#I don't think I've conveyed much of the complexities

[quatregats]

Thinking about Marie Ladon (under cut for major spoilers through Lord Hornblower)

Contemplating Marie as proxy for what couldn't be with Bush/Hornblower trying to understand his own emotions towards Bush. It's unclear to me what parts of Marie are real and what parts are not; the entire sequence at Graçay is dreamlike to begin with, and the second time Hornblower visits, in Lord Hornblower, it feels equally so. Marie is also a deeply idealized character who seems to understand Hornblower's every need and meet his every want; but we know not to trust the internal monologue at all, and when Marie does actually break through it in a few rare moments, she does seem to be a very different sort of character - the same is also true of Barbara, but Forester is a bit more obvious about it. The thing about Marie is that not only does she only appear in these out-of-the-world, in-between spaces in the narrative, often in a very overly-perfect way, but she also appears at points where Bush and Hornblower's relationship has taken significant turns and Forester only partially elaborates on it. In particular, Bush and Hornblower become very close on the way to Graçay, and appear to have grown even closer upon leaving it (and there are distinctly romantic-adjacent comments on both sides of this sojourn), while on Hornblower's second trip to France, he has lost Bush and clearly been deeply affected by the loss - in fact, it causes a rift between him and Barbara which he deepens by seeking out Marie. There are parallels there in death as well, with both characters dying in the same book - Hornblower lives out death first with Bush at a distance, then again up close with Marie. They move in odd tandem with each other, and while Marie often appears out of nowhere and takes center-stage, Bush always looms large in the background with a longer, more emotionally-wrought storyline that can never quite come to fruition.

I wonder, then, if there is something to be said for Marie as a sort of narrative device for Hornblower's relationship with Bush. She's not that relationship directly, but instead almost a way of processing it - processing the raw desire in Flying Colours, or processing death and grief and a lost illicit relationship which might be far happier than any legally-sanctioned one. She stands in for what Hornblower can't say, and she lets him process and fail to process his ghosts. I'm not quite sure where to go from there, but I think that it's interesting how she serves to act out the things which Hornblower otherwise doesn't dare to say; in Marie there are the echoes of what Hornblower and Bush are, or could be.

[chiocchi]

If you don't mind answering, why do you ship Tom Riddle and Harry Potter? Besides the whole issue that they are enemies, and the age difference, both characters are heterosexual. It's canonical fact. If it's the dynamic you like... Have you thought about Tomione's ship? They have a lot of potential together. And in the right direction, they would be a couple that could make it in the books.

JDKLJKLFJSDLKFJA This kinda feels like people knocking on your door and trying to get you to believe in their religion. It's pretty funny.

I don't know why are you calling issues to a part of the pairing's appeal lkajdsjfs (And Hermione is Harry's age and they are on the same side too?). And not sure about that canonical fact. Harry can be read as bisexual quite easily and Voldemort|Tom... idk he seems more obsessed with power, immortality, and Harry. But even if that's the case, I don't see why it should matter. We're in fandom after all.

I don't know if I'll be able to convey why I like this ship so much. For starters, I'm really into the unique connection they share. There was a piece of Voldemort's soul inside Harry's; they had a mental link; a whole language they're the only ones to speak (for the most part); Voldemort chose him and marked him; and there's even a prophecy that linked them together. There aren't two people more connected than them. They're soulmates, and the fact that Voldemort didn't intend it and Harry hates it adds another layer of complexity.

But not only that, they're like a broken reflection of each other, which I find fascinating. In his second year, Harry was worried about the similarities between them. Both half-bloods, orphans, raised by Muggles, they both considered Hogwarts their first real home. I feel like they would have really understood each other in other circumstances. They would have been friends. Because one of their key differences is that Harry found friends and adults that loved him while Tom was probably bullied and, y'know, the whole Dumbledore thing.

Not to mention that Harry would die for everyone whereas Tom would kill everyone. They're insane in their own way. I love their similarities and differences, but more than anything else, I love when they're together. The fanfics and fanarts are awesome.

And the whole thing of being enemies feels quite gay sometimes klafjdlskfja. Harry can't help but think Tom is handsome and, despite everything Voldemort did, Harry wanted to give him one last chance to show remorse. I have no doubt Harry is crazy enough to actually forgive him.

I've thought about Tomione and I've come to the conclusion that I don't like it. pinktom has a really good post about it and I agree with it. Besides, Hermione liked Ron and had something with Krum, and they're nothing like Tom. Just because she's heterosexual doesn't mean she's attracted to any man, y'know? klajdlfkdjs I don't think they would have been a couple in the books, no matter the direction. If it's the dynamic you like, have you thought about Tomarry? More believable, more intense, and a wider range of wholesomeness to fucked up in the fics. It's really interesting. Unless you don't like men being together? Hmm? Suspicious (just kidding. To each their own. So no need to go to other people's asks to try to change their minds :kek:).

Also Harry is my favorite character and he's not replaceable. I kinda don't care about any other character tbh. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

[mauesartetc]

Redesigning Helluva Beelzebub

Hoo boy, roll up the sleeves for this one.

The Original

In my review of Helluva Boss 108, I mentioned that Beelzebub's character design put me in mind of how some DeviantArt kid's fursona might look. And... Yeah I stand by that statement. The most likely reason I can figure Viv Medrano wanted her to be dog-like was to make a reference to her Die Young music video, which featured an anthro wolf singing a Kesha song (for context, Kesha herself voiced Beelzebub and co-wrote a song for this episode).

But for those who are unaware, Beelzebub's traditional depiction looks nothing like this.

Really the only visual similarities the Helluva version shares with the Infernal Dictionary version are the insect wings, six limbs, and the crown thingy over the head. (At least I think that's a crown-? Kinda hard to tell on both counts.)

Bee's eyes get somewhat more insectoid later in the episode, but that feels like a cop-out. Wow, her eyes and colors changed. Totally a bug demon, right?

They had the same problem in Hazbin Hotel with Katie Killjoy, who's allegedly supposed to be a praying mantis but barely resembles one, even after her transformation.

I understand the desire for fresh takes on old figures, and taking creative liberties so the new interpretation doesn't feel generic. But the changes should at least make sense. By now it's pretty clear Viv couldn't care less about representing Ars Goetia demons faithfully, as demonstrated with Paimon, Andrealphus, and now Beelzebub. You could slap completely different names on these characters and it wouldn't change a thing. I posted this meme a while back but it's never been more relevant:

On top of that, what reason could there possibly be for the design to be this damn complex? Why did she need so many markings on her face? Why did she need so many layers of hair? Why did she need flowing goo for her hair, tail, and body, each requiring dedicated effects animation?

When it comes to a hand-drawn production, less is more. Any superfluous details on a character just make unnecessary work for the animators.

Anyway, here's what Viv has to say about it.

Alright, I'll admit: The lava lamp bit is a little clever. Basically it works as a regular stomach does, but on demonic steroids. But it wouldn't look so much like Viv's making this up as she goes if we'd seen Bee's stomach performing its intended function in the episode. Let her chow down on a giant piece of food (maybe that cotton candy she's been handing out-?) and swallow it, and let Loona (and the audience) see it dissolving in her transparent belly. As a general rule, if it's not shown or explained in the work itself, it's not canon. Like I've said before, Viv: Elaborate on the nuances in the story you're telling, not on social media.

Also, "Her ears are designed after beehives"? Wh...Wha? Ma'am have you ever seen a beehive.

(Hell, even if you told me the ears were inspired by the generic cartoon beehive we're all familiar with, I wouldn't have guessed. There's a difference between being subtle and being vague.)

I can kinda see it in the overall shape, but that's a very specific design inspiration that wasn't clear at all in the design itself. Same with the "animal trainer" thing: I never would have picked up on that if Viv hadn't pointed it out. If a character design doesn't visually convey all the necessary information, it's not a successful design. Show, don't tell. There's a communication breakdown between what Viv's telling us and what Bee's design shows us.

(It's possible she actually meant "Her ears are designed after honeycombs", but even then, each compartment has a specific pentagonal shape that's not coming across at all here.)

I also find it interesting that Bee and Loona have almost the exact same body type. Of course Viv's pretty infamous for samebody syndrome, but it's actually unnerving how similar these two are.

Might this be a reference to Vortex's "type"? Is this foreshadowing a relationship with Loona? Am I overthinking this? Yeah, probably. Viv's demonstrated a clear preference for tall, skinny body types over the years, so it's safer to assume that's the explanation. It's all aesthetics. It ain't that deep. Occam's Razor and all that.

Finally, Bee how the hell does your shirt work.

The Concept

So at this point it seems most logical to lean into the "bee" thing for the redesign, and scrap all the canine elements. As for the blobby hair and tail... yeeeah let's nix those too. We're going for a streamlined version that's easier to animate. And because I ignored the ringmaster look for my redesign of Asmodeus, it only makes sense to do the same for Bee's animal trainer vibe (what little there is) for the sake of consistency. I know this version of Hell has a circus theme with its highest-ranking demons, but there's never been an in-universe explanation for why that is.

Let's look at actual bees, then. A quick peek at Google has informed me that certain insect species have smaller, "simple" eyes (also known as ocelli), in addition to their compound eyes. In bees, this manifests as a triangular grouping of three beady eyes on top of the head.

In her Helluva Boss episode, Bee's full demon form has three eyes, which could be a reference to this triangular arrangement, plus her regular form has two spots on her forehead in addition to the third eye. So it's possible Viv actually did research for something. Pleasantly surprised on that front.

Next, the body. I've noticed that some folks find Bee's skinny body type refreshing, as the sin of gluttony is too often personified with fatness. And that's fair. That's valid. But consider this:

Imagine any Vivziepop character saying that about a chubby person. Imagine the series sending the message that fat people can be sexy too, and that they have worth outside of their appearance, enough for at least one character to consider them girlfriend material. That they're valued and appreciated regardless of this culture's beauty standards (which we know nothing about since the worldbuilding is as thin and flimsy as tissue paper, but whatever). Imagine if this show finally had a fat female character who wasn't relegated to the background. Don't know about y'all, but that would be refreshing to me. And when you take into account all the fat-shaming of a character who isn't even fat, portraying a fat character as attractive would be a nice change of pace for this show.

Now let's talk about clothing. In the episode, Bee's clothes show off a lot of her body, with a cutout crop top and short shorts. We can take a similar approach for the redesign (something that still shows off her chest, belly, and limbs, in keeping with the extroverted "party girl" persona), but that perhaps includes more queenly elements.

The Redesign

Because this is a redesign, many elements were already in place, but I still had to figure out how this character would look as a bee. Here's where the preliminary sketches came in. Lots of trial and error in this process.

Wrestling with this character's face got a lot easier once I realized I could mold it into a pentagonal shape akin to a honeycomb compartment. It took a few tries, but at last, I had a final sketch.

All that was left to do was test out some color combinations.

I tried a few different approaches, but in the end, this is the version I felt worked best.

I used many of the colors from the original, but pushed the orange much harder since orange is the symbolic color of gluttony as a sin. And overall it gives Bee a nice honey-ish look rather than the generic black and yellow we already see on so many bees in cartoons. I thought the colored outlines on her clothing would add a soft, feminine touch, as well.

And just for kicks, here's a quick sketch of her giant form, inspired by the Infernal Dictionary drawing of Beelzebub.

Conclusion

The canon version of this character exists in the form she does for no reason than to stroke her creator's ego. "Hey guys, remember when I animated that Kesha fan video? Remember how cool that was? Wanna see me foist this unnecessarily-complex character design on other animators while I take a victory lap?" I wouldn't mind so much if Viv animated any of this herself, but she didn't. I could almost excuse this if she had no animation experience and didn't know how much work it requires, but she does. The self-aggrandizing entitlement is just off the charts. But a nonsensical design is leagues better than a stolen one, so... brownie points for that, I guess.

[meanbossart]

Hello! I really love your art!!! Im a big fan of horror and erotica, do you have any toughts to share about being a horror-orinted artist? Im also an artist and contantly want to draw (and share) some darker stuff but am too afraid of internet judgment i guess (a coward lmao). In your journey on the internet, do you were harassed or something because if your subject? Sorry if it is a weird ass ask - im genuinely curious.

Heya, glad you enjoy my stuff!

I've never really experienced any harassment because of my art. I've gotten unkind reactions/opinions about it but one individual expressing their dislike for what you do every once in a while isn't really noteworthy enough. I do, sometimes, get the impression that people online are very reactionary about getting negative feedback of any kind, which makes sense with how over-exposed we are to the worse-case-scenarios of true, nightmarish harassment. But, truth be told, MOST of us will A) never make it "that big" B) While it may be kind of rude, receiving occasional negative attention is just a part of the human experience and it will always be sprinkled into otherwise positive feedback. You just have to be okay with that and take it maturely.

I think one of the main reasons why me and my partner never received severe negative attention for our comics (besides for being mind-numbingly boring as people with our internet presence) is because we are explicitly clear about what they are and what they contain. I have seen a LOT of horror/shock-content artists be... Very euphemistic about their work for whatever reason? Like, trying to sell the themes of their work but somehow failing to explicitly disclose the triggering content within it, or they just leave it at "gore/horror" when a more in-depth description of what the work contains would have been necessary. Sometimes, people seem to do this because they are preemptively scared of the backlash they might receive; but other, much more infuriating times they seem to be tricking people into giving them money before being fully informed.

As an example, here's what the content warning for one of our comics looks like:

Could a "sexual content and assault, death and bigotry" warning have sufficed? Maybe, and at some point I would have argued about the necessity of this level of thoroughness. But nowadays I really think my boyfriend's insistence for detailed TWs are to thank for keeping the people who DON'T want to read about this stuff away, and the people who DO to be able to find it and """enjoy""" it responsibly.

So, be objective about what it is that you're making, not only with others but with yourself. Is there a more complex point that you're trying to convey with your work? Probably. Is being cagey about the work's content and refusing to acknowledge that it may still be triggering, pornographic, repulsive and shocking going to make people see that point more clearly? Absolutely not.

[whenmemorydies]

You love taking care of people: Fine Dining in the Time of Late Stage Capitalism

CW: this post discusses toxic and abusive workplaces and makes brief mention of institutional child abuse and intergenerational trauma. I might also talk about global systems collapse, for shits and giggles. Also this is another long one. You know the drill. Lets have a cuppa. Also this is my last minute submission to Sydcarmy Week 2024 and the theme of “you love taking care of people”. Enjoy!

I have a confession to make to The Bear fandom:

The food is my least favourite part of this show.

Its not that its not interesting. It definitely is. I'm a home cook and for the most part, I enjoy cooking (when I can do it at my leisure and not like most mothers, while balancing the mental load). I just find all the other aspects of the show much more fascinating.

In fact, I think this show about a bunch of cooks in commercial kitchens is so popular not so much because of its take up of cooking but its unflinching and loving interrogation of grief and trauma, including the kinds that get passed down through families.

The truth is, I've also never been overly excited about the world of "fine dining." I grew up in a large, Tamil family and so our meals were big, shared and not necessarily conducive to the minimalist plating preferred in exclusive, "gourmet" spaces:

Photograph is mine, delicious Jaffna Tamil spread is the handiwork of my great aunt (Kunchi Ammamma or “little maternal grandmother”), arguably the best cook in our sprawling, extended family.

As tumultous as family life could get, I often experienced meals (that, lets be real, were almost always prepared by the women in my family) with my loved ones as a happy experience. I mean we also had our share of blow ups at the kitchen table but what was always consistent was the love and care that went into the food that we were given to eat. It was woven into the rich and complex flavours that made up the curries, varais, and sambals we had on our plates (and that even now, make me salivate just thinking about). It was spread throughout the warm, coconut-y rotis and steaming rice and puttu we ate with our hands and used to mop up all that spicy, flavourful goodness.

And if there's one question I heard more than any other from older family members growing up, it was "ni sappittiya?" ("have you eaten?"). More than "how are you?" and definitely more than "I love you." As with many Global South cultures, for Tamil folks, food is used for nourishment but also as a primary means of conveying deep care. Obviously Tamil people don't have the monopoly on using food to show their affection (or even the monopoly on using food to replace actually saying the words "I love you" lmao). Food has been found to increase interpersonal closeness and can also contribute to emotional regulation. Feeding a child is one of the first means of bonding between parents and children. Food also plays a big role in the course of romantic love: as a basis for first dates and future time spent with a partner, and of course also as an aphrodisiac.

As Cesar Chavez, Mexican-American civil rights activist, labor organiser and co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association (which later became the United Farm Workers union) said,

The people who give you their food, give you their heart.

You love taking care of people

Conveying care and love through food is a theme that comes up repeatedly in The Bear. Recall 1x02 Hands and the phone conversation with Nat and Carmy:

Natalie: Chefs always say a big part of the job is taking care of people, right?

Carmen: Yeah, yeah. No I guess.

Also recall an almost identical bit of dialogue between Carmy and Sydney, under the world's most famous table that had absolutely nothing wrong with it in 2x09 Omelette:

Carmen: You love taking care of people.

Sydney: Yeah I guess.

Here's some further mirroring between Sydney and Carmy about giving people joy through food. Recall again the phone call between Carmy and Nat in 1x02 Hands:

Natalie: When did the breathing problem start?

Carmen: I think maybe sometime in New York. I was throwing up every day before work.

[...] Chef was a piece of shit.

Natalie: Then why'd you stay there?

Carmen: People loved the food. It felt good.

Also recall the conversation between Sydney and Marcus in 1x08 Braciole:

Sydney: I want to cook for people and make them happy, and give them the best bacon on Earth.

Be gentle with each other, so that you can fight stronger together: seasons 1-2 of The Bear

As rough and tumble as The Beef was, the clear throughline in season 1 (when The Beef was in operation) was the importance of the relationships and care between the show's characters. This was also the case in season 2 where the majority of the season was spent in the context of renovations and training prior to the opening of The Bear (in that season's last episode).

In season 1, we had Carmy leading the crew at The Beef by being patient, clearly explaining technique and positively reinforcing his staff's work.

Above left: Carmy walking the BOH crew through making Donna Berzatto's Lemon Chicken Piccata in 1x05 Sheridan. Above right: Carmy encouraging the crew to keep up their current pace in 1x06 Ceres.

We saw him working with Sydney, supportively encouraging the team to go further, to push themselves. We even saw Carmy at ease enough to talk about Mikey and his mother while at work. We had a Carmy showing us how integrated he can be.

Above: Carmy and Tina in 1x05 Sheridan

Heck, we even had a Carmy who wanted to get a compost installed at The Beef for processing food so that it didn't go to waste. Recall this golden bit of dialogue between him and Sweeps in 1x01 System:

Carmen: Eh yo Gary, you set up a compost for me today, Chef?

Sweeps: After I do my thing in the place.

Carmen: That's very clear. Thank you.

We had a Carmy who had time. Recall the below scene in 1x02 Hands before Sydney gives Carmy her draft business plan for The Beef (that she drafted on her own initiative and time to support his family's struggling business. If this man doesn't hurry up and fight for her in s4 istg...):

Sydney: Hey you got time?

Carmen: Always. What's up?

Similarly, we had Carmen in the first episode of season 2 making time to talk to a clearly distraught Richie:

Richie: Yo you ever think about purpose?

Carmen: I love you, but I do not have time for this, alright? *starts to walk up the stairs out of the basement*

Richie: *Nods, looks dejected, sniffs*

Carmen: I have time for this. *comes back down the stairs and sits with Richie*

Most pointedly in season 1 we had the conversation between Sydney and Carmy in 1x03 Brigade which lays the blueprint for their joint vision for the restaurant and which should have acted as a touchstone for both of them in season 3:

Sydney: You know, I think this place could be so different from all the other places we've been at. But in order for that to be true, we need to run things different.

When I said I didn't think that the brigade was a good idea, you didn't listen. And its not that you told me that I had to. [...] But you just didn't really listen and if this is going to work the way that I think we both want it to work [...] I think we should probably try to listen to each other.

Carmen: Yeah. You're right.

Sydney: The reason I'm here and not working somewhere else, or for someone else, is 'cause I think I can stand out here. I can make a difference here. We could share ideas. I could implement things that make this place better. And I don't wanna be wasting my time, working on another line or tweezing herbs on a dish that I don't care about, or running brunch, God forbid.

Carmen: *nods vigorously*

In season 2 while The Beef undergoes its facelift into The Bear, some of the show's most beautiful moments were when characters displayed their faith and trust in one another. Recall 2x01 Beef where Sydney asks Tina to be her sous chef, or 2x02 Pasta where Sydney and Carmy send Tina and Ebra to culinary school (and Tina's unwavering belief in and support for a nervous Ebra once they get there), and 2x03 Sundae and 2x04 Honeydew where we see Carmy and Sydney send Marcus to Copenhagen to stage with Chef Luca and build up his skills as a pâtissier.

So what happened at The Bear?

Season 3 of the show has been the most divisive of the series, with its preceding two seasons being almost unanimously adored by fans and critics alike. There's been a lot of debate on here and elsewhere as to why this is the case. What appears to be a dominant line of reasoning in this regard is the shift in Carmy and his approach to running The Bear as a fine dining institution.

At The Bear, we have Carmy as an Executive Chef who's berating, hostile, and blaming everyone else for his emotional state ("You guys are fucking killing me"). We have a Carmy who has taken "every second counts" to a point so minute that he has given up smoking because of the time away from the kitchen that it will cost him. We have a Carmy who has no patience for his team, almost all of whom have no experience working in fine dining before the opening night of The Bear. We see how out of sync Carmy and Sydney are ("Been off"). We have a Carmy who is reverting to patterns of behaviour that have been modelled for him by two of his abusers: his mother, Donna Berzatto and his previous boss, Chef David Fields, Executive Chef at Empire.

Perhaps second only to Donna and her stand in Claire, Chef David Fields' toxic legacy haunts season 3 of The Bear.

This is nowhere more clear than in the sheer wasting of food and money in season 3 epitomised by Carmy's insistence on changing the The Bear's menu every day (to quote Tina: "Every day, Joffrey Ballet?!") and his repeated throwing out of dishes he deemed "not perfect."

The waste did not go unnoticed by other characters on the show. Recall Natalie telling Carmy off in 3x03 Doors:

Natalie: The menu cost is out of control.

Carmen: Nat, figure it out.

Natalie: Oh. Oh. Figure it out? Wow.

Carmen: Figure it out.

Natalie: Why don't you fucking figure it out?

Carmen: I'm trying to use less shit.

Natalie: Okay, well, whatever you're doing, the R&D [research & development] of that, its fucking us.

Carmen: Well, we're using the best shit.

Natalie: Duh. Duh. Well, duh.

Carmen: Duh? Don't duh. No duh. [lmao this dialogue]

Natalie: Don't buy fucking crazy shit and then use it once, Carm. It's so wasteful. Duh! Duh, duh. Fucking duh, bro.

In episode 3x05 Children, Uncle Jimmy commissions The Computer to come in and run analytics on The Bear in an effort to get its costs under control (LOL at his assessment below, scrawled on the back of the dodgiest looking pie chart I've ever seen):

Computer: This sample is based on the month and a half we've been operating and does not take into account any funds spent previously on build, friends and family budget, other assorted fuckery.

Carmen: I mean, there hasn't been that much fuckery.

Cicero: Oh neph. You specialise in the fucking fuckery, bro.

Uncle Jimmy had plenty to say about Carmy's use of the former's funds (which Jimmy has duly invested in The Bear to support his nephew) including Carmy's decision to spend $11,268.00 on Orwellian butter (aka Dystopian Butter from the Fucking Rare Transylvanian Five-Titted Goat, lmao).

Even Carmy was under no delusions about how wasteful he was being this season. Recall his discussion with Sydney in 3x05 Children:

Sydney: You know what we should be doing?

Carmen: Produce vendor. You don't have to say it.

Sydney: Okay, I didn't say it then. I didn't say anything. Do you want me to say something?

Carmen: That I'm jamming us up 'cause we have a new menu every day and the economics aren't great?

Sydney: Well, I'm an accomplice, so...

Note: the language in this small bit of dialogue struck me as being off. Why does Sydney needs Carmy's permission to say anything? Its like she knows that he knows the constantly changing menu and exorbitant expenses are an issue but doesn't want to say anything until Carmy brings it up first. @yannaryartside has a great break down drawing the analogy between Sydney's "accomplice" confession here with Molly Ringwald's (sorry I dunno what her character's name was) confession about facilitating her partner's substance abuse, during an Al-Anon meeting in 1x03 Brigade.

We have Carmy repeating harmful patterns of behaviour at work that he has picked up from his personal life (for example, from his mother) but also from his professional experience.

The world of fine dining that both Carmy and Sydney came to The Beef from was marked, by their own admission, with "complete and utter psychopaths" who screamed, pushed and yelled at their staff (recall Sydney's disclosure to Carmy at the end of 1x05 Sheridan) or "fucking assholes" (in the case of Chef David Fields), who made their staff "very, probably mentally ill." Sadly, this aspect of The Bear is not fiction. @moodyeucalyptus pointed out in this post that both Carmy and David Fields appear to have elements of their characters based off of real life fine dining wunderkind Chef Charlie Trotter: a Chicago-based chef known to be brilliant but who mistreated his staff so badly that he had two class actions brought against him (one by FOH staff, and another by BOH staff led by James Beard Award winner Beverly Kim).

There are other stories about the grinding nature of the fine dining industry which we'll get into below. We'll also look at a few stories of chefs who are leading a renaissance away from the "toxic, hierarchical shit show" that has historically plagued fine dining and who Joanna Calo and Chris Storer may have front of mind as they take us through Carmy and Sydney's journey together in season 4 (because as tempting as Shapiro's offer is, we know Sydney isn’t leaving Carmy). But first, we need to go further back in time to look at how the fine dining industry itself has created the conditions for a chef like season 3 Carmy to exist in the first place. Lets look at the system, baby (to quote Tina in 1x01).

The Bear's culinary ancestry: Chef David Fields and the Fine Dining Industry

I should say that I did not want to go too far into history with this post. After Carmen, Natalie, and the Berzattos, I was committed to trying to write shorter meta (/snort). But I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the origins of fine dining, and before that, the rise of Europe as the base of "haute cuisine" (which itself is directly tied to its history of colonialism and...Empire *badumbum* @freedelusionshere has made the point that The Bear writers have given Chef David's restaurant the name Empire purposefully and they're not wrong). All of this informs the current state of fine dining today.

Though France is often credited as the place where restaurants began (in the 1700s), its been established that folks were eating in communal restaurant settings all over the world, including in China about 700-600 years earlier. The origins of western fine dining (the tradition that Carmy and Sydney have trained within) however, are synonymous with French cuisine and the efforts of Georges Escoffier (who Carmy name drops in 1x03 Brigade).

The French Brigade

Escoffier was responsible for developing the French Brigade system of organising kitchen staff which is still used today in many restaurants worldwide, including at The Bear. The French Brigade was based on Escoffier's own military experience in the Franco Prussian War and was set up to identify roles in the kitchen and increase efficiency and consistency so that restaurants could scale their work to serve larger numbers of customers.

The thing with anything based on structures found in the military is that its going to replicate hierarchy (a chain of command is central to the running of military operations). In fact, much of 1x03 Brigade is spent with Sydney resisting what she identifies as the imposition of a "toxic hierarchical shitshow".

Mariya Moore-Russell, the first Black woman in the world to get a Michelin star (who also happens to be from Chicago) talks at length here about the benefits of the French Brigade for systematising commercial kitchens but also how easily it can get corrupted if the wrong people are in the kitchen. She says in those circumstances, the Brigade can quickly perpetuate, racism, sexism, perfectionism and "all of the isms." My fav quote from the video? When Russell talks about the French standardisation of cooking adopted by most kitchens in fine dining industry (at 23:39):

They were like okay, how do we take what Grandma does, what Mama does and make it you know efficient and consistent but also just extremely stressful for everybody involved? (lmao)

Note: Moore-Russell has a series of videos on YouTube about her experiences in fine dining which are very illuminating. She's also such an engaging storyteller. For example, watch "My path through the restaurant industry".

Service à la française to service à la russe

In addition to the French Brigade, another development in the history of western fine dining was the shift in styles of food service from service à la française to service à la russe. Service à la française ('service in the French style') involved serving all the dishes for a meal at once, allowing patrons to serve themselves. Think something akin to buffet style. See below for table layout using service in the French style from 1775:

Source: Wikipedia.

To me, service in the French style looks kind of similar to how my Tamil family lays out our meals (as can be seen in the first picture of this meta, minus the pheasant, moonshine and roasted woodcocks...lol). This style of service also looks a whole lot like "family style" dining which can be described as: "when food is brought to the table on large platters or serving dishes rather than being individually plated. Guests then serve themselves from the dishes which are passed around the table." In fact, service in the French style or family style dining is how many cultures serve and eat their food, both in the home and in restaurant settings (whether they use these terms to describe that layout is another matter).

I also seem to recall a couple of soulmates Jeffreys deciding to open a family-style restaurant in 1x08 Braciole (which @bootlegramdomneess has also pointed out in her post here).

In the 19th century, service in the French style became replaced in European restaurants by service à la russe ('service in the Russian style'). This style of service is what Western fine dining and haute cuisine restaurants utilise to this day. It involves bringing courses to the dining table in sequence, one after the other. Courses are portioned and plated before being brought to the diner by service staff.

In the case of Western fine dining, Escoffier shaped haute cuisine ('high cooking') through the use of his French Brigade system and the implementation of service in the Russian style. Haute cuisine has undergone shifts and changes since the 19th century including with the nouvelle cuisine movement in the 1960s which was marked by a focus on fresh produce, paired-back menus and a focus on invention. Haute cuisine of today has been described as a fusion: employing elements of nouvelle cuisine and more elaborate techniques and processes from Escoffier's system.

To my mind, service à la russe involves a lot more people (definitely more wait staff) to have it deployed effectively. When you have more people, you have more room for error (like all those dropped dishes in season 3). Family style service or service à la française allows people to serve themselves. It encourages sharing. Personally, I prefer the latter. Also can we talk about how small the portion sizes are in haute cuisine? lmao. I get it, its art. You need a gigantic plate for a small piece of hamachi because thats the canvas. Some (read: me, lmao) might also say its big ol' waste to wash a plate that size for food that takes up maybe a 1/5 of its surface area. Can we also talk about the concept of "chargers" (which the Computer rightfully rips into Carm and Sydney for in 3x05 Children) - why do you need a table setting that no one's gonna use? I'm sure there's other aspects to haute cuisine that make no fucking sense but honestly this meta is gigantic enough as it is so I'll stop there lol.

Anyway, notably it is service à la russe and food that would be described as haute cuisine that we see at The Bear. Family style is nowhere to be seen in season 3.

Colonialism, Empire and the rise of Western food cultures

A fact that is often left out of discussions about why the French and other European countries developed such globally renowned food cultures as well as their staggering wealth and status as "first world countries" (particularly in the period between the 1600s to the 19th century) was that at around the same time, these nation states were expanding their own empires by colonising other parts of the world with the express purpose of acquiring ingredients (and other resources) that they did not have access to in Europe. A brief and non-exhaustive list of examples below:

Europe's demand for flavour was so great in the 1600s that the Dutch traded Manhattan to the British in order to secure the Indonesian island of Banda Run which, at the time, was the world's only source of nutmeg. When they first arrived in the Banda Islands, the Dutch killed and enslaved much of the Bandanese population, taking control of the island's local nutmeg plantations. This violence would come to be known locally as The Banda Massacres.

It was the hunt for a direct trade route with India for black pepper that Christopher Columbus used to pitch his voyage to the King and Queen of Spain and which ultimately led him to the Americas. Columbus' arrival precipitated the colonisation of the Americas, which resulted in enslavement, disease and outright genocide, decimating First Nations populations throughout North and South America.

The colonisation of the Americas would also lead to the exporting of various foods that have come to be staples in European cooking. For example, the tomato - the key ingredient in many Italian (and Italian American) dishes - orginated in South and Central America and was brought to Europe via Spanish colonists.

The British set up their infamously brutal East India Company (EIC) to control the Indian subcontinent and the trade of various resources including precious metals, opium, textiles (silks and cotton), spices (such as cinnamon, black pepper, nutmeg, cloves, mace) and other food items (like salt, sugar, coffee and tea). The EIC would later be supplanted by the British Raj in Britain's stranglehold on India and after almost 200 years of imperialism and economic fraud, it has been estimated that the British drained India of nearly $45 trillion. I can't even begin to fathom an amount of money that large but the British could, and that theft powered much of the empire during its height.

The influence of Indian ingredients and cuisine spread throughout the British empire, including back to Britain itself. In fact, through colonisation and empire, Indian influences appear in various global cuisines (including other European cuisines as well as in the Caribbean).

Indeed the British's impact on food globally included its colonisation of Australia and New Zealand. These two colonial outposts essentially became gigantic cattle and sheep runs for the British who facilitated the wholesale theft of land - and in the case of Australia, did so without even bothering to enter into treaties with First Nations people - in order to run livestock that was then exported to feed Britain.

In order to satisfy its sweet tooth, France operated huge sugar plantations on the backs of the labour of enslaved Africans, particularly in Haiti (known at the time as Saint-Domingue). In the late 1700s, Haiti was responsible for exporting 40% of all the sugar consumed in Europe. The human cost of this was high and brutally violent. Eventually in 1803, after many armed revolts, enslaved African-descent people kicked the French out of the country after over a hundred years of heinous exploitation (thereby creating the first Black republic in the world). The French were so economically dependent on the colony for its production of coffee and sugar that when Haiti got its independence, France decided to punish the new republic for the loss of future income on Haitian exports, demanding 150 million francs in gold as compensation. The French sent warships to enforce this cruel debt. All in all, Haiti spent approximately $21 billion paying off France for the freedom that its people had already lost their lives and shed their own blood for. The debt (which involved the fledgling republic taking out exorbitant loans and fundraising amongst its citizens) was not paid off until 1947: 122 years after it was initially enforced. The French even charged Haiti interest.

Were it not for its vicious history of slavery and its century-long extortion of its former colony, I'm pretty sure France wouldn't have had the quantities of a certain key ingredient necessary to develop its worldwide reputation for pastries and desserts. I mean, you try making a crème brûlée, an eclair, a tarte tatin, a sweet galette, a mille-feuille, a madeleine, a crepe...without sugar.

This history deeply informs fine dining today. For centuries, Europe underdeveloped much of the world (borrowing Walter Rodney's turn of phrase) through colonialism and imperialist extraction. It then used those spoils and excess wealth to, among other things, develop its own food cultures and then self-proclaim itself as the cutting edge of the culinary world. To be clear, you can only faff about in a kitchen and create fancy sugar palaces and 10-course meals if you have the means and resources to do so. Haute cuisine is a product of wealth and resources, accumulated over time. Europe's colonial history also dictates which cuisines are recognised via awards like the Michelin star system. Hell, it dictates why you have the French (Michelin is a French tire company) dictating what constitutes "good" food in the first place. If you want to read more about this topic, this essay on Medium provides a good overview of the sad, racist state of affairs over at the Michelin Guide.

Where Europeans colonised and settled, this same lens was applied. This is why you have the undervaluing of Indigenous cuisine and ingredients in Australia, a situation which has only recently begun to shift. The colonisation of Australia actively involved the lying about Aboriginal foodways in Britain's attempt to falsely claim that Aboriginal peoples were nomadic hunter gatherers who did not use their land. Its why the history of how enslaved Africans brought their food cultures with them through the Door of No Return and transformed American cuisine, is not more widely known. Its why so few chefs of colour have been recognised for Michelin stars globally.

Empire and The Bear

Season 3 of The Bear pays clear homage to the impact of European empire on the world of fine dining in a few ways. The most obvious is the fact that Chef David's restaurant is literally called "Empire" lol. Another example and one of the most visually striking to me occurs in 3x01 Tomorrow. First, recall Chef David Fields' outright theft of Carmy's dish (I think we've established that you can't get more empire than the theft of food, yes?). Can we talk about how not only did Fields steal Carmy's dish but also, turned it into the most beige meal we've seen on The Bear to date, bar that single sprig of dill fighting for its life?

Carmy's penultimate plate (the final version being The Best Meal That Sydney Ever Had™):

Chef David Fields' dick measuring exercise version:

Carm was not a fan:

Can we talk about how the original plate featured the colours of the Italian flag (green, white and red) - emblematic of Carmy's cultural heritage and what is certainly one of the single biggest influences in his culinary journey (the dish also features fish, just like the main course in La Vigilia, the Feast of the Seven Fishes) - but after Fields was done with it, that shit was practically three shades of mayonnaise?

Can we talk about how Carmy's version of the dish almost certainly had a varied and dynamic flavour profile while Fields' looks just how I imagine it tasted like: whatever flavour meh is. The dish literally has no acid from what I can see (ingredients: paupiette of hamachi, fennel soubise, potato chip and dill). And I *know* a balanced dish has salt, fat, acid and heat (cos Chef Samin Nusrat told me).

Can we also talk about how Fields hates the most commonly traded of spices? The one that Columbus was looking for when he landed at what is now the Bahamas. The one that was an integral part of the East India Company's business plan rort to fuck India and South East Asia more generally?

Carmen: He hates black pepper for some reason I'll never understand. (from 3x10 Forever)

White folks in Europe were so hungry for spices to liven up their food that they invaded large swathes of the rest of the world to get the stuff. And yet, here we have Chef Fields, disliking Europe's gateway spice: the one that the Romans (Carmy's ancestors) had been trading with the East for centuries prior to Europe’s imperial frenzy, and which now makes up 20% of the world's spice trade.

Is the man so dedicated to meh that he couldn’t even bring himself to embrace pepper? Used to be one of the best chefs in the world, is right Chef Luca.

On top of dubious taste (I'm not a food critic but no one can tell me that hamachi and fennel soubise dish tasted anything other than fucked lmao. idc idc), Chef Fields is also one of the clear antagonists in The Bear. Along with Donna Berzatto, he is one of Carmy's two primary abusers. His impact on Carmy was never as clear on the show as it was in season 3. Lets take a closer look at that impact below:

Culinary ancestry and intergenerational trauma

Both Donna and David are ancestors of a kind to Carmy. Donna is clearly a biological ancestor in that she's Carmy's birth mother. I've argued here that David Fields is a culinary ancestor to Carmy. For ease of reference, I'll include my explanation of what I mean when I say "culinary ancestry", from that earlier meta, here:

Most folks understand ancestry to refer to our family or genetic lineage. When I was in university, I learned about intellectual ancestors or genealogy: where one can trace your intellectual lineage - the thinkers and creators that have shaped your understanding of the world and/or your chosen profession. I think its useful to take this concept and apply it to The Bear to help understand what the show is saying about legacy. I wouldn't limit the concept to "intellectual" ancestry though. It might be more helpful to talk about culinary ancestors in this context because the process of creating food - crafting dishes - isn't solely an intellectual exercise. It engages our intellect yes, but also each of our senses, our memories (recall that chocolate banana from 2x10 The Bear), and the need to nurture and be nurtured. Culinary Ancestors Carmy's culinary ancestors are varied given his work history. We know he's cooked under some of the best chefs in the culinary world of The Bear, including: Daniel Boulud (of Daniel), René Redzepi (of NOMA), Thomas Keller (of The French Laundry), David Field (a sociopathic Joel McHale, of Eleven Madison Park Empire), and Andrea Terry (a sublime Olivia Colman, of Ever). I'd also include here Mikey, Donna and Natalie Berzatto. I'd include cousins Richie Jeremovich and Michelle Berzatto as well. These are the home and line cooks Carm grew up with, watched in his mother's kitchen and at The Beef. He took his lessons - the good and the bad, learnt voluntarily and involuntarily - from all of these people, incorporated them into his working self and transmuted them into his food.

NOTE: In "Ancestors and The Bear" and in other meta I've written, I've incorrectly noted that Chef David Fields was the EC at Eleven Madison Park (instead of Empire). This was due to the fact that up until 3x10 Forever, we are not told the name of the restaurant that Fields and Carmy worked at together. In the draft script for the pilot, the restaurant is identified as EMP (Eleven Madison Park) by Sugar (see p 23 of that script), however this appears to have changed to "Empire" during the course of the show's development.

Through the lens of culinary ancestry, there is a clear connection between Carmy's wasteful R&D and menu choices in season 3 with the "lessons" he received under the tutelage of Chef David at Empire. For example, and as discussed above, the refusal to serve any dish that isn't viewed as "perfect" led to extreme amounts of waste at both The Bear and at Empire.

Additionally, Chef David focused on "subtraction" (recall his writing "SUBTRACT" on green tape and sticking it to the expo of Empire in 3x01 Tomorrow) and never repeating ingredients in the dishes that came out of Empire. Instinctually, these two strategies appear to me to be techniques to create needless scarcity. They're attempts at repression in and of themselves. Carmy adopts these philosophies and tries to implement them at The Bear as well. They manifest in his unilaterally overhauling the original menu at The Bear (without Syd's input) as well as his insistence that the menu change every day.

Minimalistic subtraction of elements was also a characteristic of Escoffier's approach to cooking which would be taken even further with the nouvelle cuisine movement in France. That movement focused on minimalistic dishes with fewer seasonings and sauces. Chef David Fields is clearly rooted in the French school of fine dining in this approach.

Subtraction also shows up in the show in a more dire way: in the cutting off of relationships and the whittling away of self.

I recently come across a promo still for The Bear. It features Carmy as the CDC of Empire, plating a dish. I've seen the image before but I never noticed the writing on the wall next to Carmy before. It reads:

"Its only after we've lost everything we're free to do anything"

This quote also appears in the 1999 David Fincher film, Fight Club (which itself is based on the book by the same name by Chuck Palahniuk):

Left: Carmen Berzatto, CDC at Empire in The Bear; right: Tyler Durden, general nihilistic fuckwit in Fight Club, also preaching the gospel of David [Fields].

This ethos, written on the wall and haunting the kitchen at Empire is emblematic of how Chef David operates. It reads like a fucked Psalm, giving a poetic shimmer to Field's abuse. Chef David tears down his staff, verbally degrading them to the point that he has the gall to whisper "you should be dead" to them. (OK. Can we...for a minute...imagine being a manager and that being your management style? Telling your best performing staff that they should be dead? Excuse me, mon cheri? A literal devil).

Chef David literally strips his staff of their dignity and their connections to the outside world. He makes them lose their sense of self and claims its all to make them better chefs. He tells Carmen in 3x10 Forever:

Chef David: So you got rid of all the bullshit, and you concentrated, and you got focused, and you got great. You got excellent.

The parallels between Carmy's experience at Empire - and even in the Berzatto household - and the critique of performative violent masculinity that Fight Club was trying to get across are worth pointing out. In Fight Club, white men beat each other up to try and assert control over a perceived loss of power. At Empire, Chef Fields consistently berates and degrades Carmy, clearly threatened by his CDC's talent. Similarly we have Richie complaining about having to take orders from "toddler" Carmy, saying "I was a baby too once, Syd. Nobody gave a fuck" in 1x02 (which could have been the origin story of any one of the men who joined Brad Pitt/Edward Norton to carry out "Project Mayhem" lmao. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the dudes on Reddit fawning over Richie circa seasons 1-2 also watch Fight Club as if it was some sort of aspirational manifesto and not the satire that Fincher intended it to be).

Chef Fields is meant to be representative of a toxicity found in the restaurant industry globally. There have been numerous reports of the physical and psychological violence meted out against kitchen staff by those higher up in the brigade.

Additionally the structure of the French Brigade system is such that those at the bottom - stages - are often expected to work for free. While unpaid internships are common in various lines of work, those industries start to run into trouble when large amounts of their products and services depend on unpaid labour. In fact, darling of The Bear, René Redzepi of Noma faced criticism of his restaurant's unpaid internship program. The internship program was rife with stories of ridiculous working conditions. Redzepi finally began paying interns in 2022 but then announced that Noma would shut down regular service at the end of 2024 due to being unable to afford its staff (at one point, unpaid stages made up almost half of Noma's staff).

The fact that entry into the world of fine dining means people need to work for free as a stage automatically eliminates this as an option for folks who cannot afford to volunteer in order to gain work experience. This would disproportionately impact on certain communities, particularly communities of colour whose members may not have access to sufficient wealth that would allow them to work for free. This is clearly illustrated in The Bear where we see that Carmy has the safety nets and access in place that allow him to stage at various fine dining institutions and gain much sought after experience (e.g. his family's ownership of The Beef and his ability to work there, his cousin Michelle's restaurants in NYC and his access to those spaces). Sydney, Tina, Marcus and even Richie have very different entries into the world of restaurants and fine dining.

The issue of sexual abuse and harassment in the restaurant industry is also very subtly broached in The Bear (though it is more heavily implied in the draft script for 1x01), particularly in 1x07 The Review with Richie accusing Sydney of giving a food critic head in order to get a positive review for her risotto (season 1 Richie was genuinely the worst). But the issue is huge, with more sexual harassment claims filed in the US in the restaurant industry than any other field of work.

Even scrubbing floors by hand and cleaning with a toothbrush, while ensuring sparkling kitchens, have also historically been used as a means of punishment, particularly in institutional settings. During Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, there were numerous reports of children in care homes being forced to scrub floors with toothbrushes as a means of physical punishment and control. (CW: the above link discusses accounts of institutional child sexual abuse).

Given the above, its clear to see that the industry - the system - facilitates a whole lot of shit that its workers are subjected to. So when Chef Adam Shapiro catches Sydney as she leaves the train station in 2x04 Violet and asks her how she's doing, her response is telling:

Sydney: It's been a long month [at The Bear].

Chef Adam: Ah. That bad?

Sydney: No, just-- Restaurants.

Chef Adam: Yeah. Right? Why do we do this to ourselves?

Sydney: 'Cause we're crazy.

Chef Adam: Yeah. What was this month's crazy?

Sydney: Um. The kind that's inherited.

Chef Adam: *Nods emphatically* Understood.

This Financial Times article on the dark side of restaurant culture in Copenhagen, sums things up perfectly:

“We always had this joke, an explanation for why things are so horrible: shit falls down,” [Chef Levi] Luna told [the author Imogen West-Knights], with a cold laugh. In the kitchen, the head chef gets mad at the sous-chef, who gets mad at the person below him, a chef-de-partie, who then takes it out on a stagiaire. Then one day, the sous-chef is the head chef, and he has learnt how a head chef behaves: badly. It should give a sense of the strength of feeling I encountered about how damaging this system is that several people independently described it as being like children who are abused going on to commit abuse as adults. This is the dark flipside of the restaurant-as-family metaphor.

Challenging the status quo @ The Bear

By the end of season 3, Carmy appears to recognise that subtraction in his life is not going to bring him happiness. In fact, in 1x08 Braciole, he identified subtraction - specifically, the cutting out of people from his life - as the reason his life got quiet as he grew more isolated. In 3x10 Forever, when he finally confronts Chef David, Carmy laments the psychic and physical impact of Fields' abuse as well as the isolation it engendered. Fields, psychopath that he is, remained unfazed:

Carmen: You gave me ulcers, and panic attacks, and-and nightmares. You--You know that, right? Do you-- Do you understand that?

Chef David: Yeah, I gave you confidence, and leadership, and ability. It fucking worked.

Carmen: My life stopped.

Chef David: That's the point, right?

Additionally, its worth pointing out that despite all the focus on precision, minimalism and (quite frankly) rage being put into the impeccably plated dishes of The Bear, it's the messy, juicy, multi-ingredient filled Italian beef sandwiches that remain the site's best seller. Indeed, in 3x05 Children, Nat tells Carmy that the sandwich window is the only thing at The Bear making any money. So much for subtraction.

We also see Carmy resisting a total acquiescence to Chef David's approach to running a kitchen early on in season 3. His non-negotiables read in the hindsight of the entirety of the series like his attempt at integrating the lessons he’s learned from various kitchens. It’s why the list says “no repeat ingredients” AND “vibrant collaboration”. We know that vibrant collaboration had to come from someone else’s kitchen cos Fields certainly wasn’t collaborating with anyone. That asshole was out there dictating like a fascist.

Additionally, while Carmy has realised the dangers of the fine dining industry by the end of season 3 (and not for the first time - recall in 2x01 The Beef when he called the Michelin star system "a trap"), and while Sydney grapples with her role as an "accomplice" to Carmy's season 3 bullshit, their protégés Tina and Marcus continue to keep the flame of genuine care, collaboration and inspiration alive. This is most clearly seen during the conversation Tina and Marcus have in 3x09 Apologies where they discuss Marcus' mother and his memories of her as well as brainstorm ideas for Tina's cauliflower, brussel sprouts and horseradish dish (please for the love of gad, give us more Tina, Marcus and Ebra next season).

Challenging the status quo in the real world

There are also actual chefs in the real world who appear to be doing something different with their work: embracing their own food cultures that have historically been locked out of the world of fine dining and also trying to run their kitchens in more egalitarian ways.

Above clockwise from top left: Chefs Tim Flores and Genie Kwon of Kasama, Chef Adejoké Bakare of Chishuru, Chef Asma Khan of Darjeeling Express and Chef Mariya Moore-Russell formerly of Kumiko and Kikkō.

The first, most obvious example of this for The Bear fans is Kasama, (shout out to @currymanganese and @thoughtfulchaos773 for introducing me to the above linked, short doco) the Filipino American restaurant founded and run by Chefs Tim Flores and Genie Kwon (who also happen to be married) in Chicago. Kasama is also where Carmy and Syd were meant to have their palate cleansing "reset" in 2x03 Sundae and where Sydney may have also been hit on by fellow Coach K fan, Kasama bae (shout out to @sydcarmyfan for verbalising what I squee-ed about on first watch of this episode lmao).

Both Flores and Kwon come from fine dining backgrounds but appear to challenge some of that industry's basic tenets, including the messianic role of the EC as top of Escoffier's brigade food chain. Flores openly states that his cooking is an ode to his Filipino mother who regularly taste tests his food. In the Nick Cavalier doco linked above, Flores states "if [his mother Lolly Flores] eats [the food] and there's no reference to her dish at all, I'm not doing the right thing." Flores and Kwon also operate Kasama using a hybrid model (that I think would send regimental Escoffier into a tailspin) where they offer fast and casual service featuring Kwon's baked goods during the day and offer a Filipino tasting menu led by Flores for dinner service only. Kasama was awarded a Michelin star in 2023, the first Filipino restaurant in the world to achieve that title. It also took home a James Beard Award that same year.

Note: if you haven't already, have a read of this interview of Tim Flores and Genie Kwon conducted by the Michelin Guide. ISTG Storer and Calo have read this and lifted whole paragraphs for The Bear's script. An excerpt that stood out to me, in particular:

The two first met at Bib Gourmand restaurant GT Fish & Oyster, also in Chicago. "He was leaving as I was starting. So we didn't overlap for very long. But I actually went to eat at the restaurant that he was working at afterwards, and I had one of the best experiences of my life at a tasting menu. And after that we started talking and hanging out, and eventually started dating," recalls Kwon about how she and Flores first met.

Sounds a lot like a couple of Jeffs we know, yes?

Also check out Chef Adejoké Bakare, who in 2024, became only the second Black woman to get a Michelin star in the world (the first being Chicagoan Mariya Moore-Russell who announced in 2020 that she was taking a break from her career for her mental and physical wellbeing and who also...is married to a chef lol). Bakare's restaurant, Chishuru in London, specialises in West African cuisine rooted in Bakare's Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa cultures. Bakare, like Genie Kwon, has a background in biological sciences. She also began her career as a home cook, then ran a fish and chip cart while studying at university in Nigeria. Once she moved to the UK, she ran a supper club and later won the opportunity to run a short term pop up restaurant. During the ceremony where she got her Michelin star, Bakare noted "[i]t did feel rather odd at last night's ceremony that 90% of the room was white middle-aged men. But the passion I see among young women in the industry is such that I'm confident things will change."

Take also Chef Asma Khan, who got her start in the industry as a home cook and then began running supper clubs out of her house in the UK. She then opened up the Darjeeling Express with a group of South Asian women she had met when they were all fairly recent arrivals in the UK, none of whom had formal culinary training. To this day, her kitchen remains fully staffed and run by women.

In this TEDx Talk about her work, Khan says:

"I wanted to cook but I actually wanted to feed people. This gave me the greatest pleasure. I felt at my most powerful when I was able to serve someone something I had cooked. In some ways it was my way of showing affection and love, and being able to give them something that took them home."

Sounds familiar yes? Like a couple of Jeffreys in season 1 of a certain show?

About the systemic sexism in the industry, Khan says:

"But at that time, in England, anywhere in the West, everywhere you looked it was male chefs you saw that was on television [...] in the media. It was always about men who were cooking kitchens. The greatest irony of it all is that [...] in every South Asian home you go to, you will invariably find a woman [cooking] but in every South Asian restaurant you go to, not just in India but in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, almost everywhere in the world, you will usually find a man cooking in the kitchen. And it was a desire for me that I wanted to cook but there was no road or route in front of me."

Khan elaborates further on the skewed and gendered manner in which elite fine dining operates, in this article:

“There is no public hanging [in her restaurant]. Male chefs have made cooking into a combat sport. I think it’s a reaction to the idea that cooking is feminine: I’m not the dinner lady! I’m not your grandmother! Sorry, but if you’re constantly screaming at staff it means you’ve trained them badly.”

Khan is describing the hyper-competitive nature of fine dining (and her suspicion that in a highly gendered industry that is populated by majority men, that there is a need to perform a hypermasculinity in order to put distance between themselves and the historically feminine-gendered roots of the act of cooking) and how Khan wanted no part of it, for herself, her staff or her patrons. In this Guardian article, Khan points her attention directly at the toxic work cultures of many fine dining institutions:

Khan sees herself as a vital heckler on the sidelines of the industry, rather than part of its elite club of star chefs. She is especially scathing of a macho restaurant culture that has allowed workplace bullying and abuse to become normalised – and of those who enable it.

“My deep concern during the pandemic is seeing very prominent people with considerable wealth remove the entire workforce without a safety net.” A surge of restaurant and pub workers were reported to be sleeping rough in central London in April, a fact Khan can’t shake. “It is so shameful, my heart bleeds for the industry, it is immoral. I don’t want restaurants to be ranked by Michelin stars for the fluff and edible herbs they put on a plate. I want to know how they treat their people, they should be ranked on that. Where there is bullying and racism, where there is sexual harassment, where staff don’t feel safe, people should boycott those restaurants. I don’t want to see them prosper.”

Honestly, after reading some of the horror stories about work place practices in the restaurant industry, I'm with Khan. I'm also with Flores, Kwon, Bakare and Moore-Russell. I reckon Storer and Calo are also with these folks too and that we're going to see a shift in season 4 of The Bear that reflects the larger industrial change in the world of fine dining that chefs like these are heralding.

The death of fine dining

Above: Carmy's phone in 3x05 Children

Like @freedelusionshere says here, I don't think its a suprise that season 3 ended with Ever's funeral. The fine dining of Empire and even Ever is dead. How can it not be given the way its been largely running to date, as discussed above? How can it not be when we are living in a time of severe food insecurity precipitated by runaway consumerism and the twin existential threats of global climate and extinction crises. How can anyone in good conscience justify charging exorbitant amounts of money on a plate that is not going to fill patron's bellies while there are communities worldwide who do not have enough food to feed their children? When some communities, even in so-called "first world" countries like America and Australia cannot access clean drinking water?

Truly, the argument for fine dining posited by Will Guidara in 3x10 Forever made me (and I'm sure many others) actually cringe.

There's nobility in this. [...] We can give them the grace, if only for a few hours, to forget about their most difficult moments. Like, we can make the world a nicer place. All of us in this room. We have this opportunity, perhaps even a responsibility, to create our own little magical worlds in a world that is increasingly in need of a little more magic.

There *is* nobility in nurturing people, in feeding them. But in a time of the multiple and rolling, global existential crises, where particular communities are being targeted not just for marginalisation but whole scale eradication, this is not a time for more "magic"; particularly when those "little magical worlds" are reserved for the select few who can afford them. We don't need more holes to bury our heads in. We need real spaces of care that are accessible, kind (read: not nice, but kind. there is a big difference) and nurturing. And those spaces need to be those things not just for the patrons who visit them but also for the staff who work there.

There is also literally no time for escapism, at least not of the kind that late stage capitalism promotes and as described by Guidara in 3x10. We are living at a time where food systems are said to make up one third of all greenhouse gas emissions, pushing the climate crisis further to the point of no return. What's the point of making magic worlds to escape an actual world on the brink? And while your magic-making contributes to the brink getting closer? Its like putting lipstick on a pig.

Indeed some have posited that it was the British Empire's remaking of the world to feed Britain (which we've looked at briefly above) that has been the single biggest contributor to the current environmental crises facing our planet. The Bear acknowledges the issue as well. Recall 2x04 Violet when Tina visits Jerry at the farmers' market and his explanation for why he has so little produce to sell:

Jerry: There's fewer and fewer moths to grow vegetables now, and 'cause of that, there's fewer and fewer farms. Used to be you could come down here, buy everything you needed for a full menu. All in one spot. Whatever grows together, goes together.

The reason there are fewer months to grow vegetables is because of climate change which has impacted on everything to season length, groundwater and rainfall levels (as the two main sources for global farming irrigation) and increased periods of drought and heatwave.

So whats next for The Bear?

Season 3 put us through the ringer with Carmy replicating toxic practices in his restaurant that are rife in the industry at large. Yes, Carmy also has mental health issues and is a survivor of multiple sources of trauma. We know this. I've talked about this at length here and here. But he's also a guy who's running his own business with folks who are dependent on their place of work for their livelihoods. As such, he, Nat and Uncle Jimmy (as co-owners of The Bear) have responsibilities to their staff.

As EC at The Bear who is directly responsible for managing BOH, Carmy has a choice to make about whether he "blows his trauma through" (shout out to Dr Resmaa Menakem and his book My Grandmother's Hands) the bodies of those closest to him, including the crew at The Bear. Just as parents have to work on themselves so that they don't replicate harmful patterns of behaviour in raising their children, so too do we all in our daily relationships, including where many of us adults spend most of our waking lives: at work.

Like Richie observed, Carmy is not integrated in season 3 but neither is the industry in which he's working. A menu that constantly changes, wasteful food practices, a food production and agricultural industry that contributes to a third of global greenhouse gas emissions leading to increased global warming. These things are absolutely not integrated. In many ways, Carmy's mental state in season 3 - anxious, agitated, exhausted, is a reflection of the times. Given all of the above, Carmy's "I'm so fucking sick of this" in 3x09 Apologies hits me harder in the chest. Yes Carmy, you should be. Now go do something about it.

Having looked at the career trajectories of a few talented, conscientious chefs in the course of writing this meta, I think its pretty clear that the old way of running restaurants a la Chef David Fields is over. As we sit at the precipice of climate disaster, watching multiple genocides unfolding at once, during a time of massive food insecurity, who the hell has time to be suffering in the way Chef David made his employees feel in the course of making food that is meant to nourish people? What fucking cognitive dissonance is required to continue on THAT kind of a path?

Come season 4, I reckon we are going to see a massive shift in the trajectory of The Bear. This will be precipitated by multiple things (like the review Carmy got at the end of 3x10 and whatever the fuck Uncle Jimmy is up to with that box and those golf clubs lol) but most significantly, by a realisation on Carmy's part that his version of Michelin mode IS NOT IT.

I reckon Carmy and Sydney are going to continue to work together but they'll go back to the original plan they made with one another in 1x08 Braciole. They're going to go back to family style. They're going to treat their staff better (after Carmy apologises lol). They're going to shift from wasteful, haute cuisine to sustainable food practices that support producers and the planet more broadly. They're going to leave Chef David Fields' scare tactic of subtraction behind and lean into using more pepper.

Above: Sydney's notebook as she workshops a recipe at home in 1x08 Braciole.

Tagging: @moodyeucalyptus @currymanganese @hwere @freedelusionshere @thoughtfulchaos773 @ambeauty @brokenwinebox @devisrina @espumado @fresaton @kdbleu @vacationship @birdiebats @bootlegramdomneess @mitocamdria @tvfantic87 @angelica4equity @anxietycroissant @turbulenthandholding @yannaryartside @afrofairysblog @ciaomarie

cos you may be interested but as always, I'd love to chat to whoever wants to about this stuff!

[1alchemistart]

The way you draw poses and expressions are really lively and so nice to look at!! ✨ :0

If you don't mind me asking, how did you learn to make good expressions and poses? + Any tips you can share?

thank you very much!!! ✨✨✨

well i've always been most excited about drawing expressions and i grew up with very expressive styles as my reference point (W.I.T.C.H. and atla are big examples in my mind for this, as well as just . animated movies. lmao LSDKL) so i never really took the time to break it down before, but i can explain some of the stuff i do!

as for posing, i think THE thing that helps the most is figure drawing, so i suggest looking into that for anyone wanting to improve their posing!

to be clear this is not a tutorial bc i don't think i'm qualified for that, it's simply how i do things SDFLKLSD i'll also include some links that might be helpful! all under the cut

here are some links you might find helpful on the topic of expressions!

"How to draw expressive faces" by Magdalena Proszowska

"How I Draw: Facial Expressions" by Emirichu

"Drawing Simple Clear Facial Expressions" by Aaron Blaise

another thing i personally have found helpful when i was still learning the basics was this specific challenge, 25 Essential Expressions by napalmnacey, and various expression memes are a great starting point as well!

as for what i personally do,

i REALLY have a fondness for assymetrical eyebrows and just generally kinda squiggly ones! they add an uncertainty to the expression of a character, and imo can really enhance a saddened expression or make a comedic one a bit funnier!

including eye wrinkles (when they make sense ofc) is an easy way to add some exhaustion to sorrowful expressions, but i also find it a good way to make happiness feel more unrestrained and joyous

i also think it's very good to look at how its done in other works or from other artists with very expressive work. dunmeshi comes to mind!

other things can be kept in mind, like nose wrinkles or smile lines or the shape of the lips, and additional details like redness and sweat drops or the size and detail of the iris can be used to emphasize an expression or add complexity :OO

also, hands and arms may be annoying to draw but they're like one of your MOST helpful tools when conveying an expression! is your character embarrassed or overwhelmed? they may wish to hide their face! or perhaps they tend to scratch their cheek when they're uncertain, or they're frustrated and holding their head! hands are a very important thing to add :D

i hope this will be helpful to you!!

[cambion-companion]

Hii!!! How are you? I want to say first that I love your blog and work, you are wonderful and very talented writer, I really enjoy reading you so much.

I was wondering if for the random writing prompts you could write somethin using the prompts 12.“I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.” and 26.“Let me do this, please.” about Aemond being in love with the reader since childhood but he's afraid of telling her because his insecurities about his scar. And one day his eye hurts a lot and she want to help him but he try to push her away because...Aemond being Aemond, but at the end he gives up and let her help him and in that moment he tell her how he feels.

Of curse I think you could make this more complex and fluffy and romantic with a hapoy ending, that was just de idea, and sorry if it's too specific.

Sorry for my english too, it's not my maternal lenguage

Hi my loves! Yes I love the idea of Aemond being close friends since childhood with unspoken feelings for each other. Aemond doesn't think reader can find him attractive and the reader mistakes his coolness for indifference.

Aemond x handmaid!reader | fluff | comfort

"Did I do something to offend him?"

"No, Y/N, I don't think it's anything like that." Helaena stroked your arm comfortingly as you finished pinning her hair back in place.

You looked at each other in the mirror of her vanity, your expression worried as you wrung your hands together. "Then why has he become so cold towards me?"

"Aemond is..." Helaena hesitated, turning on her stool to face you. "He is complicated. He doesn't know what to do with strong emotions." She shrugged helplessly at you as you tried to process her words.

"I-" Your thoughts were interrupted as the chamber door swung open on oiled hinges.

The entering servant bowed low to the princess. "The Queen regent requests your presence, your highness."

Helaena rose, straightening her skirts. "Thank you, Tomas." She glanced at you once more, trying to convey some indecipherable message in her lilac eyes, before departing from the room.

You curtsied after her, brow still furrowed in confusion. What had she meant, 'strong emotions'? Aemond had been your friend since childhood, he'd never treated you with the indifference of the past few weeks.

You sighed. "Boys." They said women were hard to understand.

Finishing your duties early, you decided to take some respite in the library. Climbing the stone steps of the Red Keep you were excited to have some alone time in the book-filled room. The library was not abandoned, as you had suspected it would be, it seemed someone else had sought shelter there.

"Aemond." You said, surprised to see him sitting at a dusty table pouring over a hefty tome of history.

He looked around at you, his silver hair slipping over his shoulder. His lilac eye glanced you over cursorily before he returned his attention to his book. "Y/N."

"Seriously, what did the servants put in your food?" You put your hands atop your hips indignantly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'm not giving it. Not until you tell me why you've been treating me so terribly." You were close to tears, wiping the droplets of moisture off your cheeks angrily. "Have I done something to offend you, that you would scorn me so?"

"Y/N, no." Aemond stood, crossing the room to stand before you, his eye wide with alarm as he saw your tear-filled eyes. "I..." He sighed. "I apologize, I haven't been fair to you."

You folded your arms across your chest, hugging yourself, waiting for him to continue.

"I've been under much stress lately and..." Aemond trailed off, suddenly unable to make eye contact with you. "I've been thinking-ah!" He gave a snarl of pain, clapping his hand to his scar and bowing forward.

"Aemond!" Your tears forgotten you hurried forward, pressing your palms against his chest and shoulder to keep him upright. "Should I fetch the maester?"

"No." His other eye was screwed tight shut. "Just, help me to my rooms."

Half-supporting the prince, you shambled out of the library and down the halls. Aemond was heavy, his arm slung over your shoulders, and you stumbled a few times as new waves of pain crashed through him.

"What is it?" You asked, heaving the door to his room open and helping him sink into the cushions of the sofa. "How can I help?"

"I'm fine." Aemond said through gritted teeth, his watering eye finding yours. "You may leave."

You didn't budge, the muscles in the left side of his face were twitching alarmingly. You reached out to help ease his eyepatch off, but Aemond caught your wrist in an iron grip. "No." He breathed, whether in anger or fear you couldn't tell.

"Aemond." Your voice was soft, your fingers still outstretched towards his cheek. "You don't have to pretend to be fine. If you need me to stay, I will."

He held you for a moment, his eye searching your face.

"Let me do this." You coaxed gently.

At last, he released your wrist, giving you a terse nod, wincing as he did so. You slowly hooked your fingers beneath the band of his eyepatch and slid the leather off his face. It was the first time you'd seen him without it, you tried to keep your face neutral as you took him in, keenly aware of his own probing gaze.

"Well?" Aemond hissed, flinching again from a shock of pain. "Are you disgusted? Will you run back to your rooms in fear?"

There was nothing in the eye socket staring back at you, just empty blackness framed by scarred skin and tissue that once served as eyelids. The vertical scar running along his face was puckered and still looked ghastly despite the efforts of the finest maesters to heal it.

"Don't be an idiot." You scolded, soothing your words with a soft smile as you tore your gaze away from the haunting image. "We've been friends for how long?"

"Warm water helps." Aemond gestured to the wash basin.

You filled a kettle and placed it to warm over the fire for a few minutes, glancing back to make sure his condition hadn't worsened. "How often does this happen to you?"

Aemond was silent a moment. "Not often, but when it does I am frustratingly hindered." He sat very still as you approached with the warm washcloth.

You didn't have to, but you swept his hair back out of the way of any dripping water, relishing the feeling of it slipping through your fingers. "Will I hurt you?" You raised the cloth to his face hesitantly.

"Never." Aemond held your gaze with an intensity that sent heat flooding your cheeks.

You pressed the warm rag to his cheek as gently as you could, wincing as he hissed with pain. "No, keep it there." Aemond instructed, pressing his fingers to the back of your hand, his face slowly beginning to relax.

You returned the washcloth to its basin, wiping any remaining droplets of moisture from Aemond's face with your thumb. He reached up, tracing the skin of your hand softly, his gaze on your face was curious. You gave him a small smile, the breath catching in your throat as he tangled his fingers with yours and lowered them to the cushions.

"I thought you despised me." You whispered, your voice almost inaudible over the crackling fireplace.

"Here I thought you thought me abhorrent." Aemond shook his silver head, looking pensively at where your hands were interlocked. "Y/N..." His eye flickered back to your face. "I'm in love with you, and I'm terrified."

It was a good thing you weren't standing.

"You...I'm sorry I think my hearing is damaged." You shook your head as if to clear debris from your ears.

"That is unfortunate." Aemond leaned into your space, his gaze dropping to your parted lips. "How about I show you then?"

A soft noise escaped you as his lips met yours, Aemond's hand finding the nape of your neck, dragging you closer until you were practically sitting in his lap. The firelight danced across the contours of his angular face as he pulled away enough to measure your expression with his hooded eye. He seemed to like what he saw. "You are a rare and marvelous creature, Y/N. I was certain you would see in me a monster."

"I could never fear you, Aemond." You shook your head, his thumb pressing against your lower lip. "You have a fierce kind of beauty unmatched in this world."

"Now you're flattering me."

You licked your lips, his eye dilating as it followed the movement.

"I didn't say to stop." He grinned, swooping down to claim your lips once more.

"You're an excellent kisser, oh wondrous dragon of silver samite." You intoned melodramatically, breaking away from his seeking lips with a giggle. "The bards will forever sing praises to your prowess and perfect hair."

Aemond's laughter mingled with your own as he lunged for you, pressing you back into the cushions with his body weight and tickling your sides with dexterous fingers. You squirmed under him, breathlessly shrieking and trying to evade his devilish touches. You couldn't breathe, made worse when he ducked into your neck, sucking and nibbling against your sensitive skin. You arched into him while simultaneously trying to escape him. "Aemond, please! Ah!"

He halted his tickling, hovering over you, his hair pooling on your chest and throat. "My name will be the only one to spill from your lips henceforth." He kissed you languidly, his chest pressing flush with your own. "Make no mistake, I will make you mine before the year is old."

With that promise sending fire to your core, he helped you upright, smoothing his hair while you ran your shaking hands along your rumpled skirts. You leaned into him, unable to get enough of his smokey scent, kissing his sharp jawline tenderly. "That's a promise I will hold you to, my prince."

[where-does-the-heart-lie]

Can we have a deeper analysis in Sabo's shape language study please? It's amazing how you make him give different vibes with just his hair and I like to understand how does that work.

Oh. I'm SO glad you asked.

(The Post In Question)

Okay so this isnt the first post ive made about shape language,

Here are the others:

ASL Shapes Strawhats Shapes

i'm just gonna copy and paste the definition i have for shape language from those posts here so i dont have to write it all again.

Shape language is defined as “a concept used in art and animation to communicate meaning based on shapes we are familiar with” (source). This concept uses circles, triangles, and squares to convey an idea of the “personality” of the design without using any words.

In designs, using circles and rounded edges in your silhouette and detailing gives the design a soft and squishy look. They tend to be harmless, approachable, or changeable.

Designs using squares gives the design a solid, sturdy, and strong look. They are supportive, reliable, and inflexible

Lastly, triangle designs are sharp and directional. They are dynamic, dangerous, and unpredictable.

That's base level but here's more in depth description of each design for ya:

this one is up first!

You may notice how in this design, his hair isnt in large clumps like the others are. His hair falls delicately and waves gently with little to no hard angles.

In this design, i was trying to convey the idea of "he wasnt born to fight, but he's molded himself into someone who will." I tried to depict that by making his hair all light and feathery, his facial features soft and rounded, but also showing how he's modified his body in a pointy and aggressive way.

I didn't want to only go hard edges with the piercings though because much like he's strayed from his mold of being delicate, he's also strayed from his mold of being a cruel noble. so some of his piercings are rings, AKA: Circles.

You may also notice the different in how I've drawn the collars of these guys. the collar of this Babo's black coat falls softly, and its' arc is rounded. The shoulders don't have any padding and it rounds at the corner.

This Man Is Round.

Next up is this Freak

This is supposed to be Triangle Him.

His hair is in larger, hard angled clumps. Indicating that he probably cut his hair himself. He did... greattt. I already headcannon him as someone who cuts his own hair, but i dont think this one ever gets any better at it.

The hard angles on his teeth, his scar, his jaw, his collar, that line i forgot to erase on the left, and his coat all give indication that this guy is Dangerous and you probably shouldnt mess with him.

I didn't have any real deeper meaning to this version, I just wanted to make him look as opposing as I could. this guy is "what you see is pretty much what you get."

Even though he doesn't have a lot of deeper meaning, I think this one is my favorite of the designs. I really love these colors on him and his hair was really fun to draw. I think I wanna draw him again at some point. I think this version of him would be very funny paired with Koala. I'm chuckling thinking about it:

Koala and her Armed and On Fire kindergartener

And lastly this guy

Sabo's base design is very rectangle coded. From his Hat, to his face shape, to his coat. So this version was very easy to make as I didn't actually need to change that much!

I think maybe I could've made his design a little more complex? But also I think there is a beauty in simplicity for this one. He looks straightforward, reliable, and kind. He seems like the kind of guy who gets his hands dirty, not because he likes doing it, but because he does what he must for the greater good.

I really love his hazel eyes, too. I think it brings a nice warmth to his design that is really nice.

Additional comments:

I love talking about this stuff. I love designing. I love art. I love drawing so much it's so fun

Everytime I get to sit down and make some funky doodles my brain feels like 🧠🤸🧘🧜🧚🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️🧚💃💃💃💃💃💃

If you got this far thanks for reading :)

I usually have a description for my designs and my choices and stuff and I forgot to do one for this post, it makes me happy to see that it was missed :)

[cy-cyborg]

Proximity to disability is not the same as living with it - Writing disability quick tips

[ID: An image with “Writing Disability quick tips: Proximity to disability is not the same as living with it” written in chalk the colour of the disability pride flag, from left to right, red, yellow, white, blue and green. Beside the text are 2 poorly drawn people icons in blue, one is standing, the other is in a wheelchair. /end id]

One of the really common ways people push back against disabled people trying to give them feedback on how they’ve depicted disability in their work shows up as something along the lines of, “Well I have a child/parent/grandparent/friend with that disability, so I don’t need to consult other disabled people because I already know what a life like that is like!”

I see the most vehement pushback like this from parents of disabled children. the parents who are their child's advocates, their carers, they see everything their kids go through and have been with them through it all, so they "know what they're talking about already". And the thing about that is, while it means you have much, much more experience with the disability in question, it's not the same as direct experience living with it. Don't get me wrong, it's still an incredibly valuable experience to have, I'm not saying to disregard it, but it's not the same as having that disability. And when you're writing about characters who are disabled, and telling those stories to a public who already have a lot of misinformation about us going in, that lived experience is very, very important.

This isn't unique to parents of course, like I said, I've seen the same kind of pushback from children, friends and other loved ones of disabled people, and honestly, as someone who's been on both sides of the conversation (being a disabled person, but also having loved ones with disabilities different to my own), I do get where it comes from. But no matter how close you are with your disabled loved one, no matter how much you talk, no matter how much they explain everything, unless you yourself have that same disability, it's incredibly hard to understand the details of what life with a disability is like.

Let me use my partner as an example:

Often times, before these larger articles go up, I run them by my partner to ensure the tone and message I want to get across is actually what’s being conveyed. Which means he’s read pretty much every single article I’ve written on this blog. We talk about disability representation and tropes a lot, and he is one of the only people who sees my unmasked and unfiltered reactions to media when it’s done poorly. He’s also done a great deal of his own research on the subject, and worked with other disability sensitivity readers for his own writing projects. Not to mention, well, we live together, he sees pretty much every part of my day-to-day life and he’s one of the only people who doesn't share my disability who I talk to about the more complex emotions that come with it.

I think it’s pretty fair to say he’s quite knowledgeable on the subject of living with the specific disabilities I have for someone who doesn't have them. Despite that though, he still makes mistakes. He still misses things, and sometimes, internalised ableism - something everyone has, even disabled people - still creeps its way into his work. So do mistakes he simply didn't consider to run past me or his sensitivity readers. It’s not because he’s not listening or not trying, I’d confidently say he’s gone above and beyond in that regard, but it still happens. He still misses things that seem so obvious to me, specifically because of my lived experience as a disabled person who has to deal with these things all the time. It’s not unique to him either. A lot of people in my life are aware of the issues I talk about, but struggle to recognise them in practice or struggle to understand why them being depicted poorly is a problem.

This isn't to discourage creators from trying, mind you. But just to serve as a reminder that everyone makes mistakes, and that's ok, so long as you're still trying and still listening. No matter how close you are to a disabled person, no matter how much work or effort you put into unlearning things like internalised ableism, it's still going to pop up occasionally. And that's fine, but it means that you still need to be open to the criticism you get from people with that disability.

[hello-there-cyarika]

Hive Troopers!

But what if the Kaminoans crossed Jango's DNA with some sort of Nabooian or Alderaanian honey bee? It probably helps them communicate on the battlefield, and obviously they get the benefits of not needing a jetpack! I've got a lot of thoughts about these boys, but I'll just give some of the basics for now:

The troopers can use communicate sort of like a hive mind! It's not as sophisticated as using communicators, but they can convey feelings and vague ideas

Their antennae are very sensitive! They can be used to sense touch, smell, taste, some vibrations, temperature, and more! I think that ARFs like Waxer and Boil would probably learn to use them with a lot more skill through their training, in the same way they'd learn to use more complex or advanced HUD modes.

I think that troopers' stingers would be closer to the stingers that wasps have: retractable, and doesn't cause them to die after one sting by getting ripped off.

Troopers' wings are also probably way more durable, I can't imagine the Kaminoans sending them into battle with anything fragile like that, so they probably modified the DNA. I think the wings are pretty flexible instead of being breakable.

I'll go into this more another time, if anyone is interested, but I think that the distribution of internal organs would be significantly different with the addition of the secondary abdomen.

The boys are FLUFFY!!!

I think that the fluff would be kinda waterproof (I mean,,,, they grew up on Kamino and all) but on the other hand I think it'd make fire waaaay more dangerous. I think that blaster bolts could also cause the fluff to catch fire....

Can they make honey? yeah dude they're beeeeeees

They probably made space-mead out of it lmao

I have a lot of feelings about the way cadets are grown in little tubes land sleep in tubes on the walls like bees use honeycomb for their larvae and its all in large curved structures and how the whole thing seems just a touch like a hive......

They can DEFINITELY dance maps like bees can!!!! The ARCs and ARFs are the best at it.

They don't have compound eyes, but they do have hexagonal pupils!

I'm gonna doodle more of this whenever I have time, so let me know if you want to see anything specific, or have any fun ideas from this? I'd love to talk about them!!! <3

I also want to say that I have been VERY heavily inspired by @mothask! Please go have a look at their amazing fluffy moth boys!

@yukipri's winged au is also a huge inspiration for this! Y'all have GOT to go check out "Take Flight, Brothers All" on ao3 it's SO GOOD!!

And finally, a lot of the ideas I've developed about the bees' ARF training have come from the Reconstruction Corps AU (specifically Open Skies), created by the amazing @cacodaemonia!! I've got a lot of plans for Wax and Bo as ARF bees that I'm so excited to get started on!

So much love and appreciation to all of my inspirations!!!!! <333333

I have no idea if anyone's made anything like this before lol, but if anyone has I'd love to know!!

<3 I do not give my consent or my permission for my art to be re-posted or reuploaded on this or any other website <3

[drunkenskunk]

Welcome to another Drunk Skunk™ rant!

It is entirely possible that you have noticed: I love Warhammer 40k. At the same time, I hate Warhammer 40k... okay, hate is probably the wrong word, but let me explain.

40k is one of my favorite sci-fi settings because it is, hilariously, one of the few that actually manages to get the scale of Outer Space right. Most sci-fi writers have no sense of scale, but 40k is somehow able to convey the unimaginable, incomprehensible, terrifying vastness of Outer Space correctly.

Granted, I think it does this entirely on accident, because everything in 40k is exaggerated beyond the point of absurdity. The scale of everything is massive, every number has several zeros tacked onto the end of it, travelling anywhere takes months, years, even decades, and... that's just how Outer Space is. You can't exaggerate on what is already functionally infinite.

As a result, 40k as a setting has an enormous amount of potential. No matter how much we see of the Warhammer galaxy, we will only ever see a bare fraction of it, and there is always going to be more - and stranger - stuff hidden in pockets of the galaxy that has slipped entirely beneath notice for decades, if not centuries. Or even millennia!

But here's the problem I have. All of this potential? It is almost always completely wasted by Games Workshop. Nearly every single time, GW ignores the massive amount of potential in the setting they created, in order to focus on boring shit that nobody cares about like even more fucking space marines. It's infuriating.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no better example of this in the entire setting... than the Tau Empire.

The Tau annoy me, but not for the reasons you think.

The most common complaint I see leveled against the Tau is that they are the "good" guys, and that they don't fit into the Grim Darkness of the Grim Dark far future of Grim Dark. This is untrue. Moreover: it was never true. Even when they were introduced in 2001 with their first codex during 3rd edition, they were not good guys.

I've always held the suspicion that people saw things like their catchphrase "The Greater Good" and they read things like "the Tau are not overtly hostile," and took all of that entirely at face value, because a sizeable chunk of this fucking fandom has no media literacy skills.

It still amazes me that Warhammer 40k - a game physically incapable of subtlety - has fans that miss the blatantly obvious.

Before I get to my main point, let's clear the air on something right now: the Tau are bad guys, just like all the other factions in 40k.

If you were to place the Tau in any other science fiction setting, they would be a terrifyingly evil authoritarian space hegemony, with a firmly held belief of "Manifest Destiny" and constantly expanding the borders of their imperial holdings through the use of dirty tricks, illegitimate treaties, and good old fashioned military adventurism spurred on by their vast military industrial complex.

Yes, the Tau typically engage in diplomacy first, but that's usually only to establish a casus belli to claim the moral high ground in a conflict because the Tau are obsessed with appearances and love to play the Long Game. Yes, the average standard of living in Tau space is higher than the Imperium, but that's not a high bar. The Tau have a rigidly enforced caste system, and you can imagine how they deal with their "client races" who might disagree with that and even other Tau who refuse to fall in line.

Or have we all forgotten about Commander Farsight?

... I feel like I may have gotten a bit off track.

Okay, so: the simple reason the Tau annoy me is because there was a whole lot of potential there, and all of it has been completely wasted because Games Workshop doesn't seem to understand what made them interesting in the first place.

See, when the Tau were introduced in 2001, it was quickly established in the first codex that the only reason they even managed to make it to the "present" of 40k was due to a series of accidents that allowed that particular scrap of nowhere to slip beneath everyone's notice.

But here's the thing: we didn't really need that excuse. Every time we see maps of Tau space, it's always zoomed in to such an extent that it looks much bigger than it is... because, unlike every other faction, you can't have a full map of the galaxy that only focuses on the Tau, because it's always just a pinprick.

My personal favorite of these maps is the one from the 5th edition rulebook, but it's common with all of them.

To put this into better perspective: Tau space is almost always described as a sphere about 300 light years in diameter, which is roughly the same size as "The Bubble," the cluster of human worlds centered around Sol, in Elite Dangerous.

And that, right there, is why the Tau should be interesting, at least to me. They represent what could exist in the hidden parts of the Warhammer galaxy that slips beneath everyone's notice because SPACE IS BIG. The Imperium of Man may technically cover the entire breadth of the Milky Way galaxy, and "hold" a million worlds... but there are 100 BILLION stars, and even more planets besides, in a galaxy that stretches 100 thousand light years from end to end.

That is A LOT of Outer Space that could hold any number of secrets and weird alien species that nobody would know about until somebody accidentally stumbles on them.

The Tau could have - should have - been a jumping off point, allowing Games Workshop to make the setting feel even bigger and far more strange than it already does. The Tau could've been the template for introducing "pocket empires" to the setting: smaller xenos armies that people could use in skirmishes, but without entertaining the illusion that they have the military projection power to stand up to the other factions on an appreciable strategic scale for an extended period of time.

And yet...

It fees like Games Workshop consistently misunderstands what should make the Tau interesting. Every new codex, every new edition, it feels like we get more and more of GW trying to be like "No, no! The Tau can definitely stand toe-to-toe with the Imperium of Man! They build tall rather than wide, and are ABSOLUTELY a threat to the Imperium, we promise!" when in reality the only reason the Tau are even still here is because the Imperium always has bigger problems to deal with.

There was the bit I mentioned earlier, where the Tau were initially saved after they discovered fire due to a mixture of freak warp storms and the Age of Apostasy causing the records to get lost. The Damocles Crusade ended in the Imperium's withdrawal because of the imminent arrival of Hive Fleet Behemoth. The Third Sphere Expansion was only successful because Failbbadon Abbadon launched the 13th Black Crusade at the same time on the other side of the galaxy, blew up Cadia, and split the galaxy in half with the Cicatrix Maledictum. Every single time the Tau do anything, a much bigger threat always shows up, and causes everyone to forget about the Tau until they inevitably go back to poking the monster.

Like, I know it's GW doing this, but sometimes it feels like Tzeentch is secretly pulling strings behind the scenes to specifically ensure the continued survival of the Tau, for no other reason than simply because the Changer of Ways thinks its funny.

And that's not even talking about how they've slowly morphed into The Gundam Faction.

Like, it used to be that the Tau Empire was supposed to be this big conglomeration of many different alien races all working together. And there are token mentions of that in the 9th edition codex, with a big list of names largely devoid of context. But as soon as you see these guys in action on the tabletop, it's immediately clear what they're about. You only ever see Tau, and you only ever see Big Robots.

Which... it's not bad, the model range looks great, don't get me wrong. But it still feels slightly disappointing, when you think about what we could have had.

I love Warhammer 40k.

But I also hate Warhammer 40k.

Because I see all this potential... and, inevitably, I see it squandered.

And it frustrates me to no end.

[kyouka-supremacy]

hello!

I saw your recent post and you hinted that Atsushi is actually kinda twisted and that yoh don't agree with his morals?

If its alr with you, do you mind elaborating? ❤️

Alright, to be fair, I *am* self aware enough to realize a lot of what I say about Atsushi is probably fairly detached from canon. When push comes to shove, he's just a guy trying to get through. A polite dude. I like to stretch on how a lot of his well-mannered behaviour and his desperate attempt to prove himself good are moved by deeply selfish reasons of validating his own right to live, but that said, that doesn't make him inherently evil, either.

Atsushi's double morality is something that comes up a lot, so please check out these posts!! (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8). But overall... Is a good action that is done for deeply selfish reasons, still good? I'm not sure. But when I watched the anime for the first time, and in episode 8 it turned out that Atsushi was not helping the train passengers out of spontaneous inclination to help people in need, but rather just due to a self-interested aim to validate his own right to live... Idk, it didn't positively impress me? I was even less positively impacted by the later line “people can't live unless someone tells them ‘it's okay to go on’! ” The thing is, both scenes feel like more of the author's underlying worldviews that end up being conveyed through the series' protagonist, and that's a consideration to be made by its own– it's not an issue I have with Atsushi specifically, as much as me fundamentally disagreeing with most of bsd's perspectives on the world, as I've already said before.

But that doesn't change the fact that Atsushi is fundamentally selfish¹, does it? The difference is - I think - that for the author, more or less all people are, while to me no one is born selfish. But that still makes Atsushi not really morally virtuous, and I think that's narratively interesting to explore by its own!!! What if there was a character who only did good because (he thinks) that's the only way he has the right to live? What if there was someone who believed the right to live had to be owned in the first place? After having overcome the admittedly jarring sentiment I felt when first engaged with the character, I must admit those are some compelling concepts to explore, even despite disagreeing with the underlying morals.

At the end of the day, it's just a complex nature of the character? I like to emphasize on Atsushi's uncommendable selfishness especially as opposite to Akutagawa's hidden selflessness; but all said, a man who tries to do good despite it not being his first nature is a better man than any of us, isn't he?

¹ And Atsushi is profoundly selfish. I think that Beast in particular proves that he's ready to commit evil just as much as in canon he is to do good, if it's to pursue the goal of his own survival. The first thing we see him do, at the very start of the series, is, symbolically, contemplating robbing other people for his own survival (though in real life I would never judge someone's morality in life and death situations... But maybe since this is fiction, that can still hold narrative value). He will stop acting good as long as it's no longer required of him (each of his interactions with Akutagawa). Maybe it's a little pessimist way to interpret the manga, but perhaps still a consistent one?

[dead-boys-club]

You characterize everyone really great! Except Touya don't you think you write him a little too expressive? it just doesn't seem very fitting.

I'm not sure if I should say thank you or...

So, I'm not going to do what I did with Hawks and write you a whole book ( i lied ) on why I write Toya the way I do. However, I'll give a little piece:

Dabi was a mysterious, sarcastic jackass. Dabi was a cover. A persona. He didn't exist. He was built to mask intentions until Toya got where he needed and wanted to be. It's very simple.

Toya, on the other hand, in case no one's noticed is very emotional, very expressive and talks waaay too fucking much. I mean, we spent like 7 pages with him monologuing. He's not.. some emotionless, dead inside jerk and I also refuse to write him as some overly sexualized nympho - it's kind of tiring seeing all these characters reduced to nothing but sex and bad clichés. I mean - he's a super traumatized, unstable dude with a mental issue here and there, who actually enjoyed hurting people, but he's not a sociopath. However, he's also not in denial about a single thing. He knows what he went through, he knows what he's doing, he knows he's a little unhinged.

However - you're talking about a kid who basically just wanted attention and approval, who wanted his dad to be proud of him. Lmao, I hate to break it to you anon, but half the people I know, including myself, are very familiar with this kind of situation and the trauma of it. ( if you feel the need to come at me for the burning alive part, you can take your smart-ass right to the block button and not waste my time. )

I really, really hate that I have to keep repeating myself about these characters actually having depth and being more complex than you give them credit for.

Do you even understand what its like to be a deeply traumatized person, who sought those things and ended up so fucking disappointed that you became someone else? That you stopped trusting, stopped loving - you just kinda broke? The scenarios and reactions I've written for him with a partner convey someone who finally found someone else that isn't pushing him away, isn't screaming at it and is accepting how he wants to deal with things. And I've also made it clear in my writings of him that it confuses the shit out if him and he doesn't just accept that someone loves him and is proud of him... because how the hell is he supposed to know how to react to something he's never had? I didn't just.. make him into a character that changed over night and is good and happy, etc etc. No. Because I know better and I'm not going to shit on a character with complexities stemming from trauma and mental disorders.

As someone with a handful of mental problems, trauma out of the ass, that relates to this character on a pretty scary level - I refuse to write him on the surface of what Dabi was supposed to portray. I will continue to write Toya the way I always have and if you don't like it, that's perfectly fine. I'm not asking you to like it or change your OPINION, because that's what it is, but you will not come onto my page and tell me it's wrong. Lmfao.

I'm sorry that you want some shitty, second hand surface level Dabi writing that I refuse to give. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Hopefully you find another writer who will do that for you.

( Let me clarify: I am 100% shitting on how this opinion was brought to me. I'm not shitting on people that write him that way, not everyone spends 179395 hours in a fixation obsession over a character; I do. Write how you want. Write how it makes you happy. But don't go to people and talk to them like this.)

You could have easily written something like 'you characterize everyone really great but I don't agree with toya. can i ask why you characterize him like this?' Literally could've just asked. Not 'oh this is great except this one this one is wrong'.

If it doesn't seem fitting to you, that's okay. Then my writing isn't your taste. Go find someone else you enjoy?

[roxannepolice]

Re: my therapy thoschei quote rants. One, maybe just maybe it'll last longer than until 16th because current suggestion is to apply for a month prolongation. So less "I'll never make this as perfect as I want" stress and more "what if one person (the principal) will cut me off at the home stretch with 240 a4 pages already in place" stress 👍👍

And two, yeah I'm obviously very classics and tensimm biased, and of course there's just plain personal preference, but I think there's also a level at which it is only later on that things got... convoluted. Overconvoluted. And for me this is where legitimate criticism steps in. Like, there are much fewer ways in which you can fuck up a simple thing than a complicated one. And when you want your characters and relationships complex, you're likelier to end up contradicting yourself. If it was thought through hypocrisy and this was conveyed by the text - great. But that's not always the case.

The simplicity in ClassicWho was kind of natural for the medium that tv was at the time (you simply CAN'T be intricate and rely on micro acting when the episode will be watched one, two times tops), and I think it carried over to tenyana and tensimm in a more self-aware and thoughtful way. Even if tensimm, or Ten, or Saxon aren't someone's cup of tea, that's what it is: it's not someone's cup of tea - but I've never seen either criticisms or defences that relied on explaining how the tea is actually coffee, you just have to taste it harder.

What I'm trying to say is, I really, really enjoy simplicity and straightforwardness in art. That's not to say I want authors to guide me by the hand, but rather that there's a difference between discussing something complicated in simple and precise terms and discussing something simple in complicated and vague terms. To stick to tags used, I don't need Simm!Master to have a tragic backstory to embitter him towards the Doctor in s10 (this is purely about interpretation, it's great as headcanon and fic material), because welp, his function in that story is to be an asshole and the story is very frank about it. The fact that it needs memory shenanigans and characters being just plain stupid to remotely work is how I'd define bad writing, but that's a topic for another rant.

Basically, there's a difference between participating in discussions of soteriology in catholicism and cardinalsplaining what the Pope actually meant about good atheists going to heaven.

But I guess this is also an invitation to suggest classic and tensimm quotes that don't sit right with someone, because one thing is sure I will be needing brain warm ups in days/weeks to come...

[wombywoo]

Hypothetically, what would Quinn and Vincent's reaction be if Quinn got bite and turned during a mission gone wrong? 👀

Hmm...I've had thoughts about this, believe me....

If bitten by a vampire, there's a ~95% chance the victim will simply die, lol 💀 ~3% chance of being turned, and ~2% chance of surviving without consequence (these are rare, so there are a few side effects that haven't been effectively studied yet)

They are working on preventative measures for this type of thing--newly developed, highly experimental drugs injected immediately after a bite to try to counteract the venom--but there haven't been enough conclusive results.

Just note that, if Quinn were to be bitten by another vampire and turn, his soul would be connected to theirs, and not Vincent's. Not that Vince necessarily *wants* to be bonded in that way, but like....there's no way in hell he wants it to be anyone else. It's a very complex situation, so he'd do everything he can to try to prevent that from happening.

I think their reaction would be something along the lines of 'oh shit' lol. Vincent would be in a complete panic, trying his hardest to remain rational so he could try to fix it. If Quinn's been bitten on a limb, that thing is getting chopped 🙃 Vincent would internally struggle with this, but if it's the only option, he'd carry it out asap. For a bite on the neck or body--there's not much he *can* do, but I feel like he might try to suck out the venom if it's still recent (this wouldn't do much tbh). His other unhinged instinct would be to turn Quinn with his own venom, but that seems like overkill and would probably obliterate the poor bastard on the spot 💀 (plus, he's on the pill 😔)

Quinn would be in too much agony to really have a cohesive response, but I think he'd still try to come to terms with it as much as he can, and convey to Vincent that it's ok and not his fault...

If he were to turn, that would...change a lot of things for them. I'm not sure they're prepared for that possibility, despite how liable it may be in their line of work....they really don't like talking about it 🥲

[ghoulfuckersincorporated]

Do you think it'd be possible to rehabilitate Marked Men? If so, how do you think it'd go?

You guys ask such good, interesting questions!

I've been thinking about this one for a bit. Summed up, my answer would be that you could probably rehabilitate them physically enough to remove them from The Divide without them dying, given enough time, but I think that mentally/psychologically they're pretty much gone, so the ethics of doing so are questionable at best.

With the Marked Men, it's established in Lonesome Road that these guys are basically existing in a sort of perpetual "living death" where they consistently have these major traumatic injuries that would otherwise kill them, but they're kept right on the verge of life and consciousness by the insane levels of radiation in The Divide/along the Long 15. They're literally being flayed alive by the high-speed sandy winds kicked up by the storms that plague the area, as in "skin sliced from muscle", and they're constantly getting into skirmishes and tearing strangers (as well as one another) limb-from-limb, which would only result in more injuries.

The root of the issue is that these ghouls are basically radiation-dependent, right? Other ghouls benefit from the presence of radiation (increased healing rate, overall better feeling, energizing effect), but Marked Men need high levels of radiation to even stay alive. Maybe if you slowly, and I mean over a matter of weeks or months, moved further and further down the Long 15 back towards Vegas, really taking your time, you could acclimate them to the lower levels of radiation as well as allow their wounds time to heal enough to no longer be fatal.

But what are the implications for you if you have to remain immersed in all those rads for that long? Who's to say you wouldn't begin to turn into a ghoul yourself? At the very least, you'd be incredibly sick and flying through Rad-X and Radaway at a genuinely concerning rate. And it's not like you can waltz up to one of them and say "Hey, buddy! You wanna come to Vegas with me?" or tell them "I have to leave the canyon for a few days or I'm gonna die from radiation poisoning. Stay here!". They're gonna fight you the whole time and be genuinely quite dangerous when they do it, and the second you turn your back, they'll flee or kill you because they feel instinctually that that's what's best for their self-preservation.

Even if you could get them to a point of medical stabilization, it would by no means be an end to their physical pain (which can literally send you into shock and kill you itself) or the fact that none of them seem to have control of their mental faculties anymore by the time you encounter them. Sure, they demonstrate some minor ability to coordinate themselves, but I see that as more of a "terrified animals desperately defending the fire that saves them all from the dark" than something that teases at more complex thought processes. They don't even use words. Even completely feral ghouls outside of The Divide will sometimes use individual words (granted, those words are things like "Pain!" or "Kill!", but even that conveys some level of ability to understand what they're perceiving and to communicate that; Marked Men don't even have that as far as I recall.)

My theory as to why they would not recover mentally is that, like with the rest of the body, there will simply eventually be pieces of you that can no longer regenerate/heal properly, and they will age and rot as they should, even if ghouls are basically incapable of dying from non-trauma. This would include the grey matter that makes up the brain, and once a certain percentage of it is gone, you will see irreparable changes to that person's demeanor, behavior, and reasoning skills. Marked Men and feral ghouls in general, in my opinion, basically have a form of severe dementia that only occurs in people who survive ghoulification/live longer than the natural human life span.

I think these poor people are tired beyond a level any of us could ever comprehend. I think they're victims of something that should have ended a long, long time ago, and I think all they really know now is fear and pain. In my personal opinion, it's best to quickly and compassionately relieve them of their suffering.