#because the fact there's a dichotomy takes away the complexity from both

[foxmulderautism]

pantsing has to be my least fave writing term ever WHY is that the popular term for "writing without an outline". it literally tells you NOTHING about what that kind of writing process entails !!! no wonder some writers and self proclaimed teachers of writing have such an obtuse take on "plotting" vs "pantsing"

[horizon-verizon]

I think there's a certain irony in the fact that Rhaenicent ended up being the reason why Alicent's character was ruined. In the first season, the writers changed her age, invented a sad backstory, and created a friendship with Rhaenyra, all to make her more of a sympathetic victim. I remember the Team Black never liked this because many of these changes were made at the expense of taking away moments from Rhaenyra or eliminating parts of her story, like her friendship with Laena or her entrance in the black dress, which originally belonged to her in the book.

When Team Black fans voiced their displeasure with these writing choices, warning that they would harm the plot, the Greens (mostly fans of Alicent and Aemond, characters who benefited a lot from these changes in the first season) told them to stop complaining, saying that the show was better for giving more depth to characters who didn’t have much in the book. They claimed that the TB was just angry because their favorites were becoming more likable. In the end, the TB was right. Those changes to Alicent’s character and her friendship with Rhaenyra ultimately harmed not only her character but all the Greens characters as well. Which, in my opinion, is pretty ironic.

Absolutely. People on TB, inclu myself, were not really, expressly concerned w/Alicent's characterization for her own sake I will admit that. At the same time, they/we preferred Alicent to act with the agency she displayed in the actual story and grew more and more disgusted with the disengenuous righteousness of portraying Rhaenyra as "spoiled" to Alicent's "dutifulness", which worked to be a disservice to both women. Their relationship and the dichotomy, even for the change for best friends turned enemies they created wasn't even given the proper development or "explanation" on the friendship side that it should have. You can also look at my earliest hastagged "alicent's characterization" posts where I and others complain & criticize Alicent's character of season 1 for more.

TG has often, for a few years, relied on the whole "complex character" bull crap, and I wrote a Twitter thread back in June abt why/how they use the word. Often enough, though, we call a character(s) "complex" bc they suffer to a degree or type excessively and/or for a sustained amount of time; that is because with suffering, people can tend to build up varied coping mechanisms & defenses that could lead them into self/outer(ly) destructive places. And these can drive a story forward, as the greens provide the central conflict of the Dance/succession crises by being the ones plotting/usurping Rhaenyra. The consequences of their reasoning affects their own relationships with each other as well as their supporters. The greens' shitck is that they are just wrong, both for the sexism and how they think their rulership means for the rest of the realm's lords.

But:

the greens are still pretty static with how the show is written; bc of their goal and how they grew up, they do not have a positive character development...it's more of a constant revealing action from their potential for violence

not all complex characters are credited as such in fandoms bc a lot, or the most vocal, of the audience thinks that character is too unlikeable to really explore or credit their motives as worthy of some grace so much as how it may affect them alone if it was in real life, as to create their own blindspots

a character like Daenerys Stormborn, who is pretty morally sound gets reduced to a future-mad-girl who killed poor slave masters, and her actual psychological journey gets misinterpreted--purposeful and not-so-much--and dismissed...this girl has one of the most complex characterizations in literature/media. Her feelings about leadership formed from her experiences and pondering over the relationship b/t a leader and those they lead, small concessions of the heart for intimacy or big ones for safety, how she thinks of her family's recent and longer history and legacy living through her, her emotional maturity overlapping with many signs of her temper and compassion, etc. Her campaign to kill the masters vs her desire to re-conquer Westeros bc of said relationship and the redefinitions of "duty" and love (love for her people and humanity, what is such a thing and how to realize that?). So "complex" doesn't always mean "morally questionable".

Don't get me wrong, I love me some toxicity or some sort of non-ordinary challenge/high stakes in my fiction. Most of my stuff are, and many provide me with catharsis when it is characters developing healthier ways of community, communication, romance, whatever. I also find catharsis when things don't work out so nice, like Claudia's fate in Interview with the Vampire--not bc I hated her, bc she's actually my favorite--bc the story validates the tragedy/horror/sadness's large significance, motivation, or presence in a human's experience under a safe environment (your couch, etc.), thus affirming a fuller sense of one's "humanity". While still thrilling. Claudia was doomed bc she was a child amongst adults who used her to force bonds between themselves and she was forced to become a monster herself to survive. And was punished for that. I love characters toeing the line between grotesque and safe--it's an adventure.

[mrgaretcarter]

My experience with Aftersun (2022)

One of my best friends watched this a few days ago and was really excited about it and excited for me to check it out, which always makes me a bit nervous because I don’t like to disappoint, but it turned out there was nothing to worry about here, I really enjoyed the movie and was surprised by how close to home it felt.

Before I get into the main event I wanted to just jot down some smaller things I loved. First off the fact that Sophie’s parents say “I love you”  to each other still, despite being separated, and his explanation to her about why that is. I also really enjoyed the focus on Sophie experiencing and observing people being physically affectionate in a romantic context, and the underlying theme of her mind opening up to that side of life throughout this trip, including the fact that the last and most drawn out instance of this is her watching two men kissing after only seeing heterosexual couples throughout the rest of the movie, which went nicely with the later reveal that adult Sophie has a wife and daughter.

Alright, now onto the thing the movie is mostly about.

The way Sophie dresses and acts and the circumstances of the vacation read as very familiar to me, the whole thing had almost this flashback quality from my perspective, and Sophie’s relationship with her dad really reminded me of my dad and I as well. The closeness, the gentleness, down to the scene where he is teaching her how to get away from an attacker and she’s not taking it very seriously and he’s trying to make her understand this is important, I swear I’ve lived through an almost identical version of that.

Another thing that felt familiar was the physicality between them. I think in general stories about the relationship between a parent and a child tend to emphasize touch more when it involves mothers, however, my experience with my parents was very balanced, and my dad took very close care of me. It was emotional to see that closeness onscreen, not only in affectionate touches, like Calum carrying Sophie around, or the way she hangs off him constantly (which I also did a lot with my dad - and still do!), but in utilitarian ones too, like the scene where Calum takes Sophie’s shoes off, or applies sunscreen to her back.

To build on that, the sheer fact that he was attuned to her schedule and committed to deliberately caring for her, not just in the sense of providing, but of nurturing, and that he did so very naturally, was incredibly special, and I think reflects the current zeitgeist where we’re seeing more and more stories that challenge some of the archetypes of masculinity. I thought it was interesting that the movie itself brings up that dichotomy when it shows Calum’s frustration at not having more money to spend on Sophie and the pressure he feels around that.

The fact that their relationship was so loving though, only makes it all the more heartbreaking when you realize how much pain Calum is in and how lost he feels. Once it becomes clear where things are headed it’s apparent that he is saying goodbye to Sophie at every turn, with every gesture, and that he means all the love he feels for her really sincerely, and deeply regrets not being able to give her more of himself. He is constantly grieving the time they won’t have. The movie does a great job of showing how complex the situation is, and makes it nearly impossible to judge Calum because there is just not an ounce of anger in how it tells his story.

Considering this was based on the director’s real life, I think both the daughter inside the movie and the real one outside of it hold these memories and relay them in a way that serves as a testament to the man their father was; he did something that was deeply devastating for her and yet, the way she remembers him is completely coated in two things: empathy for his pain and the absolute certainty of his love for her.

The movie also reminded me of this post:

Anyway, the direction was great, the whole thing is shot beautifully and Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio give really wonderful performances.

[distort-opia]

I only disagree with your post about jokers origins on one thing, which is 1. I don’t think joker ever killed anyone until AFTER he became joker. I think this would be a better suited foil to Batman, who after donning his Batman persona swore to never kill; similarly, after donning his Joker persona, joker first started killing. I think it’s more likely that he hated and wanted to kill his dad, but didn’t, and ended up either running away or in foster care after being removed from his custody. Maybe after he became joker he would go back and kill his father to tie up loose ends, who knows- I just find it unlikely that joker ever killed his parents before becoming Joker (I think it leans too much into the psycho-all-along narrative which I’m not a *huge* fan of. Certainly he probably had depressive, cynical, and antisocial tendencies, but murdering one’s own parents at a young age is a bit too much) He never really mentions a mother or maternal figure; sometimes a maternal figure is portrayed as abusive, but most of the time, a mother is just… never mentioned, or at least there’s never really a deeper story on her, so I find it likely that mom wasn’t in the picture or absentee. Which has got me thinking that it IS interesting that joker never ever really mentions his mom beyond maybe one or two off hand comments. He never really focuses on her, whereas an abusive father/patriarchal figure is always mentioned (and in one instance, an abusive matriarchal figure- but that might just be him applying the behavior of his father/whoever abused him as a kid to this fictional woman he made up?) Wondering if maybe he 1. Just doesn’t really remember her (absentee mom theory) or 2. He’s trying to avoid talking about her/thinking about her for?? Some reason??

But there’s also the fact that perhaps a better foil for Batman & Joker (having your parents killed vs killing your parents) is that dead parents (Bruce’s) are the opposite of living parents (Joker) and his parents are still alive, albeit abusive and not in contact w him, clearly.

(Sorry I’m just. Rambling. The joker brainrot struck me and I needed to shake it out. Feel free to delete this lmfao)

Tbh, I think this actually boils down to a matter of personal preference -- unless DC publishes a 100% canon story outlining Joker's past. (The original post can be found here.)

I personally think that Bruce's parents being killed by an external force, essentially for no reason and in a completely shocking way, has a better narrative foil in Joker having been an abused child with sociopathic tendencies, who ended up killing his own parents in self-defense. I feel like the self-defense aspect of it is important too, since I agree with you that a Joker portrayed as "evil" and "psychotic" from the start takes away from the complexity of the character, and the parallels. Bruce had parents who loved him; he had a good home, a relatively good childhood (it wasn't perfect, but well, it beat whatever many of his Rogues had). Meanwhile, Joker having horrible parents who drove him to commit murder as a child and to then run away feels like the exact opposite to that. I don't see it as Joker killing because he wanted to in a sadistic psychopathic way, I see him killing because he had to, to protect himself.

I do see where you're coming from, and the potential of taking Bruce's no-killing oath and using that as in inversion point for Batman and Joker's characters. There's an appeal to Bruce having become Batman and never killing, and Joker becoming "Joker" and then always killing. But, personally, I do feel like this isn't going to the root of their differences. The root of their dichotomy is not Batman's no-killing rule, it's the trauma that spawned it. At one point or another, they both lost family (Bruce his parents, Joker his wife and unborn child) -- and that's the most primal, essential event of their lives. The one that split their sense of identity into a Before, and an After. So to me at least, using the no-killing rule to invert Bruce and Joker's pasts is not going deep enough.

As to Joker's maternal figure not being talked about a lot... I don't know if I agree, she is mentioned in Joker's lies about his past. In The Brave and the Bold #31, the comic I talked about in the original post, she plays a pretty significant role. Same with Joker #23.1 and the Aunt Eunice story (a maternal figure). Then there's Batman: It's Joker Time (2000) #2, in which Joker recounts a story about his father dying and his mother being abusive, letting the men she's with hurt him as a child.

No worries about rambling, it's an interesting subject to think about! In the end, it's tough to say what Joker's past is, and even though I like to think there's some truth and a pattern to the lies he keeps telling -- objectively, we're both doing what Joker is doing too. Finding the version of his past that we like better, and going with that. It's all very meta, heh.

-- Birds of Prey #16

[bigskydreaming]

Tbh, that last reblog about “woman compulsively overshares but somehow people still don’t know anything about her” actually sums up Dick Grayson very well IMO.

Because its one of the easiest and most subtle ways for people to keep secrets:

Convince people you HAVE no secrets or the capacity to keep them.

I can readily see Dick as someone who habitually almost overwhelms people with random information about himself, his day, his past, in such a way that they almost start to tune him out when he launches into some random anecdote......while most people aren’t likely to think too much about the fact that still the only information actually being shared is information Dick is WILLING to share.

And when you freely volunteer information that you can’t see as possible to use against you or have no reason to protect or not give up, but as much to use it as a smokescreen as because of any real reason to share it....you retain full control of what information you do and DON’T share, and its kinda a preemptive defense. If Dick’s always freely volunteering information about himself or his life without anyone even having to ask.....most people aren’t likely to ever realize that its equally true that they’re never really even getting the CHANCE to ask SPECIFIC questions in search of specific answers.

Even someone actively looking to use Dick as an information source or think he has some info they want to get out of him, like, upon seeing how freely and casually he talks about himself....is likely to be more inclined to sit back and wait, erring on the side of doing nothing to reveal any particular interest they might have in learning any specific information from Dick....instead banking on the fact that with this guy running his mouth as freely as he does, all they really have to do is wait and he’ll lead them close to what they’re trying to learn and they can just hone in from there all without ever revealing their hand.

Meanwhile, Dick’s just leading them on a merry conversational chase that isn’t likely to ever get anywhere NEAR any kind of actual sensitive information, because just because he gives off the IMPRESSION that there’s no subject he won’t talk about or keep hidden, he never at any point is actually oblivious to what he’s divulging and is really just keeping up a steady patter of seemingly innocuous conversation that’s actually intended as a never-ending maze of conversational red herrings. Keeping people eternally on the hook and thinking they’re about to hear some juicy intel but always skipping juuuuust shy of giving anyone anything Dick doesn’t actually want them to know.

Its the feint within a feint idea. Even the most secretive people have varying DEGREES of secrets. Even the most guarded individuals have layers of things they consider to be greater vulnerabilities than other lesser ones.

Someone like Dick, I imagine, might be likely to view even varying levels of conversation as something like a chess match. Where the goal isn’t necessarily to keep someone from ever learning ANYTHING about him, but rather just to keep them from realizing they’re only ever earning exactly what he wants them to know and not a thing more. 

The goal isn’t to ‘win,’ but rather to just ensure that one’s conversational opponent never actually realizes they’ve ‘lost’.....even if sometimes the best way to do that, from Dick’s POV, is to offer up a sacrificial pawn, let them have an ACTUAL secret of his, or learn of an ACTUAL vulnerability he’d rather not disclose....but that BY disclosing or giving up.....he’s able to steer them away from his greater secrets or vulnerabilities. As instead they leave the conversation thinking they’ve ferreted out what it is they were there to learn or get out of him, while in reality he only put up just enough of a ‘fight’ or ‘chase’ to sell them on the idea that they accomplished something he didn’t want them to, or they pulled one over on HIM, learned something he didn’t want them to....and in doing so, allows them to ‘walk away’ with a sense of accomplishment, their goal already succeeded at, all without realizing that there was a much greater treasure trove of secrets or vulnerabilities that still lay ahead....with its greatest protection being that people think they’ve already found all there is to find and thus turn back before ever looking deeper just in case there might be more.

Essentially....its just another version of the Brucie act. Keeping people from investigating the deepest parts of a person by leading them to believe they just have very little depth to begin with.

But while Bruce’s version of this tactic is to shroud himself with the illusion of being a very shallow body of water, with so little depth you can see all the way to the bottom just from the surface, and thus turn away because you’re convinced there’s literally nothing TO see there, because if so you’d already have been able to see it with a glance.....the ultimate bluff....

Dick’s version of this tactic is to hide his secrets in a maze that people never realize is a maze, because he presents himself as more than willing, even eager, to act as a tour guide and show them around the place himself, take them right to whatever it is they want to know.....but all while steering them down a self-chosen path that keeps clear of all the more intricate and better-defended parts of the maze.

And so ensures the people ‘exploring it’ never actually get a clear view of how much bigger and more complex it is than they’re even being ALLOWED to notice.....the ultimate misdirection.

I think it fits both their overall personalities and even is reflected in their combat styles too.

Bruce is of course a master of misdirection himself, but his approach tends to be more brazen. He bulldozes through expectations and hides his true motivations or thoughts or feelings beneath the cover of the massive, distracting debris he throws up wildly in his wake, everyone too busy gawking at the DISPLAY he’s given them to witness and speculate and gossip about, to realize that it was all just a carefully constructed diversion meant to keep people too occupied to notice the real work going on just down the street.

Whereas Dick learned both from Bruce teaching him how to hide his secrets and keep things like his identity well guarded, and from watching Bruce put his teachings into action himself at gala after gala and even when interacting with his peers in the Justice League at times....

But just as with his combat style and Robin and Nightwing personas, Dick also flavored his own approach to misdirection by pulling from his origins and utilizing a more performative technique that isn’t as much aimed at crafting an immersive ILLUSION for his true thoughts or motivations to hide behind, but rather is aimed at crafting a more interactive SHOW, complete with audience participation, to put on as a cover for his true thoughts and motivations....where just like a performer calls on spectators to participate and thus help demonstrate how ‘real’ the performance actually is.....the true obfuscation lies in how the performer never actually loses control of the narrative he’s constructed in such a way as to build towards an inevitable ‘big finish’ even while allowing and ASKING for total strangers to play a part along the way.

Its an interesting dichotomy to me, how Dick and Bruce can be so similar even in their guardedness, but still distinct when you hone in on things like the nuts and bolts of how they go ABOUT guarding their most secret selves.

[daltonblaine]

'ur insane girl. as if it's a completely black & white situation and not a messy ass high school relationship with two fucked up people' !!!! THIS. i hate it when people either 100% blame blaine or 100% blame kurt in their messy situations (and 99% of the time, i see people blame blaine which pisses me off lol) bc they're both dumb and they both make mistakes and they're both just MESSY TEENS

Exactly 😭 apparently this is a hair trigger for me LOL um. some thoughts on this whole situation that no one asked for:

either type of stan/anti makes no sense to me because the fact of the matter is that blaine didn't cheat out of nowhere. was it a warranted/excusable response? absolutely not, but at least it's narratively understandable (which i value more than my fave being constantly morally pure LOL)

people say that cheating was an exceptionally nefarious & extreme response because from "what we've seen" kurt's only ignored 1 call from blaine and even "wasted his time skyping with blaine" (bitterly quoting an anti's post here LOL)

BUT i reject the idea of downplaying what both blaine & we as the audience were clearly meant to feel: a character with established abandonment issues, with no close friends around him anymore, started feeling truly abandoned

we're MEANT to feel conflicted about it because it's not a black and white situation. singularly taking the side of either kurt or blaine in this conflict makes you look ridiculous

i can understand why blaine might've cheated, but i mean. i think everyone agrees it was probably the worst choice he could've made. which, obviously, makes it impossible to take blaine's "side" in this conflict because at the end of the day cheating is cheating

but to immediately one-sidedly villainize blaine and claim kurt was completely guiltless also makes me tilt my head? it's not so cut and dry from here because some people will undoubtedly disagree with me on this, but from how i see it, klaine had already gone through this whole "what if you leave me behind" issue in s3. blaine had admitted his insecurities to kurt, who had acknowledged them and told him that they'd figure it out no matter what. and then what blaine was afraid of in s3 exactly happened once kurt left, with no proper communication from kurt's end

not so simple as "he cheated" on kurt's end, but kurt was unconsciously? doing something that was stretching thin the already-fragile balance they had on the account of blaine's established issues (and kurt faced no narrative consequences for this, i.e. we barely saw any kind of introspective kurt pov of the break up the same way we did with blaine, which i think is one of the biggest reasons why engagement era klaine didn't work out as they planned - that communication issue wasn't resolved even after they got back together)

honestly it's less of a finger-pointing blame game for me than thinking that miscommunication is klaine's biggest demon. i've talked about this before but the dichotomy of kurt & blaine's general reactions to conflict (kurt tending to pull away vs blaine tending to cling) makes communication EXTREMELY important in their relationship ... which i don't know if they really accomplish but hopefully now that they're going to therapy by s6 they got that figured out 😭

final note though - some of the standards people have for ships in fandom feel a bit shallow like if i wanted an unproblematic, conflict-free, safe ship i wouldn't be watching glee ... the morality cat fights people get into esp in regards to ships (but more often characters) have always been something i've never understood LOL i always have things to say about klaine because they're imperfect and complex. glee is an equal opportunity bad romance writer (makes all relationships fucked up on some level) LMAOO #GayRights

[leonardcohenofficial]

Wait Maddie as a certified theater mutual™ what do you think the significance is of like WHY they chose to make emotional vs physical intimacy such a key part of the values of the show? Part of me is wondering how it might reflect the realities of the people involved with the show and the things they themselves are maybe consciously or subconsciously insecure or even defensive about. Or maybe as part of the larger message that the show was trying to get across about how war leaves people untouched. But i don't actually know! Do you have thots on that? The why of it all?

solid question jones; i do think that part of it is likely the context of sex being treated as less weighty/intense within the context of MASH first being produced in 1972 after the kickoff of the sexual revolution. there's not really any moralizing about sex the way that there might have been had the show been produced ten years earlier; the way the show treats henry's sex lectures and the ways trapper and hawkeye are constantly hitting on the nurses and even frank and margaret's whole deal are, to me, reflective of the fact that views about sex in popular culture were shifting and hemming and hawing about everyone at the 4077th fucking all the time wouldn't do much for the show's audience. to me this also relates to the fact that nobody really bats an eye at the idea that hawkeye and carlye were living together before they were married, which is definitely more a reflection of "the more i see you" airing in 1976 than any historical accuracy of how anybody would have reacted in 1951.

which is interesting in regard to why the show emphasizes emotional intimacy over physical/sexual!! i think that the episodes that do explore the dichotomy—henry in love, life with father, bombed, the more i see you, hanky panky, comrades in arms, major ego, war co-respondent, etc. etc.—end up placing more weight on emotional intimacy than physical because it's easier to find a moment of physical respite than it is emotional. it also seems to be less of a moral failing to sleep with somebody than it is to be emotionally unfaithful; not that people are considered "bad" if they get emotionally involved, but that there's a weird weight to "emotionally cheating." of the episodes i've named, i'll briefly talk about what i think they're doing with these themes:

"henry in love" finds henry sleeping with a twenty year old, which is the main point of conflict in the episode between henry and the rest of the 4077th, who don't want him to throw away his marriage. the episode resolves with henry fully realizing that lorraine is the real thing and that his thing with nancy really wasn’t worth it

similarly in "life with father," henry's freakout over lorraine telling him that it's okay if he sleeps with other people seems to be less about her sleeping with other people, and more about the fear of them losing their emotional intimacy if she goes to the dance with somebody else (an orthodontist—!)

trapper's first impulse while margaret is crying when they're stuck in the supply shed in "bombed" is to try and offer her physical comfort, which isn't what she wants or needs in the moment. it's very fitting given trapper isn't great with being emotionally vulnerable, and margaret doesn't want to fuck her problems away, which is pretty much just what she does with frank

everything about "the more i see you" has to do with hawkeye and carlye not only sleeping together, but trying to pick back up romatically, which they can't do because they're in different places emotionally, carlye's married, and their relationship isn't sustainable

BJ compares carrie to peg at multiple points throughout the episode and thinks that because carrie is "right here, and [she's] so attractive and so close and so vulnerable" that he's likely to get too emotionally involved and he'll be moved to try and sleep with her again; hawkeye, who views it as "one lousy goof," makes him swear an oath to "think about peg often," which would presumably take care of the emotional risk

both margaret and hawkeye clearly have their own weird hangups and are acting like cartoonish extreme versions of themselves in part II of "comrades in arms," but i think part of it is that margaret wants emotional intimacy that hawkeye can't give her (that she's also obviously not getting from donald because he's cheating on her, and her response is to sleep with hawkeye in a moment of shared fear); meanwhile hawkeye, who is established to have weird hangups about sleeping specifically with married people, is treating her like an asshole i think partially because, as he states later, "maybe [they] cared for each other a little bit more than either of [them] would like"

"major ego" is a big deal for margaret's personal life because she was able to sleep with tom without the emotional weight or expectation for more; as she says, "for the first time since my divorce, i was free of my husband. i finally let him go"

there is so much to say about "war co-respondent" but it really comes down to the fact that BJ, as he states four seasons earlier, he "can't divide [him]self emotionally [...] not because god'll send [him] to hell without an electric fan, or because it's not the right thing to do. [he] simply [doesn't] want to." until he desperately wants to with aggie. as he states, "'til aggie showed up, i was convinced peg was the only woman in the world for me. i never met a woman like her. she's so different, so exciting. hawk, she's all i can think about. and not just about being in bed with her. i'm thinking about being with her." this is the issue. it's not that BJ just wants to sleep with her, it's about the emotional intimacy and the fear of losing the lifeline to mill valley

i think hawkeye's follow up to BJ's speech in "war co-respondent" is actually the show's mission statement: "funny thing about a war: people with absolutely nothing in common get thrown together and they really start caring about each other." this to me is the theme that runs throughout the entire show; MASH is exploring what it means to build those connections, and seems to put more weight on that type of intimacy—both "good" and "bad"—in a way that's really interesting to see shift throughout the seasons

(i don't have a whole lot to say in regard to the realities of the folks on the show besides alan and arlene alda laughing at barbara walters for suggesting in that one interview that there was even a REMOTE chance alan would be interested in cheating on arlene, but i think generally speaking the people on MASH were intersted in exploring the complexities of intimacy within the context of war and how that shifts priorities and the way we make meaning together)

[metvmorqhoses]

I really wish to know, since you are all so good at judging LB and her writing, what possible other ending would have been better than the one she provided? All very good with words. I bet it's so that easy when you are called to actually deliver...

since those are not my novels i find this exercise quite meaningless, and this quite an over the top way to address people who are merely stating personal critical opinions about the art they consume. i also find quite tasteless to think in such ways about authors and their creations, even while defending them.

yet, even though to achieve the level of writing and complexity i personally would call adequate and enjoyable i would have to just take the idea and completely re-do it from scratch (because yes, those books are terribly written and characterized and that's merely a fact, not an insult), let’s just indulge you for irony’s sake, since actually saving that mess of a saga wasn't in my opinion that hard after all. should i mention the first thing off the top of my head?

bardugo should have made aleksander the third amplifier.

there's literally no reason whatsoever, if not her obsession for the good, not-the-asshole, "healthy" relationship-material guy, to have mal being it. alina spent her entire childhood with him and repressing her power exactly because of him (he who would have never accepted her for who she really was, from whom she didn't want to be separated, etc). two children growing up together, am i to believe they never touched? not even playing? we know they held hands. and alina, a child, was actually able to suppress that immense surge of power? and for her entire childhood? while the darkling's mere presence made her go shine on you crazy diamond? seriously, people.

the great twist of the saga is forced, clearly not intended from the start and literally makes no thematic sense nor provides any full circle kind of closure.

simply letting aleksander, who actually already was said to be a most powerful amplifier and morozova’s heir nonetheless, be the actual human "mythological" creature whose sacrifice would have saved the world, would have gave bardugo endless potential in literally every single direction.

she would have had a meaningful excuse to kill off her most hated villain in a way that actually mattered and made sense (much more than having mal magically coming back to life or the tear in reality nonsense), a way that could have also maybe involved that strange kind of redemption arc she is now seeking for aleksander in both her last book and the upcoming one (the darkling holding together a cut in reality saving the world and now about to be put out of his misery my zoya and co). she could have made him fulfill his hundreds of years long purpose of actually saving ravka and seeing the grisha safe, symbolically helping alina with his sacrifice to create many other sun summoners (it would have been cool to have those sun summoners also be darklings, with both the power of shadow and light used for goodness, just to say one thing). and he didn’t even have to suddenly turn “good” to actually do any of this.

bardugo could have left that feeling of certainty, that call alina felt from the start from him, unexplained until the end, instead of calling the darkling an amplifier right away, keeping it all for the great final plot twist, thing that would have provided many excuses of characters exploration and complexity, in both them as individuals and in their relationship. this also could have provided a symbolic dichotomy between the darkling (the power inside alina that is constantly calling and that she fights so strenuously to suppress) and mal (the thing that reminds her she’s human, the very symbol of her humanity). it could have meant for alina to learn to both accept and fear those two fundamental parts of herself that are constantly fighting each other in her soul, but that at the end of the day have equal importance and shouldn’t be renounced in lieu of the other (how i hate bardugo’s moral “the power is bad, to be good you have to renounce who you are entirely and for the sake of a boy who also hates that part of who you are”).

this could have also symbolized the real integration of the grisha in the actual ravkian society, since alina, once understood being grisha and being a human being weren’t mutually exclusive, could have actually preached for this way of thinking and accepting the other, fulfilling both her and aleksander’s dream of peace and prosperity for their people - and all the people.

actually, the possibilities were endless. with such little effort, everything would have had at least a meaningful reason and not that incosequential mess bardugo provided us with.

there anon. not so impossible after all, don’t you think?

[mggpleasedontlookhere]

it should’ve been you

summary: you and spencer never got along since you joined the bau, mostly because you made a mistake that costed the life of one of his colleagues. 

word count: 3,761                                                                                     reading time aprox: 15 mins

masterlist

“Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.” said Nikki Giovanni. Although the expression only extends to the limitation of ending someone else’s life because of a mistake. With the existing dichotomy of religious patrons adherent to celestial beings and men of psychology claiming that trauma and fault can enhance cognitive development, the question still stands whether the slight improvement in the human schema is worth the life of an individual. 

Why is the essential nature of living ‘to flourish in someone else’s misfortune’?

Is it so, once they’ve experienced this misfortune they can be placed in the shoes of the fortunate soul, with the inability to recall their previous position; causing another individual to fall into the paradigm?

This philosophy is circumstantial, spontaneous even, pertaining to life itself no matter what socioeconomic standing you hold or religious scripture that you accredit. Regrettably, this philosophy stripped the BAU of an agent and the team, of a colleague. 

At its core, it was my fault. I was the lucky son of a bitch that flourished in his misfortune. 

Despite most of the team seemingly differing this proclamation, it was my choices that led a man to be deprived of the life ahead of him. The only other individual who didn’t side with the rest of the team was Spencer Reid. 

Agent Ryler, Darrison Ryler is was a single man who lived in his eclectic condo with the accompaniment of his golden retriever, Sam. He served as a confident to the team, specifically to Spencer according to my observations of their relationships prior to the incident.  

He died an honorable and ardent man, even in the most grotesque situations his concern only derived from the conditions of his partners. For 10 years he’s served the BAU, only for a rookie as myself to completely decimate his entire life’s meaning by killing him in the field. 

-

“Ryler, you and Morgan flank the left side, we’ll file in after” Hotch ordered signaling to a door with corroded blue paint chipping off that was located at the end of the hallway we were posted at. 

The supposed unsub lived in Manhattan, NY and was responsible for the homicide of five women that resembled his late wife. The unsub had been categorized as a sexual sadist in the midst of a psychotic break, deriving from denial. 

The SWAT team lingered behind us, awaiting orders from the team leader. The atmosphere of the situation penetrated my nerves, causing a natural sense of uneasiness from my parasympathetic, fight or flight, nervous system. Moonlight infiltrated through the ragged curtains that hung above a window at the end of the hall, which seemed to be slightly ajar; letting crisp air into the corridor. 

I could already feel the little fibers of hair on the back on my neck stand, an obvious indication of my apprehension. Despite that signal, I was determined to follow through with the decision I’ve fought for. To elaborate, it was me who had convinced Hotch to let me journey into apprehending the unsub regardless of my inexperience of being physically out in the field with the team. 

-

I was naive and selfishly driven to expose myself to such an atmosphere I thought I was ready for. I pushed and pulled to expedite my training in order to fulfill��my hero complex. Nevertheless, I never consider the possibility of killing a man to satisfy that. 

-

Morgan had completely obliterated the door as it was now swaying from it’s hinges. Ryler followed him from behind, gun pointed at his surroundings as he announced he was FBI. 

The rest of the team filed in, SWAT included. Reid had entered after me as we both surveyed the perimeter. Hotch nodded at us, pointing Reid one way and me the other. As I left to inspect other areas of the apartment of the unsub, the shuffling of feet emitted from the loud stomps of the SWAT members increased my heart rate. I convinced myself that it was normal since it was my first time being out in the field. I swept the area, checking the master bedroom and bathroom with a few members of the SWAT, until we heard commotion in the living room. 

We hurried to the scene not wasting a breath to calm myself. When I had arrived the men that were with me had dispersed to shooting positions as I stood behind a wall that was directly adjacent to the unsub.

I had taken the opportunity to peek out, gauging the altercation and to my misfortune, the unsub had Agent Ryler in a choke hold with dagger lined up to the major artery in his throat. The unsub began spewing heinous accusations such as “you took her away from me” or  “you killed her, not me, you killed her you fucking pigs”. He screamed and shook, rationality draining from him as fast as the saliva gushed out from his lips. 

Hotch took the opportunity to calm the unsub down, playing at the factor of remorse he showed in his previous victims. Hotch sheathed his gun back to it’s holster, promptly raising his hands up in surrender while coaxing the violent man into dropping the weapon. 

Although these were fruitless attempts, the unsub grew to be more erratic as Hotch approached him. With this I made my presence known to Hotch, shifting to a better position to engage the unsub from behind. The rest of the team stood gawking at the entire scene with anticipation gnawing at their fingertips, agitating to shoot if necessary. 

I drew my gun out, my hands becoming slightly shaky from the anxiety that heightened when the reality of the situation came to mind. 

I might kill a man today

The unsub maintained his gaze at Hotch and the army of guns that surrounded him. “Fuck you, you fucking pigs. You killed her! You. Killed. My, Kerrie. Now one of yours will die!” He threatened, pressing the blade harder on Ryler’s skin earning a repressed wince from him. The men from the SWAT team cocked their weapons causing Hotch to command them to ‘stand down’. I met Hotch’s gaze again, a distinctive look flashed in his eyes, the hesitation clear on his face as he motioned for me to inch closer to the unsub. 

“Please, we just want to-” Rossi spoke up lifting his palm up as a symbol of sympathy, but in reality beckoned me to close in on the individual. 

“Shut up! Shu-shut the fuck up!” The unsub screeched, wiping his forehead with the arm that held the blade as he blinked rapidly. “Thi-this ends today, I-i, this is for my Kerrie!”

With one swift motion the unsub raised the knife to slice Ryler’s throat, but in a moment of weakness, Ryler was able to apprehend the man, overpowering his grip as he flipped their positions. 

“Y/N! NOW!” 

My surroundings moved in slow motion, similar to the speed of the slideshows Garcia would show us as she presented cases. My vision blotted, feeling every sweat droplet begin to dampen the palms of my hands. I felt every crevice of my body writhe in dread and apprehension, feeling the sudden weight of the weapon I gripped in my hands. I took in a breath, setting my eyes on the unsub. Finally, I squeezed the trigger, acknowledging the life that would be taken away. 

A loud bang and a grunt surged through the air

I closed my eyes expecting the gun to retaliate it’s force, yet I felt nothing. I opened my eyes to gauge at the scene before me, realizing that my gun hadn’t fired. 

-

I took a life that day, however it wasn’t the life I was expecting to take. Morgan had taken the shot to eliminate the unsub, but only after the unsub was able to plunge the dagger into Ryler’s pericardial cavity, nicking the side of his aortic wall. 

He bleed out on the scene. DOA.

I later figured out that my gun had been on safety the entire time we were infiltrating the, now deceased, unsub’s apartment. I could still hear Spencer’s cries of protest and disbelief when he grasped the gravity of the situation. But most of all, I can distinctively remember the menacing look he wore in his eyes as he fixated at me. The genuine enmity and contempt that swam in his pupils spoke the message that his lips couldn’t convey, it was an expression that you didn’t need an eidetic memory to recall. 

After that incident, Spencer did nothing but express his vexation at the very existence of my being. He ‘mindlessly’ knocks case files off of my desk occasionally, talks over my presentation of theories, and has undermined the suggestions I would pose during investigations.

It’s been approximately 6 months since the loss of Ryler and the mourning period seems to have curtailed over the course of the year. The heavy somber  air that was consistent in the bullpen began to dissipate and the fellow agents painted a more positive light on the life of Ryler, reminiscing on his various accolades. Despite this plateau, Spencer’s resentment hadn’t shown any modifications.  

We were on a plane routed to New York City, another homicide had taken place and there was evidence of the case being serial. Hotch was on the phone with the chief of the NYPD gathering new information that had surfaced about the unsub. Morgan wore his headphones loosely with his eyes closed, bobbing his head to 90s music while Emily and Rossi played a game of chess. 

Spencer on the other hand, had his nose in a book, his eyebrows furrowed as his long fingers dragged along the pages, scanning them at light speed. His bottom lip had become entangled between his teeth, chewing the muscle in deliberation. 

I sat across the jet, complementary to where Spencer resided. I fixated on the copy of Jane Eyre that I brought with me, although my mind had decided to overflow with a multitude of transpiring thoughts. 

“Okay, thank you very much chief, we’ll be landing soon” Hotch bid adieu, closing his cellphone and tossing the device on the table with a heavy sigh. “They just found another body” He announced, earning sympathetic and discontented stares from the team. “Kate Walsh, 36 years old, had a husband that worked in a law firm with two children. She was found dead at a Manhattan apartment on the Upper East Side” Hotch noticed the glances of the onlookers before him, although he spared a glimpse at a special brunette who practically harbored his face in a book. “It’s the same location where Ryler’s case took place 6 months ago” Hotch informed. 

Nobody dared to inspect the reaction that had been elicited from Spencer. Although his fingers grew noticeably rigid, imprinting the cover of the novel with discernible markings. His chest heaved as he took in the information, yet his composure remained cold and impervious to the circumstances. 

Morgan looked to Reid in equivocation before reverting his attention to Hotch. “Do you think there could be a connection to the case we worked there?” He inquired, sneaking another glance at Reid in the process. But to no avail, Reid remained motionless. 

“Possibly” Hotch returned, reciprocating the perturbed looks Morgan had directed. “This unsub has the same MO, same victimology, but different signature compared to the case we worked before” He reached over for the case files flipping through the images of the victims and laid them down at the table where he sat at. 

Emily had approached the table, looking over the images. “If you look at the stab wounds on the abdomen of the victim, doesn’t it look familiar to you?” She pointed to the punctures evident on the victim. 

“They resemble the wounds the unsub inflicted on women on the case we had with-” Rossi spoke, pausing mid sentence. “-when we worked that Manhattan case” His voice faded out, dwindling in apprehension to make any mentions of Ryler. 

“Yeah- and if you look at the depth of the wounds, they indicate hesitation marks-” Emily expressed. 

“Our unsub is remorseful” I butted in. 

“That contradicts with the excessive and deliberate overkill this unsub displayed” Spencer muttered, catching the attention of his teammates, although his immersion in his literature didn’t falter. 

“W-well, yeah, I’ll go to the station to start a geogra-”

“Actually, I’ll build the geographic profile for the case to ensure that more people don’t get killed by human error” Spencer disputed, directing his astringent words towards me without losing focus. 

“I guess I’ll go talk to the family of the victim” I stuttered, ducking my head behind my chair to avoid the questionable stares I knew were headed my way. An unrelenting hold tugged on my heart strings, my conscience spiraling in revelations of self resentment. 

“Actually, Y/N, me and Morgan had already contacted the family and said that we were going visit them soo-” Emily corrected, motioning to her and Derek with lamentable eyes. “But, if you really want you can-” She interjected, the tone of her voice exponentially growing to be amiable and motherly. 

“I think it’s better that you and Morgan go, Emily, so we can get an accurate profile on the guy. Maybe this time we can catch him early enough without going in guns blazing, it decreases the statistics for weapon mismanagement” Spencer suggested, this time laying his book flat on the seat next to him, peering at Emily as he insinuated the proceedings of last year’s case. 

“Reid” Hotch warned, a menacing tight lipped expression planted on his features. In defiance of the team leader’s cautioning, Spencer continued to antagonize the situation, justifying his response in order to cover up his personal agenda. 

Hotch sighed diffusing the latter of the interaction by distributing the rest of the details of the case and certain tasks that needed to be done. “Y/N I’m going to need you to go to the Coroner’s office and find out if there’s any new information or if any reports from forensics came back yet” Hotch ordered. 

I nodded in agreement, not meeting his gaze while I fidgeted with my fingers. Unbeknownst to me, the team, excluding Reid, shared a similar expression as they interpreted the tense atmosphere that encompassed the room. 

I picked at my fingers, pulling at various strings of loose skin at the bed of my nails. I bounced my knee in uneasiness, my thoughts beginning to revolve around the case we faced 6 months ago. The same memory of Reid’s apathetic eyes that were fixated on me replayed in my mind, making the feelings of self doubt resurface at the base of my skin. Anger flooded freely throughout my system as if it was welcome and well deserved. I clenched my fists around my novel, doing so in the same way Reid did. 

“At least this time she’ll be looking at dead people instead of causing them” Spencer mumbled under his breath. Despite his certainty in himself to be reticent, it didn’t seem to catch his realization that his chastising comment was coherent enough for the entire team to hear, including myself. 

“Okay, I get it, alright. It was my fault, it was my mistake that killed Ryler but you can’t just sit there alienating me from any case we work on-” 

“No, Y/N you don’t get it. You don’t get to justify you murdering Ryler because you couldn’t do your job” Spencer lashed out.

“Reid-” Hotch attempted to disrupt his malicious annotations, but was promptly shut down by Reid. 

“No Hotch. You always emphasized how important it is to be vigilant in our job, yet you let her inject herself in the investigation knowing she was completely incompetent in the field” 

“Spencer, I’m war-” Hotch was interrupted again by me this time. 

“I WAS TRYING TO BE A GOOD AGENT. Can’t you understand that Spence, I-” 

“Don’t fucking call me Spence” Spencer retorted gritting his teeth, venom practically dripping from his lips as he articulated his words. At this time he stood up from his chair with his chest heaving and hair tousled from running his hands through it. “You don’t get to call me Spence, Ryler called me Spence and you took that away from me, so don’t think you have any authority calling me that”. 

He began his stride towards me, only to be obstructed by Morgan’s arm that held him in his position. 

“Look Spencer, I know I can’t take back what I did and yes, I made a stupid decision-” I spoke coolly, dictating every syllable with an understanding and remorseful tone in order to diffuse the taut ambiance. “But, I’m sorry and I want you to know that I regret everything that I did” I explained. 

Spencer broke Morgan’s restraint on him, shoving his arm away forcefully as he took a few determined steps towards me. 

“Tell that to Mary Anne Ryler, Amina Ryler, and Timothee Ryler” 

“Spencer-”

He moved in closer.

“I had to walk up to their house and tell them that their brother/son had died in the line of work” He explained, setting his hands on the table in front of me. “I had to tell them that he died an honorable death and that he died protecting people” He stared at me with the same deadly eyes at the day of the incident, no sense of remorse palpable on his expression. 

“But he did die an honorable ma-” 

“NO Y/N! I LIED TO THEM” He slammed a firm hand on the tabletop, making the surface rattle as I did when the booming sound met my ears. I crouched down in my seat, feeling my silhouette diminish in his large shadow. 

“Now Reid that’s enough” Hotch bellowed, although he was unsuccessful in alleviating Reid’s onslaught of defaming words. 

“I WANTED TO TELL THEM THAT YOU KILLED HIM BECAUSE YOU DID FUCKING KILL HIM”. Spit flew from the corners of his mouth landing on the leather covers of the airplane seat. “YOUR MISTAKE KILLED HIM”

“IT. WAS. A. MISTAKE. REID” I retorted, feeling my blood begin to boil as Spencer scolded me. I stood up to his level, slamming my hands down to reciprocate the malicious gesture he had displayed previously. “I ALREADY BLAME MYSELF ENOUGH JUST BACK OFF!”

By this time, the rest of the team had readied themselves to intercept if our back and forth became violent. They were the audience of constant bickering that occurred between the two agents for quite some time now, but nothing has ever amounted or elevated to the dispute in front of them. 

“YOU BLAME YOURSELF?!” Spencer began to laugh in a patronizing matter. “YOU BLAME YOUR FUCKING SELF. That’s a fucking joke, well newsflash Y/N, YOU SHOULD!” 

“That doesn’t give you an excuse Rei-” 

“WELL YOU KNOW WHATS AN EXCUSE?” He pulled my chin with the tips of his fingers. “You. You’re a sorry ass excuse for an FBI agent” He whispered disdainfully through gritted teeth, butting my face away with an incredulous expression on his face. His eyes had completely blackened, the hazel hue that resided in his irises dissipating as they were clouded in animosity. 

My impulsivity became too much to subdue as my rising blood pressure took over what little rationality I had. Without thinking, my palm autonomously met Spencer’s cheek with a violent hit, causing him to stumble backwards with his face in his hands. 

The rest of the team jumped into action, separating the both of us. Morgan and Hotch coming to Spencer’s side as Emily and Rossi came to my aid. I maintained my attention to Reid, him doing the same, as we stared at each other with malevolent gazes. I noticed the pockets of blood surface on his cheek, a portion of his curls masking the prominent dark red tint forming on his visage. 

Emily asked of my condition, Rossi reciprocating the same questioning. I assured them of my state and encouraged them to believe that I was fine.

But I wasn’t. 

I could feel every nerve in my system rattle and shake. I felt every pore on my body excrete sweat from the hysteria that I experienced. My head pounded and my body felt like it was being pulled in numerous directions. I took a few shallow breaths to convince myself of a normal composure, but my eyes told the truth of my state. 

Emily wrapped a comforting arm around my waist to steady myself and to regain a sense of stability. Rossi maneuvered back to his seat, taking a second glance at Reid whilst shaking his head in discountenance. 

Silence engulf the jet, the hum of the engine combined with the shifting of the seats was the only sound to be heard. Soft murmurs came from the other side of the room where Morgan and Hotch spoke to Reid in attempt to console him. 

It had been a few minutes after the confrontation, the petulant air of the scene plateauing to a more reasonable space for conversation. I battled with the idea of speaking up, but something needed to be said. 

“Look Reid” I began, penance laced with every word that I spoke. “It was my fault, I made a mistake that costed Ryler’s life and I’m sorry. It’s something that I can’t take back and my job will always revolve around the mistake I made” I continued. 

No response

I took this as encouragement to sustain an explanation. “But with the mistake I made, I know that this will make me a better agent and that I’ll be able to save more lives out there” I sighed, feeling Emily’s hand grasp mine. “I’m sorry Spencer for all the pain and hurt I’ve caused you, but please let me do my job- or at least give me the opportunity to do my job” 

No response again. 

“I know you won’t forgive me, but I hope in time that-” 

“It’s you” He finally spoke up, meeting the line of my gaze. Although his was unreadable, expressionless almost. 

“What?” I ceased my apology, furrowing my eyebrows at him in confusion. 

Chills ran up my spine as I looked into the windows of his eyes. It was like staring into the mind of a serial killer. Uneasiness climbed it’s way back into my skin as I gripped on Emily’s hand. 

“It should’ve been you who died that day Y/N” He spat, disgust and hostility radiating off of him. 

“It should’ve been you”

part 2

-

A/N:

yes there will be a part two, I’m just finishing up requests atm ❤️❤️

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

So are you still a rose quartz apologist now that it's CANON that she was abusive to her pearl, and used classic abuser excuses such as 'oh she didn't mean to' 'I was just standing too close it's my fault'

I want to know why y’all are SO invested in absolutes. Is this kindergarten? Are Disney Villains the only concept of morality we have now? Have none of us passed the Theory of Mind test? 

Is there no median to how you interpret characters? 

You either LOVE LOVE LOVE a character and excuse their every flaw and are completely blind to any bad thing they’ve done

or

You HATE HATE HATE a character, think they’re undeserving of any sympathy (or analysis) and need to be trash-talked at every opportunity. 

Why am I ‘an apologist’ for still liking Pink’s character for its complexity and moral greyness? Are we not allowed to interact with anything that isn’t ‘pure’ anymore? Are we now monsters for not openly and constantly condemning every part of her during our free time? 

I have news for you:

People do bad things, and they can still be interesting characters/worth considering. And there’s nothing you can do about it - and nothing you can do to make EVERYONE hate the character you hate. 

And you shouldn’t try, because it’s none of your fucking business how others view that character. Stop trying to make everyone agree on an analysis that personally satisfies your needs.

Here’s MY analysis:

Pink was absolutely NOT a healthy relationship for Pink Pearl. She hurt her, Pink still has trauma from what she’s done, etc. You can definitely call it abusive (though as someone who was RAISED in an abusive environment - with an abusive parent - I have hated how easily that word is thrown around. Abuse is a pattern of repetitive harmful behaviors. Pink appears to have only hurt her Pearl once. Was it a case of abuse? Yes, indirectly.)

And is Pink still a character I enjoy thinking about the origins of? Is Pink still a character I like to talk about, and a character I can sympathise with? 

YEP. 

Because guess what? I find her growth relatable, and I think it’s one of the best-portrayed, non-linear, non-fairytale-happy-ending growths out there. 

AND THAT’S A VALID THING TO LIKE ABOUT A CHARACTER.

Most of the people that hate Pink are analysing not her - but her victims. And that’s fine! You can focus on that and hate Pink. If that’s what you need, emotionally - if you’ve had personal experiences that make it impossible for you to forgive Pink and relate to her - THAT’S FINE! tHAT’S WHAT YOU NEED. AND THAT’S COOL.

But even if YOU personally don’t care WHY or HOW Pink Diamond began to act this way, even if YOU personally don’t give a shit about how she attempted to change for the better (and overshot and ended up with another whole set of issues, welp, that’s life for ya, that’s actually very realistic) - OTHER PEOPLE ARE STILL ALLOWED TO CARE ABOUT IT AND TALK ABOUT IT. 

And you know what? YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A PART OF THAT CONVERSATION.

But here’s the thing - SOME PEOPLE DO. 

Some people - and I know this is gonna blow some minds - NEED THAT. 

I NEED THAT. I grew up with a family dynamic that strongly resembles Pink’s. I grew up with unhealthy coping mechanisms. I grew up and learned some very unhealthy shit. And now I have OTHER coping mechanisms. And guess what? I am allowed to have characters that are complex and similar to me who have fucked up and who did some bad things. 

I know it’s WILD but here’s the thing:

You will hurt people in your life. That’s a fact. 

Someday, YOU might be Pink Diamond. 

You will not realise it. You will not know it at the time. But you will be an unhealthy influence on someone. You will cause undue harm to your friends. You will over-react emotionally and use some bad coping habits and end up making things WORSE instead of better.

And when - not if, but when - you do, I hope you have enough mental flexibility to view yourself as a whole person capable of change and growth instead of slam-dunking yourself into the trash without any further analysis because you can’t cope with the idea of thinking about people being capable of both good and bad deeds. 

Because when you say ‘I don’t care about how she tried to change, that doesn’t matter to her victims’ - you’re right! From the victim’s point of view, that doesn’t matter. Victims don’t need to care about their abusers or what they’re doing or not doing. They need to focus on healing, getting better, etc. 

But you won’t be a victim for your whole life. 

Someday, you’ll fuck up and you’ll be the unhealthy one in the equation - perhaps even someone who takes the role of an abuser - and you will need to be capable of thinking about what you’ve done, instead of only what was done to you. And you’ll need to be able to think about it and reason through it.

And that’s why Pink’s character is important and useful and why we need to stop throwing her away after just dismissing her as ‘bad’. She isn’t meant to be easily consumable. But she’s just as important as anyone else. 

So stop being angry at people who need her and need to relate to her. 

Talking about how she tried to be better is not ‘redeeming’ her character. It’s not erasing anything she’s done. Facing all those bad things and saying ‘I can move on and change’ is literally a part of bettering yourself. It’s the first step. 

So unless you want your world to be full of people who only see characters in unmoving black-and-white and good-or-bad dichotomies 

LET PEOPLE LIKE CHARACTERS THAT REFLECT DIFFERENT STAGES IN THEIR LIFE. 

[flying-elliska]

one of the most impactful things I have read lately are two of French author Edouard Louis' books, Pour en finir avec Eddy Bellegueule and Qui a tué mon père (translated into English as The End of Eddy and Who Killed my Father). It's been two months and I'm still thinking about it.

The first book is an 'autobiographical novel' about the author's childhood growing up as an obviously gay boy in one of the poorest areas of France, until he leaves and reinvents himself as a writer. It's fraught with bigotry, abuse, bullying, violence, deprivation and social despair, and it's one of the most harrowing things I have ever read. It reads as many things as once : a recognition of trauma, an angry exorcism, a cry for society at large to pay attention, and to be honest, as a horror story.

It was criticized by some in France as portraying the working class in a manner that was too negative, which tells me they missed the point entirely...ironic for a book by someone who actually grew up poor - one of my least favorite things ever is progressives telling a marginalized person they can't talk about their own experiences because they don't fit the desired mold. (The French love to romanticize the working class and I'm pretty sure it's often an avoidance mechanism.)

The point of the book is so obviously not about 'look at how terrible and bigoted those poor people are'. Little Eddy spends a big part of the narrative trying to escape - himself at first, then his family/circumstances and the persistent homophobia everywhere. In the end of the book, he finally manages to get accepted into a fancy high school in the city on a scholarship and tries really hard to fit in. The last scene of the book is a bunch of his - educated, upper/middle class - classmates throwing homophobic taunts at him, starting the cycle anew. I can't think of a clearer way to say 'this is not a story about a sad gay boy escaping the evil bigoted countryside for the city and then everything was wonderful!!!! this is a story about a systemic, pervasive problem.'

One of the key arguments of the book, to me, is how homophobia, sexism and bigotry in general are both a product and a reproduction mechanism of social and economic exclusion. For instance, he describes how the norms around what it means to be a man in his village (being tough, disobeying authority, quitting school early to go work at the factory, drinking alcohol, neglecting your own health, fighting over women, repressing your feelings, etc) perpetuates the cycle of poverty ; but again this isn't 'oh these people are so stupid' and more 'these people are trapped'. Because he makes it evident how degrading and dehumanizing poverty can be, this masculinity reads as a desperate attempt to cling to a certain amount of dignity - it's an extremely dysfunctional coping mechanism. At the same time, anyone falling outside of the mold is violently ostracized (like Eddy, who tries and fails to fit in). So the system keeps reproducing itself.

In Who Killed my Father, the author makes his political argument clearer. This is more of an essay, centering on his father, arguably the most complex figure in the first novel. The man is an angry, bigoted alcoholic who makes his family miserable ; at the same time he is the son of an abusive father who makes a point of honor to never hit his kids or wife even though it's very normalized in this context. In this essay the author keeps talking about the moments of almost tenderness with his father that haunt him, the picture he has of him doing drag in his youth, the fact that the father tried to leave the village when he was young to find a better life for himself with a close friend but failed and had to come back - the moments of what-ifs, of trying to struggle free from the cycle, when the system appears almost fragile and not so unbreakable after all, that the son kept holding close like a sort of talisman.

The narrative is structured around the fact that his father injured his back working in a factory and that he had to keep doing physical labor afterwards for money, instead of resting to recover, until it completely destroyed his body. Now he finds himself bed-bound at 53. Louis inquires into who is responsible for this premature 'death'. After considering individual choices, he turns towards political decisions - the successive governments, left and right, who have been destroying the French welfare system for decades and accelerating inequality. The point is to step out of the neoliberal obsession with personal responsibility and who is guilty and who is a bad or good person, and look at systems.

An element that isn't focused on but hovers over the story constantly is that this village is one where the majority of the population consistently votes for the extreme right National Front party in most elections. The book is too angry and nuanced to be some stupid "it's not their fault that they're racist because they're poor!" argument. It doesn't make any excuses for how awful this is but instead illustrates how dehumanization replicates itself, how people being denied basic dignity leads to them wanting to deny it to others. If you want to really understand the rise of the far right you have to look at where the inequality comes from in the first place, and how easy it is for people in power to wash their hands of it by blaming the bigoted masses. (Just like you can blame societal ills on minorities ! Two for one strategy.)

Towards the end of the essay, the author talks about how proud his father is of his son's literary success - for a book who clearly depicts him as a horrible person ! And this is a man who has spent his life openly despising anything cultural, because it never showed him a life like his own. But maybe now he feels seen, now he knows people want to read about these things. Maybe there is a reclamation of dignity through looking at the horror head on. Maybe his son somehow slipping through the cracks of the cycle gives him more room. The man stops making racist comments, and instead asks his son about his boyfriend. Most importantly, he asks his son about the leftist politics he's engaged in. They talk about the need for a revolution.

I think what strikes me the most is this attitude of "wounded compassion" that permeates the book. What do you do when your parents are abusive but even after you grow up, you can't help but still love them, and you know they've been shaped by the system that surrounds them ? Recognizing, speaking the harm is essential. You need to find your own freedom, sense of worth, and safety. You need to dissect the mechanisms at hand so they lose at least some of their power over you. You need to find people who love and believe you. But then what? Do you dismiss your persistent feelings of affection and care for those who hurt you as a sign you're just fucked up in the head ? You could just decide to never speak to them again, and it would be justified, but is that really what is going to heal you the most? It's important to realize you have the choice. But there are no easy conclusions.

This makes me think of a passage I have just read in Aversive Democracy by Aletta Norval. The essential ethos of radical democracy, she says, is about taking responsibility for your society, even the bad parts, instead of seeing them as a foreign element you have to cleanse yourself of. It's too fucking easy for queer progressives, especially the middle class urban kind, to talk about dumb evil hicks, to turn pride into a simple morality tale, and forget that any politics that don't center the basic dignity and needs of people are just shit. The injury is to you and by you and you have a duty of care just as much as a duty of criticism. (And this is obviously not only applicable to class matters.) You can't just walk away and save your sense of moral purity. (This is not an argument that the oppressed are responsible for educating the oppressors ; it's about how privilege is not an easy simple ranking and it is too damn easy to only focus on the ways in which you are oppressed and forget the ways in which you may have more leeway.)

There is no absolute equivalence between political and family dynamics but the parallel feel very relevant somehow. Several truths can coexist at once : you needed help and it was not given. You were let down. It's important to recognize that people are responsible of how they treat each other. You need to call out what isn't ok and stand up for yourself. At the same time, there is a reason why things are like this. Making people into villains is often bad strategy (within reason!), and in the end, easy dichotomies are often an instrument of power. The horrors you have been through might have given you a very specific wisdom and grace you do not have to be afraid of ; you are not tainted by your compassion (it is very much the opposite of forced forgiveness ; it has walked through the fire of truth.)

To me these books fit into what French literature does best, sociological storytelling a la Zola or Victor Hugo - the arguments aren't new and they can come across as heavy handed, even melodramatic. But I'll argue that the viscerality is the point, how the raw experience of misery punches through any clever arguments about how exploitation persists for the greater good of society. Really worth reading if you can do so with nuance.

[unpopularwiththepopulace]

Here Lies Jenny: Bebe Neuwirth’s under-remembered masterpiece?

While Bebe Neuwirth is often remembered foremost for her presence in worlds like Chicago, Cheers or Fosse, there’s another piece in the tapestry of her work that brings many notable threads together and is equally significant to her.

Here Lies Jenny is the somewhat under-discussed piece of theatre that in fact has connections to all three of these aforementioned things, because of the people she worked herself on creating it with, and deserves to be brought up with slightly more comparable frequency. 

A moment then to explore some of the history of this elusive but important show.

Here Lies Jenny, recalled as a “surprise off Broadway hit”, opened at the Zipper Theatre in downtown Manhattan in May 2004 and ran there for five months.

The show was an interpretive revue of the music of German composer, Kurt Weill, born out of an idea Bebe had herself. It was shaped by collaboration with close friends – with its initial genesis assisted by Leslie Stifelman (the show’s pianist, who she’d worked with on Chicago), direction by Roger Rees (who she’d long known and worked with since their time on Cheers together), and choreography by Ann Reinking (who was Bebe’s closest dance companion in the Fosse universe).

Set in a dark and shadowy looking barroom, the piece followed Bebe as the central, amorphous female figure named ‘Jenny’, supported by three male cast members and a pianist, through an evening of carefully selected Weill songs. Alongside Bebe and Leslie on stage were Gregory Butler and Shawn Emamjomeh, as two rough denizens of the bar, and Ed Dixon as the general proprietor.

There was no linear storyline to the show and no spoken dialogue, but Bebe described how the evening unfolded “in a very logical and emotional, fulfilling way.” All of the songs presented “[described] the interaction between these five people there, that make it necessary to sing the next song.” Rather than taking a group of songs by a particular composer and imposing a narrative on them, the songs were interwoven together to create an “impressionistic and realistic painting of this person’s life.”

To give a summary of the show’s arc, Jenny initially descends the wire staircase into the bar, with little more than a frightened expression and a small bag of wordly possessions. Accosted by the two forceful patrons, she’s flattened down both physically and emotionally. The men depart and return throughout, and the emotional core of the piece fluctuates from song to song as each number evokes a different picture and interpretation of a circumstance or feeling. As reviewers put it, “she’s sometimes bold, sometimes reticent, until she leaves…with what seems like a modicum of self-possession and hope,” and “climbs that long staircase on her way into the world again.”

The idea for creating Here Lies Jenny came out of Bebe’s own desire to put together a piece of theatre and an evening of performance of her own. It was a notion intensified by growing external interest, or as she recalled, “people have always said to me ‘Do a show, do a show, do a one woman show!’”

But for a while the form the piece would take was unclear. Bebe knew she “didn’t want to do a revue”, and she didn’t want “the usual cabaret thing… [or] ‘Bebe and Her Boys.’”

“I generally hate one women shows,” she would remark, “unless it’s Elaine Stritch or Chita Rivera or, you know, Patti LuPone.”

According to Bebe, she’s “much more comfortable as a character doing something. I'm not comfortable just being myself and singing in front of people.”

On and off for around two and a half years then, Bebe had been considering how to approach this matter while putting together some music, predominantly that of Kurt Weill, with musician, conductor and friend from Chicago, Leslie Stifelman.

Leslie suggested bringing in a director, so Bebe turned to Roger Rees – a person she regards as “not just a great actor,” but also “a fantastic director”, with a “very interesting creative mind.” Showing Roger the songs, he “realised that they all described women, or aspects of women, or different times in women’s lives.”

Roger thought it would be interesting then to combine all of these varied sentiments and have them channelled through one specific woman, in one specific location, to present a complex but diversely applicable tapestry centred around the emotional interiority of one tangible female force.

The show is “fragmented, prismatic…less narrative than poetic,” according to Roger. It’s not prescriptive. Rather, it evokes strong feelings and allows the audience to interpret them into their own individual and personal narrative for this woman. It poses questions and provokes thoughts. Who is this woman? Why is she here? Why is she here now? Is that a child? Or is that just a wish for a child? What did she have in this life before we meet her and what has she now lost?

It is indeed an unusual entity, and atypical from other more standard revues, cabaret acts, or works of theatre. A “self-described Japanophile”, Bebe explained how it played in the “Japanese aesthetic concept known as wabi sabi.” Of this she would elaborate, “There’s no direct translation, but it’s about the beauty of things as they age, embracing what’s painful in life as well as what’s joyful.”

It is certainly a piece that contains beauty as well as pain, which itself is a complexity and dichotomy often ascribed to Kurt Weill’s music.

When initially finding and working on songs for what was to become Here Lies Jenny, Bebe noticed being drawn to the work of one composer most strongly.

Like Bernadette Peters talking about how she gravitates to selecting Stephen Sondheim’s material for her concerts, Bebe would say simply, “all of the music that I loved the most was Kurt Weill music.”

A revue in 1991 called Cabaret Verboten (also with Roger Rees), that sought to recreate a Weimar Republic cabaret and re-conjure some of the decadence of pre-Nazi Germany, increased Bebe’s exposure to Kurt Weill’s music and was where she “first became captivated by the composer”. Building on this strong connection and deep appreciation in the years since then, Bebe would assert of his music, “it resonates for me.”

“Neuwirth knows Weill’s music isn’t for everyone,” one reviewer wrote, “but she won’t apologize for it.” She sees its capacity to be “appreciated on many different levels,” and has described it on varying occasions as “unflinchingly honest”, “very fulfilling to perform”, not just “arch and angular and Germanic…[as] many people think”, but as having “great lyricism and tenderness”.

Bebe feels a strong affinity for Weill’s music in part because of its “ability to convey the truth completely and fearlessly and without artifice”. For example, “If you're talking about heartbreak, [his music] goes to the absolute nth degree of what that really means. The way he shows that is with fearless lyrics and the bravery to make the music as beautiful as it can be.”

“Maybe the way I appreciate it speaks to the kind of person I am,” she would say. “I’m very bright but not an intellectual. I like things in a visceral, passionate and spiritual way.” And to Bebe, Weill’s music certainly provides that – which was why devising this show was of such importance and significance to her.

 Bebe said also that “the show offers the broad range of Weill's songwriting talents.” This is indeed a truism, with the work of no fewer than ten different lyrists being showcased across the nearly two dozen songs during the evening, including Berthold Brecht, Ira Gershwin, Alan Jay Lerner, Langston Hughes, and Ogden Nash.

The different styles and languages of Kurt Weill’s music mirror Weill’s own history and geographic progression through the world. Born in Germany, “Weill, a Jew, had to flee the Nazis at the height of his popularity. He fled to France and then to the United States, where he became a citizen in 1943.”

His songs reflect the world in which he was living. For instance, ‘The Bilbao Song’ is a tale of sometimes gleeful, sometimes regretful nostalgia and comes from a collaboration with Berthold Brecht in German. It is performed here only in English through the use of “Michael Feingold's now-accepted translation”. The Brechtian-ism is a feature of this production as a whole that was remarked on at the time, being appraised there was “more than a dash of an alienation effect at play,” with material being sung for example behind grilled windows or facing away from the audience.

His French material is alternately reflective of the musical identity Weill tried to devise while having to reinvent himself from scratch in France. Bebe performs one of these French numbers here, entitled ‘Je ne t'aime pas’, which has its own poetic lyricism, and indeed mournful significance, given the translation of the title as ‘I don’t love you’.

Alternately, jazzy, Broadway glamour is comparatively evident in some songs like ‘The Saga of Jenny’ from musicals that arose in America on the Great White Way out of the era of Golden Age of the American musical in the ‘40s to the 60’s.

This show was ambitious then, in its mission of exploring a wide range of the composer’s musical contributions across multiple decades, countries, styles of music, and lyrical collaborations.

Beyond his own musicals, Kurt Weill’s music has been notably seen elsewhere on Broadway or in the theatre world via interpretations such as songs in concerts with Betty Buckley, Patti LuPone, Ute Lemper; or full stage productions with Donna Murphy as Lotte Lenya in Hal Prince’s 2007 Lovemusik; or Lenya’s recordings herself.

Much of Kurt Weill’s legacy lives on through his wife, Lotte Lenya, who was seen as his “chief interpreter… [and] largely responsible for reviving interest in the composer” after his death.

Like Lotte with her “whisky baritone”, Bebe is able to convey meaningful interpretations of Weill’s music through her vocal richness and skilled acting choices, carefully controlling factors like timing, pronunciation and syllabic stress.

An example. Bebe does the most satisfying version of ‘The Bilbao Song’ I have heard. There’s a line in this song that states: “Four guys from ‘frisco came with sacks of gold dust,” in which the last portion of the phrase is repeated a further two times. Bebe emphasises the third “SACKS, of gold dust?!” in the dramatic manner stylised through my punctuation in attempts at recreating its phonology, which contrasts against the two previous readings. This gives the line a salient narrative purpose. It conveys not just an observation, but a tale of surprise and incredulity – who on earth would walk into a bar carrying entire sacks of gold dust?

It may be seemingly just one small detail, but it has a large impact. Other versions that intonate all three repetitions of this line the same miss this engaging variation and feel flat in comparison.

This song would justly so later become a staple of her concert material – along with others like ‘Surabaya Johnny’ and ‘Susan’s Dream’.

But there is unfamiliar territory traversed in Here Lies Jenny too. The rendition of Ogden Nash’s lyrics with ‘I'm a Stranger Here Myself’ is ‘new’ – and it’s exquisite, in its melodic, lilting and playful but darkly seductive swirling sentiment.

Another notable number in need of individual mention would be ‘The Saga of Jenny’. There are two Kurt Weill songs most strongly associated with the ‘Jenny’ moniker – this, and the also well-known ‘Pirate Jenny’ from The Threepenny Opera, which Bebe had done a production of in 1999. The latter was trialled in early versions of the show but ultimately didn’t “serve the piece as well as other…moments could,” so was taken out. Fortunately, Bebe would later work it into her concerts.

The former made it in, and provides the exciting opportunity to get to hear Bebe’s take on this song as made well-known by a number of respected performers. ‘The Saga of Jenny’ appeared initially in Weill & Gershwin’s collaboration for the musical Lady in the Dark in 1941, starring Gertrude Lawrence. The song has since gone through innumerable reiterations, such as via Ginger Rogers in the 1944 film adaptation of the same name; Julie Andrews’ big-production performance in the Gertrude Lawrence biopic Star! in 1968; and other high-profile concert performances like via Ruthie Henshall, Christine Ebersole, Lynn Redgrave and Ute Lemper; along with Lotte Lenya’s own recordings.

Further extending the song’s life was ‘The Saga of Lenny’ – a version devised with new lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, performed by Lauren Bacall for Leonard Bernstein’s 70th Birthday in 1988. All of these are on YouTube and I would testify are worth a watch.

In this show, Bebe performs the number with the bravado of a war-time songbird. She strides around with an old-school 1940s microphone back and forth across the stage as she progresses through the song’s distinct chronological sections, grounding the show centrally back to its identifying moniker and characterising an eponymous, engaging and multiply varied ‘Jenny’.

When not bound to microphones, Here Lies Jenny also involved the use of Ann Reinking’s “minimal but inventive” choreography to create striking visual images. Though perhaps not resembling the fast-paced, razzle-dazzle of Chicago, these patterns of movement are at times no less impactful. Bebe is dragged fluidly across a countertop, rolled sinuously down pairs of legs, centred in a dark tango (that one review likened as a potential metaphor for a ménage à trois), or spun backwards upside down onto Emamjomeh’s shoulder in the air – to name a few notable moments.

Not a dance show by any strict sense, all of these demands are nonetheless physically taxing. This is a matter of importance given the timing of the show.

What Bebe had long deemed a “peculiar” hip from her early twenties, begun causing notable pain when it “went from peculiar to downright bad in 2001” during Fosse on Broadway. It was recorded the “pain continued during [this] high-concept Kurt Weill revue” in 2004, such that performing this manner of movement in the show can have been no trivial feat. The next three years brought subsequent arthroscopic surgery for cartilage removal, and then total hip replacement.

That being considered, the show was able to run in the highly demanding manner it did for five months straight because of Ann Reinking’s assiduously crafted choreography.

The Zipper Theatre was the “funky downtown Manhattan space” that housed the show for that time. The timing of the production and the nature of the theatre played integral parts in the piece’s characterisation.

Roger took Bebe to see the theatre when they were devising the show, and to Bebe, it felt right. “There is this creative gesture that we are making and the gesture is completed if it’s in this place.” Not in some new, shiny theatre; but here, with a darkness and sense of history that created an evocative mood similar to the tone of the whole show “as soon as you walked into the building.” This was aided by the show beginning at 11pm each night – “absolutely an artistic choice” – given that what “happens between these five people, happens very late at night”, in a shadowy time of day filled by darkness and secrets.

Here Lies Jenny ended its run in New York in October 2004. But this did not mark the end of the piece. Bebe and her troupe took the show to San Francisco in the Spring the following year – after a seven month interim that included filming thirteen episodes of Law and Order: Trial by Jury, the aforementioned hip cartilage removal, and subsequent recovery.

The show was not deemed flawless by everyone who reviewed it. Some thought it too dark or wished for less abstraction and ambiguity. But as one article would conclude, “Faults aside, it’s hard not to recommend a show devoted to Kurt Weill,” ultimately providing a “unique and polished evening at the theatre.”

Roger Rees would reflect on the show, “Weill & Neuwirth work so well together” because Bebe’s “high standard of performance” means she is able to “delve deeply and go on forever” into material he likened to being as complex as Shakespeare.

It “demands a great deal from a performer, and she is equal to it,” Roger said. “She’s very deep in herself. There’s nothing made up about [her], which is a rare and beautiful thing. The match between performer and material is exquisite.”

 This would likely mean a lot to Bebe, as the show itself meant a lot to Bebe. And still does several years later. She would cite it in 2012 as the “role she wish[ed] more people had seen”, as to her, it “was a beautiful, unusual piece of theatre”. Altogether, it was something ineffable and “bigger than the sum of its parts”.

“It’s something I've wanted to do, and I did instigate it,” she said, of putting the show together. But that’s not to say it was easy to helm matters. “For me to be in charge, makes me very uncomfortable.”

That the show got made at all then Bebe would recognise as “a testament to how deeply I love the material and how inspired it makes me.” Her trust in people like Leslie, Annie and Roger enabled the creation of such a project from the ground up that wouldn’t have otherwise existed. Thus, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Sondheim, it was the combination of both personal drive, and also the shared collaboration of four people who all “love each other very much” that ultimately ‘made a hat where there never was a hat.’

It was even further an important show to her, because it was “a very private thing.” She’d describe Jenny as a very physical and emotional role – “the most personal of anything I've done.”

It clearly holds a special place in Bebe’s own heart. Undoubtedly, it would be poignant to revisit again. As we look to the near future of theatre with shows that could feasibly be staged as events start coming back, in tandem with the publicly expressed desire of people wanting to see Bebe back on stage again, this pre-existing, modestly-sized, inventive piece would be no bad suggestion.

How about a Here Lies Jenny reprise when theatre returns?

[flightofaqrow]

YOUR CHARACTER IN FIVE QUOTES!

( repost, do not reblog. ) Tell us your favorite quotes from your character. Give us an idea of who they are by five things they’ve said.

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Alright, buckle up, I’m stealing this meme and repurposing it for my own use. Probably more than five, and including some quotes from others about him, though I’m going to try to keep it in groupings, and also not meant to be exhaustive of qrow’s character, but rather, to point out some very poignant lines that have effected my portrayal and... some possibly in an unpopular way compared to what I’ve seen in the fandom? I think Qrow Branwen is more complex than fitting the broody broken boi trope would give credit for (though he at least fits it as an overall stereotype).

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1) I’m absolutely sure Qrow had a rough start and transition from the tribe to ‘civilized society’, coupled with typical teenage hormones and mood swings, but generally, Beacon was a good time, and he sees himself as a good huntsman, and (though we may joke about it sometimes) he absolutely does not have an active nor passive death wish.

Yeah, yeah, I know he has a song all about how he self depreciates and carries shame, but that’s a theme of his attitude, not backed up to be every single aspect of his life by actual canon. Quite the contrary. 

I don’t know where fndm gets the idea that he constantly lost his battles (especially to Raven) or was perpetually looked down on or stayed an angsty, broody teenager (who could never possibly have ever even breathed a single happy breath on his own without Summer??) all four years. As if school was hell and he never came into his own until STRQ was a graduated unit or something? If ever?

Leo tells Raven she and her brother are evenly matched. Raven herself - who takes pride in being stronger and more clever than others - describes them as a pair: “we were good.”

“you're talking to a member of the coolest team that graduated Beacon! ...we were pretty well known back in the day. ...hey, we looked good! and I have a number of inappropriate stories to back that up!”

“let me tell ya, these kids are way better than we were at their age. ...well, not better than me, specifically...”

“a professional huntsman like myself is expected to get results as soon as possible.”

The way Qrow talks about his past, as well as carrying a memento of team STRQ around with him, it’s very nostalgic for better times. The way he talks about his work, if not himself, can actually be to the point of being self-aggrandizing, instead of depreciating. He’s even able to admit that his dreaded semblance, Misfortune, “comes in handy in a fight.”

“lots of us thought you were just layin' low. eventually, we just came to accept that you were probably dead. but the stories about you, i based my weapon off of yours. i wanted to be as good as the Grimm Reaper.”

Qrow talks about himself as striving to be better. It seems he never really sees himself as reaching that standard, but it certainly implies he knows he’s not at the bottom - he had an ideal he wanted to reach and likely worked towards. Notice the use of “us” and “we” as well - he talks about himself as part of a group of larger huntsfolk circles. Who knows if this refers to students or licensed professionals or both, but this heavily, heavily implies that he was more than just a sad, outside loner, at least for a time; he chatted with others and traded stories about goings-on and missions and idols.

Somewhat related and leading into...

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2)  At least around this blog, Qrow does not have an inferiority complex because of Raven.

Does he have some internalized shame about being soft that he can’t quite shake? A few insecurities about being unwanted compared to her natural leadership and competence? Yes. Does he consciously view himself as lesser than her? No. 

Also... he’s not co-dependent on her. To a degree, for while? Yeah, there was probably an unhealthy reliance going on there. But Qrow and Raven establish themselves with their own identities at some point, they’d have to, to chose different paths so stubbornly. There’s a rift there, eventually, if not always having been at odds in some ways and comfort in others.

“Raven's got an interesting way of looking at the world that I don't particularly agree with. [The weak die, the strong live. Those are the rules.]”

“...they were killers and thieves.”

We are shown that the twins were raised with this weak/strong dichotomy. Raven bought into it, but Qrow explicitly separates himself from that belief. Shown again when he mocks Raven with, “because that was your rule, right?”

He believes in true family, he believes in protecting the weak, he believes in doing good, he believes in standing up for what’s right. He may not like being emotionally vulnerable, but he shows softness and kindness to others, and for as much as he likes his flourish when fighting, he also isn’t afraid to look an absolute fool either.

He is shown de-escalating conflict time and again, even if he also falls back into violent, defensive patterns at times, too. He resents Raven for the choices she made, and as far as I interpret, thinks she’s the lesser one for running away and abandoning her family and her mission. (Meanwhile, she thinks the same of him for turning his back on the tribe.)

He all but spits on the tribe’s way of life, is willing to attack them outright to get the Spring Maiden. Why would he judge himself by those standards any longer? No, he lives by his own code, a huntsman’s code, and even has some pride in that. It’s why he can call Clover out on it. It’s why he folds when Robyn holds him to it.

It’s why it hurts when he finds out what gave him more meaning, aligned more with his own heart, than the tribe’s dogma may not actually have any purpose at all...

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3) There’s so much to unpack here:

“No one wanted me... I was cursed... I gave my life to you because you gave me a place in this world... I thought I was finally doing some good... Meeting you... was the worst luck of my life...”

No one wanted him? I believe this means the tribe, maybe even Raven, maybe trying to make friends, but no one until Oz? Does this include STRQ? I have trouble reconciling that one with everything else we’re shown. I still maintain he was part of bigger circles, but we get confirmation that these were probably fleeting or superficial. He knew people and was known, but no one stuck around.  Also more confirmation of his values. Gave me a place sounds like so much more than refocusing to me. It’s not gave me a direction, not told me what to do, it’s took who i am and gave that person a place to thrive - despite the bad that comes with - to work towards something better. Just like he always wanted.

But then he backtracks. What is it he regrets?  We do know how he likes to go into dramatic hyperbole about these things when he’s upset. [eg. “we’re not family anymore.” “i shouldn’t have come. i shouldn’t have let any of you come.” “we can kill the man who put us here.” “gone. like everybody else.”] (I love that crwby lets their characters do it. we all say things we don’t mean in the moment, give voice to those intrusive thoughts.)

I’ve talked before about how I picture him having flashes of all the lives he could have had instead. Would he have gone back with Raven and at least still had her? Would he just have been a normal huntsman defending people from Grimm without the crushing extra knowledge? Might he have been able to have a relationship or family of his own had he not signed up for the vagabond spy life? Does he just resent losing Summer and Raven because of how things went down? We don’t know, and I think the point is that he probably doesn’t either, but the weight of sacrificing all those alternatives and putting so much faith in Ozpin, stacking so much of his life’s work and identity on being part of the inner circle, comes crashing down on him all at once. 

also quite fitting...

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4) "Nice place to raise a family. ...If you're ...into that sort of thing."

This is from his World of Remnant narration, talking about Patch, but it hits so damn hard. The softness and warmth in the first half of the statement, followed by the harsh need to qualify it in regards to his own outlook... We learn all we need to know about his opinion of the subject. 

We see the conflict right there - the possibility of such a thing brings a wholesome lilt to his voice, yet he implies that it’s not something he personally intends to pursue. Is that because he doesn’t want it or because he thinks he can’t or shouldn’t have it? I don’t think that’s clear, and he may not know either. 

At the very least, I fall into the camp of him believing he doesn’t want it. Combine that with the fact that he does pick up that spy life, which makes keeping his distance a necessity, and makes settling down near impossible, and then he definitely knows it’s not in the cards for him. 

So I think it ultimately falls somewhere between. Why would he make the commitment to being a lone spy if he had dreams of love and a family? ...But then why would he resent making the sacrifice of that possibility later if he didn’t? 

Having his nieces around probably softened him up to the idea, but he’d already made his decision by that point. He’s also solid and generally happy with his choices at the point it would most matter. He’s married to his job. He’s fulfilling his missions well, in well-suited ways for his strengths and flaws. He has his nieces around as a balm on any sort of biological clock. He has his purpose with Oz.  Until he doesn’t.

This is an incredibly long-winded way of restating that one of the headcanon hills I do stand to die on is: Gray-romantic Qrow.

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5) “some people are just born unlucky... my semblance isn't like most - it's not exactly something i... do.”

I am constantly confused by the amount of people trying to do character analysis around Misfortune and Qrow based on standard semblance lore, when he has yet again stated explicitly to the contrary. We all have carte blanche ya’ll. We can do whatever we want with this, because he’s already told us his semblance breaks the rules. 

My full headcanon for it is here and my opinion about the direction I hope it takes is here but tl;dr

Unless we learn otherwise, there are very, very few ways I believe Misfortune is a reflection of Qrow’s soul, if at all. This is from the first headcanon, but it’s worth restating, because it’s important to me, aaand fits the theme of pulling in some quotes from other characters:

Everyone likes to quote Ren and his description of someone’s personality being incorporated into a semblance. I don’t buy it for qrow. Here’s the FULL quote: “A common philosophy is that a warrior’s Semblance is a part of who they are. Some say your personality and character can define your Semblance while some claim that it is the other way around. Of course, there are still many who don’t see a connection at all.”

So unless we find out otherwise I will also die on the hill that qrow is an example of the middle part. Qrow’s personality/soul has nothing to do with why his semblance is what it is, but being forced to grow up and live with Misfortune has defined him tremendously.

OKAY, there are some smaller quick ones, but I’ll stick to my five points like I promised at least, and maybe do a lesser version some other time. :]

[shifuaang]

Just wanted to say it’s nice to see someone agree Aangs parenting in LOK is grossly out of character. I keep seeing people contort the situation into pretzels to make it work. It comes close to ruining the franchise for me

I almost have to divorce LOK from ATLA in order to enjoy it, which is really kind of sad considering how it's so integrally connected to its source material and yet seems to mishandle said source material at every opportunity.

LOK recycles the same familial conflicts as ATLA. Both Aang and Toph are painted as bad parental figures, which seems like a complete character assassination of the two of them as well as of Katara who was married to Aang and seemingly allowed him to mistreat Kya and Bumi. I wrote a much more in-depth meta on this narrative choice and how it contradicts the character strengths and flaws that were given to Aang in ATLA here if you’re interested. 

Basically, I think it’s very unlike Aang to show favoritism to his airbending son when he sees firsthand how badly favoritism affects both Zuko and Azula. Aang is shown to be extremely excited about sharing his culture with Katara and Sokka and is more inclusive than anyone else in the Gaang. I love Aang because he is human and has many flaws, but to make him a bad father taints his legacy, is lazy writing, and almost ruins the series for me as well. Forgive me for going on a rant, but I’ve wanted to talk about my grievances with LOK for a while, and your ask inspired me to make a list soooo away we go:

I hate that the rules of bloodbending are retconned to create the conflict in season one - it diminishes the Avatar's ability to energybend and take away bending as a means of justice (specifically Aang who had to defy all of his friends and the rules of the world in order to defeat Ozai without compromising his culture and morals). Why can Noatak and Tarrlok bloodbend when it's not a full moon? Just because they will themselves into doing so? If this is true, surely Hama would have figured out how to utilize this technique as she was also abused and had just as much motivation as the two brothers to be a survivalist and hone her powers.

The Harmonic Convergence allows airbending to come back too quickly. It all feels too neat and tidy. While I absolutely adore the restoration of air nomad culture and watching that come to life, it's not enough of a slow burn for me. I feel that it lessened the extraordinary pain that Aang experienced being the last of his people. If they're going to go the route of the lion turtle being the one to bestow bending (which I don't like, but we'll get there), why not include a plot where the Air Acolytes go on a quest (led by the Avatar who is the bridge between the spirit and physical world) to find him and have him grant them airbending? That would have been far more interesting to me than the spirit world conveniently opening up and restoring balance.

The whole concept of the lion turtle being the bestower of all bending leans far too much into the Western-centric idea of some kind of monotheistic creator. I was happy to accept the existence of benders, non-benders, and the Avatar without there being any sort of long-winded explanation for why they came to be. Sometimes when shows try too hard to give mystical elements backstory and lore, it takes away from the intrigue and magic behind everything. LOK in general is far more Western-centric than ATLA. The spirits of Raava and Vaatu aren't necessarily a bad addition, but they are written as completely black and white. The dichotomy of good vs. evil doesn't exist in ATLA - even Ozai's life is given intrinsic value and careful consideration despite the fact that he is, by all accounts, an irredeemable dictator. Tui and La, push and pull, lend themselves to a far more complex and morally grey narrative. 

With LOK moving in a more Western direction comes a blatant lack of respect for Asian cultures, particularly Buddhist culture. Nothing is as well-researched or planned as ATLA's plot and cultural references. From fartbending to straying from Eastern themes and spirituality, it all just feels very juvenile, which is ironic considering LOK was meant to appeal to an older audience. 

While I almost loathe to say this because Zaheer is such a well-written character and intriguing in ways that even ATLA's villains aren't, his achieving enlightenment and learning to fly is a slap in the face to true morality, concentration, and wisdom, which are the main pillars of Buddhist thought and training. You're meaning to tell me that Aang had to struggle with opening seven chakras, letting go of earthly attachments, and literally dying and being resurrected in order to go into the Avatar State, but all Zaheer had to do to achieve what only one other airbender has achieved is watch P'li die? He got to unlock a previously insurmountable airbending technique after breaking every moral airbending code, including taking life with his bending? I'm not buying it. 

On a similar note, the way cultural appropriation is glossed over in LOK is also incredibly inappropriate. LOK has a real opportunity to explore racism, blackface/brownface, and the sexualization of ‘exotic’ characters in Old Hollywood when Bolin is cast as Nuktuk, but his role in the films just becomes a running gag. It shouldn't sit right with anyone that someone who is half Fire Nation is playing a waterbending hero only about 50 years after the hundred year war in which the Fire Nation almost eradicated waterbenders.

The relationships are not very well-written. Love triangles are a terrible plot device, and Bolin's abusive relationship with Eska is played for laughs. I don't like Korra being cut off from her past lives in what feels like some desperate sort of ploy to get the fans to break ties from the old characters and only care about the new ones. The copaganda is gross, and Toph becoming a cop makes very little sense to me. The plot can be messy and contrived, and the pacing isn't great.

So you're probably wondering, why do you even watch LOK? It sounds like you hate it. I truly don't. The animation is beautiful, the fight sequences are amazingly choreographed, and I really enjoy some of the new characters like Asami, Tenzin, and Jinora. I think LOK is a good, solid show on its own, but it's impossible to hold a candle to its near flawless predecessor. 

[thetypedwriter]

A Curse So Dark and Lonely Book Review

A Curse So Dark and Lonely Book Review by Brigid Kemmerer

My gosh, I feel like I have enormous feelings about this book. 

So, I had seen this book for awhile bestow the shelves at Barnes & Noble and while it drew the eye, it also didn’t entice me right away. I must have read snippets of the backside summary a dozen times before I finally succumbed and purchased it when the store was having a buy one, get one 50% off deal. 

Lame, I know. 

That being said, A Curse So Dark and Lonely surprised me in a lot of pleasant ways and at the end of the experience it was a book I genuinely enjoyed reading, despite the flaws throughout. 

First off, somehow, in ways that I don’t even fully understand, I did not realize that this was a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. 

You might ask, seeing the title, the reviews on the back literally calling it a retelling of a classic fairytale, the summary itself, and the basic premise, how did I not realize what the true nature of this book was?

I genuinely have no idea. 

I really don’t. 

It’s so flabbergasting that I don’t even have a proper answer for you other than Beauty and the Beast was not my favorite Disney movie growing up and that I probably should have spent more time checking out what bargain books to buy before I laid down the cash. 

Oh well.

That being said, retellings of classic fairy tales has been a fairly popular phenomenon in the YA literature scene (and popular culture as a whole, really) for the last couple of years and while I can see the appeal, it was never something that beckoned me. 

I’m not a huge fairytale fan to begin with so a retelling of the original doesn’t hold much sway in terms of intrigue and buy-in. 

If I had known what A Curse So Dark and Lonely truly was, I never would have bought it. Frankly, it’s a little sad because I genuinely would have missed out on a very fun and engaging read. Fortunately enough, however, my dumb actions actually paid off in good luck this time around. 

The whole premise is exactly what you’ve probably surmised up to this point: an enumeration of Beauty and the Beast with some modern fanfare and twists and turns along the way. 

Rhen is the current Crown Prince of Emberall, a country in some parallel world to the one that you and I currently exist in. With a series of twists, the main protagonist, Harper, is unwillingly hoisted from her homeland of Washington D.C. to the magical world of Emberfall, which unfortunately is not all that magical with a looming war on the horizon involving a neighboring nation, rumors of a savage beast that has wreaked havoc on the country, and a wicked witch that delights in torment and carnage to sadistic glee.  

Soon enough, a high school dropout with cerebral palsy soon finds herself in the imaginary role as the Princess of Disi, an allying nation that has promised aid and troops to Emberfall and potentially betrothed to the Crown Prince, Rhen. 

To make matters more complicated, Harper finds herself often in the company of Grey, the lone soldier of the Royal Guard and Rhen’s constant shadow, a figure she soon begins to trust despite herself. 

With a war on the horizon, the ever-present threat of the witch Lillith, the haunting promise of the beast’s return, and evolving feelings, A Curse So Dark and Lonely is a lovely concoction of both fast-paced action, romance, humor, and fantasy. This whole book gave me a pleasant buzz from start to finish. 

The plot itself, while recycled at its core, is fresh enough with the modern flare of Harper being from D.C. (Disi-this still makes me laugh), representation in the form of a character with a disability like cerebral palsy, interesting and complex relationships, and opposing enough with the threat of Lillith and future battles that it never seemed pithy or banal. 

While the world building is...mediocre, I don’t think it was amazing nor do I think it’s awful, it’s a useful enough background for the characters and their emotions to take place, which honestly is the real focus throughout the entire novel (although the author did take some liberties by inputting in things like the castle automatically regenerating food-how much more deus ex machina can you get?). 

  Kemmerer’s writing style is also fine. Nothing groundbreaking, but also not writing I find abhorrent or even unlikeable. She comes across as a typical YA author to me in terms of her vocabulary, her figurative language, and her writing style. 

The real focus, if you haven’t caught on by now, are the characters. 

I genuinely like all three main characters quite a bit, which, if you regularly read my reviews, is quite the anomaly. 

Rhen I find to be strangely complex. While he fits the mold of the brooding, arrogant prince that actually cares deeply for his people and his country quite well, I also found him more interesting than just the archetype of the royal son. 

He’s surly, dark, and quite temperamental. While he does care deeply about his people, he’s often selfish and petty. Honestly, he shouldn’t be very likable at all, but it’s for that reason alone that I do like him. 

I like that while he might be a good ruler he’s not necessarily a good person and I like the dichotomy and the conflict that implicitly comes with that struggle, a struggle often shown to the readers and the two other characters he’s closest with: Harper and Grey. 

In addition, often in YA I feel like authors constantly feel pressured to make romantic love interests “perfect” which to me, translates to being stereotypical and boring. Very often my favorite characters are the ones who are flawed and complicated-just like Rhen. 

Grey is also a character that I thought would be more simple than he actually turned out to be. I originally thought Grey was going to be the stoic, soldier type and while he is, I also really enjoyed seeing his lighter side, his sense of humor, his love for children, and the deadly loyalty that binds him not because of a curse or a spell, but because of his own stubbornness and dedication to the decision that he made and the refusal to break it.

I found this honor code fascinating and his adherence to it almost obsessive. His loyalty to Rhen is both baffling and intriguing and often it was the best part of the novel for me. 

Which brings me to my next point: Rhen and Grey’s relationship is hand’s down the best part of this book. It’s a complicated relationship and, therefore, really fascinating to read about it. They have a serpentine history involving Grey being the one to let Lillith into Rhen’s chambers which sets off the whole curse business in the first place. 

However, as Rhen says later on in the book, it was his choice to keep Lillith overnight and to pursue romance, not Grey’s. 

There is guilt, blame, affection, loyalty, ownership, friendship, frustration, anger, sacrifice and more to their relationship. Their history stops them from being true friends, as do their roles as prince and guard, yet they are the only companion the other has for seasons upon seasons. 

At the end of the day, Grey is all Rhen had for a very long time and it shows. 

Their relationship was always so engrossing to read about due to its complications and its nuances. Very few YA relationships, especially that of platonic male friendship, gets even near the level of depth and grey (I couldn’t help this pun) area shown between Grey and Rhen. Their relationship alone is a huge draw for why I found this novel so captivating. 

I did wonder for a while if perhaps there were more than platonic feelings involved, but I could never quite put my finger on the true nature of their relationship or their feelings towards each other, which I find absolutely amazing. Their relationship is messy and complicated, just like real life relationships are. 

That leaves the third piece of the puzzle: Harper. 

Out of the three main characters, I like Harper the least, but I do still like her. I like that she’s strong and tenacious, not in spite of her cerebral palsy, but in addition to her already present bravery and ferocity. She’s headstrong, stubborn, kind, merciful, and compassionate. 

My dislike from Harper stems from the fact that she’s a little too perfect, especially compared to Rhen and Grey, who I found to be much more convoluted characters. 

Again, harping (hahah) back to stereotypical YA, other than her cerebral palsy, I don’t think there’s anything in particular about Harper that makes her complicated, flawed, or especially interesting. 

She’s a good girl willing to give it all up for a country she’s only known for a few weeks even though her mother’s dying at home and her brother is most likely involved in some kind of gang violence. 

The best scenes with Harper are the scenes were she is struggling to choose between the two worlds and weighing her options, as at some points it does depict her as selfish and wanting to go home, even though she knows it would doom thousands of people. 

But of course, this is all taken care of later when she realizes D.C. isn’t her true home any more and that Emberfall has become where her heart lies. 

Lame. 

Kemmerer made Harper just a little too pristine for my liking, which is why she ranks lower than both Rhen and Grey when on paper she is by far the best in terms of personality and character traits. 

This especially grates on me when Kemmerer tells us that Harper is fantastic instead of letting us glean that for ourselves. I really dislike when an author tells me instead of shows me that someone is brave or kind or amazing or whatnot and I feel like there were enough instances of Harper being all of those things without having needed Rhen or Grey to point it out all of the time. 

I also do feel like there is some weird shaming regarding things typically seen as “feminine” in relation to Harper and why that makes her “better.” For example, Rhen talks often about how no girl ever has ever done what Harper has done, like attacking him. 

I’m sorry? You’re telling me that Grey has kidnapped hundreds of girls and not one of them before Harper tried to attack them? In any form? Really? 

I find that preposterous. 

Other instances of Harper being unique in this fashion is also sprinkled in, like how most girls apparently only care about the dresses and the jewels in the castle, but not Harper. Or how most girls would be crying from a scar on their cheek, but Harper is just upset that she misses her target.

 I get what Kemmerer is going for, but these force-fed characterizations really bothered me and were the most irritating thing about the book. 

Being feminine or caring about stereotypically feminine things like jewelry or dresses does not mean that someone can’t also be strong and brave and fierce. I dislike a lot of the subliminal messages in the novel in regards to that. 

In terms of romance, again I have to ask myself when the trope of the love triangle will die. Perhaps it never will. Perhaps it will live on for eternity, forever immortal and present in nearly 90% of YA literature. 

The love triangle between Grey, Rhen, and Harper doesn’t bother me so much in this novel as I feel like it isn’t truly focused on very much, which I appreciate. I understand that Harper has feelings for both Grey and Rhen, but her feelings make sense. I don’t feel like Kemmerer is just foisting a love triangle onto the readers for the sake of having a love triangle. 

It felt somehow...natural. 

In addition, most love triangles suck as they’re very one sided, usually in terms of the female’s POV. 

In this case however, the love triangle is influenced by Grey and Rhen’s relationship, where the lines are very blurry and for a good portion of the book I thought perhaps they were in love with each other and Harper. 

Frankly, I would have been ecstatic if this was the route Kemmerer had taken. Not many YA authors go down this route, but examples like Mark/Cristina/Keiran from The Infernal Devices and Niall/Irial/Leslie from Ink Exchange are actually the only examples I know from YA literature so this would have been so welcome and anticipated. 

If Kemmerer had gone down the route of looking into a polyamorous relationship I would have been over the moon. I don’t think she is sadly, but polyamrous relationships are still so few and far between in YA that it would have been utterly captivating, especially as she has all the ingredients to do so. 

Or, I thought she did. 

Until it’s revealed at the very end that Rhen and Grey are brothers. Or, at least half-brothers. 

Yeah. 

It’s super unfortunate. 

I’m genuinely disappointed that this is the route Kemmerer decided to take it as it seems so grossly safe. It’s almost like an intense male/male relationship can’t exist unless it’s romantic or they’re brothers and I despise that. 

Hence, why I have also decided that I won’t be reading A Heart so Fierce and Broken. I want to keep the memory and the interesting relationships between the three characters as it is: interesting.

 I have a very strong feeling that if I read the sequel that will all be shattered. 

When all is said and done, I really enjoyed this book. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to reading it and I wasn’t expecting very much, but it met all of my expectations and more. 

I am sad that I won’t be finishing the series as a whole, but I know that the direction it's going will only make me frustrated and annoyed and I would rather preserve the positive emotions attached to A Curse So Dark and Lonely than ruin it with a sequel that I know won’t meet the expectations I have. 

Perhaps that’s unfair to say, and rightly so, but I know myself and I can see where the sequel is going and I’m almost certain that I won’t like it. 

So in this case, I’m going to quit while I’m ahead and savor the moments I had reading this novel in all its fairy-telling glory. 

Recommendation: If you love Beauty and the Beast, fairytales with a modern twist, interesting characters and interesting relationships set in a fantasy world where the music never stops playing and a savage beast runs rampant, than this book is calling for you.

 I didn’t know that I needed this novel in my life and now I’m so glad that it is. Captivating from beginning to end, if you’re anything like me and a sucker for interesting romance and strong, nuanced characters you won’t be able to put this down either. 

Score: 7/10 

[radioprune]

top five favorite things about father mulcahy and/or the beej man <3

oooh thank you!! gonna do both because why not as i love them both deeply

re: father mulcahy

1. gotta be his dynamic with hawkeye. it’s very mash-22 of him to have such an. odd and weirdly flirty if not just close friendship with our feisty protagonist but there you have it

2. his boyhood hero being plato?? fr mulcahy let’s talk i mean i’m a socrates man myself but i still want to have coffee with him and talk classic philosophy

3. sense of humor. he’s FUNNY and i feel like he probably always has been, and i love when he riffs with hawk and trapper/bj and they’re like so impressed and he’s clearly loving that as well

4. the hilarious dichotomy of him being like this mild mannered little guy who’s also a boxing champ. love thy neighbor or i’ll punch your lights out indeed

5. soft spoken voice of reason. i’m thinking especially in like period of adjustment when he helps potter understand that he needs to take it easy on klinger it’s like.. ironically perhaps the typical voice of reason (for the viewer, anyway), hawkeye, is a lot more preachy than i feel like mulcahy ever is. idk he really gets people as well and he seems nice even if i don’t 100% trust someone who goes into the clergy idk i’m not catholic dont @ me

and beej <3

1. unironically his outfits. i LOVE that he goes from being this clean cut guy to dressing like a complete anarchist bc i think it betrays that that rebellious instinct was actually always there and he’s now in a place where he won’t be shunned for it, in fact he’ll be loved more, especially by hawkeye. also we have the same shoes.

2. that we don’t find out his name. i actually think it’s an amazing character beat and just sort of bit in general that this isn’t something that’s out there, i like that it’s a mystery and i like making it a lot deeper than the writers ever intended

3. that he obviously loves kids and is going to be an amazing father when they let him have the chance

4. sense of humor :-) like yes the puns are stupid but they’re GOOFY!!! and he keeps with them because it makes hawkeye laugh!!! it’s like. it’s good clean fun and you need to offset bitter sarcasm with goofiness and him and hawk have those in like a 70/30 split in opposite directions. i want to sit down with him and listen to i’m sorry i’ll read that again.

5. that he’s clearly just like. genuinely trying to be a good person. he has that complex in a different way to hawkeye but like. he tries to be as kind as possible and solve problems right away because he thinks that’s most helpful and he wants to cheer people up and make them laugh and he clearly loves how good hawkeye tries to be. making that a bonus thing: the absolute heart eyes he has for hawkeye at all times, especially when he’s being annoying <33