#anyway. None of this matters. It's all representational. The reality is less important that the information it's communicating.

[ferronickel]

When I draw locations from deltarune I do my best to represent them as they are presented to us in game, as if the images we see are literal. Then I slowly lose my mind trying to figure out how their sprites work until I eventually remember that everything is representational and the images we see don't represent the reality of the location. (Case in point, the exterior of the school can't line up with the interior. Probably because the buildings aren't to scale, but also just... the layouts are different. Where's that second story, huh? How do those windows in the back hallway work?)

So it doesn't really matter what my backgrounds look like. But THEN, I remember that I'm relying on people to be able to identify locations in the comic so they have to at least sort of look like their in-game counterpart, which loops me back around to trying to make things look right... etc.

[mk-wizard]

A Plague Tale: When tragedy is necessary

SPOILERS ABOUT “A PLAGUE TALE” SERIES AHEAD!!

As sad as the ending was and much as we all wish Hugo made it, it should stand not just because it would cheapen his death. The fact that there was no saving him was the entire point of the story which is actually Amicia’s story. The story of A Plague Tale is really the story about Amicia and her coming to terms with her brother having a supernatural illness known as the Macula and seeing him go through all the harrowing phase while fighting both literally and metaphorically for a way to save him. Eventually, she has to accept that there was no saving him from the Macula, but she could at least give her brother a proper goodbye and end his suffering out of mercy. While the circumstances and details are fictional, the situation is not. Dealing with a terminally ill loved one is a very common thing as is hoping that maybe they will be the exception and beat the disease or that there is a cure waiting to be discovered in their lifetime only to face the harsh reality that all we can do is love them and be there until the end.

We talk about representation, but we forget that isn’t just orientation, skin tones, race, religion, gender identity, etc. Representation can be things such as this and it is important to showcase them. We need show that some people just don’t have happy endings, but that doesn’t mean they can’t recover from them. In fact, the way Amicia was at the end of everything (Requiem) shows the right way to mourn which is to continue living your best life, cherishing the time you had together, remembering them and also learning from it. In her case, she wants to take action to help the next Carrier and Guardian, so that this time, they may have a fighting chance at least which can be seen as a metaphor for a loved one passing away from cancer and you trying to do what you can to help the fight against it so someone else may have a fighting chance. When you look at this way, it also drives home the point of how the tragedy of Hugo should stand. He did not make it, but because everyone learned from his experience, the next Macula Carrier might be able to.

Also, I mentioned that there was no saving poor Hugo and I meant it. The only way to keep the Macula from taking over the boy was for him to be constantly calm and happy which is impossible. No matter what Amicia and the others would have done or went, Hugo would eventually face stressful and bad situations as the beginning of Requiem showed us. It is impossible to control every single event and suffering is a part of life. And there was no medical way to keep the Macula at bay with the way science and alchemy were in the gang’s lifetime. Even if the Count had never kidnapped Hugo and they did make it to the cabin in the mountains, something else would have eventually triggered the Macula. They just did not have the means to cure, treat or keep it under control. Even the elixir from the first installment (Innocence) just slowed the process down. Also, Hugo was either always on the run, was in pain or getting treatments that were like torture which was not a life any person should live much less a child. To add insult to injury, none of it helped, so in the end, the only way to end Hugo’s suffering was to euthanize him.

This doesn’t mean that this is the way it will end in the hypothetical third installment. In the final bonus scene of the Requiem, it is hinted that the next Carrier was born in modern times when medicine, science and possibly alchemy has made progress in leaps and bounds. And considering how determined and unbroken Amicia was, I have no doubt that she made precautions to help the next Carrier and Guardian to prevent both a disaster and tragedy. It is possible and dare I say likely that in the hypothetical third installment, the terror of Macula will be put to an end and the Carrier will be saved. The dark side of this though is that Hugo’s tragic end has to stand.

Anyway, that is my opinion, and I would like to hear yours. Thank you for reading and as always, stay safe.

PS: I think the creators should create a third installment not just to complete the trilogy, but also because having this one time where having a story take place in modern times would work in its favor because we are going through a pandemic. In this case, A Plague Tale which takes place in our time would be especially terrifying and all the more satisfying.

[albatris]

ok ok alriiiight ok so the plot of ATDAO

this post is not, like........... well, it’s not gonna be a blurb or a summary or a nice neat synopsis, this is not Professional Writeblr Business, this is, this is, uhhhh

this is like drunk house party logan rambles

works best if you imagine ur just like “hey man how’s it going” super casual and I grasp you firmly by the shoulders and look you dead in the eye and just ramble all of this without taking a single breath

could I have explained in a nice neat concise "elevator pitch" sort of way? probably. mind ur business. that’s not how we do things here at albatris.org

anyway the purpose of this post is “hey people seem to know a lot about the characters and the worldbuilding and the premise but have no clue what happens in the actual story” so I’m not going to be talking about said characters and worldbuilding and premise in depth

in terms of rambles, that stuff’s been covered! this post assumes you know what Ports are, n what the nature of the ATDAO apocalypse is, vaguely what the MCs are like as people......... though I can fetch this info for you if you like

but yeah if you are coming into this post with zero prior ATDAO knowledge........... deeply deeply from the bottom of my heart: sorry

also if this is your first time experiencing One Of These Rambles

also @safe-in-the-steep-cliffs​ and @siarven​ I am tagging you because you said you would like to be tagged and also hi and also I hope y’all knew what you were in for

anyway without further ado

(visual representation of my approach to this rant, not of how complicated my plot actually is)

(my plot is not that complicated)

ALRIGHT

there are two viewpoint characters! and two plotlines which converge near the end of the story, but honestly there’s a very real possibility I will decide these are two separate books meant as companion stories to each other because I love making things difficult for myself yeehaw

ATDAO’s co-protags are Tris and Noa, best buds four years and counting. their friendship is one of the single most important aspects of the story, n the ongoing love and trust they have for each other despite the way unfolding events force their relationship to change is integral to the themes and making the heart of the story what it is. I will now proceed to not mention this friendship for the entire remainder of this post. they’re bros. that’s all u need to know. listen. listen. I have a lot to cover

so yeah, ur first key player is Tris Greer, whose parents are dicks but whose siblings are chill. most notably of said siblings there is Jacob, older brother by thirteen years, whom Tris believes is just about the coolest person on the entire planet. this plotline kicks off when Jacob gets caught in the midst of a freak car accident that kills a dude and wrecks a street corner and also somehow causes Jacob to just kind of................. blip out of existence entirely and without a trace?

n Tris is understandably horrified and distressed by Very Much All Of This, but hey, at least there are responsible adults who can look into this obviously Port-related weird disappearance and figure this mess out, right?

INCORRECT

the relevant interdimensional authorities are brought in to suss out the situation and these authorities are kind of like “hmmmm idk about this” but are all set to take Tris at least somewhat seriously until they learn the following:

that Jacob had already been reported missing to police in his home state three days earlier

that Jacob was in the midst of several ongoing personal crises and at least one nervous breakdown

that Jacob was allegedly tangled up in some real weird shit that would more than account for a disappearance under suspicious circumstances

that Tris is schizophrenic, prone to hallucinations, confusion, memory issues and quote unquote “letting his imagination and anxiety get the better of him”, and precisely zero people can actually corroborate his story that Jacob was even there are the time of the accident to begin with

and after some back-and-forth and Looking Into The Evidence pretty much everyone in any position of authority comes to the conclusion that this is just Ordinary Regular People Crimes and whatever happened to Jacob had nothing to do with weird apocalyptic energies, and that Tris is (at best) stressed out and delusional or (at worst) lying through his teeth because he knows more than he’s letting on

so Tris is forced to hop pretty quick from “I’m sure someone will handle this” to “no one believes me but I’m sure if I can find some concrete proof they’ll listen and someone will handle it” to Well Fuck I Guess That Someone Is Me

cue bizarre reality-hopping fantasy quest, which is ten times easier said than done when most of the time Tris is terrified enough just, like, going to the supermarket

he enlists the help of his new classmate Shara, amateur paranormal investigator and professional weird-bullshit enthusiast, who agrees to help him puzzle out what the fuck happened to Jacob in exchange for his assistance in mapping out Adelaide’s interdimensional “fault lines” as part of her ongoing quest to track down the source of the apocalypse

she’s got big fuckin dreams, ok, go hard or go home

slso worth noting at this point that there HAS been an uptick in Ports and their related reality-bending strangeness in Adelaide recently which is why this is of particular interest to her currently. gotta find out What Makes The Weirdness Tick, gotta find out Why The Sudden Extra Weirdness

..........and also Kai is there

Kai has no nice neat reason to get involved with the plot, Kai just likes drama and being all up in people’s personal business. Tris brings them on board for one single afternoon like “hey I will pay you some money to come to my house and fix my fucked up phone so I can listen to an interdimensional voicemail” but forgot the apparently key addendum “and then leave”

their first three chapters of knowing each other is basically Tris being like “stop inviting yourself into my house we are not friends” and Kai being like “that’s a rude thing to say to your friend. also your sister gave me the netflix password and I used your kitchen to bake pastries feel free to help yourself”

but yeah so Tris’s story mostly focuses on his quest to figure out where Jacob got yeeted to and how to get him safely home (y’all probably know a bit about The Unreality already maybe?), whilst also dealing with rising family tensions, whatever shifty stuff Jacob was involved with prior to his disappearance, and his own creeping doubts about his perceptions of reality

n I’m also saying flat out it’s not a plot that’s going the “oh the whole thing was just a delusion all along” route because ew

his psychosis is a fairly involved part of his character but the explorations around it are more to do with, like......... the difficulties he has in trusting himself and whether he has the luxury of letting himself get swept into some Big Weird Implausible Adventure when this has extremely different implications for him than it would someone else. n eventually to how his success and survival is not ~in spite of~ but specifically because of the different way he understands and interprets the world and the skills he’s developed

THAT TANGENT WAS A PERSONAL RANT IT WAS NOT RELEVANT I just have words to say on the subject of how psychosis is treated in fiction and didn’t want people jumping to the “none of it is real” conclusion anyway ok moving on

ur SECOND key player is Noa Yun, who has rather a lot on her plate right now. she’s broke as fuck and her mum is sick and her car is making Noises and she’s not getting enough hours at her job at Not-IKEA and everyone is on her back about her failing studies as if that’s a thing she has the energy to care about. feeling rather backed into a corner by life’s bullshit and her financial situation, she blatantly lies her way into a field job at the Department of Interdimensional Instabilities, because A) surely it can’t be THAT bad, and B) what does she have to lose?

so more or less what she’s doing is the equivalent of emergency services for Port-related weirdness, it’s going out and dealing with highly unstable otherworldly energies head on, navigating Weird Phenomena and bendy patches in reality......... it is, among other things, a job that’s relatively easy to get into because no one wants to touch it with a ten foot pole unless they absolutely have to

n the DII is a whole other post, this shit has lots of different functions and levels and branches and corruption and secrets and a tendency to view workers who have to go out and deal with the brunt of the apocalypse head-on as vaguely expendable and I’ve talked about it a bit before and in more Serious Words

things kinda kick off for her when in true Noa fashion she hurls herself into a dangerous situation to help out a coworker, n enters a pretty standard issue “overlap” where the barriers between universes are a little fucky, but hey, she seems to come out of it with nary a scratch, so it’s reasonable to assume everything is fine, right?

INCORRECT AGAIN

she basically gets some whacked-out otherworldly energies latched onto her that are now following her through her everyday life, and it turns out she’s starting to bend the reality around her the way certain types of Ports do, which is! obviously not ideal! she’s not exactly a Port herself, because she’s pretty sure that’s impossible, but it’s clear capital s Something happened to her in that overlap, and she doubts it’s good news. and to make matters even more disconcerting, she’s now being dogged at every step by strange visions of a child who speaks in an unfamiliar language and who seems Real Fuckin Pissed at her

so her thing is basically “I acquired fucked up reality-bending powers against my will and they might be lowkey killing me ‘cause Ports are notoriously unstable like that and also I’m haunted for some godforsaken reason” which all somehow ended up being, like, the least interesting part of her plotline for me lmao

oh and Noa also enlists the help of Shara, Because Ghosts

anyway yeah so her search to find out what’s happening to her re: Weird Children, being a Port-adjacent something-or-other, and whether there’s a way to stop her own unravelling leads her to (rogue computer programmer? mad scientist? general shifty bastard?) Laurence Marrick Thiele, who claims to have suffered a similar affliction in the past and now does some real interesting research on the subject. n this guy. well. he’s got some fuckin stuff going on

he definitely knows more about the nature of Ports than he should. also is he actually researching what he says he’s researching? also what’s with all the weird tech? also did he just straight up murder that guy Avery? all will be revealed later, maybe, if I feel like it

but yeah at about the same time as Noa goes “actually fuck this you’re shady as hell I’m out” she stumbles into, like, The Actual Reality of what Marrick is up to re: manipulating Ports and interdimensional doorways for his own gain, and the various ways this spells bad news not only for her but potentially for the entire city and anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in the crossfire, and she shifts gear to “actually you know what I’m gonna kick your ass”

there are various reasons for this, but first and foremosterly you have to understand that Noa’s got a fuckload of pent-up rage and she will bring it in full force the moment you say some stupid shit like “some people are expendable” or “it’s inevitable for the greater good”

(there’s also a fun ongoing subplot with her work at the DII where she and her team are investigating a string of strange illnesses with bizarre symptoms that appear to be spreading via obscure radio stations so that’s. happening. I guess?)

but yeah the main story here mostly follows Noa’s attempts to undermine Marrick, bastard supreme, and find a way to fuck him up before he goes, like, Full Cartoon Supervillain, n also like........... her attempts to keep up her work at the DII despite her rising paranoia that the teammates she’s growing to care about will notice her increasingly unstable state and the fact that she’s all tangled up with the very forces they’re meant to be thwarting. n along the way discovering the reality of what happened to her in The Aforementioned Overlap Incident and about her visions and such

so that’s all that. did that make sense

n she’s got a whole arc going on about trust and learning to lean on others, like, she comes into this story as a very standoffish person with lots of paranoia, she’s spent much of her life feeling like she can only rely on herself, n she’s. well. yeah, like I said, she’s got a lot of anger at the world and at the various systems that have failed her and her loved ones, n the story puts her in a position to become even more isolated

and her plotline isn’t so much “you have no reason to be angry or afraid” or her learning to Not Be, It’s more, like........... yeah you have every fucking right to be furious and of course you’re afraid! but there are people around you who love you and who will jump at the chance to defend you and who will help you carry the weight of your anger and grief and none of this needs to be yours to bear alone which is extremely cheesy

which applies to both her Weird Supernatural Goings-On as well as her regular ordinary life goings-on

I feel like Alice and Jet deserve a mention for Noa’s plotline but also this went on and on too long already so. well. Alice and Jet exist! yep. they work with Noa at the DII. I have things to say about them. I will not be saying them today

and uhhhhhh

in general, for Tris, his plotline, you wanna think, like, fantasy/adventure vibes which veer pretty sharply into horror, and for Noa you wanna think...... kinda, sci-fi mystery conspiracy vibes with a dash of some superhero bullshit maybe except not really

and that

pretty much is it I think

also the fact that Kai just invites themself into the plot for funsies and then is dragged kicking and screaming into caring about themself and making positive changes in their life means there was no convenient place in this post to be like

"oh there's also a whole major subplot about a time loop"

but there's also a whole major subplot about a time loop

goodnight! thanks for coming to....................... whatever this was! have a nice saturday everyone

[lavendulaconminatio]

Years ago I ran a blog on ace discourse: @asleepingwindow As a lesbian raised in the Catholic Church, where you can be gay just don’t act on it, I knew asexual activism had nothing to do with being gay. I know an asexual gay person is the church’s fucking wet dream. I always insisted I don’t care whether people identify that way but stop trying to say you suffer as I do as a lesbian. Stop fucking invading lgbt spaces too and making them unsafe for us! But that was a losing battle. I wonder how this time period will be seen 20-30 years from an lgbt history perspective.

Anyway, besides knowing asexual gay people are the kind of gay people straight people want, I also hated this idea that seemed to be gaining popularity about people being more oppressed simply because they weren’t seen as valid. Validity didn’t mean laws meant to protect their population, or having police see your body as human and worthy of life; they merely meant existing in popular media so people see them. There was never anything deeper than that to so called asexual oppression, which I will never think is a thing. I mean asexuality is a thing but people don’t actively hate you for not having sex, that’s a fact of fucking life. My people died by the thousands in the 80s, sometimes with only lesbians to give a shit, and some straight person says their totes oppressed because they don’t want to fuck? Yeah ok. Or if there was a basis in oppression, it was often just blatant sexism and homophobia. All men say you’re a prude for not having sex, this is nothing special, Jan.

Now years later after arguing my heart out, making a master post and closing up shop, I find myself with another side blog to combat an issue that I once again feel harms lesbians and women. Instead of being more concerned about the men that berate, beat, and kill trans women, activists are literally attacking women, especially lesbians, for not validating trans people. The level of vitriol leveled at a woman for talking about her vagina is so above and beyond any hatred for the men who have murdered trans women.

Then in some perveted irony, those same deaths are propped up as reasons to shut down women talking about sexism. Meanwhile, more women than anyone can count die every day because they are female. We don’t get the luxury of our deaths being marked a hate crime. Instead it’s domestic violence, or maybe FGM gone wrong amoung the countless other things that needlessly and horrifically kill women. And I haven’t even talked about rape.

I knew the ridiculous activism of the asexual movement would have lasting consequences but I honestly never thought the concept of validity would be taken and warped so far to try and pretend biological sex doesn’t exist and that women aren’t female just to make trans women feel better about their dysphoria. I feel immense compassion for anyone with dysphoria, I have it and struggled for a long time to figure out if I was trans or a butch lesbian. There is such an immense disconnect here about the importance of validity and what real oppression looks like. Especially when you refuse to even discuss detrans people for fear it will make you seem less valid. So their struggles don’t exist to make you feel better. Once again, all about erasing females to stroke the egos of males.

This is not the biggest issue on my plate, but it’s a recent small example of tangible consequences to prejudice. The other day I was trying to refill an opioid I have a legal prescription for but the pharmacist refused because they couldn’t find it. Despite having going through this before this woman refused to look where I suggested, and I suffered in pain for 3 days before my doctor’s office was able to tell them they had it for sure. I mean this isn’t about sexism and more about ableism (though women’s pain is often discounted more, black pain even more) In that moment, I didn’t want to be validated. I didn’t want the pharmacist to know who I am, my identity, my disabilities, I wanted her to stop judging pain patients as a whole and give me my fucking legal prescription. Every single legislation and guideline that limits opioid prescriptions are born of a prejudice against addicts and a indifference to people in pain. That pharmacist didn’t give a shit about my pain, to bother even looking, because the rules made her right and I was probably an addict anyway. That is a real tangible feeling of oppression, and like I said it’s nothing compared to other examples I just didn’t want to dig up anything more upsetting.

That is how I feel about oppression. Validity matters, representation matters, but it is not the nitty gritty of what oppression is. It’s screaming at the walls, throwing your phone, because someone with the power to judge and fuck up your life, did exactly that. And worse they feel righteous for what they did because to them you’re just a “insert slur here”. And that’s just a small nonviolent and nonlethal example.

Now unlike asexuality, I know to be trans is to be oppressed and to suffer. But you cannot lift yourself up by putting others down, you will be on a tower of dominos that can fall the moment some other group does it to you. I always said trans people obviously belonged with LGB groups because obviously bigots didn’t care if a couple was two gay men or a man and non-passing trans woman. To me it spoke to a shared history and understanding. But maybe I was wrong, maybe that doesn’t exist. I think at least the one major difference now that I can definitely see is it’s ridiculous to infer female privilege by calling us cis. One thing is for sure, LGB and trans history are not as simple as I had ignorantly assumed in the past.

I don’t want to dictate what trans life is like, I don’t want deny any adult the right to transition, I don’t have any interest in misgendering, I believe there is a difference between sex and gender. But by fucking god I will not let anyone trample on my rights, call me bitch, cunt, terf, cum dumpster, deny my oppression as a female, deny my suffering, deny my reality as a female, just so You can feel better about your body. I will not sacrifice my body at the alter of your perceptions of your body.

Society loves to say otherwise, but women don’t exist to make you feel better. We don’t exist to make men feel more like a man or for trans women to feel more like a woman. We exist for our fucking selves, leave us alone! I’m not sorry if it makes you feel less of a woman because you need to address the misogyny you have been socialized into as a male. You all reek of sexism and think being trans means you magically cannot be affected by male socialization. That is some first class Bullshit. I’m a poor disabled lesbian, and none of that erases the racial bias I was taught and raised in as a white person. I always need to be willing to confront that, and it’s no different with males. Trans or cis, all of you were raised to hate women. Own it so we can fucking get past it.

Furthermore, our society only does better when we foster discourse. Disagreeing can be enraging but it’s how you learn if your own beliefs are worth keeping or discarding. It’s how you grow. Only insecure bullies feel the need to demand loyalty, stamp out dissent, and mock their opponents than actually argue. Don’t give into this intellectual dishonesty that might be easy, feel good, gain you a moment of praise, but ultimately throws women’s liberation and equality under the bus and into a raging inferno. How dare you think your right to feel valid is more important than my right to live freely and without shame as a female.

I’m very much open to good faith discourse on this topic, but do not mistake me. I have suffered for being born with a vagina, and no male will ever get to shut me up. So the next time you want to say choke on a dick, choke on your own.

[kuno-chan]

One thing I'm curious about though is - why do people care so much about the race of characters in shows. And why is being white such a sin? White people exist and it's a fact that there are more of them than black people. It's not bad or good, it just is. Now, I don't really want to talk about real life, privilege, etc. because I'm neither black nor american, I'm from the Balkans. But I will say that being white doesn't matter at all in a country where everyone is white and the only 1/?

people of color you meet are tourists from time to time. There are a lot of chinese and vietnamese people here but they live the same way, even better. Anyway, when I watch shows there are characters of all sorts of ethnicities and cultures. I often see people complaining that there is not enough latino representation despite me seeing a latino american character almost always when I watch sth. But I never see anyone from the Balkans and despite me being white I can’t relate at all to the 2/?            

“white culture” everyone is refering to. But it’s okay you know cause skin color isn’t everything. I relate to Miles from into the spiderverse in the way he is clumsy and akward, unsure in himself but always wanting to help. I relate to Ezran’s love towards animals, I also relate to Callum’s anxiety. I relate a lot to both of the Diaz brothers from Life is Strange 2. So every time I see someone hating on character just because he is or looks white, I feel super weird and confused. 3/3            

You have to realize that the dynamics you may experience in the Balkans do not exist the same way in places like the United States where it matters very much. As it is, I don’t know what facts you’re getting that there are more white people than black people. Like, maybe in the Balkans, but in the US (and the world in general) brown people definitely outnumber white people.

And it matters because society in general has pretty much told us and the world at large that if you are not white, then you are lesser. Less attractive, less intelligent, less worthy of life in general. And if you’re white then you already don’t understand, really, what it’s like for society to tell you that on a conscious and subconscious level.

It’s not a sin to be white.

But I also bet there are different discrimination in your country? I know that in Europe, nationality tends to matter more I guess? Not so in the United States. In some places, Polish people are discrimination, for instance.

But the point of the matter is that being defensive about being white isn’t a thing that’s necessary. Because the entire country, the entire world on some level, has already told white people that they are better. There are whole studies about racial discrimination and social justices.

Nobody is hating on white people, but white people have a tendency to get defensive when their whiteness is brought in as a topic of question. Privledge exists. You can relate to characters of different colors, of course, for all kinds of reasons. Because, no skin color isn’t everything, but race permeates everything.

But you don’t have to be someone’s race to relate to them.

I think it’s important to remember that people live different lives than you. They have different experiences. Just earlier this year my brother almost got shot in a  road rage incident by a guy who was yelling “This is my country!” and kept calling him a Nigger and like the most stereotypical racist, white supremacist rhetoric you can think of. He even told the judge and the police while arresting him “I should have killed him.”

That is the reality of your life when your brown or black. You have to think about these things not because you want to, but because the world is going to first.

I didn’t ask to run my life by a blackness check, but I have to because people see I’m black and get their on ideas about who I am.

I’m not pulling the race card. The world pulled the race card on me.

None of that is in my head. That’s the reality I get to live with.

[pass-the-bechdel]

LOST full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

48.33% (fifty-eight of one hundred and twenty).

What is the average percentage of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

32.08%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Twenty-four.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Two.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Six.

Positive Content Status:

Though the female characters themselves tend to be high-quality characters who provide a strong undercurrent of positivity, ultimately this is a very solipsistic-straight-white-male-driven narrative, and that makes for an uninspiring and sometimes infuriating counterbalance (average rating of 3.01).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

None of the seasons did consistently better than the rest, with the various statistics fluctuating over the course of the series and never trending conclusively in one direction or another. Consequently, different seasons perform best depending on how you cut the numbers - that said, season four rises to the top of the heap by averages, despite never turning in the best score for any criteria, while season two was more of a standout in terms of scoring poorly less often than the rest, even if it didn’t match that with especially positive marks. 

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

Again, while not consistent, season one does tend to shake out at the bottom (more confidently than any other season attempts to achieve the top-end, at least), while season six is usually the next rung up. The middle part of the show is the better part for representation, is the conclusion.

Overall Series Quality:

Powerful, wonderful. Not without flaws, no, but as far as existentialist character drama is concerned, you can’t beat it. It rocked the industry back when it was on tv, and it damn well lives up to the hype to this day. You’ll not find another like it.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Not gonna lie: I actually took a huuuge break between writing that not-much-of-a-season-six-review, and writing this. I didn’t intend to, I just...how the fuck to summarise this show in a somewhat-succinct manner? In a novella-sized essay, yeah, that’s doable, but as something I can type up without stressing that someone can then peruse at their leisure instead of clicking ‘read more’, watching the little scrolly bar at the side of the browser shrink, and going “wow, Hell no” and leaving? The plan for this blog has always been to present information and opinions without becoming a chore for y’all to read or for me to write, and sometimes that means I edit my own thoughts too harshly and get annoyed later for not having said more, and sometimes it means I look at a task before me for a while and then go “wow, Hell no” and leave. Today is not that day.

Honestly, my experience of LOST was extremely personal, and so more than with any other show I’ve reviewed thus far, LOST has made it a challenge sometimes to discuss objectively. While there were other shows I had been attached to in the past (*shakes fist at The X Files*), this was the first that I got deeply invested in, and at an age where I could critically engage, and at a time where the internet had become a big enough deal that I had all sorts of inlets and outlets for BTS information and engagement beyond just sitting down to watch an episode once a week. In six years, I never missed an episode, which is an especially big deal considering that during that time I also enjoyed the obstacle course of homelessness, a natural disaster, and the varied delights of major depression and high school graduation. At the toughest points, looking forward to the next episode of LOST was literally the only thing I held onto to get me through the week. I had a dream once (circa season four, I think) where I drove a van into a lava flow and my last thought before I died/woke up was “but I won’t get to find out how LOST ends!” It was a big deal, is what I’m saying. It was a really big deal for me.

So...now that we’re two paragraphs in already (and since this is not an online recipe for souffle or something, wherein you might expect five paragraphs at least of totally unrelated personal-life stuff before I suddenly segue into ‘so anyway first thing you need is some eggs’), let’s actually talk LOST. I mean, it’s like crack to me, honestly, with the character-driven narrative exploring grandiose themes of fate, faith, and the meaning of life. If there were more women and significantly more gay, it’d pretty much be For Real Perfect to me, like someone looked into my brain and went “I know exactly what kind of show you’re looking for” and then made that show at a huge budget in beautiful Hawaii, and then tossed Jackwad in there as the central character because no one is allowed to have a Perfect Thing, I guess. I’m not gonna get distracted by how Jack is the actual worst, not today. We know that already; we’ve bigger things to talk about. Meaning of life stuff.

The thing about ‘meaning of life’ stuff is that philosophy (and I say this as someone who 1) ACED it in university, and 2) includes it heavily in their own work because IT’S LIKE CRACK TO ME) is...kinda waffly, wanky, bullshit. Existentialism is something pretty much everyone engages with as a concept, but if you run with it too far it’s...fuckin’ empty, y’all. It’s navel-gazing garbage. The thing with philosophy is that there are NO answers, it’s purely theoretical, and so you can dig around that rabbit hole and make yourself a comfy nest in one concept or another (if we want to extend this metaphor we can make an entire rabbit warren of interconnected ideas and also perhaps make a pompous remark about undermining the structural integrity of the very earth we walk), but at the end of the day, no one’s philosophical theory is inherently better or more valid than another, nor is it entirely clear whether or not it matters. Maybe you’ve settled on a concept of God or Gods in a pre-established religion; maybe you believe in a less defined Higher Power; maybe you’re pure science and everything is a construct and nothing is ‘real’ because ‘real’ is also a construct; maybe you’re totally nihilistic about existence; maybe you think aliens are responsible; maybe you don’t fucking care. Whatever your opinion, the conundrum remains: existential philosophy is an eternal question we all brush up against, and yet it also exists (heh) on a spectrum from ‘frustratingly unknowable’ to ‘pretentious and masturbatory’. So, how the Hell do you engage with that in a way that is accessible, interesting, and meaningful? 

So, the next thing you need for your souffle is...honestly, I don’t know, I don’t know how to make souffle. LOST, though, the souffle that is LOST - the character-driven narrative is how they make that philosophical musing work. I’d advocate for character-centric storytelling any day of the week, because emotional engagement with characters enhances audience engagement with narrative as a whole, but when your narrative is dealing heavily in existentialist themes and broad intertwined-fates and pseudo-religious faith, etc., making the human characters the central focus of your story is of paramount importance in keeping that story grounded. It also means that your audience doesn’t have to be into the more heady themes in order to enjoy the story, so you don’t cut half your audience by being a lofty elitist prick about it, nor do you lose track of your own narrative by allowing it to become too conceptual. Character-driven keeps the story tight on the ground with those people living the day-to-day reality of their lives, and the conceptual wankery is significantly less wanky for being threaded throughout that sense of grounded reality. 

The characters are the absolute heart and soul of LOST, and one of its great successes there is that it entertained such a large cast. Lots of characters means lots of different opportunities for character types, for exploring different backstories, and different motivations and perspectives when handling situations in the past and present (and future, and afterlife...). Big surprise, character variety means more ways to connect with an audience! Characters with different backgrounds resonate with a wider variety of audience members! Characters of different colours provide representation for your varied audience! Characters of different sexualities pr- ok, never mind that one. Will I stop harping about the intense heterosexuality? No, I won’t. They dropped the ball on that one, plain and simple. They missed that boat, like a bunch of straight white male chumps who still accidentally wrote a lot more straight white males than they did anyone else. Can I fault them for being straight white males and writing that experience in turn? Yes, I can. If they can sit around debating the literal meaning of life and constructing an elaborate yet impeccable six-season narrative on the subject, they can look at the literal world around them and see that there’s a heck of a lot of non-white, non-male, non-straight people. Holla damn. ANYWAY. Mostly they did a not-bad job about the white part. A dodgy job with the male part. A failed job with the straight part. It’s been half a paragraph since I explicitly mentioned how salty I am about that thing in particular. Salty as an ocean surrounding an island with a magical miracle light at its centre, I am. 

ANYWAY ANYWAY there is a lot about what made LOST work that came from a well-thought-out and strong long-term plot. A lot was made of the whole ‘the writers said they knew what they were doing but they totally didn’t!’ as if that was somehow a betrayal or proof of failure. My other favourite show-ending (and one of my other favourite shows) that I have brought up before is Farscape, a show with one of the more thoroughly cohesive long-term narratives that brought its story around with a remarkable degree of continuity, and yet the writers there readily admitted they were making it up as they went along. Contrast with, say, How I Met Your Mother, for which the infamously terrible finale had been planned since the start and strictly adhered to despite the fact that the story and characters had moved far, far from it in the natural course of development over seven seasons. Flexibility in a story is essential; you have to be ready to seize upon opportunities when they arise, or to modify to accommodate unforeseen changes. What matters is that you tell a story with that all-important continuity remaining intact, and LOST well and truly did that. I don’t care how much of it they had figured out from the start; I care that they remembered what they had done, moved with it in a natural sense, accommodated unforeseen circumstances with verve, and brought the whole thing around in the end like it had been planned. Storytelling is full of happy accidents - Kate Austen is one of the strongest characters the show produced, but I am pretty damn sure the writers didn’t make her that way on purpose; she is a combination of fortuitous casting and happy-accident writing - a measure of quality in a creator is the ability to recognise and embrace happy accidents, and allow the writing to support what functions well while discarding or altering that which gunks up the gears. And if there is one final word of praise I have to speak for this show, it is that as wild and strange and wonderful and esoteric as it could be, it ran with a truly impressive smoothness. Except for Jack. 

Basic souffle recipe that I just googled and have not tried so don’t blame me if it sucks. No lengthy preamble.

[laurenathalasa]

I am my own worst enemy. Today I am going to face why.

In my attempts to move past abuse in my life, I write about it.

Anyone who is a writer will know that this a double edged sword. A slippery slope. I’ll explain for those of you who may be confused. 

My main character of the novel I am writing is called Hazel. In my world, magic manifests in many ways. In her, it gives her the ability to give life. Most common is her ability to give life to thoughts and feelings; physical entities of mere concepts in our world. Depression. Happiness. Anxiety. Love.

When first writing Hazel, I had written her with a back story of simple bullying. One where her powers had appeared slowly, and the manifestation of her sadness and anger in an entity called Felicity was simply interpreted by Hazel as being another one of her tormentors. 

Upon editing the manuscript, and doing my own research, I realized that Hazel’s ability to create similar, yet different, parts of herself as people was similar to that of DID. I wanted to give people with DID representation, even if it had originally been a coincidence. 

However, most people with DID develop the disorder due to previous trauma. Abuse. Sexual abuse most specifically. 

So I decided that Hazel’s tormentors would be predominantly male, and made their advances and torment of her more serious. When making that decision I had been excited. I thought it was something important for people to read. I thought it would make the book seem as if to be for an older audience, and less trivial than simply another book about magic. I was excited. 

Then I sat down to write it, and very quickly realized a problem. 

My experiences with abuse ‘ended’ 2 years ago. My mental state has hills and peaks because of it, and I do my best to handle the problems associated with it on my own. 

However, writing a conversation between a main character having experienced sexual abuse, and a physical manifestation of ‘Love’, isn’t something I think a therapist would suggest. 

Writing about the abuse Hazel experienced was too difficult, and I had to avoid the subject completely, promising  myself I would go back and write it when I was ‘better’. 

However, when she talked to ‘Love’, I found it hard to find what I wanted Love to say. 

How could I give advice to a character about something that I didn't know how to overcome?

At first I had Love tell her to ‘share the burden’, but, in reality, I don’t think that’s something a lot of us want. To share that part of ourselves; that part that was weak and still is for not being past something so long ago; that is not something we want to tell partners or friends or family. 

It feels like coming out of the closet to someone unaccepting; you can’t decide whether you would rather they say ‘I don’t believe you’ or pretend not to have heard. 

I find myself at a crossroads. A dilemma. I cannot let this part of her stay unspoken; to do so would to fail any and all who have suffered from abuse in all its forms, yet I cannot write about what is so important without reliving trauma myself. 

Sleepless nights, frightening dreams, having to sit with my back to the wall as protection, headphones on to avoid silence and avoid speaking, snapping at people to protect myself, staying up unconventionally late out of fear, turning the light on in the middle of the night to make sure I’m truly alone, ghosts of touches at night that won’t leave, rooms sounding like they’re underwater...

I could carry on for days. 

Most importantly, if I were to write this part of Hazel, my family would undoubtedly put the clues together and understand why. And that terrifies me.

When I told my father about the abuse, it was a year after it had first started. I never explained how bad it was. I laid it out in its simplest terms. It came out in such a blur. I was terrified to say that something was wrong, because I was terrified that I had made it all up in my head. That what this boy was doing to me was normal, that, because I was in a class of boys and there were only two girls, that this was what boys do. 

I can’t remember what I said. But I told my father that I hated that boy. Because he hurt me, and because he said things to me. I told him that this happened every lesson, and every day after school, and every day on the bus. 4 hours a day, at least, this boy ridiculed and hurt me. 

And my father said, “How many girls are in your class?”

I said, “Just me and [name]”

and he said, “I’m sure he just likes you and doesn’t know how to say it. Boys are just like that, he’s just shy.”

So I stopped talking. I didn’t bring it up again. And when I came to my parents crying, begging to see a doctors because “I feel so sad and empty all the time” no one ever asked if there was a reason why. 

My father said, “Your hormones are out of balance, you’ll be okay,”

But I was desperate. I had finally worked up the courage and wouldn't back down. I told them I wanted to see a doctor anyway.

So they said ok.

I went to the doctor alone. The look on her face as I couldn’t help but cry in her office when I explained that “I just don’t feel anything anymore” was one of ‘just another melodramatic teenager’. 

I knew by one look in her eye that the abuse was something that was going to stay locked inside me. She told me that teenagers often feel this way, and referred me to group therapy.

I was so terrified that she would laugh at me for even bringing up something so trivial as a boy calling me names and ridiculing me everyday and hitting me and touching me, that I just nodded and said I would go.

I never went to group therapy. I never told my parents that I even considered it. I never went to the doctor since. And when I offered up the idea of going back, to find something else to help me, my father told me that ‘You don’t need anti-depressants. You’re too young”.

He was right. I didn’t need anti-depressants. I needed the abuse to go away. To erase it from my mind and for it to never have happened. 

I never told anyone I went to the doctor for that reason until months, years later. 

It’s been 2 years and I’ve still never been back to the doctor. Not for anything.

When I told my girlfriend at the time about what was happening to me she was horrified, and I was awful to her. I’ve never regretted my treatment of another person so much. I felt cornered, I felt trapped, and I loaded all of my pain onto her; someone who was already suffering. 

She tried to help, was there when I needed, tried to stop me for my own mistakes, tried to make me seek out help, but I just didn’t want anyone to see me.

I didn’t want to have to explain to someone my weakness. I didn’t want to have to say that the mere thought of a lesson or a bus ride with him terrified me. I didn’t want to say that I felt nothing, and my memory was so blurry (because of dissociation I know now) that I was sure no one would believe me. 

I remember that it was a teacher who noticed. On the same week when I next reached out for help. 

My grades had been slipping for a while. My pain made me forgetful; my silence at home made me angry. My grades were the last thing on my mind. I didn’t feel stress. I didn’t feel anything. 

My science teacher held me back one day. Another detention. They were becoming routine. They had never happened before. 

She pulled me aside when the other detention students had left. She looked so lost. 

“Lauren, what’s going on? You’ve always been a good student. Forgetting books? Not doing homework? This isn’t you. I know you. I know you can do better than this.”

I felt a lump in my throat and my eyes wanted to cry. It was the first time someone had acknowledged it. I had felt myself slipping away, shrinking behind someone I didn’t know. But my friends, my parents, none of them had seen it, I must have hidden it so well. But this teacher. She knew. She knew my pain, and I couldn’t let her see it. She would make a big deal out of it I said to myself, Just like I’m making a big deal of it. 

 I swallowed it down, and looked at the floor.

“Nothing miss,” I said, “I’m sorry, I’m just tired, I’ll get better,”

“I hope so,” She said,

And I left without saying anything more. 

Abuse is like being LGBT. You hide it from everyone until you have no choice but to reveal and accept it. Except I’m not sure if its something you ever accept. I know that some part of me is always going to feel unsafe. I think it’s why I don’t feel afraid when I am in dangerous situations.

Walking for hours at night doesn’t bother me, climbing over gates, walking through drug deals, my parents in hospital.

In none of those situations did I feel fear. 

But seeing him for just a second is enough for everything in me to shut down. Even thinking about what happened makes me terrified and I have to overcome it. Sex, relationships, all of it terrifies me. 

This is what happens when you abuse someone. Not only does it affect their relationships, but it affects everything. Trust, sleep (case and point, it is 12:09am as I write this and I won’t sleep for another hour), for me, work, hobbies, your self-esteem. It gives you strange quirks and habits that people think are funny but for some reason you have to follow. 

Make no mistake. Just because my abuse wasn’t rape, just because he didn’t make me bleed, just because I don’t bear scars as proof. That does not mean it is not abuse.

Everyday. For 4 hours. At least. Being told you’re nothing. Being told that it doesn’t matter. That boys will be boys. That you shouldn’t have picked a ‘boys’ subject. Coming home and not saying a word. Bruises under clothes where they should never be. 

This is abuse and it has taken years for me to come to terms with that because almost every single person in my life has told me that it is nothing, just because I can’t afford or make time for a therapist. 

Believe me, it has taken years for me to persuade myself of this, when it has taken mere minutes for me to try to convince you. 

That is why I have to torture myself to write this book. If it makes a single person out there feel as if what they are going through is something. Then I will have succeeded in making myself something.