#actually this post is a lie only one of the works is an allegory for neurodivergence

[belostoma]

Was working on original fiction and happened to outline two works that coincidentally both centered around 1. Allegories for neurodivergence 2. Transgenderism and 3. Petplay and so I was like well two works with that same constellation of themes is just being unoriginal but three and it's a metaseries so I should come up with a third. But the problem is one of the works is dog style petplay and the other one is cat style petplay and after that you kind of run out of domesticated animals that are convenient to write petplay about. Like you have to start getting into symbolism and shit. Nobody's going to buy rabbit petplay as a concept for an entire novel/novella unless you justify it. Well maybe I could make it work

[randomwriteronline]

Bionicle and Plato's Cave: Mata Nui help us Random has been thinking again

HI. MY BRAIN HAS ONCE AGAIN BEEN SCRAMBLED. WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING.

A thing about stories is that there aren't really fully, one-hundred percent original ones. This is not a bad thing, it just happens.

Stories keep repeating one another whether we like it or not, maintaining their own identities through a variety of changes, and Bionicle repeats many, many stories within itself: you've got Polynesian mythos, fantasy epics, dystopian fiction, cosmic horrors, torahic and/or biblical episodes, a subversion of Pinocchio, an Odissey cut short... The works. I'm half certain one would manage to fit some parts of the Divine Comedy in there, probably.

But speaking of deeply allegorical works, the Organic Annal is that too - specifically bearing a resemblance to one of Greek philosopher Plato's most famous allegorical myths, that of the cave.

For those who do not know it, please have a simplistic bastardized version of its first half, which is the most relevant in this case:

A group of men have been, since birth, shackled within the deepest recesses of a cave. They are sat facing a wall upon which a fire casts the shadows of figurines (a tree, a donkey, a vase, etc) placed before it: this is all they've ever known, what they perceive to be reality. Imagine, then, that one of these prisoners manages to free themself from their restraints, and for the first time looks back. Thus they discover the figurines, the fire, and the lie they thought was truth; and though it would be easy to consider these new idols the "true" reality, the prisoner looks past them and sees that the cave stretches forward. As such they crawl through it until they reach the outside world: the sunlight forces their eyes down as they are not used to it yet, and their first taste of this new environment is a reflection in a puddle, or maybe a lake, wobbly and not quite clear. Only when they've accustomed to the Sun they can raise their head and properly discover the real world.

The myth of the cave is an allegory for the philosopher's quest in search of true knowledge, which resides not in the imperfect physical world, but in the perfect metaphysical realm of ideas.

This is not, necessarily, the allegory I believe the Innard Scoresheet represents.

The Biological Chronicle is, to me, a story about stories. About making stories, about being swept in the flow of a story, about recreating ourselves in stories over and over and over again.

I promise it will probably make more sense later.

But back to the point: the myth and the Flesh Record follow a similar structure and have a similar message. That is the thesis of this post until I inevitably get derailed again. Let's look at that.

In applying the steps (shadow, copy, reflection, reality) of the philosopher's journey towards enlightenment to the Meat Diaries, I'll do what Plato would bludgeon my head with a stick for and take them much more literally: the places described are physical ones, and the characters actively move between them. This is not because of any personal wish to specifically spite some dead Athenian fuck, but because that is literally what happens in the Entrail Annotations, whether through actual movement or changes of perspective.

The island of Mata Nui is of course the first step: shadows cast upon a cave wall.

There is a certain irony in this. Mata Nui shares the same allegorical location as the cave, yet physically is its complete opposite - an open space signaling the end of an enormous interconnected system of caves. The journey starts from the end. Great job everybody, we've found reality! This philosophy shit is easy.

But the island is still very much the cave. It looks prettier and livelier than the cave, but it's still a prison in which the Matoran have been confined with no chance of escaping; it's still cut off from the world at large, be it beneath it ir around it; it's still a place where beings who do not know any better blindly believe what is told to them. Only seven people know the truth (or what they believe to be the truth) and spin it in tales of shadow puppets: simplistic retellings full of gaps to fill with magic and terror and prophecies. The Turaga mean no harm - they had no way to know when or if they would have ever returned to Metru Nui, and it made no sense reminding the Matoran of a place they may end up agonizing to see without being able to - but it remains that Mata Nui is a cave, a prison of ignorance.

Things change after Mask of Light: shackles broken and door opened, the silver sea stretches before the Matoran and offers them a sight familiar yet different, more defined.

Metru Nui is the figurine, the copy held in front of the fire. It's the first introduction to the Matoran Universe proper, the first step towards the cave's exit. Here we see how the Matoran are supposed to work, how this sort of society is meant to function, and it... well, it sort of sucks the joy out of it, doesn't it? The soft edges of the figurine's shadow have been replaced by hard protodermis sides that leave no room to the imagination, letting us see the craftmanship clearly. And it's... it's kind of unpleasant. Kind of dull and mean and so... unmagical. I'd like the shadows again please. Those were nicer.

(Plato describes this exact happenstance in the philosopher's journey - upon seeing something closer to the truth one might feel repelled and want to return to simpler times. But we persevere. We must.)

Or perhaps this step is not Metru Nui itself, but the Turaga's recollection of it. The city they knew is now gone, abandoned to itself and rotting miserably alone for a thousand years, and yet they still cling to that pristine image their minds have sculpted for it, forgetting details, crafting imperfect copies of its reality: their own stories place it in a time before time, turn it as they say in a "city of legends", of great minds and a great hero and a strange tension pervading it that they might not consciously recognize. This is their basis for the stories they told, and they believe it to be the truth. It is not. The truth is deeper behind them.

The Matoran Universe as a whole is a reflection in the water. We've gotten out of that cave, but it's still too bright and our eyes can't adapt quickly enough: this will have to do for now.

But what is it a reflection of? A body? That's a given, since the whole thing is housed inside one. Yet this body does not behave like a body, its organs don't act like organs. They are landmarks and settlements, and there are species and parties involved in their own more or less treacherous businesses, and death is everywhere and seldom spares anybody, and evil isn't a singular incomprehensible thing but many perfectly identical pieces, and everything is happening all the time and I would like a break. Please. I can't handle all of this. It's too close to how everything already is. Let's go back to the figurines. They were worse than the shadows, but not to this extent. Please. I just don't want to see the bad guys win. I just don't want to see my friends die.

(Upon seeing something closer to the truth one might feel repelled and want to return to simpler times. But we persevere. We must.)

The Matoran Universe is a terrible place, but it's still far away. The edges are wobbly when the surface shifts: the stakes are universal in size, the rivalries are exaggerated, the situations are fantastical, the evil so terrible and terribly simple. It does what it does because it simply does it, and after all why else should it do it? In its increasing complexity it's still simple and sometimes a bit silly. It's still dolls that you can hold in your hand to make fly around.

As @sepublic mentions briefly here, Bara Magna is by contrast just so human. Before the big bombastic Rock-Em-Sock-Em Jumbo Edition ending and peeling away the sci-fi elements, these are stories of people trying to live. This is reality.

People are sleazy. People have priorities that not always include the well-being of other being put first. People are evil for reasons beyond just "power" or "money" or "why not". Strakk is a massive selfish bastard and also he is the one motherfucker who gets me because to be very honest I too would not want to wade through a desert crawling with quicksand and huge bat winged serpents and raptor riding marauders and spartans so bloodthirsty they don't even name their children until they make a new body count record without being paid well enough. Mata Nui's idealized honor makes him a complete anomaly because nobody is a prince in shining armor here. They're all covered in bones and doing their best not to start a war again.

Even his quest, despite what it entails and how solemnly he presents it and the information we as readers have (his identity as a usurped god exiled from his own body), is surprisingly real - in fact, his struggle is actually the same as Kiina's: both of them are strangers to the region suddenly separated from their people during a time of great strife and desperately wanting to reunite with them. The difference being that while Kiina had no chance to do such a thing, Mata Nui was built to fix both of their problems.

This is what the Matoran Universe is made in the image of. And while it very much deviated across time, the core of it remained the same: elemental tribes and variegated species caught in a dance of death, biting each other's tails endlessly.

This is the world the MU beings find once fully free. It's rough, but they've been through something like this before.

They'll handle it.

They always have.

That is the will of the Non-Mineral Journal.

Of Bionicle, the story-that-ended.

BUT.

Not necessarily of Bionicle, the story-that-does-not-end.

Now we are getting into "Random Experiences Getting The Brain Scrubbed By The Hard Back Of A Sponge And Makes It The Problem Of Everybody Listening To The Inane Yelling" territory. I'm talking walking into headcanon if not straight up just fanfiction territory. Possibly also sensible speculation but I don't know how to tell. Please do come smack me if you feel it is needed.

It's wild that Bionicle has managed to endure for what now (2024) are 23 years. The endless rebuildable possibilities intrinsic to being a LEGO product have certainly helped, but at the same time I really do feel like it wouldn't have held this strongly without its story.

I will admit I'm not a building kind of person. I had some ancient LEGO bricks when I was little and what I usually did with them was stacking them in a really tall line and try to keep it upright until they fell and scattered like lemmings booking it for a cliff. Getting into Bionicle would have never been possible for me had my dear beautiful friend @cantankerouscanuck not innocently dropped me links to Legends of Metru Nui, Web of Shadows, and the Crosswired Geeks website asking if I could have please considered skimming through it. This was back in september 2023. These pieces of plastic have been irreversibly fucking up my brain for nine months, and it was only possible because the plot and characters were written in a way that actively sunk its teeth into my skull and did an alligator death spin so potent that I'm still reeling from it, thinking about it.

I do think that's one of the main reasons why it's still going, why people still talk about it. It lives on through fans who still look at all the enormous potential left by the gaps and holes in the story and work on them, analyze them, make their own versions of them. So this second section is about that part of Bionicle, the story that just does not end, carried on by others.

So back to the point, what actually kickstarted this entire line of thought (the Squishy Note and the allegory of the cave are sort of the same lol) was a headcanon I have about the characters that have been actually missing from this analysis: the Great Beings.

You Know.

The Guys Who Kickstarted Every Single Thing, And Notably Continuously Did All Of It Wrong.

From my own prior knowledge I had understood that they are all Glatorian, and I just learned that they also were, apparently, given their incredible weird fucked up mental powers that made them into godly creatures by a space octopus.

I am going to take both pieces of information and discard them.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with them, except maybe coming from the leftest field available like a sack of granite to the face, but I feel like this kind of explanation for who and what they are isn't really satisfactory to me specifically. It does fit with the allegory of the cave still, technically - they are part of the real world, the ones who created every layer of detachment from it on purpose (somebody must have shackled those prisoners at the bottom of the cave, after all) and have managed to get to a higher level of reality still, following the platonic quest for knowledge into something that resembles the iperuranium, the perfect metaphysical world in which ideas reside.

But also... I'd like for there to be a limit to how higher we can go, you know? Into the cosmic horror? Because everything is cosmic horror in the Doctor's Report already. We live on a god's face. We live in a god's body. We are a god's cells. Our universe is a tiny manmade action figure in a larger universe. Our god is just a synthetic soul. The real older gods made it and sent it around to do their bidding. Also they're all gonna kill us when we figure out our universe is fake. Cosmic horror. Cosmic horror for miles. These are fucking LEGOs. Why is there so much existentialism in them.

So yeah, at the cost of sounding boring the psychic octopus from outer space might be a little bit too far for my personal tastes.

This does not mean I am immune to adding onto the cosmic horror.

Because my personal interpretation of who/what they are still adds onto the cosmic horror.

It just doesn't also include "giant aquatic fauna with psychic powers" in the already very large salad of sentient sapient species who have stakes in this universe, because I think we have enough of those.

So what is my platonic ideal form for them?

The Great Beings are human beings. Straight up just people. They're the readers, the players, the writers, the designers, the creators and tellers of the chronicle itself - they have this immense dominion over everything around them because they are the origin of everything around them in a sense, but their constant failings make sense because for all the influence and power they are still human, and that makes them very, very fallible. I mean, mr Greg "I will rewire your brain chemistry forever with some of the best stuff you'll read as a kid, and also for undiscernible reasons doors aren't canon" Farshtey would be one of them. Things make a lot of sense.

(this is impossible in Stone Cold Canon by the way and I am aware, because if we got to properly see the Great Beings they would have needed to be products to sell, but this is not a matter of probability it's a matter of Vision. like can you imagine how fucking cool would have been a Bonkle movie where the characters finally meet the Great Beings face to face and when it happens the style just completely shifts from 3D animation to a stop-motion and live-action combo with the Great Beings played by people and the characters portrayed by their actual sets with all of the lack of expression and stiff hands and all. do you see it. im about to blow up)

And so, we return to the allegory.

What are the shadows on the wall? Are they still the Turaga's tales? Then shouldn't they be their memories, as well? Everything that comes out of their mouth is hazy either with nostalgia or simplification, and none of it can be real. Yet they present it as such, because to them it is. Their ignorance is the same as the Matoran's, but they do not grasp it because they can't. Mata Nui to them is not the cave, it's the reflection in a lake: an imperfect mirror of reality. They cannot see the fire nor the figurines.

They are the figurines. Man-made creations confined under artificial light in a vast underground system, as large as a whole galaxy and yet so small, so isolated, so far back into the cave they are never meant to know anything other than. The shadows were their own but they can't realize that, and they can't realize they themselves are copies. The Matoran Universe is a puppet show that Teridax shuts down as he takes its reigns: he banishes its fire, Mata Nui (who is a gnostic Demiurge, a god made by gods demanding worship despite its falsehood - another copy not fully aware of being a copy) and shuts the entrance, plunging it all into darkness. No more knowledge. It is not something dolls need, after all.

Bara Magna is not the last step. It is not yet reality, not yet the truth. It's closer, much closer, but it's not: it's the lake, the puddle, the reflection that distorts when something is thrown into it. The stakes are more realistic, the characters and motivations, but not yet real. There is still a layer of separation: the elemental powers, the alien setting, the strange beasts, the supernatural history, the secrets pointing to things much bigger and more fantastical than anything reality could be, the way it is cut short by no fault of its own. What does it reflect? It's not the Matoran Universe, since that is a model based on Bara/Spherus Magna. It's not Mata Nui, because that is an attempt at recreating what the Matoran Universe was, at least in part. So... Is it the real world? Our, world?

It must be.

The Great Beings (us, the players and readers and writers and artists) shaped all of this. This universe is their creation, their work, and it is based on what they know, on their reality, because all stories are.

Maybe it was a story as close to real as possible that turned fantastic and wild until it became mythical, or maybe it was a simple story that grew so complex and grounded that it became life-like. It doesn't matter. It's a long story, a really, really long one, and maybe they're tired of it, or maybe they don't know what to do with it, or maybe they just think it has run its course, or maybe... Maybe they don't know how to tell it again. Tell it like this again.

So... I guess the thing to do is clean up.

Full tabula rasa.

And once we're done we can take these figurines we still have left, the last proof of all this immense work, this spiraling dive into who and what we are, how we function, how we create, how we imitate and recreate ourselves in fictional worlds that are our own and yet completely alien over and over, and make new ones. Distorted reflections that become imperfect copies to place before a fire so that their shadows can play out a new story upon a cave wall, for those same dolls to believe they are real.

God I got sidetracked severely

[lhostgil]

Just a little food for thought...

[I know I've been away from here for a while, but it's a bit because I've been all over the place with work and life, as well as not feeling much for posting anything in here. Nonetheless, here I am with a little...post. Featuring a conversation topic I've had with a close friend or two re the recent and ongoing trajectory of the X-Men comic writing.]

Perhaps it's just my personal upset, but the way the writers are handling things feels inconceivable to me because it's not the kind of stuff I am used to. In very general terms--this is somewhat related to Asian vs Western writing when it comes to takes on gods/god-like beings. In Western writing, everyone and their grandma seems to want to become god (or god-like), or to enforce the worship/reverence of a god. [See also most of the motivations of the leading mutants of the Krakoa era, as well as those who are already considered to be of a level that puts them as good as 'godlike']

And really, I don't get it. Because as a non-western reader, from my perspective and cultural background; just speaking very generally from the position of someone who grew up with predominantly Asian writing and media:

In Asian writing, everyone and their grandma can become a god...but just as gods can ascend, so can they fall. To that, what everyone and their grandma wants more than to become a god--more than becoming a supreme being--

Is to slaughter the gods.

//I'm sure most people would be familiar with such a trope especially in Asian media--books, shows, games--somewhere along the line you will definitely fight god(s) and kill them. JRPGs are notorious in the implementation of this trope.

And the reason isn't anything complex: it's just very simply that gods are allegory in Asian writing as representative of oppression and oppressive ideals--especially in the context of failed social systems.

Slaying a god is the equivalent of freeing yourself from their oppression; overthrowing their authority and saying "on what grounds do I have to subject myself to the whims of another? Just because someone is supposedly better, stronger, more powerful...then it is only right that the rest have to lie down and take their abuse? Suffer the consequences of their shitty acts and choices?"

Which leads to the natural progression that is: if you want a world that is supposedly built, created and as close as were everyone is equal --a human-made paradise where everyone grasps their own fate and destiny-- the first thing to do is to start at level one; to rebel and to kill the gods. That's how anyone can begin to move away from the past and walk towards a future that truly belongs to them.

[Admittedly, I do somewhat see this as part of the reason why I was fairly confused by people being upset with Kurt's arc in Krakoa; in a world where they are trying to establish themselves as free from the past, what he did actually makes the most sense in comparison from to the rest of his compatriots.]

Though I suppose, I also can't ignore that there is cultural difference when it comes to viewing the idea of defying a supposedly supreme divine being. As well as the concept of divine/god(s).

[firendgold]

If you're still doing the choose violence ask game: 2 (👀), 9, 10, 22 ?

I got such a rush from finally answering the first ask that I'm doing this for as long as people send me questions. So here we go again!

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

anon, I'm at work. I'm seeing this at work. :'D

Okay, serious face. Albus Dumbledore is probably my fave if I have to choose between him and Harry on this blog. I just have to figure out why he would never...

Bottom. Albus would never, I'm sorry. He won't. He can't. Like, maybe when he was having his whirlwind summer romance with Gellert, he bottomed every single time they fucked because he was so in love and this was his equal and his partner and so what if he was a little rough and distant sometimes in the bedroom, and always wanted to top and tug his hair and hiss out orders? This was The Man The Universe Had Crafted For Him, and he would absolutely bottom for him every time... and then the summer of 1899 ends. And Ariana dies. And Aberforth breaks Albus' nose. And Gellert fucks off to go be a fascist.

And Albus, alone and heartbroken, resolves to never trust someone that completely again, never love someone that same way, and never let anyone get into a position of power over him where they might be able to use his knowledge and talents for ill. That means physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically... carnally. So he has sex with plenty of other people, and even falls in love with a few of them, but he is in control at all times. He never bottoms again.

That's all I've got for that one.

9. worst part of canon

So the first answer that came to mind is posted here, but for fairness' sake I'll try to come up with another worst thing. (That's not related to ships, because I'm trying really hard not to be THAT violent on the violence ask game.)

I think... that if That Woman was going to introduce international schools, students and characters in the middle book of the series, she should have done more with them than having them vanish after Goblet of Fire, only to come back for either fake romantic tension and one line of exposition about the Hitler allegory Dark Lord of the Before-Times (Krum, Deathly Hallows) or to be married off to a Weasley for an aesop of It's Not About His Looks Now That They're Jacked Up (Fleur, Half-Blood Prince). I'm not saying Fleur and Viktor HAD to be best buddies forever with Harry, but it is weird that they have this unique bond that no other young students have had with each other in hundreds of years, they even lost one of their fellow champions, Dumbledore gives this very moving speech about remaining connected and not letting darkness and prejudice sever new ties, and then... nothing. No side adventures in France or wherever Durmstrang is, no communication from either side, nothing.

Feels like a huge letdown in hindsight.

10. worst part of fanon

Oh, no. That's not fair. There's just so many.

If I had to consolidate what I currently don't like about the HP fandom/fanon into a few lines, I think I would say that I hate the pureblood/Dark side apologism. I do believe in nuance in characters. I do believe redemption and/or walking different paths is an important theme in Harry Potter, and I think it's fascinating to explore that with any and every character you can think of, even characters I may not personally like. But I really, really hate the way the fandom has taken that and twisted it into this idea that we were sold a lie at the start: that the British magical government was fine the way it was, and so was the society around it; that Dark magic Isn't All That Bad, Really, and there are actually Good and non-prejudiced things about a few rich bitches passing down their knowledge and secrets and slurs for generations within the Family, and keeping the Family "Pure" is cool actually, and none of this has any relation to real life ideas about miscegenation and classism and racism and eugenics, what are you talking about?

It's just so worrying. As a minority, when I see people on tumblr/twitter/AO3 gleefully agreeing that we need to eat the rich and fix society and eradicate all the horrid -isms and -archys ruining all our lives, then watch them turn around and write a 200k epic where Dumbledore was the evil one for locking the Horcrux books away and championing marginalized members of society, Hermione is just uppity for wanting to make necessary changes to the darker parts of magical society that That Woman was literally pointing out for a reason, and Tom Riddle is only bad because he took the good segregationist pureblood ideas and added murder to them... and when that fic gets thousands of comments agreeing with them full stop with no examination of any of that... it makes me anxious, at a minimum. The same thing is happening now with Grindelwald now that he's actually a figure on the screen and not just some dude mentioned a few times in the book series: same apologism, same justification of atrocities, same good-guy-blame-games, same blorbofication even.

On the one hand... fiction doesn't always directly reflect or affect reality. On the other... this unironic pro-pureblood meta is a pervasive concept that has popped up in thousands of fics written by thousands of fanfic writers. It's happened for years, and it keeps happening, and I see very few fans speaking out against it or even acknowledging it as a problem. So that makes me ask myself, who actually is willing and able to examine the injustices of our society and build a better imaginary society through the lens of HP fanfiction, and who's okay with the prejudice in the HP world as long as it's coming from the faves they're attracted to?

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

Happily, this is a harder question to answer because I've been finding so many like minds in the past 5 years who go feral over the same 20 HP scenes as I do. ^^ But give me a sec, I'll think of something.

...

Okay. Got it.

In order to answer this question, I have to go back to the first time I, young teenager, avid reader, recent reader of the HP series once book 5 was out, realized that Harry and Dumbledore had a much deeper relationship than just headmaster and student. The thing that made me latch on to them and project like crazy, basically.

It's the scene in Goblet of Fire chapter 36 where Harry has been rescued from Fake Moody and he's in Dumbledore's office with Dumbledore and Sirius. Dumbledore asks Harry to relay everything that happened to him once he touched the Portkey in the maze—and immediately Sirius tries to protect Harry from having to relive it now, so soon after it's happened. And then this scene happens.

Dumbledore stopped talking. He sat down opposite Harry, behind his desk. He was looking at Harry, who avoided his eyes. Dumbledore was going to question him. He was going to make Harry relive everything. “I need to know what happened after you touched the Portkey in the maze, Harry,” said Dumbledore. “We can leave that till morning, can’t we, Dumbledore?” said Sirius harshly. He had put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Let him have a sleep. Let him rest.” Harry felt a rush of gratitude toward Sirius, but Dumbledore took no notice of Sirius’s words. He leaned forward toward Harry. Very unwillingly, Harry raised his head and looked into those blue eyes. “If I thought I could help you,” Dumbledore said gently, “by putting you into an enchanted sleep and allowing you to postpone the moment when you would have to think about what has happened tonight, I would do it. But I know better. Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it. You have shown bravery beyond anything I could have expected of you. I ask you to demonstrate your courage one more time. I ask you to tell us what happened.” The phoenix let out one soft, quavering note. It shivered in the air, and Harry felt as though a drop of hot liquid had slipped down his throat into his stomach, warming him, and strengthening him. He took a deep breath and began to tell them. As he spoke, visions of everything that had passed that night seemed to rise before his eyes; he saw the sparkling surface of the potion that had revived Voldemort; he saw the Death Eaters Apparating between the graves around them; he saw Cedric’s body, lying on the ground beside the cup. Once or twice, Sirius made a noise as though about to say something, his hand still tight on Harry’s shoulder, but Dumbledore raised his hand to stop him, and Harry was glad of this, because it was easier to keep going now he had started. It was even a relief; he felt almost as though something poisonous were being extracted from him. It was costing him every bit of determination he had to keep talking, yet he sensed that once he had finished, he would feel better.

This is one of the best scenes in the entire book, the entire series. It completely refutes the fanon Dumbledore who is often cold, cruel, inflexible and unrelenting in his quest for whatever the author wants him to be inflexible and cruel about at the time. It shows that Dumbledore, the real Albus Dumbledore, is one of the few people who understands what Harry needs and is able to provide it to him, even when others who also care for Harry would rather protect him or shield him from what he needs.

Kid me was particularly taken by how gentle Dumbledore is with Harry here. It made me look back and see how in some ways this scene, this closeness, is the culmination of all the times they've met and spoken before.

(You can imagine how painful it was reading Order of the Phoenix right after this.)

But yeah, that's probably one of my favorite scenes that other people ignore or haven't talked about/drawn/written about much. Which is ironic, because the scene right after that where Harry talks about Voldemort taking his blood and Dumbledore's eyes do the triumphant "lol Voldemort just fucked up" gleam is probably one of THE most talked-about scenes in the fandom (even though to this fucking day in 2023 people still don't realize what the gleam meant, when even That Woman has clarified what it meant in INTERVIEWS).

...And for me, safely at the end of the questions, that's all she wrote.

[caffedrine]

I figured since other people have good and probably accurate translations of the recent Gilbert event, I’d post a very biased and opinionated summary that conveys my impressions of it better than an accurate translation ever could.

After the events of the fake lover event, Emma has endeavored to keep up her promise of behaving neutral to Gilbert and treating him like a normal member of visiting royalty, and not like the monster everyone expects him to be. This translates to cooking enough breakfast pastries for ten people and feeding them all to Gilbert. There is no indication that Yves is helping.

Instead of taking this as an attempted assassination via diabetes, Gilbert wants to thank Emma for all her care. Personally. He’s on a mission to do this, so none of the polite ‘no thank yous’ work on him. Instead, they are going on a date.

Gilbert’s idea of a perfect date is at a bookstore.

Gilbert: Hey, this is your favorite bookstore, right? Maybe because you used to work here?

Emma: *Crap, he has this weird ability to tell when I’m lying, so I can’t say no! Think of something, brain!*

Emma: Uhh. . . . Um. . .

Gilbert: I’m so happy you get me, and aren’t lying! We’re quickly becoming fast friends!

Entering the store, Gilbert immediately starts grilling the clerk. It’s pretty obvious he’s trying to catch them up in a lie.

Emma finally steps in to stop him.

Emma: You know when you hate it when people lie to you? I hate it when people abuse shopkeepers (and other people, I guess)

Gilbert: You want me to stop? You have to successfully interpret this vague gesture I’m making towards my cheek.

Emma deduces that Gilbert wants her to kiss his cheek, and afterwards, he praises her detective skills. Fast friends.

The date then turns weirdly normal, with them chatting about a particular book that’s essentially game of thrones but everyone is twisted and evil, and I’m pretty sure it’s an allegory for the Obsidian Court.

Afterwards, Emma is ready to be done with this date and just chalk it up to being weird, but Gilbert stops her- because the fun is just starting.

They wait in an alley for the book clerk to leave, which I hope happened shortly after their visit and tail the clerk to an abandoned tavern.

As abandoned taverns go, this one has a surprising amount of people in it, and they all obviously recognize Emma and Gilbert. Gilbert even points out that he doesn’t really mingle with the commoners of Rhodolite or attend any public events (kinda feeling bad for the local paraiah) random people he doesn’t personally know wouldn’t normally be able to recognize him.

Gilbert proceeds to start an abandoned bar fight, and beats everyone down with his cane. However; obeying the unspoken bar fight rules, he notably doesn’t kill anyone.

Gilbert: You do know that this isn’t the normal clerk, right?

Emma: Uh. . .

Gilbert: This fake clerk replaced the other fake clerk.

Gilbert explains that they’re probably related to the group that attacked them back during the fake lovers event. Only, thanks to him loudly and proudly calling Emma his lover, instead of attacking him directly, this was all a setup to kidnap her to get to him.

Gilbert: You know, this was a pretty good plan, but there is one mistake.

Gilbert: They plotted against me.

Emma: So, are we going to turn them in to the guard or something.

Gilbert: Nah, these are low level mooks, and I don’t foresee a future where letting them go will bite me in the ass.

Gilbert: Anyways, since you’re my (only) best friend, you need to get used to this.

Before they leave, Emma stops Gilbert and asks about the original fake book clerk. They’re missing, and Emma feels responsible.

Gilbert: I don’t work for free you know.

Emma: I don’t want to kiss you again.

Emma: . . .

Emma: how about I start actually acting like I’m friends with you, but only when we’re alone. I can listen to you vent or whatever.

Gilbert: . . .

Gilbert: Okay, it looks like we have a clerk to save!

They go back to the abandoned tavern, which is actually empty, and Gilbert complains that there’s no one to torture. They’ll have to do this the old fashioned way - look for clues.

Emma: I’m guessing they’re near by, so it would be easier to take care of them.

Gilbert: or they could have killed the clerk early on, dumped the body, and made it really easy on their schedules.

Gilbert notices a trap door in the tavern and opens it. Emma is impressed, and Gilbert preens under the unexpected positive attention.

He then has to prevent Emma from diving head first into the revealed dark tunnel, and wonders if she even has survival instincts.

Realizing Emma’s brain might be bad, Gilbert has her stay outside of the dark tunnel and goes in alone.

Emma still wants to go with him - not because she’s suspicious of him - but because she’s worried he’d feel bad about being alone in a dark dank tunnel. And DnD strategy is to never split up the group.

Gilbert points out that 1. There’s no guarantee that there is another entrance and he would appreciate it if she could warn him if someone were to come and block the one entrance they know definitely exists, and 2. She’s dead weight and he can’t really defend her if they get caught up in another fight.

Proceeding alone, Gilbert finds the first fake clerk chained up in a room.

Gilbert: Do you know who I am?

Clerk: Um, my rescuer?

Gilbert: And the Evil Obsidian Prince.

Clerk: Um, can I get my old captors back?

Gilbert threatens them a little before continuing.

Gilbert: You’re really bad at your job. It puts my (one) friend in danger, so I’ll save you if you promise to quit.

Clerk: Oh, yeah, I definitely want to quit even before you threatened me. This kind of works out for both of us.

Gilbert starts thinking to himself how much Sariel sucks - his fake clerk couldn’t handle being kidnapped, and Sariel wasn’t aware of the replacement. The security around ‘the bunny’ is awfully light considering how important she is to national security.

The return to the castle is unremarkable, but before they part, Emma stops him and asks when they want to meet up privately. Gilbert thinks about how no matter what security measures are taken, Emma is determined to dive head first into danger. Since he likes to put random body parts in his mouth, Gilbert starts gnawing on Emma’s ear and agrees to meet her later in an empty chapel late at night. He thinks about how much he likes her.

Since everyone is watching his movement, Gilbert can only be secretive every once in a while. So, it’s a big deal that he’s using one of his rare opportunities to go on a forbidden night date. He really is a good friend.

Gilbert is almost relieved when Emma shows up afraid - there is a chance she’s at least somewhat aware that she’s in danger.

Emma has brought alcohol, and Gilbert thinks about the culture shock of how it would definitely be poisoned in Obsidian, but he’s confident Emma’s alcohol isn’t.

Gilbert: You know if I tell you anything and I find out someone else knows, no one knows what I’ll do to you.

Emma: Yeah, yeah, I know what a secret is.

Gilbert thinks of all his secrets, and how he would have to kill Emma if she knew, and decides on one thing they could talk about.

Gilbert: How can I make you love me?

Emma: Oh, that’s impossible. I barely know you.

Gilbert: But we talk so much!

Emma: Yes, and anything that is important, somehow you manage to sidestep. I don’t even know your favorite color.

Gilbert: And I’d be obligated to kill you if you ever found out.

Gilbert starts engaging in a new pastime - thinking of all the ways he could kill Emma, and shares the part where he could have slipped poison into her drink. For some reason, Emma doesn’t swoon over this.

Gilbert: All I’m saying is that as a friend, I’m worried about how much danger you’re in without even realizing it.

Emma: Yes, and 99% of it comes from you.

Emma points out that him loudly and proudly proclaiming her his friend or mistress has probably put her in more danger than anything else. If he really liked her and was worried, he’d pretend he didnt know her, or ignore her. If anything, she wonders if his version of ‘friends’ is her version of ‘enemies’. Emma has noticed that he’s been trying to make her distrust and feel isolated from the Rhodolite court, and show her all the ugly sides of the nobles.

Gilbert is impressed with Emma’s insight, and thinks about how he could easily kill her. He warns her that she’s getting close to dangerous territory and to leave it.

Emma: Well, I’m obviously the wrong person for you to vent to. I hope that you’ll find SOMEONE ELSE who you can talk to without THREATENING OR KILLING.

Gilbert: Oh don’t worry, we’re still besties!

Gilbert starts thinking about how he too would like to fall in love like a real human.

[itsclydebitches]

For me, I think what I've concluded is that CRWBY is oftentimes too willing to sacrifice story for spectacle. Does it make sense for Ruby&co to steal a plane and whoops! It all goes wrong and suddenly they're fighting a big mech? No. Is it more exciting? Yes. Does it make sense for Qrow to team up with Tyrian to fight Clover? No. Does a 2v1 battle and a villain-hero team up look 'cooler'? Technically, yeah. Your thoughts?

I think you're a mind reader, friend, because that point has been bopping around my head since I posted that ask. And yeah, I get it. I mean, RWBY is a fighting show, first and foremost, no matter that it has expanded in a way that requires a lot more non-action storytelling. I would no more expect Volume 6 to end without an epic, exciting, spectacle of a fight than I would expect that for any season finale. Fans were right to criticize Volume 5 for spending too much time in the house and then following that up with a truly lackluster Haven battle. We expect that Rule of Cool.

So the problem isn't RWBY's desire for a spectacle, but rather its unwillingness to plan one that makes better sense and doesn't leave the heroes looking that bad (unless, of course, we got a version of the show actually interested in taking them through an arc wherein they grapple with their mistakes). As you say, they're prioritizing spectacle over story rather than realizing the very simple writing fact that you can have both. It always surprises me how many fans act as if published RWBY content is a historical event as opposed to a malleable fiction that a group of authors had complete control over. If the end goal is "The group has an epic battle against a mech" or "There's a 2v1 battle featuring a villain-hero team" that's great! It's just that, you know, you should implement those ideas in a way that doesn't destroy so much consistency and characterization in the process. Nine times out of ten, RWBY's problems lie in its inability to provide good setups for an idea (planning ahead) rather than the idea itself. Like we've been saying for forever now, almost no one has a problem with Ironwood becoming an antagonist as a general concept, only in how we reached that point. Same with the fights. No one has a problem with a cool mech battle, just that we got there via rejecting a perfectly peaceful plan + the heroes endangering so many needlessly. No one has a problem with a cool hero-villain battle, just that we got there by Qrow loosing all brain cells and deciding that teaming up with Tyrian is a good idea. As writers with complete creative power and an already flexible story (because, again, RWBY doesn't abide by its own rules) there are a hundred different ways we could get those battles without sacrificing so much else in the process. But that requires a lot of work and forethought that RWBY isn't putting in nowadays.

Specifically regarding the Cordovin battle, I'd be slightly more forgiving in regards to the, "It had to happen that way because the finale needs an epic fight" argument if not for one, crucial thing:

Adam.

The story ALREADY had an established antagonist for our heroes to fight, very conveniently tracking them across Remnant and, ignoring the complicated racism allegory, Adam is likewise an established baddie who the characters should have no (or very few) qualms about fighting. Tweak things a bit — plan ahead with characterization and the morals of the story in mind — and there's no reason to have the group go through all this Cordovin nonsense in an effort to give them someone cool to fight because someone cool to fight is already there.

I have an ask in my inbox that I'll probably never get around to answering, just because it would require a whole lot of thought and work and I'm fundamentally lazy lol. The gist of it though is a challenge to rewrite five scenes that I would change, creatively, rather than merely discussing them analytically. As a nod to that (sort of...), I was thinking about just one way we might change the end of Volume 6 with the above points in mind. Everyone who reads my RWBY posts know that I take issue both with rejecting Cordovin's offer and the group's hivemind, so why not fix both issues by giving Weiss some more agency? Cordovin agrees to send her to Atlas and Weiss agrees too... but Ruby doesn't. Throw in some tension based on their different experiences post-Fall of Beacon. Weiss has spent her time facing down her father and proving to herself that she's no longer under his control. She might not love the idea of heading into Atlas first, but to be frank she didn't want to go back to Atlas at all. If she's already agreed to handle that for the sake of the mission, she can handle this too. Ruby, however, has spent her time mourning the loss of Pyrrha, and Penny, and watching Qrow nearly die. So when the prospect of Weiss being separated from her is put on the table her PTSD rears up and goes, "ABSOLUTELY NOT SHE'LL DIE." So they will not separate, thank you very much. She's pulling rank on this one. Weiss, stop arguing.

So the plan is mostly formulated the same way, but this time there's a clear divide in the group regarding whether they should be doing this at all. Most agree that sending Weiss is the best option, period, but they're struggling to convince Ruby of that in a way that doesn't completely undermine her leadership and doesn't send her into spiraling with worry. The end result is Weiss making her own choices — just as she always has. She boards the airship with a hidden Maria (and maybe she's convinced Ruby to let her hold the Relic too because I hate the "It sporadically attracts grimm!" characteristic and want to remove that from the Leviathan fight entirely) and then Weiss calls them to basically say, I'm leaving. Yes, I'm really going to Atlas. I'm not going to attack those guards. I'm not going to steal the airship and turn it around. That was a stupid idea, you dolt, and though I think I have an inkling of why you're upset I'm still pissed that you don't trust me enough to do this. I can handle it. Maria and I will speak to Ironwood as soon as we land. Hang tight, Weiss out.

So they cross the border completely legally — perhaps with a cliffhanger-esque ending for them with the viewer wondering what actually awaits them in Atlas. Weiss-Maria solo adventure in Volume 7? — and Ruby is left floundering. The rest of the plan is useless now, no point in carrying it out, which means that Blake and Yang either come straight back to the group, or never had time to leave them in the first place (either way, they don't fuck with the CTV tower). Which means that when Adam gets impatient and finally goes after Blake, the whole group is aware of him as a threat. He's the final boss of this Volume.

But, of course, with so many heroes and only one villain, that fight isn't going to last long. Enter the grimm. There are a lot of hand-wavy ways that you could summon a whole lot of them for the group to fight. Maybe the combined emotions of Yang (lost limb) and Blake (abused + stab wound) manages to draw a lot more than would normally be the case. Maybe in a move worthy of Watts, Adam has done something in Argus to distract the group/scare civilians enough to draw a large number. Maybe RWBY has actually written in better consequences for world-altering events and the grimm have been a problem this entire time: a school was destroyed, a celebrity was murdered, communications are still down, and everyone is in such a state day-to-day that the grimm have just been waiting for something to tip the emotional scale. Adam does that.

So the group splits. Most have to head back to Argus to help with the grimm attack — which they are not the cause of this time! — which includes a giant Leviathan. Cordovin still gets to hop in her mech (because mechs are cool) and punch it in the face, requiring an uneasy alliance between the heroes and someone who they simply don't like. Ruby can still use her eyes, perhaps drawing on what she's emotionally grappling with regarding Weiss/all the death she's seen, though in this version the Relic isn't around for her to stall with and Maria isn't there to guide her (because in this version Maria is also an active mentor). Ruby really struggles and her eventually hitting the Leviathan, even just to do minor damage, is a big win. While most of the group deals with Argus and a few others deal with grimm near the primary fight, Blake and Yang face off against Adam. As the main antagonist now, we'll get a much longer, more emotionally focused battle. Let's introduce him to the rest of the group before his demise, maybe with some sisterly protection before Ruby is forced to focus on the grimm, what with having Silver Eyes and all. Let Yang and Blake both fumble a lot more than originally as they struggle to fight him while simultaneously battling their own PTSD. Reveal the brand earlier and let the characters respond to that. Set up the horror of it, the worldbuilding implications, and the expectation that they'll have to tell Weiss when they next see her. Crank up their power levels again (back to both Adam and Yang capable of cutting through mechs) so that we get something truly epic. Then kill him off and then reserve time for the girls to start coming to terms with that, rather than walking it off after a single hug.

Maybe the even kiss!

So the group has actually saved Argus this time. Volume 6's focus is on a villain we care about, not a cartoon paper-pusher. We've set up conflicts for Volume 7 like how Weiss will respond to the brand, how she'll reconcile with Ruby, what Ruby's leadership will look like moving forward (and her mental state), how Blake and Yang will deal with killing a man even if it was in self defense, etc. Obviously, this would change a lot moving forward. We'd start Volume 7 with the group still split. How would Ironwood respond to just Weiss coming in legally? How long does it take for them to meet up again? Are there any additional problems along the way? Does this change the trajectory of Volume 8? (I sure hope so.) But then, that's the point. If you're going to change one aspect of the canon, that should, by default, influence a great deal that comes later (and a bit of what came before). But the point of this very long-winded hypothetical is that we can always take the major beats in RWBY and rework them in a way that's not quite so frustrating. I'm not going to pretend that my revision is some fantastic bit of writing — I'm literally just spitballing based on my last 24 hour shower thoughts — but the takeaway is not, "This revision is better/worse" but rather, "Oh yeah, we can achieve many of the same basic ideas, including spectacle, without relying on stupid concepts like Ruby straight up lying as she screams that Cordovin never gave them a chance, so now she just has to do a bunch of dangerous shit for the sake of a Rule of Cool focus. There are avenues to these epic fights that don't require making the characters that unlikable, or throwing out what little consistency the show has."

[blockgamepirate]

Technoblade’s purpose in the political narrative of the Dream SMP

I can’t sleep so I decided to finally write the post I’ve been struggling with for literal months, except way more casual because I can’t be bothered anymore and also I’m sleep deprived.

So the thing is: to me the DSMP storyline has always been primarily political, probably because I was introduced to it through Wilbur who was definitely going for political, and also because I’m just generally interested in political narratives right now. Obviously I appreciate the character work and the personal relationship stuff, that’s what makes it more interesting than just dry allegory, but when it comes down to it, this story is about politics to me. So that’s the angle I’m going to approach it from.

Also not to spoil the conclusions here, but I’m an anarchist, that’s my lens.

(Obviously all of this is about rp from here on out unless otherwise specified)

Basically the situation as Techno joins the server is this: L'Manburg exists as an autonomous nation and is de facto independent although not officially recognised by the Dream SMP. The self-appointed president Wilbur Soot decides to hold an election and rig it in order to consolidate his power over the nation he founded and he gets his VP Tommyinnit to join in on the plan. Their scheme fails and they end up voted out instead. The new president, Schlatt, immediately establishes himself as an authoritarian figure and exiles Wilbur and Tommy.

A couple of points on what the election arc demonstrates:

1: the appearance of democracy can be used for distinctly undemocratic purposes.

2: even if the elections aren’t rigged, the electoral system could be massively flawed and end up favouring a party that in fact didn’t have the popular vote

3: even if the winning government (the coalition in this case) has the majority vote, that doesn’t guarantee that they’ll actually act according to the popular will.

4: the supporters of the losing parties basically just have to let the majority overrule their wishes, espcially since apparently L’Manburg doesn’t have an established role for an opposition, yikes. That’s actually a MAJOR oversight in the system but I’m not gonna go into that too much.

5: frankly as an anarchist I am just deeply cynical towards representative democracy, and just because you have a token appearance of choice and consent doesn’t mean that it isn’t a hierarchical and authoritarian system. And to be fair, from my point of view this applies even to so-called liberal democracies and progressive parties. Full disclosure: even if L'Manburg was the ideal example of a representative democracy (which it very much isn’t) I would still be opposed to it because I fundamentally do not believe in top down systems, even electoral ones.

6: despite all these flaws, all the characters seem to implicitly accept the electoral system as legitimate. There’s criticism against the actions of individual characters acting within the system, such as Quackity calling out Wilbur for trying to rig the election, but nobody is questioning the system itself.

So at this point I’m sitting there, watching all this go down, and thinking “man, this would be so much more bearable if there was an anarchist point of view being represented in the story.”

And hey, look who IMMEDIATELY SHOWS UP.

Okay, I’m not gonna lie, early installation Technoblade is not the best representation of anarchism. I was mostly rooting for him out of sheer contrarianism initially. I didn’t really even care if it would be another Killmonger/Magneto/Zaheer situation because I’m used to reading against the authorial intent when it comes to these things. Sometimes any representation is better than no representation, even with political ideologies. That’s not to say that him just straight up spouting this hobbesian notion of a “dog-eat-dog world” didn’t grate on me, obviously it did.

That kind of worldview of humanity needing authority in order to prevent chaos and conflict is literally antithetical to anarchism and is the favourite talking point of authoritarians, the least anarchist people there are. It’s literally what people use to argue AGAINST anarchism. I think it’s mostly because cc!Techno obviously wasn’t particularly educated on anarchist thought and was just basically having fun roleplaying with his friends at this point. Which is frustrating but fair enough I guess.

Cynical ideas about human nature are pretty deeply rooted in the mainstream, unfortunately, most people just consider it common sense. And like I said, it’s a huge talking point in the propaganda against anarchism.

(… even though in fact these arguments were originally used against proponents of representative democracy. Hobbes himself was very much a monarchist, the idea of letting normal people vote for their representatives would have been terrifying to him. Like surely the world would descent into a free-for-all war, all against all. Imagine letting commoners have OPINIONS, the horror.)

So yeah, that stuff was pretty ehhhhh. It was basically what I’d expected though: cc!Techno isn’t an anarchist and we just don’t get accurate representation from non-anarchists, ever. What I dared to hope was that Techno’s character would at least stay consistent about his opposition to ALL governments. I was pretty sure that he would, even though it seemed like the majority of the fandom at the time was convinced that he would switch over to Schlatt’s side or something. It would have been a really shitty twist, I would have ragequit immediately. I mean what would have been the entire point of his character then? He might as well have been a random mercenary. Why even have his character be an anarchist if you were just going to make him work for a government?

(ftr this is kinda my biggest problem with the Hypixel Skyblock revolution event lol, honestly I think that was a worse depiction of anarchism than early DSMP Technoblade. I mean the speech was good, but… still became a government official, tho. booooooooo, cringe)

And yes, I was rooting against L'Manburg, obviously, and I would have even if it had meant having to deal with another badly written anarchist villain character. I never understood why people saw L'Manburg as the good guys, they were nationalist and exclusionary and their whole existence was based on trying to scam people for money.

I mean they were definitely funny, they were great entertainers. I have no problems with people rooting for them because they’re fun to watch; I did that for a bit too. But people were starting to get really into the story and talk about Wilbur and Tommy, the corrupt politicians, and the country that literally excluded people based on nationality as the heroes, unironically, which was wild to me. And when Wilbur started his “villain arc” well: people called it a villain arc, as if he hadn’t been pretty much a bad guy from the beginning, constantly just out for money and power and taking advantage of the people around him and then pretending to be the victim when challenged. I mean yes he got worse, but I wouldn’t call it a villain arc, more like just a mental breakdown arc.

More importantly, to me L'Manburg represented so many things I hate about the status quo in real life, and seeing the fandom mostly unquestioningly accept it as good just pissed me off. Still pisses me off tbh. I mean, to be diplomatic I could say that I understand the emotional attachment and the way L'Manburg was built up mirrors a lot of how real nations are built and how they create a sense of patriotism out of symbols and a sense of honour and loyalty, and it’s actually really fascinating how it even works in a Minecraft roleplay. Says something about the human mind I guess. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though.

Anyway, I just wanted to see literally any kind of opposition to power, even if it had to come from a character that was unquestionably a villain, which I fully assumed Techno would be. Because political narratives so often just leave us out, or at best barely mention us. And even from a narrative point of view, adding an anarchist perspective to a political story just objectively broadens its scope and actually challenges people who are used to only arguing along the lines of conservative or liberal, welfare state or privatization, nationalism or multiculturalism, etc. Even if the original work dealt with it poorly, at least it would give me the excuse to rant about it on Tumblr, which is kinda why I revived my old Minecraft sideblog for this. (That and pig!Techno fanart.)

Also how can you have a story so fundamentally about power without its counterpoint: the rejection of power?

(Yes, Dream SMP as a whole is definitely a narrative about power, it’s a huge theme for Wilbur, Quackity, Dream, Eret and the Badlanders at least, as well as obviously the anarchist characters from the opposite direction.)

So yeah, the build up to November 16th for me was mainly about the anticipation for what Techno would do, how would Techno’s character respond to the seemingly inevitable formation of a new government. THAT was the point of interest for me, that was what I was the most invested in. Would we get an actual anarchist opposition as a new side to the conflict or would they just awkwardly drop that whole angle? Or even have him team up with Schlatt like a complete sellout? There was so much potential but I worried they might just waste it.

And I was right to worry since apparently in the original script Techno wasn’t supposed to do anything, he was just there to help fight Schlatt and witness the explosion along with everyone else.

And WOW that would have been so incredibly boring

Not even just from the political perspective, just talking about the narrative in general terms here: imagine November 16th without Techno’s plot points. Not only would it have been boring for Techno’s character but it would have been equally boring for basically everybody but Wilbur and Philza. An anticlimactic fight followed by a big explosion that pretty much everybody had seen coming already. Yes, the button room scene is dramatic and heartbreaking… for Wilbur and Phil. But nobody else was there to see it. For everybody else, it was just a big explosion. It would have been such a huge disservice to anyone watching the other POVs.

Techno’s intervention gave everyone an ACTUAL climactic fight, it allowed characters other than Wil and Phil to witness some actual drama happening and to participate in it, rather than just waiting around for the explosion, while also foreshadowing the explosion. Even better, it provoked SO MUCH discussion in the fandom AND gave a perfect hook for future conflicts to arise. Wilbur’s end was tragic but it was, at the time, final. L'Manburg would have still suffered a catastrophe but it would have been left with just the same exact antagonist as before: Dream.

And at this point Dream’s core goals had barely changed, just his approach was now different. Yes, that makes a difference for the plot, but it doesn’t really change much in terms of ideological conflict. Especially since there really isn’t that big of an ideological difference between Dream and Tommy, because arguably neither of them are particularly big on ideology in the first place, they just have conflicting goals and use different tactics to achieve those goals (well, the tactics aren’t always even that different *cough Spirit cough*).

Techno’s conflict with Tubbo and especially Quackity (and honestly most of the other characters in general) brings in so much more depth to the story, just by introducing another angle, not to even mention how much it brings to focus questions about power and violence. These are themes that exist in other characters’s storylines too but nowhere in the same way or as central as with Techno.

I’m getting kind of ahead of myself here, though.

The real twist of November 16th was the fact that Techno WASN’T a straight up villain, actually. It was a twist to me anyway, because with all my cynicism I just didn’t see it coming, I didn’t expect him to actually start making reasonable criticisms. I didn’t expect him to drop the hobbesian arguments entirely and start making points that actually sounded like anarchism.

I have to assume that cc!Techno must have seen some of the criticisms of his character and been inspired to adjust because the difference is pretty notable.

(Sidenote: I’m just forever kinda sad that Techno’s “I may seem like the villain here” monologue was cut from the video and most people never heard it.)

And I felt SO validated by the way, because it works so well in the story! Everyone is mostly content with the restoration of a status quo of some sort, Schlatt is gone, this is supposed to be the good ending, and then Techno calls them all out and turns the narrative around completely: This was just a coup d'état. This was just the previous political leadership retaking power by force. Why is everyone celebrating the same exact system that lead to Schlatt’s authoritarian rule in the first place?

What he does there is force the audience to question the narrative they’ve been presented so far, that they’ve accepted without a thought. It might not convince them, but they can’t just ignore it either.

Whatever you wanna say about the discourse around Techno on that day, in the ideological narrative THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART. Not who betrayed who or when is political violence justified, that’s about personal relationships and morality and it’s mostly all more relevant to the aftermath than the event itself. In my opinion, the REAL point in the moment is that the characters and the audience were comfortable with the ending only to be presented with a completely new perspective on the events.

It also recontextualises the finale, including Wilbur’s actions! It’s a much more ambiguous end to the Pogtopia vs Manburg arc and to Wilbur’s original run as the head writer. Wilbur’s “even with Tubbo in charge I don’t think [that ‘special place’] can exist again” is vague enough to be dismissed as just part of his paranoia and internal conflict, but with Techno, there’s a concrete question: what if Tubbo, given the same powers as Schlatt, will turn out to be just a new Schlatt? And suddenly you have to wonder what Wilbur meant by his words too. And was all this foreshadowing something about L’Manburg’s future?

Okay I’ve only made it to November 16th and there’s so much more DSMP to talk about but the post is getting too long and I’m starting to lose my energy. Will I ever make a part two? No idea. But I’ll try.

Standard disclaimer: I’m not the spokesperson of anarchism, other anarchists might disagree with my reading

[destinygoldenstar]

Ooooohhh I was scared of saying this...

Skybound is okay. And just okay.

I’ve recently seen a some people try to explain why THIS season is Ninjago is an underrated top tier season. Therefore I should say that as well...

I’m glad that’s what you all think...

But yeah... this season just doesn’t work for me all that well. Even on my most recent viewing of the season for some essay posts, I still feel that way. I don’t hate it as much as I used to, but I still can’t get fully into it no matter how hard I try to. Even as a kid, Skybound was, overall, my LEAST favorite season of the 7 OG seasons. Obviously, it is NO LONGER my least favorite season overall now, (That prize goes to Secrets Of The Forbidden Spinjitsu), as a matter of fact, it’s actually a whole tier higher now than I initially had it, because after March Of The Oni and until Seabound would come, Ninjago was kind of on a losing streak (Master Of The Mountain was okay, but didn’t exactly change my mind) So Skybound honestly feels REFRESHING. 

But though it’s probably bordering Hands Of Time and I kind of flip flop between them, Skybound is STILL my least favorite of the OG seasons.

I will say, there is ONE aspect of this season I found truly exceptional, and that’s Jay’s character arc.

I wasn’t a fan of it as a kid because of the fact he lied to Nya at his own free will, but WOW have I warmed up to Jay now, especially thanks to this season fleshing him out to be more than just ‘the genki guy.’ Say what you will about how much derailment certain ninja characters suffer nowadays, ALL the ninja are still fleshed out in so many ways and very much feel like people, especially in the OG seasons, where they’re allowed to be flawed and even selfish at times. It makes them feel like authentic people.

Jay isn’t any exception to this, as even though I’m not a big fan of X’ing the other ninja out of the story, in some ways, it benefits from that to make Jay be developed in a position where he has to be more than just a joke. We see every step in that process. We see him accidentally hurt people’s feelings with his ‘perfect world’ mindset, we see him try to venture out of his real life, we see how that pains him, we see what the idea of obtaining the girl and the money can do to his head, we see him actually talk to Nya and start to respect her boundaries, we see him be pressured into a lot of things and yet still keep his gut knowing that his selfish wishes are going to screw everyone over. This season really does feel like it’s directly CALLING OUT Jay’s flaws up until this point, where while he was definitely still likeable, caring, and yes funny, he actively tried to push away the life he was raised in from complete embarrassment, he became paranoid about not getting his way, and does actively lie to people about his worth, even before Skybound. Needless to say, Jay is a person with some selfish desires, and this season actively tests that and what Jay actually needs in order to obtain his wishes. And it’s honestly way more beautiful than I originally gave credit for.

His relationship with Nya is also a high point in the season. I find it annoying that in this season, THE MOST, they thrust Nya into the ‘overcoming the damsel stereotype’ and the ‘feminist’ allegory, and whenever that’s on the nose, it’s obnoxious. But to be fair, Nya’s arc here isn’t COMPLETELY about that. She’s just trying to fit into her team and recognizing her own lack of skill in some areas that sometimes she just can’t control. That it’s okay to rely on your friends and you shouldn’t be scared to show your feelings. She’s not always right, and goes too far in some places, but her interactions with Jay feel way more real than I gave credit for. Like, oh my god, two people ACTUALLY TALK TO EACH OTHER. It’s one aspect of Jaya that makes me truly accept it, (even if I don’t gush over it 24/7 for personal reasons) the fact that Jay and Nya not only actually have conversations, but we actually get to see them in an ACTUAL relationship FROM THE START. This is a down point in their relationship, and even removing the love triangle bs that caused their falling out, they still want what’s best for each other even if they don’t fully understand what the other wants. They both need to put down what THEY want and listen to each other.

Jay wants to do everything for her, and Nya wants to feel as though she deserves it.

So these two characters and their relationship is GREAT this season...

Everything else about Skybound is mediocre at best.

Oh boy! The other ninja on this team seem to have relationships with the word ‘wish.’ I like now the season does NOT use the other ninja AT ALL or explores that AT ALL and forces them into being trapped into a magic sword for half of the season. (I mean, I guess Cole had some crisis with learning how to vanish, but like, who cares?) You could argue it’s a Jay centric season, so therefore the other ninja don’t NEED to be given anything to do, but in the other seasons, when it was focused on one ninja, the others STILL had stuff going on! They still had plotlines! Possession was a Morro focused story, but it still gave Nya an awakening arc, it still gave Kai a crisis, it still gave Cole a crisis, the other ninja were given stuff to do. Rebooted? Even if the love triangle was a bad sub plot, it GAVE the people involved stuff to do. Even season 2, a Lloyd coming of age story, even if it was filler the first half, STILL put in time to have one Zane focused episode. So Skybound has no excuse.

This is like The Tournament of Elements, only the characters who were eliminated from the games, were NOT heard from again, just trapped inside the magic staff until the last episode where they’re freed to fight in the climax. It’d be as if though once Cole was eliminated, he’s NOT heard from again UNTIL the penultimate episode of the season. What made Tournament of Elements a fan favorite was... for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that ALL the ninja had stuff to do and contributed to the story. To the point where it’s really hard to say who is the main character of the season, because the season takes so much time on everyone, that it makes it feel like this is a team of mcs, rather than a one man band. Which was also a theme of that season. We don’t usually get that anymore.

Obviously, having one ninja be the focus of a season is NOT a bad thing. It has worked before, like the recent Seabound. But in Skybound, it just feels like the other ninja don’t even exist, and that’s sad, especially when they introduce interesting plotlines for them at the very last minute before they’re X’d from the script. Zane losing Pixal, Lloyd’s wisdom issue, Kai wanting to see his father again, (though to be fair, the latter would be a focus in Hands Of Time) these could be interesting plotlines on ALL the ninja’s relationship with wishes, not just Jay. It would make Jay blatantly explaining the theme of ‘make your wishes happen, don’t just sit around and wish’ far more impactful.

But the season just doesn’t do that.

Nadakahn is also an inconsistent villain. The start of the season actually sets up a really compelling and even sympathetic antagonist with this Djinn. A pirate captain who abandoned his home and family to pursue a life of plunder, only to never be able to return home until year later to find your home and your father destroyed, thus wanting to avenge it all, is such a compelling story for him. It could potentially lead to a great contrast with Jay, as neither of them truly value what Nya needs until Jay learns to do so for her, it’d also be a great contrast that calls out Jay while also makes Nadakhan seem like a warning sign-

Oh wait, he’s just a selfish, greedy, ruthless bad guy who wants to be a genie king. 

He even kills his own crew, THE ONLY FAMILY HE HAS LEFT, for no reason other than they were getting in the way of him being king. Like, even if you’ve gone crazy or been corrupted by the power in your weapon, a Djinn this broken from his losses would NOT want to discard the few people keeping him sane. It’s just SUCH an assassination to what they set up for this villain, and it destroys any intrigue I have for him in the latter half of the season. 

Honestly, he just feels like a first draft of Harumi now that I think about it. They both had their lives destroyed by the ninja (passively) and were left with twisted morals and beliefs that they’re doing the right thing for Ninjago. It worked for Harumi, because it was built up to, fleshed out, and wasn’t assassinating her character in the process. It doesn’t work for Nadakhan.

The storyboarding and pacing of this season is just so jarring. It has worse storyboarding than Rebooted, which had less episodes to work with! Skybound feels like a completely different season halfway through.

That’s mostly because the actual plot doesn’t FEEL like it’s getting started until episode 4. Because we spend the first three episodes with a whole subplot where the Ninja are framed and become public enemies, which is ALREADY a stupid concept on paper that even in execution disregards any and ALL logic and common sense. Like, you expect me to believe that after these ninja have saved this city MULTIPLE TIMES, done all sorts of selfless deeds for the citizens, and have proven to be good and trustworthy saviors, would suddenly turn into criminals who steal from museums, and ALL of the citizens, LITERALLY ALL OF THE CITIZENS, would BELIEVE THAT INSTANTLY?!! I always hate this sort of plotline for it removing any common sense in ANYBODY! 

On top of that, this framing plotline is NOT even connected to the rest of Skybound! (I mean, except for the fact that they found out about the venom through Soto, but like, you could EASILY write it so that they cross paths with Soto in a different way) Nadakhan apparently can disguise himself as other people. But he’s not seen doing this again afterwards. On top of that, they literally say he cannot wish for himself! How did he even do this? Did someone on the streets randomly say “Oh I hate the ninja! I wish they would be locked up somewhere!”

Does the pacing get any better after that plotline is over with-?

No, not really actually.

It’s not as bad, but it’s still not good. We spend so little time on the Tiger Widow island that it’s crazy. And that place clearly has some creatures that could lead to hijinks, but once Jay gets kidnapped just half an episode after arriving, the others just rest on the beach trying to get out, with only ONE animal hijink. Honestly, I think the ‘My Dinner With Nadakhan’ episode would benefit BEAUTIFULLY if it was an episode with ONLY Jay. NO cuts to the other ninja, JUST JAY being a prisoner on the ship. The title of the episode already implies that this is a first person from Jay’s perspective, why not use that to it’s advantage and have this be an episode with only Jay and Nadakhan, to flesh out them both and their dynamic? And then the next episode we could have the other ninja take up three quarters of that episode in the process of getting off the island and saving Jay. It would honestly make Episode 6 of this season feel way more memorable in my opinion, and a lot more experimental. The Jay stuff is really compelling this season! Watching ninja talk about him while making a raft on a beach is just boring!

And then the climax just feels so rushed, and therefore clumsily put together. Episode 8 of season 6 is easily the best episode of this season, but then we only have two episodes left to actually stop Nadakhan and stop hiding. And by that point, all the ninja except for Jay are captured, so we have to have a whole rescue operation with outsider characters, who have done next to NOTHING all season to earn this moment, save the other ninja (just so they can do nothing) stop a wedding between Nya and Nadakhan, have two of his crewmates turn good suddenly (assuming because they don’t want to die) and actually fight off Nadakhan. ALL of which happens in just TWO EPISODES. There’s no room to breathe, and next to none of this stuff was actually built up to, or necessary in the long run. If we didn’t waste time with that framing plotline, this stuff could actually be built up to, especially for the ending, which...

Yeah. I can see why it’s controversial. Honestly, Nya’s ‘death’ is actually pretty sad, not gonna lie, but it also forces Jay to wish to undo the entire season. Thus, because of this ONE slip up, the entire season NEVER HAPPENED. Which basically means you don’t even have to watch this season AT ALL, and you don’t miss anything. I mean, I guess the one thing that makes Skybound relevant is that Jay and Nya make up and get back together, but really, you could easily let them have a single conversation in either season 5 or 7 where they apologize for the love triangle junk and kiss and make up. In fact, Hands of Time actually kinda does that for one scene.

Overall, For Jay or Jaya fans, I can see why you guys love this season so much and why you want it to be recognized and appreciated better. I just can’t relate.

I really wish I could!

I wish everything about the season was on the same level of brilliance as Jay’s character arc and his relationship with Nya. I wish the other ninja weren’t X’d out out of the plot and actually had stuff to do that correlates with the season’s theme about wishes. I wish Nadakhan remained a sympathetic antagonist who is an intriguing foil to Jay. I wish the framing plotline didn’t exist. I wish the pacing wasn’t terrible. I wish the ending actually made the season feel like an impactful story point on the franchise and not just a filler fever dream. 

But as is, Skybound is just an okay season.

But hey, it’s still better than season 11.

[jadechamber]

A different analysis of what a romantic relationship between beidou and ningguang would be like:

So Beiguang is a very popular ship because several of their voicelines and character stories mention each other. I don't know if mihoyo will ever expand on them to this extent (maybe in story quests, I can see it happening in Beidou's) but frankly, I see Ningguang and Beidou's theoretical non-platonic relationship to be a LOT more complicated than just "oh they love each other/they are girlfriends/they want to date each other." Most of this post is just a bunch of stuff about their personalities and thoughts about each other, the last two paragraph sums up why their motives would affect their relationship. (also spoilers for the "a new star approaches" quest)

First of all, in Ningguang's Story #5, it says that because she's charming and rich and famous, many people have tried to court her, from "accomplished business men to renowned sea captains." This almost certainly is a nod to Beidou, as she is also talked about in the story #4. The rest of #5 then goes onto say basically, no matter how much she is pursued, Ningguang will never actually take up a lover, because she has no love for finite things and will never be bound by them. Mora and the Jade Chamber is her only true loves as they are a symbol for her wealth and power in Liyue. She considers the chamber to be "infinite" because she wants it to stretch all across of teyvat. We see that both of these things are not true during the archon quest "A New Star Approaches." She sacrifice the very material jade chamber to save Liyue, because deep in her heart she cares about the people the most (this is also hinted at before where she is described as being different than the rest of Qixing because she enjoys interacting among the common people and being a philanthropist.) We don't have anymore interaction with her after this so far, but this could be the turning point in her character arc and development, even if she does have plans to rebuild the chamber. I will get to why this could factor into her relationship with Beidou later. (sidenote, I also feel like the whole jade chamber stuff is an allegory to celestia but we just dont have enough info on either yet).

As for Beidou, in her Story #3, she obviously has a strong relationship with Ningguang, who has tried over and over to punish her for her pirating by fining her, but Beidou simply always pays up and keeps doing what she does, seemingly having no care for mora. And so Ningguang chose her to do "her dirty work" for her. Ningguang also thinks she is very reliable while other people don't. But at the same time, Beidou is adamant about being "her own boss," and in her first voice line about Ningguang, she also says that her loyalty lies with her ship and crew, not with the "Qixing." This makes sense as it's a common trope in media for sailors and pirates to only have love for the vast open sea and their crew, which is basically their family. They can't be tied down by their potential girlfriends stuck on the shore. A sailor npc in liyue is just like this. In her other stories and voicelines, it is evident Beidou is very tied her crew and very rarely steps foot on land.

So Ningguang and Beidou have very different personalities. One is more "refined" and private while the other is rambunctious and straightforward. One is obsessed with Mora while the other one doesn't seem to care about it that much or even using it to buy a brand new ship. One has, or had rather, a floating palace in the sky overlooking the ground while the other has a ship floating on the water. But at the same time, these are exactly what make Ningguang and Beidou alike in a way. They are both tied to a large material object and prioritize things over more intimate relationships that most people wouldn't. They both live lifestyles most people couldn't or wouldn't want to.

Basically, they are both wildly independent and don't want to be tied down to a lover. Even if Beidou tried to charm Ningguang for awhile, it was probably for superficial, non-serious reasons (like her other suitors). So if they were ever interested in each other, it might be a "friends-with-benefits" type of thing. If they ever expressed genuine feelings and romantic attraction towards each other, it would be a really complicated matter because they both know, deep down inside, that their duties and the depths of their hearts lie with other people and things. Especially for Beidou, I can't imagine she would ever want to settle down with Ningguang on land for good. Ningguang might be a different case because like I said, it seems her character arc could go in the direction where she realizes that the jade chamber is finite as well, but liyue and humanity will always continue (as long as she is alive to see it at least) so she might be able to learn to stick with beidou.

Either way, there would still be a lot of angst about wanting to be together but also truly having different priorities/having different "loves." (the sea, her ship, and her crew for beidou, the jade chamber, mora, and the land for ningguang). They would wish it could work, but also know it simply couldn't.

[nikkiwriteswords]

Hi! I would love to hear your thoughts/predictions/hopes for s3, now that we got the episode titles :D

Hey Nora!! Let me go grab my tua theory hat real quick. Spoiler alert, it looks exactly like the umbrella hat on the 3 right here:

Full disclosure, I've only got like a pinky toe in the tua fandom right now, but I'm still going to see what BS I can spin from these titles.

1. MEET THE FAMILY. The description on imdb is "The siblings get to know some more of the 43 children in an alternate timeline." So, I think this is pretty self-explanatory. Netflix likes to start things off with a bang, so s3 of TUA will probably be no different: we'll probably get a vague flashforward/flash-sideways to a "what if" scenario that will make sense by the last few episodes, and the rest of the episode will be sowing seeds for the s3 plot. The big question is, what family are we meeting? I think this episode will revolve around themes of family (no-brainer) and redefining the relationships between our Umbrella siblings in light of the season 2 finale, as well as their new Sparrow 'replacements'. To that end, initial Sparrow sibling parallels will be presented and subsequently complicated in this first episode. I also predict we'll see varying reactions to this alternate Reginald, as the Umbrella siblings are thrust into an outsider perspective that follows on from season 2.

2. WORLD'S BIGGEST BALL OF TWINE. This is going to be a multi-layered metaphor. I can feel it. It will no doubt refer to the plot that's about to unfold (is it an outside threat to both parties - the Umbrellas and Sparrows - from, say, the Commission, or is it more to do with the two rival Academies?), but I wonder if it also refers to the Wizard of Oz type scenario the Umbrella siblings find themselves in: they aren’t in Kansas anymore. (But you know what is in Kansas? The world's current biggest ball of twine.) Also kind of want to see Klaus knitting again in this ep - perhaps as a way to subtly re-address his ongoing addiction issues, especially now Ben is gone.

3. POCKET FULL OF LIGHTNING. This probably has to do with powers. Sparrow powers, Umbrella powers. There'll be a lot of new flexes in this season, so who this refers to is anyone's guess.

4. KUGELBLITZ. Here's where it starts to get interesting, because this title carries forward the subject of lightning from the last one. According to a very quick internet search, kugelblitz literally means "ball lightning" in German, and refers to both a) a glorified WW2 tank designed to take out aircraft (a certified Big Boi), and b) a theoretical black hole made from light/radiation rather than matter. So this is absolutely going to be a new, unseen power - probably from the Sparrows. Hopefully from Christopher because a cube executing a move named after a sphere just makes me chuckle. Ah, fun with shapes... But in addition, this power is probably going to pack a huge, debilitating punch to whatever narrative is underway at this point in the plot. I'll bet money that whoever wields this power is the tank character in their party or they are after this at least.

5. KINDEST CUT. This throws me back to the barber shop meta, I'm not gunna lie. Someone's going to get hurt, either physically or emotionally, and it's going to be the lesser of two evils. If it's a follow through on the barber metaphor, then Reggie will be the one to orchestrate it. Or, in a surprise twist, will he be the one gTetting hurt or being silenced? (Remember that cutthroat allegory that chases the siblings through the first season, particularly Allison and Klaus. It was about becoming voiceless.) 6.MARIGOLD. Big shout out to this post for spreading the word on the marigold symbolism. I'm pretty sure this will be Reginald backstory, which ties in with the creation of the Umbrella Academy. Also, because I'm a sucker for flower symbolism and reading into things, consider that marigolds:

a) fall into two families, the calendula which means "little clock" and the tagetes, which is named after the Etruscan prophet Tages. The Etruscans believed heavily in predestination - some events are set in stone, and cannot be changed. (Consider the way the apocalypse seems to always come for one set of siblings...) b) are named as such colloquially because they were offered in place of money to the Virgin Mary. (More divine imagery, and reference to a pure mother figure...) They are Mary’s gold. So maybe it’s a reference to Reginald’s wife, which would fit with the flashback scene we see in 1x10.  c) are a flower of duality. They have strong connections with the sun and resurrection, yet the marigold is thought to be a flower of grief because it blooms in autumn. Again, think about that flashback in the first season. At the end of the world and a wife dying, there was the promise of rebirth. d) It's also a very common flower. Remember, there's actually 43 siblings out there. We've only met 14.

Also Netflix loves to do this thing around the halfway point (usually episode 5/6) in a season they're producing. They'll switch up the narrative with a twist or turn that provides a new perspective. 7.AUF WEIDERSEHEN. Once again, a German connection. And, obviously, a goodbye. Considering the last season focused on Kennedy, are we going to get some earlier Cold War time-travel shenanigans? Or maybe WW2? I think Blackman has said something about the Berlin Wall, which is interesting. A country divided... Umbrellas and Sparrows allegory? But as an aside, I'm also kinda lowkey hoping it's a nod to Auf Weidersehen, Pet. If you don't know the show, here's the wiki summary for the first season:

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet is a British comedy-drama television programme about seven British construction workers who leave the United Kingdom to search for employment overseas. They find work on a German building site in Düsseldorf but despite promises of hostel accommodation, are forced to live in a small hut that reminds them of a World War II POW camp. The rest of the series is driven by the interactions and growing friendships between the various characters.

In episode seven, three of the “Magnificent Seven” visit an intercontinental hotel. Just saying. If s3 was to go this route, my money would be on Luther, Diego and Five getting up to shenanigans in this one. I miss 125 shenanigans.😢

8.WEDDING AT THE END OF THE WORLD. Honestly, I’m holding out hope that one of our fave siblings gets married. I feel like that’s a trap though... Actually I feel like it might actually be a trap. As in, this is when the rising action really kicks it up a notch. But also remember the title of 1x01: We Only See Each Other At Weddings and Funerals. Maybe the siblings get split up, possibly in episode 3/4, and they’re trying to reunite through episodes 5-7. Also thinking about hotels and apocalypses...  There’s something very fatalistic about these titles so far. I have a feeling that the B-plot or the subtext is going to reveal a lot more about Reginald’s history and the destruction of his world.

9. SIX BELLS. This makes me think of church bells, which is some nice continuity with the wedding of the last title. But church bells are rung for all sorts of reasons - as a call to worship, or in celebration or mourning, or to tell the time. (Thinking back to those marigolds suddenly.) But why six? Now I’m thinking of bell ringing (change ringing), and the way different bells have different cord lengths to control the time of their chimes. It’s a highly mathematical process. Will this episode be Five’s time to shine? Will he coordinate his siblings through a large attack? 10. OBLIVION. Does anything even need to be said about this one? Hotel Oblivion baby ✌✌ Any further theorising would require more knowledge of the coming plot tbh.

Edit: I wrote most of this at 2am, so I’ve just tidied it up a little. Thank you for the ask, Nora! This was fun to think about. 

[eloquentgifs]

DWJ Reading Project. Part II

As I said here, my 2021 resolution is gonna be READING EVERY DIANA WYNNE JONES BOOK I CAN FIND, and due to my love of making lists and taking notes, I’ve decided keeping track of this reading project here in this post, which I’ll keep updated as I make progress. It’s mostly for my own pleasure, but maybe it helps someone who wants to give it a try to this amazing writer and doesn’t know where to start.

Part I (1970 - 1976 & The Dalemark Quartet)

Part III (1984 - 1992 & Land of Ingary Series)

- The Chrestomanci Series (DWJ’s suggested reading order): · Charmed Life (1977): I couldn’t fully enjoy it because the main premise of the story is the codependency Cat has with his AWFUL sister, and how her abuse shapes everything on his life. He has such a low self esteem and needs so much a hug, it just breaks my heart every page. In any case, the worldbuilding, the magic system and the general vibe are just amazing. If it keeps like this, I totally understand why so many people love this series

· The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988): Ok, this is the good shit. I don’t even know how to describe it in few words. Let’s say that there’s also a kid being abused by his relatives, and there were parts where I wanted to throw the book against the wall, but Christopher is such a fascinating character to read about that you just can’t stop. And this universe, OMFG. Also, is the Asheth thing some kind of homage to The Tombs of Atuan?

· Conrad’s Fate (2005): I’ve binge-watched Downton Abbey a few months ago, so finding out this book is basically DA with magic was just a delight. Christopher and his new BFF Conrad arrive to this big ass manor to work as lackeys, while both having secret agendas of their own. There’s everything one would expect and more: Rich Family Drama, Upstairs/Downstaris antics, crime solving, forbidden loves, scifi-ish reality bugs, and of course abusive relatives (at this point, if I were DWJ’s uncle I'd think she was trying to tell me something). I read it in a day and a half. The only negative thing I can say is that I missed Christopher POV of things. 

· Witch Week (1982): This is about a bunch of pupils and teachers in a deppresing boarding school. Everyone is a little bit of an asshole at some point, but it's understandable because this world must be the worst in Series 12. Not only they keep burning witches in modern times, but witches aren’t even a minority, so you can imagine the amount of hypocrisy. It’s interesting how the witch thing can be considered a metaphor for lgtb kids: everyone is scared of being called a witch because they’ll get bullied (and maybe arrested and burnt), but every time a character find out they’re in fact a witch, they just feel confident and happy because they’ve found themselves, so they can’t even hide it. Also, there are more secret witches around than they would expect.

· The Magicians of Caprona (1980): Two families of famous spell-makers keep hating each other through generations, to the point they put Caprona, the city-state where they live, in danger. Sometimes the Italian stereotypes were too much and took me out of the story, but not gonna lie, I really loved the opera spells, the large families living all together in a big house and being loving and supportive with each other, and BENVENUTO.

· The Pinhoe Egg (2006): This one is also about confronted families of magic users, but this time they’re in the villages near to Chrestomanci Castle, and no one really knows there’s a feud because their spells are based on herbs and plants, not in singing opera on the streets. Cat comes back and shares the spotlight with Marianne Pinhoe, and as always I would love more Christopher Chant, but I can´t really complain.

·  Mixed Magics (2000): Four short stories settled in the Chrestomanci Universe, more or less linked to the main characters. My favourite is the third one, Carol Oneir’s Hundredth Dream, mostly because the idea of a kid selling her dreams as stories is brilliant, but also because I loved that little moment where Christopher reviews Carol’s dreams and everything he says is the kind of critique that Diana always received on her books.

- The Homeward Bounders (1981): There are some misterious powerful people who seem to be addicted to Age of Empires, but they play it using actual worlds and actual people. When someone from these worlds find this out, they got exiled and doomed to jump from world to world, only able to stop when they manage to get back to their original world.  The first act remind me a little of those stories from Arabian Nights where the main character keeps arriving to weird islands and getting into the most bizarre troubles but always manages to survive. Due to life circunstances I couldn't focus 100% on the reading, but I did enjoy the characters, mostly Helen, and Jamie eventually grew on me too. I must confess I got kinda lost with the final explanation about the game and the nature of this multiverse and what it's Real and how Hope acts literally as an anchor that keeps the system going (although I find the notion really interesting as an allegory, and once again a really cool message for kids: hope can be your prison)

- The Time of the Ghost (1981): Ok, this one was a dark trip. I can’t really say that much because everything is a spoiler. Let’s say it’s about an amnesic ghost who’s drawn to their family, and there’s a lot of sadness, pagan blood rituals (one chapter in particular has A LOT OF BLOOD for my taste), abusive relationships, and a little bit of the theme in the previous book: the negative side of hope that makes us cling to things in an unhealthy way. Also, I’ve read this book is kinda autobiographical, and it explains so much about the way DWJ used to depict families in her books, it’s heartbreaking. It has its moments of fun and sweet melancholy tho. It’s never 100% depressing with Diana. I think that’s what make it feel so realistic.

[kitkatopinions]

Blake has nothing going on for her now or in the future except Yang and to a lesser extent her team. These are the consequences of bungling the faunus storyline and replacing it with nothing. They've cleaned their hands of Blake's personality and goals. Like you said ship bait is all that's left.

Blake is honestly the worst treated character amongst Team RWBYJNR + Oscar imo, and tbh, I think even Qrow gets a better rep than her. And that’s saying something, because Qrow has been so badly handled.

The worst thing about this for me is the wasted potential. Blake was really wrapped up in their horribly bungled racism/faunus allegory even more so than Weiss. There are obviously problems with how CRWBY continues to try to use the racism/faunus allegory in some problematic ways rather than dropping it completely, without seeming to put in any effort to actually fix it. Blake’s story being so wholly wrapped up in the faunus racism arc had made her character problematic (for instance, she looks hypocritical for being totally against reactive violence in the case of the White Fang, but is training to be a Huntress and is just fine ripping through White Fang members.) Blake has a lot of good to her character from volumes 1-5 if you can separate her from the bungled allegory however (although I totally understand when people just can’t do that.)

Removing Blake from the faunus/racism arc doesn’t have to leave her with nothing as a blank sheet that must be built from the ground up, her character should’ve stayed the same. Blake’s base character at the start of the show that remains pretty dang consistent for five seasons is cynical, stubborn, defensive, active, passionate, focused, someone who has more life experience and a bit of a darker worldview than her friends, someone who has a hard time making friends anyway, a fairly quiet, independent girl with a tendency to run when things get to be too much and tends to self-destruct and push people away, but is still brave and selfless, with a moral code she believes in (although misused, a character that believes things like ‘stealing is always wrong’ is not an uninteresting one. Blake’s moral code was just used badly.) Blake also has a more subdued way of expressing her affections. A few things about Blake - like her tendency to run, many of her insecurities, pushing people away, and self-destructing - started to get worked through and addressed in an actually meaningful way during volumes 4 and 5 (although her resolution with Yang was wonky, but I could talk more about that in a different post.) However, in good narratives, these traits don’t just go away because they start getting worked through. For instance, just because Zuko in ATLA turns to the good side and starts addressing his trauma and working through his anger issues doesn’t mean he isn’t snippy, hotheaded, and prone to outbursts anymore. And for another instance, just because Yang starts trying to control her temper doesn’t mean she’s no longer prone to anger based reactions, snapping, being defensive, and getting into fights.

While Ruby, Weiss, and Yang read as more consistent even if there characters are going in a bad direction - Ruby’s always been reckless and considered her team the end all, her character now is the incredibly frustrating result of this never getting checked or worked through - but Blake is severely lacking in many of her old traits.

Blake has become an incredibly passive character who can’t stand up for herself and tends to just go along with whatever Ruby wants, and is more than willing to steal and lie and let others steal and lie. She’s lacking in passion, even her supposed stronger moments carrying a more passive tone. She relies on others to save her, both by relying on Yang and Weiss to defend her from mean anti faunus people, and constantly relying on others in fights, not able to land hits and begging Ruby to help her when she’s left without Yang to do her fighting for her. She doesn’t make choices herself, literally in the ‘will we launch Amity or defend Mantle’ conversation, Blake is one of the only people who isn’t shown out and out picking a side. She’s no longer cynical and no longer seems to mind waiting around - telling her younger, naïve teammate who’s spent hours doing nothing that it’s okay that she’s been doing nothing and hasn’t really helped anyone because Blake knows she’ll do something eventually and admires Ruby’s optimism. Blake no longer is independent enough to even be temporarily left by Yang without reacting like she did something she has to be guilty and ashamed of.

Like, what is this? Seriously, what is it? They didn’t even fight and they have her reacting like this.

It’s like the writers decided when they dropped her faunus arc that they could now create a new character from the ground up. A passive, supportive, co-dependent, damsel in distress character who can give the other girls a leg up and fuel their more compelling arcs. You know what? May isn’t Maid Marian, Blake is. She’s Disney’s Maid Marian. She’s the encouraging love interest/friend figure who can be jokey sometimes, occasionally tries her hand at convincing other people to do things, and to prove she’s not totally helpless, gets a hit in every now and again.

Look, maybe I’m being a little over dramatic, but that’s how she feels when you compare her to the other characters. Even Ruby, sitting around drinking tea and crying on staircases until the plot falls into her lap two different times, is a much more active character than Blake.

The closest CRWBY have gotten to making Blake an active character was when they had her react in anger to Neo knocking Yang into the void, but again, it didn’t amount to anything.

The writers could have made Blake the same character she was before while still deviating from her White Fang plot. She could have continued to be an independent, somewhat snarky, brave, passionate girl with more of a cynical worldview and a tendency to overwork herself in her hurry to get real work done that would help make the world a better place, while she tried to push past her more pessimistic tendencies and her struggles to connect with others in order to be there for them, because she believes in them and their purpose and herself. And you know what? I’m just gonna say it... That version of Blake, V 1-5 Blake, is the version that works best with Yang! Like don’t get me wrong, Yang and this new character have some cute moments and it’s... Lacking, but it’s at least something. But Yang and Blake as she was could actually be a compelling ship, they could fit well together. And Blake as she used to be could’ve interacted really well with the Atlas arc and the story in season six. She could’ve related to Ozpin when they find out about their past, she could’ve been on Qrow’s side when it came to stealing the plane in Argus and have to be convinced, she could’ve been trying to talk the Ace Ops into being reasonable, she could’ve been at Robyn’s rally, ready to help out in the fight against Jacques and passing out flyers, only to get angry and upset when she hears how Robyn talks to Marrow, she could’ve been on May’s side when May told them they needed to take action, she could’ve been right there with Yang telling Salem what’s what, or if they had to split the two (which I’m more than fine with,) they could’ve had Blake with the Mantle crew, but stay behind to help civilians, or they could’ve had had leave the manor with May. And if they were going to try and make Blake guilty for a fight, there should’ve been an established conflict where Blake and Yang disagree about Ironwood, and then that leads into a wider conflict about who was wrong and who was right. I don’t know, guys, I’m not a professional.

All I know is that Blake doesn’t feel like herself anymore and the writers won’t give her anything. It’s frustrating. This was kind of a vent post, but... You know what, I can vent about it. It feels like the writers are doing this on purpose at this point.

[aion-rsa]

Why Wonder Woman’s Real Origin Story Lies in First Wave Feminism

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This holiday season, one of the few bright spots for families unable to go to theaters—and even those who did—was Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984. An ambitious and vibrantly colored celebration of heroism in all its forms, including those that don’t end in fistfights, it’s a superhero movie that’s won as many fans as detractors. But while basking in the new spectacle is well and good, it’s also worth considering how it came to be. For even in this HBO Max tentpole, one can still see how the feminist movement of the early 20th century is grafted into the very DNA of the Wonder Woman character, her origin, and even her most contentious iconography… something that rarely gets acknowledged in the broader comic fan community.

The character of Wonder Woman was created by Dr. William Moulton Marston in 1941. A psychologist with an eclectic career, Marston went from inventing the lie detector test while still an undergraduate at Harvard in 1914 to being essentially blacklisted from academia by the age of 33. But of course his most enduring legacy came afterward; it came when he engineered a superheroine intentionally designed to be a great role model for girls and boys.

As Marston famously said, “Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world.” However, the actual political and sociological influences on Marston and the women who helped him create Diana are often overlooked, even as the character has come to dominate pop culture.

Marston, rather infamously nowadays, lived a polyamorous lifestyle with his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston, and a second partner named Olive Byrne. Byrne is often credited in the 21st century as the inspiration for Wonder Woman (instead of a wedding ring, Marston gave her two bracelets that are identical to those worn by Diana Prince). Yet it is very likely that Holloway Marston had just as much influence. After all, she was a lover of Greek antiquity and until her death kept a book of Sappho’s poetry from the island of Lesbos within reach.

Still, it is Byrne’s influence that historian and esteemed Harvard professor, Jill Lepore, most untangles in her riveting portrait of the Marston family, The Secret History of Wonder Woman. Lepore, who holds the title of David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of History at Cambridge, zeroed in on Byrne’s relation to the early feminist movement at the turn of the century and its impact on Marston, recasting Wonder Woman as a bridge between the suffragist movement and the generation who grew up reading Wonder Woman comics before fighting for the “women’s liberation movement.”

Olive Byrne was born in 1904, the daughter of Ethel Byrne and the niece of Margaret Sanger, the latter of whom founded what became known as Planned Parenthood (Margaret also coined the term “birth control”). In 1916, Ethel and Margaret opened in Brooklyn the first United States birth control clinic, and received jail time at a workhouse for their trouble. There Ethel nearly starved to death while going on a hunger strike. During this time, a 12-year-old Olive Byrne was being raised in a Catholic orphanage because her father and grandparents had died, and Ethel Byrne was not interested in raising her daughter.

Despite their absence, Olive held her mother and aunt’s politics in high regard. And those ideals would reverberate in Wonder Woman comics too. They were thoughts informed by the circle of New York intellectuals and early 20th century socialists Margaret and Ethel interacted with in Greenwich Village. Among their contemporaries were Upton Sinclair, Emma Goldman, and a very notable Lou Rogers.

Lou was actually named Annie Lucasta Rogers, but because she was told she couldn’t get work as a woman cartoonist, she initially submitted her work as “Lou” via the mail. Her historic drawings of women being able to finally break off the shackles of patriarchy by using the right to vote are echoed throughout Marston’s Wonder Woman comics, just as much as the author’s own fascination with male and female domination and submission.

In the 1910s, feminists and suffragist literature was rife with Amazonian imagery that would live again in the pages of DC. For example, Max Eastman published in 1913 a book of verse called Child of the Amazons and Other Poems. In it, an Amazonian girl must confess to her queen that she has fallen in love with a man. Yet Amazonian law forbids any warrior to marry or bear children until she has produced significant change in the world. Thus the young Amazon abandons her romance, stating she won’t seek love again until “the far age when men shall cease / their tyranny.” This is echoed in Wonder Woman comics as Diana repeatedly, and flatly, refuses to marry Steve Trevor.

In one classic Marston story, a dopey Steve whines, “Angel, when are we going to be married?” Diana coolly fires back, “When evil and injustice vanish from the Earth!”

More appropriate still is Inez Haynes Gillmore’s Angel Island. Published in 1914, after Gillmore co-founded the National College Equal Suffrage League, Angel Island envisions five American sailors who are shipwrecked on an island that’s crawling with “super-humanly beautiful” women with wings. Driven mad by lust, the men capture the women and cut off their wings, leaving them helpless as none has ever walked with their feet. But eventually one of the angels leads a violent revolution “with the splendid, swinging gait of the Amazon.”

This too echoes early Wonder Woman stories of the heroine being chained or rendered powerless by men who would wish to dominate her in every sense of the word. It is, after all, the fate her mother Hippolyta had to free the Amazons from in bloody battle.

Men trying to chain Diana or rob her of her powers by either bounding her bracelets together or removing them was also a common occurrence in ‘40s Wonder Woman comics, particularly those authored by  Marston. In one memorable Marston story, a man unaware that Diana Prince is Wonder Woman even chains her to a stove so she cannot leave the kitchen. Diana retorts with a smirk, “How thrilling! I see you’re chaining me to the cookstove. What a perfect caveman idea!”

The year of 1915, meanwhile, saw the publication of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, another feminist tale of an uncharted utopia of only women. For thousands of years, this lost paradise’s women have reproduced asexually, not unlike how Diana is born to Hippolyta in the comics after the Amazonian Queen sculpts her out of clay. These women of “herland” know nothing of fear, war, or even basic concepts of property. Unfortunately, three male American students find them and fall in love, each marrying one woman. But then each is thunderstruck that they cannot consummate their relationship whenever they want. In this thinly veiled allegory about the need for birth control, two of the men are banished when one tries to rape his wife, and another expresses confusion as to how rape can be a crime in marriage.

“The women [of Herland] are Amazons because, in the nineteen-teens, reporters routinely used the name to describe suffragists,” Lepore said in a recent article in The New Yorker. “So did suffragists themselves in both the U.K. and the U.S., including Elizabeth Holloway.”

The writers of these stories were also contemporaries and even sometimes neighbors of Olive’s mother, Ethel. And just as Olive helped introduce a worshipful admiration for her aunt Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood to the Marstons, with whom she built an unorthodox home, so too did she seemingly inform (along with Holloway Marston’s love for antiquity) what became the Wonder Woman origin story, which was recently given new life by Jenkins and Gal Gadot in 2017’s Wonder Woman.

There is of course the question of whether the new movies fully embrace these legacies. Lepore, for one, is skeptical, writing in 2020 that “Patty Jenkins seems to be interested in history… But she’s apparently not at all interested in the history of women: it’s got no place in either of her two ‘Wonder Woman’ films, even though they both take place during major inflection points in that history.”

However, the hard-won victories of that history, and how Marston seeded the ideals of its first wave into his comics, is still inextricably linked to Gadot’s Wonder Woman. We see it when she stands with a near divinity over Chris Pine on a beach in the 2017 movie, unaware and undisturbed by the preconceived limits a patriarchal society would place on her; and we see it when Wonder Woman can defeat villainy and greed in Wonder Woman 1984 without having to throw a single punch.

So for whatever bondage iconography that also clearly seeped its way into Marston’s creation, there is a definite through-line of a century’s worth of feminist ideals that connect the fantasies of the suffrage movement to the icon of female empowerment that the women’s liberation movement claimed Wonder Woman to be when she was placed on the cover of Gloria Steinem’s Ms. magazine in 1972. And a hundred years later, it lives on like Amazons and angels on the big screen.

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[thatguyniles]

Blog Post #1

Out of all the films we had to watch, Mid 90’s was the most interesting to me. I’m interested in learning to skate and the retro look has always been cool to me. It was also one of the only films to hold my full attention to the point where I rewatched scenes for my own pleasure. Long story short this movie is lit. One of the characters I most identified with would be Ray. 

In the skate shop, Ray explains how it is being black because Fourth Grade asks if it’s cool. Spoiler it’s pretty cool not gonna lie. Ray gives an example that I wasn’t expecting from the movie. He says when they skate in Beverly Hills, they already get looked at some type of way and people say they’re vandalizing and stuff, but it feels like it comes down harder on him. After hearing him say that it was apparent that I would probably relate to him the most since i’m a young black man, and have also felt that some instances the consequences are harder for myself. 

When Ruben is explaining to Stevie everyone's nicknames, he says that Ray doesn’t need one because he’s cool without one. I feel a similar way about nicknames. I don’t need a nickname to feel different or cooler because A) I’m already cool, and B) I feel like my name is cool and having a nickname would take away from who I am. Stevie also says that ray is cooler without a nickname. Ray’s friends obviously see him in a positive light, which is the same with mine (I hope). They’ve told me I’m a cool dude, even though I don’t see anything I do that makes me seem any cooler than the average guy. If I had to take a guess It’s probably how I carry myself, like Ray I come off as a chill, laid back kinda guy and I also have a knack for clowning on people. We both also question authority, whether it be demands or rules that are set in place.

 When Ray and his squad are posted up on the steps of a school, a security guard walks up and tells them that they gotta skidaddle before they get their asses beat. Of course in classic teen fashion they say no and start roasting his ass lmao. Ray and the guard get into an F-you match and Ray says “you smokin cigarettes on school property” and the guard says Jesus smokes cigarettes. Ray immediately claps back with “what kinda cigarettes he smoke”. The guard, caught off guard (pun intended) stumbles over his words and storms off. Long story short I’m a smart ass.

There are three common themes in the films we watched and they are, drugs, acceptance and alcohol. In Mid 90’s Stevie smokes cigarettes with Ruben because he wants to fit in. Ruben saying he should be more like him because he smokes, skates, and dips his pen in someone else’s ink *wink*probably gave Stevie more incentive to try and fit in within the group of skaters especially since it appears that Stevie is younger than Ruben is. In KIDS Telly steals a 40 and drinks it throughout the next scene. Later Telly is offered Whip its in one of his homeboys crib and does one, immediately feeling the high. Back to Mid 90’s, Fuck Shit gives Ruben and Stevie some of his ADD medication, much to the dislike of Ray. In the next scene the group goes to a party and Stevie is seen smoking weed with a girl he met that night. These themes are relatable to youth culture because teens and young adults are at a vulnerable point socially in life. 

Teens usually try to fit into groups that they see as popular or successful at that point in time.They try to feel accepted because they themselves are unsure of what they want to do or who they are. Humans are social creatures so not fitting in any group hits us hard mentally.

Now the part I’ve been looking forward to the most, a new soundtrack for Mid 90’s! I’m about to give you the greatest soundtrack ever just so you know. 

The first song I thought of was “There They Go”, a South african rapper named  Nasty C. This song in my opinion fits well in the scene where everyone is skating at the courthouse and the police arrive. Everyone scatters and I think the name of the song fits the situation well. The song just sounds like good chase music to me.

 Next is “Dr Birds”, by rap collective Griselda. This song fits more as an instrumental in the scene where Fuck Shit accidently hits Stevie’s older brother with his board during a trick. The two then stand face to face and Fuck Shit punks him making him walk off. The song gives off a standoff vibe and has a bell sound that reminds me of the standoffs from Dragonball Z right before a fight.

“Fubu” by rapper Royce Da 5’9” featuring Conway the machine comes to mind as soon as I saw the party scene. The song is from Royce’s album “The Allegory”, and like always he come with bars. The beat gives off a mischievous and sneaky vibe that I think would go along well with the low lit lighting and the weed they smoke since obviously they wouldn’t want anyone to know what’s happening here.

“Wish You Well” by rapper Amir Obe would fit perfectly during the scene when Stevie comes home high off the drugs he took before and after the party and runs from his brother around the house. The song has an intensity that isn’t too overpowering for the scene, even if only the beat is used.

“Kingdom Come” by Raury played in the back of my head when Ruben and Stevie were talking about nicknames. The song reminds me of togetherness with its calm mood and slower tempo. I think it works well when characters are connecting or expanding their relationship between one another.

“I’m Good Luv, Enjoy” by rapper Aaron May is a song I personally love to cruise to, so it’s only fitting I have it play during the scene when the group of skaters (and Stevie) are riding their boards down the street after Ray suggest they go skateboarding at the skate shop. The song would continue to play during the security guard interaction. The song has a good bounce along with the lyrics “I ain’t got time for you, get up out my face” work well because Ray gets in the guards face and clowns him which makes him leave. It reminds me of high school when me and my friends would crack jokes on the security guard at lunch.

“PTSD” by rap label Dreamville is a much better song to play when Ray and Stevie skate after his mother tells him he can’t hang with the skaters anymore. After his mom does her motherly duty Ray and Stevie have a heart to heart, and ray opens up about his younger brother who passed away. The song that actually plays during this scene is ass I’m not gonna lie. They needed to have me select the songs, Jonah Hill should cut me a check I’m just saying.

“Almeda” by Solonge is more of a joke selection. Don’t get me wrong the song is good, but if it were to play when Stevie downs a 40, that would be hilarious! Think about it as Steve chugs the bottle Solonge goes “pour my drank, sip, sip, sip,” lmao pure gold right there.

“Y U DON’T LOVE ME (MISS AMERIKKKA)” by Joey Bada$$ would play a little after Stevie gets drunk to Solonge. A lot happens in this scene and the trippy sound the beat has would complement Stevie and his impaired state especially when he gets into a fight with Ruben at a skatepark.

The final song I couldn’t decide between “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” by Nas, or “93 ‘Till Infinity” by Souls Of Mischief. These songs would play during Fourth Grade’s movie he was filming throughout the whole movie. The song that plays in the movie is an old school hip hop record, so I figured why not keep the similar sound, especially since he named the film wait for it….Mid 90’s.

You probably want to listen to this marvelous and swaggy soundtrack, oh what’s this a link to the soundtrack where did that come from. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0eFLRkG3KEgyMbWTGcJefn?si=RBLAKIsrTFqDLrsaLG_PSQ

[rwby-redux]

Preface

RWBY is the breakthrough anime web series created by the late Monty Oum of Rooster Teeth. Originally teased on November 5th, 2012, and officially debuted July 18th, 2013, the series follows the journeys of four young women enrolled in an academy that trains monster-slaying warriors known as Huntsmen. Set in the fictional world of Remnant, the story initially focuses on the surface-level plot of fighting against humanity’s ancient adversary, the ever-present Creatures of Grimm; over time, it becomes apparent that things aren’t what they seem, as the cast slowly begins to connect a string of heists committed by a criminal syndicate with the violent acts of a terrorist cell. The series is aired weekly on Rooster Teeth’s website, with its main arcs spanning 12 – 16 episodes per volume. In the years following the show’s initial release, RWBY has spawned numerous merchandise and related media, including two spin-off shows, multiple side-stories published as mangas, two standalone books, three mobile games, a behind-the-scenes artbook, and OSTs for every volume to date.

As of Volume 7 there are 98 episodes in total with a collective runtime of 18:52:00, or approximately 1,132 minutes, with more episodes and side content underway.

At best, they’re visually interesting; at worst, they’re disappointing.

Let me take a second to backtrack before the lynch mob starts to sharpen its pitchforks. The series deserves much of the praise that it’s gotten. RWBY was the first American-produced anime to be released in Japan (and if you’re a fan of anime, you know how insane those words sound). The 3D models and animation from Volume 4 onward are breathtakingly stunning, and even before the show made the leap from Poser to Maya, the fight sequences managed to be equally creative and entertaining. The show was nominated for and received multiple Streamy Awards, and was awarded Best Animated Series by the International Academy of Web Television. The Volume 1 soundtrack reached number one on iTunes, beating out the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Such is RWBY’s (and Rooster Teeth’s) reputation that it managed to attract the attention of, and later bring on, industry veterans and vocal legends such as Jen Taylor, Josh Grelle, and Aaron Dismuke.

That’s to say nothing of the fandom this franchise has amassed, of kids, teenagers, and young adults alike. RWBY has generated dozens of forums dedicated to fanfiction, fanart, and roleplaying. Thousands of people the world over have bonded over this show, fans from all walks of life. They’re passionate about this series. The fact that I’m writing this post is a testimony of that. If I didn’t care about RWBY, I wouldn’t be sitting on my couch at 3 AM, hunched over my laptop in my pajamas.

If RWBY is so good (or occasionally threatens to become good), you might be wondering, why, then, does this blog exist?

Well, because…when you stop and look at it critically, it actually kind of sucks.

Despite initially being written by a three-man team, the series is full of inconsistencies and an underdeveloped cast. The characters, especially from Volumes 1 — 3, are full of one-dimensional stereotypes whose contributions to the story amount to a three-word summary: “The School Bully,” “The Wacky Professors,” “The Racist Cop,” “The Cutthroat Bitch,” “The Anime Waifu,” “The Audience Surrogate,” “Discount Elle Woods,” and so on. Fundamental elements of the story, like Aura, Semblance, and Dust, are either poorly-explained or not explained at all, and the limitations of those core concepts can change at a moment’s notice to suit the needs of the plot. The primary antagonist of the first three volumes is universally hated by the fandom for having no discernible motivations beyond being “ambitious and power-hungry,” and having a personality that consists exclusively of irritating smug. The show-writers, despite repeatedly promising queer representation, have failed to make even one of their ten central protagonists queer. This isn’t touching upon the fact that the first openly-gay character on the show was an antagonist, or that the next two were side-characters who were relevant to the plot for all of seven episodes, before vanishing from the story entirely. The two leads that are currently being hyped as our first queer main-cast members have only been repeatedly teased, with said characters never once uttering the words, “I’m bi,” “I date women,” “I’m not straight”—nothing but narrative subtext and playful winks from the VAs whenever a fan asks if they’re queer. Subplots end up having no pay-off or get entirely forgotten mid-volume. The story is so protagonist-biased that the heroes are frequently able to get away with being hypocritical, or committing criminal acts because “it was the right thing to do,” with their POV framed as an infallible “fuck you, got mine” verbal gut-punch to the audience (while other characters in the show, who often make the exact same calls as the heroes, are ridiculed by the show and the fandom). Whenever the story isn’t spray-painting stolen cars and selling them to their original owners, it manages to clumsily handle allegories for real-world issues such as systemic racism, mental illness, abuse dynamics/victim survivorship, and gray morality. The worldbuilding is absent from the main show and has to be supplemented through RWBY’s spin-off series World of Remnant. The story’s setting feels flat and lifeless at times because the “cultures” of this world are never established.

The list goes on and on.

So if this show has so many flaws, why are we still having this conversation?

Because I’m captivated by the untapped potential of this world. When you brush away all of the detritus, you can see the wealth of raw material buried beneath. This is a world where the gods have forsaken their creations, with one having even deliberately created the monsters that hunt humanity. The two characters who are central to the history of this world are tragic figures, one cursed with immortality as a punishment for demanding that the gods revise the first draft, and do away with needless death; and the other, cursed to ceaselessly reincarnate into the minds and bodies of like-minded souls, waging a war of attrition against a person warped beyond recognition by the capricious spite of the gods. This is a world of forgotten magic, of shifting allegiances, of characters embarking on personal journeys and unearthing deadly secrets. It’s a story of people from all walks of life learning to cooperate and work together, forging friendships and alliances in order to face the challenges that lie ahead.

It could easily have the bones of an epic fantasy series as long as it remembers to drink its milk.

RWBY’s issues aren’t insurmountable. Most of them are the byproduct of the series’ blind adherence to “rule of cool,” the motto that practically codified the beginning of the show. From Volume 4 onward, the series took a radical shift in tone that tried to be “more mature,” and only succeeded in making the earlier episodes absurd in hindsight. Why, in Volume 6, are the characters concerned about civilian endangerment, when in Volume 2 they happily pursued a giant mech in a highway car-chase scene that would’ve caused untold collateral damage and civilian death? This change in storytelling created a thematic disparity that reoccurs time and time again, retroactively emphasizing just how inconsistent the worldbuilding and storytelling are.

It tried to be Avatar: The Last Airbender, and what we’re left with instead is Game of Thrones Season 8.

Now, I’m not using this blog as a platform to damn Monty Oum (or claim to be a better creator than him). But it’s important to address the flaws in his story, and to acknowledge that his passing doesn’t make RWBY somehow sacrosanct or immune to constructive criticism. RWBY has flaws, ranging from nitpicky to potentially capable of causing real-world harm (in the case of the aforementioned queerbaiting and racism analogies). I’m a firm believer that art doesn’t exist in a vacuum; art is informed by our beliefs just as much as art informs our beliefs. We can still respect and admire the potential RWBY has to offer, while being mindful of where it needs to improve.

That’s where this blog comes in.

At the end of the day, the RWBY Redux exists as a thought experiment. I’m writing it chiefly to entertain worldbuilding ideas and headcanons I’ve spent years musing on. I’m not asking readers to agree with any of my numerous stances, nor am I going to shy away from other fans’ criticism as I hammer this project out. With a little TLC, perhaps I’ll manage to create something that manages to be more complex than its source material. And if you choose to follow along with my endeavors, hopefully you’ll find this project equal parts engaging and entertaining.

Wish me luck.

[migleefulmoments]

This is not about being a “hater”. This is about helping you understand that Crisscolfer is based on faulty logic and lies. It’s about caring about the truth.

Abby wrote what I call a “masterpost” of the most recent proof she has that cc is still together. It’s the information she’s using right now to reassure herself that she’s right. The problem is that the conclusions she draws for why each social media post was made are illogical and erroneous conclusions. They aren’t logical, methodical, reasonable conclusion...period. 

Social media posts can be misleading and people certainly do make posts that portray a certain storyline. But it isn’t reasonable to conclude that Darren or Chris are using Instagram to tell their deepest darkest secrets to complete strangers. Neither man divulges much about their personal life on social media. In fact, the cc fandom mentions that often. Chris has a quote they love to repeat about not living on social media and Darren has said many times that he takes a lot of photos but he doesn’t post it online because he’s too busy living the moment. 

Let’s look at the post and analyze why Abby’s conclusions are wrong (my comments are italicized in parenthesis). 

Anonymous asked: why do you think they're still going strong? all evidence points to an amicable split a couple years ago

@ajw720 answered: not at all nonnie, not at all.  First, have you read ATOM?  I beg of you to read it if you have not. (I am reading it and it isn’t at all about Darren and Chris. It’s a story about children who are ostracized for being magical. It’s an allegory for being gay or being different in ways that society doesn’t accept. The children are sent to conversion therapy. It’s irrational and unreasonable to conclude it is a cc bible. The facts are: It’s a children’s book series, Chris isn’t interested in sharing his personal life at all with fans let alone, his deepest darkest secrets. Chris didn’t write an “It gets better” book for LGBTQ children only to use it to out Darren. Gay men don’t out other gay men by writing children's books. Chris has never said -or even hinted- it is an autobiography, he’s never suggested it is a love story based on his life. He started the series when he was 8 or 9 which included the character Froggy. Chris has several messages he likes to tell in his stories and he isn’t subtle in his lessons. He isn’t a subtle writer, yet Abby claims that at least 5 or 6 characters in TLOS are Darren and just as many are Chris. Instead of reading the book and hearing Chris’s message, she uses it for confirmation bias in a variety of characters and storylines. She finds the parts that FIT her PRECONCEIVED  idea of the cc storyline. It’s a fantasy-not realty. 

Second, have you seen the excessive use of the PA since october 25?  i believe a pic and/or video has been posted of him about 23 times in just about 4 weeks.  That is up from 0 in the 5  months that preceded it.  w is only required to be held out as the fake bf if cc is on. (This theory is predicated on the theory that Will is important to “cc is real”. This is another erroneous assumption that Abby concluded long ago as a way to explain why Will is around Chris so often. WIll is around because he is Chris’s boyfriend. Chris has said so with both his words and actions. Using Will’s presence on Chris’s social media as proof that cc is going strong- that Will is “mac and cheese” to the fandom is illogical-for one, out gay men do not have beards. There is no reason that Will showing up in Chris’s posts would prove cc is still together. That is another erroneous conclusion Abby reached long ago when she needed to explain away why Chris is posting pics of Will. The fact is that Will is always in Chris’s Halloween pics, their annual Disney trip, and Will’s birthday post. This year Chris also happened to post some other events they attended together so that he posted 10 pics of Will in the last 2 months.. Coming to the conclusion that Chris posting more pics of Will is proof of anything related to cc is like arguing that 1+1=322. Will being on Chris’s Instagram has nothing to do with Darren. The “23 videos and photos” include posts made by fans, friends and other people. It’s preposterous to claim that fan pics of Will or a friend posting his pic are because of the cc storyline).  

Did you watch the recent interview c did?  first it is brilliant so you should watch it.  and then he said this;

It is unfortunate that for some people you want to apply that phrase “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” to the mental side of things too.  But sometimes what doesn’t kill you, makes you suicidal. And it is really up to you “am i going to let this kill me or am i going to let this motivate me.” and sometimes when I hear people say this, i want to throw things at them, so I am going to say this very tongue and cheek, sometimes it really is a a choice, not a choice, sometimes I don’t think your point of view or interpretation  of things you are going through can be a choice.  Sometimes things are just so tragic that you just have to feel what you are feeling so it can work itself out.

(There is nothing in that quote that suggests he’s speaking about the last 5-6 years of his life or Darren Criss or a secret love or TPTB forcing Darren in the closet. He said that “sometimes the shit of life gets you down and how you respond matters”. He could be speaking about a lot of things that are very difficult for young adults. Claiming he said anything else is an irrational conclusion based on confirmation bias. She hears him speak about Darren because that is the storyline she already believes is true but Chris isn’t saying anything that suggests he’s speaking about Darren). 

C made sure to have an alibi the night of the fraud in NOLA. (Why would he need an alibi? The logical conclusion to why he posted about going to a friend’s show on Darren’s wedding night is they aren’t close friends and his post had nothing to do with Darren at all. But I’ll play along for a minute and imagine cc is real: If the love of his life was marrying someone they both “despise”, Chris would have been devastated, not out enjoying a night of entertainment-and walking a red carpet/photo op.  He barely does that ever- he certainly isn’t going to do it on his worst day.  He was with Will and he didn’t post the pic himself. If he was pushing a narrative then he would have posted the pic. It’s very unfair to claim that things that other people post are messages he is sending-it’s putting words into his mouth. Chris had no reason to prove he wasn’t in NOLA, he clearly wasn’t in the wedding photos. Claiming he went out to a show with his long-term boyfriend to prove he wasn’t with Darren at his wedding is a silly argument.)  

They walked around NYC dressed like twins on October 1, 2019.  And the hickey. (Concluding that two people who were wearing jeans, glasses and dark shirts are “dressed alike” is wrong enough but concluding that similarities in their lives prove they are a couple is preposterous. We all know that wasn’t a hickey for so many reasons from the shape to the fact it was gone in photos taken later that day to Darren wouldn’t walk around on a press day with a huge hickey on his neck. You can see from photos taken that day, they hardly looked like twins. There is nothing rationale about looking for similarities in their lives to prove they are in a secret relationship. They are nothing more than coincidences. Claiming it is a hickey after she was told by so many people that it wasn’t- including ccer is a great example of how Abby doubles down on lies if it suits her needs.  She isn’t interested in the truth- only proving she’s right.) 

C’s SM.  He just recently posted his second pic of him in a tinhat, the 1st right after the encage.  You know, the day he wore the shirt that says “everything you know is a lie.”  He really has had some blatant posts.  also, sometimes  reflection is a really interesting thing. (Again,  unreasonable conclusions are made: Chris’s “second tinhat” photo was a pic of him getting his hair highlighted with foils-a very common technique for highlighting hair. He posted it to garner publicity for his book tour.  It’s irrational to conclude that he was sending a secret message to a small group of fans to reassure them that he supports “tinhats” when Chris has actually said several times that he isn’t in a relationship with Darren and has expressed anger over fans’ comments about them as a couple. He also wrote a book that included the main character with Chris’s initials expressing his anger with fans shipping him with his costar. The first photo was not a support of Crisscolfer tinhatting but a reference to Chris’s own belief in aliens- he’s holding an alien stuffed toy and wearing a shirt that has aliens on it.)

halloween when they set up the perfect SM riot. They started with the release of pics with CC in the background, proving to the haters that they in fact our friends and then 2 weeks later, AF posted a pic that included C and PBB but no D. (Here we have an example of how Abby’s conclusions are based on several erroneous assumptions leading up to one big faulty conclusion. The tops of Chris and Darren’s heads were photographed at a busy, crowded party proving they were speaking and nothing more. Abby’s claim that they purposefully caused the riot assumes 1. that they planned the photograph, 2. they distributed the photograph or knew the right people would see it and get their message, 3.that either Chris or Darren- or both- are very interested and motivated to make sure that complete strangers know intimate details of their personal lives and that they both want to spread this information via very impersonal and public social media. Claiming that Ashley posted a pic of Mia to prove “cc is real” is another unreasonable conclusion.  Let’s address the assumptions: 1. There is no way they could tell the tops of their heads were in the camera frame. Even in an uncrowded room, it would be difficult but with several people between them and the camera, it just isn’t possible to know that the tops of their heads were within the frame. 2. They had no way of ensuring fans would get the message.  They couldn’t be sure that fans would stalk the party photos and find the tops of their heads in the background. If they wanted a photo of them talking seen by fans, they had several avenues of making that happen- they both have PR teams and their own social media accounts, and Darren’s team was there. 3. The theory that they intentionally caused a “cc riot” by doing nothing more than standing and chatting at a party isn’t logical. There is no reason for them to even want to share something like “Darren is closeted” or “Chris and Darren are in a relationship” with complete strangers and they would have no control of the messaging. Smart celebs don’t release info about themselves using a method that takes all control away from themselves.  It’s the same reason that I know Darren would never stand on a car and scream “I’m gay” to a bunch of strangers-it’s not smart. Claiming they intentionally wanted the world to know they were together at the party and therefore “still going strong”  means they purposefully put a deeply personal part of their private lives into the world in a way that gives something valuable to the cc fandom-reassurance- but gives Chris and Darren nothing in return. They lose control of their personal info-something important to both men- but they get nothing back. Neither Chris nor Darren share much information about their private lives and they certainly don’t do it on social media. When they do share personal stories, it is during interviews. Rationalizing that Ashley posted a photo of Mia to prove cc is real is another erroneous assumption. Nothing about that photo proves Chris and Darren are in a relationship-it proves that Ashley felt that photo was a good one to post for reasons she didn’t indicate but there is nothing to suggest she posted it on behalf of Chris to shade Mia)   

they are absolutely still going strong and I would say pay attention to the details, but at this point, you don’t even really need to look that close, it is incredibly blatant. (The confirmation bias in the cc fandom is all-encompassing. Abby simply cannot be wrong and she analyzes everything to find the “cc still going strong” storyline. She doesn’t look at the situation and learn from it, she twists reality to FIT HER storyline. “Pay attention to the details” is a euphemism for “twist the truth to make it cc positive”. It’s deeply disrespectful to both Chris and Darren to refuse to HEAR what either man is saying-or SEE how they are living- and instead, spend all of your time and effort rewriting their life stories. Basing your conclusions on faulty logic leads to misdirections-it’s how you find yourself believing untrue stories for a decade and counting. The question isn’t whether Chris and Darren’s private lives are different from how they present them- it is their prerogative to keep their personal lives private from the public. The question is why can’t you respect that their personal lives are theirs and only theirs and that fans have no right to debunk their truths? Why can’t you understand that going on their social media and posting about Crisscolfer is the most disrespectful and cruel thing you can do. Believing you know the truth about a stranger’s life because you are “paying attention”  while simultaneously ignoring everything that proves you are wrong is hurtful to Chris and Darren but it’s more hurtful to you. You are teaching yourself how to draw illogical conclusions and to make erroneous assumptions.You are literally grooming yourself to believe lies and it cannot be contained to the cc fandom, it is something that will sneak into the other parts of your life until you have no ability to make assessments and draw accurate conclusions about important things in your life.You will never understand when you are being conned because you’ve spent some -or all -of the last 10 years methodically teaching yourself how to disregard the truth, ignore facts, and draw illogical conclusions. 

I don’t know if Christian Bale actually said this, I can’t find it on his feed, but the sentiment is still 100% accurate-other celebs have expressed the same feeling 

  #crisscolfer

#crisscolfer tag take back