#and calling it canon requires the character actually saying those words themselves. otherwise it's all just text/subtext/interpretation

[loumauve]

apparently kissing sb of a certain gender makes you have that sexuality so now I'm unsure what the fuck I am. does that mean I have to identify as pan now bc that asshole kid kissed me when I was 11 even tho I just wanted to look at the tiny turtles in his fish tank? and bc one of my exes identified as nb at the time we were dating, and bc I kissed a girl a few times while we were dating?

does that also mean I can no longer identify as ace bc I had sex at least once?

some of y'all are so fucking stupid I stg

[asterekmess]

Been seeing you getting hate mail and while I absolutely can't understand why anyone would go to all the trouble to make some one else feel bad... I also kinda really love the discourse on Scott? Like YOUR RANTS oh man. On point. Always. Tbh I tried giving Scott a chance... He is the main char after all... But I was like??? Wtf? That dude does nothing but refute others and does whatever he wants. And this was when I didn't particularly like Stiles either (first time watching Teen Wolf). But then I got to know more of him and like Tony he went asshole to lovable asshole—seriously, Stiles might not be the ‘nicest’ but he tries and his heart is in good place—while Scott is just... self-righteous. Someone pointed out that he sees people as possessions and that irks me too that I can actually see it being true. The dude has literally nothing going on except for being the one that gets bitten. And the Romeo-and-Juliet-esque romance he has.

Okay, okay, where was I going with this?? Right. LOVE YOUR RANTS. People need to understand that Scott not being liked isn't because of his race or anything trivial like it—he just happens to be—but because of his actions. Or inactions, as it were. *remembers the pool scene and Scott saying he's busy and resists the urge to chuck a shoe at him*

Basically, love you, love your work, and love your words! ❤️

I've talked with some friends about it, and our number one issue sort of...boiled down to the hypocrisy of the show? I....sort of rant a lot here, and I would add a Read More, but I can't find the option anymore?? I fucking hate Tumblr. EDIT: I found a post that told me how to do it!

So, since he's the character I focus on the most, let's talk about Stiles' morality. Because, you're right. Stiles is an asshole. He does some fucking awful shit in the first season, and even if he had a Reason to do it, it was still bad. And I still don't like it. But I understand it.

Stiles' lack of shits about what is 'lawful' is literally established in the first ten seconds of the show. He's a sheriff's son who sneaks onto people's roofs in the middle of the night bc they aren't answering his calls, who listens in on his dad's work conversations and is willing to fuck up a crime scene because he's so excited about getting to see a dead body. He doesn't care about laws. He doesn't even care about most basic manners (invasion of privacy much, with having Scott sniff Lydia to see if she liked him?). He's a dickhead, even to the people he cares about sometimes. But personality and morality aren't the same. Stiles' entire actual morality system is based around whatever he needs to do to keep the people he loves safe and happy. Lying to his dad so he doesn't get murdered by hunters? Totally fine. Telling Scott that it was "Jackson's own fault" that Scott attacked him with superstrength and dislocated his shoulder, so Scott doesn't feel like an asshole? That's just best friend duties! He will lie, steal, cheat, and he will kill to keep his loved ones safe (let's not forget this boy threw molotovs at Peter, knowing damn well what they would do to him). We can headcanon all we want about all the different people who are in this group of loved ones, but the list is canonically very short: Scott, his dad, and Lydia. Later on, like, past s3B? It includes Derek. Canonically. Stiles puts his life and the lives of others he cares about on the line while he lies to the matriarch of the Calavera hunter clan, to save Derek Hale. Derek is just canonically a part of that group now, and he fucking knows it bc Stiles is his anchor (that's canon too bb). End of Story, Sterek or no Sterek. It's why we get that insane number of lookbacks when Derek is dying before his evolution. Because Stiles is being forced to choose between two people who are BOTH in his ride-or-die group. He Cannot Pick between Scott and Derek, until Derek begs him to leave.

SO, yes, Stiles does fuckface things, and I don't always agree with what he does, but it is ACCURATE TO HIS CHARACTER. He is morally grey. He NEVER CLAIMS to be pure or good or just or righteous. Stiles knows who he is, and he stays true to himself. And I love him for that.

The same goes for a bunch of other characters! For Peter, who is strikingly similar to Stiles, in that family goes above literally everything. Screw the idea that he was following Derek around waiting for the chance to steal back the Alpha spark. That man put his life on the line (his second life, no less) to get the shit beaten out of him until Derek let him help save Derek's life Again and Again. Family Comes First.

Scott's morality is...confusing as fuck. I thought at first he was similar to Stiles, in that family came first, but...while he's protective of his mother, he also does a lot of stuff that puts her at risk without seeming to care/worry (like leaving Peter alone with her once Stiles hits their car, so he can chase Jackson) (or asking her to come to the high school when he's convinced there's a bomber in it)? Seriously, he's more protective over Allison, than his mother. It's very black and white the rest of the time. Very "this bad" "this good." And if you do "bad" then you are bad forever, while if you do "good" you are only good until you do "bad." The Betas were "good" until they asked for the bite, and then they were "Bad." Derek was "bad" when Scott met him and scared him, so after that, no matter how much "good" he did, he remained "bad." But only when it suits him. Allison is good even when she does bad, because he wants her to be good. Chris is good even though he's done mountains of bad, because of the minuscule amount of good that Scott has seen him do, because Scott wants him to be good. Even DEUCALION is good, despite the crazy CRAZY amount of bad he's done and despite having seen him do NO GOOD, just because Scott wants him to be good. Lying to those closest to you is bad, unless Scott is doing it, and then it's good, because he knows HE is good. Killing people is bad, unless Scott is doing it. Letting villains go is bad, unless Scott is doing it. Biting people is bad, unless Scott is doing it. Protecting family is good even if it requires killing or lying, unless it's not Scott doing it. Revenge for past slights is good, unless it's not SCOTT doing it. And you try to understand it! You try to say, okay, then he's morally grey, got it. He plays with the rules to suit his own morality, whatever. Except that Scott, the other characters, and THE SHOW ITSELF, are all telling you otherwise! They all say that Scott is morally pure. That he is good and righteous and lawful. That he always does the "right" thing, and that when he does "bad" things, it's justified and he had to. THE HEAVENS THEMSELVES say Scott is somehow better or more righteous than the other characters by MAKING HIM AN ALPHA OUT OF NOWHERE. (I'm talking abt canon here, not going into deaton conspiracy theories) It's like....Like in the hate mail response I did, where I pointed out that Every Single Thing people get angry at Derek for doing, Scott did too. Lying, killing (or at least attempting it), attacking innocents, losing his temper, keeping secrets, refusing to work with someone who could help, etc etc etc. Everything Derek has done that is morally "wrong," Scott has also done. And that's okay! Doing a bad thing doesn't make you a bad person, and even if it did, Scott is ALLOWED to be bad! GO FOR IT.

Except that he is sinless. It isn't that he learns from the bad things he does, it's that they aren't treated like bad things in the first place. Because Scott did it, and Scott always does the right thing.

Derek's behavior is reprehensible at times, but the show ADMITS that and frames it as bad. Frames it as him doing a bad thing when he scares Isaac or throws Peter or tells Erica who to date. And that's fine, because Derek is established as not being morally pure.

But SCOTT IS. And because they were so desperate to make him continue being "Pure" they didn't frame the things he did as wrong, or if they did, they absolved him of it immediately, using the exact same reasoning that works for Derek's situations, but this time Actually Accepting it.

He scares Stiles, well it's because he's scared. He throws Isaac, it's because he's upset. He attacks Jackson well it's because Jackson was being a dick. He orders Allison to date Matt, well he had a goal to accomplish. Every reason is treated like a fucking doctor's note that erases the bad things he does.

Being scared, or angry, or retaliating to someone being an asshole, or trying to protect himself, was NEVER a good enough reason for Derek to do ANYTHING "Bad." It was never an acceptable excuse.

IF IT WERE: If the show were making a statement about how fallable people are, how they do bad things, but they do them for a REASON. How people will do wild and terrible things out of fear, and how that doesn't make it less bad, but it makes it understandable, so don't demonize them out of nowhere. If that were the case, I would HAVE BEEN FINE WITH IT.

Scott is held to COMPLETELY different standards than everyone else in the show! And I DON'T mean that people held him to higher ones. They dropped that bar so fucking low. Anything was allowed, and any excuse was good enough.

He made out with a girl who was dating someone else, who his best friend was in love with? It's just the full moon, he's angsty about losing Allison. He ducttapes Liam to a bathtub and starts throwing random phrases at him that he hated Derek for saying to him? He's freaked out! He doesn't know what to do with a bitten wolf! It was an accident! He works with a mass murderer behind people's backs without telling them the whole story? Am I talking about Gerard or Deucalion? Who fucking knows. Either way, it's okay, because he was protecting his family. He plots to murder a cancer patient slowly and painfully by replacing meds that likely included painkillers with mountain ash, and the uses someone else's body to deliver the killing blow, and it's okay because he was just being smart! He was just working ten steps ahead! He was saving his mom and the whole town! Who cares if it DIDN"T WORK?

He walks into his ex-girlfriend's hotel room and scares the SHIT out of her while she's naked and alone in the shower? It was the wolfsbane. It doesn't matter that no one else's impulses included HARASSING someone. He lies to his girlfriend's face about her own life because he doesn't think it's important enough for her to know (who am I talking about, come on, take a guess, which one is it? Allison or Kira? Trick question: it's both). He was just being kind! He didn't want to worry her! He didn't want to make her feel bad! She didn't need to know!

I'm so far off track it's not even funny. My point was that Everything the other characters in the show are demonized for or framed as evil or bad or wrong for doing, Scott is shown to do and it's treated like at minimum a comedy, if not a Perfect Brilliant Strategic Move.

God, fucking hell. I mean, the PARALLELS you see in this show, between Scott and others. The scene of Alexander Argent going to the hotel after being bit? That bit where he pulls his shirt up in the mirror? It's a near PERFECT replica of Scott looking at his bite at Deaton's. They paralleled SCOTT MCCALL with AN ARGENT. Deaton has this whole line in S2 where he's bitching at Derek about "the person you should trust the most doesn't trust you at all" And then seasons later, we have Scott look his best friend in the eye and refuse to trust him, only to get upset later because Stiles doesn't want to work with him anymore and he "lost them." Scott goes running into Derek's house in S1 to accuse him of killing the bus driver, and when he can't get a real response, he EGGS HIM ON by accusing him of Murdering his SISTER, just to get Derek to react. Which is the EXACT same thing Kate did when she showed up and wanted Derek to lose his temper. Scott is CONSTANTLY paralleled with villains and assholes, and constantly does the things that others are persecuted for. But instead of feeling regret or learning something from it, instead of growing AT ALL. Those actions are treated as good. We are told they are righteous. And clever. That they are what heroes do. AND YES: There are parallels between Derek and Stiles' behaviors and villains/morally grey characters! Of course there are!

BUT THEY AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE THE TRUE ALPHA MAIN CHARACTER. SCOTT IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE GOOD GUY. HE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO MIMIC/EMULATE THE VILLAINS, AND HE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE REWARDED WHEN HE DOES IT ANYWAY.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again; I understand the urge to think that the Teen Wolf writers did all of this on purpose. That they built Scott up as an unreliable narrator, so that we're forced to come to terms with a protagonist who isn't good, and we watch them fall into a villainous role while thinking all the while they are a hero. That all these parallels are intentional and the writers just couldn't Tell us what was going on bc they didn't have enough power.

And sometimes I play into it. I will lie to myself about Scott being the 'narrator' of the entire show, and that we're seeing it all through his eyes so of course things are biased and conflicting, just so I can actually Enjoy watching it.

But I think it's absolute bullshit that this was done on purpose. It wasn't. The parallels appeared because they Wanted Scott to do the badass things that they had all the villains doing, throwing people and being sneaky and clever, and stopping the bad guy, and they didn't want to deal with the fact that they were having him do bad things. So they just pretended he wasn't and refused to acknowledge that they'd already punished other people for doing the same exact shit, but somehow Scott was getting rewarded. They wanted Scott to be the hero, so they made him the hero, and screw everybody else.

[duckprintspress]

What is a Story?

When Duck Prints Press put out our call for applicants, we asked everyone to submit “a sample of their work (between 1,000 and 2,000 words)… [that] must function as a short story.” When we reviewed the 100+ samples we received, we noticed many areas where writers commonly struggled. Based on what we learned, we’ve planned a number of blog posts to discuss these challenging areas, and we’ve decided to tackle one of the most frequent issues first. Many otherwise strong submissions lost points on our rubric line regarding “plot and events,” and specifically, they scored a 1 or a 2 because “the story has no plot (for example, is a vignette).” 

So, this begs the question, what is a story, and, of course, what isn’t a story?

(note that throughout this post, I use the word “narrative” to refer to any amount of text that may or may not be a story, and I use story only in a more narrow, specific sense.)

What is a story?

The answer is deceptively simple: a story is any narrative that has a plot. But...what is a plot? There are many ways to define a plot, but at its most basic, a plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and by the ending, something has changed. If, at the end of the story, nothing has changed, then it’s not a story. However, even if something has changed, it’s still not necessarily a story, because characters and time-frame also influence the definition. A narrative without at least one character is not a story. Likewise, a narrative time-frame, if it’s discussing events at a meta-level (“this happened, then this happened, then this happened”) may show that changes occur, but it’s still not a story - it’s an overview or an outline. The lines, of course, can be blurry - and where any given author, reader, or DPP reviewer draws the line between “this is a story” and “this isn’t a story” will vary. 

How is a story communicated to the reader?

To function as a story, the narrative must include characters. Now, character doesn’t necessarily have to mean person, or even require sentience, but there must be some point of view being explored, and if the character is an animal or an inanimate object, writing it as a character will require a degree of anthropomorphizing. The key aspect is that the character has some form of agency - some ability to interact with and influence their surroundings. This character will have a point of view and a perspective that affects how they perceive the story’s setting, and by the end of the story this character should have either changed themselves, or changed their surroundings, or changed their relationships. The circumstances around this character must be different by the end of the story than they were at the beginning - or else it’s not a story.

What is change?

As part of the narrative, one or more characters in the story must engage in some form of activity that results in the world around them changing. Writing advice most oftenly calls this “conflict,” but honestly? I hate that word. The classic couching of “person vs. self, person vs. person, person vs. nature, person vs. society, person vs. fate” as the available types of conflict is tired. Defining the only kind of change as conflict and specifically describing it as “x versus y” is to automatically get a potential writer thinking in terms of antagonism. While antagonism is one available type of change, it’s not the only, and while many pieces of writing advice point out that these “versus” constructions don’t mean enmity by nature...why not simply choose a less confusing construction, one that doesn’t require addenda to explain the existence of narratives that clearly are stories but are less “versus” and more “and” - “person and self,” “person and person,” “person and nature,” “person and society,” “person and fate.” I’ve opted to use the word change, because one of the clearest ways to tell if a narrative is a story or not is to look at the nature of the character(s) are at the beginning, and look at the nature of them at the end, and say - what’s different? Maybe they’ve built something. Maybe they’ve reached a new understanding. Maybe they’ve conquered a challenge. Maybe they’ve altered their perspective. Maybe they’ve learned something. Maybe, they’ve changed the world, or maybe, they’ve just changed a light bulb - but something has changed.

Before some writing snob comes at me and says, “okay, fine, we dare you to come up with a plot that doesn’t fit into the classic five conflict types” ...of course we can’t. That model functions because all stories can be shoehorned into it, as long as very loose definition of “conflict” and “versus” are used. But because it’s described in oppositional terms, a lot of writers get distracted by that terminology and think there has to be, well, a conflict, in the narrow definition of the word. And that’s clearly absurd - many of our favorite fanfiction tropes, for example, are fluffy and comforting and soft precisely because they’re not about conflict, they’re about harmony. Yes, “enemies to lovers” is wonderful, but so is “friends to lovers.” Two people going on a date that ends with a marriage proposal is a story: they started out as a couple and ended engaged. Something has changed - their relationship status. But to call that “person versus person,” while perhaps technically correct, is ludicrous. Now, to keep it interesting, there might be some “person versus self” - “I’m not worthy of this love, omg do they really care for me, oh will society give us problems if we say yes?” which is how it can be shoehorned into the “conflict” model. But be it ever so soft, and their love ever so accepted, and their faith in each other ever so steady - if there really is no conflict, just those two people meeting up and having a nice night and ending in a proposal...it’s still a story. To say it’s not a story because there was no conflict, only an advancement of their relationship...yes, a story like that is borderline to being a vignette or “slice of life” narrative. Certainly, if there’s zero sources of tension, it may not be a very interesting story, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a story. 

What else does a story need?

Honestly - not much. Don’t get us wrong - a story is stronger if it has a setting so that it doesn’t just take place in endless blankness. A story with multiple characters but no form of dialog (verbal or non-verbal) may be a little flat. A story where something changes but some of the introduced plot elements aren’t resolved will feel incomplete to a reader. A story without any negativity could be boring. Stories lacking these elements may not be good stories...or they could be amazing, and innovative, showing how a tale can be told without elements we usually consider essential! As long as something or someone has changed, and the story is told in a narrative, descriptive format that includes a character - it’s a story.

What isn’t a story?

Things that aren’t stories fall into two broad categories:

Narratives that have description, characters, dialogue, setting, and other story elements, but nothing changes. Examples of this are “slice of life” narratives and what, in fandom-parlance, would be called an episode coda or canon insert - a chunk of narrative deliberately meant to make a bridge between two established events but in which nothing can change because the surrounding events remain established. (A coda or insert might be a story, it varies.)

Narratives that are either entirely “show” (for example, a vignette) or entirely “tell” (for example, a synopsis),  These can also be seen as relating to time - either there’s little or no passage of time (usually the case in vignettes) or far too much passage of time (usually the case in synopses). Narratives like this may or may not include a character, but even if they do, they’re still not stories. Why not? Because any story that is entirely “show” and involves minimal passage of time is unlikely to result in change, and instead will be an extended description of a moment. And any story that is entirely “tell” and depicts a large swath are overviews - there’s no element to actually grab a reader and no reason the reader should care about this dry relationship of events. That’s not a story - it’s a history textbook.

Drawing the lines between these categories can be difficult, and to some extent will come down to taste. Anyone who says there’s a hard-and-fast rule in writing is a liar. Just because a synopsis or a “slice of life” narrative isn’t usually a story doesn’t mean they will never be one. But, in general, if you’re looking at a piece of work and you’re trying to determine if it’s a story or not, there are some signs that will strongly suggest it’s not a story:

There are no characters.

There is no setting.

Nothing has changed between the beginning and ending of the narrative.

The entire narrative is an extended description of a single person/object/setting.

The entire narrative could easily be reworded into a sequence of, “thing one happened, then thing two happened, then thing three happened, then thing four happened.”

The narrative feels like a “pause,” or a “bridge” that takes place between two events that aren’t depicted in the narrative.

A central conflict or issue is introduced or described in details, but nothing is done to try to solve the issue.

Now, for the most important part of this discussion of what isn’t a story: writing something that isn’t a story isn’t a bad thing! Especially in fanfiction communities, we live for self-indulgent narratives that make us happy. We love to see those “moments between.” We live for a thought-out thousand-year history for some setting that didn’t originally have that much background. These kinds of narratives are fun to write, and especially when they’re part of an existing franchise, can be a delight to read. We are not saying that there is literally anything wrong with writing a narrative that isn’t a story. 

That said, Duck Prints Press’s applicant call specifically asked authors to submit a writing sample that was a story, with the eventual goal of selecting authors to write short stories for an anthology. Which is to say: there’s nothing wrong at all with writing “slice of life” stories, codas, canon inserts, vignettes, or synopses - it’s simply not what we asked people to submit in this specific case, and we’ve come to see that a lot of people submitted non-stories without an apparent understanding of the difference, and we wanted to explain that difference.

But, to everyone reading this: write whatever brings you joy, in as much detail or vagueness as makes you happy, and share it with whoever you want. Just also understand, that for many types of narratives, if you’re asked “is that a story?” it’s not. That’s not to create a hierarchy - they’re all equal as art forms, they’re just not the same.

Okay I kinda understand this in theory but what do these differences actually look like in practice?

In long-form works, it’s usually relatively easy to recognize what is a story and what isn’t. Almost every novel ever published has a plot, and has things change, and is therefore a story. (though there are exceptions - Wikipedia lists a few longer vignettes and, when done thoughtfully, it can be astonishingly effective.) However, in shorter works, it can be difficult to tell the difference - and, as previously mentioned, the lines can blur.

In the interest of giving an idea of what the differences are, here are a few examples I quickly cooked up to try to show you all, since I’ve done a lot of “telling” so far (this blog post: also not a story, ha!) and very little demonstration. These are each around 150 words, to show that even in a tiny word count, any of these narrative structures is a viable choice. (Sorry these aren’t high literature - I just threw them together for this post, so I’d have something that suited.)

(read more)

A story - a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, where something changes:

The door slammed open. Looking up from her embroidery, Victoria blinked as Margaret strode into the room.There was an air of expectancy that was inexplicable to Victoria; she grew more confused when Margaret approached and dropped to one knee.

“What are you doing?” Heart pounding, Victoria attempted self-restraint, but she couldn’t rein in her hope, because it almost looked like...it seemed like...but--

“Proposing,” announced Margaret, pulling a velvet-covered box from her pocket and opening to reveal an emerald set in a gold band.

“But you can’t!”

Margaret tilted her head to the side and frowned. “Why not?”

Objections occurred to Victoria, but examining them...she couldn’t think of a one that Margaret wouldn’t demolish with her usual brilliance. “You know what? You’re right. Who’s to stop us? And...I accept.”

And as Margaret slipped the ring onto Victoria’s finger, she knew: there could be no objection. Nothing had ever felt so right in her life.

“Slice of life” - a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, where nothing changes:

“What a day!” said James, dropping onto the couch with an exhausted sigh. 

“I know what you mean,” Tom agreed. He fumbled a hand across the cushion separating them, and James delighted in the simple comfort of threading their fingers together.

A beep, beep, beep sounded in the kitchen, announcing that the microwave had finished nuking their leftovers.

“You getting that?” asked Tom.

“It’s your turn!” James countered.

“But I don’t want to let go of your hand.” Tom gave his hand a squeeze, and a pleased glow suffused James’s chest.

It was Tom’s turn to retrieve their dinner.

But Tom was right - holding hands was wonderful.

“Let’s get it together,” James suggested. 

Hesitating, Tom remained still as James sit up and gave a tug on their joined arms, then he broke into a smile and rose at James’s side.

“I love the way you think.”

“I love you, too, darling”

And together - always together - they got their dinner.

“Bridge” scene, episode coda, or canon insert-style fic - a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, where nothing changes:

Arriving home after the battle, Sandy opened the rough-hewn door and shed her damaged armor. Her dented cuirass had left an aching bruise across her chest; she carried it to the smithy out back for repair in the morning. A gash on her thigh throbbed where an arrow had pierced the straps holding her greaves in places; she brought them to her leather-working station. Nicks and fissures marred her once-gleaming sword blade. All Sandy wanted was to collapse in bed, but resisted the pull of relaxation, because blood limned the damaged places red, and repair to the damaged weapon couldn’t wait. Taking a seat, placed her feet on the treadles that set her whet stone to spinning and set about polishing out every imperfection.

Yes, she was exhausted.

But her sword must be cleaned, and smoothed, and honed, and prepared.

Sandy must be prepared.

There would always be another battle to be fought.

Vignette, a narrative without a beginning, a middle, or an end, which may or may not have a character, and nothing changes and in which the emphasis is on showing, rather than telling (but, as in this example, a combination may be used):

The wind blew chill down the narrow mountain pass. All was silent, save for the rush of the breeze. All was still, save where gusts stirred the tall grasses and the branches of trees that reached, claw-like, toward the sky. 

Once upon a time, a stream had carved this cut through the cliffs, forcing its way through soft chalk and hard shale, leaving jagged stones that emerged from the steep pass walls like teeth. The stream was long dry, now, only water-smoothed stones strewn across the ground to show where it had ever been.

Once upon a time, travellers had traversed the dried-up rill bed, pounding down the dirt, knocking the rocks aside, leaving scars where their fires burned. They’d lived, and laughed, and explored, and sought...and left, never to return.

Now, there was nothing: nothing but the storm.

And all was silent.

And all was still.

And the wind blew, chill, down the narrow mountain pass.

Synopsis, a narrative with a beginning, a middle and an end, which may or may not have characters, and where something changes, and in which  the emphasis is on telling rather showing:

Emperor Xiang Zhen was born in 9884 to Dowager Empress Luo Zexi and the warlord Xiang Yijun. After his birth, there was a long period of strife. Those who supported Xiang Yijun’s claim to the throne battled those who still supported the Dowager Empress’s deceased husband Peng Zhenya. Eventually, the factions found common ground when Xiang Zhen came of age, and he was enthroned in 9902. 

With his reign came peace and prosperity. The arts flourished. Scholarship advanced, and many great Dao masters arose, using cultivation to rid the land of evil’s left by the long war. Xiang Zhen longed to join a Night Hunt himself, but he was trapped by his political position. He didn’t dare risk the fragile stability in the Empire. If something happened to him, the results could be catastrophic. So he studied, and ruled, and adjudicated, and endowed, and endured.

Xiang Zhen did as he must.

But, oh...he wished he weren’t alone.

I know this is long, so we’ll leave this discussion at this point. Hopefully you found it helpful, and please do let me know if you have any questions! Duck Prints Press is always here to offer support to writers, and we love getting writing asks!

[houseofhurricane]

also I really liked your Tamlin and I'm on his defense squad so anything with him cause i think he's better then the shit the fandom gives him.

I've been thinking about this one, and I've decided that I don't feel comfortable writing short fics about Tamlin.

Here's why I say this despite writing a novel-length fic that features a Tamlin redemption arc: in Bloom & Bone, I specifically considered what it would take for an abuser to be redeemed. I did research on abuser recovery. I thought through the abusive relationships (both romantic and otherwise) that I've been lucky enough to escape.

I realized that this redemption would require three things: 1) the abuser's unconditional admission of wrongdoing, both to themselves and others, 2) an apology to all harmed parties, and 3) a clear demonstration that they would now behave differently.

I made sure that all of these things happened in Bloom & Bone. I also had many characters call Tamlin out on his behavior, both abusive and otherwise. And I made sure that the romance was a slow burn with a love interest who always had the power to call him out and leave him.

To be clear, Tamlin is abusive towards Feyre in the ACOTAR series, particularly in ACOMAF. While his behavior in the other books is complicated and can be interpreted in a number of ways (and I personally will always love the scene where he writes those dirty limericks for Feyre), this does not change the fact that Tamlin is an abuser.

It is canon that he was abused by his father and his brothers, and it is canon that he doesn't have all the information we have about the Night Court and seems to truly believe that Feyre was in danger in ACOMAF, both before and after she went to the Night Court. It is also likely that Rhys' belief that Tamlin voluntarily told his father how to kill Rhys' mother and sister is untrue, and that Tamlin could have been coerced to share this information.

That doesn't mean that he's not an abuser.

While I do think he can be redeemed, I also do not think that a short fic can adequately address that redemption arc with the complexity it requires. That's why I wrote over 100k words about it 😅

Knowing personally how damaging abuse can be, knowing how many people experience abuse in their lives, I personally have no interest in defending an abuser. I do believe that recovery and redemption is possible for abusers. However, that process is not quick, simple, or easy.

And before anyone says what about Rhys?, I also think that Rhys is abusive, both in ACOTAR and in ACOSF. I've actually written about this before.

[artemisdesari-blog]

Why I Find Tauriel Problematic; An Essay On My Thoughts, Feelings, And Why Ambivalence Has Turned Into Frustration and Distaste

Although I have only been back on the fanfiction horse for about two years, and what a wonderful two years those have been, my brief stint writing fanfiction for The Hobbit has shown me a great deal about the fandom, and one of those things is that Tauriel is something like Marmite. For those unfamiliar with Marmite, it is a British salty yeast extract spread that is either utterly delicious or utterly vile depending on the tastes of the one eating it. The marketing slogan for it is “You either love it or hate it”, so even the manufacturers are aware that enjoyment of their product is a very subjective thing. Tauriel seems to polarise the fandom almost as much as said yeast extract, although there is a little more mid range ambivalence towards her as well. For me, personally, I prefer to pretend that she never existed in the movies at all, something that I will get into at a later date. That ambivalence has, sadly, shifted to distaste.

It is no secret that in popular literature and culture there is a very glaring absence of strong female characters. To the extent that when your Captain Janeways, Samantha Carters, Natasha Romanovs and so on pop up they become worth commenting on. Tolkien, of course, is no saint where this is concerned. It is glaringly obvious that for every Lúthien, Galadriel, Arwen and Eowyn there are dozens of male characters who play far greater roles in the saving of the world. In fact, The Hobbit is without strong female characters entirely, being a novel completely dominated by the male Company of Thorin Oakenshield, including the title character. Considering who Tolkien is supposed to have originally written the tale for, the source myths that he referenced and prevailing attitudes of the time, it is unsurprising. In fact, that characters like Eowyn and Galadriel pop up at all, not discounting Lúthien whose romance with Beren was said to have some inspiration from Tolkien’s own marriage, is impressive all things considered. 

With that in mind, let us consider the matter of Tauriel. She was not in the book, and while I can see why the studio wanted her added to the film they later made decisions about her which sat, and still do sit, very poorly with me. Generally speaking, as a writer, I prefer to try ignoring the fact that she exists in the movies, even if I reference the movie appearances of the dwarves to avoid writing about too many bearded males with white or blue or blond hair. If I do reference her it is usually in passing and with no intention to do anything further with her other than acknowledge that she was added to the cast. Frequently, however, I get asked the questions “Will Kíli and Tauriel be forming an attachment?”. “How do you plan to handle the romance between Kíli and Tauriel given the relationship you’ve been building with X character?”, “Why do you dislike her so much?”. I’ve even been accused of disliking her from the misogynistic view point of “the evil female who corrupts the helpless males,” which is frankly offensive and not at all the case.

To the first two questions: she is not book canon, I do not need to address the so-called romance because there is nothing in Tolkien’s canon to support her existence and thus the romance. To the last question… well, that one is a little more complicated and requires an in depth examination of her introduction, actions and interactions with Kíli, as well as his personality as established over the course of the films since we have precious little to go on in the books.

First, let us look at Kíli. He is a flirt. We know that, we see him flirting with various elves during dinner in Rivendell. Beyond that, however, we see very little of his tastes or preferences, although it is probably fair to assume that he is probably something of a romantic as well. As much as he is a main character, he is still more of a background character compared to Bilbo and Thorin. It is, after all, about the hobbit of the piece. He is young, either just about to turn 77 or not long having done so and that makes him young enough that we get the impression that he and Fíli both are still of an age where it is perfectly natural to idolise their uncle and be desperate for his approval. We see that the few times he is dressed down he feels it very keenly. We also see that he is playful and open, perhaps the most playful and open of all of them except, maybe, Bofur. He is curious, perfectly capable of giving his all when it comes to a fight and Gandalf refers to him as one of Thorin’s best alongside his brother and Dwalin. 

We also see him flip from open and loving, though perhaps infatuated is a better word, to cold and murderous in a moment, so we can probably include passionate in all things in that as well.

Now, let us look at Tauriel. Unlike Kíli, we have no set age for her. We know that she is young for an elf, but the ages given range from somewhere around 600 to 1,400. There is one quote placing her at 1,347 but it is in a sea of conflicting information. Regardless, she is young, she is idealistic and curious. She has never left Mirkwood and has dedicated much of the last few decades to attempting to curb the influx of giant spiders which are spreading from Dol Guldur while arguing with Thranduil; who wants his borders kept clear but refuses to deal with the source of the threat. An attitude not unfamiliar to many of us, sadly. She has the friendship of a prince of Mirkwood but is declared not good enough for him. Also, not an uncommon attitude in those who could be thought of as nobility.

She, like any being that has literally had hundreds of years to practice, is incredibly good with her weapons and pings and flips around like the others of her kind. Given her youth and position we can conclude that she is considered unusually skilled for her age but she still has the advantage of living forever, unless she tires of life or is killed, to keep improving her skills.

Finally, let us look at the history between elves and dwarves. It is not a pretty one. They come together for the sake of occasional trade, or to face the threat of Morgoth, and later Sauron, and their armies, but otherwise they keep to themselves. The dislike is clear on both sides and occurs well before the day Smaug arrived in Erebor, during the First Age in fact. So it will be difficult for this young pair to overcome millennia of bad feeling between their people, some of whom actually remember the events that set the dislike in stone. Legolas and Gimli are later understood to be among only a very, very, few who become close enough to be considered great friends. Much of fandom would probably cheerfully have them be a great deal more given Legolas snuck his dwarf into Valinor after Aragorn’s death.

To the shoe-horned in romance, and I do mean that in the literal sense. Evangeline Lily has been heard in interviews to say that she was wary about the fan reception of Tauriel from the start and that she signed on under the explicit understanding that there would be no romance or love triangle. And at the end of the initial shoot there was not. When they came back for studio shoots and reshoots, however, she was presented with a list of scenes that had been added and some that needed to be reshot to accommodate, you guessed it, a love triangle. She was signed in, she had taken the money, done the work and was boxed into a corner. The love triangle went in and it became the part of the films that polarises the fans the most. Besides, if we want to ship something, we do not need to have it spoon fed to us. Bagginshield is the most popular ship in the fandom and we only get the odd hint towards it here and there. Then look at the multitude of other ships. We did not need to be given something we can make up for ourselves.

That out of the way, let us look at their meeting:

The Company is beset by giant spiders, destined to be dinner, confused and disorientated and more than a little desperate, weakened due to lack of food and the weird miasma of Mirkwood which has been playing havoc with their minds. None of them are in good shape but, as they do, they fight on anyway. They need to survive and reach the mountain so that they can take back their home. Enter the elves, arrows whistling, blades crunching into thick spider exoskeletons, performing all manner of acrobatic leaps and twists to avoid getting bitten or killed. It is impressive, eye-catching even to the older dwarves, and would likely be even more so to a pair of young dwarves like Fíli and Kíli. We do not see Fíli’s reaction, he is too busy frantically looking for his missing brother who has been cornered by a spider. 

Enter Tauriel, who refuses to give him a knife to defend himself with and help her deal with the stragglers because she believes he may well be an enemy. She is, in fact, somewhat derogatory towards him. I would not say that Kíli is charmed, although he is certainly impressed, because were he charmed I do not believe he would have such a massively discontent expression on his face as she takes him back to the others. I suspect that, much like in Rivendell, he would have put more effort into turning on the charm. 

As the dwarves are led away, we get the first indication that Tauriel has noticed him; she comments that he is not entirely unattractive for a dwarf due to his lack of beard and the fact that he is tall for one of their kind. Legolas is unimpressed, but we expect that.

Once they reach the cells we see the dwarves desperately attempting to avoid being locked up. Most of them are attempting to force their way free, Fíli appears to be in the process of having yet more knives removed from his person while he huffs and sulks, and Kíli is watching as he is taken to a cell of his own. A solitary one at that. Fíli and Kíli, it could be argued, are a little bit co-dependant. Not horrendously, but they have been watching out for one another over all the rest from the start, they are brothers after all, and in the life of a dwarf five years is not all that much of an age gap. So we can assume that Kíli does not really want to be locked up on his own, he is a social person regardless it would seem and I suspect that being alone would be a special kind of torture for him. He tries stalling. 

“Aren’t you going to check me? I could have anything down my trousers.”

I’ll give Tauriel this, she is quick witted and this is possibly one of my favourite exchanges of the films. Her reply; “Or nothing” is cool, a little bit cutting and gives no indication of any sort of interest at all. If anything, she seems a little exasperated with all the fuss the lot of them are creating and she simply wants to be done with it. Away Kíli goes and off she goes to report to her king.

Who proceeds to compliment her on her good handling of things so far, order her to make it better faster, reject her proposal for exterminating the source rather than simply dealing with the fallout and then tell her that no matter what else she has done, she is not good enough for his son. Oof. She hesitates before replying, stumbles her way through a response and seems genuinely upset about it. Regardless of whether her feelings for Legolas are of friendship or if she had been hoping for a little more as well, being told something like that had to hurt.

We next see Tauriel patrolling the cells. Some of the dwarves are making noise, most seem pretty resigned, Kíli is fiddling with his promise stone. Which he promptly drops and loses through the bars, only for it to be stopped by Tauriel who demands to know what it is. As you do. Kíli, as you do, replies that it is a curse stone and any who is not a dwarf who looks upon it will suffer greatly. I forget the exact quote, I could look it up but I’m not feeling quite that dedicated to making my point here. Tauriel hesitates. I will not say that she is alarmed, she seems to take his words with a pinch of salt, but she is definitely wary and we have to remember that she is a very young elf who has spent all of her life in Mirkwood. She has not interacted with dwarves, has no reason to have done so and so she has no idea if what he is saying is true or not. And we have no idea how many of the old stories about elves and dwarves she has heard, although we know it is enough for her to have a generally low opinion of them. Her hesitation is enough to cause Kíli to come clean, perhaps fearing that she will take this precious memento of his mother from him. You can see the moment that Tauriel decides to return it, the flicker of surprise that a dwarf would mention a parent with such apparent fondness and it makes me wonder what stories she has been told about dwarves and their emotions. Regardless, she gives it back and the two begin a conversation which starts with Kíli’s opinion on starlight and moves on to become centred around Kíli’s travels. 

It is a good, safe, sensible conversation which would ring no alarm bells. In fact, the only thing that hints towards the idea that we should be looking for a romantic angle is the shot of Legolas looking down upon them with a disgusted sneer. 

This is where I began to feel uneasy with the direction the story was taking. Legolas is clearly jealous, Tauriel has clearly been hurt by the callous words of Thranduil and there was, perhaps, a little bit of flirting going on between the bars. This is Kíli after all. One thing we forget, however, is that she is his jailor. She is in a position of significant power over him. Let us flip the genders. The one behind bars is female, the one who holds the keys and is showing a marked interest in her is male. This is a familiar trope, and one which many of us shudder back from due to the power divide and the vulnerability of the female character, no matter how kind the male one seems. Why, then, do so many of us ignore the reverse scenario? Why is it alright for a woman, or elleth, in a position of power over a male, and especially a young one who might well be looking for a way out and a way to keep his friends and family safe, to pay such marked attention to a male captive?

The answer, of course, is that it is very much not alright, but we let it slide because it is not the reverse and society seems to have this thing for women in power seducing helpless males.

So, they have got their flirt on, spent an unspecified length of time languishing in the cells and now it is time to escape. The book would have us believe that they spent a month or so in the cells and rode their barrels out with relative ease. No gates, orcs, arrows or chases through the rapids. I can understand the movies needing something a little more dramatic. It would have been a dull escape otherwise, but we can already see the shift in Tauriel when the dwarves escape, even though she has known them at most a month, and the film makes it seem like they have only been in there a day or two which is what makes her actions later make even less sense than they would had she known Kíli a month. She hesitates. Her prisoners have escaped, her king is going to be very displeased, and still she hesitates.

I refuse to get into the thing with the morgul arrow, I find it very hard to believe that Sauron would have allowed the use of those and thus tipped others who were not Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel and Elrond off to the fact that he was on the move. I am not even entirely sure they were a thing in book canon which is neither here nor there. It is believable that Kíli would have been hurt, that is a risk in every combat situation, and I will leave it at that.

The dwarves escape and head to Lake Town with Kíli in increasingly poor shape, Tauriel and Legolas take an orc to Thranduil for questioning which results in the elf king ordering the gates sealed. He wants nothing to do with whatever quarrel is between the orcs and dwarves. I hardly blame him. Legolas and Tauriel both object at different times and get shut down, and Legolas goes to obey his father’s orders, only to realise that Tauriel has already run off after this bloke she hardly knows.

I love Kíli, I do, but at this point he holds about as much of a permanent place in her life as the bloke I started to play Dungeons and Dragons with three months ago does in mine. And she probably knows him about as well as I do that guy.

She is idealistic, young, desperate to see the world. I get that. It is as good a reason as any to want to go out there and save it given that she is, to borrow from Guardians of the Galaxy, one of the idiots who lives in it. But saving the world, or that corner of it, was not what set her off in Thranduil’s throne room. Being told that Kíli was going to die slowly and painfully was. As much as the scene argues that she is going out there to save the world because she believes that they have a responsibility to do so, she has also already shown that Kíli is one of her primary reasons.

Four years ago, my then four year old, looked at this whole mess and said “But Elsa says you can’t marry a man you just met”. Where she got the idea Tauriel wanted to marry Kíli, I do not know, but that observation stuck with me. 

Anyway, because this is getting rambling, stuff happens, the dwarves have a feast, Kíli gets left in Lake Town with Fíli while the rest go on to Erebor and Tauriel fights her way into Bard’s in time to get some athelas to heal Kíli, although not without a little bit of dithering about before hand as she tries to work out what, if anything, she can do to help him. It is not the first time we see the calm, collected and confident character we were introduced to take a backseat before she pulls herself together but it is quite prominent. Kíli, while being healed, spouts off some romantic gibberish about him and Tauriel being worlds apart from one another and wondering if she could have loved him. 

It is very sweet. It is also delirious ramblings. I have said some things while feverish and sick that have had my Significant Other raising his eyebrows at me. It is not meant to be taken really seriously. For all we know, five minutes before he might have proposed marriage to Óin or been hallucinating a fight with Smaug. It is sweet and romantic, as we might believe Kíli to be, but can it be considered a true declaration?

Incidentally, this part is one of the changes that makes me really quite angry. Fíli and Kíli were always supposed to be at Thorin’s side when they entered Erebor. He leaves Kíli, and therefore Fíli, behind with barely a twitch, and callously does so after making him struggle his way to the dock and the waiting boat in front of the population of Lake Town who are waiting to see them off. It raises questions about whether the gold obsession that plagues the line of Durin had already started to set in, but I think it was a decision made to give a greater sense of peril to the scenes in Lake Town when Smaug is razing the place. 

Either way, I do not like it. 

The morning after the night before dawns, Kíli seems none the worse for wear after his near brush with death, though we know that Frodo was heavily weakened after his own such encounter in sixty/eighty years, depending on if you book or film timeline it. He is saying goodbye to Tauriel and effectively tells her he loves her by calling her “amrâlimê” which most of us here know means something to the effect of “my love”. Watch Fíli behind him, rolling his eyes and shaking his head as though this is not the first time he has seen his brother act like this. Fíli is the Darcy to Kíli’s Bingley, except maybe this time it really is not love at all and Fíli is right to be wary and frustrated. It is also the time we see Kíli go from adoring puppy to murder hound in about 0.6 seconds with the arrival of Legolas. This time he is clearly infatuated, but I would still hesitate to say “in love” for a couple of reasons. The first is that they really hardly know each other, and while love at first sight is a wonderful idea it is not necessarily the strongest foundation for a relationship. Especially one with such incredibly strong Romeo and Juliet vibes. The second is that she has saved his life twice at this point. It is a known phenomenon that when someone does such a thing gratitude can be mistaken for powerful love.

In fact, Aidan and Evangeline have both reported to have said that had Kíli survived the pair of them would have very rapidly recognised that this is not love at all. It is gratitude and infatuation and not something which could withstand the judgement of both of their peoples.

Here, they separate, and neither mentions the other at all. Tauriel is cast out of Mirkwood, Legolas vows he will not return without her which is a whole other host of problems on its own, and they go forth to Gundabad to see what the orcs are up to. 

It is bad news, but then these things usually are.

Things go horribly wrong in Erebor, words and Arkenstones are exchanged, hobbits are nearly flung from very high places and battle commences while Dwalin attempts to knock some sense into a gold consumed Thorin. You can see why Kíli will not have had time to think about Tauriel at all.

With the battle joined, it is fight or die. Kíli is unaware that Tauriel is anywhere on the field, or that there is a trap waiting for him in that bloody tower and Tauriel… well she panics. Seeing that Thranduil is intending on withdrawing for the good of his people she stands before him and pulls a weapon on her king demanding that he stay and fight and help the dwarves. If not for the fact that Legolas comes and takes her toward Ravenhill I think Thranduil probably would have crossed a line into kinslaying right there and then. There is only so much disobedience and, frankly, treason one can endure from a subject before something more permanent needs to be done about them.

They get to the tower, Fíli is already dead and Kíli is desperately trying to hold his own against an ambush so that he can avenge his brother. And Tauriel, for some unfathomable reason, races through a tower full of orcs screaming his name. That… that is not how you do these things. At all. By doing that you draw the attention of every creature that is currently free to track you down and kill you. 

Moving on.

Watch them fight against Bolg together. They do not do it well. Kíli is fabulous next to Fíli, and probably Thorin and Dwalin and any other dwarf for that matter. He probably would not do too badly with one of the Men beside him but the elvish style of combat and the dwarf style are very different and it does not mesh well for these two who barely really know each other. Legolas and Gimli fight in many of the same battles, but rarely side by side and they are certainly more in tune with one another than these two are. In this case, Tauriel is definitely panicking and I wonder if she would have done the same if it had been Legolas she was fighting with. 

Somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, eventually they are overwhelmed, longing looks are exchanged and Kíli is killed. Tauriel breaks down to Thranduil who declares that it was clearly real love.

I just, there is so much wrong with this I hardly know where to start. 

A lot of time is dedicated to this addition. It drives a wedge between Thranduil and Legolas that we had no reason to suspect existed, it deprives him of one of his loyal guards and it does absolutely nothing at all to affect the outcome of the quest for Erebor in a positive way. It adds nothing to Kili’s death, it does not make it any more of a tragedy than it is in the book. In fact, if anything I think it takes away from it a little bit. For those not in the know, in the book Thorin is felled on the field, fatally wounded by Bolg who is then crushed to death by Beorn. Fíli and Kíli, who do not wish to see their uncle’s body taken and desecrated, and likely hoping that there was some small chance he could be saved, fight over him as guards until they are overwhelmed and die side by side before help can come. It is, ultimately, a terrible waste of their lives. Thorin lives long enough to apologise to Bilbo in one of the healing tents, much as he does on the side of the mountain in the film, and then he dies. 

So Tauriel has made no positive impact upon the outcome, it could be argued that her moment of hesitating to threaten Thranduil could have been the moments where she and Legolas might have reached the tower fast enough to save possibly Kíli, perhaps even Fíli, we will never know. What we do know is that the addition of the love triangle added extra time which could have been given to any of the rest of the Company, most of whom were given very little at all to do other than carry on in the background. We could have spent more time with Bilbo, who got shunted aside for the Legend of Legolas parts and, of course, the love triangle additions. We did not even get the funeral in the theatrical release!

It seemed to primarily be, well, filler. And the studio’s bizarre opinion that they were not going to get female viewers if they did not stick some form of romance in there. It seemed to almost be an attempt to mirror the Arwen, Aragorn, Eowyn triangle from the Lord of the Rings, except they missed the mark there spectacularly. Arwen knew very well what she was giving up in marrying Aragorn, and she ultimately made the same choice that her uncle had made thousands of years before as had her very nearly ultimate grandmother (bar Melian) before that. Tauriel could have had no concept at all of what she might have been tying herself to. And that does not even get into the political ramifications of it had Kíli survived, or if he and any one or both of Fíli and Thorin survived. 

This next is, of course, speculation, because we have no real way of knowing. 

Tauriel has sacrificed everything, her home and position for some dwarf she hardly knew. They think it is love, but in the coming weeks with Kíli dedicated to the mountain, whether alone as king or with his uncle and/or brother, distance begins to grow. Tauriel is an elf, she may have fought in the battle but she is still not completely trusted. Rumours from those who might have seen her interaction with Thranduil during the battle start to surface. Kíli might overlook them for himself, but could Thorin or Fíli? If they were to send Kíli to do something that Tauriel would not like, could they trust her not to do the same to them as she did to Thranduil? She owes them even less loyalty than she did him and she threw it all to one side in a heartbeat. If Kíli is the only one of the younger two who survived, where does that leave the succession? If he and Tauriel cannot have children together the throne is not secure, even if they could with all the millennia of bad blood between elf and dwarf will the general populace really accept a half elf on the throne? Especially one who might live forever. The answer there is very likely to be no, which will cause more problems further on and puts Dáin and later Thorin III Stonehelm on the throne again. So there was no point saving Kíli if the original timeline would come to pass anyway, if with a few more hurdles and a heap more unrest thrown in. In other words, it would cause a lot more contention than it would solve.

If they did grow apart, as the actors have stated they would, I think Tauriel would have come to resent Kíli for his role in her decisions, even though she was a grown elleth and perfectly capable of reasoning out possible consequences for herself. Evangeline says that Tauriel went back to Mirkwood after the battle and I suspect Thranduil forgave her out of pity and because he knew she had learnt a terrible lesson. I doubt, though, that she ever regained his trust, and I very much doubt she ever rose to any real position within the kingdom again. If Kíli had not died, I suspect her reception would have been less forgiving and more in the nature of “well if it isn’t the consequences of your actions” before being thrown from her home in disgrace.

Either ending is unhappy for her.

This whole diatribe actually makes it sound like I quite like the character, and there are some small parts of her that I do like. The film needed a strong female character, and this is perhaps one of the reasons that one of the more popular genderbends in the fandom is female Bilbo. Because either way, the story still works. And all the initial stuff with Tauriel worked. Her early interactions with Kíli, that snappy comeback which is actually a favourite because as a response to someone intending on unsettling her it is perfect, even that little bit of wanderlust that she lets seep out. Where it falls apart, and where my dislike stems, is the introduction of the love triangle, the huge power imbalance between them when it begins in the dungeons of Mirkwood, the fact that gratitude and love are allowed to blur over the line with no one questioning it. Except, perhaps, Fíli, who is the long suffering older sibling accustomed to his brother becoming infatuated with this or that pretty face or great warrior.

Had it been left at the wanderlust and the whole bit with the delirious confession been done away with, she could have still been great. Had she kept her head a bit better upon seeing Kíli fighting Bolg or even had a material effect on things for good I could possibly, possibly have overlooked how it all began. But that moment in the cells set my squick metre off and coloured my opinion of it from there. And even repeat watching has not helped me to see it in a positive light. It was filler, time wasting, and I find it hard to like a character who was introduced as someone that girls could look up to, and who became, instead, every cliché female love interest that I feared she would. They set her up, let her and us down, and as a result I prefer to pretend she never existed, or gloss over her entirely. 

And because people are always asking me what my problem with her is I’ve grown to despise her. 

Kíli is a grown dwarf, he is perfectly capable of making his own decisions and thinking for himself. Tauriel does not manipulate him into having feelings for her, she seems to be made uncomfortable by the confession in fact, but just as he is capable of thinking for himself, so is she. And I question every decision she made from the moment she locked him behind those bars, because that is where the Tauriel that Kíli met in the spider’s nest begins to vanish. 

She could have been a great character and she did not need a love interest, or to become one, for that to happen. The studio handled her poorly, and that is why I would prefer to ignore the fact that she, and that stupid love triangle, ever existed.

[iturbide]

More character meme stuff for you. Since Lyon is back on my mind thanks to the new banner, can I hear your thoughts on him please?

Also Ashe please.

You know, with him as the 4-star focus this was not what I was expecting this morning:

So I am all on board with Lyon

How do I feel about this character?

Lyon gets me right in the heart.  Just...his whole story is tragic, when you really think about it.  This young man who is himself intelligent, talented, and capable, but who feels inadequate next to his dearest friends that he loves with all his heart, who feels the crushing pressure of responsibility for his people and his country in the wake of his father’s death and knowing that disaster will soon strike, who falls specifically because he was trying to find a way to prove his worth and save everyone and ended up being manipulated by an unfathomable power.  His kindness and compassion, both admirable traits in and of themselves, ended up becoming a fatal weakness when they allowed Fomortiis the foothold he needed to take hold of Lyon, and from there every good and kind and noble aspect of him ended up twisted beyond recognition.

There’s something about characters with crippling inferiority complexes that draws me in.  I end up feeling deeply for them, wanting the best for them, hoping they’ll succeed and cheering when they’re able to acknowledge and accept their own personal worth...or mourning when they’re not only unable to overcome their self-doubt, but end up becoming victims when it’s exploited by outside forces.  Takumi hits me in very similar ways, especially for Conquest, but Lyon’s story is really heartbreaking for how we see the monster Fomortiis makes of him specifically through the eyes of his dearest friends.

Who do I ship this character with romantically?

I...don’t know actually.  I’m not super familiar with Sacred Stones on the whole, so I’m not really familiar with who would be possible or reasonable.  I know that Eirika and Ephraim are both popular partners for him, and there’s definitely an appeal to both of those options, but I don’t know if I prefer one or the other, if there might be someone else out there who’d be good for him, or if I even want to ship him at all so much as give him a chance to find his own happiness for himself.

Who is my brOTP for this character?

Eirika and Ephraim, definitely.  Regardless of the romantic side, his friendship with those two is absolutely integral to him and I love the idea of their friendship and how multifaceted it is, fueling both his love for them and his jealousy of them in equal measure.  I’m also really keen on the idea of him being friends with Knoll, since Knoll wants to restore Grado specifically because he wants it to become the nation Lyon truly wanted to make; that says a lot to me personally about the relationship they had, and how much Knoll admired Lyon (especially since he canonically disappears as soon as that work is finished).

What’s my Unpopular Opinion™ about this character?

Are there popular Lyon opinions?  I haven’t played Sacred Stones in years at this point: I vaguely recall borrowing it from a friend and I’m reasonably sure I played it through, but the only record I have of it is in some old unfinished fic bits living on an old computer that are directly related to that playthrough. 

How popular is the opinion that Lyon’s story is pretty much perfect?  Because from everything I’ve seen and read it honestly sounds like they handled his arc perfectly, from his motivations to his downfall.

What’s one thing I wish would have happened with this character in canon?

This is kind of a tough one because I don’t really know Sacred Stones all that well as a game.  My memories are very fuzzy and mostly involve realizing that Myrrh’s dragonstone had limited durability which meant I couldn’t use her in every battle and I was sad about it because dragon girl.  I guess if there’s anything...from what I understand, Lyon is recruitable in some side dungeon if you manage to beat this outrageous hardmode three times?  And yet he has no supports or dialogue.  Like.  What’s even the point if the party doesn’t get to talk to him?  Either don’t make him recruitable or put in dialogue because after everything that happened it’s a crime not to have him say a word.

And also Ashe because I love him

How do I feel about this character?

Ashe is absolutely one of the stand-out characters in the Blue Lions roster and the game on the whole, in my opinion.  His story is honestly fascinating: from a normal commoner kid with siblings and loving parents to an orphan stealing to ensure that he and his siblings could survive on the streets to the adopted child of a minor Kingdom noble with aspirations to be a knight and then back to an orphan thanks to Rhea who’s forced to fight for the Empire depending on your route.  That’s an absolutely wild ride.

Ashe could have been a really tragic character who leans heavy on the sympathy, but he doesn’t.  While there are undeniably tragic elements to his story, especially in the Academy Phase as we’re forced to fight his adoptive father on Rhea’s orders and steal the only parental figure he has (you find him in the cathedral a lot after that, for understandable reasons -- his crisis of faith must be monumental), he never gives up his aspirations to the kind of knight they write stories about.  This is a kid who has resorted to thievery frequently in the past, and his goal in life is to rise up from that low point in his life and become a shining paragon of chivalry and virtue helping the people.  And he puts his money where his mouth is, too: call him gullible, call him naive, but when he sees someone in a bind -- even a thief, claiming he’s been reduced to that to buy medicine for an ailing child -- he always helps out as best he can.  He doesn’t look down on people for their worst moments: he tries to lift them up so they can reach better ones, the same way he was lifted up by Lonato.  With his kindness and his compassion and his earnest ambition, I think he has an excellent chance of succeeding and becoming a knight of story and song.

Who do I ship this character with romantically?

TRICK QUESTION once again, I do not have any ships for Ashe.  I don’t have ships for most of the Three Houses kids, and while I love Ashe dearly, none of his supports really grabbed me romantically.  If I had to pick anyone, it would probably be Caspar, because their Supports are stellar: despite how rough the C is, the B turns it all around on its head and makes both of them realize that they were both being way too serious about the whole thing, and the A is sheer perfection as they realize they’ve both been spoiling the cat silly.  The idea of them going on endless adventures together, balancing each other and bringing out the best in one another, is so charming to me, and I could easily see them as lifelong partners.

Who is my brOTP for this character?

PETRA.  I love their Support chain so much and the fact that in their paired endcard she literally creates a whole order of knights in Brigid specifically to help him fulfill his lifelong ambition?  Get yourself a friend like that wow.  Also Annette: I love their Support chain and how even though the both of them are so scared of that very unsettling tower, he still goes and braves it a second time for just to find a treasure that she dropped in their initial flight.  That’s just so sweet okay I love how they get along and how close they are as friends and how they’ll pull out all the stops for one another.  Also, I have a major soft spot for his supports with Dedue because Ashe and Dedue cooking together is excellent (and also his supports with Felix are so charming and definitely show Felix in a better light once the B rolls around).

What’s my Unpopular Opinion™ about this character?

Okay so I think I got this one from @anankos but Ashe is really skilled with a knife.  Sure, everybody loves to gush about the precious cinnamon roll, but he can and will cut you if he has to; old habits die hard and he probably has a knife on him at all times just in case he gets in a tight spot, either where he can’t use or doesn’t have his bow.  Ordinarily he would use it for things like hunting and cooking as required, but he’s definitely used it as a cutpurse, and under pressure he will use it to stab someone if it will give him a chance at survival he otherwise wouldn’t have.  Don’t mess with the kid basically.

What’s one thing I wish would have happened with this character in canon?

This is so small and so minor but I wish we could have seen more of his emotional journey after the loss of Lonato.  I know it’s a really early game event, but given that certain supports can be locked until certain narrative points (like Leonie and Byleth’s B, which focuses directly on the aftermath of Jeralt’s death), I think it would have been beneficial to have shown the impact that death made on him, especially in regards to his view on the church.  Having supports with Seteth could have been great, too, especially given some of his views on the Church as a whole.

Give Me a Character  

[mittensmorgul]

Look, I know you've covered this already but I just want to reiterate how AWESOME it is that several lines and scenes of s14 were deliberately drawing our attention to the in‐betweens, to the fact that these guys have lives outside of what we seen and that they have significant moments in those off screen lives. I just fricking *love* that.

Hi hi! I know you sent this like a week ago, but I really wanted to have time to sit down and detail all the moments in s14 where they’ve used this device before replying– both for the sake of completeness in demonstrating just how critical they’ve made these “in between” spaces to the overall narrative, as well as for my own general reference purposes. :P

I’ll start by saying that the show has done this on some level from the start. I mean, the entire series begins with a cold open in 1983 before jumping 22 years into the future to begin in the “present day” of October, 2005. We begin our introduction to the story of Supernatural immediately aware that there’s already a metric fuckton of backstory we’re due to have filled in, and we’re primed to begin looking for more pieces to flesh out that history from the moment the first scene airs.

*clenches fist* STORYTELLING

I’m currently in mid-late s7 in my eternal rewatch, and even s7 uses this device MULTIPLE times. I mean, s6 does this, as well, immediately informing us that a year has passed since the events of 5.22, and gradually filling in the missing events from that gap, using Sam’s soullessness and then post-re-ensoulening amnesia about his soulless time, him “scratching the wall” and beginning to piece his own memories together, as one entry point into this “filling in the blanks of the past for full understanding of the present” storytelling device. The other major expression of this device in s6 is Castiel’s story throughout the season, which doesn’t truly begin to fill in all the blanks and answer all the questions until episode TWENTY.

(I am not defending this storytelling choice, because in s6 it served as a metaphorical “punishment,” which is still so skeevy I struggle to watch the season as a whole… in Gamble Era, characters are “punished” for remembering their past– Sam for his guilt over what he did while soulless, and eventually Cas for his hubris in believing he could devour the souls of purgatory without consequences… and again, what I get from Gamble Era overall is an unkindness to all the characters… this Erasure of Identity. For years now, I’ve read this exchange from 6.09 as a bit of an indictment of the story of that era by Ben Edlund:

SAM: So you’re saying having a soul equals suffering.DEAN: Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.SAM: Like, the million times you almost called Lisa. So you’re saying suffering is a good thing.DEAN: I’m saying it’s the only game in town.

but back to the point)

S7 employed this technique in really in-your-face obvious ways, showing us time skips with little montages that cover several weeks in a matter of less than a minute, during which we’re shown the tone of the events of the “missing time” and are being told directly how to fill in those blanks:

7.01 shows this montage through Dean repairing Baby while receiving occasional updates on Sam’s recovery and Cas’s Godstiel rampage.

7.03 gives us a montage of Dean’s healing leg while he’s relegated to the sofa in the cabin watching tv… weeks elapse like this before the action picks up again.

7.10 uses flashbacks as Bobby lays dying to directly show us a fuller snapshot of who he is as a character, and why he’s been so important to Sam and Dean as their adoptive father figure

7.11 uses another “weeks pass” montage to show us Sam and Dean’s grief and their respective ways of handling Bobby’s loss

7.17 uses another flashback montage as Castiel literally rebuilds his identity from these moments… can’t really be more anvilicious than this about the import of filling in the narrative gaps…

But over the years, this has evolved in the narrative from these blatantly obvious tells to something we’re being low-level reminded of in nearly every episode through a constant implicit assumption that these characters have lives outside of what we see on The Magic Rectangle for 42 minutes a week. The show’s gone from literally subtitling these scenes and telling us exactly what we’re seeing to requiring our assumption that all we need to learn how to fill in the blanks is to assume these are actually real people who casually reference things we never knew before from their own lives and assume we know all the characters well enough by now to correctly fill in the blanks they so casually point out to us, or even expand on vast swaths of otherwise “missing time” from what we actively see of their lives from an otherwise minor comment made in passing…

Gosh, ain’t it nice when writers assume their audience is actually intelligent, considerate, engaged, and caring like this? Honestly in this day and age of GOTCHA! oneupsmanship, of authors attempting to demonstrate their intellectual superiority over their audience, it’s rather refreshing.

One more thing before we jump right into s14. Dabb and Company have been “educating” us on how to read these subtextual instructions for years now. We had the Mixtape Revelation in 12.19 that idiotically devolved into fandom arguments over what a mixtape itself was intended to symbolize, with people arguing that the thing itself had no inherent romantic implications (which… wow… but people be dumb sometimes…). I’d argue that regardless of what anyone has convinced themselves the gift meant symbolically (or didn’t mean symbolically for people with their heads shoved so far up their butts they actually made that argument in a public forum with a straight face and actually got mad about folks who actually know better…), what it meant NARRATIVELY was that the original gifting of the tape was something that had happened in the past, that we-the-audience previously had no knowledge of this particular interaction between Dean and Cas, and were being SPECIFICALLY TOLD that even though WE DID NOT SEE IT HAPPEN ON SCREEN, it absolutely, definitely, CANONICALLY ACTUALLY HAPPENED regardless of that fact.

Not only did that unseen exchange canonically happen, it was discussed by Dean and Cas in a casual fashion, as if it was simply one moment in a past filled with moments just like it. In a season where the episodes leading up to this one were filled with comments about Dean and Cas calling each other regularly (conversations that we never see, yet are informed casually happen constantly offscreen), and Dean’s increasing distress over NOT being able to reach Cas for several episodes, it’s impossible NOT to draw the conclusion that this lack of communication is HIGHLY IRREGULAR and therefore SOMETHING WE SHOULD ALL BE CONCERNED ABOUT. We didn’t need to *see* all of this to apply this fact far more broadly to the entire narrative, and understand there were massive gaps between what they could show us in 42 minutes a week versus what the baseline background life is for all of these characters in those between-times.

They doubled down on this in s13, specifically in 13.06, both with the “Dean and Cas regularly watch movies together” comments AND in the casual knowledge Cas shares with Jack about Dean’s sleeping and coffee drinking habits. It’s not just these isolated facts that we’re supposed to take away from these sorts of exchanges, but what they mean in the larger context of their off-camera interactions and relationship as a whole.

So that said, let’s move on to s14, where this has honestly evolved to the next level. The rest of this is going under a cut for now, because the totality of this post is something like 7700 words...

14.01, Stranger in a Strange Land:

The season begins with a montage of Dinkle’s actions over a period of weeks, talking to different people and asking what they want. We don’t see every one of these conversations, but we can extrapolate out from the ones we DO see and infer how all of those experiences guide his subsequent actions (as well as Dean’s subsequent emotional and psychological state later down the road).

But we’re shown one more of those conversations INDIRECTLY, from an offhand comment of another character, where we’re both reminded of Dinkle’s little conversations, AND reminded that they don’t constitute the sum total of those conversations. There is much we haven’t seen (and will NOT see, because this scene renders any additional on-screen time to cover the tone and content of those conversations superfluous and redundant), and yet we still understand the importance and gravity of Dinkle’s entire occupation during those missing weeks:

Kip:You see, recently, I had a revelation. You know, somebody asked me what it was that I wanted. And I realized that after 600 years as a demon walking the planet, destroying, drinking, defiling – you know, the Three D’s – I didn’t know. So, I sat back, and I gave it a good think, and I realized exactly what I wanted.Castiel: And what is it?Kip: Everything.

We also see this from the other side of the narrative– through the progression of events occurring at the Bunker in Dean’s absence. Sam’s despair is conveyed not only in dialogue in his conversation with Mary, it’s conveyed through just how poorly he’s looking after his own wellbeing, not shaving (visual confirmation of his mindset informing us of what his life’s been like over the previous weeks), not eating or sleeping (we’re told, and believe because of how he’s presenting himself, but also emotionally informs us of how he’s been affected by his ordeal), while simultaneously having stepped up to lead the army of AU Hunters– i.e. people from a world where war against Michael has been their lives for more than a decade, and are literally bringing that experience to THIS world, metaphorically going back to the start of their own battle to a world where Michael is only BEGINNING to enact that war on this world, who now have the experience of having survived that war and the knowledge gained while having fought against it, but also a chance to stop it before it can be allowed to start again. Or that is the hope, you know?

We’re also seeing Jack struggle with guilt, with adapting to life without the magical powers he’d been born with, and being forced to confront what is truly important to him, and what his own humanity means to him.

We’re subtly being reminded of VAST quantities of canon upon which the current character developments are resting.

14.02, Gods and Monsters:

There’s a lot of “backtracing” through character arcs in this one, which I’m gonna boil down to the general themes:

Jack seeking out his familial history, seeking out Kelly Kline’s parents to make a personal connection to his mother’s past in order to better understand himself now

Cas relating parts of his own past to Jack (falling and becoming human, not mourning the past he can’t change but finding strength in himself regardless of his current circumstance, and to have patience while his circumstance will change in future) (aside to remind folks that this setup at the beginning of the season is entirely about subverting his words through his own actions throughout the season… with 14.14 being the massive turning point again for both Jack and Cas)

Nick’s setup of beginning to fill in the blanks from his own life after a decade of having lost everything to his possession by Lucifer. He’s got a lot of catching up to do, and a heck of a lot of blanks to fill.

the absolute knowledge that the show is 100% aware of how they’ve trained us to look at the narrative this deeply, using character mirrors, foreshadowing, parallels, etc., and that they’re keen to use this power against us. And it’s up to us to understand the difference between “things being presented to us for the purposes of subversion” and “things being presented to us to fill in narrative blanks.” Like the entirety of Dinkle’s conversations with both Dean and Lydia the vampire. Heck I’m already down to bullet points and I’m gonna need to extrapolate on this one… *sighs*

Let’s start simple, with a couple of quotes:

Michael: Why do you think I dumped your brothers and sisters in plain sight? Why do you think I let you escape?Lydia: You let me escape?Michael: Rule number 1 – you can’t have a trap without bait. That brings us to rule number 2, which says once the trap has been sprung, you don’t need the bait anymore.

and

Dean: Get… out!Michael: I don’t think so.Dean: You can’t!Michael: Oh, but I can. Because, see… I own you. So hang on and enjoy the ride.

Because the first defines and contextualizes the second… Do I really need to elaborate? No? Oh good, then we can move on!

14.03, The Scar:

Again, using the trope of amnesia and memory recovery to illustrate the emotional and psychological impact of “missing time,” if not the entirety of the content of that missing gap. In addition, to Dean recovering his memories and demonstrating his reaction to his own lost time, the two respective cases of the week (Darth Kaia, learning how she came to this universe, and everything she’s endured at Dinkle’s hands also informing further the information we learned in 14.01, and in the bunker Jack and Cas helping heal Lora of a witch’s curse that was literally stealing time from her in the form of her own life energy).

I love demonstrating how “filling narrative gaps from the past” is not only built into the inherent structure of the narrative like this, it’s also the entire purpose of all the character development we’re witnessing, as well as setting the foundation of the entire story going forward.

We had that in spades from Jody, putting in plain words what we all saw happening in 13.10:

Jody: They have a right to know but I can’t. I promised Claire human cases are mine, but anything “monstery” I’d loop her in: this. God. Claire’s been doing so good. I mean anything connected to Kaia, she’s a powder keg. First loves strikes quick, and then to lose it like that. Wow, you two are having a time of it.

Confirming the subtext of Claire and Kaia’s relationship, while simultaneously informing us of what Jody, Claire, et al’s lives have been like since then, filling in a huge narrative gap with just a few innocuous comments. But there’s one more example from within the span of this episode:

Sam: Okay, look, I’m just saying… you said you let Michael in, then, bang you’re back in a blink. But for me? You were gone for weeks. I didn’t know if you were alive. I just need you to talk to me, to slow down so I can catch up.

Sam, defining the narrative gap and begging for information to fill it with. And then at the end of the episode, he gets an answer, but it’s nothing like what he expected or hoped for:

Dean: And it wasn’t a blink, being possessed. I make it sound like that, but it wasn’t. I don’t remember most of what Michael did with me because I was underwater, drowning, and that I remember. I felt every second of it – clawing, fighting for air. I thought I could make it out, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. And now he’s gone and he’s out there putting an army of monsters together and he’s hurting people. And its all on me, man. I said yes. It’s my fault.

And it’s still not really an answer.

14.04, Mint Condition:

Narrative gap reshuffle yahtzee. I’m just gonna give a few links to meta already written for this one, because it’s about the journey, and being informed enough to pay attention to all the sights along the roadside as we go:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179792849870/when-in-doubt-sing-mittensmorgul-i

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/181790806615/questions-and-their-empty-spaces

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179742780230/mittens-help-dean-says-he-loves-hatchet-man

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179734411135/i-love-there-wasnt-any-acknowledgement-about-dean

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179724128520/stuarts-my-best-friend-we-watch-movies-and-eat

(gotta throw in at least one destiel reference…)

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179700702490/hey-mittens-just-wondering-if-you-could-help-me

And because this reading list is already getting long, I just want to use this post to point out how the use of narrative mirrors informs our understanding of those one-off characters through our established understanding of the main characters, enabling those mirror characters to serve their function in the story. Davy was not subtle with pointing that out in this episode, and it’s an essential tool in understanding the bigger picture of the narrative. But it’s also a device in filling narrative gaps by recognizing and applying the subtextual lessons being demonstrated:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179695858820/a-few-observations-on-the-mirror-characters

So this isn’t just about individual lines at this point, but an entire narrative shift that the writers spent the entire first half of s14 laying out for us through these sorts of storytelling lessons hidden just under the surface of the story itself. Brilliant.

Basically, if you’re NOT making these connections and using your brain to flesh out the entire world pointed at in the narrative gaps, you don’t really have a hope of understanding the bigger story.

14.05, Nightmare Logic:

Aah, the superpowered djinn, 3D walking metaphor for filling in gaps from the past to find wholeness in the present. Also, one of Michael’s “monster traps” he laid out in order to lure in and kill unwary hunters, which he believed (and the monsters themselves believed) made them more powerful, but in reality became the vehicle through which the Winchesters were eventually able to gain the upper hand… they survived the encounter and walked away with new knowledge about both themselves AND Michael’s bigger plans that had been evading them before this episode.

Information fills narrative gaps.

The djinn itself has been “enhanced” from djinn we’ve seen in the past, able to create its illusions in reality rather than only within its victims own minds. What was imaginary becomes tangible. Subtext becomes text.

We also get AU!Bobby’s backstory, which demonstrates that this alternate version of Bobby is really nothing like our original version, and the sum of his life experiences have made him who he is.

We also get another “zombie” reference, which the more I think back on this entire season (and Jack’s long obsession with zombies in general) is an interesting metaphor for this sort of viewing, not engaging with the deeper text and instead shuffling across it without looking deeper. Because pretty much every time someone suggested the monster could be a zombie, it’s definitively shown to be something much more complex once they begin to dig for answers.

(we also have Dean discussing his past, his relationship with his father, and talking about how setting that baggage aside and living in the present, and for the future, is something he’s worked long and hard to achieve for himself. And we’ve seen some of that journey for him, but this was a huge step for him, which will become profoundly more evident in 14.10 and 14.13)

14.06, Optimism:

Oh, we wanted zombie references? Well, alrighty, have some zombie references! Via the entirely self-deluded MotW character, masquerading as a person with a sad backstory of being “unlucky in love” while all the while she’s a necromancer who murdered and resurrected her boyfriend as a mindless zombie she enacts a brutal game with for her own personal pleasure: luring in suitors and letting her zombie boyfriend kill and eat them. Worst honey trap ever.

Speaking of honey, the other MotW is a fly dude who couldn’t find love among his species and exiled himself to live alone among a pile of rotting corpses of his victims. I mean… ew.

But back to our necromancer, who is a lonely librarian, who is surrounded by stories and laments that people in her town aren’t interested in stories. All the while she’s not engaging with her own reality, and has decided that her own version of the story is an accurate reflection of reality (while the rest of us shake our heads in horror because whoa no hon…)

We also learn AU!Charlie’s backstory, with the constant reminders that what Sam keeps mistaking on the surface level for ���his Charlie” IS NOT HER. Man, I feel that feel, AU!Charlie.

Jack: What's 'courting?'Dean: It's what you do before you start dating.Jack: Oh, and that's the thing you do before the sex.Wanda: Sometimes you just have the sex.

Yes, Wanda. Sometimes you skip all the courting, all the emotional and interpersonal stuff, and just go right to the sex. But then you tend to just walk away after without any sort of deeper connection having been made. One night stands are fine, but they’re very different things from deep interpersonal relationships.

You can absolutely engage with Supernatural like a one night stand. The story’s fun on the surface, but ultimately the courting is what provides the deep payoff.

14.07, Unhuman Nature:

We get back to the twisted story of Nick, and his quest to understand himself. He’s filling in more of those horrific gaps in his history and getting closer to the Worst Possible Conclusions about himself. He ENJOYED being Lucifer’s vessel, and wants that feeling of power back, even if it wasn’t HIS power, just being the vehicle for that power is enough for him, more important to him than even discovering the truth about himself. At the bottom of himself, he’s just an empty douchebag-shaped vessel for pure evil.

What a fucking delight >.>

Nurse: Uh-huh. Family medical history? Let's start with the father.Dean: He's dead.Nurse: Cause of death?Castiel: He was stabbed through the heart, and he exploded.Dean: Okay, you know what? We don't have time for this. All right, he's sick. His name is Jack Kline. His father exploded. There, you've got all the basics. Now what does he need to do to see a doctor?

Well that simplified the whole “filling in the backstory through the narrative negative spaces” thing in this episode, didn’t it?

Jack: Since I've been alive, everyone assumed that I would be this special 'person' who goes on forever. Only now it looks like forever might be a couple of weeks, so--Dean: We don't know that.Jack: What I do know is I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it. I just want a chance to get a tan or see a hockey game... get a parking ticket... get bored... and when it's all over -- die.

I mean, isn’t that what all of TFW kind of wants? They want to not be “special.” They want the universe to stop picking on them specifically. They want to just live their lives until they’re done.

Jack: You once told me you and your father did the exact same thing. It was your happiest memory of him.Dean: I didn't say that.Jack: It was how you said it. I could tell. I guess my point is that if I don't make it... The stuff I'd miss -- it wouldn't be things like Tahiti. Or the Taj Mahal. I'd miss more time with you. I'm getting that life isn't all these big, amazing moments. It's time together that matters. Like this.Dean: Well, who'd have thought hanging out with me would make you sentimental?

Dude. Dean. Everyone thought this. You are the king of “family is the most important thing in the universe without which I am nothing.” Talk about Jack filling in that particular blank for you.

14.08, Byzantium:

Aka that one where we discover something important to Jack in his own Heaven-- and it’s literally a missing scene from 13.06 and their road trip to Dodge City where they stop for burgers. UNPROBLEMATIC FAMILY BONDING IS JACK’S HEAVEN. And it also fills in a past narrative gap, specifically from an episode that was structured around filling in narrative gaps. WE’RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, PEOPLE.

We also have the return of Lily Sunder, now grown old since she’d completed her revenge quest against Ishim and the other angels who’d wronged her (including Cas, who literally killed Ishim FOR her). Talk about filling in a lifetime worth of gaps, and her literal near-lack of a soul she “fills in” through one final sacrifice made of love, which earns her redemption and entrance to Heaven.

I mean… those narrative gaps are looking pretty important here right about now.

Also, what’s that other big gap I haven’t mentioned yet? Oh, right! A villain literally known as “The Empty.” I’m sure that’s not meta relevant to the importance of the narrative empty spaces at all...

14.09, The Spear.

Sequel to The Scar (since the spear is what left Dean with the scar in the first place, so we’re back on our Dinkle nonsense again). There’s a lot of blank-filling going on in this episode.

Remember Garth? Well, as he’s reintroduced in this episode it appears as if he’s gone over to the Dark Side, but of course we learn he’s actually there as a deep cover agent for the Winchesters. This tells us they’ve been keeping in close touch with Garth all this time, despite us not having seen him on screen in ages. (FIVE YEARS!)

Remember Ketch? Well, he’s also doing deep cover agency stuff for the Winchesters, but with a level of incompetence that reminds us all that he’s still not one of the good guys, no matter how hard he’s trying, he’s still… falling a bit short. But at least they’re still keeping contact with him. And BOTH of these characters appearing after a while offscreen reminds us that TFW truly aren’t alone in the world, and they DO have this network of people (at varying degrees of competence still ranging from typical bumbling civvie to TFW themselves).

This entire episode was also a massive reference to Die Hard. Just… it was Die Hard: Supernatural. And we know Dean has referenced this movie endlessly. But the funniest thing: Die Hard isn’t actually referenced ONE SINGLE TIME in text in this episode. Nobody points out the similarities between the situation at the Hitomi Plaza at Christmas with Die Hard. Narrative negative space ftw.

And then we have the reveal that Michael had somehow left a “secret back door” open into Dean, and was able to just jump right back into him when it was convenient to do so. I.e., when he was losing the fight to Dean. He had a cheat code at the ready, because his possession of Dean had been operating on cheat code rules since the start in 13.23. His entire possession of Dean was a violation of the “standard rules of angel possession.” Consent of the vessel being primary. Even BAD consent has been enough in the past-- tricking the vessel into saying yes, backing them into a corner. I mean, remember s5 and the horrors Zachariah was willing to go to in order to secure Dean’s yes? Not even manipulation here with this version of Michael. Even if the face of Dean’s abject rejection of his possession, he refused to vacate the premises. Which is an interesting narrative blank to fill in, yes? Angels may have these rules, but for some reason-- is it Michael’s supreme power? Is it the fact Dean is his “destined vessel?” is it a factor of this Michael being from an alternate universe that might operate on different rules? Is it a factor of Dean’s own lack of conviction in his demand that Michael get out? Whatever it is… it is interesting.

We also catch up with Darth Kaia, who after months of balking at the notion, hands over her spear to Dean with the promise that he’ll return it after he kills Michael. It would solve her ongoing problems with the monsters Michael had been relentlessly sending after her. But he also promises to help her find her way back to her own universe. And now we don’t even know if any of that is possible… (aside to say that I’m now crying over the loss of Wayward again, and I feel this lack of resolution here is a damn pointed statement on that from Bobo.)

14.10, Nihilism.

Nihilism being a descriptor of Michael’s basic personality, in this case.

The most long-term relevant narrative negative spaces in this episode are Sam and Cas venturing into Dean’s mind, and literally using what they know about Dean to find where Michael had locked him away. They literally rely on their knowledge of who he is as a person as a map to find him, and then as a codex to actually get through to him and break him out of the illusion Michael had trapped him in. And then they all turn around and weaponize all of that to lock Michael away in Dean’s mind fridge.

Metaphors, anyone?

Meanwhile, Michael literally insists he’s telling everyone the truth about how Dean really feels about them, but it’s all… ALL OF IT… a manipulation and a lie.

(aside to admit that at this point I have been working on this post on and off for the last 12 hours, can barely remember what the point of it even was, and regret everything. I think we were supposed to be discussing Narrative References To Stuff That Happens On Screen, but at this point, that is so deeply intertwined with the narrative structure as a whole that I’m having trouble separating out textual references to offscreen stuff from the actual content of the story as a whole… yes this is already approaching 5k words at this point, and no I don’t care anymore :P)

14.11, Damaged Goods.

Dean is given information (that we have not yet seen) by Billie (again, offscreen) about “the only way to save the universe.”

Disclaimer to note that we STILL haven’t seen exactly what Billie showed Dean in her magical destiny book… which fact in itself can be open to myriad interpretations, because canon itself has shifted from this point in the canonical timeline to what we have actually witnessed unfold, which fundamentally differs between what Billie told Dean and what actually transpired on screen.

This… is major.

Also, Nick, and the effective end of his story… or is it? He’s finally got his personal backstory filled in, and turns out he was just a dick all along! Surprise! Because his “truth” never actually mattered to him. It was all a lie he told himself from the very first moment he was ever introduced on screen back in 5.01. He was never a good person who’d been used by Lucifer and manipulated into doing terrible things. He was always just a bad person who’d been looking for an excuse to do terrible things. Lucifer was just his excuse.

Dean fills in some horrific bits of their childhood for Mary through the metaphor of Winchester Surprise. Apparently delicious to Dean, but yikes… stuff like that’s really not healthy…

14.12, Prophet and Loss:

So, Donatello might not be as brain dead as previously believed! Let’s fill in that backstory, through a broken prophet who can’t be fully realized because Donatello’s technically not dead, so the new guy is getting a distorted message because Donatello’s interrupting the signal.

Dean asked Sam not to tell Cas about his Drama Coffin plan, but of course Sam had immediately told Cas about his drama coffin plan anyway…

CAS: Sam. Maybe if I spoke with Dean…SAM: It wouldn’t matter. Believe me, I-I I’ve never seen him like this. He won’t listen to me. H-He just – No. If we don’t find some way… Dean’s gone.

But then just a little while later, when Dean talks to Cas and learns that Cas knows his entire dumbass plan:

DEAN: Really?SAM: Dean, it’s Cas. I had to tell him.

Well, some time in the previous few hours, when Sam hasn’t been trapped in the car with Dean (which we know he has been canonically), Sam’s first priority was calling Cas to tell him about Dean’s plan. Like… duh… 

14.13, Lebanon:

I love this episode on every possible level. It drops us at the climax of a hunt and just trusts us to understand what’s going on. Someone has been murdered for their collection of supernatural artifacts, and it’s been traced to this shop, where the owner trades in dangerous artifacts… all of that happened offscreen, yet we understand the context if not the specific case itself. Beautiful.

Then we have the cursed pearl that apparently grants a wish. Dean uses it to theoretically wish that Michael was out of his head. In monkey’s paw fashion, instead of just granting the wish through the simplest means, the wish actually attempts to rewrite history (this is the sort of thing that differentiates a “cursed object” from a “magical cure”) in order to remove the root infiltration of Michael into Dean’s life… by literally bringing John Winchester into the present time from 2003, removing him from the entire timeline to this point and changing EVERYTHING.

Talk about filling a narrative negative space. Cas doesn’t know them, Dean never went to Hell. Hell, Dean never even went to collect Sam from Stanford. NOTHING from the entire history of the series as we know it actually happened AT ALL.

D:

At least we got to see Zachariah get stabbed again. Sam deserved a turn, you know? :’)

But we also have the other half of the episode-- the case in Lebanon, and seeing the Winchesters through the eyes of the locals. Talk about a HUGE reminder of the things that happen offscreen. They go to the post office, the local shops, and have a weird reputation around town, despite most of the townsfolk accepting their brand of weirdness. It’s… weirdly refreshing, seeing how they’ve gone from “hunters of urban legends” in s1 to “actual urban legends themselves” in s14. The power of storytelling at its finest.

In this case, so many personal blanks were filled in for Mary, Sam, and Dean just by being able to share a single family dinner with John in the aftermath of everything else. In the end, Sam and Dean CHOSE their own lives, and smashed the pearl with John’s blessing, putting everything back the way it was. The most powerful line in this entire episode, to me:

John: Dean. I, uh -- I never meant for this.Dean: Dad, we pulled you here.John: No, son. My fight. It was supposed to end with me, with Yellow Eyes. But now you -- you are a grown man, and I am incredibly proud of you. I guess that I had hoped, eventually, you would... get yourself a normal life, a peaceful life, a family.Dean: I have a family.

HE HAS A FAMILY. :’)

It might not be what John ever imagined for him. Or even what Mary wanted for him when she rejected the hunting life the first time around. But it’s the family Dean earned for himself. The one he CHOSE for himself. And he wouldn’t trade it for anything-- not even for the family he was born into, or a white picket fence he used to think he should have.

And then after this… everything changes… again…

14.14, Ouroboros:

Right. That one where everything changed. Where everything from Billie’s Books of Certain Prophecy to Jack’s soul to Dean’s certainty about… pretty much everything… went up in a swirling whirlpool of burning grace.

Yes, the episode where they burned the spiral narrative structure and were clearly beginning the inevitable run toward endgame. I mean it had been hinted at as a possibility before this, and 14.13 was certainly a product of the inevitability of endgame, but this episode sealed the deal.

They could’ve technically still gotten away with 14.13 as a one-off product of “very special 300th episode” and still continued down the narrative spiral that they’ve been circling for years now, but in retrospect from beyond the rest of s14, this was the official burn point.

So the story shifts radically in very fundamental ways from this point on, and reference to the past become… different. But what happens offscreen in the context of these episodes going forward takes on so much more weight as a result. We’re now “living in the present” with these characters.

We have Sam’s relationship with Rowena, which has clearly developed to the point of casual intimacy. Rowena confronts Sam in ways we’ve never seen before, demonstrating a confidence in their interactions DESPITE Billie’s assertion that Sam will be the one to “kill” her. That has strangely given her a sense of… comfort… with Sam, that’s demonstrated in the fact that they work together through this entire case-- paired off much the way Dean and Cas are.

Again, like in 14.06 and 14.13, we’re dropped into the middle of their case, and only informed that they’ve been tracing this monster through numerous other towns in this episode, requiring us to extrapolate out their entire hunt from discovering there might be a case, to the point where they’ve even brought Rowena onboard to help give them an advantage of a monster that had repeatedly eluded them.

The monster itself has an advantage in that it can literally see the future and escape before they catch him, until they discover the huge gaping hole in what it can actually see-- Cas and Jack are literally invisible to it. He can’t see THEM coming, specifically. The importance of actually reading what we DON’T see. Because if the monster hadn’t been so confident in what it COULD see, he would’ve understood that he was missing a critical piece of information-- the door literally shut itself in his vision of the future and he didn’t bother to stop and question WHY. And it was his downfall.

The narrative is telling us that missing this key gap-filling information is effectively our downfall as viewers.

14.15, Peace of Mind:

Hooray, we’re back to simple “missing scene” levels of text to latch on to, and I don’t have to swim through the whole of the narrative structure to make a comment. Wheeee! (sorry it’s been like 14 hours since I started writing this reply and I’ve achieved Peak Mental Exhaustion for it) :P

Let’s reflect on how all of the characters managed to delude themselves in this episode, and simultaneously approach their own personal concerns without actually talking to each other directly… and then instead focus on this exchange:

Dean: Oh. Hey! How was Arkansas?Sam: Arkansas was, uh It was weird.Dean: Heard you wore a cardigan.Castiel: Yeah, I told him about the cardigan.Sam: Great. Thanks.Dean: And the wife. He said you were, uh, really happy.

Yep. Proof again of offscreen communication happening, in a way I can yell and point at without having to write paragraphs to explain and defend. :P Aah, just like the simpler days of our past… which hey, is also a narrative theme of this episode! Nostalgia!

14.16, Don’t Go In The Woods:

Or, that one where we discuss why we don’t share everything with the general public, while Jack… behaves poorly with the general public, and then hides that fact from Sam and Dean. Also, we have this confirmation of offscreen conversation:

SAM: You got it. I'll grab Cas.DEAN: Mm. He actually left.SAM: What?DEAN: Early this morning.SAM: Why?DEAN: I don't know. Something about being cooped up in the bunker for a few weeks. We all need to stretch our legs. I get it.

Dean… had a whole conversation with Cas… and didn’t even mention it until Sam specifically asked about Cas. Stuff happened offscreen… big important stuff… and we’re only getting a peek at it now. Not only that-- because this will be VITAL to remember two episodes down the road-- they have been cooped up in the bunker “for a few weeks.” In 14.15 ONE EPISODE EARLIER, Dean complained to Sam that he’d been driving them literally from case to case without a break:

Sam: (Sam was in the map room flashing back to Maggie and the other hunters dying. He looked sad as he went to the kitchen) Found us a case. Arkansas.Dean: We've just done three back-to-back Hunts. I need some rest. At least a night. We both do.Sam: Yeah, well I'm leaving in ten.Dean: Like I said, not good.Castiel: Maybe I should go with him. And you can stay with Jack.

So the events of 14.16 are clearly after a hiatus of several weeks. Again, things have happened offscreen, and we’re only learning about them in the absolute most casual statement-in-passing sorts of ways, but these tiny references are pretty earth-shattering.

14.17, Game Night:

The timeline isn’t concrete, but I’ve written in several places that I believe 14.16, and 14.17 flow one into the other, just based on these subtextual sorts of cues-- Dean’s statement in 14.16 that Cas had been feeling cooped up after several weeks in the bunker, the fact that Cas had only LEFT the bunker at the beginning of 14.16 and we only see him reach his destination of talking with Anael now in 14.17  (and how long do we REALLY think it took him to find her and convince her to meet with him? Especially when the events of 14.17 take place over about 36 hours before bleeding directly into 14.18…). So this timeline that I’ve understood presupposes the gap of “several weeks” of being cooped up in the bunker to have elapsed between 14.15 and 14.16 as suddenly resolved itself into all of them willing to spend time in the bunker as a family… except for Cas, who’s on an as-yet unspecified mission.

This episode reinforces those missing scenes, through showing us the very different mission Cas is on, finally addressing the seriousness of Jack’s condition, but also paralleled through Mary’s growing suspicions of Jack that she’ll be unable to ignore by the end of the episode…

Jack even addresses this “but in that scene you didn’t see play out, this important thing happened!” IN TEXT, TO MARY:

Mary: If Sam and Dean saw what you did, they would be as worried as I am.Jack: Are you gonna tell them?Mary: You need help, we'll help you. We're your family.Jack: You can't.Mary: We care about you, Jack.

And now the things that happen offscreen have been lampshaded as being CRITICAL to understanding the whole of the story. And the divide between the two can be fatal...

14.18, Absence.

Literally, the title itself is telling us to be aware of what’s missing.

But we finally get the payoff on the “missing information” about those several weeks spent cooped up in the bunker-- Sam was literally not there. It was Dean and Cas, alone with Jack.

Sam: You know, after Maggie and the other hunters died... I just left. Just dumped Jack on Cas and left.

That happened in 14.14. The other hunters dying. But we KNOW that Sam had not left on his own at that time. He’d dragged Dean and Cas and Jack on three consecutive hunts in the aftermath of that to avoid going back to the bunker, in the run up to 14.15. THIS was the payoff of that “cooped up for weeks” comment in 14.16… because SAM hadn’t been cooped up with them. He’d dumped Jack on everyone and run off on his own after 14.15…

But this episode doesn’t stop there. It takes each character individually and pushes them through memories of the past, of Mary specifically, but those memories do so much narrative heavy lifting I can’t even begin to yell about them here. I’ll just link a post:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184195342200/you-know-when-deans-turns-around-after-that

Wait, I found that post while looking for the one I’d set to to find, but it’s in my Narrative Negative Space tag, so yay? Bonus. This is the one I’d meant to find:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184144189665/drsilverfish-mittensmorgul-mittensmorgul

There. My best thing from s14. And I’ll leave this episode at that.

Oh, and with the reminder that if Dean and Cas had truly still been at odds over Mary’s death, then Dean would not have brought Cas to Mary’s funeral pyre. Period. 

14.19, Jack in the Box.

Aka that one we’d all figured out what the big plot thing was just by the on-the-nose nature of the title, months before it aired.

At least the drama coffin got blowed up good?

14.20, Moriah:

The most meta meta to have ever meta’d. There’s not much happening offscreen in this one aside from the entire setup and premise of the episode as a whole. Again, we’re dropped into a hunt and expected to understand the setup, the legwork that’s already been done. We learn that Dean has been in touch with Cas, but they’re investigating different avenues. We see Chuck FINALLY answer Cas’s prayer for help from 14.17, but Chuck’s idea of “help” isn’t helpful in the least.

We understand the fundamental nature of the extent of the personal little lies Sam and Dean tell each other (Thanks for that one, Jack!), and therefore are being asked to reassess which comments from their past were the full, honest truth, and which were the comfortable performance they put on to maintain their own projected self-identities.

And whoa.

It’s now 3 am, and I’ve been working on this post on and off for the last 16 hours. And I am tired, and officially out of mental steam to keep thinking about it. So I’m gonna post it. All 7700 words of it. I hope this helps... :P

[overanalyzingelswordiswhatido]

In Defense of Doom Bringer

Since I noticed a similar argument about Dominator and Doom Bringer that I did to Nova Imperator and Rage Hearts, I'm doing another analysis to explain why I think the canon path was the one that was picked to be it. I'm gonna do a similar kind of set up that I did comparing Nova Imperator and Rage Hearts. I'll first analyze and identify the problems with Dominator that make him... less "qualified" for the position of being canon based on the trends I noticed for both the canon and alternate (which I usually just call "alt") routes.

But first! Story time!!

I am an Add main. The thing that makes Add different than the other three characters I main though, is I ended up maining him completely on accident. See, my older sibling mains Battle Seraph Eve. And I made the mistake of partnering my Lunatic Psyker, who I was unceremoniously terrible at, with my older sibling's Battle Seraph. I googled him multiple times and just COULD NOT figure it out (my older sibling did the same and couldn't figure him out either) and I'm pretty sure it's because of all the fancy lengthy terminology cuz my eyes crossed at "Dynamo configuration mode". My older sibling ADORES Battle Seraph and wanted to play her every. Single. Day. And having partnered my Add with their Eve, I reluctantly played a character I was terrible at every. Single. Day. My older sibling carried me until... it was either late Lanox or early Atlas and I can't remember which exactly. THAT was when I finally managed to figure Lusa out. I came to really like playing Add once I finally figured him out. So yeah. I accidentally main Add.

ANYWAY, on to the proper analysis now. First and foremost. I've identified three problems?? Again?? Is that just gonna be the format for these??

Thing the first is Dominator's obsession with perfection.

I googled perfectionism for this analysis, just to be sure I knew what I was talking about. So enjoy this mini essay (paraphrased mostly from wikipedia) on that. Perfectionism, in its toxic form, drives the perfectionist to attempt to achieve unrealistic goals or unattainable ideals. It's also often accompanied with depression and low self-esteem (amongst other things those two are just the most common and I didn't want to list out every last thing). Perfectionists tend to dissociate themselves from their flaws and can not be very critical of themselves while simultaneously being overly critical of others in their attempts to achieve their idea(s) of virtue (or more accurately the illusion thereof) while hiding their flaws. "According to [Allan] Mallinger and [Jeanette] DeWyze, perfectionists are obsessives who need to feel in control at all times to protect themselves and ensure their own safety. By always being vigilant and trying extremely hard, they can ensure they not only fail to disappoint or are beyond reproach but that they can protect [themselves] against unforeseen issues caused by their environment."

The first part about seeking unrealistic goals or unattainable ideals is just a general Add thing tbh. They all do it and I'd be a fuckin hypocrite to claim otherwise in a character analysis. But the rest of that is all very specific to Dominator. He does not take criticism. He believes himself to be perfect while the world is what is wrong. And he hyper controls his environment to make it something he can feel safe in. And that kinda leads right into my second problem.

Thing the second is Dominator's need for a bubble. He literally creates his own virtual world just so that he can function. That virtual world changes to his whims. It is everything he needs it to be whenever he needs it. And he created it after the real world failed to accommodate him. After the real world failed to be what he needed when he needed it. I really get the feeling Dominator is trying to make a world he understands and can predict. He's trying to make the world he's ended up in through no choice of his own, one that he can be comfortable in.

Thing the third is the edge he's teetering on the verge of dropping off of. I really do get the impression that Dominator's entire route is scared and hiding behind confidence and a pretty face. As long as he's confident and seems like he's got his shit together, then he'll be taken seriously instead of being taken advantage of. But because of his bubble and his inability to take any sort of not positive comments about himself, he is probably the most severe case of character stagnation I've observed despite it being a trend in the paths I've put together into the alt routes. And a big trend with the canon routes is character growth. That kinda knocks Dominator off the possible list. On top of that, pulling him out of the bubble that causes his stagnation is more likely to result in a path to self-destruction that he won't be able to get off of before it reaches its end.

Now comes Doom Bringer. But first. I need to acknowledge a few things about him. He has also stagnated. The difference is in severity. Doom Bringer is more aware of the world and his place in it simply because he hasn't closed himself off to it (yet he might and I wouldn't be surprised). I think he'll also require being set on a path of self-destruction to get out of that stagnation. The difference there is, based on my analysis, I think Doom Bringer is more equipped to get off that ride so to speak and I'll be talking about that more a little later on in this. Doom Bringer also doesn't have nearly anywhere near Dominator's sense of responsibility and self-preservation or impulse control. Almost all of Doom Bringer's inhibition comes from something outside of himself, whether it's someone else or the situation he finds himself in (it's usually someone else probably). It also says a lot in Dominator's favor that he is the only Add that hasn't merged himself with something yet. Cuz I get the feeling that shit is REALLY dangerous. Also the fact that Doom Bringer merged himself with his Nasod Armor simply because he essentially got tired of it's upkeep says a lot about how well he thinks of possible consequences before taking an action (I'm pretty sure he just fucking doesn't). That being said, you can be completely irresponsible (comparatively speaking) and completely lack self control (again comparatively speaking) and still be farther along in your development than someone who has more control than you. And since Dominator is VERY focused on image while the only one who cares less than Doom Bringer is Mad Paradox, it makes sense that it would be like that.

The big thing Doom Bringer has going for him is his connections to the El Search Party. I'm gonna be honest. That's the only BIG difference between him and Dominator that I think makes him more "qualified" to be a canon route. I have no doubt Doom Bringer never intended to build connections with the search party (and I'll be doing an analysis later about those connections and how strong I actually think they are). He just wasn't as good as Dominator in closing himself off to them. The reason I've come to believe this is because I've noticed that in the Doom Bringer job path Add's face is very expressive, much more so than the other two. That in turn makes him easier to read whether he tries to hide things or not. People that are easily read tend to subconsciously drop their walls faster than they originally intend to and I don't think he was an exception to this. I think Doom Bringer accidentally got attached to the El Search Party and I'm not even sure he's FULLY realized it yet. But its that attachment and that relative openness (compared to Dominator we are still talking about Add after all) that puts Doom Bringer as the Add that is on the road to starting a recovery from all of his trauma. I think it's going to take slamming face first into the brick wall of failure and dealing with the resulting emotional turmoil but as I've said. Doom Bringer is the most equipped to be able to do that and come out the other side okay. Even if it is only because he has less reason to be apathetically accepting of it than the other two Add paths.

Anyway it was actually in trying to convince my younger sibling that Dominator was just as worthy of compassion as Doom Bringer and Mad Paradox that made it so I figured all of this out at all. And I honestly struggled with it a bit because while the canon paths are often the healthiest it was difficult to put into words why I think Doom Bringer fits that bill better because the two paths are so similar once you actually look past their exteriors. That and Dominator being the more responsible of the two made it harder for me to feel like I could adequately explain my thoughts on it without it sounding like I was just making excuses for Doom Bringer and/or hating on Dominator.

One last thing. I haven't really seen any other debates between character job paths that I think will prompt me to make another post like this one??? Like I saw something about Catastrophe deserving to be canon but it was just one person and it wasn't prevalent enough in the wider community that I feel the need to make a whole long winded analysis on it. So unless something new comes up or someone asks specifically I won't do another post like this. I'll be posting the path organizations I made based on the trends I've referenced both in this post and the Raven post in a bit. Once I finish detailing it out.

[fycarmensandiego]

My thoughts on the new show

It’s not really a proper review because how would I even do that, so here are my various thoughts, somewhat collected! (This is long as hell, fair warning.)

General thoughts:

Le Chevre and El Topo are definitely a couple. I’m so glad other people in the tag are seeing this too. My first inkling was when they were hugging each other after graduating, but it was Carmen’s comment that they only ever work together that really got me like “oh they’re gay.”

Speaking of gays, Dash Haber (Countess Cleo’s courier) is one. His voice is so gay-coded, I knew this one immediately. Not crazy about him being an antagonist (even among antagonists), but he amused me, so he’s good.

Even if they have the same names, these are different characters. The exceptions here being Carmen, the Chief, and possibly Julia. This isn’t a Tomb Raider: Legend case of putting characters in different situations and slightly changing their personalities, or even a Tomb Raider 2013 case of radically changing their personalities to coincide with their new paradigms. Chase, Zack, Ivy, and the rest are really entirely new characters that simply share their names with past characters. It’s almost as if the names are references to the past shows and games than ties to those characters.

For the most part, they even have different designs. Zack is certainly the most radical change, but even the most similar have some changes. Prof. Maelstrom isn’t nearly as stocky as his namesake, and while Dr. Saira Bellum has wild hair like Dr. Sara Bellum, it’s a strange shape as well as a strange color, and her skin is darker.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened in the franchise, either. Minnie Series from Where on Earth is apparently a totally different character from Minnie Series from the original Where in Time game. Adventures in Math changed a lot of the characters’ designs and backstories: some, like Jacqueline Hyde, still had the same core, but others, like Jane Reaction, are so different they have to be considered different characters. And then there are all the different iterations of the Chief: old white guy, middle-aged white guy, middle-aged Black gal, hologram, presumably white guy shrouded in mystery...

I will say that as a result of this, I was disappointed with Zack and Ivy. Not because this Zack and Ivy are bad characters, but because Where on Earth Zack and Ivy are my favorite characters in the franchise after Carmen, and I was looking forward to getting to see them, or at least characters resembling them, again. But, it is what it is.

I get the Kim Possible comparisons, but they’re not where I’d jump first. There are similarities: both are action shows with deliciously OTT villains (though the VILE gang wish they were as effortlessly iconic as Drakken, Shego, and Señor Senior, Sr. and Jr.) and similar art styles, and Player/Wade is a fair comparison. But I have to say I’d never have thought of that comparison if I hadn’t seen it here on Tumblr, perhaps because KP was rooted in Kim and Ron’s daily lives (Sailor Moon-style), whereas CS is rooted in its overarching plot (Chuck-style).

I do agree with another comparison: Coach Brunt and Countess Cleo, and Eartha Brute and the Contessa. I saw a post in the tag earlier today that brought this up, and while I hadn’t thought of it - probably because the Where in the World show is one of the parts of canon I’m least familiar with - it seems legit to me. I had wondered why these two were seemingly born out of nowhere, when the other three had their names and likenesses drawn from Where on Earth characters. (Shadowsan seems to me to be based on Suhara’s design and, to some extent, personality, with Shadow Hawkins’ name.) The specific theory that post espouses, that it’s a legal issue, seems possible to me. Although the World villains did appear in other Carmen media, I know WGBH and WQED own the copyright to the show, though they licensed the franchise from Brøderbund. So I have no idea what the legal tangle is behind that show, and I imagine it’s very complicated.

Speaking of WGBH: I wonder if Zack and Ivy being from Boston is an incredibly subtle reference to its location there.

I have mixed feelings about the art style. It is great in still shots, but I found it a little hard to watch as animation for very long.

I don’t ship anything – yet. Julia’s clarification of “travel partner” is certainly ripe for shippy implications, but for me there’s really not much on a personality level to ship her and Carmen at this point. (Likewise Carmen and Ivy, or Carmen and Zack.) I could definitely get behind Julia having a crush on Carmen, the way I feel OG!Jules certainly does.

As to Gray... he was plainly asking Carmen out / hitting on her when he gave her his card. But even on the way to the date, she insisted she saw him as an older brother figure. Like with Julia, I could potentially get behind it in future, but I’d have to see it developed further. There’s also the matter of him trying to kill Carmen, which I’m not crazy about... Carmen’s forgiven him since he was under orders from VILE, and his mind-erase courtesy of Dr. Bellum has given him a fresh start, but it didn’t change who he fundamentally is as a person, and that person made the decision to join VILE and ultimately to agree to kill Carmen. But I’m not totally anti-Carmen/Gray at this point.

(In re Carmen’s sexuality: I have always felt strongly that all of Carmen’s previous incarnations were ace/aro, but this Carmen? The sapphics have claimed her, and I’m here for it. I’m fine with her being gay, bi, or pan. I’m fine with her being acespec and/or arospec, or not.)

I was surprised by the violence. Scenes of literal attempted murder would never have made it in previous shows or games! In fact, a lot of the melee combat wouldn’t have. The franchise hasn’t always been totally non-violent - Ivy whacked the occasional villain around on Earth, and ThinkQuick and Stolen Drums both required the player to destroy VILE robots, the former featuring robots with personalities - but I don’t think it’s ever been shown in such detail as the combat scenes in this series. I don’t have a problem with it, exactly, but it was a little jarring.

Things I didn’t like:

The educational moments were utterly didactic. I guess you could say the same about Earth, but I feel like it integrated the education into the plot better, and it certainly made the educational moments more fun by working jokes into them. Meanwhile, this show is taking the Stolen Drums approach of info-dumping for two minutes and then moving ahead with the actual plot with no attention to education thereafter. To go back to my favorite video game (I warned y’all), fucking Tomb Raider: Legend did a better job integrating education with action. And it’s not even supposed to be educational!

Stop trying to make “caper” happen. It’s not going to happen. It’s a perfectly good word to use from time to time, as it always has been in canon, but for “The ____ Caper” to be every episode title, and for it to be used at every opportunity in the script when “theft” or “heist” or another word could have been used just as easily gets annoying. The thesaurus: it exists. Also, it’s so overused that at a certain point I started thinking of the culinary garnish instead of a crime. (And I’ve never even eaten capers. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen them in person.)

I’m not crazy about the newly established genesis of Carmen’s name. Having her grow up with no name but “Black Sheep” makes me feel uncomfortable tbh, and while I like the significance of her choosing her own name, pulling it off a hat label seems cheap. And out of character for someone as thoughtful as Carmen.

Some of the villains seemed like real cultural stereotypes. Thankfully, it was not nearly as bad as Adventures in Math, or we’d literally have had Le Chevre saying, “Hon hon hon, baguettes!” but Shadowsan and Paper Star in particular made me uncomfortable as they felt like very stereotypical “Japanese” characters. The same could be said of Coach Brunt, who while not a stereotype of any marginalized group, was definitely a bit one-note. Coach Beiste, but evil and Texan.

Cross-language misspellings. Namely, Shadowsan and Le Chevre should be Shadow-san and Le Chèvre, should they not? The omission of accent marks has always been one of my major bugaboos, and while it’s not the first time the franchise has done it, it still annoys me. Shadow-san’s missing hyphen annoys me even more, since the hyphen indicates that other honorifics could be used, and in fact, it would (if I understand correctly) be more appropriate for his students to address him as Shadow-sama or Shadow-sensei while his peers call him Shadow-san.

I felt some real misogynistic undertones to Tigress. In a show that otherwise is quite female-forward, it irked me that of Carmen’s four classmates, only one is a girl - and she’s the one who becomes Carmen’s rival. And then for that to continue throughout the series, setting her up as the mean girl to Carmen’s good girl (in many ways, the Regina to Carmen’s Janis Ian), really bothered me. I certainly don’t think female characters have to be perfect, or expect perfect representation, but it feels like Tigress’ development just was not done mindfully, and instead they let themselves fall into misogynistic tropes. It’s not like you to pit women against each other, etc. etc.

The ages and timeline confused me. Carmen seems to be in her late teens or early twenties throughout the main part of the series (I saw a post that mentioned she says she’s 20), yet she was clearly still a preteen or young teen when she stole Cookie’s hard drive. Since Cookie’s delivery is an annual event, its information shouldn’t last Carmen those several years to grow up.

By a similar token, Player seems to be the same age in the flashbacks as in the present day. As a result, he seems a little older than Carmen to start, and a few years younger to conclude. It messes me up. Not least because, not gonna lie, I want to be sure it’s okay for me to be so gay for Carmen.

Things I liked:

The references to previous canon. Along with the aforementioned names, we have:

Rita Moreno’s cameo! (Please, please, God, give us another Rita cameo and cameos for the rest of the Earth cast next season.)

Mentions of punning names. This was delightfully lampshaded with Gray’s original codename of “Graham Crackle” and the subsequent drags from his classmates. And while most of the other characters didn’t get punning names, one of the two who did was Rita’s character, Cookie Booker, the bookkeeper - or, indeed, book-cooker.

The very meta plot point of Carmen getting her outfit by stealing it from Cookie, voiced by her previous incarnation’s voice actor.

Frequent utterances of “Where in the world is...” or “Where on Earth is...”

Tigress’ name, a reference to an Earth episode where Carmen faces a new rival. I don’t know if the Duchess plotline was also a deliberate reference to this episode, or a subconscious one, but it’s so similar that I can’t think it was total coincidence.

I’m thinking “the cleaners” are a reference to the Ick brothers, the janitors from World and USA 3.0.

Carmen is ginger. I have a significant bias for redheads. (I dye my hair red and am only half-joking when I call myself transginger as well as transgender. Heaven on Earth-era Belinda Carlisle is one of my major style rolemodels.) Carmen suddenly being auburn for the first time just makes her even more endearing to me than one would have thought possible. Plus, Ivy and Zack both being redheads? Iconic.

Carmen is also gorgeous. Now, unlike some of you, I have never previously been gay for Carmen; she’s always been more of a big sister figure to me. Instead, as a kid, I was gay for TV!Jacqueline Hyde, Ann Tikwittee, and Ivy, in that chronological order. But the moment I saw this Carmen with her hair up in the trailer, I was a goner. And in her cocktail dress at the charity auction, or her black catsuit at the end of episode 9? I thirst. There were several other points as well where I was just like, “Oh my god, she’s so pretty.” Yes, darlings, I am very gay.

That choker. Most fashionable thing Carmen’s ever worn. Fight me. We love a stylish queen.

Player has a fidget spinner. And it’s only seen briefly, which to me says it’s an everyday part of his life, not something they threw in to try to seem cool... Which in turn allows me to point to something and headcanon that Player is autistic. He’s also known mostly by a username, and spends most of his time working on his special interest, and doesn’t seem to be one for socializing in traditional ways. We love an autistic prince. (Also, this makes him in some ways a male version of my girl Futaba from Persona 5. Again, iconic.)

(To be clear, especially since it wasn’t in my little self-introduction the other day, I’m self-diagnosed on the autism spectrum. So well-written characters being autistic is really fun for me.)

Player is from Niagara Falls, near where I live (I’m on the outer edges of the Buffalo/Niagara Falls MSA), while Zack and Ivy are from Boston, where I’m moving next month. Totally personal to me, but I’m so delighted. Now, granted, Player is on the Ontario side of the Falls rather than the New York side, but still. (Hell, who can blame him for not living in Niagara Falls, NY? It’s a hellhole.)

The VILE leaders stay iconic. Countess Cleo’s crush on Zack in his “Duke” guise is hilarious and adorable, and Dr. Bellum’s obsession with cat videos? Legends only.

Paper Star is generally fantastic. It’s actually too bad for me she’s a villain, because I find her super likeable. Her tendency to hum/sing to herself is also really endearing, and she’s another one who’s easy to headcanon as neurodivergent. I really hope we get more of her, and more of her outside combat and the daily business of villainery, because she’s easily my favorite of the VILE crew.

Tigress is also awesome. Yeah, the female character bias is real, but she’s def my second-favorite, which amplifies my annoyance at the aforementioned misogyny. To be honest, though, part of it may be that she’s basically Amanda Evert, my girlfriend from - you guessed it, folks! - Tomb Raider: Legend, with purple lipstick.

Zack and Ivy met Carmen while casing a donut shop. This is so delightfully silly, and I adore it. Like, who the fuck robs a donut shop of all things? I feel like it could’ve been a reference to them being fat, maybe one that was meant to be developed further but ended up on the cutting room floor? On that note...

The fat positivity is real. Zack and Ivy are still able to move around and are even somewhat athletic; the Countess crushes on Zack; and nothing negative is said about their weight (except the potential implications of the donut shop). I love this.

Carmen and Jules’ conversation. As I said above, it’s not enough for me to start shipping them, but I love that Carmen casually addresses her as Jules rather than Julia. It’s so much like when people I don’t know well call me Soph instead of Sophie, which I always love because it connotes that closeness. Moreover, since Julia’s previous incarnation / namesake was almost always called Jules, and was Carmen’s former detective partner, I feel like there’s an implication that Carmen coined that nickname and it became her primary moniker. It’s just so good, and shipping or no shipping, I really hope we get more interactions between them next season.

The voices are good... mostly. Maelstrom is definitely the one I was most impressed with, as his voice has a lot of character while still being easy to understand. Liam O’Brien was doing a great Tim Curry impression there, but much less egregiously campy and therefore more believable. Sharon Muthu was also fantastic as Dr. Bellum - not as fantastic as WOEICS!Sara’s voice actor (Candi Milo?), but then, who could be? And Kari Wahlgren’s performance as Tigress was snarly perfection.

Gina Rodriguez is a big departure from Carmen’s typically low-pitched voice, but she’s perfectly fine. I never sat up and went, “Wow, what a performance!” but I can’t find any fault with it either. Finn Wolfhard as Player is obviously cross-promotional stunt casting, but surprisingly, it’s also perfect casting.

On the minus side... Zack and Ivy. Part of it is that their accents are so ridiculous that it’s distracting (see above Tim Curry comment). Part of it is that, at least to my ears, the accents aren’t believable - I thought they were supposed to be from Brooklyn until they mentioned Boston. I actually don’t fault the VAs for this, as they both have moments where I got the sense they’d be capable VAs for the characters (and I know Abby Trott is talented as I loved her in Tales of Berseria and Nier: Automata), but rather the voice director(s) who pushed them toward those performances. I feel like if the direction had been different, I’d have liked Zack and Ivy a lot more.

That plot twist. I truly never saw it coming. I suspected that Coach Brunt was not, in fact, the one who found Carmen, but I’d actually thought it might have been Prof. Maelstrom. The extent of Shadowsan’s revelations was a big surprise to me. Kudos to the writers for pulling that off.

Conclusion:

It’s not the series I expected. It’s not the series I hoped for. But it is one that I enjoyed, both on its own merits and for revitalizing the franchise. As I said last night, it is a hell of a feeling to have new Carmen content in 2019 (that’s actually getting attention), and for it to be really good content is a relief.

If anyone else wants to share their thoughts, either one-on-one or with the rest of the community (as it were), please do! I’d love to talk more about this series and this franchise and the thieving queen of my heart, Ms. Carmen Sandiego.

[caffeineivore]

On Review Etiquette

So, lately, I have been participating in @sailormoonreviewevent and it brings back some of my best and worst memories of fandoms, not just SM but fandoms in general, and the people who populate them. 

Background information: I’ve been around since dinosaurs still roamed the Earth and geocities sites with animated word-art headers and the like were still the norm. In the case of Sailor Moon as well as other fandoms in which I have participated, I seem to always end up in a peculiar sort of capacity-- on the one hand, I’d pretty much stick to a very small corner of the fandom wherein my ship and/or character preferences kept me mostly away from the vast majority of the riff-raff and the fandom politics, but maybe because I have an inherently bossy and super type-A personality, I’d still end up in some sort of organizational capacity. The whip-cracker, as it were, amidst a bunch of creative types. For instance, in Sailor Moon, I pretty much stuck exclusively with senshi/shitennou. I paid very little attention to fanfics not about senshi/shitennou, and don’t really know people outside of that group. However, for all that, I ended up organizing ficathon for a few years, as well as moderating a writing community and planning meet-ups between members. In this role, I get to see a lot of the nuts and bolts which go on behind the scenes, and, unfortunately, also have to play the bad guy in certain sticky situations, which brings me to the point of this post.

Now, as a fanfic writer myself, I can say definitively that reviews make the world go round. Much as we write for fun, and we write to please ourselves, there is nothing quite so uplifting and encouraging as a genuine, sincere, detailed positive review. You know the type-- the ones that tell you exactly what they liked the most about your fic, in such a way that shows that not only did they read it, but it truly had an impact on them-- maybe it made them reconsider a facet of a character they’d never considered before, or maybe it mentions their favourite lines, or maybe it subconsciously reassures the writer on some point or another which they were uncertain about. Obviously, these are like the gold standard of reviews, and somewhat rare and far between. However, you’ll also get a bunch of “omg i <3 this fic MOAR PLZ”, which is okay too. You’ll probably even get a few with constructive criticism, which may sting at the time, but if the reviewer 1. means well and 2. has a point, it’s definitely worth your time to take their words into account. 

However, then you get one of these other types of reviews:

1. “Why did you write about [character] and/or [ship] they suxxxx [other character/ship] IS SO MUCH BETTER!!!!!”

2. this fucking fic is dumb. you suck. die in a fire. flame flame flame flame flame. trollololol I have no life I live in my parents’ basement and wank over how hard I am even though I need to put people down behind a meaningless screen name to feel better about myself. Not in a million years would I have the balls to say this sort of thing to someone’s face, but on the internet I am a Grade A Certified Prime Asshole and proud of it. [guest review anonymous]

3. So yeah this fic is great and I know it’s marked complete but could you add another chapter? Perhaps with [very specific plot and character requirements to cater into my personal whims] plzkthxbai!

4. Ummm... so why are you writing [characters] in [AU setting] or [different version of canon-- manga/anime/pgsm/etc.]?? MY PREFERRED CANON IS BETTER. WHY CAN’T YOU DO WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO??

5. Update faster plz!!! I need the next chapter NOW!! Actually I needed it YESTERDAY!! WTF ARE YOU DOING WHY ARE YOU NOT WRITING?!?!!?!!

Annnnnnnnd... you count to ten, resisting the impulse to chuck the phone or computer out the window. Take a deep breath, count to ten again, backward this time, and remind yourself that this is just fanfic. Just fanfic. Fandom’s bound to have a few idiots. You want to reply to the reviewer: “Look can u not” but that would be validating them, making them more important than they should be. You tell yourself it’s just a troll, but nonetheless, it hurts. And when you pick up that fic again, you’ll probably remember that one review in the back of your mind, taunting, more vivid than a dozen “gr8 job hope to see more soon!”’s. 

And it’s sad. So I’m about to give everyone who has experienced this (which, in all likelihood, is everyone who has posted a fanfic in any fandom ever) a voice. A loud, stridently snarky one. 

Reviewers: CAN U NOT?? with the trolling????

Look, I’m so glad that you have the time and the means to sit around and chill and read fanfic. It’s a luxury that requires a lot of first world amenities that not everyone has, so kudos to you. But that means, also, that you have a lot of freedoms not afforded to everyone, such as, y’know, the ability to pick and choose what you decide to read and comment on. There will be fics about every possible permutation of character ships in a fandom. There will be fics in every genre, which run the gamut of writing skill from novice to expert. And pretty much every single fic site, be it something privately owned or some behemoth like ff.n or AO3, will separate their fics into categories by character, genre, length, rating, etc. etc. The internetz is a wonderful thing. You can pretty much find anything with a few clicks. Like you can literally probably search for “I want a fic featuring [character A] and [character B] in a high school AU with angsty undertones and make it a one-shot less than 5000 words because I am on lunch break”, and it will take only the minimal amount of effort to get exactly what you look for to fall into your lap.

We all have our fic preferences. We also all know what we do not like. So, let me ask, why the hell do people insist on not only reading but flaming stuff that they KNOW they’re not going to like?? I am a diehard senshi/shitennou shipper and manga is my preferred canon. I KNOW that I do not ship Rei/Yuuichirou for example, so I won’t go out of my way to read fics featuring them. I’m not crazy about fics which feature tons of violence or porn, or lots of OCs, and I tend to dislike fics which make light of serious issues such as self harm or drug abuse, and I draw a very hard line at rape and sexual assault, especially if it features characters below the age of consent. Like, serious, trigger warning, PTSD, nope nope nope nope at Planet Nope. Now, what do I do if I come across a fic featuring any of these things? 

I DON’T FUCKING READ IT. Really. That’s all there is to it. I scroll down onto the next thing. And in the event that, say, I accidentally clicked on something that I figure out isn’t my cup of tea, it does not take any sort of effort to click right back out. Why give yourself grief? But even more, why give the writer grief? Even if it’s totally not your thing, they put effort into it-- far more effort than you did, clicking on their work. THEY are into what they wrote. 

Now, once upon a time, when I was organizing one of the senshi/shitennou ficathons, one of the submissions happened to feature something that NOPED with me very hard. And as ficathon mistress, I had to read it. So I did. And then replied to the author that it was very well written but I could not review it for personal reasons. Then I sent it off to another moderator to read it and give them an actual review. And that is an extenuating circumstance. Most people would not ever be in the position to have to read a fic that they would otherwise not read, or say anything to the writer of said fic. Even in that circumstance, it is not hard to deal with it in a respectful manner. So, why the fuck would someone willingly and knowingly inflict something they know they’re not going to like on themselves and then punish someone else for it? That makes NO sense.

As far as harassing authors to follow your own niche or write more on a topic or story that they feel as though they’re done with? Dude, write your own fic. You have total control over only one person in this world: yourself. Sure, validating what a fanfic writer does is very nice and gratifying, but they are not trained monkeys there to do your bidding and perform for your personal amusement. Unless you’re paying them good cashy money (which, since it’s fanfic, you’re not), you don’t get to have a say in what they write, when they write it, where they post it (if anywhere), any of that. They are under no contractual obligation to cater in to you in any way. And furthermore, when you try to dictate to them what to write and how to write it, the message is this: I Know Better Than You. Do As I Say. You Don’t Know Shit. What You Do Is Not Good Enough For Me. What You Do Doesn’t Matter. The Only Thing That Matters Is What I Want. 

That’s nothing but a goddamn put-down. And when you put down someone who probably put in a whole lot of thought and effort into something which brings them no possible reward but personal satisfaction and maybe others’ enjoyment, it’s really kind of a sucker-punch. If, say, this was the type of interaction between a boyfriend and girlfriend-- the put-downs, the belittling, the dictating, the insults-- we’d all recoil and call it a toxic, abusive relationship. We’d tell the person receiving those comments to get out of there, to get help, to leave.

So, when you make those types of comments, that’s the message you’re sending that writer. Leave. Get out of here. Go away, for your own good, for your own sanity and health and happiness. 

Now think about it, as you’re scrolling through ff.n or ao3 or wherever, looking for that next undiscovered gem. Think about it, when someone shyly asks you to review their fic, or signs up for the first time for a fandom event such as a ficathon or a big bang or a secret santa exchange. Is that the message you want to give them? That they should leave and never look back?

Now think about it again, and remember when you first discovered fanfic, or your preferred fandom, and wrote your first fic. Maybe it was campy and featured every trope on the TV tropes page. Maybe it was a shameless Mary Sue. Maybe it was ridiculously OOC and featured eye-gougingly purple prose. Maybe it was riddled with typos. Maybe you, yourself, looking back at it now, shake your head at how you could’ve written such a monstrosity. But would you have stayed, I wonder, if nobody at all encouraged you? Countless writers fade into oblivion after one fic, or disappear forever, deleting their fics off the internet. Countless people get fed up with fandom and throw their hands up and dismiss it as a lost cause. These things are going to happen regardless, sure.

But why the hell would you encourage that?

[emeraldsorcerer]

Screw it, I went on a long rant under a read more but I’m just gonna put the TL;DR up here for those who don’t even wanna.

TL;DR summary:

I was somehow seemingly the single last holdout of the 2012 Tumblr Umineko fandom era, and I’ve lived long enough to see it boomerang back around again, something I never thought I’d see. It’s so exciting. I want to be a part of it, quite badly, just like I was before.

<insert long winded rant about the state of Tumblr RP, pre-plotting and how it isn’t necessarily bad, but how it doesn’t really jive with me in particular because I find it boring, plus I don’t communicate effectively in 2017 Tumblr RP land and Discord/Skype/other chat client RPs are just too isolated and lonely for my tastes>

I guess...I have no idea if anyone will accept this blog anymore, though, half a decade later, the way it was back in 2012. It’s a little scary, I’m not sure I can make Sakana relevant or interesting, or even develop him anymore. By god, I’ll try, because I don’t have it in me to quit this blog, but I’m left here wondering how futile it is.

...

You know, I started this blog back in October of 2012. Back then, the Umineko fandom had pretty much recently crested from what I gather, and was on the decline, and the Ib fandom was also on about the same boat. I’d made my askbernkastel account in the summer of that year even earlier, and between the two blogs, there’s been a lot of firsts. First Tumblr blog, and through askbernkastel, first exposure to the RP community. First askblog, first RP blog, which honestly, this all started out as a shameless OC self-insert thinly veiled under an Umineko disguise because I had no idea what I was doing and how cringy that was even for 5 years ago.

And yeah, now I’ve retrofitted this blog so that Sakana is his own character now, with his own personality and ways he goes about things, developed through half a decade of playing him from when he was painfully obviously just me in disguise, to now, where he’s his own thing, to the point where at one time I was being told by a couple of people who regularly RPed with me that they forgot Sakana wasn’t actually a part of the Umineko canon on occasion.

Honestly that was probably the best compliment I’ve ever received ever on Tumblr.

And now I’m witnessing the slight uptick of a fandom with whole new people all of a sudden. I’m not really sure why people decided to resurrect their blogs or make new ones at around the same time. Maybe it’s that in the past year or so Umineko came out on Steam, and Ougon Musoukyoku (the Umineko fighting game) had also been announced for a Steam release and localization, and because of its ease of access, now it’s gaining a bit more traction then when it was almost entirely dead and gone earlier last year.

It’s just kind of making me wonder if this blog’s concept is done and tired.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get away from this blog, but I have to wonder if it’s holding me back a little, if I’m still trying to push a concept that only barely worked in 2012 onto 2017 when it really doesn’t want it. I’m still constantly paranoid that people think all Sakana boils down to is a mun in an Umineko skin, and while I’ve taken pains to make him his own character and have him go on his own journeys and have him be long-term affected by them, I’ve also been at a loss for what to do next.

People nowadays largely want either predetermined plots or chat RP. Not everyone, but it’s a trend I’ve been noticing.

 I really love the fact that I can just pop into the Tumblr chat system nowadays and be assured my ask won’t just get eaten as it so often seemed to do, but it’s also made a much higher demand for communication and pre-plotting and agreeing upon the outcome before it’s even written, and that’s just straight up boring to me. At the risk of sounding like someone who needs his cane handed to him to yell at the kids to get off his lawn, I seem to recall being able to spin massive permanently-character-altering plots with other people that were extremely gratifying and didn’t require a roadmap of what exactly will happen beforehand, and that just doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Maybe it’s that people have gotten burned by too many godmodding jackoffs and aren’t willing to take that chance anymore, and that’s fine.

I do need to clarify, I don’t think this is really anyone’s fault, or anyone should feel guilty, I’m not blaming anyone for anything in specific. In fact, a lot of this is honestly my problem. Besides being boring for me because I know exactly how the story will end, I have massive direct communication issues honestly. How in the hell do I even plot with someone? What are the correct words or keyphrases to say? How do I communicate what I want to have happen? How much of it should be ‘what I want to have happen’ and ‘what they want to have happen’? Whose character arc should it be? What story do we want to tell? Should I tell them my story idea right off the bat or should I ease them into the concept? That direct tumblr chat has honestly been the bane of my creative existence for a long time now because I just don’t get how people do it.

“Oh, it’s not that bad Fish-mun.” I hear you say, “You just go into their chat and be friendly and introduce yourself and pop them an idea! And if they aren’t into it, that’s fine, just try someone else or come back when you have a different idea that might fit better!”

Yeah, no. Any time I see those rebloggable posts with something like “Reblog this if you’re totally down to just have plots sent to you” or “Reblog if you’re okay with your muse being Xed or Yed or Zed” or “Reblog if you’re okay with having your muse pestered about the relationships that you've seen them have with other muses.” or basically any of those general “Hey I’m a cool and totally open RPer you should come and do the RP thing with me guys because I’m so open!”

And it’s just like.......no. Stop being so disingenuous by overgeneralizing. There’s always going to be multiple exceptions, and too often I’ve been that exception for whatever reason, fooled into thinking otherwise, going in on that beck and call, and being ignored. I don’t mind if you’re not that open, by all means be private and selective and mutuals only, but don’t lie to me about being open when you’re not. I have a really serious problem with that, honestly.

And it’s never as easy as just going in, being friendly, introducing myself, and the RP possibilities will just open themselves up. I’ve had that sentiment told to me so many times, but I’ve also heard people talking about other people behind their backs so many times, I know there’s nuance to language use, and someone’s interpretation of being completely friendly and innocent can very, very easily come off as even downright creepy in the wrong combination of sender and receiver.

I mean, to some people, even just introducing yourself is too much for them and they don’t know how to react. Tone matters. Dialect matters. User friendliness matters. When I’m communicating with someone in specific, I feel like a totally different person depending on what person or group I’m communicating with, because I have to adapt myself to what’s acceptable with that person or in that group. One minute some person in a chat’ll just throw something like ‘i want to eat your ass out’ as a joke and that tells me where that person stands, they can give and take absolute gross absurdist out-of-left-field bullshit and that’s great. 

The next I’ll be talking to another person in a chat and discussing sociopolitical implications and norms, and how they affect those that surround us currently and how they might in the long term as well, speculating on how it all relates to the world we live in and how it’s affected as a result, and what, if any, solutions there could be theoretically to current issues, whether they’re a matter of human nature and can’t really be changed without theoretically changing the fundamental human psyche, or if a crisis large enough threatens everyone things could really be changed for the better, or if there’s no hope at all and we should all grab some popcorn as we drown in our own existentialism hell while the world surrounding us slowly wilts.

And remember, I was getting my ass eaten out one chat over at the same time.

Speaking of chats, the thing I personally have an issue with in RPing through a chat system is that it’s so immediately demanding. The thing I love about roleplaying on Tumblr is that I get to sit down, think about it for a few minutes, not have to worry about replying right away, and eventually knock one out. I don’t feel nearly as much time constraint pressure in a Tumblr RP environment. Not only that, Tumblr RP is the only way I get to make new friends and followers via RP, mostly because they see my RPs being reblogged on someone else’s account and think ‘hey maybe I should follow this guy’ - a tactic I’ve done to follow new people a number of times. Discord is nice and all, but it’s just too isolated. I kinda want some other people to see my RPs too, y’know.

I guess what it comes down to is that I still have a 2012 Tumblr RPer attitude in the 2017 Tumblr world. I’m still stubbornly used to not having text chats readily available, I’m used to being able to improvise major plots with other people where the only time for plotting is if I ask if it’s okay to do something to another person’s muse on the spot. Honestly, I’m used to a more chaotic, less reserved Tumblr. And I’ve been on my other blogs too, mainly my Tomoko blog, and have managed to find myself getting used to a more modern take on Tumblr, but whenever I come back here, it all starts to not make sense to me anymore. I have to wonder if there’s anything more of relevance here on this blog. Even the Umineko fandom has moved on to a 2017 approach.

I should wrap this up. 

TL;DR summary:

I was somehow the single last holdout of the 2012 Tumblr Umineko fandom era, and I’ve lived long enough to see it boomerang back around again, something I never thought I’d see. It’s so exciting. I want to be a part of it, quite badly, just like I was before.

<insert long winded rant about the state of Tumblr RP, pre-plotting and how it isn’t necessarily bad, but how it doesn’t really jive with me in particular>

I guess...have no idea if anyone will accept this blog anymore, though, half a decade later. I’m not sure I can make Sakana relevant or interesting anymore. By god, I’ll try, because I don’t have it in me to quit this blog, but I’m left here wondering how futile it is.

[mllemaenad]

Personally... I feel that WEaWH tries to remove itself from TME because it realizes that TME is fucking irredeemable garbage, and tries to make its WLW representation less appalling. So I'm entirely willing to overlook continuity errors for the sake of one relationship between women in the entire series that can go well.

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that. I’m not going to argue with you on the merits of The Masked Empire, as you’re entitled to like or dislike any media you choose, but I don’t think Bioware is trying to distance itself from the novel. I also don’t think their motive is positive representation, or that they’re seriously suggesting a happy ending. However, even if they were I would call the choice to reunite Celene and Briala without any serious examination of the issues that drove them apart … disquieting.

1) On distancing themselves from the novel.

To begin with the obvious, several of the Dragon Age novels provide not only context for the quests in Inquisition, but also promotional material maintaining audience interest between games.

It’s hardly an accident that Asunder is a prequel to In Hushed Whispers/Champions of the Just, The Masked Empire is a prequel to Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts (as well as giving you a roundabout introduction to Solas) and Last Flight provides you with some context on why Weisshaupt is just no help at all during Here Lies the Abyss.

They do kind of want you to buy all their stuff. And if you started with Inquisition and liked what you saw, they want you to run back and buy all the earlier stuff for context. Video game tie-in novels aren’t generally considered high art, so they’d need serious reasons to want to reject the novel as part of their canon. Just in case, I checked The Masked Empire’s Amazon page, and it’s currently got 4.4 stars – so it doesn’t look like something they’d be particularly desperate to ignore. They’d rather you bought it and gave them money.

To move more to the specific, the game references the novel constantly. In addition to devoting a whole main quest to resolving its plot, it also includes cameos from Mihris, Michel and Imshael, which really serve no other purpose than to provide a bit of closure to the people who read the novel and wondered what became of them. This is actually more than it provides for, say, the characters of Asunder: Rhys and Evangeline appear only in a war table mission, Adrian doesn’t appear at all – and who knows where Shale has wandered off to.

It also references the murder of Briala’s parents directly:

Cole: She’s still behind the curtains in the reading room, watching the blood pool on the floor.

Briala pulled the red velvet curtain aside. Her hands shook as she did. There was a pool of red on the floor of the reading room, staining the rich Nevarran carpet. It had spread almost to the curtain.

At the other end of the pool were Briala’s parents.

– The Masked Empire

If they really wanted to distance themselves from The Masked Empire, they wouldn’t put that in there. If they wanted to say that that this didn’t happen, they’d have retconned the story – or at the very least not mentioned it.

In fact, the choice of words is particularly distressing. Cole senses pain. When he says Briala is ‘still behind the curtains’ he’s emphasising that the trauma and anguish are still very much with her, making a reconciliation, particularly a reconciliation that utterly fails to address a thing that they have confirmed happened, even stranger.

 I would say that one motive for their choice to reconcile the two characters is simplicity. I like parts of Inquisition, but honestly it’s over ambitious. They set up a series of continent-wide catastrophes, each one intensely political: the mage rebellion, the Orlesian civil war, the collapse of the Chantry.

Each one probably requires its own game for a satisfactory solution. I realise they were probably going for something similar to the galaxy-wide political collapse in Mass Effect 3, but the Dragon Age games are at a serious disadvantage because they lack continuity of characters.

Mass Effect 3 had its own problems, of course, but for example – I think most people have fun curing the genophage for the krogan. But what they remember is Mordin Solus and ‘There’s a reaper in my way, Wrex!’ When it worked it was able to build on characters who were present across the series.

Inquisition is faced with trying to find resolutions for groups of people that have no direct connection to each other, and whom the protagonist has never seen before (even if they player has). This is hardly the only time their attempt to fix everything in a single quest ends up making no sense.

2) On positive representation

I’m afraid I don’t think what we get in Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts is especially positive. I think it’s … kind of infantilising, really, and has a whiff of sexism about it. I mean – again, I’m not asking you to like The Masked Empire. But this:

“It would have been a locked suite in the palace for a few years, nothing more!” Celene kept her voice low, aware that Michel and Felassan had stopped planning and were looking their way. “It would have changed nothing for us.”

“Your hair still stinks of the smoke from the people you burned,” Briala said. “That is a change.”

The dead leaves crackled under Celene’s feet as she stepped forward. “How many wars can our empire survive in such a short time? I wanted my legacy to be the university, the beauty and culture that made us the envy of the world. Instead I may be known as the empress under whom Orlais fell. You have the luxury of mourning Halamshiral’s elves and holding my heart hostage. Sitting on my throne, I see every city in the empire. If I must burn one to save the rest, I will weep, but I will light the torch.”

Briala swallowed. “You’re not weeping, as far as I can tell. Nor are you sitting on your throne. She stepped away, her movements fast and jerky. “With your permission, Your Radiance, I shall go indulge myself in my luxury.”

– The Masked Empire

… is at least an argument between adults, with the details of what they believe laid out. Celene honestly believes that the empire and her legacy are worth 'a few thousand elven lives’: she believes that maintaining the strength of Orlais is worth thousands of lives in sacrifice, as is the vision she has for the country’s future. Briala is facing up to the fact that this is the bargain she’s made: stay with Celene and she might see an elven scholar graduate from the university – but she’ll likely also see elves burn every time there’s a crisis, because elves are the most expendable people in the empire.

Briala wavers throughout the novel, obviously, because there is genuine feeling between herself and Celene. But the discovery that this has all happened before, that this is not the first time Celene has shed elven blood to impress her rivals and gain power, and that her own parents were among the victims, brings her to a decision.

You don’t have to like it, but these women are serious about what they want and believe.

But in Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts we get stuff like this:

Sera: Elves-elves-elves, but it’s really a pissing match with an old lover. Don’t know the rest but that explains a lot.

It’s hardly coincidental that they chose Sera to say this. Sera the commoner, who despises the nobility. Sera the Red Jenny, with contacts in every corner of Thedas. True, Sera’s background has led her to reject a lot of elven culture, but her biggest objection is usually to ‘moping’ about the past. This:

Briala thought for a moment. “Celene and Gaspard saw an army, but that would be fighting their fight. With the paths, I could get food to alienages where elves would otherwise starve. They would let me move ahead of an oncoming army and warn the target, or move behind them and attack their supply lines.”

– The Masked Empire

… sounds more like the practical stuff she favours: she’s said getting revenge would be a preferable option, and this is getting food to the poor, terrorising the nobility and giving little people a shot at being part of something bigger. But now we can’t take it seriously, because Sera has reduced it to a lovers’ tiff.

That isn’t meant as a criticism of Sera, to be clear. They do this when they want a mouthpiece. This is the equivalent of having Cole approve of Cullen.

And as for it going well, this is their epilogue slide:

Where once war raged, there is now a shaky peace. Orlais is resurgent, the empress a patron of arts and culture.

Many attribute this recovery to her lady love, though others wonder how long their reunion will truly last.

– Epilogue (Inquisition)

I mean – maybe they’ll forget about this. They have been known to forget their epilogue slides. But it doesn’t read as though the intent was to write a strong and loving partnership. Rather it looks as though they are selling the relationship as tempestuous.

That’s one place where I am very uncomfortable. This is the revolt of an oppressed people, and the politics an empire. And there’s a sense that they’re saying ‘Oh, those women and their emotions! Today they love each other; tomorrow they’ll hate each other; the day after they’ll probably love each other again. You never know, with women.’

I appreciate that Bioware is fairly progressive, for a game company: the character choices, the romance options, the NPCs – they are trying to represent a variety of races, genders and sexualities. But it doesn’t mean they never fuck up. I mean, there’s a bit in Mark of the Assassin where Isabela tells Hawke that Gamlen has been sexually harassing her and two responses blame her (You find something inappropriate?/Break him. And wear pants.).

Given that they are already struggling to resolve a massive plotline in a ridiculous amount of time, I’m not surprised they fell back on this. It’s narrative shorthand, and that can be handy for desperate situations. But it’s still sexist shorthand, and I very much wish they hadn’t done it.

3) Removing The Masked Empire from the equation doesn’t solve the problem

I mean, it makes some of the bigger issues like Briala’s dead parents a little easier to miss, sure, but it doesn’t make the problems go away.

I appreciate that representation is important. I do. But romantic relationships between women are not the only representation issue at stake, here. There’s no single source for the elven people, of course, but it’s easy enough to see that Bioware has borrowed from the experiences of Jewish, Romani and aboriginal peoples living under empires and/or colonialism.

And have we ever established that it is shit to be an elf. The city elf origin story in Origins is an abduction/rape/murder combo. The Dalish clans in Origins and DA2 can be slaughtered. It’s terrifyingly easy to kill off clan Lavellan in war table missions, and even though this is the protagonist’s family the game doesn’t make a thing of it. There’s a whole side quest in DA2 about a serial killer who targets elves, and who keeps getting away with it because no one gives a shit. We are up to our eyeballs in codex entries on the treatment of elves.

And here we have Briala, the leader of a rebellion in Orlais – one of the nations best known for oppressing the fuck out of the elves and trying to destroy their culture.

Even without The Masked Empire this is:

a) providing only the most minimal description of the nature of her rebellion and what she hopes to achieve.

b)allowing her to be dismissed as primarily involved in a lovers’ tiff.

c) pairing her with a woman the game actually says massacred the Halamshiral elves.

d) using the massacre as evidence against her because she was sleeping with Celene, rather than as evidence against the woman who actually committed it.

That’s … all pretty shitty, even at the simplest level. The game doesn’t address any of this. It doesn’t even force the characters to discuss what happened before throwing them back together. It spends as much time tsking at Briala for destabilising Orlais as it does Celene and Gaspard. It loves the idea that they’re all as bad as each other – which allows the player to justify just about any ending.

And this is a thing they do repeatedly: they tsk at the mage rebellion as well. They seem to be very good at describing the sufferings of the elves, the mages, the casteless dwarves … but don’t approve of them actually doing anything about their oppression. At least not anything more forceful than writing a stern letter of complaint (for those lucky literate characters!) to the local lord or revered mother.

And so minimising the problems of Celene and Briala’s relationship, and waving a locket around (which, even out of context, does not seem like a forceful enough declaration of love to startle Briala) does … not strike me as very respectful of peoples who have suffered under empires, and who have had to fight tooth and nail for every sliver of justice.

It’s not that I want to exclude a healthy, positive romance between two women in order to have Awesome Revolutionary Briala. I just don’t understand why we couldn’t have both.

Couldn’t Briala show up with a new girlfriend? Do it properly: give her a codex entry and make her active and important in the quest. Show the two of them both being affectionate and working together for the cause. Make sure that at least some of the possible quest endings leave them alive, together and continuing to better the lot of the elves.

I can understand that you may not like The Masked Empire and may want to exclude it from your personal headcanon. That’s absolutely fine, obviously. But I do not believe that was Bioware’s intent in writing the the Briala-and-Celene reconciliation, and I still have serious issues with it.

[eglantinex]

♥ ✮ ☯ ☼ ☀ ☁ ☢ ✦ ✧ ❥ ✖ ♒⚜☣❀

cannonofatlas said: ☀ What's your rp pet peeve?

This has gotten much longer than I thought it would be.

✧ Do you agree with reblog karma or is it forced interaction?

(As I mentioned in my rules, RP memes are essentially invitations to interact. When someone reblogs one of them and is practically begging you to send one, but you don’t do it, then reblog it and beg everyone else to send you one--how does that make sense? There’s a reason people call it karma--remember, do unto others?

People shouldn’t be so militant about it, sure, but there’s a reason people get sensitive about it. Even saying “b-b-but I don’t feel worthy!” doesn’t make sense after a point--we all say that. Being self-deprecating doesn’t magically make us special.

If they don’t answer, or don’t give the answer you wanted, don’t let that discourage you. You guys are following each other for a reason. Don’t be afraid to do some trial and error. If one person isn’t receptive then someone else will be, guaranteed.

☢ What fads/trends are you so over?

Using so much HTML that you can barely read the actual reply. I know why people use it and I don’t want to come off as universally disliking people who do it, and more often than not people do use it in a way that actually complements their writing and gives their replies a distinct flavor. Rather than trying to make it look all fancy and aesthetically pleasing, but when you actually read the reply, it’s...mediocre, at best. Focus on the quality of your writing first, then pretty your replies and your blog up all you like. Just for god’s sake, never the other way around.

(If I follow you and you format replies, this isn’t about you. If I disliked someone’s RP style so much then I would not be following them at all.)

♒ Thoughts on the fandom you're currently rping in?

Always. Complaining. Translate that to Latin and make it the FNDM’s official motto.

Besides the people I interact with on this blog, I don’t consider myself involved in the RWBY fandom at all. I used to be the person who followed all the popular blogs and nodded along to everything they said, but eventually everything they said was a complaint, complaint, complaint. Even genuine constructive criticism is worded in ways that are exhausting to read. Now it’s popular to hate this character, hate this episode because of one flaw, act like you know exactly how to make the show perfect and the creators are stupid for not seeing your vision. Then there are the people who are like “ugh yeah stupid SJWs,” the people who throw a hissy fit when artists draw Blake with a darker skin tone. Then there are the people who think certain ships are good as gospel, somehow think they’re required to have canon proof or else, and passive-aggressively push the less “popular” ships into a corner.

And yes, I will say this--I also really want more diversity in RWBY, but the rabid way people absolutely demand it from the show is really. shitty. (Lest people think they can have a word with me for daring to have this opinion--no, I am not straight. No, I am not white.)

I’m not saying I’m not aware of the glaring flaws in RWBY’s writing and diversity, and I always like ideas on how to fix those problems, but the fandom’s attitude--the really loud, vocal ones, because most fandoms’ problems revolve back to them--is ultimately counterproductive.

☀ What's your rp pet peeve?

Several. Personal posts significantly outnumbering actual RP-related posts; people being snobby just because their blogs are fancied up; personal blogs mindlessly liking and reblogging stuff (I used to be one of those people, which intensifies that dislike); pity parties that always, always carry over to their characters; characters that try really hard not to look overpowered and fail every time.

♥ What's the WORST thing that has happened to you rp wise?

Absolutely losing my muse for about a year. I’m glad I finally managed to start over, but it was rough. Eventually I was trying to force myself to do replies because I was terrified of becoming irrelevant to my RP partners and I would get angry at them if that seemed to be the case, even if they didn’t really do anything and weren’t aware that I felt the way I did. Given that most of the people I’m doing threads with now are people who used to follow me from the old blog, my worries were completely unfounded.

✮ Have you managed to stay away from drama?

Thank god yes. I don’t get people who say they thrive on that sort of thing; it’s tiring and unproductive. I sort of get the entertainment value but even then it’s not worth it. Just avoid the loud people.

☯ Have you ever tried to bring peace to a situation?

On Tumblr? No. In my earlier days on the Internet in general, I had this idea of being that firm but fair mediator; I remember trying to stop people from responding to a YouTube comment troll when I was maybe 14. But on Tumblr fights get petty and personal real fast--people make it that way--and like I mentioned above, it’s not worth expending my energy anymore. I might message someone to try and calm them down, but otherwise I just ask them to tag their crap or unfollow.

☼ How long do you stay mad?

Depends. If it’s not a big deal to me I brush it off; maybe I’ll be bothered for a while but I try to let it pass. I’m used to bottling things in rather than expressing what upset me because I was used to people not bothering to know, so that makes me stay mad for longer. Even if I do forgive, I don’t forget. Not in the dramatic way people like saying it to make themselves sound so tough, but I know that they’ll probably do it again whether they mean to or not.

☁ Have you ever forgiven a partner when you shouldn't have?

I am too forgiving, so yes. I used to tolerate RP blogs who really played up the pity party out of, well, pity.

✦ Thoughts on duplicates following you?

I haven’t actually had duplicates follow me until today, funnily enough. I don’t mind them; each person portrays the character differently and that’s always interesting to see. But it’s natural to prefer one portrayal over another; I know I do. Just don’t be a jerk about it.

❥ Has someone ever ruined an FC or character for you?

Yes.

✖ How has Tumblr RP changed since you started?

Not a lot that I can tell. People who I RPed with almost three years ago are still operating the same way. Though that’s not to say their writing hasn’t evolved; it definitely has.

Since this is a salty meme I guess this is where I rant about the negative changes I see among RPers, but I don’t really see any right now. Maybe in a few months I’ll see through the cracks.

⚜ How many people do you not like?

RP-wise, only a couple I’ve had uncomfortable experiences with in the past. I think if I ever get a message saying “care to RP?” I may block the sender immediately, no question.

☣ Have you ever rp'd with someone you knew for a fact was abusive but tried to give them a chance/to make up your own opinion on the roleplayer? Did they change or did you understand what people were talking about?

No abusers as far as I know, thankfully--but there is someone who was very much bad news. I’ve mentioned pity parties a couple times above, and this is one of the people I refer to when I say that. They basically acted as if they were a great victim, and sought attention--I was similar to that before, so I know people like that when I see them. I gave them chance after chance because I did believe that their angst came from somewhere genuine, and I wanted to at least help them out of their tragically self-deprecating cycle, but in the end it was too much.

There are other people who became really uncomfortable with them too and made posts calling them out and such, and rather than address those concerns they would call it yet more evidence that the world was so against them and no one loved them. And the thing about people like that is you never know how to tell them that their attitude is not going to reward them at all. You don’t even know if it’s all an act or if they actually think that way.

❀ What has made you completely lose your chill?

The aforementioned gripes with the fandom. That’s why I rarely have RWBY on my personal now, and I struggle with finding blogs that have all the good stuff (fanart, headcanons, speculation, gifs and edits) without all the really annoying ones (militant shipping--god I wish that was referring to actual boats--passive-aggressive comments towards the crew, assuming White Rose and Bumbleby are/should be the canon ships, claiming that the crew are warping the original vision while acting like they magically know better).