#does this count as meta? it's more a fight analysis than anything else

[orcelito]

everyone always talks about That One panel of Trigun: Multiple Bullets, but i havent seen anyone talk about how fucking BATSHIT INSANE the surrounding fight is

like

Vash & Wolfwood fighting back-to-back, both using the punisher as a shield

(the rest under a readmore bc this accidentally got LONG...)

Vash seeing the shots coming from behind & purposefully not moving bc he knows if he does, Wolfwood would get hit

Wolfwood getting injured too, but not moving from Vash's back. the way he's stanced, it looks Protective. he's doing what he can to keep Vash out of the direct line of fire.

even when he's getting shot up for it, he Doesn't Move. (this also seems to be the moment he got hurt, which leads into the panel later)

& throughout this whole scene, we are only seeing Wolfwood's reactions.

until the girls give them an opening, and they burst out with THIS:

Wolfwood injured, so he can't properly aim the punisher... and he gets around this by sticking one of the leather straps in his Mouth

and then we FINALLY get to see Vash's face again as he grabs the punisher (with a "GAN" sound effect, so he fuckin SLAPPED that metal hand on the punisher).

Wolfwood trusts him enough to just do what he says in the thick of battle, so we FINALLY get to the iconic panel:

which brings us to the aboslute insanity of what Vash is actually Doing.

"DON DON" -> two shots fired for two missiles launched. he literally manages to TURN THEM AROUND MID-FLIGHT (interesting to note that they seem to have internal propulsion, rather than simply being fired by Wolfwood. how many of these does Wolfwood have? they seem heavy.)

he manages to avert the third missile from hitting the dude directly, and instead makes it land Behind him. then the other two missiles, he rests his arm on Wolfwood's shoulders to hit them and direct them behind the other two enemies

Boom.

killing no-one, but showing an INSANE level of fine control AND teamwork.

and in the end, Wolfwood's arm is in a cast, Vash seems either unhurt or hurt but unbothered by it (typical Vash). And Life Goes On.

(forgot to mention before, but all panels are from @trigun-manga-overhaul! thank u for the beautiful pages)

[lazyliars]

The Quackity Meta: Justice without the Blindfold

[Anonymous asks: (DSMP) Somebody talk to me about Quackity and Eret’s character. I wanna talk about what Quackity’s views on power are with what he’s planning to do with Sam along with whatever he saw in the egg. I wanna talk about why Eret thinks reviving Wilbur is the best option for the sever to lead and their views on what a leader should be with them being the king of the Dream SMP. I wanna talk about Quackity planning to create a casino for the server to rise to the top. What does it mean to be king?]

[/rp. All mentions of dream smp members should be assumed as referencing the character, not the cc, unless specifically stated otherwise.]

At the heart of every conflict, if you look closely enough, you will find a similarity. Two contrasting ideals will reveal their own likeness, in the stage they play out their war – they both fight for the same result; to be known and followed and asserted, and in this they are the same. There would be no conflict if both sides shared nothing in common.

Lets talk about Quackity.

We'll gloss over a good deal of Quackity's history to get to the meat of this discussion, which involves Technoblade. But there are a a few lesser known facts about Quackity's early days on the server that are relevant to the discussion, like  that Quackity joined the server because of Tommy.

Namely, he joined for The Cartel, a short-lived organization comprised of him, Tommy, Tubbo and Jack Manifold, and their aims of obtaining power over the entire server by getting a monopoly on one object, the Phantom Membrane.

(Trivia: This is why Technoblade had to strike a deal with Tommy for the membranes – Phantoms are turned off on the Dream SMP now, so their monopoly actually ended up working. (Un)fortunately, Tommy traded nearly his whole supply for the priceless act of... making Techno scream really loud and talk in a funny voice. Worth it.)

However, Tommy's interest in the Cartel waned almost immediately, to Quackity's frustration. Tommy was constantly busy with his Vice Presidential duties in L'manberg. Quackity wasn't entirely left out, and he helped Tommy on multiple occaisions, but this was back in Wilbur's L'manberg, where non-europeans were strictly banned.

Quackity would slowly come to resent Tommy for this over time. He joined the server to be with him, took his side in nearly every conflict, including the ones that were L'manberg-oriented, and yet he wasn't allowed to be a citizen of his friend's own nation.

The resentment would reach a boiling point when Quackity discovered Wilbur's bid to consolidate power by running a sham election – with a one party system. Quackity challenged him, formed Swag 2020, and the rest is history...

The takeaway here is that from the start, Quackity has been shunted aside by people in power – Tommy, Wilbur, and then later, Schlatt. This wouldn't prevent him from executing his own immoral power grabs, but that trait – the distaste for people with power holding it over him, is one that would stick around, and become even more prominent later... Quackity has more reason than most to hate tyranny.

But “Tyranny” Is a word thrown around on the SMP often enough, that it's probably up there with “betrayal” and “pop-off” in total wordcount. But few use it more commonly, or more persuasively, than Quackity and Technoblade.

This begs the question: what is Tyranny in a M/inec/raft role play, and why do Quackity and Technoblade both detest it so much while still hating each other?

Well, after a moderate amount of research, I have discovered the following:

Tyranny is complicated.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

...No, but really. Tyranny is very old concept. The words originates in, you guessed it, Ancient Greece, but conceptually, the idea goes waaaay back.

Now, that last thing I wanna do is give anyone a history lesson. I'd suck at it and I haven't done that much research. But the takeaway here is that “Tyranny” has come to be defined in fairly vague terms. We'll look at a few different ones in reference to the SMP.

Oxford dictionary defines a Tyrant as: A cruel and oppressive ruler. / a person exercising power or control in a cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary way. / (especially in ancient Greece) a ruler who seized power without legal right.

Lets look at the first and last definitions:  A cruel and oppressive ruler; (especially in ancient Greece) a ruler who seized power without legal right.

By these definitions, one could call Quackity tyrannical during his term as Tubbo's VP. He exercises the power granted to him as a government official to spearhead an operation to execute a man without trial. He violently invades the home of a citizen and then puts said man on house arrest, and to subdue the target of this operation he threatens a pet (-a vague but ostensibly severe criminal act in the terms of m/inec/raft specifically-) and then reveals to Techno that the reason he's doing this actually has nothing to do with the crime Techno was accused of, and it is instead a ploy to consolidate power.

Quackity is leveraging his position in the government to amass power, and using that power to harm individuals (Philza and Techno,) in process. As an added bonus, his position in that government came from usurping Schlatt, a legitimately elected official. Thus, Quackity is a Tyrant.

But there, in Schlatt's government is where things get complicated.

Quackity had some power in Schlatt's government. Not the same kind as he did in New L'manberg, but arguably a more unrestrained form – Quackity could basically do whatever he wanted, as long as it pleased Schlatt. In New L'manberg, Quackity needed to convince not only Tubbo, but the rest of the cabinet whenever he wanted to initiate a new project. New L'manberg, while still maintaining a ruling class, had a far more equal distribution of power than Manberg did. It was still democratic.

And while we're on the topic of Quackity as Schlatt's VP, Quackity had almost instant regret the day of the election. He was undermining Schlatt from the start, questioning him, trying to stop Tubbo from breaking the signs that read “if you break this sign, you hate your viewers” and freeing Niki when Schlatt trapped her in Jack Manifold's house and then whispering at her to run.

Quackity only fell into step with Schlatt in the aftermath of Election day, when he saw a major desire fulfilled; the tearing down of L'manberg's walls. These walls were a symbol of L'manberg's isolationist roots that prevented Quackity from joining in the first place. It was one of his biggest promises whilst campaigning.

From this point on, up until the festival, Quackity would be in support of Schlatt. The things he did try to push back on would be downplayed and ignored, if not scorned. This period of time is difficult to pick apart where Quackity's personal morals and ideals begin, and Schlatt's influence ends. The steadily worsening abusive dynamic between them doesn't help this vagueness, either.

I point this out because I've seen people conflate Quackity's abuse at the hands of Schlatt, and his willingness to participate in Schlatt's rule as being of the same root; implying that Quackity only followed Schlatt because he was in an abusive relationship with him, when the reality is far more complicated. Yes, their relationship was a major factor in Quackity's actions, but downplaying his ambition and willingness to accept Schlatt's Tyranny when it helped him realize his own goals does a disservice to the nuance of Manberg-era Quackity.

What all of this points to is an individual who has a strong, some might say defining sense of Justice, yet also a susceptibility to Temptation. Quackity’s experiences with disenfranchisement by Wilbur and Tommy, coupled with his Dark horse victory in the election paints him in a sympathetic, even heroic light. But the way he slowly relinquished more and more power to Schlatt, and ended up indulging in the fruits of tyrannical gains when they proved they could get him what he wanted.

...

So, back to the question... Is Quackity a tyrant?

The answer to that question is a solid “mmmmaaaybe??”

It comes back to what you consider Tyranny. Quackity has never held complete power – he has always, always been scrapping and struggling and fighting to get a foothold in the machinations of the truly powerful, like Dream and Wilbur. He's very much an underdog story.

On the other hand, the times that Quackity has held positions of power, he's done some questionable shit. People like to forget that, while he was deeply disturbed by it, he wasn't exactly against Tubbo's execution at the festival. Putting Phil on house arrest and executing Techno without trial also count against him.

Like most things on the SMP, it's just complicated. Quackity's motivations run deep and aren't always obvious. He doesn't seem to want to hurt people just for the sake of hurting them, or use his power in arbitrary ways, but when he can personally justify it, the sacrifice of his moral integrity gets severe sometimes.

What it looks like is that more than anything else, Quackity wants control, and to never, ever lose his own autonomy. That is also why he despises Technoblade.

...And here we are at the Technoblade part of this meta, AKA the MASSIVE BULK OF THIS ANALYSIS. Which you can read HERE, because it’s too long to fit in just this one post.

[a-crimson-lion]

A Look At Bakudeku’s Development (Based On That One Instagram Post): A Photo-Narrative Analysis

Word Count: 4,287 (Yikes…)

[This got long. Like, REALLY long. Don't expect too many colors. There's a lot to get through...]

For those out of the loop, I recently came across this Instagram post during unhealthy hours in the morning. The purpose of this post, I’d assume, was to debunk any negativity aimed at the Bakudeku dynamic/ship, claiming it was indeed not abusive and that the antis in question are ignoring canon in favor of playing Bakugo’s suicide instigation on repeat. Before addressing the post in question, I would like to state two things:

I am not stuck on Chapter/Episode 1 in the series. I have been caught up proper with every story arc up to the JT Training Arc and am roughly familiar with everything past that point. I don’t just take Katsuki’s now essentially forgotten suicide instigation into account; I’m taking every part of his actions well beyond that moment and how they reflect on him, internally justified or otherwise.

While I’m among the people who believe that Bakudeku as of the latest incarnation of the manga (up to Ch. 280) is indeed abusive, I am open to discussions on why it is not. In any case, however, I cannot ignore the fact that the dynamic/ship is incredibly problematic besides the skeletons in both Izuku and Katsuki’s closets.

So, in order to address this issue to the best of my half-awake brain’s abilities, I will review the screenshots within said post and break down how they factor into the Bakudeku dynamic and the overall development. Be aware that there are some manga and movie spoilers, and this is just MY OPINION. I could be wrong, and I’m okay with that. If you wanna talk without patronizing me, the comments are open. I also apologize in advance if I myself come of as patronizing. All the screenshots I’ll be discussing can be found in the video link above (or here).

Well then, no point in beating around the bush...

1) Izuku Taking Katsuki Out Of The Final Exam Gate (Anime Screenshot)

The first piece of “evidence” used to show the merit of Bakudeku comes from the Final Exam arc, shortly after Katsuki succumbs to All Might’s assault, only for Izuku to come in and deck the #1 Hero in order to grab Katsuki and carry him to safety, allowing them both to pass.

However, this photo marks a recurring trend throughout some of the other photos: they speak more about IZUKU as a character than Izuku AND Katsuki.

Izuku getting to save Katsuki is a major development… for Izuku. One that we’ve seen before. Think about it. The first time Izuku saves Katsuki towards the beginning of the exam, he has to punch Katsuki in the face because he was considering throwing the match just for working with Izuku. And after he’s been saved, Katsuki blows up (figuratively and literally) before aggressively kabedoning him. In this scene though? Katsuki got knocked the f*** out, so he really has no room to protest if Izuku comes in to save him a second time.

Plus, this isn’t really anything NEW with Izuku. We know that he’s aware in an abstract sense that what Katsuki did to him was “wrong,” but he doesn’t hold a grudge or any animosity to him towards that. He’s one of Katsuki’s biggest defenders and supporters, assuming Katsuki allows it. So really, him saving Katsuki isn’t really surprising or a major step forward, ‘cause he was always willing to do it from the get go. And again, Katsuki isn’t conscious during his second rescue, so we don’t really know if he would have let Izuku save him again or if he would have protested.

There’s nothing new here, and nothing balanced to the overall dynamic. Just Izuku being Izuku.

2) All Might Acknowledges The New Bakudeku Rivalry (Anime Screenshot)

Deku vs Kacchan 2 was a big moment for the Bakudeku dynamic. I’m not saying it’s a positive moment, nor am I saying it was necessary, but it was big. And in the aftermath of that fight, where Izuku and Katsuki are having a back and forth, All Might thinks to himself that the two have become true rivals now, or something along those lines. And it’s nice that he’s willing to spell this out for the audience and all, but uh…

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: show, don’t tell.

All Might is essentially telling us that Izuku and Katsuki are rivals now. What does the story have to show for it? A brief conversation during their house arrest, followed by a massive stall due to the Shie Hassaikai Arc and Cultural Festival Arc (albeit with one more instance we’ll cover later), and then what essentially equates to Katsuki yelling at Izuku a lot during the Joint Training Arc.

...that’s ...not much.

And yeah, you could expect me to be a good bean to the author and wait until the later arcs, but even then, the execution… just falls kinda flat, at least for me. Going back to that particular moment with All Might’s thought process, it kind of reminds me of Eraserhead essentially acting as a mouthpiece for the Ochako vs Katsuki fight during the Sports Festival, but that’s a can of worms I won’t be indulging today.

What I’m getting at is this: All Might letting the audience know that Bakudeku have reached rival status is great! Now if only the series could deliver more on that...

3) Standing With Two One For Alls (Heroes Rising)

Okay, seriously, if you haven’t seen Heroes Rising yet, I implore you, GO. WATCH IT. It is an incredible film and I would recommend it with warm words. And I’ll admit, it gives us a better incarnation of Bakudeku compared to the rest of the series.

Yes, I said “better,” not “great.”

Look, I’m all for Izuku and Katsuki working past their differences and the clusterf*** that was their childhood, and maybe Horikoshi not being as integrally involved with the film’s writing as people think he is has something to do with it, but uh… you do not say “put myself as low as to working with Deku” or something like that and expect to be casually tossed aside, at least if you’re me. And while I’m glad there was some genuine emotional tension as Izuku gave Katsuki OFA, some part about it feels… off. Like, nothing was really truly resolved. Katsuki wasn’t given OFA as a sign of forgiveness, as an acknowledgement. Katsuki was given OFA because there was an AFO level villain about to wreck the place and kill some peeps and oh look, the narrative made it so that Katsuki was the only convenient holder around! It kinda stings when you look at it that way.

Not that it matters, because a big thing most people forget is that at the end of this movie, THE ENTIRE THING IS ESSENTIALLY SWIPED ACROSS THE DESK AND ON THE FLOOR. Even if it was going to have some level of effort towards the development of the dynamic, that effort is essentially GONE because Katsuki doesn’t remember SQUAT, and what happens to OFA after the fight is NEVER DISCUSSED. It’s just a hard reset, BOOM, back to normal. *Sigh*

Really, the whole double OFA thing was for convenience, less so for any emotional leveling up that could have been done. And even then, Izuku is still somehow the one putting more emotional input into the entire thing than Katsuki.

4) “I Thought You Were Gonna Get Ahead Of Me!” (Anime Screenshot)

Katsuki’s methods of motivation are… admittedly not for everyone. They seem to work fine for Izuku, as seen sometime after the Cultural Festival Arc, but again, that’s just Izuku. We know how he takes Katsuki’s words and turns it into motivation, but why does Katsuki bother at all?

Well, maybe this comes with desperately trying to find reasons to like a character but progressively despising him and his narrative placement more and more as time progresses, but here’s my angle on it: Katsuki just doesn’t want Izuku dragging his weight for nothing.

Keep in mind, we’re talking about the same Katsuki who held a grudge against Shoto for holding back during the Sports Festival. The same Katsuki who wanted the #1 Hero to go all out and would continuously press to fight him. The same Katsuki who wanted to fight a deadly villain even after being instructed to get back to camp for his own safety. The same Katsuki who challenged Izuku to a fight to finally determine where the gap was, and who was frustrated when he won because the power Izuku possessed was All Might’s, so clearly he shouldn’t have lost.

In short, Katsuki doesn’t like it when people don’t give it their all. And I believe it’s been stated once or twice that once Izuku makes One For All his own, there’s a good chance they’re gonna fight again. So it’s in Katsuki’s best interest to make sure Izuku isn’t half-assing anything, because he wants to prove he can beat Izuku at his best, thus proving that KATSUKI is the best.

So it’s less so for Izuku’s benefit as it is for Katsuki’s own.

5) One Giant Leap (Heroes Rising)

Arguably one of the best moments of the entire Heroes Rising film amongst the fandom is the big handhold scene between Katsuki and Izuku as they make a last gambit effort to take down Nine with two One for Alls. Admittedly this is one of the best if not the best moment throughout the entire progression of the Bakudeku dynamic thus far. I’ll give it that much.

...which makes it all the more frustrating because again: MIND. WIPE. The audience knows it happened, but in canon we never know if Izuku discusses it with Katsuki or if anyone else was aware of the moment in greater specificity. IT ESSENTIALLY NEVER HAPPENED, and I’m starting to legitimately wonder whether or not it was for the best...

6) Datte Atashi No Hero (Anime Screenshot)

First off: how? Second off: huh?

Believe me, the second ending of Season 3 is an absolute bop, don’t get me wrong, but uh… again, it provides NOTHING balanced for Bakudeku, once again relying on Izuku’s perspective on the entire matter. I once read an interesting meta about this ending and how it could be interpreted (take this with a grain of salt), but the biggest contender is that this is in fact Izuku’s fantasy. Think about it:

Izuku is a humble traveling warrior, with nothing to distinguish himself in his own opinion.

Ochako is a magician because she’s alien to Izuku, an unheard of phenomenon.

Tenya being a knight, Shoto being a prince, and Momo being a warrior princess all correlates to their high standings in society, heroic or otherwise.

The reason Katsuki is a barbarian king is because he’s familiar to Izuku in an ancient sense; he’s known him for a long time. The list goes on, but you get the jist.

With this in mind, it’s not difficult to understand that even Katsuki willing to work with Izuku would be another aspect of Izuku’s fantasy: to be able to stand beside his childhood friend once more. And remember the ending of that scene, when Izuku does that big sword slash? That’s him having fully mastered OFA. Both are things that could happen given the manga’s recent direction, but still have yet to happen because this is, again, a fantasy.

And apparently Datte Atatshi No Hero is a reflection on Izuku’s feelings towards Katsuki. Take that as you will, but again, this does not speak for Bakudeku as a whole. Just Izuku’s feelings on the matter.

7) Win to Save, Save to Win (Manga Screenshot)

Since I’ve already penned myself into a short story at this point, might as well take the time to look at this famous phrase from the story.

Personally, I consider it bulls***. It harms both characters overall; yes, I said both. It excuses Katsuki’s need to be a blunt powerhouse that only targets villains, and it redundantly demands Izuku do more of what he was already doing, albeit with less sympathy. I know it sounds corny to say saving is more important than winning, but in the heat of the moment, what gets to the civilians in danger more often? Seeing a guy in a cape deck the latest disaster right in front of them or from a distance? Or said cape guy risking life and limb making sure that this person gets to see life another day?

There’s no perfect answer to it, but that’s my stance.

And this quote, “Win to save, save to win,” justifies the one thing that keeps Katsuki from truly outgrowing his past: his need to be the best. If winning is on the same level then saving, and Izuku has an innate capacity to save, then that means it’s okay for Katsuki to have to win all the time, right?

No. It’s not. And that’s not speaking for all the “Gary Stu” crap, either.

Because being pressured into being the best is what caused Katsuki to hate any kindness offered to him by Izuku. The desire to be the best had him bully Izuku for a decade to ensure that Izuku remained the loser and Katsuki remained the winner. That desire characterizes arguably the worst aspects of Katsuki’s character, and those aspects aren’t gonna fly in the Pro Hero world. Because if Nana Shimura, Shota Aizawa, the Pussycats, Mirio, Sir Nighteye, and a handful of other incidents have taught us anything, it’s that even at their best efforts, heroes don’t win all the time.

Katsuki needs to learn this, or it will crush him in the long term. But he hasn’t. The narrative has kept letting him rack up wins, and his current actions in the manga were spurred on by the fact that he still has yet to truly take a loss.

Say what you will, but I don’t like this line. For what it says about Izuku or Katsuki.

8) The Only One Who Can Accept His Feelings… (Anime Screenshot)

Me @ #7: Wanna see me go off?

Me @ #8: Wanna see me do it again?

Izuku’s perspective on the entire Bakudeku situation is a major reason why most fans condone it. “Izuku doesn’t appear obviously bothered by Katsuki, so that clearly means it’s not abusive/problematic, so just shut up!” or something like that. Well, I’m no psychologist, so I won’t go into a spiel about people ignoring their pain for the sake of others or people trying to excuse others in order to place fault on themselves whether or not it be accurate.

Really, all I can say is that NONE OF THIS should be Izuku’s responsibility.

I’m not blaming this on Izuku because he hasn’t had actual friends or a healthy support system in a long while, but the fact that he decides to take on and enable Katsuki in his element just… doesn’t sit well with me. The logical conclusion would be talking, not throwing hands. I don’t care if they’re “distressed teenagers,” neither of them should be doing this, and Katsuki was fully aware that the teachers would stop them in the first place; that’s not simply adults meddling in what isn’t their business. Katsuki should have really figured out by now that maybe the best course of action is to actually vent to someone without blowing their face off, and I get that he’s absolute s*** at feelings, but really, that’s more of a red flag that he needs to actually get help. And if you think a little too hard on Izuku’s feelings of the matter, well…

Imagine being ostracized for so long that you lose all sense of self worth.

Imagine being told time and again that your worthless, which checks out for you because clearly if your worthless, the guy that enabled that mindset is obviously better than you, and he’s entitled to use you for his own ends.

That’s what I get from this scene.

And again, this is all from IZUKU at this point; virtually NOTHING from Katsuki.

9) Double Detroit Smash (Heroes Rising)

I’ve already said my piece about the film. At this point, it’s beating a dead horse with a stick. Moving on.

10) Word of God (Miscellaneous)

Here’s the thing about Word of God in fandom: the general consensus is that it’s nice to get confirmation from a credible source, but unless it is portrayed in canon, it’s just more words which may or may not be true.

In this case, Kohei Horikoshi, the mangaka for BNHA, is saying that eventually, Katsuki will have to apologize to Izuku. Eventually.

As in, it still hasn’t happened yet.

As in, Katsuki still has yet to decide that what he did in the past was wrong and he should try to fix it.

As in, it currently shows no bearing towards Katsuki’s current character nor the overall Bakudeku dynamic.

Sure, it MIGHT happen, but in another interview (or mayhaps it’s the same one), Horikoshi stated that Katsuki originally wasn’t intended to get as much screen time as he did. Both of these situations are different of course, but with the recent turbulence of the War Arc shaking up the manga, is it really so hard to believe that an apology might slip away from Katsuki’s thought process?

On the bright side, an apology could happen. But until it’s canon, then it’s only a possibility, and therefore can’t be used fully for the intended argument.

11) X-Catapult Handhold (Heroes Rising)

I bet some people working on the movie and some fans on the movie felt spoiled when they included not one, but two handholding scenes for Izuku and Katsuki.

And while the first handhold is certainly a marvel of battle tactics, again, there isn’t much else going on with it. Is it nice to see Katsuki working with Izuku again? Yes, but contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t go past that. Katsuki’s just willing to work with Izuku, full stop. He’d probably be willing to work with anyone because Nine is f***ing tank. And sure, getting a handhold tease is nice, but it’s only to facilitate Katsuki’s subsequent yeeting of Izuku at Nine in an attempt to do damage. Nothing more pressing about the circumstances of their past or anything like that.

12) A Bit of Advice (Anime Screenshot)

Look, this is one of the tamer, better looks at Izuku and Katsuki’s relationship. He’s willing to put his pride aside and give Izuku some advice. But remember what I said earlier in #4?

It’s not just to make sure Izuku gets better, but so Katsuki can feel like it’s a complete win when he beats his ass.

And if we take the line “It pisses me off” into account, we can look at that flaw from the same angle. Remember, Izuku has All Might’s power, the #1 Hero’s power. To Katsuki, that means he shouldn’t have the luxury of making mistakes. But Izuku does. He makes mistakes, and Katsuki sees them and he doesn’t get to exploit them. He still wins, but not because of those mistakes. And part of that pisses Katsuki off. Izuku shouldn’t get to slack. So, Katsuki gives him some advice. Advice that will no doubt help Izuku in the long run, for his (and Katuki’s) sakes. It’s a good outcome from a not very good reason...

13) Have You Made That Borrowed Power Your Own? (Manga Screenshot)

Yeah, no.

I don’t care if Izuku is used to this treatment, it still isn’t reinforcing an overall positive tone.

I don’t care if Katsuki acknowledges at some level that Izuku’s power is becoming his own, he still has the gall to say it was no wonder he passed BECAUSE of his power. Which may be true, but it’s not like Izuku was relying on it 100%, and lowkey comes off as Quirkist.

All it tells me is that Katsuki is starting to acknowledge Izuku, in the “gadfly I can’t get off my back” sort of way. Is this the “best development” y’all are rooting for? Basic acknowledgement of another human being?

14) Outta My Way Punk! (Manga Screenshot)

Katsuki reflexively tells Izuku to get out of his way.

Izuku is used to it, again, that does not excuse it.

Once again, Katsuki reverts back to his usual behavior instead of showing a more subtle approach to show the audience that maybe he’s changing beyond what a chorus of other characters saying “he’s changed!” has to offer.

...even if it’s not abusive, you can’t really say that’s a “good” relationship, either.

15) Blackwhip Training (Manga Screenshot)

Katsuki willing to train with Izuku to help him master his Quirk(s) is nice.

Still blatantly in his element with lots of needless yelling and dominance assertion, but still nice.

And keep in mind, right after it’s clear they aren’t getting anywhere and Izuku tries to rationalize it, Katsuki decides to dip seeing as it’s not worth his time anymore. And even before that, at least in my translation, Katsuki seems to be more interested in beating out Blackwhip instead of having Izuku get a handle on.

Again, maybe not abusive, but not exactly supportive, either.

16) ??? (Anime Screenshot)

I personally have no idea what they were going for with this screenshot, but if I had to guess, that’s after Katsuki gives Izuku an escape window whilst he faces off against All Might alone during their Final Exams.

While I understand that this is early on in their dynamic’s development, the fact still stands that Katsuki still wants to fight for fighting’s sake. He may have been willing to at least give Izuku a chance, but he still sees Izuku’s retreat as cowardly, even though it’s a perfectly valid way to pass the exam. He still just wants to fight.

There’s no mutuality in that sense.

17) Quote from Justin Briner (Miscellaneous)

I don’t have much of an opinion for Izuku’s English VA, but for what it’s worth, I think overall he’s a really cool dude. The same, however, cannot be said for his quote.

I can buy into Izuku wanting to get stronger because of Katsuki, since that is a major plot point. I can’t do the same for Katsuki seeing the good in people because we don’t ever see it, really? In fact, it’s more like people latch on to Katsuki and he just tolerates them until they’ve completely wormed their way into his life. There’s no scene where Katsuki considers someone a good person because of something Izuku did, or anything even vaguely along those lines, at least to my knowledge.

As for their relationship, there have been more downs than ups, and it isn’t relatable to me in the slightest. Maybe that’s just ‘cause I don’t get the overall appeal, but their friendship never really strikes me as a… well, friendship. You could argue that’s the point and that’s what makes them different and interesting, but I would much rather we see more concrete proof of their relationship being at more understandable highs and lows while actually demonstrating it was mutual.

But again. That’s just me.

18) Joint Training Pep Talk (Manga Screenshot)

I’m basically repeating myself at this point. Katsuki might be keeping tabs on Izuku, but again, it’s not entirely for Izuku’s benefit. He just wants to make sure his new “rival” (successor to the #1 Hero, I might add) isn’t dragging his feet through the mud and actually getting s*** done so their eventual third clash will actually be worth his time.

...this relationship is so one-sided in two entirely different ways, I swear.

19) Speaking With Kacchan So Naturally (Manga Screenshot)

Why are we congratulating Katsuki for adding one more person to his already (surprisingly) sizable tolerance pile?

Why are we congratulating Izuku for bridging a gap other people managed to cross with little to no effort even though he didn’t do anything wrong?

Izuku is essentially saying “Good job on me for finally getting the same treatment as everyone else from that one person after over ten years.” Good on him, but uh… that’s not exactly a landmark worth framing the way the fandom does...

The relationship might not be outright abusive, but HOO BOY the bar has never been set lower...

20) “You’ve got a good friend in him” (Manga Screenshot)

And finally, the pièce de résistance. Which is really more narrative mouthpiece-ing.

Even before that, Katsuki yet again can’t take a compliment from Izuku for whatever reason. Yet again, Izuku just shrugs off all of Katsuki’s discouragement, intentional or otherwise. And I love me some Dadmight as much as the next guy, but really, does he have a good grasp on relationships? His only friends in his life were David and Naomasa, and he’s been shown time and time again to not be the infallible man many think he is due to being the Symbol of Peace? But suddenly he goes “Bakudeku rights” and y’all jump on that with no room for argument?

Katsuki has yet to prove what All Might has been saying. Again, telling rather than showing, therefore removing the meaning from the entire thing. Unless Katsuki proves otherwise, I call bulls***.

-------------------------------------------------------

So, my final verdict? Bakudeku is fine. It’s just not as great as the rest of you are making it out to be. I’m not gonna dictate whatever you ship or what you enjoy, that’s not my place, but at least keep these perspectives in mind. You don’t have to believe them, but just… stay aware, y’know?

Alrighty, I’ve wasted enough of your time. If you’ve read it until the very end, then… thanks. Carry on.

-Crimson Lion (10 August 2020)

[the-hs-etaverse]

Aspect Groupings, IMO

Hi, first off, huge shoutout to @communistvriska who makes brilliant classpecting posts (they’re walls of text but it’s good text). But she made this fantastic analysis of the relationships between aspects and how they’re related to their positions on the aspect wheel (link).

So, I know, like, the post above is considerably more canon, but it made me remember that I think of the aspects in groups, too. It’s definitely a different system, and it doesn’t make quite as much sense w.r.t. the aspect wheel, but it’s my take (albeit a tepid one). And honestly, screw canon.

Please, take these with a grain of salt, because I am most definitely not writing these all out feverishly at 2 am. (No Keep Reading tag we you die like men)

Space-Time-Void: The World Aspects

These are the three aspects that are intrinsically connected to the fabric of reality. Yes, I’m excluding Light in this definition because of its alternate meaning, which is the one that seems more often used metaphysically in Sburb. But yeah, you have Space and Time, which are opposites in a sense (Space is the tangible reality and Time is the intangible but still real liminality), but then Void, which is absence, is basically the opposite of them both.

These are the most meta aspects, in a certain sense, because physics is based upon them. But they’re also the most tangible ones. They’re the ones with the most concretely singular definitions. They’re the ones that affect the dimensions that we can pass through (if Time counts as a dimension).

Going off of more symbolic representations of them, Space is creation, Time is revision (it’s basically the big fix-it tool of the cosmos), and Void is... well, it’s not really destruction; that’s Rage’s purview. It’s more of uncertainty. You’d think that would fit best with the Next aspects because they’re all about what’s going to happen next, but ACTUALLY MEGAN it doesn't quite fit there. Those aspects know where they’re going or where they might go. Void doesn’t know. Heck, it doesn’t even know the past sometimes (re: Equius’s Pesterquest route). But Void still fits the whole building metaphor because it’s like when you’re working on a Minecraft castle and you have no idea what to do next. Wondering about that sort of thing, and just waiting and walking around the building you’ve built, is rather important to the creative process, imo.

Mind-Heart-Blood: The Self Aspects

These are the three aspects that are intrinsically connected to one’s sense of self: body (Blood), mind (Mind), and soul (Heart). (Insert Vriska (Vriska) joke here (and another one about missing close-parentheses in Python (if you can’t tell, this was mostly written while sleep-deprived)).) But Blood is significantly more abstract than that: it’s also about one’s relationships with others, but in a different sense than Heart is. Blood is about bonds, and Heart is about emotions. And Mind is about logic, which, you could say, is an opposite of both of them.

You could even go so far as to compare Mind, Blood, and Heart to the Modes of Persuasion - logos, ethos, and pathos (respectively). Again, they’re representative of different aspects of a person’s psyche. But, like, I have no idea how you might apply that.

Okay, I have an idea with how that’s kind of being applied. Terezi’s the big Mind (translation: galaxy brain) player, and she’s all about lawyering and rules and logic. There’s your logos. Dirk’s the most developed Heart player, and he’s all about convincing through appeals to emotion, and that’s for the most part how he manipulates the narrative in the Epilogues and the ^2. There’s your pathos. And Karkat, the Blood player, uh, most of his leader stuff is in a sort of Cincinnatus-type of way; he’s not being the trolls session leader or the presidential candidate cuz he wants to, he’s doing it because somebody’s gotta step up and do it and he wants to do the right thing. There’s your ethos.

Breath-Light-Doom: The Next Aspects

These aspects being grouped together is why I made these groupings in the first place. Because, when taken deeper than face level, they all refer to one’s future. Breath is destiny (this is kind of a stretch, but “Winds of destiny, change!”), Light is chance, and Doom is fate. Yes, those are all synonyms, but they also refer to different aspects of one’s future. Destiny is about the biggest picture, where you fit in to the grand scheme of things; but it’s also about where the wind takes you here and now. It’s an extrapolation of your current path. Fate is about the fixed waypoints and endpoints, where the path will bottleneck, where you will go no matter what. And chance is about how much the path can divert along the way, and how much leeway the bottlenecks hold, and what you need to do to modify the biggest picture.

The more literal definitions of these aspects are Breath as wind; Light as, well, light (insert another Vriska (Vriska) joke here); and Doom as... uh, death.

I, uh, I really don’t have much else to say here. Uh, you guys take this one.

Hope-Rage-Life: The Now Aspects

This grouping, for me, is the most confusing (partly because they’re the aspects left over once the obvious ones are grouped together). Because Hope and Rage being tied together makes sense, obviously, but what does that all have to do with Life?

Well, I think they’re all mental attitudes, in a way, how we act now and how we choose to look at existence. Hope is optimism, Rage is pessimism, and Life is idealism. Take note: none of these are realism, not even Life. They’re all coloured lenses: When you look with Hope, you see the best version of the future. When you look with Rage, you see the worst version of the future. When you look with Life, you see your desired version of the future. But none of these are the real version of the future. Sure, they’re all beneficial in their own way, but sometimes you have to take those lenses off. I feel like Hope, Rage, and Life players have the hardest time taking off their own lenses.

Then there’s more literal definitions of the aspects: Hope is belief, Rage is destruction, and Life is growth. Very loosely speaking, these are the actions that you’d take in order to fulfill the respective mindsets. Like, I’m optimistic about Vrisrezi Real HS^2 Endgame (this optimism might be misplaced), so I’m believing super hard in that coming to pass. I’m pessimistic about Order of the Stick ending on any note other than the Snarl winning (but tbh this pessimism could also be misplaced), so I’m like “okay heck with it let it get wrecked big-time”. I’m idealistic about how I can eventually get not depressed (I pray that it’s not misplaced), so I’m working on growing in the not-depression area.

In like the grand scale, with reference to all of them

I’m not looking at these aspects in their relationship to a session. I’m more looking at them based on what they are, by definition. All these aspects are interconnected, they’re all related in different ways, especially in terms of definition, so you could absolutely make different groupings based on their definitions. This is just my take.

One thing I noticed about the Aspect Wheel is that it’s a cycle, the cycle of being. Space is about creation and birth, so you start there. You aren’t yet anything more than a substance, but then comes in your Mind, and you’re administered Hope, that you will yet be something more. And then you take your first Breath, and there begins your Life. You learn and are enLightened, and Time passes. You grow up. You learn to manage your Heart, and you have to fight against Rage, and then you form bonds of Blood. Your Blood spills out after long, and ultimately you have to face your Doom. You enter the Void. And there it ends, but there it also begins.

Wow, that got pretentious.

I have to wonder how religion would work in a setting like Sburb, if at all. The classpect system is pretty irreligious. But I’ll save that for a later post. Maybe.

[sunnykeysmash]

S14's theme of Trust: How Global Warming reaffirms the Macden meta we already know

Or, a half reworked set of discussions from my Twitter about the underlying themes of FAITH/TRUST and CHANGE present in this season. Particularly between macden because I don't give a damn for the rest. Sidenote: my twitter thread about trust that takes up half of this post was actually written BEFORE GW came out, and despite that it got reinforced thanks to GW meta.

I apologize in advance if the reading isn't as fluid as it could be, it's hard to order the threads in a single cohesive explanation but I still tried my best. Plus, english isn't my first language.

This post contains speculation that links to my previous meta posts, tagged under "iasip meta". That's where I discuss the theme of change more in detail, not here. They're a little outdated in terms of episode prediction but the meta analysis in them holds up and was reinforced in GW.

The bible = Trust/Faith

So, how does faith/trust get in the way of their relationship? Who has it, who doesn't?

Let's address it. This might be long but bear with me I guess. First we need to address what broke their trust.

North Dakota

(aka the element that broke the link of trust between macden for good, from which they are still trying to recover; and how we got there; their shift in dynamic because of it and how it's a vicious cycle that feeds itself until a breaking point, with no possibility for rational discussion. "How Mac will reject Dennis as a final test to restore their trust")

Part 1: how it affected Dennis

It is my understanding that dennis has been left profoundly scarred by how his decision to leave to north dakota went and he has been blaming the gang for failing to stop him from leaving, and especially blaming Mac. Which lead to the events in Chokes.

Where he felt frustrated at Mac for doing everything Dennis says and never going against him. He's constantly pushing him and being abrasive because he wishes for him to snap and act on his own volition.

Because aside from feeling like he can't trust anyone, and like no one in the gang cares for him, he most of all feels like he can't trust himself. He has been scarred by the consequences of his own actions, and doesn't know what else he might do that could have a similar effect.

Of course a person who can't really trust himself would feel paralyzed, they would not act or do anything. Which is why we are moving away from that, slowly. We need to have this progression in order for Dennis to Realize anything at all.

So Chokes as an episode is sort of a milestone, it runs really deep in multiple overarching events and developments. It's not just fixing macden's dynamic, it's beginning to fix a core problem that stops dennis from reaching macden and that has been prominent at least ever since Tends Bar.

It's something that has been going on in the background for a while, that is touched upon sometimes. Dennis desperately wants the gang to care about him.

So when he is surprised by the RPG on the day that for him is most emblematic of the gang not caring, I think it hit deeper than what we're assuming. His feelings were challenged.

DDL is a result of many things. On the surface it's him wanting to be a dad for his child the way Frank never could for him. I think it was also a test though. If they truly cared, they would stop him. They wouldn't want him to go away.

Now. They don't. That stings. Then things possibly go south in North Dakota. That also stings. It's easy to mentally connect the two and realize the hurt he's experiencing. "If they had stopped me, none of this would've happened" I assume is the correlation he made mentally.

So then he probably thought about Mac, and the gesture he made. He thought that meant something, but then him, like the rest of the gang, did nothing. So he's even more angry at him. "For a moment I really thought he cared, why wouldn't he do something?" Betrayal.

So that to me explains why he's been acting like shit towards Mac. And he's been slowly trying to work through his feelings on the matter, as S13 sorta showed initially, with him not wanting to address it at all for a while, and when he tried again no one cared. He's been trying.

I wonder if it's a possibility that, as we reach the resolution to this circumstance, he will try to bring it up again. I wouldn't count on it necessarily, but character wise it would simply make sense. If he's getting over the problem, he's leaving ND behind. He should, I mean.

Part 2: how it affected Mac

But this isn't just a circumstance that hinders Dennis, it has deeply afflicted Mac too, in a way that is just as personal. "No matter what I do for a person, they can still choose to leave me", it is no wonder to see that side of him exacerbated, then.

Before ND, Mac trusted Dennis' words, enough to let him leave if he said he wanted to, even if it hurt. Before ND, Dennis trusted that Mac would always "be there to catch him if he faltered", that he cared, especially after the RPG moment.

These were true. They could always count on each other, trust each other. ND changed everything, and altered their dynamic in a way that we are still feeling, and still trying to remedy. That Mac and Den especially are still desperately trying to remedy.

They /want/ to go back to their codependent dynamic, they /need/ to. But the way they are desperately trying to is only making things worse and worse, and it's a terrible cycle.

[ The more Dennis rejects Mac in hope that Mac will finally go against him, the more Mac is desperately trying to appease Dennis so that he won't leave him, the more Dennis is annoyed and dissatisfied of Mac's submissive behavior and becomes more abrasive in return. ]

Which is why I think discussing that event is a necessity in order for macden to even happen at all. They theoretically need a face to face conversation to resolve these core insecurities that are getting in the way of their friendship (and possibly more).

It doesn't have to be a romantic thing either, it is just necessary for this conflict to be addressed in order for their dynamic to go back to normal. But that can't happen without a breaking point. We know them enough to assume that they're not gonna just discuss it rationally. It would be the correct way to handle the situation, but they're not like that.

Whether everything resolves positively (as in, their dynamic finally shifting back to before ND) depends on how much they want to stay together and what they are willing to sacrifice or compromise for it. Whether certain grievances can be stronger than their bond itself (and I'm pretty sure they can't, or mac and den would've parted already, long ago).

Mac's internal conflict is likely what will make it so that we have to wait a year. If it just isn't resolved, then he would want proof that Dennis isn't /just saying/ stuff. Den might assure him that he isn't but is that enough for Mac?

How do you resolve a conflict that is basically just a huge almost debilitating fear of abandonment and mistrust of the other person's words? In what way can you possibly prove it wrong?

We know Mac loves Dennis, of course he does. But does he trust Dennis? The way he has been behaving towards him tells me otherwise. He doesn't stand up to him.

Not only that but, more specifically, he's always "interpreting" everything Dennis says, you can see it in Texts for example. He knows den never means what he says, and always has an ulterior motive or hidden meaning. He doesn't take den's rejections at heart too much because he knows they're fake.

So now imagine Dennis has a change of heart. Now he goes to Mac, and he tells him Exactly How He Truly Feels. Knowing the way Mac is used to interpreting Dennis, I don't think he'd believe him. He'd want to, but he probably couldn't.

And I don't think Mac even realizes this lack of trust at all. I think it's gonna hit him exactly as it's happening. He might feel happy at first, then be confused at his sense of uneasiness like he's been used and lied to, like Dennis is saying it to manipulate him.

But that's just for words. Physically speaking, I think Mac is very much aware that Dennis has no intention of ever leaving again, nor can he really. That's how it seemed to be in tggr at least.

The abandonment Mac is afraid of is purely emotional at this point with Dennis. It doesn't need to be a "what if he moves out". More of a "what if he doesn't like me anymore and is using me".

So anyway, about the cycle I mentioned earlier.

This feels like a build up. They can't go on like this forever, they will reach a breaking point. I don't expect them to have an honest and open and calm confrontation and solve their differences before a huge snap of both of them happens, I expect the snap.

You know, either Dennis gets too abrasive and Mac finally "snaps out of him", or Mac gets too submissive and Dennis grows tired of him.

However thanks to Chokes and now Global Warming, we can safely predict it'll be the first one. Chokes set us on a path of Mac making his own decisions, which thanks to GW we know will backfire.

They'll fight, Dennis will be overwhelmed by it as Mac ""leaves"", more on that later, first let me finish my discussion on trust.

I find it suspicious how all the episodes with a semblance of resolution that we have had so far only seemed to fix Dennis' conflicts with Macden. We have failed to address Mac's lack of trust in Dennis' words, even in Texts I think. Especially in Texts.

In Texts it wasn't communication that solved the problem, it was an act, a stare. And we only ever heard Dennis' side of it. Mac at this point already believes that Dennis likes him, so there was nothing new for him to discover at the end.

If anything, it reinforced his belief that Dennis says the opposite of what he thinks, that he isn't honest. Because despite how he's been acting all day, he still saw affection in his eyes, I assume.

But Mac has already always paid attention to what Dennis "really meant", I mean, he does it throughout Texts, thought in the wrong way because it was still through text (miscommunication) and he didn't like to consider the alternative.

I put "really meant" in quotations because Dennis doesn't really work like that. Sure a lot of times Dennis doesn't say what he really means so of course Mac would start interpreting him like that, but there are still many times when he's actually honest. This is just Mac's black and white way of seeing den.

Anyway.

As a result of not feeling heard, Dennis actually developed a heavier and more frequent use of sarcasm. Because if people won't do what he says, then maybe if he says the opposite they'll listen to him. It's a reflex born out of frustration.

Back to the "trust" thing now, because see, all this time Dennis has been acting under the underlying assumption that Mac will choose Him every time. Mac doesn't have this assumption, he has been acting to Prevent Dennis from NOT choosing him.

It's gonna be really interesting, if this turns out to be correct, to see the tables be turned and find out that Dennis was the one with faith. We are used to see Mac believe have it, in god and in their relationship, but ultimately it's Dennis that is trusting Mac to make the right decisions. Which includes choosing Dennis every time.

That's a bigass trust to have for someone who says they have no faith. In contrast to that, what faith has Mac put in Dennis? None that I can think of, he actively does stuff that will please dennis, so far.

"leaving"/"rejecting" Dennis in the finale would constitute, again, Mac's faith in Dennis. He would be choosing something that goes right against everything Dennis wants, having faith that this won't mean they grow apart, and maybe even trusting that it's what Dennis actually needs. And it's what Mac would need as well, as proof that Dennis is serious. Because if he doesn't change his mind, then he is. And you can finally see how the whole season has been constructed as a way to move away from the ND conflict in order to fix their dynamic and broken trust in order to make macdennis work.

This calls back to my meta reading for the first half of the season. Again. This is old stuff. But still accurate.

Some snippets.

I now have a more detailed speculation on how Jumper will go which is no longer the one I had in that meta post, but I will spare you the useless talk and get back to my point. Maybe save that for another post. All I need to say here is that Dennis will be adamant that the answer is SHOULD WE: NO, Mac will want to prove him wrong but Dennis will be proven right, subsequently starting the path for Mac's change of outlook. And what will make him say "no"(t yet) even once Dennis believes they should. Boom, karma.

ANYWAY.

Dennis knows he can depend on Mac or at least he's learning so, Mac isn't sure if he can do the same.

As the two bicker over who had trust in who, and who broke the other's trust, it'll come to the surface, through text, that the roles have shifted. Dennis was trusting Mac all along, Mac wasn't.

Which is why Mac deciding for himself, deciding something that goes against Dennis, saying "no", is the biggest leap of faith Mac can take, the thing that would show us that yes, finally, Mac believes Dennis will still choose him.

TGGR's final part of macden's plot itself shows us Mac accepting Dennis' cynical point of view and losing faith. "I guess we're not gonna get that romantic comedy ending after all". But that is not the note the episode ends with.

Right as Mac accepts that it's not happening, we see Charlie and Frank's ending part of their plot. They're reaching back, they have a new realization. Nikki says that they feel the same way, but they still say no for the time being.

How does this all link to Global Warming, finally?

The Global Warming meta

The jump, the realization, the acceptance, in all the meta I have analyzed in the episodes, it all comes AFTER the explosion, the rejection. First things explode and Mac "leaves", THEN Dennis is overwhelmed and changes his mind, reevaluates. Think of the Nikki&Alexi and Charlie&Frank plot as a frame of reference for this. Think of Chokes also, first Mac says "No", then Dennis is satisfied.

NOW, Global Warming macdennis meta, at its most basic, goes as follows:

Dennis thought what he liked was the sexy girls dancing, then they revolted against him and literally overpowered him, and in the aftermath he has a new outlook on the japanese guys that he once disliked. At the same time as this happens, Mac isn't there to help him.

At the same time, we always see Dennis trying to rationalize his way out of conflicts, and it never working, not with Mac, not with the people in the bar.

Basically, we reach a breaking point in the conflict, and Dennis is overwhelmed by it, Mac doesn't help him in GW, he "leaves", I imagine this symbolizing that Mac finally agreeing with Dennis in the actual final conflict would feel to Den like Mac is "giving up on them". Dennis took Mac choosing him for granted, and he now learns how much trust he had in Mac despite saying otherwise (Chokes) and how much it meant to him. Dennis comes out of it changed.

They both do.

This, as I posted about previously, is all part of "God's plan". Dennis gave Mac back his "free will" in Chokes so that Mac's harsh final decisions could ultimately aid their relationship and trust.

We need Mac to turn Dennis down for the time being AND for Dennis to not change his mind during the wait, for the trust to be restored for both of them. To remedy North Dakota once and for all, and move into the macdennis territory. In a year, aka next season.

So finally, we can see how TGGR, Chokes, Texts and now GW all work together as milestones that set us in that direction.

[spaceorphan18]

Finding Kurt Hummel: The Purple Piano Project

Masterpost

3x01: The Purple Piano Project

Welcome to Season 3! I’ll try not to whine too much while we’re here, lol :)  

The season starts out on a relatively high note, however, making the whole thing feel a lot more promising than it ended up being.  This episode is fun and quirky and there are a lot of pianos for Kurt to drape himself on top of!! 

Future Plans

So – we start off the season much like season two – Ben Jacob Israel going around and harassing everyone about their summer vacations and future plans. 

Do you see the set up of this shot, guys?  Rachel chattering in the front while Kurt tries to be distracting in the background?  Well – get used to it, because this Hummelberry dynamic is going to drag us through the next two years, guys, lol.  No really – I enjoy Hummelberry in this episode, I do.  But we had no idea this was a set up for (I’m sure someone will argue me on this) the worst Kurt arc on the show – Getting into NYADA.  And, unfortunately, the Hummelberry dynamic (or more so the writer’s obsession with Rachel not being able to fail at anything) plays into that. 

Probably going off a rush of a summer where all they talked about was going to New York, Kurt and Rachel have all their future plans figured out.  They’re going to get a little apartment on the Lower West Side (yeah, sure), Rachel’s gonna be a big Broadway star, and Kurt’s gonna be married (legally!!!) by 30.  Yes – think about what is said here, I know Kurt has Broadway ambitions, too, but I find it funny that his dream aspirations include getting married.  

There are two key things I’d like to point about the whole marriage thing.  Kurt says by 30.  As we find in this season – not before 30 cause that is Too. Young.  But also.  Yes.  Kurt Hummel wants to get married.  And I’m pretty sure he already knows who his groom is going to be.  

But anyway, thinking about season 2, and how that started in such a dark place for Kurt, here we have the opposite – bright and shining optimism.  Oh, kiddo.  This really can only go down, can’t it. 

Purple Pianos

Kurt: Why’s the T-Rex eating the Jew?

It’s exposition dump time! As we get filled in that the Glee Club remains uncool after the Nationals debacle from last year.  Kurt gets his share of funny lines as we get filled in.  

Meanwhile – the glee club is three men down; Quinn pissed off the writers again, Lauren was fired, and Sam just couldn’t work out a contract deal.  So – Will gets the idea that placing purple pianos everywhere would inspire new people to join the club.  I’m not entirely sure how purple pianos are inspiring, but like Kurt, I’m totally on board with the whole thing.  

As seen in the background, the moment he can, he gets himself up and draped over one of the pianos. 

See – look how adorable he is on that piano!!! 

Anyway – Will bores us with another inspiration speech that means mostly nothing since no one joins glee club anyway…. 

NYADA – School for Witches

Lol – oh Kurt, you’re making the best faces in this episode so far….

First of all, let’s talk about the fact that Emma thought he and Rachel were dating (omg!), and the fact that he actually takes the pamphlet about ‘Me and My Hag’ (Lol).  Secondly, let’s talk about these sillies not doing their research on how Julliard is not a musical theater school.  At least Emma is doing the job she’s supposed to be doing in this episode! 

And then she steers them in the direction of New York Academy of Dramatic Arts.  Oh NYADA and my distaste for you begins, lol….  So, this particular school only takes 20 students a year.  Hmmm…  Looks a lot bigger than that in season 4 but whatever.  And the chances that two people from the same school and graduating year getting in? Doubtful.  But this is Glee, so here we go! 

Competitive Spirit

 It’s the first day of school, and Blaine is still a Warbler, but his resolve is crumbling because Kurt is very persistent (and flirty and adorable) in this scene. You know there’s some interesting meta floating around about this scene recently – about their competitive nature and about how Blaine really isn’t /that/ competitive, but Kurt totally is.  He doesn’t mind it at all, really, which means, in a way, that they’re on equal footing.  Ah, how that is all about to change. 

But what Kurt really wants is for Blaine to be around all the time so they can spend every minute of every day together.  Oh, Kurt.  Be careful what you wish for. But also – interestingly – they spent all the time together back when Kurt was at Dalton, and Kurt wants that little fairy tale to continue by bringing Blaine over to McKinley.  It’s obvious they talked about this at length over the summer, but I wonder what Kurt’s (more serious) arguments were for getting Blaine to come to public school. 

But anyway – the fun stuff – just how adorable and flirty these two are here! Hands might not have wandered south of the equator, but they were definitely up to stuff over the summer! 

We Got the Beat

I’ve always thought Kurt was very pretty in this scene.  

I should probably have more profound analysis.  

Well, there’s not much to say, other than Kurt’s used to being bullied by the school, and he’s not about to make himself a target by getting up and singing on the lunch tables, no matter how pretty the pianos are.  

Year 3 and Kurt’s still an awkward little dancer. <3 

This song is nice and fun and energetic.  Not really a favorite of mine, but man, what does it take to get this school into anything?  Geez! 

You know, for someone who is so particular about their clothes – I’m sure this is like the zombie apocalypse.  Poor Kurt. I love the food ray shield. 

You know, never once in all my schooling did I witness a food fight. 

Kurt is just not having it. 

Kurtcedes lives! If only to pass along exposition.  And to exchange bewildered looks as Sugar sings her god-awful song.  

You know it’s funny – I never noticed how seasons 2 and 3 (and 4 actually) openers have plotlines of – let’s open up glee club for everyone! Except not really because we’re a seclusive little bunch. 

Velma and Roxy

Small town is small after you’ve been to the big city.  But Kurt has a plan, that they’re gonna out preform all the other Ohio hopefuls so they can get a shot at their dreams.  I think, for the first time, I kinda get the purpose of this song (other than the blatant relation to Wicked and connection to season 2), but that they’re already counting in their victory against all the other hopefuls.  They’re putting their cart before the horse.  

Say what you will about Gay Hogwarts, NYADA does attract the witches….

The song itself is a little ridiculous but the performance is wonderful.  I love the choreography of this one.  And as always sound fantastic together, and this performance is no exception.  Say what you will about how Hummelberry was written – and I will say a lot over the next two seasons – Lea and Chris’s voices suit each other wonderful, and the show seems to latch on to that pretty well.  

Transfer

Not exactly a pic of Kurt, I know, but Blaine’s so frickin’ gorgeous in this scene.  And Kurt thinks so, too!! Look at that grin!  

But I’m kinda fascinated by this, now that I think of it, how Blaine’s all – check me out Kurt – in this kind of suave way.  And, oh Kurt, kind of caught up in his own drama to even notice that his boyfriend’s one outfit has changed.   

But, just, the excitement Kurt has when Blaine’s decided to transfer.  OMG! the boy is so happy.  

I love that Kurt has concerns – and they are so totally valid.  Blaine did transfer to be with Kurt, and that’s going to play a part in some of their bigger issues.  But for now, they can reveal in their happiness and not think at all about nasty, nasty break ups.  

And – getting Blaine into New Directions.  But since the only competition is Sugar, there really isn’t an issue here. 

Oh Kurt – so giddy that he’s once again getting sung to in the courtyard.  Can this year get any better?!?!  

Everything’s great util you light the piano on fire. 

Velma and Roxy II

Kurt and Rachel are so ready for this NYADA mixer! Only to find out that while at McKinley they might be special snowflakes, in the real world, they’re a dime a dozen.  I like the reality of this scene, tbh.  That you can give your 1 in a Billion speeches all you want, there’s always going to be someone else who seems like they’re more talented than you.  There are a lot of things Glee misses the mark on when it comes to college.  Or theater.  And this scene is a bit over the top.  But it does show that, hey, there are a ton of people trying to make it the same as you – and so you do have to ask yourself – do you have what it takes to compete? Or do you just walk away. 

I think now’s a good time to bring up the Glee Project.  I never watched it, tbh, so I can’t judge what kind of a show it was. But I’m not a fan of the results of the Glee Project.  And I don’t mean who won and who didn’t (Damien McGinty? Really?).  I mean that I have lots of problems with season 3.  But I think one of my biggest is that a show with a cast already overflowing now has to shoehorn these winners into the plot.  (I mean, think about how much space the show would have had without Rory)  Outside of Unique, I’m not really a fan of the characters that grew out of the Glee Project. 

That said, Lindsey Pierce was one of the winners, and her little moment to shine here seems perfect enough.  She’s a great vocalist, and I’m incredibly impressed by what she does here.  This performance is excellent.  

Anyway – going back to Kurt’s story.  It’s kinda hilarious how perfect a song choice this is – this group of kids basically stating that anything you guys can do Kurt and Rachel, we can do better.  Oh Glee with all its subtleties.  

So.  Kurt and Rachel make it back to the car and break down crying because that’s what happens when your optimistic view point gets smashed.  Poor kiddos.  

And then we get Kurt gives Rachel a pep talk v.2.0 (yes, i’ll be numbering these).  And it’s similar to the Born This Way talk – that Rachel is good enough to get in because she’s still special.  The thing, though, as much as I joke around, is that I do honestly like this scene.  Because Rachel is in Kurt’s corner, too, supporting him even though he’s down on himself for lack of extracurriculars.  The scene is a balanced one, where they both pull each other out of this dark place, and I can really do Hummelberry when this kind of thing happens. 

Gay High-five!!

You Can’t Stop the Beat

Oh, I have waited so long to screencap this.  There’s a gif out there that’s even funnier though.  

Anyway – there’s a ton crammed into this little scene.  Blaine joins glee club, which is yay!! But c’mon, Finn, you’re seriously having issues with Blaine possibly taking the spotlight when you and Rachel get all the solos? And Santana’s out for the week.  Why is she only out for one week? Who knows.  And then, finally, Kurt’s feeling ambitious and running for Student Body President, and Blaine’s super proud of him.  Can’t you tell by the still above?

But the moral of the story is you can pull all of the strings out of the purple piano but you can’t pull out it’s music.  Or, er,  something like that.  

Kurt’s feeling light and airy after that handjob.  Oh, wait, nope. 

It’s funny, I think this episode still holds up.  It’s crammed full of things, almost to a fault, but is still funny and endearing and services all the storylines it’s going to be presenting during the first third of the season.  I still really enjoy this episode even if season 3 goes mostly downward for me from here. 

It’s Season 3 people. Bam!

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

I don't blame you at all for keeping quiet about the show. I just can't understand how the people running the CW can look at what Dabb is doing to this show and go, "Eh - good enough." It's NOT good enough. It is demonstrably terrible, and at this point I desperately hope there will be a new show runner next season who will reveal the last 2 seasons were all a dream because one of the boys was in a coma. I don't know how else to fix things without acting like the Dabb era just didn't happen.

Not sure my ask went thru… What’s up Girly-girl! Long time no comment, edit, review, rant, observation, bitch session…  we miss you! You still watching? Curious as to what you think about theses past 5 episodes. Looks like Dabb in his ultimate suckitude as a Showrunner has screwed Jensen over again and handed off his DeanMichael storyline to another. Shocker. I’ll be really pissed if he has. And it definitely looks that way.             

Hello dear!

I assume these two might have been written by you? And probably some time ago as well. I’m sorry about replying so late, but tumblr hasn’t really been a prioriy these past months. Thank you for your message though. :) I think tumblr is working perfectly alright without me though, but thank you for being sweet and saying you missed my rambles.

That being said, I don’t think there will be any rambles, specs or metas posted on my page in any foreseeable future - though I could probably just schedule the around 200 meta-, gif- and edit-posts that are still sitting in my drafts, but then again… they have collected some dust by now.

To be completely honest, it’s a combination of things why I have been silent on here. One being that my daily life with work has been pretty demanding and doesn’t leave me with a whole lot of energy after I get home, but it’s also that I simply don’t have as much to say about SPN anymore these days.

I joined fandom in the middle of S7 and my personal highlight times on here has been from S8 to S11 - those were the good old days of meta, really they were golden and I cherish that time dearly still, but fandom has changed since then (and what people deem most important as well), the show has changed and I don’t feel like I am having a place in this fandom any longer. While I also always love editing, my primary focus on tumblr and with my blog has been analysis and meta and I feel like the kind of meta I strived for, loved reading and wrote myself theme wise is no longer of any interest to the majority of people - which doesn’t really bother me, I would continue to post my views regardless, but these past 3 seasons under Dabb’s reign have been hard on me. He turned the show into something I can barely recognize as the show I fell in love with. The storytelling is a mess and so much other stuff as well that I have been very vocal about up until a few months back, but I didn’t want to be just negative any longer so I took a break hoping that maybe SPN would inspire me again to write, but Dabb’s version of SPN is so shallow, so foreseeable from miles away that it has simply not been the case.

To put it plainly, Dabb has made me fall out of love with SPN these past 3 years as he turned it into a show that has nothing in common with the show I love. Of course all of our tastes differ, but my personal favourite seasons past Kripke were the Carver years as he imo knew how to craft story, craft emotion, craft characters and he knew how to play subtle, how to set up a story and follow through, how to make your heart ache in the best way possible. His style of storytelling and showrunning is what I adored and Dabb’s style has hardy anything in common with that so the past three years watching the show, seeing canon thrown out the window, replacing deep emotion with cheap melodrama and stories that built up and had a climax to millions of stories that go nowhere has left their mark on me. It’s been a tough three years, years that were frustrating, yes even painful, it was like a relationship that you always hoped would blossom again but never did. It’s like a relationship that had all the raw potential but ended up hurting you more than it made you happy.

Don’t get me wrong, I will always love this show and there will never be another show that will have this impact on me and my life and I can guarantee that there will NEVER be a character that will mean as much to me as Dean Winchester, but Dabb era has been painful, because I cared so much about the show. I was mourning it and it’s characters while they were still there on my screen but treated with such careless hands that I needed to take a step back and to be honest, I think it was the right call. For one because no one needs a negative voice all the time, but even more so now that J2M have revealed that S15 will be the last.

I see a lot of people very broken up about it and I’d have been the same way after S8 or 9 or 10 or 11 if it had ended then, right now I feel relief - and I don’t want to hurt anybody with saying that - and strangely enough for the first time in a while interest again (I have been watching the episodes btw, but like I said… nothing that would need to be written about - aside from Jensen rocking it with his Michael struggle, which like you said now has been given to someone else, once more) and a faint bit of hope and even happiness, because this way they should be able to craft an ending that is planned from the get-go. And that is something that could be very good for the storyline - then again, sadly I doubt that someone like Dabb could pull it all together. But here’s to hoping. All I want at this point is for them to make it count, make it worth it - I’d love nothing more than seeing the first episode of S15 and feeling like writing meta again.

So, what does it all add up to? I know this is a long ramble, but I felt it was overdue given my silence on here. I don’t know how often I’ll be on here from now on, I’ll check in here and there, but I doubt I’ll be posting much. To everybody who is hurting due to SPN coming to an end: HUGS. Really selfishly I can say I truly don’t hurt or feel broken up, I feel more like resolution is finally on the horizon and potential for a wonderful ending. And something that I will always be grateful for is the people this show has brought into my life, people who’ll stay in my life way past this show, that’s what makes the show count: just like the character will transcend, keep living, so will these friendships for life and that’s how this show will become “immortal”. Not through the storylines, not through the 15 seasons it aired, it had impact through and due to the people who watched it and who found like minded people through it they can consider close friends and even family now.

Anyway, if I could have one wish fulfilled, it would be to get all of the good writers back on the show for this last hurra, Ben Edlund, Jeremy Carver, Sera Gamble, Raelle Tucker, Robbie Thompson and Adam Glass for example and of course Eric Kripke. Let them pen the ending to the show that famously once said “endings are hard, but nothing ever truly ends, does it”. And yes, I still stand by my sceanrio that I have written about many a times before in terms of endings. I’d love it if the ending scene was a shot of the Impala on some stretch of the road (the brothers may have died fighting the good fight or finally retired or whatever else) and some guy who looks to be lost, but a good soul tries the door and it swings open. He sits down, rumages through the car to find the keys and finally looks into the glove compartment where a thick envelope sits that reads:

“For you”

And the guy picks me it up and opens it and inside there’s a leather journal, reminiscent of John’s but not his and a folded piece of paper and the keys to the Impala. And you can see in Dean’s handwriting there’s written:

“May she be as much of a home to you as she was for me and my brother. Treat her well, or I swear I’ll haunt your ass.”

And the guy laughs and turns on the ignition, “Back in Black” starts blasting from the radio so that he turns down the volume and fumbles for the journal, opens it up and looks at the first page that says:

“My name is Dean Winchesters. And then is my story. Buckle up.”

[meyerlansky]

Oh goodness, what three or five characteristics can you boil Meyer down to? I'm sorry for one again asking you to elaborate on a throwaway line in your tags, but I'm so curious, and your meta is just so awesome.

@jasonjacinto said: if you’d be willing i’d love to hear more about you “you want me to be a villain? i’ll show you a villain” meyer meta 

OH NO you guys are just giving me an opportunity to ramble aaaahhhh /o\ okay so. to preface: i am a very big fan of a writer in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT fandom who i think is fantastic at her craft, and who writes a loooooooot of AUs that stick the characters she’s writing into completely different situations than canon. but the characters are always recognizable because she’s very very good at distilling them down to a few key traits, and then having those traits interplay with the situation[s] of the AU. it’s a really effective way to go way beyond the canon content but keep the characters immediately in-character, and since reading her meta on her process i’ve been kind of trying to do the same for the only characters i ever really write fic with, and while i don’t think i can quite do it for charlie as definitively, i have Opinions on meyer and i also think meyer is the easier of the two to misunderstand and therefore mischaracterize, so that influences how strongly i feel about my read as well. after thinking about it a bit more in depth, the “you want me to be a villain? i’ll show you a villain” thing that the tags were on is teeechnically not one of those pillar traits of his, it’s a combination of two traits that ARE pillar traits, and i’ll talk about why it’s a combo trait later on. for the actual traits themselves, with longer explanations under the cut:

a drive to survive/succeed and a fundamental need for security;

extreme stubbornness;

Smartypants;

and the limited emotional expression we all know and love;

and the “i’ll show you a villain” thing is a weird blend of traits 1 and 2.

so in terms of Base Motivations, for me meyer’s number one priority is always always always his Drive to Survive/Succeed. in canon this is influenced by his traumatic childhood, because growing up in a place full of people trying to kill you and everyone you know constantly sort of makes survival the ultimate goal with everything that you do. but because i don’t like the idea that trauma and its effects are necessarily immutable parts of someone’s character, and because when we’re talking AUs the antisemitic violence the lanskys experienced in grodno was a very specific moment in history that can’t always be replicated perfectly when translating the character into an AU, i read a significant chunk of meyer’s focus on survival and security as an essential part of his personality. the circumstances around him can influence how he interprets survival and security, but in general, for me, his number one goal is “work towards getting to a position where no one can ever hurt me ever again.”

a sub-trait of this is that he is… extremely stubborn. he’s quiet about it, but he is next to impossible to win a fight with if he really digs his heels in, physically or verbally or whatever. the stubbornness has its roots in the survival motivation, but expresses itself in enough ways that aren’t directly related to survival/security that i think it can be counted as a separate trait. if he gets knocked down in a fight he’s gonna get back up again, he very rarely expresses uncertainty out loud or through body language, he very rarely asks anyone for anything as opposed to [politely, but without giving up ground by putting a question mark on the sentence] stating what he wants and what they’ll get out of it in exchange, and he never ever apologizes. for anything. like he might have apologized once ever in his life and if he did it was to his mom. like i said, this is related to his goal of survival and need for security, in the way that, like… if you can’t be sure of yourself, what can you be sure of? so in his view he is Never Wrong, because he doesn’t think he can afford to be.

trait number three doesn’t exactly help with Never Thinking He’s Wrong because trait number three is that he is Smart. whatever universe, whatever circumstances, he has an analytical outlook and an intellectual curiosity that is… pretty wide-ranging. he’s good at and enjoys math, which is the stand-out thing, because math is hard and it’s the easiest way to express being analytically-minded, so it’s what sticks out to other people the most, but he does just like to read nonfiction and absorb Facts in general. he’s also fairly good at predicting how people will react to things, so he has some degree of… emotional intelligence, i guess? in that he can use previous examples of people’s behavior and reactions to predict how they’ll react to other situations in the future, and he’s able to leverage that analysis of other people to his [and his partners’] benefit.

which leads into trait four, which is the emotional reservedness that i am always torn on how to explain, because to some degree i do think his tendency to limit his emotional expression is an intrinsic trait, but just because he doesn’t outwardly express his emotions as clearly as the people around him [in a way that people other than charlie can clock, anyway] doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel it at all. i guess sort of the delineation for me is that meyer’s emotional repression in canon is influenced by his trauma—his strong emotions tend to be a little muted because of his PTSD—but the limited emotional expression is a Pillar Trait—he might be more aware of his feelings in AUs where he has a lesser degree of trauma in his past, but he’s never going to be effusive about them. also he is… way more susceptible to outward expressions of anger in particular than he thinks he is, and he only gets better at restraining his anger after being around AR for a while, for whom that restraint comes a little more naturally. teenager meyer is a tiny ball of rage just waiting for some idiot to give him an excuse to let it out.

SO I THINK THOSE ARE THE BIG FOUR? i can go more in depth with sub-traits, particularly of number one, but suffice it to say that i think most of the sub-traits i can think of are all in service of Attaining Security—as an example, meyer demonstrates a higher consciousness of mainstream acceptability than any of the other baby gangsters do, with the acknowledgement that liquor’s only outlawed temporarily and gambling is also only on the fringes for now but Drugs Are Not Acceptable To Mainstream People, plus his interest in the land in tampa [and later havana] as a pathway to legitimate money via real estate development, and i think that for meyer has its roots not in a need to be Accepted [which i think charlie feels more keenly than meyer does tbh] but in an awareness that, basically, the less you stick out from The Norm, the safer you are. basically, “will it help me survive” will override almost everything else, in terms of “what motivates meyer,” and then the other traits filter in and influence and are influenced by the others.

IN TERMS OF THE VILLAIN THING. that basically comes down to a blend of traits one and two? because he Has To Survive, and the easiest/most sensible path to survival in canon is by doing the organized crime shit—which is not Wrong, because the ultimate goal of EVERYTHING HE DOES is survival, and crime shit enables the survival, but it conflicts with the awareness that by engaging in crime shit, he’s sticking out from the norm, which means there’s a tension between “i have to be secure” and “the actions i’m taking to make myself secure in one respect are making me less secure in another.” the resolution to that tension is not “get out of crime immediately and do something less profitable but more acceptable,” the resolution to that tension is “Everyone Else Is Wrong.” he’s just doing what he needs to do, but if society is going to insist that he’s A Bad Person, then fine, he’s gonna be the best at being bad, and gradually move into more acceptable things, because that’s not an admission that he’s wrong to be doing crime, it’s just a natural progression of his investments. so yeah! hooopefully all that makes sense and jives and i’m not just. rambling. without making sense?

[ganymedesclock]

Character Analysis: Coran

[ Shiro ] [ Lance ] [ Hunk ] [ Pidge ] [ Keith ] [ Allura ]

What kind of blogger would I be if I forgot about our man Coran? I’ll tell you, a bad one. Last but certainly not least in the metas on Team Voltron, it’s time for a post on everyone’s favorite redheaded spaceman-of-all-trades.

Coran is a bit of a frustrating case to overlook because for someone as open and sociable as he is, we know very little of his history- and he also happens to have a lot more history than anyone else on the team... by something of a long shot.

In an offhanded mention, Coran states that the Castle is actually 10,600 years old, because it was built by his grandfather. He later, in a different conversation, reminisces that he remembers his grandfather taking him to a Balmera... while said grandfather was building the Castle.

Thus confirming that Coran is over six hundred years old, not counting his time spent in cryostasis. And yet, at the same time- Coran doesn’t really look or act what we’d consider elderly- if anything, he’s more than a little aghast at the idea of contacting an “old people disease”- insecurity, I think, of someone in later middle ages who’s just starting to confront the idea they’re getting old.

This might well cast some aspersions on Allura’s age as well- she might be a teenager or young adult by Altean standards but we don’t know quite what those standards are.

But for Coran, he’s had certainly what our human sensibilities would consider a very long life, and has spent much of that life, seemingly, in service of the royal family. Said service is something that’s run in his own family line at least as far back as his grandfather, and Coran carries himself with the decorum of high society. He’s no mere servant- much more likely, an aristocrat himself, or possibly a member of the extended royal family considering the very personal way he relates to Alfor and Allura. His official title of Royal Advisor would suggest Alfor turned to him for counsel- but in regards to what specific topics, we aren’t sure. It’s certainly part of the role he plays to Allura.

And in practice- this is someone Alfor entrusted, seemingly alone, with the safety of his daughter and the Black Lion. As Allura was placed in stasis when the castle was still on Altea and Alfor still on the castle, this would tell us that Coran was the one to launch the castle and get it away from Zarkon’s fleet while Alfor, seemingly, held them off- it was Coran who landed the castle on Arus before entering suspension on his own.

We do not know much of Coran’s personal life- besides that seemingly, he’s been a fixture in Allura’s for a very long time, and that he was a very close friend and attendant of the late king. We see very few scenes of Alfor that do not feature Coran in some magnitude. This makes sense- because again, at the end of his life, Alfor trusted Coran with functionally the fate of the entire universe. Especially close on the heels of Zarkon’s betrayal, this tells us that Alfor trusted Coran absolutely.

Out of the spotlight

Coran virtually never takes center stage. This is the main reason he’s so much of an enigma despite being an incredibly open person and intensely prone to sharing stories at the slightest provocation. Coran is support in the purest sense- to the point that out of the team, he is the only one not paired to a unique vehicle that’s his and only his. For Allura, even the castle is uniquely connected to her power in many regards- Coran can’t use much of its higher functions. 

And we do not feel like this is an uncomfortable position for Coran in the slightest. Rather, this seems to be the area he takes to and in fact thrives in, entirely of his own choice. It’s rare for Coran to command a scene- and the few times he does tend to be very memorable, and marked by something close to fury- his indignant “You do not yell at the princess!” in s1e2 and in the season 1 finale, Coran piloting the castle alone to assail entire fleets. 

Coran is support- one who assists and facilitates- but he’s not passive in his role at all. His whole title of advisor can only possibly work if he’s someone who makes his thoughts and opinions heard, and he lives up to that. He will criticize, or even argue rather strongly with- anyone, including Allura, if pushed to it. And even without much impetus at all, he’s shown to kibitz on situations in a very honest- even unflattering manner- even on people that he cares about a lot.

Basically, Coran takes a backseat, but not remotely out of lack of confidence or devaluing himself. He’s an attendant but an incredibly outspoken one, and one with a sense of his own importance as well- reinforcing his quite possible noble background. We’ve even seen that Coran can be a touch condescending- consider his cheerful patronizing of Pidge’s “primitive synapses firing away in their little brain-cage.”

And really, Coran’s ostensibly passive position combined with his own certainty of self creates a truly terrifying combination, one that very rarely flexes itself. Simply, Coran is always the accompaniment to someone more interesting or important- King Alfor in the past, Allura and the Paladins at present. He’s set up perfectly in a blind spot, and his affable prattling makes him even more likely to overlook.

When Coran attacks Zarkon’s fleet, he states that he’s been waiting ten thousand years for this. While we can guess he’d hold a grudge against Zarkon- for Altea, for Alfor, for everything he and Allura have suffered- this is literally the first time we’ve had any implication whatsoever it was there.

Coran, quite simply, took something very close to a murderous rage, folded it neatly, and tucked it up his sleeve until he had the opportunity to take his shot.

People have pointed out the downright brutal efficiency with which Coran intercepts an attack aimed at Allura and retaliates in a way that hits all five paladins, in a single movement- and how very seriously he does his, even if it’s a simple food fight. In particular, a comment I’ve heard on that scene that’s stuck with me a long time in regards to Coran: “Imagine how many times he’s done that for something that wasn’t food.”

Coran is an advisor, but he is not remotely a noncombatant. I would not be surprised at all, in fact, if this is our window of what an archetypal Altean soldier looks and acts like- someone whose first line of defense is not necessarily a suit of armor and a sword, but by convincing you first to not think they’re an opponent. Sure, it’s funny that Coran is completely ineffective at defeating Lance and they immediately engage in some kind of trash talking- but let’s not forget unlike Allura, who was mostly baffled by Lance and only turned aggressive when he didn’t answer her questions, Coran’s first response when confronted with foreign parties was to leap to the attack and his first line of dialogue besides identifying that there were intruders in the castle boiled down to “if I hadn’t just spent an incredible amount of time unconscious in suspended animation, I would’ve put you in a chokehold and knocked you out in a matter of seconds.”

Coran, to a degree, lives in the shadows of brighter people- but he does so voluntarily and intentionally- because as soon as someone tries to make a bid for those brighter people, Coran, already overlooked, is en route to intercept.

That said, while he has that angle, he doesn’t always act on it- his role as an observer means that he’s often quite willing to just see where this situation is going. He’s not nearly as proactive as, say, Shiro- who needs to feel in control of the situation. Coran is triggered to action or inaction by his personal assessment if the situation has, or will, turn immediately dangerous- and if he doesn’t feel like it’s dangerous, or that there’s a meaningful way to engage with it, he will in fact be alarmingly blase in the face of mortal peril- the embodiment of a stiff upper lip.

Another angle of his tendency to mask intense emotions if he doesn’t feel like they have a proper use at this point.

A man of a breathtaking number of hats

So Coran is an advisor, a helmsman, and the main person we see doing maintenance on the castle- and on top of all of that, he may well be some manner of bodyguard. It’s safe to say that Coran is one hell of a busybody, and lesser people would probably have just plain dropped under the weight of his workload and the number of disparate skills this requires.

At the same time, this is probably the biggest source of Coran’s goofy space dad vibe- he has so much varied life experience and skill sets that practically anything for Coran is fair game. History and nostalgia are very big things for him, and, overwhelmingly, what we learn about Coran and from Coran is anecdotal and sentimental in nature. Certainly, he’s quite smart, and likes to explain things, but how much he knows, and quite possibly to a degree just his personality itself, makes him spacey and a bit of a scatterbrain. 

“Finger counting is more of an art than a science”- or, rather, sophisticated mental math (he was trying to crunch how long it would take a spaceship to reach them considering its speed, that is not elementary level addition) is very difficult if your brain goes in a lot of directions and you have a lot of places to lose stray decimals in.

Coran relates much more easily to things intuitively and emotionally than he does trying to attend to precise variables- though that gap is not as large as one would expect because he’s had a lot of time to practice. In general, Coran’s skill set is much more rounded and stable than any of the rest of the team’s- a testament, again, to how much time he’s had to pick things up. Regardless, he does show a pretty good aptitude for working with people, when not held back by heavily outdated information as he was in Space Mall.

When he is, though, he may be slow to admit his initial judgment call was wrong- as mentioned, Coran is rather prideful. He’s quite certain of himself and other people need to impress him- and even in season 2, he has no problems verbally tearing the paladins to shreds if he doesn’t think they’re living up to expectations. Cheerfully.

High energy

You’d think someone past his six hundredth birthday would slow down a little, even if that might be the Altean equivalent of late fifties. You would think wrong in Coran’s case. Probably why this guy has so many odd jobs, aptitudes, and experiences is that he can be almost restless in his energy levels. “Restless” is not how he comes across- but mostly because, as a mature character who’s had a lot of his development already, Coran knows himself and his inclinations. 

As a result, he will often seem quiet- but if you’re paying attention, Coran is virtually always doing something, and usually multitasking as he does. While this could well be a stress-inducing byproduct of being effectively the sole staff of a castle probably designed for a lot more people than that, I think to a degree, Coran is simply someone who does not keep idle very easily at all. When his workload is lightened or alleviated, he’s more inclined to engage in whimsy and curiosity instead.

Another product of this is Coran does very little in half measures, if he’s committed to it.

Theatrics and their absence

Coran certainly has some very dramatic reactions, but it’s almost more noteworthy when he doesn’t. I’ve mentioned that Coran has a major case of stiff upper lip in the face of sometimes even mortal peril- but that’s basically it. Coran’s spectrum of emotional expression oscillates from “politely interested or indifferent” to the melodramatic screaming he put on in s1e2.

In general, Coran’s more mellow expressions of emotion tend to be positive. Frustration is a quick way to get him to more dramatic expressions, and even that varies. It isn’t even a simple game of how intensely Coran feels something, either- some of his most scathing lines are delivered quietly. If anything, it would seem that Coran is more expressive and ebullient in times of levity- if the situation feels serious, then even shouting, there’s a composed sternness to him.

He can also flip between the two multiple times within the course of a single scene and practically at the drop of a hat. In this sense, it would suggest that Coran never really has wild or uncontrolled emotions- simply, he can, and tends to be, fairly lenient in their expression.

This seems to be the product of a lot of work throughout Coran’s life by our glimpses of his younger selves. From a very moody teenage Coran who claims he can only express himself through music to his wildly over-dramatic ebullient young adult self- Coran has pretty much always had a lot of feelings, and it’s only as he’s gotten older that he’s mellowed to a degree and successfully established a certain layer of calm that can exist either over or under them.

And it’s very notable that just because Coran emotes a lot doesn’t mean he’s incapable of duplicity. Because Coran is carrying some emotional giants, and they’re simply things that you do not see at all unless something prompts him to mention them.

His quiet mention that he can’t lose Allura is basically the only admission he has made, at all in the seasons, that much like Allura herself, Coran is nearly alone in the universe- one of a trace handful of surviving Alteans. And after that, his comment that he’s been waiting for a shot at Zarkon acknowledges that possibly even more than Allura, Coran has a driving grudge- one that he buries just as quickly as he acknowledges it to tell Keith to step back and preserve himself rather than engage Zarkon.

Supportive

I’ve mentioned that Coran tends to be a part of someone else’s backdrop, but I think it’s worth noticing- especially as he can be sometimes condescending or flippant with the team- that there is a very affectionate and warm side of Coran. While he is unflinchingly observant of formal titles, it’s also very clear his relationship with Alfor and Allura has been deeply personal and rather familial- and this is much of how he takes to the paladins. Coran is never really so formal with people as to really feel stiff- his proper courtly manners juxtapose with a very flippant and sincere attitude.

A lot of people joke about Shiro being team dad, but honestly- I stand by, Shiro is the perfectionist oldest child that everyone jokes acts like another parent. Coran, though- even when the objective goal was to drive the paladins as hard as possible and make them unite against a single goal, Coran was still giving them breaks and telling them not to push it too hard. (And his praise of Allura’s methods after the fact is incredibly backhanded, almost certainly on purpose)

In Summary

Coran is a person very motivated by memories and sentimentality, but also, for all of his bouncy high-energy persona, there is a really impressive amount of emotional control under his surface, to the point that he can easily hide very powerful sentiments indeed.

Multi-talented and very inclined to working behind the scenes to support others, but also somewhat haughty, and both genuinely deeply fond of the rest of his team and utterly unafraid to take them all down a peg if he feels that’s appropriate. 

[bookedandbusythough]

Answer the questions and then tag 8 people!

-thanks to my love @house-arya for tagging me! Tumblr would be nothing without you! <3 <3 - tagging all my boos: @padmesgreene @jewishstarks @gendryatrash @miladyaryastark @valiantnedspreciouslittlegirl @hunterthewriterworld <3 @insomniarama @asongoftarthandlannister @buttercuparry @eggo-my-leggo @furious-winter  and of course whoever else wants to do this!

-> What made you sign up to Tumblr? Definitely JUST to siphon up all the GENDRYA content! 

-> What did your blog start off as being? idk basically what it is now, except I didn’t have all you fabulous darlings as friends! and also it was mainly arya x gendry week stuff, can’t wait for it to be all that again!

-> Have you ever received any creepy asks, and if so, what did they say? no, is that a thing? -> Have you ever had a bad experience on tumblr? not yet! someone rated my aesthetic low, but i was asking for it since i don’t have the energy to make my blog as pretty as all you have yours!

-> If you had to pick a favourite English monarch, who would you pick? omg idk enough about them all, but i’m going to cheat and say Elizabeth II just because I’m watching The Crown right now and Matt Smith is hot af and the Queen is a badass. Also Queen Elizabeth I from what I do know about her. But mainly does Princess Diana count? -> Do you prefer hot or cold? COLD -> Do you have a special skill or talent? Writing??? At least I like to think so... -> Do you have a phobia of anything? Those I love dying

-> If you had to pick a favourite real life villain from history, who would you pick? ummmm, i wish there was a list, give me a list. @house-arya ‘s answer Rasputin was pretty interesting. I cheated and googled a list and then laughed out loud when I saw Scalia was on there. So I guess him. Even though I hated his policy views, his writing left nothing to be desired, except maybe less. lmao -> Do you have any dark traits? I don’t know. I’m horrible at breaking up with people. Once I’m done with someone, I’m absolutely done. I can like go from being in love with them one day to a complete lack of feeling for them the next. Once I’m done. I think that’s pretty dark. -> If you could do anything, literally anything, like fly on a unicorn or something, what would it be? probably go back in time. which is sad. but it’s fine. not sad, probably have like a TARDIS so I could go on doctor who-like adventures but still get all my shit done -> What is the scale of the worst argument you’ve ever had? omg pick one. I’m crazy so all my arguments are over the top. My poor boo thang...but probably any fight with him. We’re both way too extra soooo -> What is your favourite slush flavour? that light white cherry one at the target cafe... -> If you could bring back any food or drink from your childhood that has been discontinued, what would it be? Trix yogurt, do they still sell that??? -> What is your favourite and most vivid childhood memory? When my siblings and I used to play pretend, from Power Rangers to Jurassic Park, even made up our own TV shows and acted them out, so mainly that -> If you could bring anyone back from the dead who would it be? I shouldn’t, but my friend who died 12 years ago. I would.

-> If you could go back to any time period and live there for a week, which period would it be and why? Renaissance? Just when Paris first became THE capital maybe. I’m not really sure. I’m not being very creative with my answers. But like Paris for sure some time way back in time. -> If you could visit any abandoned place to take pictures, where would it be? Titanic? Or any castle. -> Do you have any particular, peculiar interests? ummmm i’d like to say i had any interests outside of the fandoms I blog about but that would not, strictly speaking, be true. :/ -> Do you have a creepy/scary experience that has happened to you, and what was it? when i was like 10 or 11 years old, my family and i all lived in this one story house in san diego. it was like midnight, and everyone was asleep except for my older brother. he was reading one of those x-files books when he suddenly heard a noise like scratching/knocking on his room window. he was freaked out and ran to wake my parents out. my dad went outside with a flashlight and baseball bat screaming to scare whoever was out there and actually saw someone running away. they called the police but never caught who it was. we all slept in my parents room for the next like 2 months after that. i mean, there was someone staring in at my brother through the window and touching the window while he was reading x-files. is there anything creepier?

-> Do you like/read creepypasta stories? If so, what’s your favourite story? what is that?? -> If you were in the Wars of the Roses, would you be a Lancastrian, or a Yorkist? only because my friend @house-arya said a York, so am I! -> What is your recurring nightmare? i keep having recurring dream...well they’re not all the same dream, but it’s like my latest one takes place where my last one left off where i’m still in school and i either keep missing class or assignments and there’s a constant feeling i’m going to fail the entire semester. since i haven’t been in school for way more than a year now, i don’t understand why this is still happening. -> Have you ever had a lucid dream? i don’t think so, but i wouldn’t mind one. -> If you could go to another planet, which would it be? Venus. Or the moon.  ->What is your religion, if any? Baptized Catholic, but I don’t practice anymore for various reasons. -> Have you ever got so drunk, that you did something really embarrassing, and if so, what did you do? omg we did trivia at a a brewery last night, then went to in n out and my friend and I wanted to get into a fight with this group of obnoxious teenagers sitting nearby who were totally judging us for being loud. but i almost always do something embarrassing when i drink because i’m such a lightweight. -> Mike, Dustin, Lucas, or Will? LUCAS FOR LIFE <3 <3 <3

-> Do you like Marina and the Diamonds? i think i’ve heard of them? but can’t think of any one song? -> Charli XCX? there was that one popular catchy song i liked, but i don’t remember the name, but yes? -> Tag a blog that you’ve seen, and you love their posts, but have never told them, and would like to talk to them. i would say @valiantnedspreciouslittlegirl but i think i’ve already sufficiently embarrassed myself enough telling her basically what a goddess she is, especially in terms of her stories. but there’s also @gendrie who just writes the best analysis/meta (are those the rights words?) about gendrya. i literally end up smiling like an idiot every time I read a @gendrie post about gendrya. <3 <3 <3 to the 2 of you! -> Pick one thing you like/love from the 80s. the movie Psycho II. is that weird? -> What year were you born, and name something cool from that year. I’m going with @house-arya on this one and am going to say “me” too!

-> What was your blog name originally? (If you had another blog name) that was you?! @house-arya omg! that’s cray, i never realized! but i’ve never changed mine! -> Do you follow any blogs that you know the user in real life? Haha, no. No wait. My sister. She’s a bitch though, so it’s fine. @crimsonramirez -> If you are in the ST fandom, which is your favourite song off the ST soundtrack? omg i thought that stood for star trek until I saw @house-arya‘s answer (sorry to keep tagging you). but same answer as her, should i stay or should i go. -> Finally, give your opinion on the person who tagged you! ✨ I KNOW I GUSH ABOUT YOU ALL THE TIME BUT LITERALLY TUMBLR WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT MY LIFE WOULD HAVE BEEN WITHOUT ARYAXGENDRY WEEK BUT OMG YOUR BLOG IS LITERALLY MY FAVORITE AND YOU KNOW THAT BUT SOMEHOW I CAN’T STOP TELLING YOU! <3 <3 <3

[dracox-serdriel]

Supergirl Meta: Mon-El (again)

I originally posted ananalysis (Supergirl: Mon-El) for Supergirl, but I want to expand on it to address two major arguments against Mon-El. The first is that he’s a “magical unicorn” or Mary-Sue character, and the second is that he’s an annoying, abusive frat-boy.

(I also want to write about the relationship between Kara and Mon-El (aka Karamel) in relation to where Season 2 is going, but due to length, that will be a separate post.)

Under the cut for spoilers of all episodes of Supergirl through 02x15 Exodus and for length.

Argument #1: Mon-El is a Mary-Sue

A Mary-Sue/Magical Unicorn character is a character who is added to an existing narrative that reads too good to be true. There are a number of articles out there that identify Mon-El as one such character, and to illustrate, here’s an excerpt from one of them:

I once read a 400,000 word Buffy and Angel and Highlander and X-Files crossover with a self-insert lead character who magically woos Buffy and is super rich and best friends with everyone and super good at fighting and stuff and it was more believable then the nonsense Supergirl has delivered unto its audience with Mon-El.

-- Excerpt from article “Supergirl has a Mon-El Problem”

This article is particularly good because it lists a bunch of things that Mon-El has done that make him out to be one an unrealistic character insert. I thought I’d use it as a place to start a counter-argument. (To see the full list, check out the source.)

1. Magically appeared just after the heroine inexplicably dumps the guy she’s been crushing on for a year for no reason.

Kara doesn’t pursue a romantic relationship with James for a lot of different reasons. There we so many, in fact, that I made an entirely separate post for it: Supergirl: Kara/James Meta.

As to why the Kryptonian pod crash landed now, thirty-seven years after it departed Daxam... that’s still a bit of a mystery right now. Maybe we’ll find out why in 02x16 Star-crossed.

2. Immediately integrated with all the characters.

Untrue. Mon-El had considerable conflict with Alex, who calls him a coward (02x06 Changing) and tells him she doesn’t believe in him at all. He doesn’t have much of a relationship with J’onn or James. The only friends he has seem to be Winn (who helps assess his abilities) and Kara, though he seems to make acquaintances easily while “living at the alien bar” (02x07 The Darkest Places).

Mon-El has spent remarkably little time with J’onn. I say this because J’onn also lost his entire race and wound up stranded on this planet. J’onn could’ve also been a solid ally in a number of situations, such as dealing with a fifth dimensional being in 02x13 Mr. & Mrs. Mxyzptlk and handling Jeremiah’s return in 02x14 Homecoming. These are both times when Mon-El could’ve gone to J’onn with his concerns (about Kara not taking Mxy as a serious threat, about Jeremiah possibly being compromised). J’onn is the leader of the DEO, and he cares about the Danvers sisters. So why hasn’t he gone to J’onn?

Whatever the reasons, Mon-El and J’onn aren’t exactly fast friends, though it’s clear Mon-El respects him (as he gives up to save J’onn’s life in 02x07 The Darkest Place).

For the most part, Guardian/James seems to tolerate Mon-El, as does Alex, though he seems to be growing on her (though his issues with Jeremiah in 02x14 Homecoming might have ruined that progress entirely, only time will tell).

In short, he has friends in Kara and Winn, but everyone else? Ehh, not really.

3. Proven to be the “cool” one that teaches everyone to drink and has zero issue with gay people.

I think it’s quite apparent that 02x04 Survivors that Winn is more than capable of drinking on his own, as he beats Mon-El during every drinking game we see on screen. The only person he “teaches” to drink (if you can call it that) was Kara, who he dares/makes a deal with her to drink something that would be poisonous to humans but harmless to Kryptonians/Daxamites (02x06 Changing).

He might be “cool” with zero-issues with gay people, but he’s also from a hedonistic planet, which might be why he indulges in alcohol/lives at the alien bar (02x07 The Darkest Places).

Also, this overlooks his constant slip-ups with the English. For example, calling Kara’s mother “a babe,” (meaning, beautiful woman) admitting his own confusion over the phrase “chillax for five,” and saying “awe and some” as if it were two separate words (02x04 Survivors). And that’s only in one episode. No matter how extroverted/socially inclined he might be, he doesn’t just magically fit in this world upon arrival.

Part of being “cool” is making everything seem easy, making it appear as if stuff doesn’t matter to you. If you geek out over something (for example, characters in a superhero shows), you tend to lose “cool credit.” But the fact remains that his desire to drink/socialize in a bar scene is related to how he handle’s grief and inner turmoil. He covers his feelings by drinking after seeing Supergirl and J’onn super-sucked by Parasite (02x06 Changing). He likewise wants to forget about the somber thoughts of his lost planet by indulging in fun and games and/or drinking (02x04 Survivors). 

He’s got a cool exterior, but he’s a giant spazz.

4. Been revealed to be super strong and super fast and generally a badass.

Okay, yes, Mon-El is super-strong and fast. But he’s also a giant spazz. Consider the outcome of... well, every single fight he has had so far:

Mon-El vs. Supergirl. His coma wake up gave him an element of surprise that enabled him to “win” this particular fight and escape the DEO, though arguable, it’s beginners luck (02x03 Welcome to Earth).

Mon-El vs. Supergirl, take two. Supergirl kicks his ass and says, “Stay down Daxamite!” He no longer has the element of surprise. He loses. Big time (02x03 Welcome to Earth).

Mon-El accidentally injures two people in a bar. Not really a fight, but this counts as a loss because he doesn’t know what he’s doing and doesn’t mean to do it (02x04 Survivors).

Mon-El attempts to intervene on Supergirl’s behalf during Lena Luthor’s ball, and in turn he gets blasted across the room with an alien gun, leaving him down for the count for the rest of the episode (02x05 Crossfire).

Mon-El faces off against Parasite. While he does save one child by catching a car, he spends the rest of the fight getting his ass kicked by Parasite until Guardian shows up and saves him (02x06 Changing).

Mon-El is attacked and abducted by Cadmus (02x06 Changing).

Mon-El manages a sneaky escape from his Cadmus prison, only to be duped into staying behind to “save J’onn” (02x07 The Darkest Place).

Mon-El nearly dies and admits he’s terrified (02x07 The Darkest Place).

Mon-El, thinking he sees J’onn, follows Hank Henshaw out of the Alien Bar and gets his ass kicked by Cyborg Superman (02x08 Medusa).

Mon-El attempts to step in to help Kara defend the captured humans on Maaldoria and gets hit in the face/knocked to the ground for his trouble (02x09 Supergirl Lives).

With the help of the other humans, they overcome their captors on Maaldoria, who are focusing their firepower on Supergirl, and he takes over one of the guns to help them all escape -- which he seems decent with, until it gets shot from his hands (02x09 Supergirl Lives).

He faces off against the faux-live-wires and nearly gets electrocuted--but redirects the energy elsewhere (02x10 We Can Be Heroes).

Mon-El tries to take down Livewire’s captor, but instead gets captured (02x10 We Can Be Heroes). He does okay when Supergirl shows up... but only with an assist from Guardian.

Mon-El loses every fight against Mxy... very, very badly. (02x13 Mr. & Mrs. Mxyzptlk)

So, yes, he’s powerful, but let’s be honest, as a superhero he kind of sucks. To date, he’s saved one child (02x06 Changing) and has lost nearly every single fight he has been in. The only exceptions are his very first fight (element of surprise) during his escape from the DEO, and during the successful escape on Maaldoria.

Every other time, he has either lost, required someone (Guardian, Supergirl) else to save them, or required assistance to achieve anything. 

He’s got superpowers, but he’s still a giant spazz.

5. Is secretly the prince of an entire world.

Okay, this is probably true, but Daxam is gone. Being the prince of a dead planet doesn’t really count for much. He can’t go home. There’s no home to go to.

6. Fallen madly in love with the titular character.

Conceded. He did. I have no argument against this at all.

7. Had titular character return those feelings even though she is incapable of giving one reason why she likes him besides "he tries hard" and is attractive.

Besides J’onn, Mon-El is the only character who can truly relate to Kara in terms of losing his planet (after having grown up there). J’onn has been a parental figure, not a love interest, and her relationship with Mon-El has been evolving since he woke up: enemies, reluctant acquaintances, mentor/mentoree, friends... and so on.

Kara and Mon-El have also had a number of conversations that even she and Clark could never have had, such as talking about certain planets they visited and the kinds of dancing they had on their home worlds.

She’s got lots of reason to connect with him and to reciprocate his feelings. Thought I’m sure the fact that he tries and is attractive are part of that.

8. Immediately determined a long lost father was evil while everyone around him went FULL stupid and walked right into evil dad's trap.

Part of being prince of a dead planet would be a basic conditioning for life at court, which (assuming it’s anything like the monarchies of earth) means constant suspicious of everyone around them.

Not to mention the fact that Jeremiah Danvers, before being modified, wouldn’t have a hope to win in a fight against J’onn. So it’s not like no precautions were taken...

9. Saved the day because he was calm and collected and persistent about evil dad while the ladies were too weepy to notice the obvious bad guy in their midst.

Actually, no he didn’t. The only time he’s saved the day was on Maaldoria, when the Dominator let him and the others go when he put himself between the escaping humans/Supergirl. During 02x14 Homecoming, Mon-El was with Alex and Kara searching for the “bomb” Jeremiah had guided them to... If anyone saved the day, it was Winn, who hid a tracker on Jeremiah so they could pursue him into the woods. And even that didn’t really work out.

IN SUMMARY... Basically, Mon-El isn’t a very successful Superhero. He hasn’t integrated with everyone on the team/show. He’s not a magical unicorn. He is, in fact, a giant spazz still adapting to this world.

Argument #2: Mon-El is an annoying, abusive frat-boy

I can’t speak to the annoying bit, as that is a matter of opinion, but I can speak to the “frat boy” comment that came from Kara herself.

PART ONE: FRAT BOY Everyone deals with grief and misery in their own way. Some people brood. Other people try to bury themselves in work or to forget it with drinking/carousing/anything that can do to make themselves forget.

It’s pretty clear that Mon-El favors the latter.

MON-EL: Yeah, I know it's a long shot, but any chance there was a response to that signal I sent to Daxam? I mean, I can't be the only one left, right?

ALEX: I'm sorry, but, no. 

(long pause)

MON-EL: Right, uh... Anyway, enough of those... Those dreary thoughts, right? So, what do you guys do for fun around here? Do you drink or dance or... Oh, hey, do they play Garata here?

ALEX: What's Garata?

KARA: It's like soccer, with dragons.

WINN: No, not that. Uh, we have PlayStation.

MON-EL: Great. So, when do we get out of here and do that... That thing you just said?

-- Episode 02x04 Survivors

His first reaction to learning his planet is gone (and, indeed, there was no response to his distress signal, which cements this idea) is to “go out and have fun.” While this might seem like evidence of him being a “frat boy,” a lot of people handle grief/pain/sorrow like this. For those of us who handle it in other ways (such as brooding/throwing themselves into work), this seems impossible. How can you go out and have fun when you’re feeling so horrible? How can you laugh and smile when you’ve lost everything?

Nevertheless, it is a common copping mechanism, and just as valid as any other someone might use to pull themselves up after a tremendous loss.

Chances are, Mon-El earned his reputation of “frat boy of the universe” from this particularly coping strategy. It also implies that he was deeply unhappy with his life as it was on Daxam. That might be because he opposed institutions like slavery but had no means by which to end them (even though he was going to be king and therefore would be - in theory - the most powerful person on the planet, it’s likely that his true power was limited by factions--including major factions that supported slavery).

We also know that on Daxam, marriages are arranged from birth.

“On Daxam, we had arranged marriages, chosen for you at birth. You reach a certain age, boom. You're latched to that person.”

-- Mon-El in episode 02x07 The Darkest Place

This suggests that Mon-El, even as the Prince of Daxam, had no choice when it came to who he spent the rest of his life with, which is pretty restrictive compared even with the monarchies of earth. He can have all the power of a monarchy, but he had no choice in any of the major life-choices anyone on earth might have.

However, while Mon-El says their marriages are arranged, there are a number of things that imply that there is some wiggle room on this notion.

MON-EL: I've come to challenge you, Mxyzptlk.

MXYZPTLK: A Daxamite duel? I never had one of those before. For Kara's hand?

MON-EL: Yes.

MXYZPTLK: To the death?

MON-EL: Yes.

MXYZPTLK: I accept.

MON-EL: Good.

-- Episode 02x13 Mr. & Mrs. Mxyzptlk

Daxamite duels for someone’s hand are known my Mxy, which suggests that not everyone on Daxam had such strict arrange marriages. It’s likely something that those in the Royal Court had, but those outside of royalty didn’t have to deal with. It’s likely that a lot of his personal choices (who to marry, how to behave) were dictated entirely by his position.

He also says that his parents “weren’t exactly role models” (02x04 Survivors) and his father “wasn’t a good man” (02x14 Homecoming). He specifically mentions that he disagreed with certain things happening on Daxam, too.

JO: Slaving is a big business on Maaldoria.

MON-EL: Wait, this is Maaldoria?

KARA: You know where we are?

MON-EL: The locals call it Slavers' Moon. The royal family on Daxam used to buy their slaves here.

KARA: I forgot they had slavery on Daxam.

MON-EL: There were a lot of things there I didn't agree with.

-- Episode 02x09 Supergirl Lives

So while Mon-El hasn’t come out and said it directly, it’s been heavily implied that he was very unhappy on Daxam, despite whatever power a planetary prince might wield.

In fact, when he does comment on things on Daxam, he says very little in terms of who he was or how he lived. The sole exception was a backhanded comment he made after an argument with Kara:

“Things were a lot easier on Daxam, when I objectified women and didn't care about anyone.”

-- Mon-El in episode 02x13 Mr. & Mrs. Mxyzptlk

I’m guessing he didn’t care about anyone because caring for people was dangerous - it gave people leverage over him. I have to guess because we know precious little about his life on Daxam.

We have further evidence that Mon-El tends to drown his sorrows when he faces off against something overwhelming when he sees what Parasite has done to Kara and J’onn.

ALEX: Thirsty?

MON-EL: Not particularly. I've just found that drinking is the fastest way to get drunk, so...

ALEX: This city could really use a hero right about now.

MON-EL: Fighting rampaging creatures isn't on my resume.

ALEX: Oh, that's right... but beating people up for money is though, right?

MON-EL: Hey, here's an idea. Why don't you go believe in somebody else, Alex? Thanks.

ALEX: I don't believe in you, Mon-El. I suspect you're a coward, and that you would run at the first sign of danger... My sister, she's the one who believes in you. That's why she's so upset with you all the time. She thinks you have potential. To make a difference, like she does. To be hero.

MON-EL: I don't know how.

ALEX: You can start by standing up. Like the rest of us.

-- Episode 02x06 Changing

Mon-El eventually ends up working at the Alien Bar (02x09 Supergirl Lives), a place where he supposedly spends most of his time (02x07 The Darkest Place), after the Medusa virus is unleashed there. He spends a lot of time drinking and socializing, but it’s less about him being a frat boy and more about him struggling. He covers his sorrow with glibness and comedy. He drinks his pain away. He’d rather drink himself under the table than face off against Parasite.

He runs and hides when he’s overwhelmed. That doesn’t make him a bad person or a “frat boy,” it means he’s in pain and trying to cope.

PART TWO: HE DOESN’T LISTEN One of the “annoying” issues with Mon-El is that he frequently doesn’t listen to those around him, especially Kara. While this is true, he has been learning from his mistakes. For example, when he accidentally harmed two humans in a bar:

MON-EL: It's not Winn's fault. Hey, I... I tricked him...

KARA: Winn will be fine. And those guys you hurt will recover. But you shouldn't have been out there.

MON-EL: Hank told me I needed to stay here because it wasn't safe. But he didn't mean for me. He meant it wasn't safe for humans. From me.

KARA: After I first got to Earth, I went to my junior prom. And Scott Klein asked me to dance. I stepped on his foot and I broke three of his toes. It's just gonna take some time to get used to having these abilities and... And living in the world.

-- Episode 02x04 Survivors

Mon-El immediately takes responsibility for his actions and does his best to protect Winn from any fall out. He hadn’t realized that other people were the ones in danger - he thought he was the only one in danger. Once he recognized this, he says, “I promise that I will do as I'm told from now on” (02x04 Survivors).

During their unintended jaunt into Maaldoria, Mon-El constantly suggests that they save themselves, yet he follows Kara’s lead, down to walking into the lion’s den and surrendering to capture when he could’ve continued to hid with Jo (02x09 Supergirl Lives).

When facing Faux-Livewires for the first time, he “leaves his post” to help Kara fight them off, leading to a cop and Guardian being injured (02x10 We Can Be Heroes). However, at the end of this episode, when Supergirl instructs him and Guardian to take down the Faux-Livewires while she saves the original, he doesn’t question her or leave his post (02x10 We Can Be Heroes). This suggests he can and does listen to Kara - and, more importantly, that he learns from him mistakes.

Of course, in 02x13 Mr. & Mrs. Mxyzptlk, he doesn’t react well to Mxy’s sudden appearance. He withholds what little he knows about fifth dimensional beings, suggests that they kill Mxy, and challenges him to a duel. Given that we didn’t see much of him in 02x11 The Martian Chronicles or in 02x12 Luthors, the audience can easily conclude that Mon-El has not, in fact, learned from his mistakes with Faux-Livewires in 02x10 We Can Be Heroes.

However, when it comes to Mxy, Mon-El is more aware of how dangerous the imp is. He also has to deal with a cultural norm established on Daxam - that is, that fighting a duel for someone’s hand is an acceptable norm.

While Mon-El is repeating his mistakes/not listening to Kara, Kara is likewise not listening to him. Last time it was far more “Mon-El is wrong and should’ve listened to Kara,” but this time, both of them are wrong. This is something Kara admits, just not to Mon-El:

J’ONN: Where is Mxyzptlk now?

KARA: I don't know. He snapped away. I thought he was just after me, but he almost killed those guys. He's a lot more dangerous than I thought.

J’ONN: Agreed.

-- Mon-El in episode  02x13 Mr. & Mrs. Mxyzptlk

Mon-El had already said that imps were “dangerous, very dangerous” and that Daxam had a “a zero tolerance policy,” even though they “knew how to party.” J’onn described their abilities - down to moving an entire mountain range - and Kara doesn’t seem to worry about it.

Mon-El tries, twice, to get Kara to take Mxy as a serious threat. Both times she says she’ll handle it and shuts him down with little indication that she has heard Mon-El’s warnings. Yes, it was stupid of Mon-El to go off and try to handle Mxy on his own terms, but part of this was his reaction to Kara’s dismissing his warnings. He should’ve gone to J’onn with his concerns; instead, he runs off and essentially loses the DEO’s only weapon against fifth dimensional beings in the fray.

However, he does apologize for what he’s done and admits to his own jealousy.

Furthermore, he follows Kara’s lead on the bomb situation despite his suspicions of Jeremiah, joining her and Alex on the mission to recover “the bomb,” which he does not believe exists (02x14 Homecoming). He’s right there with them, backing them up, even though he thinks they should be wary of Jeremiah.  This shows that his lessons from faux-Livewire and Mxy have both left a lasting impression. He’s new to the superhero thing, so it’s important to listen to those with more experience. Even when he thinks he knows better--and even when (as it turns out) he’s right.

So, no, he doesn’t always “listen,” but he has learned from those mistakes and has shown recently that he can - and will - listen to others despite his own perceptions/concerns.

PART THREE: HE’S ABUSIVE I’m not following this logic. Every time that Kara has rejected Mon-El (which, BTW is A LOT), he has always respectfully walked away from the situation. Consider the following:

Admitting he protected her in faux-Livewire attack because he has feelings for her (02x10 We Can Be Heroes)

When Kara tells him she would never be with him because “It's... It's the way you are,” he tells her he’s going over there and leaves the very, very uncomfortable situation (02x11 The Martian Chronicles)

He supports her judgement of Lena after her rejection, even though he has already given up on changing her mind (02x12 Luthors).

When he can’t persuade Kara not to marry Mxy and he discovers that she also won’t be his (superhero) partner anymore, he leaves once she insists he does so by opening the door (02x13 Mr. & Mrs. Mxyzptlk).

When Kara asks him not to leave yet, he says that he understand that she thinks they’re not a good match and he respects it -- thus, he is prepared to leave the apartment and no longer poke at this painful subject (02x13 Mr. & Mrs. Mxyzptlk).

It would be so easy for anyone to lose their temper in these situations and say something ugly, but instead he verbally accepts what she’s said and does his best to leave on as friendly of terms as he can.

So why do people read him as abusive? He has only made a choice few comments to Kara that are admittedly quite mean:

KARA: You are so selfish.

MON-EL: Okay.

(Mon-El attempts to leave but turns back when Kara speaks)

KARA: I don't know what else I should have expected from a...

MON-EL: From what? From a Daxamite? KARA: I didn't say that. MON-EL: Yeah, but you were going to, Kara. Okay, I may have your powers but I don't have this... This innate desire to go leaping into trouble. But that doesn't make me a bad person, all right? KARA: It kind of does. MON-EL: No, it doesn't. You're no saint, Kara Zor-El! KARA: Excuse me? MON-EL: You fly around, rescuing people, like you're just pure of heart. But that is crap. Because you love that attention. You love people loving you. You are not selfless. KARA: And you are no hero. I thought you could be, but I was wrong.

-- Episode 02x06 Changing, emphasis mine

Of the things he says to her, this is the worst. Namely, she’s not a saint. She loves the attention of being a superhero.

You know, as far as insults go, I’ve heard better. Add that to the fact that she has insulted his (deceased) planet/race quite a lot, and I’d say he’s given her a ridiculous amount of respect, given her attitude towards Daxam. Heck, even when he remarks about Krypton, the worst he says is “self-righteous” (in regards to the glyph on her chest - 02x03 Welcome to Earth) and a “planet of snobs” in jest (02x04 Survivors).

Yes, he does argue with Kara. He argues with her the entire time on Maaldoria, saying they should go back. Yet he willingly goes into the lion’s den despite his reservations, follows her plan, and even submits to capture (02x09 Supergirl Lives). He also argues with her on how she handles Mxy as well as how she apparently gives Mxy a free pass on his behavior, yet she acts like Mon-El is to blame because he didn’t tell her about getting the trickster to say his name backwards is key to making him leave (02x13 Mr. & Mrs. Mxyzptlk).

Arguing with someone isn’t the same thing as abuse, and the arguments between Kara and Mon-El aren’t abusive at all. They disagree. They squabble. With respect.

So, no, not abusive, either.

[warninggraphiccontent]

4 June 2021

Not feeling 100%?

This is more anecdote than data, but I feel like I've been seeing a lot of clustered bar charts (where you have a number of bars, for different series, bunched together in each category) with quite a lot of bars per category recently.

This sort of thing:

Lest I risk being stripped of my Peston Geek of the Week badges, there isn't anything particularly wrong with this - it just happened to be one example I noticed this week! But personally, I find four bars per category a bit much - I don't think the key stories are as easy to read as they might be. (I should confess my own sins at this point.)

In instances like this one - where the results for a single age group will add up to 100% - I think there's an obvious alternative: a 100% bar chart.

I think this makes the same point - that attitudes to lifting lockdown divide along age lines - more clearly. The thing you might lose is being able to easily compare should/should not for a particular age group, but that's not the main point being made and (personally) I think that takes some time with the original anyway.

Again, there's nothing particularly wrong with the original in this instance. But I've definitely seen more egregious examples, where the number of clustered columns becomes a bar to understanding the data.

Some initial thoughts on other subjects:

DB I thoroughly enjoyed last night's Data Bites geo-special, which you can watch as-live here (and will appear in slightly edited form here). I even included a chart-based quiz - question here (it does get there eventually), answer here. We'll be back on Wednesday 7 July with the next one, and then back on 8 September after a short summer break.

VPs Reports (Meta data, below) suggest the government has backtracked on many of its 'vaccine passport' plans for domestic use. (Rumours government will leave much to the free market are still a concern - government needs to provide clarity and be wary of harms, whoever is developing such systems.) Here's the Ada Lovelace Institute report on vaccine passports I was involved with.

GPDPR Also below are many links about the planned General Practice Data for Planning and Research, a new NHS Digital initiative to use patient data, which is now starting to become A Thing in the press.

LN If you're interested in data sonification, a new podcast - Loud Numbers - is launching with a whole festival on the topic this Saturday. Here are my collected sonifications for the Institute for Government podcast (which I've been saying I'll write up for about a year and a half now...)

ODI There are some great jobs - including researcher and senior researcher roles - going at the Open Data Institute, where I'm a special adviser (but don't let that put you off).

OGP NAP If you'd like to get involved in shaping the UK's next national action plan for open government, remember you can sign up here.

CogX And last but not least, I'm delighted to announce I'll be chairing a session on 'AI Governance: the role of the nation in a transnational world' at this year's CogX at 1pm on Wednesday 16 June.

W:GC will be taking a break next week, and perhaps the week after if I'm feeling really decadent. Remember there are 100+ other data newsletters, podcasts or event series you can sign up to here.

Have a great weekend/week/fortnight

Gavin

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Today's links:

Graphic content

Viral content

Peru has world’s worst per capita Covid toll after death data revised (The Guardian)

Pretty big validation... (John Burn-Murdoch)

Covid-19 deaths in Wuhan seem far higher than the official count (The Economist)

This is an analysis of the rate of growth of the "delta variant" (Alex Selby)

COVID-19: Indian variant now dominant in a fifth of areas in England - do you live in one? (Sky News)

How the Indian Covid variant has surged in England* (New Statesman)

Side effects

Covid catch-up plan for England pupils ‘pitiful compared with other countries’ (The Guardian)

How England’s school catch-up funding falls £13.6bn short* (New Statesman)

Concerns about missing work may be a barrier to coronavirus vaccination* (Washington Post)

COVID-19 passports: Britons are still in favour even as government scraps plans (YouGov)

Most people in UK did not work from home in 2020, says ONS (The Guardian)

UK

UK's culture war divisions exaggerated but real, say public – as shown by views on equal rights, cultural change and class, and online bubbles (The Policy Institute at King's College London, Ipsos MORI)

Lewis Baston: London voting patterns 2021. Not so much a doughnut as a swirl (On London)

Labour, not the Conservatives, was the largest party among low-income workers in 2019* (New Statesman)

The Greens are on the march. Who should be afraid?* (New Statesman)

Gender in public life (IfG)

Is this the beginning of the end of marriage? (Tortoise)

US

Small share of US police draw third of complaints in big cities* (FT)

Biden Targets Racial, Social Inequities With Vast Spending Push* (Bloomberg)

Hunger has declined dramatically across America in the past year* (The Economist)

NYC’s School Algorithms Cement Segregation. This Data Shows How (The Markup)

The Persistent Grip of Social Class on College Admissions* (The Upshot)

Building a Home in the U.S. Has Never Been More Expensive* (Bloomberg)

Nature, environment, energy

Cicadas, insecticides and children* (The Economist)

Corporate-led $1bn forests scheme is ‘just the beginning’* (FT)

European Banks’ Next Big Problem? The CO2 in Their Loan Books (Bloomberg)

How an Insurgency Threatens Mozambique’s Gas Bonanza* (Bloomberg)

Everything else

English clubs are dominating European football once again* (The Economist)

Unpacking the 2021 Digital Government Survey (FWD50)

#dataviz

A collection of visualization techniques for geospatial network data (GEOSPATIAL NETWORK VISUALIZATION)

Reconstructing the Neighborhood Destroyed in the Tulsa Race Massacre* (New York Times)

Meta data

Viral content

NHS Covid app signs £10m six-month contract extension with developer Zühlke (Public Technology)

The UK’s response to new variants: a story of obfuscation and chaos (BMJ)

Exclusive: UK vaccine passport plans to be scrapped* (Telegraph)

Introducing Covid certificates is a ‘finely balanced’ decision, says Gove (The Guardian)

SCOTTISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT DURING COVID-19: DATA NEEDS, CAPABILITIES, AND USES (Urban Big Data Centre)

Sharing data to help with the Covid-19 vaccination programme (DWP Digital)

How Modi’s fraught relationship with pandemic data has harmed India* (FT)

All those pub apps you’ve downloaded are a privacy nightmare* (Wired)

Losing patients?

Our perspective on the new system for GP data (Understanding Patient Data)

Helen Salisbury: Should patients worry about their data? (BMJ)

Your NHS data will be quietly shared with third parties, with just weeks to opt out – GPs like me are worried (i)

Dear #research, People are opting out in droves – Matt Hancock’s data grab, facilitated by NHSX, is damaging your work (medConfidential)

Matt Hancock has quietly told your GP to hand over your health data. Why? (openDemocracy)

Plans to share NHS data must be reconsidered* (FT)

GPs warn over plans to share patient data with third parties in England (The Guardian)

The Guardian view on medical records: NHS data grab needs explaining (The Guardian)

Your medical records are about to be given away. As GPs, we’re fighting back (The Guardian)

UK government

Government Digital Service: Our strategy for 2021-2024 (Strategic Reading)

Geospatial Commission sets its 2021/22 priorities (Geospatial Commission)

Office for Statistics Regulation Annual Business Plan 2021/22 (OSR)

Office for National Statistics: the number-crunching whizzes keeping Britain afloat are the unsung heroes of the pandemic (Reaction)

Digital Strategy for Defence: Delivering the Digital Backbone and unleashing the power of Defence’s data (MoD)

Introducing a Head of Digital role to DfE (DfE Digital and Technology)

Why we’ve created an accessibility manual – and how you can help shape it (DWP Digital)

Working in data, insight and user research roles at GOV.UK (Inside GOV.UK)

How to make hybrid or ‘blended’ meetings work for your team (MoJ Digital and Technology)

AI got 'rithm

How soft law is used in AI governance (Brookings)

The race to understand the exhilarating, dangerous world of language AI* (MIT Technology Review)

Can AI be independent from big tech?* (Tortoise)

Sentenced by Algorithm* (New York Review of Books)

Google says it’s committed to ethical AI research. Its ethical AI team isn’t so sure. (Recode)

Facebook’s AI treats Palestinian activists like it treats American Black activists. It blocks them.* (Washington Post)

Privacy, people, personal data

Privacy group targets website 'cookie terror' (BBC News)

EU to step up digital push with digital identity wallet (Reuters)

ICO call for views: Anonymisation, pseudonymisation and privacy enhancing technologies guidance (ICO)

Data isn’t oil, whatever tech commentators tell you: it’s people’s lives (The Observer)

Everything else

In big tech’s dystopia, cat videos earn millions while real artists beg for tips (The Guardian)

Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies (BBC News)

Gadgets have stopped working together, and it’s becoming an issue (The Observer)

German Bundestag adopts autonomous driving law (The Robot Report)

Code is cheap; ignorance is costly (Matt Edgar)

The internet is flat. (Galaxy Brain)

Opportunities

EVENT: AI Governance: the role of the nation in a transnational world (CogX)

Full programme

EVENT: Special Topic Meeting on R/local R/transmission of Covid19 (Royal Statistical Society)

EVENT: Deploying algorithms in government (Global Government Forum)

EVENT: Emerging approaches to the regulation of biometrics: The EU, the US and the challenge to the UK (Ada Lovelace Institute)

SURVEY: Help to shape the National AI Strategy (AI Council, supported by The Alan Turing Institute)

JOB: CEO (Advanced Research and Invention Agency)

BEIS seeks chief for research agency championed by Cummings (Civil Service World)

JOB: Chief Digital Officer for Health and Care for Wales (Health Education and Improvement Wales, via Jukesie)

JOB: Head of Data Strategy (Companies House)

JOB: Head of Data Policy Analysis Team (DCMS)

JOB: Data Architect (GDS)

JOBS: Open Data Institute

JOBS: Open Data Manchester

JOB: Manager, Data and Digital Team (Social Finance, via Jukesie)

And finally...

Baked in

We collected data on 1,500 politicians' favourite biscuit. Here's what we found. (Democracy Club)

NYC Mayor Race: Ranked-Choice Ballot Explained, With Bagels* (Wall Street Journal)

Maps

Countries coloured by the number of other countries they border (Helen McKenzie)

An orange or an egg? Determining the shape of the world* (The Spectator)

I'm planning to cycle around London looking at bits of internet infrastructure and general sites of interest in computer history (Reuben Binns)

"How much of Scotland is further south than the most northerly part of England?" (Alasdair Rae)

Cartoons

'It's just counting!' (Scott Murray)

Help a Computer Win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest (The Pudding)

Everything else

Can you make AI fairer than a judge? Play our courtroom algorithm game (MIT Technology Review)

Behind the painstaking process of creating Chinese computer fonts* (MIT Technology Review)

[warninggraphiccontent]

1 May 2020

Bits and bobs (and Bites)

Deep breath...

We've got a fantastic set of Data Bites speakers next week (yes, I say that every month, but it's true every month). We have Microsoft (who are kindly supporting, on keeping data safe and the benefits of scale), Citizens Advice (on coronavirus concerns), the Foreign Office (on data as diplomacy) and NHSX (on why making things open makes things better). Join us this Wednesday, 6 May at 6pm. Virtual drinks afterwards. Previous events and our report on the first eight events here.

In the greatest crossover event in history, my spreadsheet of key data-related developments in the UK government's coronavirus response is now also Peter's spreadsheet on transparency 'things' and Sam's spreadsheet on mortality counts. Please help us out by adding anything we've missed.

For they have created the tornado chart, and they shall reap the whirlwind. While it's always good to see people experiment with different chart types, I can't say I was blown away by this one. Perhaps the forthcoming book will make understanding them a breeze.

OpenTech 2020 are looking for virtual speakers - I'm pondering what to present, so I hope some of you are, too.

Seeing this year's nominations reminded me that it's been 11(!) years since I was nominated for a Webby Award - for the original Orwell Diaries project (George Orwell's 1938-42 wartime diaries). This year's Orwell Youth Prize is open for entries until 11 June, and also has loads of resources for teachers and others.

Periodic reminder that some of my excellent colleagues, led by Graham, compile the Week in Public Services newsletter.

This.

Sense About Science and my colleague Tom are looking for volunteers to assess the transparency of evidence for Covid-19 policies.

The BioRISC initiative at Cambridge University have listed 297 possible solutions to coronavirus spread (thanks to Alex for the link). Many of them will raise big questions about the use of data and digital technology (plenty more links on that below...)

And finally... huge congratulations to Giuseppe on the eighth anniversary of his newsletter, which you should already have subscribed to.

Have a good weekend

Gavin

Today's links:

Tips, tech, etc

What does your home office look like? (Policy Lab)

Why Zoom Is Terrible* (New York Times)

Flexible working – what works? (Civil Service)

Parental load theory (Becky Allen)

How digital service teams are responding to Covid-19* (Apolitical)

Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing (The Atlantic)

Graphic content

Viral content: cases and counting

Global coronavirus death toll could be 60% higher than reported (FT)

This chart is mostly shown on a logarithmic vertical axis... (Max Roser)

5 year average weekly deaths by place of death (Henry Lau -and more here)

An expanding epidemic (Reuters)

New confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the past week vs. the total confirmed cases to date (Covid Trends, via Nathan)

Three charts that show where the coronavirus death rate is heading (The Conversation)

Revealed: the inside story of the UK's Covid-19 crisis (The Guardian)

Low Covid-19 death toll raises hopes Africa may be spared worst (FT)

62,315 people have died from coronavirus in the U.S.* (Washington Post)

It's the end of April - and the deadline for Hancock's promise of 100,000 coronavirus tests per day (Sarah for IfG)

COVID and ‘excess deaths’ in the week ending April 10th (David Spiegelhalter)

How Coronavirus Mutates and Spreads* (New York Times)

U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Is Far Higher Than Reported, C.D.C. Data Suggests* (New York Times)

NHS Pathways coronavirus triage (NHS Digital)

U.S. deaths soared in early weeks of pandemic, far exceeding number attributed to covid-19* (Washington Post)

Viral content: consequences

Look for the helpers: What can we learn about grass-roots COVID-19 volunteer groups from open data? (Lewis Westbury, via David)

The quiet crisis of Britain’s missing patients* (New Statesman)

America’s pandemic safety net (Reuters)

Europe’s biggest economies hone details on easing out of lockdown* (FT)

The places most exposed to COVID-19 in England and Wales (Centre for Towns)

Lockdown lifestyle: changing internet habits during the pandemic* (FT)

Corona Shock: Week II* (Tortoise)

The traffic data that shows the road into - and out of - Covid-19 lockdown (The Guardian)

The Accepting, the Suffering and the Resisting: the different reactions to life under lockdown (King's Policy Institute)

The criminal justice system: How government reforms and coronavirus will affect policing, courts and prisons (IfG)

Bailout for business after coronavirus (IfG)

Viral content: everything else

How humans have reacted to pandemics through history – a visual guide (The Guardian)

Academics probe links between coronavirus and toxic air pollution* (FT)

The most important data stories about covid-19* (The Economist)

Tracing COVID-19 (Reuters)

Dissecting Laura Ingraham’s attempt to gin up a mystery around coronavirus in New York* (Washington Post)

Sidewalk Widths Toronto (Shared Streets)

Anti-viral content

Britain breaks record for coal-free power generation (The Guardian)

Analysis: Great Britain hits coal-free electricity record amid coronavirus lockdown (Carbon Brief)

Civil service staff numbers (IfG)

Trump's courts takeover is male and white (The Guardian)

States Made It Harder to Get Jobless Benefits. Now That’s Hard to Undo.* (The Upshot)

Explore Explain, a video and podcast series about data visualisation design (Visualising Data)

Meta data

Viral content: Contact details

Digital contact tracing: protecting the NHS and saving lives (NHSX)

Twenty questions about the NHSX contact tracing app (Nuffield Council on Bioethics)

We Need An “Army” Of Contact Tracers To Safely Reopen The Country. We Might Get Apps Instead. (BuzzFeed)

Contact-tracing apps are not a solution to the COVID-19 crisis (Brookings)

Covid, contact tracing and public health tech (Labour Digital)

How will the UK’s new contact tracing programme work?* (FT, via Alex)

Coronavirus contact tracing apps were meant to save us. They won’t* (Wired)

The escalating debate on #Covid19 contact tracing apps (Chris Yiu)

Germany switches to decentralised contact tracing app in privacy U-turn (New Statesman)

NHS app may suffer basic usability issues (Open Rights Group)

NHS rejects Apple-Google coronavirus app plan (BBC News)

The boring side of tech, transparency and contact tracing (Richard Pope)

The Australian contact tracing app is out (Rowland Manthorpe)

Information Technology–Based Tracing Strategy in Response to COVID-19 in South Korea—Privacy Controversies (JAMA)

Joint Statement (scientists and researchers working in the UK in the fields of information security and privacy)

Viral content: more personal data

Coronavirus: New tool will forecast how GP surgeries would cope with a second peak in cases (Sky News)

The Consent to Activities Related to the Security of NHS and Public Health Services Digital Systems (Coronavirus) Directions 2020 (NHS England, Public Health England)

Hancock grants GCHQ powers over NHS IT systems (HSJ)

GCHQ and NHSX’s contact tracing app (medConfidential)

Revealed: Palantir commits 45 engineers to NHS coronavirus data project, earns £1 (New Statesman)

Viral content: everything else

How the NHS was digitally rewired* (The Times)

Privacy International puts Palantir in the dock for NHS data analysis work (Computer Weekly)

Emergency procurement for COVID-19: Buying fast, smart, and open (Open Contracting Partnership)

Another busy week at ONS (Liz McKeown)

Revealed: Cummings is on secret scientific advisory group for Covid-19 (The Guardian)

Make SAGE transparent* (Jill for Prospect)

NUFFIELD COUNCIL AND INVOLVE CALL FOR GREATER TRANSPARENCY AND PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT IN UK RESPONSE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC (Nuffield Council on Bioethics/Involve)

The coronavirus has changed general practice – but it is not yet a virtual service (Graham for IfG)

How is the CDEI supporting the response to COVID-19? (CDEI)

The Commons Science and Technology committee hearing on technology and disease outbreaks (Rachel Coldicutt)

Coronavirus shows how badly we need consensus on collective data rights and needs (Open Data Charter)

New insights into life under lockdown (ONS)

Viral content: tech

Home Screens: Quarantine is the future big tech wanted us to want. How long before we want out? (Real Life)

Privacy in a pandemic* (The Economist)

Covid-19 has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation (MIT Technology Review)

Tech giants are profiting — and getting more powerful — even as the global economy tanks* (Washington Post)

Viral misinformation

Fighting the causes and consequences of bad information: the Full Fact Report 2020 (Full Fact)

Facts on Coronavirus (Full Fact)

MPs express frustration at question-dodging tech giants in Covid-19 misinformation inquiry (New Statesman)

Covid-19 has caused a major spike in anti-Chinese and anti-Semitic hate speech* (New Statesman)

So #COVID19 crisis has laid bare failures by both Big Tech & govts to combat disinformation (Govt-backed) & misinformation (nongovt-backed)... (Mark Scott - some reasons to be cheerful)

Anti-viral content

New RSS Chief Executive appointed (RSS)

Warwick University was hacked and kept breach secret from students and staff (Sky News)

Nine million logs of Brits' road journeys spill onto the internet from password-less number-plate camera dashboard (The Register)

Examining the Black Box: Tools for Assessing Algorithmic Systems (Ada Lovelace Institute/DataKind UK)

New survey finds just 27% of British businesses are sharing data (ODI)

Microsoft embraces big data* (The Economist, via David)

The fight with Huawei means America can’t shape tech rules* (The Economist)

How to talk about data without talking about data (Understanding Patient Data)

Designing sustainable data institutions (ODI)

How the alt-right is pivoting to TikTok* (New Statesman)

(Important) work in progress (Paul Downey)

Opportunities

EVENT: Data Bites #10 (IfG)

EVENT: OpenTech 2020

EVENT: Contact tracing: to centralise or not to centralise, that is the question (Ada Lovelace Institute)

EVENT: How to respond to COVID-19 through open government (Apolitical)

GRANTS: ADR UK and ESRC welcome proposals for methodological development grants (ADR UK)

ACCESS: Free access to digital records (The National Archives)

JOBS: Open Data Institute

JOB: Advocacy Officer, Fixed term Contract - 1 Year Parental Leave Cover (Privacy International)

And finally...

Names for Ed Balls in different languages (Beth Desmond, via Ketaki)

A map showing all land over 2,000ft in Scotland (Alasdair Rae)

Factorization diagrams (Fermat's Library)

Cities from scratch (The Guardian)

Are men singing higher in pop music? (The Pudding)