#and even harder to try to sum up the nuances of what i like or dislike without getting too ramble-y 😂

[snickerdoodlles]

oh my god fucking ✨ yeah ✨

mental health in general is one of those things that will have me backflipping out of stories so fast, i've actually forgotten how much it irritates me. therapy in a lot of stories is just. shit. so often it's a throwaway line to justify why a character can suddenly express their feelings more explicitly in words than they did in canon (ugh) or just...throw them in a better place with none of the journey or any regression (i'm climbing walls).

i have two WIPs that explicitly deal with therapy to recover from trauma (one for Khun i've talked about a bit on here, another for Kim which uh. hahahaha), but a large part of those recovery storylines is that Khun and Kim make shit therapy patients. Khun's struggling to even admit he can heal, Kim approaches his with a battle plan because He Is Fine. they're gilb and sharp and guarded and angry, because trauma fucking sucks. it's not a linear progression, old things bubble to the surface, new things are hard to face, some days are just suddenly the pits, etc. they're not particularly nice to their therapists, but also that's the point. therapists aren't there to be your friends, they're there to help you work thru shit, and working thru shit sucks. but by dealing with their shit with their therapists, they're better set to work thru things with their loved ones and strengthen those relationships, which is the whole point.

so mental health and/or therapy fics miss the mark for me a lot when they just like...don't want to handle the journey of recovery. or the characters have to be the "good" victims who aren't too mean or difficult to heal, or therapy turns them nice because meanness can only stem from trauma, or whatever. bleh. and i think some of this happens because people see trauma as something to be erased by "healing"? i'm not sure how to better word that, but sometimes the healing journey feels more like it was approached as "how do we fix the trauma so that it no longer exists/it no longer touches you" vs "you went through something traumatic that affected you as a person, lets build a support network to minimize how it impacts you as a person in the future." i don't know if that makes sense? but it's like, the point isn't to "restore" the normal from before the trauma, a lot of times it's trying to build a system that keeps triggers from being debilitating, or give ways to cut off self-destructive behaviors, etc. i think i'm just rambling words at this point so i'm gonna shut up, but there's a very different vibe between a story that approaches trauma as something to cure vs something to grow around (*around not from).

re using Khun's mental health to rob him of his agency-- i know exactly what you mean, it was my primary complaint about a lot of Porsche-related posts and fic that came out right after ep4 and honestly the way a lot of people still handle kp's first fuck. a lot of it just...misses the narrative point of that sex scene, but beyond that like. more of the responsibility lies on Kinn's shoulders in that he sent other people away when he was too emotional to handle the situation with a clear head and he knew Porsche's decisions were in part swayed by the drugs still in his system, but Porsche was the one who pushed. Porsche was the one who chased when Kinn first pulled back. and there's a way to address the fact that Porsche was and is the one at a disadvantage in this situation that doesn't negate Porsche's agency in the choices he made or the things he wants, and a lot of that was missing because it's easier to paint things in a starker black-and-white one was wrong, the other the victim. and pulling that back to Khun-- all of Khun's choices are in some way influenced by his trauma, because his trauma scars run deep and the pervasiveness of his trauma is part of his character. but it's still only an influence on him and his decisions. sometimes big, oftentimes light. even for the big things like his extreme agoraphobia, it's still just one factor of many. trauma doesn't dictate who you are as a person or what you do, that's why you're able to heal and learn how to manage your responses to it.

☕️ on tankhun if it hasn’t been asked before or anything else in general.

ooooohhh my beloved Khun 👀 tbh not much immediately comes to mind? Khun doesn't usually get much focus in fic and while i might be hoping for some specific Khun headcanons or characterizations, it's easier to read around characterizations i disagree with for secondary character. the only hand and fast 'no' i have for Khun takes are any where Khun picks Chay over Kim, but i don't see that as much anymore. dunno if that's because it has truly died down or if i just have most of it muted, but either way i'm v grateful 😂 but everyone already knows that one, so a Khun characterization i don't much agree with:

very ""motherly"" (ie, soft) Khun

this seems to stem mostly from Khun saying he raised his brothers? ft a heavy dose of fanon characterization. but Khun having been a big part in his brothers growing up doesn't mean he'd be soft and/or necessarily a caretaker. Khun's still very sharp. i see his touches with Kinn and Kim being of the sort like, briskly yanking their clothes into order before they go out, doling out snark just as good as he gets from two moody teenagers, smacking them upside the head if they say something disrespectful, etc. Khun's still Khun. he's very impatient, intense, and brash, and he's still working through a lot of trauma that sometimes has him lashing out at others. he's not really a tender person, as much as i love tender moments with him--tenderness especially is dangerous in their life, and Khun was raised as the heir to their world first.

this is more vague vibes than anything else? it's not anything that will immediately have me backing out, esp because i love little moments where Khun can be softer with his loved ones, but Kinn is the bleeding heart of the family and i disagree with any fic that puts Khun as the heart instead.

[ send a ☕, get a bitchy* fic opinion ] *personal preference related, we’re not here to be mean

[septembersghost]

I was thinking about WDBHG in regards to haylor and i was shocked how perfectly it explains their dynamic in early 2014. While Taylor was trying to hide her heartbreak in 1989 by promoting it as a single girl who is no longer sad album because of media, he acknowledges the hurt she went through and how he caused some of it. "All the rest of my CRIMES don't come close to look on your face when I let you go" beautifully sums up how much it hurt her and how much he regretted it. "And I wrote you a song with the words you spoke" THAT I LOVE YOU REFERENCE. "Shadows come with the pain that you're running from LOVE WAS SOMETHING YOU NEVER HEARD ENOUGH" hits harder after "you never called it what it was". This makes me wonder about the convos they probably had about JG. And considering that h never expressed any jealousy regarding JG or questioned whether she loved him I feel it's safe to say that he was more to her than 'jake lite' or casual hookup. The "Anyone Between Is The Enemy" lyric is so looked over but it captures how he felt regarding the media pressure(another lyric that conveyed the same meaning was "I don't care what people say when we're together"). And that paranoia about her hooking up with someone else makes woman 100× sadder. "Tell me where you're going when you feel afraid" makes me wonder how vulnerable she was with him considering she tried to appear 'fearless' in front of media. The song's implication that he did indeed fixed the heart he let down is so😭😭. There is an intimacy and comfort and bit of an understanding of them as a couple and their dynamic in that relationship in WDBHG which I feel tay didn't want to explore more since she wasn't ready to be that vulnerable yet.

this is so silly but i have to confess that wdbhg has a big misheard lyric for me, which is, "anyone in between is the end of me," it took me way too long to realize it's, "anyone in between is the enemy," which gave me this interpretation of him being scared there was someone else and that made him want to die. once i read it's "enemy" i was like....ohhhh. help. meanwhile, you're totally right, it's saying anyone between us, all these obstacles, the press, (toxic fans...), is the enemy because it's destroying this love i know we could have. equating it to a crime because he's cognizant of how much it hurt her and also carries an immense guilt for that himself.

"Shadows come with the pain that you're running from LOVE WAS SOMETHING YOU NEVER HEARD ENOUGH" hits harder after "you never called it what it was". i need 5-7 business days to process this.

making him jg lite or that but fun is really missing the nuance in what was happening there, i think. they were both growing and processing a lot, and because they had a unique understanding of each other's fame and positions, it's not hard to infer the kinship there. obviously we can't know or speculate specifically what was shared, but i think there was a level of understanding that made their inability to work it out timing-wise or emotionally land on the same page even more painful. there were things they could mend together and then other things that got more broken due to varying factors. but you can't listen to wdbhg and not hear the care and longing in it, and the willingness to be vulnerable even if that could only be sent out into the universe to be heard in the music.

[lampmanliveblogs]

Follies at the Coven Day Parade Addendum

As promised, I did my usual rewatch and here are a few things I missed or didn’t talk about the first time through:

•The ”sweet potato” thing. So cute, so precious. •There were some references to old gags from season one, such as Gus’ high-fives and King’s bread puns. •A commenter pointed out that Raine whistles when they blow on their tea. That’s kinda cute. I was gonna make a joke about it actually being a cooling spell and Raine just used their voice instead of their instrument… but that made me start wondering if there are bards that can use bard magic with their voice instead of instruments. I think it could be kinda cool if that were the case.  •On the second time through, I get a distinct feeling that Terra might’ve actually wanted to kill Kikimora. The attack she does against Luz & Kiki while they’re invisible looks pretty lethal and was only stopped by Amity’s intervention. Later, on the docks, when Kikimora asks if she passed the test, Terra replies ”Unfortunately.” So yeah. Terra means business, and that business is mind control and death. •Angmar and Gavin from episode five can be seen in Latissa during the Emperor’s speech, implying that they live there and that Glandus is located somewhere close by.

As I sit down to try and sum up my feelings on this episode, I find that the best I can muster is ”It was okay.” Good enough. I don’t really have any strong feelings about it.

That is not to say it was bad or anything, it had a lot of good things that I liked. Amity & Luz being in love and Amity & Willow being friends was cute and wholesome, much appreciated. We got to see Raine again, even if they were turned into a goon by Terra. Speaking of which, we got to meet Terra Snapdragon, another one of the Coven Head Witches. She was intimidating in a way I think Darius and Eberwolf didn’t quite mange to be in their episode.

Seeing two of the predictions I made in my Mid-Season Intermission (meeting another Head Witch and a Raine rescue operation) come true so soon was pretty satisfying. Granted, when I was thinking the gang were gonna need someone with more inside information to rescue Raine, I was thinking of Hunter and I was kinda hoping they’d actually succeed with saving Raine. But hey, they can’t all be bullseyes.

The story of Kikimora didn’t really grip me, because I was fully expecting her to betray Luz right from the get-go. But she did trip over that plank, which I thought was hilarious so it was worth it.

We also learned just a little bit more about the Day of Unity; that it’s in one month and will involve all the witches traveling to the head of the Titan. And that’s… it. Belos also publicly unmasked, but we already knew what his face looks like, so it didn’t hit that hard.

When it comes to Luz… It was more of what we’ve already seen. Luz is having trouble figuring out just what the heck she’s gonna do with her life, you know, assuming she finds out a way home and Belos is not a threat anymore.

Now, just because it is more of what we’ve seen before doesn’t mean it’s not good stuff. It’s fleshing out and developing nuance in the character. It’s a complex question with no simple answer and so it needs time to stew both in the minds of the characters and the audience. That way, once we do get the big pay-off, it will hit all the harder. So as a piece of a larger puzzle, it fits great. It’s just that the piece on its own isn’t that exciting to look at.

The biggest development was that Luz is now more open about these troubles she has with Amity, which I think is a good thing. We saw Luz talking to Eda & King and they didn’t really have much help to offer, they just tried to cheer her up. Amity might not be able to offer much advice either, but her support is going to mean a lot. Luz knowing that her awesome girlfriend still loves and supports her even if her life is messy and she’s unsure is, I think, going to help make her feel at least a little better.

In Conclusion With the context of the hiatus, it does feel to me like this episode is mainly trying to remind, reestablish and introduce some of the main story goals of the second half of season two. Those being, Luz’ inner troubles, the threat of the Coven Head Witches, Raine’s rescue, the mystery of Belos, and the Day of Unity.

I hope I’m not coming off as too negative, like I don’t like this episode. I do, it just doesn’t excite me as much as some of the previous ones. Because let’s face it, this season so far has been full of the great episodes. A good episode then looks bad by comparison.

Oh wait, we got to see the invisibility glyph spell this episode, 10/10, my favorite ever.

Oh wait, we got to see Hooty’s skeleton this episode, -10/10, I hate it here.

I’ll be getting into episode twelve tomorrow, and, ah… I’ve been told things about it… See you then. But until next time, take care of the planet Earth and remember that anything can happen in space!

<--Previous: Mid-Season Intermission

Masterlist

Next Episode: Elsewhere and Elsewhen-->

[ghosthan]

what would you say are the differences between 616 Tony and MCU Tony? 🤔

Hi anon! Many people have talked about this and I'm certainly not the authority on the topic, but I’ll try my best to explain some of the major differences that I have noticed! Thank you for asking and I’m sorry it took me so long to answer you.

Important to note: neither version of Tony has had a totally consistent characterization. Depending on who you ask and which comics/movies they've consumed, they might give you a different answer here and not be wrong.

616 Tony is even harder to put into one box because his character has been around since Tales of Suspense in the 1950s. That’s a long time. Things have changed over time, under different writers, changing political atmospheres, and outside pop culture influence (including influence from the MCU, unfortunately, in recent years.) You get the picture. So I’ll be making some generalizations and try to be clear about which eras I’m speaking when I make these comparisons, but ultimately, if someone wanted to be contrarian, you could probably refute a lot of what I say here if you cherry pick canon. Which is fair enough! That’s sort of the fun of comics, there’s so much to choose from and something for everyone.

So here are some observations from me, under the ‘read more’.

1. Physical Appearance

This is sort of an easy one, but worth mentioning!

MCU Tony does not look like 616 Tony. RDJ is great, but he would not be most 616 fans’ casting choice on looks alone. MCU Tony is tan, a Malibu man, with brown hair and brown eyes, and RDJ has sort of round facial features (a funny sloped nose, big, round eyes, round forehead, not a particularly sharp or classically “superhero masculine” face.) As you may know, this lends well to certain fanworks and tropes, such as Tony having Bambi eyes.

Or Tiny Tony. He is not actually canonically small, but he's smaller in the MCU than in 616 and from what I can tell, a portion of fandom has latched onto that. He’s a grown man, but RDJ is pretty short, and of slighter build than 616 Tony. RDJ is 5′9, but they make him act in heels, and I believe his canon MCU height is 5′11. Another popular trope I’ve seen is shrinking Tony in fanfic/fanart for a dramatized height difference with Steve, making him weak or fragile; this is fine because everyone has their own taste, but for the official record, he’s a capable, strong guy! Especially in earlier stages of the MCU, in which he’s a bit younger. Tony isn’t just a brain; he carries out his plans with his own two hands! He builds his armor, he remodels his lab, he survives hand to hand combat when he doesn’t have the armor. Muscles!

616 Tony is 6′1 without armor and 6′6 in armor (making him taller than his 616 Steve counterpart in armor and very close to the same height out of armor!) 616 Tony is generally paler with black hair (sometimes the classic blue-black I love so much) and blue eyes, and it obviously depends on the artist, but he has a pretty typically ‘masculine’ face and build. Generally he is drawn with a squared jaw and a high bridged nose (such as in the Extremis storyline, or drawn by Marquez), but again, this varies from artist to artist! Here's some examples of 616 Tonys.

Wait, you might be saying, but I have seen comic panels where Tony has brown hair/brown eyes!

Yep. Due to a combination of forgetfulness, inconsistency, and the MCU bleeding into the general consciousness of the comics, sometimes Tony is randomly depicted in the image of RDJ, or if not in his image, at least visually inspired by the MCU-- hair color and style, eye color, dialogue, etc.

616 fans don’t typically love this; he’s very handsome when drawn this way, of course, (look at him!) But it isn’t really the same character.

Also, MCU Tony has (at least for some of his movies) a reactor built into his chest. While 616 Tony has, at times, been more or less physically connected/dependent to his tech, he doesn’t have the built in reactor (most generally speaking, there are times in comics when he temporarily has the tech built in, but this isn’t really the status quo.)

2. Relationship with parents/ family history

While it is definitely implied in the MCU that Howard was not a good father to Tony, (such as in Iron Man 2 when Tony says “You're talking about a man whose happiest day of his life was shipping me off to boarding school” and “He was cold, calculating, never told me he loved me, never even told me he liked me”), Tony has a different sort of attitude toward Howard in MCU than in 616. It’s kind of weird, and hard to discuss. To me, it seems implied that MCU Howard was emotionally abusive to Tony based on what Tony does say about his childhood, and yet, the films kind of randomly give Howard weird moments of “Well, he tried his best and deep down he loved me the whole time!” forgiveness. MCU has a Howard kink and I'm very cringe-face emoji about it.

For example, Iron Man 2 shows that old film reel of Howard talking about how Tony is the greatest thing he ever created, and in Endgame, when Tony goes back in time, he meets Howard and has a very weird interaction with him in which Howard declares he would do anything for his son, (to his deeply damaged son who is a new father himself.) Yet, for all his talk, it's his actions that speak, and his actions left Tony damaged, traumatized, and emotionally inept at forming healthy relationships. So.

Sorry. I’m a little bitter. I'm just uncomfortable with how they sort of set up an abuse history but then treated it kind of lightly and Howard gets off the hook as "well, he tried his best" without really acknowledging the hurt he caused.

Avengers: Endgame 2019

I won't go super in depth into the abuse stuff because it's a little touchy and could take up a lot of this post. But.

I’m not against any reconciliation and I do appreciate the fact that a lot of times, victims of abuse feel a desire to forgive and reconnect with their abuser-- my issue with the MCU depiction of Tony and Howard is that Tony never really gets the vindication of his abuse being recognized for what it was before he forgives Howard. To me, that’s not forgiveness as kind of... gaslighting himself that it wasn't as bad as he remembered his own experience being, because of a sense of nostalgia and grief. It’s not the same, and I have issues with it.

However, a lot of my opinion is based on subtext and it is just my opinion; with depictions of abuse, different people are going to react differently, and other people may have found these scenes touching and gotten something positive out of them, and that's totally fine too!

It’s also a bit difficult to talk about Tony’s relationship with Howard in 616, for a few reasons: shifting timelines, lots of canon that I have not read all of, and the fact that it really is difficult to sum up such a complicated relationship.

Right off the bat, I’ll address the basics. I used the same scene in another ask, and I think it's frequently cited in any meta regarding Howard, but in Iron Man Vol. 1, we see more into Tony’s childhood and see Howard verbally abusing his family, drunk, at the dinner table.

Iron Man Vol. 1 #285

We get this scene with adult Tony’s retrospective commentary on how his own issues that he blamed himself for were actually a cycle starting with his father, the insecurity and abuse and alcohol, and that he realizes how much this has influenced him. Both MCU Tony and 616 Tony have some form of “stop the cycle of shame” arcs, but I don’t really see how this works narratively in the MCU because Tony makes excuses for Howard and continues to blame himself for a lot of his own personal struggles, whereas I think there’s just a bit more nuance in 616.

But uh. This isn’t totally true, and in recent years, things got real weird. I choose to ignore this chapter of canon, but in the Dan Slott run, Tony Stark: Iron Man, Tony’s whole backstory gets imploded. For one thing, the little of Tony’s childhood it shows in a flashback is uh. Uh. Well, it’s certainly out of character compared with previous 616 material, depicting Tony as an overly confident poor sport.

Basically, Tony is adopted. Tony has an evil brother. Tony’s biological parents make an appearance, as do his ‘classic’ parents, Howard and Maria. It’s just weird. It’s kind of out there. I’m honestly not a huge fan of this and ignore a lot of it, but it is certainly a difference between MCU and 616.

3. Personality

I’m going to be very general. Both Tony’s have an outer self which they present to the public and an inner self, but they’re a bit different. Both Tony’s have struggled with self loathing, but I think MCU Tony’s actual self worth is a bit higher, even just at some points in time. Even if his ego is part of his facade, I think he does believe some amount of the “I’m awesome”, even if just when it applies to his own work/inventions/saving people. Not to say that these moments of fluctuating self esteem make him egotistical, but this combined with his egotistical act and snarky, non-stop sassy dialogue, he’s quite different in general personality from 616 Tony, who is much more reserved.

Some more recent iterations of 616 Tony have been adapted to reflect the snark of the MCU, but he’s not so snarky and he tends to approach things more seriously. This is not a dis on MCU Tony; I think MCU Tony uses false ego and excessive sassy jokes as a means to deflect and control, which I think is very interesting and it’s nice to see this explored more in depth in fic where you get to see the thought process behind the bravado. MCU Tony is a partier, a good times guy, especially during Iron Man 2, in which he really does disregard consequences to have fun (driving his race car, partying drunk in his suit, letting pretty  girls play with the armor, shooting off repulsor blasts for fun in a crowded room); I’m not bashing MCU Tony-- I think he had psychologically understandable reasons for behaving this way, the man was dying-- but 616 Tony really doesn’t act this way generally, and I think it’s a personality difference more than a difference of one being “better.”

616 Tony handles his stress differently, and they just have different psychological patterns, I think. I’m coming up kind of blank trying to think of a good comparable 616 arc, (sorry, I’m brain dead) but a less-than-perfect  example might be Tony’s brain delete arc; he’s “dying”, like in Iron Man 2 he  knows his expiration date, (circumstances are quite  a bit different), but he throws himself more into work, into a cause, and as he really fall apart, we  see him spiral into self doubt, remorse, fear, and insecurity, sort of falling into  himself with lots of manly tears and calling himself pathetic.

(Some things happen in this arc that a lot of people find Gross. I also find these events gross. But. I don’t count the sex in “World’s Most Wanted” as partying to cope with personal mortality, because I think both character involved are in “end of the world” mode, and it’s more seeking intimacy for comfort than partying to numb the hurt. Does this distinction make sense? No? Perfect, moving on.) 616 Tony is generally much more humble.

Whereas MCU Tony, I think, tries to outrun those feelings via parties or making dozens of new suits, or seeking comfort by comforting others! Gifting things to people, building things for people, highly personalized individual living quarters, teaching Nebula games and trying to show her a fun time when they were in peril together.

They have some traits in common, for sure! But canon being inconsistent both in the MCU and in 616, my observations aren’t the rule, because I’m kind of cherry picking and going based on limited memory. But off the top of my head, they’re both extravagant gift givers! Recall Tony gifting Pepper the giant bunny in Iron Man 3, and compare this with Tony carrying a mile high pile of Christmas gifts after shopping with Rumiko in Iron Man Vol. #3.

I would say that while both Tony Starks are considered humanitarians, this is much more fleshed out and supported by canon in 616. Some examples of his philanthropy in the MCU: Tony makes charitable donations of art and money, Tony has an organization which provides disaster relief/cleanup which is referenced in Spider-Man Homecoming, Tony has an MIT grant for students and staff members. But to be honest, a lot of his MCU philanthropy is only mentioned in passing, or is largely handled by other people on his behalf and on his dollar.

In 616, we see Tony using charity almost as a means of therapy: it’s something he does very privately, not in the public eye (at least, not always), and it’s something deeply personal to him. One example that immediately comes to mind is Tony’s home for disadvantaged girls in Iron Man Vol. 3, and we see scenes of Tony basically driving the streets at night, picking up underage prostitutes, feeding them and listening to their stories before bringing them to a home he’s established where he knows all the residents, and provides educational opportunities and protection.

Another more recent example in canon that the Tony fandom loves is that Tony canonically holds babies at an orphanage. Sorry I don’t have panels for all of this, this section got long and I have been working on answering this ask in a very scattered way for a very long time.

Both Tony’s are romantics, I literally could write a whole other post about their canon love life similarities and differences, but I will briefly say that while MCU Tony does the long on and off, and eventual ultimate commitment, to Pepper Potts, 616 Tony is a serial monogamist; he is always falling in love, and he’s definitely not a playboy, but the hero-ing, self loathing, and lifestyle make it very hard for him to keep anyone in his life, and most of his partners fuck his life up and betray him. Needless to say, 616 Tony is not married, and certainly not to Pepper Potts.

Oh, and I guess this is so obvious I almost forgot to include it, but a huge similarity between both iterations of Tony is that they both constantly use their own life as a bargaining chip, and will pretty much die for anything. Or be the bad guy for a good reason (at least, in his own mind... see Civil War, or Hickmanvengers; 616 Tony, especially, does not shy away from making the hard decisions, and this leads to a lot of guilt and tension in his  relationships-- often with Steve because 616 Steve/Tony angst fans are well fed, I guess)

Remember that time Tony had Steve’s mind wiped because Tony felt that Steve’s inflexible morality might hinder the Illuminati’s ability to save the world? And it eats Tony up inside and erupts into a homicidal fight when Steve finally gets his memory back? Me too.

Tony Stark as a character is defined by sacrifice, both of his own life but also of his own happiness and reputation and conscience, I think, in a lot of ways, and we see this in many universes. I could go on about Tony’s propensity for sacrifice in the less obvious ways, because I think in terms of heroic sacrifice, Tony has done a lot that other heroes wouldn’t be able to do because of moral inflexibility and conflicting philosophical schools of thought; Tony really is the “whatever it takes” type, and often believes the ends justify the means if he deems a threat worse than the potential wrong that could be done in preventing the threat. We see this a little bit in the MCU in the creation of Ultron, and in Civil War with the Accords. But there’s a whole lot more going on there I don’t want to get into.

4. Alcohol

MCU Tony’s alcoholism is never really explicitly explored. He is shown drinking in Iron Man 1, and in Iron Man 2 he drinks a lot and makes a fool of himself publicly, but MCU Tony doesn’t get any specific narrative arc focused on his drinking, and if I recall correctly, I don’t think he ever refers to his drinking as alcoholism in the movies? Also, while his binge drinking and embarrassing behaviors ostensibly stop after the events of Iron Man 2, he is shown drinking on screen at least one other time after that which I can remember, and it wasn’t a “falling off the wagon” moment, and an alcoholic in recovery such as 616 Tony would not take a drink casually. This article sheds a little light on some decisions made about Tony and alcohol in the MCU.

Alcoholism is a huge part of 616 Tony’s personality, which I went a bit more into depth about in this post, so I won’t repeat myself too much.

5. Their relationships with the Iron Man armor

A few points here: MCU Tony is famous for the “I am Iron Man” line being repeated throughout the franchise after he blows his own secret in the end of the first movie. MCU Tony sees himself as one with Iron Man, and the suit is the tech that enables him to be this version of himself. He sees Tony Stark and Iron Man as inextricable: you cannot separate them, and his identity is public. He, as Tony Stark, is an Avenger.

You may remember MCU Tony’s induction into the Avengers; in Iron Man 2, Nick Fury is forming the Avengers and tasks the Black Widow with going undercover to assess Tony to be a part of a hypothetical initiative. “Iron Man yes, Tony Stark no” and the comments about Tony as a narcissist may be funny, but the fact is, the snark and erratic personality of MCU Tony at the time of the formation of the Avengers in the movies is not at all like the Tony of the comics, at the time of the Avengers being formed. 

In 616, things are quite a bit different! Tony invents the Iron man armor to save himself (like in the MCU) and uses it for hero-ing, but in secret. He works very hard to protect his identity as Iron Man, and for a long time, as far as the world is concerned, Iron man is a mystery man piloting armor built by Tony, hired as Tony’s personal body guard, (hence the 616 Steve/Tony fandom’s proclivity for identity porn as a trope!) When the Avengers form, Iron Man is the Avenger, close friends with the Avengers, (particularly Steve!) and Tony Stark is just the benefactor of the Avengers, providing them with a place to live and finances with which to operate.

In the very early days, Tony did not have the “reactor” like in the MCU, but his chest plate did keep him alive, leading to some very dramatic shots of Tony charging up using a wall socket, lamenting the plight of a secret hero.

616 Tony, generally, and especially in some of these earlier comics, was quite reserved, rather serious, and very angsty, (in private of course.) He may be wealthy, but speaking generally, he’s much less ostentatious than MCU Tony, less of a show off, less into flashy things and grand gestures. Of course, this isn’t always true in the comics, and some iterations of Tony are more like this than others, but MCU Tony is showier, sillier, and more of a fun-times guy. Any MCU fan would find those panels quite contrary to the Tony Stark you know:

Iron Man 1

Iron Man 2

I think I would say that while MCU Tony sees himself and the Iron Man identity and the  armor as all being inextricably connected, we see a bit more compartmentalization with 616 Tony, who pretends that the armor is a whole separate person for years when his identity was private, and we see instances in older and newer comics, in which Tony  is uncomfortable with some aspect of himself as Iron Man (for instance, during the second drinking arc, Tony temporarily swears off being Iron Man entirely, or for another example, when Tony is in a comma and Tony AI exists during Secret Empire, Tony “lives” in the Iron Man suit, and I think this could be interpreted as a meta parallel to Steve during this arc; Steve has had some core aspect of his character inverted, Captain America becoming Captain Hydra, so Tony experiences a similar inversion-- Tony Stark and Iron Man are forcibly merged, in a way that Tony seems deeply uncomfortable with, if his digital drinking relapse is any indication. But I digress; sorry for the tangent.)

Okay this post is inexcusable long, and very, very tangential, and I don’t feel like I’ve really covered everything I wanted to. But it has been sitting in my inbox for too long and if I don’t post it now I never will, so I hope this long, rambling thing has been a little bit helpful to you! Thank you so much for asking, I had a lot of fun rambling about this.

If you want to read a similar post, but well written and organized, with other insights, this post by Sineala answers a similar question!

[dragonheart-swtor]

Imperial Agent Storyline: Drunk History Version

Since people really seemed to like the last one! Y’all’s collective wish is my command. Spoilers for the Imperial Agent storyline, obviously. Enjoy!

- so you start out with your agent on Hutta, a little polluted slimeball of a world that literally everyone but the Hutts canonically hates. there's lore but we're going to ignore it. the important thing is that you're here to con a Hutt, always a dangerous gambit, into working with/for the Empire.

- you sneak into a corner to space facetime your boss, a guy we only ever know as Keeper because Intelligence is weird about names. sneaking into corners to facetime people is a repeating theme throughout the story.

- you are informed that you've already got a cover story set up, and you'll be posing as an infamous pirate called the Red Blade who'll be able to get in close to the Hutt in question, whose name I've forgotten. Nethro or Nefro or something.

- "wait, what about the actual Red Blade," you ask your boss, probably

- "he's halfway across the galaxy, you don't need to worry about him," your boss replies, in a textbook example of what we in the writing business call “foreshadowing”

- (spoiler alert: you need to worry about him)

- but we won't worry about that for now. bada bing bada boom, you stroll on into the Hutt's place. you are immediately confronted by a guy who, shock and horror, actually knows the real Red Blade and knows you ain't him. (one would think that all-seeing Intelligence would have known about him, but nuance.) this is a problem for a number of obvious reasons.

- your options are as follows: bribe him, kill him, or sleep with him. (this is also something of a recurring theme throughout the story.) whatever option you take, he's dealt with. (yes, this is the man eris fucked five minutes into her storyline.)

- (I didn’t want to pay him money, leave me alone.)

- anyway, the mission progresses smoothly. meet the Hutt, do some jobs for the Hutt, betray the Hutt's right hand and stab him in the back right after convincing him you were friends, invade the Hutt's rival's palace, McMurder the Hutt's rival, you know. your average day at the office

- most of the way through, the Hutt's other right hand starts to be suspicious about you. this is Kaliyo Djannis, and she will be Plot Relevant™.

- by which I mean she shortly thereafter walks in on you facetiming your boss and gets hired by Intelligence to help out for gods know what reason. welcome to your first companion

- (or possibly you walk in on her facetiming your boss in your room, I.. don't remember, honestly. something like that.)

- anyway one Hutt is dead the other is working with us bada bing bada boom this is going great and hey remember when I said you needed to worry about that guy you're impersonating this whole time? yeah, about that,

- so the real actual Red Blade comes sailing in to Hutta and Intelligence immediately calls you up like "hey, hate to bother you, but your cover's about to get blown in a big way and we need you to murder the guy whose identity you've stolen before he can expose you.” 

- "so, just like that training mission last week. gotcha, boss, no problem."

- murder time™

- congration you done it! go home to Dromund Kaas.

- "You're on Imperial soil now, agent. Welcome home." [nonhuman Agent immediately experiences 27492738957 microaggressions] (this joke isn’t mine, for the record)

- first off, Intelligence HQ has a bomb aesthetic, as does the entire Empire in general

- second off, you do walk in on your boss talking to - by which I mean "being given a speech by" - a Dark Lord, which is less than optimal for a number of reasons, first and foremost that speeches by Dark Lords of the Sith quite often immediately precede someone getting killed

- said Dark Lord is one Darth Jadus, who will proceed to be a thorn in your side for approximately the next three hours of gameplay

- (don't worry, after that three hours you'll get a worse thorn)

- Darth Jadus decides he likes you and declares you "his" agent, which you immediately get the gist is about the worst thing that can happen to an Intelligence agent from the way everyone around you treats you like you've just had a ticking bomb strapped to your back for the rest of this meeting

- you're sent on a handful of missions, including one to the Dark Temple which, you know, Force-deaf people aren't supposed to be in, but Jadus Does Not Care

- Jadus calls you into his office at one point and tells you he's going to do some ritual to bind you to his service or something, it's not really clear, but it's clearly Not Optional and also terrifying in concept

- now, quick sidebar. there are basically two paths to take here: one where you suck up to the Sith and treat them with the utmost care and respect and fear like you're kind of supposed to, and one where you mouth off at every opportunity. Eris is mortally terrified of Sith, so she just kind of.. submitted knowing she was going to die if she didn't.

- my second run, however, was just a "hey how bad can I fuck this up" character because I already knew the story.

- I decided to mouth off to Jadus at every opportunity, including adamantly refusing this ritual.

- "What can he do to me?" I asked the person I was playing with. "I'm the protagonist! It's not like he can kill me!"

- Jadus: *kills me*

- me:

- (mechanically, anyway; story-wise I'm sure he just. put her on the brink of death. but mechanically speaking he literally actually did kill my toon)

- (this should be a warning for exactly how much this storyline is willing to put its usually-heavily-plot-armored protagonist through.)

- anyway.

-  do some missions, blah blah blah, Sith possession in the Dark Temple, blah blah blah, you know the drill

-  well, turns out Jadus is going on tour with several hundred Imperial civilians, military, and Sith, allegedly all hand chosen, to share his ~vision for the Empire~. that's all well and good, whatever I gue-

- sorry what do you mean his ship exploded

- what do you mean a member of the Dark Council just blew up in orbit

- cue Kill Bill sirens

- Panic! At The Intelligence HQ

- this throws everything into chaos; not only was Jadus more directly involved in Intelligence, but he was a Dark Councilor so now there's a massive power vacuum

- the Sith who ends up filling this power vacuum? Jadus's daughter, Darth Zhorrid.

- remember when I said you'd have a bigger thorn in your side after Jadus?

- so yeah. so Zhorrid is, for lack of a better word, fucking terrifying

- she's sadistic and completely careless of others' lives or wellbeing and oh yeah she also instantly latches onto you even harder than her father did and demands you find his killer

- a lot of your meetings with her aren't really plot-relevant so I'll sum them all up here:

- Zhorrid was horribly abused by Jadus, completely broken. She tells you a story about how she used to sing, and her father hired a tutor, then had her sing at a Kaas City performance until her throat was so damaged she could never sing again. He tore every scrap of joy out of her life, completely failed to teach her what she needed to know to survive the rigors of the Dark Council, and instilled every ounce of hatred, sadism, and complete lack of pity he could in her.

- She kills people for no reason other than a whim, because she was listening to a Sith opera and the aria was "very moving" (an actual literal thing that happens).

- She acts like a complete spoiled brat child. At one point the other Dark Councilors literally beat and torture her, presumably for this reason because she's insufferable and arrogant and way out of her depth, and she cries to you about it

- If you’re like me, your response to all this is basically “cool motive, still murder”

- I have sidetracked  very hard. where was I

- so you spend a while trying to hunt down the people who blew up Jadus's ship. There's a bunch of rebels, you hunt them down, they've got biotech weapons called Eradicators set up to destroy cities on multiple planets, skippity skip to the big reveal

- Jadus is alive, and he organized the whole thing so he'd be able to remake the Empire into the image he wanted. He tortured and enslaved the survivors of the Dominator's destruction

- Jadus gives you a whole speech about how fear is a gift to be shared and "Through victory my chains are broken" but there must be chains to break and blah blah blah holy shit this man is genocidal

- you have three choices: join him for real, pretend to join him so you can sabotage his ship and then kill him (at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Imperial lives), or refuse outright and save those hundreds of thousands of lives but Jadus escapes (and you know he's allegedly likely to return and do even worse damage later).

- (Quick sidebar again, for those who haven’t played it: Eris chose the second option and has nightmares about it for the rest of her life. It's actually extremely haunting in-game - as you're running through Jadus's ship to sabotage it as fast as possible, you can hear the distress calls from various colonies and planets being attacked, the screams of the dying that you doomed. It's horrifying.)

- so yeah there’s really no winning that situation but hey! at least Chapter One’s over. surely in Chapter Two things can’t get worse.

- Chapter Two: Things Get Worse

- there's this guy, Ardun Kothe, an SIS agent. he's a huge threat for some reason I don't remember. you're supposed to infiltrate the SIS to get close to and eventually kill him. not an easy job, but okay, we can do this.

- Intelligence sets up the meeting; months ago they sent the first word to Kothe that there was an Intelligence agent ready to turn and they've been building up from there, sending him a steady stream of information

- enter Hunter, aka the worst bastard in this entire storyline and that is an achievement. He's the one you meet first on Nar Shaddaa.

- you do some missions for the SIS, whatever, it's not important. You finally get to meet the rest of the team - and Ardun Kothe.

- Kothe wants to speak alone, which is p typical tbh. He expresses some doubts, which you assuage as best you can; he gives you your code name: Legate. It's from a form of sabbac, he explains, you'll have to play with him sometime.

- (It is difficult for me to make what happens next funny instead of horrifying, so forgive me if the tone changes a bit here.)

- Everything is going fine.

- "I'm sorry about this, Legate."

- What?

- "Keyword: onomatophobia. Engage Thesh protocols, phase one."

- Everything is not fine.

- You black out and have an extremely rude awakening.

- So it turns out whatever happened with Jadus, the Dark Council decided you were too dangerous (usually for doing your job too fuckin well) and that you needed to be leashed. So not you have mind control programming in your brain, and anyone who has your keyword can take complete and unequivocal control of your body. this is, in a word, not great.

- (This is, as I mentioned, actually extremely horrifying. You have dialogue options and they don’t change what you actually say. You have an opportunity to shoot Kothe and even if you try to select it nothing happens. But we’re not here for the horror take (not today, anyway) so let’s just This Is Fine that and move on)

- Tl;dr you can’t harm Kothe or any members of his team, you’re forced to obey anyone who has your keyword, and this wouldn’t be that much of a problem because we’ll just tell Watcher Two what’s happened and oh wait you can’t tell anyone about your programming either. well, shit.

- You go on to work double agent, like it was planned, with this new, uh. twist

- about a third of the way through the chapter, your mind kind of cracks and you start having hallucinations - seeing things you know can't be real during a holocall, passing out in the middle of your ship and waking up in medbay.

- After that, a new voice lives in your head! Watcher X, someone you either killed or let flee on Nar Shaddaa, has sort of joined the party. Is he an AI in the spinal implant the real Watcher X gave you? is he a figment of your broken mind trying to process its situation? Who knows! Not you! either way, this is not optimal but at least he seems to be being helpful this time

- so anyway we should probably try and figure out how to undo this programming bc Intelligence is being Wholly Unhelpful

- (ASAP, please, especially with how horrible Hunter acts toward you - let’s go with “uncomfortably leery,” which I promise is generous.)

- by the way, your companions still have no idea what’s going on during all this, although they try to be varying levels of supportive (thank you vector I love you bug husband)

- Good news! The Intelligence Archive almost definitely has information on what they did to you and how to fix it. Bad news! You’re definitely not authorized to look that up and crashing the power mainframe to make sure they don’t see you do it sends the security droids after you. whoops.

- Good news! There’s a way to fix you. Bad news! You have to make and inject yourself with a still-kinda-experimental cocktail of chemicals and it may or may not give you permanent brain damage. it’s fine. this is fine.

- also it takes a while to kick in which is Less Than Optimal and by the time it finally does you’ve just been left with a binding order to stay and guard the door on what is, for you, a suicide mission. there’s some incentive to “break your chains” for ya.

- You fight and kill Kothe. Who, shock and awe! is an ex-Jedi! this was in no way painfully obvious by how he kept talking about “sensing” things, I’m sure. definitely not.

- Hunter escapes, because of fuckin course he does. Hunter, who suddenly seems far more in control of everything than he had before. Hunter, who knows far more than he should. Hunter, who ends up leading you to a much, much larger conspiracy.

- End Chapter 2.

- Hate to disappoint, but Chapter 3 is honestly the least interesting to me personally, so this’ll be brief compared to the previous chapters

- You spend a lot of time hunting down this much larger conspiracy, including Hunter specifically. There's a lot of betrayal and secret reveals. (It's not tedious by any stretch of the imagination, but the story beats definitely don't stick in my head as well as the first two chapters, even after two playthroughs.)

- you go to Voss and, in order to get into a Voss-only archive, get married to a person you just met before almost immediately leaving the planet (and your new spouse) behind. this is never mentioned again.

- you get hold of a holorecording from the Star Cabal, the big conspiracy. problem: the holorecording contains a trap for the brain-enhanced Watchers, and now half of Intelligence is in a vegetative state. this is not optimal.

- partially as a result of this, Intelligence basically gets dissolved, which is Not Great because it puts you right under the thumb of yet another asshole Sith lord

- the Watchers are recovering, though, so that’s something. Watcher Two, now Keeper (the old Keeper got promoted), contacts you so you can keep working on this Star Cabal thing.

- you get intentionally captured so the Star Cabal can torture you and you can “break” and give them false information to lead them into a trap. you are immediately afterward expected to get back to work like nothing happened. this is never mentioned again.

- You track the Star Cabal to their base, way out in the Unknown Regions iirc, and infiltrate it during a meeting of the top agents.

- murder time 2: electric boogaloo (well, more like murder time 45, to be honest, but shh it’s fine)

- You fight the Star Cabal guys, chase Hunter through the whole place, and finally corner him.

- (Salt warning ahead on my part for the next story beat, if you can call it that.)

- Hunter, when beaten, reveals what I personally think is the most bullshit stupid reveal in the entire game: he is actually a she, and has been using a stealth field generator (or something similar) to change his/her appearance the entire time. There are multiple interpretations of this - "he's trans" is my least favorite, sorry-not-sorry, because a) it's pretty clear she still considers herself a woman and Hunter is just a convenient persona, and also b) a clearly predatory man is absolutely horrid representation as far as playing into harmful stereotypes about trans people, thanks. Personally, my rather cynical interpretation is that they wanted one more shock value reveal at the end of the storyline and I guess couldn't come up with anything better. It's my least favorite thing in the whole IA storyline.

- anyway, that's not really important. I just needed to be mad about it for a minute. ignore me. moving on

- The important part is this: what you gain from the Star Cabal's base is an item called the Black Codex, an ancient piece of technology with the power to erase all records of a person's existence.

- Unless you are very stubborn about it the Agent’s reaction to this is basically “oh thank fuck I’m freeeeeeeeee” and you fly off into the hyperspace sunset with your crew, giving middle fingers to the Sith whose grip you’re escaping all the way. which, really, who can blame you.

And that’s the Imperial Agent storyline, folks. Roll credits. I’ll probably do the Bounty Hunter storyline next while it’s still fresh in my mind, but I could also do the Sith Warrior storyline probably if y’all’re more interested, vote now on your phones.

[meggtheegg]

evan hansen, sam wilson, & wanda maximov?

ohh man this one's gonna get long so i'll put it under a read more :D

evan:

favorite thing about them

his sincere desire to make sure everyone is okay. half of his problems stem from that one need, but it's ultimately what makes him set things right, too.

least favorite thing about them

there are many obvious character flaws that i could point out, but the most overlooked one is that he goes off his fucking meds without telling anyone that shit is dangerous and should not be treated as anything but that.

favorite line

"dear evan hansen, today is going to be a good day and here's why. because today, no matter what else, today at least you're you. no hiding. no lying. just... you. and that's. that's enough. maybe someday, everything that happened will all feel like a distant memory. maybe someday no one will remember about the connor project. or me. maybe someday, some other kid is going to be standing here, staring out at the trees, feeling so...alone, wondering if maybe the world might look different from all the way up there. better. and maybe he'll start climbing, one branch at a time, and he'll keep going. even when it seems like he can't find another foothold. even when it feels... hopeless. like everything is telling him to let go. this time...maybe this time, he won't let go. he'll just hold on...and keep going. he'll keep going until he sees the sun."

brOTP

evan and zoe should be friends, and even if that's super unrealistic, i will still hold onto that

OTP

evan x going back on his gosh darn meds

nOTP

i've never really seen an evan ship that bothers me, actually

random headcanon

i've said it a million times and i will say it again, this kid has autism, and no one will ever convince me otherwise (side-eyes steven levenson and ben platt)

unpopular opinion

evan is neither a horrible kid or a smol uwu anxious bean. he's a mentally ill teenager, who should be treated with the nuance and understanding that deserves.

also, the kiss at the end of ywbf kills all the emotion and power of the song so quickly, why has it not been taken out yet

song i associate with them

kill the ghost - motherfolk

favorite picture of them

(i am so sorry, i had to share this picture with the world it makes me laugh every time)

sam:

favorite thing about them

what is there not to love about sam wilson, honestly? if i have to pick something, it's probably his adaptability. captain america trolling him on his morning run? okay, let's talk to him about his trauma. he and black widow show up at his door saying everyone's trying to kill them? let them in and make them breakfast, if they eat that kind of thing. being hunted by some masked assassin? time to bring a knife to a gunfight and win, i guess. the masked assassin is cap's best friend? well, time to drop everything and search the world for him and become an avenger. superheroes have to register with the government, now? well, guess it's time to become a fugitive and go on the run for a few years. cap is an old man, half the world has gone on without him for five years, and now he's supposed to be captain america? well, he'll hesitate to take up the mantle, but good for steve. the masked assassin that tried to kill him is part of his found family now? sure, whatever. invite him to the cookout. i think that literally nothing could surprise this man, by now, and he just keeps doing what he feels is right without even stopping to question it.

least favorite thing about them

honestly, i don't even know. some of the stuff he says to bucky feels uncharacteristically unsympathetic, in civil war and the beginning of tfatws, but also like,,,usually he's not wrong, he's just kind of blunt about it??? idk man i love sam wilson.

oh, and i guess the cowl on his cap suit looks kinda dumb and uncomfortable

favorite line

"the only power i have is that i believe we can do better."

that's sam summed up in one line, right there. he's a normal guy surrounded by superheroes and yet he holds his own and stands out because he's so sincere and dedicated and good that it doesn't even matter

brOTP

sam and steve. we should've gotten more of them hanging out, honestly. they were great together.

OTP

sambucky, baybee! for all the reasons i listed in my answer for bucky :)

nOTP

another one i can't think of anything for. i guess sam/tony, if anyone ships that???

random headcanon

sam was actually pretty quiet, as a kid. he kind of let sarah do the talking for him. it wasn't until they got older that he started becoming more talkative and developing his sense of humor

unpopular opinion

sam did make mistakes in tfatws. bucky wasn't the only one to screw up. that was what made their reconciliation so nice. yeah, bucky was being way more of an asshole about the shield than sam was about anything, but that doesn't mean he was perfect 100% of the time, and that's good. that's what makes him human and relatable.

song i associate with them

come on, there's no way i can't say trouble man, here.

favorite picture of them

wanda

favorite thing about them

her gentle kindness. especially in civil war, there's something so soft and genuine about her that's just immediately endearing.

least favorite thing about them

the way that closing scene in wandavision implied she still may become a villain, despite having that option and rejecting it at the cost of her family, earlier that same episode. it just felt...wrong.

favorite line

"i can't control their fear. only my own."

i probably quote this line way too often. it's just....chef's kiss

(honorable mention goes to: "I don't even know who you are." "You will.")

brOTP

i so wish agatha hadn't become a one-dimensional villain in the last episode, because their friendship, however fake, was really sweet.

but also her friendship with the rest of team cap, especially steve, was also really lovely and i wish we could've gotten more of that

OTP

🎶WANDAVISION, WA-WANDAVISION, WANDAVISION WA-WANDAVISION...WANDAVISION!!"🎶

nOTP

wanda/pietro....just...ew....

random headcanon

despite her love for the genre, the two sitcoms she could never watch were alf and gilligan's island. the themes of being trapped somewhere without your family, no matter how funny the circumstances, just hit too close to home.

unpopular opinion

they shouldn't have aged wanda up to match lizzie's actual age. i know it was never officially stated anywhere until wandavision, but in aou and civil war, she was heavily implied to be a teenager, and honestly, that would've made everything about her character both hit harder and make way more sense. she could have been in her late teens-early 20s by the time wandavision rolled around, but having her in her late 20s-early 30s just doesn't fit all the comments about her being a kid/going to high school/etc. making her younger would mean that her decision to join hydra was the misinformed decision of a traumatized teenager, rather than a grown woman, and could have tied into tfatws and karli, which could then expand into an actual examination of why young people are willing to go to such extremes to make change and that could have been really interesting.

song i associate with them

razzmatazz - i don't know how but they found me

favorite picture of them

[faelapis]

thoughts on steven and jasper, and how they can help each other.

one thing that’s great about the first ep is how steven’s new powers, and his anger, isn’t framed as just a bad thing? 

it makes perfect sense that he’s terrified of those powers in the context of “volleyball”, but initially... he’s thrilled that jasper was able to help him bring out something he was implicitly suppressing. jasper’s even kind of proud of him. it feels like honesty.

that’s almost certainly going to tie into how they help each other - steven is usually trying not to hurt anyone’s feelings, being as perfectly nice around people he wants to help as possible... but with jasper? they both sense the bs of it. jasper thinks it’s manipulation, steven ends up frustrated enough to both call her out on creating her own misery, and to fight her.

i’m not saying steven’s reaction is entirely healthy & correct - and jasper’s not the only person in this conversation with self-destructive tendencies - but i like it... because it’s NOT one of those “tough love” scenes, where a traumatized and toxic person is just. told to pull themselves up by their moral bootstraps. where someone just gives up on them, so they have to realize they were wrong without any help. without any real compassion, which means there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for them to strive towards.

sure, that may help some. i understand why it’s a popular trope, it’s a reaction to people who think they can’t be toxic if they have trauma / mental illness... but is it worth the message that you don’t deserve a support system, or any real help in getting better, until you’re already a Good Person(tm)? aka when you don’t need the help anymore? 

steven, thankfully, is not like that. he’s much kinder and more nuanced.

firstly, he’s specific. he’s not blaming her for everything that happened to her, just her own corruption. which is basically fair. that was self-destructive. since he healed her, he wishes she would try harder to heal herself. but steven’s also fully aware there are bigger, systemic causes for jasper’s current issues. he deliberately mentions to amethyst how a lot of this, really, is because of the diamonds & his mom. which is true. 

secondly, he’s not trying to punish her. he doesn’t expect some kind of magical character development because she heard a "harsh truth”. he’s using it as a lead in to say that he wants to help, not expecting her to just... magically get better on her own. during their fight, he’s affirming what has always, and will always, be true - “i’m never going to give up on trying to help you”. 

and he feels genuinely bad when he thinks he might’ve hurt her! he had plenty of sympathy for her. even at his most frustrated, he still snapped very quickly back to "oh no, are you okay??". so at no point did he feel too harsh.

thirdly, it’s not enough. his speech just makes jasper call him out in turn. she can be plenty frustrated and spiteful to him. it’s mutual frustration, and it’s understandable why - steven trying to pull her along to school & mentioning how he healed her corruption... feels like what she was always afraid of. that she’d end up in rose’s debt. that’s part of why she rejected his healing in “earthlings”. she didn’t want to be forced to change. that would be manipulation, and she never asked to be healed... and steven knows that. he wants to help anyway.

there are other “mutual” aspects as well. let’s go over why steven thinks he has something to learn from her - it seems jasper is able to pull some of steven’s anger out and (even accidentally) help him vent. that’s a kind of frustration he’s usually not comfortable showing people - but jasper wants him to use those feelings. she’d rather have an honest fight than anything she reads as pity. 

jasper has... a complicated relationship to her own victimhood. even though she’s comfortable calling steven and rose out, she does not want to be “weak”. she doesn’t want to be the victim, she wants to feel useful and worthy. when she’s been victimized, she tends to feel like she deserves it, and has to “fix” things that are far bigger than herself.

and you know who else that is true for? steven.

so what jasper reads as an insecurity in steven is something that’s honestly true of both of them - they want to help others / do their duty, but they need help too, even if they won’t admit it. even if they reject it when it’s offered. 

“you're the one that needs help. you think everyone (else) needs help, but it’s only you. no one is as pitiful as you”.

“i’m not pitiful!”

not only is jasper actually correct about steven needing help, but... this could have been said by either one, to the other. the response, too, could’ve been reversed, as it reflects their common fears of being weak, or useless.

jasper summed up the issues they both face going forward - repressing these feelings, lacking purpose, refusing to accept help. that’s what they’re likely to work on together. jasper suppresses her victimhood just as well as steven does, so it’s fitting that she senses it in him. even if it wasn’t intended as helpful, exactly, she’s still foreshadowing things to come.

and that, turns out, is exactly what steven needed to release his anger, to really vent - because it’s reflective of everything he doesn’t want to face. 

[colorisbyshe]

wrt queercoding&actual gay rep: I get what you mean, but honestly, that’s doing a huge disservice to the indie LGBT content creators out there. Some people don’t look for LGBT content made by and for LGBT people because it is easier to wait for Disney’s crumbs. I’m not coming for you btw. I have also put on the clown shoes. But my life as a fan has become a lot easier now that I go out of my way to find LGBT media. The fandoms are smaller, which means less people to talk with, but it’s alright.

I mean, yeah, that’s why I said you should endeavor to seek out actual (and not baited/coded) content from LGBT people... but I do think we should all acknowledge

a. finding that content isn’t always easy

b. that content isn’t always good in terms of quality (especially because it’s become a trend to publish books that read like fanfic AND with the rise of self publishing, though those can be good things, as well)

and c. that content... isn’t always good in terms of morality, either

Nor is it guaranteed to handle any other identities besides LGBT well (if it’s even handling LGBT content well in the first place, because, yes, I have seen LGBT creators fuck that up, too)

It’s sort of like the fanfiction vs books debate where there’s a massive space of overlap where the best fanfiction can be better than the worst published literature. So saying one is definitely better than the other (when indeed they may be consumed for very different purposes) misses the mark. Obviously, one should try to read more (GOOD) published literature than shit on the internet, but acting like it’s inherently better to ONLY consume published lit removes flattens a nuanced topic.

Likewise, sometimes gaybait shit is just like junk food. It fills you up, even if it isn’t healthy to ONLY have that. It’s nutrient-low, calorie-dense snacks. Which can have a place in a healthy diet.

Especially when some “By and For LGBT” work ends up nutrient-low in its own way.

I don’t htink attaching morality to these things (on their own, without getting into things like fan entitlement/engagement and things like that) is like... productive?

If someone really wants to watch an anime about gay skateboarders, sometimes, settling for the gaybait is better than waiting for someone to maybe recommend them a YA book where one character is gay and another one skateboards in a b plot narrative that is forgotten halfway through.

Yes, supporting LGBT creators who are competently creating work is essential but... do both?

My point about fan entitlement was about people harassing and bemoaning “gaybait” that was AT MOST accidental subtext and then refusing to seek out content that actually has gay content. About adding intentionality to accidental homoerotic tension and getting angry about it and then doing nothing about it.

And about criticizing creators who gaybait and then throw in mean spirited no homos so they can both capture an LGBT audience and placate a cishet one.

Not about saynig the only ethical consumption of LGBT content comes from LGBT creators, especially since that ignores the existence and VALUE of gay coding and censorship within the industries (which in turn does still make it harder to self promote as indie artists) and closeted creators.

This conversation needs nuance and I know... I know we already know that nuance.

Liek we all reblog gifs of movies made by cishet men about LGBT people (The Handmiaden, BRokeback Mountain, Moonlight). We all consume a lot of content not even knowing who the creators are (until they get exposed or get annoying on twitter).

So... idk man. Yeah, ideally, we are consuming By LGBT for LGBT content but sometimes... the content you want from LGBT creators just doesn’t exist. And sometimes it’s just accidental subtext in a random ass show that never even knew gay peopel exist until you found them.

Until y’all can find me By LGBT For LGBT content about childhood best friends who are separated by war and then separated again by one being frozen in ice and hte other being forced to become a murderer via brainwashing and then the frozen one spends years chasing the murderer because he still believes in him... I’m gonna say......

Let’s just admit all of this content can have value and make you feel good, its just the value might come from different things... and that this isn’t zero sum game.

You can consume LGBT content by/for LGBT people and consume bait AND consume accidental subtext AND criticize the creators in all three of these spheres for different or even the same reasons

This is overly long can you tell I’m avoiding packing

[snarkytiara]

A loooong post, and I know long essays can be annoying, so putting behind a cut, but I have some Thoughts when I see a post like this by @willandkate

- First: I’m not sure who you are trying to convince with your post? Also, you start with William’s 2016 statement, but then the rest of your post tries to make a case for why statements are not the BRF thing and that other gestures were made. The statement from William shows there is precedent for statements supporting Harry and Meghan, so your argument isn’t very strong.

- Small gestures were not going to cut it! The response to Meghan is on a whole other level, and that should have necessitated other measures IMO. If you are having to sum up all the small moments for fellow royal watchers, who pay attention to this stuff, how is anybody else even going to notice?

- Stop normalizing the press abuse of royal women. If your response to the abuse Meghan gets, is to sum up what other royal women dealt with in the past, you’ve lost the argument. The amount of abuse any of these women got is not ok, and you going straight to mentioning that abuse is a means to deflect from talking in depth about all the facets of what Meghan has been dealing with. A big issue in the royal fandom is still the amount of people unwilling to talk about and understand what only Meghan deals with within the BRF (racism and xenophobia). It makes some people uncomfortable to talk about it and it’s fucking sad. The BRF wasn’t ready for growth, but neither were some people in the royal fandom. It’s a big problem to continue to see this conflating of Meghan’s treatment with the treatment of other royal women in the BRF.

- The abuse Meghan gets is contributing to a national (and international lbr) debate about racism in the UK. POC in commonwealth countries are looking at this and it reflects badly on the BRF. This is a huge added element to the treatment of Meghan, that is not present in abuse that other royal women got in the past. That Kate got called ‘Waity Katy’ by the press, dit not lead to the possibility of negative sentiment in CW countries towards the monarchy. This was said last month:

“This week a senior Commonwealth figure told me that the tabloid treatment of Meghan – so clearly racist to observers in other parts of the world, while large parts of the British public remain in denial – is having a knock-on effect in making it harder for him to promote Britain abroad.” - Afua Hirsch, The Guardian

- You summing up all these perceived gestures, does not say anything about how Meghan (and Harry) experienced that ‘support’. Are you deciding for Harry and Meghan that it was enough? Did you really expect them to say otherwise during the engagement interview? And those small moments William and Kate spoke about them, what else were they going to say? On the surface, a show of support, but tells us absolutely nothing about how things are behind closed doors. Your post decidedly ignores that.

- After all this supposed support, Harry and Meghan still left. Fact. Is that all on them? The warm embrace of the Cambridges must have felt a bit too warm for them I guess. They couldn’t handle all the love. Your post lacks analysis into the possible reasons for Harry and Meghan and the shared blame of different parties in things coming to a head in this way.

- I also have the following question: if you are going to call out the Sussexes for overshadowing other royals, you have to be fair. What did you think of Kate launching her 5 question survey on the same day as Charles’ big speech in Davos? Is that not overshadowing him? Kate had been working on this for two years, but she just has to launch on the same day as a big Charles speech, that is important to him? Genuinely curious how you view that. And if a promo for Harry and Meghan’s documentary overshadows a Cambridge tour, seems to me that is a Cambridge problem. Harry and Meghan have no say over when ITV airs a promo. 

- Harry and Meghan didn’t deserve a statement of support, because they made the announcement that they were leaving, without consent? Weird take, as it’s odd to say in retrospect that they didn’t deserve a statement earlier in 2019, when things were at their worst, because at the start of 2020 they made an announcement. That’s after the fact. The BRF knew about Harry and Meghan entertaining the possibility of stepping back. Fact. There was a reason they felt the need to go public with it now, as it has been mentioned they were halted and sent away by courtiers when they were trying to discuss things with the queen and Charles. Your post doesn’t explore the reason for why Harry and Meghan may have done what they did and incorrectly places all of the blame on them. 

- I don’t know if you watched Harry and Meghan’s documentary? A couple obviously struggling, and Meghan’s hard time as a royal is not going to be made better simply by a pat on the back from Kate after Serena lost at Wimbledon. It’s wild that you, and others, think that is doing enough to show support.

- None of what you’ve said takes into account the KP press approach over the past couple of years. For example, any small gesture of support from Kate to Meghan gets severely undermined when KP is completely fine with a press narrative meant to embiggen Kate, at Meghan’s expense. It’s naive to believe that KP has had no part in that and I’ve yet to see a Kate/Cambridge fan accept that reality and own that it’s been happening. The reality has always been that the BRF are fine throwing each other under the bus. PR and actually thinking about how that makes them look has never been the strong suit of this family.

- You know what else undermines any small gesture of support for Meghan? The seemingly huge gestures of support from the queen to Andrew! If Liz keeps taking Andrew out and about, I sure as fuck am not still giving her kudos for taking Meg on an engagement back in June of 2018! And sure, it would’ve been smart optics for Harry and Meghan to visit Balmoral, and I would have advised them of that if I worked for them, but also; should they have visited before or after the queen was seen going to church with a smiling Andrew the day after Epstein died? Effectively showing she doesn’t give a fuck about her own image either. You could argue that isn’t a great advertisement for wanting to visit the queen.. Plus Harry and Meghan live(d) in Windsor, where they queen spends most of her time anyway.

- Speaking of the Queen, it is so often ignored how much influence she does have over the press. I’m sure over the years there has been many a time where she has intervened on behalf of the likes of Andrew. Why is it that Meghan has to have the stiff upper lip? Because this is what all royal women just have to face?

- I find it odd that you are only blaming Harry and Meghan for possibly feeling isolated. A struggling couple, dealing with a lot, should receive most of that blame? That darn Harry and Meghan are just being so difficult because they didn’t feel that William and Kate standing near them that time in Westminster Abbey was enough!1! They are so ungrateful. 

- Harry and Meghan leaving looks bad for the BRF, however you slice it. It reflects badly on them. Even if you don’t believe that, I’m sure you still feel that all this drama should have been prevented, for the sake of your faves? If this has been a topic of conversation with Harry and Meghan since last year, then why not also make it a topic of conversation how the rest of the BRF could and should have done more to prevent them choosing to leave? 

All in all, your post on this is very superficial and lacks nuance, but that tracks with what I’ve seen from most Cambridge fans. I know there is no point convincing you, and others, just like there is no point in your post trying to convince Sussex fans. But this had to be said and honestly I’ve been sitting on this since after the documentary aired.

[ctl-yuejie]

opinion on the term bl?

uhhhhhh…very complicated. I might have written a whole rant post before on the topic on this blog on an empty stomach so it was most likely not very nuanced (I think it was about people saying that The Untamed didn’t count as BL).

buckle in, this got suuuper long

tbh i first came into contact with the term in the early 2000s and since the internet didn’t play any role at my age then, the only context I had were magazines (here in Europe) and manga publications.

I knew that BL was a whole genre in Manga and that it featured gay romance and that fans / content creators would refer to themselves at fujoshi. Now, at that time I was only figuring out that I was bi, didn’t know any Japanese and didn’t have any friends with cultural ties to Japan.

So based on the magazines I read, I started to believe that “Fujoshi” literally meant “Rotten Girl” because of the taboo of same-sex relationships and the tantalizing sense of the forbidden that comes with it.

While I read some BL manga (couldn’t tell you the titles anymore), I never referred to myself as a Fujoshi or being into BL because both terms seemed to apply only to Japanese people and the sense of “the forbidden” in regards to same-sex relationships didn’t fit to my reality (having been to a same-sex marriage with my family at age 8 etc) and also felt demeaning to me.

After learning Japanese and living in Japan I didn’t really question my aversion to the terms, since I did have access to the internet now but didn’t think of fact-checking everything I had “learned” pre-internet (I think it is important to note here that the magazines weren’t the highest in quality in terms of journalistic prowess nor scientific in any way. They were just short entertaining articles, aimed at teenagers like me, trying to profit from the still ongoing wave of japanese pop culture in the west) and my only experience with both bl content and real life fujoshi wasn’t that positive:

My feelings on BL and fujoshi culture were heavily influenced by 

- the wave of very sad and traumatizing gay movies in Japan that most of the time ended in double suicides of the main characters

- rape storylines getting romanticized in manga

- pretty heavily stereotyped gay characters in main stream tv series that were only there for comedic relief

- the Fujoshi I knew back then being weirded out by the thought of same-sex relationships between women and basing their thought on gay men solely on the content they consumed 

- not finding the hailed “subversion of traditional gender roles” or discussion thereof in the BL my friends consumed. 

- my gay friends in japan having very frustrating encounters with fujoshi who started to treat them like an open air circus and not making them feel supported in real life 

- people around me making judgments based on attractiveness on whether gay people should get supported, while the hint of a celebrity being gay was weaponized  against them

now, this pretty much sums up, why I tended to have negative thoughts on the subject and felt more sympathetic to the push from some people in the queer community in japan to please retire terms like “uke” and “seme” when talking about real people.

since then, i didn’t intervene when other female friends in japan would use the term for themselves, because it still was a term coined in japan and those people were actually supportive of queer people so i didn’t see how me being preachy about it just because of my experience and not calling myself a fujoshi or fan of bl would be of any help and/or called for.

jump to 2018/2019 and i started to read more papers about it on a whim because i started to watch Crossing The Line and for the first time in a long while I was in a fandom again where people called the genre “BL” and themselves fujoshi/fudanshi.

I came to know that what I assumed the origin story of the term “Fujoshi” to be had been misreported (shocker) by the magazines back in my youth and that apparently the term was also widely used in Thailand, Taiwan and Mainland China. especially the knowledge that apparently TERFs were behind a pushback of the term made me reevaluate my opinion.

Since I have really no insight into Chinese or Thai culture it is not on me to judge whether it is appropriate for people there to use BL as a genre signifier etc and from all I have read, in some cases it is really about finding a way of creating and distributing queer content in a place that is not lgbtqi+ friendly or use it as means of finding expressions for one’s own sexuality etc.

Obv. there are genre conventions I will get annoyed about and criticize (all female characters are evil etc) but those things are also not BL exclusive so there’s not much sense in condemning a whole genre that at least tries to push some conventions.

With the Internet and a global push for more lgbtqi+ rights there is now definitely a strong symbiotic relationship between queer content and real life social changes. so being harder on queer content (in general) because it isn’t perfect doesn’t make anything better for queer people. 

nowadays there has been some wonderful content in japan with a push for real life legal changes as well, taiwan has the marriage for all and thailand is also pushing for a civil union for everyone.

especially in the case of mainland china with strict censorship rules i will congratulate anyone who tries to sneak some ambiguity in. it saddens me that the rules are as strict and that there are even more hardships for lgbtqi+ people in real life but i would never say that not creating any content that could be interpreted as queer should be favoured over trying to do something, regardless of how lacking the result might seem. 

The reason why I ranted about BL as a genre term recently was mostly directed at western fans with no cultural ties to any of the aforementioned cultures, but i definitely didn’t stress that enough in my previous post.

Since I still don’t call myself a fujoshi or being into the BL genre I am suspicious of western fans calling themselves as such. because i project my own experience and knowledge on them and there are people out there who definitely emphasize the cheeky “rotten” side of themselves while not knowing (like past me) where the term comes from and that it does’t have to do with any “forbidden fruit”. i assume a certain laziness when straight people will try and convince me that they are allies to me, because they consume BL series, but will still call me “the man” in the relationship etc.

There can definitely be a need for a similar outlet that allows people to write about gender roles, sexualities etc in a similar way but very often the argument of “it is female empowerment to be into BL” is just warping the origin story of the term into an excuse for homophobic statements. I see the term get applied to western shows as well (when there isn’t a need for using a Japanese term, especially not when there’s a missing understanding of its origin) and actual mlm shows in asia being dismissed just because it doesn’t fit the BL genre conventions (point and example: people in the west discounting The Untamed as mlm content because they weren’t explicit about it; What Did You Eat Yesterday getting dismissed because of similar reasons and the diversion from presumed age and beauty standards of BL as a genre). That way western fans made BL feel quite restrictive and not interchangeable with mlm anymore, which just confounds me.

in the end it also comes down to scope: someone writing fanfiction, producing small indie series cannot really be harmful even when they content might seem so. so regardless of what the genre entails it is important to put everything in perspective and whether this is the hill someone wants to die on, instead of leaving space for artistic expression, cultural differences and celebrating the steps into a more loving world for all.

tl;dr: I feel many emotions; there’s always space to learn more and I am grateful to everyone who made posts about the racism in criticizing the terms “Fujoshi” / “BL”; I don’t use the term myself, but only feel wary when westerners use it; personally I prefer to use mlm or wlw as content describers but I am also not 100% satisfied with that as well

ask me my opinion on ______

[poppytheorist]

Scary Mask

I.

I don’t know what to say when people come apart

The road is long, the road is dark

And these are just the words to somebody else’s song

 Before I get into it, I’d like to quickly note that this is not best post to start with. Same goes for the one on “Me Laughing.” My older posts are much friendlier reads and not nearly as dense.

Okay, let’s go.

At first I thought “Scary Mask” was straightforward, i.e. Poppy uses her persona (“I wear my scary mask”) as a defense when she finds herself in uncomfortable situations (“when I’m afraid I don’t belong”). “Well that was anticlimactic.” Indeed. But, of course, this is Poppy we are talking about, and nothing with Poppy is quite so simple.

The problem with basic interpretations that sum up a song with single sentence is that such readings miss all the nuances of the work, i.e., they leave out all the fun little twists in the lyrics, the double-meanings in the lines, etc. Basically, simplistic interpretations of lyrics ignore all the poetry, which is part of what allows music to transcend language. Poetic lyrics also provide us with new pieces of language so that we can better understand the increasingly complex world around us. Nestled in the gaps between our definitions lies the inexpressible that only poetry can render sensible.

Well-written (read: poetic) lyrics are part of what allows songs to completely baffle us; they allow songs to elude simple characterization and slip the shackles of obsessive categorization (e.g., genre). A truly great piece of music leaves us speechless; we cannot simply explain it to someone. Instead, the best we can do is say, “you know what? Just listen to this,” to which they are only able to reply, “wow… you’re right.”

This is why I love metaphors and dualities. Yes, I realize the previous sentence just caused every person who hated English in school to audibly cringe. Look, I’ve been there, I get it. I used to think English was a cruel joke played at everyone’s expense and that it was stupid because ‘there is no right answer.’ Then one day, all of that changed. Almost as though a switch was suddenly flicked ‘on’ in my brain. It wasn’t until I understood English that I finally appreciated it. I’ve never wanted to go back, so hear me out.

Metaphors are essentially a way of controlling the associations formed by your brain when you read or hear a word. They can make you associate simple pieces of language with something extraordinary, and make you see things in a way you would never have previously considered.

If you’d like to get fancy, you can start introducing dualities; that is, setting two concepts on opposing ends of a spectrum. When you do so, you allow the reader to consider new and (seemingly) impossible gradations, all born from the struggle between two relatively ordinary ideas.

Take, for example, Poppy’s ‘poetry-ecstasy’ duality that she introduced in “X.” This was the first thing that made me take a more serious look at her work, i.e., “I think something else is going on here…” We know poetry and ecstasy are meant to be diametrically opposed in “X” because the colors in the music video change in sync with Poppy’s delivery.

If YouTube subtitles weren’t broken, they would read: “poetry, poetry, poetry”

Likewise: “ecstasy, ecstasy, ecstasy”

It’s not obvious that poetry is the opposite of ecstasy unless you’re in Wonderland in which case, you messed up somewhere. Moving on, when you set two concepts against each other like that, you introduce a new interplay between the two ideas. Now the audience is forced to see things from a new perspective, one they would not have otherwise considered. Or, they just ignore it, as is usually the case, but I digress.

With all this in mind, further study into “Scary Mask” reveals that some parts of the more basic reading don’t quite add up. Take, for example, lines like, “M-A-S-K, am I okay?” or “You ain’t gonna see me tonight”; these lines refuse to fit neatly into the obvious interpretation e.g., why spell out ‘mask’? Why are [they] not going to see “you” “tonight?” Most people would choose to ignore these outliers or simply shrug and go about their day. If this post’s existence didn’t clue you in, we won’t be doing much ‘shrugging’ or ‘ignoring.’

You’ve probably noticed this already, but I try to forge readings of Poppy’s work that fit as many different pieces as possible into them. To craft interpretations that capture the interplay between all the elements in a song. Often, this requires approaching the song from multiple angles, some even being right. If this post is good, each interpretation should form its own colored shard of glass, leaving the reader with a beautiful explanative mosaic. If this post is bad, grab a broom and wear shoes for a week.

Hilariously, doing justice to the more abstract bits of art usually means I have to use figurative language to explain other figurative language. “Sounds meta.” Indeed. Some puzzles can only be done justice with other puzzles, which is also why my writing frequently dips into obscurity. Close reading yields wonders, but means interpreting ‘carefully’ and ‘openly.’ “Sounds like a lot of work.” It is, but anybody can come up with a vague idea of what a song is ‘about,’ e.g., “this one’s about love!” How insightful, you should post that on Genius, that’s just what they’re looking for. I mean, really, at that point what are you even getting out of the song? A few minutes of pleasure before you move onto the next one? Is that it? Are you going to just spend your entire life constantly devouring one helping after another, waiting hungrily for your favorite artists to dish up your next meal?

I may be going to hell, but at least I won’t be stuck doing that.

II.

Rise and shine—

get out of bed!

Take my hand, 

there’s darkness ahead.

 “Scary Mask” is one of Poppy’s best songs. No, I’m not interested in arguing about this. It is also one of Poppy’s most important songs. This, however, I am interested in arguing about.

For the sake of the following discussion, I will be ignoring most of Poppy’s singles. “Metal” and “Immature Couture” and [other singles] are good but they complicate things and I don’t have time to deal with them, despite having the time to tell you how little time I have. Fancy people would probably call such exclusions “exceptionally non-rigorous,” but I’m over it.

I tried to make this section not-boring, dunno if I was successful; my writing takes on the flavor of whoever I read last, hence why the “Me Laughing” post reads like schizophrenia. Lately, I’ve been feeling especially masochistic, so I’ve been reading [redacted]. Expect that to shine through.

Let’s zoom out for a bit: “Scary Mask” is the flagship song of Poppy’s Choke EP, though I am sympathetic to arguments for “Meat.” “Scary Mask” ties the whole EP together and makes it possible. It’s critical to Choke’s ‘flow.’ This isn’t a given, I’ll explain/pretend to explain.

The structure of Choke almost perfectly mimics that of a five-act play. Yeah, like that Shakespeare guy. The EP contains exposition, rising action, a climax, falling action, and a conclusion. The methodically squeezing “Choke” sets the mood and introduces a problem statement to color the rest of the EP. With its pendulum-like bassline and hypnotizing array of voices, “Voicemail” depicts a forsaken mind becoming further and further dissociated from reality. A complete breakdown occurs in “Scary Mask,” the explosive climax of the EP and, at least so far, Poppy's work. Following “Scary Mask” comes the bleak and gruesome “Meat,” which is clearly akin to the falling action. And finally, we are given “The Holy Mountain,” the EP’s pessimistic and wistful send-off.

As for the context in which “Scary Mask” was created, Choke comes after two pop-y records, Bubblebath and poppy.computer, and a half-pop, half-??? disc, Am I A Girl. After AIAG, Poppy had a choice: back off and return to pop or double-down and bring on the metal. Thankfully, she chose the latter and made Choke. Let’s all take a minute to praise AIAG for even allowing Poppy such options, for flowing together so smoothly, etc. Okay, séance over, let’s return: “Scary Mask” carried Choke, without it, the EP would’ve been severely lacking a massive, stand-out song to serve as the EP’s creative apex.

“Scary Mask” is, in a sense, the ‘no turning back’ point for Poppy. Producing “Scary Mask” was like Poppy locking her old style away and throwing out the key; “X” and “Play Destroy” were #wild, but “Scary Mask” was the third strike. Put confusingly, “Scary Mask” was Poppy’s ‘home run’ while also being the ‘final nail in the coffin’ and other idioms. The track is so far removed from the days of Bubblebath and P.C that it actually created a distance, a gap, between nu-Poppy and Pop-y. “X” has pop elements and Poppy cutely ‘ooo-ing’; it was walk back-able. “Scary Mask” has Jason Butler demonically screaming and saying the ‘fuck’ word; fine print says “no refunds.” Or, if you’d prefer analogies that are unlikely to age well: think of a giant iceberg breaking off from the main Arctic glacier and slipping into the cold, dark sea. Once it’s off, it’s not freezing back on. In other words, once Poppy dropped “Scary Mask,” ‘princess with a pistol’ became ‘demonic metal queen.’

I’ll also argue that “Scary Mask” is the least compromising song in Poppy’s current discography. It’s her truest expression of self pre-I Disagree. All artists have to make their music listenable-enough to get bread, just like I need to make my writing readable-enough to get read. Unfortunately, compromise is inevitable, but artists can still create good music. It’s just hard and getting harder. Plus, nobody agrees what ‘good music’ even means because we have no rigorous definition for art so—

When an artist decides to really ‘go for it,’ to make no compromises, and does it well, a beautiful thing happens. That’s what “Scary Mask” is for Poppy; she decided to pull no punches, and the result was, well, “Scary Mask.”

“X” and “Play Destroy” were both successful, but they didn’t guarantee Poppy’s nu-success. “Play Destroy” had Grimes, and “X” could have been an anomaly. If Poppy went back to pop, fans could have passed off her dip into metal as ‘weird’ but ‘kinda cool’ and that would be that. However, Poppy didn’t let up—“Scary Mask” proved she could consistently make quality metal tracks, and now we’re here and Poppy is about to destroy the world or something. Nice.

In summary: “Scary Mask” functions to transition Poppy’s sound, it does a damn good job of it, and I’m definitely looking forward to her new album.

III.

You try to take the best of me

Go away

You try to take the best of me

Go away

 Alright, zoom back in. Yes, “Scary Mask” made it possible for Poppy to throw in crazy distorted guitars and for everyone to love it, but it does more than that. “Scary Mask” also transitions Poppy her(?)self, which sounds strange but it will make sense later, probably.

Now time for the fun part.

Sometimes I like to begin my analysis with a song's verses before circling back to the chorus, as was the case with "The Holy Mountain," however, "Scary Mask" is so crazy that it doesn't even matter where I start. It's what I lovingly refer to as “straight-up bonkers,” like some twisted monstrosity tearing its face off as it stumbles around in the dark. Reminds me of the psychos from Borderlands, an analogy that already has not aged well. Basically, “Scary Mask” is all over the place, so I might as well start from the ‘beginning.’ I'm going to have to pick up the pieces and stitch them into some monster that would do Mary Shelley proud anyway.

Let's dive in.

Poppy opens the song with: “I wear my scary mask when I'm afraid I don't belong.” Okay, seems pretty straightforward so far. There isn’t much to work with here, but maybe we can add some color to this line. BUILD series conducted a relatively listenable interview with Poppy earlier this year. One excerpt to note:

Interview: “Well, why wear a mask?”

Poppy: “Sometimes you just have two faces.”

Interview: “And that’s okay?”

Poppy: “Only sometimes.”

This is why I was debating just skipping “Scary Mask”—the opening line was a little cliché, and it seemed like Poppy had taken Batman Forever literally, neither of which are particularly good signs. However, I want to stress that lacking an interesting message wouldn’t necessarily make “Scary Mask” a ‘bad’ song. This idea may seem very strange, especially in modern society where it appears everyone agrees that deep themes=good art. We’ve been raised with the notion that the best art is art that tells a message, and it’s difficult for us to consider otherwise. However, not only does the conception of ‘depth’ quickly fall apart (as I noted in the “Me Laughing” post), but it’s entirely possible that thematic elements have absolutely zero bearing on the aesthetic quality of a work. In other words, ‘themes’ may not be what make art ‘good.’

Yeah, take a minute and think about that.

Anywho, after deciding I could afford to pay attention, I found many interesting things. Note Poppy’s word-choice. She uses the word “scary,” an almost child-like characterization of something fearful. Indeed, in the music video, Poppy’s hair is hidden or pulled back, giving her a youthful appearance. Look, pictures:

Moreover, peppered throughout the song are Poppy’s pouty squeals and she sings with call an almost ‘whimper-y’ tone, the end of her words marked by a spike in pitch. Obviously, we’d like to ask: why is she presenting herself to us this way?

We find answers in the second half of the line: “when I’m afraid I don’t belong.” Okay, so when she finds herself in situations where she is uncomfortable, where she is struck by the feeling of being small, almost child-like, she resorts to the mask as a defense mechanism. Now we’re getting somewhere, though I would like to ask: why is the mask “scary”?

Being two-faced does not necessarily mean the one face has to resemble Harvey Dent post-toasting, it could simply be a different side of your personality. Perhaps the next line will help:

You can’t read my brain until it’s off

Note Poppy says “brain” instead of any other word such as ‘mind’ or ‘thoughts.’ Using the word ‘brain’ signals a sense of invasiveness. Think: Sylar from Heroes cutting open peoples’ skulls and studying their brains for secrets. I’m sure many obsessive fans have tried digging up details on Poppy’s personal life and many interviewers have tried asking her inappropriate questions. It appears that Poppy wears a “scary mask” as a counter to such intrusions, as if she decided that the only appropriate response to these inappropriate behaviors was a face-to-face with the scary mask.

Holy shit, was this entire song written as a response to the AMP Radio interview? That would be hilarious.

Poppy then repeats that the mask is “not coming off.” Hey, wait a minute…

Okay, so after a fairly badass guitar interlude, Poppy begins feverishly chanting the lines: “I'm never gonna take it off, so don't touch me / Never gonna take it off, stop looking at me.” I’m sure some fans hate me because I’m always banging the drum that Poppy’s work is about obsession, and thus, appear to be attacking them, but come on, how clear would you like the message to be? Go watch “Repeat After Me” if you’re not convinced.

Anyway, in a sense, Poppy’s scary mask (read: freaky persona) operates as a shield from foreign bodies who seek to violate her personal space.

I’m going to leave Jason Butler’s lines for the end because, well, you’ll see.

IV.

In the music video for “Scary Mask,” after Poppy first puts the mask on and has a little breakdown, there are many instances where she is no longer wearing the mask, but is still acting like a possessed teen in desperate need of exorcizing. This is weird, here are some possibilities:

1) Poppy takes the mask off in the music video because she’s pretty and people want to see her lip-syncing.

2) The mask was always on.

We’re going with door #2.

Let’s look at some of the weirder lines, like Poppy chanting the incantation: “M-A-S-K, am I okay?” By spelling out ‘mask,’ Poppy signifies that the “am I okay?” question is directly referencing the mask she wears. In other words: is it okay for Poppy to wear a mask?

We already know Poppy came down pretty hard on one side of the fence when she answered “sometimes” in the BUILD series interview. My equally unambiguous answer is: “it depends.” There are many reasons why wearing a ‘mask’ is a terrible thing that slowly renders you psychologically ‘fucked,’ go read TLP or Lasch if you want more info on that (actually, you should just read them anyway). However, we’ve already established “Scary Mask” was an empowering song for Poppy because it served as a truer artistic outlet for her, so any masquerading should be approached with this in mind.

Alright, so when is it a good thing to wear a mask? How can it be a good thing to pretend to be someone you’re not?

Well, when you’re an artist, you typically create art to express something. Often, this ‘something’ is deeply personal to yourself. You put a lot of yourself into your work. This means criticism of your work can really hurt. After all, if someone calls your [song/painting/writing] ‘trash,’ it’s like calling you ‘trash.’ It feels like that criticism is aimed directly at that piece of yourself you put into your work. Yeah, that sucks. Sometimes it’s so difficult to bear that you avoid creating anything so you don’t have to be faced with such attacks. You forgo creating art because the injurious potential of criticism is too daunting. Without a creative outlet, your feelings remain bottled inside, slowly eating away at you from within. It’s a lose-lose game and everyone’s the player.

So, you ask: “what do I do?”

Well, that’s where the mask comes in.

The artist can use a persona to get around these problems. In other words, putting on a mask can actually allow you to finally be yourself, which seems paradoxical, but I’ll explain.

Take, for example, me. After reading enough of the silly words I write, you may start to form a picture of me in your head. To speculate and fantasize about what I actually look like or how I actually act. Without even knowing your thoughts, I can assure you that any such conceptions are completely inaccurate. I know that I’m not actually as [adjective] as you imagine me to be because I work with a protective persona. The persona allows me to write without worrying too much harsh criticism. Hence, with a persona, I can safely express myself through my work.

The same is true for Poppy. As I’ve noted in previous posts, Poppy has a lot to say about the world. She would like to express these messages artistically, but it’s not always easy to face criticism of her work (and Poppy gets a lot of hate). By adopting the ‘Poppy’ persona, Poppy is able to safely express herself. To finally say what she wants to say. To be who she really wants to be. And when she is faced with scathing criticism, she is able to continue her work undeterred because it feels like the criticism is directed toward Poppy (persona) instead of Poppy (person).

An alternate (and hilarious) reading of the lines “M-A-S-K, am I okay?” and “I’m alright, I’m alright, I’m alright” would be to imagine them as part of a demented question-and-answer period with Poppy. Many of her fans have expressed concerns over the effects of living your life pretending to be a [robot/alien/demonic angel], not to mention the section of Poppy’s fan-base who seem to constantly worry about Poppy being Titanic’s so-called ‘puppet’ and that he is abusive towards her. You can interpret Jason Butler screaming “I’m alright, I’m alright, I’m alright” as Poppy’s response to such concerns. Seems like an appropriate answer to me.

V.

You try to take the best of me

GO AWAY

YOU TRY TO TAKE THE BEST OF ME

GO AWAY

YOU TRY TO TAKE THE BEST OF ME

GO AWAY

 There are some remarkably odd lines in “Scary Mask” that need some serious groundwork to render sensible, so let’s switch gears for a second and complain about pop music. Yes, I know. It’s not exactly brave (let alone novel) to decry pop music as a vapid and soulless caricature of art, but I find it therapeutic. Plus, I’m clearly writing a narrative here. If these words make you indignant, first ask yourself ‘why?’ and then relax. I listen to pop music too, most of which is terrible. Also, I’m talking about the correlation, not the rule. If you fight me with exceptions, I’ll hit you back with trends.

Pop is the most apologetic music genre out there (though mumble rap and country are giving it a run for its money, literally); pop music’s main purpose is stated by its terminology: it exists to be popular. To be as widely palatable as possible so as to garner as many listeners as possible. The implications associated with a genre revolving entirely around popularity for the sake of commercial success are pretty disgusting. I’d even go so far as to say the existence of ‘pop’ as a musical genre is a strong indicator that culture is no longer treated as an essential component to human society, but is instead only another industry, and has been for a while. People love celebrating the façade or appearance of culture (partially so they can consider themselves ‘cultured’), but the truth is that culture now exists mainly as a commodity to be endlessly repackaged and sold back to people under the guise of ‘art.’ “I blame capitalism!” Sure, and you may not even be wrong, but that’s a discussion for another time. The point here is that to successfully create music with value, music that isn’t just a meaningless product, one needs to escape such a hyper-commoditized regime i.e., the corporatized pop-music industry.

Business-wise, Poppy did this by ditching Mad Decent and signing with Sumerian Records, an independent label which will hopefully make her very happy. Music-wise, she also had to transition. Recall: putting on the mask (read: persona) allowed Poppy to be herself and make the music she wanted to. So, to evolve her music, she had to also evolve the mask. After releasing two and a half pop records, people will generally expect, well, more pop. People don’t like when their favorite artists abruptly change, probably because they don’t wish to face the idea that said artists were never making music for them in the first place. Either way, for Poppy to tell tales of an impending apocalypse or drop an insane metal album like I Disagree, she had to ease fans into it. Musically, this is the second half of AIAG and the entirety of Choke, but it’s also a perfect encapsulation of “Scary Mask.” It’s possible that the bipolar nature of songs like “X,” “Concrete,” and “Scary Mask” is only due to Poppy trying to transition her sound without upsetting too many fans. Hence why these songs incorporate lighter sections to balance out the darkness. Perhaps “I Disagree” is as dark as Poppy’s going to get, but given recent news of her hanging out with Nadya Tolokno from Pussy Riot, I doubt it (“don’t know how long until they see the rest of me”).

This is also where Poppy’s YouTube videos come in. While producing new music, she can quickly put out a few videos and slowly ramp up the darkness, facilitating a comfortable change in artistic tone for the fans. Something, something, frogs and hot water.

Considering all of the above, I agree with something @thatpoppyuk said a while back in regards to people saying “Moriah is coming out!” when Poppy dyed her bangs:

Not only is it potentially insensitive to call Poppy ‘Moriah,’ it’s simply inaccurate. For better or worse, people don’t regress, they progress. Poppy is not doing something so #basic as ‘returning to her roots,’ she is becoming who she’s always wanted to be.

VI.

Now that we have completed the necessary groundwork, we are able finish off the rest of the song. Lyrically, “Scary Mask” is rather focused; we’ve actually covered all of Poppy’s lines, so I’d like to examine the role Jason Butler from Fever 333 plays in the song.

I’ve actually refrained from gushing about how good “Scary Mask” is until now, but I don’t think I can contain myself any longer. Fever 333 was an excellent feature that perfectly meshes with Poppy’s harmonics and the chomping guitar riffs. Not only that, but lyrically, Jason Butler brings an insane performance. He brings scary mask to life.

Fever 333’s role in the song is complicated and will take multiple approaches to flesh out. First, consider the scary mask (Jason Butler’s lines) as an entity speaking for Poppy, as though it were some demonic hype-man:

This would then explain the line, “well you heard the woman, so fucking look away.” It appears that Poppy needs someone telling others to “fucking look away,” betraying a sense of dependency. After all, if Poppy could handle such onlookers on her own, she wouldn’t need someone else telling them to ‘beat it.’ We may interpret this as a sign that Poppy has come to rely on the shielding-nature of the mask. She relies on her persona for protection, but reliance gives way to over-reliance. Naturally, substitution and dependency follow.

However, this isn’t wholly satisfying, nor is it very charitable. Let’s consider another, more empowering, approach, this time as Poppy speaking through the mask. In this case, a synthesis is underway between Poppy and her new persona (read: scary mask). During the violent transformation, she screams and struggles as the darkness of the mask washes through her, until the process is complete and both are one. Or, rather, Poppy is transcending her persona through her persona, a process of metamorphic self-realization.

Approaching the relationship between Poppy and the mask as a symbiotic one will perhaps explain one of the most bizarre lines in all of Poppy’s discography (minus every line in “Voicemail,” of course): “You ain’t gonna see me tonight!” I mean, what the hell. It’s difficult to explain how much this line confuses me, words simply elude me. This is one of those lines that normal people would shrug and come up with a half-hearted explanation such as: “well, Poppy is wearing a mask, and because she is wearing a mask, you aren’t going to see her. You know, because she’s wearing a mask.” Poorly-conceived explanations such as these negate the whole point of studying art. You can’t just jerk responsibility when ‘the going gets tough.’ The reward isn’t merely the end result, and people who believe this are the exact same people who Genius exploits. It is the work, the method, the climb, the struggle that is important because it is while grappling with the piece that one learns the most about oneself. With that being said, this line has haunted me for three weeks now, but I think I can do it some justice.

First, we examine the context in which the line appears in the song. The line first appears near the beginning of the song, wedged between a crushing guitar interlude and the Poppy’s staccato-ed “M-A-S-K, am I okay?” build-up. Then the line comes again at the end of Jason Butler’s insane post-chorus breakdown which is interlaced with Poppy’s disembodied screams. This second appearance follows a punchy chorus from Poppy and directly precedes a charged guitar solo and Poppy’s explosive final meltdown. From all this, we notice that “You ain’t gonna see me tonight!” is always delivered amidst a great deal of turmoil, always sprinkled into the middle of a violent episode.

Next, we look at the line itself. “Ain’t” and “gonna” are very colloquial, like the speaker hasn’t been taught to speak ‘properly’ or has lapsed into a state where they are unable to or simply do not care. I’m also picking up a touch of mentally-disturbed giddiness, as if some deranged killer is frothily barking this at you outside your window while his head jerks around. “Well, I’m definitely glad not to live on the ground-floor.” Likewise.

I must comment, however, that “Tonight” is an odd word choice. “Well, maybe they just needed a word that rhymed with ‘alright’?” Remember what I said about giving up when things get difficult? No, “tonight” relates a sense of shadowy immediacy, like a doom drawing near. Perhaps Poppy is about to descend upon the world, shrouding it in darkness with her black angel wings.

Hence, “You ain’t gonna see me tonight” relates the sense of foreboding violence that comes with Poppy’s new persona. This makes a lot of sense in the context of Poppy’s work because I Disagree is likely going to be her most aggressive album yet. See, for instance, “I Disagree.”

Basically: full dark, no stars; Poppy’s out for blood, time to take cover.

VII.

In summary: the ‘scary mask’ is a protective garment for Poppy as well as an empowering one. The adoption of an artistic persona allows her to cope with criticisms and continue her work. Recently, she has adjusted her work, and thus, her persona, to something truer to herself, and “Scary Mask” was an integral part of her transition.

Well, wasn’t that fun? I know I enjoyed myself.

Wait, what? You have a question? Ah, wait—I know what you’re thinking:

“If Poppy only wears her ‘scary mask’ when she’s ‘afraid she won’t belong,’ then why is she ‘never going to take it off’?”

Well, maybe she feels like she will never belong.

[pixelpoppers]

Eternal Sunshine of the Gaming Mind

I've seen a lot of variations of the question "If you could erase your memory of one game so you could play it again for the first time, what game would you pick?" And, like... I don't get it.

I know the question isn't meant literally. It's like the question of what books you'd take to a desert island; if you give a practical answer you are missing the point. The desert island framing is just an evocative way to sum up the harder-to-express actual question, which is more along the lines of "if for some reason you had to pick right now a short list of what books you could read for the rest of your life, which would they be"? Which in turn is really a way to ask for someone's favorite books - but specifically weighted toward longevity and re-readability. The extra constraint changes the ranking and is thus more interesting than just asking someone to rattle off their already-decided favorites.

Similarly, I know the forget-a-game question must also be trying to get at something related to but distinct from just asking someone what their favorite game is. Responding practically, I'd minimize unnecessary memory loss by picking a tiny game I'd played ages ago and already mostly forgotten. That's clearly missing the point, but what is the point?

To me, most of the value of a good game comes from the memory of it. That's the part I get to savor and enjoy for much longer. I get to look back and understand how the game's parts come together to form a greater whole. I get to talk about it with others and share our experiences and insights. And I get to see how games influence each other as the medium grows and evolves. I love playing good games, but I might love more the way that every game I play increases my understanding and appreciation of games as a whole.

From that perspective, replaying a game I do remember can be more valuable than recapturing the original experience, as it provides opportunities for experimentation or for seeing new things I missed before. (Studies suggest that people consistently underestimate how much new stuff there is to find in repeat media and experiences, and thus underestimate how much they'd enjoy revisiting them.) This can leave me with a more complete picture of the game and a more nuanced appreciation and understanding - made richer by what I've learned and observed from other games in the meantime.

So okay, what if the question is really about your best gaming experiences that you can't come close to matching through replaying today? When I think of games like that, the difference isn't something you can surmount with a memory wipe. As a teenager, I fell completely in love with Chrono Trigger - but that's because I was a different person then (and not in an entirely healthy way). I couldn't recapture that experience without regressing to my adolescence. And in college, I had a complete blast playing City of Heroes, but that was more about the people I played with than the game itself - and the community has largely moved on from MMORPGs, and that particular game is no longer even playable. I'd need a time machine for that one.

I think for a lot of us, our favorite gaming memories are only partially about the game. They are about who we were, what our life was like, and what the world was like. Trying to recapture them with a memory wipe would just destroy a treasured memory and replace it with an inferior imitation that couldn't possibly live up to the original.

All I can really find in this question that makes any sense to me is "What is your favorite game with little to no replay value?" Which I guess does act like the desert island question as a new constraint on the favorite-game question, though it seems like a less interesting one to me.

...but I guess my answer is Portal.

[nocaptainreuben]

Countdown to YALC: I Am Thunder by Muhammad Khan

As I mentioned a few weeks ago in my review for The Electrical Venus, I recently had a lovely, relaxing week in Mallorca with my girlfriend, and of course we took a small case full of books with us! One of the books I lapped up whilst I was out there, was debut author Muhammad Khan’s I Am Thunder, which I’ve been itching to read since it was first announced.

Fifteen-year-old Muzna Saleem, who dreams of being a writer, struggles with controlling parents who only care about her studying to be a doctor. Forced to move to a new school in South London after her best friend is shamed in a scandal, Muzna realizes that the bullies will follow her wherever she goes. But deciding to stand and face them instead of fighting her instinct to disappear is harder than it looks when there's prejudice everywhere you turn. Until the gorgeous and confident Arif shows an interest in her, encouraging Muzna to explore her freedom.  But Arif is hiding his own secrets and, along with his brother Jameel, he begins to influence Muzna with their extreme view of the world. As her new freedom starts to disappear, Muzna is forced to question everything around her and make a terrible choice - keep quiet and betray herself, or speak out and betray her heart?

I absolutely love books which deal with social issues, difficult topics or morally grey areas, so I knew this was going to be one I’d be interested in. Whilst I do read for entertainment and pleasure, I also feel a kind of responsibility to use books to learn about the issues which face our society, and to listen to the voices of people with different experiences to my own, in order to grow as an empathetic person. Therefore, a book about religious extremism, radicalisation and Islamophobia – topics I’d not really explored all that much before – was really appealing to me. And right from the start I figured I was onto a winner; the very beginning of this book made me incredibly uncomfortable, and call me a glutton for punishment, but I often applaud that in a book, because it means it’s having a real impact on me. It had the feeling of a book which – like those such as Asking For It or The Handmaid’s Tale – would be difficult to read, but important that you do.

Whilst that might sound really depressing or boring, it actually didn’t feel at all like Khan was trying to preach to his readers, and instead it had a perfect balance of great storytelling and thought provoking social commentary. From the point of view of a white reader (which is obviously the only one I can comment on), it didn’t feel like it was written specifically for me in a bid to educate me, but equally I didn’t feel excluded from the narrative, or that I couldn’t relate to it. I imagine that for many British-Pakistani readers, it will be wonderful representation, and great to see the nuances of their culture, and life experiences they might share, reflected so truthfully. And I truly do understand the power of seeing yourself on the page like that, so I’m incredibly happy that Khan seems to have been able to do that for a marginalised audience. But for me personally, I loved that it highlighted the similarities in things like school life and family relations across different cultures, and meant that I could still see bits of myself in Muzna even though we have different backgrounds. Along with that, the more reading we do outside of our own experiences, the more we begin to understand other cultures and points of view, so I think this straddles the cultural divide beautifully and is the perfect book for teen audiences of any heritage. Khan himself summed it up perfectly in his author’s note:

‘I wrote Muzna’s story for you. Muslim or non-Muslim? It doesn’t matter to me. It shouldn’t matter to you.’

Whilst it’s wonderful that a book like this has universal appeal, I can’t stress enough how important representation is, and not only in seeing characters like yourself on the page, but in seeing authors like yourself as role models. Watching people who share your own marginalised identity achieve, can be one of the most powerful things in making you believe in yourself, and I really think that Khan can be for desi and Muslim teens what people like Juno Dawson, Rachel Lucas, Patrick Ness, Malorie Blackman and Melinda Salisbury are for trans, autistic, gay, black and working class teens. Something I loved in this book, was when it got ever so slightly meta in one passage, where Muzna talks about wanting to be a novelist, saying ‘you don’t hear about many Muslim authors… I want people to read my books and go, “You know what? Muslims are alright.”’, and that just sums up why the move for more diversity in publishing is so necessary.

I love that, as someone not from a desi community, the book really helped me to understand some of the nuances of that kind of life experience, by picking apart what is down to religion and what is more simply Pakistani culture. It also highlighted the differences between what is most widely accepted as the teachings of Islam, and what has been twisted to fit the views of extremists. Having things spelled out this way by somebody with a first-hand understanding of it was really helpful, and seeing everything from Muzna’s point of view made it so much easier to understand and empathise with her. This gave me an insight into how insidious radicalisation is, and how easily it can happen to vulnerable people. Those uncomfortable first 30 pages drew an instant parallel with grooming for sexual abuse (which is something I have much more experience and understanding of than religious extremism and radicalisation) and set the tone for the rest of the book, allowing me to see Muzna and Arif as victims rather than the ‘evil terrorist’ narrative which the right wing media prefers.

A book like this is obviously going to be powerful, moving and important, but I was perhaps most impressed by how authentically teenage it was. The influence of Khan’s experience as a teacher is very evident, and you can feel how much he understands his audience. This, for me, is what pushes it from a great book to a brilliant book. Yes it’s impactful, wise, eye-opening, and in places scary, but it’s also optimistic, funny, relevant, and youthful; it’s just as multifaceted as today’s teens themselves, and I’m sure it will be loved for everything it is.

I Am Thunder gets a big fat yes from me, so I’ll be taking my copy along to YALC for signing. (At this rate, my shoulders are going to be seriously aching aren’t they? :p) If you have any thoughts on the book, feel free to give me a follow on twitter or Instagram where you can throw said thoughts at my face.

[pride-vns-blog]

LGBTQ VN Week: Day Four! (6/21)

Wow, we’re already at the fourth day of LGBTQ visual novel recommendations! You’ve probably seen this preface on previous parts of this list, but if you haven’t read my first post, that writeup’s “One note before we get started” section, explains more clearly what this list is and why I’m writing it!

Plenty of visual novels talk about sex and intimacy, so for today, I’ve set aside four with my personal favorite approaches to the topic — CODE:Phantasm’s 404 Error: Connection Not Found, parade’s No Thank You!!!, SugarScript’s Cute Demon Crashers, and Mitch Alexander’s Tusks: An Orc Dating Sim, plus a conversation with Mitch about his creative process on Tusks.

Head on in to hear about your little brother dyeing his hair pink, a truly inscrutable protagonist, freeloading demons playing Mario Kart, and inspirational Skyrim mods!

404 ERROR: CONNECTION NOT FOUND (CODE:PHANTASM)

Itchio Tagline: “Sometimes connecting to others is harder than loneliness.” Genre(s): Slice of life; drama. Release Date: July 30th, 2017 (demo); TBA (full version). Content Warnings: Text-only depiction of sex and sex work; adult content.

404 Error: Connection Not Found is the story of Ren Matsuura, a camboy who ran away from home after turning eighteen and supports himself financially through camming — but thanks to his agoraphobia and general anxiety, he rarely goes outside, to the point that he’s pared all his social connections down to casual conversations with his clients and lying to his younger brother Haru about what he does for a living. When his brother decides to come visit for the first time since Ren moved out, Ren is forced to confront the fact that his guilt and shame have driven him into a corner with no support system. In the span of the demo, he starts to try and reach out to the clients he has a more regular relationship with to prepare him for Haru’s eventual visit, ending on a cliffhanger that seems to be leading directly into the plotline of the main story.

This visual novel’s demo is the shortest of all the stories on my entire list, to my knowledge, but it’s also the most memorable demo I’ve played in a long, long while. As someone who’s had to contend with similar mental illnesses in the past — paranoia and agoraphobia unsurprisingly have a pretty high degree of comorbidity! — I felt like Ren’s slow struggle to make progress for the sake of his younger brother was written sincerely, thoughtfully, and believably in the timespan of a single demo playthrough. Ren can be funny, when he’s not spiraling internally, and his rocky progress at trying to talk to others more honestly is loaded with plenty of funny jokes and quips about his takes on things. He’s a sympathetic, well-rounded protagonist who comes across strongly in the demo alone, and I ended up really rooting for him to make it to a place where he was happier with his life.

There’s another aspect to the story that I ended up really liking, too: the fact that sex work, especially jobs like camming, can be extremely common among LGBTQ people who can’t support themselves financially in other ways. Ren can’t go outside and can’t interact with many people without severe, earth-shattering anxiety attacks (a few of which we see in the demo!), so this job is what he’s got. It’s a job that’s sustained him for years, and although it’s certainly fed into his own relative isolation, 404 Error seemed to walk that careful balance of making it explicit that it’s Ren’s own lack of steady support for his mental illness instead of the simple fact that he does sex work that causes his interpersonal problems. I’m optimistic about the remainder of the story’s handling of those kinds of things, too, because what was present in the demo was sympathetic and sincere! There’s not very many sex workers or camgirls/camboys in visual novels outside of an extremely tiny handful, let ones alone in conjunction to stories that acknowledge of the way LGBTQ people as a whole can struggle with more convential jobs, so Ren’s genuinely empathetic personality and the hope I have for his future makes me excited to see where CODE:Phantasm takes 404 Error from here.

404 Error: Connection Not Found’s free Yaoi Game Jam demo is available now, and you can follow the CODE:Phantasm team on Itch.io, Twitter, or Tumblr to stay updated on their progress with Ren’s story.

NO THANK YOU!!! (PARADE)

MangaGamer Tagline: “This summer vacation begins with a car accident...” Genre(s): Comedy; drama; mystery. Release Date: June 28, 2013 (Japanese); February 27, 2015 (English).  Content Warnings: Adult content; multiple sex scenes; frequent sexual harassment; blood; drugs; violence; death.

Right off the bat, I think parade’s debut visual novel (as a studio, at least) does a lot of interesting things and definitely seems to be aiming high with creating distinct, memorable stories. The art in No Thank You!!! is gorgeous, its voice acting is top-tier, a lot of the side characters are compelling even beyond the space or role the narrative gives them, and the love interests alone are all fully-realized characters with interesting stories. Romance option Ryu’s route, in particular, fleshes out the larger sense of mystery and the other characters to an astounding degree! That’s to say nothing of the most unique mechanic — which I mostly call the NTY!!! button — that offers you the chance to say “no thank you” in a variety of scenes without always telling you what it is you’re saying that to. It’s occasionally a little too easy to guess, but at certain points I ended up lulled into a false sense of security with that easiness that the game was all too ready to take advantage of with a much less obvious choice.

One of the sticking points with No Thank You!!! that I’ve seen other players express, on the other hand, is the way protagonist Haru is written. That’s not to say his writing specifically is bad — parade clearly had a vision in mind for Haru’s personality, and from his sketchy beginnings to his clearer end, he’s a coherent character with a consistent narrative. While the crux of the story is more insight into Haru, where he came from, and what the truth behind all those mysteries might be, though, Haru’s behavior still underpins a lot of what drives the romance routes forward. And his behavior... The official quote on his personality, “[s]exual harassment is an everyday activity for him,” can at times seem like it’s underselling exactly how often he tries to grab an ass. It’s no surprise that a fair few other players I’ve seen have walked away with pretty strong opinions on Haru as a character. (I’m personally not a huge fan.)

But to me, a divisive protagonist who you don’t actually fully understand as a character — Haru’s thoughts on a lot of key things are far less accessible than the likes of Aoba Seragaki or most Western M/M protagonists, which leaves you knowing most of his thoughts or feelings via his interactions from others — seems to go perfectly hand-in-hand with the way the visual novel as a whole operates. No Thank You!!! puts you at a distance by Haru’s viewpoint being occasionally “indecipherable” (to use the official phrasing), and then it throws you further with its sometimes-unpredictable NTY!!! button mechanic, but the strength of its other individual pieces taken together still sold me on it as both a solid set of mystery stories and an 18+ dating sim.

Also I really like Maki.

No Thank You!!! is available for a sale price of $19.95 on MangaGamer’s store (18+), and you can read more about parade’s story and characters on MangaGamer’s designated No Thank You!!! page (also 18+).

CUTE DEMON CRASHERS (SUGARSCRIPT)

Itchio Tagline: “A short and silly consent-friendly and sex-positive VN!” Genre(s): Modern fantasy. Release Date: April 7th, 2015 (Mirari and Akki’s routes); August 15th, 2015 (full version). Content Warnings: Multiple sex scenes; detailed uncensored nudity.

I don’t think I could sum up Cute Demon Crashers better than the Itch.io tagline does — it’s short, it’s hilarious, and it’s got an emphasis on consent that meshes perfectly with its goofy “a bunch of incubi and one succubus come to the mortal realm to have sex” plot. The characters are all charming and fit perfectly into its universe, with distinct personalities that come across clearly without ever feeling hamfisted in the limited time that the script lets you spend with them. Although this isn’t necessarily a romance game, especially given that incubi and succubi are “closer to what people know of as aromantic” according to the SugarScript FAQ, its cute, thoughtful writing and adorable design in everything from the characters to the user interface mean that there’s plenty of love infused in every aspect of Cute Demon Crashers.

Like yesterday’s We Know The Devil, Cute Demon Crashers is one of those visual novels with a distinct, memorable mechanic that almost placed it squarely in Tuesday’s creative design list. Cute Demon Crashers is one of the first visual novels — or, by my experience, the first altogether — to implement a mechanic specifically themed around stopping in the middle of sex. If you’re ever uncomfortable or you just plain want the scene to end, you can hit a button and protagonist Claire will talk with her partner to bring things to a close. (There’s also an option to just plain old not have sex with any of them, and spending time with the characters!) A lot of the dialogue in these scenes in particular is thoughtful, nuanced, and reads to me as being a pretty realistic depiction of how someone like Claire might ask those questions or express those kinds of concerns. 

The way Cute Demon Crashers handles intimacy and sexuality, by another measure, is one of those things that I think has also had a not-insignificant impact on the visual novel community as a whole; I’ve seen a fair number of people who’ve apparently never enjoyed an 18+ dating sim before talk about how its portrayal of sex resonated with them or brought them some measure of comfort. Because of the SugarScript team’s relative investment in the English-language visual novel scene as a whole, too — this project was born out of NaNoRenO and I’ve seen them promote development forum hub LemmaSoft or other small visual novels more than once — the compassion for the player that’s written into every aspect of Cute Demon Crashers seems to extend naturally to everyone else around the team in real life, which is something extremely special.

The entirety of Cute Demon Crashers is available now for free, and you can find out more information on its upcoming sequel (Cute Demon Crashers: Side B) on the SugarScript Twitter, Tumblr, and Itch.io!

Itchio Tagline: “GAY ORCS available in YOUR AREA.” Genre(s): Romance; fantasy; community building. Release Date: July 18th, 2015 (First Day demo); January 1st, 2018 (FUARLANG/full main story); TBA (individual route endings). Content Warnings: Adult content; sex; mentions of violence.

Mitch Alexander’s Tusks: The Orc Dating Sim, from head to toe, is one of my favorite depictions of sex and intimacy in video games — and with every gradual update, especially the most recent FUARLANG build that finished out the mai storyline, I’ve only become more sure of that. There’s an endearingly genuine quality to its art, character dialogue, and even in things like the NPC autonomy feature, where your companions have just as many chances to sway things like group votes or decide who’s on watch as you would without NPC autonomy being enabled. 

Interested to hear Mitch talk a little bit about his design process and the inspiration behind Tusks, I got in touch and asked him a few questions!

Thanks for taking the time for an interview, Mitch! While the title might be fairly self-explanatory, haha, how would you outline Tusks: An Orc Dating Sim in more detail to somebody new?

Tusks is a visual novel where the player joins a group at an annual orcish gathering, in a forest at the edge of a semi-mythical version of Scotland, and you then travel with this new found family and get to know them better. Most of the game is your group getting into adventures, talking to them one-on-one at camp at nighttime, and making decisions about how to go about your travels. The game's cast are all queer, and the game itself is an exploration of queer identity, community, history, and our relationship with the idea of monstrosity/Otherness.

I think it's fair to say that Tusks, as well as your larger body of work, deals a lot with intimacy and sexuality, especially the intersection between those two things; this is probably a question you've thought over yourself a fair bit, but what in particular interests you about those topics that drives you to explore them in Tusks and your other work?

Part of it is the fact that intimacy and sexuality are areas that can be massively important to queer people (especially since many of us are marginalised as a result of our sexuality being seen as deviant) but there aren't a lot of mainstream sources that play with intimacy and sexuality in relevant ways. And part of it is just because exploring sexuality for its own sake can be fun as well!

Definitely! There's always room for more fun with depictions of sexuality, haha. The premise for an all-orc dating sim is definitely a memorable one, and one you've fleshed out incredibly well with the thoughtfulness of your worldbuilding and character dynamics. What was the original inspiration that you built Tusks on, and what helped carry you across the finishing line of completing (for the most part) its story?

It was a lot of different threads coming together: I'd been playing a modded Skyrim save with an orc character who, in my head, was gay and had left his stronghold so to find other orcs like him and establish his own wee found family. That happened at the same time as me finding out about the NaNoReNo visual novel game jam, plus wanting to work on a game that actually put queer characters and discussions first and foremost rather than us just being a token presentation.

As for what carried me through, there was lots of things: the excitement of getting to tell stories that you just don't see in mainstream games, getting amazing feedback from players, and then at the end when I released the full main story on New Years', it was sheer bloody-mindedness.

There's a fair few interesting mechanics in Tusks, especially with regards to NPC autonomy; can you share a little bit of insight on why you decided to include those and how they function in the code?

NPC autonomy's a small but effective way of just slightly upsetting this idea that in visual novels, the player character gets to make all the decisions -- it automatically puts you in a decision-making leader role, and it's up to the writer then to narratively justify that -- which can be difficult if you're wanting to tell a story about a group of equal partners. So instead, NPC autonomy lets characters vote on things or lets characters potentially turn you down for romantic encounters.

It's an optional feature, so it's possible to play the game without it being on -- it just slightly changes the flow of the story and makes it seem a tad-bit more like you're part of a collective, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that makes sense! I think my playthroughs where NPC autonomy was on were definitely more interesting, by and large, because it really does add a lot to that sense of cooperation and community.

If you had to pick just one, what non-human (and non-orc) creature do you think more people should appreciate?

I'm really interested in exploring things with strong mythological connotations like minotaurs, since they're surrounded by particular ideas like labyrinths, being half-human and half-animal. I'd also really like to see someone explore the monstrousness of hags from [Dungeons and Dragons], because I think there's probably a way to talk about them and explore their relationships to femininity, presentation, glamour magick, witchcraft, and power.

Good choices! Those are both definitely really interesting ones. To wrap things up, are there any LGBTQ visual novels from other developers that you'd like to recommend?

I'd recommend checking out The Bitter Drop, by Isak Grozny; Ladykiller in a Bind by Christine Love, and We Know the Devil by Date Nighto!

Perfect! It's been a pleasure talking to you, Mitch, and I'm looking forward to your future projects.

Tusks: The Orc Dating Sim is available now for a reverse-sale price of $2.02, and you can support Mitch Alexander’s work on Patreon or follow his “nonsense” on Twitter and fully-released work on Itch.io!

[michaelasixdjournal]

Show’n’tell wrap up

This post was written right after the show’n’tell wrap up and its length is unfortunate 😬 but it is due to the limited access to a computer during the module (since I didn’t have my own) and it tries to kind of make up for some of it O:)  Notes from the show’n’tell: What is the experience like? - a reminder not to focus only on the technical parameters. Sometimes I think I focused a lot on how the prototype processes the input it receives from the sound, and how it expresses it, but I did not think that much about what the experience feels like for the person interacting with it. I think it´s because I did not think about any particular user (which turned out to be easier than I thought). Or maybe because of this, I was actually thinking about me as the "user". When creating the starry night prototype, I set it to react to particular sounds based on what I preferred, which leads me to another note - Why did the prototype react to those particular sounds in those particular ways, except for because I liked it that way? Why did I like it that way? - here I think it might be subjective to a big extent. I haven´t thought of it in the way as why would I want it to be this way. It was the latest prototype, which aimed mostly at showing another way of expressing pretty much the same functionality as the Shape rain did. It was reacting to the specific frequency ranges for different "commands", sometimes also listening closely to the values received and forming the output based on that in more detail. So I think I created really without any justifications, almost for myself. Why I think I liked it that way, was from a big part influenced by what sounds I was able to identify in a reliable way, such as speech (or other sounds hitting the lower frequencies), whistling, "sss" sound, or metal hitting glass. So those became my "tools" and then I just matched them with the functionalities based on what actions I wanted to be triggered easily, on purpose, or by accident. Since speech or sounds that hit the lower frequencies high enough are quite easy to produce and also often happen by accident, I matched them with the sky getting darker. Why I wanted the sky to get dark easily? Maybe that is the question I should be asking. Here probably mostly for demonstrative purposes, but also to make it easier to then see the stars, because stars are pretty O:) so, very subjective I think. The prototype contained a special counter which should then determine the number of the stars that will appear on the dark sky. The goal for it was to work the way that when many loud noises in the correct freq range are made straight away, there will only be a few stars. For it to be more stars on the sky later, one would need to control the volume, speak loud enough for a while, but then lower the volume (still make sounds though, just not so loud) and control it this way, so the counter would always increase a bit, decrease a bit, increase a bit, while the number of stars to-be-created would accumulate. This way, there would be many stars on the sky in the end. I think I wanted this to be some kind of metaphor for being considerate or inconsiderate, and then the stars should have represented some kind of reward, for when we are able to control our behavior.   Due to the technical aspect though, it was very hard to make this work for me, it was depending on very nuanced numbers, and also required a steady volume of the background noises, because the range considered as "low" was quite small, since I didn´t want to activate this range by accident, so it must have been higher than the unintentional background sounds, but also lower than an intentional sound of a higher volume. Anyway, since this was quite hard for me to calibrate and the time was pressing, I decided to not have this number of stars differ so much, because I was more focused on being able to get the sky dark or light intentionally in a reliable way, which I used the speech and the whistling for. Here I think I didn´t pay as much attention to my initial intention with the number of stars representing some kind of reward, and depending on the human behavior, because I did not consider it so important, for some reason. I thought it´s kind of like an extra thought I had behind it, which wasn´t very important. The inconsiderate behavior, or the considerate, showing also patience, that might be a better word to use. That this way, basically, with patience, when you would increase and decrease the volume of the sounds you were making/speaking, it would take more time also, get a bit annoying almost, but then you would be rewarded in the end. Maybe this in itself was enough for one sketch, which would only be showing this. It wouldn´t look that exciting maybe, because I would only get it to work once, and then you would need to refresh the page if you would want to try again, but maybe it had an interesting enough reason for it to be so. (because I didn´t manage to delete the stars with the sky getting light, which was a part of the idea also.) Either way, I got this idea towards the end and it was probably too complex to handle in that amount of time. So I wanted it to be just an incomplete example of how the functionalities targeting the specific sounds could be used. And the starry sky was just an example, just to show that it could be something more calm and static than the Shape rain, which was chaotic and hectic. I wanted it to show that the input doesn´t have to mirrored immediately, I wanted it to be more hidden. Again, why? :D I think because I wanted the interaction to be a little bit more mysterious or surprising, have the person interacting try a bit harder, to get more involved, feel more challenged. I think it moved away from the mirroring a lot in the way that (in the original idea with the sky getting darker and lighter gradually) with speaking it would get darker, then at some point dark, and then it would seem to not react anymore. But it would be possible to get it lighter again, but with a conscious and patient effort, which if not made on purpose, would not happen by accident so easily. So it could create an impression that once the sky gets dark, it stays dark. The sky getting lighter then, at some point, could be a surprising moment. I think I wanted it to play a bit with expectations, curiosity and patience. If I had asked myself these questions earlier, it might have been an entire "theme". Expectations and curiosity for example. Or patience, probably not all of them together, cause that is a lot already. But as I said, this was an idea that came very late, and quite complex. It is maybe because for a longer time before, our theme, or kind of my theme in my head, was this character expressing different states/emotions based on the sound input. Being awake, being creative, having a burnout, being worried, scared, excited. There was a lot to experiment with there already probably, but I kind of left this idea behind for two reasons, 1. because I didn´t manage to hook up the beats template with the threshold one (and I had a behavior planned depending on both), 2. because I got more interested in creating environments, not just one very specific character. If I would have decided that the emotions/states is what I want to focus on, then I would find a way how to use other ways for it than beats, but by then I was already more interested in the environments so I moved away from it anyway. It was maybe a really weird time management, because for a long time we were working mostly with the beats. And then quite late we worked a lot with the specific sounds. Sometimes I felt like we are almost working on what would be enough for two pairs of people. I think I tried to be very open to change, new ideas and new ways of using the sound, that I did not stick to almost anything during this process, it was a constant evolution. I perceived it as a more experimental project, which doesn´t necessarily have an "end", end solution, end product, so I did not pay that much attention to something like "it might be too late to change this now" or "this is not of our interest right now". Pretty much everything was of our interest, at least mine :D except for the beats towards the end, that´s when I did not want to explore them any more. But I think we worked on different functionalities and themes in parallel, so then that makes it very hard to sum up in the final show´n´tell also. Because there were things happening in parallel lines. It is not the first time it happened to me I think, but only in these more experimental modules. Also during Prototyping, when we had one project for one week, and we were all involved and interested and we kind of diverged and separated into two subgroups. In a bigger project, as the final one in Prototyping, it did not happen, because I think I was also more aware and concerned about the right timing of the different stages in the process, and I knew that the final product is supposed to be just ONE :D. (but even that one was actually consisting of two pieces, but I think in that case it was not a bad thing). I think that diverging is the part that I am better at, coming up with new ideas, new perspectives, but I don´t always know how to estimate when and how the converging should happen. I think I went from the extreme of getting attached to my very first idea and wanting to continue with that one till the very end, to the other extreme, of abandoning all the ideas that don´t excite me anymore and coming up with new ones and constantly evolving. Hopefully the next stage will be some balance in-between the two. I am wondering though, what should have been done in this case. I don´t think that it went badly at all, but I think there was way more effort put into some parts than maybe necessary, and also more energy put into it than what could have been seen from the final show´n´tell. I would say it did harm it a bit, because it was too much, which also makes it more chaotic. It seemed like a really good transition though, from the single character states/emotions to the environments. I don´t think that that was a bad call. But maybe changing this, AND at the same time changing the input that we have been working with (from beats to freq ranges), was too much. I think I could have made the starry sky work more or less as I originally intended using the functionality of the beats, bpm and such. I think that it really was the functionality at many instances that was the "driving force" for the next decision, not an idea for the interaction, some kind of theme. Using the different freq ranges became our theme kind of, we thought, but that is more about the functionality also. But I know Jens mentioned that maybe whistling alone could have been interesting, for some other group, but then that would also be driven by the technical aspects almost. So I am not sure from which angle we should have grasped it. I said during the process at some time that "I am not getting any ideas, and when I am not getting any ideas I am probably not understanding something." but I think it was actually "... any ideas, I am probably not having enough constraints." The inputs could have been different, a theme could have been picked there - materials for example, wood, glass, etc.. or whistling etc... (on this dependent maybe the characteristic of the sound chosen, frequency ranges for example) The way it is processed was unlimited - constantly mirroring, counting certain "events", reaching a state, relations between the order of the states reached, on and off behavior, influencing appearance/aesthetics, irreversible outcomes, reversible outcomes by specific actions.... The outputs could have been anything - single object, environment, multiple, object interacting with its environment, elements between each other... The themes could have been anything - expressing emotions based on what the different sounds make us feel like, or without a link but expressing emotions, creating a personality, exploring the theme of patience, expectations, control, lack of control, silence, fear, anything.... It makes a lot more sense now, having it written down this way. I think we tried several of the options, from all the categories. Different inputs  (materials, beats, human body sounds, speech almost), the behavior (mirroring, reaching a state, reversible and irreversible, specifying properties of objects, ...), outputs (single object, environments with objects...), themes (emotions, personality, states of being, expectations, patience, reward, ...). I think I learned a LOT, but also I would need more hours in a day if I would want to continue working this way :D. Also it is not the most fruitful, would definitely benefit from a clearer direction. I don´t know why it´s almost always easier to see it all in retrospect. I think I was way too caught up in the code and the technical aspect. Also maybe because the code we worked with was way more advanced than what I would have made myself, so it took me some extra time to understand what Christian had coded and then I was way too much in the code I think. I had ideas still, but we didn´t have a clear theme, maybe because we were always trying something new.

[gffa]

Anytime there’s a comment of ‘the Jedi upheld a corrupt republic and didn’t fix it, ergo they are corrupt!’ I look at the current dumpster fire of RL and go, ‘oh wow, they didn’t fix it?? politics are hard, surprise!’ I try to not bring RL stuff into space fantasy discourse but, hey guess we’re all corrupt because we live in broken political systems /s. Holding on to democracy is hard and we’re witnessing it break down in real time in many parts of 1 world but Jedi bad for failing the galaxy.

This is always a complicated topic to discuss and I’ve often felt like it’s even harder to have this discussion because we’re still having discussions about the Jedi are not actually in charge of the government like sometimes we get the initial impression of, that we’re so busy having the fundamental conversations, we can’t get into the nuanced ones. But this is generally where I stand--and I have a longer meta piece here that gets into it a bit more--that’s summed up by Padme talking with Satine about neutrality vs working to make the system better:

“There are still those of us who work to overcome the corruption and believe it to be possible.” This is echoed in the same Mandalore storyline about Ahsoka teaching the cadets about the responsibilities of the citizens, giving us a look at how the Jedi feel about their role in the galaxy:

“Lasting change can only come from within.” This is what the Jedi believe--that being part of the system makes you stronger, it allows you to do more.  And, yes, it’s their duty to help support that (but it cannot be only their duty, it must also be the citizen’s duty) and they do.  We see them trying to use their closeness with politicians to better ends--Obi-Wan tries to get Chi Cho to use diplomacy, Mace tries to get the Zillo Beast to safety, the Jedi try to use their position to help the citizens of Pijal not get fucked over by their treaty, Mace tries to get leniency for the child Boba Fett, Yoda tries to uncover the mystery about Sifo-Dyas and Palpatine refuses to tell him anything, etc. Ultimately, Star Wars is a made-up space story and it can never have a 1:1 relationship with reality, it can never capture the full scope of complexities and difficulties that IRL faces, nor can we ignore that the real world is REAL PEOPLE, while fictional characters are just made up.  Fictional stories are a tool we can use to help us navigate our world, though, as well as can have reflections that are deeply meaningful to us. Which means I agree very strongly that being part of a corrupt system doesn’t automatically make a person corrupt, it’s about how you try to better the system, it’s about trying to help people, it’s about upholding democracy--which means the officials that the people choose, the Jedi have to balance supporting and bettering the system with that they are not elected officials, that sometimes they can do things better because of their position, but that they cannot just storm in and start Leeroy Jenkinsing their way across the galaxy. They’re not superhero vigilantes, they’re not playing by those narrative rules.  Nor can they overwrite the democratic process because then that’s helping to destroy democracy.  That doesn’t mean just shrugging your shoulders and going, “Can’t be helped then!”  It means creating lasting change from within, even when you’re in a corrupt system.  You do what you can, when you can. Star Wars as a narrative doesn’t always fully understand the implications that it has (because, as much as I love it, as much as I’ll defend that it’s really genuinely good in places, there are times when the narrative just fails to make something part of it, like with the clones being functionally slaves, the narrative itself fails to make this part of the story, rather than that it’s saying the characters failed), but with what we have, this is where I stand. Like, if you want to call the Jedi corrupt for their role in the story, you also have to apply that same standard to Padme Amidala and Bail Organa, who both stayed within the system, who actively had other choices to stay neutral, but chose to instead keep trying to make things better. Because democracy doesn’t just keep itself running, you have to actively support and defend and uphold it.  Which means being part of the system and doing what you can where you can. And I think that’s true for us in the real world (VOTE VOTE VOTE, VOTE ALL THE WAY DOWN THE TICKET, DON’T STOP HERE, VOTE IN THE MIDTERMS, VOTE IN LOCAL ELECTIONS, VOTE EVERY TIME YOU CAN) and in a story that can never be a 1:1 relationship to the real world, it can still be useful tool and have meaningful reflections.