#I love class subversions. There's something so wrong with both of them

[mystxmomo]

What's Agency's relationship with Eilistraee like? I got the impression that his relationship is relatively distant when compared to that of 'raun and Enclave, for example. Does he converse with her much? Receive much direction as her Chosen?

Thanks! 💕

Oh yes. His relationship with her is so much more distant. And they're both kind of okay with that? For the most part, Agency is largely doing his own thing, and a lot of his own thing just happens to also co-inside with stumbling into getting involved with Eilistraee and the bigger picture of the drow religions and their politics. Though, I'm saying that and realizing that I never attached what his priorities are to his reference sheet, so thats publically been in limbo for the last month or so. Huh. Alright neat guess we have a starting point.

So first of all. Something about Eilistraee I think differs from Vhaeraun is that... I think to Vhaeraun, the drow and their wellbeing is the whole picture. Comparatively, I think Eilistraee has some amount of understanding that everything thats happening with the three of them and the drow (no matter how big and all-encompassing it is to them and their people) is comparatively a really small piece of a much bigger world and that might actually be one of the advantages she has on Vhaeraun. While I think he intimately understands there are things out there that are stronger than him, she understands the benefit of putting trust in the wider world. And EVIDENTIALLY it benefited her in the long run. (looks warily at mystra)

So. That in mind.

As a Bard of Creation, he's someone deeply invested in, what he calls, "The Start and End of the Song." He dedicates himself in following "The Song of Fate" (Something he believes in on a spiritual/faith level, separate from any god) and allows it to lead him from place to place. As a result, he's often stumbling into the aftermath of calamity (However, in his mind, the end of calamity is often followed by the start of something equal parts new)

Though, truthfully, how much of that actually has to do with fate, and how much of that is the Forgotten Realms being heavy with consistent battle and bloodshed... well. Whichever it is. He's well acquainted with tragedy. Another man deeply desensitized to it, even. However, I think what sets him apart from a lot of the drow characters going on here is that even in his desensitization to tragedy, he never loses or (Importantly) hides the deep and sincere amount of empathy he has for others, and he personally finds a lot of strength in keeping that to his nature. His kindness and approach to others comes from the things he's seen, and his main goals in his travels is collecting and memorizing the art, music, and stories of the people he meets.

He was doing all of this on his own time LONG before he stumbled into meeting Eilistraee (And stumble into it he certainly did. The domino chain here is longer than this, but keeping it short to keep us on track. He just found one of her singing swords a day after his main one broke in half and was like. Well, sure. I guess I have a new sword now)

So you know. To a man who believes in fate, it makes perfect sense to him that a goddess would pick her chosen through a fated sword. And it certainly helps that so many of her values seem to align with his own!

Now. I think Eilistraee is someone who doesn't NEED a close inner-personal relationship with the people she guides as her chosen. If anything, being able to showcase the ways that her people find their own in their independence (Separate from her) is something I think she values a lot - I also think (Even if he's more than okay with it - He does love a good duel like the dramatic ass he is) She feels a little bad about pulling him in and directly commanding him, and genuinely values having someone who's main purpose is prioritized in sharing/spreading her values (Because there's power in that, isn't there? In the way little influences can chain react to effect the wider world?)

(Though, I think there are times she absolutely has to. As a result, he acts kind of as a surprise piece in the play she does drag him into.)

As for his relationship to her - I think, even at her most attempt to separate herself from her people, she's still a drow god at heart. She's at least a little in his business. He's absolutely talked to her avatar. He's danced with her, dances for her, and he's not shy about needing to talk to her and asking for her assistance. He's also... purposefully dressing on theme for her. He "Used to dress more in florals, but adding moon imagery to my clothing really did something to make her happy. It was the least that I could do."

But his duties to her are.. Things that come naturally. He's not being yanked around by her and her presence, it's something he walked into with care.

[annebrontesrequiem]

1, 16, and 24 for the ask thing

Thanks for the ask!

The character everyone gets wrong

There are a couple of characters I think that this could apply to, but I think the ones that grinds my gears the most is Heathcliff (from Wuthering Heights). Oh Heathcliff...

I really, truly don't understand why people read Heathcliff as a romantic (romantic as in love not as in the romanticism movement) figure. He's, not. He's so much not that if you didn't get the memo in the first part of the book, the second part of the book is just Emily going "look, look at this man. Look at how much he sucks. He's abusive. He's destroying his dead lover's son. He sucks."

This is pretty explicitly saying that Heathcliff sucks. So how are people out here romanticism him as a dark, broody hero (looking at you Stephanie Meyer specifically). Really I think it's cause adaptations cutting out the second half and because most people haven't read Wuthering Heights and only know it through cultural mitosis. But I'm still annoyed about it.

16. You can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

One that I don't think most people actually like is a shoujo protagonist who is just so passive as to decide nothing for themselves. This is especially annoying when the shoujo story itself is a compelling one. Two of my favorite shoujo (one is actually technically shonen but shhh) are like this, and it drives me nuts cause I adore the series themselves.

One I think is pretty popular is the yan-dere archetype. I just don't get it. Like I do get the idea of exploring taboo subjects in fiction, that I get. It's why murder ballads are a thing. It's why Lady Chatterley's Lover and the Red and the Black and the Scarlet Letter and like... Outlander are like that (yes I've read three Outlander novels; the first two are the best). People like the taboo. But like... every yan-dere fic I've read has just made me wish someone would shoot the yan-dere and relieve me of my misery. The only yan-dere done well is in fact not a yan-dere but a subversion of the genre... Shion Sonozaki (my beloved). Like... I don't get it.

24. Topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

God, so many topics. I think out of all of them the one that drives me the most nuts is people who are like "classics suck" or "I only read YA because all other books are problematic". Shoutout to the YA authors who were like "School literature like the Great Gatsby taught me being creepy about the woman I love is okay.

Like... genuinely y'all never read any of these books because what the actual fuck. The Great Gatsby explicitly shows how Gatsby's obsession with Daisy ruins his life. He fucking dies at the end. How is that supporting Gatsby's outlook on life? Nick says that Gatsby turned out alright in the end but Nick is an unreliable narrator and no Gatsby did fucking not.

Now don't get me wrong. This book - and most classics - has very real issues. Fitzgerald's antisemitism is very explicit. He was also, racist and homophobic and this is even more explicit in his other works (especially his short stories). It's important to discuss this when discussing these books, especially in class. Fitzgerald's works are flawed texts, as classics often are. A great deal are fundamentally flawed (holy shit Lovecraft) but they are still influential, and must be acknowledged as such.

And no this is not me saying "haha product of time it's fine". No that's a shitty argument. Brushing off flaws of classics is as bad as condemning all classics for those flaws.

Cause these books do like, mean something. Just because you don't like a book doesn't mean you can claim whatever of what it did, even when your claim directly contradicts the text. And classics should be looked at holistically. You can cherry pick the worst things from a great deal of them. You can also cherry pick them to be perfect and without flaw. And guess what? Both of these approaches are shit from an academic perspective. And from a viewpoint of the world. If you can only exist this way, your world must be so small.

Like, I dislike Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. The misogyny in it is at times so overwhelming that reading it was genuinely difficult. But I cannot sit here and say it has no important qualities. It's one of the most influential novels written by a black man in America. It discusses black nationalism, communism and race, various schools of thought amongst black activists, police brutality, the running of activist groups by white people and how an organization that may say they care about black people ultimately is indifferent towards their suffering. It also discusses the role white women have in upholding racism, in a way different from white men. Ellison's portrayal of women made me deeply uncomfortable, but I cannot in good faith say it's only because of his misogyny (which, to be clear, there's a lot of misogyny). Sometimes the truth is uncomfortable.

Invisible Man is a strange, surrealist, and at points beautiful novel. It's important, it's so important. I am glad that I read it. I don't think I'll ever like it. But I'm glad I read it.

Classics are like that sometimes. Most are imperfect, but I hope that one day our books now will be seen as old, outdated. It means that we will have progressed. Just reading YA because classics are flawed is ridiculous. YA can be good, YA can even be great. But no one should only read YA. If you care about a topic, read about it. Read theory, read nonfiction. Read more. Just read more, and more variety. Widen your world. A narrow lens is always a poor one to experience life.

Anyways, yeah. Classics are important. Their flaws should never be ignored, but neither should their strong suits, why they have survived the test of time. So stop acting like Hugo's misogyny means Les Mis is automatically not worth reading. I promise if you read it you'll find a critique of our worldview so poignant it will be moving. Even if you don't like it. (Which nooo plz don't dislike one of my favorite books lol <3).

Yeah... I think that's it. I rambled so much.

[oumaheroes]

hii its bougie <3 if you're still taking hc requests, i was wondering if you'd have thoughts on something that's been on my mind for a while. i was interested in the nuance to english culture due to regional differences. eg.,dinner being called "tea" in the north of england, rugby being more popular in the south, the difference in how scones with jam and cream are enjoyed in Devon and Cornwall?? or how certain english accents are perceived as... "less attractive" i guess (the black country accents are unpopular apparently?) -- you'd probably know more about these particularities than me ;u;

i was wondering how these cultural differences might map onto hws England's character, and how they might influence his attitudes and behaviours. because there's such a clearly defined stereotype of the english that i think shape people's expectations of what the english are like, i usually think that Arthur usually consciously acts according to what counts as positive interpretations of himself. however, i love nuanced and somewhat subversive interpretations of his character, and am very curious if you might have any ideas on how these kind of internal regional differences might shape him.

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Bougieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee <3

I’m not gonna lie this sent me down a RABBIT HOLE of thoughts, so hang on tight cos we're gonna get messy.

Accents:

Let’s start with my personal favourite, so excuse me whilst I geek out for a second. I’ve gone into this area already in this headcanon, but I personally see England being a very proud little dragon regarding English accents, those both native and non-native to the British Isles. Focusing just on accents within England for this post, the way Arthur himself sees them, (regarding class and general preference), comes a lot down to how I see him feeling about language and the unification of England in general.

England is a tiny country. It’s really teeny, compared to some, and yet holds an incredible number of regional accents and dialects (from digging about the internet for a good source, I keep finding numbers ranging from 37 to 43). There are a number of reasons for this, but the one that I love the most is that accents are influenced by the previous/ influential other languages spoken in a given area. Accents on the East of England are more influenced by Viking invaders, both phonologically and via the dialectal words used, and accents/ dialects in the West are more influenced by Welsh, for example.

Accents and dialects tell the history of a place, all who ever came there and influenced it to some degree. The map of English accents is a patchwork quilt of old cultures and people now lost to time, but their ways of speaking have been preserved in the modern tongue. The old English kingdoms might now be mere counties- Kent, Essex, Sussex, East Anglia, etc- they may not have their own influence or language these days as they used to, but their old ways have been imprinted on their people of today whether they know it or not and they carry pieces of the past in their words and how they speak them. Older speakers of the Northern English dialects liek the Yorkshire dialect still use ‘thou/thee’ where this has fallen out in other areas, the Midlands and parts of the South-East still keep the ‘-n’ ending for possessive pronouns (‘yourn’ instead of ‘yours’, ‘ourn’ instead of ‘ours’), and there’s even some linguistic research into how Brittonic, the ancestor of Modern Welsh, influenced English structure and phonology (for references, see notes at the end).

Back to England the person (to contain myself slightly), his regional accents are a story of himself, his history being kept alive in all of its variety every day. He doesn’t hold a classist view of a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ accent because he knows why they’re all there- what languages and people influenced them and how these events affected him- the older generations now lost and forgotten being kept alive in the smallest of phonemes.

Every dialect, every accent, and every language tells the story of a people, from the smallest phonological marker right up to a language as a whole and England takes comfort and pride in his dialects and accents’ longevity and variety. He is as much of the North as he is the South, as much of the East as the West and a patchwork man born of patchwork cultures it makes no sense for him to favour one particular accent over another.

That being said, he is aware that there is a common cultural stance on accents as well as an opinion regarding ‘ugly’ ones, ‘common’ ones, and ‘classy’ ones, but he himself doesn’t partake in these ideas. I like to think that a nation takes on the speech of the people and the area they’re in, matching the person they speak to or the area they visit to relate to their people. So, for me a Chav Arthur exists as much as a Brummie one does, or a Scouser, or a Geordie, or a Cockney. They’re all English, and thus they’re all a part of him.

Class

I have to include this one, if only to touch on it lightly regarding accents and dialects. Class does influence which words you speak, arguably just as much as which accent (this is known as a sociolect). Although I said that England adopts the accent of whatever area he’s in, or whomever he’s talking to if they’re English, the class people are will also affect which words he choses to use.

Here’s a short example from here:

'It is pudding for the upper class. Dessert is sometimes used by upper middles, but afters and sweets very clearly put you below stairs.'

Have some more!

Upper class: Spectacles, Lavatory or loo, Die, Napkin, Sofa

Middle class: Glasses, Toilet , Pass on, Serviette, Settee or couch

(Working class is a mix but harder to find sources for).

This is where England treads a fine line. It could be that he again adopts more of a class lexicon regarding who he is speaking to, matching his people word for word. However, England is not unaware of the affects of class, regardless of how he himself feels, and also although class snobbery and divide frustrate him, he cannot deny using this understanding to benefit himself, which also conforms to how his own people behave. (I myself have, many times, diluted and filtered my speech to be seen as ‘better’).

Want to be seen as more reliable and powerful? Want to be taken more seriously? RP and Estuary English (a lot more so these days), hold undeniable sway and England is not above adopting a manner of speaking to come across ‘better’ or more polite, or a more ‘common’ accent to fit in with the working classes. I think of England as leaning more towards a working-class mindset- he’s very hands on, very up for and used to manual labour and this particular English class has always made up the bulk of his population. It makes no sense for a nation, who represents all of their people, to have a snide view or a preference for a particular group and England as a person I see is someone who does not enjoy the foppery and false airs of aristocracy.

That being said, England is an intelligent man. He knows how to work a room and use a crowd to his advantage, knows what must be done and what he needs to do to achieve a goal and if this entails courting the upper classes for a time then he will do so. He’s adepts at switching himself like a chameleon, blending his behaviours, accent, and dialect to match who he’s talking to to achieve a goal or to fit in with someone’s perception of him, or to gain influence or prestige. He also doesn’t hate his upper classes- they are of him too, and the middle and working class have their own prejudices and ideas against the others. But he doesn’t adopt a stereotypical distain of lower classes because to him, it really doesn’t make much sense.

Abroad, this need to cultivate a particular perception defiantly comes under greater pressure. RP and Estuary English are more well know, more heard and taught, and more recognisably ‘British’, and so these are what he uses when speaking English to other nations or foreigners, either wanting to uphold an image of himself (more so in the Victorian/ Edwardian period than nowadays) or just for the ease of being understood.

Regional Differences

Okay, this one is a lot more fun. Does England put in his milk first or last when making tea? Does he put jam first, or clotted cream when having a scone? Does he have chips with gravy, or curry sauce? Does he have dinner at 6, or 9? To marmite, or not to marmite.

Ah, that is the question, and England does not know the answer. Does he do what he does because that’s what he likes, or because that’s what his people do? He didn’t grow up with these habits, after all, they’re all relatively recent in his lifetime, and so these habits are defiantly things he cultures for a particular audience.

I’m not really sure if the above preferences are class based, (well, milk first when making tea is argued to be, but I can't find any sources I'd consider entirely credible. I put the ones I did find in the notes below, in case any one's interested), so it’s hard to get a sense of which one to use. Overall, it doesn’t matter which you do and neither is right or wrong, but the English feel strongly about them, one way or another, and often Arthur the man isn’t sure at all which one he himself actually thinks is better.

Food in another sense though is something he can be surer of. A Cornish pastie not from Cornwall is not worth eating, nor is a Bakewell tart outside of Bakewell. England can be very particular about this sort of thing and enjoys maintaining and supporting the ‘original’ flavour or recipe of a thing where he can, considering this to be the ‘best’. Sally Lunn Buns from Bath, Gypsy tarts from Kent, Eccles Cakes from Eccles.

England wants to preserve his food and culture and has what could be considered a snobbish view on the ‘best’ way of creating or eating his national foods. Some things he is more lenient with: he will eat cheddar cheese, whether or not it is from Cheddar, same from Cumberland sausages not from Cumbria. But he certainly has a preference and he is not afraid to voice this when asked for his opinion.

Okay, we're done

Phew! This had me digging out my old linguistic student brain. To anyone who has made it this far down, gosh golly miss molly thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the ride, and especially @prickyy who was kind enough to want to hear my opinions about all of this <3

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Notes:

Brittonic influence on English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittonicisms_in_English

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_url?url=http://journals.mountaintopuniversity.edu.ng/English%2520Language/Celtic%2520Influences%2520in%2520English%2520A%2520Re-evaluation.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2ohDYdq3BoWImwHn6oWQAg&scisig=AAGBfm29zTF0FBCpd1KqDiAbjM-0X7nfoA&oi=scholarr (PDF)

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_url?url=http://www.oppi.uef.fi/wanda/unicont/abstracts/14ICEHL_MF.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2ohDYdq3BoWImwHn6oWQAg&scisig=AAGBfm3UvOXbJEb0b51J73eBnTJvgGaQOA&oi=scholarr (PDF)

Sociolects and class distinction within language in English:

https://languageawarenessbyrosalie.weebly.com/social-dialects.html

https://www.grin.com/document/313937

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English

Milk in tea first and the potential class reason:

https://www.theteaclub.com/blog/milk-in-tea/

https://qmhistoryoftea.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/milk-in-first-a-miffy-question/

[gwynsplainer]

On The Grinning Man and the De-Politicization of L'Homme Qui Rit (a Spontaneous Essay)

Since I watched The Grinning Man I’ve been meaning to write a post comparing it to The Man Who Laughs but I have a lot of opinions and analysis I wanted to do so I have been putting it off for ages. So here goes! If I were to make a post where I explain everything the musical changes it would definitely go over the word limit, so I’ll mostly stick to the thematic. Let me know if that’s a post you’d like to see, though!

Ultimately, The Grinning Man isn’t really an adaptation of the Man Who Laughs. It keeps some of the major plot beats (a disfigured young man with a mysterious past raised by a man and his wolf to perform to make a living alongside the blind girl he rescued from the snow, restored to his aristocratic past by chance after their show is seen by Lord David and Duchess Josiana, and the interference of the scheming Barkilphedro…. well, that’s just about it). The problem I had with the show, however, wasn’t the plot points not syncing up, it was the thematic inconsistency with the book. By replacing the book’s antagonistic act—the existence of a privileged ruling class—with the actions of one or two individuals from the lower class, transforming the societal tragedy into a revenge plot, and reducing the pain of dehumanization and abuse to the pain of a physical wound, The Grinning Man is a sanitized, thematically weak failure to adapt The Man Who Laughs.

I think the main change is related to the reason I posit the book never made it in the English-speaking world. The musical was made in England, the setting of the book which was so critical of its monarchy, it’s aristocracy, and the failings of its society in ways that really haven’t been remedied so far. It might be a bit of a jump to assume this is connected, but I have evidence. They refer to it as a place somewhat like our own, but change King James to King Clarence, and Queen Anne to Angelica. Obviously, the events of the book are fictional, and it was a weird move for Hugo to implicate real historical figures as responsible for the torture of a child, but it clearly served a purpose in his political criticism that the creative team made a choice to erase. They didn’t just change the names, though, they replaced the responsibility completely. In the book, Gwynplaine’s disfigurement—I will be referring to him as Gwynplaine because I think the musical calling him Grinpayne was an incredibly stupid and cruel choice—was done to him very deliberately, with malice aforethought, at the order of the king. The king represents the oppression of the privileged, and having the fault be all Barkilphédro loses a lot thematically. The antagonism of the rich is replaced by the cruelty of an upwardly mobile poor man (Barkilphédro), and the complicity of another poor man.

The other “villain” of the original story is the way that Gwynplaine is treated. I think for 1869, this was a very ahead-of-its-time approach to disability, which almost resembles the contemporary understanding of the Social Model of disability. (Sidenote: I can’t argue on Déa’s behalf. Hugo really dropped the ball with her. I’m going to take a moment to shout out the musical for the strength and agency they gave Déa.) The way the public treats Gwynplaine was kind of absent from the show. I thought it was a very interesting and potentially good choice to have the audience enter the role of Gwynplaine’s audience (the first they see of him is onstage, performing as the Grinning Man) rather than the role of the reader (where we first see him as a child, fleeing a storm). If done right, this could have explored the story’s theme of our tendency to place our empathy on hold in order to be distracted and feel good, eventually returning to critique the audience’s complicity in Gwynplaine’s treatment. However, since Grinpayne’s suffering is primarily based in the angst caused by his missing past and the physical pain of his wound (long-healed into a network of scars in the book) [a quick side-note: I think it was refreshing to see chronic pain appear in media, you almost never see that, but I wish it wasn’t in place of the depth of the original story], the audience does not have to confront their role in his pain. They hardly play one. Instead, it is Barkilphédro, the singular villain, who is responsible for Grinpayne’s suffering. Absolving the audience and the systems of power which put us comfortably in our seats to watch the show of pain and misery by relegating responsibility to one character, the audience gets to go home feeling good.

If you want to stretch, the villain of the Grinning Man could be two people and not one. It doesn’t really matter, since it still comes back to individual fault, not even the individual fault of a person of high status, but one or two poor people. Musical!Ursus is an infinitely shittier person than his literary counterpart. In the book, Gwynplaine is still forced to perform spectacles that show off his appearance, but they’re a lot less personal and a lot less retraumatizing. In the musical, they randomly decided that not only would the role of the rich in the suffering of the poor be minimized, but also it would be poor people that hurt Grinpayne the most. Musical!Ursus idly allows a boy to be mutilated and then takes him in and forces him to perform a sanitized version of his own trauma while trying to convince him that he just needs to move on. In the book, he is much kinder. Their show, Chaos Vanquished, also allows him to show off as an acrobat and a singer, along with Déa, whose blindness isn’t exploited for the show at all. He performs because he needs to for them all to survive. He lives a complex life like real people do, of misery and joy. He’s not obsessed with “descanting on his own deformity” (dark shoutout to William Shakespeare for that little…infuriating line from Richard III), but rather thoughtfully aware of what it means. He deeply feels the reality of how he is seen and treated. Gwynplaine understands that he was hurt by the people who discarded him for looking different and for being poor, and he fucking goes off about it in the Parliament Confrontation scene (more to come on this). It is not a lesson he has to learn but a lesson he has to teach.

Grinpayne, on the other hand, spends his days in agony over his inability to recall who disfigured him, and his burning need to seek revenge. To me, this feels more than a little reminiscent of the trope of the Search for a Cure which is so pervasive in media portrayals of disability, in which disabled characters are able to think of nothing but how terribly wrong their lives went upon becoming disabled and plan out how they might rectify this. Grinpayne wants to avenge his mutilation. Gwynplaine wants to fix society. Sure, he decides to take the high road and not do this, and his learning is a valuable part of the musical’s story, but I think there’s something so awesome about how the book shows a disabled man who understands his life better than any abled mentor-philosophers who try to tell him how to feel. Nor is Gwynplaine fixed by Déa or vice versa, they merely find solace and strength in each other’s company and solidarity. The musical uses a lot of language about love making their bodies whole which feels off-base to me.

I must also note how deeply subversive the book was for making him actually happy: despite the pain he feels, he is able to enjoy his life in the company and solidarity he finds with Déa and takes pride in his ability to provide for her. The assumption that he should want to change his lot in life is not only directly addressed, but also stated outright as a failure of the audience: “You may think that had the offer been made to him to remove his deformity he would have grasped at it. Yet he would have refused it emphatically…Without his rictus… Déa would perhaps not have had bread every day”

He has a found family that he loves and that loves him. I thought having him come from a loving ~Noble~ family that meant more to him than Ursus did rather than having Ursus, a poor old man, be the most he had of a family in all his memory and having Déa end up being Ursus’ biological daughter really undercut the found family aspect of the book in a disappointing way.

Most important to me was the fundamental change that came from the removal of the Parliament Confrontation scene, on both the themes of the show and the character of Gwynplaine. When Gwyn’s heritage is revealed and his peerage is restored to him, he gets the opportunity to confront society’s problems in the House of Parliament. When Gwynplaine arrives in the House of Parliament, the Peers of England are voting on what inordinate sum to allow as income to the husband of the Queen. The Peers expect any patriotic member of their ranks to blithely agree to this vote: in essence, it is a courtesy. Having grown up in extreme poverty, Gwynplaine is outraged by the pettiness of this vote and votes no. The Peers, shocked by this transgression, allow him to take the stand and explain himself. In this scene, Gwynplaine brilliantly and profoundly confronts the evils of society. He shows the Peers their own shame, recounting how in his darkest times a “pauper nourished him” while a “king mutilated him.” Even though he says nothing remotely funny, he is received with howling laughter. This scene does a really good job framing disability as a problem of a corrupt, compassionless society rather than something wrong with the disabled individual (again, see the Social Model of disability, which is obviously flawed, but does a good job recognizing society that denies access, understanding and compassion—the kind not built on pity—as a central problem faced by disabled communities). It is the central moment of Hugo’s story thematically, which calls out the injustices in a system and forces the reader to reckon with it.

It is so radical and interesting and full that Gwynplaine is as brilliant and aware as he is. He sees himself as a part of a system of cruelty and seeks justice for it. He is an empathic, sharp-minded person who seeks to make things better not just for himself and his family, but for all who suffer as he did at the hands of Kings. Grinpayne’s rallying cry is “I will find and kill the man who crucified my face.” He later gets wise to the nature of life and abandons this, but in that he never actually gets to control his own relationship to his life. When I took a class about disability in the media one of the things that seemed to stand out to me most is that disabled people should be treated as the experts on their own experiences, which Gwynplaine is. Again, for a book written in 1869 that is radical. Grinpayne is soothed into understanding by the memory of his (rich) mother’s kindness.

I’ll give one more point of credit. I loved that there was a happy ending. But maybe that’s just me. The cast was stellar, and the puppetry was magnificent. I wanted to like the show so badly, but I just couldn’t get behind what it did to the story I loved.

[inmyarmswrappedin]

How does SKAM build a LI?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and even gave speeches to my long suffering friends about the topic. Now that we know what happened to Josh to make him the way he is, I feel like I can finally post about the way SKAM built love interest characters. 

When it’s good, SKAM is a very tightly written show because every clip, and every storyline, advances the themes that make the main character vulnerable. I would call this their “shame” but DRUCK fans don’t like that term because the show is called “pressure” and not “shame”. In the end, whether a character’s issues are internal (”shame”) or external (”pressure”) is irrelevant to what I want to talk about, so let’s just call those themes a character’s vulnerability, shall we? 

How does SKAM make every storyline relate to the themes of the season and what makes a character vulnerable? Well, one way it does that is to make the love interest the personification of a character’s fears and issues.

To wit: In season 1, Eva is called out on having no opinions of their own. If you read @skamenglishsubs‘ culture and context posts, they have listed every instance in which this theme is portrayed by having Eva follow someone else’s opinion (I recommend you do this, because there are way more instances than I picked up on!). So, who is Jonas? Jonas is an extremely opinionated person who feels he’s not a follower at all. 

In season 2, Noora is afraid of opening herself to a boyfriend, both emotionally and sexually, because when she was 13 she had sex with a guy she thought she was in love with, who then dumped her as that was all he was interested in. Who is William? William is the school’s fuckboy who dumps girls after having sex with them, and doesn’t seem to care about the girls’ feelings, but rather is just interested in them advertising his sexual prowess via hoodies. 

In season 3, Isak’s strained relationship with his mom makes him believe that it’s impossible to have a functional relationship with a person who has a mental illness, because they’re not in touch with reality. Even has bipolar disorder.

And then, in possibly one of the most simplistic ways to perceive one’s own character, in season 4, Sana is a hijabi out to prove she can do everything a ~normal Norwegian party girl~ can do. Yousef is... not a Muslim, lol. (Note that the Yousef storyline was not originally planned by Julie Andem, and in fact came about because of feedback she received from Muslim fans that they wanted Sana to have a LI. Sana’s main storyline isn’t so much about her religion, but rather her furious desire to prove the haters wrong.)

In general, most of the SKAM remakes have not tried to reinvent the wheel, and have more or less stuck to these character profiles in order to build their own seasons. Most of the changes remake stans will point to when they talk about a remake season don’t really qualify as changes (under this definition) because they don’t change the conflict between the main and the LI. 

I was pretty interested in whether the remakes had picked up on this way to build a LI, and most particularly, how the remakes that have done original seasons built their LIs. Thoughts on these after the read more.

Out of all the seasons that remade SKAM’s four seasons, I would say there are only four that didn’t stick to the character profiles as outlined above. In my opinion, it’s these seasons:

Eva’s season in SKAM España changes this because Jorge is never set up as an opinionated person. He’s a good guy, for sure, a good friend to his friends like most Jonases, but you will never catch Jorge acting like his opinions are better than Eva’s. He never calls Eva out on not having opinions of her own. Their break up scene doesn’t deal with this, and most importantly, Eva could never get the upper hand in that last conversation like the other Evas have, because Jorge is the only Jonas to kiss Eva first.

Matteo’s season in DRUCK changes this because while Matteo is afraid that his mom won’t react well if he comes out to her, we have no idea what he thinks about having relationships with people with a mental illness, as a general rule. We don’t know because David doesn’t have a MI (that we know of). He is trans, and DRUCK wisely avoided making David’s gender identity the personification of Matteo’s issues (gvgvvh imagine how shit that would’ve been!!). Matteo and David’s major conflict is that Matteo has abandonment issues and David a tendency to peace out when things get hot.

Cris’ season in SKAM España changes this because Cris’ mom doesn’t have a mental illness. In fact, Cris doesn’t know much about MI in general. While Cris does have some internalized ableism, it comes from ignorance and buying into societal prejudices against MI, rather than personal experience. Cris’ vulnerability isn’t her ideas about MI. Her issue is that she has bought into the idea that she’s an unintelligent party girl who can’t ever be responsible or dependable.

Nora’s season in SKAM España both keeps and changes the conflicts as presented in SKAM. Nora fails to trust Alejandro because he’s a fuckboy who would have sex with girls and then mock them for getting their hopes up. But, unlike Noora, Nora’s issue is that her lack of trust in Alejandro throws her into the arms of the seemingly ideal boyfriend despite the red flags, whereas Noora’s lack of trust in William made her withhold sex. 

As you can see, all Sana seasons so far (Amira N.’s included) have kept the original conflict by having a non Muslim Yousef. Under this definition, Martino’s season in SKAM Italia isn’t a subversion, because while he does live with his mom, he doesn’t think he can have a functional relationship with her. Aside from Eva Vázquez, all of the Evas kissed their Jonas first. However, I should note that while SKAM Austin kept the Eva/Jonas conflict, they’re the only other SKAM that doesn’t open with Jonas’ essay. (Which I chalk up to facebook not wanting their show to open with a blatantly anti-capitalist speech lmao.) 

Now, how did the remakes with original seasons build their LIs?

Arthur’s season in SKAM France is an interesting example, because Baguettes picked up on the LI personifying the main’s vulnerability. If Arthur is vulnerable about his (lack of) hearing, Noée embraces it, takes pride on it and bases her identify around it. So far, this is exactly how SKAM/Julie Andem built her LIs. However, Arthur rejects Noée and mocks her language. Noée disappears after s5. Alexia has no hearing issues, or any disability.

Lola’s season in SKAM France similarly picks up on the concept. Since Lola is an addict, Maya’s father was one as well. However, this conflict isn’t really explored amidst the thousand other ideas that were thrown at the wall during this season. It’s fair to say Lola and Maya’s clips don’t develop the theme of addiction throughout the season. Unless you want to count Maya telling Lola that Lola is Maya’s addiction, I suppose. 

Kato’s season in wtFOCK (oh yes I’m going there) could be said to have picked up on the concept, although not in any real elegant way. Because of fan feedback for Moyo to get a season (which they declined to do for super valid reasons I’m sure), the team decided to have Moyo be the LI and worked backwards to build the main. It is similar to how SKAM approached Sana’s LI.  Moyo is a black guy, so Kato would be a racist! Genius!

Given these precedents, I was really curious what Nora’s season in DRUCK would do with their first 100% original love interest (so, not counting David). If they decided to go with SKAM’s standard way of building a LI, there were several possibilities. Nora’s mom has addiction issues, and this is a vulnerability of Nora’s. Would that mean that Josh would have substance issues? Or maybe his dad? His mom? Nora has a mental illness. Would that mean Josh would have issues around mental illness or therapy? Would he maybe have a mental illness himself? Nora was set up from the start as a liar. Would Josh be honest to a fault? And so on. 

In the end, it seems like DRUCK has taken the same approach they did with David. That is, Nora doesn’t have to accept something about Josh that she has preconceived ideas about (Noora, Isak, Sana), neither are Josh and Nora extremes in one character trait (Eva and Jonas). With this clip, it appears that their conflict is that Nora has a problem sharing her vulnerabilities (reminder: she didn’t come clean in English class out of a desire to be vulnerable, but to prove a point) and Josh has abandonment issues that make him prefer to try to change a person or even be hurt, rather than be left behind. 

DRUCK’s approach to building a LI in s5 (and probably beyond) might end up making the season less cohesive than SKAM seasons were. On the other hand, you can argue that the way SKAM built LIs could end up being too predictable (Isak is afraid of MI so Even has a MI, Sana is a Muslim so Yousef isn’t, Noora is afraid of being used for sex so William uses girls for sex, etc) and perhaps lowkey reductionist. And that’s without getting into the issues of making a character’s mental illness, religion, gender identity, sexuality, ethnicity or race, etc... the source of another character’s vulnerability (or “shame” or “pressure” if you will). This is particularly clear in the hands of lesser writers, as seen on wtFOCK and SKAM France. 

I will also get yelled at by @dusuessekartoffel if I fail to acknowledge that DRUCK is now doing original seasons and, though based on SKAM, should therefore become its own thing, develop LIs how they will, without taking SKAM as a model for anything. Iiiiii... think that DRUCK still owes a lot to SKAM even in this generation, and I kind of feel like the way SKAM built LIs is like the real time aspect of SKAM, something that is embedded into the very concept of the show and not something you can just discard when you buy the adaptation rights, but this is certainly up for debate.  

[savoryscribbles]

Kaminari Relizes He Might Be Bisexual

Main masterlist

Bnha masterlist

So I love Kaminari, Shinsou, Bakugo, and Kirishima, and I ship them all with myself. But subversive that’ll never happen I also ship them with other characters, I love Kiribaku, Tododeku, and and Shinkami, because I’m a sucker for the grumpy/rude x ball of sunshine trope, it’s my favorite ever. So here have this drabble I have made up which is based on this post here by the lovely @paunchsalazar specifically the first panel. I hope I did it justice. :;(∩^﹏^∩);:

Also, haha, Sweater Weather played while writing this, completely by accident, I just put my playlist on shuffle, and I have over 1,000 songs on there so it was like over a 1/1000(probably less than that? Idk how shuffling works on spotify) that it would play and it did lmao.

Warnings: Angst(I guess it is considering the kind of stuff I write), boi questioning his sexuality, fluff, platonic comfort(I guess)????, swearing, Kirishima being the best gay bff everrrrr, Shinsou being lowkey heteronormative(even tho he’s big gay), teeny tiny manga spoilers(only about the stuff right after where the anime leaves off), Shinsou being oblivious(surprising I know)

Another thing I’d like to say, this isn’t my usual content, I usually only post x reader stuff, but I hope you all enjoy nevertheless. Without farther a due...

⊱ ❀ ✿ ꕥ ✿ ❀ ⊰

Kaminari knew he liked girls since he was younger. Sure he had gay friends, and sure he might have thought once or twice ‘do I like boys?’ ‘Am I gay?’ But he always shot down these questions quickly, because he liked girls, he can’t be gay if he liked girls, right?

Then why did he feel this way? Why was his heart racing whoever Shisou walked by? He thought this feeling was solely reserved for girls, at least for him. Need less to say he was confused. And scared, what if he wasn’t straight? He knew he had no reason to be scared, and there was nothing wrong with not being straight.

Shinsou knew he was gay. He never likes girls as more than a friend, and when he started his teen years and looked at yah know... porn. He always found himself to be the most turned on by the male, even when he first started, and watched the most basic boring ass porn ever, he’d always focus on the man more.

So while it was a surprise that he found himself staring longingly at the blond fuckboy, it was not because he was a boy. His suprise had was more because Kaminari was not his type, at all. His type were the most stereotypical ‘bad boys’ or people who were openly gay. He liked to say he didn’t have time for people questioning themselves.

Both of them on the outside acted unfased by their realizations. Well, Kaminari tried, he failed though. Shinsou didn’t though, which made Kaminari more worried. Because what if Shinsou doesn’t like him?

All of these thoughts about his sexuality ran through his head nonstop, ever since Shinsou had done the joint training with classes 1-A and 1-B. And he tried to push them down, and hope they went away, but they didn’t. And they got worse when Shinsou joined 1-A. And one day Kaminari was just so sick of being confused, and had the courage to actually talk about his thoughts, so he brought it up to Kirishima. ‘He’s gay, so he would know stuff, right?’

“Hey. Um Kirishima?” Kaminari started in shire of where to begin.

“What’s up bro?” Kirishima responded.

“Nothing. Not nothing though, there’s something I need to ask you.”

“Well shoot bro, anything you need you can tell me.” Kirishima said, and luckily his encouraging words helped boost Kaminari confidence.

“How do you know if your gay?” Kaminari asked quickly.

“Hmm, well that’s kind of difficult, I guess I didn’t know if I was gay, I kind of just didn’t like girls, and found boys more attractive.” Kirishima answered, tapping his chin.

“Why do you ask? Do you think your gay?” Kirishima asked.

“Well no, because I like girls, I know I like girls, I like them a lot, but there’s a boy, and he makes me feel how I feel when I see a really cute girl.” Kaminari said nervously, finding it difficult to actually put his feelings to words.

“So you think you like boys and girls?” Kirishima questioned, trying to understand the situation at hand. Kaminari nodded, saying silent.

“Well to me it sounds like your bisexual, if you want a label for it, you don’t need a label if you don’t want to though.” Kirishima deduced, trying time help his friend the best he could. But Kaminari nodded and said a simple ‘thanks’ before walking away.

‘Bisexual huh? Bisexual, I like girls and boys, I am bisexual’ Kaminari said inside his head over and over again, testing how it sounded. He liked it, it brought him peace he hasn’t felt in a while. ‘I am bisexual. I AM BISEXUAL!!!!!’

But just because he knew his sexuality doesn’t mean that he has the confidence to tell the guy he fell for. But it’s a start and he’s happy.

Shinsou found it increasingly harder to ignore his feelings towards Kaminari. Especially when they sat right next to each other, or when they trained together, or when Kaminari invited him to a study session with Kirishima and Bakugo, or when Kaminari would sit next to him at lunch.

His schedule consisted of, wakings up, think about Kaminari, get read for school while thinking about Kaminari, go to school while thinking about Kaminari, pay attention in school but inevitably getting distracted by Kaminari, go back the dorms and in his room, study while thinking about Kaminari, stay up late while thinking about Kaminari, go to bed, and repeat. This annoyed him to no end. ‘Why wont that straight fuckboy get out of my head?!’

He always did this whoever he fell for a staight boy, he’d push all the feelings down until they were gone, and it worked, so why they fuck wouldn’t it work this time? Whatever was happening, he was not having it, he was fucking done with these feelings, and one solution he never did was confess. But that was the only solution he had left.

Kaminari was ready. He was ready to tell Shinsou his feelings, he wasn’t ready for rejection but that’s not something he wanted to think about. He had just came back from the nearest floral shop, and was making his way to his dorm room, when he ran into Shinsou. He almost dropped the flowers he got. Which was something he didn’t want, he had to pay extra to get it custom made with the flowers he wanted. The bouquet consisted of blue, purple, yellow and black flowers, all colors he knew Shinsou liked, but they also represented both of them, the blue and purples for Shinsou, and black and yellow for him.

‘Oh he must be on his way to ask out a girl.’ Shinsou noticed. He hated the sting he felt in his chest, but that’s why he was here.

“I need to tell you something-“

“I need to tell you something-“ They both said at the same time.

“You can go first.” Kaminari said, as Shinsou went silent.

‘Why did he need talk to me?’ ‘There’s now way right?’ ‘No no no.’ ‘I couldn’t even date him if he did.’ ‘I don’t date people like him.’ He was to distracted by his thoughts to hear Kaminari speak.

“Hello? Earth to Shinsou?” Kaminari said waving his hand in front of him.

“Oh sorry, what did you say?” Shinsou respinded snapping back to reality.

Kaminari laughed “I just said you can go first.”

‘I love his laugh.’ ‘No bad Shinsou! No feelings no feelings for straight dudes!’

“Okay. Well I wanted to tell you... I find you attractive, like really attractive, like in the gay kind of way. But I know you’re straight, which is fine, I just need to tell you so I can get over you and move on with my life.” Shinsou said with a straight face.

Kaminari stood in shock at what he had said, happy the he felt the same. However Shinsou took this shock as the ‘suprised a gay guy likes me, a straight guy.’ Kind of suprise, so he nodded and started to walk away, which made Kaminari come out of his shock.

“Wait! That’s what I wanted to talk about though!” Kaminari said running after him. Shinsou was taken aback as he heard Kaminari’s words. He turned around to face him.

“I like you too. I find you attractive too.” He explained

“Oh and these are for you, I’ve never dated a guy before, but whenever I go out on a date with a girl a bring her flowers.” Kaminari nervously put his hand with the bouquet out, while the other found the back of his neck.

Shinsou was confused, Kaminari liked him, but he mentioned girls. He had no problem dating bisexual guys, but he had one to many experiences where they would say they’re bisexual, but end of being straight and breaking his heart.

He took the flowers “uh, thanks I guess? I’ve never gotten flower before.”

“But about the like me and girls, are you just questioning? Are you bisexual? What’s going on there?” Shinsou asked.

“Oh, umm. Well I’m pretty sure I’m bisexual, I talked to Kirishima, and he suggested it to me and I liked it, so yeah.” Kaminari shrugged.

“You don’t just ‘like’ a sexuality, it’s not something you choose.” Shinsou responds, starting to get angry, ‘so he might be messing with me huh?’

“No no it’s not like that! The label felt comfortable, like more right I guess? Than straight?” Kaminari rushed, trying to explain himself.

“Look I get that you like me, and I may like you too, but I don’t date guys who are still trying to figure their sexuality out.” Shinsou responded, and started to walk away again, he might not stay true to his words if he didn’t.

‘He’s to cute. Why does he have to be cute? He’s probably just straight.’

“Wait!!!” Kaminari cried, he wasn’t just going to let him get away, not when he knew Shinsou liked him too.

Shinsou didn’t stop this time, he kept going. ‘Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around. You don’t date straight boys. You told him, these feelings should be gone!!!!’

“Please!!!” Kaminari said, his voice getting closer to Shinsou. “Please wait let me explain! I’m not confused about my sexuality, I figured it out I’m just having a hard time putting it into words!”

‘Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around.’ ‘Fuck it.’ Shinsou turned around to find Kaminari right behind him, and he did something he’s never done. He grabbed Kaminari’s shirt and pulled him down into a kiss. ‘His lips they’re soft, so soft.’

Kaminari stood still for a moment before he started to kiss back. Snaking his hands around Shinsous neck.

“Was that as good as kissing a girl?” Shinsou asked after pulling away.

“Honestly? It was better, way better.” Kaminari reponded before kissing him again.

And it would be one of many kisses they would share.

[tiesandtea]

SUEDE: Style & Substances

Alternative Press, May 1997 (no. 106). Mag cover. Written by Dave Thompson. Archived here.

Suede Give Us A Glimmer...

Bleeding through the debate about vocalist Brett Anderson's sexuality and rumored drug intake, the overall glamour with which society equates a fucked-up lifestyle drapes Suede like a second skin. Dave Thompson travels to London to discover why Suede are one of the few bands that matter in an age of stars who are "just like you."

Brett Anderson leans against an amplifier, hands in pocket, shoulders hunched. To his left, the rest of Suede are playing Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross"; to his right, a television crew is fiddling with camera angles. He wants a cigarette, but he never smokes this close to showtime. Instead, he swings a keychain and glowers into the monitors. It's rehearsal time in Studio Four, a theater-sized room as the BBC, and the only person who's enjoying himself is an increasingly rotund-looking Jools Holland. He's the host of this evening's show, and he's away in another room entirely. 

Later...With Jools Holland is a British TV institution. Less than three years old, it has nevertheless sewn up a comfortable niche somewhere between the chart-conscious grooviness of Top of the Pops and the more indulgent pastures of MTV Unplugged. It's a showcase for bands to run through a handful of new songs, play a favorite or two and give a taste of their live prowess without boring the unconverted senseless. Boring themselves senseless, of course, is another matter entirely, and as Suede are counted into the third rehearsal of their opening song "Trash," you can almost sense the desperation in Anderson's face. Then the action starts, and he's utterly transformed. Though he's barely moving and scarcely singing, he's conveying an intensity that explodes from his very presence, drawing the most disinterested eyes in his direction. Even the soundmen look up from their meters, and the camera crew compete for his undying attention. If Anderson weren't a rock star, he'd make a great lunatic. But because he is a rock star...well, he's probably a lunatic anyway. You would be, too, in his shoes. If the 1990s have given us anything, it's the demystification of the rock star. From the boy-next-door Weezers to the angst-ridden whiners, the message is the same: I'm no different from you; I'm no better than you; and, of course, I'm just as screwed up as you. Enter, or more properly, re-enter Suede, with their third album, Coming Up (Columbia). And all that hard work reducing idols to idiots counts for nothing. Because Suede couldn't be "just like you" even if they wanted to. Bleeding through the "is he?/isn't he?" debate about vocalist Brett Anderson's sexuality and the "does he?/doesn't he?" of his rumored drug intake, the overall glamour with which society equates a fucked-up lifestyle drapes Suede like a second skin. The scent of teen spirit clings to them, the doomed romanticism of consumptive youth which peaked on their last album, 1994's Dog Man Star, and peeks through the stunning Coming Up. Suede deal in emotional extremes, from the A Clockwork Orange apocalypse of their "We Are The Pigs" video in which armed hooligans howl through a burning industrial landscape while Suede gaze down from giant video screens, to the incandescent loneliness of the current "Saturday Night" video, in which a London subway station is transformed into a rave to which the band have not been invited. The band's junkie chic is as apparent in the stoned immaculate presentation of their latest wasted-youth album-cover artwork, as it is in the gorgeously gaunt frame which Anderson angles for the television cameras. Add a live show that oozes subversive glamour; couple that with the fearless decadence of Anderson's greatest lyrics, and whether it's all an act or not, Suede are a walking advertisement for the joyful sins of sleaze. Backstage in the bowels of the BBC, Anderson sighs. He's heard all this before. "Yeah, you can look at it like that, but that's other people's interpretation of it, and that's their problem. You can't look at yourself through other people's eyes, then worry about what you say through their ears; you've got to have some self-belief in what you are." Which is, right now, the biggest thing on 10 legs. Across Europe and the Far East, Coming Up charted at No.1 and has already outsold both its predecessors. Three singles have kept the pot boiling ever since, and the current Suede line-up (their fifth on record since their 1990 "Be My God" 7-inch single debut) is their strongest yet. Like Brian Eno's departure from Roxy Music, founding guitarist Bernard Butler's exit did not so much rid the band of one creative spark, as open the door for the flowering of another. Anderson's unequivocal grasping of the reins, only partly aided by the recruitment of guitarist Richard Oakes, may have diluted Suede's overall sound, but it has sharpened their vision to a razor's edge. The further addition of keyboardist Neil Codling fills the gaps that teen maestro Oakes couldn't plug; the Simon Gilbert/Mat Osman rhythm section is a thunderous roar that never lets up; and Coming Up is unmistakably the sound of the same great band that recorded Dog Man Star. The difference is, Anderson affirms, they've stopped pissing around. "After Dog Man Star, everyone thought we were going to do an operetta or something like that. But you get things out of your system. We wanted to refocus the band, the fact that we were virtually starting again; we wanted to readjust the basics." And did it work? "You can't completely divorce yourself from your past. I haven't got the memory of a goldfish; I was aware that I'd made two albums before it. But it felt fresh, and it felt as though we were making the record away from a lot of the crap you have to deal with, away from the spotlight, which was great. Plus...", and here he gestures to new arrivals Codling and Oakes, "... there's less of an obsession with self-importance, which was definitely a change in the band. The last two albums were quite precious and self-important, and that can be good and that can be bad." Ah, preciousness. Plough through five years of Suede press and the buzzwords leap out: "superficial", "fake", "David Bowie" - three hollow sides to the same soulless coin. But most of the people who call Suede "pretentious" are the same ones who fancy the Spice Girls. And the closest those cynics get to class is the corridor outside the school room. "It does bother us a bit," says Anderson. "People always want to polarize bands into camps, and what I always find objectionable, even with journalists who are pro-Suede, is, they always want to write about us as an alternative to this good, honest musicianship going on elsewhere, which kind of implies that there isn't any good, honest musicianship going on within Suede." Anderson resents that implication, just as he resents the accusations of vanity that are flung at him with equal frequency - the two go hand in hand, after all. "People ask, 'Are you vain?' Hang on, let me turn the question around. If you were going to appear on television in front of five million people, you'd probably look in a mirror to see what you look like. You'll brush your hair and put a bit of make-up on because you don't want to look like a pig. Does that mean you're vain? I don't think it does. "Ninety-nine percent of my career thought is dedicated to thinking about music; a very tiny percentage is spent on image. I may go shopping once a month; but while I don't think we're the honest blokes down the pub, we're not kooky weirdos either. We're just what we are." A decent image, though, is still worth a thousand songs (ask Marilyn Manson), and if it's not their Englishness that holds Suede back in the U.S., then it has to be their appearance. They look weird. Catch the "Beautiful Ones" video: Codling apes the same abstracted pose of diffidence and boredom that once made a star of Sparks' Ron Mael; and Osman and Oakes look like they're trying to extinguish a particularly persistent cigarette end. Their singer is fey. Imagine Bryan Ferry if a stick insect stole his trousers. Their music is arty. And they come on like they're somehow special, so special that America poses little interest or challenge to Suede. Other bands make no secret of their desire to crack the country, nor do they hide their disgust when they fail. Suede, though, never seemed bothered. Past U.S. tours (three so far) have been languid affairs, barely publicized flirtations which almost gratefully acknowledge that as far as most people are concerned, Suede might as well be a lesbian performing artist. Anderson dictates the band's Stateside manifesto: "I don't give a shit." "Don't get me wrong: please don't portray us as some sort of anti-American thing, because we're not. But as far as America is concerned, you can talk about airplay and videos, but all it really boils down to is the fact that America doesn't like Suede. And I'm not going to knock it, if they don't like it, they don't like it." And what don't they like? Kurt Cobain had a tummy ache, and a nation felt his pain. Trent Reznor's dog died, and a nation held his hand. Brett Anderson wrote songs about holes in your arm ("The Living Dead") and pantomime horses ("Pantomime Horse"); he equates love with flyaway litter ("Trash"), and he's never been in rehab. "I hate that rehab shit! That's one place where America get really suckered, with those rehab rock bands. Let me explain what going into rehab means. It means you're cool because you used to do drugs, but now you're a good lad, and you're really '90s, so you want to give them up. But it's a complete excuse, and anybody who says it or does it is a complete careerist. I don't think the public shoulg go out and buy records by people whose record companies have told them to say they're going into rehab. You want to talk about fakes and falseness in the music business; I think this rehab rock thing is such a lot of dog shit." So you don't just say no? "I can't sit here and honestly say that drugs are bad for you, because I don't believe that, and I don't think anybody with a brain believes that." He elaborates: "Smoking a bit of pot and taking a bit of LSD can open a few barriers in your mind, although I certainly don't think taking smack, taking coke or taking crack does anything. I know I've taken drugs before and looked back on it and said, 'That's fucking crap; you should have got your act together and stopped taking them.' They just numb you and turn you into a wrong-thinking fucking idiot. "But that's the whole problem with drugs, isn't it? You can't say 'drugs' because there's so many different factes to it. 'It's an aid to creativity.' Well, some of it is, and some of it isn't. You can't paint everything with one brush." As for the veneer of glamour which Suede's own observations convey, the danger that, to quote the new album's "The Chemistry Between Us," "we are young and easily led," Anderson remains equally adamant. "There's no point in trying to filter things like 'Don't talk about this, don't talk about that.' Lots of times when I'm talking about drugs, I'm talking in a pedestrian context. I'm not trying to make it into a big deal; I talk about it like I'd talk about anything else that's in this room." And though he agrees there is a moral question, he also believes it's impossible to do much about it. "The only way you can set yourself up as something moral is in the broader sense, by not treating music as this completely throwaway, meaningless thing, and not treating the sentiments expressed in the music as completely throwaway, meaningless things. "That's where I see my position morally, someone who can write a love song and actually bring a degree of warmth to someone else. You can't act as censor in your words; you just have to be positive about what you're doing and see that making records that people love, that people cling to, and that help people through sticky patches in their lives is, at the end of the day, a positive thing to do. There's very few things I think that are positive in the world, but music is one of them." And that is that. In an age when a star is only as big as his last three videos, and most stars are as interesting as a line at the post office, Suede are three albums into a career that means more to more people than any of the bickering of Suede's petty, wormwood competitors; and certainly far more than the bitter, twisted harping of their detractors. Stars shine, shit stinks, and the lowest common denominator is nothing to be proud of. No one really wants to watch Hootie feed his blowfish, but Brett Anderson spends "Saturday Night" moping around on a subway train, and it's the best thing on MTV this year. Who cares what else he gets up to? Turning as he heads for the soundstage, Anderson won't be drawn. "My drugs of choice are ginseng and chamomile tea, but don't worry. I'm going into rehab soon."

[catflowerqueen]

So, a while ago I posted about how certain miscommunications would lead to Signless becoming the Alternian Cupid/St. Valentine-figure (which, in turn, would become twisted into the Cupid that Earth knows), but I couldn’t figure out how arrows would fit in. Well, I’ve come up with a few ways.

First off is the fact that the Signless was shot with an arrow as he was dying in the heated manacles. This could obviously be remembered/misinterpreted down the line—the version of him remembered only as a facilitator of various flushed and pale hook-ups (given people misinterpreting the symbolism of calling him a cardinal in Stella’s song), assuming he was killed because the higher-ups disliked that so many of those hook-ups were from extremely disparate ends of the spectrum and he was therefore killed so that he would stop doing that (which is pretty much what happened with the historical St. Valentine, actually). No mention of the blood color thing, and it isn’t really “that” subversive down the line? In fact, that story might even be an official sort of cover-up by the government as to what really happened that day, and they might even encourage the story.

Down the line, the symbol of an arrow stuck in a heart (or diamond) might be among one of the more popular ways to make it clear to an ex that you’ve broken up—and it might even be used as a quick sort of “John Doe” letter when it comes to the adult exile thing—it’s something you either send to an older ex who joined the fleet sweeps before you did as a way to let them know you’ve moved on, or it’s something the older party would send to new exiles when they reach out looking to rekindle the relationships. It’s probably also a common Easter egg in movies that get sent back to the pre-adults still on planet—graffiti on walls, for example, with the arrow in a heart/diamond between the two signs signifying the people who were in the relationship.

Then, of course, when it comes to Earth and the way certain stories got twisted around, the arrow in the heart became seen as a good thing, as that is the way that cupid actually got people to fall in love.

 ----

The other explanation is that Kankri’s favored weapon (on both Beforus and Alternia) involved arrows. Hear me out: there is a common joke in the fandom that Kankri’s strife specibus is “triggerkind,” and that he uses guns to fulfill that. But what if, instead, he used a crossbow? Those have triggers, too, and I feel like it would help to improve his character and how subversive he was to troll culture—especially on Alternia.

I feel like his cullers on Beforus would have been Bluebloods at least, probably the same caste as Equius. There was a strong implication, given some of what Equius says, that the bow and arrow were the traditional weapons favored by his caste. So, I think it would make sense that they were seen as part of the epitome of “culture” and “class” on Beforus as well, meaning that it would have been what his cullers used. I see no reason why Kankri wouldn’t have been allowed a strife specibus—it seems like they automatically come with a sylladex, and there is no reason why he wouldn’t have one? I mean—even if we take the whole “babying and coddling” thing to extremes… babies still have possessions, and like to hold things. He would have had one.

But as far as weaponry goes… well, it’s likely that would have been more monitored, but I can also see Kankri being a little sly and manipulative as to what he chooses? Like… he would tell his cullers that he wants to use a bow of some sort because he “looks up to them so much” and “admires their work” or whatever. Because of the flattery the agree, but they say it has to be a crossbow because it is “easier” to use, and—going back to the whole coddling thing—they don’t want to put him under too much stress or make him too disappointed since he would likely be “too weak” to pull back the string on a recursive, or that those are harder to aim or something.

At the same time, though, Kankri’s use of a bow—any form of a bow—when that is traditionally a blueblood-caste weapon is a form of proof that blood really doesn’t actually matter that much, since he, a mutant (though he probably wouldn’t use that word) can use one.

And it is the same sort of reason that Signless!Kankri chose the bow. First off, he would have a far greater need for a weapon in general considering the state of Alternia. Even if he wasn’t necessarily using it against other trolls, he would still need to help his group get food (and would probably go on hunting dates with Meulin). His use of a bow, then, is proof yet again that blood color doesn’t mean anything, since here he is, a mutant, effectively wielding a weapon favored by the higher classes. The fact that Stella also uses a non-typical weapon for her blood caste probably helps—she is a yellowblood, but uses juggling clubs.

Now, there probably is less of an outright “rule” about who is allowed to use what type of weapon on Alternia—with possible exceptions being the tyrian trident—but there would definitely be social stigma. Stella can get away with the clubs in part because she actually uses them to juggle sometimes, which amuses the higher castes, and the fac that she procured them specifically in a vengeance quest probably gets her some leeway—though it also continually gives people the wrong impression about her black quadrant. There is also the fact that she wouldn’t really be showing off the clubs that much in general? If it came to a fight… well, if it was a big brawl people might not be paying attention to the wielders themselves in favor of tracking and dodging the weaponry, and the fact that she can actually use the clubs effectively probably scares some people off on principle—because the decorations on the club imply that it belongs to a different caste, so her using them means that she either somehow managed to defeat their former owners, or they were a gift and she has friends in high places who would take umbrage to her destruction.

As for Kankri and the crossbow… well, again, he probably isn’t using it on trolls directly most of the time, but my earlier explanation for it still stands. As well as my earlier explanation for why his being remembered as the Alternian Cupid/St. Valentine became entangled with arrows.

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

What My Thoughts On Morrissey Today

In response to my writing idea someone gave me I picked this.

So basically, Morrissey’s nationalism in recent years has gotten in the way of me being able to appreciate much that he comes out with. This is wild because a few short years ago, I stood up for Morrissey and actually still feel very moved by a portion of his music. It got me through some really rough patches in my twenties.

I realize he’s human and has faults and I don’t know him completely but just eh, living in Portland and having seen the stuff going on I’m kind of not in the place in my life right now where I want to even try to dissect him. It’s not just a fact that he’s wrong, but that it seems altogether very much in rejection of the things that made his music so special. It was difficult for me to come to terms with it or fully make sense of why someone who’s unashamed expression of witty despair in the 80’s and 90’s, someone who was outcasted from the overall closed mindedness lower working class post ww2 world of northern England, unafraid to be gay and completely the antithesis of some Tory ideal could be bought by some tired nationalist agenda. It’s even more difficult to realize where his alegianced lie in a world that is starting to reject democracy, embrace anti intellectualism in the guise of some form of selective politically motivated skeptism, and I see the world move farther and farther into fascism.

Margaret Thatcher attacked The Smiths. Morrissey was taken in for questioning more than once out of fear for what he represented. Morrissey and The Smiths has some subversive element that really did threaten the establishment and cultural norms, in a way that I feel was a little more multidimensional than even a lot of bands in the English punk scene. I guess for me, even though I grew up in the Inland northwest of the US, I felt there was a lot of parallels in common. I too detest a culture based around animal consumption, was really not a part of the world I grew up in and didn’t want to work in the factories, I liked art and music and nobody around me was really into that stuff.

I still like the Smiths and most of Morrisseys old music. I read his autobiography. I know he is a dramatic self involved individual but I did feel that up till somewhat recently his heart was in the right place and he just liked to be controversial, which is somewhat true still, but now I think there was more to it, some nationalistic self preservation instinct kicking in. Its actually more prevelant than I even realized and I honestly think it’s getting the best of anyone with money or power, even those who once stood for something counter culture. It’s hard to think of him as racist in the traditional sense with his adoration for Latin America, but he might just be so self involved that his popularity in those regions gave him a bias. He probably separates the racism from the nationalism, blindly not wanting to see how the two concepts are quite inseparable. Falling right into it.

Him saying “everyone prefers their own race”, is kind of wild to me. I genuinely even try to entertain this as a possibility like a philosophical thought experiment or a deep dive of some kind into my own subconscious part of me I am avoiding somehow, and it’s not true for me or a lot of people. Who the fuck is he to say who prefers who, and how backwards and dehumanizing. It’s pretty repulsive, and being he is bisexual and felt the discrimination of homophobia growing up, I’m inclined to think he’s not able to see that he’s become the enemy he once represented the antithesis of.

The guy I’ve kinda been with is Mexican. I totally love him. I look into people’s eyes and I talk to and open up to people and if I connect with them I connect with them. Not like I’m trying to play the I gotta friend who is this or that as some kind of example of much, or that I don’t see color or some faulty implication, but I have been in situations where I’m the only white person at a party and I prefer them because they are my friends and I love them, and the idea of classifying who I prefer is to imply that the white race should be my main concern as they are the same as me and therefore superior and they aren’t. There is nothing inherently special to me or a kinship felt with other white people for either their appearance or cultural background. It’s nice to compare notes of pop culture but a lot of stuff people go through is universal. I don’t take too much issue with multiculturalism. My white skin is meaningless to me. I can’t imagine being so inept as a person that the color of my skin actually defines my identity rather than my autonomy or ideas or relationships and what I stand for and my ability to appreciate and connect with other people.

What gets me is that in his support of the far right is not even in line with his hatred of police, or the hatred he had a few years ago. I mean, he has always gone on and on about police brutality, he’s been harassed by them on multiple occasions. He shows them on giant projectors at his shows. Police are a very important staple for fascism and nationalism, and he is now on their side after all this time? What changed? The lost young man he once was in 1981 feels very very different from who he has become and piecing together that transformation has been something I’ve been trying to do for awhile. I try to embrace both but they seem like similar but different people at odds with one another, like an uncle and nephew.

Here is what I imagine happened, and I could be wrong about that but I was a Morrissey fangirl for quite awhile. I literally had his signed autograph above my bed with dried flowers around it like a shrine for a few years, and got a grasp of Morrisseys personality in some ways.

To start off, Morrissey is a very poetic and sharp guy but he’s very miopic about his interests and has always had the tendency to see the world in a black and white framework. This in and of itself is not necessarily bad, but it’s the core framework of who he is as a person. When he was young it was very much more a reflection of his hatred for authoritarianism and deceitful people and phony artists. It’s not bad and it contributed to his music and lyrics and became the thing he was loved/hated for. The way he goes about it really has always been the double edged sword of his charm and vileness all in one and something people have mocked time and time again. He likes to be the guy in the corner that looks fine and smug and believes he sees the virtues/dispicable attributes of everyone in the room and there have been times in his life where he was, and though he won’t ever attack anyone face to face he’s quick to speak his mind about it.

Morrissey is also a very vain person. It’s subtle but he is very singular on certain aesthetics. At times it made him brilliant and poetic and a visionary. The Smiths album covers are beautiful. His look is both elegant and absurd in its grasp for purity. It also makes him seem like a twat and a pretentious prince. The fact that he seems to be these two things at once is what gave him that kind of controversial star quality at times.

Those are just two natural traits he has always been obvious with. And he struggled with it and focused on his passions and dealt with depression in the 80’s. Then fame happened and the smiths ended. He kept to himself more or less in the 80’s and 90’s aside from his disdain for Margaret Thatcher, but he kinda lost his mind a bit when his drummer took him to court in the nineties. Right or wrong he fought for two years and lost a good chunk of his money from The Smiths and when that happened he kind of was forced to start again. He lost his home. He developed that early personalized sense of self preservation and victimhood. I think he lost faith in many of his more naive ideals when he was younger. When you read his autobiography and know what happened it’s like he had to step out of his old life and into something else.

Then, he’s always been a vegetarian superiority type. I liked that he calls it as he sees it but because of his need to black and white think everything he came off as deluded and smug. I mean, to be fair you can’t seem to win with people who want to eat meat and I agreed with a portion of his message, but he never questioned himself. He’s not good at that, or doesn’t appear to be. My personal interpretation of him was to agree with part of it and give him the cred for being not afraid to be a dick and say it, but to see also that he was so dramatic and self absorbed about it to also laugh at him and the way he said it.

Now to go into fascism and why it grew on Morrissey. I see the world as kind of falling into polarization and flux because of the failures of neoliberalism. It’s a long political explanation, but essentially the systems that are in place do not provide answers to a lot of catestrophic issues. Democracy, though the best thing we have, is flawed. I really like philosophy and have studied this and the various arguments that are made, and I don’t have the answer either but fuck if I will ever side with nazis.

People are seaking solace in new ideas that are actually quite old, namely socialism and fascism that provide answers that democracy fails to. Capitalism eats itself and created monopolies and unfair wealth distribution, technology is making human labor obsolete and therefore not a stable means to base our economic system on, those with wealth are hoarding it and trying to separate themselves from the world they helped ruin. We are destroying the planet, running out of natural resources, many of our leaders in the last three or for decades have been flawed, there isn’t a universal safety net for things like natural disasters and pandemics and there are still places stripped of their natural resources where human slavery is prevalent and children starve to death. Neoliberalism has promised some great answer but has actually been the contributor to this entire mess.

We are seeing the beginning of the end now, and I am sure Morrissey isn’t going to waste that without putting himself in the victim shoes, the white traditional quintessentially Englishman of wit, who sees his beautiful world he grew up in disappearing in multiculturalism and seeing himself and the culture of old England as a dying breed, that needs to be preserved at any cost. He probably was on the fence about it for some time, weighing out his disdain for authoritarianism, having a bougouis experience with the seemingly left leaning media that he never managed to win over and called him out for his every misstep. I bet he had a friend who opened him up to the idea that we don’t know about who changed his mind. I bet cuts in taxes for the rich helped him preserve his wealth that he definitely feels entitled to after losing the first portion of it in the court case. He’s rich, famous and old and often times that leads to being quite out of touch, even to the best intellectuals. He lost his mother who was dear to him and I can imagine, even though it’s not political, it created a deep sense of emptiness and dis ease. Nationalism often times gives people a sense of security and identity and purpose. And the idea of having an unpopular opinion excited him just as it always has, gave him the opportunity to be the smug poet in the corner of the party, and he sold out. Hard. And he’s probably proud of it.

He’s irrelevant now. Honestly his latest album wasn’t good, and I like later Morrissey. He doesn’t have the same energy. I just feel like he’s grasping at something that he never fully ever had. What’s weird to me is that I’m writing about him like this when honestly, I could also easily write about how beautiful and meaningful the Smiths and Morrissey has been to me. I can’t explain how it cut through the extreme isolation I’ve been in, not to mention how the Smiths really changed music for the better. There’s always going to be a part of me that wants to defend him. I’m not saying we cancel him. I kinda think he canceled himself. I’m not going to try to not enjoy the smiths or morrissey when I hear him, and I will still hear it and enjoy it but I’m not ever going to spend my own money on filling his pockets. I still nostalgically enjoy the person he was a very long time ago and what he used to represent. I realize at the end of the day he’s just a flawed person. But also fuck fascism, and fuck Morrissey for caving into it.

I mean, at the end of the day the hardest part is that I made him a part of my identity and I just had to stop doing that in a simplistic way. I tossed out a morrissey shirt I had (it’s was a cheesy shirt anyway), and I found new genres of music and while I still love the smiths it’s not like I can’t do without them every day. I break down and listen to them sometimes. I know the songs so well. I listen to Xiu Xiu which is a modern day similar equivalent in some ways but is absolutely better and the singer Jamie Stewart is fucking gold.

[intothewilde]

⌠ ellie bamber, 20, cis female, she/her ⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, GIORGIA WILDE! according to their records, they’re a FIRST year, specializing in UNDECIDED; and they DID NOT go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of (first edition books, walking in the rain, candy-scented lip gloss, getting lost in a museum, millions of twinkling city lights). when it’s the (sagittarius)’s birthday on 12/13/1999, they always request their CHERRY PIE from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation. 

she can’t do shit with knives yet but it’s a great gif, don’t @ me) but DO like this if you want me to hit you up for plots

@gallagherintro​

tw: implied neglect, brief mentions of mental illness and addiction

ok! so giorgia was born and raised in new york city. both of her parents came from extremely wealthy families. her mother was a french socialite and her father was the golden boy of a hearst-like (founders/owners of a distinguished publishing conglomerate) family from connecticut. some of his family members claimed to be descendants of one of oscar wilde’s cousins (a rumor that has yet to be confirmed) and he believed he had it in him to become a literary great himself. he seemingly succeeded, having published multiple best sellers popular with young pseudo-intellectuals. 

giorgia was never sure if her mother had wanted a daughter or a life-size doll. from a very young age she was primed to fit into high society and paraded around her parent’s lavish parties. most of her time was spent with nannies and violin tutors, studying her father’s poetic heroes, and dancing ballet. she was taught how to socialize with society’s elite, but she never felt comfortable doing so. she felt safer hiding behind her mother or sitting beneath the stairs with her nose in a book.

while her mother wanted her child to be pretty and proper, her father wanted someone to continue his family’s legacy. she learned to read when she was four, and by the time she was five, gio was forced to write in a diary every. single. day. (over the last fifteen years she’s filled up dozens of notebooks that live on a bookshelf in her childhood bedroom). she didn’t particularly like her father and she didn’t want to want what he wanted for her. (did that sentence make sense? i hope so). but she did like to write and she was damn good at it. her poetry was published in online journals and lit mags, her short stories won young artist awards. on the outside, she was everything her parents wanted.

but like i said before, gio struggled with the social part or being a socialite, and the life of an heiress was never something she wanted. she didn’t seem to have the right attitude - she was demure and diffident, a textbook wallflower. she was never happier than when she was reading a book or roaming a museum, always curious about the world around her. she never misbehaved or did anything wrong, but her parents wanted her to behave differently. 

their tribeca penthouse always had a certain cold air to it and the high ceilings only seemed to add to the lonely feeling that gio couldn’t escape. her relationship with her parents seemed to become more strained with each passing day. the more she learned about them the more gio realized she didn’t know them at all - the spa retreats her mother went on were really trips to psychiatric facilities and rehabs, and the endless slew of young women her father employed as assistants were all lazily hidden affairs. they never talked about it, if she tried to she was shut down or ignored entirely.

gio grew up wanting to go to nyu. she didn’t know where the dream came from (her parents wanted her to go to vassar or dartmouth) but she loved her home city and something about nyu had always called to her. she was accepted early admission to the gallatin school where she planned to major in an individualized study of creative and dramatic writing.

she loved her freshman year of college. she was finally out of her parents’ home and into a postage stamp of an apartment with an eccentric girl studying theater. she was around people from all over the world and all walks of life instead of the tiny bubble of rich snobs and private schools. she was around people she actually had things in common with. she was still shy and she still found it extremely difficult to talk to people. the easiest way for her to interact with people was to overcompensate for her shyness and be excessively friendly. when she was actually able to talk, she found she had many things to say, and once she started talking it was hard for her to stop.

her roommate was a big fan of movie marathons (in october they watched all of the scream movies, and then all of the saw movies, and then all of the children of the corn movies. that’s twenty horror movies. gio still has nightmares from them). for a few weeks in the fall she had a spy movie marathon. mission: impossible and jason bourne movies, mostly. something about them piqued gio’s interest, and she started reading spy novels, which quickly turned into her writing one of her own. she wanted the protagonist to be a woman for once, and one who’s main personality trait wasn’t tits. her novel, at dawn beneath the bridge of sighs, followed a cia operative and an italia aisi agent who are forced to work together to find the kidnapped daughter of an american diplomat along with the priceless jewelry she was wearing at the time of her capture. (do i know what the fuck im talking about? no!!) 

gio comes from a family of publishers so it was fairly easy for her to find someone who wanted to publish it, but the nepotism ended there, the success was all her own. it was lauded as an impressive debut novel and critics praised her subversion of genre tropes and inventive action sequences. but it stuck out to a select few for a different reason - the heroine used tactics uncannily similar to those used by actual spies, and she used them well. some people were curious as to how the character would handle other situations in the spy world, or really how the author would plan it.

so yeah she got a letter from gallagher, and she thought it was a joke at first. she eventually figured out it was very real (how? idk!) and her curiosity got the better of her. she decided it would be good for research, and that she could go back to nyu if she wanted to. once she arrived at gallagher, giorgia... did not know what to do. she had never been so out of her element, and she felt like she was terrible at everything. but that wasn’t really true, all the things you could study for were things she was actually learning. she became determined to actually do well, and as her first year comes to an end, gio still feels extremely unsure of herself, and unsure of where she wants to focus her studies, but she’s starting to feel like gallagher is the right place for her to be.

personality: she’s very sweet, very earnest, sometimes has a tendency to retreat into herself and get quiet, but she still combats her shyness with an outgoing attitude she learned from her mother that takes her far out of her comfort zone. basically as outgoing as an introvert can be. she tries to see the best in everyone and every situation. emphasis on tries, because she’s a total worrier and is often pulled between the desire to find a silver lining and the fear that something horrible will happen. she will give people more chances than they deserve and let them walk all over her. her self esteem can be pretty low, but one thing she is confident about is her writing (although she won’t tell you because she doesn’t want to seem boastful). art and literature in all forms are her favorite things and she could talk about it forever. she’s the kind of person who tries to learn everyone’s names and once she knows it she’ll say hi to you every time she sees you.

other stuff: she’s fluent in french and english and grew up speaking them equally. (she also knows some spanish, italian, german, and russian from her nannies, but she’s not fluent). she has a deep love for photography, usually bringing a camera with her at all times. she can play classic violin and piano, but hasn’t in a while and is probably rusty, she continued to dance until she came to gallagher and no longer had time to practice. she has a cat named pierre (named after pierre-auguste renoir). she's a vegetarian. she’s basically addicted to fruit. she listens to a lot of sad pop music. her favorite colors are blush pink and forest green. she watches a lot jean-luc godard and wes anderson movies. she’s kind of a sad girl/art ho. she gets crushes on people easily and all the time. she is very impressionable, and seems to experience heartbreak often. she just wants someone to lover her for her, you know? 

wanted connections: (im super fucking tired so im just gonna write some really basic shit but hopefully i’ll edit it tomorrow).

a best friend: it’s not easy for her to make friends but i want gio to have one person she can truly be herself around. a platonic soulmate, if you will.

friends: really just anyone who is understanding of how she’s not always comfortable talking but will also listen if she starts ranting about queer representation in 20th century poetry and plays, ya feel?

big brother/big sister: because she hated being an only child and she really needs someone looking out for her

bad influence: its not hard to be a bad influence on her but someones gotta do it!

good influence: someone who lets her baby ways rub off on them

idk what to call this but a sort of mutual respect with someone she’s had a class with?

idk what to call this either but someone she really clashes with, they just don’t understand each other

people she knew in nyc: she was there for the first 19 years of her life so if your character was there in early 2019 or any time before that, they could’ve run into each other

someone from a similar background who she can just be like... felt with?

hookups/flings: she loves love but love does not love her

an ex: could be good or bad terms idk 

crushes, mutual or unrequited

give me literally anything, the more angst the better!!

[theskyexists]

Fugitive of the Judoon (spoilers)

What. what was that.

What.

I really felt like the Doctor here. Hit with the reminder that Gallifrey is still dead (what the fuck - still) then hit by Jack (what the fuck), then hit by another Doctor (WHAT THE FUCK). when she’s like walking around the city just absolutely SHOOK - same bro

I mean I’d figured that Gat was a Time Lord (OR actually, the Doctor specifically says ‘Gallifreyan’ instead of Time Lord) the moment she called Lee a ‘companion’. Figured that Ruth was a Time Lord the moment she got a weird vision and started rattling off life facts. Figured for absolutely sure she was the Doctor the moment she showed up in that orange shirt lol

Chibnall went: FUCK YOU to every single whining fan who complained about a female Doctor. LOL

At the start I was like nice - we got a focus on an older black woman! I could never have imagined this. That is to say: did RTD know this for his book version of ‘Rose’ or was that a prophecy?

So many people got vaporised in quick succession in this jfc. Chibs was like - ok no longer necessary for the plot or anything - u ded. (and those guns can’t be regenerated from it seems - which says something about Gallifreyans using em)

Ok wow. I feel disoriented and not entirely in a good way but that’s because Chibnall lost my trust a long time ago and also the pacing was weird and they should REALLY have edited the bit with Jack down - esp when he’s trying to tell them something important and he says ‘ tell her this’ three times but still gets cut off lol (I guess RTD okay’d Jack’s return?)

honestly it was a good excuse to remove the companions I spose but it had nothing to do with the episode and so it didn’t fully land, did Jack a bit of disservice - but it did let us have jokes about - ah Doctor! not the Doctor? Ah..you the Doctor? NO??

THAT KISS THOUGH!!! I LOVE IT.

Also - are they going to explain why Jack clearly looks a lot older than before or...was that the nanogenes? Because at first it seemed like that was the anti-theft system but then Jack said ‘always’. John Barrowman did a great job but I feel like the innuendo was possibly overwritten?

The way the Doctor just let Lee be ‘arrested’ and left with Ruth was super weird bc why would she leave him if she thought he was the fugitive....she’s so bendable. Let’s say, she’s a pushover a lot of the time - because the plot needs her to be - and that is still a problem.

Sad we didn’t get to see Thirteen speak Judoon.

The companions and Doctor sure had a nice talk - and her messing with the controls for ages to find the Master - how long you been sat there? 20 mins. and the Doctor’s denial - HA - and leaving em to explore while she disappears to go back to Gallifrey and just LOOK at the devastation WOW. THE FUCKIN ANGST MATES. He did good there. I still can’t - I mean the acting made it. I don’t think the dialogue is particularly inspired but they made it. And they’re ‘family’ because they’re dedicated - not because there’s that good ol love. It’s a choice, not organic so to speak. But I thought he wrapped things up according to their canon dynamics - that is to say - she gets depressed and then they lift her out of it by forming a front and barraging her with hope and faith.

Anyway.

So I think the implication is multiverse. After all.

And there are SO many hints about - hm. Uh. It being a commentary on both an Imperialist Gallifrey and the historical dynamics between the Doctor and companions. It really is becoming clear to me that Chibnall is committing to this - this subversion of ‘normal classic’ dynamics.

1. The Doctor Ruth (for some reason not realising that this woman with her is also a Time Lord and/or a very suspiciously knowledgeable person???) actually treats the Doctor like a companion - and it is PATRONISING. It’s explicitly deeply patronising - and it’s explicitly a Doctor-Companion dynamic. She even does the hand-grab. Something we’ve not seen Thirteen do at all (which I have bitterly complained about). Then she’s telling her to shut up and refusing to share anything. (having them both be women was brilliant because it only made the wrongness of it stand out more - because it’s so unexpected). Actually the whole episode had a super interesting red thread of the Doctor not opening up to her companions and then being truth-blocked the whole episode - it turns out BY HERSELF lolllll. anyway that also feeds back into it.

2. Gat is like Lee - she’s had the same training - and it’s military training. She’s not a Time Lord, she’s a Gallifreyan. They’re Gallifreyan. Lee is a ‘companion’, Gat is implied to have been the same. He gives up his very life for the Doctor Ruth, she’s the most important thing to him. - the Doctor Ruth does not speak of him again - shows very little grief. The emotional devotion inherent to normal/classic Doctor-Companion bond is militarised and it seems - institutionalised....and it’s not a good thing AT ALL - like class hierarchies and servitude. This is CLEARLY contrasted with Thirteen and her fam mending their relationship through honesty and faith and THEM lifting HER up - BY REJECTING explicitly that she’s so much older/more powerful/superior.

3. The Doctor Ruth was a soldier. She carries a gun. Her TARDIS looks much closer to the original standard version. She has a GUN, even if she mostly threatens and does deadly tricks with it - she expresses pure disdain for the sonic - the thing that the Doctor uses to learn things and open and fix things with... She’s a twisted mirror image - but she also apparently knows that ‘the Doctor’ does not use guns - and she ran from Gallifrey.

4. Gat serves the ‘glory’ of a shadowy empire of Gallifrey.

I absolutely loved the Doctor going fuck u to the Doctor Ruth (Jodie plays that so perfectly lol) and talking anyway and then speeching about the ash and bones of Gallifrey. Great stuff. And honestly I loved them syncing and some good old ragging on each other’s style choices. Are we going to get some payoff on this weird no gun policy....?

What I found super weird though is the Doctor doing that annoying thing where the script makes her state the obvious and then the Doctor Ruth ACTUALLY COMMENTS ON IT? That she’s being fucking dumb. I don’t know how to take that. I find a choice like that from a writer annoying! But now it’s acknowledged as a character trait! What. But it fits right into Doctor-Companion commentary - i.e. earlier Doctors being callously snarky to companions.

I’m just a bit iffy about the Doctor just letting this go????? Why not REALLY interrogate this random version of yourself???? Once again plot frustrates logic and character.

Middle of the series and we get this. Chibs went from ‘no arc’ to ‘ARC CONSTANTLY’. I don’t mind it - but i do find it disorienting.

I LOVED ALL THE JUDOON RHYMING. also i loved the WHOLE confrontation between the Doctor and the Judoon it was INCREDIBLE.

[woozapooza]

I’m sure this has been said before, but I see a really strong parallel between George Warleggan and Thomas Barrow. I’m not talking so much about what kind of people they are or what their role in the story is, but rather the attitudes their respective shows take toward them and their resulting status as fan favorites, at least on tumblr. I’m not gonna go into too much detail because I’ve only seen Downton Abbey once and it’s been almost two years since I finished it and I still have seven episodes left of Poldark and also because I am neither English nor a historian and don’t know much about how social class would have worked in England in these eras, but basically, both shows use these guys’ villainous characteristics to dismiss the actual injustices they face based on class in George’s case and both class and sexuality in Thomas’ case. Both shows seem threatened not just by these guys’ actual malice but by their subversiveness. Now, to be fair, I would say this is more egregious in Thomas’ case than in George’s case for several reasons. For one thing, George is more sinister than Thomas was even at his worst. For another, George has it easier than Thomas: he is very rich, he is straight, and his schemes have a much higher success rate than Thomas’ (lol). But what they have in common is that despite Horsfield and Fellowes’ uh...shaky track record when it comes to empathizing with these guys for the prejudice they face, fandom has—rightly—made up for what the shows lack and pointed out the biases inherent in how the shows construct them as villains. Yeah, George has like a scruple and a half. That doesn’t make it okay for literal aristocrats like Ross, Francis, and Agatha to be contemptuous of him specifically for his social climbing. Yeah, Thomas likes to sabotage people. That doesn’t mean it’s fair for Anna to encourage him not to “be at war with the world” without acknowledging that he was not the one who started the war and that doesn’t mean he should have to lose his ambition of leaving service.

I’m gonna change direction for a second and circle back to the differences between these guys, because even though I am definitely making a valid point about their similarities, the differences are kind of getting in the way of me putting that point into words. For George, obviously the main obstacle he faces—the only obstacle, really—is that he comes from a working-class background. For Thomas, the biggest burden is his sexuality, which obviously George doesn’t have to worry about. So while not being aristocrats connects them, their respective social class doesn’t have equal prominence in each of their identities. (I mean, maybe in-universe it would, but it doesn’t when it comes to their roles as characters, if that makes sense.) Plus, while both are extremely proud and unwilling to accept the social role given to them, they have different goals. George wants to integrate into the aristocracy. Thomas mainly just doesn’t want to be a servant (something neither George nor his father nor his grandfather ever was), but failing that, he at least wants to get promoted as high as possible. And this isn’t really relevant to my main point, but I want to add that I think what George ultimately wants is respect, whereas what Thomas ultimately wants is love, whether romantic or friendly. While both seem to seek status out of deep-seated insecurity, George’s ambitions are in service of what he really wants, whereas Thomas’ ambitions always seemed to me more of a substitute for what he really wanted. Finally, George is very elitist to an extent I don’t remember Thomas being. Basically, the reason for this digression of a paragraph is that I’m just trying not to overstate the similarities. There are a lot of valid reasons that Thomas gets more sympathy from his show and its viewers than George does. He’s a better person and he’s had much a harder life.

But just like you don’t have to be a good person to have the injustices you face to count as real injustices, George doesn’t have to be as sympathetic as Thomas for criticisms of Poldark’s portrayal of class to be legitimate. When the topic at hand is social prejudice, it doesn’t really matter whether either character was in the wrong when they did such-and-such thing. I’m gonna quote one of my favorite bloggers here (it’s me, I’m quoting myself): “Obviously the bad things that have happened to Thomas don’t excuse the bad things he’s done, but the reverse is true, too: doing bad things doesn’t make his own suffering not count.” The same is true for George, although I might in his case replace “suffering” with something milder. Have I overused “injustice” yet? The fact remains that both guys act out in response to being treated unfairly and then get vilified by the “good” characters—in Poldark’s case literal aristocrats and Downton Abbey’s case most frequently the less uppity and more heterosexual servants—in a way that almost completely erases the source of their anger, treating them as rogue individuals rather than addressing the societal forces that shaped them, forces to which many of the other, more “sympathetic” characters who criticize them literally aren’t subjected. (EDIT: I phrased that sentence misleadingly. When I say George is treated as a rogue individual, I’m not overlooking the other seriously elitist characters. I’m just saying that the show seems weirdly resisting to acknowledging the societal forces that shaped him.)

Side note: while thinking about this parallel it occurred to me that both shows have characters who, during the course of the show, rise in rank: Demelza and Tom. But both of them do so through marriage, and in neither case was it their intention. Demelza didn’t seem to care much about class as far as I recall, and Tom was a socialist, which is basically mutually exclusive with being a social climber. Idk, like I said, I’m not gonna pretend to fully understand how class works in either show’s context, and also I haven’t really thought this out, but I do think it’s interesting that both shows show “good” characters changing social status but not through ambition.

[raayllum]

Huge fan of your Rayllum metas, especially the part where you eloquently explain my exact feelings on this ship. What are your thoughts on Rayllum’s subversion of typical gender roles?

Thank you! I’m glad you enjoy them!

I think Rayllum sits in a spot that many of my ships do, which is that gender roles are both upheld, subverted, and the couple’s place as an interracial relationship must also be taken into account. After all, race and gender are often interwoven and what’s subversive for white m/f relationships may not be for poc characters or relationships, etc. And I think unfortunately that tends to be something tumblr forgets when looking at interracial or not m/f ships and branding them all as “boring white het” ships which is just... dumb and shows a big lack of understanding of nuance, but anyway....

With all that being said, here’s my thoughts on what Rayllum subverts, how it falls into my personal preferences, and more:

Subversion

When talking about subversion, one is really talking about both tropes and gendered expectations. So here they are:

Rayla is an action tough girl, but she’s not mean or icy (and there’s nothing wrong with female characters who are, Rosa Diaz from B99 is one of my favourite characters ever, but it is more common for tough women to be labelled the Stone Cold Badass). She’s warm, funny, fearful, but still the most capable warrior among her own troupe of assassins. And in her relationship with Callum, the fact that she’s the primary protector of him, rather than the other way around, is really nice to see and is a subversion of more classic m/f tropes where the girl is the damsel most of the time. 

Then you have Callum, who although being male, is more in touch with his feelings and more openly / readily vulnerable. He looks up a lot to the girls and women in his life (his mother as a source of comfort and strength, Claudia getting to learn cool magic, Rayla as a warrior who he consistently praises, Lujanne as a teacher, etc.). He’s always very respectful towards Claudia and you can tell that beyond his initial crush on her, they do get along. He’s also not an excellent fighter and does need to be rescued sometimes. 

This also plays into rather than being a lady/princess and her knight trope, Rayllum is far more a prince and his knight trope, too. I’m a sucker for this trope either way, but it is nice to see a relationship between an upper class boy and a ‘lower’ (commoner) class girl, too, as it’s much much more rare. (Which, even though I love the ‘poor boy and rich girl’ trope, can also be because marriage/a man for women is supposed to be everything, bc screw money and opportunity, right?)

But even of these subversions, Rayllum also subverts them, which gets into my

Preferences

I have a thing for characters supporting one another slightly outside of their comfort zones. Not all the time, and there’s certainly characters where their dynamic is far more natural and less growth orientated (usually with older characters who already know who they are, for example), but Rayllum does it sometimes, and I adore it.

Simply put: I like the badass character offering emotional support to the more sensitive character, and the less physically intimidating character having to protect the more badass character. Think ‘shorter/smaller/younger’ character trying to shield their friend or partner or whatever with their body even though it’ll barely make a difference. That’s my shit.

So the times when Rayla supports Callum emotionally? My heart. When he has to save her with magic? I’m losing her mind.

And while people like their strong independent female characters, insert narrow views of that here, I’m far more a fan of complex, flawed, well written female characters. And there is nothing wrong with a woman needing help, or being saved, or needing to be emotionally supported. That is not a detractor of strength; that’s just being human.

So yes, I definitely have a soft spot for the moments where Callum tries to take care of Rayla, where she doesn’t have to carry the team or responsibility or blame all on her own, and an even softer spot for when she lets him. 

The Intersection

One of the reasons I like Callum protecting Rayla is because while it does fit m/f expectations, perhaps, like because of the reasons I stated above: it’s a subversion of their assumed dynamic because he’s not the fighter. And while I do actually see Callum having more of a ruthless streak than Rayla does in the end, that’s not the point here.

The point is that Callum is half-Asian. He is a person of colour, and given the desexualization of Asian men, him being seen as strong and heroic and a capable fighter and/or partner is still important. Male characters also tend to be degraded for how masculine or how un-masculine they are. 

Callum seems to be somewhere in the middle, but I’ve seen characters who are less masculine (Aang from ATLA, Peeta Mellark from The Hunger Games, etc.) get shredded by the fandom for it, for not being good fighters, for being ‘pansies,’ etc. Even though boys who are genuinely compassionate and kind hearted and don’t try to cover it up are my favourite, and mercy and love in a cruel world is the bravest, strongest thing a person can do, but anyway—

Basically, it’s similar to how a white woman not being a love interest can be subversive, but a Black woman being a love interest is because it’s far less common and less represented. So while people may think Callum always being the damsel, or extremely flustered and unable to flirt back with Rayla (like shy girl syndrome), or whatever, as being subversive because he’s the boy, his race also factors in and should be considered. 

As well as like, canon characterization because the show does a good job handling all of that and just writing these characters as people without falling into tropes or stereotypes. (Thank you TDP.)

Closing Thoughts:

Rayllum subverts some tropes in delightful ways, and then subverts those subversions in ways that directly cater to my specific personal preferences, and I couldn’t be happier. Thanks for the question nonnie!

[koi-sims]

Do Sim Evil Better.

I’d been knockin’ this idea around for a long time, and after collecting (or making, in the case of the CAS background) all the right cc, I decided to do something fun and unrelated to my stories and make the most handsome, most ingenious, and most evil man to ever exist in a narrative, Corin Deeth III (who actually named the Corin in my current storyline - Corin with two “r”. #bigFan).

Reader, you may or may not be familiar with the story of Kakos Industries and if you aren’t you truly are missing out. It is the best podcast I’ve listened to since The NoSleep Podcast, and to be honest...I think it actually one-ups my beloved NoSleep. It is a very fun and witty podcast with some great humor, greater hijinks, and can I just mention how alluring Corin’s voice is? Just sayin’. The storyline is awesome, too...so many great characters. I want to make Jr. and Malantha next~ I’ll leave some links at the bottom of the post for those who may be interested. Anyway, without further ado, let’s meet the man of the hour, shall we?

~*~*~*~*~*~

Well hello, Corin~.... Now, I may have missed the mark, but I always envisioned Corin having short, trendy hair that still embodied professionalism and and air of slight douchery. I have seen a lot of fanart where Corin has long hair and perhaps that is canonically true. If so, I apologize Corin, please do not send me a pair of exploding sneakers. I may have missed his eye color too, but I went with a very piercing blue-green because that’s just my personal taste and light eyes with dark hair is so badass.

Corin’s traits came pretty natural - evil, confident, and I picked hot-headed because it would best help his in-game aspiration (Criminal Mastermind) moreso than him being hot-headed in the canon. He is actually always as cool as a cucumber. I admire that.

And a little in-game blurb for him because why not? Am a ridiculously enamored fangirl? Maybe. (I spelled his name wrong up top, but I fixed it AFTER I took that and the next cap - whoops)

And just for fun, this personality notice about Corin popped up when I went in to do his photoshoot. I just love it and the look on Corin’s face at the time - Ah, the taste of accuracy.

Now, on to the main event. I’ve always wondered what Corin’s sense of fashion was like, and now having listened to 99% of the podcast (it was so fun to catch up, I’m pretty much stalling on finishing what’s out now because waiting for the next is gonna hurt so bad) I’ve gotten too curious and decided to raid his wardrobe. What’s in there, I wonder??? Let’s find out.

Everyday Wear

Oh of COURSE Corin looks dark and dapper in a suit for everyday. Look at that little splash of color! I bet you used the blood of insubordinate employees to make that tie custom, didn’t you? Magnificent. What else do you slip into on the daily? Maybe when you’re home relaxi-

Oh. Um. Well...You do wear a cowboy hat very well, Corin! I mean...they match the boots and everything! I...I’m sure there are a lot of experimental abominations to wrangle around the office so why not dress the part? Not gonna lie, that shirt looks breezy and comfortable as hell. Maybe take a trip to the mountains with King Leopold sometime? (I...I know what happened in the story, and I refuse to let it go. #OTP.)

Formal Wear

Ah. The natural snazz comes out around the time of the Shareholder’s Ball and the CEO Festival, doesn’t it? You didn’t strike me as the bowtie type of evil CEO but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look amazing on you. I see you’ve forgone your gloves for formal wear. Hard to eat the deviled eggs and tiny cheeses in those, non?

...This must be the suit you wear to the CEO Festival. That’s really the only explanation as to why it always turns out to be...what it usually becomes. I am going to assume that this suit belonged to Mr. Corin Deeth I and you wear it in his honor. I sure he is looking down on you, pleased but also wondering why you haven’t indulged in what is (still) in the right-side inner pocket.

Athletic Wear

You cannot be a successful CEO of an evil megacorp if you let yourself go. Hence why you slip into nothing but basketball shorts for a long, strenuous...sweaty...satisfying...workout. Between culling unnecessary employees and flawlessly delivering the shareholder announcements, you’re deadlifting 400lbs and making 1st in marathons, aren’t you? Of course you are.

And then there’s jazzercise. Cardio IS important and I mean...just running can be a bit tedious, yeah? You’re so well-rounded, Corin, golly. Honestly, I’m not at all mad at your fashion choice for this one. You don’t have to hide it, we are all friends here. The 80′s were a great time and I am happy you’re keeping the impeccable athletics fashion alive.

Sleepwear

Even mega evil mega CEOs need rest from time to time and nothing beats resting out topless and in trackpants. I see you are wearing ADIDAS, the most evil of brands. Not much else I can say. I am too busy admiring what jazzercise has done for you.

Uh oh. It must be one of those days. Malantha has flustered you again, Dirk is texting for more life advice, and Jr. is sending way too many...um...”special photos” to prove his is thinking hard on how to best contribute to the company. Good thing Brosephus is totally awake at 2am and ready to video chat about all of this. It’s SOOOO LAAAAAAME, right?!

Party Wear

Rollin’ up to the New Year’s Festival feels good, especially when you look this mighty fine. Nothing like finally getting past Yule and Anti-Celebrating by finally cutting loose again and making those ultra evil resolutions. Again with the gloves, I see. Well, I guess better safe than sorry. There’s no tell who’ll feel your wrath after four Blue Motorcycles.

Hm. This is quite the uh...departure, Corin. I mean, nothing ever looks bad on you but where on Earth would you even wear this to? Where would it even work??? ...Oh, right! The Festival of Adorableness! Awkward or not, you’ve made it work. I’m willing to bet the Division of Subversive Cute helped out with this ensemble. Kudos to them! I’m sure burning it afterwards was incredibly satisfying for you.

Swimwear

Why are you looking so bedeviled, Corin? How, when you look that prepared for a pool party, can you possibly be in such a foul mood? Oh...oh wait. Malantha has hidden your sunblock, hasn’t she? Goshdarnit! How can you possibly be evil without being as pale as your skin tone will allow?! That Malantha...she truly is evil, isn’t she?

Welp. I guess if you’re going to get a tan, might as well hit every spot you can. Suck on that, Malantha! (....) Also, breaking out the zebra print speedo wasn’t the worst idea you’ve ever had, and I both applaud, and ready my binoculars for, you choice of white swimwear. No booty shot? Ugh. Fair enough...gotta leave something to the imagination, I guess. #disappointmentOverdose

Warm Weather Wear

This is the look of a man about to take off on his mega evil yacht and never look back. That shirt, unbuttoned down to where it is suggestive but not desperate, those shorts, defining the thighs while still looking professional, those boat shoes that scream class and bless you for not wearing socks with them. There is a thin line between evil and insane and you ride it perfectly.

Apparently, even evil knows it wouldn’t be summer without an obnoxiously bright Hawaiian shirt. Ain’t even mad. Oooh, and white pinstripe pants....why yes, dear, they do make you look taller and thinner! I can almost hear you now, as you swagger out the front doors, “I’m off to the Maldives, screw y’all! Also, if a single brick is out of place when I get back, I’ll kill you.” You tell ‘em, Corin.

Cold Weather Wear

Brrrrrr. Generally, evil is always cold, dark, and hateful but sometimes even the weather puts up a good fight. Stylish as ever, you have broken out a very elegant scarf and jacket, expertly layered as to properly insulate all of the darkness within. No hat, though? Of course not. Evil does not get that chilly.

Corin: “What you mean I didn’t win the Ugly Sweater Contest?!”

RUN.

~*~*~*~*~

And that concludes are journey through Corin’s wardrobe! This really was a lot of fun to do, and I’d be ever so pleased if the fine people who bring the @kakosindustries universe alive enjoy it too! I’ve also redecorated Corin’s in-game home (the Alto Apartment’s unit that was formally Lobo’s #sorrynotsorry) and I would like to share that one day too, if I get around to doing the photo tour. I will share some links below to a few relevant sites for anyone whose interested in Corin and the Kakos Industries story. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Cheers!

~*~*~*~*~

WCIF: Kakos Industries

Kakos Industries Home - where it’s all laid out

Kakos Industries on Tumblr - contains information about episode releases, fan-created content, and other candid goodies

Kakos Industries on TVTropes - [SPOILERS] a nice place to gather info about the series and related tropes therein

And of course you can find Kakos Industries on Facebook, Twitter, and any podcast service worth it’s salt.

[gascon-en-exil]

Joining the Game Late: S1E7 “You Win or You Die”

Synopsis

Dead animal symbolism is too easy. Ned confronts Cersei because he is an idiot. Littlefinger’s school of teasing lesbian prostitution. Theon is confused that there are people who don’t know how feudalism works. Robert dies pointlessly and everything goes to hell. Jorah saves Dany from a poisoner on the horde’s market day, and Drogo gives a rousing speech in a fictional language. Jon Snow got put in the wrong class, but Sam is there to smooth things over in an actually not gay way. Renly sucks as scheming, but not as much as Ned.

Commentary

I can’t say for certain, but this may have been the episode for which critics coined the term “sexposition” to refer to scenes with gratuitous nudity going on in the background that has little to nothing to do with the scenes themselves. This is definitely the case for Littlefinger monologuing the history of his attraction to Catelyn while instructing two prostitutes (one of them Theon’s favorite) on how to pleasure one another. The scene in total is evocative in all its contrasts, with the other prostitutes bathing their squealing children in the courtyard below and Littlefinger throwing out matter-of-fact pointers on seduction to these two women as he waxes melancholic over the great love of his life...but at the same time fanservice is fanservice. In an unpleasant way it contrasts against an earlier scene that introduces Tywin Lannister as he butchers a stag and explains to Jaime and the audience what it means to be a Lannister. The gore is just as irrelevant to the dialogue as the sex - not to mention extremely obvious symbolism, particularly with what’s to come later this episode for House Baratheon - and they call attention to one another and the interplay of violence and sex in this world.

Meanwhile important stuff goes down for both Jon and Dany, but compared to all the unfolding machinations in King’s Landing I wasn’t too invested. Dany almost gets poisoned at a market (which the Dothraki just go to sometimes apparently) and the result is Drogo vowing to seat his son on the Iron Throne chair and like two seconds of not sexy poisoner dick...which I note because I am making it my duty to note all the dick in this show, little as there is to be had. Jon and Sam make their vows and become members of the Night’s Watch, in a special way from the rest because Jon still follows “the old gods” (a tree that cries blood, how emo) and Sam is his fawning BFF now. It remains to be seen if Sam is right that Jon being named a steward rather than a ranger is really a blessing in disguise.

The most important bit from this episode however is one that managed to surprise me, even as spoiled as I am. See, I knew Robert was going to die fairly early on because the resulting political chaos is necessary to the plot, but I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so early or feel quite so pointless. It absolutely is in character for Robert to have gotten himself killed in a hunt because he’s old and out of shape and also drunk (I don’t buy Varys’s musings that his squire, a Lannister cousin, may have slipped something into his wineskin, and I’m glad the show leaves it open-ended like that), but it means the proper climax of this moment has to come from other sources. It does so quite well, with Ned and Cersei and Renly all backing different claimants to the throne, Robert penning a last will that promptly gets ignored, and Littlefinger playing everyone but Ned most of all as expected. It’s the political drama this season has been building towards all come to a head, and even as I predict the last three episodes will escalate the situation to Ned’s very subversive execution there’s still a bunch of dangling plot threads that are going to have to either get resolved or carry over into later seasons. Naturally I’m most interested in Renly riding for the Reach with Loras, but Cersei’s move to position herself and her son in power not long after Ned had foolishly threatened her was impressive as well. There’s a lot going on here is what I’m saying, and I definitely get why this show became such a phenomenon in its early seasons.

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E6: My Fair Gretchen/Speedy, We Hardly Knew Ye

Me, literally one recap ago: “When are we gonna get a good Gretchen episode?”

Me, today, looking at the title of the next episode and refusing to be embarrassed: “WELL, FINALLY”

My Fair Gretchen

The most pressing revelation here is that “Recess” apparently takes place in Arkansas, as the episode begins with Miss Finster handing out the Arkansas Standard Achievement Test.

Beyond that, this is a lovely ~ironic subversion~ of the “My Fair Lady” trope. Let me explain: “My Fair Lady” is all about turning Eliza Doolittle into a more acceptable member of high society, right? Turning her from Cockney to, well, refined?

Here, we’ve got Gretchen, who’s by no means a member of high society, but the goal isn’t to get her there either. See, Gretchen is smart — very smart — to the point that she gets a perfect score on the ASAT. She’s called into Principal Prickly’s office, where she learns that she has the opportunity to go to Oppenheimer Elementary for the Incredibly, Extremely Gifted. (Of course, Prickly has a vested interest in this too. If two more of his kids go there, he gets that job at Spiro Agnew Middle School!)

But...Gretchen doesn’t really want to go to Oppenheimer. Her mom is excited to hear the news, but it just makes Gretchen sad. And when she tells her friends she’s on the fence about what she’s learned, they decide to take action.

After Gretchen takes one last walk around the school, saying goodbye to the swingset, the graffiti, and the rancid fish sticks in the dumpster, she gets home to find...the gang! And they’ve got a plan to de-smart her so that when she goes in front of the Oppenheimer review board the next day, they’ll have no choice but to turn her down.

“I’ve been trying to dumb myself down ever since kindergarten,” Gretchen says, to which TJ replies, “This time, you’ve got experts on your side.”

“Yo, Prickly,” New Gretchen says as she walks into the gym for her review. After a whirlwind day of trying new looks (courtesy of the Diggers, the Ashleys, the kindergarteners), she shows up in, um, I’m not a fashion person but she’s coming off as very...not this decade? Wow, helpful.

So yeah, instead of going for “refined,” we get, well, the opposite of that. But here, it’s also the socially acceptable landing point. Instead of being a super-genius who aces standardized tests, Gretchen is now...just like any other kid.

The board, pictured above, asks Gretchen a handful of trivia questions, and she gets them all spectacularly wrong (“Who was the 14th president of the United States?” “Dennis Rodman?”). From outside, the gang celebrates her achievement...until the plan backfires.

A humiliated Principal Prickly accuses Gretchen of cheating on the exam, and Gretchen can’t help but recite all of the correct answers to their questions, in order, with perfect accuracy. Albert Einstein (you see him, come on) asks why she was hiding her intelligence, and she explains she doesn’t want to go to the new school. The board banishes Prickly to the hallway, where he and the gang await Gretchen’s fate.

When they emerge, Einstein explains that Gretchen convinced the board that there's more to education than book-learnin’ (which sort of reminds me of “Bart the Genius,” where Bart initially tries to convince the gifted school he has cheated his way into to let him go back to his old school undercover, “to see what makes ‘em tick”).

The board suggests the school instead implement a tutorial program, and the episode ends with Gretchen teaching...a room full of teachers. As it should be.

Takeaway: Every time I see an episode about a gifted kid/genius kid, I think about all the memes that go, like, “if you were ever a ‘gifted kid’ in school, you’re depressed now,” and...yeah. Imagine having all this pressure to succeed in fourth grade, you know?

Speedy, We Hardly Knew Ye

(Today in “trying something new on the blog,” I want to share something I wrote a few years ago that pretty much says what I would have written here anyway. The episode is about the class hamster, Speedy, dying, and how the kids react to it.)

In middle school, I had two opportunities to take part in Challenge Day, a day-long anti-bullying program meant to bring to the forefront all the deeply personal things that participants have in common, all while celebrating their diversity and inspiring them to dismantle the structure that causes these differences to drive them apart.

Being middle schoolers — 11-, 12-, and 13-year-olds in the thick of maintaining childhood friendships, facing new encounters, and experiencing puberty — there was a wide range of expectations for the event and the reactions throughout it. Many students saw the day solely as an opportunity to be able to skip school, while several of us read the material given to us with our permission slips and at least vaguely understood that our emotions — and our beliefs — would be tested.

The first time I did Challenge Day was in sixth grade, and at first, my primary concern was that my best friend and had been separated, relegated to participating on different days. But when the 100 or so of us entered the gym, whose windows had been blacked out to avoid any interruptions from the other 300 students on campus, the specially-trained Challenge Day leaders made every opportunity to pull us out of our comfort zones right away. Suddenly, we were sprinting within a massive circle of chairs, instructed to find a new seat, and found ourselves sitting between two people we’d never met to whom we would then have to introduce ourselves.

Eventually, we split into small groups of 6 or 7 — similarly randomly assigned, paired with a parent volunteer — and talked more candidly about our worries, how we truly felt going to school every day, and even our personal tragedies. The point here was to prove that we were able to open up to a group of strangers following all of the icebreaker activities we’d completed. And, from what my friend had told me after completing her Challenge Day the previous day, this portion of the day was where everyone started crying. While a good number of the students who were just happy to have the day off from school didn’t take this part seriously, I really wanted to – and luckily, both times, my group was just as keen.

I don’t much remember what I shared at that first Challenge Day, but in eighth grade I was dealing with both that friend’s sudden move to a school two hours away and the death of my hamster, my first real pet, and I felt I had a lot to talk about. The students in my group were very receptive to what I had to say, and one even took me aside after we moved on from the small group activities and complimented my candidness, saying I was very brave to cry for my friend and my pet.

Unfortunately, the parent volunteer in our group was less sympathetic. On the Challenge Day website, it states that volunteers receive a quick overview of the day before students arrive, and that’s it. Sadly, you can’t teach sympathy in half an hour. When I almost immediately starting sobbing about my troubles and was met with kindness by my fellow middle school-aged group members, this woman promptly interrupted me.

“Are you sure you’re not just getting caught up in the emotions, sweetheart?” she asked, her attempted pleasantness pierced by skepticism. “At your age, you’re too old to be crying about hamsters and one lost friend. There are more hamsters, and there are more friends.”

What could I do? I was a shy, insecure 13-year-old who was clearly overwhelmed by my own hardships — albeit comparatively minute to what some members of the group had shared — and all this woman could do was point out my perceived weaknesses and trivialize feelings I thought were legitimate and sincere. So I gave in. I nodded.

“Mm-hmm,” she confirmed, her face lit up in victory. “You need to learn to be stronger. That’s what today is all about. Let’s move on to someone else.”

Of course, because of the quiet, non-confrontational person I was — and still, only 13, barely beginning to emotionally mature — I let her words sink in. I entirely believed that what I had shared was completely out of line, and rebuked myself for crying at all. Since early childhood, I was the type of person who cried whenever I felt worried or insecure, and this woman, in just a few sentences, had made me so worried and so insecure that I didn’t want to cry anymore.

For me, Challenge Day in sixth grade was exciting. Because my school had only opened that year, even the seventh- and eighth-graders who transferred from the middle school across town were open to making new friends, and it was a wholly positive experience. But after Challenge Day in eighth grade, I wondered if I’d become too comfortable being openly emotional two years before. And, not to place the entirety of the blame on this one woman’s speech, since I clearly had many reasons to feel down, eighth grade was when I first recognized that I might be depressed. Even still, I don’t think I should have had to say, “Look, lady, I appreciate your fake concern, but I’m clinically depressed” to avoid any further insult.

I know so many people whose feelings were invalidated as kids simply because, as kids, many of them just hadn’t been alive long enough to experience the type of pain that adults have. (And even if they have, the emotional differences inherent in both parties for the exact same tragedy or other life change can be profound.) When adults don’t understand that comparing the plights of a single 13-year-old to their own — or anyone’s — is completely unfair, their words and actions can quickly devolve into invalidation and, sometimes, abuse.

During that second Challenge Day, the main message conveyed by the leaders was beyond my attention. I thought I’d come away with the advice to not cry unless it was about something really important, and to “be stronger” — which was completely abstract to me at the time. (It still is, honestly. Is there a checklist I have to fill out to determine if I’m “strong” enough to…what? Be a living, appropriately emotional person? I mean, evidently not.)

I don’t want adults to be rude to kids who are expressing emotions of any kind, even if it’s about something they don’t think is worth expending energy to worry about. Children and teenagers have vastly different capacities to internalize the world around them compared to adults, and that doesn’t make their reactions to hardships wrong or invalid. We should all know this, having been kids ourselves, but obviously we don’t.

When adults can’t understand a world in which a hamster’s death is, for one day, the most important thing, perhaps the sole hardship on a child’s mind, then we don’t deserve their innocent happiness at learning on their own that there are, in fact, more hamsters.

If we can’t handle children’s emotions at their worst — the worst “worst” they’ve ever experienced — to what fate are we dooming them when the things they don’t talk about, their depression and abuse and appropriately hard hardships that are allowed to challenge their strength, get bad enough for us to care?

Takeaway: Let kids feel their feelings when they’re kids so they have a healthy relationship with their emotions as adults. (Please.)