#accidental essay

[bloodstained-ballgowns]

i just rewatched ‘the woman who fell to earth’ a couple of days ago for the first time since it aired back in 2018 and the more i think about it, the more i like it.

thirteen is the only doctor for whom i feel a tangible, rose-tinted nostalgia. she wasn’t my first doctor, but she was the first doctor i watched live, the first doctor that i spent an actual extended period of time with over the episode rollout. her intro episode has middling parts (as can be expected with most episodes of Who) but there’s also so much good that i really want to highlight.

first of all, there are some really great character dynamics set up here. much more interesting than i remember, tbh. ryan is a guy who loves mechanics but is stuck in a warehouse job he hates, a guy who obviously wants to connect to people, a guy who by the end of the episode has lost both his mother and grandmother in the space of a couple of years and the step-grandfather he didn’t really want is all he has left (minus his absent father). that’s interesting.

yaz has a keen sense of justice and this raw, intense yearning to help people, to do something worthwhile, something more - the way she has chosen to express that is through law enforcement, but it’s not quite giving her the satisfaction she wants. that’s interesting.

graham’s experience with cancer means that he constantly feels like he’s living on borrowed time. meeting grace gave him purpose, gave him family, gave him the will to fight when he fought it was all but over, but now grace is gone. he and ryan aren’t related, but they’re family, and now they’ve got to figure out how to care for each other without the very lynchpin that brought them together. once again with feeling: interesting!

“i’m just a traveller. sometimes i see things that need fixing. i do what i can.” i like that they circle back to the ‘just some guy’ portrayal of the doctor here, both because it’s the one i’m partial to and because it feeds particularly well into the whole ‘the doctor is an unreliable narrator’ aspect, especially in the wake of the increased deification in the moffat era. it's a nice set up, even if it gets completely overhauled circa series 12/13. in fact, having thirteen keep this as a persistent attitude throughout the Timeless Child of it all could have been really effective re: her reticence with her companions and refusal to address or deal with her past.

the scene where thirteen builds her sonic screwdriver might be one of my favourite sequences in nuwho. i love that it’s a hybrid of alien tech and sheffield steel. i also love that they highlight the ‘mad inventor’ side of the doctor here (her teleportation circuit is based around a microwave?) and wish that they had carried it forward more. it would have been the perfect basis for her to bond with ryan over. jodie also pulls off the humour of the episode well, considering the significant shift from moffat dialogue.

i enjoy thirteen's outfit: the vibrancy of it as mirroring her childish excitability, but also as another part of the mask - if i dress all colourful then maybe i can ignore/outrun/masquerade my great capacity for darkness! etc etc. the shopping trip with yaz and ryan is a bit shoe-horned in at the end but it's cute that she finds it in a charity shop. (back in 2018 i bought a t-shirt with a couple of stripes across the chest solely because it remotely resembled the one she wore lol. nerd from a young age, me.) jodie also looks soo hot in capaldi's outfit though so a spin on the traditional suit would also have been appreciated.

some miscellaneous points: i like that she tells Karl off (“you had no right to do that”) right after saving him. i like that she gets it wrong at first and makes it clear that she’s working on the fly. she’s following her instinct, and that instinct is to help people. doctor who has been beautiful before but the cinematography takes such a huge step this era. “it’s been a long time since i bought women’s clothes” i am choosing to believe this is about river thank you and good night.

[tangents-within-tangents]

Thoughts on Echo as amputee/disability representation

First and foremost, I am not disabled or an amputee and I don’t claim to speak for those communities (and if I was I couldn't speak for everyone). What little I do know mostly comes from this youtube channel (@oakwyrm), this post, and other research I’ve done for my writing (and like one amputee I kinda knew in passing). By all means correct me and add to the conversation, I just have some thoughts I want to share because I haven’t really seen this discussed anywhere

Overview

So Echo is interesting. He is a triple amputee which is pretty rare in media. His disabilities come from extremely traumatic circumstances: injured in a near-death experience, imprisoned and dehumanized as an experiment with no autonomy over what happened to his body.

There are a few moments in the shows where Echo is treated… questionably. Like this bit where Rex uses him as an example of the Separatists' evils to convince the locals to fight back:

To be fair, yeah Echo’s treatment does prove that the Techno Union is not neutral like they claim. The modifications that everyone is gasping in horror at here obviously weren’t made with comfort and accessibility in mind, nor with Echo’s consent. But you still just want to be sure that “They took away his freedom, his humanity, they tried to turn him into a machine” is about using him as a living computer, not the fact that he is missing limbs. 

The Batch is also pretty insensitive toward him and his trauma imo, which is weird considering they've supposedly also faced discrimination for their mutations

Disabled people do have to deal with stuff like this in this day and age so I guess it can speak to those experiences. I think especially him being mistaken as a droid (and Hunter going along with it (bruh)) might resonate with some people. 

Aside from that stuff, Echo isn't really treated any differently as a character/person which is really good (as low of a bar as that is).

We get this moment in CW where Echo contemplates that yeah things are gonna be different now

While also (imo at least) showing that he is still the same person regardless, evidenced by the fact that he just echoed Rex :,) I also think it's significant that he joins the Bad Batch on his own terms and we're given a really emotional scene to specifically show that he's not just like 'lumped in with the other misfits' but that it is his choice to go where he feels his place is.

A lot of people, myself included, are disappointed that TBB didn't have more time to explore Echo's PTSD, but I think the one panic attack scene we did get is really good. Even thought it's minor it at least is an appropriate reaction from a guy who was medically tortured (which is more than I've come to expect from Star Wars shows lol)

And it's really sweet to see Omega showing Echo some empathy and consideration.

It would have been nice to see more of his adjustment period, and other side effects like chronic pain and maintenance, but there’s a lot of daily life stuff the show never had time for (i.e. we don’t know if he removed his prosthetics to sleep, but we also never saw him sleep anyway). His disabilities might take on a background role (much like the character himself sadly) but for the most part they aren’t invisible or erased, nor do they define his character and arc.

Physical Appearance

Okay this one is bit dicey, bc on the one hand, yes complaints that Echo’s paleness (most likely caused by burns from the explosion or chemical burns from the cryo-chamber) is whitewashing are totally valid. But I also think you can draw comparisons to real life conditions that affect pigmentation/complexion (like you know burns). So while I understand why a lot of fanart will depict him with his original skin tone and with hair, consider that there are real people who have to live with temporary or permanent changes to their appearance, and the idea of “fixing" him by making him look more like his old self can be problematic.

It's also interesting to note that Echo could act as a reversal of the 'disabled/disfigured = evil' trope. He's pale and bald and wears black and red, which is so often visually associated with villains, but we all know Echo is the bestest boy™

The Headpiece

Echo’s headpiece is interesting because within the show we don’t actually ever learn much about it (idk if there is more info in books or whatever bc i don’t have them so?). He didn’t have it in CW so we know it didn’t come from the Techno Union and therefore Echo probably had more choice with it. We don’t know its exact purpose but it’s most likely related to his scomping abilities. When he is hacking with his scomp in CW, before he has his headpiece, it’s clearly very mentally straining:

We don’t see him struggling like this in TBB once he does have it (though that could be bc he got more used to it over time). There doesn't seem to be much of an impact when he removes his headpiece in s3 ep14-15, except that he gets stuck in the ports every time he uses his scomp which is not something we’ve seen before:��

There might not be an exact real-world equivalent, but the headpiece is some kind of accessibility aid. It means that someone specifically designed a device to help him adapt to the changes the Techno Union made, as well as a helmet that integrates it. It’s removable and visually very present, much like a cochlear implant would be. (A lot of people actually headcanon it to act partially as a hearing aid, since it makes sense that Echo’s hearing would have been damaged in the explosion, but there isn't really any indication of this in canon.) The headpiece is never really acknowledged in the show, but I think that's a good thing. It's something he needs/wants and it just exists, completely normalized, and that's pretty cool 👍

Legs

Sigh... So from the very first episode of TBB I was really disappointed that the animation team or whoever completely visually erased Echo’s prosthetic legs (I think we all were, honestly, if fanart is anything to go by). It’s one thing when he’s in armor because he would probably want to protect his prosthetics, but we literally see him in his blacks and there is no indication whatsoever that he lost his legs even though it was not left up for debate at all in CW:

Like ??????!?

This is just really strange to me! Idk what went on behind the scenes with this decision but I don’t really see why it would be that much harder to animate or anything since it’s 3D and they've done it before. We do see some pretty sophisticated cybernetic technology in Star Wars canon that mimics real limbs:

But Luke’s fancy hand is technically 20ish years from now, so Anakin and Maul are more of a representation of what level we could expect here

So yeah, for no apparent reason, his leg amputation is effectively, visually and narratively nonexistent. Which is not great 👎

Arm!

The scomp on the other hand (uh lol!) is the complete opposite and I kinda love it!

At first I, like many others, thought it was a bit odd that they didn’t give Echo a prosthetic arm. Losing hands is basically a Star Wars tradition at this point, so robotic arms/hands are well established within the worldbuilding: 

We aren’t necessarily given a canon reason for why Echo doesn't get a cybernetic arm (again unless it's in some lore book I haven’t read, sorry). General fanon explanations I’ve seen are that he either couldn’t because the Techno Union wired the scomp too far into his nervous system, and/or the resources to give him one were deemed too expensive for a clone (what about his legs tho?), or that he chose not to, usually because he thought the scomping was useful. 

Regardless, I actually really love this choice (and it's the whole reason I made this post), because here's the thing: There’s a lot of problematic tropes out there that either erase/cure disabilities or compensate them with perks (like how pretty much any blind character is actually not blind by some sort of magic power). With amputees that is done with robotic arms. The character is still an amputee or course, and there is still value in that representation, if this story from Mark Hamill that makes me tear up is anything to go by:

but for the most part these characters function like anyone else, just with a limb that looks a little different. It’s no more than a video game skin, an able-bodied actor with a green screen glove. It “cures” the disability, or it actually makes the character even stronger than usual: 

It usually makes sense within the world of the story, but the reason it’s not so great in my opinion is that in the real world we just do not have technology anywhere close to that yet. Prosthetics can more or less replace any mobility from lost legs, but not for all the complexities of a hand (and even if they could the average person wouldn’t be able to afford it).

So

I think it's actually really super cool that Echo’s scomp bypasses the canonically-established amputee erasure and functions much like a stump would irl. He integrates it into his movements and everyday life and it’s (as far as I know) a lot closer to an everyday amputee’s experience. 

It doesn’t define his character, it doesn’t hold him back, he lives a full life, the other’s don’t treat him any differently, and he’s still a total karking badass 

The only additional thing is that he sometimes uses it as a weapon (which given his story, I think it’s cool to see him taking back autonomy in a way, and we only see that like twice)

And also the scomping, which could be seen as the 'added/compensating superpower' trope. But narratively it's no different than if he was plugging in with a hacking gadget of some kind (he didn't necessarily "need" to lose his arm for it) and it’s not like Echo is completely defined by this skill. Personally, I think it's well worth the positives of him actually having a visible and realistically impactful amputation. 

I see a lot of posts or comments out there that say stuff like “how come Echo doesn’t get a hand?” or fanworks that do give him one and I just think it’s a bit of a shame. If he did get a robotic hand, it just would have disappeared the same way his legs and Anakin’s arm did (aside from that one time he got yoinked by a magnet). When Echo did “get a hand” in the last two episodes there were comments like “yay he finally got a hand! but it doesn’t even work” but I was actually so relieved that it didn’t! Bc for one thing that wouldn’t make any sense, he grabbed it off a droid, it wasn’t designed to implement with his scomp, that would be really complicated. But more importantly because it again refused to erase/cure his disability! It functioned like a real-world cosmetic prosthetic (useless beyond appearance) which is exactly what he needed it for, so that he could blend in better with his disguise.

And he continually took it off throughout the episode and ditched it at the end. He only used it for the necessity of a stealth mission, he doesn’t feel the need to visually “fit in” in his daily life. 

And, last but very much not least, he made a dad joke and from my intel that is very accurate representation!

TLDR: Echo’s scomp is actually really cool from an amputee representation perspective, especially within Star Wars, and I think that deserves some appreciation 

[alisha-on-arcane]

The bridge song and, was Zaun once rich?

I think a lot about infrastructure and the built environment. And I frequently find myself humming “...we build no mighty towers...” (I used it as the working title for a relevant report but, understandably, my colleagues told me to stop being weird). It jars on me that the next line is “our homes are built of stone” though. Stone houses are generally a sign that people are doing quite well for themselves economically, or were at some point. Poor people in the past had houses of flammable wood, or more recently sheet metal or other cheap materials that offer poor insulation. We don’t have much information on the state of Zaun’s housing stock, and there are signs the undercity was once more prosperous and populated (eg the cannery and arcade are abandoned, the water tower is dilapidated to the point that Cait and Vi can make it collapse by themselves). Zaun is beautiful, stylish architecture in a state of alluring decay, but are we meant to see it as a place once rich and now fallen?  Obviously it’s just a song, even in-universe it doesn’t have to be literal. Many songs just use words that sound good. Also the Doylist explanation for ‘why is Zaun’s architecture obviously not cheap’ is that nobody wants to look at crappy architecture however stunningly animated. From the LoL backstory (which frequently does not cohere with Arcane canon), Oshra Va’Zaun, the port city preceding the twin cities, was very different before a hubristic act of magic or tech made the part that is now the undercity sink, but that was hundreds of years ago, no? Buildings around today would have to have survived the sinking. But maybe they did. Maybe the bridge song is a song of “we used to be equals, our houses are still the same, please help us now we are poor”.  To me, that changes the flavour of the Piltover-Zaun exploitation relationship slightly, even if it doesn’t change the present situation for any of the people involved. People are not the history of the place they live, and a hundred years is more than enough to make a new status quo. And to be fair, I don’t think all Zaun’s problems are due to Piltover - clearly the chembarons are only out for themselves and Silco is, at best, thinking of high-level economic prosperity with some hope it will trickle down (”Free trade. Access to the hexgates”). Caitlyn’s probably right in diagnosing the problems of the undercity as both exploitation by its past and present leadership, and Piltover leadership not caring and making it actively worse by sending in Enforcers to administer brutality without justice. Anyway. I like the layers of it, y’know. Even if I may have made them up. It feels very real and not black and white. While generally I think Silco’s right and the undercity would be better off with sovereignty, it’s also quite possible that Zaun messed itself up before and would mess up again, which is what most revolutions unfortunately do.

[callipraxia]

I started answering a comment on my Gravity Falls fanfiction. I wrote a 1200 word essay comparing the ways the problem of 'Why Are Villains?' was handled in Star Wars and Harry Potter. This is a completely normal Tuesday evening for me.

[comorianqiqi]

hi if ur black (and/or neurodivergent), and you like genshin, crk, bandori, kny, d4dj or lucky star, PLEEEEEASWESWE interact with me plraease

oh also you best not interact w/me if you one of them l*licon/sh*tacon mfs, y'all niggas creep me OUT

also if ur over the age of 25 pls don't interact w/me, it's for both ur safety and mine

speaking of pls don't interact if ur heavy on nsfw, cuz I'm a minor :p (common sense)

tl;dr, not reading allat: be my friend if you're blk and/or neurodivergent and like genshin , bandori , d4dj , kny , crk , or lucky star , just don't be creepy loool

[not-so-local-lesbian]

I accidentally just wrote a mini essay in the fucking reblog 😭 I’ll just take out the first paragraph and rearrange the rest in order if I never need a personal essay I guess…

Holy shit this is what I basically said in a cover letter I had to write for a school project! (I want to do this for a living)

We’re taught from a young age to recreate how we think to fit the same system of everyone else. When we are shown a shred of acceptance for fundamentally thinking differently, it astounds us because we aren’t being forced to think in a harmful and sometimes genuinely painful way.

It may not seem actually painful to use a different system, but it is. It mentally hurts, and it can end up physically hurting because I am literally fighting against myself.

Autistic coping is accepting that you have a different system and allowing yourself to explore what that may be. It means treating yourself with kindness, patience, and with the understanding you deserve.

It is not fucking easy. It is however, worth it. You are worth the effort you are giving to yourself. You are worth the effort others will give.

(If you ever need some tips, I can try to help!)

(Story time!! Technically this is first, then it goes to the paragraphs after the “holy shit this is”)

I also said this to my friend who was struggling to do an assignment, and he cried. Told him I’d help with the assignment, He showed me the VAGUE instructions, and I said: “well, I guess you could do ___________, but there isn’t that much structure in their wording, which is why that way is really vague and confusing. Is this why a no?”

He said yes. I gave him the way I did it, and I explained it. He said: “ I can’t do spreadsheets and it doesn’t work for me, but it kind of makes sense, and I’ll just try it out and it’ll be fine!! I’ll use it. You’re already trying to help me, and I don’t want to just say no to everything and make it hard.”

After hearing that, I told him: “We won’t use the spreadsheet. If it doesn’t work for you, that is completely okay. I suggested the spreadsheet because that is how I formatted it in my brain in a specific, all be it tedious, way to work with those vague instructions. I worked with my way of thinking/autism instead of working against it in order to make the assignment less excruciating and painful. I want to help you. Giving you a different way that doesn’t help you, even though it helped me, isn’t helping you. I want to help you find a way to work with yourself instead of against yourself. You aren’t being difficult, lazy, or uncooperative. You asked for help, which is a sign you are trying. You aren’t being lazy. Hell, you just wanted to go with a plan that didn’t work for you to make it easier on me, despite me being the one trying to make it better for you. You aren’t being difficult. Also, uncooperative is far from the truth! You told me what you found confusing, a bit of why, that the spreadsheets don’t work, and a bit of why they don’t work. That’s a lot of cooperation if you ask me. Continuously working against your way of thinking/autism isn’t going to help you. Sure, you can do it the other way, but it’s harmful and excruciatingly painful. I want to help you work with your way of thinking, yourself, and your autism. If we try a thousand ways, and they all don’t work, that’s okay. We can try another way. I quite literally want to help people with disabilities, autistic folks especially, allow themselves to find and think in their own way for a living. I’m so glad you’re letting me help you”

He said he never heard anything like that in his life. He literally cried.

I said it in the last post but I’m going to say it again because it’s important so LISTEN UP!!!!!

COPING WITH AUTISM ISN’T ABOUT FIGHTING YOUR AUTISTIC TRAITS!!!!!!! IT’S ABOUT LEARNING TO WORK WITH YOUR AUTISTIC TRAITS IN A WAY THAT ISN’T HARMFUL TO YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gerrykeay]

im not putting this post into words. beams into your mind The Parallels

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[writing-relatedactivities]

For me this goes something like this:

My brain: "Hey, no reason, but what's the most evil thing you could do right now?"

Me: "Huh, well, I don't want to be evil, but probably abuse a child/scream a bunch of racist slurs/murder someone."

(I assume this is the point where people without OCD go on to their next thought about tacos or whatever)

My brain: "Aha! You had a thought about abusing a child/screaming a bunch of racist slurs/murdering someone! Having the thought means you might do it! You definitely want to!"

Me: "My thought was about not wanting to do it! I have no urge to do it!"

My brain: "Wow, you're still thinking about that thought, huh? Real fucking suspicious."

Me: "You made me think about it!"

My brain: "And now you're picturing it too? Just because I mentioned it and kept mentioning it even more the more it upset you? If you really didn't want to do these things you'd be able to just stop thinking about it."

Ad infinitum.

Or its fun variation:

My brain: "Hey, no reason, but what would be the worst thing you could have written in that e-mail about the new database?"

Me: "Well, I definitely just wrote "Makes sense, thanks!" but I guess it would have been pretty bad if I sent a death threat or spewed a bunch of homophobic garbage that I don't believe in."

My brain: "Wow, you came up with that suspiciously fast. I bet you actually wrote it. You better check."

Me: "But I remember not writing it. I remember writing the other thing."

My brain: "What, like your memory is perfect? I 100% bet you zoned out and typed a homophobic death threat. Check."

Me: "I am queer, and again, I remember the other thing."

My brain: "Do you, though? Do you really? Check. Do you reeeeeallly? Check. I bet you did. Check. Imagine all the horrible things that you could have written. CHECK!"

Me: "Fine. I checked. It was the normal thing."

My brain: "But are you sure..."

Anyway! Don't want to end this on a downer note, so I will say that something that has helped immensely with intrusive thoughts is inventing a fictional character and assigning the thoughts to them. "That is not my thought, that is [Character's] thought." And something that has helped enormously with compulsive checking is imagining my cameras as eyes and saying "Click" as I take a mental picture.

And something that has helped enormously with both is not beating myself up when I have an intrusive thought or a compulsion, and not beating up my OCD either (because it is, after all, a part of me). When I feel these things I take a deep breath and I turn my compassion towards my OCD and I mentally say, 'Hey. I know you love me. I know you are trying to protect me in the only way you know how. So I will check my email this time, and maybe again if you're still afraid. It's okay.'

And sometimes that's enough to break the spiral.

[riddlerosehearts]

thinking about how people who watch the emperor's new groove and somehow come out of it shipping pacha and kuzco, or thinking yzma only became evil when kuzco fired her and that she would've been a better ruler than him, are both so wrong in so many different ways and are also missing one of the things that i absolutely love about the movie. which is that, the way i see it, pacha and yzma are counterparts. as parental figures to kuzco.

like, just to get this out of the way first, yzma was a dismissive asshole to a peasant whose family was starving. and yeah, if kuzco had been in her place he definitely would've also done that, which... is why she would not be a better ruler than him. she'd just be the same because they're both horrible people in the exact same ways. her reaction to being fired is to plot murder, and as soon as his funeral is over she sets everyone to work on replacing paintings of kuzco with paintings of herself and covering the palace with imagery that makes it clear that it's all about her now. i'm not even sure why this is a discussion tbh.

and also, kuzco is literally a teenager. he's barely 18 years old. source: in the movie, yzma says at his funeral that kuzco was "taken from us so tragically on the very eve of his eighteenth birthday." she also claims in the movie to have "practically raised" him, to which kronk replies "yeah, you'd think he would've turned out better". and sure, she could be exaggerating, but what evidence do we have that she is? we learn absolutely nothing of his parents, who are never mentioned even once in the movie, or of anyone else who could've raised him, and she's his advisor who for some reason sees no problem with attending to royal duties in his place. most likely because she's his regent. also, i'm not exactly a fan of the sequel tv series "the emperor's new school" but it does have something that backs up my point: kuzco is revealed to be an orphan and just before his father went and got lost at sea, he asked yzma (who was also his advisor) to take care of kuzco if anything happened to him. so, yeah, the writers who worked on the series clearly thought that yzma genuinely did raise kuzco, and nothing in the movie contradicts this.

and i find the idea of her being his only parental figure for pretty much his whole childhood incredibly interesting because, and this also goes back into why she wouldn't be a better ruler than him--she mirrors him as a reflection of what would've become of him if he'd never met pacha. they're both incredibly arrogant, power-hungry, selfish, and cruel, with a tendency to blame their problems on everyone but themselves. yzma was even originally going to have her own reprise of kuzco's theme song "perfect world", which i really wish had been kept:

[ID: Lyrics that read:

I'Il be the sovereign queen of the nation And the chicest chick in creation I'm the cat with all the cream and ooh-la-la This deadly concentration Will put an end to my frustration Now this perfect world begins and ends with moi

What's my name? Yzma, Yzma, Yzma Yzma (what's my name?) Yzma, Yzma (What'd you say?) Yzma (Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) Yzma. End ID]

(this song can be fully heard in "the sweatbox", the documentary about the making of the movie, and is also on youtube btw)

anyway, i'm sure yzma would not exactly have been the most nurturing or hands-on guardian, especially given that she and kuzco don't exactly treat each other like family. but it makes a lot of sense to think that her behavior influened kuzco's throughout the years. and for the entire movie, she remains determined to kill him. when he tries to reason with her and admits that he should've been nicer, she says the same thing to him that he originally said when he fired her. she never grows or changes and in the end, she hurts the one person who was willing to stand by her (and even then, kronk had never fully been on board with her plan) and he ends up trying to crush her with a chandelier. kuzco on the other hand is able to realize the error of his ways, come to regret who he was in the past, and start taking steps toward being a better person. his theme song gets a reprise where it's changed from a song about one person being the center of the world to a Power Of Friendship song. why? because, as i've already mentioned, he has pacha.

pacha, who similarly to both yzma and kuzco is in a position of authority as the leader of the village but unlike either of them is gentle and humble. who isn't afraid to stand up to kuzco and be honest with him even though he's the emperor, who agrees to take him back to the palace but has no obligation to be so helpful, kind, and caring toward him--and just about every reason not to be--and still chooses to be anyway. pacha who is 45 years old (also stated in the sweatbox documentary) and can see that kuzco is practically still a kid, not a single day over 18, who has time to grow and change. pacha, who already has a wife and two kids with another on the way, but practically treats kuzco like one of his own. who acknowledges that if kuzco dies all his problems will be gone and then still worries about him and goes out of his way to rescue him after he wanders into the jungle. who sees kuzco shivering at night and covers him with his poncho, who carries him when he's genuinely too weak to keep walking, who refuses to give up on him even after repeatedly being betrayed by him because he believes there's good in everyone.

also, while yzma ends up repeating kuzco's harsh words of dismissal as she tells him of her plans to kill him, kuzco had previously repeated pacha's words that "nobody's that heartless" after he saved pacha's life. and as the movie progresses kuzco and pacha's relationship becomes more and more equal and is constantly contrasted by moments of yzma being cruel and unappreciative of kronk's kindness. a good example of this is how kronk is constantly being forced to carry yzma everywhere on his back while yzma literally walks all over him and steps on his hands when she gets down, whereas when pacha briefly carries kuzco after the latter collapses he tells him he'll have to walk the rest of the way later and kuzco doesn't even protest.

idk if i'm even explaining well what i'm trying to say here. but basically, if yzma actually raised kuzco and contributed to his current behavior, then she and pacha both are figures who guided him and helped him grow. only yzma helped him become the tyrant that he was at the start of the movie, who was selfish and callous and saw everyone else as beneath him. whereas pacha helped him see the value in being selfless and considerate of others. and in the end, yzma is stuck as a cat and nobody is concerned about her. kronk has found a new job that makes him genuinely happy, while kuzco has decided to build a hut on the hill next to pacha's and effectively joined his family. in the sweatbox documentary it's even mentioned that chicha and the kids were at risk of being removed from the film, but it was decided that they needed to be there because having just pacha as a single guy who lived alone wasn't interesting enough--kuzco needed to go from having basically an empty world where he had nobody to being able to come together with pacha's whole family. and i just think that's incredibly satisfying and beautiful. it also leads up to one of the few things i really do enjoy about the emperor's new school, which is the fact that during the show kuzco moves in with pacha and chicha and pretty explicitly thinks of them as basically his parents while he's like a son to them.

idk. i feel like my mind went in a million different directions while i was writing all this. but i guess i just think that for all of the praise the emperor's new groove gets for its comedy and for how hilarious yzma and kronk in particular are as a duo, the movie also has a lot of genuine heart that gets overlooked. kuzco's character growth and his unique dynamic with pacha is, for me, really what elevates the movie from just a funny movie that i like to one of my favorite disney movies. and i wish more people appreciated that aspect of it and saw it as a found family story in the same way that treasure planet, brother bear, and lilo and stitch are all found family stories.

[abnomi]

EVERY REASON (that i can think of) AS TO WHY TURBO/KING CANDY IS NEURODIVERGENT 💥💥

i would like to make a disclaimer first and foremost about the obvious, being that Turbo/King Candy is heavily implied to have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Very often, characters with these disorders are portrayed as villains, and Turbo is no exception to this. There's nothing wrong with antagonistic characters having said disorders, per se, but when the only representation available for people with these conditions are found in characters you're not supposed to root for, it can be really disheartening. i won't be erasing these parts of him because i feel it would be in poor taste to gloss over those core elements of who he is, but plz keep in mind that having any kind of personality disorder doesn't make anyone inherently evil!!!🌞 your ACTIONS make you, not your brain

Also if anyone has any suggestions or other ideas for his neurodiversity, i would love to hear them! please do share!! I LOVE PSYCHOANALYZING CHARACTERS AND HEARING OTHER PEOPLE PSYCHOANALYZE THEM !!!! YAY🎉 if u agree or disagree with any of my points I'd love to discuss them further :-]

without further ado... click read more to find out…😈 be ready for a lot of reaches

💥 ADHD 💥

STIMMING

Turbo's constantly moving around in some way; he's a very expressive character! even as King Candy, he can't seem to conceal his frequent giggling. it's a big habit of his; he seems to do it involuntarily to regulate himself, including when he's nervous or uncomfortable.

he seems to display other repetitive behaviors as well, like doing his iconic thumbs-up pose, sticking out his tongue, or hopping around gleefully. he is but a jovial court jester..

i personally like to think that his phrases, "Turbo-tastic!" and "Have some candy!" are vocal stims of his, although i equally really love the interpretation that these (and the aforementioned stims) are tics :-]

another headcanon; i think it would make a lot of sense for him to have an oral fixation of some sort (ignoring the whole sigmund freud part of the term ermm...); just lots of biting, chewing, needing to have something in his mouth. It would align with the whole idea that he smokes, too

HYPERACTIVITY

we can clearly see throughout the film that Turbo has a lot of energy, made abundantly clear by his mannerisms and general behavior. he's constantly moving, using exaggerated expressions and gestures to communicate + express himself. He's one of the most animated and bouncy characters in the movie, next to Vanellope! it's silly how a character not very grounded in reality is such a threat, but i suppose that's what makes him so threatening in the first place...

another factor in this is how he is very adrenaline-seeking, craving activities that give him a rush (sugar rush...😂😂). more on that in a bit!!

HYPERFIXATION

Turbo's fixation with winning is all-consuming for him; it's an obsession. he doesn't appear to care about much else, if anything besides it. this could be interpreted as a hyperfixation for him (or special interest if ur all about that autism lifestyle), as it overtakes all of his focus and impedes every process of his mind.

it's clear that racing is much more than a passion for him, and while that fact is due to how he was programmed, it's a major character trait of his regardless that could be correlated to neurodivergence.

HYPERFOCUS

There seems to be a big theme of "all or nothing" when it comes to Turbo. he will either be fully dedicated to something or brush it aside without a second thought. it can't be denied that he fully wraps himself up in what he wants, whether it's a conflict he can't let go of or a new pursuit he's hungrily chasing after. 

ultimately, his dedication varies depending on if it is relevant to him and his interests or not, but this aspect of him still shares patterns with neurodivergent thought processes.

INSTANT GRATIFICATION

Seeing as he has a tendency to cheat in his use of code to spawn in whatever his heart desires, it can be assumed that this could do with Turbo wanting instant gratification to fill that bitter, empty void inside of him. while this could simply be brushed aside as greed and his belief that he is obligated to have access to whatever he wants, this trait is consistent with his generally dopamine-seeking behavior and wanting to be instantly rewarded by his actions. His obsession with needing to feel good directly relates to his need for another buzz, constantly after the next rush. (a sugar rush if you will☺☺☺)

ADRENALINE-SEEKING

Closely related to the previous speculation, Turbo always seems to be chasing his next high. he loves the thrill of action and being surrounded by crowds of people below him. it's why his big thing is racing! people cheer him on, he can do whatever he wants, he can go really fast and look cool..

it's possible that a big aspect of why he does this is to distract himself from any kind of pain, because pain = vulnerability. bro does NOT know how to independently cope with his own problems.. HE MAD AS HELLLLL!!! 😂😂

STRUGGLE WITH SELF CARE

(i know this is reaching but bear with me... 🐻) going off of his appearance and tendency to make poor decisions, it can be gathered that this man lacks skill in the self care department. his yellowing teeth and sunken eyes not only serve to complement his design, but also give way to the idea that he neglects himself in favor for whatever weird scheme he's up to.

of course, Turbo does prioritize himself above everyone else, but he doesn't strike me as the type to care much about how others think he smells. him being a bother to anyone isn't a concern of his. he cares about whatever gets him the most praise and attention from as many people as possible, which is winning and racing. Who cares about how clean he is when he's up on a podium holding a shiny, golden trophy, anyway?

It's likely that he had to step his game up when he went under disguise as king candy, which is why he looks well-groomed in comparison to his more corpse-like appearance. Ugly hoe. it can also be assumed that he's had more time to focus on himself because everyone loves him without question... Well, except for Vanellope, but who cares about her, right?

also, i know he makes a condescending comment to Ralph about how bad his breath smells, but it's made abundantly clear that Turbo is a massive hypocrite. his comment doesn't erase the possibility that he has suffered from such "halitosis" as well.

💥 ANXIETY 💥

GENERAL ANXIOUS BEHAVIOR

i know, i know, this could technically be chalked up to be "Turbo is nervously giggling and shit because he's scared of getting caught," but guys. g

even in the flashback scene, we can see how easily stressed he can become in an alarmingly short period of time. he is extremely insecure, therefore i am led to believe he is not only emotionally dysregulated, but also by extension, anxiety ridden.

yes, this is purely speculative, but who's to say that he wasn't like this before? being high-strung and intense are significant facets of his personality consistently portrayed throughout the film. as long as he is getting exactly what he wants, he is happy; the moment he loses even a blip of control, however, he immediately grows extremely tense.

if Turbo wasn't anxious about his disguise as King Candy before, he was anxious about how much attention he was receiving on a given day. if not that, then he'd be anxious over how he presents himself. He hates how he can't control how other people perceive him, which is why he is constantly trying to act like he's better than he is.

its why he justifies his behavior to himself, proudly making others refer to him as the "rightful ruler" of sugar rush and relishing in the attention of his countless underlings. Any secure and stable person would NOT ACT LIKE THIS!!!!😭😭😭

FIGHT OR FLIGHT

As we can see a handful of times on screen, Turbo's instinct to protect himself is very easily activated.

 his fear manifests in anger and aggression. we can see at multiple points how easy it is to upset him or fluster him; his anger is one side of the same coin, the opposite end being his fear and paranoia.

Going off of this point, have you noticed that Turbo is either satisfied or furious without much of an in-between? how the second something isn't under his manipulation, he lashes out and fights back? I'm led to believe that this is how he responds to fear (AAUAAYAUUUUGGHHH 🐡🐡🐡🐡🐡🐡🐡). This guy is so against the idea of being vulnerable, that even when afraid, he will utilize violence to regain his dominance over the situation at hand.

CONTROL + PARANOIA

Turbo's always trying to writhe or fight his way out of uncomfortable situations, unable to exist outside of his comfort zone for seconds at a time.

his defensive, paranoid, and controlling behavior are all reflections of how deeply insecure this man is. He feels such an intense need for everything to go exactly how he expects it to go that the moment he senses any kind of threat, he instantly jumps to defend himself and what he feels that he has "earned," regardless of whether there truly is a threat or not.

this could potentially be a coping mechanism for his anxiety and sense of stability; can't forget to mention how territorial he is!! he jumps to conclusions about what others' intentions are before they even get a chance to reply, as seen with his first encounter with Ralph in the movie. 

the racer is so internally discombobulated that he seeks any sense of stability on his environment, including on those around him. his sense of self is so warped that he copes with constant distraction; being under the spotlight, being actively racing, having to be showered with attention, having others make him feel good because he doesn't know how to do it for himself. he needs to feel like everything is under control, lest everything falls apart.

"...if there's ONE thing I can't abide, it's ANYTHING out of order!"

💥 NPD 💥

INFLATED SENSE OF SELF IMPORTANCE

Turbo's most in-your-face trait above all else. It's made more than crystal clear in every scene he's in that his arrogance is a determining factor in how he interacts with others. This is exactly what drives him to desperately crave admiration, to chase after others he's envious of because he thinks he is obligated to take what they have.

he seems to genuinely think he is entitled to get whatever he wants, just because he is inherently "special" or "better" than everyone else. Why else would he have made himself a king, a step above princess?

EXCESSIVE NEED FOR ADMIRATION

Turbo's self worth is COMPLETELY dependent on the opinions of children and teenagers. I think i don't need to say any more than that, but i will. (Evil).

As cartoonishly massive as his ego is, i think that it's fair to assume that Turbo has a very unstable sense of self, distorting his perception of his own worth down with it. his near-constant flaunting and need to be the best is a dead giveaway to his deeply-ridden self-doubt. The foundation of his stability is built around how "good" he is (at racing and winning), how powerful he is, whether or not he is being prioritized above everyone else, whether or not he is the absolute best, etc. etc.

The racer outright manipulates others to shower him with admiration and undeserved appreciation. He is incapable of forming a true sense of internal value, instead heavily and codependently relying on others to form it for him. if he isn't the best, he may as well just be nothing.

INTENSE JEALOUSY

He reacts so severely to what he perceives as others taking away what is rightfully his that it only goes to solidify my previous points even further. the second someone else is getting more attention than him, Turbo will bend over backwards to rip back the praise he believes he so rightly deserves.

being extremely competitive, he will one-up against anyone he thinks of as a threat, dedicating himself to taking them down to the best of his ability, and making sure they STAY down to top it all off.

INABILITY TO HANDLE CRITICISM

if we really dissect the entire one-off joke with Turbo insisting that his stolen pink castle is actually "salmon," along with all of his other domineering behaviors, we can garner that he is very persistent in how he wants others to view him. i wholeheartedly believe that this would translate into him not only being defensive over his supposed "ownership" of Sugar Rush, but also over himself and his own insecurities.

He needs to feel good about himself or else he will die and quite literally try to kill everyone.

LACK OF EMPATHY

He appears to have a fondness for making jokes in very poor taste. Turbo has a big sense of humor, but it's always at the expense of others. Be it a pun about a "fungeon," or jumping to protect himself with a joke about "hitting a guy with glasses," he has a tendency to take serious situations very lightly. It's not that he's unaware of the weight of it; he simply doesn't take it Seriously.

its admittedly impressive how he was able to feign empathy so well for Ralph; it goes to show how he is very capable of understanding that what he's doing is wrong, but ultimately does nothing to change his behavior because it doesn't impact him personally. 

i would like to honor this part of him, because even in the possible alternate path of a redemption arc, his struggle with empathy can be explored in a variety of interesting ways :-] he can understand complicated emotions and situations on an analytical level, but he doesn't feel for them unless it has to do with him specifically. (this obviously doesn't make him inherently evil, his ACTIONS make him evil)

💥 ASPD 💥

LACK OF REMORSE/GUILT

One of Turbo's core characteristics is just how far he is willing to go for his own self-interest with lack of regard for how it impacts everyone else. he has absolutely no concern for how anyone else feels besides himself, willing to go so far as to attempt to mutilate a 9-year-old to achieve his petty goals.

Turbo is shameless when it comes to how he goes about getting his way. While I'd like to believe he isn't fully incapable of feeling regret, he doesn't showcase feeling it in the movie itself. The most regret he'll feel is when he slips up and exposes himself. anything else is the fault of everyone else; he is untouchable in his eyes.

DECEITFUL TENDENCIES + LYING

Where do i even start with this one.

well, first of all, let's acknowledge the... erm, horse? in the room? 🐎😅(Please someone help me there is a horse in my room help helphel) being that Turbo went under disguise as King Candy for at least a decade. Even before this, there's a good chance that he's already had plenty of experience with lies and manipulation. i'd be willing to bet on this!!

one of his specialties is being proficient in manipulation, be it the code of games or the minds of people. theyre basically the same thing to him, anyway... I'm sure you all know the scene where he uses 16 manipulation tactics against Ralph and wins. this was Obviously not the first time he'd done this.

REPETITION OF HARMFUL BEHAVIORS

Time and time again, Turbo can't seem to help himself when it comes to poor decision-making. he never internalizes that his bad choices aren't JUST bad for others, but also for himself, continuing to escalate further and further into very dangerous behaviors until he literally dies.

Here's a list of bad decisions he has made! (at least, that we know of)

Pinning himself above his peers

Harassment + stalking

Carelessly charging through GCS with his car, endangering countless civilians

Attempting to take over a game that isn't his x2

Vehicular manslaughter

Implied mass murder + attempted murder, attempted mutilation

Mass endangerment

Breaking and entering, theft, usurpation, plagiarism

and more!!!!!!!

AND HE LEARNS FROM ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THIS!!! with some of the items listed here, he's attempted to do multiple times! Absolute buffoon.

RECKLESS DISREGARD FOR SAFETY OF SELF AND OTHERS

Considering how he was willing to charge into a game that wasn't his own with the awareness that it could permanently kill him, going as far as to recklessly crash into another car (albeit it's possible this was unintentional), it's easy to gather that he doesn't seem to consider anyone's safety at all in the spur of the moment.

IMPULSITIVITY

his impulsivity and disregard for safety both go hand-in-hand. When it gets to a certain point, Turbo's emotions will boil over and blow up in a cold rage, thus causing him to spiral and act on impulse, becoming a detrimental force to himself as well as everyone around him.

What's interesting is how much restraint he is capable of; he typically is very strategic in how he orchestrates his plans! but once he reaches his breaking point, he snaps and leaves all of his hard work behind in favor of something that calls for his immediate attention.

💥 ETC. 💥

extra tidbits i didnt have enough energy to fully delve into :-]

BPD

Fear of abandonment

Blurry sense of identity

Feelings of emptiness

Self destructive tendencies

Emotional instability

Explosive anger

ODD (oppositional defiant disorder)

He seems so infatuated with his own autonomy that he gets to the point of being resistant and defiant

Resisting against the rules of the world that he directly caused as a result of his own actions, being that one shouldn't "go Turbo."

Enjoys upsetting/getting a rise out of others. this is more speculative as i am going off of the assumption that he thinks pissing people off is funny, based on his other behavioral patterns. (cruel sense of humor, wanting to feel above others via control & manipulation, enjoyment of inflicting pain onto others)

Forcefully defends himself and refuses any kind of criticism

Lashes out when he feels slighted

Excessive persistence despite all odds, whether it's beneficial to him or not

ok bye!! thank you if you managed to read this far ^^ peace and love take care of yourself! all in all turbo is so neurodivergent ok please Okay <3 get this thing his meds

[i-am-the-n1-trash]

I'm rereading Tim Drake: Robin and honestly, Tim and Bernard's relationship just makes me so emotional. The fact that they both see each other as the 'bad one' in the relationship, with the other being their 'savior' says so much about their previous relationships.

Tim's biggest canon relationship is obviously Steph and, though I love her to death, their relationship was at points extremely unhealthy, and Tim was often shamed for his actions. He's the bad guy when Bruce won't let him tell her his name. He's the bad guy when Darla kisses him without consent. He's the bad guy for avoiding her when she comes back from faking her own death (against her will, I'm aware, but still), even though their relationship hadn't been in good terms at all when she 'died'.

Though Tim has his fair share of romantic relationships, only two outside of Steph, to me, are as meaningful or well-known enough to warrant exploring, and those are Ariana and Tam (There was definitely guilt with Lynx, but that was from the "she's possibly a criminal" kind, and his issues with Cassie come from a very different place too.)

In both these relationships, there are many times where Tim sees himself as the bad guy. With Ariana, he struggles with his growing feelings for Steph and the guilt of keeping a secret identity from someone he loves, not to mention the fact this is his first serious relationship and he constantly feels like he's messing up. With Tam, the secret isn't a problem anymore, but he ends up constantly putting her in danger just from knowing him, and that puts him off the idea of pursuing a relationship with her altogether.

With Bernard, though, it's the first time in a long time he has a complete fresh start. He's been stuck in a cycle of breaking up and making up with Steph, because they see each other as safe and familiar, but even that is something Tim feels guilty for.

Bernard is someone he knew, who Tim has enough history with to trust him, but who he is still getting to know now as the adults they've become, with no expectations of each other. He still sees himself as the bad guy, as the liar hiding his identity from him. They have a couple step backs, like when Tim has to ask him about the cult as Robin, but even then Bernard makes it clear that while he's angry, he understands why he's doing it, by doubling down on the fact that, regardless of Tim's current actions, their relationship is still a happy part of Bernard's life. (This comfort doesn't work that well, because Tim is a dumbass who doesn't realize Bernard knows he's Robin, but I digress.)

Essentially, to Tim, Bernard is the first baggage-free relationship he's had for a very long time, and he's somewhat plagues by the secrets he's keeping from him. To Tim, he is lying and putting him in danger, and Bernard, who he sees as a bright light in his life, deserves better.

On the other hand, we don't have that much info on Bernard's past relationships outside of Darla/Laura and Tim, but it's still easy to see that this boy is overflowing with self-deprecation.

In both Batman: Urban Legends and Tim Drake: Robin we see that his parents are, in the first one, very unaware of his life, and, in the second one, incredibly disapproving of his 'lifestyle' and even borderline emotionally abusive. Bernard really never met their expectations since he was young, and while he seems almost dismissive of this, you can tell it strikes him deep.

The one big thing we know about Bernard is the cult, and that already tells us everything we need to know. No one joins a cult if they have lot of self-love and confidence, especially not when the cult's main idea is to let go of all your problems through torture.

So when Tim, a guy he's had a crush on for years, someone he knows (or eventually finds out, the timeline is ambiguous) is not only a superhero, but his favorite superhero, Robin, he sees himself as dirty. As tainting Tim's heroism. Bernard is a likely depressed queer kid who fell victim to a cult, who has a history of self harm, with a bad relationship with his parents. To him, Tim is the one good thing in his life, and he says it outright even when they are having what's possibly their first big fight (unbeknownst to Tim, who, as I mentioned, is a dumbass <3).

He doesn't blame Tim at all for lying or keeping a secret identity, because Bernard sees himself as second to Robin in Tim's eyes and never once tries to fight back on that idea. Bernard considers Robin to be more important than himself, in general, and doesn't see anything wrong with that. To Bernard, Tim is the best thing that has ever happened to him, and the fact that they're dating is a blessing he doesn't believe he deserves.

In conclusion, these should like. Talk to each other. Please. And also both go to therapy. They love each other so much

[jamesunderwater]

mother fuck, while doing research for my james potter essay for @annabtg, I came across THIS quote:

Madam Rosmerta: “Of all the people to go over to the Dark Side, Sirius Black was the last I’d have thought … I mean, I remember him when he was a boy at Hogwarts. If you’d told me what he was going to become, I’d have said you’d had too much mead.”

Sirius Black was, even to someone who barely knew him, SUCH a deeply good person that he was the last person you'd have thought would become a death eater. THE LAST PERSON. Not the loyal, Gryffindor-bred James Potter, not quiet Prefect Remus Lupin, SIRIUS FUCKING BLACK, the firstborn son of a blood supremacist family with several family members who actively served Voldemort.

Young Sirius Black was so full of goodness that if someone said he was going to be a death eater, Rosmerta would have thought they must be drunk.

And Remus and McGonagall and Dumbledore and everyone else who knew him so much better let him go to Azkaban without a trial, never tried to get him out, never gave this boy the benefit of the doubt.

And then what did he do when he broke himself out of Azkaban? He forgave Remus in an instant. He rejoined the Order. He trusted Dumbledore enough to willingly stay locked up again. He handed his house over to be used for the Order, welcomed people to come and go as they pleased, to stay long-term if they needed -- even Snape, who had recently been eager to have him killed. And in a matter of two years, showed Harry more parental love and support than anyone had before -- to the point of dying for him, exactly as his parents did.

So when you actually look at canon Sirius, I think it's very clear why he was the last person you'd expect.

[adjoint-law]

Yes, at least partially.

TL;DR: the @end-otw-racism campaign is saying that not only are OTW's 2020 promises unfulfilled, but that they don't go far enough. (Hence, moderation.)

--------

"We need to hold the OTW accountable to their own promises." The @end-otw-racism campaign post starts by recapping the OTW's 2020 promises:

[...]the OTW committed to addressing these issues. It has been nearly three years and they have not yet implemented any of the changes they promised, other than a blocking/muting tool that was already in development before 2020.

Glancing at the June 2020 post, the promises made were all "improving collection searching and filtering", block/mute features and comment freezing, expanding their Content Warning system, etc.

No offense intended to the OTW, but... this is exactly the sort of roadmap you'd expect from them.

To oversimplify: OTW sees AO3 as a library, not a social network — Archive.org not Tumblr. (This has been true since before either existed! Even the 2007 post that led to the OTW & AO3's creation had that political bent.) Their content policy has always been something like "no CSEM, no doxxing or bullying, but otherwise, we'll host even the most repugnant shit".

In that June 2020 post, the OTW's proposed changes reflect this attitude: a big preamble about "maximum inclusivity of content", and a focus on users "curating their own experience"...

...whereas they made zero concrete commitments to specific changes in their Content and Abuse policies. At best, they promised to discuss it internally.

(Have they done that? I have no idea. Promising to have a discussion is such a classic PR trick for not committing to anything. I would guess: "technically yes they discussed it, but in informal conversations, and with no serious resources devoted". If it happened in official Board meetings, I'd have seen people arguing over the minutes.)

Prev post has the right idea: the policy promises OTW made were so weak that even if they have been seen through, we'd never know. All the public progress has been some AO3 features that were probably on their (decades-long) to-do list to begin with.

The end-otw-racism campaign is unimpressed by this and has made several specific requests. (Letter-numbering and italics are mine.)

A) Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment[...]

B) A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content[...] intentionally used to spread hate and harassment... [not] accidentally [invoking] racist or other bigoted stereotypes.

[...]

C) Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months.

D) Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects... [Publicly] published [...], not solely discussed in Board meetings.

This is why they're discussing content moderation up-thread: it directly feeds into action items (A) and (B) above. Moderation is the main thing the end-otw-racism campaign is asking for. OTW's 2020 promises are mentioned first, because we all hate broken promises, and the organisers seem to be good at writing persuasive copy.

((C) is worth its own discussion elsewhere. I'm extremely hopeful about (D), but I'm not holding my breath for a nonprofit to be any better than a private corporation at full transparency.)

To recap, OTW: (1) made very weak promises about policy changes — "we promise to discuss it" — and (2) probably didn't fulfill them beyond a token discussion. (We'll never know because—standard PR trick—they never promised to tell anyone the results of the discussions 😐.)

In response, (3) @end-otw-racism is asking for a broadened Content and Abuse policy — that's action items (A) and (B) above.

That's why people are discussing moderation here — it's a necessary step towards making the main changes the campaign asks for.

For those who might happen across this, I’m an administrator for the forum ‘Sufficient Velocity’, a large old-school forum oriented around Creative Writing. I originally posted this on there (and any reference to ‘here’ will mean the forum), but I felt I might as well throw it up here, as well, even if I don’t actually have any followers.

This week, I’ve been reading fanfiction on Archive of Our Own (AO3), a site run by the Organisation for Transformative Works (OTW), a non-profit. This isn’t particularly exceptional, in and of itself — like many others on the site, I read a lot of fanfiction, both on Sufficient Velocity (SV) and elsewhere — however what was bizarre to me was encountering a new prefix on certain works, that of ‘End OTW Racism’. While I’m sure a number of people were already familiar with this, I was not, so I looked into it.

What I found… wasn’t great. And I don’t think anyone involved realises that.

To summarise the details, the #EndOTWRacism campaign, of which you may find their manifesto here, is a campaign oriented towards seeing hateful or discriminatory works removed from AO3 — and believe me, there is a lot of it. To whit, they want the OTW to moderate them. A laudable goal, on the face of it — certainly, we do something similar on Sufficient Velocity with Rule 2 and, to be clear, nothing I say here is a critique of Rule 2 (or, indeed, Rule 6) on SV.

But it’s not that simple, not when you’re the size of Archive of Our Own. So, let’s talk about the vagaries and little-known pitfalls of content moderation, particularly as it applies to digital fiction and at scale. Let’s dig into some of the details — as far as credentials go, I have, unfortunately, been in moderation and/or administration on SV for about six years and this is something we have to grapple with regularly, so I would like to say I can speak with some degree of expertise on the subject.

So, what are the problems with moderating bad works from a site? Let’s start with discovery— that is to say, how you find rule-breaching works in the first place. There are more-or-less two different ways to approach manual content moderation of open submissions on a digital platform: review-based and report-based (you could also call them curation-based and flag-based), with various combinations of the two. Automated content moderation isn’t something I’m going to cover here — I feel I can safely assume I’m preaching to the choir when I say it’s a bad idea, and if I’m not, I’ll just note that the least absurd outcome we had when simulating AI moderation (mostly for the sake of an academic exercise) on SV was banning all the staff.

In a review-based system, you check someone’s work and approve it to the site upon verifying that it doesn’t breach your content rules. Generally pretty simple, we used to do something like it on request. Unfortunately, if you do that, it can void your safe harbour protections in the US per Myeress vs. Buzzfeed Inc. This case, if you weren’t aware, is why we stopped offering content review on SV. Suffice to say, it’s not really a realistic option for anyone large enough for the courts to notice, and extremely clunky and unpleasant for the users, to boot.

Report-based systems, on the other hand, are something we use today — users find works they think are in breach and alert the moderation team to their presence with a report. On SV, this works pretty well — a user or users flag a work as potentially troublesome, moderation investigate it and either action it or reject the report. Unfortunately, AO3 is not SV. I’ll get into the details of that dreadful beast known as scaling later, but thankfully we do have a much better comparison point — fanfiction.net (FFN).

FFN has had two great purges over the years, with a… mixed amount of content moderation applied in between: one in 2002 when the NC-17 rating was removed, and one in 2012. Both, ostensibly, were targeted at adult content. In practice, many fics that wouldn’t raise an eye on Spacebattles today or Sufficient Velocity prior to 2018 were also removed; a number of reports suggest that something as simple as having a swearword in your title or summary was enough to get you hit, even if you were a ’T’ rated work. Most disturbingly of all, there are a number of — impossible to substantiate — accounts of groups such as the infamous Critics United 'mass reporting’ works to trigger a strike to get them removed. I would suggest reading further on places like Fanlore if you are unfamiliar and want to know more.

Despite its flaws however, report-based moderation is more-or-less the only option, and this segues neatly into the next piece of the puzzle that is content moderation, that is to say, the rubric. How do you decide what is, and what isn’t against the rules of your site?

Anyone who’s complained to the staff about how vague the rules are on SV may have had this explained to them, but as that is likely not many of you, I’ll summarise: the more precise and clear-cut your chosen rubric is, the more it will inevitably need to resemble a legal document — and the less readable it is to the layman. We’ll return to SV for an example here: many newer users will not be aware of this, but SV used to have a much more 'line by line, clearly delineated’ set of rules and… people kind of hated it! An infraction would reference 'Community Compact III.15.5’ rather than Rule 3, because it was more or less written in the same manner as the Terms of Service (sans the legal terms of art). While it was a more legible rubric from a certain perspective, from the perspective of communicating expectations to the users it was inferior to our current set of rules  — even less of them read it,  and we don’t have great uptake right now.

And it still wasn’t really an improvement over our current set-up when it comes to 'moderation consistency’. Even without getting into the nuts and bolts of “how do you define a racist work in a way that does not, at any point, say words to the effect of 'I know it when I see it’” — which is itself very, very difficult don’t get me wrong I’m not dismissing this — you are stuck with finding an appropriate footing between a spectrum of 'the US penal code’ and 'don’t be a dick’ as your rubric. Going for the penal code side doesn’t help nearly as much as you might expect with moderation consistency, either — no matter what, you will never have a 100% correct call rate. You have the impossible task of writing a rubric that is easy for users to comprehend, extremely clear for moderation and capable of cleanly defining what is and what isn’t racist without relying on moderator judgement, something which you cannot trust when operating at scale.

Speaking of scale, it’s time to move on to the third prong — and the last covered in this ramble, which is more of a brief overview than anything truly in-depth — which is resources. Moderation is not a magic wand, you can’t conjure it out of nowhere: you need to spend an enormous amount of time, effort and money on building, training and equipping a moderation staff, even a volunteer one, and it is far, far from an instant process. Our most recent tranche of moderators spent several months in training and it will likely be some months more before they’re fully comfortable in the role — and that’s with a relatively robust bureaucracy and a number of highly experienced mentors supporting them, something that is not going to be available to a new moderation branch with little to no experience. Beyond that, there’s the matter of sheer numbers.

Combining both moderation and arbitration — because for volunteer staff, pure moderation is in actuality less efficient in my eyes, for a variety of reasons beyond the scope of this post, but we’ll treat it as if they’re both just 'moderators’ — SV presently has 34 dedicated moderation volunteers. SV hosts ~785 million words of creative writing.

AO3 hosts ~32 billion.

These are some very rough and simplified figures, but if you completely ignore all the usual problems of scaling manpower in a business (or pseudo-business), such as (but not limited to) geometrically increasing bureaucratic complexity and administrative burden, along with all the particular issues of volunteer moderation… AO3 would still need well over one thousand volunteer moderators to be able to match SV’s moderator-to-creative-wordcount ratio.

Paid moderation, of course, you can get away with less — my estimate is that you could fully moderate SV with, at best, ~8 full-time moderators, still ignoring administrative burden above the level of team leader. This leaves AO3 only needing a much more modest ~350 moderators. At the US minimum wage of ~$15k p.a. — which is, in my eyes, deeply unethical to pay moderators as full-time moderation is an intensely gruelling role with extremely high rates of PTSD and other stress-related conditions — that is approximately ~$5.25m p.a. costs on moderator wages. Their average annual budget is a bit over $500k.

So, that’s obviously not on the table, and we return to volunteer staffing. Which… let’s examine that scenario and the questions it leaves us with, as our conclusion.

Let’s say, through some miracle, AO3 succeeds in finding those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of volunteer moderators. We’ll even say none of them are malicious actors or sufficiently incompetent as to be indistinguishable, and that they manage to replicate something on the level of or superior to our moderation tooling near-instantly at no cost. We still have several questions to be answered:

How are you maintaining consistency? Have you managed to define racism to the point that moderator judgment no longer enters the equation? And to be clear, you cannot allow moderator judgment to be a significant decision maker at this scale, or you will end with absurd results.

How are you handling staff mental health? Some reading on the matter, to save me a lengthy and unrelated explanation of some of the steps involved in ensuring mental health for commercial-scale content moderators.

How are you handling your failures? No moderation in the world has ever succeeded in a 100% accuracy rate, what are you doing about that?

Using report-based discovery, how are you preventing 'report brigading’, such as the theories surrounding Critics United mentioned above? It is a natural human response to take into account the amount and severity of feedback. While SV moderators are well trained on the matter, the rare times something is receiving enough reports to potentially be classified as a 'brigade’ on that scale will nearly always be escalated to administration, something completely infeasible at (you’re learning to hate this word, I’m sure) scale.

How are you communicating expectations to your user base? If you’re relying on a flag-based system, your users’ understanding of the rules is a critical facet of your moderation system — how have you managed to make them legible to a layman while still managing to somehow 'truly’ define racism?

How are you managing over one thousand moderators? Like even beyond all the concerns with consistency, how are you keeping track of that many moving parts as a volunteer organisation without dozens or even hundreds of professional managers? I’ve ignored the scaling administrative burden up until now, but it has to be addressed in reality.

What are you doing to sweep through your archives? SV is more-or-less on-top of 'old’ works as far as rule-breaking goes, with the occasional forgotten tidbit popping up every 18 months or so — and that’s what we’re extrapolating from. These thousand-plus moderators are mostly going to be addressing current or near-current content, are you going to spin up that many again to comb through the 32 billion words already posted?

I could go on for a fair bit here, but this has already stretched out to over two thousand words.

I think the people behind this movement have their hearts in the right place and the sentiment is laudable, but in practice it is simply 'won’t someone think of the children’ in a funny hat. It cannot be done.

Even if you could somehow meet the bare minimum thresholds, you are simply not going to manage a ruleset of sufficient clarity so as to prevent a much-worse repeat of the 2012 FF.net massacre, you are not going to be able to manage a moderation staff of that size and you are not going to be able to ensure a coherent understanding among all your users (we haven’t managed that after nearly ten years and a much smaller and more engaged userbase). There’s a serious number of other issues I haven’t covered here as well, as this really is just an attempt at giving some insight into the sheer number of moving parts behind content moderation:  the movement wants off-site content to be policed which isn’t so much its own barrel of fish as it is its own barrel of Cthulhu; AO3 is far from English-only and would in actuality need moderators for almost every language it supports — and most damning of all,  if Section 230 is wiped out by the Supreme Court  it is not unlikely that engaging in content moderation at all could simply see AO3 shut down.

As sucky as it seems, the current status quo really is the best situation possible. Sorry about that.

[edlucavalden]

Im too exausted for proper(ish) essays, but im so crazy over this scene. i can't contain myself

TW for: S/A !!! (For the nature of the writing and well—the scene itself)

He's confused at first. he doesn't know what is going on. This slight pause isn't because he's scared or frozen but to assess the situation. After all It was kinda sudden.

All he doesn't like this feeling. he feels uncomfortable and that some sort of boundry has been breached. But he hasn't fully processed it yet.

And right before he fully comprehends and does something about it—

He suddenly becomes compliant?

It's like he forgot what he was gonna do—like He loses the motivation to enforce his boundaries.

he still feels uncomfortable. that doesn't change. But he isnt aware of that. Well, that makes sense... since he never really did fully process what was happening. It's like he lost the will to care about or process it.

This panel. Christ... Thistle finally builds up the power to say stop. It's weak—confused and disoriented. I dont think it's even directed to anything specifically. Its intentions are vague.

But god... and the lion's response? Reassurance. how he can't help it, he needs this to live, he's been waiting for so long—oh, and don't worry, I'll take care of you.

It's just so chilling after this.

Thistle's powerless, weak, and complaicent. It's out of character for thistle. This entire scene is. However It's still thistle. His behavior and actions are his own, and for me that's the terrifying part.

This wasn't... Forced? There's no fighting and thrashing— Its just a complete submission. he reacted yeah but he didn't resist. he didn't fight back even if he had the ability to (we know bc he has, for 1000 years in fact). The lion didn't directly force him either. It didn't violently force him to have its way. But it's still violating. And that's the thing; the assult wasnt violent, but passive.

Hi guys just to reiterate that I did NOT mean to say that sexual cohesion is not an act of force. this part is ment reiterate that it "wasn't forced" in the sterotypical way of resisting, i followed it up by saying that it is still violating despite that and i emhasized that idea in the parts after that,. This part (more so the entire work in general) is ment to emphasize the passive yet transgressive nature of cohesion. i SINCERELY apologize if that was the message that was interpreted from that part. I did not intend it to mean that way.

The demon has slowly but surely torn down thistle's sense of self so much it turned him into a completely different person. Like his identity was shattered and rebuilt to submit.

It starts small, building up the situation, taking away his desire to resist and enforce his boundaries, then it gives a rose tinted explanation of what is happening. Finally, it comforts and praises him. This is what gives thistle the illusion of choice, a passive way of getting him vulnerable.

You can see how it affected him vividly through this part. it's like he forgets what he was fighting for. He forgets his boundaries, his identity, the things he cares about, everything. It's being ripped away from him.

Thistle never stood a chance.

It wasn't his fault he submitted. It was the demon's for putting him in that state. His complaicency is due to the fact that he had no power for any other way.

it never mattered that thistle never fought back. Even if he did fight back or didn't, even if he succeeded or not—what then? it would never change the demon's nature. One who seeks consumption will always consume. In other words; it will always find a way.

I honestly dont think it was the demon's intention to harm thistle. It's selfish but not moralisticly evil (nothing ever is). It seeks fulfillment and not suffering. But its blind pursuit for satisfaction caused suffering, That's what makes it malicious. It doesn't matter if he intented or was aware of it or not. the demon benefited from something that could harm him and did it despite that. And that will never change.

[moghedien]

lae'zel, permission, and what she actually wants

the thing about Lae'zel is that she's always looking to someone to give her permission

basically her entire life up until the beginning of the game has been a fight to be allowed to live. she has to prove she's better than her peers. she has to prove that she's worthy of fighting for Vlaakith. hell, even when she was an egg, she would have had to prove she was worthy of hatching because if she'd been a bit late she wouldn't have even been allowed a chance.

she doesn't really do anything unless its what her goddess and her society allows and she'll do exactly what is prescribed. she bristles at any attempts to find a cure for the tadpoles that aren't going to the creche because that is what she is supposed to do as a good githyanki. anything else is a deviation from what is allowed, even if it might work.

so you look at her romance through that lens, it really sort of pulls everything together.

In the act one scene, she's still following the rules like a good devoted of Vlaakith. She will sleep with you one or two times if you ask her to, but will bristle at anything more than that. She's a totally typical normal githyanki after all (she isn't), and it isn't normal for githyanki to have any kind of serious romantic relationships. "love" isn't even a real thing, and is just a strange mental illness that cowards use as an excuse (all of these are things she actually believes at the beginning of the game based on various bits of banter and dialogue where she's reflecting retroactively on her previous beliefs). Straight up, anything beyond casual sex is not allowed, so she doesn't even question it as an option.

Then by the time you get to the Act 2 romance scene, Lae'zel's entire world has been upturned for unrelated reasons. She did everything as she was supposed to and nothing she wasn't and Vlaaktih betrayed her. Her entire culture and society betrayed her despite her never doing anything without their permission.

It seems like she is somewhat quick to accept that and switch her allegiance. Her entire existence was because Vlaakith gave her permission to exist, and then Vlaakith betrayed her no matter how devoted she was. So Vlaakith is a liar and she learns that Orpheus is a possible answer to solve the Vlaakith problem, so now she's committed to Orpheus.

It seems like a quick turn, but if you look at Lae'zel as someone who needs permission, then it makes more sense. Vlaakith can't give her that anymore, so she needs someone else to tell her how to live, so that becomes Orpheus, who of course conveniently isn't there to actually tell her to do anything. So she does as Voss says to try to save him and that becomes her entire life motivation. Because what else can she possibly do? She needs someone's permission to decide how to move on now.

By the time you get the Act 2 romance scene, Lae'zel is on this path, right? If you look at the actual Act 2 romance scene, its basically her asking for permission again. Not in the way you'd immediately expect, because while she is asking like, your permission to develop your relationship into something further, its not just you she needs permission from. She needs her societal expectations to give both of you permission.

To elaborate, you're a fucking wrench in all her expectations of what is right. You were supposed to be a one or two night casual fuck, and then she went and got fixated with you. She calls it an obsession. She says its bothering her more than Vlaakith's betrayal, more than her people hunting her, more than the worm in her head. Those are all problems that she has some instruction on how to address. You, she has no fucking clue what to do about. Rebel githyanki aren't exactly giving instructions on how to pursue romantic relationships with people while planning on how to take down Vlaakith. Even if they are more lenient and accepting of those kinds of attachments (which we have no idea if they are or not), she hasn't been around any of them long enough to figure that out.

In her feelings for you, she's confronted with feelings that to her culture are perverse and which she has no societal context for. Even if there was someone who might give her the go ahead to pursue that relationship, she has no idea who they might be. She's someone who's entire life has revolved around what she has permission to do within her society, and she finds herself drawn to do something that she has no way of even figuring out how to approach in an acceptable way.

And despite all of that, and all the complications around what asking more from you would mean from a githyanki standpoint, she still gets to a point where she wakes you up in the middle of the night and begs you to do something about it.

She's frantic and confused and its clear she doesn't even really know what she wants from you, so she asks you to prove yourself and fight her. Its not because she thinks you're too weak for her. She admits she finds you strong the first time she comes onto you. Alternatively, she basically negs you after having sex with her by calling you weak and a coward and she is more than pleased to have sex with you again after doing so. Strength or weakness has nothing to do with why she needs you to fight her.

She needs you to fight her because that's how she's always had to prove herself worthy of existence. Her entire life has been a series of peers and comrades she had to fight in order to prove that she could go on. So when she doesn't know what else to do about you and there's nothing else to tell her how to proceed, she needs you to fight and prove that you (and her) can go on.

But the thing about the duel you have, is that the outcome doesn't actually matter. Regardless, it does give her what she needs to know to go on your relationship, but not in any ways she expected. Regardless if you win or she does, she gets overwhelmed and realizes that she wants you and she wants you to want her. Something definitely starts to shift in her mindset after the fight.

If you win, she's alarmed by the contradiction that she should feel ashamed for having lost. If you lose, she's alarmed by the contradiction of feeling no joy in having beaten you. She realizes that she doesn't want to be doing the thing she's supposed to do (fight to prove her worth) and instead wants to protect you. She also says that she wants you to protect her, which is something that she only says if you lose the fight, which I think is notable and makes the shift a bit more obvious.

Because she only says it if you lose. You lost. You just showed you were weaker than her. And she still wants you to protect her. By all githyanki standards, you shouldn't even be worthy of living if you couldn't win the fight, but she not only doesn't want to see you hurt, but she wants you to see that she doesn't get hurt. Not only should this not make sense because you lost, but it is maybe the first time Lae'zel has admitted she doesn't want to have to rely only on her own strength. She wants to rely on you, even if you're weaker and couldn't beat her in a fight. That challenges everything she has ever believed in her life probably as much as being betrayed by Vlaakith did.

If you win the fight, she doesn't admit that, but I think the sentiment is still there. It just isn't something that she has to directly confront in the moment because you proved that you can protect her. In that instance, she's coming to terms more with the fact that she should feel weaker or ashamed but isn't. In either instance, she was asking for permission from her ideals on how to deal with the You problem. In either instance, she's confronted with something that challenges that. Either you fail to meet the expectations she thought she had, and she finds out she doesn't care, or she fails to meet the expectations of a githyanki soldier and she finds out she doesn't care. Because either way, she figures out she wants you more than she wants to be the good githyanki that does what she's supposed to and act like she's supposed to act. Being "obsessed" with you should be perverse and wrong, but she embraces it whether she has permission (from her society) to do so or not. That is an extremely big deal.

And even before we get into Act 3, there are some interesting beats here about Lae'zel's romance in Act 2 still. One of the two things I want to discuss is the kissing. After the main Act 2 romance scene, you get new dialogue options, including asking her to kiss you.

This is kinda where we get into my opinions on the best choices to make with her romance, and I'm aware that these are my opinions and people deciding to do other things isn't incorrect. I'm pointing this out because I'm gonna start talking a lot about choices soon and which ones I think are the best thematically and from a character standpoint. They are my opinions. You are allowed to disagree. I will however be defending and arguing my opinions here. You don't have to get angry or defensive if you did something else or don't agree with my conclusions.

Now, back to kissing Lae'zel. The notable thing about asking Lae'zel to kiss you is that her initial reaction is embarrassment. It's somewhat of a turn from how she is open about talking about your sexual encounters before this. The entire fight scene, which may have ended up with the two of you making out in the middle of camp until it faded to black, was seemingly in front of everyone and she had no concern about that.

Kissing just out of the blue though? She's shy about that.

Because just kissing for no reason is soft and pointless, really (and if you watch the Lae'zel kissing animations, they are all in fact very soft and sweet). You don't really need to do it. Before hand with the sex and whatnot, she fully has arguments about why that was ok and even beneficial for the overall task at hand. Soft little kissing though? There's no reason to do that unless she wants to. Hence her embarrassment.

Now, she won't kiss you in Act 2 when you ask because of her embarrassment. Not unless you persuade her to do it. You only have to persuade her once and if you succeed, the first time she is clearly nervous and looks around uncomfortably. In all honesty, it seems somewhat uncomfortable to persuade her especially given her initial reaction. I do, however, think its the best thing to do for her.

Yes, she's uncomfortable. She's uncomfortable with your entire relationship now because she's has no experience even knowing about a situation like this and from a githyanki standpoint, affectionately kissing in public for no reason is basically outing yourselves as being perverts. She also very, very clearly wants it. The way you persuade her, is by pointing out that she probably wants this. And if you succeed in pointing that out to her, she is smiling and afterward when you ask her to kiss she is clearly happy and very soft about it all.

If you don't persuade her, I believe you can still kiss her without the check if you wait until after the Act 3 scene, so she is clearly comfortable with it at some point. Persuading her might seem like you're pushing her past her comfort zone. That's honestly why I didn't do it for a while. But looking at how she reacts after the fact and what happens after, I do feel like its not so much pushing her out of her comfort zone. Its more challenging her to push against her initial ideas of what she thinks she should do and instead encouraging her to do what she wants. More on that later.

The other romance beat that happens in Act 2 occurs some time after the main scene in camp, when she get about as vulnerable as she's been yet. She asks you for softness. She wants to be with you and she doesn't want the rough, passionate, hedonistic type of night that has been all of your relationship up until this point. She asks for gentleness, softness, and she's terrified. She says outright that its terrifying for her to ask this and she's been working up the courage to do so.

This is meaningful in multiple ways, because its not only a sign that your physical relationship is becoming something more than just sex. Its a sign of how much Lae'zel has changed. Because Lae'zel is someone who needs permission in everything. Up until this point, we haven't seen her ask for permission, she simply waited for her betters to give it to her and denied herself if they didn't. When it was someone who isn't above her, she makes demands. She doesn't ask permission. Ever. Now she outright asking you for permission to be gentle and soft. She didn't just need to build up the courage to be soft. She needed to build up the courage to ask to be allowed something she wanted.

As I stated before, I think Lae'zel's instinct is to not take into account what she actually wants, but to just go ahead with whatever she thinks she's supposed to do. That's how she was raised and indoctrinated after all. Gently pushing against her first reactions to things allows her a chance to push against that instinct of behaving how she was indoctrinated to behave. I think her asking for a softer touch is a sign of this changing for her. The Act 3 scene is even more so.

The Act 3 romance scene is sort of the height of Lae'zel's character growth. One thing that makes me sort of sad is that I feel like you don't really get to see the fullness of her character unless you romance her. That's true with other characters I've romanced so far to some extent, but not as much as with Lae'zel.

But here you romanced Lae'zel, so you get to see her admitting how much her perceptions have changed because of you helping her see things differently. She has different perspectives and she finds beauty and bliss in things she used to find dread in. She loathed the sun, and now drags you to a roof top just to stare at it coming over the horizon (please don't stare into the sun). She finds herself liking Faerun and the colors in it. She admits all of this before she brings up what she actually wanted to talk to you about.

Lae'zel has no terms in which to describe your relationship. She doesn't know about dating (or courting) or marriage and she doesn't actually even know what the word love means. She doesn't ever say the word until six months later in the epilogue, but what she's describing to you on how she feels is without a doubt love and what she's asking of you is more or less marriage. She doesn't have the terms or any cultural context to make it easier to ask, but she wants you to stay with her, whatever happens. That's the only way she can really describe it. Staying with her. Because even if you've only actually known each other a short time, you might be the most constant thing she's ever had in her life, and she's probably terrified of what it means when the Absolute is dealt with and there is no mission keeping you together. She isn't asking for permission now to stay with you, but is asking for you to stay with her. Where you might be and doing what, who knows, but she is for the first time just pursuing something she wants that she hasn't been given explicit permission for beforehand.

And then, we get to saving Orpheus.

This is where my thoughts might get controversial, but as I said, you're free to disagree but I'm arguing for my ideas here.

I'm not sure how any of this changes if you go a different route in the final parts of the game, so I can really only speak on the options you get if you saved Orpheus and he became Illithid.

So you do the thing that Lae'zel has been lead to believe she needs to do and free Orpheus. I personally cannot blame the man's attitude given his being imprisoned for who the fuck knows how long and the fact that he is still willing to sacrifice himself. However, it is clear that he is perhaps not quite as understanding as Voss lead you to believe he would be. Given that he tells you that you should have let his guard kill you if you were actually on the same side as him, which notably would have doomed everyone and lead to the Absolute's victory. But again, centuries of imprisonment, we cannot blame the guy.

The point I want to make with bringing that up at all, is that, even in these little bits of conflict that don't really amount to anything in game, its a crack in the ideal of Orpheus. He isn't every grand thing that Voss promised you and Lae'zel he would be. He's not bad here and gives us no reason to think he is, but its a crack. Lae'zel didn't have any reason to doubt Vlaakith or see her imperfections until it was too late, after all. I'm not saying the two are equals, but Lae'zel went from worshipping an evil false-goddess to holding up that goddess's enemy in similar reverence in a shockingly short amount of time. The girl jumped from a cult that worshipped one powerful figure to a radical rebel movement that held up another. And we immediately see little tiny cracks in the facade of Orpheus.

Lae'zel won't. Lae'zel doesn't know how to be anything but utterly devoted to the highest figure of authority she sees as worthy to follow. Lae'zel won't know to be wary. But you should be wary as fuck about what Orpheus is going to ask of her.

Cut to the end. We win, the absolute is defeated, yay! Mind Flayer Orpheus is asking Lae'zel to kill him and take up his mantle and lead his rebellion against Vlaakith.

In that moment, you have really two options. Technically there are multiple dialogue options, but really there are two. You can let her go (and potentially go with her) or you can persuade her to stay. If you tell her to do what she wants, she and you will leave on dragons to fight the rebellion against Vlaakith.

I do not think this is what Lae'zel wants.

When Orpheus is giving her this duty, she doesn't look happy about it. She just finished the single most traumatic event of her life, which turned everything upside down and completely shook who she is as a person. Now she is being handed what she had said she wanted. The means to free her people and defeat Vlaakith. She has a silver sword. She's being given not one, but two red dragons. And she just looks fucking sad. She looks exhausted as Orpheus is commanding her to do this.

She is someone who has never lived a life where she was able to want her own goals or life. She was Vlaakith's. Now she's being ordered to carry Orpheus's legacy. And I do believe she wants to stop Vlaakith and save her people from her control. But she is being given all of the burden of doing so and commanded to begin immediately upon completing her previous ordeal.

Lae'zel has been following orders her entire life. She isn't one to even consider what she actually wants and instead does what she thinks she's supposed to do. So when Orpheus tells her to do this, she is going to obey the authority figure like she was been indoctrinated into doing. When you ask her what she wants, she will say you're coming with her because she's at least broken away enough to do that but not to consider that she doesn't want to go.

Gently pushing against Lae'zel's immediate reactions, as I said, is I think the way to get her honest, genuine desires. If you persuade her to stay and disobey Orpheus, she does seem suddenly energized. She will then say that her destiny is not for Vlaakith or Orpheus to decree. Her destiny is hers alone. Neither Vlaakith nor Orpheus will give her permission to do that, but you can. She doesn't obey you. You aren't an authority figure and you have probably shown yourself to be weaker than her at several points in the game. But you still give her permission to choose her life and she accepts that.

And this, is how you break the Lae'zel out of the cycle that she finds herself. in. The only way she isn't perpetually bowing down to some authority figure is if she stays in Faerun. Because she escaped the authority of Vlaakith and immediately went to Orpheus, who now she can't even escape because he's dead and she is the one holding up his legacy on his behalf. She can't choose to leave once she's accepted that responsibility, and she frankly does not look like she wants to accept that responsibility.

If she stays on Faerun, she is still fighting Vlaakith. Not only because she is literally hunting down and murdering Vlaakith's forces, but she's living completely free of Vlaakith's influence in a way she couldn't otherwise. She isn't living under Vlaakith's rules, nor having to live in direct antagonism to Vlaakith's rules by forming a new society from scratch for the githyanki. She's just living. Occasionally going and massacring Vlaakith's soldiers as a means of survival, but otherwise just living how she wants and with who she wants. And in theory, she could go and join the rebellion proper any time in the future. If she stays, her future isn't certain, and that, I think, is the best thing for her.

In the epilogue, if you are with her on Faerun, its clear she doesn't really let herself rest still. She busies herself (and you) by tracking down Vlaakith's forces to eradicate, and she tells you of another one she found, noting that she can't rest for long. You have the option to push against this gently, suggesting taking some time off. No persuasion needed. She not only agrees to take some time off, but she immediately has a vacation suggestion which she has clearly been looking into and is excited to check out. But Lae'zel is not someone who is going to consider what she actually wants. She's going to suggest what she thinks she should be doing, but with some gentle push back, will let you know what she actually wants.

Because you're not really rejecting her ideas when you push against the instincts that have been indoctrinated into her. You're giving her permission to decide what she wants to do, and Lae'zel is always someone looking for permission.

[luna-loveboop]

There's a lot about Twilight's injury arc that makes me wanna cry but every time I read through it Legend is what gets me

Because Legend took his hat off out of respect when going into Twilight's room while he was injured

I don't I ever have or ever will read a "salty and traumatised and not-nice but still good" character as well written as Legend. Because he's mean and snarky and grumpy- and almost always at least one of his eyebrows is down. Twilight even saw him as a bully at first. (Ref. comic 'bully' in Lu archive)

But this is a warrior who will take off his hat for another who got hurt. Legend shows love in almost invisible ways, and his heart is guarded enough to have spikes. But if he's going to see someone who's injured he shows respect and care.

And he showed his care in other ways too- he has so much love for Twilight to show this much past his guarded heart

Legend is always wearing his hat- it is literally something he puts on just as much as his shoes or tunic.

He shows so much love for Twilight through his injury. And him pulling off/putting on his hat is just one small way that was shown.

*dies drowning in tears because legend took off his hat and it means so much and*

Art and comic by Jojo @linkeduniverse au

:)