#and give her more agency / development than she gets

[euphorix-moon]

Lyricist

Musician!Ellie x Fem!Reader

Synopsis: You and Ellie longing for each other after your breakup

Warning: Just an angsty fic

A/n: It's definitely been a while since i've posted here but i've missed writing here so i'm just tryna get back into the groove of things, this work might be a lil rusty

It's been a year since you and Ellie had broken up and went separate ways. You were devastated when Ellie came to up to you one day saying that it would be better if you two broke up. Her music career was just starting to blow up and she thought that it would be the best for both if you guys ended things so she could focus more on her career.

Although you were upset Ellie thought that her career was more important than the relationship you two had developed you wouldn't try and fight her. What would even be the point of trying to get her to stay. You didn't want to carry the guilt of potentially holding her career back

The breakup had gone way smoother than Ellie had expected,and it had hurt Ellie more than she expected. Although she had prepared herself for this, it still hurt to see things end. She had wanted and hoped you'd fight for the relationship just a little more. It hurt Ellie a lot to end things right here especially after how much you have helped her, but it wasn't really her choice. Ellie had worked so hard to get where she is in the music industry, once one of her songs started blowing up her company had not wasted time in trying to promote her. Ellie was extremely grateful for this opportunity but, the only problem was that her agency was really working her hard to the point where she didn't really have much time to spend with you anymore. You didn't mind Ellie not being around as much because you knew this was her dream and you wanted to support her through every step of the way but, Ellie thought you deserved way more than the treatment you were getting from her and her hectic work schedule. It put Ellie in a tight corner but eventually she called it quits with you.

Since that day Ellie has worked hard and she had finally became a mainstream artist. You would walk around your city and see pictures of her plastered around almost every corner. There was a very bittersweet feeling within you, one half of you couldn't help but be proud of her but another part of you couldn't help but loathe seeing her after that day she left you high and dry. Although you do resent her for what she did, you can't help but still miss her. You'd think about the days where Ellie would show you the drafts of her songs or the days where she would ask you to help her come up with new lyrics to her song. Once in a while you do take the time to listen to her music and every time you do it gives you a wave of nostalgia when everything was good for you.

Ellie had always loved writing her songs about her experiences in life and had built a fanbase around people who could relate to her or just liked the vibe of her music. Her most popular songs and the songs she wrote the most about were about you, deep down she missed you a lot and whenever she was in a mood (which was pretty often) she started writing about you two and the time spent together. Wether it be bad or good she found herself cherishing all these moments she had with you. She found herself regretting leaving you and wishes she could get you back.

After getting more mainstream, Ellie had tried to get back into the dating scene to at least gain some,a sort of normalcy that she craved for. Recently Ellie has found herself getting more lonely and just wanted the feeling of having someone by her side, these feelings reminded her a lot about you and the comfort that you gave her but she doubted that you would want her back after how she left you. She had tried but there are little to no people who are actually genuine with her. She felt as if nobody could get past the fact that she famous and it seemed as if they just wanted to get near her just for the sake of it. After long days, she just wanted someone to lean on but after she had left you she found herself alone. With all these feelings sitting in her system she finds herself writing them all out into her songbook. She never expected these songs to get out in the first place but after her manger found her songbook it was over for her.

You spend time working in your cafe, the radio is always playing throughout the restaurant just to give the customers something to listen to. On numerous occasions you have heard Ellie's songs playing on the radio but you usually just tune it out, Until one day when the cafe was running pretty slow, you just happen to catch the lyrics of her song and wonder if there is still hope that she may come back to you.

A/n: Hopefully yall enjoyed and maybe i may make a part 2 where they reunite

[astralucis]

ffxv really missed out on an opportunity to play into the light / darkness theme by making noct the king of shadow / the king of kings and luna the queen of light. the ways their paths could mirror each other, but ultimately going in opposite directions

their union as light and shadow ( in collaboration with the astrals / stars ) driving the darkness from the world. they could still have the star crossed lovers trope too and i'M

[zaczenemiji]

Hi I hope you are having a lovely day my dear ♥. I was wondering if you could do a Kenji Sato x reader where the reader is an assistant manager to him and one day he like acts arrogantly towards her during one of his interviews when he sees a pretty journalist amongst the crowed of ppl interviewing him and he says some hurtful things to reader and collectively ignoring her and instead choosing to focus on the journalists girl. Ever since that day reader has been silent around Sato and he thought he didn't care but it bothered him because even though she is usually quite, these days she is *too* quite and then there is like a mini celebration for like a baseball game win and reader goes with a guy who is like an athlete but is not as famous as Sato. So the kicker is reader is absolutely DROP DEAD GORGEOUS and ppl at the party even think she is a model. So Sato get jealous and he acts all possessive and protective of her , while she is still angry at him but eventually he makes it up to her over time. If you have anything else to add please do.

Shattered Pride

Kenji Sato x AssistantManager!Reader

Word Count: 1,873

Genre/Warnings: Character Development, Eventual Romance, Forgiveness, Jealousy, Regret, Redemption

Author’s Note: The idea behind this was just fantastic! Thank you so much for the request, writing this was my honor.

MASTERLIST

Being Kenji Sato’s assistant manager is not an easy task. I repeat: Not. An. Easy. Task. Throughout his baseball career, he has had several assistants who quit as soon as they were hired because, for one thing, Kenji is stubborn.

Ghosted interviews, off-topic answers, and insults to other players were just some of the many things about him that gave you a headache.

You remember being referred to him by his last assistant saying that it was a high-paying job. However, you were skeptical at how quickly and willing they were to give off their job to another person.

You understood why the first time you met him. After the meeting, you asked him, “Is there anything else you need from me today?”

In response, he gave an irritated sigh. “If I needed something, I would have asked.”

Thankfully, you were more on the nonchalant scale, and how people respond to you didn’t bother you much. You were here to do your job—and excellently at that, not exactly to be friends with an arrogant baseball star.

Kenji’s behavior was… challenging, that’s the best word for it. He barked orders, rarely said thank you, and seemed to take your presence for granted. But in conditions like these, you thrive the most; you succeed where others have failed.

Today was a usual day with the usual crowd of journalists and fans gathering in the conference room. You stood by his side, ensuring everything was in order for yet another post-game interview.

It was going all smooth and well when Kenji suddenly paused mid-sentence. It was a very short pause that wouldn’t be noticeable to others but you, with all the time you spent as his assistant, noticed it.

Your eyes looked in the direction he kept glancing at. A girl, of course, strikingly beautiful with long sleek back hair that cascaded down in soft waves.

When it was her turn to ask, Kenji leaned forward to give her a dazzling smile. “Why don’t you ask me a question?” he said, ignoring the list of pre-approved questions you handed him before the interview started.

Kenji was holding court with this journalist longer than he should. You noticed that the others in line were starting to murmur in annoyance.

You stepped forward, maintaining your professional demeanor. “Excuse me, Mr. Sato, but we need to move on,” you said. “Other journalists are waiting for their turn.”

“I’m not done here,” he said arrogantly, not bothering to look your way.

You took a deep breath, wanting to handle this situation diplomatically. “I understand,” you said. “But we’ve exceeded the time limit, and it’s only fair to give everyone a chance.”

Whichever agency’s plan was it to send her here to get ahead of other journalists, it’s working. She gave you a polite smile, clearly enjoying the extra attention.

Kenji frowned and turned to you. “Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something important?” He asked. “If you can’t manage your job properly, maybe you should reconsider.”

Your eyes widened. You could feel others’ on you, their stares almost cutting through your professional facade.

Swallowing your pride, you nodded and stepped back, keeping your expression neutral. But as neutral as you looked, deep down you felt a mix of anger and humiliation.

From that day on, you remained silent around Kenji, only speaking when necessary. You remained professional though, and you made sure that your job was not compromised.

During meetings, you no longer offered insights unless directly asked. When you did speak, your tone was strictly professional. Well, it has always been, but the warmth that characterized your interactions was now gone.

Like that one time during a team strategy meeting. Kenji asked for input on a new play. The room fell silent as everyone waited for your usual insightful suggestions, but you simply looked down at your notes, saying nothing.

The coach glanced at you, surprised. "Any thoughts, (y/n)?" You shook your head. "No, Coach. Nothing to add."

At first, Kenji was oblivious to all of this. He was absorbed in his own world and the adulation of his fans, as always. But as the days turned into weeks, your silence grew too loud to ignore that even he finally noticed it.

A month later, the team planned on celebrating a recent major win. This time, they have decided to invite other athletes as guests of honor. The organizers wanted to have a mix of established stars and up-and-coming talents from the sports world.

You decided to take this as an opportunity to have yourself pampered. You have been working hard, after all. Despite the obvious tension between you and Kenji, you were still able to do your job well.

That’s why at the party, you were stunning. Drop dead gorgeous, as the team said. Though the lights were dim, it seemed as if a spotlight was following you as everyone you passed by turned their heads to look.

You decided to settle by the bar for drinks. “Hey there,” came a familiar voice. You turned to see Jake approaching. He was one of the promising young athletes and a rising star in the sports world who was invited to this party.

He plays as a forward for a popular soccer team and has recently garnered attention for his impressive performance in the league. This wasn’t the first time you met as Jake and Kenji ran into each other a couple times before at different events.

He leaned against the bar, signaling the bartender for a drink. “It’s nice to see you again and this time, enjoying yourself,” he said. “You looked like you needed a break at the last event we were at.”

You chuckled softly, appreciating his observation. "Yeah, it's been a bit hectic lately."

Jake's drink arrived, and he took a sip, his eyes studying you with genuine interest. “Well, you look incredible tonight,” he said. “Have you been hearing what the others are saying?”

Jake turned to glance at the crowd, then back at you. “They were all asking if you were a model or something,” he said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think the same.”

“Thanks, Jake,” you replied, smiling. “You clean up pretty well yourself."

He laughed, a warm, infectious sound that put you at ease. "So, how's work been treating you? Still managing the chaos that is Kenji Sato?"

You hesitated, the memory of Kenji's recent behavior still fresh. "It's been… challenging," you admitted. "But I manage."

Jake's expression softened with understanding. "I can imagine. He's got a reputation for being difficult."

Unbeknownst to both of you, the baseball star you were talking about has finally arrived. His presence commanded attention as he navigated through the crowd, exchanging greetings and handshakes.

As he made his way deeper into the club, his eyes caught sight of you. At that moment he froze. Or was it time that froze? He didn’t know. All he was sure of was that for a little while, he couldn’t breathe.

You were stunning. Your outfit, a sleek, form-fitting dress that accentuated your every curve, made you look like you had just stepped off a runway. Your hair was styled to perfection, your makeup highlighting your natural beauty.

Suddenly, he noticed the man you were talking to, Jake. “That rookie soccer player,” he thought. Gosh, you deserved so much better. At that moment, with firm resolve, he declared upon himself that he would work to be the better that you deserved.

Kenjl's jaw clenched as his own possessive instincts flared up, a mix of jealousy and protectiveness surging through him. He made his way over to you, his eyes never leaving your form.

On your end, you noticed the crowd parted slightly, and you saw Kenji making his way towards you.

Turning slightly, you met Kenji’s gaze with a cool, indifferent look. "Kenji," you acknowledged, your tone polite but distant.

"Can I talk to you for a moment?" he asked, his voice tight with barely restrained emotion.

Jake looked at you, his gaze asking if you were fine with it. You smiled at him, a genuine and warm expression, something you haven’t given Kenji in a while. “I’ll go on ahead,” you told Jake. “See you around.”

Kenji led you away from the crowd, finding a quieter corner of the club. As soon as you were out of earshot, he turned to you, his eyes dark with jealousy.

"Why didn't you come with me?" Kenji asked, his frustration evident.

You scoffed. “First of all, you didn’t ask me to.” You crossed your arms, fixing him with a hard stare. "And you made it very clear where I stand with you. Or rather, where I don't."

He winced, the memory of his hurtful words coming back to haunt him. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice softer now. "I was wrong. I was an idiot."

You remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

“I've been a jerk, and I know it,” he continued. “I was arrogant, dismissive, and I took you for granted.”

You watch him, seeing the sincerity in his eyes. Yet you looked away, the hurt still fresh. "You hurt me, Kenji,” you said. “You made me feel worthless and unimportant."

Kenji steps closer, his voice filled with regret. “I know, I'm so sorry. I was so focused on myself, on my career, that I didn't see how much I was hurting you. Your silence has been killing me. I miss your insights, your presence.”

He paused for a while before continuing. “I miss you.” He reaches out, gently taking your hand.

“You're more than just my assistant,” he said. “You're the reason I can do what I do. You make everything better, and I've been too blind to see it. Please, give me a chance to make it right. I want to earn back your trust.”

You met his gaze, searching for any sign of insincerity. All you saw was genuine regret and a longing to make things right. "This isn't something that can be fixed overnight, Kenji."

"I know," he said quickly. "I'll do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes. I just... I can't lose you."

You took a deep breath, the weight of his words sinking in. "We'll see," you said. "But it won't be easy."

He nodded, relief flooding his features. "I understand,” he said. “Thank you, (y/n)—for giving me a chance.”

As you walked back to the party, Kenji stayed close by your side, protective and possessive. arm subtly wrapped around your waist, a clear signal to everyone around that you were with him.

As the night came to an end, Kenji offered to drive you home. To which, you agreed. The drive home was quiet, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. If anything else, it was rather hopeful.

One evening, after a particularly grueling day, Kenji found you alone in the office. “Hey," he said softly, "I was thinking we could grab dinner. Just the two of us."

You looked up, surprised. "Dinner?"

He nodded, a hopeful smile on his face. "Yeah. To thank you for everything. And to make up for being such an idiot."

You smiled at him for a moment before nodding. "Okay. Dinner sounds nice."

Taglist is open! Comment if u wanna be tagged on future Kenji oneshots

@eternallyvenus @puppyminnnie

[arolesbianism]

Thinking abt reworking Uni a bit. I do love Uni conceptually and as a character, but I've become increasingly uncomfortable with their story in the state that it's in, mostly because of how completely it removes Aris from the equation. I'm hoping to not completely scrap Uni, but I'm going to start brainstorming ways to also include au Aris as an actual character that's involved in au antag stuff instead of just a backstory character for Uni

[donnapalude]

i understand the discomfort around it, but the idea of madeleine being attracted to claudia both because of her apparent youth and developed intellect, apart from textually supported, feels thematically much fuller to me than either isolated alternative and, in a fictional setting, far from antithetic to the construction of a romantic fantasy.

claudia is not a neatly compartimentalised adult with a physical condition. despite similarities, to reduce her experience to easily parsable human categorisations does not capture the full horror and potential of her existence. she is a child-adult hybrid monster, twice parentless through death and abuse and left stranded without true companions or guidance. she has decades of experience, but she is as small as a child and presumably stuck with puberty's imbalances and brain reactivity. her situation serves as a partial reference to the arrested development caused by trauma, but it exceeds the metaphor by causing material impediments that facilitate people around her in removing physical and emotional agency from her. she is denied the complete abandon of daughterhood, burdened with the responsibilities of a partner, and never quite recognised for either. the removal of the more overt incestual undertones between her and her parents, does not erase the covert ones. she may not want them to fuck her exactly, but they are the only two people in the world for her and there is true pain in being placed close enough to witness their union, but never enough to be an equal part to it. as there is true pain in the knowledge that she was created for them, to save louis and their marriage, but she can never quite be all that they need. her desire to find an external companion stems as much from the suffering generated from this inherent failure and exclusion, as from an abstract wish not to be infantilised. moreover, infantilisation, for her, is closely related to the suffering of failure and exclusion. she is supposed to be everything for them, but this translates to a gallery of roles rarely donned by her choice, more than a consistent merging. the disavowal of childhood towards sisterhood is not (only) an uplifting impetus of empowerment. it's a stoic recognition of parental disappointment and an attempt to recover louis's love in a way she hopes he'll be able to give and she receive more stably. it's a boundary and, as such, it's also spiteful. despite louis's loving attempts and lestat's mild objections, this is not an ideal solution for anyone. she was created to be child and sister and partner all together. to be just small pieces of this, and so often the worst ones at that, chafes. by denying them access to a part of her, she regains control and twists the knife back (though it still cuts both ways).

it's in this context that the show places madeleine's love as the narrative fulfillment of all of claudia's fantasies. with a wholly negative value assigned to her childhood and youth, the achievement or failure of those fantasies would hinge on whether madeleine's love is read as contingent on honoring claudia's adult mind or coveting her adolescent body. but this binary reading reflects neither claudia's nor madeleine's story.

madeleine holds a fixation for youth that is not really dependent on the thrill of unilaterally lording power over it. her story about fucking a young invading soldier and her attraction for claudia getting fully expressed in light of vampirism, imply a much subtler connection between youth and power and death in madeleine's figurative cosmology. as an unstoppable definitive force, death has something of the sublime for her, inspiring both awe and terror in equal measure. in the romantic tradition, which bleeds into the gothic, the irrational state created by fear is not madness, but clarity of feeling divorced from the confines of reason. and once the barriers are down, madeleine seems to glimpse one truth: if death steals all life, it must be, by now, full of it to bursting. "he was alive", she says, when recalling what made her encounter with the nazi soldier so essential to her survival: "i know it sounds like a joke, but when there's death all around...". she calls him a "frightened boy", cradled to her chest. and to claudia, later, she asks "what's it like to drink blood? is it like drinking life itself?". claudia is much more pragmatic: "it's not an answer to life's mystery. it's food." but for madeleine it holds another significance, it is the answer to life's mistery. to survive one must steal life from death. youth, as a source of life, found in someone holding death in their power, is a direct tap into the vein, even before literal veins come into play. yet she would not like to drain it, hers is not a destructive design. she longs to nurture that life and let it flow freely and bask in its glow. forever if possible. this is her love for claudia. a feedback loop where she nurses the child and draws from the monster, drinks from her girlhood, to return belonging and wisdom. in the flow, a true joining.

this does not accurately reflect how people attracted to pubescent girls act and reason in real life. the preying on innocence and inexperience does not normally get offset by interest and care for genuine independence. the fact that claudia is not an actual child and is initially the only vampire in the relationship eliminates issues of consent and elides the power imbalance, so that we are left with the possibility that madeleine can nurture claudia's childishness, enjoy the role of emotional protection and guidance she derives from it, as well as feel intense attraction towards the body that holds these signifiers, while at the same time affording her the shared authority and admiration of a true adult relationship. as anticipated, it's a fantasy. it's claudia's fantasy, but also a human fantasy. and it's a cloying one, in its sweetness. the pain claudia holds comes not from being forcibly treated as a child, but from the imposition to live both adulthood and childhood together (not only through her body, but also through familial enmeshment) without being able to experience either in full, as one side of the balance naturally undermines the other. she is presented the illusion of a blissful coalescence of their offerings and is always left wanting. as a child she should be cherished and protected, as an adult she should be respected and powerful. she often finds herself powerless and undefended, needing to choose which wound to tend. and whatever the choice, it can never fill her parents' needs in full measure. with madeleine she can let go and be all, and joyfully. she is daughter and sister and lover and partner and teacher and maker. she can even transcend singularity to fill out a family and a coven. it's suffocating and labyrinthine and recourseless, but it's ultimately about the difference between being deprived of other options and being freed of the need to ever search for them. the wound madeleine heals, the fantasy she fullfills, live in claudia in a heightened state, but fundamentally draw from an incredibly common human want. to be loved in full. to be loved in all the past, present, and future iterations of ourselves, completely and equally. without sacrifice, without maiming, without choosing. it's the illusion given by the love of any parent that, even in the best of families, sooner or later is broken. we learn to parcel our love and to parcel ourselves for people to love different morsels. but claudia can stay whole. for madeleine, at the end, she really is everything.

[anneapocalypse]

On Wuk Lamat, and Female Characters in FFXIV

The Thing with Wuk Lamat is you can tell me you think she had too much screentime; you can give me numbers on how many lines she had or how many scenes she's in relative to other characters or other expacs; you can prove to me "objectively" that she gets more focus than other main NPCs; you're simply not going to convince me that this is something I should be unhappy about. And not just because it's silly to think you can use numbers to prove a story is good or bad and make someone else go, "Wow, you're right, let me just throw away all the joy I experienced with this story and revise my opinion because you've scientifically proven to me that I'm wrong."

Because while I love Final Fantasy XIV and I have greatly enjoyed its story in so many ways, fundamentally one of my biggest beefs with this game has been how much female characters have been denied complex character arcs and growth and agency and interiority.

Minfilia gets treated as a sacrificial vessel who lives for everyone but herself and doesn't even get to have feelings about her own death because that entire arc is focused on a male character's angst about it instead. The game tells us in the Heavensward patches that Krile sees Minfilia as her best friend and then just forgets about that later and never follows up on what that loss must have meant to her. Ysayle is basically right about most of what she's fighting for but harboring a bit of self-delusion is apparently such a terrible sin that she has to pay for it with her life, while her male foil is deemed so worthy of salvation that there's a whole plot point about how important it is that we risk our lives and others' lives to save him. Y'shtola is a major character who's been around since the beginning, and the game keeps dropping maddeningly interesting things about her (apprenticed to a cranky old witch in a cave! saved her own life and the lives of her friends with an illegal and dangerous spell and it worked! reserved and undemonstrative yet regularly through her actions reveals herself to be deeply caring! disabled!) and then shows complete disinterest in following up on any of those things with the kind of depth and care shown to male characters with complex arcs like Urianger.

In general there is also a repeated thread of female characters being portrayed as weak or overly emotional: Minfilia is weak because she doesn't fight and needs to be eaten by a god in order to gain "a strength long sought." Krile is portrayed as not being able to pull her weight with the Scions (despite the fact that she actively keeps five of them from dying in Shadowbringers) and the only thing they could think of for her to do in Endwalker was be yet another vessel for Hydaelyn (hmm, that sounds familiar) and it's not until Dawntrail that she gets much actual character development in the main story and even that has to come alongside "Look, she can fight now so that means she's useful." (And I love Picto!Krile, I'm just saying, there's a pattern.) Alisaie, despite having very good reasons for needing to find her own path apart from her brother, is portrayed as having to prove herself when she returns, that she's "not the girl she once was," and "will not be a burden" (while Alphinaud is repeatedly given the benefit of the doubt and reassurance and affirmation from other characters even after he takes on responsibilities he isn't ready for and fucks up big time).

And if you follow me you know I adore Urianger, and I love Alphinaud and Thancred and Estinien too, so please don't misunderstand what I'm saying here! I'm not knocking those characters, or saying we shouldn't also love them. I just use them as a comparison to demonstrate how the female characters have been neglected.

Lyse has some of the stronger character development among the female Scions, and while she's still kind of portrayed as being too emotional and hotheaded in early Stormblood, I think it's actually explored in more depth in a way that I like; Lyse has good reasons for wanting to fight for her nation's freedom, but having been away from Ala Mhigo for several years now, she needs to understand the stakes for the people who've been there fighting for years, what they've lost and still have to lose. She grows as a person and rises to the challenge of leadership, and I'm even okay with the fact that she leaves the Scions afterward because it feels right for her to stay in Ala Mhigo, and at least she doesn't die.

And by all accounts she was, like Wuk Lamat, widely hated when her expansion came out.

Unironically I think the other female Scion with the strongest character arc is Tataru. She tries to take up a combat job, finds that it's not for her, and decides to focus on where her strengths are instead. In doing so, she both holds the Scions together as an organization in the absence of a leader by capably managing their finances, and also comes into her own as a businesswoman and makes international connections that benefit both the Scions and her personally. In contrast to Minfilia, she's not portrayed as weak because she doesn't fight, and is actually allowed to be an important character who's good for more than being sacrificed. Tataru is still distinctly in a supporting role for the player character, however, and her character arc happens as a side story that takes up a relatively small amount of screentime over several expansions, which I think is probably why she doesn't evoke such a negative reaction.

But there is a pattern of the game's writing showing disinterest in the interior lives of female characters generally, and in making their growth the focus of a story.

So yeah, I'm going to be happy about Wuk Lamat! I'm going to enjoy and celebrate every moment of her character arc, of her personal growth, of watching her put the lessons she's learned into action. I'm going to love and treasure every moment when she gets to be silly, embarrassing, emotional, scared, grieving, confused, upset, seasick, impulsive, and still deemed worthy of growing into a hero and a leader. I will love her with all of my soul and you simply will not convince me that it wasn't worth the screentime after such a profound imbalance for basically the entirety of the game. We've never had a major female character get such a strong arc with this much love and attention put into it and that means more to me than I can truly say. The backlash to it is disheartening, as this kind of thing always is, but I'm not going to let it ruin the wonderful experience I had playing it and how much joy it continues to bring me.

And for those of you who don't want any of that for a female character, thank goodness you have Heavensward and Shadowbringers and Endwalker and no one can take those away from you.

(And if you follow me you know that I love Shadowbringers and Endwalker and have very fond memories of Heavensward despite some issues with it, so not only can I not take that from you, I am not trying to!)

Some of us have been real hungry for a character like this with an arc like this, so, I think, y'know, maybe we can have that. As a treat.

[steddieas-shegoes]

Steve and Eddie go through the whole adoption process in 1996, despite how difficult it was to find somewhere willing to help them at all and despite their conflicted feelings on adoption.

The way they saw it though, providing a loving home for a child who needed one was better than the alternative. Eddie had enough experience with temporary foster homes to know stability was better than constant moving and questionable foster parents.

They get a foster placement almost immediately, a six year old girl named Amelia. She’s quiet, but not in a way that worries them. She’s very focused, and enjoys going to school more than any regular children’s hobbies. Neither of them know what to do with that other than keep encouraging it.

She stays for months, months turn into a year, and the agency finally gives them the go ahead to complete the adoption process.

But they don’t do anything without talking to Amelia.

She’s happy there, her therapist signs off on it immediately and explains that Amelia has shown more personality development and less signs of trauma with them than she had even living at home. Not to mention they actually brought her to appointments, unlike her previous guardians.

To celebrate, they throw a party with all their friends and family and tell Amelia she can invite anyone from school she wants. She invites everyone.

Turns out their daughter is a social butterfly and is friends with everyone.

At the party, Eddie pulls out his guitar, plays a bunch of popular kid-friendly songs after a very scathing look from Steve as a reminder to behave.

Amelia walks over to him after a few songs, on a sugar high like he’d never seen on her before, and asks to play the guitar.

He’s hesitant, but not because he’s still protective of his guitars, more because he doesn’t want her to embarrass herself in front of her friends. Kids are cruel, even and especially at seven, and the last thing he wants is this to be the thing that kids talk about for the next ten years.

She sits on the couch and holds it, arranging her fingers…correctly. Eddie watches.

Steve is watching from across the room.

She starts strumming, very quietly at first, not as confident as she’d been a moment ago. And then she starts really playing.

It’s one of the songs Eddie wrote. He played it for the last four months nonstop as he perfected it, and she’d apparently been watching.

Eddie’s jaw is on the floor and he quickly looks over to Steve, who has a similar look of surprise on his face.

He doesn’t interrupt her. She makes it through the entire song.

She looks up.

“When did you learn to play guitar?” Eddie asks.

“When I was watching you.”

“But have you played before tonight?”

Amelia shook her head, looking down. “Didn’t wanna touch it without asking.”

Eddie pulls the guitar from her hands and sets it aside, then pulls her into his lap and hugs her. Steve sits down on the couch next to them, hand on her back.

“You can always ask, sweetie. And if you’re this interested and this natural, we can buy you your own guitar if you want. I didn’t think you were interested in playing.”

“I wanna be like you,” Amelia admitted against his shoulder.

Eddie was done for. He looked at Steve, half-panicked, trying not to cry in front of these people, but Steve wasn’t faring any better.

“Then we can go get you a guitar tomorrow. You can get your own picks, too. They might even have purple ones.”

“Can I have red? Like yours?”

“Of course, sweetie.”

It only took them two days after that to realize she could play by ear, just like Eddie.

And then it only took another day after that to realize she had taught herself to read music too.

They spent hours and hours every week playing together while Steve cooked dinner or checked her homework or just watched them.

When Eddie’s band decided to record another album and go on tour when Amelia was 12, Eddie insisted that she get to be on it.

She ended up helping write one of their songs, played on the track on the album, and with a lot of work, convinced Steve to let them homeschool her for the entire 8 months they’d be on tour so she could perform on stage with her dad.

“Can’t believe she’s not even genetically yours. Are you sure you didn’t have an affair?” Steve asked the night before they were leaving for Europe.

“When would I have had an affair? I came back to the tour bus or hotel with you every single night,” Eddie kissed him softly. “She’s amazing, huh?”

“She is. What happens when she wants to be a full blown rockstar like her dad too?”

“Then we make sure she’s protected and has good people around her like I have. She could be a rockstar easily. She’s got the talent and the presence,” Eddie smiled. “And she’s got me to make sure no one takes advantage of her. But she’s only 12. We’ve got time to worry about that later.”

“You’re bringing her onstage every single night all over the world for the next eight months, baby. I think later is now.”

Eddie sighed. “She’s gonna blow them all away. I’m proud of her. Let’s focus on that for now.”

And she did blow everyone away. The fans and the media had nothing but good things to say, and Steve didn’t have to go into overprotective mom mode at all until she was 15 and signing a record deal of her own.

But between Eddie and him, the entire industry knew better than to fuck with her or them.

They made rules, of course. School still came first, she still had required family events to be at, she still had regular friends at home. She wasn’t allowed at any parties, not even the events for award ceremonies.

But she didn’t really need those rules. She had no interest in parties or abandoning her friends or family, and she was a straight A student who still had hopes of getting into Brown for Journalism like her Aunt Nancy. She had a passion for music and wanted to share it, but not at the cost of the rest of her life.

And Eddie and Steve did everything they could to make sure she got to have everything. That’s what they’d promised her from day one.

[yarrayora]

i like how falin being a maiden to be saved, a reward to be coveted, isn't a point to criticize in dungeon meshi. because we have various other female characters who are written as having their own agency

we have marcille, of course, whose story can be observed since chapter 1. how she's not depicted as the "girl team member" but "part of the team". when you're writing a protagonist group where there's only one female character among the male cast, you can always feel this sense of alienation in the writing, like she doesn't belong in the group as the story focuses on the rest of the boys. the way masashi kishimoto writes team 7 is a major example

but marcille is still allowed to be a "typical girl" who doesn't want to eat gross things and enjoy feminine clothing without forgetting the fact that she's a multifaceted person. she's a researcher who isn't afraid to get dirty when it's something relevant to magic and her goal, even though she's also grossed out at the idea of feces being used as fertilizer for crops

and when falin comes back as a monster who can't speak, it's still not a point to criticize. oftentimes stories involving female characters losing their speech (or, well, becoming disabled in some way) is meant to make her vulnerable, a fragile 'something' to be protected. but this is not an argument about how chimera falin is super strong, because that's a shallow way of thinking that ignores the fact that being a Girlboss doesn't ensure your female character is written as a fully realized person. this is about the fact that almost right after that Izutsumi joins Laios' party.

She joins late in the game, so it'll be easy for her to only be tacked on as an afterthought. A notable example would be Okumura Haru from Persona 5, where her character gets overshadowed a lot by the other party members' more colorful personalities, as if the writer wasn't sure how to integrate her into the already developed dynamic.

there's also how she's written as a sweet and shy girl yet the way her school uniform is designed betrays that image. it's heavily customized even compared to the trendy girl like ann which means it's impossible for her outfit to not go against school regulation. not something an obedient girl would have done. which makes me wonder if they couldn't decide on her writing until last minute.

but Izutsumi is different. her involvement and her own personal story arc eventually intertwines to the overarching plot. she hates having her options limited. she hates having responsibilities to uphold. she hates eating veggies! she hates that people expects her to do things their way! she wants freedom to do whatever she wants!

but in the end she learns that to have the freedom to choose, she has to uphold her responsibilities. starting from the simple things like taking care of her health by eating balanced meals, not just the ones she enjoy. she has to do work to get enough money for her food and travels. and she has to learn how society works so she can live independently. she has to learn which desire she has to prioritize that she can balance out with her responsibility as a living being.

her own self-realization culminates into her giving advice to laios that leads to him steeling his resolves to become king.

so you have Falin, who gets turned into a monster that cant communicate her desire and needs while under the mad sorcerer's control, and in exchange you get Izutsumi, the 'beastman' who knows exactly what she wants and throws a tantrum about it without shame, not understanding that what you want isn't always what you need. i think it's a really cool parallel!

this is a prime example of how tropes that get associated with misogynistic writing can be used as a proper tool that serves a narrative when you have more than multiple female characters having their own character arcs

in fact, you can apply this to pretty much every other things. when you're writing gay characters, having only one of them and they act camp can make people raise an eyebrow at whether this is meant to be a caricature of gay people or not. having two of them and one acts camp and one acts normie can be read as a bias against gay people expressing themselves. writing multiple gay characters, all with different personalities and desires will avoid accidental stereotyping.

even the minor female characters, be it the canaries or namari, help show that the way the narrative treats Falin isn't born from thinking that women are an alien breed compared to men. that her lack of agency means something for the themes involved.

[probablyasocialecologist]

When Keir Starmer was asked if cutting off water and supplies are actions that fall within international law, he said on live radio that Israel “does have that right”. Then, his party claimed he never said this at all. When Starmer said that Labour would not recognise Palestine unilaterally, his own shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, told the Financial Times that Labour would consider it. Nowhere are these contradictions clearer than when politicians express unequivocal support for Israel’s actions while also expressing concern for civilians in Gaza. In a post on X, Lisa Nandy, the shadow international development secretary, appeared to support the suspension of funds to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, because “allegations this serious demand a serious response”, while also “seeking reassurances” from the prime minister that aid could still be provided. I had to read her statement several times to try to understand what she was getting at. Meanwhile, David Cameron said he was “worried” that Israel may have broken international law, but that this did not change the UK’s stance on exporting weapons to Israel. Riddle me that. You might call this tendency Schrödinger’s policy. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said that 7 October could not be taken as licence to “dehumanise” others, but his government chose twice to invoke the right to bypass Congress and provide more weapons to Israel. This dissonance is a product of attempting to reconcile an irreconcilable position. The facts are simply too stark for anyone to confront them while plausibly continuing to support Israel’s actions in Gaza. So politicians instead resort to contradictory and sometimes wild explanations to avoid calling out these actions or demanding that anything should be done about them. The results border on derangement, such as when Nancy Pelosi told CNN that while some protesters are “spontaneous and organic and sincere”, calling for a ceasefire means giving voice to “Mr Putin’s message”. And if that wasn’t enough, last year, she told pro-Palestine protesters to go back to China, as that’s where “their headquarters is”.

[...]

Gaza has become the expression of a legitimacy crisis for an Anglo-American political class who preside over already fragile systems that deliver less and less to their populations, and whose main offering is that the alternative is worse. Things may look stable, but underneath lurk managed discontents about costs of living, diminished social mobility and the ravages wreaked by rightwing governments to which centrists provide no real answer.

[deonsx]

If Bsd Men Become Father

Feat: Dazai, Chuuya, Ranpo, Fyodor, Nikolai

Dazai Osamu

Two girls who look like princesses

Dazai Someone who really loves to play with them and kiss and smell them and wants to make the most of every minute of her time with them, "I love you" He smiled and kissed one and then looked at the other and said "I love you" and kissed again

Dazai took care of them best when you and them were by his side so now he has a real family, heaven was next to him, Your husband was very nervous at first, he had many doubts about what kind of father to be, but then everything worked out with your first daughter

One of your daughters would ride on osamu's shoulder at the time of going shopping, while the other would rather sit quietly on his lap, He likes to braid their hair, he likes to cook together, in fact, he only make some little things because he doesn't want to spoil the food, but he learned a little something with you

He cares more than anything about sleeping with you and taking care of you, and you are his most precious person in this world “you are my paradise”

Chuuya Nakahara

One boy one Girl is smart and beautiful at the same time

We all know he has the best dad potential he will truly see them as the only people in the world, He can do a lot of magic tricks on them with his power and make them fly "Daddy I want to fly!"

"No dad, fly me first!!" the two children were constantly begging their father to fly them "Okay okay my beautiful daughter and son" He flew them both with his strength and their laughter filled the room, "My love please be careful" You kissed your husband and said looking at the flying children "Mom! we're flying we're flying!!"

You laughed, "My love, I'm just doing a magic show" he smiled and kissed your neck, his orange hair shining with the morning light, They both shone with orange hair, one of them looked so much like his father that you thought it would be difficult to distinguish when he grew up

Your daughter, on the other hand, looked like you, her hair was the same as your husband chuuya, her eyes were like you, and her temperament was the same as you “My loves, I wouldn't change anything in this world for you”

Ranpo Edogawa

One daughter with the intelligence of her father

Ranpo was the kind of father who liked to take his daughter to work, he would take care of her while she was at work, he didn't even need to do his job, he would constantly train her in his own way so that his daughter could get the best education and develop her intelligence

After her daughter was born, she started to disrupt her work, you and she wanted to make a lot of new memories with her daughter, so she took you on vacations, she liked to play with her daughter, the two of them got along very well

Ranpo was determined to give his daughter the childhood he couldn't live, he liked to play games with her and introduce her to his friends "Look, the white-haired man you see over there is actually a lion." Ranpo, who introduced the agency to your daughter, was saying everything in particular, "Lion!? I want to see a lion" “There are so many memories I can't wait to share with you”

Fyodor Dostoyevski

One Purple-haired boy with purple eyes

Fyodor really wants his son to grow up with a disciplined and beautiful family unlike him, he has had a serious relationship with you for a long time and finally you and him wanted to have a child

He and his son were both really quiet, they like to play chess, you often catch them playing trivia games, They really seemed to understand each other a lot. But of course it was in warmer times. When you go shopping, Fyodor usually walks by holding his son hand, but sometimes you can see him on his lap and that's enough to make you smile

You often tell them to help you and as a result you start cooking together, and they both find it really childish, but they still agree just for you, You often tell them to help you and as a result you start cooking together, and they both find it really childish, but they still agree just for you

With his son by your side, Fyodor pulled you by the waist and placed a kiss on your forehead “I love my family” him whispered inside

Nikolai Gogol

One white-haired colored-eyed girl

A girl with the same hair color and acting just as crazy, nikolai, your husband, always puts on a show of her own to entertain her "Daddy! Please let's teleport once more!" You were watching them leaning against the door, two people in the house who were constantly shining and beaming

Eyes quickly turned to you, nikolai suddenly teleported to his side "I'm sure Mommy would like to teleport with us!" "Yeyyy Mommy!!” they took you in without letting you talk and your day was spent with smiles, combing him doing your daughter's hair getting her ready for school, you watching them lay in your bed

You slowly got up from your bed and looked at nikolai, who was combing and braiding your daughter's hair, his tired white hair and messy eyes focused on her braiding

After kissing your daughter, you covered your husband's hair and face with kisses, your daughter slowly approached you and hugged you "Ahhhhh you girls are my trouble, I'm in love with you"

Enjoy!

[2004hitalbumsevenswans]

I really enjoyed Batman: Caped Crusader. I was worried (like everyone else) that Bruce Timm would push his Bruce/Barbara obsession, but they barely interact when Bruce is out of costume, and he’s all business as Batman. Barbara is (presumably) about the same age as Bruce in this adaptation, she’s a young public defender, who still lives at home with her dad. Commissioner Gordon is mentioned to have 30 years on the Gotham police force at one point. And the series is loosely based on Batman: Year One by Frank Miller, and has Matt Reeves as a producer. It’s definitely an interpretation of the early years of Batman.

The setting is vaguely and aesthetically set in the 1940s, mirroring the original Batman and riffing on DC comic stories and character interpretations from that time. Clayface’s story and appearance is based on the original interpretation of the character, which I really enjoyed - especially as someone’s who’s read the first couple years of the original Detective Comics/Batman stories. (There’s also a lot of great references to the Adam West show, and a couple of its themes are reimagined for this more noir story.)

I could see the series setting up something between Bruce and Barbara potentially, but their interactions are really blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. There’s a moment where Bruce’s is climbing back onto the Iceberg Lounge yacht and he uses a pick up line on her, which she scoffs at, then he proceeds to use the line on two other young women. There’s another moment that you could say is pre-flirting, or is at least setting up a foundation to further a relationship between the two. Where Barbara makes a comment about Batman letting himself into her office unannounced whenever he feels like it, and she tells him she needs a way to contact him, and he gives her the Batphone number. At this point I think you could make more of an argument for a Harleen/Barbara pairing than her and Bruce.

I think the characters would both individually need a lot more development to be in a romantic relationship. I’ll say this even though I know it will be an unpopular opinion: in this interpretation I wouldn’t mind putting Bruce and Barbara together. I know that’s practically sacrilege coming from someone who’s favourite character is Oracle but hear me out.

My main issues with Bruce and Barbara together (especially when it comes to Timm’s work) is the age difference. It’s often debated but Barbara in most iterations (including current comic canon) is around the same age as Dick, usually a couple of years older, 2-3 at most. Bruce is depicted as having at least 15 years on her, if not more. And most stories that have Bruce and Barbara together also fixate on her being batgirl. Then there’s the tendency to make a Nightwing-Batgirl-Batman love triangle which I don’t want to get into but I hate completely.

None of that is happening here. Barbara has her own storylines that are just as prominent as Bruce and Harvey’s. She’s an adult with agency and flaws and is just as fleshed out as any of the other characters are. I wouldn’t be surprised if the show takes a season or two to develop a romantic relationship between the two of them. Bruce is completely focused on being Batman and sees Bruce Wayne as a persona. He’s callous with peoples feelings (Harvey, notably) and is shown to struggle with smaller acts of empathy, opening himself up to people, and honestly, social skills. The last of which doesnt doesn’t affect him too negatively because he’s a rich and well known man in Gotham.

Compared to the Bruce Wayne of BTAS it was a smart choice to show a Bruce/Batman who struggles with people and emotions. It reminded me a lot of Reeves’ the Batman. In wider Batman media you usually see two types of depictions: a compassionate Batman (which is where I would place BTAS) or a more emotionless, be-stoic-and-punch-the-bad-guys-and-look-badass version that is usually just a male power fantasy.

This version of Batman sets up the foundation for a storyline that is relatively unexplored, and I’m sure they’re going to explore it more in the next season (which has already been greenlit).

I was surprised at the lack of adult themes in the show, it was marketed for an adult audience but could easily fit into a PG13 rating, but that was probably on purpose. I was impressed they managed to have so many strong, fleshed out storylines in only 10, 30 minute episodes. But I wouldn’t expect anything less of Bruce Timm, or some of the other names I recognized attached to the project in various ways (Greg Rucka, JJ Abrams, Matt Reeves, and Ed Brubaker).

While there are a lot of critiques of Timm I agree with, I generally enjoy his work and the care he puts into it. I love Greg Rucka and was really excited to see that he wrote the episode that was more Renee Montoya centric. And while I have my issues with Ed Brubaker, I do enjoy his work.

While the series is visually and technologically based around the 1940s, the politics are more modern. Harleen asks Renee out on a date and she talks about it with Barbara openly. I saw one review call the show “race blind” which I would not agree with. Most of the racism is implied through euphemism (the scene with Lucius Fox and Gentleman ghost), but it’s still felt as a point of friction for multiple characters, it affects how they interact with the world around them. There’s also a line spoken by either detective Flass or Bullock that implies no one in the GCPD wants to follow Renee because she’s gay. It’s cut off before the last word, but again, the meaning is implied.

An issue I always had with the Timmverse is its depictions of female characters. They always feel less real than their male counterparts, less important and less visually stylized. All the important (read: desirable) women have the same body shape. They’re thin and extremely, unnaturally curvy. I’m aware that these characters are supposed to evoke that 50s comic pinup imagery but I always thought it was a bit much. Male characters - even before the animation downgrade in BTAS season 4 - were always way more unique from each other than the female characters. That wasn’t something I felt with Caped Crusader. The three most prominent female characters (Barbara, Renee and Harleen) were all different from each other, with different heights, body shapes, hair and clothing styles. They also all had 3 distinct personalities that were built up through the series. I would argue that the show was as much about the “supporting cast” (characters like Harvey, Commissioner Gordon, Renee and Barbara) as it was about Batman.

Overall I was really impressed by the show. I was disappointed with how short it was. I hope that Renee’s personal life gets a focus with the next season, and I hope they bring back Greg Rucka to write it. I love how he wrote her in Gotham Central. I was a little annoyed that they introduced the Joker at the end of the series (as a peak into the next season). I think he’s too over saturated as a character, and sometimes his introduction into a Batman story takes over everything else, and he’s depicted as Batman’s Moriarty. I do have hope that this won’t happen in Caped Crusader, because it seems that villains will be reoccurring, but there’ll be a large cast, just like in BTAS. That aspect did remind me of the way characters were introduced in those early Batman comics, it really has the same vibe. I also really really do not want Harley to be involved with the Joker in any way. Please keep her as a separate character, this new interpretation of her is great as is, he doesn’t need to be involved.

I would also be interested to see if the show develops Barbara’s character into Oracle. I could see that happening with the introduction of the Joker at the end of season one. Maybe they’re going to rework the Killing Joke? I couldn’t see them having her as batgirl, but I would be interested to see how they worked Oracle into a world with 1940s technology. I’m thinking back to her as Oracle in the Doom that Came to Gotham, and how clever that was. I’m sure they could do something just as interesting with her here. Something more supernatural feels like a long shot, because Timm usually sticks to the more “realistic”, street-level versions of Batman, but they did introduce Gentleman Ghost. So it’s a possibility.

One thing I did think could have been better was some of the voice work. Not the voice acting itself, but the design. It felt too polished alongside the score and the animation. I wish the voice acting had been more atmospheric, had more depth. It felt too clean. Hamish Linklater was great as Bruce/Batman. Following Kevin Conroy is no small feat, and Linklater’s performance felt reminiscent of Conroy without sounding like an impression. It was quiet and unassuming, yet strong.

I’m not usually someone who watches things more than once, but I’m definitely going to be rewatching Caped Crusader soon.

[merwgue]

Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses series, despite its claims of promoting feminism and female empowerment, contains an undercurrent that undermines its own narrative — particularly when it comes to addressing Rhysand’s sexual assault of Feyre. In A Court of Mist and Fury (ACOMAF), we see a scene that exemplifies this disturbing dynamic: under the mountain, Rhysand forces Feyre to kiss him while she is under his mind control, leaving her helpless and stripped of agency. While Maas paints this as part of Rhysand’s complex plan to save her, the reality of the act — that he violates her consent — is swept under the rug as their relationship progresses. This lack of resolution highlights a troubling issue: Maas is aware that Rhysand's actions constitute an assault, but rather than allowing the characters to address this, she buries it under romantic arcs and "fated mate" destiny.

A glaring moment in A Court of Wings and Ruin (ACOWAR) emphasizes the awareness of Rhysand's assault. Lucien, during a heated exchange with Feyre, accuses her of having loved Rhysand all along. Feyre’s defense is chilling: she reminds Lucien that Rhysand forced her to kiss him, an act she had no control over. And Lucien, in shock, asks the question that echoes the concern of many readers: “This is the man you’re with now?”

Let’s break this down: Maas knows what she’s written. She acknowledges the fact that Rhysand took away Feyre’s autonomy, yet she never gives Feyre the chance to confront or process that trauma. This moment between Feyre and Lucien is the only time it’s mentioned in the series, a brief flicker of recognition that quickly fades into oblivion. By doing this, Maas diminishes Feyre's trauma, allowing Rhysand’s actions to go unchallenged. The result? A deeply troubling message that sidesteps the seriousness of assault in favor of a romanticized narrative where love — or destiny — can somehow erase all wrongs.

From a psychological perspective, the erasure of trauma is harmful to the portrayal of healing. Studies show that trauma victims need acknowledgment and validation to heal properly, whether that acknowledgment comes from themselves, their loved ones, or society at large. Bessel van der Kolk, in his book The Body Keeps the Score, argues that unaddressed trauma can create lasting impacts on a person's mental and physical well-being. In the case of Feyre, Maas’s choice to brush the assault under the rug denies her character this crucial step in recovery. Instead, Feyre’s journey with Rhysand is romanticized, implying that the good intentions behind the assault are enough to negate its damaging effects.

Worse still, this narrative perpetuates the toxic idea that love or destiny can somehow "heal" or make up for the violation of consent. Maas portrays Rhysand as Feyre’s savior, her destined mate who "redeems" her from her struggles under the Mountain and from Tamlin’s controlling behavior. But the foundation of their relationship — one that begins with Rhysand drugging and forcing himself on her — never gets resolved. The result is an uncomfortable message: that it’s okay to overlook the bad as long as the end result is a "happy" relationship.

This isn’t just a failure to develop Feyre’s character fully; it’s a failure to challenge problematic behaviors within relationships. Maas’s works often preach the importance of women reclaiming their agency, yet Feyre, the main protagonist, is never given that chance with Rhysand. She is instead swept into the romantic arc without confronting what was done to her — leaving readers with a sour aftertaste that Maas is more interested in fated love than in true feminist ideals.

This lack of resolution becomes even more troubling when we look at the broader narrative of ACOTAR, where Maas purports to champion survivors of sexual violence and trauma. In the very same series, Maas writes about women being violated, their bodies used against them. She even writes about Rhysand’s trauma as a victim of sexual assault by Amarantha. Yet when it comes to the male lead, Rhysand’s similar violation of Feyre is conveniently ignored, as if his status as a romantic hero somehow absolves him of accountability. This sends a dangerous message: that sexual assault can be dismissed or excused based on who commits the act.

Maas’s selective treatment of sexual assault and trauma in ACOTAR is not just problematic — it’s hypocritical. She builds an entire narrative on the premise of women reclaiming their power, only to sidestep one of the most significant power imbalances in the series. Feyre, the character Maas positions as the embodiment of strength and resilience, is denied the opportunity to address the fact that the man she loves once stripped her of her autonomy. In doing so, Maas undermines the very feminist message she claims to be advocating.

This flaw in Maas’s storytelling has greater implications. The normalization of Rhysand’s behavior can desensitize readers to the reality of coercion and assault within relationships. It creates an illusion that as long as someone loves you or has good intentions, their harmful actions can be overlooked. This isn’t empowerment — it’s erasure, and it’s damaging.

In conclusion, Sarah J. Maas's decision not to address Rhysand's assault on Feyre is a troubling oversight that diminishes the importance of consent and accountability in relationships. While Maas may champion themes of recovery and empowerment, the fact that this pivotal moment remains unresolved undercuts her message and leaves readers grappling with a romanticized depiction of coercion. Feyre and Rhysand’s relationship, as it stands, is built on a foundation of unacknowledged harm — and until that harm is addressed, Maas's narrative remains completely flawed.

[ewingstan]

Going into Ward, one of the things that interested me is that pretty much everyone who read it, no matter what the felt about it as a whole, seemed to like what it did with Tattletale and incorporate it into their understanding of the character. To a certain extent this makes sense, outside of Amy people's problems with Worm usually aren't that characterization had been changed. But few other aspects of Ward have been talked about with so much relative positivity, or influenced so much retroactive analysis of Worm.

After reading her interlude, I'm starting to understand why.

From the bat we're given blunt and effective portrayals of how alone Lisa feels. Half of her descriptions of other characters focused on how they reminded her of people she's lost. The Heartbroken are primarily described by the ways they do and don't resemble Alec. Aiden by how he does and doesn't resemble Taylor. Imp and Rachel get mentioned but don't get to make an appearance at all, furthering the effect—reminders of her closest connections are everywhere, but the connections themselves are nowhere. She's left with the "expanded Undersiders," and is painfully aware of how they either dislike her or will never form a close connection with her.

There's a lot more emphasis here on how her power is a separate entity than there was in Lisa's Worm interlude. She's snarking at it, talking about it as something that interjects, drawing a clear divide in her head between what it figures out and what she figures out. Is that her knowledge of its nature developing, or simply a new way of looking at how it always worked?

The framing in the passage above seems to suggest that its encouraging her to distance herself from others, pushing her to interact but specifically feeding her information that will prevent close connections. Questions of agency and identity aside, I do like this as an aspect of powers-as-coping-mechanisms: she was triggered by failing to save someone she was close to, not recognizing the signs that he was unwell. Her power helps her see the signs she couldn't before, but it also seems to try to prevent those close connections from forming so she can't be hurt the same way. Not that its successful. Can't stop betting on losing dogs and all.

What she calls people internally is interesting. I figured she had been calling Sveta "Garotte" earlier to needle her, but she continues to call her that in her own thoughts, as does her power. Valkyrie gets to be "Valkyrie," and Vicky isn't called a cape name at all. There's a few ways to interpret this; I'm tempted to say that Lisa sees Victoria as a relic of pre-Gold Morning days, and sees Sveta largely in that context. Though I also feel like there's some refusal to see her or Rain as people who are separate from what they've done in the past. A lot of the comments I've read while reading the last few chapters are people debating whether she should've gone "white-hat," and I get the sense that she sees something dishonest in that. Leaving behind the things you've done isn't something she can do—even Lisa Wilbourn can't leave behind the failures of Sarah Livsey.

That might be something to think about in the context of Victoria claiming Tattletale is awful because she represents "giving up on something better." Its kind of baffling in that context; many people have pointed out that cutting the number of overdoses in half was way better than anything the heroes ever did, but Victoria resents that TT saw merely halving it as acceptable. She prefers methods that highlight a certain attitude towards a problem over methods that are effective at dealing with a problem. Having zero tolerance for overdoses and being able to do fuck-all about it becomes preferable to halving it, because not giving up on an ideal world is better than actually making the world better. As little regard as I have for Victoria's position, it seems that the text is giving it some credence by positioning Lisa not just as pursuing the methods that will make an actual difference, but also as rejecting the idea of "something better." Sveta can't be more than Garotte, overdose rates can be halved but not lowered further. Its weirdly reifying of Victoria's position, making Lisa a foil to it rather than a reflection of an entirely unrelated worldview.

There's a few team leaders in the parahumans-verse who get characterized as encouraging and benefiting from chaos within their ranks. Jack Slash had a self-image of himself as a master manipulator who knew just how to keep the Nine at each others throats to keep them in line, though of course his power was pulling heavy duty there. Trickster exulted in sowing chaos, but while he could use it to his advantage when working alone it explicitly got in the way of the Travellers as a whole during their operations. Lisa incorporates aspects of both; she seems to be cultivating a "this chaos is all part of my design" air for Faultline and Victoria while actually always being on the cusp of losing control of her own team. It seems less like something she's doing deliberately and more like something she has to deal with, even if she later frames it as part of preparing Aiden or something similar.

Man, her relationship with Aiden. First explicit mention of Taylor we've had since the beginning and its for a blunt confirmation that she sees herself as failing Taylor in the same way she failed Rex, and is terrified of doing with Aiden. It feels both like she's holding him at arms length and that she's desperate for a close connection with him.

[theblogwithoutfear]

karen page is so annoying in the show...is she better in the comics somehow or is she just like that

So I've actually wanted to talk about this forever, but I kept forgetting to make a post about it. Your ask is a perfect opportunity to write down all my thoughts. Brace yourself, because I have a lot to say. Sorry in advance lmao

I actually prefer Karen in the show. To be fair, I have not finished all the comics, but so far I think her TV counterpart is a lot better (I still like her a lot in the comics tho, don't get me wrong). The NMCU version of Karen Page also has a lot of Kirsten McDuffie (another comic book girlfriend) in her, which is great in my opinion.

A lot of people find her annoying, but to me it's her flaws that make her such a fantastic character. She isn't a caricature, stock-girlfriend character pulled from a box of tropes; she's a well-rounded individual, extremely realistic, a mirror of Matt Murdock, and a woman with real agency. Her actions have major consequences on the plot. In my opinion, a lot of superhero girlfriends (in comics, movies, TV, whatever) are written more like props than characters, and they don't have any agency or actual plot relevance. Which is why, when a lot of them die, their deaths feel so cheap and inconsequential. That's where fridging comes from. It's been a problem with superheroes since their very inception; and a problem in storytelling at large. So often in fiction, women are flat and unrealistic.

So to me, Karen's heavily-flawed character is refreshing. She is extremely impulsive; she's deeply intelligent, but makes such stupid decisions; she can be hypocritical, self-destructive, and petty. Sometimes she manipulates people, even unintentionally. She's very well-meaning, but constantly makes mistakes. And it's these mistakes that move the plot forward, and reveal important things about both her and Matt. Her actions have real consequences for the story, and she undertakes her own journey throughout the narrative. She is almost as much a protagonist as Matt is, in terms of her character development and growth.

For that matter, every one of the flaws that I listed are things that Matt does too. They are almost perfect mirrors of each other; people who are immensely concerned with justice and compassion, people who care for the truth, and people who want to make their city a better place. However, as they go about it, they stumble and make mistakes and endanger other people. They're hypocritical and contradictory and impulsive. They constantly have to call their own moralities into question, because they almost never live up to their high ideals.

(Also, as a side note, I think many of Karen's flaws—as with Matt's—come as a direct result of all the trauma she's been through: her mother's death, her brother's death, her alcoholism and drug addiction, her dad cutting her off, being framed for murder, almost getting murdered in prison, etc. So I think it's fair to give her some grace.)

But what makes both Karen and Matt so lovable, imo, is that they keep trying. No matter what mistakes they make, they get back up and try again. They do everything they can to atone for the blood on their hands.

I think also (and I'm not accusing you of this, just a certain subset of people in the fandom) that people are more willing to accept Matt's flaws than Karen's—because there's a lot of misogyny built into our society, and there's this ingrained idea that women have to be paragons of virtue. Women, both in fiction and in reality, tend to be put under a microscope and dissected, while men can get away with a lot more. So Matt and Karen have identical flaws, but only Karen gets hate for it, which makes me very sad.

It may be the writer in me, but imo flaws are what make a character—and a story—meaningful. A well-flawed character can take a ridiculous, implausible story and make it feel grounded and real and impactful. A well-flawed woman even more so. I love Karen for the same reason I love Jessica Jones and Wanda Maximoff; or, to go beyond Marvel, for the same reason I love Jo March and Katniss Everdeen and Miss Haversham and Katherina Molina. They all elevate their respective stories beyond the initial premise and plot. Flawed female characters are realistic and impactful, and therefore empowering.

Obviously, to each their own. Some people just find her annoying and don't like her personality, and that's fine. But for me, that's what makes her feel real, and that's why I love her.

[sunshine-jesse]

In defense of Andrew Graves: Facing Yourself​

Alt title: Andrew Graves: The Will to Plow Her

I think my analysis of Andrew is one of the best essays I've written so far. But since then, I think I've expanded my understanding of his character in a way that urges me to add on to my prior essay. What I intend on doing is further fleshing out my reading of Burial, and going deeper in detail on why I think Decay ends up panning out the way it does. This essay will end up sharing a lot of text with my prior one, but will add enough scattered throughout that I think it merits a complete reread instead of just scrolling down and seeing what's new.

I've focused a lot on Ashley in my past writings. She's my favorite character in the story (and depending on how episode 3 pans out, maybe ever) and I'm pretty mortified by how some parts of the fandom have reacted towards her, so I pretty much made it my life's mission to push back against that. From highlighting the ways Andrew mistreats her, to coming up with justifications for her behavior that aren't just being a manipulative bitch, I really wanted to prove that a more favorable picture of her could be painted than most were willing to.

But in doing so, I've left Andrew in the dust.

In highlighting his flaws and the ways he mistreats Ashley, I think I've implied a level of intentionality to his actions that I don't believe he has. When I say that Ashley did nothing wrong, it's in direct response to the idea that she holds the most responsibility and agency in how their dynamic plays out, when in reality, I believe she has very little. Most of her actions in-story are in reaction to a variety of stimuli that come directly from Andrew, that he has control over and are aware of how Ashley feels about. His refusal to use clear and direct language to deny her most toxic tendencies causes her more and more stress as time goes on, and instead of giving her clear answers he opts to be catty, passive-aggressive, or, at his worst, threatening. Never direct and never clear, except when establishing boundaries over his name after the choking scene. Andrew fails to help Ashley be better in some frankly depressing ways throughout the whole story, especially in their childhoods, so we never get to see where she'd fall short if given a better influence.

...

Kind of. More on that later!

In mentioning his thing about preferring to be called Andrew instead of Andy, I also implicitly mention one of the places where Ashley falls short in their dynamic and could stand to do better: recognition.

This scene says a lot. It's the most heartbreaking scene in the game, if you ask me, and probably the single most profound and well-written moment in the entire story. I could write a whole 2000 word essay on it alone, but I've already said most of what I have to say about it through what I've said in other essays, so I'll spare you all that. Instead, I'll use it to highlight something:

"I had fun."

Their dysfunction is fun to her. She's so used to abuse and alienation that even the most awful, stressful (as far as we know) route of the game is still fun to her. And that's not a sign of her being a secret evil sociopath or whatever; that's actually not abnormal behavior to develop for a lifelong victim of abuse. Those highs and lows, those strong emotional highs and lows are -addicting-. They're -fun.- Part of why abuse victims get into so many abusive relationships is because it's easy to pick up on those patterns of thought and take advantage of them, and the cycle of abuse is often furthered when a victim of abuse tries to draw out mutually abusive behaviors in someone with no interest in having that kind of dynamic.

This is where I'm willing to acknowledge Ashley's manipulative tendencies. Not just as a matter of controlling Andrew for its own sake, purely out of jealousy or possessiveness, but as a matter of trying to further the only dynamic she's ever known in her life. Better the devil you know, right?

That push and pull- that emotional rollercoaster- is all many of us know. And it's all Ashley knows. This dynamic is something she's so used to that she reacts incredibly harshly to any attempt to change it, because she doesn't know that things can be better. Because of this, she refuses to engage with who Andrew really is, and tells herself- and him- that she *hates* Andrew:

This scene is almost as heartbreaking as the above one in a lot of ways.

Andrew putting his foot down about the Andy/Andrew name dichotomy wasn't arbitrary and it wasn't just about his comfort. It was about Andrew giving a clear indication about what needs to happen for their relationship to improve. He's recognizing the cycle between them and wants to put a stop to it, because he's confident that things between them CAN get better and evolve into something healthier. Ashley, not understanding that their dynamic can get better, because their "fun" little push and pull of abuse is all she knows, rejects that. She rejects the unknown, and says- in Andrew's mind at least- that she'll never accept that new dynamic, nor will she accept who he really is.

Ouch. No wonder he looks so sad in that screenshot.

They have a conflict of understanding here, and I think it's fair to pin most of the responsibility on Ashley. Andrew was clear in what he wanted, and Ashley just... Didn't. She didn't see the importance of it ("...whatever that means in practice") and didn't really ask. This gap in communication, perfectly displayed in this scene, is likely what causes the Decay ending. He wants things to be better, and wants to treat Ashley better, and whether or not he understands the ways in which she communicates with him is in part what determines what he sees her as.

But there's a lot of evidence that he always wanted things to be better, that he always wanted to treat her better. But external factors have made it very, very difficult, and I think there are two key points in which he started to shed the importance of those external factors and seek that better relationship, both of which happening in the apartment: The killing of the warden and the 302 lady. In the first case, he was forced to do it to protect Ashley in a way he hadn't done before, or depending on how you look at it, since the death of Nina. But the intentionality was the key point here. After this point, he calls Ashley Leyley, which may or may not seem important at this point, but it's something I'll draw attention to later, so keep that in mind.

Next is the killing of the 302 lady, which is the much, much bigger point. We don't learn much about it until later on- as at first he just gives an excuse about the nail gun that doesn't line up with what we see on the map- but during the dream, it's revealed it was a calculated, intentional killing that he did to make sure there was no evidence left behind, and because Ashley (supposedly) would've wanted him to do it anyway. I say supposedly because Ashley herself doesn't seem to ever want Andrew to kill for her past Nina's death, because he only ever kills for her to defend one or both of them. If you want more evidence that violence for violence's sake isn't something she wants, look at this part in the final dream:

A knife isn't what opens the door, despite it being placed on the ground in that very map. While it seems obvious that the knife (violence) would be the key to solving the puzzle, it's put there explicitly to show you that it isn't. It's not what she wants; what she wants is a flower.

So, why is this important? Why am I centering Ashley- again- when this essay is supposed to be about Andrew?

It's because these two killings are when Andrew's self-delusion over who he really is starts to break down. It's still there, mind, as he still relies upon Ashley as an excuse to justify it, but, as well as what I've said before, the name ultimatum is an implicit confession that the normalcy he finds comfort in is starting to lose its grasp on him. There's a lot that's been said about Andy being something close to a "moral impulse" for Andrew, given his child self's reaction to Nina's death being the only thing he does that approximates a normal moral response to his and Ashley's actions, but if you do think that- which I think is a reasonable thing to think even if I don't necessarily agree- there's something you must also keep in mind:

-He- is the one who doesn't want to be called that anymore. -He- is the one who wants to let that moral impulse go, and Ashley is the one making it difficult.

That reading is assuming that Andy is a moral impulse, which I think is... either wrong or too simplistic. Every time I see that reading, it's from someone who's trying to paint him too sympathetically and absolve him of most moral responsibility. I also find it infantilizing to equate morality with childhood in such a way? But that's another tangent that I didn't sign up to talk about. What I do think, however, is that it's a useful framing device to display his own relationship with morality; the allegory to his child self doesn't have to be there for the general pattern to exist.

When Ashley starts to grill Andrew over the killing of the 302 lady, he gets mad. Very mad. Ashley sees it as pointless, as him covering his own ass, but he genuinely did it for her sake, because he thought that's what she wanted, and that it'd make her happy. But what makes her happy isn't violence- or any similarly extreme action for that matter- it's attention and validation. Something he's always reluctant to give her, despite the fact that he always chose her over the alternatives. But despite making that choice, it's always empty and meaningless, because in Ashley's mind, he never did it for her sake.

And hoo boy, does he not like it being framed like this.

He is perfectly willing to do whatever it takes to keep them happy and safe... but only for her sake. It has to be for her sake. He still needs that traditional role, and he still needs to have a narrative in which he's the good guy- a protector. Because it can't be for his sake. It can't be because that's what he wants. He has to uphold that romantic (in the literary tradition sense) ideal. His darkly romantic idealistic streak colors many of his actions and beliefs. This is most plainly visible in his quip about a double suicide being romantic, but it's also visible within the symbolism present within his dream, such as how he can only pave his own path in blood unless Ashley lights the way. It's visible within his appreciation for poetry, and it's visible with how the cultist within the dream speaks in Shakespearean English.

But the transient nature of this ideal is also revealed within this dream, because there's never a cohesive, guided path, even with Ashley there to light it up. Contrary to Ashley's dream, where you literally have maps showing you where to go, Andrew's dream has many more dead ends and no map to guide him. The symbolic role he acts out gives him no clarity, and there's no overarching narrative; merely a bunch of disconnected symbols.

This is contrasted with Ashley's dream, which has narratives so clear that the story literally gives the dream an episode title.

In a sense, he wants to view himself as an actor acting out a role in a story. He wants his life to be poetic, to represent something greater, and to have a cohesive narrative. This is why he's so disconnected from his true desires: He's more concerned with acting as a representative of an ideal than a person with agency. But every time the mask drops, every time he stops acting, his true self becomes visible. He naturally settles into being comfortable around Ashley, in treating her with warmth and kindness, and their banter becomes much less toxic. As intent as he is on acting out his role, it does nothing for him, and as his dream sequence shows, it doesn't even form a cohesive narrative, because he can't act one out. It's too contrary to who he really is, and what he really wants. But that idealization doesn't just apply to himself, it also applies to Ashley. Specifically, who Ashley is, vs who he wants her to be.

In his unique dream sequence, he sees two versions of Ashley; the child version of her- Leyley- and the adult version of her- Ashley. And the differences in the ways he interacts with the two of them are stunning. Leyley is an obstinate, annoying child. She's the one he NEEDS to take care of, and he hates that. He hates Leyley for what she did for his childhood. He hates that he needs to provide for her. He has the option of trying to kill her, even, over something as small as a candle!

But in the room with all the murders, the gilded cage, he sees Ashley as an adult. This version of Ashley is stuck in a closet that he himself has to open- and to choose to see. Their interactions are calm and friendly. She teases him a bit, sure, but she's still helpful, and they have fun together. He doesn't need her, and she doesn't need him. He needed Leyley- needed the candle- but here, there are other limbs strewn about for him to take. And, crucially, he doesn't even have the option to kill this Ashley for one of the limbs.

And during the choking scene, he lets her go the moment she acknowledges that he doesn't need her anymore. This is the first time we know of that he seems comfortable enough to set a clear boundary, which is acknowledging that their prior dynamic is dead and that they're now Andrew and Ashley, not Andy and Leyley. It's a bit late to express a clear boundary -after- literally acting like he was going to kill someone, but it's the first time we know of that he sets a clear standard for what, in his mind, would improve his relationship with Ashley.

After all, what he wants is to want her, not need her. He wants Ashley for Ashley's sake. Not for what she can provide him. He doesn't even need her for sleep, he just wants her. But Ashley has trouble acknowledging this, because he's never before shown that WANT. Only a NEED. She keeps trying to find ways to make him need her, because she's never seen what his desire for her is really like. She's only ever seen him desiring someone else, someone other than her.

She's only ever seen him as Andy, because she's never truly seen Andrew, only the violence he can inflict on others. But Andrew can see both:

He can see Leyley, the needy, bratty child who always needs his attention, that he needs to provide for. The one he hates and wants to get rid of. The one he kills for to protect.

And he can see Ashley, the one who engages in friendly and cute banter with him. Who comforts and shows him physical affection. The one he loves. The one he kills for to make happy.

He just can't choose which one he wants to see. Every outside influence- from his parents, to Julia, to Nina- makes him see her as Leyley. Ashley herself makes him see her as Leyley too, whenever she brings up all the things he did for her, and calls him Andy, his child self, instead of Andrew, his current self. And as long as he sees that child, he feels like one too, and can never give Ashley anything that comes from the heart.

But he really, really wants to see Ashley as an adult. He wants to take pride in her, how much she's grown, and how driven and competent she really is.

But god damn, does that bitch ever make it hard, because there IS no real difference between Ashley and Leyley. She's grown and changed over time, taking more adult (and stereotypically feminine) responsibility upon herself, but the fact that her temperament and personality hasn't changed much obfuscates that growth. When you talk to Ashley in the closet during the dream after getting the limb, Andrew asks Ashley to come out of the closet, but she refuses to come out because he won't invite Leyley over to play, which is a pretty strong metaphor for how he interfaces with different aspects of Ashley's personality and refuses to accept others. But the reality is that he needs to accept both, or rather, see her whole self as Ashley, rather than just the parts he likes.

In the end, it's him who has to make the choice how to see her. Ashley can only see what she's been shown, but Andrew can choose.

And in the basement scene, he makes that choice.

If Ashley refuses to leave him alone with their parents, that's it. In one of the most critical and important moments of his life, she couldn't give him the space needed to make up his own mind. She couldn't treat him as an adult. She couldn't see him as Andrew. If she does give him that choice, she chooses to acknowledge that Andrew is an adult who can be trusted to make his own decisions, even though she (perhaps foolishly) believes that this choice lines up with her own interests. And frankly it does either way, but in accepting their mom's offer, her chooses to see her as Leyley once and for all. He chooses not to reciprocate what Ashley showed him. He does it because he needs to, not because he wants to. Because it's his duty, not his desire.

This is what results in the Decay ending. Through his inability to see Ashley as an adult, he surrenders his agency and views all of his actions as an extension of his responsibilities, his role, which he no longer wishes to uphold. He dissociates fully from who he really is, acting in accordance with that disconnected, barely-cohesive narrative that exists only within his mind. The game starts to resemble the heartwrenching tragedy that many seem to take for granted that it is, as their dynamic fully doubles down on its painful toxicity. And, in an example of a poetic book end, Ashley's dream shows a double suicide, closing the book on their tragic tale.

It's tragic. It's heartwrenching. It's poetic. It's beautiful.

...Except it's not. Not at all.

It's actually fucking stupid, pointless, and brutal, and Burial shows us that. When we view their spiral as beautiful, we project the same darkly romantic ideal that Andrew possesses onto the story.

But the actual reality is horrifying.

Ashley spends most of Decay terrified of Andrew, the one person she found comfort in. He acts cold, distant, and aggressive towards her, showing pointless cruelty instead of any warmth. All she wants is comfort; all she wants is to not die. She doesn't want to engage in this death spiral at all, and, in her dream sequence, shows none of the same willingness to die alongside Andrew that Andrew does with her. The moment we stop focusing on the end of the Decay dream sequence, which has very striking imagery, and if you choose not to shoot, one of the most beautiful scenes in the game, we can see it for what it really is:

A scared animal running away from a predator.

The moment you see Decay through Ashley's eyes, and not the perspective of some romantic ideal, Decay becomes terrifying, tense, and painful. There is no catharsis to be had in this tragedy. It's easily avoidable as long as Andrew chooses to engage with reality, and not the empty promises of his mother and incoherent narrative of his ideal.

Finding beauty and meaning in tragedy is how we cope with the harshness of reality. But there is no coherent narrative to the tragedies we experience, just like there's no coherent narrative to the ideal Andrew wishes to uphold. It's something we create- that he creates- but it's not something that actually exists.

And when Andrew casts aside his desire for that ideal, and the responsibilities it shackles him to, it grants him clarity that he never had before. He sees the world for how it really is, and acknowledges that nobody- the least of which their mother- is as different from Ashley as they pretend to be.

They're no better than her, and he's tired of people pretending that they are. People are all the same, no matter what ideals they try to uphold and represent. They still sacrifice others in the name of advancing themselves, still punch down whenever they can, and still lay blame on those beneath them rather than try to take control of their lives. They just use those ideals to justify themselves, but Ashley, and now Andrew, reject even the need for that justification.

This is why I believe the story is nihilistic. Not in that it asserts the inherent meaninglessness of life, but in that it grapples with the ideals we uphold and how they obfuscate the reality of the world we live in. The story, intentionally or not, highlights how ideals are often but a pretense we use to justify what we were likely going to do regardless, and how holding to them too strongly can lead to our ruin- and how monstrous they make us look to those who do not share them.

Consequently, this is how I view the part of the fanbase who thinks Decay is a good ending.

(the characters themselves represent existentialism rather than nihilism but i couldn't really fit that analysis in here without it feeling forced so i might cover that another time)

From that point on, their relationship becomes a lot more friendly, lighthearted, and playful. They ironically start acting more like children, but to quote CS Lewis:

"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence."

He's not ashamed of being playful with Ashley, or showing affection towards her. He's grown up. He finally sees her, and himself, as an adult- although he still doesn't show that in full until much later on (more or that later). But in Decay, he still sees her as a child, and to an extent, probably himself. Let's compare the ways in which he reacts to being called Andy. In Decay, he lashes out at Ashley and gets angry, even threatening her. But in Questionable Burial, he calmly says that Andy is dead and doesn't need Ashley's comfort, but still tries to reassure her that she's still needed. He's not ashamed of or hostile towards their prior dynamic, because he's grown past it. He still acknowledges Ashley's need to feel needed, but here, he recognizes its importance to her, whereas he was hostile towards it before.

It's a display of respect towards her feelings.

This interaction doesn't happen in the Sane ending, however. He doesn't play games with her and is just a lot less fun to be around all together. Why is that? Because he still hasn't yet shaken viewing Ashley as Leyley there. He still views her as a burden, as someone who needs taking care of. He's calmly accepted that, too, mind you, but he lacks respect for her because she's still a child, in his mind. But in Questionable?

The vision did more than just make him extremely embarrassed and lay his deepest desires bare. It forced him to recognize Ashley as an adult. When choosing between "Never" and "Never say never," if Never is chosen, the burden of thought is lifted off of him. But if Ashley chooses "Never say never!", he has to reckon with the fact that Ashley is an adult, someone who can consent to those kinds of things. Someone who MIGHT. Someone who has agency, and can make her own decisions. And more importantly… someone who can trust him to make his own.

Whether he desires sex or not is secondary; he's always had those feelings and has always been ashamed of them. But now that the part of him where that shame came from is dead and buried, there's no childish impulse to grow up. There's no attachment to the hate and bitterness he had before. Look at what he worries about when he picks up that she's uncertain or confused about who he is now:

​

It's her feelings.

He wants to be fun to be around. He wants to make Ashley happy. He loves her, and not as a romantic interest or even as a sibling. He loves her independent of all that baggage.

He loves her as a person.

Their relationship runs contrary to societal ideals in some pretty huge ways. So contrary, in fact, that it's hard for some to accept it as anything good, that it can ever be best for the people involved. It's incestuous. It involves them killing and eating their parents. It involves them distancing themselves so much from society that it's hard to believe they'll ever fit in it again. It's chaotic, it's messy, it's codependent, and maybe even toxic. And yet, here they are. They're coexisting. They're happy. They're healing. They're navigating the world in the only way they can: together.

Meanwhile, in Decay, Andrew refuses to allow himself to get closer to Ashley. He surrenders all agency to her, buys into his own narrative, drinks his own Kool-Aid, and may or may not condemn one or both of them to death in the process. Like it or not, the only path where Andrew takes ownership of his life is the one where he's closest to his sister. It's the one where he decides where they will go next, the one where he decides his own feelings matter, and acts in accordance with what he wants instead of how he thinks he should act.

His agency, his freedom, and his growth don't happen in spite of his codependency; they're happen because of it. They can't grow alone. They can't heal alone.

In reading the story, one must interrogate how important those societal ideals are in the face of the realities of what makes people happy. Are those ideals worth upholding in spite of this? Can we really allow people to fall through the cracks in the name of social norms? Can we blame people for taking rash actions when the social contract has failed them?

Or are we so blinded by those ideals that we can't see that people can be happy while blatantly disregarding them?

All I know is that in Burial, Andrew, having cast aside normalcy, now appears to be truly happy for the first time in his life.

Who are we to take that from him?

[maximumzombiecreator]

Heya, you made a post recently about players getting the wrong expectations from AP podcasts for their own performance and experiences in D&D. The way you described it was almost exactly like something I recently saw at the table, complete with the getting into their own head and thrown off from unexpected interactions and then frustrated. Do you have any advice on how to deprogram, so to say, someone from this mind set and help them enjoy their time with the game more? Apologies if this is something you already wrote about and I just missed it

I ended up writing like 1500 words on this so let me put it under the cut.

So, there are a couple different approaches to this that I think work. The first, if they're willing to play a different RPG, is to play something with a different "play posture." That is, rather than playing a game where the players have a single PC over whom they have agency and nothing else, play a game that is more collaborative or where a player is expected to control multiple characters. For instance, I like introducing players like this to Blades in the Dark, where I'll have every player make two characters in the crew to begin with, and the core mechanic of flashbacks encourages players to take a greater amount of narrative control. I find this pushes them far enough outside their expectations that they're forced to take it on its own merits, and this helps them develop a more at-the-table style of play. Then when they take that back to more trad-style games, they can use the skills they developed and find a greater comfort level.

That said, playing another, stranger game after getting frustrated at their first game is a lot to ask of someone, so it's not at all something I'd take for granted.

In terms of helping at the table, the first thing is to recognize when it's happening. I tend to ask new players to my table what TTRPG experience they have, and one very big reason is that if someone is coming mainly from actual plays, I know to watch out for this.

What I try to do when this happens is pull back the abstraction level and talk about what's happening in a "discussing the characters" way. In particular, what I am most looking to avoid is making the player feel embarassed. That can make them defensive and blame others, or it can make them spiral and want to quit, it's a terrible feeling. So, for some specific examples of things I'll notice and ways to respond:

If the player is freezing - I'll pause the active roleplay, briefly summarize the current situation, and ask how their character is feeling. "So, Alice sort of came into this conversation expecting to bond with Bob, and got a lot of, I think, unexpected hostility back. What's Alice feeling in that moment?" By describing the situation, I am helping to clarify to all players what the current scene looks like. Maybe Bob's player doesn't realize that he's responding to a friendly overture by being a huge dick. Alice's player might be freezing because she came into this with a scene idea that isn't happening, but by making clear what the current scene is and asking her feelings, I'm giving her a chance to make a character choice even if she doesn't instinctively know how to turn that into a productive scene. Even if she decides Alice is feeling like "I want out of this conversation" I can then frame that as creating a tension between these two characters going forward. My goal is, basically, to frame this as a successful scene, just not the one Alice's player planned. To be clear that she didn't fail at making a roleplay scene, she succeeded, it just wasn't the scene she expected.

If the player is getting frustrated - I'll usually try to tweak their out of character frustration into in character frustration. Pulling back to discuss the scene again, I'll say something like, "So, Charlie is really stonewalling Alice here, not giving her any information, and it seems like Alice is getting frustrated by that. What does that look like, what does she do?" Again, describing the situation sets a ground level clarification for all players, but it also lets Alice's player save face. She's not getting frustrated, her character is, and that's good drama! It also gives me the chance to cut the scene short if it's not going to be productive. I can turn to Charlie's player and say, "So, seeing Alice react that way, does Charlie respond any differently, or is he gonna keep stonewalling her?" And if the answer is the latter, I can tie a neat little bow on the scene and move on. Once again, I'll frame this as a successful scene, as establishing a future drama.

If the player is shutting down - I'll look to give them an outlet for their desire to play their character, but ideally one that they don't expect. Come to them proactively with a roleplay scene that they can respond to. If I'm playing with players I know well, I'll usually have one or two I know can be prompted to be an accomplice in this. In a moment of downtime, I'll ask Alice's player what Alice is doing, and then prompt the other player. "Dan, you notice Alice getting pretty deep into her cups, she seems troubled, what do you do?" I may need to nudge Alice's player a few times in this scene, if she's really shutting down, but I find for these players asking the one-two combo of "What are they feeling?" and "What does that look like?" gives enough to keep things moving. If I don't have an accomplice I can trust in the party, I'll try to do the same with an NPC. In this case, I do feel I need to keep things shorter, but it's vital to keep the player from detaching entirely because things aren't going how they'd like. If I'm doing it with an NPC, I'll try to create a specific unusual context to give the player something to respond to. It won't be an NPC coming to them to ask, "hey buddy how ya feelin'?" it'll be the barkeep asking for a hand moving some huge kegs, or a travelling scholar asking for directions, and sharing some philosophical musings, or whatever. I'm looking to pitch them a softball, but one they haven't already formed an opinion on. I'm trying to get them used to roleplay as listening and responding.

If the player is doing alright, but demotivated by things not going how they want - I'll try to catch this at the end of the session with a bit of retrospective. I'll call out a scene they were in that didn't go how they wanted, praise some specific aspect of what each character did in the scene, and ask how they felt about it, and what they think their characters will do going forward. "That scene where Alice went to try and talk to Eve about the heist plans, I love how Alice is watching the other characters and picking up on their skills. Eve's response was kind of unhinged but in a really interesting way, I feel like it comes through that she's a bit unstable. How were each of your characters feeling about that interaction? Do you think they'll approach each other differently after that?" I want to place attention and importance on scenes that might feel like treading water, and to make them into narrative fodder that the player is going to reflect on, rather than dismissing as being bad or wrong.

All these also apply if it's a scene with an NPC they're having issues with, except that I am usually more malleable to adjust my reactions if I feel it's appropriate, or to clarify where the NPC is coming from if I think the NPC's reaction shouldn't change. Overall, I'm really trying to coax my Alice into a place of understanding that scenes that don't go they way she wants are still great, honestly even better, because the chaos and variety of play, the unexpected responses, are what make TTRPG storytelling good. I want her to feel like she didn't play wrong because things didn't go like she wanted, and neither did the other players, and to teach her to respond and react to the unexpected.

All of this, of course, comes with the caveat that this is what works if the player is otherwise fine, but a bit actual play-brained. A fairly frequent comorbidity, however, is the player with main character syndrome, whose frustration comes in part from everything not warping around them and the other players not being wowed by their cool, badass character. When this happens, I have less success deprogramming people (and honestly, less energy to commit to managing their play experience), but it's still possible. The biggest thing I'd add, in this case, is that I will really try to frame my prompts in such a way as to encourage Main Character Alice to appreciate the other characters more. Rather than just asking her how Alice is feeling, I'll specifically ask about how Alice is perceiving and responding to the other characters, and make her spotlight more dependent on reacting to other PCs. This can go badly, if she reacts to other PCs by belittling them or otherwise sucking, but once that happens it becomes a "talk about it out of play" issue entirely and I don't think there's any point addressing in game.