#and mostly that's because of a characterization failure it's not large but it is there

[astarlightmonbebe]

- alice in borderland, ch. 51.8

[writingwithcolor]

Desi Parenthood, Adoption, and Stereotypes

I have a story set in the modern day with supernatural traces, with three characters: a young boy, his bio dad, and his adoptive dad. The boy and his bio dad are Indian, the adoptive dad is Chinese. The bio dad is one of the few people in the story with powers. He put his son up for adoption when he was a child because at the time he was a young single father, had little control of the strength of his powers: he feared accidentally hurting his child. The son is adopted by the other dad, who holds spite to the bio dad for giving up his son since he lost his father as a young age and couldn't get why someone would willingly abandon their child. This also results in him being overprotective and strict over his son. When the child is older, the bio dad comes to their town and the son gets closer to him, which makes the adoptive dad pissed, mostly acting hostile to the other guy, paranoid that he'll decide to take away the child he didn't help raise. Later when they get closer he does change his biases. I can see the possible stereotypes here: the absent father being the darkskinned character, the light-skinned adoptive dad being richer than the bio dad, the lightskinned character being hostile and looking down on the darkskinned character, the overprotective asian parent, the adoptive dad assuming the bio dad abandoned the son. The reason for his bias isn't inherently racist, but I get how it can be seen that way. Is there a way to make this work? Would it be better to scrap it?

Two problem areas stand out with this ask: 

You seem confused with respect to how racial stereotypes are created, and what effect they have on society.

Your characterization of the Indian father suggests a lack of familiarity with many desi cultures as they pertain to family and child-rearing.

Racial Stereotypes are Specific

Your concern seems to stem from believing the absent father trope is applied to all dark-skinned individuals, when it’s really only applied to a subset of dark-skinned people for specific historical/ social/ political reasons. The reality is stereotypes are often targeted.

The “absent father” stereotype is often applied to Black fathers, particularly in countries where chattel slavery or colonialism meant that many Black fathers were separated from their children, often by force. The "absent black father" trope today serves to enforce anti-black notions of Black men as anti-social, neglectful of their responsibilities, not nurturing, etc. Please see the WWC tag #absent black father for further reading. 

Now, it’s true many desis have dark skin. There are also Black desis. I would go as far as to say despite anti-black bias and colorism in many desi cultures, if one was asked to tell many non-Black desis from places like S. India and Sri Lanka apart from Black people from places like E. Africa, the rate of failure would be quite high. However, negative stereotypes for desi fathers are not the same as negative stereotypes for non-desi Black fathers, because racially, most Black people and desis are often not perceived as being part of the same racial group by other racial groups, particularly white majorities in Western countries. Negative stereotypes for desi fathers are often things like: uncaring, socially regressive/ conservative, sexist. They are more focused around narratives that portray these men as at odds with Western culture and Western norms of parenting. 

Desi Parents are Not this Way

Secondly, the setup makes little sense given how actual desi families tend to operate when one or both parents are unable to be present for whatever reason. Children are often sent to be raised by grandparents, available relatives or boarding schools (Family resources permitting). Having children be raised by an outsider is a move of last resort. You make no mention of why your protagonist’s father didn’t choose such an option. The trope of many desi family networks being incredibly large is not unfounded. Why was extended family not an option?

These two points trouble me because you have told us you are writing a story involving relationship dynamics between characters of both different races and ethnicities. I’m worried you don’t know enough about the groups you are writing about, how they are perceived by each other and society at large in order to tell the story you want to tell.

As with many instances of writing with color, your problem is not an issue of scrap versus don’t scrap. It’s being cognizant of the current limits of your knowledge. How you address this knowledge deficit and its effect on your interpretation of your characters and the story overall will determine if readers from the portrayed groups find the story compelling.

- Marika.

I have one response: what? Where are the father’s parents? Any siblings? Is he cut off? Is he American? A Desi that has stayed in India? 

Estrangement is not completely out of the question if the father is Westernized; goodness knows that I have personal experience with seeing estrangement. But you haven’t established any of that. What will you add?

-Jaya

[unohanabbygirl]

Hi! As someone who has written a million words of Lucemond I was hoping you could share your opinions on the ship itself? I recently got into the pairing but I’ve noticed that a large majority of creators feminize or hyper-feminize Luke. Between him and Aemond, Luke is the one who writers will only assign the role of omega in abo fics or give him the ability of mpreg which isn’t seen in other characters. I’m just curious as to why fic writers or artists have gone down this road of characterization for Luke (and vice versa not applied the same to Aemond). I have no idea if this has been debated or not within the fandom either but it seems like you’ve been pretty active in writing since the ship was first established. I read the book so I do know there’s a LARGE difference between book Luke and show Luke. The tv producers wanted more sympathy for Luke’s death so they really upped the insecurity and softness of his character but people have taken that to sort of pigeonhole him into a more feminized character in fics/art. Why does softness and insecurity translate into him being the one to carry a child or undergo traumatic events under Aemond’s thumb? This is def not me critiquing creators or saying it’s bad to feminize characters! I’m just curious as to why the pairing has evolved in this way because in the book Luke is not insecure at all and definitely more confident. Why do you think solely feminizing Luke is SO prolific in created content for the ship?

Hmm, as someone who has read F&B and watched the show I can only answer for myself since other than this little corner I’ve created, I choose not to interact outside of it often since fandom drama and heated debates have never been my thing.

I think one of many reasons so many people here have really gravitated towards assigning Luke the more soft, feminine and nurturing role between them is mostly because of the show. A lot of people i’ve interacted with here on tumblr and in Ao3 comment sections either haven’t read F&B at all or just prefer the show writers drastic changes. It’s the reason why ships like Rhaenyra/Alicent became so popular since HOTD came out. Alicent is often characterized as a doe-eyed girl failure by Rhaenicent shippers instead of her plotting, evil stepmother book counterpart because thats the version of her we got to see on our tv screens, therefore it’s the version many of us like to lean towards when making fanart or writing fic and the same goes for Luke. Though book Lucerys is by no means a shy anxiety filled boy who feels such immense guilt for mutilating Aemond, that’s what we were able to see playout through the show. It’s the characterization most saw and instantly loved.

On top of that, Aemond is Luke’s murderer who taunted and tormented him each chance he was given until the very end. So I feel that in a fandom where dead dove is as popular as it is, it makes sense for Luke to be the one undergoing such heavy trauma while Aemond is the one who inflicts it. I don’t think most of my fellow Lucemond writers put Luke through truama in fics BECAUSE he’s the more soft/feminine one, but because it aligns with canon. Luke was the prey and Aemond was the predator. Lucy being the chosen omega is just an added coincidence from how I see it.

And while I don’t like to speak for others I feel that when it comes to fic people (including myself) usually have a habit in making the smaller and or more sweet partner the omega simply cause a/b/o is an established troupe with each secondary gender having set characteristics. And while I don’t think that omega automatically equates to weak or helpless (most omega Luke fics I’ve read showcase him being strong willed and a little manipulative if it means luring Aemond over to the blacks side) that’s simply what people do when it comes to omegaverse.

As for non a/b/o fics that only assign Luke the ability to have children, I can’t answer why those authors chose that route because I haven’t made anything of the sort myself. While I have written a fic where Luke is a mother it’s a/b/o while the other establishes all targs as being able to give birth/ “sire” so it’s not just Luke. My only answer would be they just want Lucemond babies and decided Luke should be the one to carry.

But those are just my thoughts.

[jeannereames]

Referring to your fictionalized versions of Philip of Alexandros:

How do you imagine Philip feels about Alexandros? At what age did Alexandros start clashing with him? Is there jealousy? Please explain how you see Philip's feelings about his son.

The idea of Philip as jealous of Alexander is largely a fiction of modern scholarship and really, modern fiction writing, specifically Renault who, in Fire from Heaven, implies in a few places that Philip is jealous of Alexander’s closeness to his mother as part of the Oedipal Complex she has going on (and which I find anachronistic and ahistorical).

In contrast, the idea that Alexander was jealous of his father’s success goes back, at least, to ancient sources, but you’ll look in vain, in ancient sources, for the suggestion that Philip was jealous of Alexander. (Lucian might be an exception, in his “Dialogues of the Dead,” but of course, those are fictional, and in them, Philip mostly sets himself up as better than his son because that’s Lucian’s assessment: ATG wasn’t so great.)

The idea that Philip would be jealous of Alexander is entirely hindsight; Philip would have had no way of knowing, while alive, that his son would eventually eclipse him, historically. Being jealous assumes one has a reason to be so…and he didn’t have one. One might get a hint that he was considering setting him aside…but that’s mostly implied by Plutarch and if you read carefully and can detangle Plutarch’s Greek misunderstanding of Macedonian inheritance, it’s clear that wasn’t true either.

So, I wanted to establish that before going into my own views.

In my own characterization, I see Philippos as a proud but largely distant parent for most of Alexandros’s childhood. He was away a lot, and didn’t have a particularly close relationship with his own father, Amyntas, to know how to BE a father. Much of what he knew about Alexandros came from other people’s reports: nurse, tutors, and yes, Olympias too. He wanted a healthy, smart heir, and Alexandros would’ve fit that bill. And I DO see him as very much keeping up with his kids, even if they don’t know as much. See the little short story, “For the Love of Geometry” for some insight into Philip keeping up with his son.

My Philippos is disappointed Alexandros doesn’t look more like him. I think all parents hope to see something of themselves in their children, especially important in antiquity for fathers, as it helped confirm the baby was theirs. So Philippos is always looking for evidence that Alexandros is his son, as he looks A LOT like his mother, and her family. Hephaistion points out the nose, but I think of Alexandros’s inheritances from Philip being more ephemeral: his overall health and ability to heal quickly, his physical strength, his gift for strategy. But he doesn’t look like him.

Alexandros and Philippos have different temperaments. Philippos is an extrovert. Alexandros has some introverted tendencies. Philippos likes rough-and-tumble, whereas Alexandros isn’t as keen on it. Philippos likes a good drinking song, Alexandros makes music on the lyre (imagine a dad who loves his Hank Williams, Jr. with a son who wants to be a concert pianist). Philippos likes sex; Alexandros does too but is picky (again, imagine the man who likes dirty talk in bed versus the son who’s turned off by it). Yet they share hot-headedness. And Philippos is extremely smart and shrewd, so he does appreciate Alexandros’s brains. The fact he hired Aristoteles as personal tutor certainly doesn’t suggest he wants a dumb brute for a son. But all that sets up a failure of shared interests, outside of war itself. Neither of them quite “gets” the other.

Philippos’s own uncertain/insecure childhood resulted in problems for him as an adult: he had to grow up fast and spent a lot of his younger years terrified for his life; he has a very difficult time trusting (he keeps a lot of his plans to himself until they’re ready to implement); and he was frustrated a lot so grew into “anger management issues.” As king and commanding officer, he’s also used to being obeyed without backtalk. Add to this, in antiquity (really, until quite recently) physical punishment (spankings, etc.) was typical. So Philippos occasionally lets his temper get away from him and not only spanked, but slapped, hit, or beat Alexandros. By ancient standards, he’s actually not that bad—but Alexandros is quite sensitive to it. When he’s not already stressed, Philippos does understand reasoning with Alexandros is more effective.

Making it worse, Alexandros’s native intelligence and excitable nature means he’s not especially tractable. As a little boy, like most children, he does want to please his parents. I see him as “difficult” from 3-5ish, as many young boys can be, with that first rush of testosterone. He was BUSY, didn’t sit still well, and was one of those “No!” kids at 3. (The terrible twos is really the terrible threes.) But then, around 6/7 he mellowed out and up to 10/11, I see him as a very sweet, pleasant child, doing his best to make everybody happy and rising to the strict demands of his tutors. Philippos has fond memories of Alexandros at that age, although he didn’t understand why Alexandros kept to himself so much. He worried his mother was making him haughty—and he wasn’t entirely wrong. Because Alexandros was pretty much good at everything, and his mother praised him for it, towards the end of this period, he did start to get a big head…even while a lack of praise from Philippos (who doesn’t do affirmation much) made him insecure.

Around 11/12, Alexandros started getting the tween hormones kicking in, and that, combined with the slightly big head, led to minor clashes like the Boukephalas incident. Philippos looked on it with more amusement than resentment. Assuming we can take any of the details at face value, the, ‘Are you going to put your money where your mouth is?’ (e.g., will you buy the horse if you can’t tame him?) response from Philippos when Alexandros challenges him strikes me as an attempt at a “Teaching Moment.” Alexandros did manage the horse, but Philippos also let him try; he didn’t just shut him down. To me, that says a lot about him as a father. Alexandros clearly saw it as a bit of an “I-told-you-so” victory, but Philippos let it happen. If he’d been overly concerned about his own ego, Alexandros would have been scolded and punished for arrogance, not given a chance to earn himself a horse. But Alexandros wants/needs a lot more frank praise and reassurance than Philippos is willing to give him, or got himself as a boy. Back to different temperaments.

This is more or less where they are when Becoming starts. A big chunk of that book really deals with Alexandros coming into his own, away from Mom and Dad. (“Boarding school” can be hell for some kids but works well for others. I think it mostly worked well for Alexandros.)

It’s in Rise where Alexandros really begins to “act out.” From Philippos’s point of view, taking the army north—alone—against the Getai was a stupid move that could have got him killed. Naming a hill fort after himself is just the cherry on top. But Philippos’s response shows he doesn’t know how to properly discipline Alexandros; it just humiliates him and makes him worse.

Alexandros wants to be trusted more, but Philippos, who learned distrust young, is reluctant to do that, so he can’t share confidences easily. About the only person who knows most of what Philippos is thinking, is Parmenion—and he earned it slowly.

Alexandros and Philippos’s worse clashes occur when Alexandros is 15-19/20…which is exactly when teen boys are so difficult. I had my own; I know. You just hope, some days, they don’t get themselves killed so they can grow out of it. My Philippos had that thought a lot. Alexandros was clever, talented, full of himself, and striving to become his own person against the backdrop of a stupid-successful father…so he was a little shithead sometimes. Philippos was just trying to stay alive at that age. It makes him impatient when Alexandros acts the way a teenaged boy would normally act.

The tragedy of Philippos and Alexandros is that Philippos died right around the time Alexandros finally starts to get his feet under him and show greater maturity. He’s still idealistic and arrogant (as the very last line of Rise should suggest), but he’s not constantly kicking against the goads the way he was even a few years before. He’s about to get a crash course in just how brilliant his father was. 😉

(Of the random, and somewhat ironically given his name, I could see the actor Philip Alexander as a young Philippos. He was supposed to have been very good looking as a young man. The nose is too fine but otherwise, not a bad match. Yes, the actors eyes are green, but we don’t actually know what color eyes Philip had. It’s usually assumed both eyes and hair were brown, but nothing says so.)

[apa-official]

I might just be being sensitive here, but I really dislike it when people make jokes about lobotomies, hysteria, and other such psychiatric practices considered outdated in the present day. I feel like people feel comfortable making these jokes because they believe psychiatric abuse to be a thing of the past, and that anyone who claims to have experienced it in the present is either lying or “crazy” (and therefore deserved it).

In many feminist circles in particular, people often talk about hysteria as something that “normal” (non-disabled) women were diagnosed with because men understand nothing about the women’s bodies. On here a few months ago I saw someone respond to a 19th century psychiatric illustration depicting a “hysterical fit” by joking that the patient was probably just having an orgasm but the doctor didn’t know what that was. To those who make jokes such as these, I want to ask: what if some of the women diagnosed with “hysterical fits” or “hysterical paralysis” were genuinely having medically unexplained seizures or paralysis? What if the woman Charcot describes having episodes where she seems to see and talk to a person who wasn’t there was genuinely hallucinating? Then would you think it was okay to lock them up in hospitals indefinitely? To administer treatments without their consent? Would you even characterize this as “getting them the help they need”? I feel like feminists who have never experienced forced psychiatry firsthand want to identify with the victims of 19th and early 20th century psychiatry without having to think about the ways the abusive practices of that era persist in many of the psychiatric practices of today: involuntary holds, forced medication, discrediting the voices of people with psychiatric diagnoses, etc. That would require aligning themselves with people they’ve been taught to fear. People who experience delusions, who have been diagnosed with personality disorders, who hallucinate. On the whole, there is a failure on the part of many feminists to recognize the diagnosis of hysteria (and modern hysteria-adjacent diagnoses like somatic symptom disorder and many more) as a place where the oppression of women and the oppression of psychiatric patients intersects, in a large part because they don’t even believe the latter exists.

I realize that at the top of this post I mentioned lobotomies and hysteria and then only talked about hysteria. That’s mostly because hysteria is a topic I’ve read much more about, but maybe sometime when I’m more educated I will make a post about lobotomies. Anyways. Please read literally anything by Judi Chamberlin.

[gingus-doon]

have really conflicting views on barbie because on one hand it certainly was a liberal feminist shitfest of capitalist apologism and glanced over feminist issues like race, class, queerness and disability, but there are also movies which have attempted to do their criticism more subtly and yes i mean spiderverse, of race & the police, and fail similarly but it's less jarring i think, because spiderverse was not attempting to be As political and thus fulfilled its vague criticism well enough, while the unmet promises in barbie are glaring by comparison. perhaps this is because feminism has so much resting on her soldiers-- rightfully so, but does this mean that feminist(-adjacent) media is crticized more harshly by onlookers, particularly by gender marginalized people? (as we know, of course the whites and cishet men will be upset about spiderverse and barbie respectively no matter what.) i think so. the criticism is justified but the tendency to see one film as open season for criticism and one largely, off limits (save for discussions of the workers' conditions & miguel's characterization-- a few [mostly black] leftists also discuss the copaganda in spiderverse but this is not as mainstream as the first point, it seems) is strange. particularly because mainstream liberalism has encorporated more understanding of racism & antiblackness into itself than it has of feminism (performatively, of course), which makes one believe spiderverse should garner more criticism? one could hypothesize, though, that the ambiguity of liberal feminist politics leaves a haze of discontent around the issues media fails to approach, as it's not tangible exactly what is antifeminist or (most prominently) /why/. what is the essence of barbie's failure to fulfill its promises of feminism?

of course, in general enough liberal circles, neither are criticized. but if you get a little leftier, you begin to see this phenomenon of barbie being criticized more often, or-- more broadly, should i say. i don't think the fate of feminism rests of the success of any franchise, or having better feelings about some media, but i do wonder if having grace for barbie is the best option. best option because, despite its flaws, barbie was a more feminist film than most and thus, pleasant to watch as a woman. it centered women, acknowledged misogyny, and sometimes that alone is just rare. it's also self aware of its capitalist failings, at least. i believe barbie came out around the same time as that "the idol" show, and god knows which type of media i'd like to see more often.

saw this review from a feminist i respect (will add review if i can find it lol) on barbie so i thought i might reevaluate my feelings.

[ujjwal-only]

Why do people hate Andrew Tate?

Andrew Tate is in the business of courting people's attention. He understands what power really is. Robert Greene in his book 48 laws of power talks about ways to acquire power and influence. One of the ways of acquiring power is to court attention of people, it is better to be bashed for your opinions than hiding amongst the timid masses. That's exactly what he does. He gives controversial remarks about women and other stuff so that he can get people's attention. You love him or hate him it doesn't matter because he's getting richer and richer as long as you keep watching him. He runs an online course called Hustlers University which has 100k+ students, these people are his loyal followers. They make multiple social media accounts on every platform and post his clips. This triggers a chain reaction and everyone starts posting videos related to him and in that is why you see him everywhere all the time.

He plays on people's need to believe and react emotionally. He potrays himself as a saviour of masculinity. And he has succeeded in making a lot of young men to join his cult. We think that we have evolved too far, religion and religious leaders were something of the past, people were naïve those days. Honestly, it is still the case, new age religions and religious leaders have emerged and Tate is one of them. However, the playbook he uses has been there for thousands of years.

Now, I will go deeper into what exactly he does to court people's attention. I will be a bit philosophical, please don't mind. According to Dharma we are in an age called the ‘Kali yuga'. In ‘Kali Yuga' almost everyone becomes shudra. Shudra is someone whose most visible personality trait is ‘Tamas' . It is characterized by laziness and immense lust. It is not hard to understand how to attract such people towards you. Just show them the material you possess and they'll lust for it. Tate's lifestyle is basically what most teenage boys these days dream of, fast cars, fame and women.

Tate is a shrewd businessman who knows how to get money out of your pocket. By the way, those who think that they are'nt giving him any money, my friend you are giving him money. Your time isn't free or unlimited, it has a value. He started a webcam business before onlyfans was a thing. That's how he made his first million and he never looked back after that.

Honestly, you should'nt look at people's words you should look at their actions. You can say all kind things about people whom you hate but that does'nt change the fact that you hate them. Despite all of this I believe that the overall influence he has on young men is net positive. Perhaps,this is the reason why the universe is supporting his cause. In this world we live in you cannot make large amounts of money without adding value to people's lives. I think Tate has genuinely added value to people's lives.

People mostly hate him for his remarks on women which he gives only for attention. One of the things he said was that if you have a girlfriend and she opens an onlyfans account she should give you a cut on her earnings, because you own a part of her. This remark is solely for the purpose of getting views and nothing else. There's no point in analyzing such remarks.

If I were to analyze one of his good remarks that would be his idea of matrix. The people at the top have setup society in such a way that you are set on a path to failure. You will spend the first 18 years of your life doing slavery in school. Completing pointless assignments and memorizing things that don't even matter. Schools are designed to make you slave-minded. Then after that you go to college. Colleges are a scam. Student loan is the worst kind of loan, you cannot even decleare bankruptcy on it. It is the investment with the worst ROI, most degrees are useless. There's nothing fancy about having a corporate job, it is a form of slavery. You will spend all your time inside a cubicle and then your life will come to an end. This is a terrible, terrible life and that is how most people in this world live.

To summarize why people hate Tate, it is because he wants some percentage of his viewers to hate him. That is how you lead a cult, isn't it by clearly stating who you enemy is. It has always been this way.

[jeremy-hillary-boob]

in retrospect I'm kind of fascinated by the way michael lindsay-hogg misunderstood the beatles while making this mess. like yes, he's the most punchable person on screen at any given time; whenever he opens his mouth he says something that feels custom-designed to slam into their most specific and deeply-held insecurities, and his ego ensures that he doesn't listen to them at all. but the nature of his failure is so perfectly representative of what's always wrong with public perceptions of the beatles, and it's so interesting when you remember that he is also the director of some classic uhh... mclennon fanfiction, I guess? that's not exactly right, but I don't know how else to characterize the movie "two of us," which was made in 2000 and is frankly the only beatles biopic I've ever really liked. the fact that this smarmy kid who missed the point so hard while making "let it be" managed to nail it while directing this fix-it fic later is enthralling, honestly.

because the problem that he keeps running into is a question of scale and what it is that makes the beatles good. he's very invested in this concept of having them out in an ancient amphitheater in the desert and doing these sweeping overhead shots with a giant audience. he's so married to this idea that he ignores the band repeatedly telling him that they aren't willing to do that, because they won't travel and aren't all that comfortable with a big audience in the first place. it's not even that he keeps pushing for this because they're saying no without offering an alternative; the boys suggest perfectly good concepts, but a lot of things the they ask for are small. they want to do a show in a club, or a dance hall, or the studio. they keep telling him they want close and intimate, and he keeps saying no, we need Huge and Sweeping and Universal!

related to this, probably the moment that most makes me want to yell "fuck you" at the screen is when linda offers an opinion and says, "I'm speaking as a fan!" and MLH snottily replies that he is also a fan, and a bigger fan than she is. it's mostly an annoying comment because of how breathtakingly patronizing and self-important it is. but the underlying insinuation is that he Gets It in a way she does not - his feelings are the justified worship of the larger-than-life music gods, while hers are supposedly just piddly little personal affection for quirky, imperfect human beings who happen to be making something notable.

the adolescent hubris and misogyny of these two issues aside, you can see that his problem is that he thinks they're good because they're big, rather than big because they're good. he's bought into the marketing contrivance of the past few years that the beatles represent some kind of platonic ideal of universal love that's the same for everyone and everything, and that any portrayal of them should therefore be massive and all-encompassing. but he's mistaking the packaging for what's inside it, which is four oddballs who have spent the last decade fueled in large part by their deeply personal attachment to one another and wonky charisma that makes audiences want to connect with them. they're not prophets or wizards; they're a close-knit club band who have a taste for novelty and have been set loose on the fancy recording equipment. MLH is blinded by the glamour that's been painted over them, though, so he doesn't see that the strange, sometimes ugly little love that keeps them chugging along is more important to who they are than the perfect and global significance he imagines them having.

which is what makes me marvel at "two of us," because it operates on the absolute reverse of that mistake. so much of what makes it work is that it happens on a teeny tiny scale. most of the movie has fictional john and fictional paul as the only characters on screen, and nearly all the action is them talking to each other. if there are other speaking characters present, there's a sense of discomfort or comedic awkwardness - john and paul are initially tense in each other's presence, but at the same time are the only people either of them are comfortable with. they seem protected in their solitude, which is a hell of a contrast to how exposed and cornered the real beatles seem in the twickenham footage from let it be/get back. the whole story is a bittersweet bit of wish fulfillment about two people mending a complicated friendship, because the magic was never that they were larger than life, it was that they were human-sized all along, and that was more special than idealized caricatures of rock stars could have ever been. it took him 30 years, but this guy did eventually figure out what he did wrong and try again. I don't know, I think it's neat.

(I do think linda should have gotten a free swing at him, though.)

[macgyvertape]

Talon of Horus thoughts (spoilers)

Why did I read this: r/grimdark recommended the book with “Love the part where they find a crashed Imperial ship ... and the slow realization they've been in Warpspace a very, very long time. When they hear that the Imperium worships the Emperor … that gets a solid ten minute laugh out of all of them.” (turns out thats the 2nd book)

What I enjoyed: the first half of the book is Khayon’s slice of life (going through the motions) while living in grimdarkhell, then he meets Abbadon and he’s suddenly ride or die for this guy.

I haven’t read anything before with Khayon or Abbadon but I thought this was a good intro, so it's been interesting to see other people's opinons who have read a lot of TSons books.

Notes:

The book opens with Khayon saying every word is true yet he immediately follows it with “I had nothing left to lose. Everything I’d treasured was dust at the mercy of history’s winds”, which is proven untrue over the course of the book. Khayon sacrifices or loses a lot in service to Abbadon and the Black Legion (what remains of his sister, his ship, his Power Axe Saern, his wolf Gyre). It has me wondering how much is this Khayon lying to himself vs the author seeing it differently.

Khayon has a lot of musing on daemons and the warp, how it works which I found an interesting contrast to the few other CSM books I've read.

Abaddon gets introduced as this dude whose been living alone with hair he's stopped taking care of, just accumulating hoards of stuff and picking up homebrew as a hobby. I don't know if depressed is the right word to characterize him for all he reminds me of myself. He was described with "a smiling voice" and I was surprised by how personable he was since I only knew him through fandom flanderization.

I wasn't expecting the twist that Nefertari had been dead this whole time, but I suppose it's yet another aspect of the past that Khayon clings onto discounting how it's been transformed. I really got the sense in the first part of the book that Khayon found himself in a limbo (just like the limbo hell he's physically trapped in) where the past torments him but he can't let go and move forwards until he meets Abbadon.

I've mostly read Alpha Legion, Night Lords, and Iron Warriors books for CSM so idk why I expected loyalty but from the beginning the Ezekarion is lying to each other. Makes me wonder what lies Khayon is being told.

“This is what it is like to live within a Nine Legions warband. To see things that cannot be possible and pursue answers that may never come. To wonder over the state of your brothers’ souls, knowing they doubt your sanity in return. Loyalty is everything, yet trust is the one thing we so rarely have. ‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘A momentary distraction. All is well.’ That was the first time I lied to Ezekyle. He knew I lied, yet I sensed no anger or threat of reprisal. What I sensed from him was a slow pulse of approval. A test passed. An offer of trust given and accepted. I was not lying to him, after all. We were both lying to the Justaerin.”

Is Abbadon's main strategy throwing large spaceships at a planet and calling it speartip? I’m not sure if this was published before he did this at Cadia with the Blackstone fortress but he does it here as well with Khayon’s help.

Wasn’t expecting Cloned!Horus in the last 20 pages of the book. It feels like Abaddon has dad issues but in large parts from Horus’ failure at the Siege and being turned into a walking Chaos puppet. It's interesting Abaddon says this:

“I was fortunate that day. Not just because I survived a battle with a demigod that should never have been fought, but because I heard Abaddon’s last words to his father. With a slow, smooth withdrawal, he pulled the Talon clear of his father’s body, and the moment before Horus fell – the moment before the light finally went out in the primarch’s eyes – Abaddon whispered five soft words. ‘I am not your son.”

But then makes the Black Legion symbol the Eye of Horus and takes up Horus' signature weapon the Talon of Horus and leaves it unchanged. I want to read a lot of Abbadon Daddy issues meta posts

[mdhwrites]

Love your wenclair fic! Your meta about Enid's character arc is also really good. It was great reading your thoughts, but I wish you'd go into more detail on the failed allegory of it all.

I just absolutely can not get over the sheer ridiculous failure of an idea that was "lycanthropy conversion camp". What were they thinking????? It doesn't work on any level at all. Apparently being a "late bloomer" is a common enough issue they run multiple camps for it? But if it's that common why is it so stigmatized??? The show never seems to come right out and say there are wolves who never fully shift, and Enid's claws point to her shifting eventually, so it becomes merely a matter of timing before the person "converts". That's a disgusting thing to have associated with the fucking torture of queer youth to force them to conform. And the attempt to cash in on lgbtq+ sympathy through this is just gross.

Ughhhh. I really loved Enid and Wednesday's characterization, some of the dialogue was spot on, but it really felt like whoever wrote the overarching plot had no idea what they were doing.

Thank you! I'm really happy with everything I've been doing in Risk Life, even though I still wish I was getting more done. DAMN YOU MENTAL HEALTH! *sigh* I am curious how much having three different directors for the show caused some of the issues with the arcs honestly. Tim Burton seems to push more for the idea of puberty early on, thus the term late bloomer at all and the idea of never finding a mate. A werewolf that never 'grows up' can never be a part of their society is what it feels like effectively. It also makes the claws kind of make sense because it's such a minor and small thing that it makes Enid feel like she's almost playing at being a big bad wolf when she's got her claws out. Then, when it changes directors on episode 5, that's when we start seeing more of the LGBTQ+ allegory. Unfortunately, the two just... don't mix. As much as I would love the reality to be different, this is the only story I've ever seen where coming out as gay or the like is how you are MORE accepted by your society which feels disingenuous to the experiences I mostly see from LGBTQ+ youth. A lot of people do find comfort in Enid's plotline though so if they do, I say more power to them. Also, the directors theory doesn't really explain everything since I think the writers don't change between episodes? I'm not as certain about that. Oh, and for anyone who doesn't know: Tim Burton directed the first four episodes, then the last four were split between two other directors who did two episodes each. As for the camp stuff, I'm still on the side of it just being... dumb. Especially since yeah, you're right, there's MULTIPLE camps for this? How large is the werewolf population then that you can run multiple of these? That multiple of them are possibly profitable? These are outcasts and rare divergences from 'normies', right? And yeah, as you said, it'd s SUBSET of that race that then needs to go to these camps. It's just... It's impressive how many levels of failure this is, not just on an allegorical level but a world building level. The one saving grace I'll give it is that the show doesn't take its fantasy elements seriously, for better and for worse. It's very much so there more for flavor than substance so it makes a general audience less likely to care about the actual world building. And for some stuff that's fine. For something directly correlating to real life atrocities done to the LGBTQ+... Less okay. That's why from a general writing standpoint I'll give it a sigh and a roll of my eyes but as allegory, I still growl and hiss. I also want to shout out though one theory a friend of mine had for the camps. It's that you get thrown into the wilderness with nothing to survive with so it's wolf out or die. Not literally, as the people running the camp will save you but you're meant to be put in such a do or die situation that you do transform. How does that fit into anything allegorically? It... doesn't so it still doesn't work but at least from a fantasy perspective it explains what they are. It's more of an answer than we'll likely ever get from the show at this point.

And my final note for 'they didn't seem to know their overarching plot' is going to be to Crackstone. Not even how he's a hypocrite who only has power because of his staff. No, it's how we go from a show that has fairly light fantasy elements to "SHE PUT A BLOOD CURSE ON HIM, DOOMING HIS SOUL!" Lady, I think we have skipped about at least a whole season's worth of build up to this level of fantasy, thank you very much! When the fuck was this shit on the table!? But yeah, I could rant more but this is long enough as is and getting off topic. ^^; I'm happy you're enjoying Risk Life, Not Love so much and uh, I might have some original sapphics of mine being free in a few days so keep an eye out for that!

[darlingandmreames]

I rewatched The Ritual the other night for the first time in a while and am officially Back On My Bullshit, which means lots of thoughts and opinions that I am now going to make everyone else's problem. So without further ado, here are my thoughts on The Ritual's themes, character dynamics, and how the movie (in my opinion) improved upon the book

(spoilers for both the book and the movie)

Themes

So what is The Ritual actually about? I mean, obviously it's about a freaky forest monster that kills people and grants one of those kinds of immortality where you really gotta read the fine print, but underneath all that what is it actually about?

The answer depends a bit on both whether you're talking about the book or the movie, and how detailed you're being about it. Both the book and the movie share the very broad theme of "moving on", but what the characters are "moving on" from is different in each. I'd argue that the book primarily deals with moving on from past chapters in your life- cherishing the good memories, acknowledging and accepting the failures, and moving forward without becoming stuck on either.

The movie, on the other hand, is very explicitly about trauma, pain, and grief, and the process of confronting and moving on (or NOT moving on) from those experiences. This is achieved by the introduction of Rob, a character who didn't exist in the book. His actual appearance in the movie is brief, but his death is the driving force behind the entire movie. It's sudden, violent, and senseless, and it provides a very distinct and viscerally present context for the character interactions moving forward (more on that later). Rob's death faces the characters with a complex, heartbreaking, and traumatic loss and allows the movie to explore what it means to confront and move on from something like that, as well as the consequences of NOT doing so, by making that pain and grief into a very real (and beautifully designed) monster.

And that's where the movie's second major change comes in: the portrayal of the cult. I.... admittedly didn't really care for the cult portion of the book all that much honestly. It wasn't bad and some of my favourite lines were actually from that part of the book, but it felt almost jarringly different from the first part of the book to me. I felt like the heavy metal teen cultists were very much at odds with the sense of sinister supernaturality the first part of the book had spent building.

I loved the cult in the movie though. These are people who worship the personified (monstrified?) pain and grief that stalks the forest. They were chosen to survive specifically because of their own personal pain ("why me?" "Your pain is great") and by worshipping the monster they're kept in the forest and granted an immortality that saves them from death but not decay. It's a beautiful look at the consequences of being unable/unwilling to move on from pain/loss/grief and instead being consumed by it. The cultists are defined by their pain to the point that it eventually warps them into something almost unrecognizable. By worshipping Moder they are literally unable to move on, both physically (they're stuck in the forest) and spiritually (they can't die). Whereas the cult in the book felt jarringly different in tone from the story leading up to it, the cult in the movie tied into the theme beautifully and provided Luke with a look at his future if he allows his own pain to consume him.

Which brings us to....

Characters

A stories themes are often best portrayed through it's characters, and in this case that mostly means Luke.

Luke in the book is....well, to be honest, he isn't really that sympathetic or even that likeable when we first meet him or really for a large chunk of the story, at least not in my opinion. He's a 36 year old man-child who's clearly still chasing the glory of his college days and who's life up until now has mostly been characterized by failures, flakiness, and not taking responsibility for any of it. And on top of that, he's angry. The kind of angry that's violent, easily provoked, and generally unwarranted. All of the characters are facing failures at the end of this chapter of their lives to some degree (such as Phil being separated from his wife), but Luke is very clearly the least well adjusted- and least sympathetic- of them. His character arc revolves around him learning to move on from this previous chapter in his life, accepting the good and the bad and finally being willing to move forward with determination. In the beginning of the book Luke is characterized by indifference and petulant anger that masks fear and doubt, but he ends the book with a desire to move forward and determination to survive.

The inclusion of Rob and his subsequent death COMPLETELY changes Luke's character though and, in my opinion, makes him FAR more compelling and sympathetic. We still get similar notes to where he starts out as we did in the book; whereas Rob, Dom, Hutch, and Phil have all clearly settled down and moved on from their uni days, Luke obviously hasn't. This is made clear in his suggestions for the lad's holiday, his wanting to get a bottle of liquor after they leave the bar, and his conversation with Rob when they're in the liquor store. Movie!Luke really isn't all that different from book!Luke in the first scene or two.

Rob's brutal murder profoundly changes Luke's character though. He's left dealing with the grief and loss left in the wake of Rob's death, as well as the guilt associated with not having been able to stop it. By taking a character that may not otherwise be particularly sympathetic or likeable and having the audience watch him experience a deeply horrifying and traumatic loss, the movie makes Luke into an extremely compelling character and set him for a far more emotionally engaging character arc as he struggles to cope with both his grief and his guilt.

As I mentioned above, the cult in the movie provides Luke with a glimpse of the consequences of allowing his pain and grief to consume him. Now, the cult in the book sort of does the same thing- the indifferent anger and violence of the cultists mirrors Luke's own anger covering his fear and doubt and shows what could happen if he embraced that part of him. But the cult in the movie, in my opinion, works far better in this role because they feel more thematically and tonally in line with the rest of the movie and because Luke is a more sympathetic character. His decision to accept or reject that path carries more weight because we care about him. Moreover, accepting the same path as the cultist would provide him with a community that understands his pain, something he very much did not have with his friends; we understand that accepting the cult is a bad decision, but we also understand why Luke would be tempted to do so. Simply put, we feel for him and that makes the presentation of this choice much more emotionally impactful.

Interestingly, Luke's character arc in both the book and the movie end with him developing the desire and determination to survive. It comes from two very different places though. In the book, it revolves around Luke's willingness to finally close out the previous chapter of his life- highs and lows and all- and move forward into the future despite the fear and uncertainty doing so may provoke.

In the movie, though, this decision comes within the context of Luke's survivor's guilt. He feels guilty over Rob's death because he wasn't able to intervene and this guilt is reinforced by the other characters, most notably Dom and, later, Hutch. His decision to reject Moder, to fight back and refuse to kneel, represents not only his decision to move on from his grief and trauma but also the acknowledgement that despite what happened he still has worth and his life is still worth living. It also resolves his struggle with his inability to help (which plays a large role in his guilt), something that comes into play in all of the deaths in the movie even beyond Rob's. In Hutch's death Luke tried to find him but was unable to find him until it was far too late. In Phil's death he's initially paralyzed before running away, both in fear, in much the same way he did in Rob's death. In Dom's death he was able to take the necessary steps to help Dom (dislocating his thumb to get out of the restraints) but was ultimately too late and was forced to watch Dom die anyways. By recognizing that he still has worth and that is life is worth living, Luke is able to act in spite of his fear and make the decision not to allow his grief, pain, and trauma to consume him.

No discussion of Luke as a character is completely without also discussing how he interacts with the other characters and hoooo BOY did the movie really ratchet those interactions up a notch or ten. The interactions in the book were well written but they admittedly felt a little one note at times (though this is also probably somewhat due to me viewing book!Luke as not particularly likeable or sympathetic). By including Rob's death the movie adds a layer of complexity to the character interactions that I felt really wasn't there in the book and we get to see the interpersonal effects of traumatic loss. Luke may have been the only one to witness Rob's death but they're all grieving him, and we get to see how that (and how Luke's friends' perception of his role in Rob's death) impacts and strains their relationships. As I mentioned earlier, we see very clearly that Luke doesn't have any real support or understanding from his friends; Dom does little to hide the fact that he views Luke as directly responsible for what happened and while Hutch does initially attempt to provide support, it comes off as superficial and he later admits he isn't sure whether he blames Luke. Luke is very clearly struggling with what happened but can't turn to the people he would normally rely on for support, and his interactions with his friends often alienate him and further reinforce the guilt and blame he's grappling with rather than provide any source of comfort. This, again, makes the temptation to submit to Moder and join the cult, to give into his pain and grief and loss and let it consume him, that much more compelling and his choice to reject it that much more meaningful.

Overall, the movie's decision to add in Rob and his subsequent death and to change how the cult was portrayed was, in my opinion, a truly excellent one and helped move the movie from a story I would've enjoyed but shrugged off into legitimately one of my favourite movies of all time. It allowed for a more thematically and tonally consistent story and made both Luke and his character arc more sympathetic, compelling, and emotionally impactful. When it comes to adaptations I generally tend to enjoy the book more than the movie, but this is one of the few exceptions where I truly believe the movie significantly improved upon the book

[serpenteve]

Is it so hard for people to understand the reason we have a gripe with Book!Mal is bc he's toxic? "he's a teen! and confused" So?? Does he have to be such a turd about it? Slut shames her, insults her, mopes around because for once in their relationship, ppl are looking up to her and not him & resents her for that. The fact is, Aleks is the villain. We expect crap from him. But Mal is supposed to be the Love interest so its odd when the villian is more concerned for alina & her health than he is

Anon, this rehabilitation of Mal's character is 100% a new thing from my fandom experience.

Back when we read the books, pretty much everyone recognized Mal's character was toxic garbage. In fact, I'd argue that Leigh's failure with his characterization (among other things) contributed to such a large part of the fandom shipping Alina with the villain out of pure spite 😂

Now new people come to the fandom and see the amount of hate book!Mal gets and want to be all contrarian about it. We held Mal to a higher standard than the Darkling because we expected better and all we got was your garden variety fuckboi that felt emasculated that his girlfriend was stronger than him and actively spent the majority of the trilogy making her feel like shit for being Grisha and hating that her life no longer revolved around him. Gee, I wonder why so many fans preferred the fucking villain when he was the only one encouraging her to embrace her powers from the start and offering her the throne.

And to add insult to injury, Mal was toxic in a very familiar way that reminded a lot of us of abusive ex-partners and garbage people in our own lives while the Darkling's villainy was mostly cartoonish by comparison. Hence the visceral hatred for book!Mal despite him never doing anything remotely evil like destroying a town for funsies or raising a shadow army.

People don't always map their personal experiences onto fictional characters the same way, so while there are very much readers who can map their own experiences with abuse with Alina's relationship with the Darkling, that doesn't mean everyone does. Nor does it mean that if a reader maps their past abuse to Mal's behavior towards Alina, that's it's some kind of "haha hypocrite11" own if they also happen to ship Darklina, especially since the vast majority of Darklina shippers know their ship isn't for everyone and would have been fine with Alina ending up with fucking nobody as long as she got to keep her powers.

[meggannn]

shepard/garrus?

oh boy, sorry for the late response! I always end up posting these things and then going to read/take a nap/play a game or something. anyway writing this up took two hours, i hope it is even slightly interesting to read. cut because this is looooooong

What made you ship it?

I think I was interested in this ship before I even played ME. I was just like “I know Shepard is a character and an alien named Garrus is a character, and people draw porn of them together.” because I think it’s reasonable to say it’s one of, if not the most, popular ship in the fandom, or at least in ME’s tumblr fandom? and the way people talked about it, I knew their tropes were #banter, #battle couple, #partnerships, and... and as we’ve learned from royai, I am a bit weak to those tropes (assuming I like both of the characters). the way people talked about them also from a “best friends” angle—which is sort of forced in-game in a way that seems strange to me now—was also a plus in its favor at the time. (if they get together, I do see their friendship/companionship, in whatever form, in some ways integral to their romance—unless you’re playing full far-right renegade who’s like a xenophobe and hate-fucking Garrus, I guess?—but Bioware also kind of shoehorned Garrus into that best-friend role and that’s a topic for another day.)

What are your favorite things about the ship?

(my friend will hit me if I say “partnerships” again) I’m gonna talk about the way I play my Shepard now, because so much is dependent on the unique Shepard. for Lydia’s journey over the series, I see a large part of her journey as basically a study of her (often self-inflicted) loneliness. and she never entirely breaks her habits of self-isolation, but the events of the series force her to be vulnerable in a way she would prefer not to be in front of a crew, or, y’know, ever. Garrus becomes an integral part of that story to help her break her out of these bad habits (all of the crew does, particularly also Ashley for my Shep), but to my eyes, the story of “Shepard and Garrus’s relationship” is also one of mutual respect, burden-sharing, and sanity and morality checks.

I don’t think of their “mentor” relationship in ME1 very often mostly because I don’t think it was done particularly well, but for all its faults, I do like how naturally the jump from “subordinate” in ME1 to “ally” in ME2 felt; once you meet Garrus on Omega you feel more on the same footing as two friends greeting each other because you’ve both recently been through trauma and the sight of a friendly face in a station full of hostiles is so unexpectedly welcome that it lets them both hope things will be okay for a minute. starting from that moment, Garrus becomes one of the few people who can see “under” her mask, I guess: partly because he’s one of the few combatants from the SR-1 who knows Shepard well and sees who she is both on the field and onboard the SR-2, with the ability to compare both to the times of “before you died”; partly because he has trauma response training and recognizes it in others even if he doesn’t in himself; partly because his loyal personality makes him sensitive to wonder how she’s dealing with being resurrected; and also partly because they’ve both gone through similar things. namely, getting your squad killed and blaming yourself for it, and it possibly being your fault (BioWare is inconsistent on what Shepard’s role was on Akuze, but in ME1 she has the chance to reply that she was responsible for getting them out safely, and failed).

necessity forces Shepard to adapt to things like being effectively forced to work for terrorists; being isolated from her support system; being resurrected and feeling like a stranger in her own body; later, getting decommissioned for making an incredibly difficult call to save the galaxy; watching your homeworld burn; being forced into a political role negotiating high stakes you don’t know how to play; being told you’re the spearhead of a galactic war; doing all of this without a full crew complement; the list goes on. those are all, on their own, incredibly isolating, traumatic experiences, and my Shepard’s not emotionally sane at the best of times. (emotionally stable, perhaps, only in the most literal of terms, at least on the surface. she’s like a rock when shit hits the fan. emotionally sane, no, for that reason and more.)

the tables have turned, and Garrus ends up becoming a large part of helping her regain agency in most if not all of those things: in ME2 he was a former crew member she trusted, and he was eager to work for her and be distracted from his failures on Omega. over in the battery, he is himself recovering from a major injury (like Shepard) and going through the aftermath of a bloodbath he feels responsible for (like Shepard), working on a crew that holds him at arm’s length, that he also... arguably... didn’t have much choice in joining (like Shepard—I’m assuming he wasn’t held hostage and joined voluntarily after waking up, but lbr this is unconfirmed). their reasons are different and varied, but they don’t realize until much later that they have found each other at the most opportune time, providing a sense of stability for each other, and also, frankly, sanity and morality checks.

in ME3, he steps into this role more fully because he’s become more disciplined, is doing work firmly in his wheelhouse, and paired up against Shepard struggling with their positions somewhat reversed from ME1: him more confident and her now completely out of her element, floundering with her place on a galactic scale. without Garrus—and Chakwas, and Joker, and Tali, and later the loyalty of the entire SR-2—the story of ME would be a tragedy, and it would end shortly in ME2; it’d be the story of how my Shepard slowly went insane being forced to fight boogeymen under a terrorist banner. Garrus isn’t, like, the keeper of her sanity, but their ability to check each other, and see themselves in the eyes of each other, provides stability and occasionally a bit of a wake-up call to both of them. when they’re both vulnerable, they both feel most seen, and most understood, by an alien that listens.

one angle of this ship that highly interests me at the moment, along with the above, is that while it’s not illegal for them to be together, it’s still... a really bad fucking idea lmao. (I could make the argument that it’s a bad idea for Shepard to be in any relationship with their crew but I think there are a few ships—Garrus, Tali, any Alliance crew at all—that realistically would be huge political clusterfucks.) so overcoming personal insecurity and fear of the unknown to acknowledge interest in each other, and the desire to become an item, getting roadblocked by a reality wake-up call with the fact that 1) she’s his boss, 2) Garrus comes from a society where station matters, like, sort of a lot and it even determines your job and how much legal power you have, 3) the potential political blowback (which would be ENORMOUS because lbr the hierarchy may not care about what turians do in off-hours but they WOULD care about the superior/subordinate thing, the human thing, the fact that they’re doing this while a war is going on. basically one of their best agents is on the Normandy to negotiate their interests and they’re basically at the whims of their relationship the whole time)... it’s a lot! all of that sort of makes it tragic, but I’m curious to see how they’d overcome it.

anyway, all of that is where I’m coming from when I think or write about this ship, but there’s a lot more I’m not mentioning here. there are a lot of juxtapositions that in my head that I’ve either added or extrapolated from canon that also interest me about this pairing. Garrus is a former cop, as is his father; Lydia is a poor kid who used to be in a gang out of necessity. Garrus is a turian with often traditionalist thinking; Shepard is a human who has much less sociopolitical power than him, even if she is his superior on the Normandy. both of them are roughly as old as the First Contact War, when their people were at each other’s throats not thirty years ago. Garrus idolizes Spectrehood while Lydia hates it, feeling it was forced on her. they can’t eat the same food. and yet despite all of that, and the fact that they need translators to communicate, they manage to understand each other when a lot of the world around them doesn’t.

god this is not even the full list of it. anyway I could go on but I’ll stop there lol.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

oh jesus, so much. I’m a grouchy and picky shipper, be warned.

pining can always make my ships more interesting, and imo it’s a consistent part of any ship of Shepard’s, considering it’s wildly inappropriate and unprofessional for her to be fucking any subordinate, so I think more consideration could be given to shakarian in the “we shouldn’t be having a thing and oh also you’re an alien and I’m kind of scared of both your government and your body” angle! I hope to explore that a bit with a fic I’m writing (if I ever finish it, god).

I hate the flavor of fandom!shakarian where Shepard romanced Kaidan in ME1 then felt “betrayed” when he’s confused and hurt on Horizon, so she gets with Garrus as like... revenge? idk. and then Garrus usually develops this bias against Kaidan as a sort of author mouthpiece (which is inconsistent with his characterization cause Garrus is nothing but pleased to have Kaidan back on the SR-2 in ME3!) and takes up the anti-Kaidan crusade cause K ~questioned the commander~ (since when does Garrus fall over himself defending a superior from criticism?) like, idk. I think Garrus can be sensitive to the fact that that reuniting must’ve been painful for Shepard, but also be aware that it was also really painful for Kaidan because all of Kaidan’s complicated feelings about Shepard’s resurrection were, realistically, things Garrus should’ve felt too! this trope is very popular but just feels like manufactured drama for drama’s sake, idk, I’m also not big on love triangles so. I would much rather people just rescue Ashley on Virmire and avoid the whole thing rather than have previously-romanced Kaidan around in ME3 for the sole purpose of forcing him to watch Shepard/Garrus being happy together tbh.

I think full goody-goody paragon Shepard is too preachy to make a good partner for Garrus and full shoot-anyone-in-my-way renegade Shepard encourages and emboldens his worst tendencies (and Castis Vakarian is right to disapprove of them). most people end up playing some combination of both, or if they do settle in one camp or the other, usually there is some sense of realism where Shepard doesn’t play nice/naive or play mean all the time, so it’s rare I see either of those kinds of extreme Shepards depicted, but in general if there is a Shepard that is so far in one direction it seems illogical to me that they ever stay together.

I think wanting a mShep romance for Garrus is a pretty welcome idea in fandom, but adding onto that, I think Garrus should’ve been romanceable in ME3 for players who changed their minds on other romances or want to play slow-burn romances! we had it for Kaidan—and should’ve had it for Ash—so (pounds fist on desk) Garrus too imo!

I hate the canon get-together because Shepard walking into the battery and asking “do you want to fuck” feels very tailored to the players who want to romance Garrus, not to who Commander Shepard is, imo. it lacked all of the subtlety and depth of some other romances—until the scene of Garrus coming to her cabin with a wine bottle, at least, cause I do like that scene, but anyway, I dislike the actual get-together.

just in general, I’m a stick in the mud, so my favorite iteration of this ship is where Shepard is resolutely professional, and the challenge of it becomes him getting her to open up, not the other way around. like, I think on some level every iteration of Shepard is a bit of a lunatic/eccentric, because you have to be to do the things they do, but I like to see their flirting with less of her calling him “big guy” (not sure where that came from, is that in canon? I must’ve missed it, but personally I don’t like it) and more of Garrus making wisecracks in the canteen while he’s talking to Joker, but he’s looking at her out of the corner of his eyes and he really said his joke with the aim of making her laugh, and as she’s reading her datapad she hears him, and even when she wants to chuckle she stops himself and just smirks cause she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a laugh, but he sees her lips twitch and feels his heart flutter. that. I want more of that.

oh lastly, I hate “Shepard takes Vakarian clan markings” in any iteration. there is no canon relation to turians being poc—in fact I’d argue they have sociopolitical privilege real-world bipoc do not—but the concept of social face markings, face tattoos, etc., is rooted in non-white cultures and with the fact that 1) turians had a literal civil war over the territories those markings represent, 2) we don’t even know if marriage is how markings are shared or if non-turians are ever invited to wear them in the first place, 3) most of the art of this trend, lbr, is of mostly white Shepards in wedding dresses and blue face paint... all that combined just makes me frown and scroll faster every time I see it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bipoc Shepard with Vakarian face markings in fic/art, and that to me is very telling (not because they should have them, but because bipoc fans who make bipoc Shepards usually recognize when a racially-coded trope is uhhhhh not so great to appropriate for someone not of that group).

[nerteragranadensis]

so I watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan last night with my dad, and I keep thinking about something he said afterward

he said the Enterprise doesn’t have a real naval command structure, because everyone on the bridge is always waiting on the captain’s word before they act. when the engines come back on they have to wait for Kirk to tell them what to do. at that level, they should already know what they’re supposed to be doing, without having to be told.

and obviously this is partly because it’s a movie, and partly because by the midpoint of the story the Enterprise is so far beyond “normal” operations that they are kind of dependent on Kirk’s out-of-the-box decision making. but it got me thinking.

because the other thing my dad said was it’s kind of sad to see Kirk stuck in the past, trying to go back to a certain part of his life over and over again instead of moving forward. it’s weird that Bones encourages him to do that, because it’s not healthy.

(and my dad is a recently retired pilot, a guy who did have to leave a job he loved, and who’s moved on and found new passions in the last few years. he knows what he’s talking about.)

and it made me think of Kirk in a different light. it made me think of him as someone who found a job he was passionate about--captaining a starship--but never quite fit into that role in the way he was supposed to. and you can read that in a number of different ways, but Wrath of Khan specifically ties it to the Kobayashi Maru, to that iconic line, I don’t believe in no-win scenarios. once you realize how central that concept is to Kirk’s character, you start seeing it everywhere in the original series. Every other episode has some kind of no-win scenario, which Kirk and the gang of course find a way to circumvent because they’re just that good, and they don’t believe in no-win scenarios. it’s great! that’s one of the reasons I love TOS, because everything always works out in the end and it’s comforting. but it’s also a fantasy. and in Wrath of Khan, the fantasy runs out.

because Spock dies at the end (which really blindsided my sister, who also saw it with us). Jim goes running back to the only life he’s comfortable in, commanding a starship, and he loses his best friend for it. he fights as hard as he can to get out of the no-win scenario unscathed, but this time it doesn’t work. Wrath of Khan is, overall, a celebration of all the best parts of TOS, but I think there is a subtle line of criticism running underneath it. the opening scene of the film is Lt. Saavik (the love of my life) taking the Kobayashi Maru test, and failing. throughout the rest of the movie she keeps asking Jim about the test, about where she went wrong, about how he dealt with it when he was at the academy.  and as the movie goes on we slowly learn more about the test, that Jim took it three times, and then we find that he solved it by cheating. what does that say about him, as a character?

I don’t believe in no-win scenarios.

I think there are two ways you can read that line.

Arrogance. Jim is willing to fight dirty to avoid failing at his goals.

Perseverance. Jim is unable to accept failure, not for his own sake, but for the sake of those around him.

personally I think both of these readings are supported by the text. Jim Kirk certainly loves his friends, cares about his crew, and would never sacrifice them for anything. (which is why Spock silently leaves the bridge and walks into the radiation chamber; he knows no one would ever ask him to sacrifice himself like that.) I think this is a heroic sentiment, the idea of I will not give up lives to solve this problem. but Jim also likes winning. he likes solving the problem and saving his ship and being a hero, and maybe that’s what ties him to the Enterprise more than anything. maybe that’s why he doesn’t know what to do with himself without it. 

Jim Kirk’s greatest strength is the same as his fatal flaw: his inability to accept no-win scenarios. Wrath of Khan demonstrates this, maybe better than any other piece of TOS canon. and, further, I think Kirk’s characterization in Wrath of Khan is eerily close to his characterization in the AOS movies.

because the AOS movies fail at a lot of things, but they did manage to carry over this character trait--heck, Jim says his famous line in the first thirty minutes of the first movie. and it’s probably only there because it’s so iconic, because it’s something fans will recognize, but it carries some real weight even in this new story, because of the prologue and the death of George Kirk, which was a no-win scenario.

it’s like baby’s first explanation of the Kobayashi Maru--actually, the AOS movies in general are very much baby’s first Star Trek, which I think is a large part of why they’re mostly bad. but one thing they succeed at, one thing they actually do really well, is distill Jim Kirk down to a concentrated essence. AOS Jim Kirk is deeply arrogant and selfish, but he’s also ridiculously committed to his friends and crewmates. (often within minutes of meeting them! he threw himself off of an atmospheric drill rig for Sulu, a man he met maybe fifteen minutes prior.)

in Wrath of Khan, Jim tells Saavik that the Kobayashi Maru is an important experience because how we deal with death is just as important as how we deal with life. at the end of the movie, after Spock’s sacrifice, that line comes back to haunt him. I haven’t faced death, he says, I’ve cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing. 

it’s fitting, for this movie, this story, that Spock dies at the end. it forces Jim to confront death, confront failure, in a way he never has before. whether he’s avoided it out of trauma, arrogance, or something else is up to the viewer, but he has avoided it, and now he can’t. he’s finally faced the no-win scenario, and he has to learn to live with it.

I’ve never seen Star Trek: Into Darkness, and I may never see it (I’m still genuinely upset about what they did to Khan), but I think it is fitting that it’s Jim who dies at the end of that story. because the Jim Kirk of the Kelvin timeline is surrounded by death, practically born into a no-win scenario that would haunt him for the rest of his life. he may be arrogant, but he cares about the people around him more than anything. when faced with the classic Star Trek no-win scenario, he chooses to sacrifice himself. it’s not failure if everyone else makes it out, seems to be the idea, which is a kind of thinking that stems from trauma and extreme selflessness. it’s not necessarily healthy, but it’s the kind of decision this version of Jim Kirk would absolutely make.

Jim Kirk’s greatest strength is the same as his fatal flaw, and that’s what makes him such a great, enduring character. and Wrath of Khan is willing to explore Jim Kirk as a character in a way few other Star Trek stories did, and that’s what makes it such an enduring movie. it’s also really fun to watch. I had a great time, but it also made me think. it was a story, set in the fun, colorful Star Trek universe, about characterization and sacrifice and the nature of heroism.

[xiyao-feels]

new tu and xiyao fan from earlier. i searched ao3 as per your suggestion and there's only 500 or so fics for them. :( however, i do have a legit question - what are the differences between mdzs and tu (i've never read the latter). and if you want expand on nieyao (or xiyao) please feel free! i love reading meta! one of the few reasons i miss old school fandom spaces lol. thank you!! :D

Hmmm, I see about eight hundred if I limit to English? But I take your point! But that was just as a way to start; once you do find an author you like, you can look at their bookmarks, for example. (Also I'm not sure if you're familiar with the AO3, but if not, sorting by kudos when doing a general search is a way to get stuff that at least lots of people thought was good. I'm not saying it's perfect, but when you're starting in a fandom it can be better than the default by-date-updated.)

Also I'll take the opportunity to plug my absolute favourite xiyao author, roquen. I didn't mention them last time because they haven't I believe written a post-canon fixit, and you should know that they're mostly sticking to MDZS instead of CQL canon, although with some sprinkling of CQL elements and characterization. Some particular favourites of mine include their AtLA AU and their Sunshot/on the run fics (both series with a couple of short fics), their what you might call a mid-temple hopeful fix-it (divergence where LWJ strikes to kill and LXC takes the blow), the baby LXC fic ("Lan Xichen reverts to being a fifteen-year-old junior, and immediately gets an epic crush on Lianfang-zun"; disclaimer that I was fairly involved with the creation of this one but it's GREAT) and, of course, above all, their gigantic canon fix-it verse, it's worth it every time. It's SO GOOD and the characterization is fantastic and the prose is excellent and UGH. It's so good!!!!! Disclaimer that the second fic in the series, which is the main work, is still WIP, but roquen updates regularly and there are only a couple of chapters left; if you're still wary of WIPs, I'd at least recommend the first fic, which stands alone and is brilliant in its own right.

As to the differences between MDZS and CQL…ho boy. There are quite a few, both major and minor, and I'm by no means familar with all of them—especially the ones that don't involve 3zun, lol. I tried to google around but unfortunately the ones I found tended to be either short or, if more in-depth, contain inaccuracies about JGY/LXC—I think people tend to be more interested in the Wangxian, and then this stuff goes by the wayside. The wiki can be a good source for differences for specific incidents, and although I think it's not always accurate it /does/ usually cite chapter or episode, which can be pretty helpful. 

This, by hualiann, looks like a good overview, though I'd add that JYL, WQ and WN didn't study at Cloud Recesses in the novel and that more generally MDZS has a lot of actual undead.

In general my advice is to take things people say about the novel with a large grain of salt, myself included. And about CQL, too! I have no idea if this is you but when I joined the fandom, if people asserted stuff about CQL I tended to just kind of take it as fact—oh, I thought, I must have misremembered! My memory is pretty terrible, and honestly there was absolutely stuff I did misremember. But also sometimes other people misremember, or fanon gets taken as canon, and then there's stuff like—I mean, I'm certainly not going to blame people for not realizing that "JGY conspired with XY at the Unclean Realm" is a lot more uncertain than you might guess at first, especially if they're more Wangxian focused which most people in the fandom are, but I'm still not going to present it as straight-up fact. (veliseraptor has a recent post examining this here which I would very much recommend).

Honestly I think I'd recommend reading the MDZS NMJ Empathy flashback—chapters 48, 49, and the beginning of 50. That gets you a lot of the JGY, LXC and NMJ backstory, and then you can compare for yourself! I'm also going to recommend Mercy's thread, here, listing common fanons about MDZS (I will add to the list, since it's a bugbear of mine, the idea that LXC recognized NMJ's fierce corpse by his abs).

Okay with all that out of the way, and in no particular order, Sun's extremely idiosyncratic and particularly- aka mostly JGY-focused differences list:

-In MDZS, LXC doesn't become Sect Leader until the burning of Cloud Recesses by the Wen, when his father is injured and then succumbs to his wounds. In CQL, he's Sect Leader from the beginning of the show, his father having apparently died not too long before the show started.

-In MDZS, MY wasn't working for the Nie at all before the beginning of Sunshot; he joined the Nie forces just after Sunshot began. NMJ didn't instantly promote him to be his deputy when he's telling at the Nie men for bad-mouthing him; it takes a few more encounters and/or battles with the Wen (after which MY clears the battlefield and helps the commoners).

-In MDZS, xiyao's first meeting happens when LXC is on the run with the Lan books after the burning of Cloud Recesses. We don't see it happen on the page, and we don't know any details of that time beyond, like, MY helped LXC.

-NMJ willingly sends MY away from the Nie, with a letter of recommendation for JGS, after, uh, an extended overhearing of a conversation between MY and LXC wherein MY's desire to be recognized by his father and gain a proper place in the Jin, the opportunity offered for that by JGS recruiting talent at Langya, and the possible difficulty of obtaining permission from NMJ are all established. 

-NMJ sees MY stabbing a /Jin/ captain, at Langya, after he goes looking for MY. Rather than taking a blow for NMJ, MY stabs himself, faking suicide, then immobilizes NMJ (who's trying to save his life) and flees. This is because NMJ wants MY to go turn himself in for killing the captain; MY thinks they'll kill him, while NMJ says that if the captain has actually been mistreating MY as MY said, MY won't be killed. Personally I think that all the evidence suggests that MY is right, and NMJ is blind to the effects of his position to the extent it's a not insignificant moral failure.

-Okay, so, you know how in CQL MY stabs WRH while he's distracted with WWX, outside on the steps with the Sunshot alliance right outside? In /MDZS/, they're in the Sun Palace, WWX isn't anywhere near the place, he does it to save NMJ's life, and then he starts lugging NMJ's unconscious body out of the palace. And then NMJ comes to consciousness amd demands his sabre and tries to kill him. He likely only survives because of NMJ's wounds, and if LXC hadn't shown up (responding to a message MY sent for aid for NMJ) NMJ might easily have killed him. If you want a more in-depth analysis, I take a close look here in my response to someone's, er, imaginative interpretation of NMJ and JGY's relationship in MDZS.

-In CQL, NMJ's qi deviation happens at the stairs incident. In MDZS, it happens later, when he overhears JGY being upset to LXC about how NMJ treated him at the stairs, and, overcome with rage that JGY would dare (arguably in combination with being polite and pleasant to NMJ's face, although the last time he was confrontational to NMJ's face NMJ kicked him down the stairs and tried to kill him so), he kicks open the door and tries to kill him. He also kills several people as he's qi deviating (seeing them as JGY—while in CQL he also sees several JGYs they seem to be just illusions), and injures NHS.

-In MDZS, NMJ sets fire to all of NHS' nice things. I don't think we're told either way in CQL, although it's worth noting that in MDZS this happens after the stairs (and before JGY starts playing for him again). (I think they do something in FJ?? But I don't take FJ as canon for CQL; see confusion-and-more's post here).

-In CQL, JGY suggests to NMJ that he's always played the corrupted Clarity for him (though granted this is in Empathy, so it's hard to say for sure if this is what he actually said, but in any case it's the only version we're given). In MDZS, it's strongly indicated that JGY only started playing Turmoil for NMJ /after/ the stairs—there's a variety of evidence, but I think the most objective is that WWX, who in MDZS Empathy can literally feel NMJ's anger, actually observes it working beforehand:

Since [JGY started playing for NMJ], Jin GuangYao would travel from Lanling to Qinghe every few days, playing Sound of Lucidity to help quell Nie MingJue rage. He tried his hardest, without speaking even a single word of complaint. Sound of Lucidity was indeed effective. Wei WuXian could clearly feel that the hostile energy within Nie MingJue was being suppressed.

(Exiled Rebels translation, ch. 49)

And then the next scene is the stairs incident, so.

-In general, the degree to which JGY's position is completely awful is played down in CQL. confusion-and-more talks about it a bit here; I'd also note that some of JGY's dialogue defending himself is removed ( “Some trivial achievements?” He spoke in a shaking voice, “…What do you mean, some trivial achievements? ChiFeng-Zun, do you know how much work I put into such trivial achievements? How much I suffered? Glory? Without the handful of glory I have nothing!”, for example), we don't hear about his mother at the guqin scene, the temple flashback where his mother is dragged naked outside by a client and he's kicked down the brothel stairs is eliminated, etc etc.

-There is absolutely no second flutist in MDZS; also JGY tells us in the temple that QS was already pregnant before he found out about the incest. I think even in CQL it's questionable whether he actually intended to kill Zixuan (see this whole conversation), and significant unveiling or no CQL never actually says QS wasn't pregnant before their marriage so I tend to go with that too, but certainly it's easy to walk away with the impression that he definitely did both deliberately, especially if you aren't familiar with the novel.

-(In general, I think CQL JGY is a lot more sympathetic than most people think once you look closely, but he's also very much set up to look upon a more casual watching as Villain, so.)

-In CQL it's All A-Yao All The Time but in MDZS we see LXC calling him san-di after the sworn brotherhood, and then it's back to A-Yao in the present day (see my last addition on this chain here).

-In MDZS, JGY doesn't shove JL out of the way of the incoming attack.

-The LXC lifting JGY out of his bow thing is from CQL

-The watchtowers! Oh /man/ the watchtowers. God the watchtowers are so much. Uh, confusion-and-more has a post about how much they're mentioned in MDZS vs CQL here, and see my last addition to this thread for an argument that the watchtowers were indeed a force for good. God. Twelve hundred watchtowers. He must have saved so many lives...

-confusion-and-more's watchtower post also reminds me that CQL has the Guanyin temple giving out medicine, while MDZS does not

-The episode 23 scene where Sect Leaders Jin, Nie, and Lan agree to spare some of the Wen doesn't exist in MDZS (though I'll take the opportunity to observe that I disagree with popular interpretations of that scene, see point three here).

-In MDZS NMJ's fierce corpse is literally trying to kill JGY, there's no saber spirit. And like, it's been trying to kill JGY for a long damn time, that's why JGY dismembered him.

-The XY plotline—in MDZS, JGY recommends a young XY (who at thay point has a reputation but is not known to have committed any massacres) as a Jin cultivator, as part of an effort by JGS to recreate the Yin Tiger Seal. JGS has multiple people trying, but most of them aren't getting anywhere and XY is getting furthest. It's during this time that XY kills the Chang clan, and is discovered as guilty by XXC, who brings up the evidence at a conference happening in Lanling; the Jin are stalling, MMJ gets angry and shows up, he almost kills XY on the spot and gives JGS a lecture such that he's forced to relent and sentence XY to death (and incidentally scares JGY, imho quite seriously, while he's at it). Then JGS turns it into life imprisonment once NMJ has left, and then NMJ is extremely angry and attacks JGY at the stairs. (Ch. 30 and 118)

-I mentioned before but I'll add it here too: in CQL JGY asks LXC to stay and die with him, and LXC agrees.

-The CQL ending in general is...hmmm. Despite having most of the elements which complicate MDZS' ending (JL is in a terrible position!), it kind of presents as...happy ending all is fixed now? In MDZS I think it's presented as—more complicated, even though Wangxian do very much get their happy ending.

-Also LWJ is a lot less. uh. Okay, so in CQL he's more Mr Morality, and in MDZS it's much more Wei Ying Right Or Wrong. Also, he doesn't become Chief Cultivator in MDZS! I think that's my least favourite change, because it's like...LWJ hates politics, hates compromise, and never attends the cultivation conferences. At least one of 'this is going to be a major diisaster' and 'LWJ is going to have to go through some significant shifts in his worldview and approach' are going to have to happen, but that's not the vibe CQL gives off at all, and I think it really works against some of the major themes of the text :/

-OH RIGHT I knew I was forgetting something—in MDZS MXY's revenge is focused solely on the Mo; JGY is not part of the curse.

Okay I don't want to go too much on about xiyao or nieyao, because this is already quite long and I don't want you to be waiting forever, but broadly although I certainly think NMJ cares about JGY a great deal it seems to be about his competence and potential; he doesn't really seem to, like, actually like who he is as a person. JGY, meanwhile, is at first very grateful to and then increasingly exasperated by and very much fucking terrified of NMJ, but...well, he doesn't seem to be into him or interested in spending time with him for the sake of it or etc etc.

On the other hand—xiyao. Man, xiyao!!!! They just—they get each other so fast, they're /partners/, they work together so well, they like and they respect each other, they're both like—LXC and MS are on their own tier for JGY, LWJ and JGY are on their own tier for LXC, they're for each other in a way neither is for anyone else, they care a lot about the same things—it's not perfect overlap, obviously, but it's more overlap I think than either has with anyone else, they—invest, they're builders, JGY was planning the watchtowers project from way back and although I have no doubt he was driving it LXC was with him and!!!! ugh!!!!! xiyao are REALLY GREAT, okay.

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales: Terror of the Terra-Firmians!  (Lena Retrospective) (Commission by WeirdKev27): Launchpad Looses his Last Brain Cell and I Loose My Patience

Welcome back Weblena Warriors to the second part of my look at everyone’s favorite Emo Teen Shadow Lesbian Duck... and probably the only one but hey, semantics, Shadow Into Light, which was made possible by viewers like you, the ultra humanite and a commission from WeirdKev27. Picking up where we left off, we have our first episode that has a different intended order than airing order. 

As most of you probably remember, but some of you who joined later might not be aware of the broadcast order for the first half of season one is, in the academic sense, pretty fucked. It’s not Darkwing Duck’s entirely fucked by a web of badger spiders and a queen snake on top to make it some sort of train situation, but by just sorta airing whatever episodes they wanted to, Disney messed with the character balance so Huey got less focus, not that he got a ton of focus this season but still, as well as leaning into the episodes focusing more on the kids with less involvement from the adults which gave the wrong impression about the series. While it IS very focused on the triplets and webby, the show isn’t entirely about them, but as Frank has mentioned a few times, Disney Channel apparently has this WEIRD thing where they assume kids won’t like stories starring the adult characters. 

Yeah I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while. Mostly how it’s so dumb I could swear Pauly Shore was an exec at Disney Channel. And he might be I don’t know what he’s doing these days and i’d like to keep it that way. For starters, the Scooge comics, while barely published in the US these days, are still popular globally and have appealed to kids and adults for generations and are mostly focused on him, with the kids in a supporting role and Ducktales, you know the thing your directly remaking here, was also mostly about him with the triplets supporting, if a bit less than the comics. Most of the Disney Afternoon was about adult characters, with any kids in side roles in the main cast. And it comes off entirely hypocritical of them to say this when the MCU is easily marvel’s biggest cash cow at the moment, and marvel properties have appealed to both kids and adults, like the duck comics, for decades. And if it’s because the marvel cartoons weren’t doing well , I’ll let you in on a little secret: Those didn’t do well because they looked bland and from what I’ve seen of them felt kind of bland, though I haven’t seen enough to fully judge. Kids LIKE adult characters as much as kid characters, and also like teen characters despite not being teens. Focusing on either is valid and while I LIKED Disney’s youth starring shows I also want another X-Men cartoon before I turn 50, and I bet kids would like that too, with the last one only failing because you bailed on it because you were throwing a hissy fit over fox having the movie rights, and do not get me started on that. Point is this argument is horse shit and should stay in the stables. 

So yeah I do think this episode came too soon and it’s placement effected it at the time and as such it dosen’t have the best rep with the fandom aside from the Lena bits and that includes me. The fact it was very early in the series and the characterizations hadn’t yet sunk in really hurt this episode in places but is it really that bad? Join me under the cut to find out

We open at the movies! Which scrooge apparently hasn’t been too since the 1930′s or seen any on video despite Della existing and being really stubborn. 

A rant for another episode. But the kids just got out of a Mole Monster movie, along with Lena, Beakly and Launchpad. Their reactions are as follows: Lena, Webby and Dewey really enjoyed it, Huey found it unrealistic... says the boy whose uncle fought a dragon made of gold a month or two back but we’ll get to that, and Louie was bored and felt it didn’t have enough of the ultra violence, kids these days it’s not about the gore it’s about the tension. And Beakly.. is just pissed Lena tricked them into seeing this and said it was educational. And the more I think about it the more this sounds like BEAKLYS fault than Lena’s. BEAKLY is the one who likely bought the tickets, who saw it was likely an r or pg-13 and who as we’ve seen HAS A PHONE, and ulnike scrooge probably isn’t so stingy she wouldn’t spring for a smart phone, so she could’ve just googled it, or whatever bird related pun is in this version.. gandered it.. yeah let’s go with that, gandered it, and SEEEN it wasn’t appropriate or walked htem out of the theater and ate the cost if she was that bothered by it. Sitting through a Horror Movie you didn’t research, didn’t pull the kids out of and dind’t bother to even check the poster for or use basic common sense is YOUR fault. And this could’ve worked fine, had Lena talk the kids into begging for it or had launchpad take them and have Beakly find out after, having driven to pick them up as she didn’t trust launchpad to take them home. Instead it makes the former super spy look REALLY stupid and feels really out of character for a SPY to not to do research. And it wasn’t like they decided on this later, Bentina being a spy was part of the character’s backstory from day one and its made clear as early as episode 2 in both airing orders. This is just lazy writing to justify the episode and I expect better from this crew. 

But an argument errupts between Huey and Webby over the Terra-Firmians, a hidden race of rock people living in Duckburg’s discontinued sewer system, allegedlys. So Lena suggest simply going down which gets a disapproving look from Beakly, despite you know this being their bread and butter, and the fact that if she had a problem with Scrooge not being involved.. she could just call him. Exploring fabled rock people is something he’d be into. I mean there’s a low profit margin but it also costs him almost nothing to walk to the theater or have launchpad swing around and pick him up. Just gas which given how much he pays for jet fuel isn’t a big ask. But Beakly soon gets distracted by Launchpad whose convinced the film is real and is attacking the poster a grim sign of things to come as while Beakly annoyed me in this one on rewatch, especially after realizing the above... Launchpad annoyed me both times and for VERY good reason we’ll get into. This provides a distraction and allows the trio to escape. Cue titles. 

After the title sequence, our heroes head deeper underground, there’s too much panic in this town... I mean props to Donald for trying something new but he really needs to rethink his cologne choices. Sex Panther is just.. not a good smell on.. anyone. 

So our heroes journey through the depths of the subway system, and we find out part of why Huey’s so skeptical, as he finds anything that isn’t in the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook to not exist, though the cracks in this already show as he’s added anything that does. We’ll get back to this later but as you can tell the basic dynamic for 24 minutes is Webby being a wholehearted True Believer and Huey being a Skeptical Sally. And Lena is just sorta “Eh gives me an excuse for shenanigans” about it. We also get a peak into webby’s mind as we see her notes .. which really just come off as Terra-Firmian fanfiction involving a war of succession between two sides, the terra’s and the firmies, something based on previous media, and also some doodles of a fictional candy called webby-dings and herself as a superhero, both things I want to see. 

But yeah the first third of the episode is pretty simple, just them journeying, the occasional shift in the firmament, and it’s not bad, and there are a few great bits: Huey nerds out about rocks, and finds them way more interesting than a possible rock monster.

Which leads to the best gag of the episode as when Huey tries to pick up a big sample Webby, annoyed at his hyperfixation on the JWG, asks him to ask his book for help.. which he does by reading it and actually manages to pick the large rock up. This is halted though when Lena screams.. though she really just did it to draw them to an abandoned subway car full of glomgold posters for glomgold products because of course a failed subway project has his name plastered over it. You can’t spell glomgold without failure.. the failure is silent. Glomgold is not. 

The fun is interuptted though by a livid Beakly who had realized they were missing in an earlier scene, after telling the Manager that McDuck Industries would pay for the poster.. and then found out Launchpad also destroyed the toilets “They come up thorugh the sewers!”. Launchpad that’s CHUDS, Ninja Turtles and Rats who raised Ninja Turtles like their own sons, mole people dig or use old mineshafts. It’s basic mole science. Also Beakly really shouldn’t sweat it, I just assumed the city has had a runnig bill witht he company for “McDuck Family and Employee Related Accidents, Mayhem and Shenanigans”. I mean he’s had Gyro on his payroll for at least a decade and a half by the series start, Gyro has leveled whole sections of city in an afternoon more than most giant monsters. Of which several have destroyed Duckburg. It got better. 

Point is she’s livid about them sneaking off with Lena pointing out their some sort of adventure family and Beakly.. saying she won’t see them again, or at least implying it hard. I’ll put a pin in this, as the train buckles and a bit of seismic, or rock men, activity means their stuck. So they divide into teams: Beakly will go try and unhook the train car from the busted cars so they can ride out, Launchpad will go try and fix it, and we get this lovely exxchange as a result

Launchpad: Cool never crashed a train before Beakly: Can’t you try driving it without crashing it? Launchpad: Wha? 

His face in that scene is priceless. He takes Dewey along. More on that in a second. Webby, Huey and Louie are told to stay put with Beakly only bringing Lena along because she dosen’t trust her. So since we have three split plots for a second... let’s split up gang, starting with the most aggrivating, middling with what you all came here for and why this is part of the retrsopective, and ending with the plot that directly heads into the final part of the episode. 

Launchpad and Dewey: GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Okay starting with the most infamous plot and easily the worst part of this episode, probably the worst plot in any Ducktales 2017 episode. That’s not hyperbole it’s really that bad and really pissed people off, as fans of the original launchpad felt they made him overly stupid. This is where the airing order’s a problem as putting an episode with a subplot where one of your characters is obnoxiously dumb right up front means they assume this is his charcter and not just one poorly written chapter in a very dumb but very loveable characters life, likely because the writers hadn’t figured out how to properly scale his stupidity with comptience. 

So as a result we get a good 3-4 mintutes if not agonizingly more of Launchpad assuming something he saw in a fucking movie film was real. That.. that’s his actual plot. Need I remind you, he’s in his late 20′s early 30′s. He’s not much older than me. While other episodes have him as dim this one claims he CAN’T TELL FACT FROM FICTION. 

There are lines you have to keep with your characters to keep the audience from hating them. They crossed it about 80 times with this plot and make Launchpad into a gibbering dunderhead who can’t do anything right versus a regular dunderhead whose good at one or two things and loveable enough for us to like him and not care about his numerous safey violations and child endagerment charges. Thankfully this is the ONLY episode that gets this bad and they clearly learned from this, but it dosen’t make it any less of a tough sit. 

Dewey spends most of the subplot with a look on his face that just screams that he’s as done with this bullshit as we are, as Launchpad assumes he’s a mole person and brought along a pipe to presumibly bludgeon him, because wanting to cave his best friends skull in over stupidity is a GREAT look> Thankfuly he does not. And when the lights come back on Launchpad.. assumes he’s a monster because of bright light, GAH, and locks him out before they end up outside and the plto resolves itself by Dewey pointing out by Launchpad’s utterly baffling logic that he could be a mole monster, so Launchpad.. assumes he is. 

The subplot’s later buttoned up as he claims “I love being a mole monster”, again diffrent subteranian creature launchpad, she says he’s not and my suffering is thankfully at an end. This plot just sucks, it’s bad, overly stupid and dosen’t work with an adult character. Someone like say Ed from Ed, Edd N Eddy, or someone who belivies in weird conspiracy stuff like Dale Gribble or Stan Pines. with either of them this plot would’ve been fucking great. I could buy it from Dale and it just comes off as his normal paranoid weirdness. With Launchpad it comes off like he seriously needs help because the episode frames it as if he can’t tell ficton from reality, and his splotlight episode later would directly contridct this and make this episode even more aggrivating, as he’s a fan of Darkwing Duck, and KNOWS it’s acted out by an actor, so why wouldn’t he get this? It’s just....

It sucks, it sucks and I thankfully get to move on to a better subplot

Beakly and Lena: What You Are in the Dark

Beakly tells Lena she’ll never see Webby again after this.. then chastises her when she won’t help despite you know having just said she’s going to force their friendship apart, which Lena points out. She then gets mad at Lena making a sarcastic comment at her. Okay she’s lived with Louie for at least a week in airing order and a month or two in actual order. She has to be used to this by now. She’s insolent.. because you show her no respect, blame her for something that while sure she talked you into, you should’ve known better, and top it off by saying you want to keep her from the kids because they have bright futures and come from good familes and asks who rasied her and her face.. well.

Yeah wheras Launchpad and Huey, more on that in a second, were hurt by this being some of their earliest big roles, Bentina wasn’t.. until later when we found out just HOW bad Magica is to Lena and how much she dosen’t care about her other than as a tool to use. At this point we didn’t know just how much Lena was playing webby, how much she was only manipulating her, and even with her heroic act here we didn’t know if she only saw Webby as her way to break free. The next episode makes it clear she dosen’t and genuinely does care, 100%, so in hindsight it makes Bentina come off as ghoulsih for horribly asssuming about a girl she dosen’t know, and even if she did know about Magica wouldn’t know the full story, just like us, and then BERATING her after already saying she’s going to rip her away from Webby, which itself is PRETTY bad as she’s the only friend the girl has and sh’es doing so on... talking them into a horror movie, which as I outlined was more Bentina’s fault than Lena’s, and leading the kids into a dangerous place whicha gain, Lena pointed out is something she lets Scrooge do. And trust me i know that she actually knows Scrooge, and we later find out, as we’ll cover next month, that she isn’t ware HOW dangerous things are with Scrooge. It dosen’t change the fact she knows they do dangerous stuff to a point and that Lena may just be acting out. It also dosen’t change the fact she drove three children, yes including launchpad, down here with her instead of sending them home with Launchpad.. granted that option isn’t the safest but it’s safer than taking her with them thena cting like it’s ALL lena’s fault when three of the children, again including launchpad, are down there because of HER. Not Lena, HER. I’m harder on her because she’s older, wiser and was “raised properly” apparently. Though given the way she treats a random teen off the street she again knows nothing about and dind’t bother to ask... it begs the question. 

IT’s a good question. I could see the classism coming from being raised in 40′s and 50′s britain, judging by the timeline.. but even then she’s seen the world, and while her nature is supscious, the classit bullshit makes no sense after presumibly working with, and later spymastering for, various agents of various backgrounds. How has she not dropped this in decades. Scrooge very clearly dropped the racisim and homophobia of his time, so it still stands  on her for not dropping this. And Lena’s hurt shows under hte mask for the first time, that beneath the snark and secrecy.. is just an abused teenager with nowhere else to go and no way out being bullied by an older woman whose cutting off the only light at the end of the tunnel nto for good reason but out of classist, overprotective mallice.  My issues, which to be fair probably were intentional in the episode but sitll are a bit overblown, aside we do get an absoluttley tremendous moment later as a car falls on top of Beakly.. and Magica, speaking once more urges Lena to leave her, let her die and let their plans progress. And while that iself is.. dumb, what if someone finds her or her corpse later, especially since Scrooge would likely perosnally want to retrive the body to give her a proper burial as she’s his only friend at this point, or the rest of the family questoin the story?, it fits Magica’s lack of foresight we see throughout the season. But Lena... saves her. While she later gives an explination, and a valid one at that, it’s clear from her expressoin, her actoins and how she does it... that this is her. Part of it is defiance, as she glares at Magica before doing it, her own stubborn nature mixed with her hatred of her “aunt”, meaning Magica just made it all too easy for her to do this. But the real reason is clear: It’s the right thing to do. While pissing off her aunt and getting away with it is the cherry on top.. the real reason is that unlike Magica.. Lena is not a killer, not a monster, and not a heartless vacum ofa person. Even if she doesn’t like Beakly, for good reason.. she can’t, she WON’T leave her to die and leave Webby an orphan again. She loves Webby too much to do that to her and while she may deny it.. she’s too good a person to leave someone to die for something so petty. Even if she never sees webby again and the plans ruined. It’s better than the weight of knowing she let someone who wasn’t trying to harm her and whose actions, while terrible, were out of misguided protection of her granddaughter, die like this. She saves her. And as we’ll see it pays off.. but before that. 

Huey, Webby and Louie: Into the Unknown This plot’s a bit shorter, as Webby and Huey continue their argument, with Louie eventually making it clear, and not even hiding it when directly asked by Huey, that he’s playing both sides with a delighted expression on his face as the movie was boring but this, this is interesting. Which it is. But it’s interupted by dings on the roof and while Huey assumes i’ts just a regular rock, it moves while their not lookiung.. and soon red eyed, horrifying beasts look out at them and the kids flee back to the car. This dosen’t pan out as the car starts to shake and is clearly going to collapse.. and while Webby and Louie are prepared to flee, rock monsters or no, Huey, in an utterly heart shattering image.. stays in place, terrified of moving. 

This is where this plot goes from mildly aggrivating, as Huey’s Skeptic shenanigans can get on the nerves.. to BRILLIANT. See at the time this was more annoying because it was assumed the skepticsim would be a part of Huey’s character and we’d get more episodes of him being annoying only to be proven wrong, as he semeingly dosen’t learn his lesson at this point, looging the terrafrimians in the guide book. But on rewatch.. this plot is amazing.  For starters the plot subtly introduced the defening characteristic of Huey’s personality, one that’s become more prounounced in Season 3: His need for Order. He needs things to make sense: He solves stuff because he likes there to be order in the world and something he can understand, he can put in a box in his head. Like a lot of neurotypical people, myself included, he struggles horribly when the clearly defined boxes of his life and things he undestand have wrinkles or complexities he can’t get. I for instnace easily got it when I was introduced to the concept of trans people or being non binary.. they just make sense in hindsight: given how our brains are messya nd complicated it makes sense some people would be born in the wrong ones, and tht with all the science and medicine we have to correct that, should be allowed to transition if they so choose. It makes equal sense that some people just don’t have a gender or are gender fluid, being both or neither. Despite struggling with non binary prounouns due to force of habit.. I get the concept with no real difficulty. But when it comes to accepting I don’t have to apologize for everything and that everyone is not angry or that anger is natural and people sometimes get mad and you can’t and shouldnt’ fix it.. it’s something I STRUGGLE with even knowing it’s not right, because my brain is just wired that way. 

That’s how Huey’s struggle comes off here.. he reveals he’s willing to stay and die.. because he’s SO scared of the unknown, that the idea of dying from something he at least knows what it is versus something he dosen’t.., so paralizyed by his own brain he can’t figure out the obvious.. it takes Webby reaching out to him figuratively and literally, to show him that sometimes you have to face the unknown. The unknown is fucking terrifying.. but it can be good and it’s better than sitting there, scared and unable to move. You have to try, to grow and take that risk that things may not go well to really LIVE. 

So he does.. and they reunite with the rest of the group.. and soon find the terrafirmains.. who as it turns out once we get some light on them... are actually just goofy looking,  brightly colored, each one matching one of the kids, kids themselves, and Huey reaches out and touches one, which by ET logic means their friends now, and the terrafirmians help them get out. And this lesson sticks. While sure Huey catalogues it and it seems it didn’t.. he’s never this skeptical again. This douchey skepticsim was only for one episode, his fear of the uknown replcaed with boundless curosity and from here on he’s CURIOUS about new stuff as long as it’s not trying to kill him. He loves taking in new experinces, maybe not to webby levels but he does actually try them and study them instead of just fearing them. 

Before we wrap things up, obviously we need to talk about the JWG not having entries on a lot of stuff. This would be corrected next season as it returns to being a big book of everything, but dosen’t completely contridct this as Timephoon! shows there’s stillcgaps.. which i’m fine with. While it knowing EVERYTHING was fine for the original series here, with things being slightly more groudned, it’d just be an obvious plothole if Huey didn’t use it every single time they ran into something and that’d get boring. Instead it’s simply that it dosen’t know everything, and really in the comics at times it didn’t and the triplets found out new things. It knew almost everything mind you, but having some gaps for dramatic tnesion is fine with me and Seasons 2 and 3 decided on that instead of just having it being a scouting manual which wa sfor the best. And even by later in the season hit has guides to getting a small buisness loan, so they already course corrected. 

So everything’s wrapped up and while Magica berates Lena for disobeying her.. Beakly interputps, thankfully not seeing magica and admits she was wrong and invites Lena for pancakes, even taking a crack about if their actually pancakes or english muffins with syrup, which sounds like my own living hell, in stride, having clearly grown. And Lena explains to Magica that this was the better approach: now she’s got the in theyw anted, and is above suspcison for now. Still not so much that an obvious act won’t be detected but enough that she dosen’t ahve to work actively around her anymore. Magica scoffs.. and while part of it is probably rage.. part of it is deep down both of them know she did it out of defiance.. and only Lena knows that she did it for the right reasons... she just dosen’t get why. She probably justifies it as playing the long game.. but deep down she knows something’s changing about her.. and she’s not sure if that’s a godo thing or not. 

Final Thoughts: This episode is as you can tell a mixed bag. It’s 2/3 of a good episode, with the Lena plot, my issues aside, being excellent and the Terra-Firmian plot likewise fun, even if Huey can get grating the payoff is worth it, and the jokes are really high quality. It’s just bogged down by that fucking launchpad plot that just crushed my soul in it’s palms every time it came back. I went on at length why i hated that one but boy oh boy was the hate of that subplot warranted and I stand by calling it the worst plot of the series. It is: it’s not funny, it makes no goddamn sense, and it drags down what’s otherwise a pretty solid epsiode.

Next Time on Lena: Jaws the shark, lurking in the dark, in the depths of the bin one day of a lark decides to get rowdy, get real violent takes a vacay out to Duckburg er.. Island.. also Scrooge faces his greatest Nemesis.. a PR Tour to clean up his image after an unfortunate giant Beanstalk Incident. Be there and be hip to be square. 

Next Time on This Blog: I Tackle a DCOM for the first time for another commissioned review as we take a look at racisim, specifically Apartheid and breaking indoctrination, with The Color of Friendship. See you next Rainbow.