#and my complaint is only about a singular character who no one else cares about so it rly doesnt even matter | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

curedigiqueen · 3 years ago

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This year I spontaneously watched Appmon nearly 2 times, and I have thoughts about it. And what better way to acknowledge it than on its 5th Anniversary. (Or 4th anniversary of Our Singularity). I'm planning on at least covering my thoughts on the main 5 kids this month, in an order based 100% on who I want to talk about first.

It's Astra.

I think Astra is generally the least liked Appmon character, or perhaps more accurately, is the character I see the most disdain for. And, honestly, I can understand where it comes from. But he’s my favorite Appmon character actually. In a cast with a non-conventional protagonist, a blackbelt idol, and a hacker, Astra’s “Apptube” is well, just kind of there. Like a more modern version of Eri’s idol career. His personality is clearly meant to be representative of the target audience, the group whose number one career aspiration is Youtuber. So, he’s kind of cringy and kind of annoying, especially to an adult audience. I get it. But Astra’s a character I found to have a lot of stuff going on.

I admittedly tend to have a soft spot for the babies of any team, especially if they are assertive enough to keep up with their seniors. And Astra does fit the bill. He’s generally seen to be on equal footing with the others, and his rather aggressive way of talking to the other doesn’t exactly make you think baby of the team. He doesn’t use honorifics, and in general Astra’s referred to in the same terms as Haru and Rei. (As near as I can tell, anyway with my nonexistent Japanese skills, correct me if I’m wrong). The fact he’s in elementary school is a bit more incidental than anything.

We learn the most about Astra’s family and upbringing compared to the other characters, and it is central to his arc. We get a lot of information straightforwardly in the show. He had a lot of pressure on him as the heir to the school, and felt pressured to act the part of the perfect heir. Throughout the show we see him struggle with the pressure of being the heir. As a child he was extremely dedicated to following his father's footsteps. He didn’t seem to see himself as anything other than the heir to his father's school. He seemed set apart from other children, seemingly due to the closed-off way he acted. This dedication to being a good heir was to the detriment of his happiness. Until Musimon came into his life allowing him to loosen up and seek his own happiness. Classic stuff. But Astra is a little more at war with himself than may be obvious by his “annoying” attitude.

While we first learn about Astra suppressing his own eccentricities, in his debut episodes, it’s not until later that we learn about his mother, and learn that this side of his personality didn’t come out of nowhere. His mother is very similar to him, which gives us the question of why he ever became so disciplined in the first place if his behavior isn't out of place in his family, and his mother is a strong advocate for him doing his own thing. In fact, Astra seemed initially a bit embarrassed by his mother when he introduced her to the other Appdrivers. Of course this is almost certainly because his mother calling his friend “pretty” and gushing about her husband and how they met is embarrassing, and even if Astra himself acts just as obnoxious. But even so, he's clearly less respectful towards her. The reasons behind why Astra calls his mother by her first name are unclear, though it doesn't seem to stem from a lack of love for his mother.

But regardless, it helps build the idea that more likely, he was trying to win the approval of people outside his immediate family. After all, as shown in episode 7, it was the assumption that Astra would inherit the school by others that prompted Astra’s response to his father. Even if Astra’s father does have a desire for Astra to inherit his position, he also understands that it's first and foremost Astra’s life to live. Astra however does have a lot of respect for his father and seems to value his opinion immensely, he recognizes that not inheriting the school would be disappointing to his father and does not want to disappoint him. So while I think there is something to be said for Astra’s behavior relating to a desire to impress his father, I don’t personally think it's the origin in its entirety.

Astra over the course of the series is very independent and marches to his own beat, Astra, like Eri, had made the first step to change prior to his introduction, but that doesn’t mean he was already completely different from the boy who acted stiff to prove himself to others. Astra’s second episode deals with him succumbing to peer pressure in his new activity, and his final episode is about not succumbing to his uncle's expectations, the old expectations that kept him down for so long. (But it's also a bit about fulfilling Hinarin’s expectations, expectations he agreed to).

Despite Apptubing being the career choice where Astra does as he pleases, his final episode isn’t about him Apptubing because he wants to but as a way to help someone else. Particularly his cousin. While it isn’t explicitly clear if Astra knows it’s his cousin the fact of the matter is that he’s helping his family through his Apptubing, even if it is something he picked up for himself. (A reasoning perhaps parallels Eri’s reasons for being an idol, wanting to bring smiles to her mom, despite it clearly being something she herself enjoys). His care for his family is exactly the reason he continues to train to be the heir, but that doesn’t mean even if he doesn’t uphold expectations that he can’t be a help to his family.

Astra’s arc deals with expectations vs. a desire to help. Astra in large part is assertive about not having to help other people out and doing his own thing, recognizing he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to. But his actions consistently betray his care for others. I think this is most evident in the way Astra acted as if he wasn’t going to help Eri out with her elections, but did so anyway, even if he antagonized her a bit in the process, but ended up being the proudest of her accomplishments. Not to mention the way he continues to train as the heir, albeit on his own terms. Over the course of the series, he becomes more open with his care towards others, culminating in the jailbreak episode, but he’s always been shown to care. He’s finding that balance between living his own life and helping others.

It’s clear that Astra doesn’t hate being heir at least. He’s extremely determined to do both. And personally, I think it’s very possible that he sees Apptubing as a hobby. He after all proposed the half-hour limit himself. Even at the beginning with his most abrasive. He dutifully kept it to a relatively small impact on his life. For all that it’s brought up as an important element in his life, and he is shown breaking his own rule on occasion without consequence. One of the longest times we see him Apptubing is when he’s helping Eri out. Of course on the flip side of that, we have episode 8 where he breaks the rule because his videos aren't doing as well as he likes, but that's definitely tying back to his desire for people's approval. While he is for lack of a better word, tempted into giving up training to be an iemoto to dedicate himself to Apptubing, it isn’t something he seems to seriously consider at all.

The biggest thing Musimon gave him was not the courage to be an Apptuber, but the courage to be himself. Indulging in Apptubing for fun is merely a small part of that. Astra is still the good heir, but he is no longer letting that define his entire life, sometimes forgoing certain parts of training. But that doesn’t mean that tea ceremony is a bad part of his life. There’s also a certain balance in his personality between the abrasive “annoying” boy at the start of the series and the passive boy prior to the show's beginning. I don’t feel that the polite Astra is completely disingenuous. Astra is capable of acting calm and grounded, and this side of himself becomes more apparent as the series goes on, particularly with Eri who, in contrast to him, throws herself into her idol career with more and more genuine passion. When he supports Eri with his videos but asks her to take a break, which tracks with what we know about his fathers working habits. It’s his final focus episode where he is shown to be acting, more in someone else's interest, and even shown to be a bit embarrassed by it. In contrast to an Astra who even in episode 19, was not taking much seriously. I think it’s only fair to say Astra did genuinely inherit some of his father's more grounded and dutiful nature.

And while earlier I did say Astra’s age feels incidental, I don’t think that is to say it has no bearing on his role in the story. It's part of the reason Eri is so dismissive of him at first, Sure, the other’s treat him as equal, and are in no way particularly protective of him, nor do they expect him to be any less capable than him. But this isn’t to say Astra’s relative youthfulness isn’t apparent when with the others at least in the beginning. Astra is definitely on the more immature side of things, he after all is the one who started the rivalry with Eri because his ego was bruised (not that Eri's initial dismissal of him was helping matters any). As I said earlier, Astra mellowed as the show progressed and I think it’s a fair assumption to say he’d continue to do so. Not that he’ll lose his energy, but that he’ll be able to act with more maturity and consideration for others. The most common complaint about him I’ve heard is “annoying”, which is understandable. But that’s not accidental, even in-universe (hah), others seem to find him to be a bit much at first at the beginning of the series. His “annoying” personality is him testing the waters beyond the role of dutiful heir he’s always played. He’s annoying because he’s an 11-year-old boy who does not always know how to act in ways appropriate to his situation. He’s the kid of the group. I do understand if that still makes watching irritating. Watching should be fun after all, but it’s more of a matter of opinion than an objective flaw.

Unlike Gatchmon, Offmon, and Dokamon whose personalities seem to clash a bit with their buddies, Musimon and Astra are consistently on the same page, after episode 8. This is exemplified in episode 29, where Musimon runs away for fun rather than because he wants something from Astra, and Astra is the only partner who seems to have not been worried, recognizing what Musimon was doing. Of course, their fight in episode 8 was about Astra not being true to himself, thus naturally conflicting with the one who is on the same page as his true self. Musimon shares Astra’s high energy but caring nature. I’m not an expert on the Japanese language by any means, but there is something notable about the fact Musimon uses “Boku” to Astra’s usual “Ore”. Musimon and Astra are without a doubt very similar, the only difference in their demeanors being Musimon is perhaps a bit less confrontational. If Musimon being Astra’s buddy says anything about Astra, it’s probably that Astra is by his nature not quite as aggressive as he seems. Which for someone who clearly used to takes people's opinions of him to heart, seems about right.

Astra’s arc is all about expectations, expectations as an Apptuber, and as the heir. Astra living up to, or disregarding expectations based on what he believes is best. Living the life he wants to live.

Some final observations from me in regards to Astra, is that he’s paired with Fakemon for God Grade. While it’s probably in part just how things worked out logistically, it also makes a bit of sense as a foil. Fakemon is constantly being disingenuous, while a huge part of Astra’s arc is being true to himself, while also fulfilling other people's expectations of him. Also of note, Entermon is described as a Digimon who exists wherever you can find culture something that is particularly relevant to Astra.

While being biracial is not directly important to the story, it’s not incidental and clearly is thematically related to him being trapped between the traditional and the modern Japan. While in story Astra’s story is simply about outside expectations of inheritance, It’s possible to read Astra prior to the series as trying to overcompensate for his foreign mother in the eyes of the people at his father’s school. This is something I find notable considering that Appmon’s assistant producer, Akari Yanagawa, went on to become the producer of 2019’s Star Twinkle Precure, a season of Precure notable for the franchise's 2nd biracial cure, whose personal arc more obviously alluded to racism than Astra's, though still very indirectly.

#appmon #torajiro asuka #asuka torajiro #musimon #digimon

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uwua3 · 4 years ago

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hmmm can i request masumi moving on from the director to the assistant director (reader)? like how he would transition and realize that he doesn’t actually love the director and is falling in love with the reader instead? thank you so much. i love your headcanons. theyre super lengthy, and they capture the emotions of the characters perfectly!! keep up the good work, love! :)

thank you so much!!! i’m so glad that i can portray the emotions of a character somewhat well 🥺 i often have a hard time pinpointing exact feelings so i’m so happy it doesn’t hold back my writings! i will keep doing my best to bring you the coolest pieces ever, mark my words!!! but this prompt is so ??? interesting that i’ve been thinking about it outside of tumblr, you know! i’ve held this off until i had a solid idea so here i am! ready to bring this to justice, wish me well!!! ♡

summary: masumi’s love language is making playlists, apparently

warnings: absent parents, one (1) argument, unrequited love

author’s note: please understand masumi was a hopeless romantic teen who grew up without love so his crush on izumi is definitely unhealthy, but it makes sense for his background TT i hope he overcomes a character arc where he “falls out of love” and loves himself more :D

word count: 3,666

music: breakfast in the park – scotty sire

one playlist, one song.

🌸💌 usui masumi

everything masumi did was for izumi

he acted on stage flawlessly by the script just to hear her approval from backstage. he put his acting career before his studies to have her praise the next day when he memorized his lines. he woke up for izumi, and fell asleep to see her sooner. eat, sleep, and breathe for izumi. masumi was in love

it didn’t matter if she loved him back, it was the feeling he wanted

growing up, no one loved him. so this unrequited love wasn’t painful, maybe it’s what he deserved for being so hard to love. if only he was better, did everything to improve, used every waking hour of his time to become the person izumi wanted him to be, then maybe he’d be deserving

masumi loved izumi, at least, so he thought

(but was this true love? why did the people he love always reject him? what was wrong, what did he have to do to be loved?)

it was another day, masumi opened his eyes and his first immediate thought was to greet izumi “good morning” and make sure she had her breakfast the way she liked it. he would pull a chair out for her, sit across the table after preparing her favorite coffee perfectly, and spend every second in between with her until they had dinner together

it was a cycle, a pattern misumi couldn’t find himself not doing. he lived for it, it’s what he was born to do

when masumi hurried to the kitchen to remain on schedule, he stopped by the entrance. someone else was in izumi’s place, a mug in your hand with a packet of papers open on the counter. you didn’t notice the teen by the door as you read through the stack

huh... you weren’t izumi

you looked up from the fine text and saw a boy staring at you with an apprehensive expression, as if he was wishing to will you away with the sheer force of his glare. in fact, he even appeared frustrated, his eyes narrowed and arms crossed over his chest

(of course he was angry! you were in izumi’s place, you interrupted his entire plan of the day! this was taking time out of his “loving izumi” schedule)

before you could say anything, the director walked into the room and you knew what was going on. the teen’s eyes practically became hearts, you could hear the pulse of his heartbeat from where you were, he instantly smiled and his whole face changed

it didn’t take any skills whatsoever to know izumi had a (not so) secret admirer in the dorms

“masumi!” izumi said, smiling back at him and missing the way he immediately melted at the way she pronounced his name. masumi suddenly wanted to hear it again and again. if he had a tail, it’d be wagging everywhere from how overwhelmed he was with emotion

he trailed after her like a puppy, seeking her attention and touch as he mindlessly followed with wide sparkling eyes and a permanent blush

as he tried to continue their day as normal, izumi led him to you with a big grin as she placed him in front of you. he didn’t bother turning to look at you, his entire focus was on izumi like he was stuck in a daydream

it wasn’t until izumi said those words that changed the rest of his life that he snapped his eyes towards you

“—meet our new assistant director! they’re going to be your acting coach!”

and ever since then, masumi’s hated you

it didn’t take long before the spring troupe members confessed izumi used to be masumi’s daily acting coach after practice. now that you took over her position, you basically stole him away from her (meaning less time for masumi to try to win over his true love)

(truthfully, izumi was grateful you replaced her. it was mentally draining to have to reject every single advance from the lovesick teen without breaking his heart. she pulled you into a hug with a relieved exhale, thanking you for your service as you wondered what she meant by that. you found out very quickly afterwards)

masumi couldn’t have ditched extra practice or else he’d let izumi down. so, he stayed against his will, using every chance to silently express his complaints about spending his limited time with you instead of izumi

of course, you didn’t react. you wanted to make a good impression for your first official job as the mankai assistant director (thank god your high school had a connection to offer apprentinceships), knowing this was an opportunity of a lifetime to even be inside the theatre business

(yet, you were questioning if masumi was a test or not. was this a test to prove you were patient, respectful, and willing to adapt to different types of actors? there was no way this kid was this in love with a grown woman, he couldn’t have possibly been this infatuated with izumi to the point of desperation)

(he was)

a week or two into extended practice and you were already stretched thin. masumi never took off his goddamn headphones, his volume on max with rock music damaging his eardrums as he barely paid attention to you. just nodded whenever you attempted to reprimand him, he didn’t care at all as he treated you with no respect

you were tempted to snatch his headset off and make him actually do something. you stood across from him in the practice room, his slouched posture completely not fitting the character he was portraying and his mumbled words the exact oppoosite of his performance whenever izumi was around

as he skimmed over his part and boredly stated the line in a monotonous attitude, you took a deep breath in and out with a forced smile

“masumi, perhaps you should emote more, with feeling.” you advised, your cheeks hurting from how strained your facial expressions were. masumi hummed, rolling his eyes as he turned the volume up higher (how was that even possible?)

“masumi, please pay attention.” you warned, an edge to your voice as masumi didn’t even acknowledge you. he glanced towards the door, as if hoping izumi would come through, then at the clock with a very disappointed sigh

“masumi.” you said, clutching the script in your fist as you tried to not cross your arms. your patience was on thin ice, how long would his bratty and arrogant attitude hold? you exhaled sharply, trying to maintain your composure for the sake of your internship

he didn’t respond. he yawned and stretched, as if he had just woken up. was masumi spaced out this entire time? you went to open your mouth and ask about his well–being (perhaps, you were being too critical of him. you were also a high school student, he must’ve been pressured in class), but before you could speak, he turned away with a curse

“shut up already, you’re so fake.” masumi mumbled, about to push his headphones over his ears completely but you threw the script onto the floor, startling him as it was your turn to glare at him

“usui masumi!” you shouted with disappointment, not believing your ears. why were his first words to you an insult? you wanted to go back to the stage of your relationship where he didn’t speak at all

masumi stared at you with an impatient look, as if he was waiting for you to get it over with already

“you want the truth, then? well, here it is!”

before you could stop yourself, you released all the anger you bottled up ever since you worked with him in a singular sentence

“izumi doesn’t love you, she never did and she never will, so give up already.”

this was the first time masumi even reacted to your words. his eyes widened, his hands frozen hovering above his headphones and his breath hitched in his throat. you instantly knew what you said was out of line, and when you tried to apologize, masumi sprinted out of the practice room rubbing at his eyes

the door slammed close, echoing in the corridor as you released a breath you weren’t aware you were holding. what could you do now? practice was over early, apparently

you were waiting for it to come, you knew you were being fired. you anxiously paced the floor, checking your phone multiple times to see if a notification with your resignation was arriving. it never did, even throughout the night, as you arrived to the mankai dorms with the weight of your outburst on your shoulders

as usual, you greeted the other troupes with respect despite being around the same age as them. in terms of their careers, they were leaps and bounds and years ahead of you and you made sure they knew that. they responded back friendly enough, offering sympathy most times whenever it was time to work with masumi

this time, the dorms were awkwardly quiet. it looked as if everyone was wary, looking out for something, on edge as they quietly moved around and tip–toed outside a certain door. members shushed each other with a hiss whenever a cabinet door slammed shut, or a bowl clattered against the table surface too long. it was an organized plan to not die, apparently

“what’s—” you started but were immediately silenced by a few pushing their pointer fingers to their lips with a warning expression. you bowed slightly as an apology and lowered your voice, glancing around you for the threat

“what’s wrong?” you whispered and everyone didn’t hesitate to point to masumi’s dorm room door. you learned that, to your surprise, masumi refused to leave his dorm and didn’t even let izumi in (you also found out he didn’t tell anyone what had happened between you two and your lack of professionalism)

you guessed this was going to be your apology then for not making you lose your job on the first day

when you straightened your back and confidently made your way to masumi’s door, the hushed warnings and pleas not to perish right then and there faded when you rapidly knocked on the surface with a stubborn intent to your actions

“masumi, it’s time for practice.” you called through the door, able to pick up on the vibrations of the music he was blasting through a speaker. no response, as expected of the drama queen (he was a teenager, after all)

“masumi, come outside or i’m making you.” you demanded, knowing he heard you when the volume was lowered a bar. it was instantly increased to the max, making most of the boys wince and cover their ears as the floor beneath them shook. you knew what this was: a challenge

scrolling through your albums, you found it and pressed play

without warning, masumi whipped his head towards his door as he heard something other than his own music

were you... were you playing the latest single of his favorite band?

you pressed your phone speaker below the door frame, letting it pass through the crack as he slowly turned down his own volume, staring at where the sound was coming from

after more than half the song, you breathed a sigh of relief when his door finally opened. masumi stood in front of you, his headphones pushed down to his neck, as he observed you (it was like he was really seeing you for the first time)

“you...” masumi paused, unsure how to continue. the song was winding down and fading out, coming to an end as he blankly stared at you. you fidgeted under his stare gazing through your soul, wondering if you had gone too far before—

“you know my favorite band?”

you blinked in surprise, as if you were expecting literally any other accusation but that. you nervously laughed, rubbing the back of your neck as you looked anywhere but at him. was it weird to admit that?

“y–yeah, of course. you play them all the time, so i assumed. i took a listen, they’re not bad.” you rambled, about to continue before masumi bent down to grab your smartphone. he held it out to you, which you took as he glanced at you up and down. was that, an impressed look to his face?

“of course they’re ‘not bad’. i listen to them.” masumi said, taking his script and leaving in the direction of the practice room without another word. you scrambled after him, attempting to keep up (you were usually the one dragging him to go)

masumi tried not to think about it too hard, but he did anyways

izumi didn’t even know what type of music he liked, but you did

it was during that fateful practice where masumi actually made an effort to try, and it’s like the fight from yesterday didn’t even happen

mankai couldn’t believe it—you actually managed to coax masumi out of his toxic mood swings. even izumi had a hard time processing it, confirming her gut feeling that she hired you for a reason

your hours with him increased, coincidentally enough

ever since then, you began learning more and more about who masumi truly was. any other person would’ve dismissed him as problematic for his borderline–creepy attraction to izumi, but past that, you realized there was a deepy rooted traumatic reason why masumi sought love from a select few

masumi was more than his love at first sight crush on izumi. you learned through his short, slightly rude responses, that his parents were absent from his life. when you put two and two together, it was obvious his guardians abroad didn’t give him the approval he needed as a child

(you made an effort to praise him more, genuinely complimenting his talents and encouraging him to do even better. you never noticed, but masumi’s face burned from being appreciated for once)

yet, you weren’t afraid to discipline him. you knew uninvolved parents meant a lack of authority in his life, resulting in his indifferent approach to everything. in a way, your ability to keep a level head but still reprimand him when necessary kept practice productive and functional (you learned being honest didn’t hurt his feelings one bit)

your relationship with masumi bloomed to be more than two aspiring actors. if you were lucky enough, you would even consider him a friend

he liked checking out new physical music releases in the form of cds and had a huge collection of post/progressive rock organized on his desk. when you gave him a mixtape of your favorites to share your music taste, you noticed it was closest to his player

(one time, izumi was worried about him. it had been quite some time since the last time masumi tried flirting with her. she was about to walk into his room before izumi noticed it was left open a crack. she looked in and saw masumi was lying in bed, staring at nothing with a small smile on his face as he listened to an unfamiliar song. it was your cd on repeat)

after school, you and masumi often rode the train back home if the mood called for it. he always leaned against the doors, staring out of the blurry windows with his headphones on and seemingly thinking of everything at once (probably izumi, considering how many times he subconsciously smiled to himself)

you sat beside him, focused on your apprentinceship work and staying on top of all your tasks. it was pretty much a quiet ride home, your friendship with masumi didn’t require talking to fill the silence. the comfortable gap between you two was expected, just two people co–existing with one another

except this time, it was different

you opened your laptop, about to start working before you glanced at masumi and stopped. he didn’t have his classic white headphones on, he always had them

before you could offer your own, masumi turned towards you, holding out one earbud with the other in his left ear

when you took it and placed it on your own ear, masumi slid over to sit closer and the casual distance suddenly closed. he shuffled through some playlist, he liked making them even if he did it rarely

masumi turned his head to look at you, and he seemed to be quietly asking what your opinion was on the track

(how much time had you spent with him that you had familiarized yourself with his complex body language?)

you closed your laptop and put it back in your bag. scooting closer, your legs were touching as you leaned over to read the title, humming a sound of agreement

“this is one of my favorites.” you confirmed, moving back only to realize how close your faces were. one wrong move and—

“me too.” masumi said, and he smiled

you wondered where you had seen that smile for and remembered: it was the smile he had given izumi every time he saw her in the morning

could it be?

you two listened to the music for the rest of the train ride, feeling as if you were trapped in a timeless space as no rules applied here. it was like your own little world, with masumi by your side and the background soundtrack of all your favorites

(misumi remembered your favorites, too. at the departure, you noticed he had messaged you a link. it was to the playlist he played earlier and a comment: thanks for the mixtape)

you two headed to the dorms, hands brushing and no words exchanged, like always. you weren’t aware how close you had become with the boy in love until now, especially with a singular cord keeping you two together

yet, it was as if nothing changed. when masumi saw izumi, he became the character everyone thought he was: a lovesick teenager in an unrequited relationship. he left you and sought izumi’s nonstop approval, his earbud pulled out of your ear as you watched

why was he such a different person around her? which version was his true self? and why did you want to know so bad?

(maybe, you wanted to be the one who knew masumi inside and out)

after that, you asked to ride the train home more. it was one of the only times you had him for yourself

sharing music became a way of communication over talking. you could predict masumi’s mood based on what he was listening to, and you always knew what to do when it came down to it. if masumi had something to express without his usual bitterness, he’d send a song and wait for you to listen it in full just to be understood. sometimes, his playlists even spelled out sentences

your relationship with masumi was mutual, and that was a first for him. he didn’t feel like he had to spend every second with you to confirm your friendship. he sometimes saw you irregularly throughout the day, but enjoyed it regardless

what was different was you made an effort to see him, you showed up to practice early with new song suggestions and plans to attend more music concerts. you included him, didn’t let him off easy, and had high expectations without being like his parents

no one wanted him around like you did, he had never felt this before. was this what it was like? being loved?

as you guys kept walking home with his earbuds connected, masumi was fully aware of how he wanted to hold your hand

“what is it?” masumi began, pushing his hand in his pant pocket to keep his voice steady. “love?”

you stopped, causing him to pause with you as he felt the tug of the cord. masumi turned towards you, the lyrics still played in the background as the instruments continued. a verse passed before you answered slowly, as if you were unsure and contemplative yourself

“love... love is what you feel. it isn’t defined, but it’s what you have for something that makes you happy, that motivates you to do your best.”

masumi didn’t seem to understand, so you explained further

“like, doesn’t music make you happy?”

masumi nodded

“then you love music!”

masumi seemed to understand as you two kept walking. but, masumi was even more confused, because didn’t that mean he loved you? you made him happy, you were his source of motivation

“then do you love me?”

you didn’t stop this time, but walked faster as you fell out of step with masumi. a new song was playing, but you couldn’t hear it over your own heartbeat

“don’t ask things like that, especially when you love izumi.” you laughed, but there was no humor whatsoever. masumi didn’t say anything else and the silence returned, it wasn’t as comfortable anymore

when you two walked through the front door, masumi hesitated. wasn’t this the point where he quickly latched onto izumi’s side? why did he want to stay with you? masumi glanced at you and before he could say anything, you gave him back your earbud and left to do your job

izumi waved at him, and masumi followed. for some reason, he questioned if izumi had ever heard his music before

(he realized, he never made a playlist for her)

it was nearing the end of your shift, you had blocked out your thoughts with the masumi method: maxing out your headphone volume as you revised masumi’s lines and corrections for next practice

your phone pinged, making you flinch at the sudden sound as you pushed the papers to the side. you sat with your chin on your knees, leaning against the practice room mirror as you lazily grabbed your phone, unlocking it to see a new text from masumi

it was another playlist titled “you make me happy, you motivate me”

you opened it and was about to press play before you noticed there was only one song

“i love you”

#usui masumi #masumi usui #a3! act! addict! actors!#a3!#act! addict! actors!#a3! actor training game #a3! headcanons #act! addict! actors! headcanons #mankai a3!#mankai company #a3! x reader #a3 x reader #masumi x reader #a3! masumi #a3 masumi

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rawliverandcigarettes · 4 years ago

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Mass Effect Retribution, a review

Mass Effect Retribution is the third book in the official Mass Effect trilogy by author Drew Karpyshyn, who happens to also be Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2.

I didn’t expect to pick it up, because to be very honest I didn’t expect to like it. 9 years ago I borrowed Mass Effect Revelations, and I still recall the experience as underwhelming. But this fateful fall of 2020 I had money (yay) and I saw the novel on the shelf of a swedish nerd store. I guess guilt motivated me to give the author another try: guilt, because I’ve been writing a Mass Effect fanfiction for an ungodly amount of years and I’ve been deathly afraid of lore that might contradict my decisions ever since I started -but I knew this book covered elements that are core to plot elements of my story, and I was willing to let my anxiety to the door and see what was up.

Disclaimer: I didn’t reread Mass Effect Revelation before plunging into this read, and entirely skipped Ascension. So anything in relation to character introduction and continuity will have to be skipped.

Back-cover pitch (the official, unbiased, long one)

Humanity has reached the stars, joining the vast galactic community of alien species. But beyond the fringes of explored space lurk the Reapers, a race of sentient starships bent on “harvesting” the galaxy’s organic species for their own dark purpose. The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human black ops group Cerberus, is one of the few who know the truth about the Reapers. To ensure humanity’s survival, he launches a desperate plan to uncover the enemy’s strengths—and weaknesses—by studying someone implanted with modified Reaper technology. He knows the perfect subject for his horrific experiments: former Cerberus operative Paul Grayson, who wrested his daughter from the cabal’s control with the help of Ascension project director Kahlee Sanders. But when Kahlee learns that Grayson is missing, she turns to the only person she can trust: Alliance war hero Captain David Anderson. Together they set out to find the secret Cerberus facility where Grayson is being held. But they aren’t the only ones after him. And time is running out. As the experiments continue, the sinister Reaper technology twists Grayson’s mind. The insidious whispers grow ever stronger in his head, threatening to take over his very identity and unleash the Reapers on an unsuspecting galaxy. This novel is based on a Mature-rated video game.

Global opinion (TL;DR)

I came in hoping to be positively surprised and learn a thing or two about Reapers, about Cerberus and about Aria T’loak. I wasn’t, and I didn’t learn much. What I did learn was how cool ideas can get wasted by the very nature of game novelization, as the defects are not singular to this novel but quite widespread in this genre, and how annoyed I can get at an overuse of dialogue tags. The pacing is good and the narrative structure alright: everything else poked me in the wrong spots and rubbed how the series have always handled violence on my face with cruder examples. If I was on Good Reads, I’d probably give it something like 2 stars, for the pacing, some of the ideas, and my general sympathy for the IP novel struggle.

The indepth review continue past this point, just know there will be spoilers for the series, the Omega DLC which is often relevant, and the book itself!

What I enjoyed

Drew Karpyshyn is competent in narrative structure, and that does a lot for the pacing. Things rarely drag, and we get from one event to the next seamlessly. I’m not surprised this is one of the book’s qualities, as it comes from the craft of a game writer: pacing and efficiency are mandatory skills in this field. I would have preferred a clearer breaking point perhaps, but otherwise it’s a nice little ride that doesn’t ask a lot of effort from you (I was never tempted to DNF the book because it was so easy to read).

This book is packed with intringuing ideas -from venturing in the mind of the Illusive Man to assist, from the point of view of the victim, to Grayson’s biological transformation and assimilation into the Reaper hivemind, we get plenty to be excited for. I was personally intrigued about Liselle, Aria T’loak’s secret daughter, and eager to get a glimpse at the mind of the Queen Herself -also about how her collaboration with Cerberus came to be. Too bad none of these ideas go anywhere nor are being dealt with in an interesting way!!! But the concepts themselves were very good, so props for setting up interesting premices.

Pain is generally well described. It gets the job done.

I liked Sanak, the batarian that works as a second to Aria. He’s not very well characterized and everyone thinks he’s dumb (rise up for our national himbo), even though he reads almost smarter than her on multiple occasions, but I was happy whenever he was on the page, so yay for Sanak. But it might just be me having a bias for batarians.

Cool to have Kai Leng as a point of view character. I wasn’t enthralled by what was done with it, as he remains incredibly basic and as basically hateable and ungrounded than in Mass Effect 3 (I think he’s very underwhelming as a villain and he should have been built up in Mass Effect 2 to be effective). But there were some neat moments, such as the description of the Afterlife by Grayson who considers it as tugging at his base instincts, compared to Leng’s description of it where everything is deemed disgusting. The execution is not the best, but the concept was fun.

Pre-Reaperification Paul Grayson wasn’t the worst point of view to follow. I wasn’t super involved in his journey and didn’t care when he died one way or the other, but I empathized with his problems and hoped he would find a way out of the cycle of violence. The setup of his character arc was interesting, it’s just sad that any resolution -even negative- was dropped to focus on Reapers and his relationship with Kahlee Sanders, as I think the latter was the least interesting part.

The cover is cool and intringuing. Very soapy. It’s my favorite out of all the official novels, as it owns the cheesier aspect of the series, has nice contrasts and immediately asks questions. Very 90s/2000s. It’s great.

You may notice every thing I enjoyed was coated in complaints, because it’s a reflection of my frustration at this book for setting up interesting ideas and then completely missing the mark in their execution. So without further due, let’s talk about what I think the book didn’t do right.

1. Dumb complaints that don’t matter much

After reading the entire book, I am still a bit confused at to why Tim (the Illusive Man’s acronym is TIM in fandom, but I find immense joy in reffering to him as just Tim) wants his experimentation to be carried out on Grayson specifically, especially when getting to him is harder than pretty much anyone else (also wouldn’t pushing the very first experiments on alien captives make more sense given it’s Cerberus we’re talking about?). It seem to be done out of petty revenge, which is fine, but it still feels like quite the overlook to mess with a competent fighter, enhance him, and then expect things to stay under control (which Tim kind of doesn’t expect to, and that’s even weirder -why waste your components on something you plan to terminate almost immediately). At the same time, the pettiness is the only characterization we get out of Tim so good I guess? But if so, I wished it would have been accentuated to seem even more deliberate (and not have Tim regret to see it in himself, which flattens him and doesn’t inform the way he views the world and himself -but we’ll get to that).

I really disliked the way space travel is characterized. And that might be entirely just me, and perhaps it doesn’t contradict the rest of the lore, but space travel is so fast. People pop up left and right in a matter of hours. At some point we even get a mention of someone being able to jump 3 different Mass Relays and then arrive somewhere in 4 hours. I thought you first had to discharge your ship around a stellar object before being able to engage in the next jump (and that imply finding said object, which would have to take more than an hour). It’s not that big of a deal, but it completely crammed this giant world to a single boulevard for me and my hard-science-loving tastes. Not a big deal, but not a fan at all of this choice.

You wouldn’t believe how often people find themselves in a fight naked or in their underwear. It happens at least 3 times (and everyone naked survives -except one, we’ll get to her later).

Why did I need to know about this fifteen year’s old boner for his older teacher. Surely there were other ways to have his crush come across without this detail, or then have it be an actual point of tension in their relationship and not just a “teehee” moment. Weird choice imo.

I’m not a fan of the Talons. I don’t find them interesting or compelling. There is nothing about them that informs us on the world they live in. The fact they’re turian-ruled don’t tell us anything about turian culture that, say, the Blue Suns don’t tell us already. It’s a generic gang that is powerful because it is. I think they’re very boring, in this book and in the Omega DLC alike (a liiittle less in the DLC because of Nyreen, barely). Not a real criticism, I just don’t care for them at all.

I might just be very ace, but I didn’t find Anderson and Kahlee Sanders to have much chemistry. Same for Kahlee and Grayson (yes we do have some sort of love-triangle-but-not-really, but it’s not very important and it didn’t bother me much). Their relationships were all underwhelming to me, and I’ll explain why in part 4.

The red sand highs are barely described, and very safely -probably not from a place of intimate knowledge with drugs nor from intense research. Addiction is a delicate topic, and I feel like it could have been dealt with better, or not be included at all.

There are more of these, but I don’t want to turn this into a list of minor complaints for things that are more a matter of taste than craft quality or thematic relevance. So let’s move on.

2. Who cares about aliens in a Mass Effect novel

Now we’re getting into actual problems, and this one is kind of endemic to the Mass Effect novels (I thought the same when I read Revelation 9 years ago, though maybe less so as Saren in a PoV character -but I might have forgotten so there’s that). The aliens are described and characterized in the most uncurious, uninspired manner. Krogans are intimidating brutes. Turians are rigid. Asaris are sexy. Elcors are boring. Batarians are thugs (there is something to be said with how Aria’s second in command is literally the same batarian respawned with a different name in Mass Effect 2, this book, then the Omega DLC). Salarians are weak nerds. (if you allow me this little parenthesis because of course I have to complain about salarian characterization: the only salarian that speaks in the book talks in a cheap ripoff of Mordin’s speech pattern, which sucks because it’s specific to Mordin and not salarians as a whole, and is there to be afraid of a threat as a joke. This is SUCH a trope in the original trilogy -especially past Mass Effect 1 when they kind of give up on salarians except for a few chosen ones-, that salarians’ fear is not to be taken seriously and the only salarians who are to be considered don’t express fear at all -see Mordin and Kirrahe. It happens at least once per game, often more. This is one of the reasons why the genophage subplot is allowed to be so morally simple in ME3 and remove salarians from the equation. I get why they did that, but it’s still somewhat of a copeout. On this front, I have to give props to Andromeda for actually engaging with violence on salarians in a serious manner. It’s a refreshing change) I didn’t learn a single thing about any of these species, how they work, what they care about in the course of these 79750 words. I also didn’t learn much about their relationships to other species, including humans. I’ll mention xenophobia in more details later, but this entire aspect of the story takes a huge hit because of this lack of investment of who these species are.

I’ve always find Mass Effect, despite its sprawling universe full of vivid ideas and unique perspectives, to be strangely enamoured with humans, and it has never been so apparent than here. Only humans get to have layers, deserving of empathy and actual engagement. Only their pain is real and important. Only their death deserve mourning (we’ll come back to that). I’d speculate this comes from the same place that was terrified to have Liara as a love interest in ME1 in case she alienated the audience, and then later was surprised when half the fanbase was more interested in banging the dinosaur-bird than their fellow humans: Mass Effect often seem afraid of losing us and breaking our capacity for self-projection. It’s a very weird concern, in my opinion, that reveals the most immature, uncertain and soapy parts of the franchise. Here it’s punched to eleven, and I find it disappointing. It also have a surprising effect on the narrative: again, we’ll come back to that.

3. The squandered potential of Liselle and Aria

Okay. This one hurts. Let’s talk about Liselle: she’s introduced in the story as a teammate to Grayson, who at the time works as a merc for Aria T’loak on Omega, and also sleeps with him on the regular. She likes hitting the Afterlife’s dancefloor: she’s very admired there, as she’s described as extremely attractive. One night after receiving a call from Grayson, she rejoins him in his apartment. They have sex, then Kai Leng and other Cerberus agents barge in to capture Grayson -a fight break out (the first in a long tradition of naked/underwear fights), and both of them are stunned with tranquilizers. Grayson is to be taken to the Illusive Man. Kai Leng decides to slit Liselle’s throat as she lays unconscious to cover their tracks. When Aria T’loak and her team find her naked on a bed, throat gaping and covered in blood, Liselle is revealed, through her internal monologue, to be Aria’s secret daughter -that she kept secret for both of their safety. So Liselle is a sexpot who dies immediately in a very brutal and disempowered manner. This is a sad way to handle Aria T’loak’s daughter I think, but I assume it was done to give a strong motivation to the mother, who thinks Grayson did it. And also, it’s a cool setup to explore her psyche: how does she feel about business catching up with her in such a personal manner, how does she feel about the fact she couldn’t protect her own offspring despite all her power, what’s her relationship with loss and death, how does she slip when under high emotional stress, how does she deal with such a vulnerable position of having to cope without being able to show any sign of weakness... But the book does nothing with that. The most interesting we get is her complete absence of outward reaction when she sees her daughter as the centerpiece of a crime scene. Otherwise we have mentions that she’s not used to lose relatives, vague discomfort when someone mentions Liselle might have been raped, and vague discomfort at her body in display for everyone to gawk at. It’s not exactly revelatory behavior, and the missed potential is borderline criminal. It also doesn’t even justify itself as a strong motivation, as Aria vaguely tries to find Grayson again and then gives up until we give her intel on a silver platter. Then it almost feels as if she forgot her motivation for killing Grayson, and is as motivated by money than she is by her daughter’s murder (and that could be interesting too, but it’s not done in a deliberate way and therefore it seems more like a lack of characterization than anything else).

Now, to Aria. Because this book made me realize something I strongly dislike: the framing might constantly posture her as intelligent, but Aria T’loak is... kind of dumb, actually? In this book alone she’s misled, misinformed or tricked three different times. We’re constantly ensured she’s an amazing people reader but never once do we see this ability work in her favor -everyone fools her all the time. She doesn’t learn from her mistakes and jump from Cerberus trap to Cerberus trap, and her loosing Omega to them later is laughably stupid after the bullshit Tim put her through in this book alone. I’m not joking when I say the book has to pull out an entire paragraph on how it’s easier to lie to smart people to justify her complete dumbassery during her first negotiation with Tim. She doesn’t seem to know anything about how people work that could justify her power. She’s not politically savvy. She’s not good at manipulation. She’s just already established and very, very good at kicking ass. And I wouldn’t mind if Aria was just a brutish thug who maintains her power through violence and nothing else, that could also be interesting to have an asari act that way. But the narrative will not bow to the reality they have created for her, and keep pretending her flaw is in extreme pride only. This makes me think of the treatment of Sansa Stark in the latest seasons of Game of Thrones -the story and everyone in it is persuaded she’s a political mastermind, and in the exact same way I would adore for it to be true, but it’s just... not. It’s even worse for Aria, because Sansa does have victories by virtue of everyone being magically dumber than her whenever convenient. Aria just fails, again and again, and nobody seem to ever acknowledge it. Sadly her writing here completely justifies her writing in the Omega DLC and the comics, which I completely loathe; but turns out Aria isn’t smart or savvy, not even in posture or as a façade. She’s just violent, entitled, easily fooled, and throws public tantrums when things don’t go her way. And again, I guess that would be fine if only the narrative would recognize what she is. Me, I will gently ignore most of this (in her presentation at least, because I think it’s interesting to have something pitiful when you dig a little) and try to write her with a bit more elevation. But this was a very disappointing realization to have.

4. The squandered potential of Grayson and the Reapers

The waste of a subplot with Aria and Liselle might have hurt me more in a personal way, but what went down between Grayson and the Reapers hurts the entire series in a startling manner. And it’s so infuriating because the potential was there. Every setpiece was available to create something truly unique and disturbing by simply following the series’ own established lore. But this is not what happens. See, when The Illusive Man, our dearest Tim, captures Grayson for a betrayal that happened last book (something about his biotic autistic daughter -what’s the deal with autistic biotics being traumatized by Cerberus btw), he decides to use him as the key part of an experiment to understand how Reapers operate. So he forcefully implants the guy with Reaper technology (what they do exactly is unclear) to study his change into a husk and be prepared when Reapers come for humanity -it’s also compared to what happened with Saren when he “agreed” to be augmented by Sovereign. From there on, Grayson slowly turns into a husk. Doesn’t it sound fascinating, to be stuck in the mind of someone losing themselves to unknowable monsters? If you agree with me then I’m sorry because the execution is certainly... not that. The way the author chooses to describe the event is to use the trope of mind control used in media like Get Out: Grayson taking the backseat of his own mind and body. And I haaaaate it. I hate it so much. I don’t hate the trope itself (it can be interesting in other media, like Get Out!), but I loathe that it’s used here in a way that totally contradicts both the lore and basic biology. Grayson doesn’t find himself manipulated. He doesn’t find himself justifying increasingly jarring actions the way Saren has. He just... loses control of himself, disagreeing with what’s being done with him but not able to change much about it. He also can fight back and regain control sometimes -but his thoughts are almost untainted by Reaper influence. The technology is supposed to literally replace and reorganize the cells of his body; is this implying that body and mind are separated, that there maybe exists a soul that transcends indoctrination? I don’t know but I hate it. This also implies that every victim of the Reaper is secretely aware of what they’re doing and pained and disagreeing with their own actions. And I’m sorry but if it’s true, I think this sucks ass and removes one of the creepiest ideas of the Mass Effect universe -that identity can and will be lost, and that Reapers do not care about devouring individuality and reshaping it to the whims of their inexorable march. Keeping a clear stream of consciousness in the victim’s body makes it feel like a curse and not like a disease. None of the victims are truly gone that way, and it removes so much of the tragic powerlessness of organics in their fight against the machines. Imagine if Saren watched himself be a meanie and being like “nooo” from within until he had a chance to kill himself in a near-victorious battle, compared to him being completely persuaded he’s acting for the good of organic life until, for a split second, he comes to realize he doesn’t make any sense and is loosing his mind like someone with dementia would, and needs to grasp to this instant to make the last possible thing he could do to save others and his own mind from domination. I feel so little things for Saren in the former case, and so much for the latter. But it might just be me: I’m deeply touched by the exploration of how environment and things like medication can change someone’s behavior, it’s such a painfully human subject while forceful mind control is... just kind of cheap.

SPEAKING OF THE REAPERS. Did you know “The Reapers” as an entity is an actual character in this book? Because it is. And “The Reapers” is not a good character. During the introduction of Grayson and explaining his troubles, we get presented with the mean little voice in his head. It’s his thoughts in italics, nothing crazy, in fact it’s a little bit of a copeout from actually implementing his insecurities into the prose. But I gave the author the benefit of the doubt, as I knew Grayson would be indoctrinated later, and I fully expected the little voice to slowly start twisting into what the Reapers suggested to him. This doesn’t happen, or at least not in that slowburn sort of way. Instead the little voice is dropped almost immediately, and the Reapers are described, as a presence. And as the infection progresses, what Grayson do become what the Reapers do. The Reapers have emotions, it turns out. They’re disgusted at organic discharges. They’re pleased when Grayson accomplish what they want, and it’s told as such. They foment little plans to get their puppet to point A to point B, and we are privy to their calculations. And I’m sorry but the best way to ruin your lovecraftian concept is to try and explain its motivations and how it thinks. Because by definition the unknown is scarier, smarter, and colder than whatever a human author could come up with. I couldn’t take the Reapers’ dumb infiltration plans seriously, and now I think they are dumb all the time, and I didn’t want to!! The only cases in which the Reapers influence Grayson, we are told in very explicit details how so. For example, they won’t let Grayson commit suicide by flooding his brain with hope and determination when he tries, or they will change the words he types when he tries to send a message to Kahlee Sanders. And we are told exactly what they do every time. There was a glorious occasion to flex as a writer by diving deep into an unreliable narrator and write incredibly creepy prose, but I guess we could have been confused, and apparently that’s not allowed. And all of this is handled that poorly becauuuuuse...

5. Subtext is dead and Drew killed it

Now we need to talk about the prose. The style of the author is... let’s be generous and call it functional. It’s about clarity. The writing is so involved in its quest for clarity that it basically ruins the book, and most of the previous issues are direct consequences of the prose and adjacent decisions.The direct prose issues are puzzling, as they are known as rookie technical flaws and not something I would expect from the series’ Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and 2, but in this book we find problems such as:

The reliance on adverbs. Example: "Breathing heavily from the exertion, he stood up slowly”. I have nothing about a well-placed adverb that gives a verb a revelatory twist, but these could be replaced by stronger verbs, or cut altogether.

Filtering. Example: “Anderson knew that the fact they were getting no response was a bad sign”. This example is particularly egregious, but characters know things, feel things, realize things (boy do they realize things)... And this pulls us away from their internal world instead of making us live what they live, expliciting what should be implicit. For example, consider the alternative: “They were getting no reponse, which was a bad sign in Anderson’s experience.” We don’t really need the “in Anderson’s experience” either, but that already brings us significantly closer to his world, his lived experience as a soldier.

The goddamn dialogue tags. This one is the worst offender of the bunch. Nobody is allowed to talk without a dialogue tag in this book, and wow do people imply, admit, inform, remark and every other verb under the sun. Consider this example, which made me lose my mind a little: “What are you talking about? Kahlee wanted to know.” I couldn’t find it again, but I’m fairly certain I read a “What is it?” Anderson wanted to know. as well. Not only is it very distracting, it’s also yet another way to remove reader interpretation from the equation (also sometimes there will be a paragraph break inside a monologue -not even a long one-, and that doesn’t seem to be justified by anything? It’s not as big of a problem than the aversion to subtext, but it still confused me more than once)

Another writing choice that hurts the book in disproportionate ways is the reliance on point of view switches. In Retribution, we get the point of view of: Tim, Paul Grayson, Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders, David Anderson, Aria T’loak, and Nick (a biotic teenager, the one with the boner). Maybe Sanak had a very small section too, but I couldn’t find it again so don’t take my word for it. That’s too many point of views for a plot-heavy 80k book in my opinion, but even besides that: the point of view switch several times in one single chapter. This is done in the most harmful way possible for tension: characters involved in the same scene take turns on the page explaining their perspective about the events, in a way that leaves the reader entirely aware of every stake to every character and every information that would be relevant in a scene. Take for example the first negotiation between Aria and Tim. The second Aria needs to ponder what her best move could possibly be, we get thrown back into Tim’s perspective explaining the exact ways in which he’s trying to deceive her -removing our agency to be either convinced or fooled alongside her. This results in a book that goes out of his way to keep us from engaging with its ideas and do any mental work on our own. Everything is laid out, bare and as overexplained as humanly possible. The format is also very repetitive: characters talk or do an action, and then we spend a paragraph explaining the exact mental reasoning for why they did what they did. There is nothing to interpret. No subtext at all whatsoever; and this contributes in casting a harsh light on the Mass Effect universe, cheapening it and overtly expliciting some of its worst ideas instead of leaving them politely blurred and for us to dress up in our minds. There is only one theme that remains subtextual in my opinion. And it’s not a pretty one.

6. Violence

So here’s the thing when you adapt a third person shooter into a novel: you created a violent world and now you will have to deal with death en-masse too (get it get it I’m so sorry). But while in videogames you can get away with thoughtless murder because it’s a gameplay mechanic and you’re not expected to philosophize on every splatter of blood, novels are all about internalization. Violent murder is by definition more uncomfortable in books, because we’re out of gamer conventions and now every death is actual when in games we just spawned more guys because we wanted that level to be a bit harder and on a subconscious level we know this and it makes it somewhat okay. I felt, in this book, a strange disconnect between the horrendous violence and the fact we’re expected to care about it like we would in a game: not much, or as a spectacle. Like in a game, we are expected to root for the safety of named characters the story indicated us we should be invested in. And because we’re in a book, this doesn’t feel like the objective truth of the universe spelled at us through user interface and quest logs, but the subjective worldview of the characters we’re following. And that makes them.... somewhat disturbing to follow.

I haven’t touched on Anderson and Kahlee Sanders much yet, but now I guess I have too, as they are the worst offenders of what is mentioned above. Kahlee cares about Grayson. She only cares about Grayson -and her students like the forementioned Nick, but mostly Grayson. Grayson is out there murdering people like it’s nobody’s business, but still, keeping Grayson alive is more important that people dying like flies around him. This is vaguely touched on, but not with the gravitas that I think was warranted. Also, Anderson goes with it. Because he cares about Kahlee. Anderson organizes a major political scandal between humans and turians because of Kahlee, because of Grayson. He convinces turians to risk a lot to bring Cerberus down, and I guess that could be understandable, but it’s mostly manipulation for the sake of Grayson’s survival: and a lot of turians die as a result. But not only turians: I was not comfortable with how casually the course of action to deal a huge blow to Cerberus and try to bring the organization down was to launch assault on stations and cover-ups for their organization. Not mass arrests: military assault. They came to arrest high operatives, maybe, but the grunts were okay to slaughter. This universe has a problem with systemic violence by the supposedly good guys in charge -and it’s always held up as the righteous and efficient way compared to these UGH boring politicians and these treaties and peace and such (amirite Anderson). And as the cadavers pile up, it starts to make our loveable protagonists... kind of self-centered assholes. Also: I think we might want to touch on who these cadavers tend to be, and get to my biggest point of discomfort with this novel.

Xenophobia is hard to write well, and I super sympathize with the attempts made and their inherent difficulty. This novel tries to evoke this theme in multiple ways: by virtue of having Cerberus’ heart and blade as point of view characters, we get a window into Tim and Kai Leng’s bigotry against aliens, and how this belief informs their actions. I wasn’t ever sold in their bigotry as it was shown to us. Tim evokes his scorn for whatever aliens do and how it’s inferior to humanity’s resilience -but it’s surface-level, not informed by deep and specific entranched beliefs on aliens motives and bodies, and how they are a threat on humanity according to them. The history of Mass Effect is rich with conflict and baggage between species, yet every expression of hatred is relegated to a vague “eww aliens” that doesn’t feed off systemically enforced beliefs but personal feelings of mistrust and disgust. I’ll take this example of Kai Leng, and his supposedly revulsion at the Afterlife as a peak example of alien decadence: he sees an asari in skimpy clothing, and deems her “whorish”. And this feels... off. Not because I don’t think Kai Leng would consider asaris whorish, but because this is supposed to represent Cerberus’ core beliefs: yet both him and Tim go on and on about how their goal is to uplift humanity, how no human is an enemy. But if that’s the case, then what makes Kai Leng call an Afterlife asari whorish and mean it in a way that’s meaningfully different from how he would consider a human sex worker in similar dispositions? Not that I don’t buy that Cerberus would have a very specific idea of what humans need to be to be considered worth preserving as good little ur-fascists, but this internal bias is never expressed in any way, and it makes the whole act feel hollow. Cerberus is not the only offender, though. Every time an alien expresses bias against humans in a way we’re meant to recognize as xenophobic, it reads the same way: as personal dislike and suspicion. As bullying. Which is such a small part of what bigotry encompasses. It’s so unspecific and divorced from their common history that it just never truly works in my opinion. You know what I thought worked, though? The golden trio of non-Cerberus human characters, and their attitude towards aliens. Grayson’s slight fetishism and suspicion of his attraction to Liselle, how bestial (in a cool, sexy way) he perceives the Afterlife to be. The way Anderson and Kahlee use turians for their own ends and do not spare a single thought towards those who died directly trying to protect them or Grayson immediately after the fact (they are more interested in Kahlee’s broken fingers and in kissing each other). How they feel disgust watching turians looting Cerberus soldiers, not because it’s disrespectful in general and the deaths are a inherent tragedy but because they are turians and the dead are humans. But it's not even really on them: the narration itself is engrossed by the suffering of humans, but aliens are relegated to setpieces in gore spectacles. Not even Grayson truly cares about the aliens the Reapers make him kill. Nobody does. Not even the aliens among each other: see, once again, Aria and Liselle, or Aria and Sanak. Nobody cares. At the very end of the story, Anderson comes to Kahlee and asks if she gives him permission to have Grayson’s body studied, the same way Cerberus planned to. It’s source of discomfort, but Kahlee gives in as it’s important, and probably what Grayson would have wanted, maybe? So yeah. In the end the only subtextual theme to find here (probably as an accident) is how the Alliance’s good guys are not that different from Cerberus it turns out. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

7. Lore-approved books, or the art of shrinking an expanding universe

I’d like to open the conversation on a bigger topic: the very practice of game novelization, or IP-books. Because as much as I think Drew Karpyshyn’s final draft should not have ended up reading that amateur given the credits to his name, I really want to acknowledge the realities of this industry, and why the whole endeavor was perhaps doomed from the start regardless of Karpyshyn’s talent or wishes as an author.

The most jarring thing about this reading experience is as follows: I spent almost 80k words exploring this universe with new characters and side characters, all of them supposedly cool and interesting, and I learned nothing. I learned nothing new about the world, nothing new about the characters. Now that it’s over, I’m left wondering how I could chew on so much and gain so little. Maybe it’s just me, but more likely it’s by design. Not on poor Drew. Now that I did IP work myself, I have developed an acute sympathy for anyone who has to deal with the maddening contradictions of this type of business. Let me explain.

IP-adjacent media (in the West at least) sure has for goal to expand the universe: but expand as in bloat, not as in deepen. The target for this book is nerds like me, who liked the games and want more of this thing we liked. But then we’re confronted by two major competitors: the actual original media (in ME’s case, the games) whose this product is a marketing tool for, and fandom. IP books are not allowed to compete with the main media: the good ideas are for the main media, and any meaningful development has to be made in the main media (see: what happened with Kai Leng, or how everyone including me complains about the worldbuilding to the Disney Star Swars trilogy being hidden in the novelization). And when it comes to authorship (as in: taking an actual risk with the media and give it a personal spin), then we risk introducing ideas that complicate the main media even though a ridiculously small percent of the public will be attached to it, or ideas that fans despise. Of course we can’t have the latter. And once the fandom is huge enough, digging into anything the fans have strong headcanons for already risks creating a lot of emotions once some of these are made canon and some are disregarded. As much as I joke about how in Mass Effect you can learn about any gun in excrutiating details but we still don’t know if asaris have a concept for marriage... would we really want to know how/if asaris marry, or aren’t we glad we get to be creative and put our own spin on things? The dance between fandom and canon is a delicate one that can and will go wrong. And IP books are generally not worth the drama for the stakeholders.

Add this to insane deadlines, numerous parties all involved in some way and the usual struggles of book writing, and we get a situation where creating anything of value is pretty much a herculean task.

But then I ask... why do IP books *have* to be considered canon? I know this is part of the appeal, and that removing the “licenced” part only leaves us with published fanfiction, but... yeah. Yeah. I think it could be a fascinating model. Can you imagine having your IP and hiring X amount of distinctive authors to give it their own spin, not as definitive additions to the world but as creative endeavours and authorial deepdives? It would allow for these novels to be comparative and companion to the main media instead of being weird appendages that can never compare, and the structure would allow for these stories to be polished and edited to a higher level than most fanfictions. Of course I’m biased because I have a deep belief in the power of fanfiction as commentary and conversational piece. But I would really love to see companies’ approach to creative risk and canon to change. We might get Disney stuff until we die now, so the least we can ask for is for this content to be a little weird, personal and human.

That’s it. That’s the whole review. Thank you for reading, it was very long and weirdly passionate, have a nice dayyyyy.

#Mass Effect #mass effect retribution #me critical #writing #mass effect novels #anderson #kahlee sanders #Aria T'loak #paul grayson #liselle #salarians #IP conversation #omega #mass effect lore #reapers #book review

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dgcatanisiri · 4 years ago

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Right. THAT is why I don’t watch every video essay that passes through my recommendations, just because it’s about a subject of queerness. Because it wants to talk about one of the biggest examples of queerbaiting as if it existed in isolation from everything else that happened in that fandom.

I need to blow off some steam here.

When it comes to addressing issues of St*rek, you CAN. NOT. divorce the discussion of how the show queerbaited the audience from the audience’s racism. The show had a canon queer character (of color) and centered around a character of color. And, when it came to fan content, what I would usually see come about, if the above two were involved AT ALL? Was crap like this.

A gif of Scott and Stiles, Stiles going for a fist bump, Scott a five, and them just rolling with it, with the text below bringing up a “stoned fratboy” AU. And the very next reblog text drops Scott IMMEDIATELY and makes it into a St*rek thing. Nothing about this show mattered but the characters of Stiles and Derek.

This will forever be what that pairing is associated with in my mind. The erasure of Scott to prop it up, even when it’s not even the subject.

The thing is, this pairing has ALWAYS been my go-to of straight people translating the dynamics of straight relationships onto queer couples, a translation that always misses the mark - aesthetic attraction aside, you aren’t going to genuinely fall for and proceed to act on an attraction to someone who is legitimately aggressive to you. The bully and the bullied do not ACTUALLY end up together, because the bully has made it clear that, if they were given the chance, they’d leave you bloody, not your heart a-flutter.

AND THAT WAS THE DYNAMIC. For the better part of Derek’s time on the show, he did not give a single flying fornication about Stiles - his focus was on SCOTT. On how Scott - the “Teen Wolf” of the series name - was now a werewolf, how that made a connection between them, as pack. Derek legitimately threatened Stiles with bodily harm on multiple occasions - and in a few occasions off the top of my head, actually followed through with it. Stiles was something that Derek had to put up with, and routinely made it clear that he didn’t particularly care to.

It doesn’t matter how flustered Stiles might have gotten about Derek, the genuine reality always was that Derek DIDN’T care about Stiles. It was not until the show began actively leaning in to the queerbaiting that we saw any positive shift in their interactions. Until that point, it was a lot of antagonism, and, again, antagonism may have often been used to describe straight pairings, but... I mean, people, even the straights are reaching the point of calling out this shit as being unhealthy dynamics at best.

But they were attractive white guys who breathed in the same room, while being the only romantically unattached characters in the main cast during the first season. Despite the fact that both had plenty of interactions with other characters that could have offered them something with more foundation - Scott and Stiles are best friends who are as close as brothers, Derek is after Scott to join the pack. Stiles on screen is pestering Danny about “am I attractive to gay guys?” and then got him to come over to his bedroom (it’s the same scene as that infamous “Derek in Stiles’s bedroom” bit, not that anyone ever discusses that...) Hell, go in the direction of the dynamic above, Scott and Jackson are rivals on the lacrosse team throughout Jackson’s time. Yet, even with that being the same dynamic AND not involving either character - so not “conflicting” with the ship while offering the same draw in terms of their interactions - it’s a barely touched ship when you look it up on AO3.

So we have the fandom actively AVOIDING featuring the characters of color, diminishing them, and, based on my experience in terms of the content that existed throughout the time of the show’s airing, even transplanting Scott’s characterization over to Stiles - Stiles is the snarky shit who doesn’t mind suggesting killing a perceived threat because he wants the danger dealt with directly, while Scott is the compassionate nurturer who will do everything in his power to find a solution that saves the most lives. But I recall a lot of trying to make Stiles out as “the pack mom!friend,” as if he’d be the one taking care of all these characters if they showed up unexpectedly.

Like, that example always came with the way he positioned himself over Isaac and Erica in the episode “Raving.” The way that actually is him using them as a shield - if the kanima broke through the door they were pressed against, it’d hit them first, giving Stiles time to run away. But sure, he’s the pack mama, looking out for the baby betas.

When Stiles or Derek suggest or do something morally questionable, they’re justified. When Scott disagrees, he’s the worst. When Derek betrays Scott (working with Peter in season one), his actions are brushed off entirely. When Scott (justifiably) does not trust Derek (his plan for dealing with Gerard in the season two finale), he’s a horrible person for leaving Derek in the dark - even though Derek has spent the whole season actively preying on a group of teenage outcasts, threatening to kill anyone he believes is the kanima, and just generally being a variety flavor bag of dicks.

The fandom diminished Scott, and it even diminished Danny - at the same time that we had Danny and Ethan’s relationship in season three, there were still calls for “a gay couple” on the show. Like, that was the way it was looked at, that “we need a gay couple,” exact words. Because Danny/Ethan was not main cast, or, to put it bluntly since I already said this was a matter of racism, because Danny wasn’t white, this canon gay relationship was ignored and erased in the name of getting the two white boys to kiss. Not “a gay couple in the main cast.” Just “a gay couple.”

For the record, I’m not gonna touch on the age gap element, Stiles at 16, Derek in his early 20s, even though I know it’s become a popular thing to go into as time has gone on - in today’s example of “nuance is a thing,” the nuance of this is that we have adult actors playing teenage characters, which creates muddied waters since fictional construct says one thing, but your eyes and head are seeing actors of a more appropriate age interacting, and while I don’t condone it IRL, this is still fiction and I’m gonna just leave that alone for the time being. The core of my complaint overall here is that fandom was inventing this relationship wholesale and then getting pissy when canon didn’t conform and actors disagreed.

So when you have an interview where, after a few years of being asked repeatedly about “is St*rek gonna happen?” when he plays neither character, when this show is supposedly meant to center on his character, but no one seems to talk to him ABOUT his character, when these “fans” are minimizing him and his character, Tyler Posey makes a snippy remark about how this is “weird, twisted, bizarre, and they’re watching for the wrong thing”? Yeah, actually. He’s right. St*rek shippers WERE watching for the wrong thing.

In the eyes of these shippers, Scott could do no right if it would mean that Derek was wrong. To them, “Teen Wolf” was a description of Stiles (the teen) and Derek (the wolf), and Scott was an incidental character at best. And how dare anyone involved be at all upset over this.

But the videos on queerbaiting NEVER bring this stuff up. And, when those from outside the fandom, who report on these in autopsy fashion, bring up things like Tyler Posey’s comment, they do it in a manner that even suggests that he - the actor who was nineteen/twenty years old at the time of the show’s filming and premiere - was responsible for the various forms of queerbaiting that the producers pushed, like the infamous “Dylan O’Brien and Tyler Hoechlin cuddling on a ship” thing. So, you know, just perpetuating this attitude that permeated this fandom, of this casual low-level racism.

But no, this never comes up. But speaking as someone who was there during the height of Teen Wolf’s Tumblr popularity? Oh, it ABSOLUTELY was everywhere. But, because the people doing these autopsies were in the midst of this (and, while I’m acknowledging this at the end of this ranting, I do want to be clear that I am speaking about this fandom as an entity in its own right, and not any singular individual in and of themselves, I don’t think that all shippers of this ship are racist or that shipping it is in and of itself racist, just that as an overall experience of this fandom is this core of) or they came after the show’s heyday and missed it, know the pairing for being queerbaited before they know the show/fandom/pairing itself... They’re not seeing it. They’re not talking about it. And it makes for a deep failing in these examinations. Because that racism is why the pairing got as popular as it did. Again, there were other pairings with other foundations available. And yet somehow, it’s the white guys who hate each other getting all the attention in the fandom, over anything else.

#dg rants #anti sterek

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bladekindeyewear · 4 years ago

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HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-10-31

THE SPOOKTOBER SPOOKD8 IS HERE! Time to blog it and hope to the lord of bones that it heavily features the 12-foot Home Depot Skeleton! Continuing from last time.

Will John remember that he should be off protecting the other kids from running off? Or will he search for Vrissy finally, now that he’s spent a literal DAY staring at his house burning down?

> (==>)

This is the last Blood tie with your childhood and the past you were clinging to like a man-child, finally cut. Your psyche is no longer allowed to be....

....Housetrapped.

Now get your Breathy ass over to your more adult responsibilities. Or do something as irresponsible as usual, but more forward focused and thus singularly impressive.

> (==>)

I LITERALLY GASPED

I knew I was a fatally addicted Homestuck fanboy despite the trauma but I didn’t know I was THAT much of a just-over-thirty-year-old fanboy, I literally GASPED out loud. To finally have the joy and confidence for the future that comes with JOHN and KARKAT together IN PERSON and interacting with a common goal.

What a dramatic, perfect shot. This IS Karkat right? That’s what the visuals and my heart and soul said

> (==>)

THEY’RE CLOSE FRIENDS

CLOSE ENOUGH FOR THAT

KARKAT HAS COME SO FAR

Karkat and John conversations are some of the strongest in Homestuck, I ship them as FRIENDS so hard

It brings to mind something I mentioned in the Breath, Blood, and the Flow of Reality explanation/theorypost, which was holy shit SEVEN YEARS AGO wow

I didn’t always understand the appeal of John as a character, ranking him in the middle of my liked characters list. But after a while, I suddenly noticed how enjoyable he was for the things his conversations did to others, making his pesterlogs some of the most enjoyable to read. I wrote the following two years ago, in a character rankings thread, back when we knew jack shit about the import of classes and roles:

“I didn’t really see why I should think John was such an amazing character until I realized his consistent effect on the other party. He’s goofy and doesn’t really understand anything, but he understands just enough about his friends and others to make cutting, hilarious, almost unintentional insights that can change people for the better, even if he’s off the mark. It’s not what he says himself, but what he brings about in others that makes him so great to read. I mean, if you wall him off from everyone else… he kind of fails.

That’s why I take issue with the complaint of protagonist syndrome, here. John is very little by himself, but enhances all the characters around him immensely. Imagine if John were doomed to stay the least powerful and/or game-advancing of the kids and trolls combined; notice how little that would do to the story, or his beneficial role in it.”

John cut himself off from EVERYONE for YEARS in the Candy timeline. He tried to be close to people and just ended up distancing himself from it. He tried to keep himself tied down by his old home and memories of the version of Dad he lost, and all sorts of childish stuff. But that tie is cut, and the bonds he’s forged need to be grasped to bring him out to exercise his maturity, because Breath is futile without real BLOOD.

> (==>)

Awesome shot.

KARKAT: ROUGH DAY, HUH.

youtube

(that was supposed to skip to 2:26 when you click but I couldnt embed it that way -- I haven’t metal geared i just seen clips and super best friends & know some memes)

So many scars. I used to even ship Jane and Karkat a little so they could just be aghast together at everyone’s shenanigans and level criticism at them together, but to think Jane’s fought and hurt Karkat THIS much...

(And yeah, his blood color is shown through his eyes now at this age, that’s correct.)

> (==>)

Oh my fucking god, going from that to Sprite mode that abruptly. XD

This is great.

JOHN: karkat? JOHN: what are you doing here? KARKAT: IT'S NICE TO SEE YOU TOO.

Hah, SO close that Karkat’s immediately critical of NOT being greeted warmly. :)

JOHN: this isn't a battlefield, it's just... KARKAT: THE OBLITERATED, SMOLDERING HUSK OF YOUR FORMER HOME. JOHN: well, yeah. KARKAT: WHICH WAS DESTROYED AS COLLATERAL IN AN ONGOING MILITARY CONFLICT. JOHN: oh all right, fine. JOHN: it just feels weird to call it that. JOHN: i guess i'm used to thinking of home as somewhere far away from all that war stuff.

Yeah John, the burning down from a bomb that was meant for you and ALL of your friends’ children is supposed to shatter you out of that illusion.

I’d continue criticizing, but Karkat’s about to do it for me:

KARKAT: JESUS *CHRIST* JOHN. KARKAT: I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO LIST ALL THE WAYS IN WHICH THAT CONSTITUTES A SHORT-SIGHTED AND PUKE-WORTHILY IGNORANT THING TO SAY TO ME, PERSONALLY. KARKAT: AND FRANKLY I DON'T HAVE TIME TO BOTHER, THANKS TO THE COUNTLESS FIRES I HAVE BEEN PUTTING OUT ALL DAY, THE ONE PRESENTLY CONSUMING YOUR HIVE NOTWITHSTANDING. KARKAT: YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAVE MADE THINGS GO A BIT MORE SMOOTHLY? JUST A FRACTION? KARKAT: IF YOU HADN'T JUST DECIDED TO WANDER OFF THE INSTANT SHIT STARTED HAPPENING. JOHN: jeez, i'm sorry karkat. JOHN: i had no idea how much time had passed. JOHN: i must have gotten a bit distracted by my house being blown up.

A BIT DISTRACTED. You empty-headed irresponsible guardian.

KARKAT: NOT WANTING TO POINT OUT THE OBVIOUS, BUT I FEEL LIKE THIS WAS A PROBLEM THAT YOU OF ALL PEOPLE WERE UNIQUELY AND MAGICALLY EQUIPPED TO DEAL WITH. JOHN: huh? KARKAT: YOU KNOW. KARKAT: WITH YOUR SHOOSH THING. JOHN: my shoosh thing. KARKAT: YOUR SHOOSH THING. KARKAT: THE GUSTY NONSENSE? THE GIFT OF GAS?? KARKAT: YOUR SBURB ALLOCATED BLOW JOB??? JOHN: uh. KARKAT: THE SUPERNATURAL COMMUNION YOU HAVE WITH ALL THINGS WINDY, YOU ASS!! JOHN: oh right, that. JOHN: that would have let me put the fire out, maybe. JOHN: i don't think there's anything in my skillset that would have unexploded my house though. KARKAT: THAT'S FAIR.

Mhmm. Many of the characters in Candy AND Meat are currently in a situation where due to either years of unpractice in a worshipful society that discourages it by fueling their insecurities or inability to due to confinement in a years-long space trip has caused them to AVOID using their powers for the main beginning stretch of our new story. People have complained about them outright “forgetting” to use their powers, and they’re right, to an extent, but it’s story-justified. They’re almost all physically or psychologically prevented from doing so! But those walls are coming down, starting now. They’re going to come back into their own. And we’re bound to see a LOT MORE of these literal Gods using their abilities to shape the fabric of reality as the story progresses.

JOHN: i suppose i'll add one more notch to the daily tally of crazy stuff that happened which i just have to accept as my life now.

It was all already happening, you just refused TO accept it until now.

JOHN: so... JOHN: what else happened while i was caught up watching the symbolic representation of my former life get consumed in a giant fire ball? KARKAT: OH BOY. WHERE TO START. KARKAT: SO FIRST OFF, IN HINDSIGHT, TODAY WAS PRETTY OBVIOUSLY JUST ONE HUGE BAITED TRAP. KARKAT: I SAY "IN HINDSIGHT", BUT FORTUNATELY IT WAS ALSO EXTREMELY APPARENT EVEN IN FORESIGHT TO THOSE OF US WHO SPENT A FEW SECONDS THINKING ABOUT IT. JOHN: ...right. KARKAT: OH COME ON EGBERT, SERIOUSLY? KARKAT: KIDNAPPING A PERSON OF IMPORTANCE, ONLY TO LET US KNOW PRECISELY WHERE AND ON WHAT OCCASION THEY WOULD BE MOST ACCESSIBLE FOR A RESCUE ATTEMPT? KARKAT: HAVING THAT OCCASION BE NONE OTHER THAN THE CORPSE PARTY OF A HIGHLY NOTEWORTHY POLITICAL FIGURE, WHOSE CASKET MIGHT AS WELL HAVE HAD A GIANT "KICK ME" SIGN DAUBED ON IT? KARKAT: THERE WAS BASICALLY NO WAY IT WASN'T A FRONT FOR SOMETHING HUGE. AND IT WAS! KARKAT: WE HAPPEN TO BE SITTING IN FRONT OF ONE FACET OF THAT HUGENESS AT THIS VERY MOMENT.

Wait. Oh, God.

Someone brought up the possibility that Gamzee might still be revivable by Jane, and I speculated that she’s deliberately CHOOSING not to because she actually doesn’t like him that much or has some semblance of fucking sense left in her.

But what if she PLANNED to have a public funeral for him, and then revive him SOON AFTER to turn him into a Christ-like resurrecting figure? D:

JOHN: well, when you put it like that... JOHN: i guess we all got pranked pretty hard, huh. KARKAT: THIS IS NO TIME FOR YOUR SHITTY NERD PRANKS JOHN. KARKAT: FRANKLY I'M INSULTED THAT YOU THINK SUCH A WORD IS EVEN REMOTELY APPOSITE TO THE PRESENT SITUATION. KARKAT: OTHER THAN TO DESCRIBE THE WAY I AM PERSONALLY BEING "PRANKED" BY REALITY IN HAVING TO EXPLAIN ALL THIS TO YOU.

Pretty much. Get serious, John, actual people are dying by the--

--oh right, he was like this through the apocalypse and death of everyone on Earth.

I guess this is in character. Paradox Space made sure to choose someone empty-headed and disconnected from reality enough to withstand this shit easily. He really is a Breath player.

KARKAT: IT TURNS OUT THAT WE DIDN'T NEED TO PUT SO MUCH EFFORT INTO THE RESCUING YIFFY PART OF THE OPERATION. KARKAT: SHE BASICALLY RESCUED HERSELF WHEN ALL WAS SAID AND DONE. KARKAT: AND TOOK CARE OF KICKING GAMZEE'S CORPSEBOX OVER WHILE SHE WAS AT IT, IN A STUNNING DISPLAY OF EFFICIENCY WHICH THE REST OF US CAN ONLY ASPIRE TO.

Excellent, yeah.

JOHN: it sounds like she'd be a pretty welcome addition to your ranks then. KARKAT: SHE'S A CHILD, YOU MORON.

Yeah, you’re fucking grown up now, John. Stop thinking of the kids as the ones who have to rise up when the adults aren’t all doomed or dead.

KARKAT: THE VRISKAS, PLURAL. JOHN: shit. KARKAT: THEY'VE BOTH BEEN CAPTURED. JOHN: shiiiiiiiit. KARKAT: YEAH. KARKAT: GREAT WORK KEEPING AN EYE ON THEM, BY THE WAY! KARKAT: YOU LITERALLY HAD ONLY ONE JOB, AND YOU MESSED IT UP IN THE EQUALLY SINGULAR WAY IT WAS POSSIBLE TO DO. JOHN: urgh, i know, i know. ):

At least he messed that part up while he was TRYING to watch them, and not when he wandered off and watched his house burn for a whole day instead of protecting the remaining kids.

KARKAT: JANE'S PLAN FOR THIS CONFLICT HAS THUS FAR CONSISTED ALMOST ENTIRELY OF KIDNAPPING VARIOUS HIGH PROFILE CHILDREN. KARKAT: IT'S BIZARRE. KARKAT: AS THOUGH WE ARE FIGHTING A WAR OF ATTRITION, WHERE THE MAIN RESOURCE BEING UTILIZED IS THE OFFSPRING OF THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE ON THE PLANET. KARKAT: IF IT WASN'T ONE OF THE CORE TENETS OF HER FASCISTIC PHILOSOPHY, I'D BE TEMPTED TO SAY THAT CURBING REPRODUCTION MIGHT HAVE BEEN A GOOD IDEA, IF ONLY TO PREVENT THIS KIND OF FUCKSHIT NONSENSE FROM HAPPENING.

Leave it to Karkat to point out the blatant absurdity of Homestuck’s nonsense in any given situation.

JOHN: wait. JOHN: wait a minute. JOHN: you said that both vriskas have been captured, right? KARKAT: EXCUSE ME WHILE I WEEP FOR JOY AT THE REVELATION THAT YOU HAVE BEEN PAYING ATTENTION FOR ONCE. JOHN: okay, well putting that emotional outburst aside for a moment. JOHN: how is that even possible? JOHN: doesn't vriska, the original vriska, still have her magic alien mind control powers? JOHN: it seems like it should be basically impossible for anyone to kidnap her. KARKAT: YOU'VE STUMBLED ASS BACKWARDS ACROSS THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT OF THIS UNFORTUNATE DEVELOPMENT.

...Is Karkat going to put two and two together and realize that Vriska must have been intentionally captured of her own free will for some sort of ploy?

KARKAT: YOU ARE CORRECT, IN THAT WITH HER CASTE-TYPICAL, *COMPLETELY SCIENTIFIC AND NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT MAGICAL* PSYCHOMANIPULATIVE ABILITIES, STAYING OUT OF CROCKER'S REACH SHOULD HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY TRIVIAL FOR SERKET PRIME. KARKAT: EVEN ACCOUNTING FOR THE FACT THAT SAID ABILITIES ARE NOT NEARLY AS POTENT ON HUMANS AS THEY ARE ON FELLOW TROLLS, THEY STILL OUGHT TO HAVE TIPPED ANY ALTERCATION SQUARELY IN HER FAVOR. KARKAT: BUT SOMEHOW, IT DIDN'T! KARKAT: INSTEAD, THINGS APPEAR TO HAVE GONE GLOBES UP IN CLASSIC VRISKITE FASHION, AND NOW ONE OF THE MOST UNEXPECTED AND UNWANTED BUT NEVERTHELESS USEFUL WEAPONS IN OUR ARSENAL IS DOING TIME IN CROCKERJAIL. KARKAT: THAT'S ABOUT ALL WE'VE BEEN ABLE TO GLEAN FROM TAPPING INTO THE BATTERBITCH AIRWAVES, WHICH IS A FANCY TERM FOR EAVESDROPPING ON THOSE OF HER AGENTS WHO TALK A LITTLE TOO LOUDLY IN SEMI-PUBLIC SPACES. JOHN: jeez. JOHN: i really screwed that up, didn't i.

Guh. I guess Karkat is underestimating Vriska a bit or just assuming the worst out of a habit of assuming the worst of everything. (Or, if he has his suspicions, he’s not telling John.)

KARKAT: HAVING SAID ALL OF THAT, AND WITH THE RECOGNITION THAT I AM CHOOSING TO NURSE YOUR BRUISED FEELINGS DURING A PLANET WIDE CONFLICT FOR THE FATE OF MY SPECIES, KARKAT: IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO EXPEDITE YOUR GETTING THE FUCK OVER IT? JOHN: i... hm.

Yeah, use your shoosh-paps from Karkat wisely, John. You needed them.

JOHN: i don't really know? JOHN: this all feels wrong, karkat. JOHN: no offense, but when you're around, it's usually a lot... KARKAT: A LOT WHAT? JOHN: a lot funnier. KARKAT: FUNNIER. JOHN: how to put this. JOHN: normally listening to you go on and on about how much we've fucked everything up is just very funny! JOHN: but now it's just not the same. JOHN: maybe it's part of what's going on with this entire reality? i don't know. JOHN: once upon a time i would have put down your ability to pull a silly rant out of your butt as a fundamental law of physics or something. JOHN: remember back when we first knew each other? JOHN: it felt like all you ever said to me was how much you thought i was screwing up and being a useless asshole. JOHN: and once i realized that you were also just a dumb kid who didn't know what was going on, i started to kind of enjoy it. JOHN: but now it's like... the only one who's still a dumb kid is me, and everyone else has something big and important going on that i just don't understand.

Mhmm, Karkat has every reason to be mad. And everything really, REALLY close to you that you care about is in danger from the very things he’s mad about. Karkat is RIGHT for once with every angry seemingly-exaggerated-but-not word, and that’s throwing you.

JOHN: i thought that i finally got what was going on with this whole war and everything. i wanted to be useful! JOHN: i guess i got a little too wrapped up in the feeling of something finally happening again. JOHN: and then watching it all blow up in my face, kind of literally now that i think about it...

...you think maybe something that happens to be A WAR is actually a big farking deal that you should be serious about??

JOHN: it's hard not to feel even more dejected about the situation than i was before. JOHN: and now even the patented karkat vant rant has lost all its sparkle.

IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FUN.

JOHN: maybe if you had like, painstakingly itemized a list of all the things wrong with my plan in a comically overdone fashion or something. KARKAT: I CONSIDERED IT, BUT HONESTLY THERE WAS SO MUCH WRONG THAT I CONCLUDED THAT THE BEST THING FOR EVERYONE WOULD BE TO NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN. JOHN: oh. okay.

Heheh.

KARKAT: IF WE'RE BEING HONEST, YOU DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A PLAN, JOHN. KARKAT: CALLING IT A PLAN WOULD IMPLY THAT IT WAS A STRUCTURED SEQUENCE OF STEPS DESIGNED TO ACHIEVE A GOAL. KARKAT: WHAT YOU CAME UP WITH WAS A CONVOLUTED MESS WHICH STILL SOMEHOW INVOLVED DOING FUCKALL. KARKAT: AND I USE CONVOLUTED HERE IN THE SAME WAY THAT I WOULD TO DESCRIBE THE FRENZIED DRAWSTICK SCRIBBLES OF A SQUALLING HUMAN INFANT.

All Breath and no Blood? All concept and influence and ephemeral accomplishments and no physical impact or results?

Karkat has been fighting this whole time with physical results in mind. He NEEDS to tie that ephemeral shit down, and once added to his plan, once Breath sweeps the tide of actual sentiment of people, inspires them, you have an actual victory in reach instead of just more attrition.

KARKAT: I APPRECIATE THAT YOU SEEM TO HAVE DUG YOUR PAN OUT OF YOUR OWN CHUTE THE FEW MICROMETERS NECESSARY TO NOTICE THE PRECISE DEGREE TO WHICH THE WORLD IS BEING JUDICIOUSLY BATFUCKED RIGHT NOW.

Really need to dig yourself out more than that, John, yeah.

KARKAT: AS HARD AS IT IS TO BELIEVE, THAT'S A FEAT WHICH NO SMALL NUMBER OF PEOPLE ARE COMPLETELY INCAPABLE OF DOING!

(Which is why your plan of attack needs more Breath!)

KARKAT: BUT NOTICING THE PROBLEM AND MAKING MEANINGFUL PROGRESS TOWARDS SOLVING IT ARE TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS. KARKAT: THE NEXT TIME YOU GET THE IMPULSE TO "LEND A HAND", YOU'D BE BETTER OFF CANNING IT FOR FIVE MINUTES AND LISTENING TO THOSE OF US WHO'VE BEEN TRYING TO SOLVE IT A LOT LONGER THAN YOU HAVE. KARKAT: THIS ISN'T AN EXERCISE BEING CONDUCTED IN ORDER FOR YOU TO PROVE YOUR PERSONAL DEGREE OF MORAL RECTITUDE. KARKAT: AND IF IT WAS, YOU WOULD HAVE ALREADY FAILED MISERABLY! SO DO YOURSELF AND EVERYONE ELSE A FAVOR AND STOP TREATING IT LIKE ONE. JOHN: well... all right. if you say so karkat.

Phew. Let’s hope he takes Karkat’s gift of a worldbound, arms-in-the-dirt sense of responsibility (Blood) and runs with it.

KARKAT: I DO SAY SO, EMPHATICALLY AND AT GREAT VOLUME. KARKAT: AND NOW THAT MY OBLIGATION TO CATECHIZE YOU ON THE SUBJECT OF YOUR OWN LIFE IS FULFILLED, I HAVE A WAR TO GET BACK TO. JOHN: wait, hold on. KARKAT: OH MY GOD WHAT NOW.

--is it gonna be a hug?

> (==>)

JOHN. Put it together.

JOHN: you can't be leaving already. JOHN: there's... so much we still need to talk about!

No, not that!!

...well, yes, I’m all for more of you two talking but. This ain’t just about you two.

KARKAT: WHAT MORE COULD THERE POSSIBLY BE FOR US TO DISCUSS?? KARKAT: PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME YOU JUST HAD ANOTHER EMOTION THAT WE NEED TO DROP EVERYTHING IN ORDER TO DISSECT. JOHN: no, that's not what i'm talking about at all. JOHN: karkat, we still haven't spoken about *you*! KARKAT: ABOUT ME? JOHN: yes. KARKAT: ABOUT *ME*? JOHN: about you. KARKAT: WHAT THE FUCK ABOUT ME. JOHN: well... JOHN: you know, how you feel! KARKAT: HOW I FEEL. JOHN: or just... JOHN: argh, i don't know!

This was more of an intervention than a feelings jam, John. I’m not sure John’s in the condition right now to Breathily inspire Karkat somehow and help his war with an idea and drive he didn’t have before -- like he SHOULD eventually -- but I suppose we’re about to see.

JOHN: it's just been so long since we've seen each other. JOHN: all sorts of things have happened in that time, and it doesn't feel right to just not even mention any of it! KARKAT: LIKE WHAT?? JOHN: oh, i don't know karkat, literally anything! JOHN: i mean, look at you. JOHN: you are decked out in a tight body suit and have an eyepatch and everything. there is simply no way there isn't something to discuss there.

You talked with him plenty while NOT in person, though.

> (==>)

Such MOOD. What a good image.

JOHN: or like, forget the eyepatch, we don't have to talk about the eyepatch. JOHN: i feel as though my point still stands? JOHN: there is basically a bottomless well full of stuff to go through. JOHN: i mean we kind of glossed over it when you brought her up earlier, but what about yiffy? JOHN: this might not come across so easily due to human troll cultural boundaries, but her existing is kind of a big deal?? JOHN: i feel like somehow i missed the part where we all sit around and talk about how strange it is that two of our friends went off and had a secret child without any of us knowing! JOHN: is it too much to ask that we have that part now, karkat?

That’s fair. And they DO need to talk about it! But this is sort of like in the Game -- there’s important shit to do, and not a whole lot of time to do it. You’re going to do a lot of talking, but you won’t be able to do all you want with certain people separated from you by the circumstances of how this war is dividing your responsibilities.

JOHN: i mean, maybe it just doesn't mean that much to you. KARKAT: JOHN. JOHN: which is a little strange, given that it ties in to the whole conflict that you had with jade and dave. JOHN: oh god we have to talk about dave. KARKAT: JOHN. KARKAT: FUCKING HELL! KARKAT: I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT DAVE. JOHN: no, this is what i mean, karkat. JOHN: we need to talk about dave! KARKAT: HAHA! LIKE SHIT WE DO!! KARKAT: I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE HOW THIS IS EVEN A RELEVANT TOPIC OF CONVERSATION. JOHN: oh come on. JOHN: there's no way you aren't feeling kind of messed up about him, right?

THIS is fair. Karkat does need to talk about this with somebody. Whether John is the right somebody... I guess he is where Dave is concerned. And he has to talk to Jade eventually, too.

JOHN: i know i am. JOHN: whenever i think about how things ended between you two... JOHN: especially now that he's... JOHN: ugh, i'm sorry. i'm SO sorry karkat. sorry doesn't even begin to cover it. JOHN: this whole thing feels so impossibly sad. JOHN: all i'm trying to say is... JOHN: it's not healthy to bottle these feelings up and not acknowledge them. JOHN: even if you aren't feeling anything right now, and i don't for a moment believe that's true, *i* need to talk about dave! JOHN: so can we please just talk about dave for a moment. KARKAT: NNNNGNGNGGGGGGGUUUUUUGUUGHHHHHHHH FINE.

It’s difficult to live in a Daveless world.

KARKAT: IF IT WILL GET YOU TO SHUT UP ABOUT THIS TOPIC FOR EVEN A BRIEF MOMENT, THEN FINE. KARKAT: REGARDLESS OF HOW POINTLESS AN EXERCISE I CONSIDER IT TO BE, I WILL DISCUSS WITH YOU MY "FEELINGS" ABOUT DAVE. JOHN: okay. JOHN: thank you. KARKAT: ARE YOU PREPARED TO BE INUNDATED WITH NONE OTHER THAN AN UNINTERRUPTED SPATE OF HARD, UNEMBELLISHED DATA VIS A VIS MY SWEEPS-SUPPRESSED, BISCUITFELT EMOTIONS ON THE DAVE SITUATION?? KARKAT: WELL HERE GOES.

--it’s not gonna be short, or cut away, is it? --actually it could just switch to a very sad sunset-like vista of the two sitting there, and one poignant line from him followed by a long, hanging pause.

> (==>)

KARKAT: *DEEP BREATH*

A giant expletive isn’t it.

The best sendoff you could give him.

> (==>)

Holy shit. It really IS a rant!

KARKAT: YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW I REALLY FEEL ABOUT DAVE? KARKAT: HOW I FEEL IS THAT I WISH THAT EVERYONE WOULD STOP FUCKING BOTHERING ME ABOUT HIM!!! KARKAT: ALRIGHT, SO HE AND JADE GOT HUMAN MARRIED!! BIG DEAL!!! KARKAT: DO PEOPLE FORGET THAT I WAS THERE?? I FEEL LIKE EVERYONE IS FORGETTING THAT I WAS LITERALLY INVITED TO THE OCCASION. KARKAT: I'VE EVEN COME TO EXPECT THIS KIND OF AMNESIAC BEHAVIOR FROM EVERYONE ELSE, SINCE I ADMIT THAT I DIDN'T EXACTLY STICK AROUND OR ACTUALLY SHOW MY FACE FOR MOST OF THE ORDEAL, BUT YOU EGBERT SHOULD HAVE NO FUCKING EXCUSE! JOHN: wait, karkat, that's not what i KARKAT: SO YEAH! THAT WHOLE THING HAPPENED, AND I CAME TO TERMS WITH WHATEVER THERE WAS TO COME TO TERMS WITH, WHICH WAS FUCKING *NOTHING*, AND THEN I GOT ON WITH THE ACTUAL IMPORTANT BUSINESS OF TRYING TO PREVENT THE WORLD FROM CRUMBLING! KARKAT: WHICH, NOW THAT WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT, IS *STILL FUCKING HAPPENING*! KARKAT: I AM UTTERLY APPALLED THAT THIS IS AN INFO MORSEL I KEEP HAVING TO SPOONFEED DOWN YOUR WINDCHUTE EVERY FIVE SECONDS, JOHN, I REALLY AM. KARKAT: I MEAN HOLY SHIT, NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR THIS! KARKAT: AND ONE THING I CAN SAY WITH ABSOLUTE IRONCLAD CERTAINTY IS THAT IF DAVE WERE HERE, HE WOULD SAY THE SAME THING!!

Okay he dealt with it by keeping his hands in the dirt working on hard-fighting responsibilities, yeah, as a Blood player might. But the way he’s ranting about it seems a little-

KARKAT: SPEAKING OF WHICH, WHERE *IS* DAVE?? JOHN: um. KARKAT: I FEEL LIKE IF ANYONE COULD HAVE PREVENTED TODAY FROM DEVOLVING INTO A HEADLESS CLUSTERFUCK, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN... OKAY, MAYBE NOT HIM, BUT AT LEAST HE MIGHT HAVE HELPED DRAG YOU OUT OF YOUR DEPRESSIVE FUGUE A LITTLE SOONER! JOHN: (oh shit.)

Oh SHIT

> (==>)

Oh no... oh no, they’re BOTH about to let it out together.

They’re gonna have to cry it out. Finally, onscreen. THIS is why they weren’t showing us, why they were saving it. It felt so awkward at the time but it’s because it has to culminate in these two, some of the closest to Dave since CHILDHOOD, get to show us the effect on everyone in a microcosm.

KARKAT: NOT ONLY THAT, BUT MAYBE WITH BOTH OF US HERE WE COULD HAVE DISPENSED WITH THIS ENTIRE SORRY TOPIC ONCE AND FOR ALL, IF ONLY FOR YOUR BENEFIT! KARKAT: OH HI DAVE, JOHN SEEMS TO BE UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT THE UNSPOKEN HISTORY BETWEEN US IS OF SUFFICIENT IMPORT THAT WE NEED TO HASH IT OUT THIS VERY SECOND IN FRONT OF THE BLASTED REMAINS OF HIS HOME! KARKAT: yo karkat that does seem to be a strange thing for my best friend john to be concerned about given that he has spent the past five years wallowing in the depths of deepest divorce fever KARKAT: and especially since jade and i have meanwhile been working as part of your resistance with no complaints, but sure, we can brofist each other and arrange our limbs in an unambiguously platonic way KARKAT: a way which is also flawlessly calculated to communicate to everyone present that here are two guys who are totally and unequivocally over each other JOHN: (oh god. you don't...)

Talk about John’s comment about Karkat’s rants not being hilarious in a situation. THIS situation really tugs it out of them. :(

KARKAT: THAT SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT IDEA DAVE, AND WITH THAT MAYBE THAT WAY WE CAN WASH OUR TOUCH STUMPS OF THIS WHOLE ORDEAL AND NEVER HAVE TO SPEAK OF IT AGAIN! KARKAT: WOULD YOU LIKE THAT, JOHN? KARKAT: WOULD THAT SATISFY YOUR CRAVING FOR CATHARSIS ON THE SUBJECT OF DAVE?? KARKAT: WELL WHY DON'T WE TRY IT THEN. KARKAT: IN FACT, WHY DON'T YOU CALL DAVE AND GET HIM OVER HERE RIGHT NOW! JOHN: (oh my god...)

> (==>)

These visuals are ON POINT. This entire sequence since Karkat showed up is masterfully done.

KARKAT: MAYBE WE SHOULD GET JADE TO COME AS WELL! JOHN: ): KARKAT: FUCK, WHY NOT INVITE FUCKING EVERYONE!!! KARKAT: WHY NOT PRESS "PAUSE" ON THE RACE WAR FOR A MOMENT AND HAVE ONE HUGE FEELINGS JAM LAWNMEAL WHERE WE ALL PUBLICLY EXPATIATE OUR VARIOUS CONVOLUTED EMOTIONS. KARKAT: FORGET PEACE TALKS, GET FUCKING *CROCKER* TO COME! KARKAT: MAYBE THE SIGHT OF A DAVEKAT RECONCILIATION IS THE SECRET KEY TO UNLOCKING THE PART OF HER BRAIN THAT STOPS HER FROM BEING A GENOCIDAL RACIST BITCH!!! KARKAT: HOW COULD WE HAVE POSSIBLY BEEN SO BLIND!!!!!! KARKAT: IF GAMZEE WASN'T DEAD, YOU COULD HAVE INVITED HIM AS WELL! KARKAT: HAHAHA, THAT'S OKAY, WE STILL HAVE A VERITABLE MENAGERIE OF PEOPLE WE KNOW WHO AREN'T DEAD. JOHN: ))))): KARKAT: ALL OF WHOM I AM SURE WILL BE SIMPLY DELIGHTED TO ATTEND WHAT WILL UNDOUBTEDLY BE THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN EARTH C'S BULLSHIT HISTORY. KARKAT: IF THIS IS WHAT IT TAKES, EGBERT, THEN I AM PREPARED TO DO IT! KARKAT: DON'T THINK THAT I WON'T!! KARKAT: IF JUST FOR AN *INSTANT* IT WILL GET EVERYONE OFF MY CASE ABOUT THIS, I WILL STAND UP WITH DAVE IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE ***FUCKING WORLD*** AND SOLEMNLY VOW THAT I DO NOT GIVE A SHIT!!!! JOHN: KARKAT!!!!

That last bit with John. I can HEAR the rawness in his voice as he shouts that last bit... he’s about to burst into tears. And Karkat is going to have to with him. And they’ll cry it out together, as they should.

> (==>)

JOHN: ugh, fuck, this is just too much! JOHN: i thought you KNEW! KARKAT: KNEW WHAT??? JOHN: dave's GONE, karkat! JOHN: he's... JOHN: he's dead.

Let’s see it happen.

> (==>)

Just body language, the blow of the words...

JOHN: i didn't mean for you to find out like this at all, i thought... JOHN: i mean, i only heard about it yesterday, but i was convinced someone would have told you already! JOHN: apparently one minute he was there, and the next... JOHN: none of us even know how it happened, and it doesn't make any sense that he's dead, but he is. JOHN: he is dead and he's not coming back. KARKAT: JOHN: talk to me karkat, please. JOHN: please talk to me karkat. KARKAT: KARKAT: HE...

Jade and Rose were on a different part of this battlefield, they didn’t have the ability, time, and/or heart to break the news--

> (==>)

KARKAT: HE DIDN'T EVEN SAY GOODBYE?

aaaaAAAA

What a fucking expression, wow.

And what a regret RoboDave has to have for abandoning everyone without so much as a farewell letter. To think that ditching them like that was IN his Ultimate Soul is going to eat away at him. He may be linked to all of his self of selves, but he’s still an individual with individual regrets.

This was a damned good update. See y’all next time.

(It may be the new meds I’m on, but between this and the thorough love I see put into the unofficial archive, I’m suddenly reminded that despite all the drama, I fucking LOVE Homestuck. Even its current incarnation.)

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #Homestuck^2 #spoiler #spoilers #John Egbert #Karkat #Dave Strider #Jane Crocker

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starsgivemehp · 4 years ago

Text

The Argument Against and Defense of Hetalia

Let me preface this by saying that I have not watched the show or read the manga in a few years now, and thus I am working mostly off of memory and what fan content I see these days, which is not a lot. Also, I am a gentile, and I don’t claim to know a lot about the Jewish community or traditions. I am, however, a writer and I have plenty of practice analyzing and criticizing works of fiction from multiple angles. With that in mind, this essay is an attempt to explain everything that is wrong and not wrong with the show, the comic strips, and the fandom.

I’m putting this under a read more for sheer length, this was 11 pages on Google docs.

Let us start with the list of grievances assembled largely from one post, the majority of which I had to go digging for as the original person in this post who mentioned Hetalia said, and I quote, “i dont feel the need to link a source for [hetalia] because…” and then listed two things, one of which is incorrect entirely. But I digress, I will address each one at a time. The list of grievances is as follows:

It is called ‘Axis Powers’ Hetalia

One of the main characters is a personification of Nazi Germany

The entire point of the series is:

Advocating for eugenics

Racial fetishization

Advocating for fascism

Nazi sympathizing/propaganda

The entire franchise is terrible due to rape jokes, racism, and Holocaust jokes

Hetalia fans are all terrible due to rape jokes and other issues

Death of the author cannot apply to this fandom

There may be more that are in other reblogs of the post in question, and I may add addendums further in this essay, but for the time being, I will address each of these grievances and explain the validity or non-validity of each, from a position understanding of both fans and of non-fans. Thus, in order:

‘Axis Powers’ Hetalia

When people talk about Hetalia, they usually are referring to the anime due to its widespread popularity. However, Hetalia began as a series of strip comics posted on a forum by Hidekaz Himaruya (and I spent a while trying to actually find the original comics, but I can’t, there are links to his blogs there in what I’ve provided). It later was formatted into a manga, and then later became an anime. While it was originally titled Axis Powers: Hetalia and the first two seasons of the show are named as such, it usually is only referred to as Hetalia. The anime seasons after said first two seasons have all been ‘world’ focused: Seasons three and four were titled World Series, season five was titled Beautiful World, season six was titled World Twinkle, and the upcoming season seven is titled World Stars.

For the purposes of tagging everything, I tend to see the tags ‘hetalia’ and ‘hws,’ which is short for Hetalia: World Series. This name of the third and fourth anime seasons is the most widely accepted and used name for the series as a whole. While it is true that, years ago, people referred to it as ‘aph’ for Axis Powers Hetalia, the fans and the series have put that behind them, for good reason. It is understandable, even righteous, to not accept the title ‘Axis Powers.’ It does draw focus to the WW2 era, and place the fascists and nazis as the ‘main characters,’ or even, ‘the good guys,’ which is not the case. Obviously, the Nazis were terrible and the entirety of the Axis Powers did horrible, unspeakable things during the war.

It must be noted, to anybody who has not seen the show or read the manga, that the first one to two seasons do have a ‘focus’ on the WW2 era, per se, but it largely talks about interactions between countries, as they are the personified party, and makes extremely few allusions to the war itself, and none to the Holocaust. I will address that in a later section. For now, the point to make is that after these original two seasons, Hetalia branches out into a much wider worldview, adds several more characters, and focuses more on said characters in individual arcs and offerings of historical facts - as generalized as they may be. Nobody claimed that Hetalia was correct in everything it said, but it aims to play out some historical information in a simplified and humorous way. This is due to the fact that the characters are all singular people meant to personify entire countries, which leads us to point two.

The Personification of Nazi Germany

This is the second complaint of the strand of the post in question that I was presented with, quoted as “one of the main characters is a personification of nazi germany.” This is an entirely incorrect statement. ‘Nazi Germany,’ as people call it, is the state of Germany during the era leading up to and of World War 2. The country is still Germany, the people were still German, the Nazi part comes from the political regime in power, a real world nightmare. In the Hetalia series, the characters are called by their country names, because that is who they personify. This may change at times. For example, the character now known as Turkey was previously called Ottoman Empire. They come to be when civilization starts or a colony is introduced to a place. This can be seen in the strip or episode where China ‘finds’ Japan as a small boy and begins to teach him reading and writing - and Japan thereafter invents hiragana. It can also be seen in the comic where a young child, Iceland, questions who he is and why he knows his people are “different beings” than him. The country that speaks to him (I only have the comic here in my likes in that list, the name isn’t mentioned and it’s been a while, but it might be another of the Scandinavian countries) explains that he is Mr. Iceland, they don’t know why he is Mr. Iceland, but they know he is.

What I am attempting to explain with all of these other examples is that there is no ‘Nazi Germany’ character. There is a character called Germany (or Mr. Germany), and all of his adult life, he has been called Germany. He is never addressed by anything else. He does, however, look remarkably similar to a childhood friend of Italy’s, Holy Roman Empire (or just Holy Rome), but as far as it has been explained in canon, Holy Rome went off somewhere and, later on Germany and Italy met as strangers. The general consensus is, due to the area where the Holy Roman Empire used to be is around-ish Germany, the characters are the same. But never, in any of the comics, anime, or movie, is Germany referred to as Nazi Germany. I don’t believe the word ‘Nazi’ appears at any point in time, even, though I cannot claim I have seen every shred of content, so I may be wrong. But I doubt that very much, as it is not in the nature of the series to do such a thing. Moving on.

Advocating for Eugenics

I will start and end this section by saying that Hetalia was, in the original post, roped in with Attack on Titan, of which (as far as I know) the author advocates for eugenics - or the idea that certain people should not be allowed to produce offspring due to their race or other factors. There is no example of Hetalia content wherein this disgusting opinion is ever mentioned or supported in any way. This is at worst a flat-out lie, and at best lumping Hetalia in with a much worse show that does do this (but I won’t get into that, I have never seen more than a few episodes of Attack on Titan and I don’t care to see any more of it. Throw your opinions or defenses elsewhere, I care 0% about it entirely). I have no more need to prepare a more detailed response to this accusation. It simply is not true.

Racial Fetishization

This particular accusation is a difficult one. Fetishization may be a strong word, as the series is largely a comedy. Everyone gets their turn in the spotlight, so to speak, so I find it hard to plainly state that any one character is fetishized or displayed as the most powerful. There is, of course, Rome, who only appears in small segments as Italy’s grandfather and is, in the series, touted as an amazing empire who had it all. I do not believe this is what the accusation is referring to. This accusation seems to be some sort of insistence that the show and creator believe that white people (or possibly just Germans/Nazis/the Aryan race?) are touted as the most powerful and nobody else can compare. I can confidently say that while that is never said anywhere, there are a few issues. Hetalia, particularly the animated series, had (and may still have) a longstanding issue of whitewashing countries that should not be white. This includes Egypt and Seychelles (who both later got a darker skin tone, probably still not dark enough though) as the worst offenders, and even Spain, Turkey, Greece, and Romano (southern Italy), and so on. Yes, this is a big problem. There is no defense against that. It should not be the case. These characters obviously should have darker skin. I will note, however, that many fans are already completely aware of this, have been complaining about it since the beginning, and tend to draw these characters with more correct skin tones in their fanart. This is a case where yes, the original content is not good, but the fans make their own fixes. If you are angry at Hetalia for whitewashing, good. You should be. But I do not believe this should reflect on the entirety of the content and the fandom (And note that I am not linking any particular fanart here, because I want nobody to go attack any fans).

It is also important to note that yes, a large majority of the series builds upon stereotypes. No, stereotypes are not good. No, you should not assume that the personifications of the countries encompass all citizens of said countries. The entire premise of the show is one person = the embodiment of a country, and that person changes and adapts with the times in terms of uniform and personality. It is extremely hard to do this without stereotyping. Most serious fans are aware of this, and do not in any way believe that these characters represent everyone from these countries. It may be true that much younger fans used to, and it may be true that people do not want to watch the show because stereotypes are, arguably, bad. But do remember that this is a comedy, and every character is picked on. Every one. And it is understandable if this branch of humor is not for you. I, personally, don’t like Family Guy or South Park or any shows like that for their humor. I also don’t attack the people who do. I ignore it.

Advocating for Fascism

This is another area wherein I believe the accuser is simply lumping Hetalia in with the original poster’s subject, Attack on Titan. Again, I will not defend or attack that show, as I do not care about it at all. However, regarding Hetalia, I can confidently say that it does not advocate for fascism. While the first two seasons are (sort of) set in WW2 era, as previously mentioned, the fighting is not really a big part, and nobody is touted as correct - only struggling in the conflict. For example, there is a scene where Germany, post WW1, is shown making cuckoo clocks by hand and lamenting the fact that he has to make so many thousands in order to pay back France. This is by no means painting fascism as a good thing, or explaining anything about how poverty and other struggles lead to the formation and rise of the Nazi party. It is simply a scene where we see a man frustratedly making cuckoo clocks and complaining while France’s big head jeers at him in his imagination. The surrounding scenes and the end of this one are making note of how Italy keeps coming over to his house to try and be friends and Germany keeps kicking him out because Italy is annoying and whiny. The episode further goes on to mention that Germany is attacking France again, and Italy has suddenly become his ally, and he is not happy about it for the aforementioned reasons. Again, this does not in any way paint Germany as being ‘right.’ The purpose of the segment(s) is/are to show him disliking the annoying Italy (whom the show is named for) and trying to get him out of his house before eventually giving up and accepting that they can be friends. Is it all 100% historically accurate? No, not by a long shot. Does it paint him as sympathetic? Sort of, you feel bad for the guy making a thousand cuckoo clocks, but only in the sense that he is one person doing a lot of work, a completely fictional situation. But Italy - and the audience - obviously know that attacking France again is not a good thing, so does it advocate the Nazis or fascism? Also no.

Nazi Sympathizing/Propaganda

I pretty well covered this in the previous section, but I will expand. I have alluded to the first two seasons as “focusing” on WW2, in a way, and also mentioned that this is a generalization of sorts, so here I will attempt to clarify. The first few episodes do, indeed, touch on ‘the way they all met’ in a sense; Germany is starting a war and he reluctantly becomes allies with Italy, and less reluctantly becomes allies with Japan, who examines both of them and decides he is content with this situation. However, none of it is very serious, and these ‘formalities’ give way easily to more humorous personable interactions, such as Italy hugging Japan without warning and the touch-anxious Japan pushing him off and getting flustered, Italy petting a cat and then freaking out when he is licked because a cat’s tongue is rough, the two of them ‘training’ by doing your regular old exercising and jogging and Italy being late, etc etc. Stupid, personable jokes.

On the flip side, the show covers the Allied Powers quite a bit too. A lot of this is the five big ones - America, Britain (/England/UK), France, Russia, and China - all meeting around one table and squabbling about various things. I fondly recall one scene where China arrives late and has a bunch of workers suddenly building a Chinatown in the meeting room because he was hungry and wanted his own food, and the others protesting. They are then offered food and become okay with it, because food. Other such nonsense plays out in other, similar meetings. There is also a segment where the Axis powers are all stranded on an island for… some unknown reason… and they set about attempting to survive via campfire and fishing and such. Twice (three times?) the Allied powers ‘attack’ them on this island via China whacking them each with a wok and, as the three of them are in a sad heap, something interrupts the scene to make the Allies retreat. One time, it is Rome’s sudden and also unexplained entrance across the sky singing a song, and another time, it is England’s preoccupation with a cursed chair. Also, at one point, Austria is playing a piano. Does any of this magic logical, real life sense? No. It’s stupid and funny and has nothing to do with war. These are just personable characters thrown into weird situations so they can be funny, with some extremely mild historical context along the way.

I will note again that WW2 is pretty much completely dropped after these two seasons, with the war hardly addressed at all, and future seasons focus more on other characters. The Scandinavians get to all have fun together, the Baltic trio is mentioned, there is a lot about Switzerland taking care of Liechtenstein (wow I spelled it right after all these years, go me) and being stiff and formal with Austria. There is also plenty about people mistaking Canada for America, and England and France squabbling throughout the years, and Spain finding Romano cute but also very grumpy, etc etc… This series is largely Eurasia-focused, yes, and it can be criticized for not being as diverse as it should be. But boiling it down to ‘Nazi propaganda’ is outright, obliviously false.

I don’t know if this is the best place to put this particular note, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to place it, so here it will go. I would like to mention that in the series, some characters, like Germany and Russia, express outright fear of their ‘bosses’ in certain points in history. It is important to realize that Germany, Japan, America, etc… these characters are not the actual, real-life humans in charge of these countries, but people of a fictional, separate species than humans who grow up as the nation grows and have lives that are affected by these world leaders (we even watch in the show America shooting up from child to young adult as the colonies expand, and England comments on how quickly he grew up - but not as quickly as his people, of course. We’ll get to Davie later). The president of the United States is America’s ‘boss,’ and naturally, that boss changes every time the president changes. The emperor of China is China’s ‘boss.’ It follows, thusly, that at one point, Hitler was Germany’s ‘boss.’ The terrible person himself was alluded to, as far as I know, exactly one time, not by name, and no face was shown. In a very brief scene, Germany laments that his new boss is scary and he was just ordered to go force Austria to come live with him. Said boss is shown as, I believe, an evilly laughing shadowy figure. That’s it. That’s the scene. There is no other mention of Hitler, nor is there any mention of the Holocaust anywhere. One could argue that the show is then trying to say that the Holocaust didn’t happen, but I think such an accusation is frankly absurd. It’s a comedy, it was always a comedy, and what in the fuck would be comedic about a mass genocide in any way? Nothing. None of it is funny. Of course it is not brought up in a comedy.

Rape Jokes, Racism, and Holocaust Jokes

While I did somewhat address racism already in the section about whitewashing and racial fetishization, I have another clarification to make, especially regarding the jokes. A lot of people complain that there are rape jokes throughout the series, and that there are two Holocaust jokes. I will begin by saying yes, this is all true, those things did happen during the course of the show. However, it is important to note that all of those things happened in the English dub of the animated show, and none of these terrible jokes exist in the Japanese/subbed version, or the original comic strips.

The English dub is, on all accounts, pretty terrible. Everyone has an over exaggerated accent, there are the aforementioned jokes, there are name changes (England referred to as Britain, among them, very confusing), and the voice actors themselves make mention in commentaries that their goal in this job was, to paraphrase because I haven’t listened in a while, ‘to be as offensive as possible to absolutely everyone’ (and one of the English dub voice actors is even a convicted sex offender, but that’s it’s own mess). Not the most glamorous or noble of goals. One could say ‘at least if it’s everyone, it’s not really racism, is it? Just humor?’ There is a case for that. Many comedians will say that they poke fun at everyone to avoid singling anybody out as inherently superior. It cannot be said to be the best way to make humor, but it cannot be said to be the worst way, also. Overall, I don’t like the English dub, I don’t watch it, I prefer the subs. And yes, the subbed version has a few issues of its own, but I can say that at least, no, it does not make any Holocaust or rape jokes. Are those kinds of jokes excusable? Fuck no. They’re completely inappropriate. Should you judge the whole series and fandom based on the grossness of the English dubs? Also no, the people who did the English dubs have zero to do with the original creator, the animators, and the fans. Screw them.

The Fandom Being Terrible

I must again preface by saying I was never super active in the fandom at large. I had my own little niche of friends and I stuck to them and I didn’t often branch out. I did, however, go to cons back in those days, and saw plenty of cosplayers. The main complaint I see regarding the fandom is that most of the fans are completely rabid, make a bunch of rape jokes, and even dress up as ‘Nazi Germany’ (iron cross and red armband and all) and pretend to shoot up synagogues. Now, I have not seen cosplayers do the nazi solute or do such photoshoots, but I can believe that people have done it. I have seen plenty of rabid fans, and some of the OCs created for Hetalia, especially many interpretations of individual states (or Antarctica), were extremely cringey, racist, and overall just not good. And yes, these things are undeniably bad. They are very bad things! Those people should be ashamed. They should know better, regardless of their ages or anything, for fuck’s sake. The nazi salute is not a thing you do jokingly, pretending to shoot people is not a joke. Everyone is aware of this. The people who did, or maybe even still do, those things need a serious sit-down and to be woken the fuck up, because they are acting terrible.

However, it is extremely unfair to paint all Hetalia fans in the same light. That is a very stereotypical thing to do, no? As I mentioned earlier, I stuck to my little niche friend group of fans, and while we all had our own flaws and were younger and kinda dumber, we never did things like that. I never did things like that. Rape jokes were never funny, I never liked them, I never accepted them. I have people I still know who still like Hetalia and they never made those kinds of jokes either. I think, as the years have gone by, a lot of the more rabid fans have died out of the fandom. They’ve either grown the fuck up or they’ve went off to pollute some other fandom. Recognize that, especially in the beginning, the anime was low-budget and had a lot of that old and gross queerbaiting and stuff like that, so it was undeniably a magnet for crazy yaoi fans. But the majority of fanart, fanfics, and just overall fan stuff that I see these days are nothing like that. Overall, the fandom has seriously calmed down. A lot of the focus is much more on taking these characters and applying them to other historical events with more accuracy than the show might give. The history in these fanfics and fanarts may also be of questionable accuracy at times. I personally once wrote a fic where I made allusions to the death of Joan d’Arc and, later, the death of Elizabeth I, but did I add much historic fact? No, do I look like a history major spilling all this? The point of the fic was England - the character - maturing through starting to love one of his rulers and recognizing a terrible thing that he did before. It’s not the best piece of work out there, and maybe someone could point out a few things I did wrong with it, but for what it’s meant to be, it’s harmless. Takes on characters not actually in the series, like Ireland, Scotland, etc etc are generally pretty mature from what I see, fanart tends to just be the characters in various poses and styles. The overall love the fandom has, I think, is in the better character designs and in the very concept of the countries as people who laugh and cry and live through war and peace for thousands of years. And here is where I address the final grievance that I personally saw in the notes of the post which started this whole thought process and essay.

The Death of the Author

A lot of people might not fully understand what ‘The Death of the Author’ means. The death of the author is a belief rooted in the 20th century that the personal intentions, beliefs, and prejudices of the authors of certain works can have no bearing on their produced content, because once it is out in the public, every reader may then have their own interpretation and belief system. By publicizing the content, the author ‘dies’ and the reader is born.

There are some scenarios where this cannot apply. One example is JK Rowling, a very special case of a very problematic woman who happens to be so powerful, and so rich, that consuming any type of official (or even unofficial) Harry Potter anything can and will give her that much more power to spread her TERF bullshit. Let me be frank: Any time that consuming a product is allowing a bigoted or problematic person to gain extra money or extra power that they then use for evil, the death of the author cannot apply. You cannot use it as a moral justification. You might perhaps use it as the reason why you struggle to let go of a fandom near and dear to you, as Harry Potter is to so many people, but you absolutely must recognize that purchasing the books, the movies, or any other official content is outright supporting a TERF.

That in mind, there are dozens of other cases where the death of the author absolutely can apply. The easiest, of course, is with authors who are actually dead, such as Lovecraft. Lovecraft was a complete bigot and racist, an overall terrible person, and his works are saturated in that racism. But he is dead, and his work is very popular, and there are ways to take and use his work that do not contribute further to racism and bigotry. All you have to do is slap a non-racist cthulhu on a page. Make that cthulhu eat everyone equally. That’s a good cthulhu right there, a nice, safe cthulhu.

So where does Hetalia fall in this spectrum of can or cannot have death of the author? I believe it leans more to the side of yes, you can apply it. For one thing, you can definitely find the show for free in some places, and watch it without giving Himaruya a single cent. The comics are also available online for free, and while you might be giving your ‘support’ by being a viewer, I think overall, that’s not only negligible, but does not contribute anything bad? The author of Attack on Titan has many charges levied against him in the post which prompted this, and arguably, giving him any money is bad. But as far as I have seen, while Himaruya might have started out with a flawed premise and may have some whitewashing issues, I have seen nowhere that he funds any kind of racist, nationalistic, fascist, etc anything of any kind. This is not like Chick-Fil-A, where offering any kind of patronage is (or maybe used to be) sinking funds into terrible organizations. This is not supporting literal Nazis, as the complaints claim. This is a largely mediocre series with good parts and bad parts and zero ties to horrific organizations or ideals. Consuming good fan content does not make someone a racist or a bigot or a nazi sympathizer. Even rewatching some old favorite scenes or checking out the new season doesn’t make someone that. By all accounts, the show is flawed but not a means to fund nazis.

The Bad Anything Else

I will now take some time to talk about some other problems Hetalia has, because no, it is by no means flawless. I already discussed the whitewashing and stereotypes and the mess of the English dub, but there is more. I made mention of the fact that battles and seriously bad events such as the Holocaust are not mentioned, and this holds true throughout pretty much all of the series. There are certain points where ‘battles’ of a sort are seen, but only flash moments. One scene in particular that I really enjoyed as a tween and can now see the problems with is the whole revolutionary war scene. This was a scene split into two episodes (for some weird reason, even an unrelated episode in between, like, what? Why??) about a particular (unnamed) battle in the American Revolution where England faced down America, they each had a gun with a bayonet, and England charged America and his bayonet deeply scratched America’s gun, and America declared he was no longer England’s little brother, and the whole thing was played out as an extremely emotional scene. England is lost in the past of seeing America as a cute little kid he took care of, who has now grown up and is being reckless and stupid, and America is all righteous and independent and proving he’s a grown up, it’s all very emotional, I cried, other fans cried, there was much fanart.

This scene is problematic in a way. Boiling down an extremely nasty conflict following lots of really bad laws and protests to this one scene doesn’t do history any justice. It says nothing about the struggles of the American colonists, the struggles of the British empire, the awful things the colonists did to the natives, etc etc. It is one small scene and it focuses on these characters as humanoid, with feelings, and completely ignores the complexities of history. And yes, in a way, that is bad. But it is bad in the sense that nobody can - or at least should - take this show to be the end-all be-all of history. It is not. It is not often entirely correct, and it picks and chooses what points in the past several thousand years to play with, and trying to use it as a map for history is a bad idea. However, this focus on the countries as human-like and struggling can also be a good thing.

It is also important to note that there have been other problems. The portrayal of South Korea, for example, is extremely controversial, and while I do not know all of the specifics, I believe that it was banned in Korea due to this, and the character was entirely removed from the anime, among other things. Obviously, a bad take, a bad character. There are also just straight up not great characterizations in certain cases. I don’t, for example, like anything about how Belarus is portrayed as a crazy psycho constantly begging Russia (her big brother) to marry her? I think that that is ridiculous, and I know nothing about Belarus as a country but I am pretty darn sure that that is not how one ought to go about portraying the country. There are a few other examples, but my purpose here was not to pull up a list of every country and explain what is correct or incorrect about each characterization. It is enough to say that some characters were not portrayed perfectly. But with that in mind...

The Good Anything Else

It is the most important to remember that this, all of this, is fiction. This is a silly, silly fantasy series. The countries are not humans, they are some weird semi-immortal species that share a universal language and know they are not human and are referenced by humans as ‘those people.’ They are fictional constructs. But the good out of all of this is that they explore human emotions. The American Revolution scene should not be taken as how the revolution was, and who might have been right or wrong. But it is a very emotional story of a big brother unable to accept that his little brother has grown up and wants to make his own choices. That, right there, is a heartfelt scene that I’m sure plenty of real people can feel something about. And there are plenty of other scenes that really grab you by the heartstrings, especially given how crazy, stupid, and humor-oriented the rest of the show is. And I will take a moment and enthuse about some of the more popular scenes that I think are, in fact, pretty good.

There is one episode in season 5, Beautiful World, where an American woman visits France (the place). This woman, Lisa, is blond and bears a striking resemblance to Joan d’Arc. While visiting some historical place somewhere or another in Paris, France (the person) spots her and rushes up with an odd look. When she questions him, he apologizes and offers to give her a tour of the area, which she accepts. He then proceeds to lead her around and explain some history and show off some beautiful sights, and he mentions some stuff about Joan d’Arc. She butts in and lists off some stuff she knows, he beams and looks proud and says yes, she’s right. The end of the scene has the two of them standing alone somewhere and him commenting how young Joan was when she was killed, and that he always wished she could have had a better, nicer life. He then states that he is very happy that she got it, while giving this American tourist a gentle smile. She looks away for a moment, distracted by something perhaps, and when she looks back to ask just who the heck he really is, talking about a historical figure like he knew her, he is gone. It’s a very emotional scene in a quiet sort of way, because the watcher/reader understands that he took one look at this woman and instantly believed that she was, in fact, Joan d’Arc reincarnated into a totally different and totally average life, and he is so genuinely happy that a woman he saw as a hero gets this chance to live normally. Whether or not you may personally believe in reincarnation, and regardless of how often other times in the show France is shown as an obnoxious sexaholic, this is an extremely tender scene that lots of fans seriously love. It is very ‘human.’ And I feel like this is what the series as a whole strives to offer. These human moments. They may be peppered in a sort of lackadaisical style in the anime, but they are far more prominent in the comic strips, so it is important to realize that that kind of scene is more of what the creator likes to focus on.

Another very popular and touted scene is the Davie scene. I don’t remember if it was put in the anime or not, I read it as a comic. It was a scene set in colonial America, where the man himself was just a very small child. Little baby America was hanging out in a field with a rabbit and sees this boy, who introduces himself as Davie. Davie brings America to his house and opens up a botany book and points out a blue flower (possibly a forget-me-not) that he wants to see but that isn’t in the New World. America assures Davie that he will find him one of those flowers, and goes off to do so. He fails his search and goes back to Davie, who is older now, but Davie looks embarrassed and turns and walks away. Distressed, America runs to England and explains about the flower, and England says the flower is not there, but they do grow at home, and he will bring some the next time he leaves and comes back. America happily waits, and when England returns with a bouquet of the blue flowers, America takes them and runs off to Davie’s house. He is let in by a boy who looks just like Davie and presents the flowers, and the boy then puts them on (or maybe in) a coffin of an elderly man. America, smiling, does not seem to understand what is going on, and hopefully calls the boy Davie.

This entire scene, in the comic, has very few words. Davie’s name is repeated a few times, but most of the rest of the ‘dialogue’ is in images. The flower, England saying it is not there, etc. This makes the scene extremely poignant, and when we reach the end, we, the audience, realize suddenly that while baby America was fixated on finding a special flower for his new friend, years and years went by, and that friend grew up and got married and had children and eventually died, all while America remained looking the exact same age and understanding the exact same things. Look, folks, I don’t know about you, but that is some angsty stuff right there. I cried. We all cried. We all miss Davie. Mention the name to fans and you will get sobs. We love you, Davie.

Which brings me to my penultimate point, that this series is heartfelt and, while it avoids a lot of the bad of history, can be very poignant about what human nature is like. Human lives are long, very long, but also so very short, they fly by. Some lives end in tragedy, others are mostly peaceful, and maybe we get second chances if you believe in reincarnation, maybe not. Maybe it’s good that our lives are so short, maybe the fate of living forever and watching people you connect with die is tragic. Or maybe it would actually be really fun, having friends for thousands of years that you may squabble with at times but ultimately care for. Maybe nothing is simple and life is about finding joy where you can, and everyone needs to sometimes take a step back and realize that everyone is flawed, and there might be good and evil but the vast majority of people are in a grey area, trying to live their own lives and do what good they can for whatever reason they might give. I want to end with one last topic, one I have not yet addressed this whole time. The big white alien in the room, if you will.

Paint it: White!

There is a Hetalia movie, folks, if you didn’t know it, and it’s called Paint It White. This movie has just as many silly parts as any other Hetalia thing, but it also has a plot! In this movie, strange, all-white aliens are starting to invade the Earth. They arrive and anything they touch, they turn into completely identical white humanoid blobs, even the country personifications. With this scary and seemingly-unstoppable threat, the main eight - America, England, Russia, China, France, Japan, Germany, and Italy - all try to infiltrate the alien spaceship in frankly hideous uniforms to find out more and figure out a way to defeat them. Hijinks and disaster ensues, and at the end, each of them is fighting a mob and gradually being defeated. Italy is the last one standing, and as Germany is slowly being transformed into a blob along with the others, he tells Italy to smile. Italy then finds (or has? the plot isn’t great, it’s just there) a black marker and he suddenly starts going around drawing ridiculous faces on everyone. He draws fitting faces on each of his friend blobs, like a stern face on Germany-blob, a deadpan face on Japan-blob, etc etc. The invaders suddenly stop. They look at each other, marker-faced, and start to laugh. Then their leader of sorts comes out and is basically like “wow, we thought you were all stupid and you have wars and stuff, but this? This is beautiful. Wow. We all look exactly identical on our world, and these faces are cool and new and unique. We’ll turn everyone on your planet back if we can have this magical thingie you’re holding.” And of course Italy hands the marker right over, and everyone is put back to normal, and crybaby, scaredy-cat, useless Italy saves the world.

The plot is, obviously, not super great. It’s not going to win anybody any awards. But it has a very poetic premise. The strength of humans is that they are all unique. Every human has a different face, a different body, a different life. Our differences may cause conflict, but they are also something to celebrate. At the end of the day, Hetalia is an okay show that can get you hooked on history and tries its best to teach you that we’re all only human and there might be war and conflict and bad things, but you have to reach for the good things and find yourself good friends and have stupid laughs and enjoy life, however long or short it may be. I think that that’s a pretty decent message to send out to people.

The Bottom Line

In the end, this is a fandom like many others. Hetalia has its flaws and its cringe moments, and it certainly had its fair share of awful fans. But I truly believe that painting it overall as nazi propoganda and one of the most problematic and harmful shows out there is a blatant lie and disregards… just about everything of the actual content. I think it is difficult for someone to concretely say anything is super good or super bad without seeing at least some of it, or doing some research, and this business of blithely going along with what everyone else says just because they use big danger words does not do anybody any favors. Spreading misinformation is, I’m sure, the exact opposite of what most people want to do. And make no mistake, I am definitely not saying that everyone needs to like, or even watch, the show. If you never ever want to watch this show in your life, that is absolutely fine. Go forth and never watch it. But mindlessly following the herd and yelling overgeneralized, unsupported opinions about it is not a good thing. I beg of you, do research on the things you want to form or share an opinion on, think critically, and for the love of God, do not swipe a giant paintbrush to forsake every single individual fan of a show as a terrible, awful person. By all means, hate nazis, they are pieces of shit. Boycott things that support genocide and fascism, yes, fight for equality, yes. But do not go accusing without thinking, and do not overgeneralize. I leave you with the words of my old laptop bag that I bought years ago at a convention:

Make pasta, not war.

Thank you for reading.

#I wrote an essay #I could probably source this way more #but I've been working on it for hours #Just take it

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ofzvbini · 4 years ago

Text

𝐓𝐀𝐒𝐊 / the saddest memory drabble . 𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 / poor bastard #5 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐆𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 / none ! 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐂. / blaise zabini , age twelve , is finally getting noticed for his talent .

blaise has met three of the five men that his mother had been married to . three of five men who were all , collectively , hardly worthy of a second thought .

( yes , he counts his father among these men . the most spectacular accomplishment the man had achieved was helping to spawn blaise . remarkable in and of itself but , ultimately , the only thing worth noting in his short stint of a romance with the zabini matriarch . )

with these new step-fathers came a steady stream of impersonal gifts , trinkets and toys that could have been for any little boy in the world were they not for him : brooms that blaise had no interest in flying , muggle footballs that his mother sniffed delicately at , and they all seemed to want to teach him how to play chess regardless of the fact that his mother had taught him years ago . every single one of them .

all of it got tiring eventually . blaise wasnʻt particularly bothered when they went away .

they passed in and out of his life , these ephemeral entities , and blaise barely cared enough to learn their names . he never had to . none of those names were his . some tried , thinking it a gift of itʻs own to tie blaise to them as their son in name as well marriage . his mother would bat her eyes , titter something about honoring her family , and the matter would be dropped . the only name that truly mattered in their house was the one that valentina zabini never relinquished her hold on .

the current one hadnʻt tried yet . he either had less spine than the last or was smarter than the whole lot of them . he hadnʻt asked them to take his name . he hadnʻt tried to bribe his way into blaiseʻs good graces . he hadnʻt seemed to do much of anything . blaise couldnʻt tell if this was a credit to his character or not but he kept his distance from the matter . he kept to himself or the house elves , the quick glances he would send blaiseʻs way on occasion the only indication that he even knew of blaiseʻs existence .

blaise found him incredibly dull .

more often than not , blaise would find himself sneaking away from the dining table during meals in order to creep into the back garden . he could avoid the banal conversations about work and politics if he timed it right and , well , neither his mother nor his step-father ever made mention of stopping him .

it was simply easier here with his hands buried in the dirt . here , he was the one who could coax life into another being . here , he was the one shaping things into what he wanted .

❝ the house elves told me i could find you out here . ❞

blaise didnʻt jump ( this was his house . he would not be made scared in his own home ) but it was a near thing . his latest step-father , some french something or another with a considerable inheritance , approaches blaise with his hands held behind his back .

blaise hates that stance . he didnʻt have the energy to fake gratitude for a gift he didnʻt even care about to spare the feelings of this man he hardly knew .

❝ you talk to the house elves often , do you ? ❞ blaise bites back , carefully put together apathy made clear in the monotone of his voice . he was always better than his peers at this , at feigning the cool disinterest in anything and everything , that dramatic sort of uncaring ease that teenagers tried so hard to adopt .

his mother had trained her little boy well .

❝ i do . they know more about the people in this house than anyone else , ❞ his step-father sits next to blaise , uncaring of the way the dirt stains his pressed trousers . ❝ iʻve been asking them about you . ❞

❝ why would you do that ? ❞

❝ because they know you . and they were able to give me some ideas on a present you might like , ❞ his step-father says , shifting around to reveal the pot that he had hidden behind his back . he moves it towards blaise , placing it directly in front of the boy .

❝ you bought me flowers ? ❞ blaise asks , one brow arching at the vivid purple blossoms . ❝ careful . i think my mother might get jealous . ❞

this coaxes a smile from his step-father , who simply shakes his head at the cheek . ❝ do you recognize them ? the elves said you didnʻt have any on the grounds . ❞

he pulls the pot closer to himself , careful not to brush against the petals as he turned it this way and that . ❝ itʻs wolfsbane . ❞

❝ it is . ❞

❝ we donʻt have any because weʻve never had any need for it . the risk of aconite poisoning is more trouble than itʻs worth . ❞

❝ but youʻre a growing boy , arenʻt you ? you can handle some plants that are a bit more challenging , ❞ his step-father ( perhaps , he should try to learn the manʻs name ) cheers , gesturing widely to blaise , as if the sudden lengthiness of his limbs were indicative of an aptitude for dangerous plants . blaise canʻt help but blink up at the man , desperately trying to tamp down the way he glows at the trust being shown towards him .

this trust was all for blaise , not for the polished scion that his mother nurtured and built by herself . his aptitude for herbology was his own , something that he worked on when his mother had no need for him , the singular talent that stemmed entirely from him and wasnʻt carefully cultured by his motherʻs tender hand .

and here his step-father was , actively encouraging it .

❝ maybe weʻll get you something even better later , ❞ the man hoists himself up , brushing the dirt from the seat of his pants . ❝ do you think you could handle some devilʻs snare ? maybe some venomous tentacula ? ❞

all blaise can do it nod , taken by surprise for the first time in the entire period of knowing this man .

his step-father grins and lays a large hand on blaiseʻs head to ruffle his hair . blaise doesnʻt even muster up a complaint at the indignity . he would have for anyone else . he would have cared more about his hair and the state heʻd be in by the time he made it back into the house . he would have raised a stink about his step-father touching him in the first place . instead , he lets it happen . he decides that he might actually like this latest husband . he probably shouldnʻt .

he does .

❝ thereʻs a good lad . ❞ his step-father smiles once again . blaise smiles back and pretends itʻs not as rueful as it feels . he gives blaiseʻs head one more fond pat before he turns on his heel to head back to the porch . blaise watches him go and knows that this was the way muggle bombs were built . this was the naive optimism that made ranchers give names to their cattle .

this was , above all , destined to end poorly .

his mother steps out to greet his step-father at the door , a tender kiss and a smile on her face for him . the smile does not reach her eyes . it never does when thereʻs a ring sitting on her finger . they chat for a bit before his step-father points at blaise , still sitting in the dirt with his newly gifted pot cradled between his hands . he meets his motherʻs gaze and a sharp coldness creeps up his spine at the calculating look in her dark eyes .

well then .

blaise supposed that it was nice while it lasted .

#this is godawful i just have a lot of thoughts #nox.task #𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖎𝖘𝖊 𝖟𝖆𝖇𝖎𝖓𝖎 ━━ ˟ ⊰ history .#𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖎𝖘𝖊 𝖟𝖆𝖇𝖎𝖓𝖎 ━━ ˟ ⊰ isms .#tfw you actually like ur stepdad but wish u didnt #ask me about blaiseʻs feelings towards his mom gO ON ASK

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safarigirlsp · 4 years ago

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From Error to Error

@iamakiller

Afternoon sunlight filters into my office window, barely peeking over the New York City skyline as the sun dips lower by the minute. It catches my eye, causing me to cast something between a squint and a glare at the offending beam.

I sit silently in my wingback chair, legs crossed, notepad resting on my lap, listening to the interminable dross of marital problems on which my clients seek my counsel.

He doesn’t listen. She’s too needy. He doesn’t appreciate her. She doesn’t put out enough. On and on and on. So many of the same trivial issues verbalized from different trivial people that they often blur together in my mind. Couples merge to become a singular mass of whining, churning misery.

Job security, I tell myself. I’ve given up finding fulfillment in work, even in relationships. It’s all become so dissatisfying. I once thought that earning a doctorate in clinical psychology would ensure that I was engulfed in interesting cases, in stimulating exploration of fractured psyches. Unfortunately, there were too few of those gems to pay the bills. So, here I sit, marriage counselor extraordinaire, letting this verbal sewage flow into my ears from an endless stream of bickering spouses.

Today is no different. Another couple with a burgeoning divorce trying to cling together because of their son. An admirable goal. Doomed to failure.

This is their first session. An emergency, I was told. Not that there is really such a thing in this line of work. An ‘emergency’ usually consists of a fight they can no longer avoid or a discussion they are too meek to have without a referee. I’ve always found it amusing that what they never seem to realize is that by the time a couple is looking for someone like me to unite with them against their spouse, that they have both already lost.

It is of some consolation to me that this couple is mildly more interesting that most. A successful actress and director. Their problems, however, could not be more mundane.

After introductions are made, pleasantries exchanged, we sit. Husband and wife on opposite ends of my large sofa, myself in my chair, and I wait as the silence they find uncomfortable and I find relaxing fills the room.

Nicole begins. A tearful tirade of how she’s lost herself in her marriage, how she’s taken for granted and how her dreams have fallen victim to her husband’s selfish whims. I wait, hoping to hear something unique, to no avail.

I offer my best professional condolences and plastic assurances that, “I’m here to help.”

Once Nicole has finished and is sniveling quietly into a tissue, I turn to her husband, Charlie.

Charlie sits relaxed on the couch, one long leg crossed over the other, too indifferent to his crying wife. He runs a large hand through his hair as he smiles at me. A flagrantly curated gesture meant to endear me to him. I give him the false smile that I put on every day along with my jacket before leaving my home.

He first makes it a point to politely but firmly address and counter all of his wife’s complaints. A decent tactic for a debate, less so for ensuring marital bliss.

What a sanctimonious ass.

Following this is his florid reasoning as to why he is the superior partner in the marriage, and also, a thinly veiled ploy to garner my sympathy. I listen with interest. Not to his ‘problems,’ which are absurdly negligible, but to his investment in gaining my commiseration.

Odd that such a confident man would have any concern for gaining the approval of a stranger. It quickly becomes obvious that his poignant desire for endorsement extends beyond today’s counseling session. So, the big shot director craves validation from women. A useful kernel of information.

Finally, the emergent strife between this couple is revealed to me when Charlie discloses an affair.

Even this, however, is a feeble attempt to garner sympathy, whether from me or his wife, I cannot be sure. It is noteworthy to me that he craves validation for even this unsavory conduct. Of course, he was pushed into it. The poor poor man had no recourse from his terrible marriage with his beautiful starlet wife other than to run headlong into the orifices of another woman.

I hope my features remain neutral, not belying my cynical amusement.

I wonder how many other women there were. How many others there are. I am certain his mousy stage manager is only a minnow in his sea of consorts.

Turning my attention briefly to Nicole, I can see she is affected by Charlie’s disclosure. I see sadness, remorse, even pity reflected in her empathetic eyes. Pathetic. She did not strike me as being overly burdened with intelligence, an assessment that is now reinforced. It is little wonder that Charlie has so easily kept his assignations from her scrutiny.

When Charlie says how lonely and joyless his marriage was, I nod in a guise of sympathy that I do not feel so as to conform to the rules of polite society.

Truth be told, I feel very little anymore. As Charlie meanders through the tiresome details of his affair, my mind drifts. I think back to the last time I’ve truly felt something. Anything. Charlie thinks that when I raise my eyebrows in a show of mild consideration that it is from his words and not from my own epiphany that it has been years since I myself have felt anything resembling joy. The emotional highs I seek are always closer to excitement and satisfaction.

A picture of Mr. Barber has begun to form in my mind. His confident air and easy smile are all a mask. A face he puts on every day the way I put on mascara and lipstick to make himself presentable to the rest of the world. But, what is he hiding beneath the mask?

Even his confidence, it seems, is built upon a fragile foundation of affirmation, stolen from the lips of young naive women. No doubt too many for even Charlie himself to remember the figure.

He has used countless women to climb out of his own well of insecurity. Each body a lifeline to be desperately grasped and used, in an attempt to elevate his own self-worth.

Yet, it’s never enough for a man like him. Perpetually chasing a high that lingers just out of reach, and settling instead for a few moments of fleeting ecstasy amid his grimy carnality.

Yes, I’m getting a clear picture of Charlie, indeed. Despite what his handsome smile and steady amber eyes belie.

When Charlie is finished, Nicole is in tears, doing her best to use an entire box of tissues, while he looks at me. His gaze is confident, almost expectant.

He thinks I’m sympathetic to him. That he’s won me over. Poor Charlie. The thought of removing the smug grin from his lips makes my own turn upwards slightly. Even if for nothing other than to show him that I do not fall victim to such transparent manipulation.

“Charlie,” I say sweetly, luring him into a trap of my own. “I see a small problem with your perceived ‘difficulties’ in your marriage. What of these issues with Nicole were not facets of her character from the outset? I’m sure a man as perceptive as yourself became aware of them quickly”

Charlie’s mouth sets as I speak, his disdain seeping through the cracks of his marble features.

“Much as I’m sure she should have been aware of your hubris rather early,” My eyes hold his intently. “I would pose it to you that your predilection for women outside of your marriage is not as simple as a misstep or a quirk to overcome.”

Charlie was glaring at me now. Even though his face remained even, his eyes burned lividly as they held mine. Good.

Nicole, knowing Charlie must be upset by my words, rushed to his defense even now. “Maybe Charlie just felt that I-“

“No, Nicole.” I cut her off immediately, my tone sharp. “You hold no accountability for this.”

Charlie’s jaw clenches fiercely as I continue.

“Is that how a man acts who wants to save his marriage?” I lean forward slightly, allowing just a hint of venom to tinge my next words. “Is that how a man who cares about his son behaves?”

Charlie’s eyes darken markedly with an emotion I can’t quite place. Although, for the first time today, hell, the first time in weeks, I feel a surge of excitement flood through me.

“To say differently would mean you’re lying yet again to your wife.” I smile wickedly. “That you’re lying to me.”

Nicole looks at me with red, thankful eyes. In them I also see a glimmer of hope. I’ll never understand women like her. Weak, cloying women, desperate to retain a man who has wronged them. But, it’s written on her face as plainly as Charlie’s malice radiates towards me. He could fix things with Nicole if he wanted. She even believes that he’ll try.

I know, as I look into Charlie’s eyes that now gleam with a simmering enmity, that he will put no effort into fixing his marriage. No, he is as intent on destroying this as he has everything else in his life. I wonder if he’s aware of that pattern himself, I muse.

#safarigirlsp rp #iamakiller #no warnings #yet.

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rachelkaser · 4 years ago

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Stay Golden Sunday: Flu Attack

Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche are brought down by the flu and fight like cats in a sack. Sophia observes.

Picture It...

Sophia is hemming one of Dorothy’s dresses in the kitchen as Blanche comes in with one of her own. They’re preparing for a big charity dinner on the weekend, and Sophia’s a little irritable that she hasn’t found a date yet. Rose comes in, feeling a little under the weather, which puts Dorothy’s back up. Rose promises she’s not sick and won’t get anyone else sick. Blanche sets herself up for one of the best zingers in the show’s history.

BLANCHE: Oh you don’t have to worry about me, honey. I never get sick. I take very good care of myself. I treat my body like a temple. SOPHIA: Yeah, open to everyone, day or night.

Cut to, presumably, a few days later, and Blanche, Rose and Dorothy are all camped out on the couch, sick as dogs. Rose feels guilty for bringing the creeping crud into the house, while even illness can’t stop Blanche from primping. Sophia comes in, upset because she still can’t get a date for the banquet, and begrudgingly answers the doorbell. Dr. Richmond, a woman in a snazzy blue blazer, arrives to tend to them. She does a very brief physical exam, palpating their throats and looking into their eyes for some reason -- Blanche is a little nonplussed about being examined by a woman, natch.

From this short appointment, Dr. Richmond determines they all have the flu (Sophia: “I told them that two days ago. Tell them something new for $50″). She encourages them to rest for at least a week, meaning they’ll miss the banquet, and leaves. They’re disappointed at this failure of medicine, and discuss home remedies. Sophia tells a story about Sicily’s Widow Caravelli, who would treat ear infections with a green salve that Salvador, the village idiot, later marketed as pesto sauce.

DOROTHY: Ma, you’re making this up. SOPHIA: So what? I’m old. I’m supposed to be colorful.

Three days later, Blanche and Dorothy squabble over the heating pad -- Sophia rightly calls them out for being so cranky. Rose comes in with a folk medicine book, and is inexplicably cheerful. When Dorothy questions it, it turns out Rose’s Hot Toddy recipe might be a little strong. Dorothy and Blanche continue to fight over who gets the TV, and even Rose’s Hot Toddies can’t keep her from getting snappish. They storm off to their bedrooms just as Sophia comes in an announces she has a date for the banquet.

In the kitchen, the Girls continue to bicker, over the orange juice, the Vicks VapoRub, and the Nyquil cup. When Rose bursts into tears, they start apologizing to each other, the stress of being cooped up and sick making them crazy. They hug it out, promising to get through it together. Sophia enters and tells them that, when she called to cancel their reservations to the banquet, the organizer’s disappointment led her to suspect either Rose, Blanche, or Dorothy won the Best Friend of the Friends of Good Health Award.

BLANCHE: Why, what’d she say? SOPHIA: It wasn’t what she said. It was what she didn’t say. ROSE: What didn’t she say? SOPHIA: How they hell do I know? She didn’t say it!

Immediately intrigued, the Girls start reciting what each of them has done to possibly deserve the award. Rose participated in a walkathon, bikeathon, telethon, and marathon. Blanche volunteered with senior citizens, at a daycare center, and as a volunteer dummy for a CPR class. Dorothy sold peanut brittle to raise funds for a new bloodmobile. Naturally, the competition causes them to turn nasty again, and they all decide to go to the banquet, flu or no flu.

At the banquet, Rose and Dorothy are at the table with their dates -- Dorothy’s doesn’t seem especially happy to be there. Blanche arrives alone and says her date will arrive shortly, and they continue to argue over who’s going to win the award. Sophia arrives with a much-younger man named Raoul, a flower vendor Sophia met at the dog track who can only say, “It’s a pleasure to be here” in English. Blanche arrives with a man named Tommy and tries to pass him off as her date, but he’s quickly revealed to be a waiter -- Blanche’s date didn’t want to be seen with her in her sickly state.

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The event’s emcee takes the stage, and tells everyone that Don Johnson, the celebrity guest, isn’t coming, but they have the clothes he was planning to wear. Sure enough, a presenter arrives on stage with a white blazer. The Girls get one last dig at each other as they wait for the award to be given -- Rose even preemptively removes her napkin from her lap. The presenter opens the envelope and announces the name of the winner: It’s Sophia!

Everyone bursts into applause, including the three Girls, as Sophia goes to accept the award (after getting two victory smooches from Raoul). In her acceptance speech, she says very pointedly that she’s lucky to have love and support in her home and wanted to pass it on -- the Girls exchange meaningful looks -- and flexes on everyone by showing off her handsome, young date. The other three Girls apologize to each other again and toast to friendship, sealing it with one final, explosive sneeze.

“The minute I found out you were contagious, I should have thrown you out on the street.”

Confession time: While I think some other episodes from Season 1 are structurally better, or are more touching in some ways, this episode is my favorite. Remember when I said in “The Custody Battle” that the episode was so lean on good singular lines of dialogue that I had trouble picking one for my mid-post header quote? I had the opposite problem here: So many lines of dialogue are great that I had to flip a coin to pick one.

DOROTHY: Blanche Deveraux can’t find a date? BLANCHE: Oh don’t be ridiculous. My only problem is trying to decide which of my many suitors to flatter with an invitation. After all, it’s the social event of the season. DOROTHY: I guess you’ll just have to break a few hundred hearts, Blanche. BLANCHE: I know. I haven’t had to disappoint so many men since Daddy tore down the tree house.

While this episode has no moral, no character growth, and no drama, it’s still the best if only because it has such a relatable story. Who hasn’t been extremely sick and cranky and miserable at least once in their lives? In any other circumstances, the Girls’ nastiness to each other would be shocking and disturbing. But under the circumstances, I can’t say I wouldn’t be behaving the same way.

The Girls spend most of the episode at each other’s throats, and yet in spite of that -- or perhaps because of it -- their friendship feels especially strong. It’s not like they want to be so horrible to each other -- they’re just radiating horribleness and get caught in each other’s crossfire, is how I look at it. And they’re still able to apologize to each other and get past it, twice. I think it’s a great example of how friendship can take a test like this.

BLANCHE: You really think selling candy is going to qualify you for that prestigious award? DOROTHY: Oh, excuse me. I didn’t realize that slipping my tongue to half the firemen in the county was the more lofty social achievement.

Still, message aside, almost every joke in this episode is a winner and lands perfectly, and for that reason alone I will keep this in a playlist of my favorite Golden Girls episodes forever.

There’s really no B-plot to this episode -- instead, there’s more like an A1 plot and an A2 plot. The A1 plot is Blanche, Rose, and Dorothy suffering from their flu while Sophia attends them. The A2 plot is all four Girls wanting to attend the charity banquet and being up for the same award. Since these plots are effectively twined together throughout the episode, it means that all of the Girls get equal screentime and lines throughout the episode.

Sophia does sort of hover in the background, and at first it seems like the episode is going to relegate her to funny lines rather than an important role, as has happened before. However, this pays off in a big way when she wins the awards over the other three Girls, and gives an acceptance speech that shows she was paying full attention to them throughout the week and knows what to say to remind them of what’s important.

I almost wish we knew what Sophia had done to win the award, given the other Girls got to brag about their accomplishments. But I think the fact that Sophia’s the person in the episode who behaves charitably, taking care of the other Girls when they get sick and never really complaining about how awful they’re being and not even mentioning all the things she’s done. It’s still cool to see that the Girls are so community-minded -- and it’s good to remind us of their good traits even as they’re all crabbing at each other.

SOPHIA: *about the Widow Caravelli* She was best known for this green salve she used to make to treat ear infections. One day she gave a batch to Salvador, the village idiot. He misunderstood the directions and put it on his linguine instead of in his ear. DOROTHY: I guess if you’re an idiot with a hearing problem, you do things like that.

Another reason I like this background story about charitable work and the betterment of the community is that it contributes to the feeling that these onscreen characters are people with lives that happen off-camera. I know that’s not really the case, but it’s these details that make them feel so three-dimensional. Everything they do is in keeping with their characters as we know them so far -- it doesn’t surprise me one bit that Blanche came up with a firemen’s CPR class and volunteered herself as the practice dummy.

I don’t think I have any complaints to make about this episode. Every moment is just great joke after great joke, and all four actresses are at their peak. I don’t think there are two consecutive minutes in this episode that don’t give me a giggle. Reportedly, playing sick was tricky for the Girls, as they couldn’t play it too over the top, and the whole crew began to feel ill after the week’s filming just from having watched them play sick.

BLANCHE: You know, this is the first time a female doctor’s ever examined me. Feels kinda strange. DR. RICHMOND: I hear that a lot. You know the truth is, despite the progress that women have made, medicine is still a man’s world. *sticks a tongue depressor in Blanche’s mouth* So, if it’ll make you feel any better, I used to be a man. BLANCHE: *flinches and pulls the depressor out of her mouth* What?! DR. RICHMOND: Just a little female doctor humor.

Part of me does wonder why all three Girls are spending their recuperation on the couch in the living room, as opposed to their own separate bedrooms, but I think at this point in the series they only have one TV in the house. One very minor nitpick is that Sophia seemed convinced, by what the organizer said, that one of her three roommates won the award, when she was the actual winner. I’m not sure what we’re meant to take from that: Did Sophia mishear Harriet McConnell, or was Harriet upset that Sophia’s daughter and friends wouldn’t be there to support her? But that’s a minor quibble at best.

Also, bit of trivia for you: Bea Arthur didn’t usually break out in laughter on set, and the times she did were notable. In Golden Girls Forever, she says she had a great laugh in this episode during the banquet scene when the presenters show off a hanger with Don Johnson’s clothes on it: “I’ve never seen anything funnier in my life.” She added that they eventually had to cut away from her because she couldn’t stop laughing, which tells me that we originally got a Dorothy Reaction Shot at that point in the episode, and I’m frankly sorry we didn’t get to see it.

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I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out this episode’s sudden relevance given the world situation. While the Girls being sick and fighting will always be relatable, them specifically fighting because they’re sick and cooped up together feels even more so given the pandemic and all the not-going-out we’ve all been doing for the last year. Not to sound sappy, but Sophia’s message to her daughter and two surrogate daughters in the final scene that they value the people they have around them, even in the not-so-great times, puts a smile on my face.

Episode rating: 🍰🍰🍰🍰🍰 (five cheesecake slices out of five)

Favorite Part of the Episode:

It’s really tough to pick out just one, but I have to pick the joke I didn’t get until I was an adult.

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#golden girls #stay golden #stay golden sunday #blanche devereaux #rose nylund #dorothy zbornak #sophia petrillo #the flu #s01e21 #picture it

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terramythos · 4 years ago

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TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 32 of 26

Title: The Siren Depths (2012) (The Books of the Raksura #3)

Author: Martha Wells

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Adventure, LGBT Protagonist, Third-Person

Rating: 8/10

Date Began: 11/09/2020

Date Finished: 11/21/2020

Moon's past has always been obscure. A winged shapeshifter, he has spent most of his life as a solitary wanderer. He has few memories of his childhood, and only recently found others of his kind-- the Raksura. Now Moon has found a home as first consort to the queen Jade in the Raksuran court of Indigo Cloud.

However, when a neighboring queen recognizes his bloodline, Moon's new life is upended as he's forced to return to a family he doesn't even remember. Seemingly abandoned by Jade and overcome with doubt, Moon has to navigate the complex politics and grave secrets in the court of Opal Night alone. But an old enemy is about to return, threatening every Raksuran court in the Reaches.

The one thing he hadn’t expected to do was miss Indigo Cloud so much. He had been leaving people all his life, to the point where all the turns seemed like an uninterrupted progression of departures, and there had been people he had missed terribly. But this was a never-ending ache in his chest... You’ll get over it, he told himself. You always get over it.

But somehow, this time was different.

Some major spoilers and content warning(s) under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: As always, graphic violence and action. There is a disturbing scene that's... kind of forced cannibalism I guess (I'm not sure how else to describe it). Some sexual content is implied but not graphic. The r*pe plot point from The Cloud Roads is relevant, but is not depicted or described in detail. A romantic relationship with a significant age gap is briefly mentioned (both are consenting adults but it may make some readers uncomfortable).

For the most part, I enjoyed The Siren Depths more than the previous entries. I connected much more strongly to the central conflict, and was pleased to see some deeper character development than in the last two books. This entry also introduces fascinating new settings and characters while exploring some genuinely interesting ideas. It serves as a good parallel to The Cloud Roads, with similar plot beats explored in different ways. I did have one big problem which I will detail further in the review, but let's talk about the good parts first. Moon's conflict in this story, like the rest of the series, has to do with belonging. But The Siren Depths has the advantage of two books of development. From what we know of Moon's past, he sees any home as temporary, and when he's suddenly forced to leave Indigo Cloud (presumably for good), his new attachments and way of life come into question. To some degree, Moon sees this as an inevitable part of his life. Sooner or later, something out of his control will happen and he'll be abandoned. What I found relatable is there's several times Moon knows he is being irrational but still can't stop the negative downward spiral. Like... jeez, just call me out specifically next time! While a depressed protagonist can be a drag to read, I think it really works here because we've grown attached to Moon and know how far he's come. And sure enough, he does get his ass in gear when he realizes this ISN'T like before, and lots of people do care about him. The found vs biological family conflict is interesting as well. I think The Siren Depths does great here because you can see both points of view. Moon always assumed his biological family died, and they assumed the same thing about him. This should be a happy homecoming, but under the circumstances simply isn't. Moon resents being torn from Indigo Cloud because a group of people he barely remembers have a legal claim on him. Opal Night seems strangely hostile until you learn more about its politics and secrets. Even though they're early antagonists, they're not really villains; just a traumatized group of people who see Moon as a missing link from their past. When he's not what the others are expecting, obvious issues ensue, but Moon finds he does care about some of these people, even if it's not really his home. Outside of Moon, several other characters have arcs in this book. While the previous books feature a likeable enough cast, the characters are mostly one dimensional. Not so here; we explore the insecurities and struggles of some of the supporting cast. Jade isn't nearly as self-confident as she appears to be, and grapples with this throughout the book-- for example, wanting to prove to Moon that she is willing to do whatever it takes to get him back. Similarly, Chime's struggle with his involuntary transformation comes to a head here as his strange new powers become relevant again. We see just how bitter he is that he's cut off from his old magical gifts and still holds out hope that they'll return. We even get some indication that while this HAS happened before in Raksuran history, it's incredibly rare. There’s also an interesting hint on what the powers really are, which has some pretty big implications. This is potentially a future plot point, so I’m hoping it gets explored. (Also, I was totally right about Moon/Chime, do I get a prize?)

There are several new characters I found really interesting, namely Malachite and Shade. Malachite (spoiler: Moon's biological mother) is initially presented as the antagonist, and her behavior seems inscrutable. She's a powerful queen who commands respect, yet seems unpredictable and standoffish. All of this starts to make sense as one learns more about her. Turns out unbelievable, extended trauma really fucks with a person. The Fell destroyed her colony, killed her consort and most of her children, and she spent almost a year in full guerilla warfare against them. Yet she adopted the Fell/Raksura crossbreeds and raised them as her own children, demonstrating nothing but indulgent love and kindness towards them. I'm not sure I would be able to do that in her place. In general she's just a huge badass; totally decked out in scars and the first to leap into battle. At least we know where Moon gets it from. Did I say Fell/Raksura crossbreeds? Yup, that plot point is back. Only, it's explored in a different way here. The crossbreeds in The Cloud Roads are terrifying weapons deployed by the Fell. The ones in The Siren Depths, raised in a loving home, are just kind of weirdly pale Raksura. I liked Shade in particular, who we learn is Moon's half brother and serves as an interesting foil. Moon would probably be much more like Shade if the Fell attack on Opal Night never happened. Shade is an earnest and kind (if naïve) man and behaves like none of the Fell we’ve met in the series. I hope we see more of him (and Lithe, the other crossbreed) in future volumes, because I think they're an interesting take on nature vs nurture with the "inherently" evil Fell. Speaking of the Fell, while they themselves haven't changed much, I thought they were more effective villains than in The Cloud Roads. We see their manipulations and twisted views of the world in much more detail. There's a long sequence where much of the main cast is captured by The Fell, and their struggle to survive and potentially escape is harrowing. I also like that Moon isn't their main focus this time, which adds some nuance and perspective to their behavior. They’re also just... creepy as shit. While I do have some issues with the ending of the book, I think the Fell are handled pretty well beforehand.

I'd be remiss to ignore the always excellent worldbuilding in this series. Like in The Serpent Sea, we get to see more Raksuran courts, all of which feel distinct. It’s cool and impressive for a singular fantasy race to have multiple believable factions and societies. The settings in this book are also creative, including a giant half-dead mountain tree, a city carved into a giant statue, and what I can only describe as "Rapture, but make it a solarpunk prison". Wells goes into vivid, loving detail when it comes to the world. That being said, I would like to see more of the sea/sky realms, since this series has largely focused on the earth. The Three Worlds is kind of a misnomer if two of them don't really show up much. Oh well, maybe in future books/stories.

My main complaint, and what drags down the rating, is the ending. It's... underwhelming, confusing, and seems pretty rushed. I'll go into more detail below. *major spoilers for the ending* So... one of the big plot points in both The Cloud Roads and The Siren Depths is that the Fell are crossbreeding with captured Raksura. In The Cloud Roads, this is explained as a ploy to strengthen the Fell with some unique Raksuran abilities; queens can prevent others from shifting, mentors can scry future events, and so on. In The Siren Depths, however, we learn it's not that simple. There's some third party manipulating the Fell and encouraging their actions. The goal is to produce a crossbreed that physically resembles the (unnamed) Fell/Raksura common ancestor for... reasons. We are led to believe the being orchestrating this is in fact an ancient ancestor, though its motives are unknown.

While this feels like a retcon, the discrepancy is acknowledged in the story, and it is explained that the Fell in The Cloud Roads were either lying or those specific ones decided to pursue their own agenda. Which... fine, makes sense based on what we know about them. I'll let it slide. Perhaps it was hinted at earlier and I just don’t remember.

So Moon and the others follow the Fell to the mysterious source, a vast and abandoned underwater city. Soon they find the creature that's been imprisoned there. Turns out it's not the Fell/Raksura ancestor, but something different. I can only describe it as sort of eldritchy, with a vaguely creepy physical form, and the abilities to speak through dead/dying Fell and to create disturbingly realistic illusions. The Fell/Raksuran ancestors trapped it there eons ago, and the only way to free it is the physical presence of a member of the ancestor species (for some reason). Which explains why it has been encouraging the crossbreeding, since their common ancestor is presumably extinct. It's freed from its prison since Shade fits the "ancestor" criteria based on his physical appearance. Then, in the span of literally one chapter, it attacks everyone, chases the characters through the underwater city, gets hit by some water, then promptly melts like the Wicked Witch of the West and dies.

I had a couple problems with this ending. First, the whole Fell crossbreeding conflict with the Raksura is a huge generational trauma thing. Moon has his own horrible experience with them, of course, but it's also a big issue with both Indigo Cloud and Opal Night. Hell, it's the whole reason Moon was separated from his family and lived thirty-some years in exile without knowing what he was. The series literally wouldn't have happened without this conflict. To have everything explained away by "an eldritch wizard did it" is very anticlimactic. I vastly prefer the original explanation.

Second, we know basically nothing about this creature. How was it able to communicate with the Fell (and Chime)? Why was it imprisoned other than being super evil and stuff? Who knows. And yeah, it's possible this will be expanded on later. Except I'm pretty sure that when this book came out, it was the last one planned for the series. The next two books follow a different storyline and came out four years later. So this was probably the only explanation we were ever going to get.

I'm not totally against the concept, but it needed more time and a more interesting/memorable villain for it to work. Introducing all of this in the second to last chapter of (presumably) not only the book but the series, then defeating it with little effort, feels unsatisfying. Hell, there’s more time dedicated to discovering and exploring its prison than anything involving the creature itself! As it stands, the Fell were much creepier and more memorable bad guys in this book, yet narratively serve as bit players in the end. It just feels off.

Also, a nitpick, but the title of the book is weird. The Siren Depths is obviously referring to this imprisoned being. It's trapped underwater and is calling the Fell to it. But it's never referred to as a siren; I'm not sure that word is used at all in the book. It just seems like an odd choice of title that doesn't really fit the vernacular of the world. Siren has some very specific meanings/connotations in our world that don't translate to The Three Worlds. Not a huge deal, just something I noticed.

*ending spoilers end here*

Despite my issues with the ending, I really enjoyed everything else about the book. It does everything the other books do well while featuring serious improvements. I've heard mixed things about the next two books but plan to go in with an open mind.

#8/10 #taylor reads #2020 reading challenge #BONUS ROUND #*casually posts this a week late*

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stilesssolo · 5 years ago

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So what did you think about Rise of Skywalker? 👀

Alright it’s been like a month so I feel like I can talk about this now? Be warned, spoilers ahead

So like honestly I’ve seen so much backlash over the movie and really I… enjoyed it?? Did I have some issues with it? Yes. Was it the most groundbreaking film ever? Obviously not, but like… has Star Wars ever been completely groundbreaking? I know and love the original trilogy dearly, ESB is my favorite movie ever, but like… obviously the technology and world building was revolutionary and completely shaped the genre. That’s not what I mean. But like… let’s not forget that when we are introduced to Luke he is playing vroom vroom with his toy spaceships and complaining that he can’t go to Tosche station. These movies have never been known for being like, the deepest, most meaningful, highest quality films ever made? I feel like people’s expectations were way too high?

I really loved all the parts where Rey and Finn and Poe were adventuring. (Still a little pissed they erased Poe’s Rebel parents’ backstory and made him a drug dealer but whatever.) I loved Leia actually being shown as force sensitive. I loved the camaraderie and the new characters and how all the parts of the story seemed relevant (like I loved Rose in TLJ but her and Finn’s plot felt SO irrelevant.) I thought it was fun and fast paced and yeah there were some things that came WAY out of left field (which I totally think is because JJ went back and had to rewrite stuff Rian set up, so if they had worked together to make the trilogy more coherent it would have been much better… like the Rey being a Palpatine thing seemed SO random) but honestly I enjoyed it overall.

My biggest complaint is with Kyle Ron and I knew that was gonna be it going in. Like, I knew they were gonna redeem him. Do I care about him at all? No. Do I think he deserved to be redeemed? Not really. I think they didn’t do a *terrible* job with his redemption arc but I still feel like he didn’t really deserve the chance. Even when we got his whole backstory and found out Palpatine was manipulating him and blah blah I was like okay… cool motive still murder?? If you wanna tell a story about someone being brainwashed to be evil and do terrible things and then choosing the light for themselves and becoming a better person all from their own free will, like… Finn is RIGHT THERE, Disney. Especially with the addition of Janna and the other ex stormtroopers? I feel like that had a lot of untapped potential to be a really cool thing and instead we were focusing on angsty emo white man #46. That story’s tired, dude. Tell me something else.

Needless to say I hated the R/eylo kiss at the end. I thought it was such fan service and so forced and I feel bad for anyone who has suffered from physcial or mental abuse having to sit in that theater and watch everything that Kylo did to Rey be erased completely– and not only that, but for her to forgive and reward her abuser with a kiss. Honest to god as much as I wanted her to just straight up wreck him (girl why did you heal him after you stabbed him. Shoulda just left him there) I think that the moment would have been more powerful if she’d just taken his hand. I think their relationship would have been better if it had more sibling vibes (or was just nonexistent, but I was self aware enough to know we weren’t gonna get that at all going into this movie.)

But yeah. All in all I thought it was fun and enjoyable. There were moments I really loved and moments where I sobbed and moments where I was angry but I truly did like it a lot. I’d give it like… a 7 out of 10 probably? That would have gone up to an 8.5 if Disney weren’t COWARDS and let Finn and Poe kiss at the end. 1.5 seconds of two women we don’t know and have never seen before kissing after the battle does not count as LGBTQ+ representation, Disney. Do better.

(Also, in conclusion: my favorite part of the movie was when Harrison Ford appeared on screen for about sixty seconds and my sister turned to me and went “every single Disney+ subscription paid for this one singular scene.” Thanks Baby Yoda for bringing Han Solo back.)

#star wars spoilers #tros spoilers #anti kylo ren #anti reylo #just to be safe #let it be known if you come into my inbox defending reylo i will not be answering #theyre a trash ship and i hate them and you will not change my mind on this #OH another complaint #'sith wayfinder' bitch its a holocron #come on now #just call it what it is #asks #answered #anonymous

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serenagaywaterford · 5 years ago

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It’s fucking crazy how in a show meant to wake the general populace up, people really do seem to hate majority of the female characters. Note it’s only the complex ones, because god forbid Margret Atwood wrote them as shades of grey and not as definitively “evil” or “good”.

I’ve been in quite a few shitty fandoms in my day but I’m not certain I’ve been in one quite as overwhelmingly tone deaf as The Handmaid’s Tale fandom. I have never seen so much hypocrisy and virtue signalling and fake wokeness in a singular fandom with source material (in terms of the original novel and S1/2 at least) that directly opposes those things. Like I was in GoT fandom for a while and holy shit the misogyny there. So, I know what it looks like. But the thing about that hellplace was that there was still a fairly recognisable and approachable faction that loudly and actively spoke out about the sheer number of issues with GoT (racism, misogyny, etc.) I feel like those people gave up on the show about mid-run, and GoT was left with a bunch of idiots and “libfems” by the end.

The thing about THT is that it appears to be 95% idiots and fake-woke “feminists” I put it in quotes cos they are NOT feminists. They just like to identify as that cos it’s trendy. They have no idea what feminism is if they centre Nick in the THT narrative, or refuse to engage with any female character other than June or Emily in any rational way and instead wish rape, violence, torture, death, and/or intense suffering on any female character (or apparently actor who plays said character!) they personally dislike because they don’t have the braincells to understand what Atwood specifically was trying to do.)

When THT becomes all about a MALE and his precious fweelings, and his uwu luv stowwy wiv Jwune and all they focus on is how “cool” June is for bullying other Handmaids into suicide, and how “awesome” she is for being 1000% selfish and self-absorbed and not caring at all about all the other women (esp. poor women of colour) she tramples on to get what she wants, that is NOT GOOD. This is a character who purposely and actively manipulated a domestic abuse victim to go back to her abusive, violent, cheater, rapist husband for June’s own ends. (And surprise, surprise that blew up in her face and people really take June’s side 100% on that cos “Serena deserves Fred” aka “Serena deserves to be beaten, raped, and abused by her husband because she’s a bad woman who has done bad things herself”. When you are saying a woman, no matter who they are, deserves to be beaten and raped and imprisoned in that situation, you are not a feminist because that isn’t justice for Serena’s crimes. That is torture.) Nothing June did in S3 was heroic. She is almost no better than the woman she hates at this point. I see very little difference between June and Serena anymore, and yet… YET fans think the sun shines out of June’s ass and Serena should be raped to death (aka “Wouldn’t it be soooo cool if Serena became a Handmaid?! Omg so cool! She deserves it! Hurr durr I am FEMINIST!!!!”).

O.o

There is zero nuance in THT fandom. It’s fine to dislike female characters. It’s fine to be critical of them. It’s fine to like male characters (I guess…). But centring men in a woman’s story and then parroting Gilead’s ideals unironically while calling yourself woke? It’s terrifying.

June is so gross in S3, and when she isn’t being awful, she’s written as some child-crazed, hysterical woman. The writers’ full sexism and internalized (or externalized lol) misogyny on clear display. And the fans just LAP IT UP with no critical thought. No complaint. Like, “Yes, this is what a woman should be!” nevermind the entire purpose of the commentary in the novel (and S1) was that women are MORE than just hysterical, overly emotional baby-machines or housekeepers. Women are not mere resources to be harvested like cattle. Women have more personality than just “ME WANT BABBY!!!” Women are resourceful and complex and not all good, not all bad. Women are conflicted and conflicting. Meanwhile, now the show presents women almost identically to how Serena Joy wrote about them, and how Gilead has identified them, and the fans are like “Yeah! This is fine! I don’t see any problems with this at all!”

And if you dare say, “Um, guys, that’s a pretty bad take. Do you understand what you’re actually saying?” you get called a “rape apologist!!! HURRRR!!!! WHAT ABUT 2x10!!!!!” And it literally doesn’t matter what you challenge these fans about, whether it’s Nick, the themes of THT, Serena, June, etc. They see you are a fan of Serena and suddenly the discourse deteriorates completely to “Nazi!!!! you’re a rapist nazi sympathizer!!!!!!!!!”

So, there’s no point in talking to any of them. Yeah, cos I’m the one saying women I don’t like deserve to be raped and beaten until they die as slaves in an oppressive fascist regime. (That’s actually you guys, jsyk.) My favourite was being compared to an MRA. Like, do you people even read what you write?

I’m not the one talking non-stop about how great Mr. Soggy Pancake Man is and how we must protect this precious bean in a story about massive female oppression uwu. “BUT WHAT ABOUT NICK?!?! MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER!!!” I hate men, lol. I can’t count the number of times I’ve literally said, “I don’t give a shit about ANY of the men in THT. I only care about women and you people are misogynistic pigs for the way you talk about women.” yet I’m a Men’s Rights Activist?

What I hear when I go into the tags:

“All women are awful harpies and stupid or boring except this specific one cos we want her to bone the Cute Boy we’re obsessed with and she’s just basically a self-insert for our own lonely fantasies and we need to only hear about the Cute Boy, not these annoying women. If a woman character interferes or challenges my heterosexual fantasy OTP in any way, that woman must suffer and die, and I’ll laugh and cheer as that happens, especially if she’s beaten by her husband or loses her mind/commits suicide! They deserve it! Also, who really cares about all those other women’s stories elsewhere in the world. BORING! My white saviour self-insert main female character can do no wrong because I am perfect! I’ll even go out of my way and actively search out people who aren’t doing anything to me, aren’t talking to me at all and just keeping to themselves, and send online threats, hate, and insults to anybody who doesn’t agree with me about how great Mr. Stale Bread is and they’re Nazis for not agreeing with me.”

And I’M the MRA? I’m the crazy one?

No self-awareness at all. No nuance. No critical thinking skills. And a HELL of a lot of projection that they don’t even seem to know they’re making. There are grown ass women (like 40 YEAR OLDS!) who worship Nick Bland’s ugly dick, online bullying literal minors who don’t subscribe to the Serena-Hate groupthink. It’s a cesspool. THT fandom fucking SUCKS. I’m gonna guess it’s these same morons who wished that Yvonne would lose her baby cos you hate SERENA. Like, if you don’t think this is disgusting, I don’t know how else to get it through to you that something is VERY WRONG with the vast majority of online THT fandom.

99% of this fandom doesn’t seem to give a fuck what Atwood was trying to say in her novel, or what the show intentionally set out to do challenge and prove. Anyway, anon. I feel ya. I hate this fandom which is why I never check the tags anymore, never go on Twitter, unfollowed the Insta, don’t go on FB, and stick with my very wonderful small group of non-crazies who also appreciate the complex, difficult character of Serena here – and block everyone else I can because I just don’t have time for that kind of constant drama and aggravation from ignorant people.

Wow. Okay. Sorry. Rant over.

#the handmaid's tale #tunglr dot hell #Anonymous

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