#and some of that stemmed at least partly from his own selfishness and the things he was in denial about

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

one of these days i'll write up a post about the parallels and foils between vivi and hermes and why it fucking kills me. for now all i can say is in hindsight the 'latched onto vivi Hard as a kid' to 'latched onto hermes Hard as an adult' pipeline is Real

[beclynn-herondale]

I suddenly got the random burst of courage to say this. I'm a little anxious to still post it, but it's something that has bothered me a lot. So please to judge me too much lol.

I'm going to address some things about Jace but also some things about Céline that I've read.

Tw: suicide mention, self harm mention, mental health.

Everyone calls so many of Jace's reckless actions "dumbass moments" or "dumbass decisions"

This isn't me saying he doesn't make them simply put of being reckless, I just don't think they were always that.

But that bothered me, and I didn't entirely realized why. until then it hit me. It's often overlooked that Jace was actually a little suicidal in the early TMI books, or at least had suicidal ideation (and I don't say this lightly).

Suicidal ideation or being suicidal can also be not caring for your own safety, or not caring if you die. It's not always taking your own life, it can be trying to die in a way that looked like an accident or didn't seem like you taking your own life, because then it wouldn't seem like you were intentionally leaving someone behind. And I saw that in Jace. I just don't think Jace knew.

Jace I don't think wanted to live that much in early tmi, I think part of him did for the Lightwoods, but that's it. Not for himself, because he didn't love or care about himself (not actually, most of that was a joke to hide his true feelings or use as delusion to hide himself from the actual issues, and to deflect from how he actually felt ).

I don't think Jace even really realized it himself honestly. Because Nephilim don't use any mundane terms, so he probably thought it was just being a fearless Shadowhunter. I don't fully believe all of Jace's decisions were because he was so fearless, I think he believed that, but I think really he just didn't care if he lived or died (not until he met Clary, that's partly why Alec hated her at first, was because she did something Alec felt he should have been able to do, but Clary only opened Jace's eyes to what he had and what he'd miss).

Not to mention the amount of times characters mentioned he had a "death wish" or Simon even acknowledging that he always seemed to be getting himself killed. Or how about that talk in CoFA when he said he would never do it because them Clary would be disappointed in him and wouldn't want to see him in the afterlife.

Also, him pushing people away, trying to get people to hate him, getting himself hurt. Are all forms of self harm. Jace was hurting himself here.

A lot of this stems from his trauma and the abuse he endured from Valentine, mental, emotional and physical.

Now he makes them to keep the ones he loves safe, which he's getting better at being safe. It's a learning process. I don't think TDA Jace gambles as much with his life anymore. And I think he's more careful now.

———

I'm also gonna address some things people have said about Céline.

First of all, and I myself am tired of saying it, so sorry, but, Céline didn't kill herself. That's canon. And if you hate that being canon, well idk. . .

Anyway, this was a while ago, and should have probably said something then, but I like to think about this stuff. I saw someone say they felt she only cared about Stephen, and how she was terrible for killing herself when she was pregnant with Jace (I personally believe she was planning to run away, but Valentine knew and stopped her, and that's why he took Jace so early. I believe she loved him and fought for him with her last breath, cause that seems like Céline).

And I just like to say that when you're suicidal enough to actually take your life you are entirely hopeless, you have lost any hope because you just want a relief from the pain you're in, and living seems more like hell than death.

And again, she didn't but I want to say that because I'm tired big seeing people who have no business saying it, say that "suicide is selfish" or "suicide is shameful" or "did they not think about those family???" Of course they did! But that doesn't matter when you're so desperate for relief.

Calling suicide shameful or selfish only isolates suicidal people more.

Suicide is, and will always be tragic. That's it. Tragic.

And I've seen Céline called insane for preferring to be in pain, and I'd hate to break it to you, but that's called self harm. She was self harming herself. But in a way Shadowhunters did it. She wasn't insane, she was in desperate need of help, which she wouldn't get, because Nephilim are dumbasses.

these comments hurt and disgust me. And are exactly why people don't open up, don't speak up. You're literally driving them away because you're making them feel shameful, selfish, insane, crazy. You name it.

Céline was not a monster. She was not insane. She needed help, she needed love, she needed safety, she needed a hug. She was an abuse survivor dealing with PTSD.

———

Maybe this doesn't make sense, and I'm not saying I'm right about everything, and as usual I'm talking from personal experience and some things I've had to read up on from that.

It's also not the only way of self harming, or suicidal ideation and thoughts, those both actually happen on a spectrum, it's just not talked about enough. There are countless different way, and different levels.

Also, as usual this is just mostly me speaking from my perspective, and I'm not an expert, so take a lot of this with a grain of salt. But I can say as someone with personal experience this is how I acted, and how I have felt.

I don't like to see people's pain being made fun of. Or to see them called monsters when really they need help, and you calling them that is only pushing them further.

Again, Jace isn't like this anymore but I think it's overlooked how serious it actually was.

And Céline tragically never got the help or love she needed.

I just needed to get this off my chest.

[flickeringart]

The Megxit Drama

A peek at Meghan Markle’s chart

The British Royal Family has certainly been the subject of dramatic events recently – Prince Harry and Meghan Markle doing an interview with Oprah in order to explain their break with “family”, royal duties and royal life – revealing quite unsavory things sufficient to depict the firm, staff and members of the family in a bad light. Essentially, Meghan was retelling her traumatic experiences of being treated unfairly, feeling trapped, being subjected to racism, getting no help in times of emotional crisis and robbed of freedom, while her husband Harry passively went along confirming all of it. Whatever the truth is, they certainly painted themselves as victims – compassionate and good-natured. They attempted to remain respectful to the people involved in the story, yet if actions speak louder than words, they certainly weren’t particularly “respectful” by throwing the Royal Family under the bus with this interview. The couple has gotten a lot of backlash as people are disinclined to buy their narrative, partly because both seem to be quite self-serving under the guise of selflessness. Meghan made it clear during the interview that she didn’t know much about life as royalty and went into it all surprisingly clueless, almost setting herself up for disappointment. One could assume that by committing to such a structured existence as becoming a royal, that one would do the homework and at the very least expect to give up the privilege of being “an ordinary person” in favor of being of service. The British Monarchy obviously has symbolic value more than anything else, which is not to say that it’s unimportant or trivial. Symbols carry meaning and the Royal Family upholds that meaning through attempting to embody it physically. The members are not supposed to be inflated and begin to believe that they in and of themselves are princes and princesses or whatever titles they are given. They are supposed to serve the titles rather than the titles serving them.  In becoming a part of this symbol of divine reign, one merges with something far greater than the limited self. One serves to uphold an image that is immortal, ancient and has a function in the psyche of the British people. I dare assume that Meghan didn’t fully grasp this concept and went into it all with far more attitude than people would like – perhaps understandably so considering her lack of experience of monarchy. Prince Harry seemingly got pulled along with it all, presumably wanting to rescue his wife from that which killed his mother while piggybacking on the momentum of the situation and metaphorically breaking free from the “limiting container” of the institution. Harry said in the interview that he felt sorry for his father and his brother being trapped by their roles, which seems like a desperate attempt to try to gain some significance, to end up in the role of the hero and avoid living in the “shadow” of more prominent members of the family. People generally seek significance in some way and will come up with the most creative attempts to cast themselves in the role of superiority, whether it’s through victimhood, humility, bravery, sacrifice or anything else that elevates the self in some way. Whether someone’s behavior stems from an attempt to make up for the lack within or not can be hard to spot, but considering the skepticism the interview has been met with – and the scrutiny (and ridicule) that it has been exposed to – it is safe to say that people’s gut feeling tells them that something is not quite right.

(The chart of Meghan Markle on astrotheme.com)

Meghan Markle has been accused of a lot of things, of twisting the truth, of exaggerating in order to further her own agenda, of being self-serving and manipulative. Some call her “narcissistic” – which is the “usual” label thrown at anyone who lacks genuine care for others, stirs up drama and drags other people through the mud in order to benefit themselves. However, her behavior might not be intentional, but compulsive. After all, no one is 100% sure of why they’re the way they are, whether it’s deemed good or bad by society at large. Where the line is drawn between intentional and unintentional is unclear, yet the odors of shady business and dishonorable motives can be sensed – and people don’t usually like being “sold” something that isn’t what it seems. Generally people don’t appreciate being deceived, which is obviously why the backlash has been so extreme.

She has quite a charming and radiating outer appearance, which is typical of someone with their Sun in the 1st, and in its domicile at that. She also has the sweet and innocent “puppy eyed” look of a Cancer Rising, which displays emotion and vulnerability. It’s not surprising that she pursued an acting career before meeting Harry. The spotlight-seeking Leo Sun in the 1st house of self, the Moon-Saturn-Jupiter stellium in the artistic sign of Libra in the 3rd house of communication and (inter)action, as well as the boundless imaginative Neptune in the 5th house of creativity all contribute to the personality of the actress. Considering that she has an emphasis on Leo and Libra, it’s safe to say that she was in it for the refinement, admiration and class that being an actress could provide. She thrives on positive attention, and is undoubtedly sensitive to discord. With a Cancer Rising and a Libra Moon, she craves gentility and fairness, for everything to be “ok” socially. Cancer is a cardinal sign, and although it’s quite emotional, it’s also very active and motivated to create safety for the self. It does this by avoiding direct confrontation, of appealing to people’s caring side. There’s nothing wrong with this, but people might feel as if the Cancer Rising person’s innocence is “put on”. In the interview, Meghan had no problem displaying her own weakness and emphasizing her own vulnerability. She used these attributes to gain esteem, whereas another person of a different nature, with different archetypes protruding, would’ve felt humiliated leading life with that energy. Her Moon is her chart ruler, which makes her emotions the primary focus – in other words her subjective experiences, mutual care, needs and requirements is particularly emphasized in her life. The Moon is in Libra, the cardinal air sign that strives for balance and justice and awareness - especially as it relates to interpersonal relationships. Libra is famous for wanting to keep everything “civilized” and “respectful”. The tight Moon-Saturn-Jupiter conjunction in this sign points to emotional exaggeration (Jupiter) and restriction (Saturn). By entering into a relationship/business deal (Libra) she experienced harshness around her emotions (Moon-Saturn) on a grand scale (Jupiter). On a side note, Capricorn rules the 7th house, indicating that she encounters discipline and structure through partnership. The institution and structure (Saturn) that she entered into through her marriage with Harry (Capricorn in the 7th) would challenge her emotions (Moon) and it put limits on her freedom (Jupiter-Saturn) and affected her overall health (Sagittarius in the 6th).

Meghan has an Aries Midheaven, indicating that her career involves breaking new territory, doing her own thing, leading her own way. This usually doesn’t go over very well when attempting to work for authority. The person usually becomes frustrated and eager to venture out on his or her own. This is exactly what has happened. Her Moon-Saturn-Jupiter conjunction in Libra opposes her MC in Aries, which perfectly points to her attempts to keep things civil and non-aggressive (Libra), while coming off as selfish and individualistic to the public (Aries). Aries as a sign is famous for not listening to anyone and moving into unpaved territory, which she certainly has accomplished. The public now sees her as someone who goes her own way – doing her own thing and standing up for herself, for better or for worse. Her Mars is in Cancer, which is why her aggression isn’t direct and rather passively expressed. She has the stereotypical female aggressiveness that implies playing on one’s weakness and hurt in order to wear down the target. It’s also in the 12th house, which hints to it being disowned by the conscious personality. Meghan might have a hard time conceptualizing of herself as a force of impact and might not see how her pent up frustration might become an enemy to herself. She has complained about feeling attacked by the media and this is classic of a 12th house Mars attributing aggressiveness to anything but the self. Attack and unpleasantness seem to flood the person from the unspecified sources, and it can arguable be a horrific experience. In the interview she mentioned feeling suicidal at one point and desperate to not be alone with the threat coming from the outside, her own mind, or both. It’s difficult to attribute the cause to any single factor with planets in the 12th. Mars squares her MC and her Moon-Saturn-Jupiter conjunction which indicates struggle in the psyche concerning her emotional involvement with structure and beliefs, vs. her public image vs. her own fighting spirit. She certainly has confronted and challenged established structure (Mars square Saturn), albeit with an attempt to be “respectful” resulting in a passive-aggressive understanding of everyone’s difficulties and struggles.

The thing that drew her to The Royal Family in the first place must’ve been her Libran urge for class, style, aestheticism and beauty. She undoubtedly found it glamorous and exciting to get to be in the spotlight, to be respected as part of something elevated and glamorous in nature. She probably has a need for spiritual meaning, indicated by her Moon-Jupiter contact – and to have her daily work based on sharing “truth” and “generous” disposal of knowledge gained through experience (Sagittarius in the 6th). She also craves structure and order indicated by her Moon-Saturn contact, which she pursued through partnership (Capricorn in the 7th) with a member of a family with unparalleled saturnian streaks of tradition, custom and regulations. To establish herself within the family would not have been such a terrible idea for her because it could’ve met all of her needs for purpose and order. However, her Mars in the 12th house didn’t allow for this plan to work. One could say that her own self-serving function rebelled after having yielded to outside influences for too long. Planets in the 12th house are usually “given up” to whatever circumstance one is in – which often results in the person acting through being “overcome” by something - pushed into a position of having to act. Meghan declared feeling imposed on by the outside, emotionally unsafe and unwell. The 12th house is the house of self-undoing after all, and her actions might’ve proven to be quite detrimental - perhaps continuing to be. Square aspects, as that between her Mars and Moon-Saturn-Jupiter conjunction stimulates action because it’s indicative of friction. She had to fight (Mars) for her needs (Moon), control and integrity (Saturn) and for her beliefs (Jupiter).

[propshophannah]

I've always seen you as the Captain and the one who first laid the bricks to the Elriel ship and seeing your post is just... Sobering. I was ready to welcome Elriel, but Azriel's PoV.... If it's going to be like this I want Gwyn and Elain to stay far away so he can sort his issues.

Yeah. It was... icky for a hot second. Now I get why he came off that way. He’s sleep deprived, he’s feeling down and angry and he’s happy and envious of his brothers happiness. Like it’s a lot. He’s also overworked (which is likely his own fault for not saying no). But Rhys hit the nail on the head with the “deserve” line. Az needs some therapy. I don’t want him anywhere near either Elain or Gwyn until he figures his shit out. It came off really bad in that scene and kind of creepy. 

Then Rhys used the word “seduce” and Az straight up tells us he hasn’t thought that far through it, and basically implies that he’s thought of the sex and not what comes after. That’s both selfish and stupid (BUT I GET that in that moment, we’re seeing a strung out Az. So it’s not necessarily indicative of his normal behavior). 

But THEN he thinks about how he wanted to invoke the Blood Duel for Mor and I was 100% creeped THE FUCK OUT. I mean I don’t think SJM intended it to be creepy, but she DID want to let us all know that Az going after unattainable things is his pattern. He won’t be happy until he can learn to break that cycle and I honestly think it goes back to his daddy issues. His dad didn’t lock up the mom because he liked her, he did that so no one else could have her, so he could keep her to himself. If Az’s behavior is any indication, this strange infatuation thing with females stems from that. But ALSO from him not feeling good enough abut himself. That’s apparent in the fact that he goes after things he knows he can’t have. 

Cuz you can’t tell me he doesn’t—on some level—know about Mor. Both that she prefers ladies, that she avoids him on purpose.... His shadows seem smart enough to be able to pick that up. Or at the very least provide all the info he’d need to come to the correct conclusion. 

I honestly like Gwyn more for him after this book. Partly because she’s in Nesta’s friend group and Az is apart of that so it wouldn’t change the dynamic as much as adding Elain or taking Az out of it would. I also think their healing arcs potentially fit together really well. 

My ONE reservation with Gwyn is we don’t know who her father is. And I do NOT want some fucking plot twist that’s like... Gwyn is Azriel’s kid or something! (Excuse me while I vomit all over the floor.) I mean I could learn to love it, and I DO NOT think that’s what’s happening here. But I do NOT TRUST SARAH NOT TO FUCK WITH US on that parentage. Bitch is crafty af.  (My money for her dad is on someone in the Autumn court. I think.)

[skeletorific]

(Sorry if it’s already been asked)what’s your interpretation/view of the quadrants? What in your mind makes an healthy and unhealthy quadrantship?

*distant drumbeat* I’ve been WAITING for this one! Turn it up!!!!

So, a few general notes about quadrants before getting into a breakdown. First, I don’t think there’s a hard and fast definition of what makes, say, a healthy kismessitude, any more than there’s a hard and fast definition of a healthy human relationship. What would be toxic and terrible for one couple may be exactly what keeps a different relationship together. Meowrails is very different from pale Vrisrezi, because Equius and Nepeta are different people with different wants and needs in a relationship than Vriska and Terezi. As with all bonds, it’s important to look at a broader trend of behavior and the individual mental health levels before you can say “this is unhealthy”. I DO think there are certain things to watch out for, but ultimately I probably have ships in that quadrant that may violate one or more of those “no-nos” just because of how those characters bounce off each other. 

Second, I think there’s more fluidity in quadrants than the fandom typically allows for, because human relationships are also by their nature fluid. We’ve all seen a set of best friends who act like a couple even if they aren’t romantically interested, and we’ve seen couples who bicker and squabble despite being deeply in love. How you choose to identify your relationship is ultimately nobody’s business but your own, even if red love for you looks like pale love to someone else. Alternian troll culture is romance obsessed and this can lend itself to an obsession with defining the attraction, but this doesn’t mean that’s necessarily how it HAS to be.

Finally, I’ll be listing ALL confirmed canon examples of each quadrant to provide a context for what I’m referencing. This should not be taken as necessary endorsement for any of these ships, or even that I think they were a “good example”, simply that how they chose to identify influenced my own definition of these quadrants. I will also be leaving out a lot of ships that would seem to fit a particular quadrant (noteably Rosemary and Arasol) because their own status is complicated in-text (Rose explicitly refers to wanting to be in all of Kanaya’s quadrants and their relationship has tended explicitly pitch at points, Sollux is referred to as Aradia’s “boyfriend” and yet there is apparently no issue between either of them when his flush quadrant becomes occupied)

With that, let’s dig in

Matespritship:

Successful/Actually Date(d) Examples: Dad/Mom, Latula/Mituna, Meulin/Kurloz, Aranea/Porrim, Mindfang/Summoner, Meenah/Vriska, Sollux/Feferi, Konyyl/Azdaja (currently vacillating), Stelsa/Tyzias

Crushes (unrequited, vacillating, or thwarted): Eridan/Feferi, Kanaya/Vriska, Nepeta/Karkat, Equius/Aradia, Tavros/Jade, Gamzee/Tavros, Sollux/Gamzee, Jack/PM, Lynera/Bronya

What it means to me: Matespritship tends to be an opt-out quadrant for a lot of people, I think. Most seem to stop reading at “closely analogous to human conceptions of romance” and turn off their brains. However, as with all things troll culture, I think there’s more to it the deeper you go, especially considering the fact that your moirail is expected to do a LOT of what we would consider standard s/o stuff: caretaking, comfort, intimate knowledge, closeness. I absolutely refuse to buy that the only thing distinguishing the two is that matesprits have sex, especially since that stumble into some VERY UNCOMFORTABLE territory in regards to troll asexuality. So then, if it’s not that, then what is it?

Ultimately I keep coming back to the idea of passion. Your matesprit I think is the person who you genuinely see in the best possible light. Unusual for Alternian society, you’re unable to ignore the depths of your admiration of them, or to let their flaws filter into your perception. Moiraillegiance is about total honesty and unflinching recognition, but matespritship to me is about that kind of fairy tale passion. Its a person who, even if you know on an intellectual level they are not perfect, that you genuinely have a harder time seeing the darker side of because you are so consumed by this passion for what you see in them, your unfiltered awe and appreciation for who they are. 

Additionally, I see matespritship as on some level inherently possessive. You not only admire that person, but you fundamentally crave their attention in a way that is probably a bit on the selfish side. Its not enough to want good for them, it has to be good alongside you. This is typically where it’s more prone to flipping caliginous. 

Warning signs: Matespritships seemed to vacillate pitch FREQUENTLY on Alternia. This is not necessarily a sign that something is wrong. As Karkat says, it’s often a matter of communication and timing. However, it does have the potential to explode in everyone’s face if not carefully managed, in no small part due to the passionate emotions involved. Some things that tend to go bad fast:

-Admiration is key to an effective matespritship, but pedestalling your flushed partner too much can be dangerous. Once the flaws do become apparent (as they will in any relationship) they can become increasingly hard to ignore, and that can be SHATTERING if you don’t prepare.

-Especially on Alternia, matesprits are the quadrant I see as most likely to neglect the communication aspect of their relationship. Safety isn’t a factor for them like it is for more caliginous quadrants, and the expectation is usually that feelings jams are for moirails. Especially for younger trolls, there’s an idea that we’re in love and thus should just know what the other person needs/wants. If you don’t pick up on it, then maybe we aren’t meant to be. This is a trap. ALL relationships need communication in order to function on a day to day basis. Opening up to your matesprit about something that’s bothering you isn’t a sign of fading passion, but of maturity and your own changing needs.

-Despite a fondness for fate pairings I think matespritships are usually expected to fade out, in no small part because they’re founded on a level of passion that can be hard to keep up long-term. This is actually fine. Not all relationships are meant to last eternally. However, if you know your matesprit is a person you want in your life long-term, part of that is learning how to cope with periods of low passion. Its normal to not always feel an all-consuming desire to keep your matesprit in arms reach. It’s normal to need space. What’s important is that YOU know that you still love them, and that they have the confidence to know that’s true even when you can’t always express it.

Moirallegiance

Successful/Actually Date(d) Examples: Kanaya/Vriska, Eridan/Feferi, Gamzee/Karkat, Nepeta/Equius, Kurloz/Mituna, Meulin/Horuss, Terezi/Vriska, Kuprum/Folykl, MSPAR/Polypa, Xefros/Dammek

Crushes (unrequited, vacillating, or thwarted): Eridan/Karkat, MSPAR/Chixie, MSPAR/Stelsa, Tegiri/Polypa

What it means to me: To start out with, I haaaaaaaate hate hate the perception that moirails are just BFFs. To me, there’s too much evidence to suggest otherwise, not the least of which being that after Feferi ends their moirallegiance she tells Eridan she still wants to be friends with him. How many of you break up with your best friend and then tell them you can still be friends after?

To me, moirallegiance on Alternia is as much a coping mechanism at it is a romantic entanglement. In a society where there’s no such thing as therapy, your moirail ideally functions as a release valve for you, to help you exercise softer feelings in a safe, sanctioned environment. Two things are key in that dynamic: honesty, and selflessness.

There’s no pretense in a moirallegiance, but an unflinching embrace. The successful moirails we’ve seen (Meowrails, KupFol, arguably GamKar) have always been rooted in banter that may come off as pitch at first glance. This is partly due to general Alternian socialization practice, but I think it also stems from the fact that pale love is founded in knowing every inch of your partner. You know what they are, body and soul, the flaws and the highlights, and while you do not uncritically accept it like a matesprit might, some part of you fundamentally identifies with. Your moirail is that person who you feel like you’ve known for years after talking for a few hours, because something about how they’re wired clicks with you in a way most don’t. As such, there’s less need for posturing. A feelings jam is one of the few places on Alternia where you are allowed to admit to vulnerability, to fear, to frustration, because you know that the other person will have your back unquestioningly without letting you get away with bullshit.

This mutual support stems from the other half of pale love: the desire to see the other person flourish, no matter what. If the matesprit wants you to be happy at their side, the moirail wants you to flourish even if they do not stand to benefit. You experience your moirail’s success like it was your own, and want as good for them or better than you want for yourself.

Some warning signs:

-Burnout. We see this in most clearly in Eridan and Feferi’s case (and a bit in Gamzee and Karkat’s case), but its a genuine risk in moirallegiance. The caretaking HAS to go both ways or the relationship is doomed to fail. More often than not, burnout indicates a failure within the relationship. Your moirail has not been caring for you to the degree you need, and quite possibly you have not been communicating HOW you would like that behavior to change. As I said, honesty is essential, and things ideally should never reach the point of burnout because you are in constant complete openness with your moirail about how you need taking care of.

-Fucked expectations. Romance is a dominating subject on Alternia, for obvious reasons, and one of the biggest hits a moirallegiance can take is a person questioning too far into pale desire until they mistake it for something else. The two are very close, but they are not exactly the same thing and often times the relationship can be sunk by one person getting in their head about that intimacy until they try to make it something it isn’t. Moiraillegiance is not a stepping stone for matesprit or kismesis, and most importantly it is not a consolation prize quadrant. You should never “settle” for moirail, or pale date someone who will accept you as a moirail only if they can’t get you as anything else. You need to want a moirail for a moirails sake, or its just a crush with extra levels of fuckery and expected free therapy.

Kismessitude

Successful/Actually Date(d) Examples: Spades Slick/Sn0wman, Jack Noir/Black Queen, Eridan/Vriska (now broken up), Karkat/Karkat, Mindfang/Dualscar, Terezi/Gamzee, Tagora/Galekh, Bronya/Elwurd.

Crushes (unrequited, thwarted, vacillating): Eridan/Rose, Vriska/Tavros,  Karkat/John, Gamzee/Dave, Sollux/Gamzee, Eridan/Sollux, PM/Bec Noir, Terezi/Vriska, John/Terezi, Konyyl/Skylla, Daraya/Lynera

What it means to me:

I want to structure this as a dismantling of two very common misconceptions I see for this quadrant. One, kismesis is NOT the inherent abuse quadrant. This I believe is working with a faulty definition of what abuse is. Abuse is not simply being mean or engaging in a physical manner with somebody. As has become something of a mantra for this essay, its about expectations. Abuse requires someone to be taking advantage, exploiting a particular vulnerability (or creating it if none inherently exists). What makes a relationship abusive is a situation where someone you SHOULD be able to trust or care for uses those expectations to hurt you, either for personal gain or simply to make themselves feel better. A kismesis is not that, because a healthy kismesis goes in with the expectation of rivalry. For some kismeses, this looks like basic sniping, insults, and jabs. For others, it looks like actual fighting. In either case, its the difference between a boxing match and assault. As long as the rules are being respected, both parties are consented, and someone is checking in to ensure that no one is hurting themselves (sometimes your partner, sometimes your moirail, sometimes your auspitice), then there is nothing inherently wrong with having a circumstance in which you are allowed to work through some nastier feelings without fear of consequence or hurting someone who can’t take it.

The second misconception: kismesis is not just a relationship with some bitchier dialogue. As we’ve seen, being a little bit rude is not restricted to pitch feelings. We have many examples of it in relationships that would be considered unequivocally red or pale on Alternia (KupFol, MeenVris). I go back to the Karkat dialogue constantly. Your kismesis is not just a person you make fun of, but something closer to your true rival (in the shonen anime sense). Its a person who you see so much good (or potential for good in), but who is brought down by some kind of fatal flaw that just grates at you. And so, you fixate on the idea of pushing them out of that flaw, through whatever means necessary.

Its from this fatal flaw that I believe the benefits of kismesis come out. Your kismesis, like your matesprit, has intense passion for you, but doesn’t idealize you. In fact, at points your kismesis may be incredibly aware of the WORST possible version of you. What distinguishes it from platonic hate, though, is the fact that you at your worst doesn’t make them flinch. It makes them want to provoke you, to see how you can change. Kismeses sharpen each other, which is something that rarely feels good but is so often necessary. You should never let your kismesis sit back too far on their laurels, because it is your job to be consciously aware of their faults and call them out on it. 

Additionally, while the hatefucking aspect is often overestimated, I think its not surprising that passion in these kinds of relationships tend to get intense, which is part of why it so often requires some kind of ashen intervention. Once harnessed, though, that passion can be turned to powerful ends for both yourselves and the world around you. 

Some things to watch out for (unsurprisingly there’s a LOT for this one but I’ve distilled it into two broad ones because this thing will be long enough):

Power imbalance: As I said, kismesis is not inherently abusive. However, it DECIDEDLY has the potential to become so, in particular in a society like Alternia where the power strafes are often so significant. This is particularly the case in pitch relationships involving a highblood and a lowblood, especially when the highblood is “steering the ship”. Vriska/Tavros is a good example. If summarized, her feelings for Tavros pre-Sgrub are very straightforward and healthy pitch ones. She admires his potential and envies his kinder relationships while despising his indecisiveness. All fine enough groundwork. However, three factors collaborate to make it a hot disaster: Tavros’s disinterest in her (meaning the pitch advances are unwelcome and in some real sense nonconsensual), Vriska’s own lack of restraint (meaning she takes things too far even for a kismesis), and the inherent caste imbalance (meaning Tavros has no meaningful way of fighting back and nothing in Vriska’s rearing has taught her to care if a lowblood gets hurt by her actions). This isn’t to say a highblood-lowblood (or any humanly imbalanced relationship) can NEVER work, but it requires both parties to put the work in to even the playing field. The highblood needs to actively show restraint, both physically and situationally. This is also where an auspitice generally comes in handy, ensuring things never get to a point where the action becomes one-sided.

Misdirected Rage: As I said, kismessitude is a Space, much like moiraillegiance, that gives you the opportunity to work through some less-than-palatable emotions. Using a pitch date as a way to burn off stress is not inherently invalid; in fact, its often expected and as long as your partner is willing can be one of the better ways to cope with something without having to address it directly. However, this CANNOT be built into the foundation of the relationship. Your kismesis is not a punching bag, but their own person, and the focus always needs to eventually return to that. You cannot effectively sharpen someone else if your anger is never about them, and it is ultimately unfair to constantly ask someone else to consistently bear the brunt of your bad days. This is (debatably) where pitch Gamrezi went wrong. Ultimately that kismesis was never really about each other, but about both of them projecting their self-loathing onto the other person when they were both at incredibly low place, thus making their anger unproductive and meaningless for both of them. As such, any kind of empathy was impossible and they were not able to self-regulate. 

Auspiticism

Succesful/Actually Date(d): Vriska/Kanaya/Tavros, Karkat/Jade/Karkat, Spades Slick/Doc Scratch/Sn0wman, Liv Tyler/Courtyard Droll/Wizardly Vassal, PM/Jade/Bec Noir, Kanaya/Vriska/Rose

Crushes (unrequited, thwarted, vacillating): Vriska/Kanaya/Eridan, Gamzee/Rose/Terezi (look I know this one is practically canon but Rose kind of implies she never really used those auspiticism lessons), Rose/Kanaya/Horrorterrors, Eridan/Feferi/Sollux, Gamzee/Kanaya/Karkat, Dave/Kanaya/Karkat, Konyyl/MSPA Reader/Azdaja.

What it means to me: Ahh the bastard child of quadrants. I’ve got a lot of unpopular opinions on auspiticism (most notably that Kanaya isn’t actually that good at it), but let’s start with defining some things. I believe there are two kinds of auspitices. 

One is the “breakup” auspitice. This is the version described in the infamous romance pages of Homestuck. This version is meant to prevent a black romance from breaking out where one shouldn’t occur, either because one or both parties already has a kismesis or because there is some other mitigating factor that means neither can afford to get bogged down in this crush. A breakup auspitice should ideally be a figure that both parties trust, even in the midst of heated feelings. They should also have the strength of will to continually interfere, and a clear enough head to cut to the root of the issue. Its a thankless task, often, but a very vital one, and most importantly, short-lived. This auspitice’s job only lasts as long as the feelings last. Once both parties have had the chance to cool down (or the circumstances creating the rivalry are at an end), their job is considered over.

The other kind is the version that we arguably see more of in canon, what I call the Third Leaf. This is less an intercessary party and more the third member of a particularly tempestuous kismesis, who will act to ensure the other two leaves don’t cause serious harm to themselves or each other. This relationship is far more long-term, and thus has more requirements. To me, your auspitice is someone who has pale potential with both you AND your kismesis. They know and care about you both on a very deep level, to the point that they are willing to put themselves in the middle of your bullshit very consistently. This means that you trust them enough to call it quits even in the heat of your anger, and you also believe what they tell you about your own pitch partner when their actions need greater contextualization to keep things on the level. This task is often equally challenging, but (hopefully) not as thankless or as pragmatic.

I’ve previously referred to the auspitice as a personified safeword, and I believe that’s very emblematic of the Third Leaf. Even healthy kismeses may reach a point where one needs a day off, or something hits in the wrong way. In a rivalry, though, admitting that isn’t necessarily easy, as its both breaking kayfabe and has the potential to read as more weakness that needs to be excised (”it hurts because its working”). The auspitice is privileged to go between and be believed every time. If your auspitice says its a no go then you better have a pretty damn good reason to ignore them. For some kismeses, overriding the auspitice is grounds to break up once and for all. 

Some warning signs:

Burnout: As is the case with the previously discussed concilliatory quadrant, caretaking can be exhausting. This is especially the case in auspiticism, where the care is often expected to be very one sided, and usually involves dealing with a lot of vitriol, anger, and even physical violence. Obviously its more prevalent in Third Leaf dynamics, but even breakup auspitices can reach a breaking point if they’re not careful. Its important as the ashenmate to understand your own limits. For better or for worse, the focus will not be on you. If you are reaching a low point, then you need to be vocal about this with your other two leaves, or disaster is almost inevitable. The trade-off for this is that (according to my headcanons at least), your ashenmates are expected to drop everything to care for you if you need it. The kismesis will not be safe to proceed until you are back in fighting shape, and as such a truce is declared until they have both done “aftercare” of a sort for you. What this looks like is different for every auspiticism. For some, its alone time. For others, its blanket burritos, movies, and forehead kisses. No matter what, though its IMPERATIVE that you find a method that works for you, because the relationship crumbles without self-care.

Doormatting: As I said, auspiticism is a concilliatory quadrant. As such, there can be a tendency to over-forgive or overwork, especially if your other two leaves have stronger personalities. In particular, ausptices who are closer with one leaf over the other need to be vigilant for favoritism or bowing down. It is your job to contextualize the actions of your ashenmates. It is not your job to do apologetics for them or atone for their actions. Hold them all accountable. They need to be putting in at least as much work as you do to make their relationship work and not just offset the emotional repair to you.

Controlling: The inverse of this is the power-tripping auspitice. This seems unlikely, but its more of a threat than one might think, in my view. Because of the trust auspitices command by virtue of their position and their relationship with the other two leaves, their word is in some sense law. This can be addictive to some people, and lead to an abuse of power that can be just as toxic as in any other quadrant. It can look like scolding your ashenmates far too much, placing yourself at the center of their issues, or even punishing them for annoying you when what they’re doing is perfectly acceptable within the context of a kismessitude. As I said, self-care is important for an auspitice, but selflessness needs to be at the core of concilliatory dynamics. You are here because you genuinely want good for the people you are mediating for. If the relationship has become all about you, then something has gone horribly wrong. Avoid the urge to power trip just because the role is sometimes a Lot. 

[notthatiwilleverwriteit]

Sorry if I’m rude, but I really don’t get the Ugetsu hype at all 😕, would you mind explaining it please, I would like to widen my perception of him

Hello, dear anon!

First of all, I’m so sorry for keeping your ask waiting for so long. You would think that as an Ugetsu fan, I would have been jumping up and down because of this question - and don’t get me wrong, I am excited. But much like with my previous Given ask, I found myself a bit puzzled by what to say, to be honest. Turned out this wasn’t as “simple” of a question as I originally thought. 

Secondly, don’t worry, your question isn’t rude. On the contrary, I think it’s admirable if you want to try to understand someone else’s bias and interests. It doesn’t mean you will start liking and being passionate about the same things, but I think it’s always welcomed to ask people why they like something. I’m not expecting you to start liking Ugetsu after reading how I feel about him, but your attitude is something I think we desperately need more of in this fandom.

“I really don’t get the Ugetsu hype at all 😕, would you mind explaining it please”

It’s interesting to me that you speak of “Ugetsu hype”. According to my time in the Given fandon, Ugetsu does have fans but he is probably one of the least liked characters. My gut feeling says that out of the main cast (Uenoyama, Mafuyu, Akihiko, Haruki, Ugetsu), Ugetsu is definitely the least liked among the fans. So, I can’t say I have witnessed any “hype” regarding him. Apart from a couple of hardcore Ugetsu stans, the closest to “hype” I have seen is people wishing he would find happiness after he and Akihiko broke up.

Also, I don’t think I can really “explain” anything either. Certainly not as some kind of fandom phenomenon. I can only speak for myself and myself only. The reasons why I love Ugetsu might not be why some other fans love him. I think that’s important to remember whenever talking about favorite characters/ships in general. We can never know why someone loves something, so I don’t think we should judge anyone on a personal level for liking something in fiction.

To give my answer some structure, I thought I would use some of my favorite Ugetsu illustrations. 

His character design and overall “vibe”:

As a reader/viewer/fan, I am more often than not interested in the somehow controversial characters and they usually end up becoming my favorites. Gotou Masamune (3-gatsu no lion), She Li (19 Days), Sing Soo-Ling (Banana Fish), Bakugou Katsuki (Boku no Hero Academia), Joker (DC Comics), Oikawa Tooru (Haikyuu), Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy (Harry Potter), and Oh Sangwoo (Killing Stalking) to name a few. I have always connected more with the antagonists and found them more interesting.

So, with a track record like that, I wasn’t surprised when my heart made a beeline to Ugetsu’s character. To me, it was pretty much love at first sight. I was instantly drawn to him: dark, sensual, and beautiful. In the anime, I absolutely loved his character’s mischievous and playful voice acting.

Ugetsu had an aura of solitude and distance to him, but he was also needy and affectionate in his own way. His frankness and mischief seemed to work as defense and yet he was also surprisingly vulnerable and even afraid. In many ways, he was like a cat who are often misunderstood as assholes when there is also a lot of character, affection, and intimacy packed in them.

Kizu’s choice of instrument for Ugetsu also fascinated me. To me, the violin is one of the most beautiful and intricate instruments, and it fits Ugetsu’s character perfectly. It's elegant, incredibly difficult, and kind of temperamental. The violin is sorrowful, seductive, and possesses loads of charisma. It sounds beautiful on its own though the more solitary it is, the more lonely it sounds. But it can also be a light, playful and mischievous sound, bouncing and chasing in the air. In either case, the violin won't allow itself to be ignored. 

To pair Ugetsu with the classical violin especially was also great. First of all, learning the violin on the level of becoming a soloist requires incredible discipline, dedication, and passion. Violin is a very unforgiving instrument, but it also gives you freedom. Things like intonation and phrasing are where a talent like a soloist could shine and express themselves. I think that kind of combination of disciplined precision and expressive freedom fits Ugetsu so, so well.

His softer and more vulnerable side:

I often see comments that Ugetsu didn’t really love Akihiko or care about him. Some readers think he was selfish, heartless, and abusive/toxic towards Akihiko in their relationship. And they feel sorry for anyone who later ends up in a relationship with him. To some people, Ugetsu came across as the lowest of low in his time with Akihiko.

Now, I am not going to try and claim that Ugetsu didn’t hurt Akihiko. He most certainly did, oftentimes knowingly when he was trying to push him away. Their relationship was no doubt turbulent and painful for both of them, and I’m sure they will both be happier now freed of their cycle. Even though I am an Ugetsu fan, I don’t want to make it sound like he couldn’t have done a lot of things differently.

However, I also see some parts of myself in Ugetsu. I relate to his certain type of uneasiness when it comes to letting someone/something occupy my priorities. It makes me restless and defensive easily, and I end up rejecting that someone/something which often comes across as being cold. That was an important part of why Ugetsu originally wanted to break up with Akihiko. His love for Akihiko grew so deep it posed as a “threat” to Ugetsu’s sense of “order” when it came to his passion for music. Despite of how their relationship ended, I don’t agree that Ugetsu is somehow incapable of loving someone, it just scares him and is something he needs to figure out for himself. Also, because I somewhat relate to Ugetsu in this sense, it kind of stings when people are so eager to proclaim that his kinds of people don’t deserve someone to love them.

I also believe Ugetsu cared about Akihiko and was worried about him. He did notice Akihiko had started to lose his passion for music and in a way, was giving up on himself. He wanted Akihiko to find his “trigger” again somehow. I have also read interpretations that Ugetsu probably felt guilty about how their relationship seemed to affect Akihiko’s drive. I think that’s an interesting point. Overall, it’s important to remember that partly why Ugetsu initially wanted to break up was to also “free” Akihiko from his suffering. I don’t think that is something that a heartless character would do.

I do think Ugetsu was happy with Akihiko in many ways, but it’s not his style to be flustered and lovey-dovey about it. Which is another thing I find myself somewhat relating to. Instead of being super romantic, I think Ugetsu shows his love and happiness by being clingy, playful/mischievous, and letting someone in his space both mentally and physically (by this, I don’t mean just sleeping with someone but actually letting them see him as a private person). Despite of the lack of proper communication being one of the problems in AkiUgetsu, I think Akihiko was one of the few people who really knew Ugetsu.

AkiUgetsu as roommates:

The beautiful coloring of the panel is by o_yang_o on Twitter.

I think it’s safe to say that most of the Ugetsu-hate stems from his time of being roommates with Akihiko. It was a very dark time for both of them despite the occasional islands of reminiscencing the good parts of their relationship. Ugetsu hurt Akihiko in many ways during that time and realized his behavior was hurting him.

But I think people often forget that Ugetsu was unhappy and hurting, too. Of course, it doesn’t excuse his actions but it explains them. Letting go of Akihiko was just as hard - if not harder - for Ugetsu as letting go of Ugetsu was for Akihiko. In his incapability of cutting the relationship off, Ugetsu resorted in trying to push Akihiko away by hurting him, but Akihiko wouldn’t give up on him. So, his actions didn’t come from some deep-rooted evil but rather being in pain and scared. He wanted the suffering to end but at the same, he couldn’t picture Akihiko not coming back and was terrified of everything, even the music, disappearing in the basement if Akihiko did leave him. 

I think the breakdown Ugetsu had when Akihiko finally broke up with him was telling of how difficult taking that last step had been for Ugetsu as well. He was scared of letting go and being let go of because surely nothing would be left behind. It’s true that it was Ugetsu who originally wanted to break up, but it was Akihiko who needed to walk away first when it finally came down to it. I think Ugetsu’s reaction spoke volumes of how deep his feelings for Akihiko truly ran. In short, AkiUgetsu ended up in a bad and painful direction, but I most definitely believe Ugetsu overall is capable of loving someone and he has a caring/affectionate side to him as well.

Overall, what I love about Ugetsu is his complexity and layers. You need to see deeper than his behavior to see his character as a whole. He’s not innocent and has many flaws, but he’s also not the cold and distant human monster he’s sometimes made out to be. I think Kizu put a lot of care and effort into building his character and did a beautiful job.

Liking a character like Ugetsu ultimately comes down to personal taste and preferences. I can understand that he’s not everyone’s cup of tea or if he evokes negative feelings. But I don’t think it’s fair to see some characters in a black-and-white manner if you’re at the same time making an effort to see behind some other character’s behavior. You don’t have to like every character and you can have biases, but if you catch yourself knowingly ignoring something, your reading probably isn’t the most accurate. A “lesson” I came to realize in my journey with AkiHaru.

Thank you for your question and patience, dear anon!

[vinkumakkara]

real talk maybe too real but my own personal interpretation is that Zenigata’s oblivious to the fact he’s gay partly becus of pretty bad self-esteem issues and body image issues in particular that he apparently has in canon so he doesn’t really see himself as desirable to anyone, ever. the way i see it his self-esteem in general has just been steadily getting worse and worse after he devoted his life to Lupin becus of course it would, he experiences crushing failure and humiliation almost on a daily basis

beyond that it also stems from the whole thing where before meeting Lupin the sole driving force in his life was just doing What Was Expected of him, he’s highly educated and he became a cop because of his family name and when ur a guy you just Like Women and thats that. he got married and had a kid because that’s what you do (and his job basically demanded it anyways) but in the end his marriage failed and he never actually felt sexually attracted to his wife in the slightest, or really any woman ever so now he just accepts that hes a weird sexless creature who’s generally just not attracted to people. whenever he’s shown interest in women it’s always because they initiate and he both short circuits becus he thinks hes unfuckable and also because that is just what you’re supposed to do, of course he should act like he’s interested in return. also he is extremely touch and attention starved as i think he’s someone to whom physical closeness is very important, like it really affects his mental health even further and he doesn’t really have anyone else somewhat permanent in his life but the Lupin gang, and he can’t get that closeness from them (at least not with the canon status quo in effect, this isn’t about anyone else’s headcanons about happy poly families or w/e)

if he got over some of these issues and actually managed to take a look at his life i think his struggle with his sexuality - as opposed to your garden variety internalized homophobia i guess - would stem specifically from the fact that he’s in love with Lupin in particular and what that actually means in retrospect, like all the wild and sometimes highly illegal shit he’s done just for him, all the corruption he’s ignored just because it doesn’t directly concern him and what he considers to be his sole purpose in life... like however you might interpret his personal scale of justice, i think at his core Zenigata is a good, empathetic person and the fact that he’s spent so much of his life causing so much damage and hurt to other people not because of any higher cause or common good - whether he told himself it was all to protect society or do his peers and bosses proud or to save Lupin from himself, whatever - but rather something as selfish as his own feelings and sexuality could break him

imo his esteemed family background is specifically a huge source of his repression and his need to perform what he perceives to be his role. like even if he’s genuinely very proud of it and even if’s just a very liberal read by myself, even in (questionable) canon he actually seems to acknowledge that it has kind of forced him to take a specific path in life that he might not have taken otherwise, at least according to the unaired green jacket episode where he first meets Lupin. i think that Zenigata envisioning this impassable chasm between him and Lupin due to their family names is something that’s also implied/somewhat explored in stuff like the first and the even more important 4th episode of green jacket, like he wants to cross it but feels he just can’t. he’s in love with Lupin and desperately wants to be loved in return but - and im just repeating what i’ve said multiple times in the past but WHATEVER - he’s just so super anime he’s recontextualized his feelings as Destined Rivalry just like he’s probably done with other dudes in his life he’s crushed on (there’s literally one example in red jacket!). but Lupin also represents an unattainable goal in general that gives him something that he can more or less safely project his sexuality onto so he doesn’t ever have to truly face it. because he will never truly catch Lupin and deep down he knows that he doesn’t want to catch him, either

[wanna-b-poet31]

From Safety to Protection: How Aziraphale’s lies change throughout Good Omens (A meta)

Guess who finally read the damn book?! :D  For the purposes of this Meta, I’m viewing the book and the mini-series as two halves of the same whole, not necessarily the “same” characters parading in each, but definitely similar enough that the inner thoughts of one can help us understand the inner thoughts of the other. 

The Breaking Point

So, can we all agree that Aziraphale is not cut from the same cloth as the other angels?

While he has still been exposed to the toxic “homelife” of Heaven, been consequently conditioned to believe Heaven’s “there’s nothing to see here” rhetoric, and he has witnessed many travesties at the hand of Heaven, he has difficulty reconciling his “good” heavenly orders and his (from Heaven’s perspective) “pointless” love of humanity. 

In short, there is plenty of cognitive dissidence between the actions (or inactions) of Heaven, and what Aziraphale knows to be the “right” thing to do.

For examples of his struggle, look no further than this passage in the book:

His gut reaction is to tell Crowley. He goes on to describe how he not only “likes” Crowley, but they both like the Earth, and that he unquestionably trusts (and clearly desperately loves) Crowley. 

The question here is not “can I trust Crowley”, the question is, “how do I protect what we have?” 

He WANTS to tell Crowley. In the context of the mini-series, he WANTS to find Crowley before he runs off to Alpha Centauri and save the world with him. He KNOWS that doing so, saving the world IS the right thing to do.  Both selfishly and selflessly, he KNOWS Crowley and the world as worth saving.

However, in the same breath he asserts his trust of Crowley, he acknowledges that he does NOT see eye to eye with his superiors and that Heaven and Hell both treat the world as an elaborate chess game. Something meant to be won, not protected. Not loved. 

And yet, he decides to contact Heaven Anyway. Partly because he knows what he is “expected” to do, and partly because the nature of his abuse makes it difficult to reconcile his three “truths”: that the world is worth saving, that Heaven is intrinsically “good”, and that the “good” side treats the world as a chessboard.  

But they’re HIS side. Surely, that means the two ideas can be connected? Surely, they’d be more than willing to see the redeeming qualities of humanity? Surely, the powers of Heaven, which he has been told are undeniably good, would take care of their little anti-Christ problem. Right?

WRONG. 

He is continuously told by Gabriel, by Michael, by Uriel, by damn Sandalphon, and finally by “the Metatron” how “the war is meant to be won, not diverted”. There is no love for humanity, and finally, Aziraphale SEES the abuse. He recognizes that they are gaslighting him, “supporting” his choices, when they have no intention of preventing the war. 

Clearly, every other character we meet devalues his deep-rooted love of Humanity. We can see that after 6000 years every other supernatural character has fallen into line, having somewhere along the way stopped loving Humanity for Humanity’s sake, and loving it as means to an end -- a war.  Every other character that is, except himself and Crowley.

Once it’s clear to him that no one in Heaven actually cares about humanity. Nevertheless, they persisted. 

Together. 

On a side of their own.  

So, what does one abused angel with some undying love for humanity (and Crowley) choose to do with his revelation? 

He chooses to lie to save the world.  

  SAFETY IN LYING

It would be disingenuous to say that Aziraphale is a stranger to lying. He does it all the damn time. However, it’s his growth from lying to protect himself to protect Crowley and the world. 

For example, one of his “biggest” lies is to God. Despite confessing his actions to Crawley and is comforted by the demon, when he is confronted by the voice of God herself he is pretty damn terrified. The voice who literally just cast out angels for asking questions knocks on his door and asks him a pointed question and he lies. 

On one level you could argue he is protecting humanity here, but really, he’s doing it to protecting himself. He is terrified of falling, and the trauma associated with that fear motivates Aziraphale. He has seen his cohorts fall, he has seen war, he has seen the lack of love, and he can not take it. 

Losing love, or worse, doing the wrong thing, clashes with his identity as an Angel. Based on the emotional manipulation going on in Heaven, I think it’s safe to say that he’s not getting much support from them for this anxiety, so he has to ignore his feelings. 

Look at the fear in Aziraphale’s face when he admits the truth to Crowley. Certainly, the demon is lovestruck, but Aziraphale looks terrified. His body language screams fear, his mouth falters, his eyes are begging for forgiveness, and his brow is furrowed. He knows the gravity of his actions and needs the reassurance that he is deserving of validation.

But, given how all the other angels treat him poorly, and that the voice of God is confronting him with anger in her voice, I think it safe for us to infer that he is not given validity for his compassion.  

So, he lies because there is safety in lying, and the lies he tells protect him from the vengeance of his abusers.

LYING ABOUT CROWLEY

He also lies to Heaven to protect himself from their judgment about loving (or at least being around) Crowley. 

Not always an outright lie of commission like he does with the sword, but he hides and protects the one relationship that isn’t one-sided in his life.  Just like his lie to God, he is not doing it necessarily to protect Crowley (yes, it’s an added component,) but he’s also protecting himself because he would be just as likely to be destroyed if they are discovered as Crowley is. 

Again though, his lies aren’t for vanity, but safety. The choice to be in the metaphorical closet about his relationship with Crowley most likely stems from his constant abuse by Heaven. To cope with their belittlement and his own cognitive dissidence, he has developed mechanisms for deterring their wrath against him for loving unabashedly. It’s not a healthy environment for him to be in, and it shapes how he interacts with Crowley and humanity. 

This is not a commentary to his character. Simply to survive his abuse, he has to lie about his interests, his loves, his humanity, because to be anything but the hive mind results in more trauma. It allows for his safeguards to remain intact.

THE CHARACTER GROWTH

Whereas Crowley can come up with lies with ease, Aziraphale is a terrible and liar.   Once he reaches his breaking point the kind of lies Aziraphale tells is no longer rooted in personal safety, but the protection of others. 

Throughout the series, we examples of lies of omission, commission, and character lies. However, it’s not something they are seen to do particularly often, which lends to the idea that Aziraphale is somehow flawed or broken to Heaven. 

He’s none of those things, but having him believe this to be true, helps Heaven maintain their dogmatic hive-mind. Except, Aziraphale consistently defies their norm. His ultimate rebellion is his choice to lie. First about the antichrist, and then about the divine plan. 

He doesn’t know if what is “Great” is “ineffable”. He’s taking a chance that neither Beelzebub nor Gabriel knows either, and instead of deflecting their wrath off of himself, he uses his questions to protect Adam from Heaven’s wrath. And, likely to stop Heaven and Hell from forcing Adam to restart Armageddon’t.

Unlike his previous lying examples there is no ulterior motive to his lying. No selfish or safety concern he has. Just stepping forward and using wit more cutting than a flaming sword.  Aziraphale’s skill is with words, He doesn’t actually know if it will work, but he has to try when the world needs defending from Heaven who has pushed it onto the precipice between death and life. 

TLDR: Aziraphale lies to heaven for safety reasons but once he realizes the depths of his abuser’s indifference towards humanity he lies to protect others. 

Thanks for coming to my Tedtalk

[asocier]

          now we’re gonna talk about leah’s family life/dynamic bc :^) i never get to but it’s so pivotal to her character so i gotta put this out there:

          leah’s considered second-generation vietnamese, which means her parents were born in vietnam and immigrated over to the states. history lesson aside, they basically came over during the 80s and made a life for themselves in california. leah’s mom is a nail technician while her dad is uhh -- he’s kind of had a lot of different jobs over the years, his most current one being the manager of a convenience store. lowkey though, her dad works a lot of different kind of informal jobs for those in the community like being a handyman or cutting other people’s yards, so he’s always busy.

          leah’s family is pretty tight knit; she’s an only child, so she got a lot of attention from her elders growing up whenever they visited, but she’s didn’t grow up in an intergenerational household ( meaning her grandparents/other relatives didn’t live with her and her parents; this type of home situation is fairly common in asian households due to filial piety, where the children take care of their parents for life essentially ). i guess you could say circumstances worked out such that leah’s parents were allowed to have their own home, though they both continue to play active roles in providing for their parents ( leah’s grandparents ) when necessary. leah isn’t the only young adult in her family though, nor is she the youngest -- she has plenty of cousins, though not all of them are in america. 

         i could go into a lot of depth about leah’s grandparents and her other relatives, but she doesn’t really talk about them a lot in threads because, well, they’re not as big of a part in her life as her parents. HOWEVER -- despite them not being directly influential in leah’s life, most of her extended family members share a very strong belief in very traditional catholicism, so what goes for her parents sort of goes for most of the family too. but it’s important to note not everyone in her family is catholic; some adhere to buddism and others are agnostic or atheist. again, not super important, but it’s something to think about since it allows leah to have some outlets if she needs different perspectives from those in her family. anyway --

         catholicism is something leah was exposed to since before she understood what it was. she was baptized as an infant, had her first communion, has been confirmed, and of course, has attended those catechism classes as a kid. there’s plenty of religious imagery and symbols in her house, and her family has made it a routine to attend mass every sunday along with obligatory services during certain times of the year. all in all, her family is devout and do a lot of things they do because of their faith. 

       while faith plays a big role in why leah’s parents are on the conservative side, it’s not the only reason. they hold very traditional views partly from growing up in a different culture, partly because of generational differences. it’s also important to note that saving face drives leah’s family dynamic quite a bit, and it’s a big reason why leah’s parents placed very high demands on her while she was growing up. how she dressed, what she did in school, who she hung out with, her romantic life ( or rather, her lack thereof ) -- all of this was dictated in part by her parents one way or another. 

          it’s really important to note that this isn’t because leah was a slacker in school, dressed in a way that was too revealing, hung out with bad people, had too many failed relationships -- it could be argued that her parents were just trying to look out for her, and in a way, that might be the case. but leah was a straight a student, dressed moderately most of the time, and had good friends. she wasn’t like cedric who was actually going out doing things and rebelling. leah was a good kid, but her parents still found things to nitpick. 

         she couldn’t wear jeans with holes in them or crop tops, couldn’t hang out with friends ( don’t even think about hanging out with platonic male friends ), was criticized for partaking in seemingly frivolous extra-curricular activities, had a strict curfew, was ( and still is ) forbidden to date -- the list goes on. one thing i really want to emphasize is the fact that leah’s parents aren’t abusive: they’re oversolicitous. this all stems from a genuine concern about leah’s safety, about wanting her to have a good reputation and her well-being. but also, her parents want to maintain their reputation as well, so in a way, it’s also selfish. whatever the driving force really is, by the time leah was in high school ( and still now in her canon timeline ), she feels suffocated by the fact she lacks the independence that her peers have. it became incredibly apparent in high school when her friends were able to drive by themselves to parties or outings and were beginning to date and experiment with their sexuality. it’s safe to say that by age 18, when leah was a senior in high school, she was not considered an adult by her parents. 

        a big, big, big thing i really wanted to talk about in this post is how leah’s parents played a role in the development of her sexuality and, for those interested in shipping with her, how much anxiety leah has about moving a serious relationship forward due to her parents in a true canon timeline. 

         leah, as mentioned earlier, isn’t allowed to date in her true canon. period. not until she has finished all of her schooling at least, whenever that may be. thus, anything romantic or sexual that has happened to her since her first relationship ( unless plotted otherwise ) is something she would keep to herself and a close group of friends. she doesn’t tell her parents anything about her love life let alone her sex life, so everything is bottled up tightly and kept under lock and key. sometimes i overlook this aspect of her character for the sake of ship development ( since it’s hard to really develop any kind of ship if leah is straight up just like “no, sorry, my mom said no” ), but to put it out there, this is how things would really be. 

        essentially, realistically, there would have to be a point in time in which leah gives your muse “the talk” about her parents, about how she keeps her relationships private and a tight secret. not because she’s ashamed, but because she doesn’t want her family to attack the relationship, nor does she want her family to consider her to be a disappointment for being disobedient. it’s an incredibly difficult subject for her to talk about, so by default, she never brings it up until she has to ( especially since it’s awkward af ). but yeah, dating is a risky game with leah in the long run. 

         also important is the fact that leah identifies herself to be pansexual, which, ( unsurprisingly ), would not fly with her parents. so any relationship that wasn’t heteronormative would cause a lot of tension between leah, her partner, and her parents. but i can tell you right away that when leah loves, she loves hard, and she’d be willing to drop everything for your muse. she doesn’t think the teachings of the catholic church is fair in that regard, so she’d fight her parents until the bitter end if your muse sticks beside her during it. 

       uh, uh, uh i think that’s all i wanted to talk about right now. i guess i really wanted to put out there that while leah is out here living her best life in the short run with interesting sexual encounters, lots of flirting and dating, and all that good ( and not so good ) college hook-up culture, in the long run, she’s incredibly anxious about letting her family in on her love life, so any serious ships would have to keep that in mind since i don’t think it’s realistic for things to be smooth sailing 100% of the times in ships. 

[wesavegotham]

Is modern Batman still a hero?

One topic that I see a lot when people are discussing which bat-character is better or who deserves the most to be Batman after Bruce is how brutal or empathetic the different characters are.

The argument is of course, that characters like Tim or Dick deserve to follow Bruce in his footsteps more than more violent candidates like Jason or Damian.

Personally, I don't really see why you would even want your favourite character to be Batman, but that isn't the topic of this post. Neither is discussing who should take over after Bruce. It's a bit pointless anyway since the Main Universe will always return to Bruce and the (former) Robins are all a bit stuck in their age range, so why fight over a status that wouldn’t stay around for more than a year? Anyway, back to the reason for this post.

A lot of those discussions about "worthiness" are rooted in a certain belief: That Bruce as Batman is empathetic and not brutal, he's a hero.

Maybe it's because I haven't read comics since the 60s, maybe it's because I'm not American and didn't watch Batman the animated series or any other Batman show when I was a child. My knowledge about Batman mostly stems from comics that came out since 2006. I don't have a lot of nostalgia when it comes to Batman and I sometimes struggle to see where this belief in Batman’s goodness comes from.

I look at Batman after New 52 and I don't see an empathetic hero who refrains from using unnecessary violence. I see an often very selfish man, who is incapable of taking responsibility for his actions in a lot of cases, is extremely violent and one of the worst things is probably that both writers and a lot of readers happily let him get away with it. Problematic behaviour isn't bad per se, some of my favourite characters are assholes or shady, but usually both writers and fans aknowledge that fact when writing or talking about them.

The problem here is that DC is writing Bruce as an anti-hero while marketing him as a hero. Even as one of the greatest heroes who has ever lived. I don't know about you, but the lack of empathy and heroism Bruce had in King's Batman run, after all the main Batman book for the last three years, was appaling, and he didn't do much good in other books either.

And again, all of this would be fine if the narrative treated his actions as wrong and made characters in the DC universe comment on that behaviour as wrong. But that doesn't really happen, at least not in a meaningful way. In most cases another character expresses some disappointment for one page, but nobody seriously questions Bruce's status as a friend, leader, mentor or hero. In a lot of other cases Bruce's actions are depicted as good simply because he's Batman and Batman is popular, not because his actions are without a doubt good.

One example for how differently writers and readers treat characters who aren't Bruce Wayne/Batman doing shady stuff is how Adam Glass portrays Damian's actions in Teen Titans and how readers reacted to it.

After the catastrophic events of Justice League: No Justice Damian decided that the Justice League's methods don't work and that Arkham wasn't a good place for dangerous criminals anymore, because the criminals always broke out pretty quickly and would murder innocent people again. With the help of Red Hood he built his own prison, which kinda resembled a torture chamber. I think we can all agree that this is wrong and the narrative treats it as such as well. Thankfully Damian eventually reached the same conclusion and tries to be better again.

Nevertheless, a lot of DC fans still think Damian deserves to get fired or even beaten up by Bruce for what he did. The solicitations for April 2020 make it sound like they might get what they desire.

Even when I ignore how contraproductive punishing a child for trying to solve a problem with violence by using more violence is and that Bruce's neglect allowed all of this to happen in the first place, no matter how this Teen Titans annual will play out, I simply don't think that Bruce is one to judge in this particular situation.

I like to use the summer/fall of 2018 as a reference point because that is when DC Rebirth ended and the entire DC universe started to fall back into it's bad New 52 habits.

Since then Bruce was partly responsible for creating Sanctuary, a poorly designed mental health facility, where Wally West accidentally killed a lot of fellow heroes, because of the way he was treated. The Trinity felt a bit bad about it, but reopened their facility without any known changes anyway:

Bruce imprisoned the very dangerous Batman Who Laughs in a secret prison under the Hall of Justice without telling the Justice League:

The hero community didn't know about any of it, which allowed BWL to infect a lot of allies who Batman had left in the dark.

He beat up Jason Todd, his former protégé, so badly he couldn't walk for weeks based on information that later turned out to be false:

He's overall extremely brutal. Just a few examples:

Breaking KGBeast's neck and leaving him in the cold afterwards:

The entirety of Batman #59 and #60 where he beat up the guards in Arkham, beat Bane into a pulp, punched Gordon in the face, tortured ex-inmates for information on Bane and had Penguin imprisoned in a small cage in the Batcave.

And he punches people in Arkham into submission basically whenever he feels like it:

A lot of Bruce's awful behaviour is from King's run on Batman, but other examples are from Red Hood and the Outlaws, Batman and Superman or even from Detective Comics written by Tomasi, who probably writes the most heroic version of Bruce nowadays.

Tynion's run on Batman just started, but there are already some examples for questionable behaviour there too:

Like building a not very humane looking prison after coming to the same conclusion as Damian, which was that Arkham isn't enough anymore:

Or letting Cheshire get hit by a moving truck on purpose:

Yeah, seriously, the only reason this doesn't count as lethal method is because Batman doesn't kill, thus his enemies simply aren't allowed to die from fatal attacks.

But apparently Bruce is still a hero, a man of empathy and commited to only using as much violence as the situation requires😑

If DC wants Bruce to do shady stuff as much as they do, then maybe it's time to admit that modern Bruce is more of an anti-hero than a hero. Or if DC wants to redefine what it means to be heroic, then Bruce needs to drop his moral supiority complex when dealing with characters that actually don't act that different from him.

[tessatechaitea]

The Invisibles #3

This is exactly what taking drugs isn't.

Our world is composed of geniuses and not-geniuses. That's the kind of statement a not-genius makes because it's so fucking obvious. Do you ever have to say anything that pretty much says "All of the people on the world are either this or that"? Anyway, the point I was making wasn't that I'm one of the not-geniuses even though it's the point I accidentally made. The point was that in the non-genius camp, we have those who are smart enough to recognize genius and those who sit grumpily in their pee-puddles whining about how the high-falutin' elites are trying to make things different. Different, in this case, generally means better but if you're a non-genius who can't recognize geniuses, you're just mad that somebody said french fries might not be the most nutritional side dish (even though you could still live in a world where you acknowledge that french fries are both not even close to nutritional and also the best food on the planet. I mean, you have that choice. But I guess the pee-puddle you're sitting in (which is slowly leaking into your gun cabinet) has probably distracted you from rational thought). Again, that wasn't the point I was going to make (about the french fries!) but I have a problem staying on topic. Partly it's because I've never been able to stay on topic (you should read some of my college essays which I'm not going to release to the public so even though I suggested you should read them, you won't be reading them. Ever) and partly it's because of another reason that I forgot while typing the college paper parenthetical statement. My point might have been that you can recognize a genius because they can state plain what other people are obfuscating in their pronouncements. If you're not smart enough to recognize the genius, you might think the genius is spreading propaganda, mostly because you really want to believe the thing that isn't true because it shields you from guilt or blame or repercussions stemming from following your own selfish desires at any cost. The genius is reviled by people who can't recognize genius and viled by people who can. Or unviled? Previled? Maybe I should have just gone with lauded. You might think I'm saying all of this in regards to Grant Morrison but you'd be wrong. I'm actually saying this about A.R. Moxon, the author of The Revisionaries, whose Twitter handle is @JuliusGoat. He did not pay me to point out that he's a genius although he probably should have. I suppose it's not too late. Being that he's a genius and knows the smart thing to do, I'm sure he'll buy my RPG when he Googles his name and/or Twitter handle and finds me sticking my tongue way up his asshole in this post. I mean, I'm basically saying he's smarter than Grant Morrison! Getting back to Grant Morrison, is he really a genius? I'm not so sure. I think maybe he's just a libertine who did a lot of drugs and traveled to a lot of sort-of-spiritual places (not to be more spiritual but to get his hot genius take on spirituality in a place that smells of burning corpses and goat semen while he shits his guts out back at the hotel high on hashish). Sometimes when you've done acid and other illicit substances, you feel the need to think you've risen above the flock by doing a thing most people will never consider doing. Maybe Grant doesn't exactly feel this way but some of his stuff sometimes comes across as that. I mean, sure, if you've ever done LSD or the like, you've definitely experienced a sort of melding of yourself with the profound and the mundane and the timeless in a way that usually only schizophrenics experience. You have done something that has changed you from the person you were before. But thinking that it has somehow made you different or better than those who haven't done it just means that you've never talked to people who went to high school in the flyover states. I've known some really boring and backwards people who did a lot of acid simply because there wasn't anything else to do out in the cornfields. It really did surprise me, a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, to discover how prevalent psychoactive drugs were in the Midwest and Plains states. I thought that was just the hippies and children of hippies! What I didn't think, though, was that it made me a non-sheep (like the guy in my San Jose State creative writing class who once wrote a story about how he had broken from the flock because he dared to try LSD. The teacher loved his take and luckily for me, she was blind so she didn't see me rolling my eyes and making jerk-off motions from the back of the class. I mean, wow, dude. You dared to try LSD. I was probably on LSD while listening to the teacher read that stupid ass story!). Okay, maybe my whole take on "Grant Morrison thinks he's better than everybody else" stems from my envy of the idiot jock who wrote a stupid story that the teacher loved while she mostly just reacted to my stuff with "WTF? I guess I see how nostalgia can seem like a dream and the pop culture death of Superman can sometimes be more powerful than the death of a close family member but why did you choose to make none of this linear and what the hell do your Star Wars figures have to do with your future death? Also, the baseball game between Heaven and Hell where Heaven wins because Hitler snarls 'Jew' and then beans Jesus with the pitch to push in the last run was decent." Now that we've resolved some of my issues (I mean, maybe not "resolved" but at the very least "put out there in the open so you know where my biases are coming from"), let's get on with The Invisibles #3. When we last left our homophobic pouting white suburban "my mother doesn't hug me enough" anarchist protagonist, he was about to be hunted to death by a mystical group of human fox hunters in the secret London hidden beneath the one everybody thinks of as the "real London." I sort of hope the kid gets murdered. But then we won't get to see him learn his lesson which allows viewers to also maybe a learn a lesson. It's sometimes why you need characters like Mrs. Oleson from Little House on the Prairie. Although it was kind of enough to have Laura Ingalls who was a selfish devil child who was always learning lessons from humble and righteous Pa (who probably only killed one or two Native Americans, making him a stalwart saint of the frontier). I suppose the audience didn't need an over-the-top scurrilous villain like Mrs. Oleson. Although without Mrs. Oleson, how could the show have glorified the true saint of the frontier, Nells Oleson? The patience and kindness of that man were a testament to, um, patience and kindness!

I'm assuming Dane spends the next twenty pages snot-crying into a used coffee filter.

Dane continues to hang out with Tom of Bedlam because Dane can't survive on the street on his own and he knows it. He's not hard at all. He's a little wanna-be suburban gangster who read half of a book on anarchy and now thinks he's better than the slack-eyed populace going about their normal day-to-day bullshit. But he also thinks he still needs money and a place to live. He's not really great at the anarchy thing. But maybe if he listens to Tom, he'll learn a little bit about life and his heart will grow three sizes. Not because he suddenly cares more about everybody; it'll be a side-effect from learning the Dark Arts. Tom casts a spell so that Dane can look through the eyes of a pigeon as it flies about London. While Dane is seeing the hidden, creepy monsters lurking behind reality that pigeons can see (just as Pigeons can enter the afterlife in Moore's Jerusalem. I'm sure there are other urban horror stories that tell of the magic of pigeon vision. Did Lovecraft ever right any pigeon poems?), Tom tells Dane the secret history of cities. They're a virus that has propelled man from small villages which barely change across the centuries into huge population centers that use up the life force of the hosts as they build more and more and more, bigger and bigger, until, one day, they can build a rocket to propel the city virus into space and onto a new planet. Tom has seen, in visions, other planets affected by the virus, dead planets where the buildings stand as gravestones for the previous used-up races that contracted the virus. It's all very Lovecraftian. Not in the racist way but in the visions of other realities that change the nature of your own reality once you realize their existence. Hmm, that can actually kind of describe racism. I suppose Lovecraft's xenophobia was what made his stories about strange, unknown terrors so compelling. After teaching him loads of magic, Tom decides to teach Dane the most important lesson:

It's a really good lesson but also it's just Tom's attempt to get Jack Frost to appear.

Tom teaches Dane not to be a sheep or, in Tom's words, a robot. It's one of those weird lessons that everybody thinks they learn but nobody really learns it. Like when people read just that one Frost stanza on some poster in their English Lit class from "The Road Not Taken". Everybody gasps in air as the profundity of that single stanza (extracted from the context of the larger poem, much to the detriment of all of us) washes over them and they suddenly believe they've seen what life really is. Life isn't doing the thing you're supposed to do! Life is living to the fullest! Carpe diem! But the feeling of that moment erodes. It is eroded by the path we all take as we pretend we've taken the other path. We stop seeing that their weren't just two paths but many. And we get a job and we get a spouse and we get a house and we get a child and we occasionally think of Frost's single stanza and we decide, "You know what? I'm going to find the time to jump out of a plane!" or "I'm going to climb Everest!" or "I'm going to sleep with somebody of my same sex because I've always wanted to and hopefully my wife won't find out!" And sometimes we do and sometimes we don't; it doesn't really matter. Because the thing about taking the path less traveled is that it's still a path and it still represents the path you took and, you know what, there's that other path over there that I never got to experience and it's just shitting all over the path I'm currently on. Some people somehow block out the phantom possibilities and they're the lucky ones. The ones you can claim they have no regrets and maybe they're speaking truth when they say it. But mostly they just try not to think about it. Because once you start peeling at the wallpaper of your current life because the wallpaper, which others upon first glimpsing might think is beautiful and extraordinary, but which you've looked at every day for thirty years, you're done for. And you don't do it to find the beauty of what's underneath; you simply do it to see something different. And the new thing hasn't been scrutinized and deconstructed and critiqued; there's been no time to obsess over it. It's imaginary and if you happen to be like most people, imaginary must be better because why imagine the worst?! Okay, okay. I've just outed myself as not an anxious or depressive person! But I also don't go peeling at the wallpaper, so who knows? Maybe I do imagine the path less traveled was an intense tragedy?! The Invisibles #3 Rating: A. It's still pretty good and I'm still upset that I only have a few issues. Recently, I was thinking of writing an essay about how the worst thing about growing up is how you stop feeling things. Not that you stop feeling anything at all! Just that you stop feeling feelings that were once overwhelming and all-important. Like the crush you had in junior high. Can you imagine if, at forty, you still felt those feelings so intensely (among all the other ones you've felt across your life)? I understand that feelings must abate over time or we'd all be fucked up from not being able to get over our first crush while simultaneously not moving past the death of our closest grandparents. I get it. And some would say it's a mercy. But lately I've been wondering, "Is it?" Maybe I want to still feel those seemingly inexhaustible passions. I was reminded of wanting to discuss this because Tom says in this issue, "They made you forget how to feel, eh? Remember it now? Like everything new and the sun itself spinning behind your ribs, filling you up with silver. Like the way it was before they made robots of us, sentenced to a life behind bars we're trained to set in place ourselves." Now, that Tom speech was more about the whole "we're the shepherd of our own sheepdom" thing but in a robot and prison analogy. But the other thing about feelings made me remember how I was recently lamenting not feeling all of the things I once felt. Like the basket case from The Breakfast Club says, "When you grow up, your heart dies." And while you can argue whether that's true in the sense that you just stop caring about things, I think it's absolutely true in that it just slowly winds down and isn't capable of feeling how it used to. It's like a rechargeable battery that can no longer keep a charge. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, every single one of my friends, at one time or another, wound up weeping in my basement apartment about something in their lives (usually a woman!). I can't even fucking imagine that now. Maybe they'd be a bit upset or hurt or depressed but hardly disconsolate. I thought I would never get over the sadness at the loss of my grandfather or (and this might sound ridiculous to some but others will understand) the loss of my first cat as an adult, my precious little Judas. And while I obviously won't ever "get over" them (my eyes tear as I write this), I am no longer destroyed by the mere thought of their non-existence. A week after my Judas died, I saw Guardians of the Galaxy in the theater. Judas was always my Raccoon Boy so I almost broke down near the end when one of the characters put their arm around Rocket to console him. I made it out of the theater before absolutely losing it and snot-crying all the way back to the car. And so I can see how retaining that level of feeling over anything would be counterproductive to actually living, I absolutely miss it. I profoundly miss it. I want to be kicked in the stomach until I can't breathe by my feelings. I want this every day even if I know it's the cursed wish of a Monkey's Paw. How can anybody feel everything so palpably for their entire lives? And yet, how can we not?!

[thestupidhelmet]

Anonymous said to thestupidhelmet:

For the recap of One difference the answer is probably yes, a meta of character arcs and subtext chapter by chapter would be awesome!    

In the almost ten years I’ve written T7S fic, I’ve never been asked to do this before. I started it a few weeks ago, and I managed to get through two chapters. Analyzing my own story requires way more time than I anticipated. 😅

I had to choose between finishing a meta of all fifteen chapters of this story or continuing to write new a one. Not hard to guess which I chose to do. Sorry about that, anon. Sometimes, I wish I could press pause on time and do ALL the things. But, sadly, I can’t.

With that said, I’m posting my meta of the first two chapters. If you’d like to read more analysis of this story, you can check out the comments on it at AO3. I have some very insightful commenters, and I responded back in kind. Those exchanges might be interesting to you. 😊

Meta is after the cut. Enjoy, my anonymous acquaintance!

One Difference: The Answer’s Probably Yes

FFnet / AO3

Summary: In a desperate act, Hyde seeks advice from Jackie, a girl who thinks he's scum. He's not fond of her either, but she makes him a crazy yet strangely-appealing offer.

Rated: M

Chapter 1: Temporary Insanity

Despite the title, this chapter is about breaking free from self-delusion.

Hyde’s motivation at the start of the story is the same as the episode “The Best Christmas Ever” (1x12). He wants Jackie’s advice on buying a present for Donna. Jackie, however, is more aware of her dissatisfaction in her relationship with Kelso than she is at this point on the show.

In the episode, one can interpret her, “Hyde, if you want to make out with me, the answer’s probably no,” remark as evidence she’s at least somewhat physically attracted to Hyde. It’s also evidence of her massive ego. But in my story, she’s on a mission to find out if the problem(s) in her relationship with Kelso stem from her or Kelso. So, combined with her physical attraction toward Hyde, she takes a risk and says instead that the answer’s probably yes.

Hyde, meanwhile, reels from a burst of self-awareness. Jackie’s chastisement that he “doesn’t deserve a girl like Donna for six dollars” breaks through his selfishness and self-delusion. On the show, Hyde is written as a villainous, boundary-ignoring / -invading selfish foil to Eric during much of season 1. In my story, though, he realizes Donna doesn’t share his romantic feelings, and that pulverizes both his heart and his self-conception.

Kelso’s negative attitude toward his relationship with Jackie lessens Hyde’s inhibition toward kissing Jackie. He wants to numb himself from the shock and pain his self-awareness has brought.

Despite his need for escape, Hyde’s realization about himself has an immediate effect on him. He wants to make sure Jackie is a) absolutely sure she wants to kiss him and b) isn’t too young to make that determination. Instead of acting from a totally selfish place, as he’d been doing with Donna, he takes Jackie’s wants and needs into account.

Jackie’s experience during the make-out gives her at least some of the answers she seeks -- that Kelso doesn’t satisfy her physically, in large part because of Kelso’s selfishness -- but she’s not quite ready to embrace the truth fully.

Jackie and Hyde don’t know each other too well at this point in the show. The same goes for the story. Their communication sucks. In the universe of this story, Jackie admired his dancing skills in “That Disco Episode” (1x07), and she clumsily tries to explain that to him. He eventually untangles the misunderstanding between them, and this conversation is foreshadowing for chapter twelve, where they go to Prom together.

Hyde also begins to challenge Jackie’s snobbishness a little. It doesn’t hit the mark, but it plants a seed into her subconscious. The story begins with Jackie demonstrating her classism and Hyde’s internal reaction to it. This is a thread that weaves through Jackie’s character development throughout the story and her parents’ behavior.

I love foreshadowing.

Eric and Donna catch Jackie and Hyde in the act, same as they do in “I Can’t Quit You, Baby” (5x02). I blended and rearranged elements from Jackie and Hyde’s season-5 relationship into this season-1 version of their romance. Partly as Easter eggs for the reader and partly to reflect that Jackie and Hyde’s relationship, regardless of when it happens in during the show’s timeline, creates similar ripples in the world around them -- and to show that Jackie and Hyde, when written in-character, will inevitably make certain choices.

Chapter 2: The Best Gift of All

This chapter’s main purpose is to show the aftermath of Jackie and Hyde’s realizations. Hyde is no longer in denial about Donna’s feelings for him or his treatment of her. Jackie, on the other hand, goes right back into denial about her relationship with Kelso.

Her physical attraction to Hyde hasn’t faded, though. If anything, it’s grown stronger after their make-out. But she feels guilty for cheating on Kelso, and she’s gotten drunk unintentionally. She does her best to ignore her attraction toward Hyde and reaffirms her faithfulness to Kelso.

This chapter foreshadows Edna’s behavior toward Hyde in subsequent chapters and her eventual abandonment of Hyde. His homelife is an important element of this story, and we get an important glimpse of it here. She’s gone on one of her days’-long jaunts with her current boyfriend. Hyde is left to take care of himself, not an unusual situation.

Having been abandoned by both parents, his emotional wounding blinded him to other people’s feelings and wishes. His own feelings and wishes were paramount above all others, a touch of narcissism. Fortunately, Jackie’s blunt assessment in chapter one destroyed that narcissism, and he’s a changed man.

At the Christmas party, Hyde makes clear to Donna he knows how selfish he acted toward her and apologizes for it. His friendships with Donna and Eric have been the most stabilizing forces in his life, and losing them would be devastating to him. Fortunately, Donna forgives him and trusts him, and Eric ... well, he’s a little less trusting, but their friendship is safe.

When I wrote the end of this chapter, I thought the story could satisfyingly end here. The last paragraph puts a neat, narrative bow on what could’ve been a two-shot. But I outlined a longer story, and I had no intention of not writing it.

[madara-fate]

What did you think about episode 14 of Darling in the FranXX? The Ichigo hate was real after that one.

Yes it was, and while I understand that she wasn’t exactly a saint during the episode, the level of hate that I’ve seen is wholly unwarranted.

Okay, I understand that she prevented 02 from meeting Hiro which is something that really needed to happen, especially after episode 13, but things also need to be viewed from her perspective because when this is done, her actions become a lot more understandable. From Ichigo’s perspective, this was the same 02 who had been manipulating Hiro with zero remorse and tried to turn him into a monster, and only stopped because she discovered that he was her original darling. This was the same 02 who she heard had always used her previous partners as mere tools who she basically killed and disposed of, and now she had first hand evidence of this and even let 02 and the others know of this:

This was the same 02 who went on to physically attack the entire squad over a misunderstanding that she really shouldn’t have been fooled by because it was clear as day that Hiro had escaped from the room of his own accord. 

The thing is, nothing that Ichigo said above was untrue, and while 02′s sentiments may have changed by this point, Ichigo still had every right to be protective of Hiro. Add to that 02′s continued needless dismissiveness, and you can see that 02 really wasn’t doing herself any favours. So of course Ichigo’s not going to want the guy she loves to get hurt any further. Perhaps the ridiculous amount of Ichigo hate also partly stems from the fact that she confessed to Hiro and kissed him in front of Goro? Despite the fact that she didn’t know the latter was there, nor does she owe him her romantic affection just because that’s how he feels about her.

02′s continued dismissiveness was just another example of the annoyingly convenient writing this show has sometimes exhibited because honestly, despite the fact that what Ichigo said was indeed true, any explanation from 02 clarifying that these were no longer her sentiments, and that she truly just wanted to have a heart to heart with Hiro would have done wonders towards getting the group to be more willing to let them see each other, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Don’t get me wrong, Ichigo conducted herself in a very brusque manner and she allowed her desire to protect Hiro to stop her from thinking clearly. 02 and Hiro really did need to have a talk and clear some things up and Ichigo’s stubbornness, at least initially, prevented that from happening. However, she was not in the wrong for wanting to protect Hiro from 02 given what they know of her thus far. Ichigo definitely acted selfishly, especially in the way that she pretty much forced herself on Hiro at the end with the kiss because the confession would have been enough. Also, she didn’t seem to consider that 02 is essentially the only one Hiro can pilot with. Thus, she’d be bringing him back to the way he was before. However, I do think that can be forgiven seeing as how her main incentive was Hiro’s protection. I’m sure the majority of people would have done the same thing if it meant that the person they loved didn’t end up dying. She was fully willing to accept 02 into the group and essentially ignore her feelings for Hiro in favour of his happiness with 02, because she obviously saw that he was happy. This continued up until the beginning of episode 12 which wasn’t long ago, but recent revelations understandably changed her mind.

Yet having said all this, 02 didn’t handle herself any better, she was also being selfish for constantly just acting on her own desires and not worrying at all about anyone else or how her actions things could potentially hurt Hiro himself. Both Ichigo and 02 were at fault for the things that transpired during the episode, and to be honest, an equal portion of the blame also needs to be placed on Hiro, but so many people just seem to be constantly ignoring 02′s actions as if she hasn’t done anything wrong, but the reality is that what she’s done and the way she’s conducted herself so far has been just as bad. I can understand why both of them did what they did; they both care a lot about Hiro, but their high levels of emotions caused them to make errors of judgement. We can all obviously prefer one over the other but calling the one trash and worshipping the other exhibits a lot of bias. The amount of childish comments I’ve seen wishing death upon Ichigo for this was beyond disappointing, when all she really wanted to do, was to protect the person she loves from someone who she knew to have been manipulating him and who even made attempts on his life.

But as I stated earlier the writing in this episode was just far too convenient, and I’m also getting a little tired of the show choosing to focus on the relationships rather than the plot. After the potential that episode 13 gave, the show could have gone in so many interesting directions, so it’s rather irritating that they chose to elongate the drama in such a manner. I’ll reiterate that I don’t feel the blame should be placed solely on Ichigo for what happened. For the information she had, she made some pretty rational decisions. I mean, 02 was literally strangling Hiro just 2 episodes ago; the marks on his neck were evidence enough of that, and now she’s saying she wants to talk to him. That’s a big 180, and even though the viewers understand the reasons for the change of heart, this wasn’t explained to Ichigo and the rest of them.For me, the fault lies primarily on the way 02′s been written so far. She seems to remember most if not all of what went on in the past, yet she never gives the squad any of this information even though it would go a long way in clearing up the misunderstanding. Instead she just keeps it super vague, and even after Ichigo’s scathing words regarding how she had been manipulating Hiro, exploiting him and would discard him afterwards, she didn’t even try to defend herself when she easily could have explained that this was no longer the case. She essentially just said “Yeah, I’ve been manipulating and using him, and I’ll probably end up killing him too, but so what? That’s none of your business”:

So following this, why would Ichigo relent? Why wouldn’t they put 02 on guard for a few days after that? That was bad writing used solely to further the drama, when logic would dictate that 02 should simply give a short explanation. And then when the prime misunderstanding happens, she just conveniently either completely ignores or doesn’t see the escape rope that’s very clearly dangling in the middle of the room. So she goes ape shit, and of course that just happens to be when Hiro arrives and justifiably calls her a monster, more convenience.There’s so many places they could have salvaged this episode. 02 could have very easily given a brief explanation to the squad to fill them in on the true nature of the situation (still withholding a lot, but giving just enough information to get them to let her through). Hiro could have broken it to Ichigo why he wanted to talk to 02 but that also conveniently didn’t happen. They could have had Hiro remain in the damn room like he was supposed to, or at the very least not had 02 literally be completely blind at the climax. This episode could have been a lot better if someone just had the slightest bit of communication skills. *Sigh*

[dwightfortich]

How Freud’s theories applied to real world and it’s implications.

The chosen topic can be applied to real world through comparing your activities and personal experience with Freud’s theories. In Freudian theory, the human mind is structured into two main parts, the conscious and unconscious mind. The conscious mind includes all the things we are aware of or can easily bring into awareness. The unconscious mind, on the other hand, includes all of the things outside of our awareness all of the wishes, desires, hopes, urges, and memories that lie outside of awareness yet continue to influence behavior. The unconscious mind played a critical role in all of Freud's theories, and he considered dreams to be one of the key ways to take a peek into what lies outside of our conscious awareness. He dubbed dreams the royal road to the unconscious and believed that by examining dreams, he could see not only how the unconscious mind works but also what it is trying to hide from conscious awareness. My conclusive opinion about his theory is pretty much based on or influenced by how we make decisions. Our personality is based on our foundational bring up from our parents. Then proceeds into whether we could make good decisions that are not powered by impulse.  I believe that our intellectual being is driven by sex and aggression (being able to produce and reproduce), but is also based on Eros and Thanatos which means life and death. Now, Freud’s Theory is thought out and very simple. He simplifies the way we decide on things which is based on our id, ego, and superego. Our id is sought out in the infant/newborn stages of life. A child is born and has needs that are not based on how others feel. When the child is hungry, uncomfortable, or not feeling well it cries unaware of how the parent is feeling at the time. Its wants are pretty selfish and self-centered, but a newborn cannot identify this at this stage of life. Now, as the child gets older its actions are based on the ego stage of life or doing things from a realistic point of view. Both ego and id stages of life are co-parts. One feed two, two proceeds to grow, and then three is developed which is called the superego stage of personality and can be defined as our beliefs, morals, and attitudes. This stage in my opinion is developed by our parents and what they install in us. It can also include our cultural background and knowledge. This stage of personality teaches us how to maintain ourselves in the world and how to make rational decisions in life. Yes, Sigmund’s Freud theory does not work for all people, but when you really sit down and read it, it gives you a better understanding. The implications that i draw of Freud’s theory of education.Freud is at least partly responsible and his followers certainly more so for the idea that babies have mentality. His ideas lead us to the conclusion that their mentality will be of the type technically called omnipotent, which means that thought and reality are not distinguishable, and the rest of life might be considered as the struggle to come to terms with the fact that ‘reality’ has its own agenda. Psychoanalytic or psycho sexual theory deals primarily with personality and postulates that human “behavior is motivated by inner, unconscious forces, memories, and conflicts” that often stem from early life experiences. According to this theory, there are three basic structures of the personality the id which consists of the irrational libidinal drives that motivate the person to seek pleasure and sexual gratification, the ego the rational part of the mind, and the superego essentially the conscience which counterbalances the impulses of the id. Development occurs through a sequence of five psycho sexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital) which focus on a body part (or erogenous zone) that becomes the center of pleasure or gratification (Rice, 1997). Defense mechanisms such as denial, repression, rationalization, and displacement, which serve the important purpose of temporarily distorting reality to relieve anxiety or reduce conflict, are also important components of Psychoanalytic theory. Though primarily of historical interest, an understanding of Freudian theory may give classroom teachers insight into the importance of unconscious feelings and drives that motivate some student behavior.

Reference link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V73hdaSTzWg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPMFXtGtHEM&list=PLsYXzLZzJ4p87aNvzKIZuDHmw-JgXPPix&index=6

[tangled-bea]

Episode 07 “Varian makes  a particle accelerator, Cassandra is still a bit of an ass”

(Warning Spoilers Ahead)

Lets talk Alchemy

Alchemy, and Science are two different things.  A historically true alchemist was nothing more than a charlatan.  In the fantasy story telling realm, alchemy is just another form of magic, that is blended within the science of a world.  In the end however, it is still just magic.  Tangled: The Series as taken the World Building of Corona and given us a rather odd and powerful Alchemy/ Pseudo Science to this world that we NEVER see once part of the Movie, or the Short Film.  Where in gods green earth did all this come from you might ask? Why have the Series take a massive deviation from established canon?

Well, I am very happy to report, it’s because they are going back to some of the many, many concepts of Disney’s Rapunzel story, as created by the legend himself Glen Keane.  One of which is what I call the “Green Rapunzel” concept.  In this concept, Rapunzel wore green not pink, had a crossbow, her mother was a badass Warrior Queen, and Rapunzel falls in love with big, smart, but a little dopey, tinkerer/ Blacksmith named Bastion.  Within Green Rapunzel, the story was set up in a mix of Gothic and Renaissance with a da Vinci influenced technology including Bastion tinkering on a pair of Icarus Wings.  There was a planned scene of Bastion saving Rapunzel by using those wings and flying over the Kingdom.  (As long as they NEVER bring in ANY of what I call the Eisner Rapunzel Concept…  It’s all wins here…  What’s the Eisner Rapunzel….  Rapunzel hair is alive and has a mind of its own… and she is from Modern Day San Francisco… Yeah…. Thank you, Shareholder’s Revolt, of 2006!)

Renaissance science was alchemy greatest era, and da Vinci wasn’t afraid to dabble in it or study the occult around it.  So, we should be very pleased to see the series taking from some of its rich concept ideas.  Though it’s delivery in this episode rather sloppy compared to its mysterious introduction…  You do know when one favors throwing in random modern physics words as line filler, especially using most of them incorrectly, we get lost not impressed.  (Somewhere a STEM student is crying.)  We kind of jump the shark using Alchemy to create a Blackhole generator… From an Alchemical version of a Particle Accelerator and a glorified Electro Magnetic Levitation Machine.  (Over at CERN, their Particle Accelerator is crying).  Also, if the writers were poking fun at how worthless Disney’s own Maglev technology has become over the years because they haven’t updated it… You’ll all my heroes!  I might be projecting on that one a little bit… But seriously Disney, UPDATE AND FIX YOUR MONORAILS!

Anyways, with some ground rules, the Series can really come into its own with the introduction of Alchemy to the world. We had a great peak into with Varian’s first episode, and as they broadened the world building on that, it came out a bit of a mess, making you feel they were making it up as they wrote it.  Alchemy is tricky, but it seems somethings got lost in translation when trying to create a unique version of it.  Using it to move the story, not letting the story move around it makes you feel it was an after thought.. Just because you need a McGuffin for your story doesn’t mean you need to create a blackhole machine.  But nothing says danger like generating a gravitational singularity in the center of the kingdom, that can suck up everything around it… (Big Hero Six called, they want their McGuffin back.)  In the end, doesn’t matter, but let’s not get to carried away like this again.

So, we have a black hole, and we need to fix it.  The stories focus has been on Cassandra and Varian so it has to be something they can do together to put a stop to it…  I know! They must pull a lever, that is to high for them to reach….  Really?  That’s it… Out of all the things you could do, you choose that?  A lever…  that is far away….   Last time I checked, that’s Rapunzel’s specialty… You know… Lassoing things, and pulling levers that are far away…  They didn’t even bother to make it so she couldn’t be there to do that.  Not even go the lazy way and use a bunch of science words improperly to explain why she couldn’t.  The moment I saw the lever, I said, Raps got this!  Yeah… Well no, we got a horse powered dryer, and Cassandra and Varian waiting for the level of the machine to come simply come in range to be reached.  

After showing all those awesome little Alchemical balls Varian was using throughout the Episode, I was picturing him making one on the fly, and Cassandra needing to get up close to throw it in… or have them tied to a spear or arrow for her to fire at the machine to end the alchemical black hole.  The two of them coming together as a team to save the day like that, would have been awesome.  The victory would have been so much sweeter for both, and so would the cares.  Such a missed opportunity…

Cassy, Oh Cassy

By far Cassandra is one of the most humanized character in the entire series.  I love her, mainly because even after learning multiple lessons on how being selfish and an ass can hurt the people you really care for, she still does it.  Like in real life, playground politics lesson learning doesn’t magically cure character flaws.  I also think that Rapunzel is also getting a little frustrated by this, which is also totally awesome.  They are showing a very realistic dynamic between these two best friends.  So far she has screwed over Rapunzel twice, Eugene at least once, and now Varian.  Even when she knew she was doing something wrong, with Rapunzel acting as the good Angel on her shoulder, she choose her selfish needs over Varian.

Though I am sure this is head canon, I feel that there was a reason Rapunzel didn’t help Varian in Cassandra’s place.  (Something she could have easily of done.) She wanted to show Cassandra that her actions have consequences.  Rapunzel seemingly predicted Cass’s betrayal on her promise to Varian.  When she tried to talk to Varian about how he was blinded by his feelings for Cassandra to see that he was being used.  Cassandra made a promise, and she broke it.  If there is one thing about Rapunzel we know for a fact, is that when she makes Promises, she NEVER breaks them… Ever.  When people do it around her, I am sure that annoys her.   With another Cassandra centric episode coming up next week, I hope to see even further strain on their relationship.  Rapunzel never had a Best Friend beyond Pascal… She has no idea how to handle one that is slowly causing problems.  Some good story would be seeing Rapunzel and Cassandra having a falling out, and the FEELS when they reconcile would be epic! Not in one episode, a story like that would need a handful. 

Hey Look we found the Plot again!

At the very end, the black rocks have returned, and we learn they were the force behind Varian’s Alchemical Particle Accelerator.  The secret of the rocks has now spread to four, seven if you include animals.  The infestation has moved even closer to the kingdom.  Rapunzel and the link to them seem just as strong as it was before.  As we creep along into explaining why these rocks returned Rapunzel’s hair, we can only guess on what is to come.  The story on how her hair came back, the story promised to us from the beginning has been left in limbo for some time.  Saying, Magical Rocks did it was barely half of it…  You didn’t tell us a story... As far as we know it was just an ex-machina...  We have gone no where really with it since Before Ever After, so we are all craving for another slice of the story.

The Next Episode

I’ve already seen the griping and moaning from people over Disney not making Cass a Lesbian.   Blah Blah Blah…  Please…  Sure in my own head canon, Cass is super ambiguous when it comes to who she likes and does lean towards the females, but that’s head canon…  Disney doesn’t need to turn Tangled into a SJW nut house over a fictional children’s characters sexual preference.  End of Rant on that.

With a new Cassandra/ Rapunzel centered story coming up, it is making me feel that their friendship will be involved, at least partly to the main plot.  They’ve established a lot about Cassandra, and she has turned into one of the most well-developed characters in the series.  Even more so then Rapunzel who for the most part, hasn’t really done anything in character development since BEA.  I feel they are building up to a turning point in their friendship.  Just by knowing the basics of the episodes we have left especially Episode 11 where Pascal runs away from home, I see that Rapunzel will be suddenly focusing on others more, and she isn’t turning to Pascal in her times of need like she did in the tower.  It is leading us more and more to Rapunzel’s social life having a part in the main plot.  The biggest part of that right now is Cassandra, even more so then Eugene at the moment.

Where are we going? 

Tangled should be about Rapunzel, and they’ve done little to develop a lot of great groundwork given to us in BEA.  Is Rapunzel having anymore nightmares about Gothal?  Is she following up on her mother’s story, reaching out to her father?   I know we missed a lot in the six months between Tangled and BEA, but you can’t fully integrate into a family in six months.  The show stared off with the idea, that she hasn’t.  She is still in the same cramped and overbearing position that lead her to sneak out of the Castle with Cassandra.  There are a lot of similarities between her position now, and the one she had in the tower.  She has a false sense of security, and a false sense of happiness, as her dream, “See what’s outside the Kingdoms Wall,” is withheld from her.  

Where did Rapunzel’s frustrations go?  At the end of BEA she was determined to prove to her father there was more to her. Yet, she is doing everything she would of normally have done without the black rock incident of BEA.  Many of the restraints from before are still there now.  So, as we enjoy all these wonderful stories I worry for Rapunzel. With BEA giving us such a wonderful picture of her mindset, I wonder if she is closing herself off to these feelings… My worst fear is that the Writers have abandoned them.  As they must now bend a knee to the powerful demands of their Disney Channel overlords, in favor of standard tropes, and serial content, that are good for syndication and cuts down on costs.  I doubt it… but its a constant fear…  Show Runners have little power in the end when facing executives.

Last Thoughts

Even as I apply my critique to these episodes, I do so knowing that as a whole, the series is still great, and I enjoy it.  My love for Animation, and for Disney will not waver, but I am a practical person, one who knows how the world works, how the animation world works, and I will still always have mistrust in DTVA, and Disney Channel… It has a history of mismanagement, and it would be them, not the Tangled: The Series team, that we should all fear. We are talking about the same people who thought making a Decendents 2 was a good idea.  

I’ve been described as mean… I have no animosity to any who think that.  I will still think you are a great fan of Tangled.  I simply picture myself as just misunderstood, like good old Eugene.  I understand people have deep personal and even complex relationships with the series and characters.  That is the Power of storytelling, that is the Power of Disney. One must also realize, and understand, that rational or critical thinking, doesn’t mean I love this series or story any less.  I also understand that nothing is perfect, and I am not demanding this series be perfect.

All I ask, is that they constantly push themselves, that each episode will be better then the last.  Understand that there will be mistakes, and when they do, don’t deny them, overcome them.   I will always maintain that if the entire fanbase was a mass of people nodding their head in agreement to everything that is done, even when we feel something was off is wrong.  It would me the Series didn’t have a healthy fan base… We do a disservice to the creators of the Series, and the Series itself not to be diverse in thought and opinion.  The fandom MUST be rich and dynamic, filled with everything from the mega-fans to the pragmatic.  This is what Tangled The Series has and we are all better for it.

[benrleeusa]

[Ilya Somin] What Elizabeth Warren Gets Wrong About Daenerys Targaryen

Daenerys Targaryen (played by Emilia Clarke).

Massachusetts Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is a big fan of Game of Thrones character Daenerys Targaryen. So am I! It's one of the few things Warren and I have in common (other than support for marijuana legalization, a love of golden retrievers, and both having been law professors). Still, I have several bones to pick with this recent article Warren wrote in praise of the Dragon Queen. Dany is a lot more problematic than Warren suggests—sometimes in ways that reveal flaws in Warren's own worldview.

Before reading further, you should know the rest of this post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones. Yes, SPOILERS. Those who dare complain about the spoilers despite being duly warned will suffer a dire fate similar to that of the Dragon Queen's enemies: Dracarys!

Back to Warren and Daenerys:

Warren writes that Daenerys "doesn't want to be a slave owner or a dictator—and she definitely doesn't want to become her murderous father." One of these things is not like the others. It's too her credit that Daenerys opposes slavery, and has in fact freed many thousands of slaves during her time raising any army on the continent Essos. She isn't called the Breaker of Chains for nothing.  She also has a genuine desire to avoid repeating the horrific errors of her father,  "Mad King" Aerys.

But Daenerys pretty clearly does want to be a "dictator."As she herself notes in the most recent episode of the final season of Game of Thrones, the "one goal" of her life has been to retake the Iron Throne of Westeros. She doesn't seem to have any objection to the vast scope of powers of monarch's powers (it's an absolute monarchy), nor does she believe that the legitimacy of her claim to the throne is dependent on the will of the people. To the contrary, she's more than willing to use heavyhanded coercion to force resisters to "bend the knee." She also rules as a despot during her time governing the territories she conquers in Essos (though somewhat less so in the books by George R.R. Martin than in the HBO show based on them).

Perhaps Daenerys cannot be blamed too much for this. Almost everyone in Westeros favors authoritarianism of one kind or another. The cities of Essos are ruled by narrow oligarchies. But Dany is not an exception to the dominant worldview of her society in this respect. Moreover, she clearly does have a strong love of power, even though she is often able to impose some restraint on the selfish impulses that stem from it.

Warren is right to point out that Dany says she wants to "break the wheel" rather than just continue the same old struggle for power that has devastated Westerosi society. But it's also true she seems to have no notion that doing so requires institutional change, not merely replacing a bad monarch with a good one (preferably herself). I discuss this flaw in her thinking (another she shares with nearly all the other characters on the show) here:

Unlike most of the other rulers we see in the series, Daenerys has at least some genuine interest in improving the lot of ordinary people…

Nonetheless, it is not clear whether Daenerys has any plan to prevent future oppression and injustice other than to replace the current set of evil rulers with a better one: herself. The idea of "breaking the wheel" implies systemic institutional reform, not just replacing the person who has the dubious honor of planting his or her rear end on the Iron Throne in King's Landing. If Daenerys has any such reforms in mind, it is hard to say what they are.

Daenerys most recently restated her desire to break the wheel in episode 4 of season 7, when she announced it to a group of captured enemy soldiers. Immediately afterwards, she proceeded to execute two of the prisoners, Lord Randyll Tarly and his son Dickon, because they refused to swear allegiance to her. Daenerys orders one of her dragons to burn them to death.

Lord Tarly is a far from sympathetic character, one who has committed significant injustices…. Nonetheless, this is an example of Daenerys ordering a brutal execution of prisoners without any due process, primarily because they refused to "bend the knee" to her…. Life and death are still decided by the word of the king or queen, with no institutional safeguard against the abuse of such arbitrary power.

Daenerys' indifference to the need for institutional constraints on government power is, to a great degree, shared by Elizabeth Warren herself.  The latter advocates policies that would massively expand government power  over the economy and society, and over online speech, while imposing few if any new institutional constraints.

Warren's shortcomings in this respect are much less excusable than Daenerys'. Unlike the Dragon Queen, Warren has the benefit of centuries of political and economic theory outlining the need to impose limits on government power and explaining how it can be done.

Warren praises Daenerys' recognition of the threat to humanity from the zombie-like White Walkers and willingness to prioritize it over her personal goal of taking the Iron Throne. The praise is partly justified.  But in the most recent episode of GOT, Dany says she made this decision out of love for Jon Snow, the King of the North, who urges her to deal with the Night Walkers first. Making this sacrifice out of love for her new boyfriend is not quite the same thing as doing it out of a sense of duty to the people of Westeros (though, in fairness, the latter is probably not completely absent). One wonders whether Dany would have made the same decision if she was not attracted to Jon.

Finally, Warren is also right to note that Dany is a much better person, with more admirable motives, than Cersei Lannister, the current occupant of the Iron Throne. But that is damning with faint praise. It is a little like saying Warren herself deserves credit for being a better person than Donald Trump.  She is. But Trump and Cersei are ridiculously low standards of comparison.

Despite her flaws, I still think that Dany is probably the least bad plausible contender for the Iron Throne (assuming the institution of the monarchy continues). Jon Snow, the understandable favorite of many fans, is—to my mind—disqualified by his egregious incompetence as a political and military leader. In that sense, Warren is right to cheer Daenerys' bid for the throne. But, ultimately, we would do better to place our faith in institutional constraints on government power rather than in seemingly heroic leaders—or in politicians who promise to solve all our problems if only we bend the knee.

UPDATE: Reason's Robby Soave has some related thoughts on Warren and Game of  Thrones here.