and forming communities tied together by shared lived experience rather than shared genetics.

And this idea of Found Family is also built into Sk8′s narrative.

Like, for example, the way that Reki promises MIYA that he and Langa will “never disappear from [his] sight,” filling the void that MIYA felt after his friends abandoned him.

And in the way that JOE becomes a paternal figure for Reki, teaching him ways to improve in skateboarding, and ensuring that Reki doesn’t self isolate when he’s feeling insecure.

And in the whole Ep 6 business with Hiromi acting as babysitter to the Gang.

Hell, even ADAM (derogatory) is associated with this trope. Abused as a child, he finds solace in an underground skateboarding community and culture he helped create- his own found family (or some powertrippy version of it anyway).

Again, queer fans see themselves depicted in the show, but this time in the way that the show gives importance to Found Family relationships between its characters.

3.) Shadow and Drag

This is one that’s more of an association that I personally made. But I was intrigued by the way that Hiromi adopts his SHADOW persona. He wears SHADOW like a mask, and adopts a personality seemingly so opposite to his day-to-day behavior.

Further, the theatricality and general “gender fuckery” of his SHADOW persona, to me, just seemed so similar to a the characteristics of a drag persona (I don’t know a whole lot about drag but enough that I’m drawing superficial similarities).

There’s also this aspect of a “double life” that he, and actually all the other adult characters of the show, have to adopt, which is a way of living that I’m sure a lot of queer viewers see themselves reflected in.

4.) The Hands

Ohhhh the Hands.

One of the things I noticed very early on is the way the show constantly draws our attention to Reki’s hands, which I thought was a little strange for an anime about skating. After all, skating doesn’t really involve the hands, or at least the show doesn’t really draw attention to hands within the context of skating.

I count 3 times so far between Eps 1-9 in which hands are the focus of the frame.

First, when Reki teaches Langa how to fist pump after Langa lands his first ollie, second, when Reki and Langa make their Promise, and finally, when Langa saves Reki from falling off his board.

And you know what they say, twice is a coincidence but thrice is a motif (no one else actually says this I think I’m the only one who says this lol).

I’m not really certain why hands seem to be such a shared fixation among queer people (at least among those I interact with). All I know is that gay people are just fucking obsessed with them.

I have a Theory as to why, and at this point I’d love for other people to chime in and “compare notes” if you will, but I think it basically has to do with repression. And in the same way that queer people have had to redefine the meaning of family, we’ve also had to redefine intimacy.

Being overtly physically affectionate with someone of the same sex, even if they’re your significant other, or often specifically BECAUSE they’re your significant other, can still be dangerous, even now despite the “progression” of society. Queer people know this, this vigilant surveillance of our environment and ourselves, always asking ourselves, “Am I safe enough to be myself?”

Already, Western culture is pretty touch-averse. That is, it’s considered taboo to touch someone unless they’re a family member or a romantic partner. And to touch a person of the same sex in any way that could be misconstrued as romantic (which is most things tbh) is a big no no.

There’s just A Lot to unpack there.

But basically I think that queer people, by necessity, have had to learn to romanticize mundane or unconventional ways of being physically intimate so that we can continue to be romantic with one another without “being caught” so to speak.

Kissing and hugging is too obvious. But a handshake that lingers for just a second too long is much more likely to go unnoticed, braiding someone’s hair can easily be explained away as just lending a helping hand, touching palms to “compare hand sizes” is just good fun.

But for queer people, these brief and seemingly insignificant touches hold greater meaning, because it’s all we are allowed, and all we allow ourselves, to exchange with others.

God, I’ve gone off and rambled again. What’s my point? Basically that the way the show draws attention to Reki’s hands, and specifically how they’re so often framed with Langa’s hands, is one of the major reasons why I clocked Sk8 as a Queer. It’s just something that resonated with me and my own experience of queerness, and I know that I’m not the only one who noticed either.

~

So in conclusion, uhhhh yeah Sk8 the Infinity is just a super gay show, and it’s not even because of the homo-romantic subtext (that at this point is really just Text).

Because what’s important to understand is that Queerness isn’t just about same-sex romance.

Queer Love isn’t just shared between wives/girlfriends, husbands/boyfriends, and all their in-betweens. Queer Love can be two best friends who come out together, queer siblings who rely and support one another, a gay teacher who helps guide one of their questioning students, a queer community pitching in to help a struggling member.

And that all ties with another important thing to consider, that what we refer to as the “queer experience” or “queer culture” isn’t universal. In fact, it wrongly lumps together the unique experiences and struggles of queer BIPOC all under one umbrella that’s primary White and middle class.

So I think what drives a lot of my frustration about labeling a show like Sk8 as Queerbait is this very issue of considering queerness and queer representation within such narrow standards, and mandating that a show must pass a certain threshold of explicit queerness to be considered good representation.

I get that someone might only feel represented by an indisputable canonization of a same-sex couple. That’s fine. But labeling Sk8 as Queerbait for that reason alone ignores the vast array of other queer experiences.

The aspects of Sk8 that resonate most deeply with my own experiences of queerness is in the way that Reki and Langa share intimacy through skating (intricate rituals heyo). For me, them officially getting together ultimately doesn’t matter- I’ll consider Sk8 a Queer show regardless.

Similarly, @mulberrymelancholy​ finds ace/arospec representation in that very absence of an on-screen kiss. A bisexual man might find representation in Reki, not because he enters a canon relationship, but in the depiction of Reki’s coming of age, growing up and navigating adolescent relationships. A non-binary person might feel represented through CHERRY’s androgyny.

That’s the thing, I don’t know how this show will resonate with other members of the queer community, and it’d be wrong to make a judgement on Sk8′s queer representation based on my experiences alone.

That being said, Straight people definitely don’t get to judge Sk8 as Queerbait. Y’all can watch and enjoy the show, we WANT you to enjoy these kinds of shows, and we want you to share these shows and contribute to the normalization and celebration of these kinds of narratives.

But understand that you don’t have a right to tell us whether or not Sk8 has good or bad queer representation.

And even members of the queer community are on thin ice. Your experience of queerness is not universal. Listen to the other members of your community, and respect that what you might find lacking in this show may be the exact representation that someone else needs.

[thecat-inthehat]

I’m trans. And that affects how I play and interact with XIV. 

I always hesitate to talk about my trans-ness, or trans characters, and I usually feel weird about it when I do, or that I’m somehow indulging in a way. I always feel like I never have anything important to say, or that I’m being a whiny entitled brat about it, or that no one cares. So I think I’ll try and talk a little about it.

I’ve seen some really good trans wols or adventurers, and it makes me really happy to witness, seeing more people Like Me out in the world. It’s not often that I feel lonely being trans, but it really does lift my heart to see others around and enjoying the world that love.

That being said, XIV fandom, and fandom as a whole, still isn’t that kind to trans “headcanons” about canon characters. Fandom’s been pretty okay about trans WoLs, though the erp’ers in the Quicksand have a serious problem with their transphobic ‘futa’ or ‘femboy’ shit. I don’t have Helisent’s gender in her search info, because I don’t want her to be called slurs in game while I’m just trying to do my damn roulettes. More often than not though, it’s the little comments here and there, or worse, the indifference. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen rare art or fic for trans xiv characters, only to have comments about how “that character is cis” or “is this a girl/boy version of x?” Those comments hurt, and those comments are transphobic. (Genderbends are their own post, but by and large they are transphobic as well.)

I say “headcanons” because there’s very little textual evidence that any particular character is cis. It’s just assumed to be that way, that cis is the default, and people thinking that a particular character is trans is a headcanon. Sometimes adding trans!(character) can be ... othering. I understand that sometimes people use those tags as a flagship, a way of saying “hey, it’s safe over here, come join us”, and I appreciate those. But sometimes it’s just exhausting to deal with the idea that cis is always the default, nevermind the fact that there’s sometimes mean comments about “but that character isn’t trans”. Damn it, we don’t really have evidence for one or the other a lot of the time, we only see that character’s gender presentation. 

And sure, you can say that that’s largely because XIV is built and developed around the idea that Eorzea operates on the gender binary -- it’s not exactly pushing the boundaries on gender, or made by openly trans or queer people. While I’m sure that there are trans or queer people that work on XIV, the goal of XIV isn’t to be��“Eorzea trans adventure”. I get that. Most of the media I consume is made under the assumption that the fictional world is cis, and I’m not surprised that the characters therein are presumed to be cis. I understand the reasons why it is the way that it is. 

Fiction, and by and large fandom, is a transformative experience. The Devs for XIV have gone on record saying that they keep a lot of things ambiguous to let players have fun, especially in regards to shipping, or the timeline. That should, and does, extend to trans or cis headcanons about characters or how you interact with them. I’m not saying you have to go out and view particular characters as trans (though that would be nice), more ... be mindful of the fact that everyone experiences the game differently, and that cis isn’t the default setting, just a common one.

I guess I don’t really have a point here, just some thoughts that have been knocking around in my head, especially after seeing some unintentionally cruel and transphobic comments on friend’s art. So just... I dunno, be kind. Think critically about a trans “headcanon”, and what it might mean to someone, or how it might influence a character’s arc, or the way they interact with the world. Yeah, there’s some real bad fetishization out there with regards to trans headcanons, but that’s not really what I’m talking about here. Just keep an eye out, and look at things with an open mind.

Anyways, Ardbert’s trans. Lucia is too. So is Minfilia. Thancred is “I’m a man (I think???)”. Alphinaud is trans, and I have the most evidence for that one. 

Sadu’s canonically genderfluid -- her last three lives were male. Urianger is canonically gender non-conforming, and I’m willing to bet that he’s got some interesting ideas about gender. All the Ascians have the ability to mold and shape the flesh of their host, so in what world would they be cis? 

Just... think about it, I guess. I’m happy to talk about it if anyone’s curious. 

[thevictorianghost]

If you could rewrite legend of korra and make it your own(or just in general better) how would you do it? The villains would stay the same and korra and crew are the same(personalities you can definitely tweak a bit. I would definitely not have any love triangles and make korra and asami happen in the beginning) how would you do it with your ships being canon as well?

Okay so I’ve never actually watched LOK. I’ve heard A LOT about it through watching countless video essays on Youtube and reading Tumblr posts about it. I know the who, the what and the how, I just haven’t wanted to watch it because, even though it looks cinematically gorgeous, the story was written by Bry/ke and there’s a LOT of it, worldbuilding and storywise, that I just can’t bare to watch.

So here goes. This got long. Enjoy!

1) Remove the Decopunk world. 

A Decopunk world is a world where technology is 1920s-ish, but very advanced. We have cars, tanks, radio, bobs and faux bobs, cloche hats, short skirts, nice suits, etc. I adore Decopunk. The 1920s are one of my favourite eras. An optimistic way of looking at the world, partying, illegal alcohol, the remnants of the Great War... I love it. I really do. But it doesn’t work in the pre-established world of Avatar. It brings elements that are far too imperialistic and colonial in nature (which prompted the comics to be imperialistic and colonial in nature, with the Northern and Southern Water Tribe, you can find many posts about that), which came along hand in hand with the Industrial Revolution, as this article puts it so well. Please read it, it’s awesome.

Why did they feel they had to denature Avatar’s world? They already had everything they could possibly want. 

The Fire Nation could be more Steampunk, which is a little less advanced than Decopunk (First Industrial Revolution vs Second Industrial Revolution) because there were elements of Steampunk in the Fire Nation Army (such as the tanks, the navy and the dirigibles). But it could be for them only. It could show us how Zuko transformed the Fire Nation from a war industry to a steam-powered country. This could be the new way to channel firebending (and please, no more “anyone can do lightning bending”, you don’t need lightning bending to get electricity and it makes  Zuko, Iroh, Ozai and Azula weak in the show!). 

We’ve seen waterbending used in clever ways in the Northern Water Tribe. How could Katara’s waterbending and Sokka’s engineering influence the Southern Water Tribe to make them use waterbending more? Canals, waterfalls, waterways, etc.? In new and different ways? Could the Southern Water Tribe use hydroelectricity, but in a clean, sustainable way? Why does the Southern Water Tribe port look so... mundane? 

The Earth Kingdom already had a working train system in Ba Sing Se. And the postal system in Omashu. Toph could have taught earthbenders how to follow the Badgermoles way and dug tunnels throughout a nation in peace. Then boom. Subways. But instead of machines pushing the people along, you can have benders do it. Instead of messenger hawks, the postal system could run through the entire kingdom instead of just Omashu and be much more efficient. The Earth Kingdom could be praised for its fast postal system that could, maybe, work as telegrams.

I’ll come back to the Air Nomads.

Those are just examples from the top of my head. I don’t mean “never allow technology to “””progress””” (I use that word veeeeery loosely because it has huge imperialistic undertones). I mean instead of trashing the fun parts of bending to make way for Decopunk technology that doesn’t need bending, work with it! Get creative! This worldbuilding feels... too easy. When Avatar: The Last Airbender was praised for its worldbuilding.

I adore Decopunk. I enjoy it far more than Dieselpunk and it’s much less known that Steampunk. But it has no place in the Avatar world.

2) That doesn’t mean “remove Republic City”.

First of all, it should honestly have a better name. It’s kind of like naming a city “Democracy City”. Which is way too on the nose. Harmony City sounds better, and that’s the first thing that came to mind. Anyway.

I really like the idea of a city being built in the spirit of Iroh and the White Lotus. To allow the Four Nations to live together in harmony in one city. But why is Republic City literally New York City with an “““Asian””” flair? What is up with that? I know New York is the MOST Decopunk city ever (you can’t encounter anything Decopunk without seeing New York, with its Art Deco buildings, the Harlem Renaissance, the Prohibition, etc.). But they do NOTHING with it! They just take New York, change some names, add some Asian flair, and call it a day. 

I don’t want 1920s New York for Republic City. I want Zootopia.

What happens in a city where all the Four Nations are represented? How does Water, Earth, Fire and Air work together? Big cities tend to be quartered in neighborhoods, so each neighborhood could be a smaller version of their nation. We could have a Northern Water Tribe next to an Earth Kingdom next to... you know what I mean? Each neighborhood could be a small-scale introduction to the nation for Korra first, then you can send her to that nation afterwards!

Which leads us to this.

3) Have Korra follow a traditional Avatar’s journey. 

I really don’t know why they decided that Korra would learn three elements before the age of sixteen (when that’s the age Avatars usually START their journeys) and then only have her learn Airbending during the entire show. Wasn’t the structure of each Book being about Aang learning one element at a time a good structure? Why go out of their way to NOT do that? Why was it the White Lotus’ prerogative to train the Avatar in the first place, too?  

So let’s have Korra know waterbending first (and show Katara teaching her, please!), then she can learn Earth, Fire and Air. By going to the Earth Kingdom, to the Fire Nation, and to the Air Temples. This could help develop each nation and show us how they have grown through the years. And it could lead Korra and the audience to figure out that there’s not only Aang who has had children to represent the Air Nomads, but there were other Air Nomads who survived the genocide and we can actually see the Air Nomads as a thriving culture.

So about Republic City. As I said, we could keep it. But now that Korra is going on a traditional Avatar journey, you could have, say, one episode at the beginning and one episode at the end of each season taking place in Republic City. To show us how each Nation’s neighborhood works and as an introduction to Korra before she actually takes the plunge to travel to that nation. 

Please! Build upon the Avatar world at large more! Come on!

4) Stop it with the love triangles. 

Many have talked about the Mako, Korra, Bolin and Asami love triangles. I’ve read once that they don’t exactly feel like friends, they’re only colleagues who share the fact they all dated Korra at one point. Which is sad. Knowing that the Gaang is so beloved because they’re such GOOD FRIENDS first!

So work to build strong, healthy friendships first, THEN start thinking about romance if you have to. And please, if you want a ship to be endgame, don’t have it so you have to confirm it on Twitter. 

Don’t.

Oh! And also. Bolin and Eska’s relationship was unhealthy as all hell and treated as “funny” and “comic relief” because a woman was being emotionally abusive to a man. That’s terrible. Please don’t do that.

5) Don’t let Katara fall to the side like she did. 

Many, MANY before me have talked about how Katara got the short end of the stick in LOK. Where’s her statue? Where’s her recognition as the Greatest Waterbender in the World? Why is she day in and day out in the healing hut, when she said “I don’t want to heal, I want to FIGHT”? Does she even have a waterbending school? Or is that completely fanon? Why does she allow Aang to take one of their children on life-changing field trips while leaving their other kids behind? Aren’t they also Air Nomads by birth??

It’s okay to worship the old Gaang because, well, we all love them! I do love Aang, even if I give him a hard time a lot, but I love the character. I just don’t like the way Book 3 Aang was written. But some characters shouldn’t have everything while others have nothing. Aang is LITERALLY THE STATUE OF LIBERTY. But where was Katara’s statue? And also, what happened to Suki?? What happened to Mai or Ty Lee, too?? Or even Sokka?? He died some time ago and... that’s it??

Which brings us to this.

6) Zutara, Taang, Sukka and Mailee.

I’ve seen that picture of Toph, Aang, Sokka and Katara being edited with Zuko and Katara next to each other, Toph and Aang next to each other, and a (suddenly alive!) Suki next to Sokka. I think that’s so good! It feels so healthy!

Not all relationships that started when people were kids work out. Sokka and Suki seem the strongest relationship at the end of the show and they’re probably the only ones I could see working out in the end. Sokka could become the Southern Water Tribe Chief and Suki could become his Queen when she’s retired from the Kyoshi Warriors.

Katara and Aang would be lifelong friends, of course they would be, but I don’t really see them lasting. Aang was twelve when they started dating. They’d date a few years, then they’d decide they want other things. That’s a good thing to show kids!

I’ve written many metas about Zutara, but Ambassador then Fire Lady Katara would show a changing world, where the Fire Nation, now no longer a war industry but a Steampunk country, is moving forward, with Zuko literally marrying a woman the Fire Nation tried to wipe out. They would be equals and leave an equal mark upon the world. Together.

Toph and Aang would be amazing together. They’d be a great team, working in the Earth Kindom, helping rebuild the old Temples when the Air Nomads came out of hiding, and bringing peace around the world. I don’t think they’d be a conventional relationship. They’d do their own thing for a while, find each other for a while, work together on some projects, then continue doing their own thing. Aang being the Avatar who travels the world and Toph teaching metalbenders and working with the King in Ba Sing Se and Bumi in Omashu and wherever she’s needed. I think Toph would be much more fulfilled than what we’ve seen of elderly Katara. She doesn’t have Katara’s abandonment issues (I’ve talked about them here) and she’s more independent, I believe.

I know I haven’t talked about them much yet, but I want Mai and Ty Lee together in the end. Badass ladies challenging their respective stereotypes and create a new world for themselves. Mai could find herself away from the Fire Nation court (I don’t know what she’d do, but circuses love people who throw knives, don’t they? She could be a circus performer for a while), and I think Ty Lee, in this version, could work at the circus and with Aang to rebuild the Air Nomads. I love the idea of Ty Lee being a descendant of the Air Nomads.

All of them should be shown creating Zootopia-like Republic City. Because of course they should be! They’re the Gaang!

So yeah, that’s how I would see the world of Avatar grow beyond the borders of the original show! :)

[roboromantic]

yeah I think the tf fandom tends to have a problem with what I call continuity bleed: assuming/acting like something that's true/exists in one continuity is true/exists in most or all others

and I mean yeah, obviously they influence each other but that doesn’t mean every single detail is gonna get carried over — there’s still no definitive color for Energon for cryin’ out loud!

like when Brainstorm got killed off super early in idw2 and people were calling it homophobic when he never??? had ANY sort of characterization in idw2. Someone who didn't know anything abt idw1 wouldn't see that as homophobic at all (and imho it's a hell of a stretch even if you ARE familiar with it)

Or people getting mad abt Rescue Bots Blurr being really different from p much every other version of Blurr and like. Do y'all get mad about every single tf who changes between continuities? like I get he's a fan favorite with established traits and it's Weird (What do you MEAN Starscream’s entirely red and becomes a good guy?!?! Why’s Prowl a hippie motorcycle?!) but c'mon, we gotta mix things up a bit or everything just gets stale.

I once saw someone in the tags here say that either the whole franchise should be treated as a frivolous toy commercial or all of it should be examined as if it were a super serious story and idfk where to even begin with that. Idk how to tell you this but the goofy 80s cartoon still absolutely had political commentary and even the most gritty, dramatic, and well-written portrayal TF continuity is still ultimately made to sell plastic figures.

Personally, the thing that irks me most is g1 and especially tfa fics referring to the Primus vs Unicron mythos when they either did not exist at the time the show was created or were explicitly excluded from canon bc Derrick J Wyatt wasn't a fan of it

to be fair it gets a bit complicated what with the "oh they existed as the same beings in every continuity until some nonsense happened and now they aren't/retroactively never were" or whatever but still.

Uuuhhh I'm finally writing this to continue what that last post I reblogged was talking about but I've actually had this sitting in my drafts for a. month I think? anyway I have a note that just says

Seekers (though this leans more towards fanon)

and I don't remember where I was going with that :V I think it was probably along the lines of how fanon has kinda built up the Starscream TC and Skywarp dynamic to something that's never really existed? idw1 was probably the closest but they've never really been the ~trine~ fanon makes them out to be; TC and Skywarp are rarely even significant characters. Or maybe it was just the idea of Seekers being their own subtype of Transformers and the existence of trines in the first place and people acting like every single bot that turns into an airplane is a seeker and I could go on abt fanon seekers again but that's not the point of the post

ANYWAY I'm glad we have BotBots to give us something with next to no possible ties to previous canon beyond like. the existence of Energon and Sector 7

[alirhi]

Loki ranting

Okay. I had this thought in my head of like just compiling links of all the Loki shit I've posted/reblogged so far so that when I get into a conversation about the show and how it fucking disgusted me, I can just be like "here. here's this masterlist post, go read all this shit. This is my entire argument, and not only mine, but a lot of stuff posted by people far more intelligent and level-headed and eloquent than I am, whom I happen to agree with." Because the alternative is constantly getting fired up all over again, and that is exhausting.

BUT! I'm stupid and don't know how tumblr works. Apparently I can't just be like "give me all the Loki-tagged shit I've got" I can only search all the Loki-tagged shit on all of tumblr. And I'm not scrolling back through all of my posts. I talk too fucking much for that shit 😂

So, I'll try to remember all of my grievances with how the MCU has treated Loki, and all of the excellent posts made by other, equally upset fans, and put it all together here under this nice, neat little cut for everyone else's sanity and scrolling convenience...

For people who actually read my shit fairly regularly - bless you, you crazy, patient people. I love you! - this is going to be a lot of repetition of shit you've already read. Probably at least twice. I'm passionate and I have a terrible memory lol. Sorry.

Anyway, first, for those who don't know me and haven't been following my explosions of rage for the past couple of months, some quick background: I do not read comic books, so Loki's Marvel comic canon means nothing to me. I know almost nothing about it. The reason I'm so in love with the character in the MCU is because I am an eclectic witch and the deity I've actively loved and worshiped the longest in my life (literally for as long as I can remember) is Loki. So when he was mentioned in The Mask, I squeed. When they named Matt Damon's character after him in Dogma, I cheered.

When Thor came out in 2011, I just about died from happiness. I was hungry for any representation of this underappreciated god, no matter what it was. I didn't even bitch about how underpowered he was, because at least he was there. But I'm getting slightly ahead of myself.

I can hear anyone reading this going "Why Loki? Isn't he, like, evil? Like basically the Norse version of The Devil?" Because I heard all this shit irl all the fucking time. And no. So let me give you a quick rundown of who Loki actually is.

Loki is a Trickster God. He's often referred to as the God of Mischief. He is not and never was evil, simply chaotic and hedonistic. Loki Laufeyjarson was the son of Laufey (that's mama; they changed her to a man for some reason in the movie) and Fárbauti. Right from the start, from his name, we get a sign of how Loki goes against traditional norms of the time, because in Norse culture, families were patrilineal, and surnames were "son/daughter of father" (which would have made him Loki Fárbautitason), not the mother. But Loki's surname is matrilineal. Feminist icon woo! lol

Though he's a Jotunn, Loki is counted among the Gods (Aesir) in Norse tradition. Depending on his mood, he is alternately helpful or disruptive to the other Gods. I'm not gonna sit and teach a whole text class on him lol but I'll use my favorite example of Misunderstood Loki - the conception of Sleipnir!

So, get this shit. This is also part of why I DO NOT follow Odin and never fucking will (a very small part, but still part of the reason). So, the other Norse Gods are petty motherfuckers, and they wanted some shit built but didn't want to pay the dude doing the building. So they were like "okay, if you can get it done in X amount of time, we'll pay you, but if you can't manage it NO MATTER WHAT, this whole thing is free." And they made sure he had NO help, nothing but him, his materials, and his Very Good Horsey. And this guy and his horse were fucking BAMFs. So it was looking like he was definitely gonna get it done in time, and Odin was like "nah, fuck that shit. I'm cheap." and so he sent Loki to distract the work horse. Loki transformed into a mare and lured the horse away, got fucked, got pregnant, gave birth to the 8-legged (for some reason) horse Sleipnir. Odin rides Loki's son into battle. Um. Kay.

So Loki helped Odin be a petty mf, and Odin got himself a new pet out of the deal.

Oh, also, because he's smart af and a shapeshifter and a master magician and genderfluid, Loki "fails" to fit the super fucking toxic and narrow Norse/Aesir view of "a real man". He prefers intelligence and manipulation to solve problems rather than violence, he's not afraid to behave like a clown if it gets shit done, and that grosses the Aesir out, so they constantly ridicule him for being "less than a man".

Loki is the God of the outcast and the misunderstood. The marginalized people from all walks of life. He is the God of the LGBT community. In modern terms, he's pansexual, polyamorous (married to Sigyn and they are deeply in love, but boy gets around and I've never seen any indication that Sigyn gives a shit) and genderfluid.

Okay. Focus, Ali. This is part of why I usually post multiple rants instead of one big long one XD The longer I ramble, the more I get sidetracked and forget the original point.

So. Loki's awesome, and being a Trickster, is powerful as all fucking hell. There's not much he can't do.

And now we come to Thor (the movie, not the deity). Loki's there! 24-year-old Ali is spazzing! All is right with the world!

Oh lord, they've actually done him justice?! Amazing! He's complex and nuanced and emotional, just like the real Loki! I loved this movie. Loved. It. The climactic thing with trying to blow up Jotunheim never really made much sense to me until someone made an excellent point the other day about Loki being raised in a racist society that was racist against his own race, he just didn't know it yet, poor child. Baby Thor was never corrected when he pledged to commit mass genocide, so Baby Loki probably absorbed the lesson then that Jotunns=evil and killing them all will win his father's love. Anyway, 2011 Loki was a beautiful, heartbreaking portrayal of the God I've loved all my life and spent 24 years longing to see depicted on the big screen.

Then The Avengers happened. And I saw another Loki very close to Norse mythology - mainly, how he's treated. In the beginning of the movie, he's sick, exhausted, and in pain. He can hardly stand, he stumbles and needs help when he walks. He was very obviously tortured, and the sickly blue light of the scepter's control is in his eyes. That gets less and less pronounced as the movie goes on, showing Loki working his way free of it, but in the beginning, he's a mess. Because he was tortured and used by Thanos. Marvel directly confirmed this, and that he was under the scepter's/Mind Stone's control. Loki's actions are not his own in The Avengers. He's under both threat and Thanos' direct control. The movie actually shows The Other directly threatening him to keep him on task, because this is not Loki's plan. It is not what he wants. He's being used and villainized... Just like in real life. It hurt to see this done to him, but the accuracy was too beautiful to ignore.

Thor: The Dark World comes out. I've heard people complain that this movie is the weak link in the Thor trilogy. I disagree. I think that's Ragnarok, for a bunch of reasons, but we'll get there. (And for the record, I loved Ragnarok, too. It was a funny movie. Infinity War and the Disney+ series are the only portrayals of Loki in the MCU that I truly fucking hated.) Anyway, good, fun movie. Had its faults, as all movies do, but it still followed Loki's real-life arc in a way. How? By having Loki dragged back to Asgard in chains and imprisoned underground. Again, not super happy that this happened to my love, and having to see it on screen was painful, but at least in the MCU he's not chained to a rock with venom dripping on his face for eternity, so there's that. (poor Sigyn. how tired do her arms get, holding up that bowl? best wife ever, amirite?)

In TDW, we're shown Loki's love for Frigga, who favored him and taught him magic as a child. We see his bravado; his attempts to mask his true feelings, especially grief. We see him slowly coming back to himself after the events of The Avengers, and slowly mending his relationship with his brother. He accepts that Odin will likely never love him, but Thor just might, because they were close when they were young. "I didn't do it for him." No, no my sweet, you did it for your brother, and a little out of guilt for what happened to your mother.

At the end, Loki fakes his death and escapes, taking the throne, and I have mixed feelings about this. Not the writer's choices here; I love that completely! A natural progression in Loki's story. But my joy is tainted by how closely they're following the Eddas now. Because Loki's escape from his prison heralds the beginning of Ragnarok. And Loki will die in Ragnarok. I don't want to see that play out in front of my face. I won't be able to handle the grief (spoiler alert! IW broke me. I almost walked out of the theater. Loki's death was legitimately fucking traumatic for me. I don't even care how pathetic that is. That grief was real, it was intense, and I still shake and cry when I think about it.)

Marvel announces that Thor 3 will be called Ragnarok. The internet treats this as a shocking revelation. I roll my eyes and mumble "duh" to myself and move on XD

Then they say Ragnarok will be a buddy comedy. I throw up a little in my mouth and no longer want to live on this planet. If they're going to make something called Ragnarok, could they at least treat it with even a fraction of the respect they've shown these characters thusfar? Jfc. I mean, I'll see it anyway, because I'm a whore for Tom Hiddleston lol. But come on, people!

I hated that they made Hel the long-lost older sister and Fenrir her fucking pet/attack dog. Those are my favorites of Loki's children! Hel is such an incredible badass that the early Christians named their dimension of eternal torture after her! They were terrified of her, to the point of naming the place that terrified them most after her. That's awesome! And Fenrir's just the best. I love wolves. Those two details, and Odin's retcon of "we're not Gods! ...lol, except your sister. she's totally a Goddess. and def gonna kill literally everything, so... good luck! byyyeeeee" pissed me off royally.

The rest was great. I genuinely liked this movie. Still do. And they finally used The Immigrant Song! That was pretty cool. If they'd thrown in Bring the Hammer Down and Thunderstruck, I might've called this movie perfect. XD

I wasn't totally in love with their portrayal of Loki in Ragnarok. Yes, the falling for 30 minutes line was funny, as was "I have to get off this planet" and "YES! That's how it feels!" And "Get Help" was funny as hell. But also, like... There is no way Loki would have been the dumb one in that first encounter with Hela. Also, he can teleport and project copies of himself and shit, so... He would not have been that desperate to go straight back to Asgard and bring her right along with them. Loki's not stupid. But whatever. Movie's gotta movie.

What I did love was seeing the slow mending of his relationship with Thor continuing, and the badass fighting on the bridge. I also loved that, like Real Loki, Movie Loki helped when help was needed, was quick and clever, and while he was carrying out the main plan, he was also planning ahead and grabbing the Tesseract. Yes, that drew Thanos right to them, but that's a whole other thing. Loki never would have left that thing on Asgard to be destroyed or lost.

And now Infinity War. Hooooly fucking shit. You know what? No. I'm not going into this. He was killed, years of character growth were erased forever, my heart fucking shattered. The end.

Endgame. IW hurt me so bad I didn't see Endgame until this year. I actually watched Civil War first (for context: I had actively avoided all Cap movies until this year because I fucking hate Steve Rogers. I find him insufferable. Did not realize what I was denying myself until I watched CW and finally saw the charms of Bucky. When he appeared in IW, I was so lost. XD I was like "...who dis? Murder Jesus?" also I just... didn't care. I was numb by then from crying through most of the movie over Loki)

So, anyway. Endgame. Loki picks up the Tesseract in alternate 2012, escapes, fans go "yay! he didn't actually die!" I go "yes he fucking did. Five years of his life, gone. Five years of growth and change, erased. Loki is dead. This will not be the same."

I was more right than I could have predicted. Now we come to the point of this rant. Sorry it took so long, but you were warned lol.

The Loki series makes me so angry I actually get sick to my stomach. It was fucking TRASH. When I praised Marvel for following Norse mythology so faithfully earlier? Yeah. I DID NOT MEAN TREAT HIM THE WAY THE OTHER GODS DID. I did not mean paint him as a pitiful clown, a joke, a caricature of who he truly was, with his pain and suffering played for LAUGHS.

This is supposed to be 2012 Loki, newly freed from Thanos' control. The Loki we saw in the beginning of TDW - snarky, exhausted, nihilistic. The Loki who rolled his eyes and said "get on with it" expecting to be killed.

The bumbling clown flipping on a dime from posturing to calling himself weak is not 2012 Loki. That is not ANY Loki. That is Tom Hiddleston in a black wig doing what he's told by a shitty writer who had no fucking idea what he was doing and was salty about his (bad) original script (for something totally fucking unrelated) getting killed.

In Episode 1, Loki is mocked, imprisoned, stripped against his will, tormented, belittled, and given a flippant summary of all the trauma Actual MCU Loki suffered that this one skipped out on, with no context, no acknowledgement of the trauma he's already lived quite fucking recently, and with the narrative twisted to not only erase all the abuse he's suffered, but to make it all his fault. And this is supposed to make him want to help these people?

And worse, IT FUCKING WORKS. WHAT?! I CAN'T- FUCKING WHAT?! Remember when I said LOKI IS NOT FUCKING STUPID?! So why is he STUPID?

Episode 2, he's a child. Mentally, this Loki is a fucking child. Now we've erased all the growth and development of his entire adult life. He's dopey, impatient, impulsive, desperate for a pat on the back and actually shows it. Yes, abused and neglected children crave the positive attention we never received, and we often grow up to be a bit emotionally stunted. But not all of us, and not Loki. Not as we've seen him EVER in the rest of the MCU. Playful and a bit callous at times? Absolutely! But not a big dumb fucking puppy.

Episode 3, a ray of hope, despite Sylvie! (I hate Sylvie) Loki casually admits he's pan/bi; labels never come up, but he admits to being with both men and women! He sings! Not really relevant to whether I approve of his portrayal or not lol but Tom has a beautiful voice, Norwegian ("Asgardian" lol) is a gorgeous, entrancing language, and I could watch that one bit on loop for eternity and never get bored. And then, finally, we see a glimpse - a glimpse - of Loki's power! He stops a falling building and pushes it right back up! Are we finally getting to see what he can really do? Will the next episode bring us Loki in all his glory?

Nope. 4 and 5 we see him mocked and pushed around and utterly irrelevant. Again. We see tiny reflections of what he could maybe theoretically do in other random Loki variants, but the "main" (lawl. main. it was the Sylvie and Mobius show. Loki was never the main anything.) Loki? Nothing. He wears his heart on his sleeve for no reason, bonds with the man who imprisoned, taunted, and gaslit him, is killed, and continues to be a moron and a joke. Always the clown. Always the dumb one. The one with the bad ideas. The inferior Loki.

Don't even get me started on that finale. I can't. This already took so much out of me. Fuck Marvel. Fuck this fucking show. I just... I'm done.

[hekatekun]

The metanarrative’s grand narrative: Osomatsu-san’s characterization throughout the franchise

The growing cynicism throughout the entire Osomatsu-san franchise shows itself in season 3 with more prominence than anything prior. I think that’s pretty common amongst any “long-running” gag comedy - replacing a plot with spiteful commentary that’s admittedly pretty hit or miss at times. However, it invariably creates a negative but pretty funny character growth, and I love the way the show (I’m including the movie too as “canon” material considering season 3 has referenced it way too many times for me to disregard) has set up this metanarrative across seasons. Long post ahead.

Obviously, Osomatsu-san is self-aware and has a casual relationship with itself. No linear plot (though S3 seems to be trying it out and I’ve enjoyed it - I love that they’re willing to experiment), rather a collection of unrelated skits; and so it points out its own metanarrative because of this “lack of consequences.” With comedy comes impermancy and Ososan AND -kun will always bounce back from that week’s insanity. From the Oxford Dictionary, a metanarrative is “a narrative account that experiments with or explores the idea of storytelling, often by drawing attention to its own artificiality.” Basically: a story about stories.

On top of this, is what I’m calling the “grand narrative,” which is often used interchangeably with metanarrative, but here I’m making a distinction to make it less confusing. Of course, Ososan is a story about stories, but with that comes a story it’s not directly telling, which is where most of the (little) character development is taking place. This is what I’m going to call the grand narrative of a show whose premise is being a meta-aware comedy. I’ll admit I’m by no means an expert on these subjects, but storytelling methods are something I enjoy trying to analyze. As a media format, Ososan really utilizes the fact that it’s a tv show.

Right off the bat S1E1 makes it clear what to expect: Nothing. Not a damn thing. But, the show had already been cleared for this first season, so it has to be produced. This same episode’s preview is done by Osomatsu, which I’m just gonna quote instead screenshot because there’s too many.

“...we plan on properly starting the anime the next episode.” “...you ended up with an extra minute, so you need me to do something to fill it?! Actually, is this anime going to be okay with episode one being like this? I’m getting worried about how the rest of this is going to be...” “There, I used up a minute! [EPISODE ENDS]”

Episode one is not only batshit referential, but downright mocking the state of anime in 2015. Which, truthfully, I don’t have much to comment on in that regard, as I’m not an avid anime fan. However, it does this under the premise of being indecisive about what kind of anime they wanted the Osokun reboot to be. 

They’ll do just about anything to stay popular and relevant considering that is, quite literally, all they have going for them as characters in the series and just being characters in general. They may be pieces of shit, but they’re likeable pieces of shit. The dynamics they’ve built upon to be entertaining is encouraged, and they’re basically just roleplaying different skits and fucking around.

All the AUs! All the skits! They’re just playing! They’re just fuckin’ around!! They couldn’t come up with any interesting plot nor could they “graduate” from being anime protagonists and join the real world, so they just fuck around and make a gag anime!

Even if we follow both as the audience, the show makes a difference between the what’s them in their “normal life” (crazy begets crazy, no?) and what’s their “show.” But, really, that’s just one way to look at it, as they don’t really follow any rules as a show. I could say the Joshimatsus are separate characters from the sextuplets, and it’d be a “correct” interpretation. It doesn’t really matter - I’m choosing to examine it all as being the six of them just running around and playing, because being entertaining and having fun is all they know as characters. Besides, having it blended together beyond recognition reinforces how it prioritizes entertaining us, the audience, above logic. Storytelling doesn’t need to make absolute spatial-temporal sense for it to be enjoyable to fans.

In any case, that mentality really seems to be what pushes their character development negative, as they look to reinforce habits and rituals despite them being really detrimental for them in the long run. They know they’re popular characters as is, and with really everyone from staff to fans encouraging this behavior further, so they see no point in fixing what isn’t really broken.

I found this 4 year old article from Manga.Tokyo discussing the Ososan phenomenon in Japan because while the craze died off pretty quickly in American anime circles (which deserves a whole other post), Japanese fans went fuckin’ nuts.

This portion caught my attention, as it makes sense that entitled and enabled asshole children would grow up to be entitled and enabled asshole adults. The article also goes on to compare them to idols (even beyond the F6 spoof) and that they are rooted in being comfort characters above all else. 

It’s worth a read, especially because Japanese fan response is what drives majority of the content post-S1, and, inevitably, ties into their character development. 

They know that they’re Characters, particularly Protagonists. You know what happens to protagonists? Everything works out. Just about every single story created has stuff working out for protagonists. In fact, we have a whole genre made that separates stories with bad tragic endings from our Normal Stories. Ososan is a comedy, not a tragedy, so surely there’s gonna be some payoff somewhere along the road, especially as the seasons and other content are still being pumped out. To a self-aware, entitled, enabled protagonist, assuming everything is just gonna work out for you isn’t that far off from your narrative truth.

However, Ososan is a gag anime, and a lot of gag content (like 4koma mangas) is dropped for other projects before any emotional cathartic ending is provided for characters and fans alike. So, three seasons and a movie later, nothing has happened. It’s a great idol cash cow with a Family Guy filter, and the characters (and writers) don’t even bother to hide it anymore. And I know I’m being hypocritical concerning my definition of “canon material” but I think this portion from one of the drama cds “Choroplex” basically summarizes my point:

CHOROMATSU: Wait, don’t make this into a gag! You don’t even care about becoming employed, right? KARAMATSU: There’s no way that could happen... CHOROMATSU: What kind of future are you imagining? Is it nothing but this? [HUGE PAUSE BEFORE THEY MOVE ONTO SOMETHING ELSE]

They’re parodies of themselves and are running out of ideas. Stagnation and decay is normal, if not unavoidable, at this point in time for them. They’re just 20 somethings who’ve hit a wall but they’re too scared and insecure to bring about permanent positive change. It’s easier for them to fall back into normal patterns and joke off the rest.

They have an antagonistic relationship with expectations. They can’t handle a single iota of expectations, or responsibilities. They’ve never needed to worry before, so why bother now? Once the biggest hits on the block, now they’re just guppies in the ocean, and there’s nothing they believe themselves to be able to accomplish to keep up with this big brave new world. This is epitomized in S3E15, where old man Osomatsu tells a bastardized version of the Tortoise and the Hare, blatantly projecting his feelings onto it. Again, too many screenshots so let me pull more quotes (bolding for my own reference):

“The place that the tortoise thought was the goal was not actually the goal. His journey down the road of life still continued on. The tortoise was quite tired, but he continued running anyway.” “No one actually knew who was in front anymore. There are too many people above you.” “After the tortoise found out how society worked, he thought, ‘So this is the difference in talent? No amount of hard work is going to fix this. All right. I’m done competing with others.’”

S3 has left more questionable endings than its counterparts. The last 2 skits I referenced don’t even a gag to them, and the marriage skit doesn’t play music for the entire second half of S3E5. There’s more involved too. I haven’t even brought up the rice ball twins becoming actual entertainers in their universe, or how they introduced this whole AI subplot only to reject it because All Six Of Them aren’t interested in expanding their little corner of the world. Here’s a transcript of the ending preview from S3E1:

“Hey, hey, Osomatsu here. I thought we were saved from being replaced, but I guess we get new characters next week. Man, we’re busy. New encounters, changing surroundings... We’re NEETs to begin with because all that is a pain. I guess a lot can happen after three seasons. [EPISODE ENDS]”

The sextuplets’ mindsets are extremely self-centered, which is also an environmental thing (the parents don’t even really care that they’re NEETs, for one) and an understanding of what they ought to be (epic successful protagonists). They also have a very black and white mentality, all or nothing. They’re extremely sheltered, and once they realized where they stood in society at large, they just gave up. To them the world is divided between winners and losers, and somehow, “inexplicably,” they found themselves to have fallen from grace. But they’re protagonists, that has to count for something! Everything’s gonna end up okay, right? Well... what this show has told them: No, not at all. They are consistently compared and warned of Iyami, and are perfectly aware of this fact, and have come to internalize it as a truth rather than a reversible self-fulfilling prophecy.

Too many screencaps, taken from the S3S5 marriage discussion:

JYUSHIMATSU: I wonder if we’re gonna get married someday, too. CHOROMATSU: Well, I mean... probably? I’m not exactly sure, but... TODOMATSU: What? You’re gonna get married, Choromatsu-niisan? CHOROMATSU: Huh? Well, yeah... someday.

Surprise! They have commitment issues! The same group that couldn’t commit to a fucking plot! Though their personality issues have several factors involved, I can’t overlook the theater motifs abound. Life’s a stage, and they’re performing entirely unscripted and it shows.

Do I think all of this is 100% intentional on the writers’ part? No, probably not. There’s also an extra layer here regarding contemporary Japanese commentary that I’m not familiar with, so I just ended up focusing on the characters. I can’t be in the writers’ heads, but whatever decisions are being made by executives regarding censorship and “compliance” are reflected in these character changes that result in being significantly more bitter and defeatist.

In the all or nothing, winner-take-all mentality, the only way to save face at this point, in their minds, is to own up to it - act like it’s what they wanted all along. And, hey, it’s funny to watch, right?

“Why is Osomatsu all my examples”, you might be asking. Well, he’s the damn blueprint for it all. The leader of the bunch, the first personality to grab your attention, has had all his issues projected and ricocheted in their echo chamber.

Ultimately, my point here is that you could think their “canon characterizations” (though canon means nothing in a show like this) as being intertwined with the nature of their self-aware existence. They’ve shown you all their tricks, the smoke and mirrors are getting boring, and they’re stalling long enough the story seems to be moving on without them - in spite of them. And when something genuinely threatens their way of life, they don’t know how to respond.

You can play it all straight, of course. Remove the meta jokes and all the same plot points can be hit, but, as a slapstick comedy, it’s able to easily add this additional layer in that I appreciate. I’ve said it in my last post and I’ll probably say it in more, but with comedy comes sincerity - the caveat of all the cartoon violence is that, on some level somewhere, this is how they really feel.