#even aside from the complexity of her character and narrative at large she is such a delightful character

[coolattas]

thinking about lucretia adventurezone and grinding my teeth down to the gums because holy fuck dude. holy shit. she was impossibly, horribly young on the starblaster. three hops and a jump from being a fucking baby. the two-sunned planet is devoured by the hunger in the same year that she graduates from high school. she is easily the youngest of the birds, even considering the differing rates of aging amongst the rest of the crew. teenaged astrophysicist, wizard, author, artist, without ties solid enough back home to keep her from the starblaster's maiden voyage. she writes and rewrites every moment she can wring from her memories into enough notebooks that it's damn near arthritis-inducing to step within 50 feet of the stacks upon stacks of field notes, of detailed accounts and gentle, domestic benignity. she loves and she loses and it still can't ever prepare her for the next decade. a century dwarfs the time she spends alone running the bureau, but the sheer magnitude of her loss is incomparable. lucretia learns to live in the stolen century, learns to rely on others, learns to trust and care and laugh and build, create, sacrifice, indulge. she pries these things away from herself in the name of a greater good, to what she believes to be their only hope. she sees the agony they're in, and she inadvertently compounds that anguish when she tries to fix it. she is 18 and 118 when she feeds fisher her journals. she is 30 and 130 and 50 and 150 when taako holds a staff to her chest and counts down like it means anything to her anymore that she dies. maybe it's atonement, but even that sounds far too holy a word to describe it. her brother grips her life in his hands, and she thinks it's only fair that he is the one to soundly smother it at last. the lonely journal-keeper is so young and so impossibly old and she is so, so tired. her family will outlive her by centuries. she will be a fine powder, dust beneath the crust of the planet, long before she believes their forgiveness will ever be known. if that day comes at all. everything she has ever done is soured by a guilt so weighty that she spends every day trying to play damage control with the havoc she feels solely responsible for having wrought. she lives within the confines of dichotomy, of red and blue and good and bad, even when she knows she's lying through her teeth, because its easier to live with herself (it's not) when she justifies it, when everyone else lives and dies by the idea that she got it right. she spends 12 years alone, sitting in the thick of her own grief. she mourns men who are right in front of her face. she sees the way they have changed, so fundamentally, sees the ways her choices have ruined them. 12 years is such a long time to be alone. 12 fucking years. she ages 32 in the same span, shedding decades in wonderland in the blink of an eye, and she knows she's running out of time. she's willing to give up whatever she has left, without question. lucretia loves so fiercely and so unquestionably and still she believes herself to be irredeemably cruel when really she was just so scared, tethered to any sense of hope only by the idea that she was doing right by her family. in a position that no one should have to be in, a situation that virtually no one else could truly understand. she was so young and she suffered so, so much. more than any person should. she is flawed but she is not the monster she convinces herself she has become. lucretia adventurezone they could never make me hate you lets kiss on the mouth ok?

[vampire-wizard-solidarity]

i think it’s kind of interesting the way fma is upheld as this super progressive piece of art that’s great at writing female characters despite the fact that one of the most important female characters, winry, is written with some pretty typical misogynistic conventions?

like, obviously i don’t want to overstate how bad it is or imply this is done maliciously, or whatever, but a lot of the reasons people claim winry to be a feminist character just don’t hold up.

they often bring up the fact that she’s a mechanic, she isn’t a housewife for ed and she’s an independent woman or whatever, but all of those are largely aesthetic and not at all how she’s written into the narrative. she is, in truth, very much pushed into a typically feminine role: in practice, the way she’s written is like a healer. she shows up in the narrative whenever ed injures himself and she patches him up and outside of those occurrences she largely just sits home and waits for ed to come back. the only difference is that instead of just healing normal injuries, she heals ed’s metal limbs. if we were to replace her profession with being a doctor, her narrative role wouldn’t change at all. her role in the story, her writing and involvement in the narrative is pretty much dependent on up keeping the well-being of the the male protagonist.

even the one story element that is entirely about her isn’t about her - her parents’ death is used entirely as a vehicle and motivation for ed’s character, for him to be mad over and console winry. like, she finds out about the man who killed her parents, freaks out, ed consoles her and then it is entirely used as a motivation for ed to hate scar, he is the one to always bring it up, he is the one harbouring negative emotions over it, and the next time winry gets to address this issue he is the one getting mad and she tells him to knock it off and that she’s come to terms with this enough to not be actively hostile to scar. we never get to actually see her grapple with her emotions over this, this development in her feelings happens entirely off screen without us knowing, even in the moment we don’t get to see any emotional conflict from her. all the emotional conflict comes from ed.

and i get it, she’s a side character, but considering this is a pretty important and long term conflict/plot point, it would’ve been nice to, you know. see the development of how she went from wanting to kill the guy to being open to be amicable to him. how she deals with and processed this grief. how that progression actually happens and affects her.

and the thing is this could’ve been a good character moment for ed too! a part of his character is the way he pushes his own feelings aside, channels a lot of his grief and sadness into anger, oftentimes anger at other people’s hurt, sidelining his own pain. the way he refuses to cry, refuses to let himself properly deal with his own hurt. like, it’s notable how he says that winry’s parents were like an aunt and uncle to him, but whenever he brings up his death he frames them as winry’s parents, exclusively focusing on the way his friend was hurt, never about the way he had a close relationship with those people as well. winry could’ve called him out on this - the way his refusal to process his own feelings inadvertently makes him decide how winry should feel for her, projecting his own rage and grief onto her. it would’ve been cool to see winry’s actual struggle and to see the way ed’s treatment of it doesn’t take the complexity of her own emotions into account, making ed confront the fact that he is also allowed to miss people, that he’s allowed to be mad at others not just for the way they hurt those he’s close to, but for the way they hurt him too.

grief is a big theme in the show, and it’s just frustrating to see a big aspect of it unexplored because we don’t get to see the way winry actually processes the grief of finding out how her parents died, meeting the man who killed them. it also fails to use the opportunity to explore the way ed’s own refusal to process his own emotions inadvertently deprives his loved ones of agency, of the ability to care for themselves and for him. it’s just, really disappointing writing!

[smile-files]

it's funny how much bow fixates on how important the contestants are, and how thus a contestant (marshmallow) will choose to give attention to another contestant (apple) over her; because she's a ghost (and automatically not a contestant), she is incapable of being "real" like the contestants -- she can only barely tangibly interact with them, and even when she can, it's only within the confines of one location and one element of the story.

to the show, the contestants are the main characters: and so the reality of any character, their depth and personhood, relies (in the eyes of the viewer) on their ability to interact with the contestants, as that determines their screentime and personal developments -- and, as bow notes, contestants are the ones most easily able to interact with other contestants. the contestants are the most "real" within this framework. a background/side character is less "real" in a sense, because they're a flat character, not meant to act like a fully fleshed-out person -- the contestants are "real" in their humanity, their complex relationships and emotions, their way of simulating actual human experience.

of course, this is all incredibly ironic, then, as the contestants were manufactured to be contestants: created to be the main characters in mephone's show. they're "fake" -- particularly in how they were synthetically designed to be "real". the way the characters have acted thus far implies that, largely, they had some vague knowledge of a past and identity for themselves outside of the show -- the only characters alluding to the contrary are fan and cabby, who have personal issues to that effect, such that they wouldn't automatically suspect that their uncertainty about how they are outside of the show would imply that they don't really exist outside of it. the fact that this revelation about mephone creating the contestants is a revelation at all means that they must all have been created to have some sort of backstory -- they were synthetically designed to be "real", synthetically designed to "remember" a past that would thus influence the way they feel and act today. part of what makes someone "real" or "human" is the fact that their experiences in the past affect them (regardless of whether or not they remember those experiences consciously); we have a continuity. the contestants, having been created in the show's genesis, awoke to feel like they were just continuing a life they already had (but which never existed).

there's some fascinating meta-narrative going on: is it not true, from our perspective, that these characters, these people literally didn't exist before the show? the ii16 twist, in contextualizing everything, makes you wonder about what it means to be a main character in a story -- and, in bow's case, what it means to be a main character cast aside by the narrative...

(just for the record, i don't necessarily believe that mephone consciously made the contestants -- but that doesn't matter to my speculation anyway.)

[adragonsfriend]

Shooting Anakin like Padmé

So I've mentioned this before, but for most of ROTS, Padmé is shown pretty much only in her own apartment, and she's only allowed to leave to (1) go to see Anakin to tell him about the baby, (2) go to the Senate to deliver an (admittedly devastating) line about Palpatine declaring himself Emperor, and then (3) go to Mustafar to find Anakin. Besides those times, the camera only looks at her when Anakin goes to see her in her apartment, or when Obi-Wan goes to her apartment to see her about Anakin.

This relegation of Padmé to the domestic sphere--even if it's less obvious in that it's not a cooking or cleaning domestic space--is strange for a character who is obviously active and present in the previous movies. Why isn't she in the Senate building before the last scene? Why doesn't she have an office? Paperwork to do at least? Why don't we see her preparing to give birth? Hell why can't she and Anakin just talk somewhere else for once?

The answers to these questions are not ones I'm going to bother with right now. Whilst they are probably complex and interesting on some level, ultimately, they largely start and end with and "the narrative stopped being interested in its main female character other than in how she affects its male lead." Instead, I'd like to demonstrate how stupid it is by imagining ROTS scenes if Anakin was shot the same way Padmé is.

Rescuing the Chancellor

Start by cutting the whole space battle and rescue. We open on Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Palpatine returning to the ground and being greeted by the Senators and the press. Padmé pulls Anakin aside as in the movie. Since we didn't get to see Anakin execute Dooku, Anakin summarizes those events to Padmé, during which he tells her that he's not sure he should've killed Dooku and that he's afraid Obi-Wan would be disappointed in him. Padmé avoids confronting/is distracted from this revelation by her own news--she's pregnant. Continue the scene as written, with Anakin dismissing her worries to tell her to be as happy as he is.

Impact

Because it would probably reveal too much plot-wise for Anakin to tell Padmé that Palpatine directly ordered him to execute Dooku, this would deeply minimize how much Palpatine has over Anakin's decision making, as well as obscure how Dooku being executed even happened when Obi-Wan should've been right there to stop him (audience has no idea he was knocked out). Also, the audience would not see Anakin disagree with Palpatine to save Obi-Wan, and would therefore be deprived of the understanding that Obi-Wan is important to Anakin.

Even if all of this information was included in Anakin's summary of events, it would replace all of the showing done in the rescue scenes with telling, thereby destroying all of the emotional weight the audience experiences actually witnessing the events.

Appointment to the Council & The Opera

Instead of seeing Anakin talk to Palpatine and Obi-Wan, and throwing his fit to the Council, we instead get Anakin sitting in his quarters in the temple after the council meeting. He gets angry, standing up and pacing the room, talking to either himself or R2-D2 about how annoyed he is about not being made a master and that Obi-Wan would ask him to spy on Palpatine.

Instead of Anakin sitting with Palpatine in the Opera, we are treated to another scene of him in his quarters, this time we see him in his quarters, reading some texts, maybe muttering about trying to find the story Palpatine told him about.

Impact

Instead of seeing Anakin being manipulated, being inept at politics, his inability to manage his emotions in front of the Council, the tension of his argument with Obi-Wan about spying, and the way he's immediately drawn in by Palpatine's story about darth Plageuis, we just get him pitching a fit in private. Pitching a fit in private is a pretty reasonable thing to do--most people do it at some point--and so on top of doing nothing to show any of his interpersonal relationships with Obi-Wan, the Council, or Palpatine, it also shows very little of the complete breakdown he's headed toward.

Order 66

Instead of seeing Anakin go into the Temple, leading the clones, we are instead shown him getting dressed in his new sith cloak, which matches Palpatine's.

Impact

The audience gets none of the horror of seeing Anakin about to kill people. They only gain the information that he killed the Jedi children when Obi-Wan tells Padmé--there is none of the symbolism of him being shown to kill that one kid who looks just like his younger self. It reduces a horrific act and character decision to less than a news headline, and--especially with Padmé's later denial about it--makes it sound like more of a rumor than anything.

Mustafar

After Anakin puts on his new sith cloak, we cut to him on a ship to Mustafar. Only it's not his fighter, it's a ship large enough to have sleeping quarters, or maybe a kitchen. We see Anakin in one of those two spaces, again pacing, but this time he has set his lightsaber on a table, and keeps glancing at it agitatedly. On arrival, he picks it up and leaves the ship. Cut to him announcing over comm to Palpatine that the Separatist leaders are dead, without showing any of the killing involved. Then he sees Padmé landing and goes to greet her.

Then, keep the strangling Padmé and dueling Obi-Wan the same as the movie.

Impact

Now imagine seeing that final duel after an entire movie in which we have hardly seen Anakin and Obi-Wan interact, never seen them fight together, and only witnessed Anakin draw his saber once, to cut off Mace's hand in one wild swipe. It wouldn't mean nearly as much. We wouldn't know where Anakin suddenly got all these crazy lightsaber skills from--it would be crazy that he can go toe to toe with Obi-Wan who we just saw fight Grevious. We wouldn't know that Obi-wan's death was something Anakin would've died to prevent only days earlier.

Overall Impact

While some of these altered scenes do have potential to communicate some important things about Anakin (staring at lightsaber = guilt, picking it back up = choosing violence), on their own, they fail to tell his story well, and give little depth to his character.

He doesn't really talk to anyone on screen -> seems like a total loner who doesn't talk to anyone but Padmé. What do you mean Obi-Wan is supposed to be his best friend-brother-dad-teacher? (Why does Obi-Wan say he loved Anakin at the end or bother to personally look over Luke?)

Anakin doesn't really do anything for anyone but himself -> what do you mean he's supposed to have been a caring person who was corrupted?

Anakin is called a General and a war hero, but we never see him lead troops or even fight -> was he just given the title to make him seem more important?

Anakin and Palpatine only interact for like two seconds -> why does Anakin believe him about the Sith story or follow his orders to commit atrocities?

Anakin doesn't have any strong feelings about the Jedi, positive or negative (let alone both simultaneously) -> why do we care that he betrayed and killed them? why didn't Palpatine just let the clones do it?

Basically, it makes him seem stupid and inactive, and completely fails to show the audience his ongoing struggle with violence and torn loyalties, unless of course the audience is willing to go to lengths to imagine the depth he might've had if the narrative had prioritized him a little more.

There's lots of fic and meta that does that for Padmé, but the movie itself does not force the average view to see her as anything but Anakin's girlfriend who loves him more than anything, for some reason (he's pretty?) and is a Senator for some reason (she talks about politics for a minute?).

Like, I'm being a bit reductive, but all the scenes I cut of Anakin doing violence? Those are the equivalent of Padmé doing politics. All the interactions with Obi-Wan, Palpatine, and the Council? Those are Padme talking to other senators, her handmaidens, maybe even her parents. Anakin's mounting stress? That's a bit about Padmé seeing a doctor, worrying about her own health.

Padme isn't the main character, but she's not a side character either. The screen time she got could've been better used, even simply by letting her look busy when Anakin talks at her. ROTS makes her seem silly and inactive, and fails to show the audience the full depth of the ongoing conflict between her duty as a political power and her relationship with Anakin.

[ai-the-broccoli]

The Resignation and Resistance of Yukika Nanase, an analysis

Last Friday (September 29th, 2023) was the 15th of the Eighth Month in the lunar calendar, which is the date of the Mid-Autumn Festival/Chuseok/Tết Trung Thu/Tsukimi/Uposatha, festivals strongly associated with the autumn moon in Asian countries.

Since I happened to have some ThoughtsTM and writings on Yukika Nanase (whose release event, "Otsukimi is After an Elegant Tea Party" was about, well, [O]tsukimi, and who's got a lot to do with Yukika in general), I thought this might be a really good excuse for me to finally officially begin posting on Tumblr! So...

Here is the first one out of a few (perhaps?): a little something I first wrote earlier this year, though now refined, organized, and extended by... maybe over 5 times its original length, for posting on here.

(official CG of the full moon, as it's depicted in the Yukika-narrated event Otsukimi. why exactly there is a rainbow around it is solely up to interpretation)

You may or may not be aware that Yukika Nanase is one of my favorite characters and main blorbos in Magia Record, and while I'm sure personal preference (and her being Relatable™️ for me) counts for a good part of it as it usually does, I would personally argue that she is also just an exceptionally intriguing character in general.

Typically, the fandom at large seems to view Yukika as a daredevil ojou-sama of sorts and some thrill-seeking gambler (and a character that her designer Masugitsune really likes), etc, etc. Now, it's clear where that image comes from, and by no means is it totally off either, but once you really get around to watching or reading any of her stories, you basically immediately see an entirely different side to her than what you might've assumed from her fandom reputation. almost like... the back side of the moon, so to speak

Now, in the canon story content itself, Yukika is often treated as a somewhat comedic character by the narrative, especially in stories where she's not the main protagonist. By no means is this a complaint or a criticism: Elements of comedy don't make a character any less well-written (unless said comedy is implemented in a way that's ineffective or distracting, but that's another matter entirely), and with Yukika in particular I've found that she often works with comedy excellently.

Besides, the fact she often has a comedic-ish role is largely in line with (and partly because of) Yukika's own extremely effacing perception and framing of herself—however, it also makes it quite easy for one to simply completely overlook her own emotional complexities and problems, both in-universe and among fans in the community. Which is fair, even she herself does it! ...But I do want to draw attention to it here, since it's an aspect of her that's quite interesting to me.

So today I'm going to talk about... Yukika's fatalistic mindset and her mental health.

Long informal analysis under the cut:

[cw: major spoilers for most Yukika-related stories, vague reference to Ashen Revolution's themes and motifs (nothing actually spoilery aside from AR's short very first opening section, which will be directly quoted), clinical discussion of mental health issues, mention of addiction]

A Magical Girl who has lived without ever straying from the rails laid out for her since childhood. Raised as a young lady, she is able to handle everything with ease, but her self-esteem is extremely low because of all the talented ladies who surround her. Though she was fed up with the boring life she was leading, her life has taken a sharp turn since she became a Magical Girl, and now she is constantly caught up in trouble.

Yukika's Extraordinary Everyday Life

If you're already familiar with any of her canon stories (or have read her official character description above), you must know that Yukika's "main thing" is that she's always involved in all kinds of trouble on an extremely frequent basis.

Like almost any other playable character in MR, she has her moments™️ (and, the fact that she is in constant stress and anxiety due to the passive effect of her wish; when nothing is wrong she keeps worrying something is about to go wrong in no time and she apologizes for it in advance, and when something is wrong, she blames herself for no matter what it is and tries to take responsibility at top speed), but overall Yukika seems generally surprisingly "fine" as in, we pretty much never see her get into any particularly negative emotional outbursts over anything, at all. Despite all the troublesome situations that she never stops finding herself in, she seems decently adjusted and stable (that is, "stable" on the grand scale of things, since everyday instability is her stability), at least among the MR girls we know.

But when you look into why that is the case, you'll kind of see that it's because Yukika actually has her own unique sense of a fatalistic mindset—in that, typically speaking, (there are some notable exceptions, such as when she made her wish) she completely accepts the state of herself and the state of her life as they are, even though they are by no means what she genuinely sees as ideal.

For instance:

[Though with all that said, I am, so to speak, in the role of "Villager A". - Yukika]

Yukika: (As I was one of many “Black Feathers”...) Yukika: (I didn't have any desire to advance and become a White Feather someday.) Yukika: (Because those White Feathers who manage the Black Feathers are more suited to shining...) Yukika: Yes, like the pride of Mizuna Girls Academy, Akatsuki Tsukuyo-senpai…! Yukika: Even in Mizuna Ward, where many wealthy families produce polished children, Akatsuki-senpai is a genuine charm... Yukika: ...Just like the full moon. Yukika: (While I get saddled with Student Council Officer duty almost every year because I seem "sort of" ladylike, whatever that means...) Yukika: (Akatsuki-senpai has an aura leagues above mine.)

she looks weirdly happy in the last two (pretty self-deprecatory) lines here and then goes on to talk about how her presence is so faint that Akatsuki-senpai still doesn't know she's a Magical Girl yet, whi— ANYWAY I digress

From this early part of Otsukimi, we see that Yukika has a crush on Tsukuyo (for legal reasons this is completely? a joke) a pretty set idea of what her "role" in this world is supposed to be (i.e. she has a "fixed mindset", as some may call it, as opposed to a "growth" one), and that is the role of a "Villager A"—basically meaning an NPC character, to put it in more common terms.

Yukika: (Looking for a substitute for Akatsuki-senpai and being mistaken for Akatsuki-senpai…) Yukika: (Despite her absence from beginning to end, she's got the sense of presence of a true protagonist!) Yukika: (It's getting more impossible by the second for a minor role like me to pretend to be her...)

And this attitude is very telling of her outlook on life as a whole.

Student Council President: That’s right. Will you accept? Yukika: Please leave it to me. Yukika: Our already-busy President shouldn't have to deal with this kind of hassle. Yukika: As the lowliest Student Council Officer, I think that I'm the right person for the job. Girl A: ...Oh, I’ll help you too! Student Council President: Thank you, it’ll be a huge help. Yukika: By "the lowliest Student Council Officer", I mean the Student Council Chore Officer, of which one is selected from each class. Yukika: My job is to gracefully prepare the tea in the student council room, help pour the tea for the exchange parties, and so on. Yukika: ...That's a tremendously misleading description, of course. Yukika: But in short, since it's hardly comparable to the Student Council President, who's elected by the whole school, and the Class President, who's elected from her class's honor students... Yukika: The job naturally gets foisted on me, the vaguely cultured-ish girl with no aura and hardly any presence!

From her rank in the Wing of the Magius as a "lowly Black Feather", to her duty in the student council as the "Student Council Chore Officer", Yukika views her roles and positions of insignificance as essentially predetermined things that she—as a self-perceived NPC figure—is simply matched for by nature; and she never even considers the idea of breaking out of this status quo, because, to her, it is simply a fact of life.

and you may notice this in the way Yukika presents/frames things—anything—in general, too; she's basically got an attitude of "ah well, of course, things are how they are; now let me deal with it so it doesn't trouble anyone else" toward basically everything, ever.

This brings me to my next point...

A Bunny Caught in the Tracks of Orbit

Yukika: Speaking of the moon, I used to wonder when I was a kid... Yukika: When the moon faces the Earth, it only shows the side with the rabbit and its mochi. Yukika: Why doesn’t it show the “other face” on it’s back? Yukika: According to my physics teacher, this is because the moon’s cycle of “revolution” and “rotation” is the same. Yukika: It’s apparently quite common in space. Yukika: (I don’t know what the standard of “common” is in space, but...) Yukika: Ah... I am Yukika Nanase, a first-year student at Mizuna's Girls Academy and a Magical Girl. Yukika: Yes, I am one of those who reluctantly set foot into the world of Magical Girls— Yukika: the "other side" of common sense, that most people will live their lives without ever knowing.

(excerpt from the start of Otsukimi, slightly condensed for format)

It is very clear from Yukika's Magical Girl attire that she's associated with rabbits/bunnies—partly for the casino aesthetics, partly for the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland reference, and partly because of the Moon, which is heavily associated with rabbits in Japanese culture. Namely, there is the legend of the moon rabbit, a mythical creature said to live on the moon, as Yukika herself references in the excerpt above.

Now, the next part is going to look like a bit of a stretch if taken to be actual speculation of canon, but to be clear that is not my intention; it is merely a connection I made/similarity I noticed, and I figured it would be interesting to bring up.

(...Actually that does remind me, I should probably clarify here that this entire analysis is, in fact, of my own personal interpretations of the content presented in the game itself, rather than what I theorize to be the deliberate intention of the writers.)

With that out of the way, let's look at the opening section of Ashen Revolution:

Rabi: We can never stop the never-ending movement of the starry sky. Urara: However much I practice, I can never defy the gravitational pull drawing the diabolo. Alexandra: No matter how much I raise my voice, without this atmosphere, my melody will never resonate. Asahi: Yes, we are forever under the control of the unseen. Asahi: Like this rabbit, it lost its life at the hands of my unseen self. Asahi: Everything is made by the natural order, and being at the mercy of it is a fate we must resign ourselves to...

I won't go into details about AR here since on a technical level Yukika is entirely unrelated to it, but it is an event about the struggle of Magical Girls, who help people in secret but remain completely unknown, unacknowledged, and not understood. Which...

compare Yukika's previously quoted monologue, in which she compares the world of Magical Girls, which "most people will live their lives without ever knowing", to the backside of the moon.

Coincidentally, Yukika's own character is also all about helping people in the background and never ever being acknowledged (to a higher degree than the average MR girl). Relatedly, she also notably possesses a level of figurative invisibility/unseenness similar to the AR girls, through her entire recurring "faint presence" thing.

So, as seen in the AR excerpt above, the rabbit motif is used to demonstrate their helplessness in the hands of fate—or in their specific case, "fate" as in what they perceive to be the "Will of the Universe".

Well, funnily enough…

[Yes, I believe it's all due to the Great and Terrible Will of the Universe... - Yukika]

Yukika: (Here it is, the new hassle..!) Yukika: (The schedule has returned to a blank slate…) Yukika: (Rather, things have actually gotten worse thanks to the passage of time.) Yukika: (How can I put this? It’s as if...) Yukika: (It's as if some great and terrible will of the universe is at work,) Yukika: (and is specifically targeting me and creating trouble.)

…alright, so this is 99.1% a coincidence, especially because the two terms don’t use the same word for “will of the universe” in the original Japanese text, but it’s pretty crazy nonetheless.

In any case, the themes of fate and fortune are indeed actually heavily featured in Yukika’s own character. There’s her gambling motif as seen in her story, design, and gameplay alike, and her entire “keeps getting caught up in troublesome matters” thing, which is the result of her wish.

And how does she see it?

Girl A: Wouldn’t that mean you’d have more work? Yukika: Please don’t worry. Yukika: Dealing with trouble is my fate. Girl A: …Fate? Yukika: Ah, nothing! Let’s hurry! Girl A: Yeah, got it! Yukika: (Yes, I am involved in trouble on a daily basis.) Yukika: (It’s the “fate” that has been decided for me ever since I became a Magical Girl.)

"Fate". Once again, we see a certain degree of fatalism in Yukika's worldview, especially in regard to herself. Rather than a choice she's made on her own, she sees her behavior/self-imposed duty of helping everyone out as the luck of the draw, something that is "decided for" her.

And this part is extremely significant because it offers us a particularly revealing look into her mindset:

The truth is, in spite of everything she goes out of her way to do daily in order to resolve trouble and help/save other people, without actually being forced to do any of that by anything or anyone, Yukika sees literally all of those actions as passive acts rather than something she's doing out of her own free will (and isn't actually obliged to do, really)—because, no matter what she does she only thinks of it as the predetermined consequences of her own choice, for these issues are always the fault of the wish she personally made (or so she thinks), thus the responsibility to resolve them naturally always falls on her shoulder, which is why there's really never anything to brag about about this, according to Yukika.

As for why and how she made such a wish in the first place, that is explained to us in her MSS:

Yukika: …I do think that I was blessed in many ways during my upbringing. Yukika: But one day, um… In spite of all that luxury, Yukika: when I thought of how from then on, rather than moving forward with my own strength, Yukika: I would instead be riding the train toward the future on the tracks built by my parents, Yukika: I started to feel like I wasn’t really “living” at all…

Not necessarily relevant, but for a bit of a linguistic context, the word for “tracks” (in the sense of “rails; train tracks”) and the word meaning “orbit” (as in the trajectory of a celestial body around another; the curved course of a satellite) is the same word in Japanese (and various other languages. Which makes sense, since even the English term “orbit” was derived from the Latin word “orbita” meaning “tracks; course”); hence my title for this section. anyway this ties into the motif of gravity as seen in Urara's line above

Very interestingly, the original line here too explicitly uses train and train track imagery as a metaphor for the course of life and fate, similar to how it's used to symbolize these things in Kenji Miyazawa's The Night on the Galactic Railroad, and by extension Magia Record, which takes a lot from Miyazawa's works.

Speaking of which, that brings us to our next, largest, and final section...

A Thin Ice Between Life and Death

buckle up guys, it's got three parts

Pt. 1. The Rabbit with a Death Wish

Earlier on, I said Yukika accepts her life as-is, but really, she also fully accepts her death as-is. While her heart does desire to feel "alive", and it is for that, rather than any active desire to actually die, that she longs to be at the brink of death, it is... actually a bit worrying, how little she feels like she has to live for.

Well, let's look at the part in Otsukimi when she thought she was going to die to the powerful Witch:

Yukika: (Ah… There’s blood coming from my mouth. This is called hematemesis, right?) Yukika: (I'm... definitely a goner at this point.) Yukika: (But despite that... No, maybe because of that...?) Yukika: (My head's perfectly clear, and I'm getting tons of adrenaline.) Yukika: (Way more than when I bet all of the coins I have…) Yukika: (I feel like I’m alive!) Yukika: Hehe... Yukika: (...Wow. I must be kind of crazy.) Nanny Witch: …………!! Yukika: Kwaah…!! Yukika: Hehehe... I've got plenty where that came from! Yukika: ...Is what I'd like to boast right now. Yukika: But my battery is dead. [the image of Hotori and Rion flashes before her eyes] Yukika: (I’m going to die without being able to do anything…) Yukika: (I wonder if that unknown White Feather felt the same chagrin…) [the image of Hotori and Rion flashes before her eyes] Yukika: I’m sorry… Yukika: I won’t be seeing you two at the moon viewing party. Yukika: .............

...maybe it's just me, but it strikes me as unusual and almost alarming how little she seems to feel like she has to live for, you know? Like, Rion and Hotori are a pair of girls who she literally just met this afternoon. And they (and her not being able to defeat this threat on other people's lives) are somehow her biggest regrets.

And like, Yukika isn't just like this here. Whether you say it's for thrills or for other people's sake (it's usually initially the latter with the extra bonus of the former sometimes), she never even hesitates to put her life on the line. It's kind of sad, really.

This makes sense, though; this sort of attitude tracks perfectly with the abysmally low value she attributes to herself and her existence (again, in her eyes, she is literally just the most basic NPC ever, and who cares about what happens to a random NPC? well actually several people in this fandom do care, including me, but it's not like Yukika Nanase would know that).

In fact, let's look at the legend about the moon rabbit that I mentioned earlier. A quick online search would tell you that it's a mythical figure in East Asian and indigenous American folklore, based on pareidolic interpretations that identify the dark markings on the near side of the Moon as a hare or rabbit

As a side note, this is (accidentally?) fitting in the context of her own perceived "lowliness" (+ faint presence and all) against Tsukuyo's full moon-like brilliance... but I should probably leave that for another analysis oops (assuming I ever write one)

who (in East Asian folklore) pounds the elixir of life (according to Chinese and Vietnamese interpretations), or rice cakes such as the mochi (Japanese and Korean interpretations).

But how come the Moon Rabbit arrived on the Moon?

There's a story behind it that originates from Tale 316 of the Buddhist Jataka tales, and a derived version of it appears in the Japanese anthology, Konjaku Monogatarishū.

According to the Japanese folklore:

The rabbit, as well as the hare, have long been associated with moon deities, and may signify rebirth or resurrection. According to legend, an old man who lived on the moon decided to visit Earth. A group of animals saw what they thought was an old beggar who was starving. “Poor beggar, he looks hungry and has no food. Let us give him some food”. First, the monkey plucked some fruit from the trees. He brought the fruits and laid them in front of the old beggar. Next, the otter collected some fish and brought it to the old beggar. The jackal was too lazy to find something that the beggar could eat, so he caught the first animal he could - a lizard, and placed it in front of the old beggar, along with some water. The rabbit did not know what to get for the old beggar. He was not good at catching animals or fish, nor could he scale trees and get fruit. He only knew how to gather grass, but humans didn’t eat grass. Having nothing to offer, he sat in a corner unhappy. Suddenly he remembered that humans like to eat meat. So he got up happily, prepared a fire and jumped into it, having decided to cook himself for the unknown old man. The fire did not burn the rabbit! The old man revealed himself to be Sakra, the ruler of Gods. “You have been very kind and selfless.” he said to the rabbit. Touched by the rabbit’s selflessness and virtue, he drew the likeness of the rabbit on the moon. “Henceforth, for all ages, all those who will look at the moon, will see your shape in it and remember your kindness.

(the story of Tsuki no Usagi, from here. lightly adjusted for formatting and such)

Most versions of this myth have roughly the same story, with the identities of the rabbit's companions varying. Interestingly, the legends of Moon Rabbits among some indigenous cultures of North and Central America often tell an extremely similar story as well. For example:

According to an Aztec legend, the god Quetzalcoatl, then living on Earth as a human, started on a journey and, after walking for a long time, became hungry and tired. With no food or water around, he thought he would die. Then a rabbit grazing nearby offered herself as food to save his life. Quetzalcoatl, moved by the rabbit's noble offering, elevated her to the Moon, then lowered her back to Earth and told her, "You may be just a rabbit, but everyone will remember you; there is your image in light, for all people and for all times."

(from Wikipedia)

The Jakata version of the tale relates that this event took place on Uposatha, which is the same night as Tsukimi. And while it’s hard to say for certain that this was 100% a deliberate reference, it’s definitely not farfetched to connect this legend to what Yukika does on Tsukimi in her debut event, and in general.

Deeming herself a thoroughly unnoteworthy person with nothing special to offer, she's extremely willing to throw herself into anything from minor inconveniences to life-threatening dangers, as long as it's to help someone else. Because, as noted by Tsukasa and Mifuyu in her MSS...

Tsukasa: I mean, she says she’s "dragged into it" by the effect of her wish... Tsukasa: But really, isn’t she taking on this lost child of her own volition? Mifuyu: She’s the type of girl who could never leave someone in need alone, no matter what. Mifuyu: So, from her perspective, it’s the same as being dragged into things. Tsukasa: …What a kind girl.

...So, honestly, I have no doubt that she would have no hesitation in doing the same thing as the original Moon Rabbit did in the legend, had she been in his/its situation.

Yet the thing is, as Mifuyu analyzes above and according to Yukika's own words about "fate" prior, Yukika never sees what she does as anything exceptional because, in her eyes, she's only doing what she's naturally supposed to do, and what she probably (incorrectly) assumes to be what anyone in her circumstances would also do. Thus, she never sees any merit in those actions and she refuses to take credit for them, trying to remain in the background because she firmly believes that's just where she belongs by nature. but more on her self-effacement next time.

Now, onto the secondary reason she's eager to throw herself into danger:

Her thrill-seeking instinct.

Though it's a well-known fact about Yukika that she is quite a reckless gambler, have you ever wondered...

Why is she like this in the first place?

Pt. 2. The Psychology of an Ennuyé Bunny

in which I accidentally turned the analysis post into a psych diagnosis of a mostly unspecified mental condition I swear as a distinctly not STEM person I went out of my way to do scientific research this time, please bear with it if you don't mind

Of course, there's a canon explanation for this in Yukika's MSS, where it is discussed.

Tsukasa: …medal games? Yukika: When I abandon myself in an all-or-nothing, do-or-die game, I can forget for a moment about my boring daily life. Yukika: So… going to the arcade after school to play medal games became a hobby of mine. Yukika: I even secretly bought a casino set, and now stare at it at home every night…  Mifuyu: …Your escape from reality, I see. Yukika: Exactly. Tsukasa: If that’s the worst you can do, then you really are a true lady.

(Seen in her MSS and personal memoria, this is the casino set she secretly keeps in her closet but only ever stares at, without actually doing anything with it.)

As Mifuyu puts it, Yukika finds in small acts of gambling an escape from her boring reality, and as she said in her wish, what she wanted was "the feeling of being alive".

This is, statedly, due to her boredom* more on this later from following a predetermined life path (hence her wish being an act of defiance against fate, one which she is shown to be deeply ashamed of), but also...

...you know how substance abuse, excessive gambling, and other forms of addictions often co-occur with mental health issues?

Yeah.

In many such cases, said addiction can be the consequence as well as the cause of these issues

because for people with symptoms of depression, anxiety, executive dysfunction (and any other kind of stress or motivation issues, etc.), activities like alcohol and gambling provide them with a temporary source of ease, escape, and/or brain chemicals of the likes of catecholamines* see explanation later, any of which they might lack otherwise.

Besides, executive dysfunction (which is seen in many different mental conditions) can also mean worse inhibition control in both thoughts and behavior, which makes people with executive function issues particularly susceptible to addiction to physiological-rewarding behaviors, in more ways than one.

So... while I'm not going to pin anything particularly specific on her (okay I lied I'll say here she clearly does show symptoms of general anxiety at least, even if that's solely induced by the effects of her wish and not something originally innate to her, but that's mildly beside the point here since I'm more talking about the cause of her wish instead of the consequence), I don't think it's that much of a stretch to speculate that Yukika might have a mental condition or two that contributed to her unbearable "boredom" with her routine everyday life at that time.

Many studies have shown that executive function problems (as seen in various different conditions including neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD and ASD, or mood disorders such as depression and bipolar) may be caused by imbalances and deficits in certain key neurotransmitters, such as:

dopamine, and

noradrenaline (a.k.a. norepinephrine)

...both of which are among the 3 catecholamine hormones & neurotransmitters, alongside adrenaline a.k.a epinephrine.

for reference, common ADHD meds like amphetamine (Adderall, etc.) and methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta, etc.) are often catecholamine analogs or serve the same function, that is to say, they're used to increase the amount of dopamine and noradrenaline released by the patient's adrenal glands.

You may have realized that this isn’t exactly the first mention of adrenaline in this post. Indeed, Yukika herself brought it up in the earlier excerpt from Otsukimi where she experiences a rush of adrenaline at death’s door.

Adrenaline and noradrenaline both fall under what's considered “stress hormones”. Along with dopamine, they're a big part of what activates the fight-or-flight response (or to put it in more medical terms, the "acute stress response") in a person, as the catecholamines increase heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, muscle strength, mental alertness and more.

Between the two, adrenaline is released by your body when you experience acute or chronic stress, in preparation to protect itself against real or perceived danger.

On the other hand, noradrenaline is continuously released into circulation at low levels, but the amount produced also increases in response to stress and fright.

(By the way, adrenaline is made from noradrenaline, and noradrenaline is made from dopamine.)

...Right, well, all this neuroscience stuff and I still haven't made my point yet. But basically, what I mean is that there's enough canon evidence for me to believe the odds are that Yukika Nanase is not precisely a neurotypical individual, no matter what her problem(s) actually is in exact.

This is evident in her...

Chronic boredom (sometimes synonymous with "ennui") prior to making her contract, indicative of a depleted reward system

Attraction toward gambling and other risky behaviors that act as stimuli and generate the release of catecholamines in her brain

Possession of a certain level of impulsivity, and engagement in reckless & risky activities

Novelty-seeking attitude and behavior

As previously discussed, those traits above are primarily observed in Yukika's wish, the circumstances and reasons behind her wish, and her thrill-chasing attitude and behavior, including her fondness for medal games.

Like, if you read what Biser Angelov says about the connection between ADHD and boredom (the article is about ADHD specifically, but you can apply this particular section's info to other conditions with cognitive dysfunction as well):

As you can see, the screenshotted paragraphs discuss similar ideas to what I've been talking about in this subsection, and I'm sure you can see from here how the situation described indeed applies to Yukika, especially with her state before her wish.

In addition, let's examine the psychology of a thrill seeker. Yukika fits the description of what we would call an "adrenaline junkie", being particularly into thrills and dangerous situations. But what exactly makes thrilling sensations so appealing to a so-called "adrenaline junkie"?

You may or may not have heard of the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS), originally published by psychologist Marvin Zuckerman in 1964 as a measure of sensation seeking that encompasses and evaluates an individual’s personality traits of thrill and adventure seeking, disinhibition, experience seeking, and susceptibility to boredom. A study about the brains of people with high scores on the SSS shows that under chaotic/dangerous/troublesome circumstances, these people tend to excrete less cortisol and more dopamine in response to the situations, compared to those who score low.

Now, cortisol is also a stress hormone, but it generally generates more feelings of what we actually consider "stress" compared to dopamine (and other catecholamines), which is instead more associated with feelings of pleasure and attention. So, during those highly chaotic experiences, those with a thrill-seeking constitution are more likely to feel good and elated instead of feeling burdened by stress, and the experiences thus become exciting to them rather than suffocating.

Considering the factors analyzed above, this might be the case for Yukika as well. If her brain suffered from a deficiency of catecholamines on mundane days but could produce much of those energizing neurotransmitters and hormones under stress and fright, it would explain why she enjoys high-risk/near-death experiences (and gambling) and finds being in chaotic troublesome situations to elevate a good portion of her boredom.

Moreover, the need for higher stimulation in children with executive dysfunction is backed by scientific research, according to this article on the link between ADHD and high-risk behavior.

Other studies (Zentall and Zentall 1983 and Douglas 1983) indicate that children with attention problems need a higher level of stimulation. According to the research, children with ADHD are under-aroused by dull or repetitive tasks and will seek out high-interest or high-risk activities to compensate. Further, (Farley 1981, 1985) children that are under-aroused will search for more intense activities and will be more open to different experiences. They will prefer complex tasks to simple tasks; will seek new and novel experiences that include the need for high energy and high risk. In short, Farley found that children with hyperactivity seek high stimulation. His recommendations for children with hyperactivity included modifications to education to include more interactive and creative experiences to provide the extra stimulation needed.

Many other scientific studies, such as this one conducted in 2021, have also proven that ADHD, a major symptom of which is executive dysfunction, is "uniquely linked to a pervasive pattern of engagement in risky behaviors", spanning across various domains, including gambling.

Moving on, Yukika also has the tendency to:

Ramble a lot (in her head and otherwise) while jumping from one topic to the next, sometimes in ways that would be considered... whimsical?

Accidentally think aloud, or vocalize things that she has no intention of letting the other party hear about, without realizing it until she sees their reaction

Despite her own opinion, Yukika actually stands out to me as quite capable, intelligent, and resilient in various areas (especially when you consider how honestly difficult her everyday life is like).

That said, the way she thinks and talks does sometimes give off the impression of some sort of scatter-mindedness, and when we spend time in her head we see that Yukika kind of zones in and zones out of conversations sometimes because there’s always so much going on in her brain (partly thanks to her full awareness of her own trouble-attracting nature, but I kinda get the feeling she was probably kinda like that even before becoming a Magical Girl), causing her to blurt out to people things she doesn’t mean to tell them about at times.

There are several instances of this in Otsukimi, including the “dealing with trouble is my fate” comment she didn’t mean to let that random girl hear about in the earlier excerpt, and the Great and Terrible Will of the Universe remark (as seen in a previous screenshot) wasn’t meant for the Tea Ceremony Club’s leader’s ears either.

As for her erratic thought patterns in general, you can probably see the way her internal thoughts are always constantly racing throughout the entire event. In fact, one can just look at the very start of Otsukimi for an example. And in a different scene, we see Yukika suddenly wondering to herself, while very sincerely navigating the problems in an attempt to solve them:

Yukika: (This time, I’ll find the cause of the trouble!) Yukika: (I’ll definitely reveal it...) Yukika: (Just what the Great and Terrible Will of the Universe (Tentative Name) actually is!) Yukika: ………… Yukika: (I doubt it'd happen, but just imagine...) Yukika: (The moment I step into the old school building, everyone yells "Happy Birthday!",) Yukika: (and this mob of well-wishers swallows me whole.) Yukika: (If nothing else, please let me be spared the embarrassment of such a turn of events...) Yukika: (Ah, and maybe even Akatsuki-senpai is in the act.) Yukika: ...Yeah, I think not. Yukika: I mean, it's already past my birthday for starters...

...yeah. Doesn't particularly read like the thought process of a neurotypical kid to me, but hey, who knows, maybe that's just me.

Moreover, she also shows signs of:

Anxiety and restlessness (the former of which was either caused by her wish or marginally increased by it)

Low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, and (debatably) inappropriate guilt

...etc, etc.

Overall, I believe that more than sufficient evidence is present in canon for one to see Yukika as having one or more mental conditions that come with executive dysfunction, and interpret her behavior and thinking through such an explanation.

Pt. 3. The Girl Who Wants to Live

On a note directly related to my conclusion in Pt. 2, I'm going to take a moment to compare and contrast Yukika to one of her better friends, Yuuna Kaharu.

Now, I personally believe that Yukika is quite a parallel to Yuuna in various ways, and Yuuna in The Flower that Blooms in a Hollow Heart definitely reads to me as having depression. I'd say the parallel is most obvious (to me) in like, Yukika's "I feel like I'm not really alive because all I'm doing is living the boring luxurious life to the future that my parents planned for me" (Yukika MSS, paraphrased) vs Yuuna's "I'm an empty shell blessed by the lucky life handed by me by my parents on a golden plate, only living because I'm not dead yet" (Hollow Heart, also paraphrased).

Yukika and Yuuna are also character foils, however, in that Yuuna has an arc centered on growth and she is able to advance forward because she finds herself a clear and defined goal in Mami, whom she sees as a role model that she aims to become like one day. On the other hand, Yukika establishes right at the very start of Otsukimi that she had never any desire to advance upward, whether in WoM or in school, because it was supposedly people like Tsukuyo who were suited for such better roles, and to Yukika, that's simply how it is.

There is another striking difference between them, and that is that Yuuna is unabashed in taking credit for when she's done something good, whereas Yukika times and times again brushes off any help she's offered with an "oh it's nothing special / it's already over with so let's not talk about it" kind of attitude, because that's really just how she sees it.

As examined earlier, this is largely due to her low self-worth and her perception of everything as her own natural responsibility. The unfortunate thing is that this self-effacing attitude, on top of her already faint presence and all, makes her even more unnoticed and her deeds completely unacknowledged.

And then, by further preventing most people from recognizing Yukika and her efforts, it reinforces her mindset about her lowly faint presence and further contributes to her lack of self-worth, which in turn makes her value her life even less, altogether creating a vicious feedback loop.

Yukika speaks of having friends in class, but with the way she talks about it, they don't seem all that close to her and they're definitely not people she could fully open her heart to.

see the fact that she's very concerned that her classmates and school friends mustn't hear about her visits to the arcades; she is never really seen thinking much about them on-screen, going to them for help, or worrying about any particularly important school friend when the whole school is in trouble, etc.

In canon, there are like only three named characters who consistently notice Yukika and actively try to pay attention to and care about her (Rion & Hotori, later Yuuna), and none of them even go to the same school as her.

And because Yukika has this somewhat fatalistic mindset, no defined aims or goals in life, and effectively actively discourages people from noticing her, she is likely to just... stay this way, unlike Yuuna.

Like, Yukika is just a weirdly really static character in her default state. As someone who's tried to work with her as a major character in a story, it's honestly kind of crazy how I always absolutely have to throw her into some odd situation where another character actively tells Yukika that she (and she specifically) should try to change or grow, as long as I want to make her undergo any dynamic character development. Otherwise, her usual mentality typically completely blocks any possible self-development of the introspective kind from happening.

To me, there's something rather... subtly tragic(?) about this, but...

Yeah, so, I for one do believe that Yukika still has the quality for future growth. Not sure if it could happen in the game or not, but like, I do think that can still happen to her as a person. And more than that...

In spite of everything I've been saying up till this point, Yukika's core desire is "to live".

It's in the wish she made. It's why she chases excitement the way she does. Indeed, Yukika is relatively easily self-sacrificial as a result of the "low self-worth + too kind" combo and she seeks to experience the brink of death for a wholly different reason, but truly, her overall main subconscious drive is to feel alive.

And the most paradoxical thing here is the fact that her longing to experience a brush with death stems from her desire to live, rather than a desire to die; not only thanks to the catecholamines rush, but also because it is through the fact that the chance of death exists for one that their life is so meaningful. (or so goes my personal opinion, in any case)

After all...

Yukika: Wow... Student Council President: What do you think about it? Yukika: Yes... Yukika: I'm so glad to have been born on a planet with a moon! Student Council President: You… you're that moved by it? Yukika: Yes. Yukika: I thought that I wouldn't live to see it again. Student Council President: Okay…?? [...] Yukika: The same old face of the moon as always. The same boring world as always... Yukika: Tonight, they both shine brilliantly to me.

...

Even though her everyday life is tedious, her self-esteem dreadful, her mindset somewhat fatalistic, and something's up with her brain chemicals too...

Deep down in her heart, the thing Yukika Nanase truly wants is to be alive.

And I don't know about you but... man. I find that very moving, you know?

And...

That's all, folks!

This concludes my essay. Basically, my big main point is that Yukika is certainly one of the most characters of all time and should be cherished at all costs.

Thanks for reading this (very long) propaganda analysis post to the end, and I’ll see you next time o7

[toast-of-eden]

I really, really like Kim Dokja as a woman in fics.

A cursory dive into men and women in ORV.

PREFACE: I love this IP as it is, I'm not a gender studies expert, and I'm a cis woman. So this is just me musing on this, and hopefully encouraging other writers and fanfic aficionados to fuck with gender roles and have fun with it.

I'm also not 100% sold that any of this was intended by the author or that other readers will like or agree with this take — a lot of it is how I, personally, have chosen to frame the text for myself.

I’ll also say that genderbending KDJ to make the Joongdok ship into a cishet one can be viewed as problematic, but I’m not really talking about the ship. More about the characterization.

I’m basically about to give you 2,000 words of this. That’s a lot. But here’s my Tl;dr

[Spoilers ahead. Also CW for some talk about SA in the webnovel.]

Just in case you don't feel like reading a 2,000 word character analysis and musing on men, women, and the treatment of gender in ORV.

Because ORV is largely told from Kim Dokja’s perspective, his view of gender and their roles is incredibly impactful on the narrative and the story we’re told.

That trickles down into how we’re shown characters and, in turn, how he values certain traits attributed to his concept of gender roles.

In the real world, pre-scenarios, he’s only seen the worst of men. From his father to his bullies to assholes at work — men just suck.

Enter Yoo Joonghyuk, the fictional hero of Ways of Survival.

YJH’s masculinity is, to Kim Dokja, what every man should really strive to be. Yes, he’s very strong and very handsome — but he's also deeply emotionally complex. He also cooks, cleans, and raised a baby all by himself, SO.

Add women to the mix: KDJ is absolutely surrounded by strong and resilient women right from the jump. We saw what Han Sooyoung and Kim Sookyoung did with the little fuzzy knowledge they had in the early scenarios. I can’t even imagine what they could have done with KDJ’s reference material.

All that combined makes female Kim Dokja just... honestly a powerhouse of a character to explore in my opinion.

Men in the "real world."

Growing up, Kim Dokja's male role models were... lackluster. At best. And Kim Dokja didn't fit any of the forms of masculinity presented to him.

His father, the first male role model in most children’s lives, was an abusive piece of shit.

At school, he was bullied by other boys.

Moreover, he wasn't able to thrive in the army, nor could he thrive in a white collar environment (see: Han Myungoh).

And why the fuck would he want to be like that guy?

So Kim Dokja's male role model was found in a web novel. Yoo Joonghyuk, a fictional character, captured his attention.

Yoo Joonghyuk is what Kim Dokja believes an ideal man should be from his beginning all the way to his end — round zero to 1863 and beyond. He wants to be like that guy.

Yoo Joonghyuk = complex, strong, deeply emotional but resilient

Men in the real world = churlish, brutish, villainous, or otherwise just meatheads.

That leads me to men in the early scenarios.

From the earliest scenarios, Kim Dokja is surrounded by strong women. Right from the jump.

Yoo Sangah adjusts to the new world almost immediately. Jung Heewon's sense of justice makes her the strongest member of the group. Han Sooyoung is a BAMF. Lee Seolhwa is the smartest person in the room and the only woman who's ever caught and held Yoo Joonghyuk's attention. Hell, Shin Yoosoung is Kim Dokja's powerhouse ward and loyal follower — to the point that she reincarnates herself without her memories to serve his purpose.

Aside from Lee Hyunsung, whom Kim Dokja often describes as a being a real stand up guy, the only man he spends real significant amount of time with is Yoo Joonghyuk.

We have to remember that this story is from Kim Dokja's perspective, so it's entirely possible that there were other men around, but that he just didn't see it that way.

At any rate, the worst, least complex characters are often the men of the story. This is especially true of the men in the early scenarios, which show Kim Dokja’s POV a little more straightforwardly, so I’m going to use them as primary examples.

Take, for example, Chapter 17: Ep. 4 - Line of Hypocrisy, II. Here, Kim Dokja has come upon a disheveled Jung Heewon who's dying in the street with her "jacket...half removed and a bit of her skirt...torn," left for dead lying in the streets, slowly dying from poison gas. He assumes she's been sexually assaulted.

He quickly figures out who the attackers are, because they try to attack him too. When Uriel starts a bounty scenario to take the villains down, Kim Dokja says this:

And again:

Men in the real world = churlish, brutish, villainous, or otherwise just meatheads.

Let's get even more literal here.

Take, for example, Song Minwoo, a bully from the pre-scenario world who shows up during the scenarios as a literal monster.

This is a villanous male in Kim Dokja's life who, coincidentally, has some of the same knowledge as him, having read some of the chapters of Ways of Survival. And he learned nothing, except how to bully better.

Yo FUCK that guy.

Let's go for another example.

Quality Assurance Dept. Deputy Yoon Sangho and the Mino Soft coin farm.

Coincidentally (completely on purpose) in the same chapter we meet Song Minwoo, we're introduced to another male character who was actually not antagonistic IRL.

Guess what? He's antagonistic now.

As a quick recap, when Kim Dokja gets there, he finds that the coin farm has captured Han Sooyoung. They plan to "make content" with her, and Yoon Sangho offers Kim Dokja a first go at her if he gives them more resources.

Read panels left to right, top to bottom.

Ew.

So much ew.

ANYWAY. Will reiterate the pattern here:

Men in the real world = churlish, brutish, villainous, or otherwise just meatheads.

I don't think it's a stretch for sexual violence to be considered a man's weapon. I also don't think it's a stretch to imagine that Kim Dokja, in spite of knowing this, won't attribute it to gender verbally — he'll just show us how he sees it. That's... kind of his thing.

Let's touch on Yoo Joonghyuk as Kim Dokja's Masthead for just a second before getting into the women of ORV.

I won't get into the later scenarios too much, because a majority of the new male characters are transient aside from Yoo Joonghyuk and his various regressions. And then we get POVs from (ahem) other characters.

So I'll get into YJH's regressions.

I've really hammered in how much men suck in ORV, but not really much about why Yoo Joonghyuk isn't like that. He's Kim Dokja's companion. His foil. (The love of his life.)

This is where things get complicated, because this guy is literally Kim Dokja's role model and, in a lot of ways, the center of his universe.

But that's why it's also most interesting part.

Yoo Joonghyuk remains the masthead. And it's not for his physical strength.

In spite of all of his changes in personality, he's still the same person underneath, who's fundamentally lonely and depressed as all hell. He's seen lifetimes of loss and goes on to transcend humanity, time, and space to become a fucking god. Even so, he perseveres through it to find the very end.

That emotional resilience and strength is what Kim Dokja admires in his only male role model.

Now let’s turn our eyes to the women in ORV.

Oh, this is so juicy.

The characters that show the most development in both the short and long time, with the exception of Lee Hyunsung, are women. I'm just gonna name some of the women in the early scenarios. There are so, so, so many other examples, from constellations to YJH's mentor, etc.

In order of appearance (I think):

Yoo Sangah

The most adaptable character of the earlier chapters

She starts chapter 1 as a high-achieving, kind of prim lady. She very quickly makes a deal with her constellation to become a badass who wears a catsuit, becoming stronger and stronger, kicking asses and taking names. She's also still good with kids.

Once it's established she's not a love interest, though, her prominence largely fades from the story. Side-eye.

Jung Heewon

Literally the best person KDJ knows. The moral high-ground and trauma-buster.

As previously mentioned, her first appearance in ORV is as an SA victim. Within about 10 minutes of reading time, she shows that she's able to put aside her trauma and discomfort to get shit done (a very traditionally masculine trait, by the way). She serves as the absolute good of KimCom and is often portrayed at the angel on his shoulder. She's also one of the strongest characters in the series by the end.

Shin Yoosoung

The little girl who believed she was evil, and eventually became it until she defied her fate.

A little girl who will one day become a villain. It can't be understated how complex this girl's trauma is from the moment we meet her, especially knowing that her fate is to be betrayed and trapped in slavery for all of eternity.

Kim Sookyung

The Wanderer King, Kim Dokjas mother, a false villain.

Fate did Kim Sookie dirty.

First of all, she introduced Kim Dokja to reading and the joy of reading things again and again, which eventually led him to Ways of Survival.

When Kim Dokja killed his abusive father as a young child, she framed herself so that she'd take the fall for the incident.

She wrote a book to collect royalties and help him live an independent life while she was in prison. To protect him from the truth, she let herself be the villain to her own son.

He held onto that — he was bullied in school because of her, and he didn't know the truth. So he resented her.

And when the truth came out, and Kim Dokja realized she wasn't the villain, she was eaten by the Fourth Wall. Holy shit. Of course, she was spit right back out when Dokja begged for it, but holy shit.

Long story short: not only was she not a villain, she maintained an unconditional familial and selfless love for Kim Dokja and protected him from the worst trauma imaginable by taking on the role of a villain.

Kim Dokja as a woman.

In my opinion. Just mine. Based on all the above.

Kim Dokja as a woman in explorative fics is fascinating to me.

As someone who's never resonated with traditionally masculinity, admired the story for what it was, defied it in the way he did, and admired the protagonist in a deeply emotional way, I just... just...

AH.

Ruthless, cunning, manipulative, largely (largely) asexual (we don't have to get into that here), and probably (maybe?) aromantic (definitely aromantic) — these are all traits that subvert traditional femininity too.

And I have to say — the family of cishet wiil-they-won't-they tropes could also be greatly subverted here, because this isn't a romance. It's a story about companionship.

I want emotional intimacy without the physical intimacy. I want the physical intimacy without the emotional intimacy. I want platonic love explored without emotional or physical intimacy at all.

But most importantly, I want it from a female character. Because I think that would be fucking cool. I’m tired of “woman with bow and arrow hates dresses and isn’t like other girls,” and I’m also tired of, “woman likes dresses but goes so super traditionally feminine that she eschews any masculine traits at all.” There’s a flavor of empowerment in both. But I want to see a next evolution, pleeeease.

[fadetouchedsilk]

im not sure how to parse this exactly (probably since the thought hasn't marianted fully yet) but i wonder if the tone of veilguard's writing is less about appealing to a younger audience and more of a response to falling media literacy rates

kind of thinking out loud here but like.

i'm recalling the girl on booktok who proudly annouced that she only reads the spoken dialogue in her books, not the narration & the people in her comments laughing and agreeing (no wonder they can 'read' so many books per year, they're only reading 25% of the words). or 'starting to think some of you don't like media or characters, just fanfiction tropes.' you can hand someone like that a complex narrative, but what are they going to do with it aside from completely & happily misunderstand things that are very obvious context clues & themes? we can joke about the fandom mischaracterizing our blorbos & trying to be cool about just scrolling past but idk, personally i feel like i've seen an uptick in completely off-base takes in the last few years (probably some fandom bias there but this isn't my first time playing dragon age or narrative driven games in general so i don't think i'm entirely wrong)

it doesn't help that this group also loves to be loud online & the bioware devs (to their ongoing detriment) seem to be unable to distance themselves from fandom. we saw larian's response to this type of outcry, i wonder if bioware is just trying to get ahead of the curve. they make some questionable decisions, but they aren't stupid & i don't think people like that are especially hard to market to from their standpoint.

i don't think that older titles like dao are perfect or anything but i sincerely doubt that large swaths of current audiences would 'get' it. like, there IS a lot of narrative hand-holding in this game & i'm not talking about things like the map markers or accessibility features. 'do the companion quests!' you get told multiple times, more or less outright, & i'm still seeing people confused about getting 'bad' endings despite ignoring this incredibly obvious series of hints. there's a fair amount of information to be found in the codexes, but are people going to read them? we don't know, so we're going to repeat the relevant item name several times over on the off chance you might end up remembering it. like yes this is some people's first foray into rpgs, but you would think that progressing the story would be intuitive (especially given the structure & the journal itself).

the 'the curtains were blue!!!' crowd is unfortunately a very large audience these days, ea is a corporation who wants to make money & they do need that if they intend to keep making games. it might not even be intentional, it truly could just be the result of following market trends.

don't take this as me making excuses for bioware or anything, but there's definitely some sort of reason we ended up the way we did. i see the scaffolding of something interesting here with a lot of potential to be better than what the final product was, a lot of hooks we could have spent more time chasing & that leads to me wondering just what the hell happened.

[justforbooks]

The novelist AS Byatt, who has died aged 87, was throughout her existence a victim of Samuel Johnson’s “hunger of the imagination that preys incessantly upon life, and must be always appeased by some employment”. In the words of one of her own heroines, whatever in the moral abstract she thought about the relative importance of writing and life, nothing mattered to her more than writing.

Her first novel, Shadow of a Sun, appeared in 1964, the year after A Summer Bird-Cage, the first novel by her sister, Margaret Drabble, was published, thus establishing the notorious and possibly exaggerated rivalry between them. It was followed by studies of Iris Murdoch, of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and by another novel, The Game (1967). In 1972, she endured the death of her 11-year-old son, Charles, knocked down and killed by a car. The experience marked her deeply. She continued to teach and she sat on committees, but for a decade the creative springs were dried up in her. There is no compensation, she said to interviewers who asked about such compensations, for the death of a child – except that if you survive, you’re a bit tougher. But it taught her about the machinery of grief.

Her creative career started again in 1978 with The Virgin in the Garden, the first of what would prove to be a remarkable tetralogy of novels, and a long, complex narrative of a small community and its school in Yorkshire celebrating in the coronation year of 1953, the start of a new Elizabethan age.

To some extent the creation of fiction had become necessary to her as a complement (or antidote) to her teaching work at University College London, as a kind of private gesture against an excessively theoretical academic environment. It was evident, she wrote acerbically, that what writers there were in the 1970s were not coming out of English departments: it therefore seemed better not to go into one.

The Virgin in the Garden was well received, and was followed by Still Life (1985), which included the chance death by electrocution of one of the main characters from the first novel, and an emphasis on the accidental element in human life and death.

Her reputation (until then, that of a literary novelist with slightly intimidating intellectual qualifications) was transformed by the publication in 1990 of Possession, which was to win the Booker prize and become a slightly surprising bestseller worldwide, and, in 2002, a film.

A rich and capacious combination of 19th-century letters, poems, fables and journals, all contained within the apparently orthodox setting of a modern literary detective novel, it was the book in which her exhilarating genius at last came into its own. Publishers in Britain and America, who had contemplated in appalled respect the prospect of selling a novel containing large swatches of pastiche Victorian poetry, were triumphantly refuted when sales of the book – even before the award of the Booker and Aer Lingus prizes – soared. It had seemed until then, to quote one review, that her fiction was to be characterised by a luminous bookishness that stayed artistically inert.

She was a self-confessed intellectual, and this earned her a bad press in a country in which the word was a term of denigration. Possession elbowed this image aside by adding vitality and comedy to literariness, and excitement to erudition. The wells that had been sealed up for so long were now flowing with unexpected abundance.

The book brought together elements in her background that had lain fallow until then, and provided pointers to the way her writing was to develop in the future. In it, in an extraordinarily rich mixture, are to be found her fascination with Victorian fiction and poetry, her childhood absorption in myths and fairytales, her interest in the sheer mechanics of storytelling; in it also are to be found her insatiable thirst for knowledge, her love for subtlety and complication in her plots, an increased assurance in her use of humour, her satiric view of the more exploitative aspects of the academic industry, and her growing mistrust of literary biography as a genre – described by her as “a bastard form, a dilettante pursuit”. This mistrust was something she was to explore more extensively in a later novel, The Biographer’s Tale (2000).

The publication of Possession released an unbelievable flow of creativity. Books came bursting out, notably Angels and Insects (1992), which was filmed in 1995, and, later, The Children’s Book (2009), shortlisted for the Booker. “I think I wrote them in a kind of joie de vivre about being a full-time writer instead of walking through the streets thinking about students and lectures,” she said.

Another aspect of her talent that was unexpectedly unleashed during the 1980s and 90s was the short story. It is rarely the case that writers who are at ease in what has been described as the big baggy novel are also adept in this very different and extremely demanding form.

Byatt was able to cope with equal ease with the 2,000-word story and the 20,000-word novella. Her first collection, Sugar and Other Stories (1987), dealt with bereavement, ghosts, memories of her childhood, her father; in it, for the first time, she wrote in The July Ghost, a story based on her own grief at the loss of her son. It was a kind of clearing of the decks. Later stories carried on from where Sugar left off, building on the concentrated, painterly and tactile prose she had developed there.

One of the most typical was A Lamia in the Cévennes, written for the British Council’s New Writing series. In it, a painter who has abandoned London for the Cévennes mountains of southern France finds a lamia – a mythological creature, closely modelled on Keats’s lamia (a “palpitating snake… Her head was serpent, but, ah, bitter-sweet! She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete.”) – in his swimming pool. This pool bears a striking resemblance to the one Byatt had built for her house in the village of Avèze in that region with the prize money from Possession; the hero is trying to capture the different blues and different surface planes that his pool confronts him with:

He muttered to himself. Why bother. Why does this matter so much. What difference does it make to anything if I solve this blue and just start again. I could just sit down and drink wine. I could go and be useful in a cholera-camp in Colombia or Ethiopia. Why bother to render the transparency in solid paint or air on a bit of board? I could just stop.

He could not.

He tried oil paint and acrylic, water-colour and gouache, large designs and small plain planes and complicated juxtaposed planes. He tried trapping light on thick impasto and tried also glazing his surfaces flat and glossy, like seventeenth-century Dutch or Spanish paintings of silk. One of these almost pleased him, done at night, with the lights under the water and the dark round the stone, on an oval bit of board. But then he thought it was sentimental. He tried veils of watery blues on white in water-colour, he tried Matisse-like patches of blue and petunia – pool blue, sky blue, petunia – he tried Bonnard’s mixtures of pastel and gouache.

His brain hurt, and his eyes stared, and he felt whipped by winds and dried by suns.

He was happy, in one of the ways human beings have found in which to be happy.

It was her way too. Her love of the fine arts was deep and scholarly, and is apparent throughout her work, most notably in her Portraits in Fiction (2001) and Peacock and Vine (2016), on William Morris and the designer Mariano Fortuny.

Born in Sheffield, Antonia was the eldest child of John Drabble, KC and judge, and his wife, Marie (nee Bloor). She described her childhood as having been greatly blessed by very bad asthma, and when later in life she came to read Proust, she recognised certain things in him – “a contemplative, acute vision, induced by keeping very still in order to be able to breathe, a sense of living most fiercely in the mind, or in books, which were a livelier life”. If she was fortunate in her asthma, she was also fortunate in belonging to a family that took books and reading for granted.

She remembered three colouring books that she was given at the age of four, each with a page of poetry beside a picture. The poems were The Pied Piper and Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott and Morte d’Arthur, and she quickly had all three by heart, a suitable foundation for a writer who was to be so influenced by the Victorian age. Later, she lost herself in a tangled maze of myths, folktales, legends and fairy stories, and found in them another world beyond the (to her) limited and boring world of childhood. Most importantly, she quickly recognised and understood the vital importance of storytelling.

Her early immersion in myth found its outlet much later in her career, when she was invited to contribute to Canongate’s series of retellings of ancient myth. Her own novels, as she pointed out, had threads of myth in their narrative that were an essential part of their form.

It was inevitable that, in choosing which to retell, she should turn back to one of the most influential books her mother had given her in her childhood, Wilhelm Wägner’s Asgard and the Gods, and rewrite Ragnarök (2011), “the myth to end all myths, the myth in which the gods themselves were all destroyed”. Written in the persona of a child living in a time of world war, when human beings seemed bent on destroying the world they had been born into, it provided ample ammunition for metaphor and irony, as well as some beautiful writing: “Wind Time, Wolf Time, before the World breaks up. That was the time they were in.”

The second world war very soon removed her father temporarily from her daily life. However, her mother, who had been an early graduate of the English school at Cambridge but had been forced to give up teaching when she married, took it for granted that children needed to be supplied constantly with poetry and with books.

Life in the Drabble household was something of an intellectual hothouse with a highly competitive element: all four children were expected to excel. Antonia and Margaret’s younger siblings, Helen and Richard, became, respectively, an art historian and a KC.

Antonia was educated at Sheffield high school and the Mount school, York, and later at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she took first-class honours in English, at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, and at Somerville College, Oxford.

In 1959, she married Ian Byatt and had a son (who died in the accident) and a daughter; in 1969, they divorced, and she married Peter Duffy, with whom she had two daughters. She taught in the extramural department of London University (1962-71) and the Central School of Art and Design (1965-69), and in 1972 became full-time lecturer in English and American Literature at UCL (senior lecturer in 1981). She left the college in 1983 to write full time.

She was conscientious in taking on administrative chores that many writers baulked at, and gave service on many committees, notably the Kingman committee on English language (1987-88). But the appointment that perhaps fed most directly into her interests was on the board of the British Council and its literature advisory panel.

Throughout her career she was, like many writers, a tireless traveller; unlike some, she was generous in acknowledging the benefits she gained from her travels, which she undertook not just to sell herself, but to learn from other writers and readers. She began writing short stories, she said, because of lectures she was given about the superiority of the short form by writers in China and Russia. But her interests were essentially and intrinsically European, and her intimate knowledge of European literature, past and present, also fed into her work.

She could read easily in many languages, which made her a natural choice as a judge of the first European literature prize, when it was established in 1990; it was while reading for it that she discovered the work of writers such as Roberto Calasso, Javier Marías and Bernardo Atxaga, for whom she formed a lasting enthusiasm, and did much to enhance their reputation in Britain.

She was also remarkable for her generosity to younger writers. At a stage of her career when she might well have been excused for finding her own professional commitments a sufficiently heavy workload, she read new work voraciously. Her floorboards cracked under the load of novels and poems sent to her by writers and publishers who valued her approval far above that of reviewers. She could not possibly have read all of them, but she read an astonishing number.

She was appointed CBE in 1990 and made a dame in 1999. Devoted to her family, she was much absorbed in the future of her children and grandchildren. But beyond every other attribute, she had a genius for friendship. In this relationship, all her qualities came to the fore: her imagination, her creativity, her ability to communicate, her steadfastness, and above all her generosity.

She is survived by her husband and daughters, Antonia, Miranda and Isabel.

🔔Antonia Susan Byatt, writer, born 24 August 1936; died 16 November 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[wutheringmights]

I finished The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin last night, then spent all of today digesting it. I really needed time to figure out how I feel about this book, nonetheless the Broken Earth trilogy.

As a whole, I like this series. My biggest praise will always go to the relationship between Essun and Nassun. That Essun, a woman defined by her motherhood, was a terrible mother to her daughter, and that her daughter in turn found solace in her mother's old abuser, is fascinating. It's insane. I would read a hundred books about them.

But even though the series is about Essun and Nassun, it's so just... not. I've complained before that the intricate world building is as fascinating as it is distracting. The narrative is always scrambling to explain something new, so much so that the characters aren't allowed to interact as much as they should.

I'm not even just talking about Essun and Nassun. Tonkee was wasted. She was first introduced in the very first book, and she was very cool and interesting. I kept waiting for the reason why Tonkee is in this story beyond a few lines of needed exposition. But after the first book, she stops being important.

Outside of characters like Schaffa, Hoa, and Alabaster, I didn't really care or know any of the other characters in the large cast. In theory, I'm supposed to have feelings about Lerna and Ykka, but... no. They served a function. And that's it.

The plot of this series just baffles me. Why did we spend so much time with Castrima? Why did Nassun have to keep finding excuses to not go after Essun? Why was this three books? This could have been duology! If I really wanted to, I could put on a tin foil hat and claim that someone outside Jemisin forced her to turn a two-book plot into a trilogy. I'm just utterly baffled that someone would let this story meander like this.

All my griping aside, I don't hate this series. I like it a lot, but on a intellectual scale.

This book is filled with fascinating observations about our society. I bet someone who knows more about the neo slave narratives of the 20th century would be able to write a killer paper on how this series ruminates on the legacy of authors like Butler and Morrison.

I like all of the complicated characters, how they defy dichotomies like good vs evil. Nassun is one hell of a character. I want to study her. I want more of her.

I don't want to pit two bad bitches against each other, but I can't help but compare this series to R.F. Kuang's The Poppy War trilogy. They have little in common, but they are both dark fantasy series I read this year, so bear with me.

The more distance I put between myself and Kuang, the more I struggle with how simplistic her stories can be at times. She doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation or for the reader to introduce their own feelings to the mix. If you scrape off the overt violence, it surprisingly simple. It's a series that doesn't require a whole lot of input from the reader. But, the plot has fantastic momentum. Each book by itself is a joy to read.

Jemisin embraces uncertainty far more. There are no clear answers. The reader meets these characters and are forced to come to their own conclusions about them. Everything from its world to its themes gets more complex the more thought you put into them. The book demands you think about it. But, each book is kind of a slog. I always had to force myself to pick it up and read the next part. I never regretted doing so, but I also never really fell in love with the series the way I wanted to.

This is a case where I can say that a series is objectively excellent, but not really for me. I'm glad I read them all and I'm going to continue diving deeper into Jemisin's books. But I am so very glad to get the Broken Earth trilogy off my plate.

I also want to talk about the acknowledgements at the end of the book. In it, Jemisin explains that she wrote the trilogy while caring for her sick mother, who died before the last book was finished. I wish I got this context sooner. As Jemisin says, the trilogy is inadvertently an exploration of motherhood and her grappling with her mother's death.

There were a few scenes in this book in particular where I felt her experiences and thoughts echoed my own. I'm not a Hugo Award winning author, but I did notice that after my mother died a few years ago, everything I wrote was about her, even when it wasn't.

"Even that part where--?" Yes, even that. Even now I'm still writing about her and my relationship with her, and in many ways that are and aren't painfully obvious.

It was just an interesting thing to read when her death anniversary just past.

(Do me a favor and don't give me any more condolences. I really don't need them, and I would like to not regret adding that little tidbit about myself to this reflection.)

[mittensmorgul]

In your opinion, which writer(s) wrote the best Dean episodes, Cas episodes and Sam episodes? Please don't feel troubled to answer it :)

ooh hello! This feels like a fun thought exercise. Thanks for asking!

I think I'm just gonna ramble about it rather than try to make lists or anything, because I personally feel like different seasons/eras of the show had writers that really stood out and gave me all the feelings :'D

Under a cut because it is long-ish, but also because these are my personal opinions delivered ramble-style and not like some sort of research paper even remotely attempting to be objective. :'D

I think I should start with Sam, since his character feels more consistently written to me across the seasons, but I have to start by pointing at Kripke himself. He wrote our intro to Sam, after all. Edlund gave us the best "soulless Sam" Episode with 6.09. And Meredith Glynn gave us some fantastic insight into Sam even in episodes that were equally about Dean-- like 12.11 and 15.17. Credit also to Yockey for 13.12 and 13.19 especially. He actually gave Sam emotional depth!

Sam as a character is kind of hard to judge according to the metric my brain set out for this. Like, I personally processed this question as "which writers revealed these characters' inner lives to us the most." And Sam as a character just... his "inner life" even from s1 was always a conflict with the Supernatural itself, you know? Far more than even the whole MoC arc for Dean was. Let me try to explain...

S1 Sam's biggest conflicts were find Dad so we can get revenge and I can go back to Normal Life and forget I was ever touched by the Supernatural at all. The demon blood/special children arcs were pretty much the same. His internal conflict was largely "am I evil, or even human?" And his personal goals were sort of the antithesis of the entire concept of the show we were all watching, you know? I didn't tune in to see Law Boy Sam and his Normal Life. I tuned in for Supernatural. lol

So from the outset, to keep Sam relevant to the narrative, the supernatural was essentially foisted upon him. Special Children. Demon Blood. "If you can't save him, you have to kill him." Sam was the object of the plot, and the vast majority of his character actions and choices and goals and desires were shaped by that.

Later seasons gave him a bit of a break from being the Plot Objective, to a certain extent, but every time he began to be even a little bit interesting in his own right (end of s12 taking charge of the hunters and then the AU hunters in s14, or his growing bond with Rowena and witchcraft in s13 and s14, for example), the plotlines never seemed to go anywhere truly deep for more than a random episode here and there. And that's just... disappointing. I mean, when the finale can only muster a blurry-wife-lonely-life montage for him, it only compounds the feeling that there just wasn't a lot to Sam as a character overall, that maybe deep down he just had no real internal hopes and dreams outside that basic generic notion of what life should be like for normal people, and that's pretty damn depressing.

Onward to Dean, because honestly he's the character we have with the biggest window into his emotional state throughout the series. Right from the start, Plot Happens To Sam, and we largely experience it through the filter of Dean's reactions to that.

In early seasons I credit John Shiban (starting with 1.06 Skin), Sera Gamble, and Raelle Tucker (starting with 1.03 Dead In The Water) with establishing the as yet untold depths of Dean Winchester. Sera obviously stuck with the show for a good long time and gave us some of my personal favorite episodes during that time, most of which I love for the Intense Dean Feelings (1.12 Faith, 3.12 Jus In Bello, 6.11 Appointment in Samarra). I'm not terribly fond of her showrunning, but heck she can write an episode.

But those folks took a character that potentially could've just been the two-dimensional dudebro monster hunter whose entire personality was classic rock and his car and made him into one of the most complex and nuanced characters in media. So credit to them for establishing Dean's hidden depths that future writers would build submarines (and one Ma'lak box that thankfully never made it to the bottom of the ocean) to explore.

In later seasons, my Dean champion was clearly Meredith Glynn. If you want to cry about Dean, just marathon her episodes. Well, her and Bobo enjoyed tag teaming on him, honestly, and that just made it so much better/worse. :'D

But I think overall Dean as a character was well established early on, and most writers over the course of the series were easily able to tap into that well without getting stuck on the surface level nonsense it was all too easy to float across when they chose to. More often than not, though, writers didn't get tripped up on the dudebro and chose to reveal the mess of Dean underneath. I mean, even Bucklemming occasionally nailed it (10.16 and 11.18 primarily for them imo)

Which brings us to Cas... the angel who fell in love with humanity, rejected Heaven and God, and chose his own family. I don't think any writer can touch Ben Edlund for ultimate Cas feelings. My biggest regret is that Edlund left the show before he could write a truly human Cas episode. If I could redo ANYTHING about the entire series (setting aside the finale, because that doesn't count), it would be to let Edlund write 9.03 and 9.09 instead of bucklemming... >.>

Why? Because yes, he showed us aspects of Cas as a phenomenal cosmic power, but he never forgot that none of it would've mattered without the crack in Cas, the little bit of him that set him apart from every other angel. And it wasn't his otherness or his power or his grace. It was his humanity. His fear of it at first (i mean his first episode with Cas in it was 4.16 ffs), and his evolution into gradual acceptance and then understanding and love. Not just curiosity of humanity as a concept, but his own desire for it in contrast to every other angel who rejected it for themselves and considered it "lesser."

Even at his most angelic, Edlund wrote Cas at his most human.

[incorrect-quotes-from-she-ra]

Morning! I hope you don't mind if i give you yet another She-Ra thought I'm too damn lazy to post on my own. Also, it's long again. I WILL find that character limit some day.

So, we know the way Shadow Weaver raised Adora resulted, among other issues, in her being selfless to the point of self-sacrifice, which came to a climax in the Heart's failsafe business.

And it's been suggested that this was basically intentional on Shadow Weaver's part. Basically, selflessness is a very beneficial quality for others to have. My theory is that <b>her plan for Adora had always been specifically for her to someday use the failsafe and release all magic</b>.

(i will admit i am also curious how formatting works in this app. thank you for your help with these experiments)

So, evidence. Let's start with her name. I know this is a remake and they were stuck with the existing names, but there's a scene where Scorpia complains about it ("yeah i GET it, everyone LOVES you"), which constitutes the writers acknowledging its meaning, which makes me think it's fair game to analyze.

First, I'm obviously assuming Shadow Weaver choose it, as part of her ongoing parenting plan. It's also possible it was her original First One-given name, we don't know. Neither quite works because either she or Light Hope should have had some issues knowing what the name was and they clearly knew automatically. Really the entire series is weird in that everyone communicates with everyone else way too easily, and i will definitely rant about that someday.

For now let it stand that Shadow Weaver is the parent figure, it makes the most sense for her to pick the name, both in-universe and narratively, so i shall assume so by default. I have two things to say about that choice.

First, as we all have noticed, most of the princesses have names ending in -a. All of them, if you count "Glimma". It's never said to be intentional, but it would make sense. And then IF such a tradition exists among Etheria's royalty, it's not unreasonable for Shadow Weaver, a notable and moderately respected member of the land of knowledge, to know about it.

And then if she knew, of course she would take it into consideration when looking for names. Admittedly it's a little weird with the anti-Princess propaganda that the Horde has, but she doesn't really need to explain or justify this. Hordak has a very [i]laissez-faire[/i] attitude, and everyone else she clearly doesn't care about.

And if she knew or suspected that the princesses' powers were related to the Heart of Etheria, which i will argue for later, then giving her a princessy name is also adequately ironic.

The second name bit is that Scorpia clearly knows some Latin, but not enough. True, <em>adorare</em> means to worship and/or to love, but Latin verbs are more complex than that. _Adora_ specifically is 3rd person singular present indicative active. The translation would be "she loves".

Names aside, i want to talk about how they (we) learned about the Heart of Etheria. Castaspella doesn't know what to do, Shadow Weaver suggests they take a road trip to research, which she's reticent about but concedes is probably the best use of her time, and they find success. We don't know how long it took them, but i had the distinct impression that it wasn't very long.

Naturally, I'm suggesting Shadow Weaver knew all along, and led Castaspella on the trip to have an excuse for the inevitable "how do you know?". Also tricked her into thinking it was /her/ discovery, and maybe even that she was succeeding where Shadow Weaver had failed before, if necessary.

That's why she's so excited to share their results with everybody, and Shadow Weaver cuts her off, apparently just to antagonize her for fun, but I'm suggesting it was also because for her this is the culmination of a decades-long plan, and she wants to Get On With It.

It's also interesting that there was a mural depicting the Spell of Obtainment in the hallway leading to the failsafe. It was a reminder of Shadow Weaver's past, and an opportunity for her to show she regrets her results but doesn't repent from her choices, which i quite like actually. But I'm also saying that, meta-textually, it was a signal that she'd been there before, literally.

And then there is the potential in-universe connection, since we don't know what exactly the spell was meant to be obtaining. Power, for sure, and from what happened we're probably meant to assume it's tapping into some sort of demonic entity or dimension.

Fair enough, except that it never comes up again. And it's kind of a big plot point that Etheria is isolated from the rest of the cosmos, which may or may not conflict with it having a contactable "hell". Meanwhile there's the Heart of Etheria Project collecting all that magic, which Mara's allies (and their descendants) would know something about, have access to at least one backdoor to, and may well have tried to tap into its power at some point.

And then what went wrong may well be one of the defense mechanisms of the Project, though I'm admittedly veering into unfounded speculation.

So, a rough timeline. Light Spinner was always motivated to excel and craved power. She was probably always envied the princesses, who command greater magic than most sorcerers with apparently none of the study and practice.

She took to researching everything she could that might lead to power, eventually discovering the chamber with the failsafe, and presumably other information left by Mara's Friends, either in other chambers or in documents she's since removed. She would have learned a lot of things from this.

As i suggested, i believe she knew there's some connection between the princesses at large and the Heart of Etheria. Incidentally, i don't know exactly what that connection is, and in particular whether princesses were created by the Project or an existing phenomenon that the First Ones co-opted. But it doesn't matter, exactly.

What's important is that there's clearly a connection, more specifically a control system for the princesses and their magic, which is presumably related to how Shadow Weaver was able to tap into the Black Garnet's power. With Hordak's help, obviously, since she clearly believed it when he claimed he could cut her off at will, but he's later shown to have basically no understanding of First Ones' tech, so the knowledge must have come from her.

For the record, i would guess she thinks princesses are artificial, empowered both magically and politically to keep the planet in check, and that they would be depowered once the failsafe was fired. I also think that may be true, actually, since it almost happened when Entrapta was messing with the system, and if i recall none of them were shown to use any magic after Adora did fire it, while she clearly used Perfuma's power. But anyways!

Back to what Shadow Weaver learned, she would know some of what the failsafe does, namely disrupt the system that's hoarding most of the planet's magic, thereby spreading magic to all (most notably her), and some of how to use it, and the fact that she couldn't do so and hope to live, and some of the criteria for who can. That part is important.

But first, she also learned the Spell of Obtainment, deemed it more likely but didn't think she could do it herself, despaired of getting help until she thought Hordak's rise to fame would give her #casus belli#, lost her patience when the Mystacor leadership disagreed, etc etc etc. Pretty uncontroversial in this part, i think.

After she'd joined the Horde, when Hordak showed up with baby Adora and wanted to lump her with the rest of the orphans they have, Shadow Weaver pleaded to have her get special treatment. She even said that she's special, and it couldn't have been her leadership skills or good heart, since she didn't have either yet. It's heavily implied she could recognize her as a First One, but it's not clear why she would care, since they were known for leaving behind advanced technology, which a baby also doesn't have. Unless, of course, she knew there are devices only a First One could use, and maybe has plans related to that.

So I'm pretty sure she learned the criteria that the failsafe requires, devised some spell or technique to check people for them that she pretty much used all the time, just in case, and was very surprised when a newborn tested positive. She was also surprised when Hordak made her personally responsible for the raising of the kid, but her reaction is pretty much "ok, that could work, i guess".

Also also, i suspect she can read First One script. Not perfectly like Adora, but better than Bow's parents probably. Mostly because when she puts Adora's hand on the crystal and says "i think you know the password", that seems like a very transparent attempt to pretend she knows it too when she doesn't. But that seems irresponsible at such a crucial moment, she and Castaspella should really have researched it earlier. Or at least her line there should have been "you can read this, right?" or somesuch.

So I'm thinking it's a double bluff, hoping everybody assumes she doesn't know so she doesn't have to reveal how and why she knows, again.

And that's all i have, i think? This is not nearly as well laid out as i would like. But then, nothing ever is, right?

Also it's not even close to morning anymore. Thank you if you even got this far, and have a good evening!

hi!!! this took me a while to answer, i'm so sorry about that <3

i'm very low on energy today so i cannot summon up the brain energy to respond properly to this, as much as i want to, i'm really sorry for that as well

i love this theory!! it actually fits in really well with canon and makes, like, a LOT of sense now that i think about it. i definitely wouldn't have thought of this on my own, so thank you for sharing this with me!! :D

[mc-critical]

I was curious since you were just talking about Suleyman sisters. Which one is your favourite and what would you change in their storylines? (Me: I would Sah being in love with Ibrahim and her and Hürrem being enemies, because I truly someone from the imperial family liked Hürrem)

I honestly love all of them. Even though they all share a similar purpose in the narrative on the outset (that is, being antagonists to Hürrem), they have distinct motivations and personalities that always succeed to make them so interesting to analyze.

Despite of that, I have to say that my favourite is Hatice. She's the one who felt most fleshed out, with the widest arrays of personality and relationships and I sympathize with her in nearly every level. While I know that S03 Hatice could turn people off and I could understand why in theory (good flanderization is still flanderization after all and her "Heel Face Turn" could feel underwhelming after Hü's huge E63 victory and it lowkey makes for kind of a soft reset of the show's status-quo, but not only I haven't seen this actually being used in arguments against her, but this is solely a writing problem that didn't even originate from her and wasn't totally fixed until the end.), I felt this was the most logical step in her arc and her development made complete sense, no matter how flanderizing it was and how tragic it ended up being. [poor Hatice :(] I have analyzed her character and why I love her so much as well in more detail here.

The one thing I would change is, again, her spending more time with Osman and Huricihan. The need of having kids was set up as a very important part of her character from the beggining and Osman and Huricihan's birth could've felt as a new wave of hope after the devastating child losses. It felt like they were the start of an entirely new chapter of her life where she could enjoy the company of her kids the way she so wanted to, but the birth of Huricihan and Osman ended up being only the finale of Hatice's worries over her children, a satisfying end to these arcs of hers where she could finally find happiness at last and with this it was over. It wasn't built on at all and this whole angle of Hatice's character was seemingly dropped just like that. While I get that her storyline was very densely packed and they may not have had time, they could've given us a few scenes at the very least, especially in S03B where they would play part in empowering even more Hatice's tragic arc, being a reminder of Ibrahim. Not to mention that Huricihan would've been a much better character if that set-up existed.

I adore Şah Sultan, as well and I actually enjoy her dynamic with Hatice even more than her dynamic with Hürrem, because it tells us much more about who she is. It was so enjoyable to watch these two sisters confront each other on not so few instances, while still loving each other. I love how Şah's ambition contrasts so well with her genuine care for the people she loves (like Hatice and Esmahan) and how her pragmatism could actually get in the way of that care, while we could still see that the two coexist in her regardless. It makes her motivation so interesting to figure out in a way we haven't seen before or after with any other character. Her love for Ibrahim.. while yes, I get that it may seem a little weird, putting so much stuff in their past into another context that could draw the line between "this makes sense" and "how exactly did that happen?", it explains why Şah may have this deep seated resentment to Hatice, it is a nicely used plot-device to drive conflict between them (the conflict set-up in their past that is outside of their clash of ideals and philosophies in the present and near future) and her and Lütfi later. It makes her more interesting, too, because it shows her ability to let go of her feelings when she sees is necessary. Her approach is also very interesting and unique (at least at first) and while I find most of her scenes with Hürrem generic, she was a formidable and effective antagonist. I also find interesting that in rewatch, you do see that out of her and Hatice, it's Şah who is more elitist, interestingly enough. (because while Hatice mostly pulls rank out of ignorance or when she's challanged outright, Şah pulls rank not only in confrontation, but in casual conversations with people around her, as well - E87 is a perfect example of this. She also views the dynasty as something even more valuable that shouldn't ever be touched - her not wanting to fight Mihrimah in the end, even though I'm sure she could've outsmarted her if she truly wanted to, she wanted the most out of anyone in S03B for the dynasty members to have each other's backs and support each other no matter what and she was as ready as Hatice to stand behind what the dynasty represents, but not on a more personal level like Hatice, rather on standing behind its laws and traditions, like Ayşe Hafsa.)

What I would change with her, is that intrigue of hers that succeeded to have Hürrem be exiled for the third time. There's nothing wrong with the intrigue neither writing-wise, nor with Şah's character in it, and I kinda appreciate Hürrem's overspending there as a parallel to Mahidevran's overspending in S02, showing that they're not so different after all in a bunch of cases. But otherwise, the whole thing felt like pointless filler that only repeats some aspect of previous storylines. Yet another harem riot, though not as large in scale, and that almost contrived exile, which served nothing in the end (except for showing how Hürrem has gained a decent network of political allies, but that was shown before the exile, too). I would probably make it a far more complex, but still to the point intrigue, the outcome of which sure wouldn't be another exile for an episode. This also wouldn't have been the ending culmination of Şah's careful plans against Hürrem, either. (Ayaz Pasha's death afterwards was relatively quickly planned in comparison! Like.. c'mon..)

Fatma is my least favourite sister of the sisters, but she certainly has her moments. I love her debut and I love how fun loving she is, I sorta wish we saw even more of that. I actually don't recall a moment where Fatma ever pulled rank on someone in the way Hatice in E26 did and Şah so casually does and if there truly isn't any moment like that, then I love her even more for it. What is even more interesting is how her motivation is a promise made to Mustafa (even though this whole motivation is kinda strange writing-wise, since she's an entirely new character and the devotion to Mustafa could look like something the writers only came up with in the heat of the moment for S04A's bad use of flashbacks and to make yet another antagonist for Hürrem... Fatma could've been next to Mustafa when he was a child in Manisa and she liked him as a child, who knows? That coupled with Mahidevran probably reminding him of Fatma's existence, as well.) and how far she's going to go to fulfill it, even after his death. It all showed a side of hers that is willing to put the dynasty members in intrigue (the way she put Selim and Bayezid against one another and even when she played that game on Mihrimah), an interesting contrast with the other sisters, who would do anything but, at least not so consciously. (I'm referring to Şah's very first scheme against Hürrem, in E85-6) I love how she scolded Mihrimah in E121 and I love how they showed her sorrow for Mustafa's death. (that little scene where she said: "I failed.." was so touching, honestly... It shows how devoted she was to it all) Her relationship with Kara Ahmet is also pretty great.

What I would change with her, is her part in the menopause plot. The episode itself is such a weird and tonal mess, but Fatma there was at her worst and I don't agree with her making fun of Hürrem like this. I get the purpose of the episode and scene, but it still sits wrong with me and since that was our first episode with Fatma, it rendered her a little petty for me when I was first watching. I wouldn't have had Fatma tell it out loud for everyone to hear, I would've probably made her show Hürrem she knew in a confrontation similar to Hürrem and Mahidevran's (hey, a part of their formula could work for once!) between both of them during the entertainment. I would have also given her a little more balanced screentime. In some episodes it was very fine, but in others, it felt like she was more shoved into the background.

About Hürrem having at least one dynasty member to like Hürrem - I agree, it would be a breath of fresh air, to say the least, there should've been this kind of variety. If there is one I would make a friend of Hürrem's (at the most part), that would be Beyhan.

I would have given her more screentime, especially in S01-2, she could be there to advice and support her sisters even more and for them to calm down from the games and intrigues. She wouldn't play such a big role in the story, aside from an arc or two that would be different from working against Hürrem. Her and Hürrem would be usually on good terms, since her emotional maturity would let her understand at least a bit of her side of the story and wouldn't be so quick to accuse her. (as she wasn't when she learned of how Hatice learned about Nigar and Ibrahim) Beyhan can't be fully on board with her, of course, because moments where Hürrem tramples on Hatice's happiness directly or indirectly could put them at odds, but I feel Beyhan's personality and shtick would be the best suited for a friendship with Hürrem of sorts. Since she still wouldn't be part of the throne war, Hürrem would have no reasons to act against her personally, either. (now, S03B could be a problem, but then we could... have her return to her castle permanetly?) It would've been epic if Şah had only her dynamic with Hatice in the story, but I don't think that alone would be enough for the writers, because they sure were searching for someone to replace Ibrahim as a more prominent antagonist until S04's switch of focus and enrichment of storylines. 

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Florida has just become the first state in the Union to mandate that high school students learn about the crimes of communism.  The subject is indeed very important, and too little known. The problem is that the new legislation, like other recent Florida measures, itself recalls certain evils of communism.

As of this coming school year, high school students who wish to graduate from a Florida school must pass a class in U.S. government that includes "comparative discussion of political ideologies, such as communism and totalitarianism, that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy essential to the founding principles of the United States."  

Any high school teacher is going to sigh at the awkward circularity of the "principles essential to the principles" formulation.  As Orwell tried to remind us in "Politics and the English Language," though, vague formulations demand our critical attention.  This weird phrasing serves a sinister purpose, one that becomes clear later in the law.  The point is that the United States is to be defined as free and democratic, regardless of what Americans or their legislators actually do.  American is free and democratic because of a miraculous investiture from the past.  Complacency is therefore patriotic, and criticism is not.

The law presents "totalitarianism" as an ideology.  Totalitarianism is not an ideology, so Florida teachers are henceforth legally required to teach nonsense.  To be sure, one can find historical figures who referred to themselves as "totalitarian" in a positive sense, but in general the term has been used as analysis and critique.  In use for about a century now, "totalitarianism" has generally been used as a category that brings together regimes with very different ideologies, drawing attention to underlying similarities.

As such, totalitarianism can also be a tool for self-critique, since it draws attention to political temptations that make different systems possible.  The most important book about totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt, presents Nazism and Stalinism as possibilities within modern politics.  When in Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt wrote about conspiracy theories, she was writing not only about Nazi and Soviet practices, but also about a human failing.  When she wrote about narratives where we are always right and they are always wrong, where we are always innocent and they are always guilty, she was describing a universal risk.  When she wrote of people who were simultaneously gullible and cynical, for whom “everything was possible and nothing was true,” she got uncomfortably close to contemporary American reality.

By defining totalitarianism as a foreign ideology to be contrasted with American principles, Florida legislators have denied students not just the knowledge of what the term actually means, but also the possibility to appeal to a rich body of thought that might help them to avoid risks to freedom and democracy.

Unlike totalitarianism, communism is an ideology.  Its ideological character is visible in its approach to the past: communists transformed history, an open search for fact and endless discussion of interpretation, into History, an official story in which one's own country was the center of world liberation regardless of what its leaders did.  The party was always right, even if what the party said and did was unpredictable and self-contradictory.  The most important communist party still in power, the Chinese, takes this line today.  To question the revolution or the inevitability of the system is to fall prey to "historical nihilism."  In April 2018, a Chinese memory law accordingly made it a crime to question the heroism of past leaders.  What we have is good and right because we inherited it from glorious dead revolutionaries, and we must not question what the government tells us about our glorious dead revolutionaries.

We have our own official story of revolution. The Florida board of education has recently forbidden teachers from defining American history "as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence."  That narrow formulation rules out most of reality but crams in a good dose of mysticism.  Nothing is ever entirely new, and nations arise from many sources aside from principles.  The board of education’s claim is political rather than historical: Everything good comes from the past, and we must not question what the government tells us about its righteousness.  If there is only one story, and you have to tell it, that is not history but History.  The point is not that the American Revolution is the same thing as the Chinese Revolution. The point is that we are treating it the same way, describing it in dogmatic terms that we enforce in memory law. And that is deeply worrying.

The same spirit is in evidence in that Florida communist law.  Deep in the past, it instructs us, is where we find freedom and democracy.  Freedom is not something to be struggled for by individuals now, but magically "inherited from prior generations."  That phrase should give pause to anyone who cares about freedom.  If you seriously think that freedom is something that you can inherit, like a sofa or a stamp collection, you are not going to be free for long.

In the law's logic, democracy is not actually allowing people to vote, but some silent tradition that somehow exists whether or not real Americans can vote in reality.  Despite what actually happened between the eighteenth century and now (slavery, let's say, or voter suppression), we must close our minds to everything but those mythical "principles essential to the principles."  The facts give way to an underlying logic, impossible to articulate, that demonstrates that my country is better.

The Florida communism law requires that someone (it is hard, given the awkward phrasing, to say who) must "curate oral history resources."  The curation will involve the selection "first-person accounts of victims of other nations' governing philosophies who can compare those philosophies with those of the United States."  There is something humiliating about turning real people into poster children for American exceptionalism.  Refugees from other countries past and present have individual and complex stories, which cannot usually be reduced to tales of American superiority.  Edith P., a Holocaust survivor, speaks of waiting for hours every day in front of the American embassy, which denied her family a visa.  American schoolchildren read about Anne Frank, but no one tells them that her father applied for an American visa.  Leon Bass was an African American soldier who saw a German concentration camp.  He had something comparative to say about "governing philosophies," but it would not survive curation.

America today is not an especially free country.  Our own non-governmental organization Freedom House, relying on our own preferred notions of freedom (civil and political rights) ranks us in fifty-eighth place.  In other words, it would theoretically be possible (and it would certainly be valuable) for the Florida board of education to solicit testimonies from people from fifty-seven other countries where people live more freely than here, who could explain why they have not moved to the United States.  They could compare their countries' "governing philosophies" with that of the United States (favorably, unfavorably, who knows: they are free people).  But we know that this will not happen.  Such an application of the Florida communism law is unthinkable, because the Florida communism law is not about freedom.  It is about repeating that America is the best country in the world.

Self-absorption is not anti-communism.  Anti-communism would entail listening to history rather than History, and educating individuals who can make up their own minds.  You don't get freedom from the flock.

Another familiar communist trick can be found in a recent directive by the Florida board of education.  The trick has to do with leveraging victory in the Second World War.  Beginning in the late 1960s, a certain version of the Second World War became an important part of communist ideology.  In the Soviet Union, and also in today's Russia, any wrong done by the system was explained away by the fact that the Red Army had defeated the Germans.  The fact that Nazis were evil made the Soviets good.  The fact of having resisted the Nazis made one's own system unassailable.  This communist technique has now, uncannily, resurfaced in official Florida pedagogy.

In the recent school board directive, we learn that "examples of theories that distort historical events and are inconsistent with State Board approved standards include the denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons." This repeats the Soviet (and Russian) logic.  We don't deny German crimes, and therefore we are innocent of any crimes ourselves.  Indeed, anyone who suggests that we look at our own history: well, they are like Holocaust deniers!

Another sad resemblance concerns voting. Freedom involves educating people about the past as it was so that they can make up their own minds about what the future should be.  Democracy involves giving people the vote in the meantime.  The Soviet Union held elections, but they were ritualistic and fake.  When Soviet power extended across eastern Europe after the Second World War, local communist parties rigged elections.  Thus authentic anti-communists would make sure that their own elections were not rigged, and that all citizens could take part.  But the Florida communism law was passed in circumstances that suggest a lively interest in making voting more difficult.  In 2019, the Florida legislature enacted pay-to-vote legislation that effectively disenfranchised people that Floridians, in a referendum, had voted to enfranchise the year before.  The Florida communism law came into effect this 1 July, hard on the heels of a new Florida voter suppression law.

I have spent decades teaching and writing about communism, and I certainly think that young people should know about communist systems and their policies of mass killing.  But declarations of superiority do not amount to a pedagogy, nor to an anti-communism worthy of the name.  The content of the Florida communism law, and the Florida voter suppression law, and the board of education directive on race, do not suggest that Florida lawmakers and administrators have learned much about what was wrong with communism.  

These measures reveal American weaknesses that make American tyranny more likely.

* * * * *

When I went to High School in Florida [many decades ago] all Seniors had to take a class called “Americanism vs Communism.” As I recall, most students slept through the class. I thought that it was insulting propaganda - using an inadequate text that was filled with poorly written boilerplate and boring poorly made films.  If the right wing wants to inflict propaganda on teenagers it should invest in decent writers and film makers.  They are very poor in the literacy department.  I was 16 at the time and unsophisticated but I could still tell that what i was being taught was a waste of my time.

[korranguyen]

I finished She-Ra

and let me start off by clarifying that I thought this was a good show. It contains such a poignant, hopeful, yet still tangible narrative about cycles of abuse, about agency and the invisible hand, about the nature of true improvement in everyday life, the complexity of relationships and their difficulties and the interdependency we nonetheless embrace. Not to mention the diverse portrayal of a whole host of sexualities and identities. All wrapped up in a cast of multidimensional characters from the get-go.

But what’s missing? Oh, right! The narrative of war. Which leads me into the point of my post.

It’s glaringly obvious to me that the creator is white.

One of the first things that struck me during the show’s pilot was its use of this seemingly Native-inspired motif. I was immediately drawn to it, expecting, with the consciousness of that parallel, that the show would draw upon the memories and scars still present in forthcoming generations, ongoing environmental and societal destruction, and how displaced, disillusioned, yet powerful young people might struggle but eventually reign triumphant over the trauma they have inherited.

But as the series progresses outside of its first season, the story warps into something quite different. Getting to grow up on the victim’s side of the war seems like a good fate— one with little to no emotional baggage, at least in comparison to their counterparts. Outside of Glimmer, we barely see any common or chronic legacy of trauma or anger towards war-related loss (unless it’s directed towards Entrapta). The problem with recognizing Adora’s Horde jacket disappears within the first three episodes. Being a member of the Rebellion (literally consigning to being a soldier) isn’t portrayed as a tragic fate anywhere past their initial defeat and disbanding: they all just tend to hang out in little camps together, bonded by love and the power of friendship, mostly dissociated and unmarred by whatever tragedy might belie their hypothetical people. The whole war and sides thing functions more as a plot driver and frame for the intimate conflicts the show is actually concerned with, whether it be Adora’s shifting sense of identity, her Messiah complex and never-ending assumption of responsibility, her conflicting feelings towards Catra, or the strained friendships between her, Bow, and Glimmer. Even when a character (Mermista) does suffer a significant loss, the sense of loss and distress she faces resolves in... what? Two episodes? And trivialized to getting over it with a bubble bath and ice cream?

(Compare this to ATLA, where the Gaang was constantly connecting with others through their shared and ever-present generational pain: Haru, Jet, Lee and his family, Suki, Hama, Baby Hope and her family, the entire populace of every town we see in the show... Yes, I know both of the creators there were white too, but my point still stands)

The princess’s temporary losses and friendship struggles pale in comparison to the suffering of the two most sympathetic characters in the show: Catra and Hordak. The trauma they bear from their unique personal histories overwhelms any kind of baggage (or lack thereof) their victims ever have to cope with. Which I don’t have any problem with, per sé— I loved all of these arcs and found our two antiheros such tragic and fascinating characters constructed uniquely by their war-related situations, posing so many fantastic philosophical and moral questions I can and will dissect and analyze with vigor and enthusiasm and appreciation— I just mean to point out that it speaks for the creator’s understanding of war and its true ramifications to use it as a framing device, only to largely abandon it in preference of a different type of story.

She-Ra was never a show about the victims of war. It was never intended to deliberate upon the trauma of civilian warfare, and it was never meant to represent the victims of conquest the Rebellion actually paralleled. 

It's not a problem to convey sympathy and cycles of abuse in a much less global sense and focus your narrative on that! It’s not a problem to just have a cheerful kid’s show about friendship and love and hanging out in big castles having sleepovers and proms! I’m just pointing out that the way the whole war and conquest narrative was shoved aside this easily speaks for the background of the writers and the priorities they had coming into the drawing board.

[thebluelemontree]

Is it wrong to say that Sansa uses an out of sight out of mind coping mechanism? I noticed it because it's what I do a lot. I know some ppl say she rewrites traumatic memories to make the memories bearable but it doesn't make sense. If that was how she coped, wouldn't she have been telling herself lies about Joffrey still in acok? Or found a way to erase/rewrite Marillion's attempt to rape her?

Yes and no. She does that except all the times she doesn’t. ;) I think that characterization is extremely reductionist (and ignores character complexity and  growth) when it’s applied that broadly to every situation Sansa has been in. You have to take these things instance by instance because they aren’t all the same. Sometimes that labeling doesn’t fit at all. In many cases, it feels more like the fandom pathologizing the act of romanticizing or trying to push aside or reframe something unpleasant or even traumatic when that’s just something most human beings do now and then. Some do it more than others, but its all within the realm of typical coping behavior and being older or more educated or more “logical” doesn’t make one immune to it. So I hope you don’t let those interpretations make you feel abnormal or more fallible for identifying with Sansa in that way. Romanticizing doesn’t even have to be about coping at all, but simply expressing desire through daydreams. People imagine being in idealized scenarios with crushes all the time.  

You also hit the nail on the head. Sansa just doesn’t go around making up false narratives about every objectively awful thing that happens to her. In fact, her actual responses to those moments can be a useful basis for comparison when we’re analyzing the unkiss, for example. Misunderstanding the unkiss is usually where a lot of these assumptions stem from. That’s a whole other can of worms in itself. The unkiss is just too long of a discussion to put here, so I just recommend this post as to the reasons why it isn’t about trauma and take a browse through my unkiss tag. It does bear repeating that Sansa factually remembers every scary thing that happened during the Blackwater and why it happened, indicating she has processed it honestly and critically, before any incarnation of the unkiss happens. The unkiss is a mismemory added on to the facts, which began as her being the actor that kissed him first. It’s not a lie to deny the facts or to excuse his behavior. It’s regrettable to her that Sandor was not able to be the person she could rely on to get her out of KL at that time. Nonetheless, this repressed desire is just so strong in her that it manifested in a kiss so real she could remember how it felt after the reality of his leaving KL for good sank in. 

Early AGOT Sansa tended to want to move past unpleasantness rather quickly. Just sweep those red flags under the rug so everything can go back to blissful harmony. Sansa is naturally averse to conflict and just wants her present with the royal family to be smooth sailing into a bright future. Ned had a very similar tendency when it came to concerns over Robert’s true character. He saw things that disturbed him, but he hoped and clung to his idea of Robert anyway. For Sansa, this resulted in some misplaced blame and rewriting events so she could deal with the aftermath. This is mostly seen in her processing the Mycah incident after Lady’s death and how her perception of all the characters involved shifted in varying ways. This is after she knew perfectly well what really happened, because Ned says Sansa had already told him the truth of what Joffrey did while Arya was still missing. However, it would also be unfair to completely chalk this up to Sansa’s idiosyncrasies. We have to put her flip-flopping in the context of the situation as well. She’s also experienced a gutting loss with Lady’s death and the fact that the first blow to her innocence was her father volunteering to put Lady down. She doesn’t have Catelyn to go to with her confusion and hurt, and Ned has largely been silent. She’s also still engaged to Joffrey through all this, this is still a patriarchy, there are political ramifications to speaking against a crown prince, and she doesn’t know how to deal with seeing such cruelty and vindictiveness in her future husband. Especially when he responded to her tender concern and wanting to help him with venom and hate. 

I mean, jeez, she’s 11. I don’t expect an 11 year old to understand how to identify the signs of emotional manipulation or see how this situation can escalate into domestic violence. Just because Sansa can’t articulate what is happening within her relationship with Joffrey, doesn’t mean she has blocked out any notion that Joffrey can turn his anger on her. Part of the reason she misplaces blame on Arya (and rewrites what happened) is because Joffrey turns scornful of Sansa for being a witness to his emasculating shame. He punishes her with the cold shoulder because she didn’t immediately take his side and pretended not to see instead. He regains power through making Sansa feel small and fearful of his moods. 

“He had not spoken a word to her since the awful thing had happened, and she had not dared to speak to him.” -- Sansa II, AGOT.

Sansa looked at him and trembled, afraid that he might ignore her or, worse, turn hateful again and send her weeping from the table. -- Sansa II, AGOT.

This is coming from someone who is supposed to love her and someone she will spend the rest of her life with. To fix things, she must be unequivocally on Joffrey’s side going forward or suffer the consequences, which we can see happening as her story completely flips over breakfast sometime later. This is not saying Sansa is fully exonerated from not supporting her sister when she needed her, but that it’s understandable how she arrived at this point. Even when things start to get really bad after Ned’s arrest, Sansa still holds out some hope that she can appeal to Joffrey’s (and Cersei’s) love for her to get him to be merciful. Is it really her fault she believed a part of Joffrey really loved her (and thus was reachable by her pleas) if he also heavily love bombed her and treated her like she was the most special girl in the world? Love bombing is a classic feature of the seduction phase leading up to abuse.  

So we can see Sansa does ignore truths and rewrite events sometimes and her personality is a factor; however, the context surrounding it matters a lot. Post Ned’s execution, Sansa does a full 180 regarding Joffrey and Cersei.

Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded crimson doublet patterned with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar that framed his face. She wondered how she could ever have thought him handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and his eyes were vain and cruel. "I hate you," she whispered. -- Sansa VI, AGOT.

Once she had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father's head. Sansa would never make that mistake again. -- Sansa I, ACOK. 

"A monster," she whispered, so tremulously she could scarcely hear her own voice. "Joffrey is a monster. He lied about the butcher's boy and made Father kill my wolf. When I displease him, he has the Kingsguard beat me. He's evil and cruel, my lady, it's so. And the queen as well." -- Sansa I, ASOS. 

There’s also her conscious efforts to push away thoughts of her dead family and Jeyne Poole, but she states why she does that. It’s traumatic, the tears start flowing uncontrollably, and she is desperately trying to avoid falling into another suicidal depression. Her survival in KL depends on her holding it together and appearing loyal and obedient to Joffrey. Mourning her loved ones would imply to Joffrey she is plotting treason. Besides, she knows that even if she did ask Cersei or LF about Jeyne, she has no reason to believe they’d do anything but lie to her face in a patronizing way. There’s no point being plagued with wondering what the truth might be when she can’t do anything about it. Still, she prayed for Jeyne wherever she might be. She genuinely thought Arya had made it to WF on the ship and was safe at least until she got word of her brothers’ deaths and her home being sacked by the Iron Born, though there was initially a touch of projection and fantasizing about Arya being free while she remains captured. As of Feast, she believes she is the last Stark left alive and she has no one but Littlefinger to help her. So while she is suppressing her grief, it’s done with good reason, and it’s not being replaced with any false narratives to cope. 

We also cannot ignore that her relationship to Sandor Clegane has instilled in her an appreciation for the un-sugarcoated truth now that she has experienced betrayal and injustice first hand. In his own way, he’s encouraged her to listen to her own inner bullshit detector. The rose-tinted glasses have become a lot more clear compared to where she started. This is a newly learned skill though, and her self-confidence has been wrecked by internalized verbal abuse. She’s also been left on her own to figure out people’s intentions by herself, which runs parallel to her mounting desperation to get out of KL as Joffrey’s violence escalates. Developing a touch more of a jaded, skeptical side does sometimes clash with her enduring idealism and faith in other people (like with the Tyrells). This struggle is not a bad thing. The goal isn’t to become as cynical as the Hound, but to arrive at an earned optimism that has been tempered by wisdom and practical experience.

Her situation with Littlefinger is much more challenging than anything she faced in KL. He moves her where he wants her to go with complex web of lies, manipulation, grooming, isolation, coercion, dependence, guilt and shame. Her safety and desire to go home are tightly bound to being complicit in his lies and criminal activities. She feels indebted to him for getting her out of KL, even though his methods push her past her boundaries and force her to compromise her moral integrity. The thing is, there are things Sansa does know about LF, but she doesn’t seem to be ready to try and put the puzzle pieces together. She’s not daring to ask probing questions about Lysa’s reference to the “tears” and Jon Arryn or about the possible dangers of Maester Colemon prescribing sweetsleep for Robert’s convulsions. While the subject of Jeyne’s fate is still one she doesn’t want to revisit, somewhere in her mind she does know LF took custody of her friend. If it feels like this is somewhat of a regression back to her early AGOT self, there’s probably some truth to that; however, it’s perfectly okay for positive character arcs to be an imperfect progress. There can be relapses, regressions, setbacks, missteps, and misguided actions. All that growth isn’t lost. Everything she knows is just stored in the back of her mind, not forgotten completely. The general trend line moves her toward successfully confronting Littlefinger with the truth when GRRM is ready to pull the trigger. She’s definitely aware of Littlefinger lying to her more than she lets on and she knows his help is not out of the kindness of his heart, but motivated by what he wants her to be to him. But it’s not like she has the option to go anywhere else, does she? She’s a wanted criminal with a bounty on her head and has no other friend or ally in the Vale she can trust with the truth of her identity. Confronting LF without any means of neutralizing his power over her isn’t the smartest thing to do when he’s shown her he can literally get away with multiple murders. Again, it’s not just her personality that makes her hesitant to pull back the veil and face the horrible truth head on. The outside forces pressuring her perceptions and behavior cannot be discounted either.    

[animezing-fandoms]

Feminism in Fairy Tail with Lucy Heartfilia

Okay so @gaysquaredwrites made this fantastic post today about how people say Lucy is useless because she’s not as great a fighter as the other characters, but that doesn’t mean she’s useless because she brings light and happiness into the characters lives and that’s just as important as fighting! And I originally wrote this rant as a reblog to their original post but it ended up being LONG AF and I didn’t want to hijack their post like that so I decided to just post this feminism and Lucy rant as my own post.

So something that I see a lot in most fiction and not just shounen manga but also in Western sci-fi/action fiction as well, is that the female characters in those stories who aren’t primarily fighters, or do fight but not as well as other characters are often criticized for being useless because they “always need to be saved” or “can’t win a fight on their own” and while this does happen to a lot of female characters in these genres, it doesn’t make them “useless” characters to the story. These people just don’t seem to realize that there are other important roles for characters in these genres aside from fighting and beating bad guys, and that’s emotional support. 

You don’t have to fight in order to change/save someone’s life. Emotional support is just as essential as physical in both fictional stories and in real life and I feel like people seem to forget that a lot.

Especially since that emotional support often comes from female characters which people are already frothing at the mouth to discredit and undermine so it’s no surprise that people complain that they’re useless because they can’t fight as well as the male mc (which is stupid especially in shounen manga because in those stories no one fights as well as the main male mc, that’s kind of a trademark of the genre tbh) and claim that that take is “feminist” while completely ignoring the important role that those female characters play in uniting the other characters for a certain cause and giving them the courage to keep fighting and fighting with them even if they aren’t the strongest fighter in the story. 

But those parts of their stories are usually downplayed or ignored in favor of the “she’s just a love interest” argument, which is actually a more complex and important role to a story than people seem to realize. But I won’t get into that here because that’s a different argument and that would involve getting into her relationship with Natsu and I want to keep this meta purely about Lucy and how  people try to paint her as a “useless character” because of sexism. If you want to read about how nalu is actually more feminist/progressive than people think, click here.

Now if you’re judging characters importance to the story of Fairy Tail based on how many fights they’ve won/lost, then you’re only focusing on one aspect of the story which is the action, and completely ignoring the emotional/narrative parts of the story that make us fall in love with these characters and root for them during the action.

For example, the guild wouldn’t even exist if not for Lucy! After Makarov disbanded it after Tartaros, Lucy was the only one who kept tabs on the guild members in order to reach out to all of them to get the guild back together once Natsu and Happy came back to her. And they even said it multiple times in the manga that they wouldn’t have come back together without her. So yeah the guild would not have come back together to defeat Alvarez without Lucy.

And, everyone seems to forget that during the Tartaros arc, she literally saved everyone’s freaking lives by sacrificing Aquarius’s key to summon the Celestial Spirit King and free everyone from the fortress they were trapped in. Everyone would still be trapped in that thing and Tartaros would not have been defeated if she didn’t make that sacrifice. And it was a huge sacrifice! Lucy’s spirits mean everything to her! Sacrificing Aquarius to save everyone in Fairy Tail left her freaking heartbroken! 

And that wasn’t the only sacrifice that she’s made in the series either! Her freaking future self sacrificed her life when Rogue tried to kill Lucy in order to save her life. 

Now you could argue that other major characters in the series have made large sacrifices too, such as Juvia saving Gray, and Makarov using Fairy Law at the cost of his life and maybe others too that I’m forgetting. But those sacrifices while important to the story and the importance of those characters, are made up for by both Makarov and Juvia being brought back to life later with Juvia sustaining a scar, and Makarov being in a wheelchair which yes, is a big deal and should not be overlooked. But the point I’m making is that both he, and Juvia intended to sacrifice their lives, but ended up living anyway. Like Gray and the multiple times he’s attempted to use iced shell but always ends up getting interrupted or talked out of it. 

So Lucy is the only main character who has intended to sacrifice something important, and followed through with it without getting revived later (although it was only her future self that died, but the point is she still died without getting revived later on in the story) and without getting the sacrificed item back. Yeah, people seem to forget that Lucy sacrificed Aquarius’s key, and Lucy still does not have that key back. So even if you think that future Lucy dying isn’t a heavy sacrifice because that was just a version of Lucy, the Aquarius sacrifice is definitely a heavy one because that one didn’t get resolved later. Lucy sacrificed that key, and did not get it back immediately after or at the end of the arc, or even at the end of the story! Yes the key is out there in the world somewhere but she still has to find it and that’s probably not gonna happen for awhile and it’s gonna be really difficult to get it back! Lucy sacrificed something precious to her for the sake of her guild that she loves so much and she never got it back at the end of the main story. And that’s why I think that sacrifice in particular is probably the biggest one in the story. 

But that sacrifice is often overlooked by fans who claim she has no purpose in the story, because that wasn’t a “fighting” sacrifice like giving their life for another character. That was an emotional sacrifice because she sacrificed her ability to not only use Aquarius’s key, but have her in her life as a close friend by sacrificing her key. No life was lost by Aquarius’s key being shattered, but it shattered Lucy’s hearts and ours in turn. 

It was a big emotional sacrifice, and that’s why it’s downplayed because emotional components of a story like Fairy Tail which are what Lucy plays a big role in, are often played by female characters, because being “emotional” is a traditionally feminine role in most stories. 

In fact, putting a higher importance on traditionally masculine roles for characters like fighting, and downplaying the more feminine roles like emotional support, makes it pretty obvious what those so-called “fans” are really saying when they say Lucy is “useless”. 

More often than not, people who claim Lucy is useless do so because they compare her fighting ability to Erza, who is a very skilled warrior and has many important achievements in the battles she’s been in. And because of this, they claim that Erza is a stronger female character than Lucy in the story. 

But just because Erza is a female character that is a good fighter, doesn’t mean she’s a stronger female character than Lucy. Both Lucy and Erza are equally strong female characters in their respective roles in the story. But people, mainly misogynists, don’t look at it that way and just lump them into the category of “female character” which guess what, is sexist because you’re only categorizing those characters by their genders and not the distinct and equally important roles they play in the story.

Having Erza be one of the most powerful wizards in the guild as a great fighter is a huge win for female representation in shounen manga because she plays a role that is typically reserved for male characters. But that doesn’t mean that Lucy, who plays the role of emotional support which is typically reserved for female characters any less important. The idea that all female characters need to be less “emotional” or “feminine” and need to play more traditionally masculine roles like Erza does in order to be considered good female representation, completely misses the point.

So while I do want to see more female characters in roles typically reserved for male characters like Erza. I also want to see the female characters who are in traditionally feminine roles for the genre like Lucy get treated with more respect and be recognized for their importance to the story and not get labeled as “useless” because they didn’t win a boss fight.

Because if you think that characters, both male and female who serve the more traditionally masculine roles like fighting are more important to the story than the characters, both male and female who serve the traditionally feminine role of emotional support, then guess what! That’s misogyny too!

If Fairy Tail was purely just a story about people punching each other, then we would not be as invested in the story or these characters as we are. Lucy is the one who makes important emotional sacrifices, and is the one who reminds the guild what they’re fighting for, and gives them hope and happiness when they need it most. 

So if you think Lucy’s useless because she doesn’t fight as much or as well as the other characters in the story, then just admit you’re a misogynist because if you have that opinion then you clearly didn’t take the time to pay attention to the story as a whole, and were too blinded by your sexist views to see how important to the story Lucy’s role as the heart, aka the emotional support of Fairy Tail actually is. In fact, the story wouldn’t have even started without her since she’s the first character we meet. 

Emotional support in a story like Fairy Tail is just as important as the fighting. The story would have ended after Tartoros without Lucy. Lucy is the one who not only saved all of their lives but brought their guild back together. Fairy Tail would not exist without Lucy. That’s how Lucy primarily saves the day in this story, not by punching people with magic, but with her heart that is filled with love for her friends that fuels her actions, just like Natsu, Gray, Erza and literally everyone else in the guild. She’s no different from them in terms of her importance to the story, her role is just a little different from theirs.