#Poorly chosen hills to die on

[ante--meridiem]

You would not believe how many accusations of hypocrisy/contradictory stances can be resolved by remembering the population of tumblr is greater than 1. (Greater than 2 even, to account for the accuser).

[ante--meridiem]

I have no strong feelings about the classification of pluto and don't really disagree with anything op says, but wow, the amount of people in the notes comparing this to the "do dinosaurs have feathers" discourse as though an argument about the inherently subjective and arbitrary matter of choosing definitions and classifications is in any way comparable to an argument about whether or not a verifiable material fact is true pisses me off. No one is debating whether or not pluto has the properties that define things as planets vs not planets, they're debating whether that is what the definition should be. (And I know you're aware of this, op - I'm getting pointlessly mad at people in the notes, not at you.) Yes, some definitions are much more useful than others, "arbitrary" doesn't mean all are exactly as good as each other, and people outside a field may not always understand why one is better. But you can't call others anti-intellectual and in the same breath fail to draw a distinction between taxonomy ("how do we define the word planet") and material properties ("do dinosaurs have feathers"). Or, I guess clearly you can but I'm going to be annoyed by it, because anti-intellectualism is a problem but so are people wielding the term "science" to hide the distinctions between types of claims and smuggle them all into a single batch of Scientifically Proclaimed Objective Truths (which actual scientists don't do! Actual scientists are keenly aware of the difference between first order observations and empirical conclusions and models and taxonomies! It is if anything the opposite of anti intellectual to care about those distinctions and most scientists wish laypeople understood them better).

If there were a group of people saying "yeah these animals we have fossils of definitely had feathers, but I think we should stop calling them dinosaurs because of that" then that would be a much better comparison. And I would disagree with that group, but it would be a very different form of disagreement to that I have with the group saying "those animals didn't have feathers, or at least I want to pretend they didn't".

wow pluto reclassification discourse is exhausting. here I thought doing a poll that highlights some of pluto's cool lesser known dwarf planet friends would put things in a context where it can't possibly go in that direction but nope a bunch people really do just hold a hard stance against a classification system entirely out of a sense of nostalgia

[total-drama-brainrot]

I'm determined to have Dave be my favourite character when I watch Pahkithew. He seems like a silly fella.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Sorry if this seems confrontational, but for the life of me I can’t get into your “Chloe has no growth” point when the show itself retracts growth from everyone and is inconsistent with everyone. You saying “The show just lays down basic character traits in Chloe” doesn’t make sense when her basic character traits are supposed to be her being selfish and spoiled.

S2 built off of that and despite what you say, had Chloe doing things that in S1 she wouldn’t have done. She apologized multiple times to the people she wronged, she willingly put herself in harm’s way to help the people she cares about and she was openly vulnerable to Ladybug in “Malidiktaor”. Something S1 Chloe wouldn’t have done. If there’s a distinct difference between a Chloe back in S1 and a Chloe in S2, then growth HAS taken place. But it doesn’t stay because of the formula (and the writers just don’t want her to keep that growth)

So what I’m asking is…what do you mean “Chloe doesn’t have growth”?

I can understand the “No arc” argument because an unfinished arc feels like there’s no arc at all (even though they are fundamentally not the same)

I wouldn't say that the show retracts growth from everyone. It's more that no one is ever supposed to grow. Every episode resets the cast. That's just how pure formula shows work and Miraculous is being sold as a pure formula show. The characters are meant to be static (one of the writers literally compared Miraculous to Dora the Explorer).

That static nature is why pure formula shows normally avoid giving their good-guy characters major flaws. It's the wrong medium for that type of thing specifically because the characters cannot change in meaningful ways throughout the show. They can learn little lessons that don't really change them and maybe have big change between seasons via a special or movie, but that's about it. Thus things like the season four conflict working so poorly. It's just a terrible choice for a formula show! The conflict is literally not allowed to develop properly because of the chosen format.

But sure, let's talk about Chloe and why I will die on the hill that she never demonstrated meaningful improvement even with the issue of the inconstant writing. In fact, seasons-one-to-three Chloe is one of the most consistent characters in the show. For this discussion to work, we need to start off by discussing character development and the two main forms it can take: character establishment and character growth.

Character Establishment

When the audience meets a character, they know nothing about said character. It's up to the writer to guide the introduction process. To choose when to reveal already existing elements of the character's personality, skills, and backstory. This is called character establishment. It is the writing telling you who the character is on a baseline level. Those reveals don't need to happen at the start of the story, though. They can be - and often are - held back for when the time is right.

When these reveals are delayed, it's important to remember that these elements were always part of the character. The reveal isn't changing who the character actually is. It's just changing how the audience views the character.

For example, we spend a good chunk of season one uncertain why Gabriel is doing what he does. Then, in Origins, we learn that it's all for Emilie. This is new information that adds depth to Gabriel's character, but it doesn't change him in any way. This is who he always was. We just know him better now and can recontextualize past events with our new understanding of his motivation.

Character Growth

Character growth is when writers take a character's personality or world view or even just their skills from point A to point B, allowing the audience to watch the character change and become a new better - or lesser - version of themself. This is usually part of a larger character arc where all the moments of growth add up, but it can take the form of small moments of growth that don't fit into a bigger picture, too. I'd probably still call that an arc, but we'll use the word "growth" a lot in this post, so let's just call it growth to be consistent.

Miraculous doesn't really have either arcs or growth because - once again - formula shows don't allow characters to meaningfully change, so I'm going to have to make up an example here. I'll use one that illustrates how character establishment and character growth can and do intertwine as that's an important thing to acknowledge to help guide this discussion.

Let's say that we have a character who lost their family at a young age. We'll call this character Mary. Mary's loss guides her character throughout the entire story, but the other characters and the audience are never told that this is what's going on. We just know that Mary acts in seemingly illogical ways at times and that she trusts no one.

Throughout the story, Mary learns to trust her costars, leading to a big, dramatic scene where she finally tells them - and the audience - about her past. This big dramatic scene is both the culmination of a character arc and a piece of baseline character establishment that allows us to understand Mary's character better no matter what part of the story we're reading.

Because these combo growth and establishment moments are so common in stories, it can feel like character growth when we learn new things about a character in a dramatic moment, but that's not always what's happening. Sometimes dramatic moments are just there to reveal what was always there by forcing a character to act differently than they usually do through the power of extenuating circumstances. These extenuating-circumstances moments are not character growth because, once the moment is over, the character resets to their normal self. The moment wasn't there to let them grow. It was there for the sake of the plot.

This is actually a really important thing that writers need to know how to do. Figuring out what circumstances will make a character say or do a thing they generally wouldn't say or do is part of how stories work. I have started stories with characters acting wildly "out of character" because I put them in the a situation where the behavior suddenly was in character!

Oh, you don't want to talk to this total stranger because you're an introvert with social anxiety who has yet to learn how to love yourself and open up to others? That's nice. Your leg is broken now and you're stuck in the middle of nowhere. What you gonna do sucker? Lie there in the dirt or talk to the nice lady who wants to help you? Your choice! (Spoiler: he talked to the nice lady. He even let her physically support him when he'd usually never let a stranger touch him!)

As soon as that scene was over, the character reverted because it wasn't growth. He didn't become a more open person. He just did something he normally wouldn't do because the situation demanded it. It was extenuating circumstances so that the freaking plot could start.

This is what happened with Chloe in season two. Everything that people call growth is really just extenuating circumstances that reset by the end of the episode or even by the end of the scene.

Let's Talk About Chloe

Chloe does not have a character arc, aborted or otherwise. She is never taken on a journey where we watch her change. All we get is delayed character establishment via extenuating circumstances, but it's given in ways that make some people feel like she was being given an arc. Let's talk about why that is.

Season one Chloe is a one dimensional mean girl. She has almost no depth. She's just here to be petty and cause akumas. She is not a fully realized character.

Season two takes those traits and keeps them, but also gives Chloe a lot more depth to round her out and make her feel like a real character. She's just as petty and mean as she always was, but we're finally allowed to see her in some moments that make her feel like a well of potential to become something more, which the writers basically had to do if they wanted to let her be a hero. The audience needed to feel like Chloe could be good in the right situation.

The feelings evoked by her newly discovered depth are why people go "oh, she had a character arc! My feelings about her changed in a big way!" But she didn't have an arc. You just got to know her better by seeing her in moments where she was forced to be vulnerable. That's not growth. Growth is meaningful, lasting change, not situational change. Everyone changes based on the situation! It's why the "True Selves" stuff is such nonsense. It implies that there's one set way that we're supposed to act in order to be authentic and anything else is some kind of lie which just isn't how the world works.

Let's look at some examples to drive home what I mean.

Season one established that Chloe idolized Ladybug. It's why we get things like this moment from Evil Illustrator:

Ladybug: Fine! You stay! Later! Cat Noir: What do you mean later? Ladybug: I mean, you're the one who wants to protect her, so you don't need me. So, later! (swings away) Chloé:(looks over balcony) Ahhh! Ladybug! Text me! OK!

And this confession from Antibug:

Ladybug: [Chloe] pretended she was me?! How often does that happen? Armand: She idolizes you.

So Chloe adores Ladybug and wants to impress her/be her best friend. Cool. Got it. That never goes anywhere in season one because season one doesn't see Chloe and Ladybug interact much. The most we get is Ladybug saving Chloe from akumas, which doesn't allow for deep conversations. I don't think that they're ever alone in a moment where they can actually talk.

That changes in season two. In season two, they get to interact a lot and it's often in moments where there's a big threat and no one else is around, letting us see a new side to Chloe. But that's not Chloe changing. It's just the writers revealing that Chloe has more to her than the mean girl stuff because of course she does! Pure mean girls don't exist. Everyone has depth. We simply never saw that depth before because Chloe was never put in a situation where she needed to be open. We can't say that season one Chloe wouldn't confess things to Ladybug or chose to sacrifice herself to let Ladybug win because she never had the chance to do those things!

In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that season one Chloe probably would have done the same things as season two Chloe because season two Chloe doesn't really contradict season one Chloe. Antibug showed us that Chloe was pretty desperate to be loved and welcomed the way that Ladybug is loved and welcomed:

Chloé: Jagged Stone! Jagged: (thinking she's the actual Ladybug) Ladybug! What are you doing here? Chloé: Um… when I find out you were here, I knew you'd wanna see me! I had to come say hello. (Sabrina waves at Jagged)

and Chloe has always been a stubborn girl who stands up for what she wants even if what she wants is something bad. Antibug also showed us that Chloe can be genuinely nice to the people she cares about. Her and Sabrina's relationship is shown to be complex with them often having a lot of fun together.

Similarly, Origins sees Chloe showing her father genuine affection after she's saved from Stoneheart:

[Image description: Chloe and Andre hugging and looking very happy to be together]

Origins is the baseline episode that tells us who the characters are on day one, so I never once doubted that Chloe loved Andre, but Andre didn't get akumatized because of Chloe's actions in season one. He didn't even get akumatized for something that Chloe had nothing to do with! His first akumatization is in season two, so it's not shocking that we don't get a Malidiktaor type scene until Malidiktaor.

Chloe was vulnerable with her personal hero when her beloved parent was in danger, but not before? Shocking! Who would have guessed?

Me. I would have guessed. I didn't even realize that people were reading it as some sort of character growth because it clearly wasn't. Malidiktaor didn't feel like something new for Chloe's character. It just felt like the writers were leaning into things that we'd always known about Chloe and using them to better establish her character as someone who genuinely cares about select people. She just doesn't show most of the time.

The same thing goes for Chloe's sacrifice and apology in Zombizou. Chloe only sacrifices herself when there's no one left but her and Ladybug. When the choice is to let the terrorist win or take the hit and let you personal hero save the day. Brave? Sure, but also not growth. Chloe is team Ladybug for all of seasons one, two, and three! She wants Ladybug to like her! Plus even a petty brat can have moments of goodness where they pick a hero over a literal terrorist.

This honestly would have been a damming moment if Chloe didn't sacrifice herself. She functionally had no other choice here. The entire episode builds itself to the self-sacrifice moment so that Chloe is forced to make that choice even though she's been her petty bratty self throughout the whole attack. It's genuinely solid writing.

Then, in the heightened emotions directly after the Zombizou win, we get this:

Miss Bustier: But I hurt a lot of people... Chloé: No... I did... I forgot your birthday, once again. And when I saw everyone had prepared a gift for you, I totally lost it. Because I, too, would've liked to offer you something. I'm sorry, Miss Bustier. Miss Bustier: Thank you, Chloé. Those words are the best possible gift you could ever give me. (hugs Chloé) (Chloé hugs her back, forgetting herself for a moment.) Chloé: Huh?... Uh, yeah. Okay then, we're all good.

A brief moment of vulnerability that quickly ends and does not stick around because Chloe's change was situational, not true growth. The next scene of that episode starts with Chloe being her usual self:

Chloé: Me? You want me to apologize to the entire class? Ridiculous! They should be thanking me for saving everybody.

And ends with the reveal of Chloe's gift to Miss Bustier, which was given in private via a note.

Once again, nothing new for Chloe's character. She acts as she always has, being mean to everyone while having moments of vulnerability when things get tense. Remember that hug between her and her father that we talked about earlier? Same concept. She had just almost died from an akuma attack and so she needed some emotional support, leading her to act more openly loving than she usually does when he's around. Once the moment is over, she reverts to the petty mean girl default.

Giving gifts to placate people is also something that we've seen before. A pretty similar thing happens at the end of Evil Illustrator, it's just played less sympathetic towards Chloe because the writers weren't giving her depth back then:

Sabrina: Too late. Chloé and I are doing the project together. Marinette: You mean, you're doing the project? Sabrina: Well, of course! After all she's been through... Marinette: Ughhh.... Nice new beret, by the way. Sabrina: I know, right! Chloé lent it to me. She really is my BFF! Chloé! Your geography homework's ready!

For any of this to be character growth, we need to see Chloe act differently over time. For her to be put in similar situations and get different outcomes, but we don't see that in part because Chloe didn't change and in part because season one didn't do much to develop Chloe's deeper side. We rarely see her alone or in moments of extreme vulnerability, but you need those moments to show her depth. That's why Despair Bear had Chloe crying alone after Adrien threatened to end her friendship and not before. Chloe is very reluctant to openly show depth. You have to force it out of her, which perfectly fits the character we met in season one.

Even her standing up to Hawkmoth and rejecting the akuma isn't character growth in my opinion. Chloe has always stood up to authority and demanded whatever she wants. She has wanted to be Ladybug's friend and be seen as a hero since season one, so it's not shocking that her extremely strong will would allow her to defy a terrorist. If there is anyone in this show who can stand up to a terrorist on shear "no!" power alone, it's little miss I-always-get-what-I-want. I could see a variation of this happening at any point in the show, just change Chloe's reason for defying Gabriel to match the situation. Rework these lines to be about a party that she wanted to go to and I'd still totally buy it:

Chloé: No, Hawk Moth! I am a superheroine! I am Queen Bee! Ladybug will come and get me when she needs me! I WILL NEVER JOIN YOU! (throws her photo onto the ground as the akuma exits it... and pants)

Chloe acted like a hero here because she wants all the perks of being a hero and can't believe that Ladybug would actually bench her. That's impossible! Ladybug wouldn't do that!

As soon as Chloe accepts that she won't be a hero again, Chloe stops acting heroic because acting heroic wasn't growth. It was her playing a part the same way she played a part in Despair Bear. She was doing what she needed to do to be Queen Bee again and not because it's the right thing to do. This would only be real growth if she rejected the akuma after accepting that she wouldn't be Queen Bee again, but that's not what happens. As soon as she accepts that she's out, she no longer has any reason to play nice. She never grew into a character who did what's right for the sake of doing the right thing. It's always been about getting what she wants or being seen how she wants to be seen. Until that changes, she hasn't changed.

So no, Chloe didn't have an aborted arc. They didn't start to redeem her and then change their minds. All they did was make Chloe one of the most complex characters in the show only to then not do anything with the character they wasted our time establishing, ignoring the complexity they gave her while also cranking her mean dial up to the point of absurdity where she's not even fun in her original role anymore.

I get why it feels like she had an aborted arc. The fact that the character establishment was delayed makes it feel like something shiny and new about Chloe. There's also the fact that the character establishment we get in season two is the kind of character establishment that you'd do if you were setting up for a redemption arc, but that doesn't change the fact that it was all establishment work. None of it was a true arc where we watched Chloe grow. We just saw her put in situations that revealed hidden depths.

Her showing depth is not her growing because when in the world does she show off this supposed growth? She only acts differently in the type of scenes that we've never seen her in before or around characters that we've never seen her truly interact with before. When she's around the established teen characters or in her usual scenes, then she acts the same way that she always has. We never see her be genuinely nice to Marinette or something like that. She's only nice to Ladybug and she's still rude to Chat Noir. That's not character growth! That's character establishment that can then be used to guide character growth!

Same thing goes for the stuff in Despair Bear. We learn that Adrien can push Chloe to be better, but he never does it again and she reverts as soon as he lets her off the hook, so it wasn't character growth! It was just Chloe establishing that she can play nice when she needs to. This means that she could grow if the story chose to take her down that path because we've established that she knows what being nice looks like. Fake it til you make it plot go, go, go! But the plot never went, went, went so meh?

Add in the fact that season one was a bit of a test season with lots of elements that got dropped and the fact that characterization in this show has always been wildly inconsistent from episode to episode and I'm really not seeing a strong argument for Chloe having an intentional arc that somehow got aborted. People just saw the potential for her to have one and argue that potential is the same as an aborted arc when it really, really isn't.

To give an analogy, Chloe's story is like walking into the kitchen and seeing grandma laying out the ingredients for her famous chocolate chip cookies. We get excited because, hey, cookies! Then we come back an hour later and there are no cookies. Nor is there some other sweet that uses the same ingredients. There's just ingredients, sitting unused in their original packaging, making us wonder what the heck grandma was up to. At the same time, she never really started making cookies. She just set out ingredients. They're still there, totally unused, waiting to be made into something, so we can't call them a failed cookie attempt. That implies a level of commitment that was never there. She didn't even say that she was making cookies! We just assumed she was because we, understandably, wanted cookies and wanted to believe that grandma had a purpose to her actions.

[lord-morpheus-ravens]

I absolutely adore your work!! Could I request number 4 from the soft fic prompt list? Only if it sparks joy ❤️

Hiya nonny!! Sorry for the very late reply but I've been writing my thesis (and loving it, but it does leave very little room for anything else). Let's see if I can come up with something short and sweet for prompt 4. Neck kisses!

When Hob finally surfaced from his single-minded haze of grading, of poorly hand-written essays (cursive literacy might be the hill he had chosen to not-die on, but it was still a pain in the arse to have to sift through pages upon pages of shaky chicken scrawl) and weakly debated points, the light in the living room had dimmed, and the sofa clung to the shirt at his back like a second skin.

He unstuck himself and stretched, dropping the papers on the glass table before he stood, vaguely fancying a cup of tea, or perhaps a little water. Without bothering with his slippers, he crossed the hall, popping his spine as he went. The flat smelled like rain, clean rain, not the heavy, polluted kind he hadn't quite gotten used to in the 21st Century, and Hob smiled, peering inside the kitchen to find that at some point between noon and whatever hour of the evening this was, Dream had let himself into his home.

It was good that he no longer asked permission.

He was wearing one of Hob's shirts, the dear thing, and the neckline hung low and loose, exposing the smooth curve of a pale shoulder as Dream floated about the kitchen like a particularly sweet ghost, poking inside each and every cupboard like it contained the answers to all the questions of the universe. And he was singing -humming a gentle little tune under his breath, light and thoughtless and so achingly beautiful Hob found himself hovering by the doorway, just listening.

It was somehow at once familiar and unknown, like a half-forgotten lullaby, ancient and new, dotted with the sound of clinking china and Dream's catlike steps, the sound of home. Warmth bloomed inside Hob's chest, wetting his eyes, and his initial weariness fled him like he'd just woken from a long night of deep sleep.

"Hello, Hob," Dream said softly, and though his back was turned Hob knew he was smiling his shy little smile.

Breaking out of his mesmerised stupor, Hob rushed across the kitchen and gathered his lover's thin, unyielding body in his arms, pressed a kiss to the nearest cheekbone and took the honeypot from Dream's hand so they could twine their fingers. "Hello, my heart," he whispered, suddenly overwhelmed with affection for this otherwordly creature who had taken time out of his impossible duties to come and make tea for him. "It's so good to see you."

He reinforced the point by trailing his lips along the delicate shape of Dream's ear, pausing just beneath to touch his tongue to that sweet spot that always took the breath from him. Dream shivered, melting into his embrace, and raised his free hand to pet Hob's hair. "So I... ah... so I gathered."

Already half-drunk on the scent of him, petrichor and sugar and the sharp sting of star-matter, Hob parted his mouth just so and dropped slow, questing kisses along the white line of Dream's neck, so graciously exposed by his own ratty T-shirt (turned an obliging black to suit the wearer's tastes). Dream's blunt nails dug into his scalp at the tease, and Hob sucked a short-lived bruise into the tender skin in retaliation, splayed his palm over his beloved's stomach just to feel it quiver with tension.

"Come here, Dream, dove," he murmured, urging him to turn around so he could lift him onto the counter by the thighs; Dream's lashes fluttered over the ever-wet blue of his eyes, and he went easily, light as a feather, reaching for him arms and legs. "Christ, I'm the luckiest bastard in the universe."

Dream's huffing chuckle faded into a whine as Hob set his lips back over the curve of his throat, worrying the skin with his teeth. "I love you so much, sweetheart."

Throwing his head back to meet him with an arched spine, Dream folded himself around him and hung on, digging suddenly-boot-free heels at the small of his back. His cool hands fluttered restlessly about his body, finally finding purchase around the strands of his hair. "The tea," he panted, rolling their hips together even as he lifted Hob's face from the cradle of his neck. "The tea will get cold."

Hob cupped the dear face with gentle fingers and kissed his open mouth softly. "I will drink it cold," he promised. "And I will love it."

I hope you liked it!! It's a bit spicier than my usual, but the prompt WAS neck kisses, so...

[ante--meridiem]

I'm so sorry for nitpicking this tag because I do sympathise a lot with this sentiment and fully understand why the girl would be upset and fully believe you have the right to prioritise your friends over your relationship, and I'm replying to you specifically Dae because we've been mutuals for long enough that I trust you to take this in good faith and not as me trying to attack you - but the phrasing here is reminiscent of a trend that's been bothering me in posts rightfully complaining about amantonormative pressure to prioritise romantic relationships over previous friendships, which is to act as though the amantonormative rule is wrong not because it tries to impose a rule at all, but only because it imposes the rule in the wrong direction.

People have the right to be hurt at being deprioritized, but people also have the right to choose and change their priorities. There's no hard rule of either "romantic relationships come first" or "pre-existing relationship come first" that everyone should be bound to. People also have the right to decide that not being above a certain level of priority is a dealbreaker for a relationship or a friendship and there may not be any way of resolving things that makes everyone happy.

And it really really sucks that it's usually the platonic friends that get the short end of the stick in that dilemma. But that's just not something that can be solved by imposing a rule in the opposite direction.

Saw a reddit post today about a girl who was upset that her childhood best friend replaced a photo of the two of them in his wallet with one of him and his girlfriend. And while yeah, she was being unreasonable with a lot of what she was saying, I totally understand the sadness of a friend "replacing" you with someone they have romantic feelings for. Makes it worse when the top comment is this

Every single comment on this post is about how family and romantic relationships always take precedence over friendships. I don't have anything more to say to this aside from the fact that... this is why it's hard for aroaces to imagine futures for themselves. Society drills it into your head that you're going to live in a world where you are no one's priority if you don't have romantic relationships and it fucking sucks

[ante--meridiem]

I do genuinely believe the whole "calling things soulless" line of argument is bad argumentation and if not directly going to cause you to dehumanise people you dislike then at least very few steps away from it regardless of my knee jerk emotional response to it, but I will admit there are probably other common forms of argument with similar issues I'm more willing to occasionally let slide because they don't set off the same knee jerk response, and that this one just feels personally threatening to me because to the extent I can conceive of the thing it's gesturing at as something that exists it's not a thing that I think I personally have much of. But many of the people who express it do seem to like me and think I have it (I mean. If someone sees me as completely soulless and thinks soulfulness is a valid measure of worth we're not going to stick around each other enough for me to hear them express anything) and it probably isn't even always because I haven't been honest enough about my internal experiences with them (though in some of the cases where it isn't that's probably just because they wouldn't believe me if I was).

Which to be clear is not to say I would think it would be fine if I weren't convinced that I will automatically end up on the wrong side of it eventually, just that my threat response to anyone who expresses it is probably stronger than strictly justified due to my own self image.

[ante--meridiem]

I definitely agree a lot of people here are just mean and like to justify it, but some of these points are only mean when taken to extremes and in measured quantities are just. Respecting your own time and boundaries.

Sometimes people need to be corrected if they've made a mistake about something important. You should try to do it as gently as you can, but "never mention it if someone makes a mistake" is not a good norm to set. I'd hate to think people were seeing me make important mistakes but too polite to let me know.

You are allowed to have had enough of a conversation. You aren't obliged to let someone keep dragging you along in an argument until they win it by sheer power of exhausting you. You shouldn't try to get out of important conversations you don't want to have but sometimes you just know an interaction will be futile and frustrating and exhausting and you don't have to keep subjecting yourself to it just because someone wants you to.

Yeah you shouldn't refuse to do people favours at all but neither should you be obligated to say yes any time someone asks you for something. People taking advantage of someone who can't bring themselves to say no is a real thing, not just an excuse people use to never help others. If someone is taking advantage of you you're justified to stop doing them favours, and even if they aren't, if your plate is already full you should be able to say no. It goes back to the ask/guess culture thing I suppose, but if there's even a hint of ask culture in your environment, people feeling comfortable asking you for favours whenever they need them has to be balanced out by you having the right to refuse them.

If you have made a commitment to contribute to a group you certainly shouldn't try to get out of it. (Your examples do fall under this clause, so that's fair.) But if a group you haven't committed to wants to rope you into giving more time/effort/money than you can spare for them, you have every right to try to get out of it.

I know people abuse all the cases I mentioned above to be assholes, but I still don't think that means you should say anyone who tries to apply them is using them as an excuse to be mean.

some of you are miserable because you're mean. like you're just mean to people and things

[ryanmeft]

Movie Review: A Haunting in Venice

In every skeptic there is a glimmer of faith, and the stronger the skeptic the stronger the glimmer. A skeptic is simply someone who has looked at the world and discovered that it is not how they wish it were. It is not a comfortable or happy revelation, and most of us would happily abandon it were there the slightest hint of fact to any other explanation. That is the situation Hercule Poirot finds himself in at the beginning of A Haunting in Venice. He appears to enjoy a life of tea and retirement, but he is a broken man, thinking nothing of his bodyguard laying out a desperate man seeking his aid and acting as if humanity does not exist.

It is 1947, ten years since we last saw Poirot in Death on the Nile. The time has been intentionally chosen by director and star Kenneth Branagh, working from a late, poorly received entry in Agatha Christie’s novel series, which specifies no date. He has taken a free hand with the material and chosen his year so that the exuberant, confident, arrogant Poirot of DotN can be replaced by one whose faith in God, humanity and everything else has been wiped out by going through two World Wars.

The opening device of a retired detective wasting away without a case is hardly new, but Branagh sells it well by adding something new to the unflappable detective---flappability. Summoned by his old writer friend Ariadne (Tina Fey) to a seance by a medium (Michelle Yeoh) she professes to be unable to expose, he encounters the series’ usual lineup of eccentric oddballs: Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly) the mother of a young woman who drowned the previous year, the deceased woman’s arrogant, fortune-seeking ex-fiancee (Kyle Allen), Olga (Camille Cottin), the extremely superstitious housekeeper, a doctor (Jamie Dornan) traumatized by the war and his son (Jude Hill), who is more interested in books than people, the medium’s opportunistic assistants (Emma Laird and Ali Khan) and Poirot’s own bodyguard (Riccardo Scamarcio).

Inevitably there is a murder and these people end up locked in with Poirot, this time in an old, rotting Venetian palazzo that is said to be cursed by the long-dead souls of children left there to die of plague. A train and a boat can have nothing on this place---it is an excellent accomplishment in the use of a great setting at a time when setting hardly matters in most wide release movies. Like any good, really old house, it is strewn with expensive treasures under dusty coverings that are stretched throughout hallways and rooms which are just narrow and close enough to be confining, but not so much that they don’t also look really neat. Always threatening the proceedings are Venice’s famous canals. All of this murder and suspicion takes place during a really cracking storm, and the waters reach menacing fingers toward the foundations of the building. We are, every so often, shown the window from which the dead woman fell, a spectre of a real, well, spectre. Most of this was done in Pinewood Studios, but many exteriors are clearly the sinking city, itself.

The previous movies were dependent on the (by now a bit tired) premise that the genius was always one step ahead, even when they do not appear to be. This one depends on taking that same character and shaking him badly, leaving him in genuine doubt, fear and panic. The best horror movies operate also on this principle. They place a disbelieving person in a situation where their disbelief will be tested, for it is so much more frightening encountering a scary thing you didn’t think existed than one you fully expected. Poirot faces new types of challenges this time, something that couldn’t quite be said for DotN. He hears voices. He seems to be ill. Every mystery he figures out simply crumbles into a new one. There is an attempt on his own life. And there is always that storm. He handles this by hiding frequently in the restroom so as not to let his panic be seen, but we see it, and his struggles with his own skeptical nature humanize the character in a way not previously accomplished. For all his affected, fabulous-moustache-having ways, Poirot was the least interesting thing happening in the previous two films. Here, he is the best thing. Branagh directs himself, from a third script by Michael Green, with conviction, so that when the answer comes it is cathartic. Before now, I could take or leave sequels. Now, I want to see more.

The weakest link here is Fey, who gives her role every bit as much cynic power as Branagh’s, but who is saddled with a character clearly meant to be a satirical tribute to Christie herself. She is said to have made Poirot famous by writing of his cases, and reminds us of this constantly, at one point even claiming Poirot is nothing without her stories. It’s an overbearing and obvious bit of meta-commentary, a tactic I’ve long grown tired of in fiction, and the character’s presence robs the film of that little touch it needed to be a mystery classic.

Even with that blemish, though, this is as close as Branagh’s ever come to capturing what he’s trying to do with these adaptations. I would like very much to see more. I’ve gotten what I’ve been looking for since 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express. I have faith in the series now.

Verdict: Highly Recommended

Note: I don’t use star ratings. Here are my possible verdicts:

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid Like the Plague

[ante--meridiem]

Last thing I have to say on my chosen discourse topic of the day is that it's only on tumblr that I found people who even understood my issues/discomfort with that form of argument and in real life I generally got the impression that expressing discomfort with calling things-and-likely-by-eventual-extension-people ~soulless~ would be essentially a confession that I fit in that category via the general "why would you argue against any accusation that doesn't directly apply to you" kind of thinking - which is of course an issue in its own right but doesn't help when you do feel like the accusation should apply to you if it even makes sense as an accusation.

[ante--meridiem]

Someone could make the most reasonable critique about not doing potentially very risky things with unknown consequences but the moment they phrase the issue in terms of "playing god" my knee jerk instinct is to want to say the thing is awesome and we should do it as much as possible

[ante--meridiem]

I'm the annoying person this post is about sorry, but to be clear: when I say I hate love triangles (I haven't encountered infidelity plots often enough to have strong feelings but they'd probably annoy me for similar reasons) it's not that I think they're morally wrong to write somehow or couldn't be interesting to anyone. I just can't help the feeling of it being forced conflict where the obvious simple solution is just never considered.

It's not even that I mind characters being strongly monogamous, what I mind is them acting like there is a Law Of The Universe that says you have to choose and could not possibly just date multiple people with everyone's agreement. If a character at least considered that and knew it was not for them, that would be one thing, it's that having the possibility be too inconceivable to even mention or address is... kind of the underlying premise that makes love triangles work the way they do.

Which is pretty realistic to how a lot of people approach romance irl, so I don't think it's wrong to portray that or anything, but I reserve the right to find it more frustrating than compelling.

"i hate love triangles" "i hate cheating" "stop writing about love triangles and cheating" people write about love triangles and cheating because complex emotions and romantic conflict are deeply compelling themes. get good.

[tchaikovskym]

Albert Einstein was an infj, just bc he was smart does not mean his dominant function should have been a thinking one, and tertiary ti does not mean it couldn't be high functioning and I just refuse to believe fe was his last function and also I feel like ni-ti is the thing

[ante--meridiem]

I am generally in support of "inaction is also an action" in the sense that I don't think actively refusing to engage with something because engagement might render you ~impure~ should be treated as a neutral choice. That said, I do think that there is a very good and obvious reason why inaction is generally treated as a default, namely that people have a limited possibility for action available to them and everything they don't dip into that limited store of actions for is something they take no action on by default. I don't think it's helpful to think of that as "everyone commits mass murder every day by not waking up in possession of omnipotence", which is the logical extreme of "inaction is also an action".

Also I do realise this is probably obvious to most people saying it, so this post is really only for people who tend to take things literally and to their logical extremes (myself, for one); I’m not claiming the existence of people who do actually mean the logical extreme when they say this.

Also before people start speculating about what issue I'm vaguing here: it's just trolley problem discourse (on my dash again. Fortunately not as annoyingly as other times it's been on my dash) and I do actually fully agree with "inaction is also an action" in that context, I just think it's worth keeping in mind that the reason it works in that context is that it's being applied to people who are actively engaging with a scenario in order to choose to not act, rather than inaction being the default response due to lack of omnipotence.

[louishoney]

,

[tactiletea]

Magi analysis?? In 2022??

Anyway, Hakuei should have been a more important character given her introduction and the hill I’ve chosen to die on

Hakuei is set up to be a really impactful character and I think that’s why I get so steamed about her being sidelined more than some of the other characters. She holds the position for two really important first encounters for the series, one of which I think was poorly done but significant nevertheless.

Hakuei is our first true glimpse of the Kou empire. Before this, all we know of the Kou empire are rumors shared by the Kouga clan and even after this arc we get some more information in the Balbadd arc and through Hakuryuu while in Sindria but we don’t really get to see the major players until Koutoku’s funeral when we get to meet the elder brothers. And the information and impressions we get is largely negative. We hear a lot of talk of the Kou empire being a new world power, a warmongering nation that was built by assimilating and conquering other small territories in the area and that they’re quest is for world unification. The Kouga Clan seems rightfully worried about their arrival. And yet the first person we meet is a direct contradiction to a lot of the rumors. 

Hakuei is the picture of diplomacy. She is elegant, intelligent and tactful. She’s leading an army, she has a djinn, and she is aiming to lead peaceful negotiations because she truly believes in her ideals. At the same time, she’s shown to be down to earth rather than an arrogant royal (she gratefully accepts the horse milk offered to her and bows to Baba to show respect), she’s also steadfast and strong. She doesn’t back down and when one of the Kouga members strikes her with a sword, she doesn’t even flinch. She does not fight him, she holds strong to her intentions even when faced with a threat. And most importantly, Hakuei is peaceful. She is here to make peace. She might be working on the Kou Empire’s agenda but she is nothing like the rumors would have suggested. She is opposed to war and unnecessary violence and only wants the Kouga clan to join on their own terms. A lot of this can likely be marked back to her father and brother’s death which was spun to have been the result of rebels from one of the conquered nations but I think it’s also the essence of her personality. She believes in her ideal for a peaceful, unified world and she will work to achieve it rather than forcing it on others. And this sets up a really interesting conflict with the views we are given of the Kou Empire. And even when we meet the other Kou characters and get to know their depths, Hakuei is still a standout among them for these reasons. And at the same time we have Ryosai who is the epitome of the Kou rumors. He’s power hungry, violent and ruthless. He thinks of the Kouga clan as being beneath him and wants a war. And yet he’s serving Hakuei until he betrays her, setting up a conflict of what we expect the Kou Empire to be like and what they’re actually like. It makes the audience and the characters within the story pause and think that perhaps things are more complicated than they appear. 

Secondly, Hakuei is our first interaction with a dungeon conqueror. We have seen Amon’s dungeon, we know from Alibaba that the djinn’s power is incredibly sought after and hard to come by, that millions of people have died to achieve it and doing so can change the entire course of your life. And we know that the dungeon itself is dangerous and challenging. But we have not seen it’s power used. 

Now this is where I don’t think Hakuei’s appearance is done well. When Ryosai betrays her, he sends the army to kill her and she deflects with the power of her djinn. In the anime, she’s given a weird djinn equip (or partial equip since it’s different from her later appearance) when in the manga she just uses the attacks. She’s got some good looking smug panels which are great bc we love a girl who’s sure of her own power. But ultimately, she runs out of magoi almost instantly and is beaten down. Now we know that Hakuei is one of the weaker king candidates from her stats, she has really low magoi levels so she probably can’t hold an equip for as long as others. But she’s still strong enough to have conquered a dungeon. In the singular panel we see of that, we see only her and Sieshun making it to the treasure room (very small panel and I do not remember where it was). She’s also put in charge of her own army and campaign so she’s respected as both a princess and a warrior within Kou unlike Kougyoku who does not hold the same status. So she’s got some power to her. And yet it seems like she’s taken out rather quickly, especially in comparison to her later appearance in the Medium fight and the other king candidates we see. Her army also turns on her rather easily under Ryosai’s rule. And ultimately, Aladdin is the one to save her. Otherwise Ryosai fully intended to kill her.

So I almost wish that she had been given a bit more power. This is supposed to be our first look at the strongest power a human can achieve, something only a handful of people out of the millions of challengers have ever gotten to use. But the fight ends in two pages. I think it would have been more impactful if Hakuei had decimated that army. You could make the argument that she was already exhausted, she was already injured, but it still seems to come up short. I wish she had done more damage. In the anime version, she does wipe out most of the army only to be surprised by their back up. And she does so with one attack. But she’s still bested. And in the manga, she scares most of them away because they can’t battle her power. But it’s still such a short fight. And yes, the argument could also be made that it’s because she’s so powerful that the fight was short but it’s not short because she’s powerful. It’s short because she runs out of power five minutes into it.

I wish she had laid waste to the land. I wish she had done more and gone father. I don’t want a long fight, I want her to take out the army with a flick of her wrist. But I wanted more impact from it. I think it would have had more impactful if Aladdin had arrived and the fight was over. She’s standing over Ryosai, ready to execute him as a traitor. The army is gone, the rebels either defeated or scared away, the land has been torn apart by her tornadoes. I want Aladdin to look upon this power and realize oh, this is what a djinn can do. This is why this power is so hard to obtain and yet so sought after. It’s because a single person can take out an army. And this is the power he gave to Alibaba. Because he went into Amon’s dungeon and had no idea what he was getting into. And maybe that’s a little horrifying for him, that realization especially once Paimon explains that the role of a magi is to choose someone to give this power to. 

So beyond that fight being underwhelming to me, my overall frustration comes from the fact that Hakuei sets us up for two incredibly important plot points. And then she gets shafted and sidelined for the rest of the series. She has no agency for the rest of the series, she’s just “Hakuryuu’s older sister who needs to be protected” when I fully expected her to come back in later with some kind of importance. Judar even boasts her strength to Hakuryuu as a reason for him to conquer a dungeon and yet she doesn’t seem all that strong. She’s not even around for the World Summit. And while I’m okay with her being taken over by Arba, I wish we had seen her after she recovers or that she had some kind of role in her own rescue. Otherwise, beyond her initial appearance, we could easily remove her as a dungeon conqueror and the rest of the series wouldn’t have much of a loss. And that’s kind of sad given what a great character she is.