#damaged this thing that gives my life structure and meaning and i have to confront that truth for real and act on it in a few days. LOL

[pepprs]

so deeply in hell

[prof-peach]

So Peach pretty clearly dislikes ten year olds going off as trainers (and people like Oak that support it). If she had a say in it, what kinda of rules would she put in place for people becoming trainers? (Minimum age, requirements, etc)

Take a test: Prove you have the basic knowledge of care, and common sense when confronted with an emergency. Do you know what to do when your pokemons poisoned? Random strangers on the street could help you sure but again, are we ok with 10 year olds talking to strangers who may not be friendly? Professors hand pokemon out, don’t think to explain the basics, and let kids loose on the world. I see so many Pokemon in terrible condition because someone trusted a literal child to care for a complex and powerful creature. Now god forbid what if the kid gets hurt? Middle of no where, what if their phones got no signal? What if they’re travelling alone? What if they’re still in a dangerous area? There’s a lot to consider, the world is big and full of things that could obliterate you for straying too close to its nest, or trying to catch one of its young.

Age restrictions: 15+. A literal child faces the fact that his rattata just got actually eaten by a wild ekans, what do they do? Thats damaging, pretty scary and often a source of trauma down the line, they may even become afraid of snake like mons. A higher age bracket means they’re more emotionally prepared to deal with the unknown. I see so many people complain that their kids Pokemon did something that scared the child, and they blame the mon, not that fact that they got their young child a wild creature to hang with. Pokemon don’t hold the same morals, the same rules or behaviours as us, and many get upset by this when confronted with it. Do you know how many times I’ve been looked at like I’m a bad person for slamming as hard as possible into a Tauros who’s kicking off? So many! But if you go about handling some species the way you’d handle humans, you’ll get hurt, you have to know how they tick, and get on their level, earn their respect in the ways they understand, do things safely and within the realms of understanding for each species. At 10, this is not easily done, you hardly know what you’re about at that age, the worlds huge and you are not as informed as you should be.

Species restrictions: people should start with species that are more simple and easy to work with, and ramp up to the more complex or dangers of Pokemon. If I had a penny for every kid with a dragon Pokemon complaining about how unruly it is, or that it doesn’t listen to them, I’d never have to work another day in my life. Yes they’re cool, yes we all want to one day see or interact with dragon types, he’ll yeah there’s plenty to love about them. But they’re also super dangerous, often come with complex needs, and very rigorous social structures that don’t reflect humans behaviour well. Start with a more common bunch, and work your way to the complex brackets. It saves the Pokemon a lot of grief, and the child potential harm. This could be age implemented, or badge relative, maybe based on skill level with more exams or whatever to prove you’ve got the knowledge to handle it. This also doubles up with physical exams, and it’s a hard truth. A frail old grandma getting her first Pokemon should not be getting something prone to thrashing, something that could break her due to being spooked or something. Same with a 10 year old. Don’t give a child a Pokemon that would literally choke them to death because in their world that’s what they do as a sign of respect or joy, and can cope, but to a human it’s potential death. There’s so many different examples of this, but Pokemon have physical needs, some need to fly, some need to be ran, some have to have a lot of exercise or they get seriously unruly. If you are not able to provide that, the Pokemon suffers. It’s just that simple; so the testing could also include a way to assess what species best fit your lifestyle, or needs.

Me personally, I don’t hand pokemon to anyone under the age of 15, and only if they’re emotionally prepared and prove their metal. Adoption assessment here is run by a number of staff, myself included. We sit the human down and chat, find out where the Pokemon will be staying, how much income they have and if it’s enough to care for that species, how much time they can give the Pokemon, what kind of home they live in and if it’s suitable for the size and needs of the Pokemon. They are asked a series of hypothetical questions, all of which show us if they’re prepared for emergency, consequence, and the care requirements necessary to keep their potential new partner healthy. If they are planning on travelling, I ask that they return with the gear they plan to bring with them on the road, and we do a mock-camp out over the course of a weekend, team brawl run scenarios, the youngsters are in safe environments but are posed with real life dilemmas, and there’s a safety net to see if they have the stomach for the real world. They do one day without their Pokemon and are tasked to survive, and another day with their potential partner, to see how they get along in these situations. It’s more like a boot camp.

If the human fails, we give them tips and tricks, and send them home to try again some other time, if they succeed, we start adoption processes. This is controversial as a lot of other professors just hand living creatures out like candy, but we don’t work that way here, and do not back down from the due process. Our concern is with the Pokemon first, they come above us, many of our residents have recovered from illness, from emotional trauma, and some have extended health conditions to think about. We cannot just let them go not knowing if they’ll be ok or not, it’s down right ridiculous to let that happen. We get parents coming in at us all the time that their precious little sonny-Jim didn’t get the Pokemon he wanted, and we have to explain that they failed the exams, or have an awful personality and would be a questionable match with a living creature, or perhaps they just weren’t emotionally ready yet, they panicked every time an emergency was posed to them. It’s tough love, but someone’s got to be honest and tell people when things aren’t right, so they can grow and improve.

I won’t go into the money aspect, that alone is a big issue for a lot of people. It’s not cheap to feed a big Pokemon. And is a trainer prepared for a species that hunts? Charmander eat meat. Little kid of age 10 ok with seeing it tear through a poliwag? Probably not. No one likes to say it, but Pokemon aren’t all happy little cute things, some have their own sets of issues and habits, it’s not always smooth sailing.

[halogenwarrior]

Just as somewhat of an add on to my post about the criticized trope of "villain who threatens the status quo" and its many manifestations, and when the framing is actually giving a harmful message and when the nuances of the story make it not so and the objections to it is a "false alarm" - one thing I also notice when people talk about stories' relationship to the status quo within their world is this equation of "natural = immutable" and "manmade = mutable". Like along the lines of "this story is bad because it depicts someone wanting to change a manmade social phenomenon as bad, and they need to accept and find peace instead, when that trope is actually supposed to be used for things like people who want to stop things like natural death or an earthquake". And look, I get why the "treating unnatural things as natural in the narrative" is highlighted as it is by some people, given the long history of social Darwinists and the like justifying their preferred (oppressive) politics and social organization by saying it's about evolution or human nature - they created this association between natural/immutable and manmade/mutable, not people talking about fiction on social media, and people understandably want to defeat these people's arguments on the ground they set because they very much can be defeated on the ground the social Darwinists etc. set.

But... this dichotomy is absolutely not true of real life, and just falls into the naturalistic fallacy. There are lots of natural, bad things that can and have been changed - diseases that have been cured, even the fact that scientists already have plans (and have practiced) the idea of diverting an asteroid before it hits earth and causes massive damage. Every manmade social structure can be changed, but the inverse is not true.

So I feel like instead of having this paradigm for when a story "should" feature the problem in its world being fixed as coming down to whether it is natural or not, it should be based on what would be right for that specific story. There can be good stories about people confronting a disease or natural disaster without being able to "do anything" about it, and good stories about people curing a disease or, like with the asteroid example, preventing a natural disaster. Likewise, there can be good stories about rebelling against an unjust social system, and there can be good stories where that unjust system is effectively a constant that the characters have to deal with, suffer in, and perhaps find happiness or little victories in spite of it. Just because the system can be changed doesn't mean that a given set of characters in the specific situation they are in reasonably could (unless you want to get into a lot of victim-blaming), any more than you would be mad at a story where the characters deal with an epidemic disease for not ending with them all being vaccinated, because you know that is a possibility in the long run, even though those characters in that situation wouldn't feasibly be inventors of vaccines.

Now this comes with a few caveats. First of all, what about the extent to which seeing stories where people don't do anything about the systematic problems they face will encourage people to underestimate their own power to change things? Well, I really don't think the main obstacle to people taking social action in their community is that they sometimes watch fiction where characters don't do that. I feel like people spend more time wondering why a fictional character who is mostly powerless in front of a greater force before them spends time trying to help themselves, their family and friends as best they can rather than figure out some way to destroy the system entirely (again, see the "why didn't they invent a vaccine" example), then actually questioning their assumptions about THEMSLEVES, in the real world, being powerless and how much more they themselves would be really capable of.

And some people might also object along the lines that making things about human interests and small victories can deflect things away from the social issues, like an American news segment that praises a 9 year old for raising money for a parent with cancer through some cutesy sale rather than talking about the problems with the USA's health care system. But here, the criticism isn't that it's wrong to praise the kid for going out of their way to do something so selfless, or treat those individuals who do brave and kind things in a harsh system can only be seen as victims and not also as heroes (yes, a kid like that would absolutely deserve to be praised and admired!). The criticism is that focusing on these stories allows people to subliminally want the bad systems to stay in place, so humans will keep being morally tested and show heartwarming nobility, that they will think the world is a just one because, even though it is unjust, it creates those "nice moments", and that they might believe that people are so kind that there will always be some individual person to carry the load for someone else, so there's no need to change the system, in the process ironically not treating the acts of kindness as extraordinary and heroic enough, in that people are expected to do them and in such quantities that the problem somehow stops existing altogether. And I don't think any of these criticisms really apply when you are talking about fiction, at least fiction depicting completely made up (if based on reality) social injustices and not journalism. You could make an argument for fiction depicting an injustice in the real world featuring someone doing something "heroic in the small scale", but I really don't think in the end there is harm in a fictional story where a person has little power to change the system they are in but still does as much good within it as they can.

So I've talked about stories where the system is depicted as bad, but even though changing it can be done theoretically by people in general, for the character's being followed it's unfeasible and for all intents and purposes it's just something they have to live with and work within, and how that's likely not sending some noxious message on how we should worship the status quo. But what about stories like the ones I alluded to at the beginning, where wanting to change things is villainized, treated as hubris and sign of a mind that doesn't have the inner peace to accept things?

Well, I would say that these stories generally send a "bad" message, but, because natural really isn't the same as immutable, they send a bad message whether the thing the character tries to change is natural or unnatural! So yeah, I don't like stories villainizing the horrible audacity of someone to want to end slavery or something, and I also don't like stories villainizing the horrible audacity of someone, say, wanting to revive the dead, because things are better as nature made it. That's not to say that all stories about hubris and the value of acceptance and equanimity are bad, just that whether they are "problematic" comes down to the framing rather than whether the thing the character wants to change is natural or unnatural. And by framing, I mean this: if the character is framed as hubristic because they believe they, as an individual, are so intelligent and talented that they can change some complex aspect of life for the better without any nuance or carefulness or input from others, that has potential to be a great story, and it's a flaw many people have in real life that has caused no end of suffering in the real world! But if the character is framed as hubristic for believing that anyone could or should change that aspect of life, that it's too complex or more often too inherently good or just "sure it's not moral, but it's natural, so it must be worshipped", then no. Kill that idea with fire.

Likewise a lack of acceptance can work when it's clear it's not saving anyone, it's just hurting by not letting go. Like a "don't revive the dead" story can absolutely work if the equivalent real-world metaphor is someone's family keeping them on life support and using CPR over and over again, even when it's painful and humiliating and it's clear they aren't going to ever get better. That's something horrifying that does happen in the real world! But not so much when the character actually wants to save another person, in a way that will definitively help them if it's done right rather than just harm the other person but make the "reviver" feel better about themselves and escape their own personal grief. And for someone who isn't accepting their own death and is villainized: is the villainization coming from them lashing out and making themselves and others miserable even though there's nothing they can do about it (fine) or for them wanting to save themselves when they legitimately have a change (not fine)! Now it might be that in your fictional world, the way to save or revive yourself or someone else involves hurting or killing other people, in which case they very well might be bad people for it, but again, the key is in the framing; are they portrayed as bad people for causing a greater harm for a smaller good (fine), or portrayed as bad people because wanting to defy nature is not good in the first place, and even if there wasn't all the harm they should just "accept death (or whatever other bad thing there is in question)"?

Now I usually try in my posts on Tumblr to stick out of discussion of politics that is not directly related to media, not because I obsess over media as being the basis of everything but because that's what I come on this site to do, and would go elsewhere to just talk unabated about politics. Though still, I can't help but notice that when you have a debate where side 1 is like "we have to change this horrible thing, and have the imagination to see the possibility and strive for it", side 2 is like "it's more complicated than that, don't act as if you know everything and can fix everything that easily", and side 1 again is like "It's not complicated, that's just the excuse people make for themselves", what groups of people are on either side tends to flip depending on whether the thing to change in question is natural or manmade. If it's natural, it's typically the rationalist techno-optimist groups cheering on change (see all of the support for anti-aging research you see there) and left wing (and some parts of the right wing) people who are skeptical for how it may lead to social inequalities (to which, again, the proponents would argue that the potential for downsides is no reason for the harm by neglect that comes from not trying), while if it is manmade it's left wing people are are arguing strongly for change and the supposedly "open minded" dreamers of the aforementioned rationalist techno-optimist crowd are suddenly saying you shouldn't change anything because it's complicated/perfect as it is. In reality, I think the right attitude for both is trying to open your mind to the possibility of change and be dedicated to trying for it, while maintaining carefulness and skepticism about the effects of it being done "wrong".

[adventism-atheism-orthodoxy-me]

Real Presence and Magical Pronouns

We live in an age that really decries anything that is deemed to be "magical thinking".  The belief that anything that can't be proven to be governed by Newtonian principles, or other logical processes, is to be questioned. God is a "Magic Man", etc.

I would be surprised if there were any atheists or agnostics who would give "Real Presence" - the idea that anything really, truly, happens during a Christian Communion or Eucharistic service - any credence or credibility.  Even most Protestants view the rite as something less - a memorial, maybe.  The items used during the ritual are called, "symbols'', or "elements", and aren't really thought of as much beyond the material, "It's just something we do that means this..."  Pick your rationale, whether "drawing our minds to Christ'', or at its most basic, "because he (Christ) said so" (Luke 22:19, 1 Corinthians 11:24-25).  The Eucharist for many Christians really has become a meaningless ritual.

The idea of Covenant comes up from time to time, but covenant is one of those words that the modern mind doesn't really get.  It's in our vocabulary, and we can talk about it as a thing, but to my mind, any descriptions we give of it rely a lot on linguistic gymnastics and are dependent on other words that have become vague to the modern mind.  Things such as "contract", "treaty", or "pact", come to mind as fairly concrete translations, but none of those words accurately contain the concept that's been lost. They actually do damage to it by their inadequacy in a culture unable to even comprehend the original idea.

There is a lot going on here that I’ve been thinking about.  The idea that words can hang around long after their useful purpose is done, or the idea that you can create something by giving it a name.

But my reason for starting with “Real Presence” has to do with the magical thinking around pronouns.  I’ve inherited several thousand years of Indo-European linguistic structure.  I’ve studied English formally and have used it casually as my main form of expression for over 50 years. To me, language has always been about clarity, and communication.  Apparently, very early in history, dividing things up between genders seemed important. I don’t know if it started with animal domestication or not - I suspect not - but regardless, it was understood that there were differences between the male and the female of any given species.  Roosters don’t lay eggs, bulls don’t give milk, etc…  It largely revolves around properties of reproduction - eggs are ova, milk is only derived after calving, etc…  A hen is not a rooster, a cow is not a bull, and a steer is something else - though castration doesn’t magically make him a cow.

We live in a period of confusion.  And while I agree with Alexandra Hudson, that Civility is important, and that none of us should go out of our way to offend, I think that the magical thinking around gender identity really does need to be confronted.  It has gotten so bad that calls are being made to criminalize intentionally misgendering someone (1,2,3).  Thoughtcrime anyone?

That I could somehow ontologically change who you are by referencing you with a pronoun different to the one you use for yourself, that the reality of your existence changes substantially with the use of the pronoun I use, is magical thinking.  All my life I’ve tried to use language for clarity.  I’m a technician by trade, so every little thing has a name, and writing is done for clarity.  So when I see someone who strikes me as a female, I’m going to call her, “her”, the burden of convincing the rest of us that she is a he, is on her (1,2,3,4) and anything else is willful disregard of rational thought.  

If you want to be a “he”, put in the work, become a “he”, and people will call you “he”.  There are no shortcuts, like any goal in life it requires a certain amount of ascesis to become what you want to be.

My daughter has started using the word “They” when referring to her friends.  It’s weird in such a low-context language to not use the more technically precise words to describe the persons or people in her life - I usually have no idea if she’s just talking about doing something with a singular friend or with a group.  She’ll mention a singular friend, use “they”, and it’s reflexive to me, I’ll ask, “oh, who else was there?” She speaks of "language simplicity", and "inclusivity" - not precision or accuracy.

The point of all this is singular.  Nobody is immune from magical thinking. We grow up with assumptions, and think we know how the world works.  Our history has given us a template to follow, ways of looking at the world, and this will not be changed in a single generation through coercion. I choose to believe in a supernatural reality, something even more real - even though it may not feel that way sometimes - then the physical - Because it encompasses the physical.

Does something happen during the Eucharist?  I choose to believe that something does, though I can’t prove it.

Does something fundamentally change in the universe when I misuse a pronoun?  I don’t think it does, further, I think it fundamentally distorts observable, concrete, reality - it asks us to communally endorse a psychosis, and directly refutes materialist dogma - nobody with XX chromosomes will ever get prostate cancer - Ever. And athletes with XY chromosomes will almost always dominate their XX chromosome competitors.

It's getting to a point that not even a child can say, "the Emperor has not clothes!"

But increasingly that’s just me.

[assignmentimprobable]

As promised in my last post, I have The Goods (aptly titled “the TC Toxic Masculine Character Write-up”), starring the three darkest/most villainous roles of Tom’s career and what frameworks of toxic masculinity they communicate something about. 

Analysis below the cut for courtesy.

Let’s start with the one everyone knows. Lestat de Lioncourt. He is an overwhelming, overzealous, grandiose being. His masculinity has little respect for anything outside of its purview. 

This is a man who wants, and in following his wants so indulgently alienates his life-partner. He never really stops to listen to Louis and his feelings, and defuses conflict with short-term solutions. Goodness, he baby trapped Louis and used the family structure to keep him locked in their relationship. He’s dismissive and short-sighted, the very definition of “here for a good time.”, a whirlwind romance that takes and takes. 

His selfishness is a defining character trait, one that the socialization of men breeds into a great many people who don’t know how to give themselves to another person in a sincere way. He fancies himself a provider, he is the particular head of the household whose notions of what is the correct time to have (ie. A good one, quit moping about the people we just killed) dictate the family unit. It’s smothering and it ends up doing damage that goes unresolved within the confines of the movie. The toxicity at work is unmitigated selfishness and so-called solutions that alienate the people around him, the inability to sincerely engage in dialogue for more than a few moments at a time.

Then we have Vincent from Collateral (2004). The aspirational masculine. Competent, handsome, calculated. The picture of cool and improvisational, Darwin, I-Ching, whatever man. He’s an absolute animal, and quite frankly, the kind of man who uses Old Spice. 

His masculinity is a projection of confidence and security, the kind that strips away joy and concern and leaves a cold, focused fury in its wake. Mean-spirited in a lot of ways, he comes down on Max for every human reaction he has in a very snarky; I-don’t-know-what-the-big-deal-is way. His coolness is what many men aspire to, and just as it is for those men, it’s fake! He’s a goddamn hypocrite is what he is. His nihilistic outlook has held him back from being a happier person, someone who has an active role in his own fate. The standard parts that are supposed to be in people aren’t in him because he’s convinced himself it doesn’t matter. And guess what? It matters, it all freaking matters. 

Vincent is a man composed of great envy. To quote a prior discussion I had with @power-chords​ on Vincent and use their awesome term- it’s not just a facile nihilism, but a facile masculinity. His whole debate with Max, his growing belligerence is the crescendo of something, a funhouse mirror where the reflection doesn’t match the man but the questions ring out for him anyway. “What the fuck are you still doing driving a cab?”, as in, “You could have been doing something else with your life if you could just see that you have a choice.” It’s substance that Vincent lacks. That substance is having the emotional intelligence and fortitude to feel and not lock it to a place where no one will ever see. This bestows upon that masculinity a fragility that is felled by a few well placed blows in one night. I’ve known a lot of men who fell apart under the weight of their feelings because they were convinced that within the context of being men that they didn’t matter. That it’s a conquest and a barrier to their goals- their perceived limitations of what they can do. It’s those limitations that are toxic, not the feelings themselves. Being confronted with that sends the stack of dominoes tumbling one by one.

Finally. The most personal example of the toxic masculine. One Frank TJ Mackey of Magnolia (1999) fame. We all know a Frank, or worse yet: some of us have BEEN one (not me tho, y’all be easy!). The kinds of things this man says, we’ve all heard it before from self-important wannabe messiahs among their big-bro-little-bro think tanks. 

Everything he preaches, from the bioessentialist man drive. It’s evolutionary, anthropological, biological. That kind of bullshit, it’s ‘animal’ in the imagery, to the way that he engages with women and manipulation. It’s the kind of insecure masculinity that takes the debate stage and wins because it’s the crassest, loudest voice in the room. Frank’s the kind of guy who hangs in the same circles as your Jordan Petersons and your meninists. The leather cuffs and vests and scorn for the nice-guy. 

His anger is jealousy and ego, not being enough and crafting a larger than life persona, a gimmick to drown out any notion that he’s not “man enough.”- because that’s what it all comes down to. He became the ‘man of the house’ after his father left and cared for his mother for the rest of her days. He was the one by her bedside and tending her emotional needs, and the late Mrs. Mackey still wanted her husband. The kind of complexes that creates in someone whose notion of masculinity is characterized by the father figure who often used the word “cocksucker” and left one day… Yikes. I’m not saying anything that folks on here haven’t said in more well-formed ways about him, but what’s apparent here is that he doesn’t want to ever experience that feeling of not measuring up, not being man enough again. 

He's punishing all women for something his mom did in a sick delirium. He makes them ask what they did wrong because he’s projecting his own questions of what he did wrong to make his mom not want him in the end. He’s built his whole identity around it, and when even the proximity of that feeling approaches he blows the fuck up. He’s pathetic, he’s fragile, he’s feeling, and everybody’s got to bear the brunt of it when you press the button. He wants to seduce and destroy because he can’t build his self-esteem any other way. Anger and uncontrollable emotion simmering beneath that intense restless energy. It’s scary and uncomfortable and downright absurd. 

I mean come on, respect the cock? Really? This is the masculine that tries to convince you of its merit and it’s skill when really? It’s just an attempt to feel better about itself at YOUR expense. And other men buy this shit too because they’re in the same emotional place! Don’t buy what he’s selling, because he’s a fuckin scam artist. 

All of these different portrayals capture something real about the psyche and socialization of men, and god I find that so compelling. I feel like I’m putting this all in a jar and shaking it to see what happens. I applaud this man’s talent for moving along the spectrum in different, distinct ways to communicate the same concept. He captures it and just, relays it back to us in ways that evoke discomfort, dread, and laughs because this is so, so silly.

[findingjoynweirdstuff]

Dream SMP Recap (April 27/2021) - Facing Fears

Ponk confronts Foolish at the Community House and plans to build a supreme fridge to make things up with him after the Banquet.

Tommy, preparing for the prison break, decides he needs to face his fears before he does so.

---

VOD LINKS:

Ponk

Foolish

Tommyinnit

Tubbo

Ranboo

Captain Puffy

---

- Ponk starts off in the cobblestone pyramid base.

- Ponk looks at the photos on his walls and puts on his shoes.

“Chat...today, we make the supreme fridge. We lost a friend -- it should’ve been Eret, okay? In all honest, it should’ve been Eret...it’s sad. It’s all so sad to think a friend of mine -- another friend! -- betrayed me like this, you know?”

“I guess...Purpled won’t be needing our supplies anymore.”

- Chat thinks Ponk doing a deep voice sounds like Sam. 

- Ponk wants to make it up to Foolish, and what better to do than make him a supreme fridge? He still has the cake Foolish gave him at the Banquet. He had no idea. 

- He starts mining down the Netherite blocks. Purpled won’t be needing these anymore.

- Ponk then goes over to Niki’s city to retrieve supplies.

- Badboyhalo is like that one friend who’s way too into a pyramid scheme and tried to get everyone else involved.

- When a dono points out that Ponk still got involved in the scheme, Ponk replies: 

“I mean...look. The pyramid scheme gave me structure to my life, alright? What kind of structure did I have before then? Huh? Think about it. What was I doing? Who was I sharing my thoughts with, chat? Exactly. So anything with structure was probably better than that, you know?”

“‘I had Sam?’ I had Sam. Chat. What did Sam do to me?”

- Ponk makes it to the ocean monument farm.

- Sam joins the game.

Ponk: hello...

Sam: You’re cute :)

Sam: Later <3

- He leaves. Purpled joins the game.

Ponk: So

Ponk: LOOK WHO IS HERE

Purpled: hi ponk

Ponk: DONT HI PONK ME

Purpled: ok

Purpled: bye ponk

- Purpled leaves. Ponk realizes he missed out on his chance to play Bedwars with him.

- Ponk gets a message back and goes to play Bedwars.

- Foolish notices the renovations and new obsidian layer on L’Sandburg. It doesn’t actually look too bad, and he decides he might keep it.

- After Bedwars, Ponk returns to the cobblestone pyramid to get things. He takes a closer look at the photos again. Sam is crossed out with red in one.

- Ponk waits at the Community House for Foolish. He has a photo of him and Foolish and a cake.

- Foolish asks what happened at the Banquet. Ponk boats over to him, but Foolish notices his eyes are still red.

- Ponk tells him that he never knew Foolish was going to get hurt. He was just the coat man.

Ponk: “Look at me! Does this look like someone like the guest of honor? No, alright? To have to serve people that have betrayed me, Foolish! How do you think that hurt? And then to see you! Taken up there by my friends, alright! I don’t know.”

- He tells Foolish that they’ve had good times together, that he saved the cake Foolish gave him. He gives Foolish the cake. When Foolish worries it might be poisoned, he says they can eat it together.

- Bad said he’d found armor in a chest and gave it to Ponk. Ponk didn’t know he was going to need it.

- Foolish asks how he knows this isn’t some sort of trap. Ponk tells him that he wants to make it up to Foolish.

Ponk: “Obviously, you can’t trust me and I know that, right. But I wanna make it up to you. Okay? Trust is something I hold very dear to me, and for me to break it, alright...be it from a third party’s perspective, okay? I didn’t have much to do with this Banquet, Foolish, you have to understand me.”

Foolish: “You’re telling me the Egg isn’t in control of you right now, is what you’re saying?”

Ponk: “The Egg helps me, Foolish. It gives me structure, okay?”

Foolish: “Do you still believe the Egg is some kind of good thing? Do you believe it’s actually something you should have in your like?”

- Ponk tells him to walk with him. Foolish points out he led the attack on his temple, all for the Egg.

Foolish: “You did it for the Egg! Thinking you would like, impress it or something, like it would give you more! What’s the real problem, Ponk? You haven’t explained. What’s the real problem? Your hand, like what’s with your hand -- what’s with the Egg in the first place--”

- Ponk tells him they don’t talk about the hand. That’s something he has to deal with. But he’s truly sorry, and he’s going to build Foolish a supreme fridge.

- Foolish is still concerned about the eyes. Ponk says the eyes mean nothing. Foolish doesn’t know how much Ponk has lost, who he’s lost. 

- Foolish snaps, saying he died. Does Ponk know how scary a thing that is?  Ponk replies that he does know, but Foolish is taking it out of proportion.

Ponk: “A quick death, or a slow, painful one, Foolish? Come on, man.”

- Ponk will still lay the foundations for the fridge. Even if Foolish chases him off, he will come back, day after day, to build the fridge and prove that he’s a good person.

- The Egg provides free Starbucks, and that is worth it.

- Foolish says he can’t trust Ponk until the red eyes and everything in his system are gone. Ponk says it will all be explained in time.

- Foolish has had enough and leaves. He heads back to the summer home. Ponk got him thinking about death again. He makes it back to the green light to calm down.

- Foolish then goes to continue building, to finish the mansion.

- Tommy wasn’t there for the Banquet. The Blood Vines are gone from the path now, and he is not afraid of the Egg. He wonders where it went.

- He has something to do today. He heads over to Snowchester to meet with Tubbo. Tubbo and Ranboo come over to the mansion.

- Tommy pulls Tubbo aside to speak with him alone. He asks Tubbo about how, after the Disc War Finale, he gave Tubbo the Nightmare armor set. He wants it back.

- He asks for Tubbo’s help with some things, but doesn’t want Ranboo there.

- Tubbo takes Tommy into the Snowchester vault. Tommy says he’ll give the rest back, but he wants to keep the Totem of Undying. Tommy puts on Dream’s armor.

- Next, Tommy and Tubbo go over to Pogtopia to retrieve Tommy’s sword. They open Sam’s vault door and Tommy gathers his things.

- Tommy and Tubbo go mine some obsidian in Pogtopia. He needs obsidian and blackstone.

- He gets home and cleans up the blood on the Prime Path. Ranboo arrives and gives him more stacks of obsidian.

- He explains to Tubbo and Ranboo that in a few days’ time, things are going to change, and he’s not strong enough yet. He wants to face the things he’s scared of.

- Tommy mines below the watchtower. He wants to create two bunkers. One that replicates the Final Control Room, and one that replicates the prison.

- Tommy asks if either of them have been to the prison. Ranboo says no, Sam doesn’t let him in. Tubbo says Sam didn’t let him in either.

- He tells Ranboo and Tubbo that he’s afraid of taking damage.

- Tommy’s heard rumors about the Panic Room and asks Ranboo what it was. Ranboo says it was just a room he went to when he got stressed, kind of like what Tommy’s making but the opposite.

- After they finish the bunkers, Tommy leads them all to Logstedshire. Tommy walks around, looking at everything there and remembering what happened.

- Next, Tommy goes to visit the exact recreations of the rooms in the museum. He meets Eret on the Prime Path.

- He asks Ranboo and Tubbo to lock him in for a minute and walks into the Final Control Room, talking through his feelings, pressing the button like he did when it happened.

- Tommy starts looking through the chests and finds the book that Eret left for Wilbur named “I’m Sorry.”

Tommy: “It’s okay...it’s okay because times have changed, and so have people. Not all people...but most.”

- They leave the museum and Tommy asks Tubbo to stab him with a sword.

- Tommy then goes into the recreation they made of the prison cell. He starts panicking and asks to be let out. Tubbo and Ranboo let him out. He tells them that in the next few days, it’s all going to change. He’s going to try and do what he should’ve done a long time ago.

- Tommy gives Ranboo a hug and thanks him for helping. He asks Ranboo to leave, then tells Tubbo to come up the watchtower with him.

- There, he tells Tubbo about dying and coming back. He and Tubbo had the chance to kill Dream and they didn’t, but now, Tommy’s going to break into the prison and do it.

- He needs from Tubbo a couple of things, and Tubbo can’t tell anyone -- even Ranboo -- about this. He needs Tubbo’s help to get him several invisibility potions, defenses stronger than TNT: withers.

- People are going to be upset with him because getting rid of Dream will get rid of the revival book. Tommy says the revive book isn’t worth it to keep him alive. Being in between life and death was worse than just staying dead.

- Most of all, he needs Tubbo to trust him.

Tommy: “This isn’t the right thing to do, Tubbo. It’s the only thing to do.”

- He tells Tubbo he’ll see him soon and leaves.

- Tubbo and Ranboo go off to fight some wither skeletons for skulls.

- Later, Ranboo goes mining with Tubbo in VC.

---

Upcoming events remain the same.

[likearecordbb]

about your post on the recent discourse...

it's honestly so confusing to me because like,, you say that ppl pointing out how members of this fandom will make neil very stereotypically 'feminine' is reinforcing the idea of 'masculinity' as one thing and 'femininity' as another.... and i get that we should get rid of these labels. but at the same time... the content itself that ppl are criticising (the ones that 'feminize' neil) are already doing just that. that's why they're criticising it.

i can't point out how ppl are reinforcing the idea that a relationship should have a 'man' and a 'woman', without... saying that that's what they're doing. the writer themselves already sees relationships this way and 'masculinity' and 'femininity' as two different distinct things. that's exactly *why* they're writing neil this way while keeping andrew close to canon.

there's nothing wrong with neil being stereotypically 'feminine' of course. but to act like it's somehow misogynistic for me to go to these ppl and be like 'hey, u shouldn't view mlm relationships through the lens of a hetero one! it can be very harmful' is weird to me... *especially* considering these stereotypes that ppl are pushing onto neil come from misogyny themselves. (ppl making neil much much more emotional than he is in canon while keeping andrew very stoic)

idk, like... ur simultaneously saying that we shouldn't view relationships as needing a 'man' and a 'woman'... while defending people who are doing just that and creating content which reinforces just that.

it's one thing to say 'we shouldn't view masculinity and femininity as two distinct and different things!'/'we should get rid of these labels all together cause they're meaningless'... but if i look at the content that u make/consume and it's practically, if not entirely, all andreil conforming to heternormative stereotypes... then i can't help but feel like ur not as detached from the idea of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' as u would like to believe... i trust the ppl who say these ideas are meaningless while not changing the canon characters because they seem to be sticking to their words.

people will just say that they prefer writing andreil is this heternormative way... they'll just say it what they like or what they're most comfortable writing without ever questioning *why* they prefer it this way.

and if they're projecting.. well then, *why* this couple? why pick an mlm couple to project what is often the experience of a cis woman in a relationship? why pick this mlm couple when there are others that do fit the stereotypical heternormative dynamic? idk. like,, u can do this ofc, but ppl can also call u out on ur shit.

there's an undeniable reason that neil is exclusively the one that ppl pick to make more stereotypically 'feminine'. and there's a reason this type of content is also so popular. and it's certainly not wrong to point this out.

You know, I can see all of these points that you're making. For me, the overall issue of this is very complicated. I am also super uncomfortable with the imposition of heteronormative roles onto...well, onto any relationship, regardless of the identities of the people who constitute it. I was raised smack dab in the middle of the gay community by lesbian moms (together 38 years now, jfc, can you imagine??), so that "man/woman" thing was never something that I grew up internalizing or normalizing. I can recognize that this may give me a bit too much of a sense of objectivity.

However, I'm also like...I've been ruined by grad school. The "feminizing" word makes me really uncomfortable because it starts to stray for me into gender essentialism territory. It also seems to foundationally differentiate between "masculine" behaviors and "feminine" behaviors and I just really hate that? Lesbian moms, trans daughter, bi (and late-in-life trying to see where on the ace spectrum I might fall) self, I've just met so many people with so many expressions of gender and sexuality and I just... Idk, I automatically resist anything that feels like it's upholding "masculinity" and "femininity" as real (as in, not constructed) things. And then I also am like, well, I've known SO MANY gay men who behaved in the ways that the discourse constructs as "feminized" and then I start to feel like, what about these men? Are they less 'men' because of it? How would it feel for that man to read these things saying his identity expression was a problem or a bad stereotype? Do I read *Neil Josten* within that context... no, not really. I think Neil has a 'not enough emotional expression' problem way before he has a 'too much emotional expression' problem.

I'll say here what I often say to my students in complex discussions: I don't have answers. I don't think I'm right and anyone else is wrong. I just have complicated thoughts and feelings and concerns about some of the things that sometimes seem to be left uninterrogated.

So, I do 100% get the need to be vigilant about the imposition of a "man" (dominant, emotionally constipated, sexually driven, stoic) role and "woman" (emotional, needy, teary, dependent) role onto relationships with two (or more!) men or women. I would also argue that we need to get rid of that idea in hetero relationships, too, because it's super damaging. I just wish we could find a way to talk about that that didn't feel like it was accepting this idea of femininity as a given? And I definitely agree that it's problematic when the 'bottom' in a relationship is depicted as the one who's soft and silly and weepy. (Have you read TJ Klune's Tales from Verania series? A VERY fun world that does that not at all and it's great). I'm not saying these things are not worth confronting--I'm just really uncomfortable with the way the conversations are often framed around a concept of femininity/feminizing. It feels like shrapnel, I guess? Like, 'ugh stop feminizing Neil he's not weepy and uwu he's a badass' feels inherently to me like it's making femininity and badassery mutually exclusive? Maybe I'm just looking for a caveat or footnote in the argument that acknowledges that that is constructed *for women too*? And is a part of, like, a larger heteronormative patriarchal structure? And not something that we can just all obviously agree is the way the ladies (should?) behave?

One other question I've been dying to ask, though, is: where are these fics? I don't think I've ever read something where Neil is crying over Jack being mean to him or anything. Maybe if I start to see hints of that characterization, I just close the tab and never end up getting to the 'worst' of it?

Although, if what you said earlier about the "content that u make/consume and it's practically, if not entirely, all andreil conforming to heternormative stereotypes..." was referring to me, then... idk what to say to that. I don't think that's what I do. The heteronormative relationship that you're describing isn't one that I enjoy, desire for myself (or anyone else), or have any interest in reproducing.

Does this clarify what I'm trying to say? I guess it's a really long way of saying, in the old insufferable grad school tradition: well, first we have to define our terms. Because I'm not sure we're all coming up with the same thing when we use the word "feminizing" and that probably has a lot to do with why we keep having this exact same conversation over and over and over again.

If I missed any specific point you'd like to pick at in more detail, please let me know--my very sad platonic life partner (who had to put her beloved 15-year-old poodle to sleep yesterday) and her mom are waiting for me to drive them to the stores for a distraction, so I'm feeling a little time pressure.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Top five magneto moments from the X-Men movies?

Ohhh...lemme think. (I tried picking from different films. It's not really in any order of preference, just scenes I think are neat.

1. aka the first one. I mean, not the first-first one or the second one or- but the first scene with Charles and Erik being Like That and doing their thing.

There's already at least one pretty popular post about why this scene is so damn good and how it tells us so much about these guys' dynamic without telling us much at all and I just really think it's well-done, well-acted. Especially since in the og movies, Mags and Charles aren't the main-characters so they don't get that much screen-time but this is what we need to know and there is just so much being communicated. I was kind of torn whether to pick this one or the very last one of the film but I chose this one bc I feel like the first one is more about Magneto (we already know he's going to be the villain right here, we learn what motivates him, we get some of the trademark bitchiness Ian McKellen brings to the character. Good stuff. Also when he walks off like: "We're the future, Charles! Not them! They no longer matter!" So much going on here.) while the end-one is more about Professor X. Also, for me the last scene actually elevates this one even further because of the way it makes this exchange frame the entire narrative of the film. You do get the sense that Charles and Erik are two chessplayers moving their pieces with the whole "What are you doing here?" - "Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answers?" and -

Like, you just get the sense that everything that happened between those scenes is just a little bit beneath them. It isn't any major break or change in their lives or relationship, they're the same as before and that also gives you an idea about the kind of history these guys already got to have.

2). Obviously.

Iconic. Show-stopping. Do I even need to say anything? Probably one of my favourite prison-break scenes ever put on screen. Everything about it. The dialogue, the violence, the "never trust a beautiful woman - especially one that's interested in you", the camera movement, the wink, the glass shattering and the cell coming apart, Ian McKellen floating on a metal/blood frisbee. This one has it all. Some physics guy on YouTube actually made a video about how powerful Magneto has to pull this off and apparently, this is a lot more impressive than any of the major property damage we see him cause across films.

3. Ah yes the Villa Gesell scene

Lemme say first: This scene is completely and utterly pointless from a plot-perspective. It's literally just a character moment. And I love character moments. It's just there to show us who Erik is and the film bends over backwards to justify this scene being in it: An entire stack of coincidences that is Shaw's photo hanging on the wall of this pub with the name of his boat clearly visible and he's sitting next to the two Nazis who happen to be sitting in this very pub right there and then and of course one of them has his Nazi knife with him (which is a very weird mixture of a Hitler Youth knife and an SS Honour Dagger and even ignoring that it's a mess bc they even forgot that German capitalises its nouns so why is the inscription all lower case and I'm the most annoying person on the planet to watch movies with but t-)

And the thing is - I actually like this entire scene even more for all of that. Because they could have just had that Swiss banker tell Mags where Shaw is. But instead, his entire trip to Argentinia is in there to let us see Erik kill Nazis and we get an exact sense of what he's doing with his life, who he is, how he is - and also did I mention dead Nazis? - I live for that (and also for a deleted scene where he sees a mother and her kid at the Argentinian airport and has a flashback and 😢).

I also like that it continues the pattern we get in the bank scene where he doesn't confront his targets directly but sets them up to incriminate themselves. We also get the "Frankenstein's Monster"-line which is something I have a lot of thoughts about - especially bc the whole "what makes us human/monsters"-question is a big deal in the movie. Also-also it sets up Charles 'head empty' moment from the finale of the movie where he tells Erik that the people CURRENTLY FIRING FUCKING NUCLEAR MISSILES AT THEM are just 'good innocent men' who are 'just following orders' and you just get the sense of how often Erik has heard this shit (also...thinking about how this film is set in 1962, meaning right after the Eichmann trial). There's just. A lot going on.

4. Oh let's be controversial!

ok I know this is something I know a lot of people hold against Erik and say it's one of his meanest and most unfair moments. but honestly? His anger is at least as earned as Charles' at this point and any take on this scene that is "one of them is right and the other is wrong" is ...boring. Erik once again lost people he cared about, he spent ten years in solitary confinement for a crime he didn't commit, he just learnt that literally everything that he warned about in the last film will happen (already has happened, partially), pretty much word for word ("Identification, that's how it starts. And ends with being rounded up, experimented on, eliminated.) to the point that an actual TIME-TRAVELLER comes back from the fucking future to tell them how bad they all fucked up.

(One of the things I like is that he doesn't make a difference between people who chose his side and people who chose Charles' side - he names Banshee along with Emma, Azazel, Angel. He's just sad about all of them. Generally, I'm still prissy that we never got to see him go full Magneto for any length of time in the prequels so him speaking of 'mutant brothers and sisters' is the closest we get to knowing what he would be like if they didn't always find some new weird between-movies plot for him like prison or starting a family in Poland or starting a leftist commune on an island - although I can kind of respect that one.)

Also anyone who ever had the misfortune of actually hearing me talk about this movie for any lengths of time knows I have...a lot of thoughts about Erik and his time in solitary confinement and I like that the first times we see his powers after he gets out after ten years of no metal, it's a huge mess. Erik as we know him from First Class would probably just wave his hands at those guards in the Pentagon kitchen and kill them with a few well-aimed knives in a blink of an eye - but this time around, he trashes the entire room and hits no one. And in the plane scene we see him lose control completely and almost bring down the plane once he snaps and you really get the sense that after ten years, he's no longer used to having metal around that reacts to his powers.

Also, in that same scene the mutual acknowledgement between him and Logan in the end? I liked that.

5. (almost) all scenes where he's just a giant menace to infrastructure and important landmarks.

Like the fact that he destroyed the Sydney opera house is just such a casual by-note, we don't even talk about that one. It's just how it goes, you know? The only let-down is that he literally went to France without taking down the Eiffel-Tower in DOFP? A giant metal structure? This is a serious oversight by the writers and really cheapens the whole movie-going experience. 2/10.

[kitkatt0430]

the flash and the problem of the pointless sacrifice

It starts at the end of season one. Eddie Thawne picks up his gun and shoots himself, dying to protect Iris, Barry, and the rest from his dangerous descendent Eobard Thawne.

Season two ends with its reversal, Barry creating the Flashpoint Timeline that, though its eventually set back to 'normal-ish', leaves a time remnant of Eobard Thawne alive and well (if running scared from the Black Flash/Hunter Zolomon as a speed zombie) to wreak havoc once more.

And I get it. The Reverse Flash is one of the Flash's most iconic villains - killing him off in season one couldn't be permanent. But apparently Eddie's suicide could be and the message that sends is... unfortunate.

Eddie is an extremely kindhearted person and we see that about him again and again throughout season one. He always has a smile for the people he cares about and he's an absolutely terrible liar. But we also know that he was bullied as a child/teen and since he never brings up the subject of his own family, it's likely he doesn't have a support structure outside of Central City. And the support structure he does gain in Central City was Barry's support structure first. There's not a single person we see Eddie spend time with in season one that didn't know Barry first.

And that's a big part of what wears him down over the course of the season. When both Barry and Eddie need support, Barry gets it first. Barry's secrets are treated as something Eddie has to prioritize over his relationship with Iris. Barry's loved Iris longer than Eddie's known her and while Iris loves Eddie, she also loves Barry and she's infatuated with the Flash - not realizing he's Barry's alter ego. Over the course of the season, Eddie constantly tries to connect with Barry and Barry constantly holds back. Their relationship is never equal. And that's what leaves Eddie open to Eobard's manipulations with the future news article.

And Eddie tries to make his own future with Iris anyway. But even with Iris accepting his proposal, Joe makes it clear he'll never truly accept their relationship and Eddie's sense of self worth is at an all time low. And that's the state of mind he's in during the fight in the pipeline. When Barry chooses not to let Eobard go after all, it puts them all in a position of potentially having to deal with this fight between the two speedsters just... never ending. It puts Iris in danger because Barry cares about her and because while Eddie is Eobard's ancestor... Iris isn't. From Eobard's point of view, Eddie's the only one who isn't expendable and from Eddie's point of view... he's the only one who is expendable.

His answer is suicide. And his death immediately erases Eobard from the timeline, but its also implied to have contributed to the re-emergence of the singularity. But at least Eobard was dead.

At least, until Barry created Flashpoint at the end of season 2. Presumably Eddie was alive in Flashpoint, but we never see him. Maybe he stays in Keystone instead of transferring to Central City. Never meets Iris. Never gets worn down to feel like he's not good enough. Never kills himself.

When Flashpoint is reset, Eddie's dead again but now his sacrifice has been rendered moot because Eobard's still alive as a time remnant.

It sets a rather nasty precedent for the show.

Season two also ends with a suicide. This time it's Barry's.

Much like Eddie the year before, Barry's been worn down. He had his place in his family's come into question, with Henry leaving at the start of the season and Wally's arrival midway through the season. His back is literally broken by the stress of fighting Zoom and despite everything he's suffered for the city, his honor is called into question the instant a different speedster takes to thievery. He has to give up his speed to protect Wally only for that to immediately put Caitlin in danger. His colleagues are brutally murdered by Zoom to teach him a lesson. His father finally comes back for good, only to be murdered in the same place as Barry's mother.

Honestly, there is no question (to my mind anyway) that Barry's suicidal at the end of the season. And because Barry his time remnants are fundamentally the same person at the moment of their split, the time remnant Barry creates is suicidal as well.

That time remnant tears himself apart to stop Zoom's plan to destroy the multi-verse. His very existence also lures in the Time Wraiths that take Zoom away, transforming him into the mindless Black Flash. All at the cost of a version of Barry killing himself, going unlamented and forgotten. But at least the multi-verse was safe.

Until the Red Skies Crisis when the multi-verse is actually destroyed and rebooted.

Another sacrifice rendered pointless.

HR does not kill himself in season three. But he deliberately places himself in a position to be killed in Iris' place. He arrives on the heels of a scandal on his Earth where he's been revealed to have been taking credit for someone else's work - with that person's blessing, but its still ruined his reputation. He comes wanting to reinvent himself, but from the start he's not the person the team really wants. They want Harry. Cisco wants Harry. He gets it hammered in that his strengths aren't appreciated by the team because he's not a scientist. His efforts to help STAR Labs are dismissed entirely. The only reason any attempts to help his museum venture succeed are because changing the future might save Iris.

It's not that HR is disliked, but he's left acutely aware that he's considered 'a bit much' and that he's always going to come second to the people he puts first. In fact, Tracy's probably the only one who truly and completely appreciates HR as he is.

So HR swaps places with Iris, knowing that he's going to die when he does. And while HR doesn't kill himself, there's an argument to be made that what he did was still suicide by proxy.

And this is a sacrifice that sticks, because Iris West is the love interest. She's never going to be killed off for real.

Three seasons ending with a suicidal sacrifice. And only one of them doesn't have that sacrifice reversed or nullified. Unfortunately, that's not the end of it either.

Harry leaves his Earth at the start of season four. His relationship with his daughter, which was shown to still be strong in season three, has somehow deteriorated to the point where she's thrown him off her support team and he comes to Earth-1 to reconnect with the found family he forged during season two. He's in the midst of a crisis and his understanding of himself as a parent is unraveling. And then DeVoe calls the other pillar of Harry's self identity into question, because Harry's genius isn't enough on its own anymore. He's not smart enough to out think DeVoe and his Earth-1 family is suffering. So Harry creates his own downfall, burns out his own brain trying to be the smartest. And he sacrifices his last moments of lucidity to find the answer to stopping DeVoe. In doing so, Harry puts Barry in the position to save Ralph's life.

But DeVoe still gets the last laugh when he causes the STAR Labs satellite to come falling down, nearly destroying the city and creating Cicada in the process.

But unlike previous seasons, Harry doesn't die. He gets some of his intelligence back and immediately gets exiled by the writers back to Earth-2 due to the massive problems with ableism this show has. But that's a different conversation.

Season five is probably the only season not to include a suicidal character who's kills themselves. Nora dies when she erases herself from the timeline by accident, but we know now she'll be back in the back half of season seven, along with her new brother. But one out five seasons not taking a suicide (or similar action in Harry's case) and painting it as a noble - but ultimately useless - gesture is rather... bad as far as track records go.

Season six has the alternate Barry Allen - implied to be the Barry from the 90s show - who dies in place of this show's Barry. To save the multi-verse and let this other Barry go home to his wife, something he'll never have with Tina again. And the multi-verse is destroyed anyway.

Season seven opened with Nash Wells, whose usual method of investigating mysteries and hoaxes led to the Anti Monitor's freedom and the multi-verse's destruction. His home Earth destroyed so he can never go home. He's confronted with an alternate version of his dead daughter, who can barely stand his presence. He begins to hallucinate alternate versions of himself and is possessed by the Reverse Flash and all his research on how to create a new Speed Force - to try to make up for some of the damage he's caused - points to a single conclusion. The only way to make things better is for him to die.

Instead, Nash's death immediately makes things worse. The artificial speed force is flawed and Barry destroys it in the very next episode. And while one could argue that Nash's death allowed Barry to save Iris and ultimately restored the original Speed Force, it doesn't negate the fact that Nash's suicidal state of mind wasn't addressed by the people who called him friend. And his legacy was immediately deemed a failure and destroyed.

While I wouldn't say the show is glorifying suicide, there's a subtle and incredibly troubling repetition in the story telling on the show that frames suicide as the right decision in certain circumstances. Even though what's being sacrificed for often comes to naught. And it's incredibly uncomfortable, seeing it all laid out like this.

I'm still really not sure what to make of it all, but I've got no doubt it ties into the show's ableism with regards to mental health issues. Because every time its someone whose mental health has been brought down to a low point who commits these acts of 'sacrifice' and while the team grieves these losses... they don't seem to learn from them either. Because it just keeps happening.

(Think I missed something? Please, by all means, add on.)

[darkpoisonouslove]

Ranking the Winx Club Finales

I recently finished my rewatch (and first watch of a season and a half) of Winx Club and wrote out my thoughts on all of it. However, to send off a year that was in experience a lot like watching this series - meaning, generally frustrating and downright disappointing whenever I got excited over a thing with a few highlights that actually stuck the landing - and to get out any remaining feelings over the series, I have decided to rank the finales from least to most favorite. I just have a lot of rage to spare over season 8′s finale and needed an excuse to do so. Plus, I am being thematic here goddammit! Here we go:

8. Season 8

Yeah, I really spoiled that already. To sum it up:

But let me elaborate. Like I already said, this finale enraged the living fuck out of me. I just cannot comprehend whatever possessed them to write a finale so, so... excruciatingly devastating... to a season that started out with a lot of promise and had some extremely solid decisions (except for the art style, which is just NOT IT). This finale is an absolute disaster in every way. First, there is a new plot point introduced mere minutes before the finale and it is never tied into the overall narrative of the season which doesn’t do it any favors, especially after the two halves of the season already have trouble connecting together into one overarching story. The reason they brought in the creatures from the Dark Dimension was to distract Valtor while Winx make their attempt at stealing the stars which could have very well been a role filled by Arken confronting Valtor in an opportunity to clear up all the muddy details around their partnership and bring together the two halves of the season. The Winx’ plan had potential that was completely wasted by their own interruption instead of seeing each girl (provided Layla was playing Icy, Stella - Darcy and Musa/Tecna - Stormy) doing her best to pretend to be the Trix she’s posing as to give the Trix the due role they should have had in this finale. Instead, we get an Icy that is a complete opposite of the character we’ve known her to be for seven seasons all for the sake of a wish she doesn’t even get fulfilled despite her decision to help. Her motivation is a direct contradiction to the original plan of the Trix and disrespects her character from all previous instances of her being on the show for absolutely no reason as she is left with nothing in the end and the whole backstory they invented for her out of nowhere and couldn’t fit in any way with anything previously known about her was in vain because it was never resolved. Winx essentially manage to defeat Valtor once they wish for their own power-up and are gifted powers they haven’t really earned only to be pronounced great heroes who even get their own constellation in the sky. Come again? There was no narrative tension in this episode, no big climax to resolve what is supposedly the biggest threat in the universe at the moment, and no actual emotional conclusion to the season. It can’t even be called a messy wrap when so many threads were left hanging in there. A true disaster on every front.

7. Season 6

Even if you count both 6x25 and 6x26 as the finale of season 6, the structure is still lacking big time. Acheron who is the main drive of the entire season is defeated before the end of 6x25 and the Trix who are the other main villains were also more or less neutralized at that point to leave absolutely no stakes for the last episode so they had to pull some bullshit to fill it. The Winx are useless for the entire episode, including Bloom whose battle with the Trix is an absolute joke. Like, they can’t even think of syncing their attacks so that she can’t protect herself from all three of them with her ridiculously small shield and Bloom couldn’t even bother to actually buy herself enough time to leave the Legendarium. The only saving grace of that fight is the little emotional moment it causes for Bloom but that was also not really set up at any point of the season so it was just out of the blue. Selina changing her affiliations permanently even after the imminent threat for her life was neutralized made about as much sense as her turning evil in the first place and the fact that they needed her to lock the Legendarium made everything 1000% shittier because of how convenient it was that she just decided to turn good again without any justification for her course of actions. That coupled with the lack of consequences for any of her actions (she nearly killed Flora for heaven’s sake and no one even brought that up?) plus the dreadful info dump monologue they gave her just brought the whole thing down. The wrap-up of the season was also underwhelming after they had an entire episode that was mainly free of villains in order to close the other storylines... but, of course, there were no other storylines. Pretty disastrous.

6. Season 7

Just like in season 6, Winx were pretty useless here as they really didn’t do all that much for the plot. Luckily, the fact that the Trix were brought in allowed for the villains to have a battle that was more intriguing and provided some action as for a finale. The other key elements of the season (fairy animals, Trix, wild magic, Kalshara and Brafilius and the time travel) were actually woven together pretty well to make for a pretty satisfying finish to a season that really lacked any solid plot. The mini worlds and the Tynix transformation did not have use in the last episode but that wasn’t too catastrophic. There was actually a pretty emotional moment between the fairy animals and Winx that would have been even better if their relationships had been better developed throughout the season... You’d really think that since fairy animals were the main point of the season and there was no solid plot to account for, they would have taken the time to pay attention to Winx bonding with their fairy animals but nah. I am still impressed with how touching their goodbye was given the fact that they didn’t really have all that much time to actually become close so bonus points for that. The very last scene is a little generic but what else to expect from a season that has sung all its songs already (thank god that there were no musical numbers in this because I have a feeling it would have been even worse)?

5. Season 5

Season 5 could at least pat itself on the back for dealing with the main villain of the season even if there were a couple iffy things about the whole deal. I’m taking away consistency points for a) the fact that the Throne was supposed to be activated with the seals from the Pillars of the Infinite Ocean, yet suddenly stealing a random Sirenix would do, b) Tritannus being defeated by simply having his trident taken away even though he literally grew in body mass implying that the power of the Emperor’s Throne had seeped inside of him (also confirmed by Mystery of the Abyss) and c) the mutants inexplicably turning back into people once Tritannus lost his powers even though they never turned back during his times of relapsing back into a human thanks to running out of pollution. His defeat was just ridiculously easy and Bloom got to do it even though Layla was the one with the personal connection to Tritannus and the one most directly impacted by his actions as her family fell prey to him. Instead of getting to shine in a season that focused heavily not just on her home world but on the environment from which her powers come, she got benched in favor of Bloom getting to do everything again with only mild assist from Layla’s cousin. They should have kept it in the family and left Layla and Nereus deal with Tritannus. The Trix were blasted out of the narrative extremely conveniently and the rest of Winx were saved twice by the mutants just turning their back on them instead of destroying them right then and there and then being turned back into their original form as well. There wasn’t the usual teamwork of the whole Winx unit which I am still salty about despite being sick of all the time they reached for convergence in that season. Theredor fighting alongside Winx (different from his own daughter) was a nice touch but the king and queen of Andros coming off as so helpless (and apparently the only people in the castle unless you admit that everyone else drowned) was frustrating. Where was the Andros army? We only got Tressa, Roy, four of Winx and a handful of mermaids. Is that the whole population of the Heart of All Oceans? Additionally, the finale left no time for any emotional resolution of the season’s events, especially considering the big deal that Daphne’s revival was. Instead they opted for a musical number at the end. Not the best form.

4. Season 3

Season 3 had a finale and then another finale. Granted, better than season 6 that had a finale and then filler but there was not a lot of glory to the ending of a story with such a strong opening and emotional moments that send you bursting into tears. The spell of the four elements was pretty decent in its first appearance in 3x25 but the way Valtor lost it all was a real let down after the climatic confrontations between him and the Winx girls throughout the rest of the season. His return was more or less a desperate last attempt at personal revenge against Winx as his goal was mostly out of reach at this point. The spell of the elements was brought down in both its use to create clones of Winx’ boyfriends and in its power as it was much easier to undo in its reappearance. The saving graces of this season’s finale are the couple emotional moments sprinkled through both 3x25 and 3x26. Bloom’s willingness to sacrifice herself for her friends and the world was the thread that the finale hangs on as she is mostly the one resolving the whole conflict which was a bit dissatisfying after the emotional damage Valtor inflicted on all of them directly or indirectly. There is a few moments left to recover from the emotional intensity of their battles against Valtor but nothing that really addresses the seriousness of the trauma they had to survive because of him. The Trix didn’t even get to have a last stand of their own in either of the last two episodes despite the position in which they started the season but that was more or less unnecessary anyway since we’d already seen they can’t hold their ground against Enchantix Winx even with a boost from Valtor. Overall, the finale is pretty weak, especially as a follow-up of the dynamic and strong experiences that the season put them all through. It was the first finale that was confined to a single episode (or rather two separate battles spanning over an episode to end the season) and there wasn’t enough tension building in the confined storyline an episode told.

3. Season 4

The season 4 finale is overall a solid conclusion that delivers both a final battle with the Wizards and enough time left to address all the other storylines left unfinished. The final battle was pretty short but there was enough intensity in the previous couple episodes to have covered the action demand that the season had already set up and it also provided the opportunity to have Winx come back together as a team after Layla split up. Not only that, but Nebula and Roxy also get to play their part while the Wizards make their last desperate attempt to regain the upper hand. It’s pretty climatic for something that length that also left about 15 minutes of the episode still to fill. Everything that had to do with the closure of the Earth fairies storyline was emotional beyond belief and gave more depth to all of them and Layla’s decision to join them. Winx had to face all of the separate responsibilities they have on their shoulders and find a way to balance them all so that they can pursue their dreams. There was a plethora of emotional moments and a deserved spotlight shined on Layla’s situation and how she’s dealing with it, plus the others’ feelings. It was a really touching finale and also an inspiring one to see Winx stand behind their dreams while still balancing their responsibilities. It seemed to achieve the initial goal of the season to have them adapting to the adult life they were shifting into.

2. Season 2

I’m gonna be honest, I had a very hard time deciding whether this would be number one or two because the season 2 finale had a lot more character moments that were very moving. It really corresponds to the season since it was more character driven than the first one and the finale suited that. However, ultimately I decided that it would take silver because of a couple minor things that bring it down. To get that out of the way, the second portal to Realix that led Winx there was imo a copout that destroyed pretty much all of the tension that the entire season spent building around the search for the Codex. It just felt so wrong for there to be another way to enter that dimension and to me it was a big disappointment. Especially since the key to activating the copy of the Codex was the color riddle that was a ridiculous panicked attempt on the writers’ part to show that Stella isn’t useless and has what to give the team but it only made her look worse in my eyes. Also, minor gripe for the fact that there wasn’t that much of a final battle since everything ended with a single convergence. Of course, there were several battles across the episode between different sides that made for good action and tension and there was magic involved in more ways than simply the convergence in order to defeat Darkar but it was still a bit of a letdown to never truly see him put his everything in battle. And the fact that Griffin and Faragonda held him off for as long as they did on their own actually hurt his credibility as a threat as well. But hey, on the plus side, remember when the teachers actually helped and did not leave the fate of the whole universe in the hands of 16-year-olds? Good times! The MegaTrix and her? their? battle with Darkar was epic. 20/10 on that concept alone, plus it really brought a great feeling of vindication after the number Darkar did on them and felt so satisfying even if they were also part of the villain team of the season. They were portrayed as three-dimensional and weren’t cast out of the narrative without care just because they were villains and that was actually probably the most solid moment that the Trix have ever had on the show (just minor gripe for the fact that they were supposed to be trapped in Realix when the dimension was sealed forever but they were later somehow brought out of there which was never explained). Sky’s speech to Bloom was actually a pretty emotional moment and the payoff from it felt earned and allowed for Bloom’s victory against the darkness to feel natural and in place. It was probably one of their best moments as a couple. Plus, the cute little interactions that we got during the celebration party to send off the season on its merry way made for a great finale. (And a shoutout to the Musa x Riven scenes both in 2x25 and 2x26 because that was some good shit and some cute shit and it was exactly what we deserved).

1. Season 1

Season 1 reigns supreme with its finale. There is just no other finale that can rise to the level of the first one that was built for about one third of the season so that the last episode could dive right into the action without wasting time on setup. This is also the only place where we truly and fully get to see each of the Winx and the Trix (well, minus Layla who hasn’t been introduced yet) showcase their powers but especially Bloom and Icy. It is the longest battle we have seen and it builds a lot of tension on top of what was already there to leave you on the edge of your seat. The exploration of magic in this episode makes it so iconic and such a great watch even on the 300th time. There isn’t really much more to say than simply “It is epic”. What makes it even better though is the fact that there is enough time left in the episode to wrap up everything else and not in a rushed way. The battleground is extended to the locations that have already suffered the previous battles to show the full extension of the action and to setup the wrap-up that comes at the end. They even find the time to let some of the minor characters have distinct and touching moments as well and thus expand the universe of Winx further than just the main characters. Speaking off, they all get their moments, too, and the Specialists aren’t left out of that (you will never catch me not fangirling over Sky and Riven fighting back to back). The finale also doesn’t forget about the overarching story about Bloom’s origin which is commendable considering the constant lack of consistency the show suffers. This is really the only finale that isn’t lacking in any of the departments and manages to provide a truly fascinating story that keeps you entertained and in suspense while at the same time does not discard the emotional payoff or the logical continuation of events. It just excels in every way.

Well, this is my analysis on the finales of Winx Club. What started out as a bitch fest actually left on on a positive and uplifting note to make for a great ending to a harsh year. Let’s see what beginnings 2021 will bring! ;)

[mbti-notes]

I'm an isfj. I know someone with serious mental illness and I don't feel very compassionate when I hear about his life. I feel pity, I feel very helpless/powerless and angry, I feel guilty, or I feel uncomfortable and want to turn away coz it's scary that people's lives can go really badly. I feel really selfish being like that and I don't want to be this kind of person. How can I nurture more compassion?

Assuming typical brain development, you are born with the capacity to empathize. Empathy is an important part of human genetic history because we needed it for survival, specifically for successful cooperation. To work together well, we must understand each other well, we must support each other’s efforts well, and we must help each other contribute well. As with any raw, inborn capability, it’s up to you to develop it to its higher potential through the choices that you make. Your choices have decreased your ability to empathize. There are two common obstacles to overcome in the process of empathy development:

1) Egocentrism: People at low levels of ego development aren’t able to empathize because they aren’t able to recognize other people as subjects. Do you understand the difference between a subject and an object? Many people only know the difference in theory but can’t apply it. In English grammar, a subject is the “active” part of the sentence, e.g., the person who is doing something. By contrast, the object is the “passive” part of the sentence, e.g., the person who is having something done to them. This basic grammatical structure belies the framework that the mind uses to understand relationships in the world.

Everybody has their own experience, which means that your understanding of reality begins from your own personal vantage point - you see yourself as a subject, experiencing and doing things in the world. Your vantage point includes things like your self-concept, thoughts, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, judgments, schemas, triggers, past experiences, etc. When you look out into the world through your vantage point, you don’t see the world as it is, rather, you merely see the world as it gets interpreted through the content of your vantage point. A simple example: When you look at a painting, what happens? All you see is a canvas with some colored paint smeared all over it? If that’s all you see, then you’re either not human or you don’t have a personality. No, for instance, as ISFJ, you see the colors and whether you like them, you see the image and how it makes you feel, you see the style and how it compares to the aesthetic styles that you’re already familiar with, and so on. 

The same principle holds true when you deal with people. You, the subject, acts upon the other person, the object, with the contents of your vantage point. You don’t see people as they really are but only as you want/expect/hope them to be - it’s all about you. For example: You think about how they make YOU feel, when in fact, they’re not purposely doing anything to make you feel anything. You think about who they remind YOU of, when in fact, they bear no relation to the people you’ve known before. You think about whether YOU are better/worse than them, when in fact, they are simply a person with strengths and weaknesses just like you. And so on.

There’s nothing wrong with having your own vantage point, as we all have every right to our own existence. However, the problem arises when you never learn or never acknowledge that there’s more to the world than your own vantage point, which means that you are, in essence, completely confined by it psychologically. In short, your vantage point gets in your way instead of aiding you. Egocentrism makes it difficult to empathize because you don’t really see people, rather, you only ever see aspects of yourself as you constantly project the contents of your vantage point onto them. This creates ego drama, as you are more concerned with your experience and how you’re reacting than what’s actually going on with the other person. When you’re not grasping the truth of someone, how can you know the most appropriate way to relate to them, comfort them, help them, or guide them, especially when their experience is very different from yours? You’ll be grasping at straws.

Therefore, empathy requires the ability to transcend egocentrism, essentially, to stop approaching the world as though your own experience is all there is (oblivious) or all that matters (narcissist). To have meta-awareness of your egocentrism and understand how it holds you back (in limiting your perception and distorting your judgment) is to create the space to choose differently, i.e., to refuse to be a slave to ego drama. When you finally wake up fully to the fact that you aren’t the center of the world but rather only one equal part of a greater whole, you will possess the humility that is necessary for empathy. Humility refers to the ability to put yourself into the right perspective. A genuinely humble person knows their rightful place because they are no longer a slave to the ego dramas that create craving for strength and superiority and/or fear of weakness and inferiority. Humility allows you to stop treating people like objects and respect them as subjects in their own right. In other words, their experience is just as important to them as yours is to you, and you are both fully equal in that respect, so you know to honor their existence, as you honor your own. This is the basis of the classic golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

What does humility look like in real-life relationships? It looks like LISTENING. To be a good listener is to listen without all the biases, prejudices, and judgments of your ego dramas. Reasonable and sound judgment comes only AFTER you have collected all the facts, which requires listening - only then should you be trying to apply what you know to their experience. But you won’t be capable of listening well if your ego drama is always twisting the facts or if your ego drama always gets triggered every time you interact with someone. To truly hear someone is no small feat. Not everyone who talks about their struggles wants “help”. A lot of human problems arise from never feeling truly seen and heard. Therefore, to be a great friend is, first and foremost, to have the ability to see and hear someone and receive their experience without judgment. Once you are capable of listening empathetically, compassionate action naturally follows.

2) Poor Emotional Intelligence: I have already written about this, so you should read the articles provided. It’s obvious from your description that you have poor emotional intelligence. The development of emotional intelligence is correlated with the development of the F function, so you struggle with using Fe properly. Being confronted by your friend’s struggle with mental illness, your emotions get triggered, your ego dramas start playing out, and in the end, you are stuck in your own head trying to make sense of what’s happening. Your attention isn’t on your friend, is it? You’re not really listening.

It’s common for people who struggle with empathy to frame the problem as “me versus them” - either I protect my own experience or I surrender to theirs. This defensive attitude is rooted in egocentrism. There’s “me”, there’s “them”, and there’s “us”. When you are egocentric, all that really matters to you is "me”, and "they” are only important insofar as they impact you. In “me vs them” mentality, you don’t want to feel any negative disruptions from the outside world, so you close yourself off to emotional influence (a common symptom of Ti loop). By being defensive, you are directly hampering Fe development. Without healthy Fe, establishing a sense of “us” in a relationship is impossible, because the wall of defensive fear never allows anyone to actually reach you. But what about the other side of F dysfunction, such as the people pleasers of the world? They are also egocentric in that they only care about their craving for acceptance and affirmation - it is still ego drama all the same. People pleasers give the illusion of not caring about “me” to get what they want from “them”, but it is actually all about ME and getting them to like ME, not about “us”.

When you have poor emotional intelligence, you aren’t able to accept and resolve your own feelings and emotions, which results in them becoming self-inflicted obstacles - they get in the way of good judgment. Having good emotional intelligence means knowing how to put feelings and emotions into the right perspective, such that they inform you to make BETTER decisions. Resistance to your own emotional life means damaging your decision-making ability as well as resisting all the negative things out in the world. When you encounter negativity in someone else, it reflects back to you your own negativity, and thus begins your ego drama of fighting and trying to bury the negativity in yourself. You are at least aware enough to honestly describe what you feel when you encounter someone that triggers you, but you don’t have the ability to resolve those negative feelings.

One of the main problems of poor emotional intelligence is not being able to tell the difference between thoughts and feelings. Feelings are simple, all you have to do is say, “I feel sad” or “I feel guilty”. That’s it. That’s a feeling. Once you start to say more, once you start to talk about the feeling, then you’re having thoughts. Feelings need not become anything more than what they are, and they come and go like the wind. But thoughts are complicated because they are about analyzing, evaluating, believing, speculating, etc. Thoughts stick to you in the form of ideas and beliefs, and they impair your judgment when you’re not addressing the underlying negativity that creates them. People often try to think their feelings away (i.e. rationalization), which doesn’t resolve anything and even spins you out of control.

You say that you feel guilty when hearing about his suffering. If you feel guilty, then feel guilty. Do you believe that there’s something wrong with feeling guilty? Is it not normal to feel bad for having more than someone when you’re an empathetic person who hopes that everyone can find their happiness? You say that hearing your friend makes you feel uncomfortable because you’re scared of confronting negativity. If you feel scared, then feel scared. Do you believe that there’s something wrong with feeling scared? Is it not normal to feel scared when imagining negative things that could threaten your survival? Why do you view feelings as abnormal or as something to be banished out of yourself? It’s a form of self-loathing.

From these two examples, do you understand that it is your own inability to accept yourself and your feelings that is the root of the problem? As SJ, it is typical to be more concerned with being “proper” than being real, so you consistently deny the truth about yourself because you don’t want to see the many ways that you are “improper”. Resisting your negative feelings and the truth that they reveal about your impropriety only feeds the negativity as you start judging yourself harshly, calling yourself “selfish”, thus your negativity escalates into ego drama and throws you for a loop. By contrast, if you were to simply allow your feelings to inform you about the truth of what’s happening with you and accept that truth gracefully, there would be no need for negative feelings to turn into a big ego drama. 

In the history of psychology, the humanist psychologist Carl Rogers was perhaps best known for his ability to empathize very deeply. He said: “If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual.” 

If you fear change, if you fear your heart being disrupted, if you fear confronting what is strange and unknown to you, if you are easily threatened by difference or negativity, if you fear feeling the heavy moral responsibility of helping someone in need, then you will fear the act of empathizing with people, because they may, at any moment, say/do something that turns your world upside-down. It is that fear which keeps you closed off and stuck within yourself, refusing to empathize when you clearly have the ability to empathize. It’s up to you to acknowledge the fear, accept it, and let it go. Until you make that conscious choice, you are merely stuck on your side of the wall, never able to truly see past it. Only by letting someone into your world, being emotionally strong enough to feel touched without feeling undone, can you establish a connection with them. Once you’re connected to someone emotionally, compassion comes easily (and that is the basis of having a healthy F function). 

[rawsanma]

In Memoriam of "Shin Evangelion: Curse"

*The following article contains a full spoiler for "Evangelion 3.0+1.0".*

I sat together with a person who was not in birth when EOE was released, and after watching the film we talked a bit and thought about the people who passed away without ever seeing this. I understand that fans from the old series and those who came from the new series may have very different perceptions of Shin-Eva. So I'd like to first correct a few things I said in my first impressions.

It may be somewhere between an honorable movie and a mediocre movie in general, but as Evangelion, it's garbage.

After about halfway through the two hours and thirty-five minutes, I started to look at my watch again and again. The double ending, which is both a personal novel and a product, was a fleeting fantasy, and the two songs "One Last Kiss" and "beautiful world (da capo ver.)" were not used effectively in relation to the story, only being played in the staff roll.

When I saw the first 10 minutes of the movie that was released last year, I thought that perhaps Paris was chosen as the setting for the story of "humanity fighting together in the face of destruction" or "the expansion of the Eva world (not G Gundam, but G Eva!)", but that was not the case at all. He just wanted to depict the battle using the Eiffel Tower as a FATALITY,　I realized that he hadn't made a single millimeter of progress since when he asked Hayao Miyazaki if I could film only this action scene of Her Highness Kushana in the re-animation of Nausicaa, he was scolded, "That's why you're no good!"

At the beginning of the film, they try to carefully describe the things behind the scenes that were not told in Eva Q.  The third Ayanami like the TV version is the main character, and they go on and on about living in the countryside, copying "My Neighbor Totoro". The large family of our parent's home that we go back to during the summer vacation is presented as an image of happiness in life and a decent human being. It is also connected to Gendou's narrative during the Human Instrumentality Project but isn't it too Showa-era and too simple a solution? I am interested in how the young fans who are children of nuclear families who left their large families in the countryside and moved to the city saw the too sudden depiction of "life in the countryside". It was almost a gag to see Ayanami walking around in a plug suit which is a sexual orientation that has manifested itself after Space Battleship Yamato, in the images of pre and post-war farming villages depicted by recent NHK morning dramas. The director, influenced by his wife, must have been immersed in the LOHAS and vegan lifestyle as a fashion statement, which is only possible because he is an urbanite with too much stuff and too much money. As for this theme, it has already been presented in the watermelon field scene in the second film, and it is merely a re-presentation of the same theme in a diluted form.

I've pointed out before that Eva Q is "a crack in reality because of the loss of reality to rely on. "It's rude not to eat what you're served!", Shinji was scolded by Touji's father, who looked like a subversion of Hayao Miyazaki's work (Gedo Senki!). I have a simple question, how can the interior of a house become so old and wretched after only 14 years? How can a community of people of all ages be formed in just 14 years?　There was a line that implied that Touji had killed someone for the village, and it is possible that the director had extremely beautified the "Showa era" as a sanctuary where people who are hurt and regret their committing murder during the war as a soldier live nearby, and when he opened the last drawer after using up all the materials, he found the image of the original landscape of his childhood.

Misato and Kaji's child, which is only described for a few minutes, is also abrupt, and I don't feel that it is more than a plot device for the purpose of staging the reconciliation with Shinji later on. Some people seem to be moved by the fact that "behind Misato's cold attitude towards Shinji in Q, there was such a conflict in her mind," but it's the opposite. All the answers are just excuses after wasting nine years of work. Even if the wounds healed and treated with a gentle "I'm sorry," after being beaten severely by a raging DV husband, the fact of the beating would not disappear, and the wife would feel nothing but fear at the sudden change in her husband. To a situation that he had set to minus 100, he spent 2 hours and 35 minutes gradually pouring water drawn from other places and past works to bring it back to zero...I've never seen such a horrible match pump. Well, now that I'm writing this, I'm thinking that I've seen this before.

The relationship between Eva Q and Shin Eva is very similar to the relationship between "The Last Jedi" and "The rise of Skywalker" in Star Wars. In a self-absorbed rampage of conjecture that did not listen to the opinions of others, the historical stage of the series that had been built up was turned into a mess, and then the destroyed story was carefully built up again from the ground using unnecessary length, and only the shape of the story was created to end it without being disgraceful, and every scene that tries to make things more exciting is a copy of past work. As for Star Wars, since 8 and 9 were directed by different directors, I was able to settle my feelings of resentment towards Ryan and gratitude towards Abrams, respectively, but as for Evangelion, the director looks like a child who has been proud to clean up his own mess and have his female cronies praise and pat him on the head. Moreover, what kind of sympathy do you expect when you are told to "I'll make amends" for the mere act of wiping your ass after defecating, in a cool, Showa-era chivalrous tone?

In this film, as a recovery from Q and a summary of new Eva, there are elements throughout the story that critics can easily relate to the old Eva. “Oh, I can talk about this in connection with that!” This is what gives them a good impression and it has nothing to do with how the old fans perceive it. The director seems to have a dedicated person in charge of communicating and negotiating with the outside, but now he wants the critics to communicate with the fans about Shin-Eva. As long as he doesn't speak for himself, he can correct their interpretations later based on the "misunderstandings" of the people in between himself and his fans. This is a very Japanese-style system of surmising feelings, a system of authority that is formed when only a limited number of cronies are informed of the true intentions of the president. If I talk about it in too much detail, right-winged Yakuza will show up very soon, so to make it short, it is an indigenous control structure unique to Japan that originated from the "Mikado behind the bamboo blind". This time the director was very conscious of that, and I was able to see that Eva, who was a challenger, has become an authority that does not tolerate any criticism.

And what fan from the past could enjoy watching the endless battle scenes after Shinji returns to Wunder in the middle of the film? One after another, the sister ships of Wunder appear--there's almost no difference in appearance, but Ritsuko is able to guess their names the moment they appear. Right after the line "I'm pretty sure there's a fourth ship," the fourth ship comes crashing upon them from underneath, with no intention other than to make us laugh, right? As well as the repeated tenseless bombardment fight with no description of damage no matter how many artillery shells are hit, and it's quite painful being poured Asuka and Mari's Me-Strong Battles which are already enough by the time of Q, continuously down my throat like a goose with a funnel in its mouth. There's no way to synchronize my feelings with the screen, and it just creates an atmosphere as if the story is going on with the unattractive super-robot action that I pointed out in Q. It's no use pointing out, but the repair and supply problems of Wille side in a world where the industry has been destroyed were shown in the farming village part, though it was inadequate. But those of NERV side, an organization of only a man and an old man, was completely thrown away.

The last part of the story about the Human Instrumentality Project is like a fanzine where Gendou, Asuka, Kaworu, and Rei are lined up in a row and complemented in turn and then dismissed, whereas EOE was a total complement through Shinji. The director has tried to upgrade his framework by borrowing them from EOE and has failed miserably. Someone who has created works by putting his emotion and flair into a copy has dabbled in copying his own work. As a result, he had to confront his own sensibilities from when he was young and had to compare the old and the new by his old audience. Frankly speaking, only the techniques have been traced, the sound and the screen have become gorgeous, but the emotion and the sense have deteriorated. The face of the giant Ayanami that was replaced with a live-action one -- probably based on the face acting of Shinji's voice actor, and the "untested ordeal" of her tweet means this -- appears in the background like a gold folding screen in the high sand at a Japanese wedding reception. You're getting tired of all this, and you're not making it seriously, are you? The battle between Eva Unit01 and Eva Unit13 in Tokyo-III, which I expressed my anxiety about before the film's release, is a scene where the company's CG team can't produce what the director expects and he is so frustrated that he has the same mindset as in the final two episodes of the TV version, "I'd rather get a minus than a red", and after that, it became like a gag scene, including Eva fights in Misato's apartment and Shinji's school classroom, as if he was staged them in desperation. The side-shooting screenshot of the little Wunder charging at the head of the giant Ayanami is a picture of ”Cho Aniki (Japanese STG)” itself, and it's also meant to be funny, right? It's a series of loose, sloppy, and tenseless scenes that can't be compared to EOE.

What the hell have the CG team been doing for the past nine years, getting paid with no progress and making Eva look like an outdated piece of crap? Didn't anyone have the chivalrous spirit of the Showa era like "Don't embarrass our boss!"? Don't be so relieved when you get the green light! The director has just given up on you! There were a few scenes where the person at the top of the editing and collage, who has been making the coolest pictures, was not given as much good material as he used to be and seemed to make desperate staging in a way that he would never have given the green light in the past. It's been more than 10 years since Xapa was established, but I guess they don't have enough talent to meet the director's vision. Perhaps because of this, the conclusion of the film is exactly the same as the old one, that the director has no choice but to use his personal feelings to finish Eva, but the film ends up being a self-imitation of "Sincerely Yours". It is sad to see a person who "surpasses the original by putting his heart and soul into the copy" start to copy his own past works on the big screen of the theater, because he has become a big name in the animation world after reaching the age of 60, and there are no others left to be copied. However, right after "Komm, süsser Tod" started playing in the old movie, the scene where the titles of each episode and the reverse side of Cels were played in succession was projected on the wall of the studio using a projector -- the title of the new movie was added.  It made me mad and thought, "Don't touch my EOE with the dirty hands of the merchant.  I'll kill you."

The last things that the man who "transfers his own life onto films" presented in his costly self-published private novel were a naked confession of his own mental history up to the point where he met his wife, which he temporarily entrusted to Gendou, and the words "I think I loved you" and "I loved you" exchanged between himself and the former lover who could not be together and themselves who had separate spouses, just a reckoning of the muddled love affair that existed behind the scenes of EOE. I half-jokingly said that the distance between the director and Asuka's voice actor was important for the end of Eva, but it turned out to be true in a different way. During the recording session, Asuka's voice actor was told by the director, "I'm glad Miyamura is Asuka," which sent chills down my spine as it conveyed the horror of a creator who doesn't hide everything about his life and relationships and uses them to create his works.

In the scene where Shinji says "I liked you too" to the adult Asuka, who is wearing a tight latex suit and drawn in a more realistic character design (making us aware of the cosplay by Asuka's voice actor), while she is lying on the EOE beach, I thought "You guys should do this in a coffee shop or something between recording sessions! Don't make us watch middle-aged man and woman having unpleasant conversations on the big screen of the theater!", I almost screamed out. I think that's the scary part, the director's one-sided love for Asuka's voice actor is falsified by having the character say that she liked him, as if it was a mutual love. The director's statement at the beginning of the pamphlet says that he started working on the sequel right after Evangelion 2.0 without hesitation, using the worldview of "Q". I'm not trying to quote the line "You can change the reality you don't like by getting on Eva.", but it's not as if he's trying to cover up the fact, but he really believes that using his strong imagery, and it made me feel a bit chilly that there was no one around to correct his misconceptions.

At the end of Human Instrumentality Project, I wondered if the fact that a senior member of the movie industry had praised the shooting of EOE by flipping Cels over as a "tremendous deconstruction" was still fresh in his mind. This time, too, it was postponed after postponement, and even though the makings have been done in time, he showed the other side of the production with line drawings and roughs. The reason it was so innovative was that it was the first time anyone had tried it then, and now, 25 years later, it's just a rut. It's disgusting that everyone is praising the master's strange drawing habit and saying, "Oh yeah, that's it, that's it." As I've said before, it's like "defecating in a sixty-nine," which was successful because the first partner happened to be a scatologist. The expression of EOE was sharp and ”Rock’n’‐roll”, but Shin-Eva's "fun of anime images" has gone into the realm of traditional art, like slow "Gagaku".

The director hadn't decided who Mari Makinami was for a long time -- he was so indifferent to her that he threw the actor's acting plan to a sub-director -- but with Shin-Eva, he's changed her into an equal to Moyoco Anno, his wife. In other words, the flashy battle in the middle of the film, which is unimportant to many viewers, is revealed to have been a very pleasant pretend play for the director, in which he has his former love and his current wife fight on his favorite robots. Once again, we are shown the director's so-what-attitude, which has not progressed even a millimeter since "I'm an asshole," and which he can complete his work only by masturbation. So it's no wonder that they couldn't depict the extremely simple catharsis of Shinji's great success with Eva Unit01, which is what most of the old fans want. Because a robot with a pathetic old man on board can't get an erection due to impotence, let alone masturbation!　Oops, excuse me, sir.

And as I said before, it's time to realize that the English language has become so popular in Japan that it's become lame. You use Infinity, Another, Additional, Advanced, Commodity, and Imaginary, just because it sounds cool to you, right?　Everyone criticized the naming "Final Impact", but I never thought I'd see the time when I'd faint from the lack of taste and coolness in Evangelion, such as Another Impact, Additional Impact.

And the ending, with the wedding report in a live-action aerial shot of the director's hometown, newbie fans are screaming that it is like, "They're doing a very positive version of the old "Return to Reality!". But I felt it was too empty and cynical because it was intended to be read that way by the director. It depicts only the elation of marriage, and the pain of getting along with a partner and his or her family with different values is cut off (well, maybe Q was expressing the hardship of married life......). But isn't the emotional weight of a marriage report much higher when you meet your partner's parents?　The fact that he ended the movie by showing his own hometown instead of his wife's hometown leaves me with the impression that he's definitively an egotistical geek through and through. "You may have graduated from a good university and are making good money in the city, but if you're not married and don't have children, aren't you somehow humanly flawed?" After 25 years, Evangelion, which was such a forward-thinking Sci-Fi, is now completely in sync with the earthly ethics of Showa-era's farmers and farm horses. "I got married and it saved my life. I don't know about you, but why don't you try?" You can think what you want, but if you want to convey it as a message of salvation, you have to express it in the content of your work, not in your own talk.

I've been married for 20 years, I have two children, both of whom are about to reach the age of adulthood, I've paid off the mortgage on my home, and I'm finally at the end of raising my children, but all of that is just an outer shell of a social skin that has nothing to do with my true nature or where my soul is! There's no connection between what kind of life an individual lives in the real world and the Sci-Fi sense of wonder, in fact, there shouldn't be any connection! If you're a science fiction fan, take a page from the great Arthur C. Clarke! I was a nerd with a negative value of 100, but when I got married, I gradually poured the "common-sense values" of the Showa era into myself, and now I'm a true man with no negative value? Don't write such pathetic fiction proudly! Listen, what you presented to the audience at the end was the same thing that someone would say to you, "You seedless stallion!" It's the same kind of unethical and vulgar message that you shouldn't be giving! The old Eva became a classic of Japanimation, and no one was able to properly scold you, or you keep away those who tried, and the result of this is directly reflected in the ending of Shin Eva!　You've reached your 60th birthday and you only have such poor social common sense, damn it!

I'm sorry, I was so excited that I lost my control a little bit, just a little bit. I think the director is relying a little too much on his wife, who is ultimately a stranger on, to be his laison d'etre (lol). If they were to break up in the future, it would certainly be the soil for the next Eva, the content and development of which is completely predictable, but that is no longer my concern. I wonder if his wife doesn't like the fact that he's mentally dependent on her like this, and that it's being shown on screens all over the country. If it were me, I'd be furious, but since she's a creator, I guess she understands how he feels. Ignoring the other person's feelings and continuing to force what he believes to be love on her, thinking that it will make her happy, seems to me that there has been no progress at all since the way he treated his girlfriend 25 years ago. The person I want to hear from the most right now is not the self-proclaimed Eva fans who are looking at each other from the side and giving positive feedback in celebration of the final episode, but his wife. If the director had a child, he would not have been able to distinguish between his own ego and that of the child, and would have doted on his child, making a documentary film about his or her growth, but would most likely have turned into a controlling and poisonous parent in his or her adolescence. And he animated his feelings for his child who was rebelling against him, without the child's permission, considering it as a one-sided redemption for the child, and the child who was exposed to the whole country about their home life would have distanced from his father more and more.

In the end, Evangelion did not become a product like Gundam, but rather a robot animation that was the director's weird personal novel. The repeated use of the word "job" in the film has stuck in my mind, but in order for the studio to survive, it had to make Evangelion a product in this new series, and I'm sure that was the initial motivation behind the production of these new films. Your real "job" was to make Evangelion the same as Gundam, to protect the people who came to you because they loved Evangelion. Years from now, I can see a future where Xapa will be like Ghibli, behead the staff and continue as a copyright management company. The director, who didn't want to be embarrassed as a creator by a new challenge adopted the safe way -- I can't believe that I have to use the word "safe" for Evangelion -- to end the new series that relied on EOE only for himself, not for the future of the people who came to admire him. That's what Shin Evangelion is all about.

The good part? The fact that he didn't bring Shin Ultraman trailer at the end of the film makes me think he has grown up a bit. If you're declaring "Farewell, All Evangelions" with the intention of hurting, disappointing, and disinterested old fans like me, then your malice is unfathomable, and that's quite a feat. Brilliantly, your intentions have permanently killed a part of me that used to be an Eva fan.

As horrifying as it is to imagine, it must have crossed the director's mind to reschedule the film and set a new release date for March 11. The only reason he didn't do so is not that he has grown up to be a sensible adult, but rather because the idea of linking Evangelion 3.0 with the Great East Japan Earthquake was a fact that is too painful for him to make it public.

Ten years ago today, many lives were lost and Evangelion was destroyed.

This fact will never disappear, no matter how much the director denies and covers up with the "true" history. If there is any mission left for me as a fan, it is to continue to pass on this fact to future generations as a storyteller. It is a huge loss for Japanese fiction that the end of the great Evangelion has become a self-recovery work of the great failure of the reboot affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake, and that the potential of the great Evangelion has been consumed by the self-defense of someone who cannot admit his own mistakes, and I sincerely regret it. Shin Evangelion will be forever cursed by the dead, who yearn to see the sequel of Evangelion 2.0, and the living, who yearn to see the sequel of Evangelion 2.0.

This curse will be completed when it spreads, arrives, and is burned by the powers that be as a false history. I pray that my thoughts will reach him!

[sevensided]

@stranger-analysis​ I decided to make a post so I could organise my thoughts better!

A Dream Always the Same is a predestination paradox in two ways: structurally and narratively. As a concept, predestination paradoxes are a recurring theme in the story, as Mike relates it to different issues he’s facing: growing up, his feelings for other boys, and his attraction to Will. 

The first mention of the predestination paradox is in Chapter 9:

At the start of the story, part of Mike’s plan to reconnect with Will is to create a new D&D campaign. They decide that their new campaign is going to reimagine Will’s old campaign - the one that Mike and Lucas refused to play, and the one that sparked the fight/fall out between Mike and Will. I decided that Mike and Will would “fix” Will’s campaign together as it represented a mutual desire to get back to where they were, friendship-wise. It was a peace offering they both wanted and accepted. Another reason was that in canon we do not know how or when Mike and Will made up, only that they did by the finale of season three. In other words, the D&D campaign that Will planned (and that Mike attempts to fix) is a predestination paradox in itself, as Mike is “rewriting” the end of the story (the end of the campaign). As Will explains:

A predestination paradox “doesn’t mean the end of the story changes; it just means the way the story is told changes”. As ADATS is set in July-October, my aim was to explain those three months in a way that felt authentic and true to canon. In this sense, the end of season three - with the Byers leaving Hawkins - does not change in ADATS. The final scene in canon and in my fic is still the moving-out scene. But the way that is built up has changed from canon, because ADATS is a “time plug” fic that sought to explain the three month gap in canon. While the start and the end of those three months is the same as in canon, the way I chose to tell that story is different (like Mike rewriting the campaign).

Mike and Will also talk about predestination paradoxes in a more thematic way, as I mentioned before. For instance, Mike thinks about it in terms of growing up and changing:

On the surface it’s about maturing, but in a deeper sense it’s about Mike’s fear of his homosexuality, and his worry that this is not a fleeting phase, but something permanent. Over the course of the story he grows to understand, if not entirely accept, his sexuality, but he struggles with the idea that this could be inherent, natural. In other words, one of Mike’s internal “predestination paradoxes” is the idea that he was born and will always be gay, even if society decries homosexuality as a "choice”. You can also see this when Mike lashes out against his parents, talking about how they pressure him to get married, get a job, have kids, etc. He describes these things as indicative of “normal”, when he doesn’t consider himself “normal” (because he’s gay). In this sense, he thinks about what life might have been like had he and El stayed together, but in liking guys, it’s changed the way his story is told and, therefore, how it might end (with Will).

One of the last references to predestination paradoxes is in Chapter 33, when Mike is confronted by his own inaction when the opportunity to kiss Will arises but he does not take it:

Aside from reflecting on Will’s own words in this section, it’s also where Mike comes to several realisations: that he wants to kiss Will, that he has feelings for Will, and if the opportunity arose again, he would act on his feelings. In this way, Mike’s “predestination paradox” is marred by his own fear and reluctance to damage his friendship with Will. But (as the reader and the writers knows) Mike and Will are destined to be together - his fear is therefore misplaced, although he doesn’t yet know that. In this sense, Chapter 33 and the almost-kiss is a mini predestination paradox: had Mike chosen to overcome his fear and kiss Will, the ending might have been different. As he didn’t do that, they’re left thinking that their respective feelings remain unrequited.

Finally, you can see the reference to predestination paradoxes in the title. I chose to call the fic “A Dream Always the Same” because it implied that this is the fate for both Mike and Will: it is a shared desire, a common dream, that they will be together. Their desire never changes; it is always the same. No matter how their story alters in canon, they will always find each other.

And that’s how ADATS is a predestination paradox! @stranger-analysis​

Edit: I also want to add that in Chapter 9, when Mike and Will first discuss predestination paradoxes, Mike’s insistence that the ending might not even change is also reflective of his emerging feelings about other boys. He is, in a way, appealing to Will to give him the answer he knows he should hear (that he’s straight and that’s that) rather than what he is suspecting is true (that he is gay). Just thought I’d pop that in there! Because Mike isn’t always talking about paradoxes in the way that Will thinks they are - for Mike, the concept of destiny also has a much more personal tone to it.

[ramblingguy54]

Enji & Touya Todoroki: Motivation Gone Terribly Wrong.

My Hero Academia’s latest chapter shines a new light of the dynamic Enji and his son, Touya Todoroki, shared as time went on. It’s very interesting to see after learning Touya’s quirk would be too dangerous for his own body, Enji did decide not to push him forward with further advancing his quirk’s abilities. Instead it goes for more of an exploration on how he detaches himself emotionally from his son by each passing month afterwards. Touya was the beginning downward spiral of Enji’s abusive attitude evolving in many different ways starting with more attempts at creating a perfect quirk inherited child. Even with fair warning from a doctor to not explore this idea at all, Enji still refused to succumb to that notion of never being able to surpass All Might. Enji tried to put his son down gently on stopping their training altogether and not worry about this dream of being better than All Might anymore, which was the right call in this regard. However, the damage was already done, where it’s crystal clear Touya isn’t going to yield away from achieving his father’s dream and feeling acknowledged. Children are highly impressionable people, naturally, so to be faced with an idea, in a society based around heroism no less, of never being able to feel loved & respected by his father Touya wasn’t gonna accept this as a conclusive answer.

From Touya’s perspective, his dad is the number two hero, so why wouldn’t he want to follow in his footsteps? Their society has highly praised heroes, such as Endeavor, for how many people they’ve managed to save in all their years of heroics. This chapter continues to show how well integrated the world building and lore is woven into creating MHA’s diverse cast of complex characters. Touya is no different from this statement in putting on full display the consequences of their society being so highly dependent on that mentality of heroes. As far as many are concerned in their world, becoming the best hero is a definitive way to earn love and respect from many around yourself, as well as family. Although, we’ve known from Shigaraki’s backstory this is far from being true, obviously. Becoming a hero isn’t guaranteed happiness for making whatever problems in your life magically disappear be them small or big. If anything, My Hero Academia amplifies those internal conflicts of each character who became inspired to take that mantle upon themselves. Touya Todoroki is yet another tragic example of their structural system failing to give them proper emotional growth. Having a father, who embodies so much negativity in what heroism means to him, was a guaranteed disaster for having long lasting affects on their dysfunctional family tree. Regardless if Touya Todoroki took the intense training upon himself for putting burn after burn upon his fragile body, who planted this crucial seed in the boy’s head? His father did, plain and simple. Enji may have not greatly physically abused Touya, as seen with Shoto in that distant future, but there’s plenty of psychological damage the child’s been handed down from his father. Namely one utmost important thing being, emotional neglect.

Underneath whatever Enji said to try gently guiding his son away from training to become a better a hero than All Might were those darker desires in doing whatever it took to get what he desired. Enji became all the more laser focused on getting that top spot of number one hero, rather than give Touya a real heart to heart, which the boy oh so desperately needed to prevent bigger problems. Enji doesn’t bother to pursue those concerns, voiced by Rei, to try finding another way for communicating properly with Touya’s inevitable insecurities. He’d rather play scientist in seeing how many babies it’d take before getting their perfect child. All of that becomes a greater detriment to Touya’s mental state seeing his father take a greater interest in playing favorites, once Shoto came into existence. It finally clicked in Touya’s head what kind of person his father is and what stuff was happening in their family tree. Touya became so crushed and confused with everything his father made him believe in standing up for. Eventually, something had to give and damn did it not hold back on Touya’s breaking point in confronting his father with all of those repressed feelings. No matter how much Enji tried to help in a sense from deterring his son and guide him to an extent, it doesn’t change a simple fact he brought all of this upon himself. Enji did indeed reaped what he sowed with Touya by filling his head up with ideas of grandeur about being better than All Might. That he could put his mind toward becoming a stronger and more impressive person, too. Those words don’t amount to much when he ends up throwing you to the wayside in favor of someone else to carry on his dreams. If Touya wasn’t worthy, than what does that make him? Another failed experiment to be ignored forever?

Touya’s breakdown hurts to look at because all he wanted was his father’s love, like any kid would want to have. Doesn’t help that when your father is a respected person in a renowned profession of community there’s going to be loads of more pressure in wanting to impress him. So, it doesn’t take much thought to figure what’s gonna happen next with that kind of emotional intensity. Touya’s line, “The kids at school all say they wanna be heroes! I can’t understand that. Because I’ve got you for a father.”, was a serious red flag for his anger boiling over at everything ranging from his father, the concept of heroes, their family tree, and most importantly Shoto taking up the reigns from what was, in Touya’s eyes, his whole purpose for existing. Combine that with stubborn determination, a powerful quirk, painful drawbacks, and a shit ton of emotional issues giving us one Hell of a pissed off broken kid determined to kill Shoto Todoroki for taking away what was his “birth right” and father’s love. 

This panel is God damn intense in encapsulating everything wrong with Enji’s actions. He wanted so badly to surpass All Might it ended up crushing his whole family’s idea for a happy life together and it’s shown so wonderfully with Touya’s descent into bitter madness at their family, society, and idea of pure heroics.

It’s why Touya’s arc works for being so empathetic, yet painfully tragic. while also showing another side of Enji’s personality that he hadn’t reached a level of intense abuse just yet anyway, until after these events occurred. Gives us a more layered look into what types of abuse there were in the Todoroki house hold.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Alex ze Pirate Mini Review 3: About pacing and terrible dark revelations played as jokes.

And here we are at the second part of the arc, which was titled “Abandoned”. And just as a word in advance: While “Underappreciated” was mostly defined by the shitty behavior Sam experiences by his crew and how Dobson crossed comedic lines to the point Alex and her crew come off more as abusive than “funny” in the way they treat Sam or interact with their environment, this one is defined by another major issue Dobson has in his bigger stories overall: Pacing.

 See, the right pacing in a story is really one of the most important basics a creator kinda has to grasp. He or she needs to know primarily the following things in relation to pacing, when planning out a story: What are major events/storypoints/key scenes I want to work towards to, what happens inbetween these points and at which speed do I get from point A to B, C etc.

Cause the truth is, a lot of stories out there follow certain tropes or expectations, particularly when they are part of a certain genre, so people more or less have ideas when a certain “point” is hit, what the next point, if not even the endpoint is going to be down the line. And people also kinda want to reach the endpoint of a story, particularly if they expect doing so will finally give the protagonists they care for (and the audience itself) some sort of satisfying conclusion.

The one thing you can now do however, which can in the worst scenario totally kill an audiences/readers enjoyment of the story and even break your creation apart, is get the pacing wrong. For example by unnecessarily dragging out your story instead of just getting to the point, especially when people just want to reach the next major beat, resulting in increased annoyance by them. This can e.g. be seen in a lot of fanfics when writers create damn arcs within their own shit, or (to give a professionally published work of fiction as example) the manga Bleach, when instead of fighting Aizen and his two major supporters directly, the “war” against him was unnecessarily dragged out by having e.g. a pointless flashback sequence that barely shed new light on certain characters and gave EVERY damn main and sub captain of the Shinigami a shot at some random villain/minion Tite Kubo created on the spot but no one cared about really, just to make the story arc run longer.

Obviously, the opposite can also be the case, where people just rush too fast from one point to the other instead of giving the audience time to even properly comprehend or explain what happened and why it happened. Which can get additionally frustrated, when by rushing through plot points the work of fiction gets overloaded with concepts and ideas that may on first glance look interesting, but don’t have any real payoff in the big picture of things, making it come off as pretentious in some cases and pointless overall. Like the movie Southland Tales, which deserves to be burned off the surface of the planet.

 The “best” case scenario when pacing a story, is to know when you need to slow things down (give characters and the readers e.g. moments to breath and emotionally comprehend a situation they are in, giving also insight into a characters emotional state or personality) and when to speed things up (e.g. when there is a big battle, to know which moments are meant to focus on, but also when to be “faster”, giving really the impression that time is of the essence, that high stakes in a short amount of time are given and to hit a key event at the right moment to get a satisfying reaction from your audience)

 And now, after giving a glance on my general opinion on pacing, in order to avoid me commiting the cardinal sin of dragging things out, lets just get to Dobson’s actual artwork.

  As you can see, the chapter starts off again with the island, but this time now with Sam not part of the picture and its consequences (no one cleaning up the place in the morning). This is not really a bad thing to start the chapter of, primarily because it creates a nice contrast to the beginning of the first part.

Page 3 to 5 however…

Lets just say I get what Dobson tries to show here, but I think is exaggerated to a degree that kinda hurts the narrative; the fact that without Sam, shit does not quite get done.

The problem is the execution of the idea. See, instead of putting the fact Sam is missing into the forefront, the fact stuff has not been done is. Stuff the crew should be able to handle after a very short time of adjustment easily. I will admit, Talus suspecting they were robbed but then asked if he had also looked into the cabinets, is kinda funny. I mean, it fits the character (and sometimes people in real life) to be so adjusted to seeing a certain situation as routine every day, that when it is slighty changed they may initially assume the worst but in reality just one convenient step of the routine was left out. Less forgivable I think is the fact that seeing how Sam did the clothes the day prior, I have to wonder how dirty those guys are that already everything is left in piles of dirt to the point they have only the following alternative as wardrobe.

Halloween costumes.

…. Ok, why is there Halloween, and likely a modern day variant of its celebration, in a comic set in a fictional world compared to ours, in a time period it would not exactly exist anyway? Christ on a pogo stick, consistency is all I ask for. Oh and of course NOW they realize Sam is gone. Because they finally put together that their daily luxuries they took for granted are no longer available.

Hey now, Talus. You all are guilty of being terrible friends. In fact yu are so terrible, you would make Twilight Sparkle vomit at the sight of yours. Also, why of all characters are you wearing a costume? Unlike those two bitches, you still had clean clothes on a few pages ago. Speaking of bitches, Atea in the middle panel looks readyto be edited in a cumshot video. Just saying for all those “creative” editors out there.

 YAY! Lets get our slave back so he can do all the stuff we care about but do not want to do.

Seriously, if Dobson tries to convince us they want to get him back because they care for him as a person, he fails miserably. Both by the choice of wording in this page, where Atea and Talus react angrier about the fact that without Sam things don’t work smoothly, rather than concern about his well being, as well as any behavior expressed in the previous chapter. These people are not reacting like friends in worry, they act like spoiled brats. Especially Talus who could still get his stupid burgers if he, as the cook of the crew, would just do his job. All he has to do is additionally open a few cabinets. Also, where in the heck is Uncle Peggy? Oh just go to the next pages so we are getting this over with.

Oh great, the lolcat pirates are back. Because they were so hilarious the first time. And look, they got defeated again. And what is their contribution to the story? To give information on where Sam may have gone.

And it is here now where I have to stop and come back to the pacing issue. Cause the last ten pages here? They are a good example of what I meant with rushed pacing and how it ruins things.

Once more I need to say, I get it. I get the major points Dobson wants to get across. That a) Sam is gone that b) without him things are not all that good for the crew anymore c) they decide they want to find him d) they get information of where he is by going after the one feline that can provide a potential hint. Four major story points Dobson wants to get across. And he is free to get them across. But the way he does it, is just way too fast. Neither the characters, nor the reader really gets time to comprehend that Sam is gone and what that means aside of the surface level loss of luxury Alex and Co are now experiencing. The emotional weight of Sam’s “loss” is pushed aside for the sake of cruising through the plot defined by its surface premise, as fast as possible. And considering that the meat of this story is supposed to be how much Sam means to the others as a person as well as his personal tragedy, intend and execution, thanks to this pacing, does not compute.

Pacing and overall structure are way off and fail to engage us in addition to just killing any suspense in what is going to happen next or surprise us in an interesting fashion. In other words, I am not entertained by this story. It is not funny, it is not sad, it is not “adventurous”.

Personally, I would suggest to actually use the “premise” of those ten pages and turn them at least into two independent chapters of this story overall, to give the premise actually some meat on the bone. The first chapter being a multipager with the crew realizing Sam is gone first BEFORE realizing that without him their luxuries are gone (putting also emphasize this way on the fact they care for Sam also more as a person instead of just the things he does for them) and then once they realize he is missing, deciding to go after him. Only to realize that when they want to prepare themselves for the task (getting their gear together as well as lunch e.g.) that everything is dirty or damaged because Sam normally takes care of it. Leading to a sequence of them having to experience doing Sam’s work for once, making them already there indirectly in part realize what he all does they took for granted.

The second chapter would then be them on the sea, trying to think of where to look at and eventually stumbling upon the cat pirates. Only instead of defeating them easily this time and getting the information, expectations are subverted and the cats actually fight back first, leading to a more hilarious confrontation where Alex and her crew can actually also show how they can be funny and badass, instead of Dobson just always “talking” and trying to convince us they are cool. And look, I do not expect a multi chapter One Piece like battle against the cat captain who turns out to be a master of Scratch Jutzu or something the moment he sniffs catnip. But please, give me something in this story. Some conflict, some diversion, something for characters to actually do that shows they can be badass, funny and awesome. Something that is as cartoony as Dobson likes to claim Alex ze Pirate is, but has never shown in its entirety.

Instead we get to this page, where of all characters Talus is the one who finally seems to realize how he and others took Sam for granted.

 And again, even this page is a good example of terrible pacing. Cause this realization, now shoved in within this and the next page? It would mean so much more if it happened in parts somewhere else in this story before or after, slowly to everyone stepwise. Cause then it would actually feel like a “development” of a chain of thoughts and internal realizations. Instead it is half heartedly thrown in all at once in those pages, to get the point across that NOW Sam’s “friends” finally realize, they took him always for granted.

Congratulations on realizing that you are the real scum in this story. What do you expect from me now? To give you hugs and feel pity for you like you are characters in Steven Universe, all because you had an epiphany? You do not deserve mine or any readers sympathy, just because NOW you feel bad for your terrible behavior. Cause if I did, it would just feel rewarding in a certain manner. And you do not deserve a reward. You have to make things up first or at the very least put in some sort of effort to show me, that you are not just feeling bad, but are willing to change for the better. Otherwise you are in the future still just the same toxic abusers you were two pages ago.

... man, that really felt like me already venting at Steven Universe.

Anyway, we have reached the town where Sam is from…

And it looks NOTHING at all like the artwork from Legends implied parts of the town to look like

Where are the badly drawn docks? The houses that imply this is not just a small village on the beach but an actual small town? The twon square where they sell underaged boys as slaves? Jesus Christ, what is the orphanage going to look li-

Nevermind. The orphanage is crushed. And all the people that lived in it are dead.

... WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU, DOBSON! This is genuinely a sick joke here. Look, I am all for black and dark comedy myself, but this feels cruel. I need to remind you, Alex ze Pirate in Dobson’s eyes was also meant to be a comic for all ages. Meaning something also little kids should be able to read and enjoy. Pushing aside how much of that would be bullshit by the shitton of sexist and sex jokes in other strips of the comic alone, this here is not the kind of joke I would like to see a little kid being exposed to when reading any form of story.

Look, I am not saying you can’t make fun about death. But Death is also a major part of life, which many of us are already being exposed to at an early age. And I think it is important that when we talk about death as a subject in a story for kids, we should actually address it in a “mature” manner the kid may understand. That death, as in the genuine loss of a life and not e.g. an awesome interpretation of the Grim Reaper as written by Terry Pratchett, is tragic. That it means permanently losing someone you or someone else loves. That when talking about it, we should talk about it in a serene manner. And there have been great kids stories who tackled the subject directly or indirectly. A Land Before Time for example, the loss of Littlefoots mother and how he “copes” with it while the majority of the plot still focuses on an adventure to find the Great Valley… that is great. But this thing here that Dobson does? To create a shocking revelation and then sell it as a joke based on the fact that Alex, Atea and Talus react with jawdrops to it? It is not handling the death of those children with any form of gravitas in a story that supposedly is meant to be emotional and play with your heartstrings. And yes, we know nothing about those kids, they are essentially non entities to further the plot. But in context of the story, you have to consider, those kids that are “unimportant” to the reader? For the character of Sam, those people were family. At page 14, we as readers start to realize what Sam finding this locket and going back to his hometown only to find out everyone he knew is dead must mean for him. We, people with even an ounce of empathy and understanding how tragedies should be in part written realize, that shit just hit the fan for Sam and that the story should genuinely focus on how Sam would deal with such a tragedy. But does Dobson treat this revelation with any grace or dignity? NOPE!

It is just a bunch of information dropped on us randomly by an old guy who (I guess similar to Dobson) does not even care that kids died. They are just a plotdevice. Oh and also most of those kids died of an infectious disease where most people die of dehydration after literally shitting non stop. Just to add additional gravity and dignity to the loss of prepubescent lives that should count as Sam’s siblings.

You know, I have to change my opinion on Alex. She is not the worst abuser of Sam. The worst person to ever abuse Sam is Andrew Dobson himself. Cause at least Alex did not kill his extended “family”. And to think this “children comic” was written by the same guy who made a “So you are a Cartoonist” strip where he talked about how kids media can tell more mature comics with more gravitas than live action stuff and novels meant for people that aren’t just children, young adults or mentally stucked manchildren. Dobson, after this page you have no right to call your stuff “appropriate for children” or mature anymore.

I am genuinely furious at this page right now as that I can go on. So here, have the last page of this chapter so I can wrap this up and enjoy some good forms of fiction…

Well Atea, everyone he knew from this village and potentially cared about died in an house collapsing with no one having removed the remains still and he is going on a cemetery. UNLIKE DOBSON WHEN WRITING THIS, USE YOUR BRAIN YOU INSULT TO LESBIANS!

[adarlingwrites]

Absolution

Summary:

noun: formal release from guilt, obligation, or punishment

The Capital Wasteland lauded the Lone Wanderer as a hero, a Messiah, a savior who's willing to give her life for the Good Fight. Beyond the legends, the propaganda, and the mythification that surrounded her legacy, there is only one person who knew her bare soul. She gave him his absolution, and now he will fight for hers.

XXI

January 5, 2278.

Fifteen minutes past midnight, we went home. After cleaning up and sharing a dinner of noodles and beer, Percy didn’t waste any time counting all the ammo she saved for emergencies, while I tended to our weapons and gear. Around three in the morning, I was ready to retire, but Percy’s still slouched over the workbench, recycling old microfusion cells as she sipped on scotch, straight from the bottle.

“Percy,” I call her attention, placing a hand at her shoulder.

“Oh!”

I must’ve interrupted her.

“What do you need, big guy?”

“I suggest that you get some rest. Long day tomorrow.”

“Mhmm. Just a few more minutes,” she replies, back still turned against me.

I was ready to get to my room, but then Percy leans her head against my chest. “Charon, what if I die from this?”

My throat tightens at the thought, and I place both hands on her shoulders, giving them a squeeze. “You’re not going to. I’m here to ensure that.”

“Thanks. But let’s say I do. What will happen to you, when your contract holder dies?”

I pause. I let my hands fall to my side. My friend turns around and looks up to me, her glasses cloudy from the cold.

I’m debating myself on whether this should be her business or not. I’ve seen parts of her that shouldn’t be for my eyes. Percy had let me see her at her most vulnerable moments, while she only shows her can-do attitude to everyone else. And yet, she knows so little about me. I think I’m being unfair.

Dammit. This is what I fucking get for letting what I feel about my employers get to me, regardless whether it’s positive or not.

I shouldn’t be divulging information to my employers more than what’s necessary, but when I look at my friend before me, I feel an urge to share the parts of myself I couldn’t even confront.

“Back then, the death of whoever held it meant failure to obey the standing order to protect that person, and would result in my termination as well. But something has changed along the way. The day the bombs fell, we were ordered to hold our contracts, and wait until someone comes to claim it. They never came.”

Percy nods her head, motioning me to continue. I start to pace around, struggling to remember the details after that.

“I… I wandered aimlessly for I don’t know how long. I was dying, lost in a desert when a group of survivors found me. They found my contract, and when I came to, the conditioning kicked in. I will serve them, and will continue to do so until I fail. When I do, the order to hold my contract until someone claims it takes effect again.”

Her brows knitted together, mouth curled into a frown. There’s a sadness in her eyes. She’s pitying me again.

Not pity. I don’t need that.

“You don’t need to pity me,” I said, and her eyes grew wide in surprise.

“I’m not- I don’t pity you, Charon. I’m just trying to imagine what you’ve gone through, and I can’t fathom how terrible that must be.”

“It’s better that you don’t.”

Arms wrapped around my waist from behind, and I freeze in my tracks. Percy’s soft and warm, and she presses against my back. I can feel the tightness in my chest melting away.

“I want to understand you better,” she whispers.

I should be keeping my distance after our talk about our professional relationship in Doc Barrows’ clinic. Instead, I turn around and pull her in an embrace, pressing her face against my chest as gently as possible. I’m not a gentle person, but for this angel, I can try.

Damn, can we stay like this forever?

“Let’s get some rest,” I tell her, and let her go, dragging my feet to my quarters.

“Do you want to sleep next to me again?” Percy asks.

I felt my heart starting to race.

For someone who said that I shouldn’t act on what I feel for her, she’s giving me a lot of mixed signals. I don’t know what to do with them. What does she even want?

One day I’ll get the courage to ask her that to her face, but for now, I just shook my head.

“I wish to be alone with my thoughts,” I tell her, and she nods.

She smiles, but the slump in her shoulders tells me about her dejection.

“Okay. Offer still stands. Good night.”

I couldn’t sleep after that.

Lying on a mattress wasn’t as comforting as it used to be. Or maybe it’s because there isn’t the warm weight of another person next to me.

Fuck.

I’ve gone soft.

I heard a soft sigh through the thin walls of the house, and I was ready to get up and comfort Percy, thinking she was crying again. But I heard her keen and moan, and I lay like a rock in my spot.

Like I said, the walls are thin. This isn’t the first time I can hear her touching herself. I understand that she has her needs; the skin mags she looks out for says enough. It’s not my business.

I’d be lying if I said that the sounds she makes didn’t fuel my imagination for months.

Tossing and turning, I took a ratty blanket and pulled it over my head, intending to block the noise out, and screwed my eyes shut. I hate this feeling. I’ve never felt it before I met this woman. All this… longing.

My eyes shot open when I heard her sigh my name.

So that confirms it.

But, why me?

The previous employers that had used me for pleasure are the unsavory, depraved types. They would never look me in the eye. They’d say degrading shit. They never said my name.

Percy is not one of those. She’s the fucking “Wasteland Avenger” or “Wasteland Angel” or “Savior of the Wastes” or whatever damn epithet people want to give her. People look up to her.

For those reasons, hearing her moan my name feels forbidden.

Her invitation to sleep next to her is becoming more tempting. I know it’s not an invitation to be intimate with her, but the past few weeks have been shit. I want something to go right just for damn once.

I heard her gasp my name again and I took it as my cue.

My feet took me to her room as fast as it could. It was dark, save for the sliver of moonlight that seeped through the roof.

“Percy, you called for me?” I ask her.

I hear frantic shifting of fabric, clattering, and her PipBoy light goes off.

“Charon! I uh… um, I thought you were already asleep I- did you…”

I take cautious steps towards the bed, and sit on the edge, the rickety frame creaking under my weight.

“How much did you hear?” she asks me, near whispering.

“Everything,” I said, telling her the truth.

“Wait, all this time you’ve been hearing me- oh God.”

“Yes,” I murmured. “I didn’t mean to. The walls are thin.”

Percy rubs her face, then she squints, reaching for her glasses. She takes a long, hard look at me. Neither of us are breaking the silence; this angel is within my reach and yet she feels so distant.

Finally, she speaks up. “God, this is awkward. Can we pretend none of this ever happened?”

I gulped. I don’t want to.

“No,” I assert, looking her in the eye and holding her gaze. My friend tears her eyes away from me and rubs the back of her neck.

“I guess there’s no point hiding it. I think you’re attractive, Charon.”

My breath hitches at my throat and it comes out as a disbelieving laugh. “Crazy smoothskin.”

Percy chuckles at my remark. 

“What now?” she asks me.

My eyes flick to her lips, to her pale throat, down to the her nipples poking from under her shirt. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to ask her to join me in acting on the dirtiest thoughts I had for her, but the rational part of my mind holds.

“How long?” I dared to ask her.

“I’m not sure. I know I felt something the first time I bumped into you in Underworld. But I haven’t really thought about it until around November. What about you? When did it start?”

“When you walked into Underworld with that stupidly tight stealth armor. I couldn’t stop staring at your ass.”

Percy snorted. “Really?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at myself quietly too.

“What the hell did you find attractive about me?” I ask her, still in disbelief at my damn luck.

“Well… there’s just something about the way you carry yourself I guess?”

I raise a brow in response.

“Your bone structure. You look strong and steady and I like that.”

Now I’m tilting my head and smirking.

“And you’re gruff and scary and intimidating and I find it hot,” she blurts out.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “So you find any tall, scary ghoul you find intimidating hot?”

“God, no. Just you. Always been you.”

The sincerity of her words is too much.

All those months of letting me act on my own accord is starting to kick in. I reach for her face, my rough, radiation-damaged fingers caressing her soft cheek, and she leans into the touch. I dared to press my thumb against her bottom lip, savoring its texture, imagining what it would feel against mine. As gently as I could, I tilt her head, pressed my cheek against her neck, and took a deep breath as her small hands flew to my shoulders, squeezing and kneading the tense muscles.

I press my mouth against her neck and she pushes me away.

“Stop. We should stop. You and I both know acting on what we feel now would screw things up,” she interrupts, somber.

I exhaled sharply, nodding and keeping my distance. “Fine. Then please stop giving me hope.”

“What?”

“This. Touching me, asking me to sleep next to you… I’m starting to think you’re leading me on.”

Percy scoffs at my accusation, crossing her arms.

“I’m not!” Percy exclaims. “I’m just saying that it isn’t a possibility now. Right now, I’m your doctor and employer. It would make our relationship unequal.”

“And I am centuries older than you,” I hissed back at her. “There are people who would consider that astoundingly unequal too.”

“Then that makes it twice as wrong! This isn’t multiplication where you take two negatives and it becomes a positive.”

“I have no idea what the hell you just said,” I snarled. “But what I know is I want you. So don’t give me hope unless you’re going to follow through. Please.”

Percy went quiet, still as a statue where she sits. With wide eyes, she gazes into mine.

“Say that again?” she demands.

“Say what again?”

“You said, ‘I want you’. You… you rarely tell me what you want.”

Oh.

“God, Charon I want you too…” Percy starts, moving to the edge of the bed to sit next to me.

“Fuck whatever the hell people say, you should know by now that I’ll defend you against all the fucking ghoul bigots in the world,” she continues, leaning her head against my bare shoulder.

“Weeks ago I would’ve agreed to this, but things have gotten too crazy. From your contract, to dad dying, to getting jumped by those Talon mercs, to the shit we’re planning for Paradise Falls, to Project fucking Purity… There's too much going on. I don’t want to compromise our objectives because of what I feel.”

“I understand.” My heart’s going to fucking burst from my chest.

“I’m not going to be upset if you don’t want to do this anymore when it’s all over. But, please, could we wait?”

I’d wait forever for her, if I can. I’ve waited two centuries for someone like her without even knowing that I needed it. I’m not sure if what I’m feeling is plain lust or something more, but I need her.

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I don’t want to ruin what I have with you now.”

“What do we have now, Percy?” I ask her.

“I’m not sure. But I told you that I want to be your partner, right? Let’s work on that.”

Grunting in response, I slouch, resting my elbows on my knees. After a few moments, I turned to her again.

“May I still sleep next to you?”

My partner laughs softly, and moves back to her spot on the bed. Her small hand pats the mattress, on the empty space next to her.

“Of course.”

Back turned from each other, she falls asleep first. I could tell from her soft snores.

An hour later, I still couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about the things she said.

I lie facing the door out of habit. During the training I was forced to take part in, it was drilled in our heads, making us better prepared for intruders and ambushes. 

Close to sleep, I was alerted by a soft whimper coming from her.

When I turned to look at her, her brows are furrowed and her eyes are screwed shut.

“No,” she murmurs, and I listen closely. “Get away from him… Don’t hurt Charon.”

She’s having a nightmare. About me getting hurt.

Grumbling, I shifted my body so that her back was pressed to my chest, and I draped an arm around her.

“Shh. I’m here, and we’re okay,” I whisper.

Percy’s whimpers die down to sighs, and we remain like that for more than a few minutes. I felt dirty, watching her sleep, but seeing her strained face relax eases my nerves.

At some point, I fell asleep. It was a dreamless one.

The next morning, I woke up slowly, eyes adjusting to the brighter rays that came through the cracks on the roof.

A leg is draped over my hip, her face pressed against my chest, and an arm around my waist.

To my surprise, Percy is still asleep next to me. It’s a rare occurence for me to rise earlier than she does.

I look at her PipBoy in the open drawer next to us. Ten fifty two in the morning.

We were supposed to be up by nine.

My hand on her shoulder, I give her a shake. “Percy, wake up.”

My friend stirs awake, stretching her limbs. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost eleven.”

Percy practically jumps out of bed.

“Oh fuck! C’mon, let’s get ready.”

I went to my room. I put on the black shirt Percy gave me, the sleeves already torn away, and proceeded to put on the rest of my armor. As I was walking through the door, I saw the ushanka on the bed side table, and grabbed that too.

Time to talk to Church.