#because their characters are so intrinsically linked within the life series

[insomnya777]

elaborating because i can and a couple people asked me to and we all know that all i need is a little encouragement to get me going

under the cut because i'm a grade-a yapper and this is going to be LONG. like super long. i've pulled up lyrics and songs and everything. <- your final warning

1. joel as sabrina

so no one really disagreed with me on this one and i don't think anyone will just because of the fact that he references her in his videos but like. i'm still going to talk about it because i want to and this is my blog and You Can't Stop Me!!!!!

if you don't know sabrina carpenter, basically just know that she's charismatic & confident & hilarious & gorgeous. plus like all of her songs are sooo him! they're fun and light and always a hit!!! but also can be scathing if they need to be!!!! her humour especially reminds me of him (as a character) because it's like ironic and self-aware but also flirty and silly but also a little twisted and a little mean. in particular i think that the cocky (not the word that describes it best but it's the only one i can think of) side of herself that she shows during her concerts reminds me a lot of joel with his whole "oh i'm so tall and handsome" bit he's got going on

literally like i don't know what more i can say to this. my dude has multiple of her songs in his playlist, he used espresso in his video, and also one of his tools on hermitcraft is named after a lyric. it's canon guys 🙏

songs that i think are the most him + specific lyrics:

espresso — i can't relate to desperation, my give-a-fucks are on vacation

read your mind — oh, i'll be laughing when you say that you really have changed, finally found your way, 'cuz i'm close to your face

tornado warnings — i deserve an hour in a week to focus on my thoughts, not so obsessed with yours i can't hear myself speak

lonesome — if i fall in love with all my problems, will they leave me too?

things i wish you said — nobody gets my jokes, everyone here thinks i'm fucking rude

bed chem — who's the cute boy with the white jacket and the thick accent?!

don't smile — don't smile 'cuz it happened, baby, cry because it's over

good graces — baby, you say you really like it, being mine, so let me give you some advice!

2. grian as taylor

okay this one is VERY personal to me. i am so unhealthily attached to him as taylor. you're probably thinking: but, nya, he literally canonically has an alter ego named after ariana grande! and i raise you this point: i simply do not care

all jokes obviously. i can see why people see him as ariana! especially in her new album, i've listened to it a lot, and i definitely can see some songs that remind me of his character - cough, cough, we can't be friends (wait for your love) - but i've got to say that ariana to me has always been scar (or maybe even a bit of jimmy? undecided) but that's a post for another time

now why i see grian as taylor! i have three main reasons for this actually. as an og swiftie and an og grian fan i may be a little bit biased but just. ignore that. thanks

first of all, i think that they're both kind of starting points, if you get what i mean. most hermitcraft/life series fans start with grian, and then eventually branch out to other creators. similarly, a lot of people listen to taylor swift/know her songs the best out of the genre she specializes in/within the audience her content is aimed towards

secondly, they're also both the most popular within their own branch, and i think they're both the type of artists/channels that you can enjoy without really being a Fan of. almost mainstream (? don't know if that's the term that would work for grian but you get my point). like you don't have to be a diehard grian fan to enjoy his videos, you can just decide one day to pick up one of them, watch it, then never think of it again. does that make sense?

third, i think they both have a lot of variety within their content. taylor's music ranges between emotions and styles, just like the videos that grian makes fluctuates in theme. he's on servers like hermitcraft, where we see him interact with other people and show off his building skills and just be silly. then he's in the life series, which is the total opposite, and then he was also in evo, which is also very different, and so on. his characterization also is very different from author to author, which is, of course, to be expected, but i haven't really seen other people in this particular fandom get characterized so differently to this degree. (it's not a bad thing!!!! i love it i think it's actually sooo fun & interesting that we can take this character and morph it into what we want. like most people don't even realize they're doing it you can only really pick up on it if you're looking for it)

songs that i think are the most him + specific lyrics:

castles crumbling — and you don't want to know me, i will just let you down

begin again — thinking all love ever does is break, and burn, and end

22 — happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time

call it what you want — and i know i make the same mistakes every time, bridges burn, i never learn, at least i did one thing right

the archer — 'cuz all of my enemies started out friends, help me hold on to you

don't blame me — for you, i would cross the line, i would waste my time, i would lose my mind

hoax — stood on the cliffside, screaming "give me a reason"

this is me trying — and my words shoot to kill when i'm mad, i have a lot of regrets about that

my tears ricochet — you know i didn't want to have to haunt you, but what a ghostly scene

mad woman — what did you think i'd say to that? does a scorpion sting when fighting back? they strike to kill, and you know i will

the prophecy — please, i've been on my knees, change the prophecy. don't want money, just someone who wants my company

3. jimmy as olivia

i'll be real with you, i have considerably less reasons for why i've chosen this. it relates a lot around his interactions with other characters instead of just him as a character + i've taken a few creative liberties here so. cut me someeee slack!

my main reason for this is that jimmy is just the epitome of teenage girl to me (just like olivia). that's probably a little bit of projection on my side because i, myself, am a teenage girl (which i don't know if many of you know? but yes i am a teenager) and jimmy's probably my favourite which leads to me kind of distorting his character a little. but. i don't know. something about the not being taken seriously, the refusal to give up, the insistence that this time will be different just hits me so hard/is relatable. not to get all serious on you

i will say this, though - while sabrina as joel was about both sabrina carpenter the person (or the person that the world knows) and also her music, i think for olivia as jimmy, it's mainly about the music. but you can also relate her relationships with other people (what we know of them, at least) to jimmy's with scott tango grian whatever. i think they do parallel each other pretty well, but, again, that's another post

i also think that jimmy's a lot more sour, not so much guts. olivia's first album revolves around that idea of heartbreak, jealousy, angst. i think his character usually revolves around themes like that. guts, olivia's second album, to me, is a little different. she's grown as a person, reflecting, and she's a lot more confident, too. it shows in her music. i think that jimmy (especially in the life series) is overall very, very sour coded, but then again, there are many songs on guts that definitely can be related to him too.

songs that i think are the most him + specific lyrics:

love is embarrassing — jesus, what was i even doing? 'cuz now it don't mean a thing, god, love's fucking embarrassing

ballad of a homeschooled girl — each time i step outside, it's social suicide

the grudge — i'm so tough when i'm alone, and i'll make you feel so guilty, and i fantasize about a time you're a little fucking sorry

teenage dream — when are all my excuses of "learning my lesson" gonna start to feel sad?

brutal — all i did was try my best, this the kind of thanks i get?

jealousy, jealousy — their win is not my loss, i know it's true but i can't help getting caught up in it all. comparison is killing me slowly

favourite crime — one heart broke, four hands bloody

1 step forward, 3 steps back — i hate that i give you power over that kind of stuff

THE END!!!!! i hope you enjoyed reading this as much as i enjoyed writing this and let me know your thoughts 🫶 always up for some debate!!!

if joel is sabrina carpenter coded (& he is trust) then grian is taylor and jimmy is olivia rodrigo. no i will not be taking criticism but i am fully willing to elaborate

[that-ari-blogger]

Worldbuilding (Flutterina)

When I set out to write a series analysing the fourth season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, I wanted to focus on individual characters who aren’t the main duo. I’ve discussed Glimmer and Perfuma so far, but what about the world itself?

I would argue that the setting of a story is as much a character as any of the protagonists or antagonists, and the setting of She-Ra is that of a war. You cannot discuss it without mentioning that core aspect.

But up until now, the series has been a focused on the individuals contained within. It describes the conflict between Catra and Adora in great detail, while the war has always been there, just in the background.

Flutterina changes that.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Journey’s End, Third Life, Double Life, Doctor Who)

The thing that struck me about this episode is how its tone shouldn’t work. This is an episode about how cool the protagonist is and how amazing the fight scenes can be, and it's also a psychological exploration of the everyday civilian. On paper, those two concepts are about as dissonant as you can get. In practice, it is almost seamless.

I want to start with the visuals of this episode, because they really make my point for me. During the party, everything in Elberon is joyful and happy, but it’s juxtaposed with the signs of war. The people here have tried to dress up a tank to cover up for the damage they have received. The tank now shoots confetti, which makes everything ok, right?

“Okay, okay. Terrifying booming sounds were probably a bad idea.”

I want to stress that some the PTSD displayed by the villagers in this episode is the brain working as it should. Key word: some.

If you are in a place where loud noises and danger come from the same place, your mind will link the two and give you intrinsic reflex to get out of the way when you hear a loud noise. This is designed to save your life.

What is bad here is the fact that this reflex was developed. Nobody should have to be under that amount of stress to the extent where the instinct carries over when they leave the battlefield.

A subtle detail in this episode is just how jumpy the mayor is. This woman recoils from everything, even sudden movements from Adora. The war has wrecked this woman's psyche.

But jumpiness isn’t the only symptom of having experienced trauma. There is also numbness, when you lose feeling after your senses being overused time and time again. Sometimes, this is just your mind filtering out what it perceives as white noise, sometimes it is nerve damage.

Journey’s End is a harrowing play written by R. C. Sherrif, depicting life in the trenches during the first world war. It is not a play I recommend if you want to have a fun time reading, but it is incredibly powerful.

There is a certain weight to every word, and a pensive silence that feels empty. Journey’s End does not pull punches.

Most notably in this case is the focus on coping mechanisms. The emphasis on the amounts of each left and right boot is dehumanising as a way of rationalisation. There is x number of boots recovered, x number of pairs left, x number of right boots lost. If you think about the inanimate object, you can forget those who wore them.

But there is also a profound sense of hope in the book, and something I want to link back to She-Ra. Because in Journey’s End, one way people keep themselves in a form resembling sanity is through idolisation. If they look up to someone, it takes their mind off their surroundings. That idolisation becomes pretty separate from the person it's targeted at, and the characters recognise this. Imagine someone who can’t die, someone who you can get attached to because no matter what, they are safe.

That’s what Flutterina does, it shows you people who are coping with extreme hardship, and lets you know exactly how She-Ra fits into this, not just as a hero, but as an idea. That’s why Adora and Bow being so badass in this episode doesn’t feel dissonant, they are the ideals that keep the people of Elberon safe and hopeful.

But I want to talk about the implications of this episode, because they are some of the heaviest in the series, and the eponym makes my point for me.

There's a difference between playing someone who can't act and acting badly. Double Trouble is an incredible actor, and by extension, so is Jacob Tobia.

I don’t think we ever see Double Trouble create a character from scratch. They wear people as masks, and so the character of Flutterina must have come from somewhere.

Also, nobody in Elberon is surprised by the existence of this person, they all recognise her, if seemingly a bit weirded out by a sudden change in mood.

Let’s do some deductive reasoning here, shall we? This was an active battlefield until about a day ago, maximum. Flutterina existed before that battle, and is nowhere to be seen now so Double Trouble could take her place with no pushback.

The real Flutterina definitely got killed in that battle.

Which implies that there is some heavy stakes for this war beyond what we see. The protagonists have plot armour, as is the tone of the story, but when the camera isn’t on you, no holds are barred.

And this isn’t a rare occasion. Flutterina is explicitly a young character, and nobody is surprised by her apparent lack of parents. Where did they go?

I get the feeling there has been more than one battle in Elberon, and Flutterina’s parents never had the chance to meet Adora.

This is a morbid line of thinking, but we are analysing the setting of a war story. There are no victors in war, just survivors, profiteers, and poets.

Let’s talk about the Life Series.

This is an animatic by @vyeoh, in which the use of colour is unrivaled. The fact that these two are each other's worlds is shown by the fact that everything else is in greyscale, and at the end... well, you'll just have to watch it for yourself. (Link)

I am someone who exists on Tumblr and repeatedly goes off on tangents about tragedies and the band The Crane Wives, so it was only a matter of time before this series made itself known to me.

And to be clear, I’m not talking about the original source material here. The Minecraft series is all fun and games, but the fan lore and material added on to it is really what makes it special to me.

Speaking of which, one of the key sticking points of Third Life is the storyline of the Flower Husbands, to people who are just trying to live out their lives in this setting. They pick allegiances to survive, they look out for each other. These two are adorable, and I think it is poignant that they both got killed in the crossfire of someone else’s battle.

The tragedy of Third Life is the collateral damage. The spiral into insanity of two of its characters could have only involved each other, but they brought others in and made them a part of their descents.

This energy was then replicated a few seasons later in Double Life, in the Clockers.

Everen is an animator with incredible talent, and a ton of her visuals are really complex with battle sequences and similar. But the single best shot she ever made was this one:

Two hands reaching for each other, but unable to connect, a relationship broken by violence. Again, this didn’t have to happen, but it did.

That’s what war does, it breaks lives and ends stories prematurely. That’s what’s tragic about it.

The original Flutterina didn’t have to die, and the person who ordered the attack will most likely never learn her name. She is just a number, a casualty. Similarly, the mayor of Elberon will forever be jumpy, unable to even drop a book on the floor without feeling unsafe. Neither of these people were soldiers.

I am fully breaking into my opinions here, and I don’t think I’m being particularly subtle about it. So, let me try and back myself up with one more tangent.

“Because it's not a game, Kate. This is a scale model of war. Every war ever fought, right there in front of you. Because it's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die! You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn! How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does what they were always going to have to do from the very beginning. Sit down and talk!”

This is part of a speech delivered by Peter Capaldi as the 13th Doctor, and I leave it here for you to take as you will.

Instead, I want to talk about how She-Ra changes the rules. I mentioned how idolisation can lead to hope, and that hope is really important here. Because a big part of this series is the hypothetical “what if you could save everyone?”

She-Ra gives the people of Elberon hope for a greater tomorrow, a thing to believe in, but she also gives the audience something to root for. She creates an image in the minds of those in the real world that tells them that the conflicts can be over. War can end, bad people can be stopped, and notably, she doesn’t win by the same rules as the Horde.

The Horde’s tactic for this war has always been “kill everything”, and in the end, Adora won’t do that. Instead, she will confront the Horde’s leader, and stop him from throwing his underlings to kill and die for him.

She-Ra gives us hope for a better tomorrow.

Final Thoughts

Gee, I wonder why analysis of the setting of a war story got preachy.

As a side note, this is one of the episodes where we see Catra get really bad in her relationship with Scorpia, because that is abuse. I’ve seen a lot of discussion of redemption arcs online that limits the story to one extreme. Either the person was bad and can not be redeemed, or they were always good and don’t need the redemption. I think its rather important to the story that Catra does these bad things and they are specifically what she redeems herself from.

But I’m leaving my discussion of Catra and Adora out of this season, because I want to focus on them for season five, so this is all you will hear about her for the moment.

Next week, I’ll be talking about Pulse, and doing a deep dive on how much storytelling can be crammed into one scene. So stick around if that interests you.

Previous - Next

[shsenhaji]

📚 Tress of the Emerald Sea - Book Review

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5265296349

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Adult fantasy, adventure, rescuing a loved one, fairytale vibe, ships and pirates, romance.

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson was a delight. The first of his four secret projects, set within the wider world of his Cosmere universe yet not necessarily connecting to any one series, follows the titular heroine Tress as she embarks on an adventure to save her friend Charlie.

First of all, the novel’s framing provided a unique and strong voice. Narrated by a familiar Cosmere character who also appears in the book, the book seamlessly weaves between the narrator’s strong voice and opinions, and the perspective of Tress herself. It feels as if we are being told a story in the best sort of way, which also emphasizes the fairytale-esque vibe of the plot and the characters. It also allows the reader to acquire fun facts about the world-building and it provides some nuanced mediations on the characters within the novel, without it feeling out of place, out of character, or interfering with the flow of the story.

Secondly (and most importantly), the characters and the plot were delightful. I absolutely loved Tress, who is an ordinary girl (and really feels like one) and yet decides to undertake a crazy plan for love - because it is the right thing to do, because someone should do something, and that someone is her. She has flaws the reader (and the narrator) notices from the beginning, and seeing her not only blossom and manage amazing feats but also grow out of her previous (and potentially harmful) mindset was very cathartic.

I loved her pragmatic and matter-of-fact manner, as well as her kindness, determination, and very real fears and doubts. The metaphors (especially the glove) as well as Tress’ love of cups were important through-lines that also tied in very nicely with the plot and the novel’s messages. The other characters were all great; real, fleshed out, often subverting expectations. I really appreciated the inclusiveness and diversity of several characters, who are allowed to exist and be complex without it feeling tokenistic.

The romance present in the story was so well-written, and truly provided a microcosm of the novel’s overall messages and themes.

The worldbuilding itself was definitely unique. The entire concept of the spores - how the moons and the seas worked, the different types of seas, how that affected our main character but the world itself as well - was detailed, vivid, and provided for some quite spectacular scenes. I also liked how the narrator slowly opened up the scope of the world, starting with Tress’ island and the basic concept of the spores, to the realities of sailing on the seas and the political and socio-economic relations.

It felt real, and was truly intrinsic to the story and the characters; as well, due to the narration, there was that otherwordly and ethereal quality to everything. I also find it fascinating that many concepts behind the worldbuilding was based on real science.

Finally, the illustrations (found in both the ebook version and the Dragonsteel hardcover edition) were absolutely gorgeous, and really brought key scenes (as well as the accompanying emotions) to life.

Tress of the Emerald Sea is a beautiful story; kind, full of adventure and character growth and amazing worldbuilding, and with a really great ending. It manages to subvert and critique a lot of tropes, but never in a way that feels mean or out of place. I loved it so much more than I thought I would, and I was already predisposed to like it already.

[irenedubrovna]

A post regarding Euphoria for the benefit of myself and basically no one else

So, it really bothers me when people say Euphoria is groundbreaking, progressive media. Here’s a dissection of why I don’t think it is, because this is what I feel like doing at work:

The character of Rue is objectively great. She by far receives the least overt sexualization, and is treated neutrally in terms of active sexuality. She’s treated like a normal teenage girl with mental issues and an addiction to drugs. She falls in love with a girl who she pines for and places on a pedestal. The reason I think she is written this way is because she is a Sam Levinson proxy. She written with gender ambiguity and with little regard to the experiences she’d go through as a black gay female, probably because Sam Levinson has no insight to that aspect of life. Her performance is heightened of course by Zendaya, who breathes unique life to the Sam Levinson’s artistic extension, and without her performance this show would not get even half the acclaim it gets. Attribute that to Zendaya of course, because the director has done little to deserve this acclaim.

The rest of the females, sans Lexi, are pornified to a disgusting extent, not only due to the fact that they are supposed to be underage, but also because their existence as people is treated as being absolutely secondary to their sexual appeal. They are foremost presented in terms of their relation to sex. Cassie, Maddy, Jules, and Kat cannot be removed from their sexuality without disrupting the plot or their journeys in relation to the plot. Why are the females so intrinsically linked to uber fetishized versions of female sexuality, or uber fetishized versions of blossoming female sexual identity?

Maddy is presented not only scantily clad 90 percent of the time, but also dressed in a precariously unattainable sexual fashion. At any given time she is styled to look straight out of, simultaneously, a high fashion editorial, and a “barely legal” porno. She is airheaded and profane, and promiscuous, her mannerisms dictated by the adult films she’s “studied” in order to project an image of perfect hyper sexual femininity. She’s complacent in becoming a prototypical housewife because it will earn her a comfortable place as a trophy wife. She has no aspirations beyond that. So, let’s unpack all of that. Maddy’s role in the show is mostly passive. The most active thing she does in the plot is revenge fuck a man in the pool of a party. Nearly everything else she does in the show that is plot relevant is of someone else’s volition. Even less of what she in the show is related to anything other than a man. She is abused and then pressured into framing another man for said abuse. She has no agency as a character. The only notable difference to this rule is when she takes drugs at a carnival, knocks a pot of chili over, and calls her ex’s mom a cunt. Removed from her active sexual life and carefully cultivated aesthetic, she’s a trite stereotype of an unambitious girlfriend who gets treated poorly. I see people call Maddy iconic, but if she wasn’t gorgeous and well dressed, I doubt anyone would even think twice about her, let alone create fancams and Instagram pages dedicated to her. She exists as a plot device, and as pretty set dressing to build up the shows aesthetic. Her emotions are not well explored, her motivations are sexist, and she is often there to be demeaned, objectified, or to say a bad word. The most damning part of her involvement in this show is her episode where it is stated that she, as a fourteen year old girl, lost her virginity to an adult man, and it is stated she was in control of the situation. This is a dangerous thing to say about a character, to any audience, but especially a young one. To imply that a precocious young girl was in control during her first sexual encounter with a much much older man implies things that frankly border on rape apologist ideology. This show states this unflinchingly and with no further elaboration. If there’s one thing that tells you that Euphoria is a bad show, let it be that. Also, if there’s one thing that tells you about Sam Levinson as a person, and the way he views girls and women, let it fucking be that.

Jules is a young trans girl. She also likes to have sex with men as a means to “conquer femininity”. Scratch that, she likes to have degrading sex with older men in order to “conquer femininity”. This mindset is shown to be toxic, of course, but I think the problem with this idea in general is that there’s no deeper exploration for what this mindset means. It implies that she believes women are the sum of their intrigue and degradations. This mindset I can only assume would be a cultivation of dysphoria and internalized misogyny, which this series is absolutely not prepared to address in a tactful manner. Jules is a teenager with mental illness, trauma, and is undergoing an identity crisis. There’s something powerful in her character, something worth saying, however we only get trimmings of those meaningful things, and are ultimately left with a hurtful depiction of a trans girl because all of her musings on womanhood and identity are incomplete, and they fail to reach beyond the surface of their thesis statement. She wears colorful clothing, is overtly feminine and artistic in her presentation. Everything about her screams insecurity over her own womanhood. That is the crux of her character. Now, I think we should ask ourselves, is trans person who is insecure about their identity peak representation? Is this what trans people deserve? Is it “groundbreaking “? If this show was run by someone else, I might be inclined to say that there’s nothing insidious about this, but this is the guy that made Assassination Nation, so I think we know what he thinks of young women, the way they should be portrayed (that is, for the capitulation of a man) and realize his inclusion of a trans woman in his cast is no more meaningful than the inclusion of any other woman. Women to him are made to be categorized and should, at the end of the day, be easily palatable for the capitulation of a man. The device of having Jules being interested in older men and rough sex for identity reasons is transparent. Trans women are exploited and objectified with a similar fervor to cis women, the caveat being that they are “a forbidden fruit” of sorts to straight men. Jules is sissified, her presentation fetishistic. Her role in the plot is more involved. Her relationship with Rue is sweet, though toxic on both sides. She is ultimately betrayed, blackmailed, and snowballs into something of a manic episode, all well portrayed by Hunter Schafer, but I don’t think her inclusion in the show absolves it of any of its many sins.

Let’s talk about Cassie. Cassie is the Eurocentric beauty standard exemplified. She is the blonde haired blue eyed girl next store, and her boobs are of course always on display. She is notably promiscuous, something I say right off the bat because that’s how she’s introduced, as a so called slut through the words of the devil (Nate Jacobs). She is a girl with daddy issues, which we are all familiar with at this point. Her sexual boundaries begin and end at the whim of her partner. The terms of her consent are much like the terms of consent of many young girls brainwashed by society and the rising tide of degradation porn: everything is alright as long as you provide them comfort and affirmation afterward. You can touch them roughly without asking, you can use them as a tool to affirm your masculinity. This is the way men prefer their women now: just broken enough to say yes to anything they want. It’s become a joke at this point. Men like girls with issues, but only the ones that will feed their own desires. Cassie Howard is meek. Her inclusion in the plot I suppose ties to themes of drug addiction and how it divides and destroys the people you love. It doesn’t show what it does to her beyond shaping her sexual encounters, which is no surprise. Overall I’d say Cassie is in this roster of females as the most traditional categorically, in relation to how men view women and further how they sexualize them. She has a relationship with someone who doesn’t really love her. That mostly what she does here. Gets used. Doesn’t drive the plot or conflict much. More pretty set dressing. More aesthetics. How this show consists of so many women but is driven so much by men is unsurprising, and, again, very enlightening in the grand scheme of things.

Lastly we touch on Kat. I’d like to begin with the fact that self actualization through sexual exploration, in a show run by a man, is just a cloak for a woman to gratify the audience with her sexuality. Regardless of whether or not she is plus sized, this is overt objectification. She is on this show to be sexy. Beyond that, the fact that a minor using sex work as a form of liberation is disgusting. Whether or not she is portrayed as “owning” her sexuality is negligible, and speaks to the same mindset discussed with Maddy. Minors cannot fucking consent to sex, sexual acts, or anything within the confines of such. It’s crazy that this occurs with two different characters in such a similar way. It has echoes of “Well, she looked older..” and “Well, she wanted it..” or “She’s advanced for her age”. Never, not once in the events of the series is there meaningful introspection on what doing this kind of thing does to a minor. Moreover, these acts are explicit, and made clearly for sexual gratification. None of these things are absolved by the fact that she’s plus sized. If anything, her body type is fetishized in this context. It’s also another case of a “good girl to bad girl” transformation, which are archaic and, of course, sexist. With the rise of adult websites targeting minors for explicit content, this is even more reprehensible. Once again, in terms of representation, is this really what speaks to you as progressive? Groundbreaking? A girl gains control of her own narrative by having sex with lots of men. She gains control by being sexy. She gains control by dehumanizing and objectifying herself. No she doesn’t. Media controlled by men will tell this story to you thousands of times, don’t listen because she’s bigger than a size four.

ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS ARE UNDERAGE. ALL OF THEM HAVE EXPLICIT SEX SCENES, EVEN THE SEXUAL ASSAULT IS MADE CINEMATICALLY PORNIFIED. THESE SHOTS ARE MADE TO BE OBJECTIVELY SEXY. THIS IS NOT A CASE OF SOMEONE CREATING SOMETHING FOR THE SAKE OF REALISM. IT IS ABOUT MAKING SCENES THAT SPEAK TO A MALE AUDIENCE. THAT CATER TO THE MALE GAZE. ARGUE WITH THE WALL.

I won’t go further into the plot, other characters, or the structure or the episodes for sake of brevity, but I felt compelled to air my thoughts on this to the void. I can only hope I was critical enough that Sam Levinson will one day see this and cry because another bad feminist thinks something that he made sucks

[cosmicjoke]

Okay, onto chapter 128 of SnK.  There’s some really huge thematic payoff in this chapter which I want to talk a little about!

The big theme that really comes full circle here is the theme of violence, and how it’s intrinsically linked to the human condition.  That’s obviously a huge theme throughout this entire series, but in a lot of ways it culminates in this chapter.

I first really noticed it in a big way, in terms of having a big impact on the characters, way back in chapter 50 something, during the Uprising arc, in that scene where Jean, Connie, Sasha, Mikasa and Armin are waiting around, and they start talking about Levi and how repulsed they feel by what they perceive to be his unnecessary violence.  They flatly condemn him for it, even going so far as to say there’s something wrong with him, and making bold statements about how they would never kill another person, no matter the circumstances.  This statement of course comes back to bite them not long after, when Armin is forced to kill one of Kenny’s squad in order to save Jean, and Jean begins to understand the impossibility and even selfishness that can be inherent to holding without compromise to one’s moral values. 

That theme comes back in a huge way in chapter 128, and it’s really interesting to see Reiner try to step in and take on the role of martyr by telling the members of the 104th that they don’t need to fight, trying to save them from the moral dilemma of killing their own comrades.  What I found really interesting here was how Jean, Connie, Mikasa and Armin don’t answer at first, and you can see this is a huge struggle for them, the scenario presented before them one which clearly goes against everything they want to believe they’re fighting for.  Connie even says that they’re supposed to be saving people, not murdering their friends, etc...  But it’s impossible to ignore how it’s Hange who steps in and dashes any possibility of them sitting this fight out against the rocks.  They say they aren’t interested in being a spectator, and reminds everyone there that humanity doesn’t have any time left for them to be debating their morality.  This ties back in perfectly with what Levi had spoken to his squad about way back in the Uprising Arc, again, when he told them he doesn’t know what’s right or wrong, and that all any of them can do in any given situation is act in the way they think is best, both for themselves and those they care for, and for humanity as a whole.  We’ve seen Hange come to terms with this blunt and often brutal reality well before this, during the battle for Shingashina, for example.  Hange really began to separate whatever moral qualms they might have had, any emotion they might have had about killing other people, during this arc, and coming to really understand and accept that sometimes morality was something that had to be sacrificed for the greater good.  Here in chapter 128, Hange isn’t interested in or willing to indulge in preserving either their, or anyone else’ moral purity at the expense of the Marlyean group.  They’re in this together, and Hange understands fully that to accept Reiner’s offer of sitting back and watching while he, Annie and Pieck take on the Yeagerists would be the height of selfishness and a prime example of placing one’s own moral purity over the well being of others.  I always think it’s brilliant the way AoT explores these issues, of how an uncompromising loyalty to one’s idea of morality can, in fact, lead to total disaster for others, can in fact worsen the lives of others.  How if one has a moral code they are absolutely, under no circumstances, willing to break, that person often is the one who is most self-serving and self-centered, more concerned with keeping their own hands clean than with helping anyone else.  SnK doesn’t condemn violence, but instead makes very strong arguments for why it is sometimes not only an option, but the ONLY option, and that’s incredibly bold, and incredibly true to reality.  

Armin, as usual, is the first to understand this, after Hange reminds them all.  Armin was also the first, back during the Uprising Arc, to extend understanding towards Levi and his violence, and why he had to at times resort to it.  Armin flat out says here “I refuse to stand by with clean hands”.  He’s acknowledging the selfishness inherent in an uncompromising moral code, and refuses to place himself above the rest of humanity, even if it means once more getting his hands dirty with the blood of other people.  He still comes up with a plan to try and avoid any bloodshed, but you can see Armin is willing and ready in this moment to do whatever is necessary, which he does when he and Connie get into the situation they do with Daz and Samuel.  Armin is the one who tackles Samuel, which is what gives Connie the chance to shoot him.

There’s this huge moment with Levi I want to talk about, after everything goes to shit and Armin’s plan falls apart, where Yelena says “You can’t separate humanity from violence.”  And then she says to Levi “Right, Captain?”, and we get a look at Levi’s face, and once again, he just looks filled with naked despair.  I think these two panels are incredibly important in understanding Levi’s own psychology during this entire final arc.  Yelena is right, for once, when she says you can’t separate humanity from violence.  It’s a part of the human condition.  And she asks Levi specifically about it, because if anyone understands this, it’s Levi, who grew up in a world where violence was often the ONLY option, if one wanted to survive, or protect those they cared for.  But Levi’s saddened expression in the following panel really speaks to his feelings regarding the undeniable truth of Yelena’s words.  Levi knows it’s true, but he wishes desperately that it wasn’t.  I’ve called Levi an idealist over and over, and it’s because Levi is someone who understands the way of the world, and understands human nature, with more clarity and compassion than probably any other character in the series, he understands that violence, pain, poverty, desperation, fear, death, are all a part of life, and especially a part of the human condition, and yet, even with that understanding and acceptance, Levi is also someone who strives towards something better,  towards a world in which these things AREN’T necessary, aren’t inevitable.  Levi has been fighting this whole time in order to try and create a world in which people can live in genuine peace and prosperity, without fear, or violence or inequality.  But every bit of Levi’s life experience tells him and reminds him, day in and day out, of the impossibility of that ideal.  The impossibility of creating a world in which these things don’t exist.  Nothing in Levi’s life would ever lead him to believe true peace and prosperity for all is an attainable dream, nothing in his life which would ever give him real hope in that dream becoming reality.  But still, he fights for it.  This is part of what makes Levi so remarkable.  It’s the very fact that he STRUGGLES to believe in the possibility of a better world, and yet still gives everything of himself to make it a reality, that makes Levi such a hero.  In fact, Levi doesn’t really believe that it’s possible, I don’t think, his life having been too hard and too desperate to fully embrace such an ideal notion.  But, once again, even as he’s riddled with doubt as to it’s attainability, he sacrifices everything he has for the possibility, no matter how slim.   Levi’s naked despair in the panel following Yelena’s question is because he’s being reminded once again of the impossibility of that dream.  Once again, he’s being shown that humanity is incapable of achieving true peace within itself, he’s being shown once again that people are by nature violent and warlike, and that everything he’s fought for seems more and more like a distant and hopeless dream.  Yelena sits in stark contrast to Levi here.  She’s bitterly accepting of the ugly reality, unmoved and unemotional.  She doesn’t care.  She thinks humanity is a worthless mess, unsalvageable and unworthy of salvation.  To Yelena, this is the inevitable result of humanity’s very existence, and to fight for something that unrealistically idealistic is a fools errand.  Indeed, Yelena seems almost to revel in it, the violence serving as affirmation of her beliefs, giving her a sense of validation.  But Levi, beside her, is deeply affected, his pain and sadness openly expressed in his face, his disappointment and heartbreak plain to see.  Levi is HURT by the violence, by seeing it unfold.  Levi, despite knowing the truth of Yelena’s words, despite knowing from the most first-hand experience the brutal and violent nature of human beings, and the improbability of humanity ever achieving true peace, still believes with his whole heart that humanity is WORTH fighting for.  Levi, despite how hard it is for him to believe in actually achieving a better world, still believes that FIGHT is worth an attempt.  And that’s really one of the most vital philosophical difference between Levi and people like Yelena, or Zeke.  Despite knowing and understanding better than anyone the brutal and harsh reality of the world and humanity, to Levi, it’s still something that’s worth fighting to protect, and worth sacrificing for.  Even against his own, weary doubts as to its possibility.  And that just shows a strength of character that is immense.  To be so burdened by doubt, but still to fight with every last ounce of your strength, to give to your very last breath.  That’s Levi.  That strength of character, that unwavering conviction in giving his all to a cause he isn’t at all sure is even possible, is never more apparent than in this final arc, when Levi is in the most literal sense at deaths door, physically wrecked and barely able to even stand, and yet still he fights with everything he has.  That truly is remarkable.  That truly is heroic.

Just one more note.  Floch really exposes himself in this chapter for what he actually is, which is a power freak.  He’s been spouting off this whole time about the Empire of Eldia and saving the island and the people on the island and blah, blah, blah, but during his conversation with Kiyomi, he admits that he doesn’t really believe that the island will be safe, even if Eren wipes out all of humanity, that people will still continue to kill each other, and then he starts in about how what’s important now is for people to “know their place”, as he holds a gun to Kiyomi’s head.  Floch is a power freak, he wants to control other people, wants to dictate to them, wants to hold power over them.  He exposes that about himself here.  He doesn’t actually care about Paradis, or the people on it.  He’s simply getting off on being able to push other people around and make them do what he tells them to.  He’s such a bitch.  It was hilarious when Kiyomi took his ass down and messed his arm up.  

[citylightsbooks]

The Motor of the Essay: Rachel Kushner in Conversation

This is an excerpt of a free event we held in conjunction with Litquake for our virtual events series, City Lights LIVE. This event features Rachel Kushner in conversation with Dana Spiotta celebrating the launch of The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020, published by Scribner. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom and hosted by our events coordinator Peter Maravelis. You can listen to the entire event on our podcast. You can watch it in full as well on our Youtube channel.

*****

Dana Spiotta: I know that everyone's going to ask you these questions about writing fiction versus nonfiction. And I read somewhere that you said, with your novels, you begin with imagery more than an idea or a character. With the nonfiction, there is a range of pieces about writers and specific books to journalism--like the prison story and Palestine--and then there’s the ones that are personal essays, right, like the girl in a motorcycle. So I guess they might all have different origins. But where do you begin with that? And how is that different as a process from what you write in fiction?

Rachel Kushner: Yeah, so it is kind of a different process for me, although I sometimes feel guilty to try to make declarations about which is harder, or how one does one thing, because you know, for some people, the essay is what literature is.

For me, fiction is more difficult. And so in a certain way it's what I've signed on to do with my life, because the process can be so mysterious and fickle and unreliable. And I'm waiting to catch a wave, or get the drift and then try to figure out how to sustain it, and then how to change it in order to sustain it. Managing so many different things at once is a very curious hermeneutic, because you need to know where you're going.

But then you also need to let happenstance inform you. I think some of the ways that we are challenged, and how we learn in our lives and also as writers, are by having encounters that we did not anticipate or predict, and that happens in fiction. And then you're kind of in a "taking mode" and you know exactly what's for you and you go with it and you run.

Essays are a little different for me. I mean, obviously. Time is shorter. But usually the motor of the essay is a sprung sentence. I come up with one sentence that is doing something in the syntax and it's making something sort of declarative. And it's kind of a gambit. And it needs to be followed by another. And sometimes I'll have a whole paragraph like that. And those paragraphs will just be floating in the void of the potentiality of the essay that I haven't written yet. And I don't sweat, like, "How am I going to link this to that?" yet. Because I just know by instinct that they're both going in. And if I put them in the essay, then they are interrelated by virtue merely of their proximity to each other. Then I start to build links.

Some journalism is a very different process. Like you mentioned, for the piece that I wrote, originally for the New York Times Magazine, about prison abolition and the carceral geographer, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, they said it can be any length and made it long. So you know, it was like 20,000 words. And it was my version of that essay, and it probably was a pretty good essay. But I think the weakness in it was that I was not speaking to their audience. And they really--you have written for the New York Times Magazine--they want to be able to countenance everything you say, sentence by sentence. It's not like writing an op-ed, where you just say your thing and then people can fight it out in the comments. They want to be fully on board. And I wouldn't want to have to do that all the time.

It's extremely difficult, because you have to keep remembering how to bring in somebody who may have wildly different ideas about how society should be organized, and not seem polemical, not seem pushy. It's a kind of seduction I think that really benefits from collaboration with an editor. It's arduous, it takes time. That essay took two years to write, but because the subject matter was important to me, ultimately, I decided it was worth it.

Dana Spiotta: Yeah, it's such a great essay. And I learned so much from it.

Peter Maravelis: When you're writing about events and feelings from decades ago, how do you return to the experience? What takes you back?

Rachel Kushner: That's a really great question. So, you know, with some of these essays, like the first essay in the book called “Girl on a Motorcycle,” which is about the Cabo 1000--a no longer existent, illegal motorcycle road race where you span the Baja in the course of a day--was the first thing that I ever published and I wrote it 20 years ago. And after looking back over it, in order to put it in this book and to improve upon it, I opened it up; I wrote a new beginning and a new ending. There are so many details and scenes in that essay that I never, ever would have remembered had I not written them down when I was much closer to the meat of that experience.

But there are other essays like the title essay which I just wrote quite recently. I'd put the book together, and I knew it was going to be called “The Hard Crowd.” And then I just basically sat down and wrote this essay. And I think, you know, as maybe you're telling a story, or going through your life, sometimes things really do sort of trigger the release of a memory. And Proust has this conception of two different kinds of memory that he calls voluntary memory and involuntary memory. And voluntary memory is the kind of fixed story that you tell, you know, "Oh, he's telling that story again," meaning it's a kind of sclerotic, hardened account that, for Proust, doesn't really have any real artistic or intrinsic wealth to it. Whereas involuntary memory is maybe when you would smell a perfume that you haven't smelled in 30 years and it reminds you of this or that. And I think that writing itself can activate involuntary memory, because you start to see into spaces you haven't seen in a really long time.

Like when I was writing this essay, I somehow ended up talking about Terence McKenna, and remembered that I'd seen Terence McKenna give this lecture at the Palace of Fine Arts. And then I saw the Palace of Fine Arts and him on the stage and where I was sitting, and who was in the audience. And so then I mentioned in the essay that this noise musician who I don't know, but I knew who he was, was sitting right in front of me. And that was a funny thing because the New Yorker called him and asked, "Were you at a Terence McKenna lecture in 1991." “Yeah, I was.” I mean he probably thought like the FBI is after him or something. I can start to see things and details in pretty haunting detail, particularity once I'm starting to build the framework that will allow those kind of involuntary memories to come up to present themselves.

Peter Maravelis: Do you feel that maybe kids who grew up in a certain era share communal memories, like growing up in San Francisco in the 70s is full of shared moments and scenes?

Rachel Kushner: Yes, I do feel that, but I would maybe even particularize it to not just an era, but to kids who grew up in a certain world within San Francisco. And I'm going to just be blunt: it's the kids who went to public school in San Francisco in the 70s and 80s. We all traversed a world together, and the particularity of that world. I'm not saying that it's special or different. Everybody has a world that they traversed, and that stays inside of them as memory. And ours is ours. And those who experienced it do feel bonded, I think, for life, in a way. And it's something I've thought about a lot since that essay was published in the New Yorker because of the number of people who reached out to me and wanted to talk about their own memories of this same world that we shared.

Peter Maravelis: In the New York Times review, Dwight Garner mentioned the phrase: “At the party, she was kindness in the hard crowd," from the Cream song "White Room." Is that in fact where your title came from?

Rachel Kushner: It is. I mentioned that in the title essay, it all becomes clear, or at least somewhat clear where I heard that song, and why I made it the title of this book. It's a good line.

To see upcoming events at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, check out our complete calendar.

[fusonzai]

I think I'm talking about confidence, I'm not too sure.

I was fifteen when I first saw Great Teacher Onizuka. My friend had lent me the DVD set (as you did when it was 2008) and I was about to spend the day watching it, feigning some illness to get out of school for the day. I needed some time alone, to process everything that had been going on around me.

For context, my parents were in the middle of a divorce. My mum, the most amazing person in the world to me, was not having a good time and I was not at all possessed with the skills to help her cope. Processing the concept of divorce, while trying to mediate the two adults going through it, wasn’t something I could handle. I didn’t know what I was doing. I needed a whole day away from friends and away from parents. While everyone was at their day job, I could think about everything and nothing, uninterrupted.

My attempt at getting out of school worked, however it came with a caveat. Mum had decided she’d take the day off with me. Feeling defeated but still stubborn, I insisted that if she was going to stay home too that we were watching GTO. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

GTO begins with our protagonist, Eikuchi Onizuka, squatting down by a payphone, trying to stare up the skirts of some high school girls coming down the nearby escalator. That’s a bold open. Two delinquents notice this and attempt to then extort him for cash. He promptly beats them up, forcing them to use all the money they have to buy him some food from the nearby convenience store. This scene establishes a few things straight off the bat: Onizuka is, first and foremost, a pervert and he’s physically strong but not to the point of unfairly asserting dominance over others. Onizuka dreams of being a teacher of all things. He wants to be the teacher he never had, being there for students outside the classroom as well as in. The series showcases Onizuka using his ex-biker gang leader skills and sheer determination to change the attitude of the antagonist students in his class. Each week he solves the reason behind their resistance toward him and they join his team until eventually he really is the Great Teacher, Onizuka.

The first delinquent problem Onizuka solves is that of Mizuki Nanako. Her parents aren’t divorced but they’re not exactly doing well. Ever since her father’s company started doing well and they moved into a mansion, she feels as though her parents just aren’t seeing eye to eye anymore. She blames it on a simple wall separating her parents’ private rooms. Before it got put up, her parents would talk and laugh together, sharing in their joys but also their defeats. Then before she knew it, they put a wall up and stopped sharing anything at all.

So, Onizuka arrives at her house. He’s got a bandana tied around his head, his abs gleaming as he’s smoking a cigarette. More importantly, he’s holding a sledgehammer, ready to demolish that wall. With her parents yelling at him threatening to call the police, Onizuka ascends the staircase and begins to take down that wall. Every powerful swing, shaking the wall and cracking the foundation.

(What a man what a man what a man what a might good man)

It felt cruel watching this scene with my mum. Here we were, two people still trying to process a big life event, opting to spend the day away from the problem. Here Onizuka was, just smashing through the problem with nothing but conviction, stupidity and sheer confidence. I couldn’t quite conceptualise the thought just yet but I think I envied that confidence. I wanted to be able to take a sledgehammer to this invisible problem and fix it. I didn’t know what an actual sledgehammer would solve nor was I even able to figure out what my situational sledgehammer would be, I just knew I wanted to be more like that. I wanted that confidence; I just didn’t know what it was yet.

Confidence. A complete assuredness in your actions. You may not have any idea of the outcome of said actions but you’re certain in the choice you made taking them. Maybe that’s just one definition. I struggle to this day with how to define confidence, I’ve been confident at different times in my life for different reasons. Mainly it’s been something I’ve found as I’ve gotten older though.

I struggled a lot with it when I was younger. I’d struggle to find it and when I did there was someone there trying to take it from me almost immediately. Pink polos were gay, skinny jeans were gay, being interested in anything outside the norm was gay as well. I wasn’t bullied by any means but there was always somebody around to tell you what they thought. I’d fold under that kind of pressure. I remember when I was 10 and we were in music class, I sang a little too loud and the popular girls behind me started pointing and laughing, clipping me before I got too sure of myself.

I got older and I thought I’d found confidence through weight training, but it was just arrogance. I genuinely thought I was better than other people in my creative writing class because I picked heavy things up and put them down. Of course, this had a drawback, whenever I’d meet someone bigger than me, I’d feel pathetic, jealous and inferior. I thought I’d rid myself of this arrogance when I started studying Japanese. My initial study was diligent and excessive. I’d have two Japanese classes a week and spend the rest of my time after work revising. Looking back now it was necessarily efficient studying, but in terms of time put in the hours were there. I believed I was working hard, which led to this arrogance in my abilities. An arrogance that was swiftly cut down whenever I met somebody better than me.

So, I always arrived at this juncture where I’d learn a new skill or hobby and wonder how to be confident in myself without comparing myself to others. I didn’t quite know how to praise myself for doing well at the gym or learning something new in Japanese without immediately comparing myself to others. It meant that I’d occasionally have these emotional highs when I achieved something only to be brought down to earth when I saw that somebody could do it better. I didn’t know how to make my achievements my own. The confidence I had was too fickle, it didn’t come from within and it often led to feeling superior to others based off of a single quantifier.

I was still uncomfortable with myself. I wanted outside validation which led to comparison, boasting and arrogance. I didn’t realise that I couldn’t get any of that from anyone else, it all had to come from within.

It’s taken me 14 years, but Onizuka finally made sense to me. I was watching the incredibly famous (in Japan) live action version of GTO one night, which turned into a nostalgia trip as all the episodes were almost identical to their anime equivalent. As I was watching I was wondering why I still hold this fictional character in such high regard, of all the powerful charismatic anime protagonists I watched in my teenage years, why does Onizuka persevere?

It’s because he’s kind of a dork.

(Get you a man that can do both)

Along with the confidence and strength that being a protagonist in a medium geared towards young boys affords you, Onizuka also has some very human flaws and vulnerabilities. The intense scenes like surprise renovating Nanako’s house or rescuing a whole bunch of kids from a gang are always juxtaposed with him being absolutely wayward in so many other aspects of life. He lives at the school because he can’t afford rent, he’s 26 and never had a girlfriend and his only friends are his students. We are always shown that his confidence isn’t intrinsically linked to how well his life is going, it’s just his feeling and determination in the moment. For all that bravado we see, we’re also shown the more human, relatable aspects. He’s amazing, brave and confident, but at the same time he’s still vulnerable and human.

Yet here’s the thing, I thought confidence meant a lack of vulnerability. I thought one couldn’t be both confident and vulnerable. This isn’t some segue into Boys Don’t Cry or a delve into masculinity. I didn’t believe that vulnerability wasn’t masculine, I just thought that vulnerability meant you had a long way to go before you were allowed to be confident.

(These lines go from bravado to insecurity in an instant, but I still think Tyler is confident as fuck)

I show what I feel to be the pretty vulnerable content on this blog. I write about my doubts and insecurities, the events that shaped me and the times in my life where I really felt at my lowest. I document the struggle I find myself in now, trying to carve something for myself and come to terms with the changes that keep happening around me. I don’t think anybody reading this would have an image of me as an outgoing, confident person. There’s rays of positivity sprinkled in occasionally but it’s generally content that I struggle to tell people in person.

Before starting this blog, I would have imagined that if I wanted to become this confident idealised version of myself, I’d need to erase any form of vulnerability. Delete the Instagram posts with moody lyrics, delete the couple shots and stop caring. I’d need to kill part of myself to become someone different. I couldn’t consciously accept that they were two signs of the same coin, even if I knew it in the back of my mind. The more I’ve been writing the better I’ve been feeling. These fears and insecurities being out in the open don’t make me any weaker, they actually feel like progress. My weaknesses will exist regardless of whether or not I tell people about them, my insecurities won’t disappear overnight. I’ll never be someone I’m not. What I can do is take these things that used to terrify me and put them out in the open. In my last piece I waxed on about making my words my own, by verbalising and bringing these thoughts into the open I feel like they become my own. They’re not completely stripped of power but they don’t hold the same sway over me that they once did.

So that leaves me with confidence. I can air my vulnerabilities and doubts but then where does my confidence come from? How do I then stop it from becoming arrogance?

Let me tell you about Charisma Man.

You know how when Superman goes back to Krypton he’s just a regular person, but on Earth he’s basically a God? Charisma Man is a joke (turned comic) about how Western Men often believe themselves to be Superman on Earth when they move to Japan. Why? You’re basically bombarded with compliments from the get-go. You get told your Japanese is amazing (when it’s not), that you’re so tall (when you’re short back home) and that you’re such a handsome man (when all experiences up until now have led you to believe the opposite). Thus, you create a kind of false confidence for yourself. Or do the people around you do it for you? You yourself haven’t changed but the people around you have, and they’re whispering sweet nothings in your ear.

(Honestly didn't know it was a comic, initially heard of it on a subreddit making fun of other expats in Japan)

Hell, maybe I am good looking? I studied Japanese for a year back home, maybe I am just really good at it? Maybe those people around me back home were just obnoxiously tall and mean. Maybe I am the shit. You begin to formulate this new identity for yourself. You are Charisma Man now. You’ll be making heaps of money, have girls on standby and be loved by everybody in no time.

Except that never happens.

The reality of Charisma Man isn’t so bright. You’re probably an English teacher living somewhere far away from the big city. Your apartment is probably small and old and your salary is half as much as you were making back home. Despite being told about how good your Japanese is, you still can’t turn on the TV and watch a program. You still can’t go to the bank and open an account with your bilingual Japanese friend. You’re still single and you’re probably getting fatter off convenience store fried chicken, if anything.

It’s fake confidence with no merit, built on nothing. You haven’t put yourself out there or done anything to earn that confidence so it always feels foreign to you. There isn’t some feat you perform or some hurdle you cross to get that kind of confidence. You’re not smashing walls with your sledgehammer or confronting your fears and growing. You just get fed compliments until your confidence balloon bursts.

I felt like I was Charisma Man for a hot minute. Separated from everyone I knew, out drinking every night, being complimented left right and centre. I kept trying and failing to keep my feet on the ground. Back then I thought it was new-found confidence, but I wasn’t really coming out of my shell; I was just being obnoxious. After long the facade faded and I realised I was the exact same Elliot I was back in Australia, just with less money and a nicer haircut.

I began to think about my experience. Why was I so confident? Why did it dissipate so quickly? Why was I not the only one that experienced this little phenomenon?

I came to the conclusion that confidence can come from many places. It can come from other people, but then it’s reliant on the praise of others. It’s shallow, fickle and bound to dissipate sooner rather than later. You’re constantly reliant on the praise of others to affirm who you are as a person, you can fool people into giving you praise but that goes away before you know it as well.

It’s a big enough of a struggle to understand yourself, it’s near impossible to understand strangers. Relying on such an unstable form of validation is essentially just inviting mental trauma in the long run.

On the other hand, confidence can also come from within.

After I distanced myself from all that charisma, I began to realise that I felt my best and my most confident when I actually put the work in. I started properly studying, eating well, and writing down my thoughts. It didn’t matter as much if people didn’t say anything, because I went to bed every night knowing that I put in enough work. Nobody said anything about the change, but I felt like I was becoming my own biggest supporter.

It’s both rewarding and daunting when you switch dopamine suppliers. I used past tense in those last few sentences because that particular fountain hasn’t been flowing so well lately. The flip side of not letting other people’s compliments fuel you anymore is that when you’re not doing right by yourself, that confidence tend to dry up pretty quickly.

[cadomoisspokenfor]

Legion Rewatch Notes,

Chapter 4:

Frizzytop

I theorized in episode 2 that David could see through the 4th wall, or at least into a different universe. At the start of this episode Oliver outright breaks the 4th wall. Perhaps powerful reality benders just have that capability. If David knows, and Oliver knows, then Farouk definitely knows.

“A great philosopher once wrote, ‘In times of peace, the war like man attacks himself.’ This is the route of all our problems.”

“We are the route of all our problems. Our confusion, our anger, our fear of things we don’t understand.”

If we carry those 2 quotes throughout the rest of the show, then no doubt the tragedies that happen later on are caused by a collective misunderstanding of each other. And a collective lashing out at that misunderstanding of each other.

“Violence, in other words, is ignorance.”

The most central theme of the show is empathy vs fear. I s’pose whenever there’s a conflict in the show we’re supposed to be asking whether the characters should answer with empathy or fear. Certain characters lives have revolved heavily around fear. And that informs their decision making quite a bit. This will all come up again at multiple points throughout the show.

Syd... probably can’t break the 4th wall. So maybe it’s most logical to interpret this as her inner monologue. Very Jessica Jones esque.

The same voice lines from when Syd was searching for David in episode 1 are played. I guess there go to whenever Davids lost (whether in the world or in his mind) is to transmit Syds voice calling his name in hopes he’ll hear it and come back.

Kerry can pick locks.

The concept of “bad mutants” is well established amongst the veteran summerland crew. Ptonomy’s caution about David is probably because he feels he has a selfish vibe, and that’s a well known red flag of “bad mutants.”

It should also be noted he’s partly afraid of him because he has so much trouble understanding him. His powers, which when used affectively are essentially the ability to understand where someone’s coming from, keep getting overrided by Davids.

It’s now to the point where Ptonomy is doubting his own ability to tell what’s real and what’s not real. He was pretty confident he’d always know somehow in episode 2. Now, not so much.

Ptonomy very early on is open to the idea that David both has powers and psychological issues. “He’s unstable. You try hearing voices for 10-15 years, self medicate with hard drugs and then get dumped in a looney bin.”

Ptonomy also determines that because of his instability combined with the fact he has powers, David is a bomb waiting to go off.

I suppose if we’re trying to figure out their logic with the whole “the combination of being mentally ill and having powers makes him dangerous”, and considering that their right now going over an incident where David robbed his therapist for drug money and then bashed the doctors head in when he came back, the direct concern is that David makes bad decisions and/or selfish decisions (at least), and if he were to make a bad decision regarding his powers a lot of innocent people could get very badly hurt. Or killed. Along with the worry that the voices in his head don’t exactly give him the most angelic of advice at times, and because of his powers he’s very capable of fulfilling their wills, so to speak.

Based on Olivers speech at the beginning of the episode though, it might be safe to say the overall message is instead of acting on fear they should act on empathy and help David overcome his problems instead of vilifying him for his mental illness.

Syd suggest Davids hiding his real memories behind a fake ones and Ptonomy says she going through a lot of effort just to convince herself Davids a good guy. I never really got what he meant, but I guess what he meant is that Syd’s trying to find a justifiable reason for why David would attack Dr Poole like he did when the obvious answer is just “He’s got violent tendencies.” I always just thought she was genuinely hypothesizing, ya know, trying to solve the case. Maybe she was and Ptonomy’s just mean.

“I was looking for the man I loved. Or did I just love the idea of him? The face he showed me?” Doubt springs up early. Why can none of the characters reconcile that a person can have both good and evil in them at the same time? That’s... all people, in fact.

When Kissinger ask if Amy knew David had powers Amy says, “I think so.” Amy potentially acted on fear as well, in regards to her and Davids childhood that is.

Kerry mostly only thinks of herself in relation to Cary.

Cary misses Kerry when she’s gone. Even besides the roles they fill for each other, they generally enjoy each others company. They’re quite literally as close as 2 people can be. Each one living for the sake of the other.

Davids once again surrounded by a crowd of people all yelling in his face. After they disappear though he recovers pretty fast. I guess he’s used to it.

Clockworks Podcast pointed out that the music Davids wincing at is sax heavy Jazz, which is (abstractly) the sound The Devil With Yellow Eyes makes whenever he appears. If my theory about David seeing through the 4th wall is correct, then maybe he’s actually hearing that sound whenever TDWYE is around. Alternatively, Farouk blast that in his head everytime to mess with him.

“Sorry... I forgot about your um... I had a similar- proclivity? Malady? I forget the word- what’s the word? I’ve been here a long time.”

If the previous paragraphs are right, Oliver’s probably implying he was also affected by a mental parasite at some point. It might’ve even been what stranded him in the astral plane.

From Davids perspective he skipped over the entire second half of Chapter 3.

Oliver is essentially explaining the plot of the show to David and the audience before it’s even been unfurled.

“You have an unquiet mind, so you war with yourself, like a dog trying to chew off its own tail.”

David’s still in a very pessimistic guilt ridden place at this point in the story. That’s probably the internal war Oliver’s talking about.

... why can’t Oliver leave the astral plane again? If he did have his own mental parasite, it seems long gone by now. If he just can’t find his way back, then how does he do it in Chapter 7?

Syd calls non-mutants “normals.”

“We were the ghost in a haunted house.” ~Syd, Chapter 4

“You think ghost like living in a haunted house?” ~Syd, Chapter 12

Why does Syd keep hallucinating The Angriest Boy? Or is that just visual metaphor?

Ptonomy’s a very, “Get the job done and look classy while doing it” sorta guy.

“To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.” ~Sun Tzu, Ptonomy

Is the above quote perhaps relevant to the shows message during other conflicts throughout the series? Could it be subtly implying all the characters should always look for non-violent ways to defeat their enemies? I.e. not just a classy line from Ptonomy, but a statement of themes within the show.

The food David, Philly, and Dr Poole are having in Philly’s memories is cherry pie.

In Philly’s memory David says, “I don’t keep a lot of stuff.” And Philly comments that there’s no evidence David had a past. At least among the things David owns at that point. I know Farouk edited a lot of Davids memories, but why did David himself get rid of so much physical stuff? Syd said the reason he broke into Dr Pooles that day was to destroy their taped conversations. What’s compelling him to erase himself from existence? Is it as simple as “Farouk”? It seems like on a deeper level David doesn’t want anyone to know too much about him. Everyone’s only allowed to know what he tells them. His way of feeling in control I guess.

Philly did the classic “I can fix him” when she started dating David.

Philly implies David going off his medication and keeping bad company is what caused the downfall of their relationship. And subsequently his life, probably.

Despite everything, Philly still feels sympathetic towards David.

“Whoever altered Davids memory-“ Ptonomy very early on humors the idea that Davids being acted on by a 3rd party.

The longer Kerry is away from Cary, the more antsy she is for a fight. She’s not supposed to have to sit through all this “boring stuff.”

Ptonomy left after he got the info on Pooles location from Philly. He probably wanted to get the rest of the information from the source. Ironically, they probably woulda gotten closer to the real answer if he’d just looked a bit longer.

Sys proudly says “Yes” when “Dr Poole” ask if she’s in love with David.

It never really comes up again, but Kerry and Cary are physically linked. Maybe even psychologically. When one of them gets hurt, or even exerts their body a lot, the other can feel it, even if their own body doesn’t take on the actual damage. This is still true even if they’re miles apart.

Syds definitely portrayed as the hero at the end of this scene.

“All those years of practice-“ A part of David always knew he had powers. I wonder, did he practice a little in secret? Or is he saying he was at Summerland for years? That doesn’t really add up. But then... what does he mean by years?

Lenny encourages David to get angry so that his powers will strengthen enough for them to overpower the astral plane. Sort of... cheating his way out. David will later achieve more feats of strength through honing his emotions. Like many heroes, his level of power is intrinsically linked to his emotional state.

Very directly here, Davids violence is caused by ignorance. He doesn’t know Syd switched bodies with Walter and is trying to escape.

[bestworstcase]

how's everyone in bitter snow feel about the justice system in Corona? also how are the guards in bitter snow, how do these people treat their positions as guards?

okay anon you said “everyone” so like

gonna talk specifically about all the character’s perceptions right now, as of chapter 9, because a lot of these feelings evolve over the course of benighted and also the rest of the series 👍

major characters!

cassandra!

she is well aware of the harshness of the system. her own birth parents were executed for their crimes—we’ll get more into that later >:)—and given who her father is and what her aspirations are, she knows some of the more unsavory details about what guard work can mean. there is a part of her that is… uncomfortable with this, but she rationalizes it as a discomfort related to feeling like she’s trapped in the shadow of the (very serious) crimes for which her parents were executed. she has very much drunk the kool-aid that all of this stuff is correct and just because it’s only being done To Criminals, who of course are not like regular people, who must be protected From Criminals (like her parents, there’s this whole nasty feedback loop of self-disgust going on with this). 

she also very much has her dad on a pedestal and doesn’t want to think badly about anything he does, and she wants to make him proud, and in her mind making him proud = succeeding as a guard. so that’s another huge thing tilting her in favor of the coronan justice system. 

rapunzel!

i don’t think rapunzel has quite made the connection between the existence of the king’s watch and what they actually do, which is arrest people and feed them into the horrible justice system. she knows that eugene was arrested and nearly hanged, and she doesn’t feel good about that, but she also has not been exposed to this system as a… daily thing with a wider scope than simply being something eugene escaped from. she has a very particular kind of self-centered naivety where it is still hard for her to grasp that people… exist, outside of her life, almost like a lack of object permanence where the concept of Other People is concerned? because she grew up in a tower with nobody but gothel. she’s beginning to develop inklings of this, but it’s not there yet, and with frederic and everyone in the palace actively trying to shelter her from the more upsetting pieces of palace life still, she’s still kind of navigating around obstacles that she can’t see in order to get there.

anyway all of which is to say she’s laboring under the impression that everything in corona is hunky dory. still very much in the homecoming honeymoon phase.

eugene!

eugene is in this weird transitional place where he, by his own actions in the last chapter, has been rather rudely shocked out of his own complacency and now he’s looking around at all the luxuries and privileges he has been granted purely by virtue of being the guy who happened to bring rapunzel home and he’s going: oh. oh i didn’t earn any of this actually. 

he knows exactly what corona is like. if you’re a thief in this world you know not to get arrested in corona. and he did get arrested in corona and he came very close to losing his life because of it. for a while there, i think he just fully embraced his pardon and decided to live it up because, well, why not, it’s what he deserves after a lifetime of hard living and fighting to survive… but fundamentally, he’s not an asshole even if he is sometimes an ass, and the more he lets go of the flynn rider persona the more his natural empathy reasserts itself. right now, his focus is on being better for rapunzel, but i think he sort of has in the back of his mind how very, very lucky he got in his brush with the coronan justice system and that inclines him to at least feel… dubious about becoming a cog in it. 

lance!

he’s sort of similar to eugene, in that he has this criminal background and he knows exactly what sort of reputation corona has in the criminal world… but there’s also this element of, he’s sort of… adjacent to law enforcement now. thief-takers are sort of like private investigators and sort of like bounty hunters, and they exist in the weird margin between law enforcement and criminal activity and lance has this very personal experience of having been sort of… invited into that space as an opportunity to reform his ways, and that worked for him.

i think he and eugene could probably have a really interesting conversation not too far down the line about how they got out of the thieving business and became better people and ways that could be applied on a broader scale versus just chucking everyone in prison, which i imagine tends to be the default not just in corona but in most countries in this region. lance sees his experiences helping victims of theft as intrinsically linked to his personal decision to never steal again, whereas eugene reformed because rapunzel, specifically, treated him with compassion and dignity. put those two things together and you have a decent platform for a restorative approach to criminal justice. 

varian!

varian is a kid. he has no clue about anything but his alchemy lol. i think he probably has a lot of romanticized notions of adventurous thieves in the vein of flynn rider and is accustomed to seeing guards/watchmen as The Enemy through that lens, but he has very very little actual real world experience with either and to him it all has this aura of fiction. it’s something that happens To Other People, not to him. 

caine!

caine saw the coronan justice system tear her family apart when she was nine years old, over a petty theft her father committed to feed his starving family. also, she’s saporian, so she has this extra pile of cultural grudges against corona in addition to this personal trauma. she hates corona, and unlike in canon—where the narrative need to make everything About Rapunzel demanded that her motivations be dumbed down—she puts the blame for what happened to her squarely where it belongs, on king frederic’s crackdown and the system backing it. though she’s not a separatist herself, she’s perfectly happy to work with them to attack corona, and she sees her piracy as… sort of a campaign against corona and its allies? in that she targets mostly trading vessels belonging to the seven kingdoms and has definitely liberated coronan prison barges in the past. 

as far as she’s concerned corona can just burn. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ up saporia

sirin! 

…honestly you’d be hard pressed to find anybody who hates coronan justice more than sirin does because [spoilers lol]. she keeps it on a very tight lock, because she is a pragmatist first and foremost and she isn’t interested in expending her rage on a doomed cause. when she acts on her hatred, she wants it to matter. and she’s also a leader, with a lot of vulnerable people relying on her to keep them safe, so she can’t just lash out the way she might want to if she had no other obligations. so she’s cultivated this very cold, very methodical anger and is proceeding with her plan very carefully but also, definitely enjoyed getting her hands bloody in the prologue. 

assorted secondary and minor characters (just the ones i feel like talking about, rip to everyone else)

commander peter!

it is peter’s job to enforce the coronan justice system. fundamentally, he has to agree with it. i think he has this ideal of what justice should be in the back of his mind and he sees all the ways that coronan justice doesn’t line up, and he’s trying his best to close those gaps while working from within the system. he cares very intently about his country and its people, and he firmly believes that he’s working to keep everybody safe—even if it comes at the cost of this harsh, sometimes unfair system. 

as part of this, he keeps very high standards of conduct for his watchmen. abuses of power do happen—peter can’t always be watching every single man in his force, and while he ostensibly commands the city watches in the rest of corona’s city’s too, in practice his influence tapers off outside of herzingen simply because of distance—but he tries to stamp them out as best he can.

(there’s definitely a big range within the king’s watch itself vis a vis how the guards approach their work. i think, taken on average, they... are cops. their job is to enforce the system first and foremost and they wouldn’t get into that career if they didn’t believe in it; some try to be more compassionate about it than others and some are just in it for the authority but they’re all... working to serve the system.)

arianna!

she’s both a foreigner originally—she was born and raised in eldora, one of corona’s neighbors—and very well traveled, so she has seen a lot of other models of justice in action and this leads to her taking a dim view of the way corona handles things. i think she and frederic probably have a lot of heated arguments about his crackdown in particular, and it’s one of the biggest points of contention in their marriage. she does often succeed in being a moderating voice, and i imagine she is a vocal proponent for reform not just in corona but in the seven kingdoms generally, but unfortunately she has no real authority in corona (because frederic is the monarch, not her) so her influence in this regard is limited. 

frederic!

in contrast to arianna, frederic i think truly believes that cracking down harder on crime is the only way to make it go away. he’s thinking about how a criminal in a jail cell is a criminal who isn’t out on the streets hurting people, rather than thinking about where these criminals are coming from in the first place. he listens to arianna—and to ludolf and peter, who are other moderating voices in this regard—but he also has a very hard time stepping out of this mindset of “we just need to take the bad people and put them somewhere else so the good people will be safe.” in a way, i think he has a very similar mindset to rapunzel in that they both tend to engage in black-and-white thinking, but where rapunzel sees only the good parts of the world, frederic tends to see things in the most bleak light possible. 

gilbert! 

gilbert is a career military guy in a kingdom with no standing army during a time of peace. this… absolutely has an impact on his approach to domestic justice, and in particular he takes the attitude that criminals and dissidents are The Enemy. he feeds into frederic’s worst impulses and fears because in his mind, frederic is too cowardly to do what must be done to quash The Threat. i think… like frederic a lot of this ultimately comes from a desire to keep corona safe, he’s just jumped fully overboard into not considering the “wrong” sort of coronan part of the country he wants to protect. and then him seeing everything through this military lens is fuel on that fire. 

ludolf! 

he’s a champion of compassion. he hates the existence of the prison barges and the gallows, but i think he also does not have much in the way of actionable alternatives; he’s has this kind of idealized, almost rapunzel-esque idea that if they just apply a little faith and goodwill then the problems can be solved (and this tends to weaken his stance politically, because he runs into the “well then what do you propose we do” problem; he works best in tandem with someone like arianna or peter, both of whom are details people who can come up with real solutions). 

quirin! 

having been… sort of? the closest thing aphelion had to law enforcement back in the day, i think he has strong opinions on corona’s system—namely that it’s all wrong—but he keeps them to himself because he’s not one to talk about the past in general and he’s also well aware that in corona, he’s just some peasant and his opinions aren’t wanted. mostly, he tries to keep his head down, keep himself and his kid out of trouble, and focus on preserving the simple life he has constructed for himself. 

(in aphelion, i think criminality was dealt with through the moonstone cult—this decayed somewhat over the course of the dedication, as aphelionese people lost their strong connection with the moonstone, but the basic philosophy still remained, and the basic philosophy was “work to understand the root of the problem, then shine the light of truth and understanding on it until the problem reveals its solution”)

adira!

adira very much thinks coronans are all a bit nuts and unlike quirin is not at all shy about voicing this thought when it happens to come up on the rare occasion that she stops being a vagrant long enough to talk to somebody. but that doesn’t happen very often. mostly she’s been too focused on searching for the sundrop and fixing the moonstone to care much about what corona does with its criminals, but also if she were directly asked she’d be like “were you trying to create a criminal assembly line? because that’s what you did” lol

nigel!

i think nigel is a very fearful person in general but this also wars with a degree of practicality. the notion of criminals frightens him but he can also recognize that many people turn to crime out of desperation or fear, and he has a tough time navigating this dissonance. on the whole i think he’d tend to lean toward whoever argued the most reasonably on any specific subject where coronan justice is concerned, which in practice means he ends up aligned with peter a lot—he respects peter’s authoritative experience in dealing with criminals, and peter tends toward this reasonable-sounding, incremental reform approach to the system that speaks to both nigel’s fearfulness and his practical side. 

feldspar! 

he’s in kind of an uncomfortable situation, in that he is saporian but i don’t think he is particularly open about that fact and would really prefer his coronan neighbors not… know about it. because being saporian, he has a clearer view of how the coronan justice system disadvantages his people and how the crackdown landed especially hard on saporia. i think he lives in perpetual anxiety over the possibility of getting in trouble or being accused of a crime and having his whole life destroyed as a result. also with his friendship with cass, there’s definitely a part of him that wants to just. shake her. until she wakes up to the injustices being done; but he’s far too anxious to actually do something like that so whenever she starts going on about being a guard he’s just kinda like :| 

xavier!

as the royal blacksmith and thus supplier of the weapons and armor used by the king’s watch, he has this closeness to the law enforcement side of it that definitely biases him a bit in favor of them; they’re one of his primary customers and biggest sources of business. but also, he’s a very intelligent, very well-read person, and i feel like he spent some time traveling in his youth, so he’s in a similar boat to arianna where he knows for a fact that this is not the only or the best way to do things and he could probably be coaxed into a lengthy conversation about it with the right questions. 

[actualbird]

and for this rec list for @dghdafeedbackfest​, it is time for the TEARS!!!!! here are some fics that made me cry real actual goddamn tears, many times in public. be warned and have tissues ready if you decide to embark on these fics!!!

in this world, we’re just beginning by cakesnake, nosecoffee

“I'm going to solve a mystery.” He tells Todd proudly.

Todd snorts. “Because you're a detective?”

“Correct. And you're going to help me.” Again, telling him, there is no question, Todd is intrinsically linked, he can feel it.

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“This place is legitimately paradise, there's nothing to be solved, no mysteries here.” He shrugs, and takes another sip of his drink.

“If this place is such a paradise then why aren't you having fun?”

( A San Junipero AU )

CONTENT WARNING: DEATH. it’s a san junipero AU and if you dont know what that means, i implore you to quickly google it before you endeavor on this fic, just like i did. will that make you cry any less now that you know whats going to happen? ABSOLUTELY NOT. i read this fic right before an 8am class and my eyes were RED from BAWLING. the emotions in this fic are intense and really god me in the heart but also made me believe love is real.

I Can't Tell One From the Other (Did I Find You Or You Find Me) by Lavellington

"I can't possibly meet your parents on Sunday, Todd! It's too soon! I haven't done any preparatory research!"

"Yeah," Todd says, "we all know you're Mister Preparatory Research."

*

Todd's still trying to Fix Things with his family, and he's not sure if introducing them to Dirk Gently counts as progress in that department.

part of a series!!!! the whole series is wonderful but this fic is really my favorite of the whole thing. it doesnt look like itll make you cry, but it will, oh it will. i love this fic so much because it’s the kind of hurt that feels like pulling out a splinter. it has to happen to get better. wonderful piece.

and i could give you all the olive trees by orphan_account

Todd opened his eyes to a vision of dancing white and yellow blobs.

‘Daisies,’ he croaked.

‘I told you to run,’ Dirk said.

(Dirk and Todd get captured by Blackwing. It's no picnic.)

CONTENT WARNINGS: BLACKWING, VIOLENCE, AND INJURY. this fic is not for the faint of heart but if youre a fan of seeing characters get hurt but never give up this fic is gonna be amazing for you

The Only Way Out is Through (Or: How to be Almost, Mostly, Okay Again) by electricteatime / @kieren-fucking-walker​

"Terrible as it is, it’s easier to cling to the hope that there were good reasons for what they did. That the people who treated him well were at heart good people, and they hadn’t just been lying to him the whole time, that the small amounts of affection he’d been given were real and tangible. Even when he knows the truth somewhere deep inside it doesn’t mean he wants to acknowledge it.

But, like all things, it’s only a matter of time."

*** The only thing Dirk Gently has ever learned to do with his trauma, is shove it down as deep as it will go, lock it away, and hope that ignoring it means it isn't really there. For a while at least, it works. But when the past comes knocking looking to make amends, and pretending that none of it was as bad as it seemed isn't an option anymore, the delicate balancing act he's been practicing for years finally tips over the edge.

Healing is painful, recovery isn't linear, sometimes you have to tear everything down before you can start to rebuild.

His own demons might be the scariest thing he's ever had to face, but it's not something he has to do alone, and in the end that makes all the difference.

OHHHH MANNN OKAY OKAY SO. this fic is my all time favorite wip right now. i patiently wait for new chapters like a frothing at the mouth chihuahua waiting for a treat. this fic contains some real heavy stuff in terms of dirk’s trauma but more importantly, dirk’s recovery, and it is handled so goddamn well. this fic makes me cry, but it also gives me hope. do you want dirk gently to Get Better? THIS FIC IS FOR YOU!! PLEASE READ IT, I LOVE IT A LOT!!!

All Roads Lead to Nowhere (Except the one that Leads to You) by electricteatime

Todd’s heart stops. Or it feels like it does because… that’s a voice. That’s a human voice. That’s a human voice that he must have been hallucinating. He’s been driving too long, drunk too much coffee, didn’t get enough sleep last night he’s just-

“Bloody hell, it’s dark in here.”

Nope. Todd scrambles to open the car door and flings himself away from the vehicle, stumbling backwards until he lands on his ass, staring at the car with wide eyes and struggling to catch his breath past the sheer terror that’s overcome him all of a sudden.

This isn’t happening. ***

Todd knows the work he does isn't the most morally sound, being a delivery guy for a local gang was never going to to be, but the job is good, the pay is better, and no matter how temporary it was supposed to be when he started he has no intention of stopping now.

Then a strange man with an even stranger name wakes up in the trunk of his car, and everything goes to shit.

this is one of the first few fics i read for this fandom and i am blown away every single time i reread it. todd’s characterization in this fic hits the ball out of the park, and characterization and journey are just done so well it brings tears to my eyes. gorgeously crafted fic!!!

(He Wouldn’t Say) Kidnappings Were a Routine Part of his Career by Bumblie_Bee

Dirk is woken by something colliding with his face. Hard. He opens his eyes, and at first the room around him is hazy and dark, but as his eyes adjust and the blurriness clears a little, he sees he’s in what looks to be a warehouse and realises that the ‘something’ that had collided with his face was, in fact, probably a fist. Which would make it more of a ‘someone’ than a ‘something’, if he’s going to be precise.

CONTENT WARNINGS: VIOLENCE AND INJURY. okay this is straight up whump with comfort but goddamn do i love whump and comfort. what i love so much about this fic is that it doesnt just whump the hell outta dirk, it makes dirk go through the messy process of physical recovery. it’s so so difficult, and that makes me cry. oh but what an honor to cry for this fic!!!

you are the one (you hold me in my place); by unintentionallyangsty

three months after the events of Bergsberg and Wendimoor, Dirk is kidnapped again.

following this, it becomes very clear, very quickly, that Todd hasn't yet taken the time to mentally process the drastic shift that has taken place within his life, leading up to this point.

this is the aftermath.

CONTENT WARNING: BRIEF SELF-HARM. this fic is pretty intense on the emotions and it makes me cry because it is so apparent that the trio care about each other so much!!! wonderful look into how todd is dealing (or not dealing) with everything happening

if you cry reading these fics, dont forget to drink some water to re-hydrate!!! also dont forget to leave a comment to show these fic writers some love!!!! happy (or not so happy...) reading :Dc

[douchebagbrainwaves]

LET YOUR IDEA EVOLVE

In Wright's early plans for the Guggenheim, the right half was a ziggurat; he inverted it to get the round closed, he was carrying a Powerbook identical to mine. You find the same in music and art. Leads could and did use a fixed size round as a legitimate-seeming way of saying what all founders hate to hear: I'll invest if other people will. And since the lawyer could never admit, in front of his client, that he'd screwed up, he instead had to insist on retaining all the draconian terms in it, but to design beautiful things. It's hard to imagine what it would feel like to have x-ray vision for character. Then the startup and the lead would cooperate to find the best startups. Investors like it when you don't need it this month.

Understand this and make a conscious effort not to be so cruel to one another? The guys that guys envy, girls like. She has a horror of ostentation so visceral it's almost a phobia. And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option. In the past when I bought things from Apple it was an unalloyed pleasure. Investors may end up with less stock per startup, which is like a sort of Valley within the Valley, terrible things happen to them too. Leads could and did use a fixed size round as a legitimate-seeming way of saying what all founders hate to hear: I'll invest if other people will. One of the defining qualities of an asshole. Where had these questions come from? Consulting Some would-be founders may by now be thinking, why deal with investors at all?

The Eiffel Tower looks striking partly because it seems kind of slimy. Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people's mistakes, traffic jams, addictive but unrewarding pastimes. A deals per partner per year. Fundraising is still terribly distracting for startups. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. But while some openly flaunt the fact that each series A has enormously elaborate, custom paperwork. It's easy to start to believe it will happen, and I think that's ok. Fourteen-year-olds didn't start smoking pot because they'd heard it would help them forget their problems.

Investors may end up with less stock per startup, but not if you're working on technology. Some of the more unscrupulous do it deliberately. Startups don't win by getting great funding rounds, but by making great products. Keep rewriting your program. You can magnify the effect of growth than the cause. The antidote is people. The cause of this problem is the same. The word I most misunderstood was tact. And since the lawyer could never admit, in front of his client, that he'd screwed up, he instead had to insist on retaining all the draconian terms in it, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. Some of the more unscrupulous do it deliberately.

Poof goes the axiom that taste can't be wrong. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be able to compete with. Apple II? Unfortunately, t is still very far from infinity. In fact, what makes the number go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of startup people around you. If that weren't bad enough, these wildly fluctuating nodes are all linked together. But if you consciously prioritize bullshit avoidance over other factors like money and prestige, you can let the numbers speak for you. How can you get errors asking that? You're not going to stop to consider the possibility that he is forced to produce an elegant design. It didn't have any noticeable effect.

Or Bruegel in his paintings—or Shakespeare, for that matter. During interviews, Robert and Trevor and I would pepper the applicants with technical questions. As a thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. There will of course come a point where you get stupid because you're tired. After a while, drugs have their own momentum. Teenage kids used to have a medium that makes change easy. That's the worst thing a startup can least afford. Chance meetings let your acquaintance drift in the same way the nerds learned to be popular, certainly, but as a predictor of success it's rounding error compared to the founders. If it's physiological, it should be better not just for clothes, but for almost everything they do, apparently, do society wives; in some parts of Manhattan, life for women sounds like a continuation of high school, watching as the cheerleaders threw an effigy of an opposing player into the audience to be torn to pieces. How big is the hacker market, after all? Hard as this was to be the most common form of failure is running out of runway.

[carmenlire]

Hi! I am pretty new to SH, and when I went to ao3 to find some malec fics I saw there were 19k fics there and I just... noped out. But then I came across one of your fics somewhere idr (prob tumblr) and I really really liked your writing style so I may or may not have spent my spring break reading all your fics... rip. I'm still way too intimidated by the sheer amount of fics on ao3 and since I really loved your writing, I was hoping you could maybe rec some, either fics or authors? Thanksss

holy shit, anon, I’ve written so much dkfgjhsdfkjg that must have been quite the undertaking for spring break lmao! I’m super happy to hear that you like my writing though, especially enough to read most/all of my fics! 

Okay, so. When I first started in this fandom, it was overwhelming too and that was in August of 2017 lol! I read a lot of fic rec masterlists on here and then once I went through those, I explored ao3 a little more, along with those authors that captured my interest. I don’t know what you’re interested in but I’ll just go ahead and list some of the fics I started with along with my favorite authors! Everyone on this list is a delight as a person and a writer and I hope you like them! 

(This is going to be probably a lot of me rambling variants of read this!! but I’m gonna put a short summary so you know what the story is actually about. I will most likely oversimplify the fic lmao but check out those links for the full synopsis!)

Over 100k

Fall Without Wings by @notcrypticbutcoy (WIP) This was the first fic I ever read in this fandom and it topped every masterlist when I started– for good reason. At the time, it was around 180k? and I read it in one day/sitting. The writing is impeccable, plot to die for, and the way the author builds the characters in this story is just engrossing as hell. This is god tier lmao!

One Line Summary: Canon divergent AU where shadowhunters have wings, Magnus is actively on the Clave’s shit list, and Malec’s relationship is the best sort of slowburn.

One Easy Answer by @maleccrazedauthor This is the first of a two part series and holy. shit. I was enthralled from the first sentence. Apparently, I have a thing for canon divergent AUs and I read this a year and a half ago but still remember gasping at a certain point, hanging on the edge of my seat as I waited to see what the characters would do. I love this canon divergent AU– it’s written so beautifully. (Note: The series itself is over 100k. This particular fic is around 36k)

One Line Summary: Magnus and Alec are leaders of their people and have to learn how to make things work when a marriage of convenience is their only option.

Anything You Say by @milominderbindered Admittedly, I’ve only read the first 80k? of this because I started it like over a year ago and it was a wip at the time but I remember being Super Into It and desperate to see where the story was going. Now that it’s finished, I’d totally recommend it!

One Line Summary: Detective Alec and Forensic Expert Magnus. Honestly, need I say more lmao.

Deeper than the Truth by @insiemes This was one of the first fics I read– probably within the first week of entering the fandom. It’s a wonderful story and a classic for a reason. And that ending:’)

One Line Summary: Alec is a famous author who uses a pen name and Magnus is a fashion designer in love with Gideon’s books.

60k-80k

The Haunting of Lightwood Hall by @bonibaru There are tragically few historical Malec fics in ao3 and this is a gem! The plot is interesting and the love story is super well done. And that ending! I loved it so much.

One Line Summary: Magnus Bane, a psychic, is invited to the Lightwood estate when a murder mystery implicated the heir, Alec Lightwood.

42 North, 71 West by @lecrit Okay so, admittedly, I haven’t read this yet but it’s because I don’t read wips and this just concluded like, last week lol. However, lecrit is a brilliant author and I’ve read several of her fics before and loved all of them! You really can’t go wrong with this author and I would encourage you to read anything/everything in her ao3!

One Line Summary: Politics!Alec and Actor!Magnus in one AU? Sign me up!

The Strength of (Un)Broken Bonds by Blue This is the first of a three part series and I love it so, so much! This is a little grittier though not angsty. The plot is tightly woven, the characterization spot on, and it’s an excellent exploration of the parabatai bond done right. Wildly creative and I everytime I reread this, I’m just in awe at this author’s skill!

One Line Summary: Post 2b, shadowhunters realize just how intrinsically their biology is tied to demon energy and Alec has to deal with a fritzing parabatai bond.

Addicted to You by AlxSteele I’m not a huge fan of fuck buddy AUs but this author is prolific in the shadowfam so I took a chance and I’m so glad I did! This was a realistic portrayal of this AU without being needlessly angsty. Everything was just right and I was so ready to see Magnus and Alec get their shit together!

One Line Summary: Magnus and Alec lead busy lives and neither one has time for a relationship– only what starts out as a string of one night stands leads both to catch feelings big time.

A Fighting Chance by HeartsDesire456 This is a classic for me. I read most of this in one sitting and was almost late for work! But it was totally worth it. I love the build up and the world that this author created. Really, one of the best malec fics I’ve ever read and I love it so, so much! I would recommend anything else by this author, especially Hard Choices, though that fic is considerably heavier though no less well done.

One Line Summary: Alec owns an MMA gym next to Magnus’s dance studio. What starts out as a noise complaint quickly changes Magnus and Alec’s life irrevocably.

We Break That Way by ifallonblackdays_fics and valfromrome I’ve read this several times and it’s a fic of substance. I love fluff but this is a really excellently plotted story that does a fantastic job of showing both Magnus and Alec as the leaders they are. It’s darker but realistic for the shadowhunters universe and I love how amazingly well these authors created a story that picks up after 2x18 in an excellent canon divergent AU where Magnus and Alec didn’t reconnect at that Hunter’s Moon party?

One Line Summary: Not all shadowhunters are happy that Alec’s trying to build relationships with the downworld– what happens when a group of extremists go after the Head of the New York Institute in a bid to return to the old way?

40k-60k

The Lonely Heart Hotline by @unrestrainedlyexcessive Anon. Listen. I am putting Fatale here because this is her latest completed fic and it’s 40k but I would heavily encourage you to read every single piece of writing by this author. I have read all of her fics at least twice and I love them to death. She does such an amazing job of portraying real life, even when her AU is fantastical. I’m partial to her Ave Atque Vale series, which was the first fic I read by her, and her Home series but as I was scrolling through her ao3 profile, I just kept remembering all her stories and how amazing they are. Seriously. I can’t stress enough about how much i love this author’s writing!!

One Line Summary: Alec’s a law student who moonlights as a phone sex operator and Magnus calls him one night, only to talk about music and his questionable phone professionalism.

Love is a Gamble by la_muerta This is another author that I adore and I’ve read all of her fics! This is a western historical AU that I read last spring and simply loved! I’d also recommend her series The Universe is Conspiring Against Us!

One Line Summary: Sheriff Alec Lightwood is busy enough keeping Nephilim Falls from descending into chaos but when Magnus Bane opens a gambling house in town, Alec’s has more on his mind than his townspeople.

20k-40k

Give Me the Pain (Then Take It Away) by LadyOxymoron This is a beautifully well-done story of Alec and Magnus exploring BDSM, particularly Alec’s submission. But it’s so much more that. It’s about their relationship and Alec learning to take better care of himself and overall, I was stunned at this fic. I would really recommend anyone read this for something that pulls the heartstrings while still being hot as hell.

One Line Summary:  After a near death experience and throwaway line from Magnus, Alec finds out that he can let himself fall, as long as Magnus is there to catch him.

Appassionato by chonideno This is a classic in the shadowfam. A wonderful story of malec falling in love before properly meeting. The vibe is so ethereal and full of feeling. Really lovely story.

One Line Summary: Alec plays the piano and one day, a request slips under his door– what follows is months of Alec playing for a stranger, both of them falling one note at a time.

Pillow Talk by lacheses This was one of the first fics I read and it’s a really beautiful story that takes place during season one. It’s gentle and really does a fantastic job of building Magnus and Alec’s relationship, both of them so cautious and invested so quickly after meeting.

One Line Summary: Alec Lightwood falls in love, one nap at a time.

Good Our Whole Lives by @beatperfume This fic ruined me. I was invested from the first word and read it in one sitting. The emotions are enough to put you in a stranglehold and while I was wildly unsure based on the synopsis/AU (hooker AU) I gave it a chance and I am so glad I did. I remember reading it and just feeling so much. Wonderful, 10/10. I would rec anything by this author (she really is very creative!) but particularly and I will be your shade.

One Line Summary: When Magnus catches Alec, a shadowhunter, hustling his club the two of them reach an agreement.

Three’s a Crowd by GoldenDaydreams I’ve read this a few times and I love it to death. Super lighthearted and funny, it’s a fun story about Alec and Magnus trying to have sex and Jace being a perpetually pain in the ass cockblock lmao.

One Line Summary: The story where Jace keeps interrupting Alec and Magnus’s ‘alone time,’ and they’re both super fed up.

Sympathy for a Prince by @ketzwrites This was a hella fun story about Magnus as a literal prince of hell and Alec, a no-nonsense detective just trying to do his job. Ketz has written several fics I’d recommend but this might just be my favorite!

One Line Summary: When Magnus, prince of hell, comes top side he doesn’t expect to meet Homicide Detective Alec and become his partner, so to speak.

Hold Onto Me (Cause I’m a Little Unsteady by MagnificentlyMagic One of my biggest pet peeves with the show is that scene in 1x09 where Jace betrays Alec and then it’s never spoken of again. This is a great fic that takes that scene and runs wild with it.

One Line Summary: His parabatai rune was burning, not with death, or injury, but with betrayal.

10k-20k

Yours is the Light by @theonetruenorth This author is an autoread for me and I love a good abo fic. This is so beautiful and I really, really love this. It spins the trope on its head while still in the shadowhunters verse and delivers a really satisfying love story for Alec and Magnus! I would really, really recommend literally everything they’ve written though!

One Line Summary: It wasn’t exactly a secret that out of all three secondary genders, it was the alphas who were the strongest, the most aggressive, the most territorial– It was also completely wrong.

Inimitable by Bumblebeesknees. I adore anything by this author but this. Wow. The plot is super creative as Alec and Magnus get sent back to Victorian London and Alec has to do something both of them would rather he didn’t. It explores a murky area that has the potential to ruin both of them and the writing is perfect. I don’t want to ruin anything but you gotta read this. I read it when it was first posted then scrolled back up to the top and immediately devoured it a second time. I’d recommend anything and everything by this author.

One Line Summary: Stuck in London in 1882 without Magnus’ magic, the way back to New York in the 21st century requires securing a charmed amulet from the Magnus who lives in that time.

It’s a Kind of Magicby @thealmostrhetoricalquestion I love every single fic by this author and would highly suggest you read everything by her but this one has a special place in my heart. It’s light and sweet and a wonderful AU!!!

One Line Summary: Magnus and Alec live on the same floor and are highkey into each other– the only thing is that Magnus is a witch and Alec’s a mundane.

1k-10k

You Only Live Twice by partnerincrime I love this story so much!! It’s a fun little Simon POV on Alec as a gardening billionaire recluse and Magnus as a CEO of the shadow world’s largest department store. It’s hilarious and I lose my shit every time I read it!

One Line Summary: In which Simon Lewis becomes an entrepreneur, and, through a series of highly improbable events, fails upwardly toward success.

Lonely Starbucks Lovers by partnerincrime is also a hoot and I love this author so much!! It’s the quintessential coffeeshop AU.

PWP

The Way I Feel for You by @theonetruenorth Goddamn, this is a masterpiece. I’ve read this several time and like I said earlier, anything by this author is guaranteed to be amazing.

Shadows. Shovels. Joy. by oncethrown While this isn’t strictly a pwp, it’s about the parabatai bond and Jace’s POV on Alec having sex. Heartwarming and super well written! another example of how the parabatai bond could be well done.

In Plain Sight by redorchid. Holy shit, I love this to death and it’s actually the first in a series called membership, about Magnus and Alec’s exploration into exhibitionism.

hit me like a ray of sun, burning through my darkest night by liamandzayn I’ve read all of her malec fics at least twice and I just think she writes great sex lol. Definitely recommend!

With Bones Unbuttoned by @ohfreckle No smut list would be complete without ohfreckle. She’s an autoread author for me and I think I’ve yelled about this particular fic literally every chance I get. Goddamn, the sex is hot as hell and the emotions that pour through are enough to make my own heart ache. No one does it better and I wish everyone would read this and die with me.

Lionheart by Bumblebeesknees Both this one and the one above are 2x18 makeup sex fics but they’re both very different. I also love this one immensely and this author, as I’ve mentioned above, is amazing. 

Series

Alec Lightwood Deserves Nice Things by @my-nameless-bliss This series ruined me. I can’t stress enough how much I love this series. It’s beautiful written, the emotion gut wrenching, and it’s a wonderful exploration of Alec’s masculinity and what that even means. It really made me think and reevaluate my own life and I am awed by this author’s talent and everyone needs to read this. There’s also ALDNT extras which is a multichaptered work set in this universe.

We Built a Dynasty Like Nothing Ever Made by Madalena. This was a canon divergent AU set after 2x17 that does a great job of exploring shadow world tensions and Alec as a Leader and Head of the Institute. Creative and stunning and wonderfully plotted, I’ve read this series several times and love it so much!!

The Boundless Saga by sarcasticfluentry and teumessian This is a canon divergent AU that starts in season one and it’s a classic for the shadowfam in my opinion. I particularly love Parts 4 (which could go in the pwp section) and 7, which I think it’s an excellent exploration of shadowhunter tradition and expectation.

Authors

@laughingmagnus Serendi has been an autoread author for ages, since the beginning, really. Her writing is wonderful and she really hits emotions in a way that’s enviable. Her Maryse centered fics are superb.

@gingergenower I’ve been yelling about Kat’s writing since I discovered her last winter. I started with goddamn right (you should be scared of me) and I’ve read all of her fics multiple times. You really can’t go wrong with her!

@thattrainssailed Monica’s writing style is very distinctive and literary. She writes Malec like they’re set in stone entities, powerful and always in control, even if everything else is a chaotic mess.

@bytheangell Elle can write fluff or angst depending on her mood and she does a wonderful job with whatever strikes her fancy. She has a >100k fic called Support System that I’ve heard really great things about, even if I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.

@royaltybane Lydia is an OG in the shadowfam for good reason! Her writing is fluid and suitably full of feeling. You really can’t go wrong with anything by her!

Ohprongs is a wonderful author and I’ve read all of their stuff on ao3. I’d highly recommend them for shorter pieces.

This is by no means an exhaustive list! I’ve quite literally read thousands of Malec fics since I joined the fandom in summer 2017. These are the most memorable to me, however, and the ones that I’ve returned to time and time again. Any author I mentioned would be worth going through their backlist. I often just picked my favorite fic of theirs. 

If there’s something that you’re into– a trope, a general tone– you can always come back and I’ll do my best to answer your questions and give you recs! I hope that this helps and isn’t too overwhelming– I tried to organize this masterlist by word count and then misc categories. Thank you so much for thinking highly enough of my writing to ask me this and I’m sorry it took a little while to compile this fic rec list! Happy Reading!!

[heleentje]

Nachtwacht Sorting

The past... eight months or so, I’ve spent quite a few trips to and fro work amusing myself by figuring out a Sorting for the Nachtwacht characters. Some were easy, some took most of those eight months. And since I’ve missed writing meta, I’m now sharing it with all three of you who care about this show.

A word on the Sorting Hat Chats sorting method

The method I’m using is the Sorting Hat Chats method: based on the Harry Potter houses, but quite a bit more developed.

This method gives people a primary and a secondary house. Your primary is your why, your reasons, what drives you to take certain actions. Your secondary is the how: how you go about reaching your goals, how you react to things.

This might not be the kind of sorting you’re used to from the Harry Potter books. No house is intrinsically good or bad, it’s all about how your traits manifest and how you react to things.

The full explanation is too long for this meta, but you can read it here (and I highly recommend doing so!). All definitions below are taken from that link.

With that said, let’s sort the Nachtwacht characters.

Tl;dr:

Wilko: Slytherin/Gryffindor Vlad: Hufflepuff/Slytherin Keelin: Ravenclaw/Ravenclaw

WILKO

Primary: Slytherin

Secondary: Gryffindor

Slytherin Primaries are fiercely loyal to the people they care for most. Slytherin is the place where “you’ll make your real friends”– they prioritize individual loyalties and find their moral core in protecting and caring for the people they are closest to.

Gryffindor Secondaries charge. They meet the world head-on and challenge it to do its worst. Gryffindor Secondaries are honest, brash, and bold in pursuit of things they care about. Known for their bravery, it is almost a moral matter to stay true to themselves in any situation that they’re in.

Of all the characters, Wilko was by far the easiest to sort. He is stubborn, he is brash, he charges straight at danger with no regard for his own safety. These are all the traits of a textbook Gryffindor secondary.

The Gryffindor primary would be exceptionally ill-suited to him, though. Lofty ideals are wasted on him. Doing the Right Thing is never as important as doing right by the people he cares about. And Wilko cares a whole lot; he is an open and guiltless Slytherin primary. Unlike Vlad, Wilko’s circle of people is limited: Vlad and Keelin and Vega, Sacha and Helena and Cooper, and the rest of the village as a distant third. These are the people he will prioritize.

Nowhere is his Slytherin primary clearer than in The Domovoi (2X4). His worst fear is losing the people he loves. It is a very Slytherin kind of fear and one that is bad enough to break him at the sight of Vlad and Keelin (supposedly) dead.

His primary also makes Wilko the person who cares the least about the Night Watch as a concept. He cares about Vlad and Keelin. If the Night Watch is somehow detrimental to them, all ideals about protecting the earth go straight out of the window; when Vlad is forced to leave the Night Watch, Wilko quits on the spot (The Gate of Souls). No doubt, no hesitation.  

At his best, he is caring, willing to go the extra mile for the people he loves and ready to charge in so they don’t have to. At his worst, he is paranoid about any strangers and prone to taking decisions without informing or involving others.

‘Impulsive’ is a word that often gets bandied around with regards to Wilko. It’s how he expresses his (very loud) Secondary. Yet we are faced with an interesting paradox: Wilko may be impulsive, but his control over his werewolf side is exceptional. Whereas newly-turned werewolf Fran practically gets turned inside-out trying to resist the transformation once the moon rises, Wilko barely seems to notice it (2X10 The She-Wolf). Entire episodes take place during a full moon without Wilko ever mentioning it (4X4 The Protector). Only a super moon seems to have any effect on him (1X5 The Werewolf).

Wilko was born a werewolf, yet even among werewolves his control is remarkable (and remarked-upon by Vega in The She-Wolf). This lends an extra dimension to his impulsiveness: Wilko acts impulsive if and only if the situation presents a danger to the people he cares about. Giving in to his werewolf side would make him a danger to the people around him.

Tl;dr: Wilko is a loud and unapologetic Slytherin/Gryffindor: he prioritizes the people he cares about above all else and charges straight at danger in order to keep said danger from reaching them.

VLAD

Primary: Hufflepuff

Secondary: Slytherin

Hufflepuff Primaries value people–all people. They value community, they bond to groups (rather than solely individuals), and they make their decisions off of who is in the most need and who is the most vulnerable and who they can help. They value fairness because every person is a person and feel best when they give everyone that fair chance. Even directly wronged, a Hufflepuff will often give someone a second (or fifth) chance.

Slytherin Secondaries improvise. They are the most adaptive secondary, finding their strength in responding quickly to whatever a situation throws at them. They improvise differently than the Gryffindor Secondary, far more likely to try coming at situations from different angles than to try strong-arming them. They might describe themselves as having different “faces” for different people and different situations, dropping them and being just themselves only when they’re relaxing or feel safe.

Like Wilko, Vlad is motivated by people. Unlike Wilko, his loyalties are broader, extending to the community he lives in and to people in general. Vlad likes people. He’s willing to help those in need even if he doesn’t know them and/or they appear to be a threat initially (3x1 Het Monster). Befitting his Hufflepuff primary, he gives second chances and believes the best of people. This is equally likely to work out well for him as it is to backfire (4x10 Reika). 

Less present in the actual show but very clear in the movie is his traditionalist and socially-conforming side. He has followed in his father’s footsteps as a member of the Night Watch, something that was long a goal for him (4X10 Reika). He is duty-bound and puts aside his own personal needs to keep the peace. Vlad, knowing he has to leave the Night Watch, argues within the framework of the rules the Council set up. He states his case, he tries to change their mind — but when it comes down to it, he professes that he has no choice. He has to obey. If the High Council says he needs to quit, he will quit (The Gate of Souls).

His tendency to see the best in people makes him somewhat vulnerable to manipulation, especially from people close to him (4X10 Reika). This is, however, tempered by his Slytherin secondary.

Supplementary materials tend to describe Vlad as the strategist who has a plan ready to go before they go out to face the monsters. While there is truth in this, it’s not the whole truth: Vlad comes up with plans on the fly and changes them rapidly when the situation demands it. He likes to go out with a plan in mind, true, but he feels no need to stick to that plan. He is a quick thinker even when caught unawares (coming up with a plan right after shaking off brainwashing — 2X6 The Master Vampire). He is versatile and ready to make use of unconventional resources, such as bringing Sacha in the loop when Keelin and Wilko are taken out of commission (1X5 The Siren). On top of that, he has a bit of a manipulative streak if it serves his plans well (2X4 The Domovoi, both in his cheating at the start of the episode and his plan to use Wilko to draw in the monster. Jury’s out on how effective either of those instances were, but he did it anyway.)

Tl;dr: Vlad is a Hufflepuff/Slytherin: he attaches value to people and community, and is willing to give even those he doesn’t know the chances he feels they deserve. He is a versatile planner who can easily improvise and switch plans on the fly, using all resources available to him.

KEELIN

Primary: Ravenclaw

Secondary: Ravenclaw

Ravenclaw Primaries have a constructed system that they test their decisions against before they feel comfortable calling something right. This system might be constructed by them, or it might have been taught to them as children, or it might have been discovered by them some point later in life. But it gives them a way to frame the world and a confidence in their ability to interact with it morally.

Ravenclaw Secondaries plan. They collect information, they strategize. They have tools. They run hypotheticals and try to plan ahead for things that might come up. They build things (of varying degrees of practicality and actual usefulness) that they can use later– whether that’s an emergency supply pack, a vast knowledge of Renaissance artistic techniques and supplies, or a series of lists and contingency plans. They feel less at home in improvisation and more comfortable planning ahead and taking the time to be prepared.

Keelin took by far the most time to pin down. I have my suspicions as to why that is, but that would result in an entirely different essay (with a much higher salt content).

Here’s the thing about Keelin: depending on the episode, she switches viewpoints. Whereas Wilko and Vlad are usually very consistent in what drives them, Keelin will switch from a Hufflepuff’s care for people to a Gryffindor’s concern with what is Right seemingly without rhyme or reason. (It’s mainly those two. She doesn’t emulate Slytherin all that often.)

She is no Slytherin, that’s for sure. I debated Hufflepuff but she does not have the same instinctive concern for people that someone like Vlad (or Sacha, another Puff primary) has. She doesn’t share the steadfast conviction of a Gryffindor. In the end, it is the constructed, thought-out morality of a Ravenclaw primary that shines through.

Supplementary materials tend to describe Keelin as the emotional heart of the team. I… disagree. Strenuously. This may have been how her character was initially conceived, but Keelin doesn’t gravitate towards people, she gravitates towards knowledge, planning, preset rules and the things she’s already learned in the past. There are two examples of this I find most emblematic.

The first is The Time Thief (2X12): when finally breaking free of the time loop that takes up most of the first half of the episode, Keelin’s first instinct… is to plan. It’s to find out what’s going on and who’s behind their problems. Vega has to remind her to find Vlad and Wilko and inform them that something’s wrong.

The second occurs in Cerberus, The Gatekeeper (4X5): when Keelin and Wilko get dragged off to be burned at the stake, Wilko begs Keelin to use her magic. Keelin replies as follows (emphasis mine):

“I can’t! I swore to defend people and never hurt them!” (NL: “Ik kan het niet. Ik heb gezworen mensen te beschermen en hen nooit pijn te doen.”)

It’s not because she doesn’t want to hurt her friends (Slytherin). Not because she doesn’t want to hurt anyone (Hufflepuff). Or because hurting people is wrong (Gryffindor). No, she can’t because she swore an oath, a binding contract. She has built her morality through consideration, by weighing what is good and what isn’t and then sticking to that unless more compelling arguments are presented to her. (What does she accuse Vega of when Vlad needs to quit in the movie? Short-sightedness.)

It explains why Keelin seems to switch motivations. I believe she is still very much in the process of constructing her Truth. A number of things she has taken from her upbringing (Black magic is bad, white magic is good — even if the latter is used to hurt people). In daily life she borrows from Vlad’s Hufflepuff most often, but it never comes as naturally to her as it does to him.

Left to her own devices, Keelin falls back on knowledge and things she has previously incorporated as truth, not on people.

Many of those traits bleed into her Ravenclaw secondary. Keelin’s default method of facing a problem is researching it. She collects information. She reads up on potions and spells. She falls back on all the things she’s learned in the past. She wants to have a plan all ready to go before she steps outside and when that plan falls apart, she has a hard time recalibrating (this is what sets apart her Ravenclaw secondary from Vlad’s Slytherin secondary).

Tl;dr: Keelin is a full Ravenclaw: her morality system is constructed and still a work in progress. She tends to draw on Hufflepuff traits when among other people, but left to her own devices she falls back on knowledge.

[dreamersscape]

Note: This ask is from ages upon ages ago, and I’d like to offer my deepest apologies to whoever requested this. It was very important to me that I answer  thoroughly and in as articulate a manner as possible, and I’m embarrassed how slow accomplishing that took me. I hope that somehow you’re able to see this post, and you’re able to get something out of my rambling.

Thank you again for your patience in awaiting my answer, nonnie! I’m excited to put this headcanon of mine into words. It’s not often I have really specific and/or detailed HCs, I’ll admit; usually I stick to extrapolating off of canon. And while that’s sort of what I’ve done here, it seems to have happened mostly on a subconscious level, stewing until I realized a pattern forming within nearly all my fic plot bunnies.

It’s also possibly a key to how I understand Allan as a character, so… that’s kinda cool.

Okay, so Allan doesn’t really present as an overly anxious person, does he? At least, not in comparison to some of the other characters, like Much, who is utterly incapable of suppressing his anxiety. If Much is feeling apprehensive about something, you’re going to know it. So why then did I begin to notice my habit of, once he’s been stressed past a certain point, characterizing Allan’s emotional breaking points almost always as him tailspinning into a state of profound anxiety/panic? Well, partly because Allan just really REALLY sucks at dealing with negative experiences/emotions. His preferred method of coping with anything is to internalize the heck out of it, stuff it deep down inside, and then hope he never has to think about it ever again i.e. avoidance at all costs. And that appears to work… for awhile. He’s good at living in the present, ignoring past events and future repercussions. (Side note: a big reason why I also think substance abuse or other similar escapes could be quite alluring to him.) Eventually though, because it’s never been dealt with or even confronted, something triggers the release of all that pent up stress and negativity. He basically builds this towering pile of Bad Things, and so when it gets knocked over, it manages to completely overwhelm him. But until he’s thrown off-kilter and the pile loses balance and tips over, he’s mostly able to coast along, maintaining a relatively calm exterior while mired in turbulent inner seas.

Now, I realize I haven’t given much in the way of evidence for this yet, or explained why I think this all happens within the framework of a very anxious mindset. Hopefully I’m getting there. But that preceding paragraph is there to show how I find I characterize Allan as a result. (I probably wouldn’t have figured out this pattern of sorts if I could ever resist making things the Absolute Worst Imaginable Confluence of Events for Allan in my fic ideas, but that’s a “problem” for another day.)

What I’ve found is the key for me to get in Allan’s head and see things from his perspective is this: fear is his #1 motivator and it constantly feeds into his #1 priority, which is self-preservation. That goal of personal safety develops and eventually changes over the course of the show, but certainly for the greater part of the first two seasons, that is what primarily drives him. (For what I believe drives him from the end of 2x12 onwards, see here.)

For the most part, I’d say it’s pretty safe to say self-preservation-as-priority-number-one in regards to Allan’s character is generally widely accepted by the fans of the show. But opinions on why and how that came to be might vary more. I don’t know, maybe proposing that fear is the major driving force behind Allan’s decisions and behavior is not very revolutionary, but that is what I’d like to posit and explore in this post.

So, why do I think Allan is constantly consumed by his own personal well being above all else, to the point where its essentially become an automatic filter overlaying the way he interacts with the world? (I’m not intending to dramatically overstate things here, BTW; this is just how deeply ingrained I believe it is.) To me, this indicates at some point early on in his life something or a series of events convinced Allan that the world was an inherently dangerous place and you needed to always be on your guard for the next threat around any corner. This trauma could have taken a variety of forms depending on your headcanon,  but IMO it’s clear from Allan’s canonical behavior that it happened. Things that could point to this include, but are not limited to, the sparse background information we do learn about (Tom abandoning him and simultaneously stealing all his belongings, his apparent total lack of vocation despite his father being a blacksmith) as well as how he interacts with his brother (his over-identification with Tom–”I was like him once”–mixed in with the understandable trust issues, Tom’s borderline antisocial behavior in general, and I also wrote here about how their dynamic possibly alludes to a dysfunctional home life). With that as a fundamental part of your worldview, it’s easy to understand why you and your anxiety might have become good friends. He has no base level understanding or measure of being/feeling safe. Or maybe he once did, but there isn’t a way to go back or recapture that.

Another component of Allan’s anxiety I’d like to highlight is his personal locus of control. Locus of control is a psychology term that evaluates ‘the degree to which people believe that they have control over the outcome of events in their lives, as opposed to external forces beyond their control.’ It’s usually described in terms of being internal (belief that one can control one’s own life) or external (belief that life is controlled by outside factors which the person cannot influence, or that chance or fate controls their lives). ‘Individuals with a strong internal locus of control believe events in their life derive primarily from their own actions: for example, when receiving exam results, people with an internal locus of control tend to praise or blame themselves and their abilities. People with a strong external locus of control tend to praise or blame external factors such as the teacher or the exam.’ I definitely believe Allan has an external-based locus of control, and I think we see this in how reactive and defensive he is to his environment and in his tendency to shift the blame or not take personal responsibility for his actions. As opposed to Marian’s and Robin’s “everything is a choice” mantra, Allan often feels he has/had “no choice”, or feels “stuck”. Consequently, this lack of perceived ability to dictate and be accountable for one’s actions can make you feel very powerless. And if you believe the world is a unpredictable, dangerous place and there’s little you can do to affect or change that, you’d likely feel pretty fearful and anxious. Indeed, there has been research that concludes that people with an external locus of control tend to be more stressed and are more prone to clinical depression.

Now, I realize the preceding two paragraphs are either relying heavily on speculation or pretty technical terminology, so I’d like to conclude by referring directly to Allan’s behavior as evidence of his frequent anxiety. It is still in production, but I am working on a comprehensive gifset of every time Allan outwardly demonstrates anxiety. I’ll link it here once it’s finished. (Spoiler warning: it’s going to be a whopper of a gifset.) But until then, I think it’s notable that Allan exhibits a wide range of behaviors that typically denote anxiety. Licking his lips, swallowing/gulping, sweaty palms, fidgeting with something in his hands (could also be a sign of excess energy, but there are three instances of this in the first two episodes of the show alone, and this often seems to happen when it’s implied Allan has excess nervous energy), shifty eyes or a gaze that is unable to meet anyone else’s, hands on head in dismay, etc. It’s subtle because Allan’s doing his best to suppress it–he doesn’t want it to show because that would mean looking vulnerable/weak, which is not safe and a terrifying prospect when you live in a unpredictable, dangerous world–but if you’re looking for it, it’s there.

In summary, on the outside Allan projects a calm, self-assured, doesn’t-take-anything-too-seriously, cheerful, amiable image. And that is a legitimate part of who he is. He’s cultivated that facade for so long that it has taken on a life of its own. However, on the inside, he is ALSO a lot of the time an unsure, self-doubting, self-destructive, fearful, angst-ridden bundle of nerves. So that’s why when I read a story where Allan is ONLY portrayed as the former with none of the latter, it just doesn’t feel like Allan to me. In those cases, it’s as though I’m reading about a vaguely Allan-shaped empty shell. And I get it–it’s hard to always show all those sides of Allan when he’s not one of the main characters or he’s not the primary focus of the fic. Or the author might not be at all inclined to have Allan’s role be more than a surface level portrayal, and that’s okay. Not everything should be about Allan! But I also think there is often room for hints; Allan’s facade does have cracks. All this to say, Allan’s layers and contradictions are an intrinsic part of his character’s essence for me, including his anxieties/insecurities/fears, and his life has largely been built on that apprehensive foundation.

TL;DR Allan’s anxiety not only exists, it dictates much of what he thinks, says, and does, and the poor guy needs a ton of therapy.

sources for the locus of control info:

Rotter, Julian B (1966). “Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement”. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied. 80: 1–28. Carlson, N.R., et al. (2007). Psychology: The Science of Behaviour - 4th Canadian ed.. Toronto, ON: Pearson Education Canada. Benassi, Victor A; Sweeney, Paul D; Dufour, Charles L (1988). “Is there a relation between locus of control orientation and depression?”. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 97 (3): 357–367.

[scratchface]

Yusaku and the Rejection of Fear

Part four of the Yusaku character analysis! And more! Like discussion of some of the more subtle themes in Vrains, and what they mean.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

This is pretty long and image heavy, but it was by far the most fun.

Wariness

I’ve already talked about Yusaku and first impressions and how he analyzes everyone he meets for potential threats, but that says lot about Yusaku in regard to the first encounter. He trusted a stranger once without taking the due caution, and it’s not a mistake he’s going to make again.

That means with Yusaku, we can probably assume you’re a “bad guy” before you’re proven to be a “good guy”; not necessarily in terms of good vs evil, or guilty vs innocent, but In untrustworthy vs trustworthy.  

But despite his wariness, Yusaku disregards most people entirely; they don’t factor into his perception of the world as important at all. He doesn’t recognize a classmate on sight, and when he sees an out during the conversation with Naoki, after establishing that Naoki knows little about Playmaker besides rumors, he tries to take it.

But the confirmation Yusaku sought is actually quite interesting, because the only way Naoki would have seen Playmaker at this point was if he witnessed a duel between Playmaker and a Knight of Hanoi, or was a Knight himself. Yusaku was making sure the person approaching him had no connection to Hanoi, and had no leads on Playmaker. You can see this in how he actually asks Naoki two questions, despite being completely disinterested: he was prompting Naoki to give him more details about himself to work with, while never once giving away anything about himself.

In fact, this is a common tactic Yusaku uses in his IRL conversations; he always let’s others do the talking, and only briefly interjects to get them to talk more. He does it to Aoi, but mostly does it to Naoki.

This is how Yusaku monitors the people around him; Yusaku likes to know and control how much others know. He eavesdrops and investigates, but never gives away anything of himself except occasionally his name. Yusaku wants to know as much as possible while limiting the knowledge base of everyone else, which isn’t just a tactical decision on his part. When speaking of the incident and what came afterwards, Yusaku focuses a lot on how little he was told, and it’s clear that it still bothers him.

Yusaku seems to have a complex about knowing information regarding his current situation. The situation involved torture and starvation, but what may have scarred Yusaku the most what the lack of control and knowledge, the inability to understand his situation. Or rather, ignorance is intrinsically linked to powerlessness in Yusaku’s mind. That’s what leads into his obsession with finding the truth:

It’s fair to say that in Yusaku’s mind, knowledge absolutely means power. The one who uncovers the most is the victor, which is also why he’s jealously keeps his own secrets, except for when he’s lashing out at Hanoi.

In order to control the distribution of knowledge, Yusaku’s behavior is rather manipulative, but he almost never lies. When he himself is questioned, he gives a vague answer or none at all, and let’s the other draw their own conclusions. He carries a fake deck entirely for the sake of subterfuge. He takes the necessary steps to make sure he’s never pegged as a candidate of Playmaker’s true identity: no reputation as a duelist or a hacker in real life, or as someone invested in the matter of Hanoi. 

But despite how careful he is, Yusaku doesn’t hide his identity when breaking into Vyra’s apartment, despite the likelihood of her actually being in it and seeing him. There was no guarantee she would be in Vrains at the time. Yusaku was fully prepared to come face to face with a Hanoi General in her own home. Had she not been purged, Yusaku likely fully intended to interrogate Kyoko when she awoke. But then what? She still would have seen him, even if he sent her off with the authorities.

This all leads to a single conclusion:

Fearlessness

Yusaku is fully prepared to be found. He doesn’t want to be, but he doesn’t want the conflict with Hanoi to stay just in Vrains either. Yusaku wants justice beyond stopping Hanoi’s online activity; which is why he struggles to uncover the IRL identities of Hanoi’s knights, and also likely the reason Vyra was in jail. Kusanagi and Yusaku must have made sure the authorities found evidence of her cyber terrorism and the Another’s virus when they called an ambulance for her. Yusaku is careful, but he’s not afraid of confrontation. In fact, the character in the series least wary of the battle entering the real Den City may actually be Yusaku.

Let’s not forget, Yusaku has a hidden compartment in his apartment. One that protects his unconscious body from being found while he’s in Vrains. Yusaku included this because he thought him being found out and tracked down to his apartment was an possible eventuality. By staying within a secret room, if his identity was revealed and his apartment was raided, he could wait out the raid in hiding. Yusaku was anticipating taking the fight IRL, and properly preparing for it. That’s why he doesn’t hide his face, why he reveals himself as a victim of the Incident, and more.

Which brings new insight to these words:

This isn’t just a mocking reply; this is the truth. Yusaku really wants this fight. He’s completely unwavering before the possible IRL consequences and the dangers ahead.

Quite a bit of emphasis is placed on just how much time Yusaku has spent preparing for his revenge. That’s how much he’s been wanting it. 

Lots of characters in Yu-Gi-Oh express faith in their decks, but Yusaku especially focuses on how he built the perfect weapon for challenging Revolver and Hanoi.

It’s not just his cards Yusaku is confident in:

Yusaku won’t lose, because he won’t accept failure. After ten years of suffering and scheming, Yusaku isn’t going to let any of it go to waste. So much so that even when faced with what he admits is pitifully low odds, Yusaku considers victory the only possible result. For someone who was once caught and tortured by the people he’s now confronting, that’s nothing short of incredible. It’s like Yusaku has banished all his fear.

And because of his faith in himself, Yusaku purposefully takes risks and injures himself in order to gain advantage over his opponents. Yusaku doesn’t play safe; he carefully measures the danger of his every action and does it anyway. Whether it’s risking a limb or psychological trauma, Yusaku will do it if it means gaining leverage over Hanoi. His identity is just another chess piece he’s prepared to lose if it gets him closer to taking the king and knowing everything.

With Yusaku’s obsession with knowing the truth of the past and his struggle with making sense of his history, its really no surprise that the next villain has the ability to alter memories. In fact, its hard to imagine someone that clashes more with Yusaku on an ideological level.  

Humanity

Yusaku thinks people are the same as they were in ancient times. And the context of this line is the fear and superstition triggered by the eclipse in Vrains. Yusaku considers fearfulness inherent to mankind.

What does that say about Yusaku, who has no fear? Nothing absolute, but the implications are certainly there. No wonder Yusaku is unable to affirm his own humanity in the duel with Bohman.

But, there’s a little something more to all of this, that ties back in with a rather contradictory trait of Yusaku’s: his forgiveness.

So, @breakdawn-avenue asked a while back:

“I’m just re-reading your first part of Yusaku’s analysis (the abyss and his special person) and was wondering if it may change (a little bit, if anything) considering episode 58.”

I think the biggest shift in our perspective of Yusaku coming out of 58 is that he’s incredibly forgiving. We already knew this, seeing how he shrugs off Akira’s torture and maintains a relatively good relationship (not trusting, not friendly, but not bad either) with him and Ghost Girl despite how many times the two of them have screwed Yusaku over. But this is on another level.

I think Yusaku’s incredibly forgiving nature isn’t just compassion and empathy for others, it also comes from a place of apathy and mistrust as well. I mentioned Yusaku initial character bio before, but a huge part of that is “He only seems to trust Kusanagi.”

And it’s true. Kusanagi is one of the few people Yusaku expresses faith in, through out the series.

Besides Kusanagi and a few more arguable exceptions like maybe Ryoken and Takeru, Yusaku doesn’t trust anyone. He doesn’t have faith in anyone. He has no belief in the nature of other people, and no expectations of being treated with kindness. He thinks people are fearful, and what does fear do to people? Makes them focus on self-preservation. So when people betray him, hurt him, put him under the bus for their own self interest, Yusaku isn’t offended, because he expected as much. To Yusaku, it seems, people are just like that: cruel and selfish, and because he’s accepted it, it doesn’t seem to bother him much. Yusaku expects to be hurt.

Why? Because he once tried to make friends with a boy and got kidnapped and tortured because of it. The last time Yusaku believed in the innocent intentions of others was the start of his own living hell. 

And because Yusaku thinks everyone is like that, he doesn’t really resent it. He’s been through worse, so the petty hurts don’t bother him. He only trusts his own abilities, so the betrayal of others is just a minor inconvenience. 

Yusaku thinks all people act in their own self-interest, and he has yet to be proven wrong. Even Go, who stunned and impressed Yusaku with his compassion, his attentiveness to his opponent, and his sportsmanship has turned out to be as self-motivated as the rest. Aoi and Ema have been selfish characters from the start, and Akira has shown on multiple occasions that his own self-righteousness comes before all else. Yusaku doesn’t hold any of this against them. To Yusaku, selfishness is not a “bad” trait, its inherent within everyone. And he doesn’t hold Ryoken’s mistakes and crimes against him either, because while Ryoken had a hand in destroying Yusaku’s faith in humanity, he was also the only one to try and fix it. 

Speculation, Fear, and Life

But is Yusaku right? Within the world of Vrains, does fear and struggle make the average person selfish and cruel?

So far, yes, and ain’t that something? Dr. Kogami supposedly started all of this out of fear of mankind’s inevitable mortality, and committed atrocities in the name of alleviating that fear. Then, scared of the what his creations were capable of, he formed the Knights of Hanoi and tried to hurt and kill millions of people and destroy all computer-based technology. And the Ignis, the most “human” of all AI, are notable because of how they fear for their own lives, and may destroy humanity because of it.

The further you look, the more you see fear leading to selfishness or cruelty in Vrains, in the name of self-preservation. Go, afraid of losing his acclaim and the reverence of children, challenged Playmaker. Aoi, afraid of being unloved and left alone by her brother, challenged Playmaker. Akira, afraid for his comatose sister, tortured Playmaker. SOL, afraid of being unable to maintain their tech empire ordering the manhunt for Playmaker. There are more reasons behind all of these, but fear is an undeniable factor. 

Even more, we have Blood Shepherd, who seemed like a nice person before tragedy occurred and he became callous and cruel. He’s a representation of the “human” side versus the “AI” side. If Kengo and the Knights and SOL all represent humanity, it paints a pretty ugly picture, doesn’t it?

But let’s look at the opposite. If the desire to live in Vrains leads to selfish actions that harm others, what does it mean when people risk their lives?

What happens when people overcome fear, and decide there’s something worth risking their lives for? Sacrifice, almost every time. That is the entire basis of the Tower of Hanoi arc: every single character in Vrains besides Playmaker sacrifices their life, purposefully or not. All of the Hanoi generals, Ema, Aoi, Akira, Spectre, Go, Ai, and Kogami all sacrifices themselves and “die”, however briefly it lasts. And they do this because they’ve overcome fear and selfishness. Ryoken attempts to follow their example. Even the news crew put their lives at risk! Now, in season 2, we see Takeru overcoming his fear to join Playmaker, and repeatedly using himself as a meat shield for Yusaku’s sake, particularly in the most recent episode. We’re seeing similar progress with Aoi, Ema, and Akira too, as each explores their own different ideas of putting aside their self-interest and safety. 

So fear is linked with life, and courage is linked with death.

Except in the case of Yusaku. Yusaku is the exception, as his unwavering courage leads him to victory. 

If fear is what keeps people alive, is fear the result of free will, the drive people have towards life? Ryoken and Kogami insist free will is essential to life, after all, and the inclusion of free will in the Ignis allows them to fear for their lives. 

When Yusaku has a dream about Revolver talking about the lack of free will equating to a lack of life, he wakes up yelling “I…”.

As if something about “free will” causes Yusaku subconscious distress, enough that he wants to defend or explain something about himself. “I” what, Yusaku? Does Yusaku subconsciously feel like he lacks something essential to life? We can’t forget that Ai has pointed out that between them, it’s Yusaku that seems more like an AI. Ai is the “human” one between the two of them, and is certainly the one who possesses the most fear and sense of self-preservation.

Is Yusaku really missing some essential component to free will, to life, one that was lost to the Ignis, or is he purposefully leaving it behind and gradually becoming less human than the Ignis themselves? And is that why he isn’t sacrificed? What isn’t “alive” can’t “die”?

The further I get into this, the less likely it seems Yusaku is really “human” in the same way the other characters are, going by the recurrent themes. Is he from another dimension? A reincarnation? An advanced AI? An alien? Or, is he a human in the process of becoming something inhuman?

And what of the other six? Takeru’s arc is clearly addressing how he’s currently learning to abandon his fear, just like Yusaku already did. Spectre seems to have cast aside his fear as well, while Jin wallows in it. Eventually, though, we can assume Jin too will overcome his fear. Where is this all going? What makes the six kids exempt from the basic nature of humanity, a nature so pervasive it even infects the artificial creatures based on them? And if they lose the fear that keeps life-forms alive, what are they?

Will Yusaku’s rejection of fear, and therefore self-preservation, catch up with him in the end, claiming his life as it did the others’? His quest for revenge has been impressive, and successful, but there’s something self-destructive in his relentlessness.

[robinlordtaylorsource]

Since his thespian beginnings in Shueyville, Iowa, and Northwestern University, Robin Lord Taylor’s stage career has been all but chequered. A self-confessed cinephile, he has graced our screens —both big and small— appearing in the most coveted series, from AMC’s hit The Walking Dead to CBS’ The Good Wife, and blockbuster films like Accepted. But it was his role as Oswald Cobblepot in the Emmy-Winning 2014 series Gotham that put him in the international spotlight.

Although the drama is not yet out of his system, Taylor admits to falling into the TV sphere rather serendipitously. “The reality of making a living as an actor [is that you’d] work for any medium that would happen,” he earnestly confides. “Once I moved to New York, I found myself working more [in TV] but I never ever expected [such huge success]. I grew up in a really small town and, to find myself working in television, and not just television but in the Batman universe still feels incredibly surreal.”

In the diversely dystopian background of Gotham City, Robin Lord Taylor offers a nuanced performance of the iconic malefactor, Oswald Cobblepot (a.k.a. The Penguin). The last time we saw him in the fall finale, things were pretty tense: now in Arkham Asylum and with a certain familiar laugh —courtesy of Cameron Monaghan— back in the picture. “His life is such a roller coaster from season to season of Gotham,” Taylor affirms. “He’s lost the most he’s ever lost. He’d built up an incredible courage, he was the most powerful he’s ever been —even more powerful than when he was mayor— [and now] he finds himself in Arkham Asylum and he’s not just stripped of his money, status and power [but he’s also] emotionally shut down. He’s lost everybody he’s ever trusted. I’m yet to know if this will make him stronger or weaker but he’s really at his best when he’s out —that’s when Oswald really shines. I think people will see some delicious come up.”

The Penguin’s unmistakably angular features, fishy bearings and opulent aspirations have been previously portrayed by Academy Award nominees Burgess Meredith and Danny DeVito; yet, the highly acclaimed Gotham offers a unique insider’s perspective into the character’s eccentricities: presenting us, for the first time in prime TV or film, with Cobblepot’s backstory. “I don’t feel like I have to —Thank God because I don’t think I would be able to— live up to the people that have played Oswald before,” Taylor admits. “I’m telling a different aspect of his story and there are a lot of things that, unless people have really dug deep in the comic books, would have never been known before and that’s very surreal. The pressure is lenient in that way. There’s no such thing as a definitive backstory of every comic book ever.”

Deeply rooted in the “umbrella-wielding madman’s” idiosyncratic physicality, the sycophantically sly Penguin Taylor has gifted us with for the past 4 years has not only lived up to but exceeded the expectations. Most of us love comic books and their universes but there is an intrinsic toxic hyper-masculinity that, thankfully, hasn’t permeated into the Gotham writers’ room as last season Taylor’s Cobblepot was introduced as a clearly queer character —unarguably one of the only queer characters in mainstream comic film adaptations nowadays. “I feel very fortunate [to be playing a queer character] and I’m actually really glad that it’s me,” Taylor admits. “I’m an openly gay. I’ve been married for several years and I feel like I have the tools to address issues dealing with sexuality correctly; because I grew up with them.”

“It’s been interesting to see people’s responses to this storyline. Some people want to make it extremely exclusive, as to saying Oswald is gay now. But it’s much more complex. I knew right away that this [storyline] was serious. His experience is vastly different than mine —I always knew from a young age that I was gay but Oswald’s situation is different [although] it’s obvious that he is in the spectrum,” Taylor continues. “It’s a much bigger conversation than just oh, The Penguin is gay’ and I’m glad that I’ve been able to open up a larger discussion about sexuality [more so] within the frame of a series called Gotham. It not only raises a question but I have also been given an opportunity to confront [homophobe] attitudes dead on. [As I said before,] there are no definitive stories in comic book [yet] I got a lot of threats from this particular story and this character from people saying ‘hey, I’m not a homophobic but I just don’t like that he’s gay because that’s not how he is in the comic books’. That’s actually an incredible homophobic thing to say because they are all different characters. No one had a problem with a young Batman and Selina Kyle (Catwoman) growing up together…”

Despite Cobblepot being a social and otherwise psychopath, Taylor found a humane link to the character precisely in being bullied as a child. “I feel fortunate [to] move the conversation forward. Especially in this day and age with the political climate in America,” he says. “Someone opening up a social media account and spreading homophobia, it doesn’t hurt me personally but it hurts my heart that it’s out there and that there are kids who are bullied for it like I was. I just want to be a voice so that especially young queer kids aren’t afraid [to be themselves]. You are told your whole life that you are nothing [and] being able to take that and use it to fuel the ambition to fulfil your dreams, I see that in myself as well.”

Taylor plays The Penguin with such panaché that’s almost impossible not to feel sympathetic towards the “squanderer and emotionally manipulative character.” All qualities opposed to those Taylor himself bestows: outspoken, unafraid and devoted. Though the comic book non-canonical representation has affected the 39-year-old actor in more than his stagecraft. “I’m much more confident,” Taylor confides. [Landing this role] was such a validation. Gotham really broke through that wall and now I really feel like I have the most confidence in my talent. I feel confident about my experience as an actor. I feel more confident in my body —spiritually and emotionally. Everything is coming really naturally to me and I’ve never had that feeling before professionally. It all has to do with getting older [as well]. I’m less afraid. Of failing. Of making a fool of myself. Of how people are going to judge how I look like or what kind of person I am. I just feel more confident and brave. And I owe so much of that to Gotham.”

And although Taylor feels most confident whilst wearing The Penguin’s shoes, this year will see him taking part in some long-awaited and well-deserved projects for the big screen —with titles like The Mandela Effect, The Long Home and Full Dress already under his belt. “They’re still in production so you never know when or where we’ll be able to see these projects,” he teases. “But, that being said, I am so proud of these films because they are incredibly small, independent projects. They are really works of passion from the directors. I only had about 3 months in between shooting Gotham, [which] is such a huge machine and an incredible work to be a part of. But, the other half of it is to work on a really small set with just the director and a few other actors, which is also an incredible thing to say.” Taylor’s aplomb goes even further into his beloved backstage. “I do see myself in the future hopefully producing and directing but I really want to start in a smaller way,” he confesses. “I feel like someday I would really love to be able to say I directed something as incredibly and technically complex as Gotham but I’m definitely not there yet. I want to start small and then work my way up to Ben McKenzie [his co-star, who has directed multiple episodes of the primetime hit series] status”.

As for what else’s on hold for the virtuoso in the near future? “I’m excited to delve even deeper into this character and to go back to work with all the incredible people that I work with. I feel like I’m becoming a better communicator and actor in general. I’m looking forward to growing in my craft and see where it takes me,” he says. “As a person, I’m hopeful for more receptive humanity from everyone, in light of everything that’s happening in the world. We need to be kind to each other. I know I sound so idealistic but we need to start somewhere, especially now.”