#and the human characters honestly fall into a similar trope. the human women have *more* personality but still very little.

[marklikely]

on further reflection maybe it isn't out of character that i liked the kens over the barbies when a lot of the joke is how the barbies are all blandly nice and hypercompetent which as you may know is like my single most uninterested gender dynamic for fictional characters

[cursedvibes]

jjk having queer-coded villains seems to be an intentional choice. what are your thoughts on this

Honestly, I think the queer themes and characters we've gotten in jjk are pretty great. Yes, some of them are villains and that is a common harmful trope, but first of all it is not just the villains and second you have to look at how their queerness is portrayed and implemented into their characters.

We have characters like Kirara and Hakari and I think you can count Tengen too, who are queer(-coded) and not villains. Their queerness is pretty explicit in case of Kirara and Tengen with Kirara having clearly transitioned and being some flavour of trans and Tengen also openly stating she's lost interest in gender and is if anything a gnc woman. Queerness is also not their entire character, just one minor aspect of it that is honestly not that important. Tengen being responsible for the creation of jujutsu society and Kirara rebelling against the school and then choosing to aid the kids in the Culling Game is much more significant than their gender. Tengen corrects Yuki about being a man and then we move on, it is not actually a big deal. Yuki is more concerned with Tengen's actions than her gender.

The comment from Panda insisting that Kirara is a guy was weird, but it isn't brought up again, everyone just doesn't gender Kirara when seeing them without making a big deal about how "weird" it is for a presumed guy to have boobs like you might've expected in other pieces of media. The implication here I think is just that Panda hasn't seen Kirara in a while nor knows them very well. The comment was unnecessary in my opinion, you could've shown in a better way that Kirara transitioned, but the way it is treated afterwards makes it better. I think it especially helps that we see Hakari so accepting of Kirara, it is something normal and their relationship is loving. Kirara's gender or presumed sex is no issue at all between them and the other characters just roll with it too.

Same could be said for things like Geto and Gojo's relationship for example, the most prominent example of queer-coding in jjk as is also heavily displayed in marketing for season 2 of the anime. Obvious choice, they are by for the most popular ship and tapping into shipping sells. Their the sasunaru of jjk. I don't think you could call it queerbaiting though because contrary to sasunaru you don't have this "jk they both ended up marrying some random women like the heterosexual men they are" and there are literally no confirmed relationships in jjk anywhere except for the people who are married (and those usually don't love each other). stsg have as much ground to stand on as Kirara/Hakari or Muta/Miwa. They are milking that money cow, but with the way it is handled in canon, it doesn't bother me much ignoring their fanbase.

Another aspect we see in stsg that also applies to how we see queerness in some of the villains is that their relationship (of whatever nature that might be) is there to humanize both Gojo and Geto. There is actually some meaning to it, not just shipper bait or an insane villain being gay and that being included as another aspect of him being reproachful like you see with many Disney villains. Geto's bond with Gojo (and his family) is portrayed as the last bits of sanity left in him and also any criticism you'd leverage against that could apply to Gojo as well, a main character.

Similar with the queerness of the other villains. It is either an unimportant detail of their identity or it is actively used to humanize them. Uraume's gender is purposefully unconfirmed, nobody even makes any assumptions and that fact is about as important as their hair colour. It's just part of their identity, nothing more. It is not portrayed as predatory or used for any "trap" jokes. At least not in canon, the fandom is its own beast and I think their behaviour comes from what they are used to seeing in other media not due to anything done in jjk.

Kashimo falls into the same category of unconfirmed gender. Fans and some fantranslators assume Kashimo is a man based on what they looked like in the past, but it is actually never confirmed in the manga. Neither Hakari or anyone else ever genders Kashimo. There being no assumptions made or their possible gender or androgynous appearance discussed. People just roll with it and it isn't made to stand out in the story. I don't think you can even call Kashimo a villain, more like an antagonist similar to Higuruma was one with selfish morality. Their gender or appearance doesn't play into that at all.

With Kenjaku I guess you could see them taking over Kaori as predatory towards Jin, but it is played different than the common tropes. For one, Jin is as it seems aware of the change, just chooses to ignore it. It isn't played as a "man tricked other man into sex" or "man disguised as a woman", in fact the story goes quite out of its way to state that Kenjaku isn't (cis) male actually. Both Wasuke and Jin address Kenjaku as a women, even when they have suspicions. Kaori stays in some form with Kenjaku, she isn't just a cheap disguise and pregnancy overall is an important topic for Kenjaku both in good and bad ways. When Kenjaku says "thank you for getting along with my son" it is the first big step towards giving Kenjaku more depth than just them being a big bad mastermind. Kenjaku cares in some way for their child and doesn't just see him as a test subject. So the time in Kaori's body clearly had value to them as well beyond just getting a vessel for Sukuna. Same goes for their meeting with Takaba for example, which is the biggest example we got so far of Kenjaku being proven to care about other people and gaining depth through it. Their relationship with Tengen could count as well.

So the queer aspects we got of Kenjaku are there, but they aren't shown in canon to be something strange, quite the opposite usually. I think you see it best when you compare Kenjaku to Orochimaru, who clearly, as stated by Gege too, is a big influence for the character. Orochimaru has the body of a woman in the first part of the series, takes over the bodies of children and shows interest in Sasuke that is often seen as gay. Orochimaru is portrayed as predatory particularly towards children/boys, a persistent stereotype of gay and/or effeminate men as well as trans people. When Orochimaru reveals in the fight against Hiruzen that he inhabits the body of a woman, the characters around are disgusted and not only because this means another person's body was violated, the uncertainty of Orochimaru's gender unsettles them. You see the same thing in Boruto. Multiple characters make mean or disgusted comments about Orochimaru because they can't tell their gender and the whole "are you a man or a woman, a father or a mother" gets pushed a lot, often used as a joke. Mitsuki is being supportive and corrects people, but that doesn't stop Orochimaru's gender being brought up almost every time they feature in the series. "omg I can't tell this person's gender this is so weird and creepy" don't you have more pressing concerns like the fetuses swimming in those tanks or the human cloning?

Compared to that, Kenjaku is handled much better. There is no weird fixation on children, they have only taken over adults from what we've seen so far (due to the size of their brain and it being a real organ I think that is even a necessity) and the bodies are also mainly there for practical needs, Kenjaku isn't shown lusting after them no matter the person's gender. Choso goes from assuming Kenjaku is Yuuji's father to calling them a parent. It isn't commented on, we just assume Tengen informed him. Kenjaku being revealed to be Yuuji's mother isn't shocking because "wtf that's a man in a woman's body", it is more so about the implications of them being related. It is also used to show that Kenjaku is actually not a cis man (everyone at that time even doubting Wasuke uses she/her naturally with Kenjaku not objecting to it despite not really pretending to be Kaori) and by being his mother they have a closer personal connection to Yuuji. The fandom usually puts more harmful tropes into this moment than there actually are in the manga. I'm pretty sure Yuuji was more concerned about Kenjaku actually being related to him than Kenjaku being his mother aka exhibiting a gender he might not have expected. The "my father is your mother that's so mind-boggling and weird" is something that only exists in fandom. I don't see a reason why Choso or Yuuji would care and everyone else even less.

Takaba putting Kenjaku in a nurse outfit is also only portrayed as another fun part of their shenanigans, being neither overly sexualized nor seen as off-putting or weird. I think it was actually put there because Gege wanted to emphasize once more that having a female body doesn't unsettle Kenjaku, they see it as normal. It is part of their identity, but that itself isn't the thing being made fun of, it's a joke about sexy nurses that's detrimental to Takaba if anything.

In the same way, Kenjaku being pregnant with Tengen isn't made a big deal either beyond what it means for the Culling Game or the merger. It isn't a strange pregnant man, just another instance of pregnancy symbolism in this manga where cursed wombs are quite a common thing. And Kenjaku's whole deal is motherhood, birth and pregnancy down to the choice of their name, which is derived from an ambiguously gendered or Virgin Mary-adjacent bodhisattva. These pregnancy themes are shown as both a good thing and a bad thing depending on the context and not on principle as disgusting or bad. Kenjaku's gender fluidity has thematic relevance, but it isn't mocked or portrayed as bad by itself.

Beyond Uraume, Kenjaku and maybe Geto depending on how you look at it, I don't think there are any other queer-coded villains? Mahito was a high school girl for a juju sanpo, but that episode was more wholesome if anything and I think it was just there to show his fluidity in sex and gender. Once again not mocked or brought up as a reason for why he's evil (she isn't even that evil in that high school AU).

So yeah, I don't see a problem here, I actually wish more mangas or animes would portray queer characters this way. Make sure villains aren't the only queer characters, don't make queerness their entire character trait and treat the characters with respect.

[court-artist-under-the-stars]

Ooc // pre-tumblr, I actually had multiple stories! Not listed chronologically.

Anti-government multiverse theory story about four queer teenagers with various powers and their maze headquarters

An AU (???) of above story where two of the teenagers fall in love in, like, the most fanfic-tropey way possible (Some tropes include: Meeting in a coffee shop (one working there, the other being a sleep-starved college student), fake dating (for a ball), one of them Getting Sick and the other helping, one teaching the other how to do their version of art, etc.)

A story where a guy and girl fall in love but oops girl has Deadly Flower Disease (not the hanahaki thing) and dies before he can tell her he loves her

Very happy-go-lucky girl manages to have a (female) demon fall in love with her and have said demon banished from hell for falling in love with a human

Above story having demons be dead children?? Specifically this demon being a “demon of regret”, where a miscarried (/aborted? I’m not sure past me knew what abortion WAS) child was a “child of regret” and having a different look to other demons

Two magic twins, the god of magical knowledge and the goddess of magical energy. One cannot exist without the other, and with either gone, magic will be undone completely

Said two magic twins falling in love with two different characters: the goddess falling for a necromancer/bard combo, and the god falling for a prince, that, due to a controlling mother figure (not even his real mother, son of two women but kidnapped as a baby), could not speak “the common tongue”, and could only speak in an ancient language

A story where you (aka y/n) were roommates with a persona at the time, who had magical powers similar to error sans (I was an undertale fan pre-tumblr), but was corrupted by Shadow Magic Creecher and eventually succumbs to her corruption (this one I can talk about for AGES it was so fleshed out)

Different anti-government story about a teenager with powers finding out they’re destined to die and make the afterlife better for everyone, with more like, fluff in-between their plot points (Their villainous mentor figure finding love in a past rival and their sister figure fucking killing a guy out of revenge for her sister). This one is the most recent, and I can still probably make something out of this

Vague fairy species, positivity, negativity, and Bambi, one dying quickly, one living a human lifespan, and one who’s actively poached and hunted

And more!

Honestly, I can look through the old notebooks I had in 2021 and vaguely give you a description of Every Story I Ever Thought Up

[theoneeyedwriter]

this is a reminder, PSA, reassurance etc etc for anybody who is second guessing their plot.

just because you are writing a book that contains:

a school for magic users

witches, wizards, magical folk

a summer camp (or just camp)

gods/goddesses (Greek Norse etc etc)

people who control the elements

people who hunt demons and other supernatural creatures

people in a dystopian society who break away from the government

people who live in a weird paranormal town

a horror/mystery with terrifying supernatural creatures

a main character who is not female

a main character with dead or missing parents

a character who lives with an abusive parent, family member, or guardian

does not mean it is:

a rip off harry potter (you could probably do better than rowling anyway)

popular and already seen a thousand times

copying Camp Half-Blood or the Parent Trap

a badly written Percy Jackson

an avatar knock off

stolen from the plot of supernatural or shadow hunters

basic, unrealistic, overused

taken from Tim Burton movies or Gravity Falls

trying to be Stephen King or Dean Koontz

sexist, anti-women

stereotypical, a sympathy trap, a typical sob story

inappropriate for younger audiences, a knock version of the Dursley’s or Al Marsh

but it does make it:

magical, a new glimpse at a new magical world, most likely 500x better than rowling’s

witches, wizards and magic folk will never go out of style. magic is so fucking cool and has so much potential for new and different plots, characters etc

fun!! who doesn’t love summer camps in books?? au’s? actual plot settings?? summer camp settings are amazing, top notch, just *chefs kiss*

i mean, we all love loki, so why not give us stories about his kids?? not necessarily fan fic, but seriously, ancient gods and goddesses are so dope and really deserve more modern books written about them.

not used often, and so cool to see societies built around the elements! i don’t think we’ve gotten enough content of different worlds that have powers withdrawn from elements, it’s such a cool and untouched area of magic!!

never overused. i could read books about supernatural creature hunters for the rest of my life. you can make your own creatures!! and add cool human-monster hybrids. god, the possibilities are limitless

weird paranormal towns are just the best. who doesn’t love weird, run down, and low populated towns with a complex supernatural backstory that revolves is crazy shit happening all the time?? if you don’t, you have no taste. sorry but, i don’t make the rules. paranormal small towns always have been and always will be the shit so please keep writing more

BE THE NEXT BIG HORROR WRITER. horror is such a complex genre to write and i honestly admire everyone who can write horror. i don’t think there’s nearly enough horror content coming out these days. give me more, MORE. nothing in that genre is overrated, write about vampires for all i care, sure it’s been done a thousand times, but with your own twist added, you can make something never seen before

i am a female. i dont get offended by main character being anything but. yes, there are far more male mcs than female, (in more popular modern literature) (and don’t get me started about the unrepresentation for non-binary, gender fluid, trans etc in literature. i will never stop ranting about it) but that doesn’t mean not making your mc female a crime.

dead parents are a common way of portraying a mc’s loneliness, lack of affection, lack of restraint, lack of a good parental figure. but, it can also be a good way to represent other things like their relationship with and other family member/guardian, that you’re parental figure doesn’t need to be a blood related parent. honestly, keep the dead parents trope comin, those kids are always awesome anyway

extremely realistic. not everyone has a perfect home life, and it’s important to see that in literature as well. who knows, if your mc escapes their abusive guardian, friend, significant other, it opens up the possibility to helping other in similar situations.

and most important of all, every single wip out there is:

unique

amazing

special

appreciated

awesome

dope as fuck

deserving of awards, praise, and popularity

not to be given up on

important

different

unlike anything else

loved, wanted, and needed

please don’t give up on your wip. it’s all of the above, and really deserves to see the light of being completed, ravished, praised, appreciated. someone out there will love it, i’m sure of that. so keep creating, keep being awesome, and keep fucking writing. :)

[neversetyoufree]

I read the vanitas manga it's feels like queer bait to me, so many straight kisses but no gay ones? Vanitas & noe dancing is just more bait, Luna is a genderless vampire (non human) and that's it, everything else is bait just like the creator's last work

I've seen other blogs getting similar asks, so to be honest, I suspect that this isn't being sent in good faith. However, on the off-chance that this is a genuine question, or that anyone reading this has similar concerns, I'll try my best to answer this properly.

1. VnC is still a work in progress. Literally anything could happen before the ending, including canon queer people, and given the subtext we've seen so far, there's a part of me that's hopeful for it. If there were ever a shonen manga with a chance to give us legitimate rep among major characters, I feel this could be the one. I'm not going to say that just because a series so far hasn't had any explicit queer relationships, it never will.

I mean hell, just look at the show Hannibal. It's a gay love story, but the main characters spend the first season and a half getting romantically involved with a woman. One of them even gets straight married. These things happen, y'know? And even if we never see a kiss or anything, that doesn't mean something can't still be rep in a meaningful way.

2. As I've said before, even if we never do get more explicit representation than we have right now, this series will still be a very welcoming one to queer people in a way that I think is important. There is a lot of casual, subtle homophobia in the world of fiction, and VnC has had every opportunity to fall into those tropes, but it never does, and I think that's worth something in itself.

I think it’s valuable that we get to see a woman flirting with other women, and the joke isn’t “haha gay girls, that’s weird.” The only joke is how flustered the girls she flirts with get, because Domi is charming and forward. I think it’s valuable that we can see a couple of dudes dancing together, and nobody makes a thing out of it. There’s no commentary about how it looks gay. Neither guy is uncomfortable. They just. ballroom dance, and it’s fine. This may be hard to articulate well, but even if we never get Vanoé romance, and there’s nothing gay about that scene, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still feel queer. I think the more we get to see that kind of casual same sex intimacy, whether it ends up romantic or platonic, the more welcoming the world becomes to actual gay people, because it does a lot to normalize that kind of interaction. So while you may disagree, I think that scene has a lot of worth.

3. I don’t know where you’re from, anon, but personally, I am pretty uncomfortable accusing MochiJun of queerbaiting, because I come from a wildly different cultural context. I am a whole-ass American, and though there are some especially obvious cases that I’ve joked about in the past, I am not qualified to try and have an actual educated discussion about queerbaiting in Japanese media. I’m not educated enough about gay rights and culture there. I don’t know what actual Japanese queer people would and would not consider good rep. I don’t know what issues people there are concerned with.

Plus, like, queerbaiting is a marketing tactic more than anything else. The issue comes from when you try to lure in an audience by signaling that your work is queer, then double back on that promise. It is entirely possible, though rare, perhaps, for an author to write something full of goddamn subtext without fully intending to do that. For a famous example, just look at the original Sherlock Holmes (the books, not the BBC show). A lot of people have read queerness in Sherlock and his relationship with Watson over the years (and funnily enough, Noé and Vani were conceived of as a Holmes and Watson relationship), but I’m not about to accuse Arthur Conan Doyle of queerbaiting, y’know? I’m not convinced that Mochijun has ever tried to hook people in under a false promise/suggestion of rep, which is what the real issue would be.

So like, without a better knowledge of Japanese queer culture/representation and a closer understanding of Mochijun’s own intentions with this series, “bait” is not an accusation I feel either of us should be making, anon.

4. It’s been a while since I last read the series, so perhaps I’m forgetting something, but I am legitimately racking my brain trying to figure out what in Pandora Hearts you’d consider queerbait, and I am coming up empty. The series doesn’t really have any representation in it, but it never tried to suggest that that wouldn’t be the case, and I cannot remember anything that ever toed the line of getting gay. If you’d like to tell me what exactly you mean when you say “just like the creator’s last work,” please feel free, because I am genuinely rather confused.

And if this was, in fact, a bad-faith ask rather than someone legitimately concerned or confused, then it is at this point I’d like to ask you to politely fuck off and please stop messaging people. As I said, I’ve seen at least one other person get a very similar message to this, which makes me suspect that you, anon, might be the same asker, which is honestly quite sad. Do you genuinely have nothing better to do with your time than try to make random strangers on the internet feel bad about the things they like? Is making ill-informed accusations of queerbaiting fun for you? Get a hobby bud.

[beccanoodles]

Spike and Faye Pairing Analysis

March 2021

Ah the hit or miss pairing of the century! If you don’t love it, you probably hate it lol. I’m a very analytical person so I love analyzing works of art and overall enjoy deep discussions about them too. I have SO much to say when it comes to Cowboy Bebop (and oh I plan to), but I have decided to start with my very own OTP. Here, I am not really going to discuss Spike and Faye’s feelings for each other, but rather why I think people are drawn to this pairing and why I think they're totally valid. Get ready for a long read!😁

⚠️SPOILER WARNING!!! [Major Cowboy Bebop and the movie Out of the Past spoilers]⚠️

First off, let’s clear something up. I am confident most of us can agree that Spike was in love with Julia. Some people assume Spike and Faye fans are deranged and disregard Spike and Julia’s romantic relationship to try and make something of Spike and Faye that never was. While some people may have their various theories and opinions on this, generally, I don’t think anyone denies Spike’s love for Julia. As we will see, this pairing is not really driven by who loves who...let’s first look on the surface.

I don’t know your experiences with the series, but in mine, every time I show this to people it never fails for someone to say something along the lines of,

“Wait, they don’t end up together?”

“Why didn’t he kiss her!?”

“He should have stayed with her...”

and so fourth. 

Naturally, this pairing catches many eyes. 

Think about it, you are given two really cool, really hot and really deep characters that are really fun to see together! There are so many parallels between the two and they are arguably the strongest characters of the bunch. Granted, you can agree with this and still not ship them, but these aspects are part of what opens up the door for many fans of the pairing.

However, there is certainly more to this pairing than them simply looking good together right? As the years pass and I’ve now seen the show multiple times, my understanding of it has evolved in many areas, Spike and Faye included. 

Spike and Faye really couldn’t have ended up together. Sure, it’s a nice thought, but It would have been an entirely different show if they had. I don’t feel that the show should have happened any other way and I don’t think many other fans would either. 

So, what am I saying here?

What’s the point of this paring if I don’t think they should have ended up together? 

It is what's so frustrating about them, yet keeps you coming back and what honestly validates this pairing in my opinion. Spike and Faye are not driven by what is, but rather, what could be.  

I personally feel the themes of classic film Noir are not discussed enough when it comes to Cowboy Bebop! This is one of the show's major influences, especially when it comes to the plot and characters.

One of the common tropes of a film noir is that of a protagonist who is drawn back into his past and ultimate doom, usually by the “seduction” of a femme fatale. In these movies, the women are either a femme fatale [devious, dangerous, mysterious, greedy, troubled, or unreliable] or a woman of virtue [reliable, dutiful, trustworthy, conventional and loving]. 

I am going to use the 1947 classic, Out of the Past to make my comparisons from here on out.

In Out of the Past, Jeff is a former detective who gets caught up in a love triangle between a gangster and his girlfriend Kathie, sound familiar? He attempts to run away with her, but is betrayed and runs off to start a new life in a new town. Here, he meets Ann and falls in love with her, but of course, his past catches up to him and he is drawn back into the world of criminals (largely by Kathie’s involvement). This ultimately results in his and Kathie’s deaths and Ann’s heartbreak. 

Even though Kathie is the femme fatale in this movie, I found myself comparing her more to Julia’s role in the show, than to Faye’s and I found that Faye actually fit best in Ann’s role (this is a bit unusual considering Faye is typically seen as the femme fatale of this show).

Does that mean I think Julia was as ill intentioned as Kathie or that Spike fell in love with Faye? Well, not exactly, let’s look at it a bit further.

“The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can’t leave alone...Like an angel from the underworld or a devil from paradise.”

Most of what we get about Julia is from Spike’s point of view. From this, we learn she is at the center of Vicious and Spike’s conflict, but aside from that she is basically depicted as “The Virtuous Woman” of a noir. The colors around her are warm and she is shown caring for Spike. There is an innocence and modestly about her as well.

Yet, when we finally do meet Julia, we get a different image. We know she is tied up with dangerous men, but is she herself a dangerous woman?

She is certainly capable of betrayal. 

Suddenly she is a bad-ass-gun-toting woman in leather and black, surrounded by hues of grey and dark blue. Intentional or not, Julia is a major part of what lures Spike back into the past and ultimately to his death. In this case, Julia is the femme fatale of Spike’s story and thus, their relationship is doomed from the start.

Faye, on the other hand, is portrayed in somewhat of a contrast. When we first meet her, she is the clear cut femme fatale, appearing cunning, strong willed and seductive. However, we soon find that she has quite a bit of kindness and naivety hidden behind her facade. She uses the former tactics as a way of emotional (and probably physical) protection. Gren points this out in his conversation with her. 

Gren, 

“You’re just afraid they’d abandon you so you abandoned them. You distanced yourself from the whole thing.”

As the show progresses, we start to see less of her “femme fatale nature” and something more genuine. Think about it, between Hard Luck Woman and RFB Part 2 we don’t see much of Faye as her typical conniving or unreliable self, aside from changing the course of the Bebop maybe. Sure she takes off, but it isn’t at all for the same reasons she did in Jupiter Jazz or Speak Like a Child, for example. 

I would argue we actually see her more trustworthy and caring than ever. Since I don’t want to spend too much time talking about Faye’s character development (not here at least) I’ll give one example of this. 

When she returns to the Bebop after her encounter with Julia in RFB Part 1, she gives Spike the message, even though the outcome might hurt her (i.e. he leaves and/or dies). While she does first say “It’s gonna cost you,” she doesn’t really mean it because she tells him without hesitation only moments later.

This isn’t to say Faye good, Julia bad. Both women have their layers and even though we know way more about Faye, I don’t get the impression that Julia is selfish and cunning like Kathie was. But I do get the feeling she was enclosed in a world of crime and betrayal the way Kathie was. We really only know the basics of Spike and Julia’s situation. Who knows the details like motive or how long it lasted etc. etc. We can only speculate...

There is a scene towards the end of Out Of The Past, where Kathie tells Jeff to go away with her. This time it is her asking him, just like Julia asks Spike. During this she mentions,

“I never told you I was anything but what I am, you just wanted to imagine I was. That’s why I left you.”

This got me thinking...did Spike imagine Julia as something she wasn’t? Or something he wanted her to be that she just couldn’t be? 

It could explain why we get such contrasted images of her.

There are themes of this “dreamlike” relationship between Jeff and Kathie, similar to Spike and Julia’s “It was all a dream.”

The two of them were going to “live and be free,” probably something neither of them knew how to do and most likely wouldn’t have been able to get away with.

When Jet asks Spike if he can just forget the past, this is his answer.

Spike,

“There was a woman. For the first time in my life I saw a woman that was truly alive. At least that’s what I thought. She was the part of me I had lost, that part that was missing, that I had been longing for.”

I always wondered about this, because Spike is clearly talking about Julia, but right after is when Faye shows up. To me, that spoke volumes...

Faye is a woman who is terribly human and terribly alive.

Going back to Faye and Ann, I find their similarities shine not so much in the “Virtuous Woman,” concept, but rather in Ann’s dedication to Jeff and her optimism for the future. She is also the last person to talk to Jeff before he leaves for the final time, as if he were being presented with one last alternative. Spike spends his last moments with Faye as well, in which she basically begs him not to go and keep him in the present that she has now discovered for herself. She may be stuck, but she is definitely someone that yearns for human connection, love, and life.

The problem is, Spike and Faye are both set in opposite directions. Her’s leads to a future and Spike knows this because he points it out early on (My Funny Valentine). He also knows, his most likely does not. He has already dug himself too deep into this hole, if you will, that there is really no turning back. 

But let’s say none of that was an issue? What could be?

I sat and watched this movie (Out of the Past) with my mom. She didn’t know anything about it and didn’t know why I was watching it. I wanted her genuine reaction. The whole time she was getting mad at Jeff until the very end. I asked her why and she said that she wanted him to be able to live happily with Ann. I explained to her why he had to do what he did. She understood this, but still couldn’t help but be sad at how things turned out for him, when they could have been good.

Even though Kathie and Jeff are the “lovers,” of this movie, you don’t really want them to end up together. Forget that Kathie has a devious nature, regardless, you know where it has to end and you don’t want to see your hero die.

Like Kathie, Julia symbolizes Spike’s inevitable doom and Like Ann, Faye symbolizes his possible future. 

“I’ll be with you till the end”

                           “You’re the one still tied to the past Spike!”

                                                               “Why do you have to go? Where are you going? What are you gonna do, just throw your life away like it was nothing?!”

It’s two sides of a sad coin...

We want Spike to have a future and because we love the characters of the show, it would be really great if he could have it with them, but that is where the tragedy is. It's only an idea we can think about, a possibility presented to us as it was to Jeff and Spike before their deaths.

The bottom line is, when it comes to Spike and Faye you are really only given a taste. You are not given what you expect to see, which is why I say this ship is driven by what could be. As it is with most of the character relationships in the show, no major breakthroughs are made until the very end, when it's too late. Then it just feels like such wasted potential, but sometimes in life, that's how it is. And thus, we have been given a very classic noir here ladies and gentlemen!

So no, I don’t think people miss the mark when they ship Spike and Faye, nor do I find they invalidate the show by any means. I kind of like that Watanabe switched it up and didn’t do the expected, but left us those subtle hints. He didn’t outright give Spike another lover, but he gave us someone that represents what he could have. Kind of does that with the crew as a whole too!

UGH. I love-hate this show and I love this pairing! Thank you for reading my thoughts and I know this may not be the case or reasoning for everyone, but just based on what I have seen around the community and where this show draws inspiration, this is what I have concluded. I didn’t get into Spike and Faye’s feelings for each other because it gets a little more theoretical there, but I would like to do a post on my thoughts on that as well sometime. I also didn’t touch too much on Spike’s reasoning for choosing to face Vicious in the end, just because I know that will only lead into a whole other analysis lol. But you know I have my thoughts on that and certainly plan to share them 😎 Also, I know I basically spoiled it, but Out of the Past is such a great movie!! I think if you’re a fan of this show it's definitely worth a watch! There are so many more parallels to Cowboy Bebop that I didn’t even mention. Anyways, thanks again and talk to you soon!

[inessencedevided]

Ah, but what scenes in particular did you enjoy? The wangxian ones in general? Or were there any particular ones that stuck with you?

-the axe cultivator

Oh, ac, I missed some of your question last time didn't I? So sorry. My head is kinda in the clouds these days

There are so many scenes that stuck with me, so I'll make a bullet list and probably still miss some ^^

It's such a small thing but in ep 1 the transition from the tale of how wei wuxian was killed transitions to the tea house via a shit from within sizhui's trea cup as he's pouring tea "onto the camera". It's nothing special but remember loving that shot so much the first time I watched that it was one of the things that kept me watching

Wangxian-wise in the first two episodes, I'd be remiss not to mention that handgrip when wei wuxian plays wangxian to calm wen ning down. Because it goes on ... and on ... and on. When I watched it for the first time I was like "ooohhhh so it's gonna be this kind of gay". You know the endless-longing-stares kind. And now when I rewatch it's just devastating. The last time they saw each other before this scene, they also held onto each others wrists but wei wuxian let go and fell to his death. And here lan zhan is, holding on for minutes and only let's go once jiang cheng threatens wei wuxian. Just ... 💔

i started shipping xiyao from their very furst sxebe together. Those two actors (i try to remeber their names but i always forget them again. My memory is shit when it comes to names :/) really just did want some of that sweet sweet homoerotic tension. Also, their first interaction stand out to me as the moment i really started to like lan xichen. In a setting that was shown early on to be highly hierarchical, he exhibited in the very forst scenes that he is willing to disregard someone's standing and look at their character and abilities instead. I just really love xichen ❤

Okay, i can't name one scene per episode, so let’s sum them up a little

I adore this progression during the cloud recesses and the yin iron arc from a flirtratious rivalry to genuine deep freindship and love. There are so many little moments that stand out because of the subtle acting joices made my wang yibo and xiao zhan, as well as the script, The lantern scene, when Wei Wuxian doesn’t betray the yin iron secret to huaisang and lan wangji goes “hu, so your bullshitting has reasons”, when they are in the market and lan zhan actually communicates that he doesn’t like crowds and wei wuxian pulls him closer but not into the crowd and so many others. When you watch closely, you see them realising little details about each other and I’m honestly so impressed with how amazingly the process of their falling in love was portrayed

fast forward a bit: obviously, the freaking montage quasi-fan vid in the middle of the cave scene set to their freaking love song. I remeber when I first watched this scene I actually, literally screamed. I could not believe it because their was no fucking way that this could be read as anything but romantic and I was not used to that much blatant queer romance!

A little less happy (okay a lot). The entire destruction of the jiang clan with a special mention to the scene when Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian just saw the bodies and run into fields where they fight and Jiang Cheng chokes Wei Wuxian and then they just fall back in exhaustion and sleep right there under the open sky. Everything about that scene was brilliantly done and also soul-crushing. The loss of innosence in that moment devastated me. It was so obvious that in the moment of deepest despair, all of these children’s traumas and deep-seated fears reared their ugly heads. So Jiang Cheng directs all his grief at the easiest target for his anger and Wei Wuxian just takes it because that is what he thinks is his job. And the real tragedy? This dynamic will not be broken until Wei Wuxian’s literal death. These children need therapy so goddamn badly and all they get is more trauma on top of their excisting trauma.

“The single log bridge” scene. I. Am. A. Sucker for the found family trope, especially for characters who cronically think they have to do everything on their own. So there Wei Wuxian is saying he will walk his dark path alone, but instead he finds lit lanterns and a humble feast prepared for him by people who love him. That juxtaposition kils. me. every. time. YOU ARE LOVED WEI WUXIAN! FOR YOURSELF!

(Shout out to the second time his word are refuted, this time by lan wangji and *gasp* verbally. Because there is NO better love declaration than that scene in front of basically every leader of cultivation world who politely wait for their turn to attack them)

Luo Qingyang removing herself from the narrative. I literally cry every time.

Talking about women: jiang yanli defending wei wuxian and calling him her brother. That moment is the "three things all wise men fear" quite incarnat, only it's the anger of a gentle woman

“Let me go” So ... I have SUCH a thing for couple who grapple with questions of when it is time to let go and when it is time to hold on. So Wangxian hits all my buttons. I will go further into this in my last bullet point (about the very last scene)

Oh god, this list is gonna get so long and i’m still going to forget things

In the present timeline:

Again, to sum it up, all the gentle wangxian moment where they look at each other and their entire face grows soft. Every almost-smile lan wangji sends wei wuxian, every "oh. He really loves me huh?"-look from wei wuxian. Especially in the Jingshi just after lan Xichen's loredrop. These two intensly guarded people (yes, wei wuxian is guarded,he just hides behind smiles) are so open with each other. I only have to see a guf of lan wangji with his heir down and I go feral!

Talking about that episode, the lan family backstory as a scene does things to me. And I remember watching that the first time and so much of lan wangji's behaviour suddenly making sense. Especially little lan zhan kneeling in front of his mother’s house and that being how he showed his grief really drove home just how this man exhibits emotion. I'm pretty sure that that was the moment he really became my favourite character.

Same episode and a start juxtaposition to the domestic scene between wangxian before: the talk between lan xichen and Jin Guangyao just afterwards. You could probably write an essay of meta about the parallels and differences between those two scenes and I think that's deliberate because they're back to back. The lan brother's share tea with the person closest to their hearts. One is finally able to open himself fully, the other closes up more than he ever has before with this person. The framing in that scene alone drives that message home, never mind its content. It's heart-wrenching and so well done!

Talking about xiyao: jin guangyao's death for similar reasons. Just ... arrrgh

I'm sure I've missed a ton but thus is already so long so I'll close with my favourite overall: the last scene. The parting and subsequent reunion on the mountaintop. I've stated before why this means so much to me. It is such a reassuring message to me: to have two intensely different people learn to understand and love each other exactly as they are. Being who they are, the occasionally walk different paths. But they don't limit each other. They learn to improve each other by just being there when they are and therefore know and trust that their love will return.

This was mostly cql because you asked for "scenes", but have some honorary novel mentions:

Lan Wangji: "The face says nothing. Listen to the heart-beat." 😭😭😭

The moment when wei wuxian collapses after the second siege and lan sizhui expresses surprise over this, lan wangji says something like "We are all human." I love that moment for many reasons. 1) it's one of the rare direct insights into lan wangji's thoughts. No matter how brief he is here, you don't say something like that just because. 2) and it's significant that he is the one saying it because he, too, is placed on a pedestal. In fact, I think a lot about mdzs boils down to the conflict between the inner self and outer perception and how that dichotomy can be both a deliberate shield (lan zhan being the perfect example) and a curse

I hope you and your axe are having a wonderful day 🥰

[goblinconceivable]

oh ffs, i have feels but also head exploded

So basically someone liked a story I wrote a million years ago and mostly forgotten about, and when that happens I often reread the thing.  (I can’t be the only one who does that...)  Can’t say I’ve thought about Alex/Izzie since I wrote it, couldn’t even tell you when I stopped watching the show, though I think it was before her cancer.

Anyway I infected myself with feels for them again.  And I dig the style I was using, 1+1 started a third chapter for funsies and should have stopped there.  Because I did some reading and watched some clips and it’s all too much and when that happens I meta.

Usual mishmash, structure desired but no work put into achieving it.  Classic brain dump.

Okay, fundamentals first.  I am for now ignoring how Izzie/KH left the show.  Because they had to exit her somehow and I’m sure Shonda was pissed at her, (or was leaving the door open for her return but I doubt it.)  Haven’t seen it, if I needed to I could work it into my conception of their whole arc, but since I’m more critically hung up before that point, not worrying about it.

What’s got me messed up is that RIGHT AFTER Izzie promised to not go crazy, she... went crazy.  Like, WTF was that about?  I get that GA is all about the soapy drama, that is why I stopped watching.  First couple seasons: brilliant.  Downhill from there.  But two things:

1) We never get to see these two happily together.  One hot second and bam.***  Every.  Time.  Shonda allowed it for Meredith and Derek, but in my brain other couples got it for periods of time at the least.  But these two, nope.  And know what?  THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN FASCINATING TO WATCH.  I could delve into this and might swing back around but trying to hit highlights.

2) It set them on two different storylines instead of one.  And Izzie got the short stick.  Yes I can see how it works on paper, but not on screen.  There are limits to the visual medium and limits to how much screen time they were given, which pretty much destroy the ability to nuance something this complex.  

a) Izzie’s in her own world dealing with a ghost and is basically in two relationships at once (mental note to look for parallels with Alex’s exit and Jo v Izzie.)  Except one’s a dream and the other is a reality that is still developing, yet she can’t give attention to.  She has to fight every time to be there for Alex in the real world, and we don’t really get to explore her struggle.  It often just looks like distraction and distance and him being second right after she firmly laid out that she cares about him.

b) Alex is in a relationship and is super happy and excited and wants the perfection he’s dreamed about to be real so much he’s overlooking everything that’s off.  In his own little dream world I guess, but like, the whole thing skews into this being the story of Alex while Izzie is wandering in circles somewhere over in that direction, all serving the purpose of advancing exploration and development of Alex’s character.  When did KH ask to be let out?  If it was after this point, Shonda svcks.  I mean, it is cool to watch him really blossom, but since he’s doing it under his own steam I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth.  Because he’s not really in a real relationship.  I want to see him get that, I want to see it for real.

***What IS interesting, I’ll admit, is that when they’re not together, they’re beautiful.  Which is most of the time, so they gave me that.  I’m a massive fan of the bittersweet, the star crossed, the never-quite-on-the-same-page, the nuance, the “it’s a deeper connection, a deeper love than just romance.”  Thank gosh, it is time for excited thoughts.  Because there is a strong friendship and mutual reliance and helping each other grow, pushing and giving hard truths and encouragement, and yes romance is woven through this but not the genesis and used more in terms of nudging everything along the path.

I love that Alex basically imprints on Izzie.  I love that he loves her the whole time.  But he’s willing to step back.  He may get jealous and resentful and petty and scared and mean.  But those are natural human emotions, Izzie gets them too, and they’re fundamental to his character and through those things he learns and grows.  Izzie doesn’t make him.  She entices him.  Yeah, often directs him, especially at first.  But at some point he’s growing on his own, in fits and starts, in reaction to his own emotions.

For example, when Izzie tells him she slept with George, he gets pissed, but also admits why pretty readily.  And he tells her the truth, remarkably straightforwards.  He reaches out to her a lot.  And she turns him aside a lot.  And he keeps loving.  Even if romance is off the table.  He runs after her a lot.  Sits next to her when she’s upset a lot.  Is understanding a lot.  He’s different with her, and look I’m a fangirl, it’s a trope, I swallow bait line and hook.  Which should be bait hook and line if my vague understanding of fishing is correct.  I fished once, with safety implements, and still cried even as they removed the fish and popped it back into the water.  (Okay I just reread to sort out where I’d gotten too and it’s hook line and sinker.  Statistically someone will probably read this someday, you have my full permission to laugh at me.  Anyway...)

The quintessential moment, the revved to 100, of course being when Izzie is clinging to a dead Denny.  They’re all standing around.  No one even looks surprised with jilted Alex talks to her.  In a really caring way.  And this is still fairly early on, wasn’t watching anything but their scenes but this had to be rare sight eh?  (Mebbe?)  And then he picks her up and sits down holding her and she clings and cries and like symbolism and could essay that but not going to right now because the broad relevant stroke is that Alex loves Izzie selflessly.  And this is the pinpoint core of why I can buy his ending, because he can’t NOT love Izzie.  I don’t think he even wants to stop.  Though he can set it down in his heart and let her go and doesn’t pine.  But he never stops loving her and it’s so many kinds of love imperfectly yet perfecly forged.

Forged.  But also born.  Stars uncrossed.  I have emotions without words and if I try I’ll never get out of it to move on, so moving on.

(Oh, George telling Alex to talk to Izzie because she won’t talk to him about whatever it was.  Isn’t is crazy that Izzie’s emotional squishy bestie goes to the emotionally stunted bad boy to help her because...  it’s an understanding of the two-way Izzie/Alex bond, but also this crazy trust that Alex will show up.)

I love that Izzie isn’t blind to his faults, truly doesn’t like his faults, but has eternal faith for who he is and can be.  She always saw him as someone with walls, once she stumbled on a lose stone and got a glimpse inside.  She knows.  She doesn’t always understand, but she knows.

Slight divergence from that line of thought, but its a great moment when they get together and he’s fairly transparently trying to make sure they’re in a committed relationship by dangling other women in front of her, and she’s a little ticked that he seems to be taking it rudely casually.  Probably a bit of insecurity, but I’d say more that she has a long history of not reading him from the perspective of him loving her.  Ie, 100% not recognizing that telling him about sleeping with George would hurt him.  And doesn’t get it until he comes in and he’s dropped the swagger and it’s a “I know I’m doing something wrong and I don’t know how to do it right so help me” thing.  

(Random memories of Sloan/Don from The Newsroom when she’s crying on the floor and Don comes in a sits next to her.  I wuvs them too.)

I love that she openly leans on him, when he offers support she takes it.  She doesn’t ask why, she accepts it and leans into it and is open to it because she trusts him because she knows him.  The bits where she hates him tend to fall out of romantic issues, but when that’s removed from the equation they’re in sync.  And the thing is, just as caring is fundamental to Alex’s nature, trust is fundamental to Izzie’s.  And those two things weave into each other.  Kinda like rats and the food button.  When Alex reaches out Izzie she honestly accepts it, a “reward.”  So he’s comfortable doing it again, and again.  And when she does rebuff him he’s seen rewards come out enough that he doesn’t just scatter.  And when Izzie trusts him, he rewards her with gentleness and care.  She has the rougher time of it overall, because Alex is more screwed up emotionally, and breaks her trust more often than she rebuffs him, but that’s where Alex’s constant love comes in.  But I cannot recall enough critical moments to have a cohesive proof, so I could be a little off base.

In my head Alex has always loved Izzie more than Izzie loves him, but I think my memory was unfair.  There is a real constancy to Izzie’s affection, though I don’t think she imprinted on Alex as he did on her.  She’s a different person, loves differently, has different issues.  But my longstanding impression is mostly because of Denny.  Who she truly did love, though the qualities of that love deserve exploration which I will not at this time attempt. And Denny loved her.   The whole “side loves along the way” being a trope.  Though usually “it ended in death/deathlike state” is given to the man and so THANK YOU SHONDA.  Thinking of classics like Jane Eyre and Rebecca though I think both were actually crazypants first wives.  And I do think female character’s side guys have a  habit of dying, but it tends to feel more like a plot point to shut the door on continued love, whereas Denny remains a part of Izzie’s life. 

 At any rate, despite superficial similarities, Alex doesn’t hit the trope because his crazypants relationship wasn’t ever really about the woman:  yep Alex got Rebecca, and Rebecca was crazypants, and it was a plot point to get him to the crying.  Rebecca wasn’t love. It was never love.  BUT

She DID, in every way, highlight what needed to be highlighted.  1) That he desperately wants a family.  2) that caring for someone, not just about them, is fundamental to him, (and ties neatly into him caring for Izzie all those sitting on the floor conversations.) and c) it’s not entirely healthy.  Which is ALSO why thrusting his new happy relationship with Izzie into caregiver role is insensitive and undermines the relationship because it only makes sense if we got to see them both happy in the relationship first.  And then we can see the quality of his caregiving change.  But we didn’t.  So bugger it.

I do LOVE how they let almost the whole next season play out he fallout of all that.  Something taken slowly!  We got to explore it.  Did feel a bit drawn out tbh.  But it just emphasizes the weight of it, I guess.  Especially as it was a subplot amongst 100 others.  This was their development for the season.  Which was mostly Alex.  But Izzie’s reactions revealed some things about her as well.  Majorly dancing around laying it out for a close look and I don’t know why.

Favourite moment?  Maybe Izzie putting her hand on Alex’s chest when he’s freaking out and telling him to stop, he doesn’t need to say any more.  Because he’s trying to convince her of something, and she understands.  And the trying to convince is shredding him, and she knows that.  It’s a very loving and accepting “stop.”  She’d already taken charge of the situation, for the good of the patient.  She’d already taken charge because she knew Alex couldn’t handle it, he was too deep in something to see clearly.  And she’s still in charge.  She doesn’t break down and cry for him, or try to comfort him, he’s been thrown back into childhood and PTSD might literally be at play and what he needs, and she understands, is someone he can trust, who’s calm and gentle but strong and solid, to say it’s okay.  It’s going to be okay.  You don’t have to carry this on your own.  We have it now.  Because when we’re little and in over our heads what we want and what we need is an adult to take the burden.  And still the physical contact is comforting, her tone of voice reassuring.  She creates a space where he can feel safe and heard.

Ugh, rewatching, and we’re watching him literally devolve.  Stages of grief ya’ll.  He’s using every tactic to try and get what he thinks he needs: being able to take care of Rebecca.  He’s in denial that anything is wrong.  He gets angry when Izzie grabs him, to the point of threatening to hit her (though it’s fighting words and not real threat, and Izzie totally knows that.)  He dives into bargaining.  She’ll be okay if he can take care of her.  He can do it.  He tries to convince her it’s true.

By the time he gets home it’s depression.  Not just Rebecca, but about his mom.  And Izzie approaches him differently.  In the hospital it was immediate and she was “in charge,” and needed to be in all facets, but at home, with the situation taken care of, she’s a friend.  An equal.  Which is what he needs right now.  His sticking point later is the crying, so I kinda wonder how he’d react just to having told her about taking care of his mom as a kid.  Right at the start he told that kid about his dad, (dad beating up his mom and him beating up his dad) while Izzie was within listening distance and didn’t seem fussed.  But it’s ultimately a story about him being manly and protecting his mom physically.  Which would be why it’s several seasons in before this crops up - waaay more intimate information.  Probably all lumped into one, with the crying as shorthand.  And mostly that his past is a fact, it’s his emotions he wants to keep private and deny.

He clearly did try to drown his emotions with sex.  I’m not sure it would have worked with a random girl because he’s way too close to crying to do much of anything.  And obviously doesn’t work with Izzie because sex is apparently emotional intimacy and I guess comfort for men moreso than women, but it plays out as a desperate attempt to get comfort in a safer way.  Bargaining again, I suppose.  “Have sex and will be fine tomorrow.”  But, as noted, he doesn’t get that far because it’s too heavy and he rather quickly is just sobbing.

Which is a lovely parallel to holding Izzie while she cried on him after Denny died.  Though Izzie had no qualms and no massive emotional recoil because emotions and vulnerability are normalized for females Izzie is a particularly emotional person.  And an inverse of all the times Izzie is an emotional wreck and Alex sits down besides her and offers her support and understanding.

Could also argue that Izzie just saying “I’m sorry... About Rebecca.  And your mom” - it’s an emotionally intimate moment.  Of understanding.  She’s acknowledging the two situations, and isn’t trying to do anything about them, explain or push or anything else.  Just make him feel understood and not alone and sex is the way he can respond to that.  How to process that in a way that feels manly to him?  Also notably Izzie does seem to be going with it, and it’s aborted because he starts sobbing.  And is still saying “Please” which is amazing, because he totally was never asking Izzie to just sleep with him.  He wants to make it stop - the pain, emotions, probably reliving memories.  But also... stages of grief.  He needs to feel it, so he can accept it.  He really just needs to cry, and grieve, and not be alone.

And it’s like... this is where their love story feels epic because it would look so different if they didn’t have all the levels and layers of love.  Take out the romantic/sexual aspect.  Take out the friendship.  The trust.  The family.  Take out anything and this can’t play out.

Who didn’t love moments like Alex explaining to Bernedette Peters that men sometimes need to protect their manliness in the eyes of the woman they love.  And they’ll do shit things to protect that manliness, but it’s because they care.  Which is obviously idiotic and while romantic on screen is very much not so in real life, but this is fiction so hey ho.  It’s such a wonderful foil.  Because the situation here was not that Alex took his pain elsewhere to protect Izzie’s opinion, but that Alex completely and for a long time shut Izzie out to protect his manliness, which is entirely counterproductive but the only option he could see.  He minimizes his experience as a “bad night.”  (I mean, if you remove all the adjectives, he’s not wrong.) He’s protecting his own sense of manliness to himself.  He doesn’t like feeling that vulnerable.  He let Izzie get too close.  He’s afraid.  It’s all a tangle.  And it pays off when they come back together and he’s willing to be more vulnerable, almost, and then enthusiastically, happy to be.

*But it does reference when he slept with Olivia when he failed his boards.  So yeah, he’s done it literally too.

Backing up a step to revisit season 5.  And actually they start out close.  They’re all out in the cold waiting to greet patients and Alex grabs a blanket for her.  He’s not irritated that Izzie keeps asking how he’s doing, just obviously in a bit of personal denial.  And they’re totally messing around and lighthearted and look at each other with their heads really close and it begs some questions about the interim, though I guess they just haven’t talked about it deeper than “are you okay.”  And per the Izzie/Meredith convo I guess they didn’t continue having sex (probably didn’t have sex that night either).  Though the way Izzie looks at him as he leaves, she’s totally concerned that he’s not dealing with it.

Ah yes, forgot - so they just kept his breakdown unremarked upon, the superficial checking in is situational because Rebecca is a fact.  They don’t talk about it, it’s fine.  Pretending it did not happen.  But it’s as soon as Alex thinks Izzie told Meredith about it that it goes pear shaped.  It’s funny that his issue is the crying and he’s the one that told Meredith, but thematically Izzie saying “he’s opening up to me” is sorta the same.  Also awww that even as she labels them friends, there’s this little glow inside her that they got closer.  Emotional intimacy, what’s life without it eh?

So also 100% it’s high on Alex’s mind.  That he did it, and so too that Izzie could betray him and tell others.  Their relationship is so beautifully fragile in that short interim.  It’s this little bubble where he’s okay that he was vulnerable with Izzie because she accepted it and isn’t making a big deal about it.  And he does feel super close to her.  But he can’t take anyone else seeing him in a non-manly light.  For himself, and it works in terms of Izzie too if it’s an inside/outside situation.  I’m a bit stuck and going in circles.  If Izzie tells, then Izzie isn’t taking it seriously?  Doesn’t understand him?  I don’t think he’s even angry at her, if he looks weak to others then she’ll come to see him as weak?  Halp, stuck.

Also so, I’ve seen it remarked upon that Izzie tends to forgive Alex when she maybe shouldn’t.  But part of forgiveness can come from understanding the other person.  Doesn’t have to be, especially for little stuff.  But for big stuff?

Oh, and so weird but kinda cool that right after that rather self-aware conversation with Peters, he specifically lets Izzy see him with another woman.  Were those scenes meant to be inverted?  Or is he going into this eyes wide open?  Trying to prove something?  He’s hurting her though, is it intentional?  Because cheating, by nature, is secretive, your person doesn’t know so you’re not hurting them directly, though of course when they find out it blows up.  But the intention to wound is not there, it’s an escape.  Proving that he’s really fine and back to his old self?  They are not sleeping together so this isn’t cheating.

And even after that Izzy just shrugged it off.  Popped in to tell him they maybe are getting kicked out, tries to get an apartment with him.  She’s holding on to their closeness and friendship, despite him being prickly.  And then... he smacks her or whatever they were doing which is back to flirty, and not meaningful but notably guides her out of the elevator before him.  Though her barb about STD did hit him.   Maybe he was trying to figure out how to stop being rude at her, and her continued friendliness was bufffer space until he could?  He does say hello at the end, but who was she talking to about having no one?

It does bring up an interesting insight.  It is true bout not something I thought about, that Izzie could be lonely, and actually does get as much out of their relationship as Alex ever did.  They are incredibly close.  And I think George might be married at this point, and thus no longer her “person”?

And then into the cryptic speak about them, while the father/son organ musical chair thing was happening.  He’s looking over his shoulder at her, glances up, unspoken words yadda yadda.  Follows her out into the hall when she leaves.  The freeze out is shorter than I remember, but look, they kinda always keep communicating because freeze outs do not feel right.  And I’ve moved to a blow by blow but Alex is trying to talk profession, and Izzie doublespeaks the “emotionally stunted” and he physically recoils and stutters like “yeah but no, that’s not what we’re talking about” and yet is now there and talking about them too.  “Okay, ... I”m trying to be-  I am, but this” WHAT is he trying to be/is???  Trying to not be emotionally stunted.  Is emotionally stunted (or doubling down on trying?)

This is just such a beautiful conversation.  Because Izzie IS emotional and caring but she has a mean backhand.  Pettiness, ultimatum, she can smack back as hard as anyone smacks her.  And she’s coming from a totally reasonable place, because he’s going hot and cold on her.  And you can see that it affects him, and that falls out from that same pattern where he’s trying to tell her somehing and she’s not putting in a ton of effort to figure out what he’s saying, but is focused on her own needs and thoughts.  ‘Cuz she’s hearing something like “give it up, you’re not going to get what you want out of me.”  And he’s trying to say “I’m afraid I can’t be what you need, because I svck, please don’t make me try and fail.”

And they’re convo through parallels continues, Izzie calls Alex broken and is like “okay I do it your way my caring for you is pointless and it’s all fine.”   Dad calls for son while kinda dying.  I know they claimed different thought process but didn’t Alex call for Izzie when he was shot?  And the payout from the series of exchanges: Alex is yelling at his standin to just step up and show he cares.  With a hefty does of potential regret.  It’s a 180, hoping that the kid does love his day, as well as getting emotionally invested.  His relationship with his father isn’t mentioned, not sure if it’s meant to play into this, because he has previously acknowledged that he regrets losing his father completely.

(But then 10 seconds later she’s going to go crazy and by avoiding treatment it’s kinda like trying to kill herself and just... poor taste writers, poor taste.)

Cue a moment where Izzie knows what he’s trying to say and rewards it.

Enter Izzie being a little obtuse, I know I covered this but ending my personal cannon with them getting together - Alex literally says “are we going steady.”  He’s literally saying “you tell me yes or no, and I will do that.”  Of course he’s trying to say “I don’t know if you’re serious and I want to be please clarify and reassure” but one of those literal ones should have been enough.  But then Izzie does always push him, not always intentionally, to be a little more direct, a little more vulnerable, trust her a little more.  And the result is sooooo adorable!

And brings to mind when Izzie was trying to ask him out for the first time.  And it went a tiny bit screwy and Alex flips it and asks her out.

There’s just so much awesome.  *sobs*  And there’s probably awesome in the cancer storyline too but I do not feel I can trust it and also it’s going to run full into Izzie being lame and leaving and all character development out the window?  And I DO NOT want to see her trying to come back and Alex saying No.  Because what will I see in the middle that gets them there?  They always say yes.  Eventually.  And season 16 when JC is leaving the show is a bit on the long side, even if I ignore the details of the intervening years.

Throwing everything at the wall and maybe I’ll be done with dumping or can at least refine things.  It’s the little speech I’ve only read and don’t want to hear bcause not sure how he did his line-read, but when he describes how he imagines Izzie’s life.  In how much detail, how much he wants for her, what he knows she’s capable of building.  He’s saying it to Jo and I’m uncomfortable with the idea he loves her, even if the letter to her does leak a “love you, in love with Izzie,” and I’m fine with Izzie loving Denny and don’t find it a problem Jo is still alive because I don’t see Alex going back but the thing where if he looks her in the eye he won’t return to Izzie and the kids is upsetting.  And it’s just the kids and insta-family which is enticing.  I mean, he’s not going to tell wife he’s leaving that he’s always loved his ex in a different way or anything.  But he’s also not lying.  He does mention to Meredith that he can’t go back to Seattle.  He’d stay with Jo then out of...  ?  Halp.  The best I got is he’s currently in a dream and if he goes back to his life, where he was happy, then he’ll lose the dream and it will disappear on him?

Slightly nicer is the elsewhere expressed (Meredith) idea that he’d set Izzie as unreachable.  Thus, in line with what he told Jo, he didn’t want to contact her because he didn’t want to make it worse for himself, and his happiness comparison was completely excluding himself from the possibility of being part of Izzie’s life.  It’s all happiness of them individually, not together.  But yes, he always wanted to reach out, wanted to hear her voice and he never had an excuse?  No excuse but curiousity, and that wasn’t enough to take a chance, but this was an excuse and he took it.  

And the idea that he knows the right thing is to stay in Seattle, and being with Izzie and the kids is crazy, but it’s what makes him happiest, where he belongs.  Meredith’s letter read first, so in that light, he’s overexplaining to Jo.  Also exposition.  References that conversation about his mental picture of Izzie, which I think was in the context of Jo questioning his feelings for Izzie.  It scared him because...  ?  He focuses on the kids.  It’s a little at odds with doing this for him, and a little suddenly ignoring the fact that he’s In Love with Izzie and I guess his mental image for Izzie was also his dream life and he gave it to her.  Though where he thought her kids came from is possibly an oversight.  Adoption?

Because it makes it sound like he’s torn between new and old love but the old love has is kids and wins.  It’s a free pass to perfection.  But he imagined a “whole life” for her, which is a massive investment opf time and emotional energy on someone he hasn’t seen in forever.  I mean thinking well for an ex is al well and good but this sounds a bit beyond that, where she’s not a part of his life but a part of HIS life, believing she’s okay makes everything okay.

I am also willing to take up arms and claim that “I can’t look you in the eye because I wouldt be able to walk away...” doesn’t mean walk away from Jo, but walk away from Izzie.  But that’s kinda tenuous.  It just... it sounds like if he sees Jo he won’t be able to leave her, which puts her above Izzie (and even the kids, though he can still be in their lives) and that contradicts other statements, or at least their implications .

Though fair point that there’s a metric of who you’ll give up everything for.  Izzie would for Denny.  In a sense, I hear Meredith got her back in the Seattle hospital and she declined out of respect for Alex’s feelings.  So in a way she gave up her life for Alex.  And never reached out to him but did respond when he did.  She picked up the phone.  Maybe not knowing who it was, or they all kept their own phones.  And Alex gave it all up for Izzie+kids.  I want to know he’d give it all up for Izzie alone, and the life they could have had.

Or is it that he wouldn’t be able to leave Jo because, as noted to Meredith, it’s the right thing to stay in Seattle.  And he’s become a man who does the right thing.  And sometimes the right thing isn’t what we truly want, and to get that we have to be selfish.  He one perfect thing is in Kansas.  And it’s the family.  It’s a family with Izzie.  And his kids.  It’s the whole package.  If it wasn’t Izzie, the kids wouldn’t be enough?  Also indicates that even with Jo was not exactly where he should be.

I’m also going with “some clues in various directions to satisfy various viewers but really offending most of them because this is all 10 years ago and people are newer viewers or forgot or hated Izzie when she left etc.”  But preponderance of evidence leans in favour of this choosing what makes him happiest over what makes him happy.  

ETA: he has a life for Izzie in his head because if she’s not happy, he can’t leave her where she is.  He sees her as an optimist, the opposite of him and good things happen when you lean in that direction.  He imagines her somewhere woody because that’s where they lived when they were married.

ETA2: Izzie didn’t notice Alex wanted to be exclusive.  Because Izzie sees the good in him, but she doesn’t try to justify or explain things.  She takes him at face value (mostly, she knows superficial crabbiness is just an unpleasant personality trait.)  Until/unless she has very good evidence to he contrary.  And THAT is why he has to take an active role and go to her.  He does have to work for the relationship.

(Briefly skipped to a scene in season 6 (avoiding that season) and he actually says “I can’t be your nurse” which is so much character growth.  Because I was afraid he’d gone full out into caregiver mode, which is not healthy for either of them.  He’s protecting himself, but also pushing her to face up.)

CODAS

Watched Alex calling for/hallucinating Izzie when shot.  Maybe it’s a Miranda thing?  After freaking out right after she died, about how he can’t live without her, his breakup speech was essentially about how he realized he could survive without her.  He doesn’t need her like that.  And he was really hurt by the really shitty thing she did, leaving him. Thus valid conclusion that they should part ways and he’s not caught in the love/hate.  But at some point after that, per hallucination conversation, he really wants her to...  come back for him.  To love him enough to not be able to stay away and come back for him it’s funny because the best way for her to love him was the respect his wishes and not come back.  I mean she doesn’t even say anything after he asks that.  

Interesting point “we married...”  It’s a promise.  He starts with “I’m sorry.”  His breakup speech to her - rehearsed?  He’s speaking from love and hate all blended and I think he’s a lot more honest and self aware, and he’s almost always been honest with Izzie.  So his dying speech was also fear based?  He’s scared, he’s in shock, like, physical shock.  To when is his mind taking him?  It’s natural to have regrets after a painful but necessary breakup.  It’s been months but that’s still recent enough.  So on the whole, inconclusive except yeah, he isn’t over her, but he admits during their breakup that he loves her “so much.”

Also love his “frozen together in time... and now we’re not.”  They’ve both grown and changed, and so has their relationship, but there connection hasn’t.  That hasn’t changed.  

So back to his Izzie speech, which is meaningful intentionally as in 300th episode, where years later he was wondering still about her, enough to create a good life for her.  A happy, rich and full life.  He imagines it clearly and deeply enough to add smell to it.  Smell is heavily linked to memory and emotion.

As happy as he is with Jo.  Maybe it’s contentment?  Something missing for each of them but not something he consciously knows?  Meh.  Back to frozen.  He has an image, a full rich image of her and her life.  It’s immersive but static, a snapshot.  And the him who looks at that snapshot is the same him over time.  

Letter to Meredith.  “It’s about me.”  Which is sorta back to breakup speech.  It was about him, ending the relationship.  He didn’t deserve to be left.  And this is about him, not leaving Izzie+kids.  There’s movement and beauty in this.

Meredith/Alex talking true love.  So I’m torn.  Jo refused his proposal, and the question is if you only get one true love.  Did he think Jo was a true love, and if she refuses him it’s not?  Or is he hoping that true love happens after they’re married?  Given the constancy of his love for Izzie, from fairly early on, even if he didn’t call it that at the time I’m pretty sure it’s indisputedly much earlier than marriage, and she turned him down all the time, which would forestall true love worse, right?  Can’t say as I’m not watching any Jo/Alex, cannot will not no need don’t gotta.

[yenslilac]

Daenerys Targaryen and Ophelia: An Essay

I wrote this a while back, just after Season 8 ended. After a few edits, I decided to share it with you! Disclaimer: I wrote this fueled with rage at 11 at night for two weeks straight. Don’t judge. 

Part 1: The Heroine Goes Absolutely Bats**t Crazy

Ophelia. Known throughout time as That Crazy Chick Who Drowned Herself. What a legacy. And Daenerys: She Who Toasted A City Like Marshmallows And Then Was Offed By Her Nephew/Lover. The sad thing is, these are my heroes. What a life. But the ‘Insane Heroine’ trope is prevalent in many forms of media – Dark Phoenix is another example. At first glance, Daenerys and Ophelia have very little in common; Daenerys is a powerful and assertive leader, and Ophelia is a background love interest. The one thing that unites them – they go crazy because of rejected love. While their descent into madness is slightly different; Ophelia is pitiful, Daenerys aggressive, both end up dying indirectly or directly as a result of their lover. Lovely. Let’s talk first about Ophelia – She is rebuffed Hamlet, the original pathetic sad boy, and at the death of her father, goes insane. After several performances of her insanity, she makes her way to a river where she falls (or throws?) herself into the water and drowns. This is witnessed by Gertrude, who then goes on to tell her brother Laertes of her death. It’s a pretty monologue, describing the flowers and plants growing along the riverbank, and how pretty and peaceful she looked as she sank under water and DIED. Remember this. Then my girl Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men etc. etc. Oh boy. Ohhhhhh boy. What can I say except **************** ***** ** **********. Thank you for your time. But she like Ophelia, was scorned by her Boyfriend Who Felt It Was Just A Little Weird That She Was His Aunt. But like, your paternal grandparents and the rest of your great-whatever grandparents were siblings, and your maternal grandparents were cousins so… But I digress. Wait no, this is what it’s all about. I’m back! I un-digress! So, she goes ‘insane’ cause she can’t get laid (don’t we all?) and roasts a whole lot of people and becomes… Hitler for some reason… So, Boyfriend Who Felt It Was Just A Little Weird That She Was His Aunt And Really Wishes He Can Just Catch A Break For Once Is It Really Too Much Too Ask is egged on by Murder Sister™ and Smarty Pants McGee to kill her. Just like my friends! He makes out with her and stabs her (best of both worlds!) and she dies. Very prettily. Remember this. You know. YOU KNOW I’m going to rant about this.

Part 2: Heroic Man Kills The Crazy Lady Like The Feral Dog She Is (But Feels Sad About It) 

Trope as old as time… why is this still fine… surely there’s a better plot deviiiiiice. “Duty is the death of love…” Shut up. Shut up. No, it isn’t. There is a thing called multitasking. You should try it. But let’s recap. Woman goes crazy because of lover/hero of the story rebuffing her because he’s got issues of his own that he doesn’t care to share with her, and close friend/family member is killed. This is when the paths of the Hero diverge. Hamlet does not actually kill Ophelia himself, but his careless actions towards her eventually drive her to suicide. Jon, on the other hand, does kill Daenerys, (no, I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed) by a knife to the heart while snogging her. (I’d like to take the opportunity to say that this was ridiculous and yes, I will die mad about it.) What else is similar? Hamlet holds Ophelia’s (or in some adaptations tries to) dead body in his arms as she is about to be buried and Jon holds Daenerys as she dies. They cry and wish it didn’t have to be this way, but really guys, this is Your Fault.

The problem with this trope in particular (and I’m talking about a lot of other examples here, like Dark Phoenix and Wolverine) is that it renders the killer sympathetic. They didn’t want to do this, but it was for the good of humanity, it was a mercy, blah blah blah. Really? Did someone make you kill her? No, a sense of moral justice does not count. Hamlet abuses and humiliates Ophelia then claims he loved her so much that ‘forty thousand brothers could not…” Creepy. I have to say, creepy. And Jon Snow. “Was it right? It doesn’t feel right…” I’m glad you came to that conclusion. I really am. But I knew this from the moment you stuffed that butter knife into her spleen, so honestly you don’t have any business feeling sorry for yourself. If there’s one lesson that Game of Thrones and Shakespeare has taught me, it is:

(not an artist, don’t judge)

Part 3: Someone Died And The Director Said, “Cool But Like… Make It Fashion.”

Do you remember what I told you to remember? Did you? Cause I’m about to RANT.

Throughout time (like 500 years) men have been painting Ophelia’s drowning – the probable suicide of a tormented young woman – and made sure she looked hot while doing it. True, the description of her death is pretty and all, but depictions of her floating just below the surface, a dramatic and lovely pose and flowers strewn around her glamorise her death – something many other people have taken note on – and give her death something of a peaceful, serene departing note, rather than the death of a woman so deranged she did not appear to understand the gravity of her situation as she sank under water. Daenerys suffers a similar case of SDPS (Sexy Dead Person Syndrome). Let’s go through it step by step, shall we? While in an embrace with someone she loves and trusts, she is stabbed in the heart area (I guess?), and she dies. The End. My respect for white men flew off with Drogon. But I haven’t complained properly yet! Compared to other characters, like Myrcella, Joffrey and Catelyn Stark to name a few, her death was very clean. In these other examples, blood runs down their faces or spurts out of their neck in suitably graphic fashion but Daenerys’ case, two thin lines of blood trickle from her nose and mouth. Pretty, pretty. We get a brief shot of a pool of blood on the snow as Drogon picks her up, but blink and you’ll miss it. She looks shocked and confused as she dies, yet the next shot of her face shows her eyes are closed and an almost peaceful expression on her face. Not only this but we don’t actually get any proper Last Words, when she knows she is about to die. She makes no sound at all. She dies prettily and quietly. We also don’t see the knife at all until she is dead, removing any very graphic nature from the scene. A lot of the camera shots are of Jon’s face. This scene is not about Daenerys Targaryen’s death; This is about Jon Snow’s inner turmoil as he selflessly sacrifices the woman he loves to save the rest of the world. Hold up one second I gotta……

I mean, come on. Daenerys is barely mentioned after her death. She, a woman who freed hundreds, no, thousands of slaves and worked hard to reach her goals (albeit a little dragonfire-y) yet she dies without a whisper and is forgotten almost immediately. She becomes less of a central character and more of a catalyst for other men’s rise to power (see Bran the Broken). Wait, what about Sansa, you cry? Well, at this point, she was so out of character I’m striking her from the narrative. Bye bitch 😊 The same goes for most of the other women in the last season. They become plot devices with a little agency and that’s about it. Missandei? Unnecessarily killed to create the “Mad Queen”. Cersei? A compelling villain reduced to a ‘crying girl who wants to be comforted’. Arya? Kills the Night King and then, I dunno. Sansa? Suspicious of Daenerys because of reasons, betrays her brother/cousin because she doesn’t want Daenerys on the throne, then just ‘forgets’ about this whole thing to become Queen in the North. Brienne? Honourable knight left sobbing after her one (k)night stand left her. Another thing that many of these women have in common (the ones who survived to the final episode anyway) is that none of them have romantic endgames despite this being set up. Arya and Gendry have been close friends in Season 2 and 3, then <3  and everyone (i.e. me) thought that you know, they get together and stuff, because that’s what the writers seemed to be setting up. But nope. Arya’s all like ‘I wanna kill the queen’ (which she never does) and throws all that out the window. (But Gendry was totally on that ship at the end). Brienne and Jaime seemed to finally stop eye fricking and then got straight to the actual fricking but nooooo. “I lOvE CeRseI! WE’re bOTh tERrIble PeOple!” And of course, the crowning glory:

And the woman who actually does come out on top is Sansa, a largely unemotional, suspicious woman whose brother is now the king and made her a queen because she’s his sister. Riiiight. That’s totally not nepotism or anything. 

The End: But Boy, Am I Just Beginning

To conclude, the ending of Daenerys Targaryen was largely misogynistic as it painted a brutal and dishonourable murder as an act of mercy and gave the killer (sorry man, I feel like I’m throwing you under the bus here, but it must be said) a sympathetic angle as a heartbroken martyr sacrificing for the greater good. I had high expectations, I really did, but you just took it anD THREW IT IN THE DIRT. Good god. But it’s fine, I have fanfiction anyway.

Thank you for reading this, if you stuck around this far!

[deadlymodern]

Hello, first of all I really enjoy following your story, very curious as to were it's gonna go next, thank you for all the work you put into it. I love how you're including diversity in sexuality/color/background in your decade so I can't help but notice how all (unless I missed it) your character seem to have very similar bodys, is it a concious choice ? (I know people were leaner because of physical labour + lack of food, but there were some chubby ones still, espescially within the wealthy)

Hello! First of all, thank you for the comment, I’m happy that you are liking my story so far and I can only hope to keep on making enjoyable content in the future c:

It is very true, nonny. I don’t think I have a character that isn’t slim. And, sure, back in the Victorian era we didn’t have fast food joints and a massive amount of people did heavy physical labour. But human bodies come in every shape, and being slim isn’t a synonym for being healthy - as well as being fat isn’t a synonym for being unhealthy or inactive! - so honestly, I have zero excuses for not bringing more body types into the story thus far.

Most of us were brought up in a society where we (& especially women) are taught to hate our own bodies on a daily basis. We a bombarded with beauty standards and, on the long run, this really shapes our unconscious mind and can lead to several mental health and self image issues. 

I personally have struggled quite a lot with mental health regarding body issues and, though I am well today and have been in therapy for a while, there is a lot of damage and “facts” that remain to be unlearned. 

I became aware of the whole body positive movement and what fat phobia meant a few years back, when I entered university. It has become one of the things I advocate the most irl, also because it comes hand in hand with feminist causes etc. And though I, as a filmmaker, think I am doing a good job portraying a whole lot of different characters in the short films I work in along with all my co-workers, I did notice that I still had some struggles. I realized that, in most of my sketches and paintings, I mostly portrayed extremely slim and slender androgynous figures. And that’s when I noticed I was doing the same thing, unconsciously, with my sims.

I think it is very important for me - and everyone else who creates any sort of content - to try and understand why we sometimes might find it hard to portray bodies that are similar to our own and/or far from the beauty standard. It’s a whole discussion of self love and acceptance that I believe has to be addressed way more than it does, so I’m glad you’ve brought this to me and called me out! I genuinely mean it. 

I do plan on adding characters with more realistic body types in the future, for sure! My whole idea is to end up with a set of more diverse and relatable characters by the end of my legacy. But also, I don’t want to just “add diversity for the sake of it” without thinking my characters thoroughly. If I’m going to add a sim in, even if it is a side character, I want to do my research and be as respectful as I can with how they are going to have their space in the story. I really don’t want to fall into any tropes and have a stereotyped character what so ever. The last thing I want is to do a disservice to my characters or the people who follow their stories.

I already have a few small ideas for the near future in how to present bodies more realistically. The way body types may change during and after pregnancies are one of the topics I want to explore soon, and I’ve been testing body presets and sliders because I’d like to have realistic chubby and fat toddlers and children too :)

I am ever so sorry for not being that aware on this matter here. I hope I did not make anybody feel uncomfortable or somewhat in an unsafe space within my blog! And I also hope you understand that I’m not trying to use my past struggles with self image as an excuse or a way to shield myself into just making slim characters forever. I do want to get out of my “comfort zone”, not only for the sake of storytelling but also for myself and my own self esteem.

This is really important, nonny. I am still battling against 23 years of socially constructed standards, there is much to be unlearned every single day! Thank you for taking the time to send me this and I hope this answers your question! Have a lovely day x

(Also, forgive me for taking a bit to answer, I really wanted to take my time to write this as best as I could!)

[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

Queers in Space (DS9 Edition) Part 1 (Seasons 1-midway season 5)

Continuation to Queers in Space (TNG)

Benjamin Sisko: Similar to Picard's Captain-Gender, Sisko is Dad (some characters, like Julian, might occasionally look at him and think Daddy, mainly when he's being Righteous). He’s very caught up in caring about everything and is just happy he’s got such a large family (although he wishes there were more babies he could dote on). What he otherwise really loves is getting pegged by beautiful women.

Kasidy Yates: Speaking of women who peg...  She uses she/her pronouns and “woman” but her relationship to gender is like... not relevant. Not needed. Whatever. Call me whatever and I'll respond to it. And she's pan. She's been in space for long enough to have realised that attraction is attraction. Chaotic bench, I love her.

Jake Sisko: he's a burgeoning bisexual, Byron is his literary inspiration and he's the only man on DS9 who's pretty consistently half-well-dressed (you cannot change my mind about this). He and Nog have tested kissing. Mayhaps they may try out more in future.

Kira Nerys: Her lesbianism was so powerful that she was barely allowed to interact with other women (mirror!Kira may have been a bad bisexual trope, but she was also far closer to the truth). Not just a lesbian, but stompin' about in her butch boots and padded shoulders for the first half of the series, damn! All those guys she keeps dating are her beards.

Jadzia Dax: Omnisexual, poly, genderqueer babe - the poly part is why I cannot fully ship her with Worf, even though I love that she’s with a partner she can spar with (in ahem multiple ways). The whole point of trill is to experience life to the fullest and Jadzia takes that brief very seriously (that is canon!). At heart she's also very romantic. The fact that she and Nerys don't seem to have any storylines together is homophobia.

Julian Bashir: Trans, queer, dork. He canonically comes aboard knowing nothing about himself or the universe, he's just here to learn and have a good time and be an idealistic hero and accidentally fall in love with both his best friend and a lizard spyman and we're here cheering that wonderful foot-fetishist on like proud parents (Benjamin has literally sat him down to give him his blessing, but also express his confusion about his tastes).

Elim Garak: Blessed by the mouth of Andy Robinson himself, omnisexual and into Julian and down to clown and generally just a chaotic energy of fun and murder and sex, in whatever order. I read a thing about Cardassians choosing gender through specific make-up and the blue mark on the forehead, and they're all intersex and honestly Yes This! Garak opted out. He dresses like the genderqueer slut icon he is.

Miles O'Brien: I could go 50 different places with him. At first I wrote him off as a straight cis guy, but then as DS9 went on I became less sure... for one, there's Julian and the poly marriage with Keiko and Nerys. For two... it'd be fun if he were gendershrug. “I'm an engineer, I haven't got time to think about that” - does this open up the possibility that in the future all humans choose their own gender? I mean, the federation is supposed to be a form of minor utopia, so yes, and Miles just never got around to it and never will.

Keiko O'Brien: My poly, pan queen. I didn't see her and Nerys coming at aaaall and may I just say I am thrilled. It's what she deserves. She has two hands and a large heart (and a large bed too). She's a lady, but by now I've entirely decided that cis just doesn't exist at that point in the future. Gender is A Choice and she liked the sound of woman and like with everything else she liked the sound of, she grabbed it with both hands and went “mine” (she did that with Miles and Nerys as well).

Worf (Part 2): Ds9 is when Worf got more interesting to me. He was fine on TNG, but here, my word. Both the worst and the best. Okay, yes, he's very monogamous, I will relent. But also he's got a much bigger bi energy going for him, which I celebrate. On that note, if Garak isn't his type, what kinda person is? I'm assuming he's just not into Cardassians as a rule, because of their culture-biases. He likes a partner who'll punch him in the face before propositioning with all their cards on the table. What he needs is to get pegged.

Odo: Ace and aro. He’s full of love. In order to mimic “solids” he tries to make sense of his emotions from their perspectives and so comes to the conclusion that he definitely isn’t allowed to love Quark and definitely ought to be in romantic love with Nerys, but once he understands himself better, he doesn’t feel such a need to limit himself. He has unlimited hands you guys!!!! (sometimes he has no hands, but that doesn’t limit him either). He’s tried out various body shapes, and he likes the sound of “man.” He can’t place his finger on why, and honestly he doesn’t have to. It’s his identity. Hope he realises how loved he is.

Quark: He thought he was your average straight man on the station, but ds9 has a way of bringing out your true colours and it turns out he’s in love with an occasional bucket of goo. He expresses this by snarking at aforementioned goo-man. This isn’t even me, this is just... canon facts. Ferengi have strong binary genders. Quark is a man, but he’s later not-so-secretly sympathetic towards people who veer away from binary gender, such as...

Rom: Is “not having the lobes for business” code for being trans-femme? Kinda feeling it is. In a way it’s harder to be trans-masc, simply because afab people in Ferengi culture have a much harder time escaping the home planet in order to explore themselves, and Rom will eventually launch a campaign for equality for trans Ferengi (what is “trans” in Ferengi?) Also he’s more ace than he realises. He has urges (that one episode... definitely proved that), but they’re not directed at anyone. He likes being loved. Surprisingly sex doesn’t play as big a role in that as he might’ve thought it would.

Nog: "Doesn’t have the lobes for business” but is kinda chill about gender. Probably due to having grown up amongst other humanoids. Especially come starfleet academy he fully embraces gender and sexuality definitions as being “eh” to him. It’s not his interest, so he doesn’t define it. That being said, he’s also somewhere along the bi/pan spectrum.

Leeta: Pan-ace. She likes a certain amount of attention, and she has strong sensual attraction and she doesn’t mind sex, but as long as she’s loving and loved, she’s happy. After dumping Julian (like they both deserve), she gets a bunch of sugar-parents, who pay her school for her. It’s like hunger games out there, with how every one of them tries to impress her the most. She likes the attention and she loves studying, she can do it all. Be a bombshell and a smart cookie.

Gul Dukat: His gender and sexuality are “idiot clown-man.”

[jbuffyangel]

Undeserved Forgiveness: Arrow 7x18 Review (Lost Canary)

After seven years and 150 episodes (yes, I math’d it) Arrow has finally paid off a L*urel L*ance storyline in a way that makes sense and feels earned.

Let’s dig in…

Olicity

Sometimes the Arrow writers are so obtuse about their audience it boggles my mind. Then there are other times when they are so self aware I can’t help but laugh. “Lost Canary” is one of those self aware moment. It’s almost as if the writers said to themselves, “Okay. This episode is gonna be a lot about birds so we better give the audience some Olicity goodies to keep them happy.”

Smart move.

Arrow has to ship the boys off somewhere in order to have their all girls episode. Rene is off with Zoe on a school field trip while Oliver and Diggle try to find the person who killed Emiko’s mother, so they can convince her not to be evil. Or something? I think? It boils down to a interrogation of a Longbow Hunter. Yeah, remember the Longbow Hunters? Who knew they were still a thing? Not me. 

It’s kind of fantastic all the guys are stuck with monumentally crappy storylines while the ladies have their moment in the sun. Ah the gloriousness of reversing gender roles.

Anywho, Oliver is going to leave Felicity which means WE GET WORRIED DADDY! 

Oliver begs Felicity to take it easy. 

Pffft, it’s like he’s never watched Arrow before. Dude, know your genre. 

Felicity promises she’s going Netflix and chill. Oh girl, you totes just jinxed it.

And then it happens. Oliver rubs his stomach and says...

Source: olicitygifs 

April 15, 2019 will hence forth be known as Precious Cargo Day in the Olicity fandom. We shall drink and sing in merriment while binge watching Olicity moments in celebration of this blessed day. For this is the day fan fiction came to life.

We’re five minutes and twelve seconds into this episode and I already think it’s fantastic.

After Oliver returns from his Longbow Hunter thing (Seriously don’t ask me what happened)

and Felicity returns from saving a soul and giving Earth 2 a hero to fight for them, our wonderfully stable and unproblematic married couple cuddle on the couch. Honestly, I don’t understand why Olicity snuggling and watching Netflix isn’t a hit show? It’s Emmy award winning entertainment. 

Source: olicitygifs 

Felicity was away from Oliver for a day and she practically ran into her husband’s arms, so I really don’t know how homegirl is gonna do twenty years without him. It hurts to think about, so let’s focus on the happy. 

Source: olicitygifs 

Oliver wants to order whatever Felicity is craving because he’s determined to be fictional perfection so no one can have realistic expectations of non fictional men. Felicity informs him L*urel is going back to Earth 2. He doesn’t care. I cannot describe to you how much Oliver Queen doesn’t care about any version of L*urel L*ance. 

Once again I reflect upon the road we have traveled my friends. I don’t know how we got here, but our destination is glorious.

Worried Daddy is far more concerned that Felicity didn’t take it easy as she promised, but no worries the Green Arrow is here! 

Oliver promises to take care of Felicity and then promptly falls asleep on her shoulder because he’s so exhausted. 

Yup, that pretty much sums up the first trimester right there. You’re pregnant but you’re husband is the exhausted one.

She finagles a foot rub out of half asleep Oliver and they both collapse. MAX DOMESTICITY ACHIEVED. 

Source: olicitygifs

Honestly, the show could have ended right here. I’d be thrilled.

Felicity Smoak and Canary Corp.

Yes, that’s the official title of the episode. Don’t @ me. Arrow has tried this Birds of Prey thing before. Remember Helena, L*urel and Sara in Season 2? Yeah, neither do I and why? BECAUSE IT DIDN’T HAVE FELICITY IN IT. Too bitter? 

The Felicity Smoak/Oracle similarities were not lost on the Arrow writers and it’s clear they tried to adopt the moniker for our girl’s codename, but were shot down by the DC brass. Overwatch it is then and, as usual when it comes to Felicity Smoak and Emily Bett Rickards, she has made it her own.

This is Emily’s last season and therefore Arrow’s last chance to do a Birds of Prey themed episode with Felicity Smoak at the helm. Boy, they did not waste the opportunity. Thank goodness too because that would have been a real bummer. 

“Lost Canary” is full on girl power. Arrow has many female characters, but the storylines are dominated by the men. It’s not a shocker. The main character is male. The writing staff I believe has been male dominated until a shake up this season. That’s not to say the male writers haven’t crafted a fantastic show with some amazing female characters – Felicity Smoak being at the top of the list. However, this show is long over due for the spotlight to shine on the female characters, actresses and writers.  

Representation means hearing the voices of the marginalized, but “Lost Canary” is not simply Arrow ticking a box. Nor did the writers pad the episode with trite and insulting dialogue like...

(I will forever side eye The Flush for that one.) 

No, “Lost Canary” is steeped in big life questions as it addresses the season theme of redemption head on. Each character has her own perspective on Bl*ck S*ren and redemption as a whole. Each character is given ample screen time to voice her perspective as the women debate the best way to handle Bl*ck S*ren’s recent downward spiral… or perhaps it’s a stagnant upward spiral. The point is the women are written like the multi faceted characters they are. WOULD WONDERS EVER CEASE?

Let the redemption debate commence.

Source: dcmultiverse 

Bl*ck S*ren is back in the evil business. See, you can tell because of the all leather, black lipstick, cloak, tacky techno music and the sashay walk KC ripped off from Nina Dobrev. 

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

This is what I like to call an “Everything but the kitchen sink” visual trope. Oh hell, the kitchen sink was there too.

Bl*ck S*ren chucks the three piece power suits, with the shoulder pads that can fly her to Hong Kong, in favor of a more diabolical ensemble to convey her inner turmoil. The subtext is pretty much text. Arrow hammering away at it should be a monumentally huge tip off for where Bl*ck S*ren’s character is going.  

The surprise isn’t so much where Arrow is going with this character, but rather in how they get there.

Admittedly, I struggled with E1 L*urel L*ance. I couldn’t stand her romance with Oliver, couldn’t keep up with her flip flopping personality, grew tired of her blaming everyone but herself, couldn’t forgive her for Tommy, hated her disdainful treatment of Felicity, and found her to be a insufferable pain in the ass, which she compounded by becoming a drunken, insufferable pain in the ass. 

Whew. Season 1 and Season 2 were rough.

I had one bright and shining hope for this character – her Bl*ck C*nary storyline. It was a colossal disappointment. 

Not even my deep love for the Lance sisters could save my investment in L*urel and I was overjoyed when Arrow killed her. It remains one of the best creative decisions this show ever made.

Regardless of the reasons for KC’s return (and there are reasons my friends), the writers smartly chose not to resurrect L*urel. 

No need to bring back that mess. Instead, they started over with some doppelganger hijinks and crafted Evil L*urel aka Bl*ck S*ren from Earth 2. 

It turns out Evil L*urel is a hell of a lot more fun than Saint L*urel. The character plays to KC’s acting strengths and she didn’t impede on Dinah Drake’s storyline as Bl*ck C*nary. Well, not much.

But the dramatic linchpin in Bl*ck S*ren’s character is that she’s not L*urel.  Yes, she looks and sounds like the L*urel L*ance Team Arrow loved and lost, but no amount of time would ever make this woman into a replica of the one who died. This is a good thing because the woman Oliver Queen dedicated that ridiculous statue to was a hindrance to the story.

L*urel’s Season 6 arc was infuriating primarily because they reduced a meta human to a helpless victim. The writers shredded Quentin Lance’s character as he pursued his deeply unhealthy obsession with resurrecting his dead daughter through an entirely different human being. Let us never speak of it again.

Season 7 is a vast improvement. The good/evil push/pull remains the dramatic well the writers drink from, but instead of cramming old L*urel down Bl*ck S*ren’s throat they allowed her character to breathe. The fact she was different from L*urel is what made her interesting. Arrow didn’t run from it. They embraced it. And they paired her with an unlikely partner.

Felicity Smoak.

Bl*ck S*ren’s willingness to cross lines, including murder, was a necessary evil because Felicity’s husband was trapped inside the system. She needed help from someone with access and who wouldn’t be afraid to go over the line to get the job done. Suddenly, being evil doppelganger playing pretend lawyer was massive pro. 

Bl*ck S*ren’s a sardonic wit and glowering demeanor made the perfect straight woman to Felicity Smoak’s ball of sunshine. 

Except, Felicity wasn’t a ball of sunshine and more often than not L*urel was stopping her from going too far.  

The two women worked in tandem as they questioned their morality and what defines good and evil. The ebb and flow of light and dark allowed Felicity and L*urel to see each other differently. 

This sparked understanding, respect and finally compassion.  Their interactions felt more honest than anything that transpired between E1 L*urel and Felicity and as a result their friendship was more believable.

I’ve enjoyed the good/evil/push/pull dynamic that’s made up the majority of Bl*ck S*ren’s arc this season because it was fairly even handed. When L*urel tipped too far in one direction they would shift her the other way. Every time L*urel helped Felicity with Oliver’s case or pulled her back from the ledge, she would follow it up with almost murdering someone. 

Bl*ck S*ren’s instinct in almost any given scenario was to kill first and ask questions later. It flew in the face of the straight laced, law abiding DA image she cultivated by stealing E1 L*urel L*ance’s identity. The writers did this deliberately because everything that made Bl*ck S*ren “evil” is still there even as she tried emulating Quentin Lance’s dearly departed L*urel.

But eventually the writers need to pick a lane. Arrow has two choices – keep Bl*ck S*ren evil or redeem her.  It’s kind of a like a love triangle. You can play with the back and forth for awhile, but eventually the writers need to make a decision. Otherwise the story loses any emotional authenticity.

The real shock of “Lost Canary” is how the writers present both sides of the argument. It’s so fair and logical. A L*urel L*ance centric episode is making sense. Talk about feeling like a fish out of water.

Dinah and Felicity are diametrically opposed when it comes to who Bl*ck S*ren is and if she can be redeemed.  The argument boils down to nature versus nurture, but how Felicity and Dinah arrive at their individual conclusion fits not only within the scope of their own storylines, but within L*urel’s as well.

Dinah is nature.  She firmly believes L*urel is an irredeemable killer and all efforts to save her are for naught because a killer is who she is. Dinah issues a warrant for L*urel’s arrest and believes she killed Diaz. I’ve been loudly advocating for some jail time for L*urel, but I didn’t really expect Arrow to go there. I’m not that lucky. A warrant for her arrest and L*urel on the run is close enough. 

It’s understandable why Dinah believes Bl*ck S*ren is a lost cause. She witnessed her boyfriend’s murder at L*urel’s hand and a tearful apology doesn’t erase what happened. 

Dinah has also been there any time L*urel has decided to murder someone, typically out of frustration, anger or to protect her own self interests.  She would pull L*urel back from the ledge, but it’s difficult for her to believe BS was ever on the wagon when she so frequently fell off it.

Dinah is not wrong. L*urel is a murderer. Murder is L*urel’s default position whenever the going is rough, which is exactly what is happening now. Yes, L*urel is wrongly accused of murder, but let us not forget all the murders she did commit and has yet to pay for.  Dinah didn’t love Bl*ck S*ren’s approach when it came to interrogating criminals, but the answer to these problems is not a crime spree.

Felicity is nurture. In the beginning, Felicity did not see Bl*ck S*ren as anything but criminal pretending to be her dead friend. She emotionally manipulated people and was reaping all the benefits of E1 L*urel’s life. 

But the hubby was in the slammer and Felicity needed a lawyer, fake or real it didn’t matter. Desperate times call for desperate measures. L*urel was one of the only people to have Felicity’s back and their partnership grew into real friendship.  Felicity has been the beneficiary of L*urel’s kindness and love, so she knows without a doubt there is good but it needs to be encouraged.

Felicity is so ardent in her belief that she bizarrely blames herself for L*urel’s crime spree because she wasn’t a good enough friend. 

Let’s just pretend that’s true for a second (even though it’s not). The max penalty Felicity could incur would be paying for drinks some night. But L*urel tries to blow up Felicity and HER BABY.  I feel safe categorizing that as an insane overreaction.

The truth is Felicity has been an amazing friend to L*urel and she continues to be throughout the episode. She proves to Dinah that L*urel has been framed by Emiko for Diaz’s murder. Felicity offers L*urel her support even after she goes on a crime spree.

L*urel: Oliver’s sister did me a favor because I was really sick and tired of pretending to be someone I’m not. Plus, no one believed it any way.

Felicity: I did! Look, what happened to you wasn’t fair. You were accused of murder, you lost your job, Dinah didn’t have your back I get it. You got a bucket load of bad news, but you are not Bl*ck S*ren. Not anymore.

L*urel: That’s funny I used to believe that too.

Felicity: Think of the good you’ve done L*urel. Think of honoring Quentin!

L*urel: Quentin is dead. Nobody cares about Quentin. He only wanted his daughter back.

Felicity: That is not true.

Well… far be it from me to disagree with my Queen but it is kind of true. This is a wonderfully impassioned speech even if I don’t agree with all of Felicity’s arguments. Sadly L*urel pretty much spits in Felicity’s face and is generally undeserving of all this support and understanding.

Felicity and Dinah have it out after L*urel tries to blow them up. Felicity continues to blame herself for this Bl*ck S*ren spiral whereas Dinah is firmly entrenched in the “Bl*ck S*ren Is a Murderer” camp.  Felicity calls Dinah out on her hypocrisy when she boasts in a fit of moral superiority that she could have gone down the same road as L*urel, but didn’t. 

Felicity accurately points out that the reason Dinah didn’t go down the same road was because she had the team. Dinah had friends who loved and supported her even when she didn’t deserve it.

Felicity ain’t wrong! I forgot Dinah is a murderer too. Yes, there is a big difference between murdering bad people versus murdering good people, but it doesn’t change the fact that Dinah has also taken lives. 

While we’re on the subject on Vinnie, she also lied to the team about her relationship with him 

and went on a crazy revenge bender after Bl*ck S*ren murdered him. 

Dinah was in the Newbie tantrum up to her elbows, which included assaulting OTA when they refused to hand over Bl*ck S*ren.

Dinah was forgiven for all of these transgressions and welcomed back to the team with open arms without even apologizing. Now she’s the captain of the police force and a deputized vigilante. All of which would have never happened without Oliver Queen and Team Arrow. 

Dinah was forgiven when she didn’t deserve it. 

It was the second chance she needed to become someone who is deserving of that forgiveness. 

(We can argue the semantics of whether or not Dinah really has become someone worthy of Oliver and Felicity’s love and trust another day. For the sake of this episode let’s just roll with it.)

Dinah continues to argue that even if all of that is true (WHICH IT IS HONEYCAKES) it doesn’t apply to L*urel because she doesn’t want a second chance. She never did. Felicity pushes back once again and argues the opposite. She thinks L*urel wants a second chance more than anyone else and didn’t realize it until it was already gone.

WOW. What a scene. It’s so invigorating to see two female characters argue passionately about something that has nothing to do with a man. This debate is about friendship, faith and forgiveness. It’s about the true meaning of redemption, who deserves it, and who decides who deserves it. Felicity and Dinah are arguing about their fundamental beliefs and challenging one another’s morality.

Source:  hollandrooden

Dinah gave L*urel a chance and she blew it, so enough is enough. Felicity feels L*urel was succeeding at that second chance until she was wrongly accused. Sometimes people need several chances to get it right. I completely understand both Dinah and Felicity’s positions, which is how you know it’s a great storyline. If you can see both sides of the coin then the writers are mining drama with serious depth.

Both women are right and both are wrong. We’ve been exploring Bl*ck S*ren’s redemption since Season 5, but “Lost Canary” feels like the first honest conversation being had about it. I understand Dinah’s frustration because they are my frustrations. 

I do not believe throwing on a three piece suit, playing lawyer, living someone else’s life and enjoying all the benefits someone else earned qualifies as redemption. Pretending to be E1 L*urel L*ance has protected Bl*ck S*ren from facing justice for any of her crimes. While I appreciate she’s helped put criminals away, freed Oliver Queen, and is a good friend to Felicity Smoak, it does not even out the cosmic scales when compared to the evil she has committed.

Bl*ck S*ren is a murderer. She was coddled by Quentin Lance because she looks like his dead daughter. Felicity reaches out again and again and Bl*ck S*ren continually rejects her love, support and forgiveness. I’ve watched Bl*ck S*ren time and again head out to murder someone as a solution to whatever problem she’s trying to solve. I’ve watched both Dinah and Felicity stop L*urel from committing those murders. 

L*urel stopped because she was caught – not because she thinks murder is wrong. She doesn’t express remorse for wanting to kill someone either. She typically has a snippy remark for Dinah and Felicity as she slinks away from the scene of her premeditated murder.

Unfortunately, the writers are treating Bl*ck S*ren’s penchant to murder the same as E1 L*urel’s alcoholism. Felicity and Dinah tell Bl*ck S*ren to put down the drink and convince her to stay on the wagon. But we aren’t talking about booze. Bl*ck S*ren’s addiction is killing people. NOT. THE. SAME. THING. I get it, Dinah. Trust me.

Then there’s Felicity Smoak. She sees the best in Bl*ck S*ren even when she’s at her worst. Primarily because Bl*ck S*ren saw Felicity at her worst and pulled her back from the brink. 

Felicity is not a killer because Bl*ck S*ren offered her hope.  So, it’s understandable why Felicity refuses to abandon her friend especially now.

But that’s not all of it. Sure, BS was a good friend to Felicity, but that’s not why she is standing by her. The truth is Felicity Smoak is a really good person. She is intensely compassionate, loyal and supportive. Felicity sees the best in people and her ability to pull that light from those she loves is unparalleled. Nearly every character in the Arrowverse has benefited from Felicity’s steadfast encouragement.

I know this aspect of the character often frustrates some people. Some believe Felicity is used to prop up other characters. Her character suffers because she’s constantly launching another superhero. 

The fastest way to cultivate a positive fan response to a new character is to filter that character through Felicity Smoak. She represents the audience opinions more often than not. Her popularity has a way of spilling over to problematic characters and it casts them in a more positive light. I don’t deny Arrow employs this practice often.

But I never saw it as a negative. Felicity is the believer. It’s what I love most about her.  Diggle is the mind (moral compass) and Oliver is the soul, but Felicity is the heart. She is the hero of heroes.

L*urel L*ance was a wildly problematic character. The writers never quite knew what to do with her and they could never really settle on a personality with a defined set of characteristics. 

We never knew what version of L*urel we were going to get week to week. 

The writers struggled with her even more after rerouting the central romance away from Laurel to Felicity.  Her storylines never seemed to get the necessary focus they required even though it felt like we spent an inordinate amount of time on L*urel. Watching Arrow develop her character was a lot like running in place, as @callistawolf​ once said.

Her messy history with Oliver also seemed to be the elephant in the room when it came to any friendship with Felicity. There’s never any discussion around the events of the Season 2 finale. Felicity wondered if Oliver’s “I love you” was real and I’m sure L*urel had some questions too.  

Did she think it was all a ruse to save her life or did she simply accept that Oliver was really in love with Felicity? It seems like the latter although it’s never actually addressed. If there was any confusion on L*urel’s part I guess 3x01 cleared it up because the only thing on Oliver’s mind was Felicity Megan Smoak.

Arrow likes to pretend L*uriver never happened and it is completely understandable. It’s a bad dream we’d all like to forget, 

but L*urel’s central connection to the team remained an ex boyfriend she didn’t like very much. I appreciate the show wanting to define a relationship between Felicity and L*urel outside of Oliver, but ignoring L*urel’s romantic history with him didn’t feel very honest.

Perhaps their friendship would have been more believable if the writers set aside time for L*urel and Felicity to bond outside of Team Arrow, but they didn’t. L*urel just shows up in the foundry and starts barking orders. 

Even Felicity questioned their relationship status. Girl, same. They had moments of kindness, but we never saw them work as partners or enjoy each other as friends like Felicity and Bl*ck S*ren. 

In fact, one of the most common arguments against L*urel being in the grave was that Felicity would never be that upset because she wasn’t that close to L*urel. HA! A lot of L*urel’s character was built upon telling rather than showing and her friendship with Felicity is one of the many areas the writers made that very frequent mistake.

The writers did not make that same mistake with Bl*ck S*ren. They gave her friendship with Felicity time to develop. They started off as enemies, but as circumstances evolved so did their relationship. 

Bizarrely, this is why Bl*ck S*ren’s and Felicity’s friendship feels more honest and earned than anything Felicity had with E1 L*urel L*ance. Bl*ck S*ren’s connection to Team Arrow is through Felicity. She has absolutely nothing to do with Oliver Queen and IT’S FANTASTIC. 

The writers tried to connect L*urel through Oliver for four years, but he was never the solution. Felicity is.

Felicity is the solution because she has a big bandwidth when it comes to forgiveness. No one has benefited more from it than Oliver Queen. Murder isn’t a deal breaker for Felicity. She fell in love with Oliver when he was dropping bodies. She barely blinked at Sara’s assassin history. Diggle murdered his own brother and I don’t think Felicity even commented on it. Remember when Roy thought he killed Sara? Who did he tell first? Felicity. She was freaked but calm. Dinah was a murderer and Felicity welcomed her onto the team with open arms. Rene pulled a gun on her and it was totally cool. I mean, sweet mother of Moses she was friends with Curtis Holt and tolerated his mansplaining and misogynistic bullshit, which says it all. 

So is it really a shock Felicity is ride or die when it comes to Bl*ck S*ren? No. I identify with Dinah’s frustrations, but recognize Felicity is on the higher road. Simply put, Felicity Smoak is a better person than me. The belief she is giving Bl*ck S*ren is no different than the belief she gave to Oliver or Sara.  

So, she’s challenging me as well. I cannot cheer Felicity on when she offers unconditional love to Oliver or Sara or John, but admonish her when she offers the same to L*urel L*ance. Sara was an assassin and I didn’t demand a prison sentence for her.

That said, I see one massive difference between Bl*ck S*ren and Oliver Queen. Oliver was remorseful about his past and crippled with guilt. He didn’t need additional punishment because he was already punishing himself enough. Oliver also spent five years in hell, lost nearly everyone he’s ever loved and is constantly sacrificing his happiness for the greater good. 

His redemptive journey is wildly different from Bl*ck S*ren’s. Oliver didn’t get to just toss on a nice suit and call it a day. And he killed bad people!!! So, I maybe I can’t hold Bl*ck S*ren to a higher standard than other characters I love, but I can damn well hold her to the same standard. 

So, is L*urel remorseful?

We don’t have to pick between Felicity and Dinah because it is possible to hold L*urel accountable and be compassionate. This is where Sara comes in.

Source: canarygifs

I have been incredibly frustrated with how Arrow has used Sara in the past when she’s come back as a guest star. I’m still ticked she didn’t get a goodbye scene with Quentin. The Sara I know on Legends isn’t always the same on Arrow, but “Lost Canary” is different. The writers give Sara her due and she reflects on her journey in a way she’s been allowed to before.

Everyone knows I’m a huge Lance sisters fan. The one saving grace in L*urel’s Season 2 storyline was when it stopped being about her relationship with Oliver and she began to focus on repairing her relationship with Sara. 

I bought into the Bl*ck C*nary storyline in Season 3 because I believed Sara’s death was a life altering catalytic event for L*urel.  “The Calm” remains my favorite L*urel L*ance episode and I will always believe Sara is her great love and vice versus. We all need something or someone to live for and that love doesn’t always have to be romantic in nature.

So, Sara coming back to town to protect her sister’s good name and offer some wisdom to Bl*ck S*ren made a lot of sense to me. Sara is the one who pieces together that maybe failing to kill Felicity and Dinah wasn’t a mistake after all. She uses her sisterly intuition and finds Bl*ck S*ren at Quentin’s grave.

Source: canarygifs 

Sara gives it to L*urel straight in an EPIC speech. She owns all her past mistakes. Sara cheated with her sister’s boyfriend, let her family believe she was dead and then became an assassin. 

Yuuuup. Sara Lance history sure is colorful! Each one of these errors in judgment is an unforgivable offense. And yet, L*urel found a way to forgive Sara. Well, after she blamed her for absolutely everything that went wrong in her and boozed her way through the liquor cabinet, but let’s not get bogged down in the details.

This remains my favorite Lance sister scene of all time because L*urel does not go to Sara offering forgiveness. No, L*urel comes to Sara begging for forgiveness. Despite everything she’d done and everything she suffered, Sara survived whereas L*urel was crippled by her pain. These two women found their way out of the dark together. Sara’s forgiveness put L*urel on a path to sobriety. L*urel’s forgiveness put Sara on a path to heroism. Neither of them truly deserved forgiveness for what they had done, but that’s not the point of forgiveness is it?

It was L*urel’s love, not Oliver’s that gave Sara the second chance she needed. Maybe Sara didn’t deserve forgiveness when L*urel gave it, but it sparked the beginning of her journey towards someone who did.  Sara is the Original Canary, the captain of a time traveling superhero squad and the one and ONLY White Canary. She offers the wisdom of her life experience to help Bl*ck S*ren.

Source: canarygifs 

 She also calls Bl*ck S*ren out on her bullshit. She tried to be a hero for six months. TRYING? SIX MONTHS? She thinks that evens the score for years and years of mayhem, theft and murder? 

We’re supposed to feel sorry for BS after she’s spent six months living in a comfortable apartment and getting paid well to do a job she didn’t earn.

Great, she helped Oliver out of prison. She also tried to kill him multiple times, so they aren’t exactly equal yet. When Sara tried to quit the murder business a lethal team of assassins came after her and she had to commit suicide to get them to leave her alone. But L*urel knows the horror of the Balmain double breasted, wool blend jacket. Poor baby.

I forgot she was accused of working with Diaz and lost her job. Yeah, except she did work with Diaz and SHE IS NOT A LAWYER SO SHE SHOULD LOSE HER JOB. 

Then there’s being falsely accused of Diaz’s murder. Hmmm… who killed Vinnie again? L*urel being falsely accused of ONE murder compared to the multiple homicides she has committed and has yet to pay for in any real or substantial way does not equate. Yet, here she is with a stick up her ass and expecting everyone to feel sorry for her. You know, I take it back. She really is like E1 L*urel sometimes.

Sara explains what real redemption is and it is my favorite line of the episode.

Source: canarygifs

She’s right. Redemption is not a light switch that can be flipped on. L*urel can’t do a couple nice things and say, “TA DA! I AM REDEEMED!” It’s not how it works. There’s no endgame here. This is something L*urel needs work at for the rest of her life. She needs to fight every day to be a person worthy of forgiveness. When L*urel falls down, or life doesn’t go her way, she can’t throw an evil temper tantrum.

A real hero isn’t looking for a reward. A real hero doesn’t look for someone else to blame. A real hero doesn’t keep score. A real hero sacrifices and fights the good fight because it is the right thing to do. Does Bl*ck S*ren qualify? 

No. She is not a hero yet. She is undeserving of the love, compassion and forgiveness Sara and Felicity are offering her.

But we all are undeserving of forgiveness. We are all broken in some way. We all do or say hurtful things. Each of us will either do something unforgivable or feel like we’ve done something unforgivable. What makes the difference in our life is having someone who loves us despite our sins. 

We can see the people who have been loved when they are unlovable and those who have not when we look at the landscape of humanity. Sometimes we need a push in the right direction when we are at a crossroads, but not all of us have someone in our life who loves us enough to give one. The ones who do are blessed.

Bl*ck S*ren’s sins are deeply evil. She has dug herself a very large, dark hole. L*urel stopped Felicity from falling down the same hole because she knows there’s nothing but pain, emptiness and loneliness at the bottom. She knows how to stop someone from falling in, but L*urel does not know how to climb out. Bl*ck S*ren is stuck in a self destructive cycle. Felicity fundamentally believes every human being is redeemable if they want redemption, but some need more of a push than others.

The truth is we all need help out of the darkness. We all need someone to love us unconditionally. We all need someone reach down into the hole and offer a hand. But our redemption remains in our hands. It’s not enough for someone to reach out. We have to reach back.

All the evil hijinks boil down to a faceoff with Bl*ck S*ren and Felicity.  Felicity tells BS one last time  she believes in her, but ultimately it’s not about what she believes. It’s not about L*urel L*ance’s legacy or who Quentin wanted BS to be. This is about who Bl*ck S*ren wants to be. Free will my friends. It is a bitch.

COME ON! Nobody is killing Felicity Smoak least of all Bl*ck S*ren. L*urel is picking out china patterns in her head, so she ain’t killin’ bae. She joins Felicity and the rest of the birds and together they defeat the villain of the week. Sorry I really didn’t pay much attention to the partner.

Source: smoaktechs 

In their victory celebration, Dinah decides not to arrest Bl*ck S*ren and even comes up with a get out of jail free card excuse aka “working undercover.” A relieved Felicity tells L*urel that everything can go back to normal.

But L*urel disagrees. It is time to stop running. It is time to stop pretending to be someone she’s not. It’s time to go back to Earth 2. She has to made amends in the place where she created so much pain. I. AM. SCREAMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, it’s not a stint in the pokey, but I WILL TAKE IT. Going back to Earth 2 is the next best thing. It addresses my primary problem with L*urel’s redemptive arc and that is pretending to be someone she’s not. Being Earth 1 L*urel L*ance protected Bl*ck S*ren from all the damage she caused on Earth 2. If she really wants a shot at redemption then she has to go back to the place where everyone knows her as Bl*ck S*ren. Earth 2 is where L*urel will be forced to confront everything she’s done and accept responsibility for it. There’s no hiding, running or easy outs on Earth 2. That is the place where an honest redemptive arc can begin.

Felicity understands and gives her a parting gift – E1 L*urel’s Bl*ck C*nary suit.

Source:  nyssaalghl

It’s a beautiful full circle moment. I don’t make the rules! Felicity anoints the superheroes, assigns the names and hands out the couture! If she says L*urel should be Bl*ck C*nary on Earth 2 then L*urel is going to be Bl*ck C*nary on Earth 2. Fine with me!

L*urel meets Sara once more at Quentin’s grave. Her story always comes back to Sara no matter what version of L*urel it is. Felicity was the push, but Sara’s words lit the spark. She launched L*urel L*ance’s hero’s journey once again. Cuz see the light?!!!!

Source: canarygifs

This scene also feels like a goodbye to the Lance family. Quentin is gone, L*urel is dead, Sara is off hero-ing through time, and Bl*ck S*ren is returning to Earth 2. This isn’t the end of L*urel’s redemptive journey. It’s the beginning. But it is the first time I believe she might deserve it someday.

Source:  nyssaalghl 

FLASH FORWARD TIME!

Dinah created the Canary Network to be a support system for women, so someone always had their back. It’s a reminder to Dinah of what she failed to give Bl*ck S*ren once. It’s a whole conglomerate of leather clad ladies supporting ladies! LOOOOOOVE IT!

There is no singular Bl*ck C*nary. No one woman holds the title. It fulfills L*urel L*ance’s dying wish in a way she couldn’t even imagine at the time, which is why it is so fitting.

Unfortunately, Galaxy One massacres the network in “Lost Canary” and Dinah loses fifteen of her girls. It’s a devastating loss for Dinah, but I couldn’t help but cackle a little. Arrow never misses an opportunity to throw a little petty at the LL fandom. Oh you’re made we killed once Bl*ck C*nary? Watch us kill fifteen! How do you like them apples?!

Dinah, Felicity and Zoe want to lay low and regroup after such a big hit, but Mia is fired up and ready for pay back. 

Source: amunetblack 

Dinah tries to convince her to wait for the surviving canaries to fight back when the time is right, but Mia defiantly says...

Source: amunetblack 

It’s like they tailor made her for us fandom. Mia Smoak is perfection on every level. 

Dinah calls in some back up to keep an eye on Mia.

L*urel.

She saves Mia from some Galaxy One goons. Unfortunately, the horror show of a wig is back, but let us pray there are less buckles on the suit. The lipstick has changed from black to red so serious upgrade in that department.

Source: dcmultiverse

It’s a beautifully symbolic moment because L*urel saves Mia in an alley where a body of a dead canary is lying. It’s the same kind of alley where Sara fell to her death and launched L*urel’s Bl*ck C*nary journey. 

It’s the same kind of alley where L*urel’s journey was foreshadowed in the pilot,

but with a significant change. L*urel is no longer connected to the man in the story, but to the women.  Sara, L*urel, Felicity, Dinah, Bl*ck S*ren, Zoe and Mia all weave together in one beautiful thread. Bl*ck C*nary no longer belongs to one woman. It belongs to all of them.

The beauty of this is I don’t have to sit through another half baked Bl*ck C*nary storyline for L*urel. I trust she’s earned the suit on E2. Even better she’s still Bl*ck S*ren. This isn’t 2.0 of E1 L*urel L*nce. Hopefully, all the snarky wit, aptitude for zingers and glowering that made me fall in love with BS remains. I just needed her to stop murdering people. That’s all. All of this means I might finally have a version of L*urel L*nce that I can enjoy.

L*urel gives Mia some wisdom that screams THERE IS GOING TO BE A SPIN OFF, 

but what I loved most is L*urel is still trying every day to prove she is a hero. 

Redemption is a journey and not a destination. And undeserved forgiveness is often the beginning of that journey. Nobody knows that better than L*urel L*ance.

Stray Thoughts

#Fact. Source:  felicitysmoakgifs

Bl*ck S*ren pretending to be L*urel acts somewhat normal. She ratchets up the cheese factor when she's Bl*ck S*ren. I forgot about that.

Emily is having an A+ hair season. Really it's like a Vidal Sassoon commercial every week.

This made me emotional. Source:  olicitygifs

"Let's just call her a genius and leave it at that." Hubby is so proud of bae.

Bl*ck S*ren versus White Canary is like a heavy weight boxer fighting a chipmunk.

Felicity and Sara flirting is everything I didn’t know I need. The love triangle was centered on the wrong person in Season 2. It should have been Felicity and not Oliver. Source:  ebett

Yup. We all knew. Source:   felicitysmoakgifs

“Felicity Smoak is killing people now." Sara is my spirit animal.

Sara has seniority Dinah. It should've been you sitting it out. Respect your elder. Source:  canarygifs

The great evil of this episode is the grommet sweater. We must protect the actresses from this atrocity because it's spreading. 

This  was cute. Source: hollandrooden

Sara has a baby on Earth 2? I NEED THE NAME. WHERE ARE PICTURES?

Don’t tell me L*urel is not in love with Felicity. I know my truth.  Source: hollandrooden

Spit my drink out when Sara said this because it’s ridiculous. That said, Arrow continually painting Laurel as a saint is a constant reminder they are never bringing her back. the more Arrow paints Laurel as saint. Source:  danverskara

Was it snowing in the future? What was up with the weather?

Disclaimer: Any gifs on the blog are not mine. If you would like a gif removed from my reviews, please message me. 7x18 gifs credited.

The *** in names is so the review doesn’t show up in the tag.

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[strxga]

Stop stoking the fires. Just stop. Please.

I genuinely can’t believe I have to write this post, it’s honestly genuinely surprising how the FNDM hasn’t changed at all from the past years and I’m just so tired of it. So tired of all the drama, the character hate, the toxicity, please just, stop this, stop this already!

Ever since Seeing Red the FNDM has been on a constant back-and-forth between shitting on certain characters while also elevating others to the highest praise, and while usually this wouldn’t be such a huge deal, it is because this has gone way past the point of tolerable but to the point of harassment and blatantly fake accusations. Obviously I’m referring to the whole Adam vs. Bumblebee fiasco that’s been stirring on the pot for far too long, and trust me, this has been going on for far too long and starting to get EXTREMELY out of hand.

Each and every single day I go to the Adam Taurus tag I see nothing but hatred and venom being spewed at Adam’s fans, calling them abusers, misogynists, scum of the Earth, abuse apologists and other far worse things, and the worst part is that NONE of the Adam fans I have spoken with have EVER excused his character. In fact they’ve all agreed he was an asshole who got what he deserved. Some agree the narrative did a good job of handling it while others disagree, and that’s good and all! We all have our different opinions, but when we as a community bundle together to single this specific group of fans who particularly enjoyed Adam’s character for whatever reason and proceed to harassment and take over the character’s tag and just fill it to the brim with hatred? Then we, as a FNDM, are doing something WRONG!

Bumblebee and Blacksun shippers are CONSTANTLY asking their tags to be kept nice and sweet with no hatred in it, so why is it so hard to ask for the same for the Adam fans? They know their character isn’t the most universally well-liked, but when you lunge all these fake accusations and branding and labeling them as something they aren’t? Things are being taken to the extreme and being taken way too far! Especially when these bullies CELEBRATE Adam’s death and shove it in their faces. Imagine if someone did the same to you, if someone went ahead and made FUN of you when your favorite character in not just RWBY but in any medium died. Would you like that? Would it feel good to be on the receiving end of that?

Adam wasn’t the best character or person. He had the POTENTIAL TO BE MORE but he wasn’t - Kerry and Miles settled on writing him that way and they did, but that excuses NO ONE to harass these FANS for believing and wanting their favorite character to be more than just the yandere ex-boyfriend trope. There are soooo many unconfirmed or just plainly false headcanons about Adam being spread about him in the tag or lies being told to new fans that just make him even far more despicable than he already was in canon: A few examples of this is I’ve seen people present their headcanons of Adam sexually assaulting Blake, stabbing her before or even that she discovered her Semblance after he physically assaulted her while they were together on the White Fang WHEN THERE’S NOT EVEN A PROPER BASIS FOR THAT!

As far as we KNOW, he only took advantage of her emotionally, which is bad enough as it is. But Adam is by far NOT the only character with these traits yet he’s the only character I see being demonized further by the FNDM. You want a long list of other characters who are abusive and very much as real as Adam is yet get absolutely no hatred for their actions? Some of which are on Chibi as well: -Cinder Fall -Roman Torchwick -Neopolitan -Hazel Rainart -Tyrian Callows -Raven Branwen -Jacques Schnee -Corsac Albain -Fennec Albain -Ilia Amitola

I could even list a few more but these are the first examples that come to that. Let’s take a look at the similarities between Adam and the other listed characters:

-Adam is the leader of a terrorist organization, the White Fang -Cinder is a member of the biggest criminal and terrorism organization EVER. -Adam killed multiple Humans and Faunus alike. -Raven is the leader of a group of bandits that casually assaults and murders settlements outside of the Kingdoms for supplies to survive. -Jacques leads the S.D.C. and is single-handedly responsible for Faunus abuse and oppression and operating outside the law for his own selfish interests. -Roman is a thief and murderer who cares only about himself and is willing to take as many lives as necessary if it means to survive. -Cinder orchestrated the Fall of Beacon which led to multiple lives from ALL the Kingdoms to end prematurely. -Adam supposedly took advantage of Blake emotionally while they were both in the White Fang and used manipulation to keep her by his side. -Cinder emotionally AND physically has assaulted, threatened and manipulated Emerald. -Raven is emotionally manipulative and tried to take advantage of Yang and make her feel inferior to her so she could maintain the illusion of power. -Adam was on a quest of obtaining power to accomplish his goals. -Cinder desired power so obsessively that she not only joined Salem but allowed herself to be turned into a Human-Grimm hybrid. -Raven’s whole shtick is about being powerful enough to lead her tribe! -Adam has an unhealthy obsession with killing Blake for betraying him. -Cinder has an even unhealthier fixation on Ruby and torturing her, wishing to see her burn to ashes in front of her, even to the point she’s still obsessed with her. -Hazel holds Ozpin accountable for something out of his power and is obsessed with murdering him over and over for his own satisfaction. -Tyrian is just straight-up psychopathic and a mass murderer who delights in killing! -Neopolitan expressed a twisted and wicked delight at the idea of extinguishing Yang’s life. -Adam stabbed and hurt Blake and cut Yang’s arm as a display of power. -Cinder killed Pyrrha and left a nasty scar on Weiss too after piercing her with a spear. -Adam groomed a young Blake into serving by his side as a soldier despite him being much older while Ghira was still part of the White Fang. -Ilia, if we’re going by the Adam Trailer, was around Adam’s same grown age while Blake was, at the oldest, 12. So even if she didn’t groom her, she still felt attraction for a minor, which is pretty bad! -Adam lied to all the Faunus and claimed he cared for them. -Fennec and Corsac did the same to the entirety of Menagerie. -Adam has tried to kill Blake multiple times. -So did Corsac, Ilia and Fennec.

All these fucking characters are based on reality! People like Tyrian are mass murderers that are still frequent! People like Hazel who form a grudge and never let go until the target of their hatred’s life is beyond miserable, people like Neopolitan who take a sick satisfaction in hurting those who are down and enjoys inflicting pain on others. Criminals like Roman who kill and steal as long as it’s for their self-interests, people like Raven and Jacques who form negligent and abusive parents that only hurt their children, people like Adam who are abusive and crave to be seen as a savior in order to retain power. People like Cinder who are not satisfied with obtaining power and using it to crush others but who won’t stop until the people they oppress cannot dare even lift a finger against them like a megalomaniac tyrant! All these characters, not just Adam have real-life counterparts that are just as frightening!

Oh and let’s not forget when Yang was about to be killed by Neopolitan was there outrage for her character? Absolutely not! As a matter of fact, most of the FNDM loved it so much they started SHIPPING these two characters together! Why?! Hell if I know! Because they’re both women I suppose and for some reason the FNDM excused Neopolitan’s behavior, but when it’s a male character the one doing the hurting then he gets demonized to all hell and back. I’ve seen absolutely zero arguments in the FNDM when it comes to women-on-women violence though. But I guess it’s because it’s empowering for the fans for some reason? I don’t know. I just know one thing.

All these fucking characters are real, and they’re terrifying! Yet they’re still in Chibi. All these female villains are dark beyond belief yet they get excused! Why, because they’re women? Because they’re pretty?! Regardless they’re all just as bad as Adam fucking Taurus yet no one says fucking anything! Why are still only the males that get demonized? Why are the fans still so toxic to others? Why has this FNDM not fucking changed since 2014?! I’m sick and tired of it. I didn’t want to write this post yet here I am doing so because this hot garbage mess of a FNDM can’t go at least a fucking day without being wild.

Respect other people. Stop accusing them of shit they’re not guilty of. Just stop. Stop stoking the fires of drama. Just get along with each other! Let people like the characters they want to like and for the love of God stop harassing each other and just be at peace!

[marshmallowgoop]

Ryuketsu or Ryumako

Anonymous said: Pairing: Ryuuko x Mako or Ryuuko x Senketsu?

[Make me choose!]

Given that I never shut up about a certain relationship, I figure that this one is pretty obvious (but I’m kind of relieved if it isn’t? And that’s why I got two asks for it? Lol, I’m always afraid of bugging the crap out of people with my gushing).

But. Ryuketsu. They are literally the reason I gave the series a chance.

Kill la Kill helped me realize that I love human/non-human relationships. I just can’t get enough of ‘em. This show made me a certified supporter of Monster Fuckers.

Also, I remember seeing this Tweet a while back about how het relationships are so easy to do well, but creators keep messing it up. The argument was that all you need to do is have a woman who tops and a man who loves and supports her with all his heart. I was just like, “You mean all of my het OTPs?”

Of course, Ryuko and Senketsu’s status as a “het” ship is more than debatable, but the Tweet brings up something good. I am so tired of the “aggressive man being aggressive is romantic” trope, so I really love to see stories where men are kind and sweet and truly love and respect the women they’re with. And if you consider Senketsu to be a man, that’s 100% him.

Plus, I looked over my awful very first novel that I wrote and completed when I was 13, and the main romantic relationship has the same exact dynamic as Ryuko and Senketsu.

So, tl;dr, I know I’m the laughingstock of the fandom for it, I know everyone thinks it’s the biggest joke ever to “ship aggressive dye job with her cloth father” (but I will argue forever that he is 10,000% not her dad or a father figure, thanks), but Ryuko and Senketsu are so good and sweet, and it was inevitable that I’d fall in love with them.

@dracus16 said: RyuMako or SatsuNonon?

Hmm, I think I’m gonna have to go with Satsunon.

Nonon definitely puts Satsuki up on a pedestal, but I think that after the events of the series, Nonon could absolutely grow and come to see Satsuki as an equal. Satsuki, too, could finally feel safe in fully letting Nonon in.

I’m a total sucker for the “childhood friend” trope, so. It was also inevitable that I’d like this one.

Plus, Sushio totally encourages the pair with stuff like this adorable after-series fanart of Nonon about to give Satsuki flowers!!

And, heck, even his character sheets in LOVE LOVE KLKL make me go, “Aww!”

Satsuki may not be the most open with her emotions until the end of the show, but I think she clearly loves Nonon and loves having Nonon in her life. This couple has a lot of sweet potential.

Anonymous said: Pairing: SatsuNon or SatsuMako

Hmm! I’m gonna say SatsuMako.

I kinda bring it up above, but one thing I really like about SatsuMako is that Mako is so eager to be Satsuki’s friend once the opportunity arises. Mako doesn’t worship Satsuki or treat her like a god; Mako doesn’t even hesitate to treat Satsuki like any other girl.

And that must be so nice for Satsuki! For her entire life, people have judged her because of her status or considered her to be something greater than human. 

But not Mako. Mako offers Satsuki a place to truly be herself in.

And on Mako’s side, Satsuki totally respects and believes in Mako when so few people in her life do. Satsuki trusts Mako to help carry out her plan to save Ryuko from Junketsu and doesn’t underestimate Mako’s power. Mako is so constantly looked down upon or considered ridiculous and annoying, but Satsuki never feels that way.

They’re just such a feel-good, sweet coupling. I’m sad it’s not more popular! Nakashima and Trigger have featured similar pairings before, such as Honey and Natsuko in Re: Cutie Honey and Akko and Diana in Little Witch Academia, but I feel like SatsuMako gets the least love by a wide margin (and I’d say it’s my second favorite of the three!)

I know Satsuki and Mako don’t get a lot of time to interact, but. There is so much to love here, and they’re honestly one of my favorite ships from Kill la Kill.

[bigskydreaming]

Blech. I’ve pretty much officially finished writing, editing and revising this standalone epic fantasy novel I started years and years ago and only just recently got around to finishing. Which is good, for sure, but also....blech. LOL. Because now I have no more excuses for putting off making a decision about the cover.

Like I always intended to self-pub this particular novel for personal reasons, and I can make my own covers just fine. I’ve done epic fantasy covers before for other clients that turned out well, even working with stock art and photomanipulation, its totally possible to make something that hits all the genre expectations and sells the right tone and feel to readers who come across it. BUT I’ve always loved the illustrated covers of a lot of fantasy novels I grew up with, and always kinda wanted something similar for this particular work, even though I have other fantasy projects I wouldn’t care as much about that one way or the other.

And so years ago when I first started the book and was only about a third of the way in, but still had a solid sense of the world and story and where it was all going, I happened to stumble across a fantasy artist whose work was like...exactly the right tone and aesthetic I’d always been picturing for that novel’s setting and vibe. And he was a freelancer, and open to commissions at the time, and you never know with freelancers if they’ll still be taking commissions a year or two down the line or if they’ve gone to work for like, a video game company or studio or something like that by that point, so even though the book was nowhere near done I hopped on that and commissioned an illustration from him to be used for the cover at some future point when I was ready for it. I just needed the illustration, I was fine doing typography and all that myself when the time came.

And I mean, I’ve literally been on the other side of the author/artist interaction tons of times, lol, so like, I know from my own experiences where its helpful to give an artist or a designer room to breathe and exercise their own creativity, make use of their own particular skillset and interpret the story elements you tell them are most important to see conveyed in the final cover, in like...their own way, like what feels best to them, what they’re most inspired to do with the foundational info you give them to build off of. 

Like I mean, visual design is its own skillset, and often completely separate from the kind of visualization most authors do of their own work while writing it....and with self-pubbed authors especially, as artists or designers you often run into authors who get really hung up on relatively minor details that they feel really need to be on the cover in some capacity and in really specific ways. Which is often to the detriment of the cover in the long run because like....what looks right in your head as a writer, totally familiar with your own world and story and its every minutiae and the implications and context of every single element....is not always going to come across the same way to readers who happen across your cover while browsing. Because they literally have ZERO context for what they’re looking at, and thus it really needs to stand on its own two feet and sell itself, not....loop back around to some hidden significance that will really only resonate with readers who end up buying the book and only once they reach this one scene in chapter 27 or whatever, you know?

So I really didn’t want to do that with this artist. I was only commissioning him because I loved what I’d seen of his work and the style he seemed to default to naturally was the perfect fit for what I wanted, IMO, so I was more than willing to let him take the broader strokes of the setting/themes/storyline in whatever direction inspired him most, as long as he hit within the general framework I provided him.

BUT, that said, for all that I tried to give him as much creative freedom to work with as possible, there are of course always a FEW things that as the commissioning party, are really important to see in the final product, and so yeah, I did have a couple of areas/elements that I did stress were really important to strike the right tone with, or it could make or break the whole illustration.

Specifically, I was concerned that he hit the right feel with the main character. My protag for this novel is a woman, and the one area his portfolio samples didn’t have a ton of variety with and thus had me slightly worried about what visual tropes he might default to...was female characters. He had tons of gorgeous settings, fantasy creatures, architecture, knights and sorcerers and monsters, but not a ton of women in the samples I saw. He did have some, for sure, and like there was nothing super concerning about the way he’d drawn/painted them....there were some priestesses, sorceresses, that kinda thing, and their anatomy and wardrobes weren’t like....glaringly cheesecake-y or anything like a lot of fantasy artists’ portfolios....so I knew he COULD get the character right, the way I hoped he would, I just wasn’t SURE. Like, I wasn’t concerned about specific details, beyond like....not outrageously contradicting the character description and scenes I gave him to work off of, I wasn’t worried about nitpicking minutiae. But my protag is a warrior-magic user archetype, and warrior women is like, the one female archetype he didn’t have any samples of, and I was more concerned about him defaulting to like....the old fantasy standby’s of ridiculously impossible and unnatural poses for warrior women, not to mention totally impractical armor, that sort of thing. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this was the ONE thing I stressed, lol. I didn’t really care about the finer details of her armor like in terms of decoration or filigree or even color schemes, I honestly could just adjust my own descriptions in the book to match what he came up with if need be. Stuff like that, so not a big deal to me. ALL I was concerned about was like....she not fall into those trope traps that ensnare so many women on fantasy covers, like....just make her look like she��s a fucking warrior who knows what the hell she’s doing, and I’ll be fine with everything else, you know? I even sent him some covers of published fantasy novels to use as comparison comps, like ‘this is the kind of feel or vibe I’d ideally like to see her capture, something like these women in these covers here’ as well as ‘this is what I really really DON”T want to see, like, I shouldn’t have a better sense of how good a contortionist she is than whether or not I believe she can swing a sword.’

Soooooo.....what happened?

Did he prioritize as I’d really really hoped he would and strongly expressed my desire for him to, and take care to at least avoid the more obvious problems, even if the end result was’t 100% what I was hoping for? Nooooooope. She might as well be mid-yoga pose. Sigh. Like, the guy has a damn near perfect grasp of anatomy and proportions on every other human figure I saw in the many samples I looked through before commissioning him, but somehow, despite this being of utmost importance to me and the ONLY thing about the entire project I stressed about and made sure to emphasize, lol, he ended up painting her in this weird bent at the waist position that throws her lower body proportions off entirely and like, her hip is angled or arched in this weird way that’s incredibly distracting and off, and like also, of course her armor is....pointless, in all the specific ways that happened to be the ONLY details about her armor I was concerned with. Y’know. Like. Its effectiveness. As armor.

And the absolutely obnoxious thing about it all, is that everything else about the illustration? Absolutely gorgeous. Everything I’d hoped for, even as I deliberately tried not to build up too specific an image in my mind ahead of time. Hell, BETTER than anything I’d have come up with on my own, and totally validating my impulse to have someone with different skillsets than my own do this instead of just making a cover out of stock art the way I usually do with my other projects. He absolutely captured the specific MOOD I was aiming for with the setting and general atmosphere, like, the very reason I’d been drawn to his style in the first place, he totally nailed that. Couldn’t have asked for a better fit to the general ambiance of the piece. The colors were just the right shade of otherworldly, a great mix of light and darkness that sold the gloom of the surrounding environs without drowning in dark palettes that make it hard to pick out individual details and differentiate between figures. So on and so on.

EVERY SINGLE OTHER THING ABOUT THE DAMN ILLUSTRATION IS PERFECT LOL.

Except for the only fucking part I was worried about in the first place, lmaaaaaaaaaao whyyyyyyy.

And I mean, because his style was a combo of illustration and painting, there was never gonna be a ton of room for revisions or tweaks to the final piece, I knew and understood that going in. He showed me what he had when he was done with the initial pencilwork, before he painted over it, but with the understanding that it could still change from that point, if he needed to shift things around because of the way the colors and lighting and shadows were all coming out once painted. And the pencil work lacked the finer details that he added into his painting in the final stages, so like, I did see a rough draft before he started painting, and could ask for tweaks or adjustments at that point...except at that point, I didn’t NEED to! LOL. In the rougher sketch, her general position was just shifted enough from what it ended up being that like, it wasn’t my ideal pose for her but nothing I’d say I actually had a problem with, like her upper body was elevated just enough and at just the right angle compared to what he ended up with that at that point, there was no unnatural hip thrust or any of that stuff, and there was only a rough sense of what would come to be the final armor. So I mean, TECHNICALLY I had an opportunity to pump the brakes and be like whoa wait dude, this isn’t what we discussed, can I get you to go back to the drawing board just in this one specific area right here and maybe even just take another look at those comps I sent you, see what I mean about what I’m trying to avoid and how that’s kinda sneaking in here anyway....except, I didn’t think I had to say anything at that point lol, because it all looked on track??

I mean, its not like I think he deliberately misled me with that initial draft or anything, nothing as dramatic as that. I’m fairly certain that like most artists and designers will tell you, in the process of like, the actual drawing/painting/designing, you have to make adjustments as you go to account for the little unforseen speedbumps where you were juuuuuust off enough in your prediction of how this would look when working in your ultimate medium, that you have to like...keep nudging your initial outline little by little as you go to account for the slight shift in direction...with gradually that adding up to a fairly significant departure in the end. Ultimately, I think we ended up with what we ended up with because he was good with focusing on my specific concerns when drafting in pencil and just mapping out a general intent, but the closer he got to finishing up his piece, the less and less focused he was on the stuff I prioritized rather than his own innate prioritizations and so he just kinda figured ‘is it really gonna be THAT big a deal?’ instead of sacrificing a direction or angle that played into what he thought was a more important design element. Stuff like that. Like, you know me, I’m def not saying that makes it A-Ok in my book, lol, I just mean to say I honestly don’t think it was...a willful, conscious effort on his part to leave me with something as far removed from what I was hoping for as what I got.

So again I say blech. Its just super frustrating and obnoxious and I’ve been trying to decide what to do with it for like, months now. Because again, EVERYTHING ELSE is perfect and gorgeous and like, yes, good, this is what I wanted, what I was hoping for. Like, I literally could not come up with a design using my own go-to mediums that would come anywhere close to capturing the general feel and tone and mood of the story and its setting better than the overall vibe of his piece.

Its just the protag, front and center, is absolutely driving me fucking nuts. And I keep going back and forth endlessly because I’m like is it really THAT bad and noticeable or am I hyper-fixating because I specifically tried to avoid this end result and ended up with at least a version of it anyway? And then I’m like psst, remember how much fucking money you spent on this, like yeah thats long gone and doesn’t change your current situation one way or another so it doesn’t really matter except oh yeah its totally gonna fucking haunt you if you don’t use this lol and all that money was spent for nothing lmfao you dumbass. And then I’m like, just to weigh my options, what would I design for this cover myself, if I ended up scrapping this and making my own from scratch, do I at least have anything in mind that’s for sure not any worse than my dissatisfaction with this? Except lol I literally can not seem to come up with ANYTHING, like, total blank, because again there’s just enough that I LIKE about the piece that its like, now that I’ve seen THOSE aspects of it, I’m not gonna be content with any cover that doesn’t contain them and I just literally have no way of replicating those effects via my own design medium.

Ugh. So its really annoying, and I keep going around and around and around in circles and making no progress on what to do about it and like...ugh. I hate being so anal about shit like this, especially when I am usually pretty good about dodging the hyper-fixation tendencies on this front specifically.....but I just got whammied but good by the way all of this unfolded and came together and now I feel stuck and lmao I’m really not fond of the fact that I’m really fucking proud of this book and how it came out in terms of the writing and story but like, covers ARE actually a pretty big deal as they’re literally a reader’s first impression, and I feel like no matter which route I go, a big part of me is gonna be doomed to be like NO YOU FUCKING IDIOT THAT WAS THE WRONG CHOICE, UGH WTF DUDE, TURN AROUND, UNDO, UNDO, U’LL REGRET THIIIIIIIS.

ANYWAY! That’s my much ado about nothing. I was kinda hoping that hashing it all out in a post and working my way through it as I wrote it all down would like....magically reveal the Right Decision to me and everything would click and be so obvious by the time I got to this point in the post, but alas.

Fix-It Machine broke. This accomplished nothing. UGH. RUDE.

[rat-apologist]

A Semi-In depth Review of Anna Todd’s After

So I’ve been seeing the trailer for the movie adaptation of this book every five seconds on my Instagram feed, and as a proud dyslexic unwilling to sit down and read it, I listened to the audiobook.

Again, these are all my opinions, if you don’t agree that’s okay.

Here is a quick, spoiler free plot synopsis for those who want/need it: Being moved from Wattpad into the real world of publishing, After follows a girl named Tessa, who simultaneously has the mentality of a five year old and an old man from the 1800’s. She is eighteen years old and is going to college to be an English major. Tessa loves control, planning, and books. She's an introvert at heart, and “not like other girls” (i.e. dresses conservatively, is a virgin (the books words, not mine)). She has a shitty mom and a nice, preppy, boyfriend who is still in high school, and her life is completely planned out. That’s all turned upside down when the poster child for emotional abuse named Harden (harry styles) waltzes into her life during a frat party her first week of college. Your typical Wattpad/teen movie drama ensues.

(the actual review under the cut)

This review is chock full of spoilers for Anna Todd’s book After. If you want a good idea of what I thought about this book without any spoilers I’ll just say this: I can really honestly say I was never bored while listening to this book. However, that is not necessarily a good thing. Often times I was just too much in awe of the clunky writing and truly evil supposedly “redeemable” characters to be bored. On a one to five star scale, I’d probably give it a two. More on that later.

Here are the things I liked:

(this one is only applicable to the audiobook) the narrator was amazing, her voice acting was very appropriate (though she did tend to drop accents sometimes- but that is forgiven because of how otherwise amazing her line delivery was- especially considering the quality of the dialogue).

Landon and Dakota were my favorite characters, and even though they had no personalities beyond what they meant to Tess and how they interacted with Harden (Hardin? Again, I listened to the audiobook I’ve got no idea how to spell that lmao) they still made the book better to listen to.

Despite the repetition of plot/narrative structures I can happily say again that I was never really bored.

Okay moving on to more mixed-bag feelings:

So the last chapter was from Harden’s perspective, and I thought that was an interesting idea. Learning what one character thinks, especially since our protagonist is, how you say, a little bad at reading/interacting with other human people. However the execution left something to be desired for me. It quite literally was just the exact same scene we just saw from the previous chapter, but from Hardens perspective instead of Tess’s. Which was just ended up being unnecessarily repetitive at times.

I liked how Tessa tried to be less judgmental throughout the book, however her growth is very, very limited.

I liked the fact that they mentioned they used condoms in pretty much every sex scene, and that most of the time clear verbal consent/clear nonverbal consent was given for the sexual stuff. That does not happen often in books, especially in fan fiction from what I understand.

I like that Tess does stand up for herself, while I could sometimes see myself comparing her to Bella Swan considering how much of her personality does kind of revolve around her relationship with Harden, she certainly was more vocal about her feelings. And boy, did she have a lot of feelings.

Moving on to the things I didn’t like, this is probably going to be a mix on writing, characters, and plot points so bear with me. (I’m saving my many thoughts on the twist for last)

Okay so a big number one is the biggest plot driver, the love story. So, I feel like it goes without saying, but the main relationship is SUPER unhealthy. Harden constantly stalks, manipulates, and bullies Tess throughout the whole book. He is pretty much abusive, using her caring for him to his own advantage and then dropping her when it suits him. Plus his hyper-sexualization of her “virtue” is really really nasty. Tess pretty much cries in every interaction they have together, and even acknowledges how toxic their relationship is, and yet I’m supposed to root for them? Hmm… I don’t think so

The near constant slut shaming and girl hate in this book bothers me, especially when it’s mixed with the hints of “I’m not like other girls” from Tess

The character descriptions kinda weird me out considering how much Harden is described like Harry Styles, like literally a tumblr punk edit of Harry Styles

The dialogue is… bad. To all the writers out there (myself included) make sure you read your dialogue out loud to see if it sounds natural, that way if your Wattpad fanfiction ever does get published, and your book is adapted into audiobook, you’ll avoid a situation like this one. Because, especially listening to it, the dialogue in this book is really really bad. Honest to god it sounds like robots imitating humans are talking to each other, only they’re trying to convince the other robots that they are humans. For some reason Anna Todd avoided using contractions for most of the book, making the characters sound unnatural and completely out of their predefined characters. Why would these college students not use words like “it’s” “we’ll” and “we’re”? It is truly astonishing, and it makes the few uses of contractions really distracting. Normally I don’t give a shit about grammar since I don’t really understand grammar, and normally grammatical errors aren’t that obvious when listening on audio, but the dialogue was seriously that bad.

The pacing was bad, that’s kinda all I have to say. It was generally too quick during plot development but then took a screeching halt for each fight/sex scene (of which there are many)

The repetition of certain words/phrases really got annoying. Everyone's always screaming, biting on their lip, or smirking. Harden is rude, as Tessa mentioned about eight million times, and Tessa finds his dirty talk arousing. We know this, because Todd uses those phrases about a billion times a chapter.

The sex scenes kind of grossed me out. I’m (in general) fine with sex, but the way the sex scenes were written seriously ucked me out. These college kids avoid using words like “penis” “dick” “pussy” etc. and use really really juvenile words like “down there” and “length”. Maybe this is a fanfiction thing, and I’ll admit that I have not read essentially any fanfiction, but it is truly a disturbing way to write sex. Especially since Tessa is written to have the experience and understanding of sex as like a child, not even understand what an orgasm is and unwilling to say words like penis or vagina, something our loverboy Harden is super attracted to, by the by.

I hate that this book uses “girl almost gets assaulted so man can come in and valiantly protect her” trope. It is super gross and I hate it. That’s kind of all I can say, the use of women's pain so that men can get some amount of redemption is awful.

More on Harden: I am sick of the “violent, broken man that I promise I can fix!” trope. It is used to justify and excuse abuse and I hate it. Tess is honestly scared of him several times in the book and it’s played as a personality quirk of his? Like everyone just accepts that’s how he is? I know for the most part we aren’t supposed to “like” him for the first part of the book, but it’s obvious that the author wants us to root for him and Tessa in some capacity. Especially with the inclusion of his perspective at the end, which in a way is exactly the kind of manipulation that he is into so idk. Also he is possessive despite the fact that they weren’t dating, and he is very clear he does not date. That’s already abuse, but of course there is more. On top of that he is cruel, and pretty stuck-up throughout the book- making him pretty much insufferable to me. And all of this shit just gets worse once the twist is introduced, and no amount of his whining from his chapter could at all change that.

The rest of the characters are all either boring, or the worst people you could ever meet. Tess’s mom, Molly, Jace, all really terrible to offset the horror of Harden. To almost justify what he does- because comparatively he doesn’t seem as bad (up until the twist).

The twist. Dear god the twist. So, as it goes it isn’t an extremely inspired twist. I’ve seen it done before in a similar way (I’m looking at you, Ten Things I Hate About You). For those who are wondering: the big twist is that Harden only really pursued Tess in the beginning because after she revealed she is a virgin at a party early on in the book he makes a pricey bet with Zed (another side character only used to add ~drama~ to Tessa and Harden’s relationship) to see who can take her virginity. All of the subsequent bullying, possessiveness, manipulation, etc. were all a ploy to have sex with her before Zed could. I feel like it goes without saying that that’s disgusting, but let me tell you exactly why: at least if he was actually interested in her at first his weird behavior could possibly be passed off as hormones (I wouldn’t like it, but I’d understand it  more if you’d try to make that argument), but the fact that it was all for a bet not only makes his disgusting actions worse, but makes the fact that he supposedly falls in love with her so much more annoying. Plus, the fact that he literally tries to trap Tessa in a lease so she can’t leave him, and tries to bribe his friends into silence really shows how little he actually cares about Tessa and her thoughts and feelings.  

So, why two stars? Honestly, because I was entertained (for lack of a better word) by this book. Maybe if I actually read it and not just listened to the audiobook it my rating would be lower, maybe if there was just one more sex scene to slow down the pace I would have been more bored. Who knows, but I was entertained. Sometimes by how terrible the dialogue is, by how astonishing the characters decisions were, sometimes by the actual plot. It’s like watching a shitty soap opera, it’s not good by any means, but it certainly keeps your attention.