#anyway from an outsider perspective this looks Bad. like without context

[nervousmonolith]

0 need for this reply 💀

[kalinara]

So I had a thought about Scott/Jean vs. Logan/Jean ship dynamics, in the 616 universe and I felt the need to share it. (Without scans for once because I am not at my primary computer. Alas.)

Disclaimer: I am a Scott/Jean fan (I'm sure anyone who's been to my blog is shocked) and I've never really seen the appeal of Logan/Jean outside of a throuple context. That bias will likely come through in this thought.

But anyway, something I find really interesting is how Scott/Jean and Logan/Jean kind of reverse a very common YA fantasy love triangle dynamic.

I mean, reverse is kind of a funny thing to say here, because I think both ships long predate the kind of YA fiction trends that I'm talking about, but it's still kind of funny.

Anyway, this is the trend that I'm thinking about: in many YA fantasy books, there is a female protagonist that is somehow caught in two worlds. Maybe she's secretly a faerie raised by humans. Or she's half elf, half human. But raised human. Basically, the idea is that the female character is an ordinary human girl until something happens that reveals that she has this whole other magical life and potential.

And in many of these books, there is something resembling a love triangle. The girl's got a boyfriend who is an ordinary human. He's in love with her as a human and helps her keep connected to her human side. He's usually conventional and a bit boring. Then there's the bad boy magic guy. He's the one who encourages her to embrace her elf/faerie/whatever magic side. Go wild with your sparkly chaotic magic.

Inevitably the boring dude loses out to the bad boy, because really, there's no competition.

But that's why Scott/Jean and Logan/Jean are kind of funny from that perspective. Because in this badly imagined comparison, Jean is of course, that ordinary girl. Now, she IS a mutant, so she's already not completely baseline ordinary. But we could look at the Phoenix as kind of her whole magical other self.

Scott, of course, is the conventional bland original love interest whose known her since her youth. Logan, of course, is the bad boy, wild guy she meets as an adult.

But the actual dynamics of the relationship are the OPPOSITE of the YA cliches.

Because Logan, for all his wildness, is a pretty conventional romantic. Oh, he's got the dramatic self-loathing and pining, but generally, he's a "bring flowers to the lady" kind of guy. At least with her. She's "Jeannie". She's normal and kind and sweet and she brings out the best in him and makes him want to be a better guy.

I don't know if we ever really get a clear idea of Logan's feelings about Jean AS the Phoenix in 616. Probably because back during the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix Saga, Jean/Logan wasn't really a thing. He liked her, but she seemed primarily disgusted by him. (This got retroactively remedied in some of the X-Men classic stories that rewrote a few of those scenes to add some pining and reciprocity. But that's after the fact.) Basically, during the time when we were supposed to see Jean and the Phoenix as essentially aspects of the same person, Logan wasn't a romantic factor at all.

By the time Jean/Logan was a thing, the Phoenix was narratively a separate entity, and Logan's never particularly been in favor of it. He is, however, very into Jean as the girl next door. The human side of her.

But Scott, on the other hand, has always been MASSIVELY into Jean as the Phoenix. He never really seemed that put off by the Dark Phoenix. He was happy to propose marriage just before the Shi'ar decided to poke their heads in and make everything more difficult, and that was AFTER the woman nearly killed them all and ate a star.

There's at least one point in an X-Factor issue, when Scott's admittedly running very hot and cold (mostly due to the Maddie issue), where Jean outright accuses him of loving the Phoenix more than he loves her.

Claremont's had that moment of connection at the orphanage, and we've had at least a couple of Phoenix comes back stories that involved her directly coming for him (Endsong was my favorite. Scott gets her to back down by having Kitty's hand phased through his chest. Such a stupid fucking plan, Scott).

And there was a scene that, back when it came out, got Scott a fair bit of criticism. In New X-Men, to Emma, he vents something about Jean's wardrobe, the mom sweaters verses the Black Queen's corset. Now this was Scott at his most traumatized and self-destructive/self-loathing. I don't think he was literally saying that he preferred her when she was being mentally influenced (especially since she almost killed him at the time). I THINK it was more of an indicator of the out of control way he was feeling, and how her attempt to project normalcy and repress the wilder/more passionate/more powerful aspects of herself were something that he felt very alienated from..

(There were a lot of interesting Jean-and-Phoenix elements going on in that run, alongside Scott's trauma, and Emma's...many issues. It's worth a reread, though not all of it is a comfortable reread..)

There's a reason that the "psychic affair" started with Emma wearing the guise of the Phoenix.

And of course, the more powerful Jean is, the more Scott seems to be into it. This is the man who has, more than once, used "my wife could kick your ass" to win a confrontation. He's clearly turned on when she ignites a star.

It's not that Scott is ONLY into the Phoenix though. He loves Jean too, and we've seen that 100 times over in the 90s and in Krakoa and how they interact on a day to day basis. But to him, her power is an important part of her. And it's hot when she embraces it.

I feel like this may be the fundamental reason that Jean/Logan never really took off as a pairing, even when there was ample opportunity (except in the context of polyamory). Because for all that Logan has that bad boy sex appeal, he doesn't really work as a power fantasy. Not every girl is into civilizing the wild man, after all. Some really want to cut loose with them instead.

And well, when that's not an option, a quiet conventional man who'll happily hold your flower while YOU cut loose, that's got its appeal too.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

hey! do you have any thoughts on demise as a looser/more fluid/symbolic/metaphorical figure in the context of the story of the series- like thoughts on what he represents, and stuff like what his curse could mean thematically rather than the more essentialistic absolutistic "literal satan" interpretation that most of the (at least western) audience seems to take?

i know he may be somewhat contentious as a choice introduced by the writers especially considering from an outside perspective what he kind of did to the majority of fandom analysis and discourse, but i've been thinking about how it's quite possible the writers had a more paganistic approach to what it means to be a deity and how demise doesn't even really have a NAME so much as he is supposed to be some sort of manifestation/personification of the concept of demise, and maybe also of hatred, and also i don't know, like, what the point of that hatred is or why there has to be demise/what implications there could be of this worldbuilding

hope that was coherent enough to make sense of anything i just said but yeah i was just curious if you do!

Heyy sorry never replied, replying now!! Thanks for the ask!

Yeah it's exactly how I'm taking Demise, and I think what you mention connects more to what little I know and understand of shintoism.

In French, Demise has an absurdly long name and is basically called "The Avatar of the Void", which I think is... interesting? It makes me extremely curious as to how Demise is called in original japanese --because to me, "Void" is about the absence of things more than their destruction. It's about the absence, not the inevitability of things crumbling down that comes with Demise. I don't know which of these concepts are the closest to the original vision (if it's Void rather than Demise I think it recontextualizes everything we thought we know about this world and characters, but in my opinion it feels too incoherent with the rest of the world, so my guess is that it was a poorly thought-out translation --but I might be wrong!), but to me it's all in the title: Demise. The curse is that every golden era must end with a reckoning.

I think the curse is extremely compelling in that mythological sense, the way Demeter and Persephone's tale is about the joy and pain of passing seasons; it's the given cause for this world's fate as it is condemned to rise and die continuously; and that their eternal, bright future will always be opposed. To be honest, I'm not even sure it's a *bad* thing. Conflict is not only inevitable, it needs to rise to the surface instead of being suppressed to ensure things do not remain stagnant and shortcomings are being acknowledged and addressed --which is also partially why the suggestion of TotK's golden forever after really doesn't sit right with me, especially since nothing was learned and nothing truly changed in the course of its runtime.

I think the curse sucks when people think it means that Ganondorf is a generic evil demon man without motive of his own. It especially grinds my nerves since I somehow never hear this argument being made for *any* other villain in the franchise. I know they look alike the most (and TotK didn't help matters here), but I never *ever* saw people arguing that Vaati doesn't have motive, for example. Or Majora. Or Zant. Or even literal nothing characters like Bellum, who by all means looks more like a primal demonic evil acting on instinct than anyone else. Somehow, we get to assume they have internal motives that, while obviously wicked and self-serving, are their own! But somehow, Ganondorf, the actual main antagonist of his series with the most amount of games hinting at his backstory and internal moral code, gets flattened as an evil puppet with no internal life whatsoever. It's genuinely bizarre.

Anyway sorry sorry! Thanks again for the ask!

[wortsandall]

okay so like lets talk about this...2k words of prowl analysis. mostly from mtmte 27 but also just general observations. i dont even know where to put a keep reading but just be aware this is long:

prowl has major issues. like i get him fr fr. but he's got problems. and the most important is his perspective. he doesn't trust anyone. he can see the capabilities of a scenario. he's a rule follower to an extent. sometimes rules are made to be broken for the greater good mindset. he isn't really close to anyone. they all find him grating in some way though they appreciate his skills. he's good at his job. i feel like because of this he thinks he's always right. and thats dangerous.

he always sees the bigger picture. the next move. like pieces on a chessboard. he sees the next big fight and how they respond. he looks down on those that can't seem to do that. bumblebee especially. but also...chromedome

because theres two scenarios here in mtme #27...either prowl is just really mean deep down. or he was trying to put himself on the same level as chromedome so that they can make up.

for the first option: prowl is unintentionally mean. he's sarcastic and blunt and honest but not malicious. what he said sucked but i don't think it was intentional. he sucks at talking to people one on one. outside of his position in command, outside of war times. normal day to day conversation is not his forte. so i don't think he intended to walk up to chromedome and blame him for what happened. i think he was trying to compare. put himself on the same level rather than say to chromedome that things going bad on cybertron was his fault, because chromedome had left that opening in his head allowing decepticons in. he does have a focus on the fact that chromedome removed his memories left him open to decepticon control. he mentions it twice. so i think he is bitter but trying not to show it and failing

for the second: he was trying to say basically that they both lost things. lets put our differences aside. but he goes about it so stupidly and without context of where chromedome currently is. prowl says first thing, the memory stuff. the memory stuff that chromedome is making a valiant effort to no longer do. and then he compares it to losing rewind. and thats when chromedome snaps. but chromedome was already in a bad mood. i mean i get it. from chromedomes pov-overlord was on the ship bc of prowl, bc prowl couldn't take no for an answer and tried to manipulate chromedome (and succeeded) into doing what he wanted anyway. he put overlord on the ship and told the rest to get chromedome to do what he already said no to doing when he's compromised. bc prowl knew that chromedome is essentually an addict to this memory stuff and would fold. which is exactly what happened. and the overlord thing is what KILLED rewind. chromedomes partner. and prowl walks up and basically says that they're the same. they both lost things-prowl his memory leaving him vulnerable and chromedome his partner. but its not equivalent to chromedome. and its too flippant, too casual of something to base a reunion on.

its clear that prowl is NOT over chromedome in anyway. that first conversation where prowl tried to get chromedome to look through overlords head is filled with jealous ex energy. snide comments about rewind and then threatening him. he basically provoked chromedome into taking prowls memory. he was trying to protect rewind and himself from prowl.

in prowls pov, it looks like chromedome snapped. that he got mad and wanted to hurt prowl for what he said which might be true to an extent. but prowl started that confrontation by not taking the no and trying to manipulate and threaten him into saying yes. prowls inability to let sleeping dogs lie is why rewind died. and still when he showed up and chromedome basically said he didn't want to talk to him, he pushed on anyway. once again.

and then is hurt by the realization that chromedome is more like bumblebee than himself. that chromedome is focused on the fact that his partner died rather than the big picture. of why prowl needed to know overlords memories. of what that could've done for the cause. because prowl doesn't work like that. he's too busy looking forward to see the mess he leaves behind. and he sees what bumblebee and chromedome do as a weakness.

and its hypocritical. because at the same time he keeps bringing up the consequences of what chromedome did. that it left him vulnerable. a personal thing just like rewind. he'd argue that its about the decepticons using his body to create chaos instead of peace but the reality is that its both. he is still mad at chromedome-a personal feud. the same thing that he's accusing chromedome and bumblebee of having too much focus on.

prowl NEEDS to learn how to focus in. to not see everything at once but small things. he overlooks the things that hurt people for the greater purpose of winning the war. but with the war over, where does that leave him? alone. and he will stay alone because he uses people. he manipulates and uses people. he makes comments on their decisions, unasked for. he patronizes and judges and it keeps people at a distance.

i think the one person he ever loved was chromedome. and he thinks that because chromedome didn't erase him that means he still cares. when chromedome erased his other partners because of how much he loved them and how much it hurt. in reality, chromedome meant more to prowl than prowl did to chromedome.

chromedome is the type to get along with others just because. he listened to shit he didn't care about just because someone else did. thats probably how they got close in the first place. but thats not sustainable. they're different people. prowl didn't even want to fight, he wanted to leave. and he just assumed that chromedome would follow. that was probably their downfall. chromedome had reasons to stay, people he cared about and such and prowl was willing to leave them. because the greater good doesn't care about personal attachments.

so they broke up and chromedome moved on. but prowl didn't. he watched from afar. and every chance he gets to show back up in chromedomes life he takes it. because of this misunderstanding of chromedomes motives.

his hurt at this rejection. another one showing that chromedome doesn't even want to resume being semi friendly like they were before hurts. he wants to hide behind impersonal truths like that chromedome lacks perspective. but in reality he had hoped there was a future for them that just needed rekindling and he didn't realize that chance died the day he asked chromedome to look at overlords memories.

and the altercation that follows and it being broken up by ultra magnus didn't help. because what ultra magnus said is objectively true. that prowl makes decisions that others carry out and he never has to deal with the consequences. the biggest most obvious one is overlord which killed pipes, rewind and two others. prowl counters with it being war. that decisions have to be made but it doesn't contradict what magnus said at all. its almost an acknowledgement of that. its not purposeful or malicious but that's war. people die. and its hypocritical for magnus to be upset at him for it when magnus has had to do the same. he tries to be flippant but magnus is hurt. he almost DIED himself that day. he would've. and it was because of prowls actions. so both prowl and magnus are correct here. but once again it shows prowl's inability to come to terms with peoples motivations or their emotions. he defaults to logic and the greater good, while most people talk about whats personal to them. but prowl doesn't know that magnus almost died that day. but im unsure if that would change his response.

magnus parting words are interesting too. he says that he's glad prowl has company because prowl is the loneliest person he knows. and thats true. prowl isn't close to the rest the way that they are with each other. yet he was upset when bumblebee questioned if they were even friends. they spend a lot of time with each other yet prowl spends most of that time crtiticing bee. he probably thinks he's being helpful when it comes across as overbearing. i think he overestimates his value to the rest of them. in his eyes they are friends, even if he knows they aren't close. but in everyone else's eyes its hard to tell. because there is no work prowl and friend prowl. he's one prowl 24/7.

but thats a lonely life to live. and the constructicons trust prowl because now he is a part of them technically. they've seen his memories. they understand each other. and thats essentially all he has left. and so i think it hits doubly hard. that prowl has never really had people to lose. before he had chromedome to lose and he lost him. but most of the time he's alone, and he doesn't know how it feels to lose close people. every one hes lost has been to war-he knows that reality. he signed up for it. probably adds to why he doesnt get bee or chromedome. people die thats war. and its cold but not necessarily unfeeling. i think he does feel bad that rewinds dead. not enough to recognize his part in it, but because he can see that chromedome is upset by it. and that makes sense. they were conjux. but prowls never really had anyone like that. except chromedome. so yes its good he has company. but at the same time i think magnus was also saying that its good that he has people to lose. that maybe he can understand where the rest of them come from. when they talk of their petty feuds rather than the bigger picture. its sincere but its also a damnation.

i think prowl is a really lost person. he's thrown himself so fully into the job that he's lost how to be. how to exist among others without purpose. without some grand plan and back up after backup plan. until he learns how to loosen up. how to live in this new era...he will keep losing people. the first to go was chromedome. thats not fixable, not for a long time. but he doesn't have to lose anyone else. he just has to learn how to change. how to adapt. ironically, he needs to transform.

and the constructicons:

he hates them so bad. bc he hates decepticons. and he was forced with them-into a gestalt of sorts. and now hes stuck with them. they seem to think they understand him, that theyre similar. which prowl hates because he doesnt want to think like a decepticon or be seen as one. when in reality hes one of the autobots who is most similar because of his affinity for the ends justifying the means. the bigger picture. he hates how megatron excuses his actions bc its needed for a united cybertron, but he makes the same excuses. its probably projection. something he doesnt want to acknowledge but its something he cant help but see.

and the constructicons put it out onto the open.

but he doesnt want hero worship from them, no. he wants to be left alone. he's used to being left alone. and now he's got 5 idiots following after him. but this should be a good thing for him. to learn how to navigate people. but instead it leaves him a little unstable. they bonded because they all hate spike. and now thats driving him. i havent read anything past dark cybetron. i have no idea what hes doing next or whats going on. but i feel like its not going to go well. and its because he cant let go. he lives in the past-constantly spouting off about what each person has done. while leaving his own sins off the table. it was war and they did what they thought they had to. and that logic applies to both himself and megatron and the decepticons he so hates. but he doesnt see it that way because hes stuck ruminating over the past and all the lives lost.

[itsclydebitches]

Adding to the Semblance discussion. It was REALLY uncomfortable when they said what Semblances meant and I realized what Adam’s represented especially when Blake talked about her own Semblance.

it did not leave a good taste in my mouth at all when Blake just said ‘his Semblance is like yours’. Not even touching on the implication of Jaune’s own Semblance manifesting as his literal desire to be useful to the point he is sacrificing his soul(they specified he’s boosting their Aura, not just healing.).

like…I fully expected an intervention or something but no.

On a less…upsetting note. Do you think in Volume 5 when Ruby said she unlocked her Semblance training, it was that moment in Yang’s trailer? One where Ruby bolted and tripped. Which made me go ‘Oh, so this is the moment she talked about!’. Always found it weird how no one mentioned it in discussions.

I think it helps a smidgen that Ren's lecture (from what I recall, anyway) makes it clear that not everyone agrees with the theory that semblances = innate aspects of who you are... but the problem is the show then went to treat it as a given, rather than just a dubious, perhaps self-fulfilling idea. However, if RWBY is going to commit to that 1:1 connection, then yeah, the writing needs to consider what semblances reveal about a person that perhaps needs to be addressed. The closest they've gotten is with Blake and I think that's a staggering failure because 1. Her clones are not solely used for running away (they fight back, provide distractions, combine with dust, etc.) 2. Other characters with similar semblances (like Sun) apparently don't have this same flaw despite the metaphor suggesting as much and 3. Running away isn't inherently a bad thing. I keep thinking about how Blake's biased perspective of her own semblance might have led to a more nuanced version of Volume 8. What happens when you take a character who originally thought that running was a horrific, cowardly act, only for her to realize over time that it's just another kind of combat strategy, one that's often necessary in a long-term war (something she's in a unique position to understand given her generational fight for equality) and then you set her up in contrast to her overly optimistic "We can do it!" leader when they're both faced with a no-win scenario? As the cynical, hardened, activist, "You have to know how to fight to survive outside the kingdoms" team member, I'd have loved to see Blake help Ruby grow as they face more and more complicated situations... not clasp her hands and gush about how she's always looked up to her (not actually). Semblances could have been a key part of all that, especially when you take into account that speed is also a useful tool for getting out of a tough situation. How often has Ruby used her semblance to get away from a fighter she knows she can't take on alone? Roman, Mercury, and the like? But that Ruby belongs to a former version of the story that wasn't upholding certain messages to the point of narrative nonsense.

I'm drawing a blank on where Ruby "bolted and tripped." Was that another short? I never saw Yang's trailer as the moment she unlocked her semblance though, if only because Yang has no reaction to it. She laughs a little and says, "Nice one, sis" which is not the kind of excited response we'd expect from a younger Yang when Ruby hits such an important milestone. I've always assumed we've never seen the exact moment Ruby unlocked it on screen, just heard about it in passing.

Although, in re-watching that moment I spotted this:

Far from being a generalized character flaw, the context of this is Ruby running from hand-to-hand practice when we've already established that she doesn't want to do this. That's another flaw the show introduced without considering how it fits into the larger World Building. Why is Ruby the only one who has the "problem" of not being able to fight without her weapon? I would have bought this if the show had simply framed it as an issue all Huntsmen face, but Ruby is in a unique position to circumvent it given her family's personalities and fighting styles: Yang is a brawler, Tai might have been similar, and we see that Qrow has no problem shrugging and throwing a punch when his own weapon is lost (Tyrian fight). Instead, RWBY acts like Ruby is the only one with this issue (Ozpin calling her out), she's apparently overcome this with a single hit (Haven battle)... and then it never comes up again. Despite the fact that Volume 9 has her lose her weapon and then be too traumatized to pick it back up for all of 30 seconds the hand-to-hand never returns as a satisfying, "Ah, good thing Ruby had that development and came from this family, otherwise she might be in serious trouble here!"

Hmm. You know, now I'm just thinking about an AU where teeny-tiny Ruby with the speed semblance is originally trained in close combat because do you realize the advantage you have with Petal Burst and your small stature? Besides, playing dirty in the name of survival is a Rose-Xiao-Long tradition! It's not until late in Signal that Ruby is deciding on her weapon and it's a damn struggle for her to wield such a massive scythe, but she's stubborn and is determined to follow through on her choice. So one day she looses Crescent Rose in battle and Roman thinks that's it, this kid only had "one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed" going for her and those stuffy Huntsmen are notorious for putting all their eggs in one basket, learning their fancy moves with their fancy, dust-powered weaponry and then it alllll falls apart the second they're forced to get their own hands dirty. Piece of cake.

...only for Ruby to kick his ass with arms like steal from wielding a weapon that weighs as much as she does, the ability to slink her way under any guard, a speed semblance that can take her behind her opponent in an instant (trailing petals as a distraction to boot), and years of training under Tai, Yang, and Qrow—all of whom really like punching things.

Ruby: What? Did you think I needed Crescent Rose? That's stupid...

Yang: 👏👏 😎 👏👏

Blake, who also harbored those assumptions about Signal-trained Huntsmen because like many of their enemies she comes from a culture where you fight with whatever the hell you've got on hand: 😍

Weiss who DOES need her weapon to enact any kind of damage because she's been taught that any fighting that could so much as muss her hair is a big, cultural no-no and she's just beginning to realize that maybe that ignorance/aversion is a bit of a liability:

[peachpitss]

finished reading your deltarune and ut tics and i am so fascinated by the player's presence and the way you write them!!!

like, they appear to be this powerful, otherworldly entity, with compassion and hostility untold, but in reality they're just Some Guy™

like, i guessed from the whole 'skip his dialogue' section that this was someone who'd watched a play through and wanted to fight sans, but couldn't get past him and rage quit. which is a very relatable experience, but in the context of the Universe its absolutely terrifying.

This Some Guy has caused untold suffering, and continues to harm their host, but... they don't know that? i mean, they do, we all do, but we don't know know that, on the level that the characters understand. is a no mercy runner who goes on to play deltarune in a pacifist fashion someone hiding from their true nature like a coward? no! of course not! and the game cannot punish you for that, because you are just exploring the avenues it gave you. and it feels mean, from mr fox's end

of course, this gives way for fanfic to explore these questions from the character's perspective, so ty for sharing your fic :D

finally have time to sit down and answer this!! first of all, this is SUCH a sweet message. thank you so much for taking the time to send me all of your thoughts! with the deltarune fics (particularly "arcane apocrypha") it was definitely all about how a presence like the player would be interpreted by the characters in canon, but in a much more meta way. it was fun to play on the idea of eldritch horror there + i wanted to envision how the characters who are aware of the player would interpret differing/inconsistent inputs from them. how can you interpret the character of an entity that appears benevolent 99% of the time, but the other 1% of the time veers off the rails entirely into depravity? they'd surely feel really unknowable and mysterious, even if it's Just Some GuyTM trying to mimic something they saw a let's player do on twitch or something. haha whereas with the UT fic approach, it was a lot less...medium-aware, if that makes sense? the DR fic knows it's a game, the UT fic does not. and i find that a lot scarier, in some ways. the idea of someone reaching down and controlling you but not being entirely aware of what's going on or where outside influence might end and your own desires or actions begin. that version of the player is ABSOLUTELY someone who rage quit the no mercy route and reset. haha! i wanted to own that player input matters in all routes, but it was hard to work that in without losing focus so i added a small bit of dialogue mentioning that "the voice" may have been present in multiple timelines, but that it was all a blur. i think investigating what that maybe less jarring influence might look like in a...less stabby timeline would be interesting in the future, but i'm not sure if it's something folks would want to read. i may write it anyways for myself! (: you're absolutely on to something here in that at the end of the day, UTDR is here to explore tropes and tell a story. and that it shouldn't be taken as a litmus test for someone's actual morality or anything. how can we possibly gain anything from a narrative with which we refuse to engage? we really shouldn't feel bad about playing, because we're supposed to. i personally don't think DR will end in a way that is strictly accusatory because i don't think toby would want to punish us for playing his game, per se. i've seen people express distress and say that they feel bad for playing DR. but at the end of the day, even with their meta commentaries, these games are meant to be played. we can't possibly crack open their shells and slurp up that good good lore juice if we don't. and these are stories that are certainly valuable experiences. i've said it before, but fanon is frequently much edgier and much less charitable than anything toby fox would write himself. so we should all keep playing and appreciating his story. (: anyways, fanfic is a great place to explore these story implications and take them to their current logical conclusions. so i'm glad you enjoyed the ride! thanks again for this really thoughtful message! <3

[alittlefrenchtree]

I have a PR question. How do we know if a non-paparazzi photo is staged/arranged or not? I’m talking about random pictures someone takes of him and his supposed dates. ☺️

I don’t think you can know for sure, Nonny. That’s kind of the beauty of it 😊

If you’re interested in joining today’s class and read a little more about stuff, click below.

Disclaimer 1) I really shouldn’t be any kind of authority in terms of pr and of famous people pr but since many people here are presenting things as true statements without knowing anything about anything, it’s only fair that I tried to explain some stuff while knowing, like 5% of stuff.

Disclamer 2) I’m not really interested about talking specifically about Timmy’s situation. His dating life is either a private thing that shouldn’t be commented as a public topic or a pr thing that I don’t want to encourage it by commenting. Or both and see all of the above.

What I’m interested in, is talking about pr strategy and public images in general ways, why it’s there and how it works and that’s about it.

That being said, let’s start today’s class.

My belief when it comes to pr and related stuff is that knowing the ‘truth’ is less important than having as much knowledge as possible on the subject. It’s kind like math. If you have an equation and someone gives you the answer but you don’t know how to get to there yourself, knowing the answer doesn’t get you much. But if you have all the keys to resolve the equation, you can try to find the answer on your own. And, even if you don’t find the answer, knowledge will help you understand the logic of it. Why it’s there. What it says.

So what’s our equation today? A content of one (or more) public person/people taken from a smartphone camera of someone we don’t know.

Smartphone content isn’t inconsequential. Using ‘low’ quality camera instead of a professional one says something different. It’s supposed to bring more authenticity, closeness to the audience, spontaneity. It feels truer because you could be the one taken it, since there is a large chance you own a smartphone when you probably don’t own a professional camera. It has to be genuine if you could be the one taking it, right? You would have any interest in taking part of something fake, wouldn’t you?

It can feels logical like everybody knows that or it’s not really important but it’s something that is actually thought through by professionals when it comes to create content. There is that brand of cooking videos (you know the one you stumble on when you remember Facebook exist and that show you recipe that always look really easy to make at home and delicious (and also overly greasy and/or overly sugary) that was explaining how they could totally shot their videos in professional kitchen with high quality stuff but choose to do the complete opposite instead? Because their goal is to make their audience feel like they can make the recipe at home so they shot their videos on small kitchen with smartphones.

Creating professional content on un-professional devices is a real thing. Half of the business of influencers people is built on this. To think that the strategy has stayed only in the influencers people business would be very naive. In the famous people world, content created on smartphone is used for these bts vibes. We’re showing you what you’re not supposed to see so you feel like a part of it. This is how the famous people you love are in real life, when the camera is off. Except they’re not off, since you’re seeing it.

You’re not part of it, we’re showing you just enough for you to want it, to envy it but you’re not.

Let’s go back to the casual pic of that public person. Truth is, you could be taking the picture yourself and still don’t know what you’ve taken.

Say I’m well known top model who has signed a new contract with a clothing brand. I have pap walks to put the clothes in online articles and magazines. Of course pap pics also ends up on social media but they aren’t the type of media design for the platform. Pap walks create some distance from the audience because they often looks like real photo shootings. Part of the audience is defiant towards it. Either it’s an invasion of privacy or it’s staged. It’s not that positive.

What’s positive is me going out in my brand new clothes and cross path with people who recognize me. They wouldn’t know anything about my contract but would do all the job themselves without knowing they’re doing it. They would take a picture from afar, maybe a selfie, share it on social media with a cute context. A story. Write about that cute dress I was wearing, what my coffee order was (omg, she likes almond milk like me!), what’s the interaction was like. Was it staged? I like that dress and I really wanted to go for a walk and for that cup of coffee. And the fan was nice, everything was genuine. Yet, I still went out to be seen and the clothing brand is happy.

The problem with that scenario is that I’m not in control of anything. Maybe nobody will recognize me or care enough to take a picture or something went wrong with the fan/person I’ve seen and instead of a cute story I have someone insulting me all over the internet. Lot of time lost, some risk taken, not much result. Wouldn’t be easier to take a friend or a PA who would snap a few pictures and we’ll be home in 5 minutes, job done? Pr team get the pics and share them with the world with one of the twelve stan accounts about me they’ve been running for years. Even write a little story to go with it if they’re inspired enough. If you think it’s too much, you’re naive. Everything that can be faked or staged to save time, money or give you more control of the result, has already been faked and staged by someone. Multiple someones.

My take on this would be, the bigger you are, the more money you have to carry on your shoulders, the less you let things to chance and the more you take control of your narrative. PAs, agents, PR people,… When you have a whole team around you, you don’t (overly) pay them as secretaries. They’re not just here to handle your planning and bring you coffee or you would only need one person, not 7 of them walking around you all the time.

But what if there is no contract? What if I’m just wearing that dress because I like the brand? Or maybe there is a commercial deal with the brand but I have no obligation to wear it on my daily life or been seen with it. Wouldn’t the pics look exactly the same to an outside eye?

Of course I can go low key, move only inside cars with tinted windows, don’t walk around in popular places and only go in isolated, private places. I can. But maybe sometimes I’m tired of it. Maybe I just want to meet my non-famous friends where they like to go and fuck it if I’m seen there. Pics taken by people would look like they’re staged. Except maybe they’re not.

But if I stop caring, I indirectly accept that however I’m seen becomes part of my public image. And if it has become part of my public image, I should accept that it will be monitored to some extend by my team, and eventually by myself.

So how do we find the answer? We can’t. Based on a single photo alone, I don’t think we can. Unless you’ve seen contracts or you know the person personally, you can’t really pretend what’s going on being doors. Even so, would you know everything? Sometimes a contract is just a contract. Something a commercial deal is also a friendship. Sometimes a real friendship became public et become part of your public image. Sometimes you don’t really feel like talking about commercial deals with that cousin you’re seeing 5 times a year and doesn’t really care about what the details of your fucked-up public job are. So even your own family doesn’t know the truth about everything.

What we can do, if we’re interested in doing it, is look at every piece of content and ask ourselves. What are we seeing? How is it made? For what purpose? How that type of content is used in different contexts?

With more context, you can make interpretations for yourself. Will everybody will have the same? Of course not. Mathematicians, physicists, chemists, spent their time disagreeing on interpretations of stuff, how can we expect people to agree on the interpretation on something based of human behavior?

From what I’m seeing, PR conversations seem to be going on in many (many) fandoms. From a PR point of view, I don’t think it’s not a bad thing, whether what we’re talking about is real or fake in the first place. Having people think it’s fake and people think it’s real makes the conversation going. They’re always be people who would want to defend their point of view, their opinions, their favorite celebrities. Names will keep being mentioned, pics shared, word spread. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and algorithms are happy.

My best advices, I guess, is, first, remember that you aren't obligated to have opinions on everything or to care about every aspect of the life of an artist you love, even when media and people would like you to think you are and you should. There is even things, such as dating life of other people than yourself, you shouldn’t really have opinions about at all.

If romance, love and sex keeps getting used to sell, it’s because it works. Think about all the books, all the movies, all the stories where a love story is integrated in an action movie/horror story/sci-fi scenario even when it has nothing to do with anything. Romance/love/sex sells since forever and probably for a long time. Because most people think falling in love is the main purpose of life and the most important thing in the world.

My second advice would be, don’t be naive but don’t be cynical either. Contexts and nuances are always important.

Anyways, like always I don’t have an answer and I’m barely even interested in the answer but I hope I'm able bring some perspectives to things because it’s important. More than ever, content is a tool. Since everyone is part of an audience, if not potentially part of all audiences , we should all learn more about how the tool works.

Of course i'm joking about the concept of class. I'm not a teacher. I'm only sharing some personal knowledge and opinions. I can be wrong or contested. No hard feelings against anyone.

[laur-rants]

Schrodinger’s Game Theory: The Fate of Daud

Ever come up with a theory, and then halfway through creating it, the evidence changes and so you’re stuck with a lot of well-put-together ideas but nowhere to go with it?

Anyway, I did that with Daud. Lol.

I just rediscovered a whole ass rant in my drafts (which is now in the link above for private viewing and judgement PLS read it, if you’re missing some context to this post) that I clearly spent a lot of time and energy on, where I came to the conclusion that Daud in Death of the Outsider is actually a imposter/doppelganger, and it was because of the writing from the book contrasted the writing in DotO so poorly, that I came to believe this. I was like, VERY convinced prior to Billie’s book coming out that this was, in fact, a viable game theory. !00%. There was a chance that out there, somewhere, Daud was still stuck in his mind, and needed someone to come rescue him. Stranger things have happened to explain characters coming back from the dead in a video game, okay?

Somewhere along the line, though, it stopped being game theory and was more like, a fan idea. I had collected enough evidence to come to the conclusion that my theory wasn’t sound. That, and Billie’s book released, and there’s no way I could argue that. Instead, imposter!Daud moved to Fan Theory, something I could fictionally, write about, put into an AU.

But... Just because it’s probably not true in the scheme of the game doesn’t stop me from thinking about it, from wanting to talk and share those ideas with others. Even if, at the end of the day, they hold no water and it wouldn't matter because, well. If Billie’s book is to be considered post-DotO canon, then there’s no reason to believe my theory would hold weight. It wouldnt matter, because Daud well, he was left for dead either way. Nobody was coming to rescue him. I’m sure there’s plenty of questions people have in response to this, the most chief one being

“If its not Daud how is he in the Void talking to the Outsider and Billie at the end of DotO??”

And my usual response is: the end of Return of Daud saw Daud becoming trapped within his own mind, through a trap laid by witches from the very beginning of the book. That meant, even if his physical body was still, well, physical, he was trapped inside his mind.

I proposed that out of survival, well, a sliver of his mind would hole itself up in the Void, maybe even be stuck there (this is not so uncommon as it appears; think of what happened to Jessamine in the Heart). Once the spell on his mind and the Outsider were gone, the sliver could return back to his mind. And he’d still be alive.

From a gamer perspective, looking at the mechanics of the game, and everything else, it makes sense. I’m sure some people would say this theory would ‘cheapen Daud’s death’ and I would refute that by simply saying ‘all of DotO cheapened Daud’s death, and despite being a playable character in the franchise he dies unceremoniously off screen and we just take Billie’s word for his death to heart.’ Nothing cheapens a death faster in my head than ‘time to renege on this character’s entire past arch and have him die off-screen.’ His death was ruined far before they went into the Void. If anything, this would give Daud a change to explain himself. 

But I digress. I actually did do a stupid amount of research on this. And what it all really boils down to is that there was bad writing involved in DotO when it came to timeline consistency and quality checkers not checking for that, + the book having been rewritten like, twice, to keep up with what Arkane was changing in DotO in real time.

That’s post marked 9/25/18. I’ve had this theory sitting around for a long time. I enjoyed it. I find it compelling. But ultimately, it was me trying to save Daud, in my mind. Would it be cool for the witches to have stolen Daud, replaced him with a dummy body Eyeless/Envisioned, given that dummy body his memories, and then, when it had outlived it’s usefulness of sending Billie astray, the magic broke and it perished? Hell yeah it would have been cool. and honestly, according to the books, it was a viable option! They could do all those things. You can’t tell me that

Billie can steal faces,

Emily can create copies and

They witches had access to a gemstone that can make prisoners of their own mind/see the thoughts of others,

and NOT immediately think that they’d try and replicate one of the strongest Marked to ever live. The one that TRAPPED DELILAH, no less. And because the witches messed with Daud’s dreams at the beginning of the book (it’s subtle, but its there, its like, you see it on the reread sort of thing), that’s the whole reason he thinks the Outsider is supposed to die, so of course the double would fervently believe the singular obsession that brought Daud into a trap in the first place...

I’m digressing again. Anyway.

What does this mean for Dear old Daud?

It means Daud canonically died, and it was shitty and poorly written and I’ll be salty about that until the day I die because some schmuck on twitter wrote one singular essay and Harvey Smith decided ‘you. you’re the one who needs to write this story’ and then we got Corvosider fanfic in a Dishonored game and I wanted to die. It doesn’t help that this writer was notoriously pretentious and shit-stirring in the fandom at-large BEFORE their hiring-- anyway, this isn’t a salt piece on that. I AM SALTY ABOUT IT, but I’m not the person to discuss it at length. Just know that that’s why some of the narrative decisions in DotO are so out of fucking whack, and we all have to deal with it.

MOVING ON....

There is still... a very slim chance. To save Daud.

Realistically speaking, this chance will never occur. It’s clear and obvious that Arkane has no plans on returning to the Dishonored universe, so despite all these loose ends that Arkane left and all these pieces that need to be picked up and all this lore that’s been reneged on, there’s really not much of a chance that we’ll see, say, Billie, return in a game that is specifically designed to save the timelines. Which, honestly, would be fucking baller. I want a game where I play as Billie, where the shattered timespace of Dunwall is saved by her capable hand, and Emily is free to rule for decades without having to fear that the Isles will fall into the Void like it’s Deimos falling into Hell in DOOM. We KNOW the timelines are saved because we KNOW that Emily has a long and Just (or unjust, if you went high chaos lol) Rule over the kingdom. That can’t happen if, just three years down the line, Billy is running all over the place trying to make sure time doesn’t break at the seams.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Because of how Daud meets Billie in RoD, we know that a Billie three years into the future (’YOUR future,’ she tells him) is trying to save his life. There are other timelines she’s saved already, for sure. Including saving Daud in the past, saving Corvo and Emily in the past, saving Granny Rags in the past -- basically, saving all the Marked from coming to an untimely end. And then, after all that, she goes back in time and tries to save Daud, tries to save him from being poisoned by witch magic and falling into a trap that is triggered when he touches her Future version of the Twin-bladed Knife. She goes through a sort of Groundhog Day scenario, where she confesses that she’s tried hundreds of times to save him, and she couldn’t save that Daud.

But why show us Billie failing to save Daud, if she was destined for failure? Because, eventually, she must succeed.

And therein lies Daud’s (potential) salvation. Is it realizing the other Daud is an imposter? Well... let’s think of it this way. Is the Billie who regained her arm and eye an ‘imposter’ where the ‘real’ Billie is in a timeline where she lost those body parts? Is the Aramis Stilton who went mad in the basement of his mansion the imposter? Or is it the one that Emily saved and was able to keep lucid? These people aren’t ‘imposters’ to their timelines, but they kind of are to the timelines that are saved. Which means DotO could be an entirely separate ‘timeline’, one that we manage to play through and see the ending of. But the ‘true timeline’ may never be known. But at least, we know it happens, and we have Billie to thank for that.

FIN.

[theoreticalli]

tma and unreliable narration

you know in thinking so much about melanie and jon and helen and jon (and to an extent georgie and basira and martin too) I just keep coming back to how good an example of unreliable narration tma is (spoilers thru 160 and for 187, as well as a link to a post abt the finale).

because jon is our pov character, right? for the vast majority of the series, outside of statements, everything we experience is implied to be through his perspective. we start out with him and him alone, we return to him again and again-- alone in the tunnels, alone in America, alone after the Unknowing, alone as the apocalypse swirls around him. we let him entrust us, an unseen confidante, with things he won’t tell anyone else. we are intimately familiar with his experiences and his personality, and we see every little moment of development he goes through. we spend so much time with him.

but jon... is wrong sometimes. like, objectively, we know that. his paranoia spiral in s2 is the first major indicator that this character, who is functionally our narrator, is not objective. he makes decisions based on prior experiences and the information he has and assumptions from both, like we all do. it’s just good character building! it makes him feel more real if he’s wrong sometimes, if he has flaws and blind spots!

and sometimes he is wrong. the most signposted and indisputable moment is the web table, when he just straight-up puts the clues together and comes to the wrong conclusion, or when he spends a whole season being suspicious of tim and martin (and elias) when not!sasha’s right there. basically, He Is Not Immune To Propaganda

so that’s our sign that this is not the kind of character who is always or even usually Objectively right or in the right. he’s not frequently outright wrong, either, but his view of things is always limited, and the other characters are carefully placed to be foils to his perspective, to highlight things he isn’t thinking about or illustrate contrasts or just other opinions. again, It’s Good Character Building! it’s smart writing to have all your characters exist first and foremost as bundles of principles and priorities informed by certain key backstory events, because then you can rely on that to figure out how they’ll react to any given situation, and personalities and quirks tend to fall into place from there. my brain is not moving on the frequency to illustrate exactly what all these foils are right now but I’m sure there’s other posts about that so moving on

most of jon’s conflicts with his allies are not because either of them are wrong, but because they each have distinct and conflicting perspectives. and there’s some posts I see that just... frustrate me because they only take into consideration the context for jon’s actions, and don’t extend the same analysis to any other characters involved. there’s no thought put into why georgie might feel the need to draw the boundaries she does, why melanie goes off on jon at the specific times she does, or god forbid when either of them try to reconcile with him at various points. jon is sympathetic to us as the audience in his shoes, but the actions he takes don’t always have positive effects on those around him in the same way that other people severely hurt him without really meaning to. really, my first reaction to posts like these is always to want to just point out 5 different moments of context that show that most of jon’s allies are never being malicious to him because they’re bad people, or heartless. they have their reasons, and are not being cruel for cruelty’s sake like many of the avatars. they aren’t required to agree with him to still be taken in good faith.

(I have a post about this wrt the end of s5 that I’ll link here to make this stay mostly spoiler free so feel free to go read that but anyways)

and there’s also the things jon directly says about other characters, which again, should not always be taken at face value! and this bit is partly a personal grievance with the way helen’s arc ended, so ymmv, but I think that leaving the exact nature of the distortion (esp how it meshes with its host of sorts) more vague is much more effective in terms of her function in the story. so to my interpretation, even though jon says a lot of things about what the distortion is, that doesn’t necessarily mean any of them are entirely accurate! that’s a point helen made repeatedly, and her role as a foil is to make it clear that the truth is never one thing, no matter how the eye likes to pretend it can find objective reality. she wiggles her way out of the liar’s paradox because reality is complicated, and there are many statements that lie in that grey area between true and false while still sounding very sure. so even though jon states a lot of things in a very certain tone, that doesn’t mean any of them reflect the nature of the distortion any more than anything helen said before. it’s just one more piece of information to put together with everything we’ve seen about the character’s words and actions up to that point and come to our own conclusion!

to me, that’s a much more fun and interesting way of engaging with this story than only looking at things through jon’s pov and taking the things he says without a grain of salt, and I think jonny’s done a really good job of having a lot of characters with specific traits and clear histories that pretty consistently inform how they engage with any given situation. of course, there’s a lot of characters and a lot of extrapolations one can make, especially for more minor or intentionally mysterious characters, so there’s no one right way of understanding a given person. but it’s fun to mess around with, to discover new bits that you’d forgotten about that inform your interpretations, to fill in the gaps.

that’s all no I will not shut up about melanie king if you read this far thank you so much you have my affection and pls reblog w your thoughts!! xoxo

[sanstropfremir]

I'm curious for your take on a fashion trend that always has been hanging out in the wings, but seems to have really taken off in K-Pop in particular the last few years.

It seems like every way I look these days, we're getting hit with luxury "looks" that are legit just the luxury brand printed all over a bland or non-innovative item. This definitely isn't new (it makes me think of the prevalence of those stupid - and stupidly expensive - Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts in the US back in the 2000s), but I feel like it's now seeping into K-Pop album concept photos and stage outfits in addition to just their every day fashion/sponsored photo shoots. In some cases it doesn't bother me as much because its a small addition (like Sunmi's triangle Prada barrettes in some of her latest comeback photos - I don't like the barrettes, but they work because the wider concept is great) or its used unconventionally (like TxT's latest concept photos, where you can see some of the usual brands but thrown together with unconventional pieces so they feel fresh).

But in other cases, it feels like they're just phoning it in by picking luxury clothing so they can say "look, we're expensive" and calling it a day. I'd submit the examples of The Boyz in some of their latest teasers, the latest Stray Kids concept photos, and quite a few of Blackpink's albums/promotions since they all have their own brand sponsors that they stick to these days. A lot of American celebrities are guilty of this as well so its not just K-Pop, but I honestly just don't expect more from Hollywood like I do from K-Pop.

It's clear that you can have effective styling without defaulting to the luxury branding (A.C.E comes to mind immediately), and there are plenty of luxury pieces that don't have their branding all over it that often allow the same luxury feel without shoving the brand in your face. So this branded merchandise trend really ends up rubbing me the wrong way.

What are your thoughts? I think my stance is clear, but I'd love a different perspective from someone that has a lot more background in fashion, particularly stage fashion, than myself.

anon ilu i have many thoughts on this topic but i don't think i've ever mentioned it before so thank you thank you for somehow reading my single braincell and asking about it!

basically for anyone who doesn't want to read me going off about luxury branding the tldr is yes i agree, i personally don't like branding in general and luxury branding especially. i don't own a single item of clothing or accessory with an obvious/recognizable brand logo and i haven't for probably over a decade now. now let's get into some nitty gritty.

in the current fashion climate i think most of the time it's tacky to display wealth so openly and obviously and it is one of the main factors in driving the machine of fashion consumerist culture. i also think it's a weak styling choice because it only has one association: money. 99% of the time it does not contribute anything meaningful to the artistic vision of the work and it's just to brag. sm stylists pull off luxury branding better than most other groups because they tend to integrate it well into the overall aesthetics of the specific mvs, and it's usually pretty sparing. with sm they use it more as a confirmation of the quality of the sm brand than just boasting about money in general. notable examples where i think visible branding works are kun's supreme jacket in kick back, and taemin's balenciaga 2017 in day and night, because both well integrated into the aesthetics of the videos and they're also offset by other looks. i also like the styling in bambam's ribbon, because although the whole mv is designer looks, he only uses one actually logo-ed one (louis vuitton escale summer 2020), which gives a visual indication of expense to anyone who isn't familiar with fashion. the only time i can think of an idol using a brand ironically is taemin's supreme instagram bad bitch outfit in advice, because he's parodying a specific look.

most of the clothing from designer houses is absent of logos, with the exception of a few (lv, gucci are the main offenders). but, there is the caveat that it does tend to be the ready to wear collections that have that kind of design. (ready to wear is the stuff that is available for off the rack purchase). here's a few examples:

taemin and key in balenciaga menswear ss2018 for story of light, taemin and ten in louis vuitton menswear ss2021 for advice and paint me naked.

in my opinion there's only one house that can get away with the irony of its own branding and that's balenciaga, because they consistently do the weirdest shit you could possibly think of. they have a collaboration with crocs. no i am not joking. the shoes for their fall 2021 collection are platemail stilettos. yes like the medieval armour. they launched that collection as a video game. they recently cleared their entire instagram but prior to that they were just letting models post cryptid blurry shots with no captions. there are designers that are doing interesting things, but very rarely is it with the physical branding itself. it's difficult because like i said before, it locks the audience into an extremely specific connotation and honestly most kpop stylists are not deft enough to work around that in a truly meaningful way.

the important things to hit in any styling are colour, harmony, and silhouette. thank you for bringing up a.c.e because i would have done it anyways, because their stylist is probably the best in the business right now. i talk about the basics here (of styling and of a.c.e in particular), but anon you are correct, a.c.e uses very very little branded styling and they look great. good styling is not about looking expensive, it's about looking the best as befitting of the concept.

but here's where we come to an important point. like with most things about kpop and western pop culture as a whole, luxury branding and streetwear as a trend has been appropriated from black hiphop artists and black streetwear fashion in the 90s and 00s. it started in the hood as a reclamation of items that were meant to be 'outside their station' (luxury) and an elevation of plainclothes that were available to them. sportswear by and large was always cheaper and mass produced, in comparision to day to day wear, which used more expensive materials and had more complicated construction. and was activities based only. it wasn't until around the 1860s that sportwear even existed at all, and even then it was not what you would think of as sportwear by modern standards. there was, up until the 1980s, a pretty strict unspoken dress code that if you wanted to be taken seriously in polite (white) society, you had to dress according to the class standards at the time. (this still exists by the way, it hasn't gone away at all, especially in relation to workplaces and black/natural hair). streetwear at the time was a form of celebration of black excellence and a subversion of white society. but like all innovations by black people, it got jacked by white america and now it's lost the meaning behind its context. on black bodies and paired with black achievements, branding is an important and relevant styling choice. on kpop boys? they're already lifting second hand at this point. do better.

[olivinesea]

In the Golden Dark, pt. 4

pt 1, pt 2, pt 3

a/n: Everyone better have their toothbrush ready bc this is about to rot your teeth right out your head. This concludes my brief flirtation with happiness, I hope it’s everything you wanted. Back to regular programming after this. ~2.4k

Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. - Sarah Williams

Dysania, Hotch thought to himself, dysania is what Spencer said it’s called. Before he’d started spending so much time talking with Spencer he’d never known there were official terms for so many of the things he took for granted, things he thought were just a part of life. This one for example, “dysania”: the state of finding it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. Surely everyone found this hard to do he had countered. Not really, I guess, Spencer had shrugged. Not everyone. They had both grown quiet, considering the spaces between the words, the information unintentionally shared. These types of moments happened often and Hotch wasn’t all too sure how he felt about them. It was uncomfortable to share about himself, but it seemed to happen so easily with Spencer. Like some piece of him was reaching out, pushing past his normal guard to grasp at the other man, to try to pull him close with details he’d never intended to share with anyone.

Spencer responded kindly, often matching with his own stories, his own fears. It felt so natural, the exchange of ideas and the flow back and forth between mind and heart. Spencer, who so often found it tricky to connect the cues some people were born understanding, had no trouble understanding Aaron’s small hesitations, his silences following the realization that he’d just said something out loud that would normally remain internal. Spencer was guarded too, in different ways and for different reasons, but the walls were there nevertheless. He’d had trouble all his life understanding what people expected from him so he’d learned to minimize, to live inside his own head. He’d grown in his time at the BAU, found friendship and family where he hadn’t realized he was lacking. But there were always some things he held back.

People loved to be dazzled by his intellect, by the way he could remember the most inconsequential detail in a text or connect an obscure reference to its source. He didn’t mind, he enjoyed that part of himself as well. But sometimes it felt hollow, just a party trick he was brought out to perform and then put away until wanted again. The other things, the personal things, he had never learned how to share those and had always figured no one was that interested anyway. Somewhere along the way it became a compulsion to hide certain details, convinced that if everyone knew they would reject him. His mother and her illness, his own doubts about his stability, his need for help at times; he pulled those secrets in close, wrapping his fingers around them and squeezing until they stopped squirming so much. It wasn’t until he listened to Aaron haltingly give context to an offhanded comment that he dared to pull out some of his own worries. So they clumsily exchanged confidences, slowly building a new structure with each brick they pulled out of their walls.

Knowing the term didn’t help with the issue though. Didn’t change the fact that without the pressing responsibility of a weekday, where people expected him to be certain places at certain times, Hotch was finding himself unable to get out of bed. He stared at the clock, narrowing his eyes, disbelieving what the numbers were telling him. How could it be that someone who slept so little could spend so much time laying down?

He rolled away from the cursed illumination and glared at the wall instead. He could see Rossi’s confrontation played out on the blank white surface. As if he had been outside his own body, he watched his reactions, studying the degree of sincerity. Was he really making logical decisions or was he only wishful? He needed to talk to Spencer, needed to come up with a plan before this got out on its own. He had considered that option too—not doing anything and letting everyone else deal with their own feelings. He was tempted but he knew in the long run that would not work out well. He was still the leader of his team, despite whatever feelings he was finding himself caught up in. If he acted soon, he could still control this.

His thoughts returned to scolding him about how he should get up, take care of some errands he had been putting off. At least do some laundry after being gone all week. He closed his eyes imagining the laundry, the clean warm fabric pressed against his face. One of the few reliable pleasures in life. He rolled onto his back and stretched his long limbs away from himself. He could do that at least.

There was a brief moment of anxiety as he willed his muscles to contract, to pull him upright, unsure if they would cooperate this time. Thankfully they did and he shuffled around the room, collecting errant socks and emptying his go-bag that he had left on a chair the night before. He had managed to get the laundry started and was fumbling with the coffee maker when he heard a knock at his door. He spilled the grounds as his head snapped up to glare at the sound. He swore and did his best to sweep what he could salvage into the filter, placing it correctly and flipping the switch before going to investigate the intrusion.

He found Spencer standing outside his door looking a little guilty. They eyed each other, Hotch in sweats and t-shirt, hair standing up at odd angles, Spencer dressed for a day out in cool late winter sun, his favorite purple scarf wrapped around his neck for luck. Spencer’s eyes darted around the room behind Hotch. It was dark, the only light coming in from one small window. The rest of the curtains were drawn and he hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights, not needing them to take care of basic tasks.

“Sorry, I tried to call,” Spencer wrung his hands as he made an effort to stop staring at the gloom in front of him.

Hotch thought about his phone, how he had purposely turned it off, something he rarely did. He had been so tired last night, he’d needed to ensure a few hours without someone requiring his attention. He’d felt a thrill of rebellion as he’d tossed it aside but he must be really out of it to not have checked it yet today. After a moment of awkwardness while they both contemplated how they ended up here, Hotch invited Spencer in for coffee.

“It should be ready in minute,” he said while waving him inside.

Spencer walked toward the kitchen where he remained standing, hesitant. There had been a wild impulse that drove him here, even when Hotch didn’t answer his phone. He’d been repeating conversations with himself, things he needed to say, imagining all the different responses he might get. His mind had been so full of these scenarios as he made his way from his apartment, but now that he was here he wondered if maybe this hadn’t been better left alone. Who was he to demand things?

“You can put your stuff down,” Aaron said with a slight smile.

“What?” He looked at his bag that he was clutching tightly, his knuckles turning white. Thoughts unmistakable as they ran across his face, he glanced around, trying to decide where to put it. Trying to get his bearings in this unfamiliar environment.

“Here,” Aaron held out his hand, offering to to take it. Spencer shrugged it off and handed it over to Aaron who set it on the dining table. Meanwhile Spencer sat on the edge of one of the bar stools and unwound his scarf, hands too nervous to stay still, and set it on the stool next to him. Aaron returned to the kitchen and pulled out a pair of mugs. He didn’t bother to ask how Spencer liked his coffee, everyone already knew that deviancy. Instead he just handed him the box of sugar, a spoon and a full mug. Spencer kicked his heels against the rungs of the stool.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling into the warm curls of steam. Hotch hummed, leaning back against the counter, his own mug wrapped tightly in his fingers. He was awake but he wasn’t fully registering what was happening. He hoped the coffee would alleviate that feeling.

“Sorry to just show up, I was going for a walk and…” Spencer trailed off, hearing the excuse he had prepared out loud, he found it sounded false. He rubbed his thumb against the warm mug. He inhaled deeply, then said, “I wanted to see you.”

He looked up to check Aaron’s reaction. Frustratingly he didn’t appear to react at all, looking back steadily, absorbing the information. Then he nodded, as if he was answering a question, maybe a response to something in his own mind.

“It’s ok, I wanted to see you as well. We need to talk.”

Spencer’s eyes went wide at that but Aaron waved his hand and tried not to laugh outright at the horrified expression. “It’s nothing bad, I promise.”

Spencer relaxed a little, enough to sip his coffee again. Hotch could tell he wasn’t completely convinced. He rubbed his head, worsening the disarray there and sighed. He needed to level the playing field somehow. Spencer made a risky move coming here unannounced. The power imbalance of the situation, already uneven for so many other reasons, was not going to help them get through this conversation. They needed neutral ground, somewhere they were both comfortable, or at least distracted enough, to talk about their feelings without becoming so anxious they never really said anything.

“Let me take a shower and then we can get out of here.”

“Oh, ok, we don’t have to, I just…”

“Spencer, I’m sure you didn’t want to spend the day in my apartment,” he said firmly. He let his eyes scan around the room, seeing it from another’s perspective. It was barely lived in; even when he was physically present he wasn’t living there. There were no personal touches, no paint on the wall, no photos. It was only the shell of a home. He had done all his living in the home he’d shared with Haley and Jack. There had been no reason to try to build any of that again on his own. “We could go to the Science Museum?”

“Oh, I love that place,” Spencer sounded both excited and relieved.

Hotch gulped the rest of his coffee, ignoring the burn on the roof of his mouth. “Give me fifteen minutes.”

Spencer stayed put for several minutes after he left the room. Frozen in his seat, afraid to touch anything else, certain someone as deliberate as Aaron would notice anything out of place. But he had been welcomed in, a voice in his mind argued. It was the same voice that had pushed him along all the way to this point. The same voice that insisted what was happening was real and wasn’t going to let him worry it away.

He forced himself to stand up, carrying his coffee cup through the room, drawn like a magnet to the bookshelves. It was a little dark but up close he could read the titles. They had talked about books plenty during their late night conversations, he knew Aaron was a big reader. But there was something different about seeing the tangible evidence of that, the wrinkled bindings, the books stacked horizontally where he had run out of space on the shelf so he’d had to fit them where he could. There was an organization to the shelves, though it wasn’t immediately apparent. Perhaps the only thing in the apartment that felt alive, it was obvious that someone was regularly pulling books off and replacing others. He ran his index finger along the spine of one, thinking about the discussion they'd had about it. He was about to pull it off the shelf when there was a voice just behind him.

“Find anything good?”

He twitched, pulling his hand back, thankful that he’d finished his coffee so the movement didn’t cause any spills. He turned to look at Aaron, dressed casually in jeans and a sweater, hair still a little damp. They smiled at each other.

“Do you want any more? I probably have some to-go cups.”

Spencer shook his head and passed the empty mug to Hotch’s outstretched hand.

“Ok, I’ll be ready in a minute.”

He left to take the mug to the kitchen and grab his keys. Spencer’s scarf was still on the stool so he grabbed it and headed to the front door. There Spencer was standing holding his bag, not looking quite as nervous as before.

“You forgot this.” Without warning, he stepped in close to loop it carefully behind Spencer’s neck. He could feel Spencer staring at him but he avoided his gaze, operating on instinct. He didn’t let go of the tail ends of the scarf, playing with the fringe between his fingers. Neither man moved, their bodies dangerously close. He risked a look into Spencer’s face and found him watching intently. Aaron started to inhale, to say something to break the tension, when Spencer leaned forward and pressed his mouth against his lips. It was surprisingly soft, traces of mint and coffee mingling pleasantly. Aaron couldn’t help the smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth.

Spencer rocked back, looking for approval in the other man’s face, tentative but also absolutely certain that he’d done the right thing. He barely had a second to confirm the happiness on Aaron’s face before he was pulled forward by the ends of his scarf, this time to be met with a deeper kiss. A kiss that left no room for questions about where they stood. Spencer wrapped his arms around the other man’s neck, breaking away from the kiss and burying his face in the hollow of his shoulder. He felt overwhelmed as his blood pulsed loudly through his veins. Eyes closed tightly against the warm skin, he did his best just to breathe.

Aaron rubbed his back lightly, understanding, waiting for Spencer’s senses to calm. After a minute, Spencer pulled away a little, just enough to see Aaron’s face. A large hand cupped his face, thumb running softly along the cheekbone. He closed his eyes, focusing everything on that touch. He’d thought about this moment a lot, anticipating the multitude of different outcomes. Now that it was real he needed to remember every detail exactly as it was. He covered Aaron’s hand with his own, looking into his dark eyes again.

“Let’s go.”

[breadboylovin]

NEW POST FOR MY 95060 PLAYLIST!!! complete with explanations of every song choice under the cut because i love explaining my own creative decisions for some reason (PLEASE DO NOT FEEL COMPELLED TO READ ALL OF IT IF YOU DONT WANT TO ITS VERY LONG LOL). i may add a few songs here and there later on, or more likely rearrange what i've already put in slightly, but for now i consider it done.

alright now heres a look into my twisted mind

PART 1: TEMPTATION

Franz Ferdinand - Michael: It's a song about seducing someone named Michael. What more can I ask for (serious explanation is that it’s also very homosexually charged like you just have to listen to it… also feels taunting in a way where it’s like ‘oooooh you want me so bad’ and he’s RIGHT Michael DOES want him so bad). Also credit to this post for letting me know this song existed and inspiring me to make this playlist in the first place :-3

Mystery Skulls - Paralyzed: Just another song about how Michael is awestruck by David and feels compelled to follow him for whatever reason (the reason is that he wants him so bad)

TAEMIN - WANT: This is one of three Taemin songs on here because I think if David survived until present day he would fucking LOVE Taemin. Anyways this is a song about knowing you’re hot shit and everyone wants you and I think after seducing Michael through fucking?? Fatal motorcycle races and evil noodle mind tricks??? David deserves to feel that

Glass Animals - Gooey: OHGHGHGHFH THIS SONG… the vibes are impeccable on this one, Dave Bayley’s alluring voice feels like a slight remix of what David is going for and the way it feels like the singer is trying to convince the listener of something (even though it’s purposely vague) just FEELS like David with Michael. The line “I can’t take this place, I can’t take this place/I just need to go where I can get some space” especially fits when imagining how Michael is new to Santa Carla and may want a place to belong that David and the boys are happy to provide

TAEMIN - Impressionable: I see this as the moment that Michael downs the bottle of “wine”, where this song is David’s internal monologue reveling in how easy it was to charm Michael and get him to join. I always thought this sounded like a taunting villain song so it just fits. Also it’s like ridiculously horny which is a plus

PART 2: THE RELATIONSHIP ITSELF

MGMT - Me and Michael: In my head this is directly after Michael drinks the “wine”, and if it were an actual song in the movie, it’d play instead of Cry Little Sister in that scene. I already made art related to this but I really just love the juxtaposition between something that Michael will later see as horrible (becoming a half-vampire) and David seeing it as a perfect slow-dance moment. Also “Me and Michael, it’s not a question now” because the blood drinking has now linked them together… mmmmm. Credit to this post again for making me find this song!!

ALI - DESPERADO: This one is less about David and Michael specifically and more about how the night in the cave went down for everyone there, starting with a soft slowness as they ate and then descending into chaos as Michael downs the wine and they celebrate a new addition to the pack. The bacchanal energy is off the charts

Dorian Electra - Man to Man: This song is just one that I attribute to all of the boys because I think they do a lot of homoerotic sparring. Also the part of the movie where Michael punches David in the face and David just goes >:-3 back at him

Chase Atlantic - Friends: I don't know what it is about this one but it just Hits… The chorus kinda sounds like David and the boys trying to convince Michael to stay with them instead of coming back to human society after drinking the blood, in the same sort of taunting manner that they had when David (presumably?) made Michael hallucinate the bike lights and sounds outside of his house

Taking Back Sunday - You're So Last Summer: THIS SONG IS JUST REALLY GOOD. I don't know what it is about this one either… I guess the “Maybe I should hate you for this/Never really did ever quite get that far” part could represent the first glimpse of Michael’s more conflicted feelings about David. Also the second half of verse 2 not only fucks so hard but could also be indicative of Michael’s repressed gay feelings, lying to himself about how he wanted to be around David because he’s cool or whatever but he actually just has the hots for him and would let him do anything if he asked to

MGMT - Little Dark Age: Mostly here just for vibes. Have y’all seen that one edit set to this song? Yeah

The Neighborhood - Prey: I feel like this song captures the general unease that Michael feels right before he sees the boys kill for the first time, knowing that he’s probably turning into a vampire and something horrible is happening… especially with “Something is wrong, I feel like prey” just generally describing what it must feel like to be a human among vampires (though he’s not fully human anymore at this point)

PART 3: REALIZATION + FIGHTING BACK

TAEMIN - Criminal: YET ANOTHER TAEMIN SONG!!!! It’s all about realizing you're with someone who’s like, an evil manipulative villain and genuinely bad for you but you can’t escape just yet because you’re kinda into it. I don't think David is THAT bad of a guy, but Michael could be like “I need to get out of this situation because this man is a vampire but I feel attracted to him and it’s hard to really get away”. Also the line “My hands holding yours that stabbed me are not clean either” just HITS cus Michael hates David’s vampirism but HE’S a half-vampire now so it’s not like he’s innocent either. This is just a really good 95060 song AND a good song in general, listen to it even if you don't normally like K-pop cus it slaps

Glass Animals - Wyrd: This would be the moment where Michael snaps out of it and just starts running away, but to no avail, because he’s still a half-vampire (“You can’t run so you must hide” meaning that he can’t outrun his new monstrous nature, the best he can do is hide it until it eats him alive). Meanwhile David laments over how this is a stupid decision from his perspective (“So, my friend, our time is done/You and I could’ve had so much”)

Moonface - Minotaur Forgiving Theseus: This is a very veeeeery bitter song from Michael’s perspective about David being a vampire… with the “You’re just a hitman” repetition referencing how David. Y’know. Eats people. And the “I heard you're coming for me now” references both how David first approached him and the impending confrontation

The Neighborhood - The Beach: This song goes from the bitterness of the previous one to a pseudo-acceptance of the end of their brief friendship and what’s inevitably going to happen next. However, I think the bridge of the song illustrates the little bit of Michael that doesn’t want this to happen, that wants this relationship to somehow work out because he cares about David even if he is a vampire (unfortunately he ends up repressing this because he feels a duty to kill David now)

Gorillaz - Rhinestone Eyes: This is mostly in here because of the music video, the buildup to a battle just echoes in my head whenever I hear this song now. In the context of this playlist it makes me imagine David looking up at the Emerson’s house from the hotel (and Michael doing the opposite) knowing that something’s about to happen and it’s going to be horrible

Glass Animals - JDNT: This entire song feels like the climax of the movie. Verse 1 feels like the Emersons and Frogs getting ready to attack the cave (“I’m all armored up”) with “I feel that final poke” being when Marko gets staked, and the chorus right after is a tinge of regret that Michael feels once the plan starts to take shape. Verse 2 is the other boys waking up to see that Marko is dead + them dying themselves (“Where my funny friends gone?”) and the bridge is Michael and David’s fight before Michael finally gores David on the antlers. The outro of “You can’t breathe without me” VERY much feels like David taunting Michael from beyond the grave, knowing how much Michael loved him and how horrible what he’s just done is

PART 4: GRIEF

The Brazen Youth - Burn Slowly/I Love You: Ooooooghghgh the conflicted feelings about their relationship is STRONG in this one… The “Burn Slowly” part being him trying to convince himself that he did the right thing by killing David while the “I Love You” part is him realizing that he really did love David and it fucking hurts

Sufjan Stevens - The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us: MAN. MAN… Everything past “I can’t explain the state that I'm in” is just so… it’s Michael realizing what he had even more and just how much it hurts that he’s lost it. He knows he was in love now and it fucking hurts SO MUCH!!!!!

Sufjan Stevens - The Only Thing: [head in my fucking hands] Michael moping around Santa Carla because it feels empty without David. All the “should I tear my eyes out now?/Should I tear my heart out now?” parts oh my GOOOOOOOOD sufjan stevens i'm going to slap you on the head.

Paramore - Tell Me How: THIS SONG HURTS SO MUCH ITS SO. It’s another one about conflicting feelings so theoretically it should be earlier in the story but I always envision something very morbid when listening to this (and have now written a fic about it so check that out)… Michael going back to the hotel where he put David’s body and musing to no one, asking how he’s supposed to feel now, the “And always coming to your defenses” where Michael keeps defending David and their relationship to his family who all think David was a horrible monster… this song fucking hurts. Also I unintentionally drew a parallel between JDNT’s “You can’t breathe without me” and this song’s “Do I suffocate or let go?” and now that I’ve realized that it hurts even more. Fuck this song

[bluntforcefem]

carcinization, babey!

so floating around blaseball spaces have been blink’s lore on how the garden has affected the flowers’ players, and recently, mads’ stuff on how the call got the firefighters, which makes it sound like they got murdered but that’s fine. and i started thinking about carcinization, because becoming a crab is about a lot of things, like gender and crabs and being a Part Of The Team and love, y’know, crab things, but it’s also about what is left in the “absence” where a [mumbles vaguely] killed god was at some point, and it’s also incredibly up to interpretation! 

anyway! crabs players.

so, a basic thing of how i view carcinization: it’s both connected to debbie and not. at some point, it was because of her, and now it’s not, but it is, kind of. it’s about baltimore and it isn’t. it’s about the crabs and it isn’t. what it is about, in no uncertain terms, is the person being carcinized! on some level you have to be willing to be carcinized for it to happen. if you walk into the baltimore crabs and you say fuck this shit i don’t want this, it’s not going to happen. there’s obviously a lot of nuance to this, but the basic foundation of it is that it is voluntary! and it’s reversible. and despite being a very, very physical thing, carcinization is about emotions.

i’m going to do players in order of who i have the most thoughts about! because some crabs are definitely definitely thought about more by others than i do, haha.

so luis acevedo! traded to the crabs in the season 7 elections, from the garages. they’re a hologram, and they’re constantly shifting both their appearance and identity subconsciously or manually to suit them how they see fit. they have a very very very solid sense of identity despite this, and they’ve been around, you know? centuries old. so they get to baltimore and they kind of already know what they’re getting into, except they have no idea at all, really. 

and i think they see carcinization from this outsider’s perspective, like, this is something you get when you’re a part of the team, this is something you get when you’re truly from baltimore and you’re truly a Crab, and they want it! they really do. because the crabs weren’t super important to them at first but they become important, and they want that connection to what becomes their family. but they don’t get it, not from an outside source. it’s because they’re a hologram, kind of, but mostly their identity is malleable by them and not many other things, and that’s the way they’ve crafted it. 

so luis rolls up their sleeves and goes okay, bitch, guess i have to do everything myself around here! and they carcinize themself, essentially, they give themself chitin one day and blue blood the next and claws and legs and every time they want to change they do, and i don’t think they quite realize until late into the Up that this is their carcinization. that this is their connection to the team, because they made it that way. and they run into the place where all the crabs hang out like holy fucking shit is this what it was? and they’re all like yeah?? we figured you knew?? and [luis vc] i fucking did NOT. it ends happily for them, either way.

next is [squints at hand] squid galvanic and jacoby podcast! these two are extremely intertwined for me specifically in relation to their experience with carcinization, because they’re both playoff births, right? they’ve only truly existed on the immaterial plane for a couple years, maybe, squid longer. and i think while the shadows are normal now that the fk apple is up (something i will elaborate on   later), they used to be not so great. and squid and jacoby were born into the shadows and not baltimore, really, and carcinization couldn’t reach them there. and then squid’s out, and it is seeing baltimore for the first time in its life, and the crabs for the first time, too, and finn invites it to go swimming in the extremely toxic bay with her because it can! 

and it does, and it wakes up the next morning with chitin plates interlocking up its spine and patches of it along its jaw, and it maybe freaks the fuck out, a little. because nobody explained this to it, because nobody thought they had to? but once it gets explained and it knows what’s happening, squid is overjoyed. it wasn’t a part of the crabs like the rest were in Up, and now it’s a step closer to that, and it’s happy about it. plus, it makes it look really cool, and i think it likes the feeling of sort of being Distinctly Inhuman in another way than it already is.

jacoby, on the other hand, doesn’t get carcinization. like, they get it on an objective level? and i think they understand it, sort of, in the way that you can understand it when it hasn’t really happened to you yet. i think they’re too unsure for it to happen, and when they’re more confident they get some hermit crab carcinization, but it’s… very slow. one step forward two steps back. i think that being a replacement for a bad pitcher that got foreshadowed has made them a little too anxious in their abilities, and their carcinization reflects that. sometimes squid peels stray bits of chitin that tried to grow on its vampire squid half and sets them on jacoby’s head and they laugh about it, though, and it makes it easier. 

i think about tosser’s carcinization in the context of it reflecting self-confidence a lot as well. the general thing about tosser is that after the real bad reverse sweep before the first peanut fight, he lost his carcinized arm! normal arm time. he blames this on debbie, and on carcinization not seeing him as good enough anymore, but carcinization isn’t the one seeing anything, really. tosser, on some level, has taken a hard enough blow from that loss to lose the confidence and motivation that made that arm carcinize to begin with. in the Up the rest of the team helps him build his own arm, artificial, and it’s once again the self-made connection to your team. you don’t need carcinization to be a crab, it’s something you foster yourself, and tosser is an original, and he’s had that connection and only made it stronger. i think once he gets down chitin and muscle begins to interweave with the metal, a bit, but nothing nearly as much as before. he’s okay with that, really. prefers it.

tot fox is a fox. she wears that funny crab hat you know the one. she doesn’t mind carcinization, and carcinization doesn’t mind her, but they’ve never really interacted, i think. she gets some extra legs to scuttle around with after she kills the sun and she’s happy with that.

dreamy and nagomi are both very carcinized, i think. nagomi found strength in the ever-changing nature of it and everything about it, in contrast to the heavy stasis of lady friday, and dreamy’s an original crab! however, i think while nagomi’s carcinization has remained just as heavy and strong as ever, dreamy’s faded and molted off over siesta. not for lack of wanting, but because with the sudden absence of the crabs, it sort of weakened her connection to it, and then over the decade it just sort of retreated back into itself? and she misses it, of course, but she learns how to live without it. and then the crabs come down, and i’m always thinking about sim’s minific where the carcinization comes back all at once. dreamy knows before anyone that the crabs are back because the chitin lining her jaw is back in full force and she can feel it, intrinsically, like something coming home to her. moco is less carcinized to begin with, but i think their armor grows chitin plate to replace rusted and missing pieces.

i’m sleepy now, and i don’t have particularly strong articulated thoughts on the rest of the crabs’/former crabs’ carcinization, so you should come to the crabitat at tillmansucks.com and ask about them! because i do love them very dearly. (pedro davids my beloved)

thank you for reading! love a crab

[wisteria-lodge]

a burnt AND exploded Bird

so i finally managed to articulate a thing that i'm prrrretty sure points to an unhealthy snake primary model? while the concept of a snake's People, and the concentric social circles, resonates with me, it's the morality part that gets me. i don't construct my morality around my People so much as, when i'm really in the grips of it, do everything i can to convince myself their actions aren't violating my /existing/ morality. 

This sounds like a... half-Burnt Idealist primary. We’re used to the  dramatic, completely Burnt Idealist in fiction, where you have no personal morality, and are forced to use someone else’s to compensate. But this is like... the Castiel situation. You have a morality, but it’s not very sure of itself. It needs outside supports to justify it and prop it up. And when those supports are other people... it’s really important that those people remain morally pure. 

i can explain everything away, tell myself they're really a good person and this is just a lapse in judgment, that surely everything will be fine if i can just get them to understand what they did wrong. 

Oh man. So Bird. They just need to understand. I need to help them understand. They’re just missing information. 

(because surely they wouldn't keep doing something wrong unless they didn't realize.) they didn't mean shitty things they very obviously said or did and i just misunderstood somehow, so on and so forth. 

Burnt Bird! Burnt Bird! Gaslit bird! 

part of this was, i'm sure, from issues i brought into my relationships from beforehand, but it's also been fed by heavy-duty gaslighting through multiple close relationships over the course of years. 

Yeaaahh. Birds are... especially vulnerable to gaslighting. 

it's given me the unfortunate yo-yo effect of being extremely suspicious and constantly on guard in close relationships, assuming the worst.

I mean, I know you know this, this isn’t some brilliant new insight, but - tell them this stuff. And if you can’t, or they respond badly, that’s not a relationship you want to put much time or energy into. 

I feel /intense/ distress and repulsion whenever someone i feel like i'm under social contract to hold accountable (or not hold accountable) does something that makes me go 'UHHH.' 

It is not your responsibility to hold the other person in the relationship accountable. Not over their moral choices, or health, or whatever they do with their free time. I have been the Parole Officer half of a relationship. I had the best justifications in the world. All it does is breed resentment, and make things even worse. It’s not your job. It’s not a job you’re able to do. 

extra layers of Big Scream when i get even a whiff that someone might be asking me to take their side in a situation where they're actually in the wrong.

Yeah, you’re not a Snake.

maybe it's because i've had bad experiences with people going to someone else for “advice” about a conflict with me, only to misrepresent the situation/go to a yes-man, and then use the backup as both a bludgeon and an opportunity to tighten up their cover story after i'd poked holes in their previous gaslighting, but the idea of being that third party is one of the most viscerally upsetting and violating things i can think of. 

You were not kidding. That is some heavy duty gaslighting. I am so sorry. 

it's bad enough that, the more goodwill and commitment i have toward a relationship, the more likely i am to just. bottle things up and never tell anyone what's happening when there are problems, rather than get an outside perspective and risk being a bludgeoner myself by not giving them enough context. 

Okay, wow, so your Bird is also Exploded. Birds primaries Explode when something goes wrong with the mechanism used to take in information, and that’s what’s going on here. You’re not allowing yourself to take in outside information. You’re not allowing yourself to listen to what others think about your relationships and it’s hurting you. You’re a Bird. You need that outside input to feel secure. 

which means they have more opportunity to be awful and treat me like shit

Yes. Abusers isolate the mark, you know this. 

(all made much worse by the fact that multiple, objective-in-hindsight gaslighters have used 'i'm one of the people you're supposed to trust, you're abusive for questioning me just because you had bad experiences with someone else :(((' on me.) 

You are abusive for questioning me. Yep. That’s how you Burn a Bird. 

that got a lot longer than i intended, whoops, and i have more thoughts about it, but: does this sound like a model, or just unhealthy snake? any idea what other primaries modeling snake this way might look like?

There is no Snake at all here. Sorry. 

(for reference, when i say 'violations of my existing morality' i mean things like when i see them being a bully, being a hypocrite, saying or doing something bigoted, treating animals poorly, and so on, not just being a dick to me.) 

Implying that they are allowed to be a dick to you, but not animals? I don’t follow.

i don't mind using subterfuge and roundabout methods to guide them to the conclusion that it was wrong if i think it'll work, in fact i would much rather be able to do that than be blunt, but unfortunately people have an easier time cognitive-dissonancing their way around snake slipperiness, and 'person continues to think their shitty behavior is fine and will probably continue acting on it' is a really upsetting result for me even without the idea that they might think they have my /approval./ so! blunt it is. i'm also aware that it's really easy for this to turn into just straight up controlling behavior and i worry about turning into a bully, but i can't just drop it because silence is complicity and AAAAAAAAA. ANYWAY i just keep going my bad ashfkshd)

Stop. Breathe. It’s okay. It’s only controlling behavior if you’re trying to control them. Expressing the way you feel about something they did is not controlling. That’s healthy. Probably someone in the past told you that you were a controlling person, but that’s a tactic. I really don’t see any risk of you being a “bludgeoner” or a “bully.” 

No one is going to be perfect. Not you, not them. If they do something that bothers you, talk to them about it. Is this a one-time thing? A pattern? You’re allowed to talk to other people about it too. See if they think it’s as big a deal as you do. 

If the behavior changes, great. If it doesn’t... they might not be at a place where they can change. Sometimes people just aren’t ready to learn. And then you decide, is this a dealbreaker (or not) and act accordingly. 

thanks @the-moogle-of-your-nightmares​ for the submission

[dontjudgemeimawriter]

Cards & Falling Asleep scene-- Raymond’s POV

This is a scene that isn't intended to be part of the story, which is from Terran's perspective, but nonetheless an important one.

Some context: Raymond has asked Terran to stay over to get to know him better. Raymond has mental magic, meaning he can sense and influence people's minds. He's also facing a bit of a situation that Terran doesn't fully know the details of.

I don't think I need and trigger warnings?

Under the cut

War had been the only card game I could think of that might actually get him out of his head. Definitely the only one I was pretty sure he knew. It was a simple, dumb game with no strategy, no bluffing, no prediction. I think he was trying to anyway, counting cards a bit, but there was nothing to do about it. You put the next card down, that’s all there is to it.

I think I’d rattled him a little with the visualizing thing. I hadn’t even been sure he’d be able to see it if I implanted an image, but I knew he had by the bewilderment on his face. And oh my god, I’ve never seen him bewildered. Occasionally I’d seen him surprised, plenty of times he’s been frustrated, maybe even confused in a flustered way. And it was so fun, he was capable of bewilderment,there were things he didn't know. Of course, there were plenty of things I thought he was wrong about, and I knew in a way he was sheltered… was sheltered the right word? His world and perspective was narrow, specialized. 

We flipped over cards, my jack beating his 5, and I swiped the cards off the bed and put it in my pile. He was intently watching the space in front of us, waiting for me to flip over the next one, but I had to pause to jog my pile, and it was kind of interesting to look at him when he was focused on something but not focused on it. Usually his intense look made me uneasy, but right now it didn’t. 

I flipped over my top card and he flipped his. I stared at the cards for a second, and he broke his gaze to look at me.

“It’s a 9, you get it.”

I smiled, laughing at myself, and grabbed them. I hadn’t been sure it was a 9 or a 6, but either beat his 4 anyway. We kept going, a steady rhythm of flipping and grabbing, but when I paused, staring at a 7 and a 3, he chuckled at me.

I took the cards and shot him a playful glare. 

“Do you need to review your numbers?” he asked, a grin pulling at his mouth, and he was teasing me and it just made me smile more.

“I haven’t taken a math class in two years,” I said, defending myself.

“And in that time have you not encountered numbers?” He flipped over another card, and we continued playing, and I tried to think of a good retort, but our numbers matched, so we declared war and he took the pile. “Hey.”

“Not my fault, it’s the cards.”

“Bad cards.” I’d run out so I grabbed my discard pile. 

“They’re your cards.”

“They’re the hotel’s cards,” I corrected, then remembered. “Actually they’re the last hotel’s cards.”

Terran paused and looked at me, raising an eyebrow. I raised mine mischievously. It’s been an accident, I’d swiped everything off the bedstand into a bag and only realized when I’d unpacked. I was considering it being a thing, that I steal each hotel’s playing cards and leave the last’s as a joke, but I knew Terran wouldn’t approve of that idea, and it was probably a bad one anyway. Besides, I was worried someone would get in trouble. It was best to be the perfect guest. So I shrugged it away. 

“Well, that explains why they don’t like you,” he said, and the carrying of the joke and lack of disapproval surprised and thrilled me. 

Still though, I didn’t know how to respond, and our attention returned to the cards. The only sound became the sound of cards flipping over, and before long he’d gotten almost the entire deck.

I didn’t mind. It was nice to play cards with him. I’d played cards a good amount— it was a good thing to do between studying. I’d played with Jodi a lot, we’d gotten really intense about playing Gin. When her friends joined we’d play Hearts or Cheat, but you really needed more than two players for that. I’d never bothered to buy a deck, somehow we could always find one and every hotel I’d ever been at provided one. I’d thought of playing cards as a possibility, but as soon as I’d sensed that memory—all I’d gotten was a poker chip, fire, and fear—I’d remembered the few times we’d played cards back before, and remembered that he’d played cards with Zachary. And it wasn’t a game then. I’d never been sure what it was exactly, but I’d sensed that it wasn’t fun. They treated it like an exercise in fucking over each other. 

Not something I wanted to bring into this space. Not when the entire point of this was so I could know who he was outside of that. 

This was working, though. The playful teasing, the grin he’d shoot me sometimes— that was what I’d wanted. And I could feel him more relaxed than I’d ever known him, and I got the feeling that this was him— more himself than he’d ever been. 

Or maybe I was hoping it was so much. Maybe I was extrapolating the good parts and ignoring the bad. He was good at acting, and I wasn't sure if being unfocused fixed that. Playful teasing wasn’t too far from the witty sarcasm he sometimes employed. Maybe he was acting, always.

But for a second he looked at me, and there was something there in a quick glance, something I don’t think was acting. Because if there’s one thing Terran can’t do, it’s flirt, even if it’s fake or would be beneficial. That was what really made me realize that it was an act, that it wasn’t really him. Sneaking a glance like that wasn’t a planned flirt. He didn’t even pick up on me flirting with him— that I knew, because I’d snuck a peek once while placing a hand on his leg. He was likely teasing me because he’d learned it from me. 

I have no idea if he likes me, though. I want to take a snuck glance as a sign, but with him, I have no idea. I’m pretty sure all of that—flirting, dating, attraction—is something he’s never really had to interact with. 

And it doesn’t even matter. That’s not the point. Does it thrill me to have him so close, to actually feel him reaching out to me? Sure. But I don’t care right now if it means something like that or if it’s just desperation. Because he doesn’t get comfort or safety, I know that, or affection in any way. Zachary doesn’t give affection. Mika can be very affectionate but no way she’d give him any. Maybe I’m flirting, but maybe I'm giving him something he needs, because how can I even expect him to be better without getting any positive connections? So this is for him, too— to actually give him some connection.

But it might be cruel, too. Might end up being worse. Which is why I really hope at the end of this I trust him, because I really, really want his help. 

I’d been so distracted I don't even realize that I’ve stolen back a good portion of the deck. “You’re making a comeback,” he says, and I look down to see that I have, and now I focus on the cards and continue to steal away his until he places his last card down, and 8, and I turn over my queen and smile, taking the last card and the pile. 

“You win,” he says, and leans over, lying down on the pillows, and he’s closer to me now and I can tell he’s tired. He’s usually tired, constantly casting a spell takes up a lot of energy and I don’t think he sleeps very well either. I considered offering to put him to sleep— after studying sleep cycles I experimented with myself. Problem was once I got to stage 2 I wasn’t conscious enough to purposefully go into REM, but then I brought it up with Jodi and she gave me permission to try it on her. Being in someone’s mind while they’re in REM is a really cool feeling, very intimate. It’s vulnerable in a real way, a way I didn’t expect. It’s really hard to get into someone’s mind while they’re asleep, but it turns out already being in opens up so much because all mental defenses are lowered. I don’t think Terran would appreciate the offer.

Instead, I say, “It’s kind of a relief for you to know about the college thing.”

“Oh?” He's still leaning against the pillow. 

I lean back so I’m next to him. “I didn’t want to keep it a secret but I know you don’t approve.” he looked like he was going to respond, so I added, “and I don’t want to hear it now.”

He stayed quiet.

“But I did want to just because I’ve learned a lot. How our minds work, even how our magic works. It’s crazy how much I was going on instinct before, but also how I was right about some things. I know where I’m going now, know what I’m doing.”

“You’ve always been smart,” he said, and his voice was sleepy, which was really sweet in a way I didn't expect, and I looked at him and he looked really tired but he was still watching me. 

I brushed away the compliment. “I did well in school because Mom taught me how to improve memory. You’re always a step ahead of me unless I lie to you.”

“No,” he replied.

“I don’t know my numbers, remember?”

This time his eyes were closed. “Numbers aren’t that important. You’re smart. You’ve always been.”

I didn't respond. My instinct was to argue with it but then I remembered Jodi telling me to stop arguing whenever I got a compliment. I hadn’t been smart enough to avoid Zachary. Hadn’t enough even to listen to Terran and stay far away from Calson. Hadn’t been smart enough to keep Jodi out of it, or Jesse.

I felt him fall asleep, drifting off. Felt him, relaxed. I stayed where I was for a while, just looked at him. His hair flopping against the pillow, his face relaxed for maybe the first time I’d ever seen it. I had the urge to reach out, to touch his face, his hair, but I decided against it, keeping my hands resting on the blanket. 

I wish I didn’t trust him so much. This whole thing, testing him— it’s testing me. Proving or disproving for myself. Maybe I shouldn’t be testing him anyway. I keep trusting him. I trust him without even thinking about it— saying I didn't was a lie, projecting the frustration that he didn’t trust me. But I shouldn’t trust him, not as much as I did. Did I trust him just because I liked him? Or did I trust him just because he’d saved my life? Maybe it was just gratitude. 

I got up, finding a quilt they’d put in the lower drawer and laying it over him so he’d have some warmth. He was in REM already. Dropping straight into REM was unusual, his body must be desperate for sleep. Moving him would have been close to impossible, and no way would I risk waking him. If I could I’d keep him in REM just so he could get a good night’s sleep, but it would bounce up to stage 4 and 3 soon. I undressed enough that I could sleep comfortably and turned off the light, getting under the covers enough so I was covered but didn’t disturb him, and closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep.

My chest tensed up. I was breathing shallowly, not deeply like I should be. My mind was alert—I could hear every sound, but specifically his breathing. Sleep breathing. I knew that. Slow and light. But all of me was alert to him and his presence and how close he was and I realized in an uncomfortable moment that it wasn’t a “Someone I like is very close to me” kind of alert.

I was scared.

Why was I scared? Why was my brain doing the “predators are close, not safe to fall asleep” signal? Hadn’t I just been trying to figure out why I trusted him so easily?

Maybe I didn’t trust him. At least not enough to sleep next to him. Not enough to give up consciousness around him. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

It dragged on. I stayed still trying to tell myself to relax. Even trying to do what I’d done before, use magic to bring me into stage 1, but as soon as I tried to get to the next step I found myself fully aware again. 

I stared at him. He was the vulnerable one right now. He was asleep, not conscious in the slightest. Not me. Although I suppose he could wake before me.

I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t harm me. He’d fucking risked his life for me. I knew that. And I knew he was always fighting me just because it was to keep me safe. And I knew he wasn’t the person he’d once been.

But I kept remembering that. Remembering that person. We’d reached a point of some level of friendship even before he’d saved me. But even then I’d been uneasy, alert. Watching my step. Knowing he was watching and judging me and it wasn't just about impressing him. Knowing how easily he could kill a person, without being barraged with guilt and thoughts of who that person was or could have been. Knowing that he viewed that in me as a weakness. I’d never expected him to save me. I hadn’t even expected to beg for my life, I’d accepted it. 

I’ve always been skeptical of the claim that fear and love are close. And it was love— even without attraction or romance or anything like that, I knew love, and I loved my friends and my family and Terran had become both, somehow. But now, staring at him, fear washing over me, maybe they were closer or more interchangeable than I thought.

Maybe I didn’t trust him. I should trust my body’s reactions, shouldn’t I? I should trust this fear, this instinct. I’ve never been good at instinct. Mika had been, she’d just deferred to me. And I thought it out, but not in the way that Terran did. He assumed people were lying, looked for reasons not to trust them, and I looked for reasons to trust them. So maybe I’d been wrong about Terran. Maybe that was the logical explanation for this. 

Or maybe, I realized, this wasn’t about him at all. Terran was a distraction from the real problem I was facing. A distraction from thinking about Jodi and the message and what I was going to do. 

I hadn’t planned to beg for my life. I’d made a decision and been ready to die for it. Just like now. But then when I was facing him, knowing it was about to end, I found myself asking, found myself reaching out to someone I wasn’t sure I could reach. I hadn’t wanted to die when it was facing me head on, and now it was again so of course I was scared. Of course I couldn’t sleep when it was very possible this was one of my last nights.

[popculturebuffet]

Don Rosa: “The Magnificent Seven (Minus 4) Caballeros!” or City Slickers 3: The Crystal City

Saludos Amigos, the Ride of the Three Caballeros returns! After some time off to take care of other seasonal commissions and to finally get the life and times fo scrooge mcduck back on a steady pace, everyone’s three favorite chappies in snappy serapes are back for another go round.  This time i’ts back to comics one last time as we take a look at “The Magnificent Seven (Minus 4) Caballeros: which was the penultimate story from Duck Maestro Don Rosa, and as a result the final one set in present day, as while the next one would have a wraparound segment, it’s a flashback tiding up the one last bit of Scrooge’s past Rosa hadn’t clicked into place yet, and thus we’ll get to that eventually as part of life and times. And honestly it serves as a fittng and satisfying conclusion to Donald’s story. 

The geneisis of this one is rather simple in comparison to “The Three Caballeros Ride Again!”. Don Rosa REALLY enjoyed writing TTCRA, wanted to have another adventure with Donaldo and his boys, and given the previous story was a huge hit likely had no trouble convincing his publisher. And since he set the first story in Panchito’s home country of mexico, it only made sense to have the next story in Jose’s home country of Brazil. Adding to it Rosa specifically wanted to avoid using the amazon rainforest this go round, as to him pretty much every story involving Brazil focused on the massive and wonderful rainforest. And while a great setting, Rosa knew there was much more to the country and wanted to show it off. And to his credit.. he’s 100% right as i’ve seen dozens upon dozens of stories set in the rainforest but not nearly as many set ANYWHERE ELSE IN BRAZIL. If their lucky we get to see Rio, but that’s about it. So kudos to Rosa for wanting to display more of a beautiful country and show it had more to offer than merely it’s biggest attraction. As for what treasure they’d be after, the lost city of crystal stuck out to him, having been described in a goverment document that was so degraded when it was found there wasn’t much left to go on and searched for by a famous explorer who was the basis for indiana jones whose name I forgot but we’ll run into his name again later. So yeah not as much setup here and what tiny bit is left can be covered when we get to our villian. So with all that out of the way, let’s ride on!

We open with Scrooge firing Donald and throwing his ass out on the street, berating him for screwing up and then telling him to be back early tommorow to make up for his firing. Then Gladstone literally walks all over him becausae he’s a jackass, and Daisy then shrieks at donald for you know, being stuck on the floor, having messed up the shirt she ironed for him without.. actually you know asking for context, HITTING HIM, then telling him to pick her up for dinner at the ritz. 

It’s like this intro was perfectly designed in a lab to piss me off. All three of the characters who on a good day ar excellent but on a bad are outright monsters, at their worst, treating Donald like crap, i.e. the reason to call them monsters, and generally abusing him for flimsy reasons. And again Daisy HIT DONALD. No that’s not right, she shoryukened his ass! She upercutted him! God damn. And her just casually doing that is played for laughs. In a lesser Rosa story this would only get worst and be “oh haw haw”.. instead... to my delighted suprise.. this is all treated seriously. Yeah really. Instead of being treated for laughs like normal, and not being a dark enough work comedically to make it work like say It’s Always Sunny, Donald is seriously depressed, beaten down phsycially and mentlaly and when the boys, who’ve been present for all of this and tried to help him up off the ground, ask why he takes this.. the answer is pretty damn bleak. 

Just.. holy shit that’s dark.. and I applaud Rosa for not only recognizing this isn’t always funny, but for actually tackling it. And I will grant Donald being a butt monkey CAN be funny, especially when it’s caused by his own ego. It’s the basis of his entire career. It’s good stuff. My issue has been more that Rosa sometimes dosen’t get that either some aspects have aged poorly, even by the 90′s, and thus dosen’t adjust them or play them more for drama, sprinkling a bit of that in with the comedy. So to see him do that HERE, to acknowledge in some way his own faults and do something with them.. i’m very proud of him and it warms my heart that he could do something like this that shows he could grow and change, even SECONDS from the end of his career, but with no intention of ending his career at that point or even after finishing his next and last story. It just ended up happening that way and as such this story carries even more weight as for all intensive purposes, this is the final tale of Donald Duck for Don Rosa’s Barksian universe. This is the last big tale before whatever triggers Scrooge’s retirement, the last tale he wrote in the here and now. And while not perfect for some reasons we’ll get to from a character perspective? It’s a pretty good note to go out on. 

Anyways Donald somehow makes this SADDER by mentoing, when Huey, Dewey or Louie tries to make him smile that he hasn’t smiled in some time before sadly loping off to make their dinner before buying daisy’s. 

Yeah... I just.. I need a moment.... Here’s my asistant iwth an important message

Okay i’ve regained my composuer.. and yes I will be shwoing that off at every opportunity. I have generous friends. Now where were we? Ah yes with their uncle in a depression hole, can relate, they figure he needs a nice gift to get him out of it. The boys think he needs friends.. and of course the boys come to mind, though the fact their on the other end of the contient proves a problem.. but Huey, Dewey or Louie has a solution and takes the boys to the Woodchucks because of course they do> Their primary go to for anything is the guide which to be fair contains the entire sum of the world’s knowledge in a guidebook. 

So the boys, with the other two likely filled in on the way, plan becomes clear when they stop by Woodchuck HQ and talk to the guy in charge of the badge department, which ahs a fun acronym because of course it does, this is one of Rosa’s faviorite running gags and mine as well.. I just don’t have it in me stamina wise to type the whole thing out. Point is the boys ask that Donald be used as courier for a special shipment of badge’s to Rio. The authority guy is understandably a bit reluctant to give a non-woodchuck this duty, but the boys remind him that in a previous story, not sure if it’s barks or rosa’s, Donald apparently not only found the last remaning pieces of fort duckberg but saved them from the mill. As a result the Fort, which was the original HQ of the woodchucks until Scrooge threw them out, was apparently rebuilt. So the guy in charge is more than willing to not only give donald the duty, but an open ended plain ticket, i.e a vacation. The Nephews do have to guilt him a bit more to get donald a condsensed pamphlet based on the brazil chapter of the guidebook which at this point seems like overkill. Just.. buy him a guidebook boys. IT’s a bit much to ask that a portion of your heavily guarded and protected text be given to your uncle for a vacation and seems like a tad of a stretch but the gag, including the boys getting badges in guilt and convincing, makes it work. 

So after the boys set off to telegram the rest of the Cabs, we cut to donald arriving in rio, passing christ the redeemer on the way

The Rio Woodchucks greet donald and take the package for him, giving him new orders to go by cable car to the observation deck atop Sugar Loaf Mountain. This is a real mountain in Brazil and frustrated Rosa because he couldn’t find any pictures of what the station looked like in the 1950′s, despite as he put in his notes having eager fans from the region, researchers and other contacts try to find it, settling for having vintage cable cars pulling into modern stations he got from photos from said contacts. If I hadn’t said it before i’ll say it now the man is a BEAST when it comes to getting things acurate, only bending it if it helsp the story and still making sure his drawings are as accurate as possible. It’s one of Rosa’s most adimirable traits. 

Donald took a Donde, some form of streetcar there, hanging on the back and .. uh I have no words for this..

Donald Duck ran into a horse and it farted in his face. Just... why though. This horse naturally is Senior Marteniz, with Panchito currently being thrown out of a cable car for trying to put his horse in there which is fair. What isn’t is people having an issue with his hat. I mean.. people wear hats. I know it’s a bit big for the tight fit of the cable car but still it’s a bit weird to throw a strop about anywhere outside a theater or sports place where he’d be actively obstructing people’s view. And it appears to be the same weirdly crazy asshole.. Imean again the horse thing is resonable but calling it a “crazy hat” I mean yes it’s a big hat.. but ... you you do know mexico exists right? And sombreros? or other cultures at all you weirdly specific douche? 

At the top, after a quick and funny hat swap gag, Panchito reveals the triplets called him here.. as did Jose who assuemd it was  lovely senorita.. who uppercuts him. And it’s STILL more reasonable to uppercut some rando hitting on you, if not by much, than Daisy’s Domestic Abuse. Anyways the three put things together and Donald realizes via flashback the boys hoped his smile would return and said he’d have help. 

Donald, being utterly beaten down by life, apologizes.. but it turns out the boys needed this as much as he did. Jose’s night club career is flopping hard, with his agent unable to get him bookings and Panchito has barely scraped any money together for his ranch dream from last time. It’s a nice touch: That the boys , while having more exciting careers have just as much strife as Donald does and as much problem. It helps make them feel as real as donald, as characters with their own lives and adventures outside of him and their own wants and needs and it really helps the story come alive. Jose however has some suggestions to escape their blues. 

But Panchito suggests instead they go for some adventure and go diamond hunting in the plains of brazil, which the two agree to.. and Donald’s a big gung hoe about carving his way through human flesh.. just jesus man.. get a therapist. Your Ducktales counterpart did and he seems mildly well adjusted. So the adventure is on.. and they all toss their hats.. off a mountain. First thing on the provisoins list hats.  Before we head on I just wanted to point out even though most of my audience here is likely unaware the movie exists that this Comic honestly reminds me of the 1991 comedy City Slickers starring Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby. If your struggling on the name Daniel Stern, think Marv from Home Alone. 

No.. the RIGHT marv. I may not be a huge fan of Home Alone but we respect Daniel sterns in this house. And yes if you didn’t know French Stewart played Marv in one of the sequels now you do. And i’m sorry you know that. 

There we go. Right Marv and Wrong Dad from Christmas story. Back on point City Slickers is a terrific comedy I finally saw a few weeks back about three friends all facing mid life crisises, with Billy Crystal being unsatisfied with his career and undsure WHY he does, Daniel Sterns having cheated on his shrewish wife with one of his employees whose also now pregnant, and Bruno Kirby being a ladies man whose faced with the prosepct of settling down, go for a weeks vacation to a cattle drive, as Brunos character tends to set up these trips but this time they actually need it. They encounter cows, assholes and a cowpoke named Curly. It’s pretty good. 

But yeah they both feel kinda similar, if with far less drama and crumbling marraiges on the cabs end because you know, this is for children. I’m pretty sure it’s just a concidence but given Rosa’s love of film, even if it’s more 30′s and 40′s films, and how the City Slickers seems right up his alley, I wouldn’t he suprised if he saw it and simply took some slight inspiration from it. Either way the similarity makes me giggle a bit. Again the plots aren’t all the same but the basic setup is about the same, complete with the main character’s family making sure he goes. It’s a bit of a stretch but I thought it was pointing out and while this review is comissioned, how I go about it isn’t so if I want to take a few paragraphs to compare this to an excellent comedy you should defintely see with two underated actors, maybe three i know nothing of bruno kirby other than the man had horse allergies and thus had to take heavy medication every day so good on him, and a lot of fun. 

So our premise and pastiche firmly in place, our heroes fly out to the frontier to adventure and Donald even thought ahead on them needing two more mounts and bought them from the local farmer for 100 bucks: It turns out their a llama, who jose takes and an old ox which donald reluctantly takes and wonders how to steer.. which I just got the double pun. Nice touch.

So our heroes head on with Donald expressing suprise they aren’t in the jungle like the movies, Jose correcting him, you get the bit he’s going for. But as they travel Donald not only breaks out the pamphlet but also , once jose mentions finding el dorado, casually mentions he and Scrooge already found it in columbia, and when Jose incrediously mentions that maybe he also already found the lost mines of the incas.. turns out yeah they did that too. Dont’ know if it was a barks or rosa story for either, since I didn’t check that part of Rosa’s notes, but it brings the scene into greatness as the boys not only belivie donald and figure he’s not pulling their legs.. but marvel at his life. And it’s here Donald smiles a bit.. he’s already got his smile back realizing that as miserable as his life can be.. he’s still seen and done things no man, even his globetrotting pals, has sever done before or sense. Found long lost places, solved mysteries and rewrote history.. sometimes literally sometimes in the “found things that changed historical knowledge” sense. Point is.. he realizes he has more to his life than he thought and maybe it isn’t so miserable after all. 

Donald also mentions the local waters are filled with stuff and the other Cabs mounts quickly climb on his continuting the gag of the Cabs assuming donald’s some big expert by accident. For me personally it varies in how funny it is, sometimes it’s grating othertimes it’s genuinelly pretty good, your mileage will vary. We then get a page and a half of slapstick with various animals and this gag repeated and it’s eh. Not bad, and there’s a REALLY great visual bit where donald gets squeezed by an anaconda and not only is he comically and tightly squeezeled, but it takes a few panels for it to wear off. Other than that not bad stuff but nothing especially new or really that funny. 

Our heroes soon find a pit trap.. and a capybara in said pit trap.. which I also give myself credit for recognizing on sight. Who dosen’t like a good capybara? Their basically a large brazillian rodent if you were curious. Donald asks what can they do and hte boys take it as a secret test of character, and not just donald being kind of lost and decide to help free trapped animals instead of treasure hunt which Donald, much like his entire life, just reacts to with “what what are we doing now?”. But they manage to free the greatful Capybara and we get this inspired bit. 

Naturally the sheer confusion of seeing this as well as being confronted with the relaly bizzare nature of his world, i.e. having both a rodent whose an old friend and one that’s clearly just a regular animal causes Donald to fall into the hole. He’s soon found by the natives.. and here we get one of the worst aspects of this story and one I honestly didn’t expect to encounter given Rosa’s research: Calling these indgeinous people’s.. “indians”. Yes really. 

We were in 2004 by this point, and even in the cultural cesspool of the early 2000′s, a time where micheal jacksons actions towards children were used for reams of jokes and where R.Kelly got off for the same just because “he makes the good musics”. What i’m saying is even in this time in history, we knew better than to use the term indian and I remember distinctily the term native american being in my text books even at this point as a kid. So Rosa, a world traveled knowledgable adult.. has no excuse for this, not even “It was the 50′s when this was set and they’d used this” as while he had Scrooge being mildly racist in “The Empire Builder from Callisota”, he didn’t you know, have scrooge use the fucking n word or other slurs during the story because you know that’s racist and he knows it’s racist. I’m coming down so hard on him because I expect BETTER. I can, even if it bothers me and I will give out about it, KINDA ignore the daisy stuff because domestic violence against men wasn’t as wellk nown, so while it dosen’t play well and I won’t pretend to enjoy it I can at least understand why rosa thought this was funny when it isn’t> This? The man clearly should know better, should know to use correct terms, and is usually better about this, but just isn’t here and for one of his last stories it’s REALLY depressing to see a man I have a ton of respect for fail this badly. It’s just a small element of hte story but it really sticks out badly and says bad things about an otherwise good man. Even a good man can really fuck up and Don.. honestly really fucked up even when, normally his portryal of indigneous people’s is really good.. and is for the rest of the story. This is just a really bad if really easy to miss bit I feel he deserves some flak over it. He knew better. This story proves he knows better in other ways and knows indgenous people deserve resepect. He just dosen’t show it in his laungauge and it’s disheartaning. 

Anyways, the Natives drop donald off with their cheif.. who turns out to not only speak perfect english, but has a rather nice modern setup and clothes. He’s the son of the former cheif whose dad, using a secret crystal city with a rich mine, paid for his son to go get an education in the US and hopefully bring back knowledge for his people. Instead all he learned was to be a greedy selfish asshat who calls his own people “savages”. This is what i’m talking about: While the indian thing is bad and Rosa should feel bad.. the rest of the story does treat these tribal peoples with genuine grace and care, as our main villian is shown as one partly because rather than respect his culture and simply use thenew knowledge of the outside world to help his people by educating them, bringing back new techniques and medcidnes while mixing it with thier old culture, the bastard prince simply wrote them off as savages and used his new learnings to rule them and get them into trapping, a buisness i’ts later made clear at the end of hte story they don’t like and only followed him because he’s their chief. And it dosen’t even come off as them following him as chief because their stupid, mainly just because of tradition and knowing they can’t escape him and he’d just find htem and find some way to cowtow them. The tribe here are innocent victimes forced into a life they don’t want by an asshole who became a colonizer instead of a hero and leader to his people and simply wants to sell them out as soon as possible to fiance a fancy and comfy life for himself.  The bad guy here is recycled from Rosa’s pre scrooge work, and works well here and honestly.. is a good villian and a good antagonist, something Rosa struggled with sometimes when not just using what barks made. He’s a chillingly realistic villian: someone who would step on where he came from instead of helping it and again treats these people as simple victims forced to be minons by circumstance and as the end of the story shows, and we’ll get to that, not nearly as stupid or “savage” as this cruel bastard thinks. And naturally being a cruel bastard, Chief, since his name isn’t given, plans to ransom donald as he naturally has no hangups about selling people AND rare animals. Thankfully Donald’s only a prisoner for a bit as Donald’s ox makes a back door and with the help of their mounts the boys free all the trapped animals and escape.. with Senior Martinez accidently taking the Chief’s necklace. Turns out that’s the sigal that signals his right to rule, so he figures if the tribe finds out it’s missing they’ll rightfully dump his ass and tells them to give chase, which the cabs find out about via a wild parrot. It’s better not to ask. 

So our heroes head into the wilderness to loose them and find a rocky slope, making their way up to some more plains. They now have both a high vantage, and a place to set up camp so do so. They also found out Martinez took the necklace, and now know why the chief is after them, but Panchito decides to keep it for now till they can figure out what to do with it. SO over the camp fire Donald decides that if they can find this lost mine that the Cheif’s dad used to go to,  they won’t need to look for diamonds the hard way and Jose’s skepticism is rebuffed by the fact that Donald’s found plenty of lost cities with scrooge.  So donald brings up the legend of the crystal city, with the guy who found it being colonel percy fawceet, and brings up more adventures you get the bit by now. Point is he mentions a crystal arch lighting up at night to ward off intruders.. and sure enough our heroes happen to be right by it, complete with a crystal road that simply had been covered by shale over the years. Donald decides to get some rest and head out in the morning, with a valid explination as to why not to worry about hteir perusers till then: It’s so dark that even if they left a trail, they can’t follow.. which the evil cheif agrees to though he finds the trail they dug up, pointing as an arrow and now realizing his dad’s treasure was real, plans to naturally exploit the hell out of it.  So the next morning, bright and early, our heroes have built a raft, and are greatful they looked in first as the waters are stalked with dangerous predatory creatures. How htey haven’t all killed each other, I do not no, but it looks cool so i’ll shut up now. So our heroes leave their mounts behind and head in up the stream via the raft and find the massvie and awe inspiring lost city.. as for why it hasnt’ been found they soon figure out why: THe stream in is dangerous, and jose figures it was delebratly packed with dangerous animals, and thus few would think to go in there, and the only ohter way up is scaling the cliffs it’s build into, but as the cities built into the sides of said cliffs, no one can see it from a distance. It’s a birlliant way to justify just WHY something remained lost and somthing barks is tremendous at. Our heroes soon find though that the canal go deeper and approaches a water fall.. and thus jump off loosing their only way back and thus heading in deeper to see if they can find another way out. Meanwhile the Cheif has found the swamp and recongizes his dad mentoning it and being a greedy jackass, and suddenly realizing that maybe his people won’t want to loot the city their swarn to protect, tells them to guard the Cabs mounts while he goes on ahead. 

Our heroes journey deeper into the unknown and after coming across pick axes mine carts and the like find the mines of fear.. lit with crystals and with wall to wall gems. So they’ve sucessful founds the lost minds of ophir, set up by one of king solomon’s realtiives. The actual King Solomons Mines had been found in a barks story, naturally and is also likely the basis for the african mines level in the ducktales game. 

Donald being donald.. ends up sitting on a giant anaconda who swallows him whole as he dosen’t realize just how big the thing is when his pals mention it to him, and only escapes through Dumb Luck, as is the duck family way, lighting a match and causing the Anadonda to spit him out and run... unfortunately not only does Panchtio loudley announce he dosen’t have his pistols, The Chief shows up with a gun. Naturally he intends to plunder, because jackass you see, and intends to leave the cabs stranded, with the anaconda picking them off one by one when they inevitibly have to sleep while he’ll come back with inflatable rafts and boats to loot the rest. The cabs bemoan the fact that their fucked.. and then this happens. 

So with that Donald FINALLY snaps, tired of taking the world’s shit and determined not to be the looser everyone around him but his boys clearly think he is. Seriously Donald.. dump. her. ass. It’d also tell you to dump gladstone in a shallow ditch but given your love for hacking through human flesh and his luck I don’t want you to impale yourself. So thus.. Donald stops getting polite and starts getting badass.. shouting THAT’S THE LAST STRAW BEFORE.. .. welll...

Bad. Ass. Also who knew Donald was part Kree? Wait .. how though? Questions for later. So as Donald gives the asshole his RICHELY deserved asshole a beat down, the anaconda pops up and grabs the boat.. with Donald STILL fighting the Chief the whole time. Holy shit. If this is your last time writing a character in a lead role what a note to go out on holy jesus. The cabs however show their CLOSE to as badass with Panchito roping the anconda and Jose attacking it once it curls around.. and unlike last time where his umbrella was quickly disarmed, here the Anaconda eats the tip.. only for Jose to expand it and on Panchito’s command, hook the damn thing. I didn’t relaize till writing this up just HOW badass this story’s climax is.. just holy shit this is awesome incarnate. 

Donald ends up loosing the fight eventually as asshole whomps him on the head with the gems.. and sends donald flying, destroying the gate regulating the water thanks to freeing the anaconda. As a result asshole escapes.. for about five seconds till he drops over the falls, presumibly to his MUCH deserved death and even if he surivives, likely wont’ for long without anything to defend himself. Goodbye asshole, you were a good villian but you’ll be better tarantula chow. 

Our heroes are still stranded.. but Panchito notices the Anadconda escaping and well... he decides to equal donald in badassery. Again..words do not do this justice. 

Our heroes disembark, and find that the tribe has been held at bay by the noble steeds, and as I mentioned earlier, and why despite the frequent use of .. that word i’ve said enough already, this story isn’t too bad. The tribe, once free.. are perfectly intellegent and nice, only in the game because of tradition that asshole abused. Their going to head deeper into the valley on the offchance asshole makes it back so he can’t find them. So the tribe is free and seeing the emblem as the symbol of their opressor and not wanting it, they can likely make a new necklace honestly just without the gems, Panchito gets to keep it. So our heroes won, the adventure is over and our heroes head back to rio

In our final scene we get our wrap up with our heroes back in Rio to enjoy what’s left of their vacation.. which given the scope of events only two days of it have passed so far, so it’s nicely implied they have a day or two before Donald has to go back where he can just.. enjoy himself. Have an actual vacation now his soul is whole again. Our heroes went to the authorities, and it turns out the Chief was one of the most infamous trappers in Brazil, and is now again either dead or in no way shape or form easily able to come back into the country.. and when he does, he’ll now have every officer in the country on his ass.So in short he’s pretty fucked and i’m pretty happy about that.  Naturally our heroes dont’ get to keep the mines, because well... it belongs ina museum.. or to become a museum and cultural landmark and the boys know and respect that. But Jose and Panchito both still got something out of the deal: for starters they have their confidence back, as seeing tthey could keep up with donald after realizing what a legend their friend is restored their own weary souls. Meanwhile, Jose’s newfound fame as the man who found a new brazilian cultural touchstone means his agent was able to get him booked up for a year, while Panchito , after consulting with the good senior martenez, decided ot keep the broach, and use it to get their ranch. And Donald? What did he find?

Donald found his smile again. He’s found himself again. After letting life beat him to near death, to just a souless shell. he’s found the real Donald. He’s realized that despite Scrooge’s finaical abuses he lives a rich full life. It’s part of why I compared the story to city slickers. While Donald’s life is far worse off than Billys, like him he finds himself again after the rousing adventure. And who knows what his future holds? Given Scrooge’s grave picture, yes Rosa drew that, he probably does marry daisy and work for the old bat.. but maybe now he can fight back, refuse to let htem walk all over him and actually find a healthy relationship with daisy and with his uncle before his uncle finally retires to Goldie’s loving arms. I could be wrong, it could be same as it ever was just he gets angry again.. but I like to think of something better for our boy. A better life and one more fufilled and more happy and one where he finally finds his pot of gold. He may not of found it yet but well.. there’s always another rainbow and he realizes that now just as his uncle did years ago. Donald is finally whole again to find his hapniess and a better life. Maybe with daisy, maybe with scrooge, maybe without them. Probably without Gladstone because he needs to cut that tumor out of his life, but still, he’s found himself and sometimes that’s all you need to find your purpose. So with that warm thought in my head our heroes play us out one last time. Well not for the restrospective obviously but still. 

Final Thoughts; While I do prefer the previous story, on going through this again for the review, I did find this story utterly charming and a great way to send off our boys and Donald for Rosa’s work. While again that one word is very unfortunate and Rosa should’ve known better, otherwise the story is pretty imaculate, using history to build a thrilling story with tons of character and a tremendous arc for Donald. And as I said the villian is excellent and overally the story is pretty great. Maybe held back a bit by the racisim, but the rest of the story is so joyous, badass and well crafted, it’s easy enough to override the less savory aspects. Dosen’t mean they didn’t need to be noted it just means this story is magificent and as usual for Rosa’s work I recommend it. 

Next time on the Ride of the Three Cablleros: We go to Disney Juinor for Mickey’s Perfecto Day! ..... whelp at least it’s a short one. 

And if you’d like to comission your own review, their just five bucks, jsut direct message me, tell me what you’d like, and I will send you the link on my paypal and get to it asap. Thank you so much for reading and have a happy holiday.