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simplepotatofarmer · 4 years ago

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technoblade: a takedown - pt. 1

(not clickbait)

aka i go over every argument people make against c!techno one by one and determine whether they’re valid, false, or a mixture of both. i rewatched every single stream/video, including those on his alt channel, so i could approach this with the most information possible. i’ll be breaking this up into parts because there’s just too much otherwise. all about the characters unless stated.

techno believes in a ‘dog eat dog’ world - false

this is an argument i see used a lot when people discuss techno so i wanted to address it first. luckily, the stream in which he says this is only his fifth stream on the server. there’s one major reason why this argument falls apart and one minor reason that isn’t objective like the first.

first and most importantly: techno has never acted on this. even at the beginning - which is when this comment was made - he was helping his allies, from building railings to keep them from falling, making a potato farm, and all the gear he grinded for to equip his allies in pogtopia with. moving forward, he’s also helped out plenty of people: giving tommy a place to stay and items, telling phil to reach out to ranboo after doomsday, as well as giving both tommy and ranboo food when asked. there’s more, of course, but the point is he’s never once followed up on this statement. he teamed up with quackity to stop the egg. he spoke to niki about how he was giving anarchy a bad reputation because of the violence and wanted to take a different approach which he has.

when people use this argument to insist that techno is the villain, it doesn’t hold up because it’s merely taking one statement he made and upholding it as a main part of his character when his actions and later statements have shown that he doesn’t actually believe in this randian view point. objectively, i can’t see how this argument can extend beyond ‘well, he said it’. regardless of what he said during the pogtopia arc, he’s said the opposite later - wanting everyone to live free with no oppression or imperialism - and has never acted on it nor brought it up later. this take honestly seems disingenuous and was in fact the driving factor of this post.

second and not as critical, techno mentions multiple times during each of his first streams that he’s not sure who all is on his side. this is a reoccurring point for him. he makes the comment about wanting a dog eat dog world during the red festival stream, while speaking to bad and sam. the first part of the conversation is techno asking about state secrets since they’re (as far as techno knows) on manberg’s side. bad mentions schlatt killing cats and techno launches into a spiel about massive anarchy and the weak being huddled in fear, asking them how does that sound. bad says as long as there’s no cat murder, perhaps. bad then asks techno what his ‘single issue’ is and techno responds that he wants to destroy the government. to me, the context of the conversation, who he’s speaking to and what his opinion of those people is, is an important thing to consider.

techno’s ‘we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it’ comment means he was always going to betray pogtopia/l’manberg - valid but not how you think it is

i’ve seen people say that techno saying ‘we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it’ is a clear sign that he was always intending to betray pogtopia/l’manberg which, yeah?

but i wouldn’t call it a betrayal.

he says the ‘we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it’ line at the end of the ‘eve of revolution’ stream while he’s talking to quackity, ponk, and sam. the conversation is as follows:

techno, to quackity: i’m glad we could get to know each other. i heard you’re on our side now. i heard you betrayed schlatt.

quackity: yeah, that’s right. are you betraying anyone?

techno: no. i would never betray my personal ideals.

[some chatter from ponk and quackity]

sam: what does that mean? what if the people you’re fighting along [sic] have different ideals than you, though? doesn’t that mean you’d betray them?

techno: listen... we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.

then techno states that he ‘said what he said’ when sam questions him about his choice of metaphor.

he actually uses the same malaphor at the beginning of the ‘revolution’ stream when they (quackity and tubbo) question him again and in that case techno definitely avoids the subject which isn’t a good thing but considering everyone was so worked up about the possible traitor, i can completely understand.

overall, techno is extremely upfront about his intentions. yes, there is definitely some miscommunication between all the parties because none of them were on the same page but that doesn’t make techno the bad guy here nor does it mean he betrayed anyone. he was upfront about his intentions from the start.

in his first two streams, he makes a joke that if they happen to set up a new government/president that he would just take that one down and it would be a never-ending cycle. over and over, he says that he wants to do destroy the government/manberg. when tommy mentions taking it back, techno says, ‘what do you mean, take it back?’ though this kind of gets lost in the middle of everything else - dsmp (lack of) communication strikes again.

the takeaway that i see here a lot is that techno always intended to betray them because he knew tommy wanted to take back l’manberg and knew that he would go against them if they set up a new government. and this is true to an extent! he did know that tommy wanted l’manberg back and he did know that he would go against them if they set up a new government. but wilbur was also telling techno that he was on board with the whole anarchy thing.

none of them were on the same page and that surely led to a big chunk of what happened and hurt feelings on both sides but that doesn’t mean techno betrayed anyone or that he was the bad guy for doing exactly what he said he would do from day one.

techno destroying (l’)manberg was wrong - it’s complicated

the first thing to address here is that for most anarchists, destroying a government isn’t a bad thing. in fact, taking down the government/state is basically our goal. now, i don’t speak for all anarchists, of course, but overall the general feeling is that violence in the name of overthrowing an oppressive government is not inherently bad. there’s no way to do a one-for-one here because it’s minecraft but the general sentiment remains. so while violence enacted against the state is a bad thing for people who aren’t anarchists, techno has no reason to and would not view it as inherently bad.

but it did hurt people and techno himself acknowledges that fact. he’s acknowledged what he’s done when confronted about it. he hasn’t said he was wrong because understanding that it was hurtful doesn’t mean he believes he was wrong. to him, he wasn’t. destroying what he viewed as an oppressive system was the right thing to do, even if it hurt people.

(also this isn’t any kind of meta but i think it needs to be pointed out that wilbur had already set off the tnt and techno summoned two killable mobs which did plenty of damage but he didn’t say wilbur was the great who came before them for no reason.)

again, this is going to be the most controversial part of this post because i don’t believe destroying government is a bad thing and i don’t believe techno is wrong for believing that as well. there are better ways to address the problem and techno is adjusting his tactics but if another government was to be established, i don’t believe he would be in the wrong to destroy it because he’s an anarchist.

the tl;dr of this section honestly could just be summed up with ‘watch less marvel, read more ursula k. le guin’.

‘techno is the villain because he called tommy the hero’ - so very false

this is a take i’ve seen that to this day i don’t understand.

techno calling tommy the hero does not mean he was setting himself up as the villain in any capacity. it was merely pointing out tommy’s habit of putting himself at the forefront of almost every conflict, trying to shoulder everything, no matter how it hurts tommy himself. the speech was directed at that and nothing else. it doesn’t mean techno is the villain, it doesn’t even mean there is a villain; there are more stories to be told than the classic hero-villain and the hero-villain narrative doesn’t always apply to stories. (i’d certainly argue that it doesn’t apply to the dream smp but that’s a different conversation.)

techno is to blame for tubbo’s death - false

i think this one has been done to death but what would a techno post be without it?

no, techno is not to blame.

he said over and over that he was outnumbered and believed that if he had done anything, everyone would’ve turned on him and ‘torn him to shreds’. even if that wasn’t the case, it is what techno believed. he had no reason to think that he could take the entire crowd out until he actually fired the rocket launcher. and remember, he tested the rocket launcher earlier during the festival on niki (who volunteered) and it didn’t kill her. when he realized the amount of splash damage it did, he gives a surprised laugh and then begins firing into the crowd.

as for saying he was under ‘mild’ amounts of peer pressure, techno has a habit of minimizing. not just the things he’s done, but often situations that he’s been in that were stressful. he stated that he deals poorly with high stress situations and one of the cognitive distortions that can come with anxiety is minimization. techno doesn’t actually believe it was ‘mild’ peer pressure - it was a situation that caused him enough distress that he brings it up later at doomsday - but it’s easier to deal with a situation when you downplay it, it’s easier for techno to keep up that calm façade when he’s acting as if whatever happened wasn’t that big of a deal even if it was. again, the way he speaks about it on doomsday was clearly upset and emotional.

the only person to blame for tubbo’s death is schlatt. he was the one pulling the trigger and techno was the gun.

if you made it this far, thank you for sticking it out! i spent so many hours rewatching all the streams, some of them multiple times, while taking notes to be able to do this. i’m extremely passionate about techno and i feel as if a lot of the arguments against him tend to miss the nuance of his character. this project is on-going and i’ll be going over the butcher army/retirement storylines next. feel free to submit any points you’d like to see addressed!

#technoblade #dream smp #dsmp analysis #dsmp meta #tommyinnit #tubbo #quackity #dsmpblr #dream smp analysis #loyal does meta #this......is a lot #i spent so much time on it y'all

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everyonewasabird · 2 years ago

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Brickclub 5.1.12 “Disorder a Parisan of Order”

Ugggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh Fannicot. The guy who didn’t know what he was doing, but he was having fun and wanted to Take The Whole Barricade Down Himself, and who got a lot of people killed.

Hugo spends the first part of the chapter talking about how righteously affronted tavern owners and bankers were at the rebellion because of the ways it harmed property and disrupted business. He praises their bravery sarcastically, describing their righteously taking up arms to defend Capital as “singing the Marseillaise.” The symbolic link between these people and Thenardier is obviously intentional, though of course Thenardier isn’t one of them--he wouldn’t risk his neck that way, even if he still owned a tavern. But the text is signalling that these people suck.

I do really love the point Hugo is making, that privileged people react to minor threats to their privilege as if they’re suffering the worst oppression ever visited on human beings. Sure wish this book would become useless soon.

He also talks about lynching and makeshift court-martials and how bad they are--and how people taking on an authority they had no excuse for murdered Jean Prouvaire. Which doesn’t contradict the themes around Le Cabuc: it’s integral to them. Enjolras knows exactly how very, very fucking bad taking that action is. That’s why.

Which is an interesting contrast with Javert, who runs private court-martials by himself all the time? His judgment of Fantine seemed to be what the law expected of him (which: Wow that’s fucked up), but he also does it on himself at key moments, not nearly as rationally as he thinks he does. He does it in the same spirit of crushing rebellion as the people who shot Jean Prouvaire did, too. It feels especially significant that Prouvaire was the one who got that lynch mob rage, actually, rather than, say, someone more like Bahorel: he’s a rebellion of free-spiritedness, not physical force or particular material threat, at least not more than the rest of the Amis. You have to hate rebellion of spirit in particular--which is exactly what Javert most hates.

Anyway, Fannicot is being Thenardier-linked from the start, for good reason. And he was in charge when Prouvaire was murdered.

Fuck. This. Guy.

..It is darkly funny, though, that when he runs out at the barricade, getting a bunch of his men stupidly killed for no reason, he gets shot by his own cannon on the way back because he didn’t think to tell it to stop firing.

The chapter ends with the inevitability that a barricade will be destroyed by an army (though it doesn’t address the fact that they usually disband and flee first), unless the people rise along with France herself. Which is, Hugo assures us, possible.

Thinking about the chapter title, the obvious read is that it’s about the stupid, self-interested bravery of the bourgeoisie--and by extension, Fannicot--being disorderly in defense of the status quo. I do wonder if "order” is double-valenced, though, as being not just the order that authority stands for, but the Order of the wider universe and Providence. Which would mean that the chapter title is also describing how Fannicot’s foolishness brings down divine justice on his own stupid, disorderly head.

#brickclub #lm 5.1.12

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cblgblog · 4 years ago

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I know I’m probably beating a dead horse at this point but I feel like it isn’t talked about enough how the accord do not and will never affect Tony the same way they’ll affect those like Steve & Wanda. Tony can always just blow up all of his suits again & go back to a fully normal life if he wants to. He doesn’t have to wear a tracking bracelet, or submit dna samples, or fear getting shoved into a straight jacket or electroshock collar if he gets arrested. I’ll I just don’t think it’s addressed enough how blatantly privileged Tony & other normal humans like rhodey & nat would be under the accords compared to their other teammates. No wonder they were so supportive of them from the beginning.

Ah, but what is fandom for if not the beating of dead horses?

I agree with you. I generally prefer the film over the comic event (granted I haven’t read it in a few years now), but I do like that the Civil War comic had more time to discuss those civil liberties issues. Like, the damn thing, as with most comics events, is annoyingly massive. Not if you just read the core 6 books of the main CW storyline, but the tie-ins, oh my God the tie-ins. Comic events and their damn tie-ins…

For the sake of telling a fuller story though, I do like that the comics had so damn much. There was much more room for side content, for lesser characters who aren’t in the MCU, or weren’t, at the time. There’s a fuller picture of why various people are taking the sides they do. Some of those reasons make more sense than others, but yeah.

There’s a bit from the comics that I’ve posted before where Tony and Peter (mid 20’s, his own hero Peter, not Frankenstein, Tonky Jesus fanboy Peter) are arguing about the Registration Act—as it’s called in the comics—and talking about the civil liberties being violated. Being a 2006 book, it’s got a very post 9/ll, Guantanamo Bay theme going. The lack of trial, of legal representation, the prison that’s even worse than The Raft. There are several scenes like this as I recall, and yeah, the film is sorely missing them in places. You kind of see it with Team Cap in The Raft, but it’s very much a quick thing in the larger narrative of the film, and that’s annoying.

I’m not exactly advocating for this, because the film version with it’s smaller focus works a lot better in many respects, but I do sometimes think of the alternate reality where Disney Plus existed sooner, and Civil War was turned into a series instead of a film. Say six episodes, match the number of installments in the main comic event, eight eps if you wanted to push it. Then we could get something that delved deeper into what these documents actually say, what the public’s reaction to them is, how they would affect people besides our core Avengers group.

Show some kid like Peter who has abilities but doesn’t want to go out and fight bad guys, just wants to live a normal life. Show someone who can’t reveal their Enhanced nature to friends or family because it wouldn’t be safe for that person. Show the every day or every day-ish people (ala the Netflix shows) and where they stand on this. Wanda talks about people being scared of her after the Lagos incident and you kind of see that, but not really. Actually show that. Show the fears that people have of these Enhanced people, the legit and less legit ones, and show the other side too, the regular, every day people who still look at this and say hey, no, hang on, this is wrong.

Again, not necessarily saying I’d want this over the film, but if the Mouse overlords ever wanted to revisit that storyline and expand on it, I wouldn’t complain.

And yeah, people have talked about this too, but it kind of sucks the way the film handled everyone and their reasons for siding how they did. Steve is all about choice and keeping the government from abusing its citizens ala Hydra, Tony’s got his whole, we need to be kept in check thing, but very few of our other players land where they land because of the actual Accords. Nat doesn’t want her Avengers family to fall apart, and wants to maintain some control over the situation rather than none. Rhodey’s the career military man who (generally) follows orders and hey, if this is what most people want, we don’t get to just decide eh, no thanks. Panther doesn’t care about any of this, dude just picks the team that’s going after Bucky. Peter doesn’t know what the fuck he is actually fighting for, Tony didn’t tell him, Scott and Clint are there because Cap asked, and also, presumably, because of the danger the Accords would put their family in, but that second point is never explicitly stated.

And Sam…I feel like we really got fucking robbed with Sam, especially in light of what we’ve learned about his character in Falcon and WS. The film doesn’t much go into his reasoning, beyond the fact he believes in Cap, he’s Cap’s ride or die, etc. But given the history he has in Falcon and WS, again, we were robbed. Dude is all about making sure minorities aren’t oppressed, aren’t punished for existing. Dude is very much aware of the double-standards in this country. I know that stuff was written in later, but my God did we miss out on a Sam monologue about this in CW. Sam, who’s like Nat and Tony in that he can theoretically hang up the wings and be free of the Accords, but still takes the other side. Would’ve been hella interesting to see Sam and Rhodey’s little argument they have about it be an actual scene, an actual debate. Sam who knows of the US government and it’s unjust laws and abuse of power, knows it long before he hears of Isiah Bradley. Who has those nephews that will have to grow up in a post-Accords world. It just would’ve been super interesting to see Rhodey and Sam, both Black men who joined the military, one who left, one who didn’t, have an actual discussion on why they feel what they feel. Even discounting the finer details of the Sam stuff, the stuff that wasn’t written yet, it would’ve been cool.

And, of course it would’ve been awesome to see Tony and the non-powered on Team Iron Man (but mostly Tony) get called out on their privilege with this issue, but that of course couldn’t happen, because Tony has plot immunity. Let fire and lightning pour forth and destroy all who dare to question the wisdom of Tonky Jesus, praise be to Tonky and all he has given us.

#pro steve rogers #pro team cap #anti tony stark #anti tony stans #anti team iron man #anti iron man #sam wilson #fatws

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starberry-cupcake · 4 years ago

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Free Short Stories: Aromantic Recommendations

Aro week is over but I spent it reading aro stories that are entirely accessible online (with their authors' consent) and thought I'd share some with you, as well as some extra resources. I’m going to include under “read more” content warnings and specific details, like the kind of rep included or important notes, so if you want to be sure and safe before reading them, you can click “read more” for all that information, or if you prefer just the blurb, avoid it easily enough. There you will also find the extra links of interest and other masterposts.

Edit: This post used to be split in two parts, I’ve integrated them into one whole post for everyone’s convenience.

1. Nkásht ii by Darcie Little Badger

Josie and Annie set to investigate a strange death that may involve more than they expected. Sometimes the love that heals isn’t romantic and bonds that are strong are those chosen.

2. Hope of the Future by Elizabeth Barrette

In a fantasy setting, a human cleric finds an elf bard and a strong female dwarf, all cast aside for their identities, and create their own home and family. The same characters also appear in another poem that continued their story: The Underground Gardens.

3. Tanith’s Sky by Penny Stirling

Ash is left with the loss of Tanith, after she sacrifices herself to save the world. Tanith's memories resurface in people's minds and Ash has to navigate their identity, their memories and how to label for others’ sake their lost relationship.

4. And If The Body Were Not The Soul by A. C. Wise

Ro is a human who forms an unlikely bond with an alien refugee, discovering a different layer of proximity that doesn't chain to the type of physicality humanity sets. In that process of discovery, Ro learns about the other side of the social oppression in their own city.

5. The Crows Her Dragon’s Gate by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

An exploration of the background and re-telling of the story of the goddess Xihe. Marrying out of the obligation of customs and pressure, this story explores the feelings of Xihe, her relationship with Di Jun and the freedom she ultimately seeks.

6. The Girl Turns West by Darcie Little Badger

Another tale set in Native American culture (the author is a Lipan Apache writer), this story is about family, sacrifice and forms of non romantic love and devotion that transcend the limits of life and death.

7. Kin, Painted by Penny Stirling

The narrator can’t find a place in a family that seems so determined, so certain, painted each in a specific way. A poetic prose filled with magic and the colors that we paint ourselves with, which can sometimes change with time.

8. Cucumber by Penny Stirling

A queerplatonic couple in a fantasy setting deals with social pressure in a story written in poetic verse.

9. The Famine King by Darcie Little Badger

A woman is chased by fear, memories and a being that affects her relationship with her own identity and mental health, while finding refuge in a found family. These characters are also included in a previous story called To Sleep.

10. How My Best Friend Rania Crashed A Party And Saved The World by Ada Hoffman

Emma, a Relator, finds out that her best friend Rania, a World Saver, is being used by her boyfriend and can lose her credibility as a Hero for it, so she enlists a tech-savvy Number Fiend, Deborah, to crash a high school party in a forbidden sector to confront the guy.

11. Unlike Most Tides by Darcie Little Badger

Mathilda is in peace with her solitude until she communicates with energy beyond her understanding and finds the voice of a murdered woman who asks her for help to deal with her killer: her ex boyfriend.

Content Warnings and Extra Details

1. Nkásht íí by Darcie Little Badger

Details: urban fantasy, folklore, suspense, aromantic lead character, main platonic relationship between female characters. CW: minor characters deaths, accidents, the death of a child is mentioned, domestic abuse in flashbacks.

2. Hope for the Future by Elizabeth Barrette

Details: aroace male lead in a poly relationship with a female and male character, fantasy, story in poetry, happy ending. CW: arophobia and acephobia, family abandonment.

3. Tanith’s Sky by Penny Stirling

Details: fantasy, sci fi, drama, hurt/comfort. Main qp relationship between an aroace cis female lead and a non binary allo lead. The aroace lead is dead by the start of the story, which I had my hesitation about, but the story does a wonderful job capturing Tanith’s life in an aftermath of what would be another untold story, as well as Ash’s identity and their relationship, as well as the process of grief and moving forward. CW: major character death, grief, depression, transphobia, arophobia and acephobia.

4. And If The Body Were Not The Soul by A. C. Wise

Details: explicitly touch-averse asexual non binary lead, very likely aromantic (expressed but not named in the text), sci fi, social strife, hurt/comfort, found family and friendship (nb and cis female, nb and alien friendships). Many commenters have expressed that Ro is potentially an autistic character, some autistic authors and reviewers have agreed or disagreed but I couldn’t find whether the author stated that at any point. CW: mild depictions of violence, xenophobia, social issues and unrest, happy ending.

5. The Crows Her Dragon’s Gate by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Details: the goddess Xihe is depicted as aroace yet marries the god Di Jun for a time in which she lives troubled. Fantasy, mythology, re-interpretations, angst with a happy ending. CW: internalized acephobia and arophobia, dubious consent, violence, animal death, toxic marriage, there is a side wlw couple of mortals who die.

6. The Girl Turns West by Darcie Little Badger

Details: there isn’t romance in the story, the lead character doesn’t seemingly have romance in the future and there is a side female character who explicitly rejects suitors and prefers to live independently yet with her family. Considering that the author has written several aroace characters, I decided to include this one and another story in Part 2 as strong potentials (there is another story by the same author that other sites recommend as aro-representative, but I think these two are a lot less vague). Fantasy, mythology, folklore, bittersweet ending. CW: death mentions, wounds and accidents, blood mentions.

7. Kin, Painted by Penny Stirling

Details: poetic prose, fantasy, aromantic lead character, trans male character, non binary characters.

8. Cucumber by Penny Stirling

Details: fiction in poetry form, queerplatonic relationship in a fantasy setting. CW: arophobia and acephobia, social pressure.

9. The Famine King by Darcie Little Badger

Details: mystery, suspense, horror, folklore, hurt/comfort, angst w/optimistic ending, explicit non romantic & non sexual main relationship between to female characters. CW: blood, wounds, cannibalism mentions, mental illness with hallucination episodes, racism.

10. How My Best Friend Rania Crashed A Party And Saved The World by Ada Hoffman.

Details: high school setting, uplifting, sci fi, aroace lead character in a friendship with a heterosexual girl and a bisexual girl. CW: arophobia by the best friend, which is not confronted or discussed, mentions of racism. Notes: I read this story for the Pride list last year and I didn't include it because I had a bone to pick with Rania's character. The story is fun, a lot more lighthearted than many of the ones here and has a distinct tone that makes it good to include, plus Emma (the lead) is a very friendly, social and well-liked person, rather than the traditional robot/alien foil aro, ace and aroace characters tend to receive. So, even if I'm still uneasy about Rania and how her bad attitude is not acknowledged in the story, I’m still including it for all its perks.

11. Unlike Most Tides by Darcie Little Badger

Details: there is a protagonist who prefers to live in solitude and speaks about it and about her favorable feelings towards it. It isn’t explicitly stated that she is aromantic but, much like The Girl Turns West in Part 1, I’d say it’s a good addition to the list, though it's probably the least explicit of the bunch. Mystery, supernatural, sci fi, suspense, positive ending. CW: murder, corpses, side character death, blood, femicide.

Other masterposts:

@coolcurrybooks's first and second masterpost I consulted

Penny Stirling's recommendation list

LGBTQReads recommendations list

Claudie Arsenault recommendation list

Aro and Ace character database

Aroaessidhe recommendations list

YA Pride masterlist

My own LGBTQ+ free short stories rec list from last year, some of these stories are in it but the majority is not

#book recs #short stories #masterpost #lgbtq+ books #aromantic books #aromantic stories #aro week #aro awareness week #aromantic awareness week #aroace space #long post #books

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retvenkos · 4 years ago

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No, I am not done talking about aging up the characters of the Grishaverse, thank you very much...

(Spoilers for pretty much all of the Grishaverse!)

I’m going to come right out and say it - I don’t think aging up all of the characters was the smartest move. I think the Grishaverse is compelling, and the characters can be very complex, and part of that leans on the ages of the characters. I’m going to be talking about why I think (at least some) of the characters should have retained their same age, or at the very least, shouldn’t have been quite so aged up.

But first, I understand some reasons as to why they aged up characters, so I’m going to state them outright, to advocate on their behalf (but also, I can try my hand at debunking some of these. For funsies):

1. Mass audiences will be less interested if the main story feels too Y.A. - most adult audiences won’t want to watch that genre.

(This is a very fair argument! However, when comparing Shadow and Bone to other popular (non Y.A.) fantasies, Shadow and Bone is very Y.A. Compare Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings to Shadow and Bone, and you can see how the Y.A. genre permeates the text. There are character moments and story beats that Shadow and Bone utilizes that are characteristic of the Y.A. genre. It was created with that audience and expectation in mind. No matter how hard the show tries to divorce the source material from it’s Y.A. roots, it is still very much a Y.A. story. The second most important plot line is a romance and not the implications of how society created the Darkling and how society Must Be Fixed if we ever want to move on and win the war. Those problems of the wider Grishaverse are better tackled in the Nikolai Duology (which still stumbles), and the Nikolai Duology feels like a different story/genre because it’s tackling something different. Shadow and Bone is an inherently Y.A. story, and really, it is the later books in the Grishaverse that deviate from the tropes and traps of the genre. No matter how you dice it, the original trilogy is very much a Y.A. story. Lean into it, and you might be better able to mess around with the fluidity of the genre, all while your audience knows what the story is, and what will come of it. Alternatively, the writers could have gotten deep into the text and tried to bring up the deeper problems of the story (most of those grey areas) to make it less trope-like, but that would require an almost complete retelling, which we did not get. Too often, Y.A. stories are divorced from the genre when they are adapted, but it’s not done in an organic way that looks at the text itself, and it feels very off when viewing. Just let Shadow and Bone be what it is. If you want a longer rant on this, hmu.)

2. Some very serious things happen to these characters! To write about it is one thing, but to watch a 17 year old Alina be manipulated in this way or to watch a 19 year old Genya be used in this way is dark and very much Not Okay!

(Yes! Watching all of the terrible, terrible things happen is bad enough on it’s own, and when you de-age Alina from 25 to 17 and Genya from 30 to 19, there are some very big consequences! It’s not nearly as inviting or Okay to view! Anyone would be rightly horrified! Especially older audiences! Well, forgive me for being so blunt, but that is part of The Point. Part of what makes all of this so cruel and so unfair is that these characters are young - they are barely no longer children - and that is what heightens the injustice of it all. Alina is a teenager who is tasked with saving the world and freeing an oppressed people! And she doesn’t want to do it! That’s a lot to handle, right? Arguably, by keeping their young ages, you are better breaking out of the Y.A. adaptation trap because you are making a statement about how young these characters are and how unfair all of this is. Y.A. adaptations always age up the characters for palatability, but by keeping them young, you are making it more grungy and more frightening without even changing the source material!)

3. Okay, but adult audiences don’t want to ship teenagers. How will we get them to watch?

(This argument is probably the most sound, and it makes the most sense! Netflix wants to get the widest audience they can - they know teenagers who read the book are going to watch it anyway, so they need to get the older crowd invested. An easy way to get people invested is to get them hooked on a romance plotline. Then you have to watch the show to see how it progresses! It would be hard to do that if adults feel uncomfortable telling 16 year olds to kiss already. Another problem is that Shadow and Bone doesn’t have an adult cast - they have the young ones and that’s about it. Compare that to Game of Thrones (or, if you want me to stop with GOT references, shows like Cobra Kai) where there are 2+ generations - fans have the older group to ship, and the younger group to wish the best for. This is a trap of the Y.A. genre. They are Kids, but they are Not. In the book, this works fine, as their ages aren’t mentioned often. In fact, in the books, they read like competent 25 year olds, except for key moments when they show their age, which usually feels bittersweet (the Six of Crows Duology is much better at this than Shadow and Bone, but I digress). So what do we do? Well, D*rklina fans aren’t going to like this, but I would argue that we keep Alina and Mal aged down, and the story subliminally changes from “the love triangle” to “coming of age while dealing with abusive relationships”. In fact, this is another great way to divorce it from the Y.A. genre, which was already a goal we had in mind.)

✧ *:･ﾟ

Now, let’s move onto character analyses... everyone’s favorite.

In this section, I’m going to break down some main characters from the Shadow and Bone Netflix show (and some upcoming characters, just for the hell of it) and I’m going to advocate for changing their ages. At the end, I’ll give you a rough ballpark estimate for what I think they should have been.

(Also, I just want to address that I loved the actors chosen for the Netflix show, and this is in no way an attack on them. They did great, and they’re performances were amazing. This is me talking about an issue the showrunners made, not the actors.)

Alina Starkov

First, we get to talk about the lovely Alina Starkov. Jessie Mei Li is 25 years old. Her book counterpart is 17. That’s a whopping 8 year difference where a lot of growth happens. Alina Starkov in the books is doing her best for a girl who is told that she is going to save the world. She doesn’t have a lot of experience outside of the orphanage and the army, and so her knowledge of how Grisha are treated is ignorant at best, and malicious at worst. She doesn’t see nearly all of the suffering that is happening in the world, and for the most part, it stays that way. She knows the Fjerdans don’t like them, she knows the Shu are bad too, but she doesn’t really know the extent. She really gets a good look at it in the 3rd book, but for a large part of the series, Alina doesn’t really know what she’s up against, and her age is an easy explanation for her ignorance. A 17 year old growing up in a remote orphanage hasn’t had the greatest education. A 25 year old Alina has less excuses.

(There’s also a lot to be said about how Alina mostly... doesn’t care about the wider issues plaguing Grisha. This is decidedly Bad. I’m going to say this once, and I will say it many times again, but generally, audiences are more okay when a younger character does Bad Things because they reason they’ll learn in time. Thus, for a show, it’s strategically better to make these characters younger. Saying this doesn’t mean I support Alina’s disregard, it just means I recognize how it is utilized in storytelling.)

But why is her ignorance important, you ask? Because, Alina misses a key point of why the Darkling does what he does. To her, his actions of expanding the Fold are very black and white. Even when she’s with him, she refuses to see how it’s justified. Thus, a younger Alina is a little more understandable.

If Netflix was planning on focusing on how the Darklings desires are good but his methods are wrong, keeping Alina aged up is fine because she could be the voice of those concerns. However, I don’t really see that happening, so aging her up seems cheap.

Furthermore, part of the injustice of Alina’s character is that she is a child tasked with saving the world. She is a teenager who is being worshipped as a Saint, and who is going to have to martyr herself for the good of the world. It’s unfair. It’s cruel. Alina being 25 doesn’t somehow change this injustice, but to the average viewer, seeing a 17 year old child dying for the good of Ravka - dying because she’s the only one who can stop the villain - is more emotional and more disturbing. There’s your grit, Netflix. It was already handed to you.

And I know, Ben Barnes (who plays the Darkling) is 39! It would be extremely uncomfortable to watch him fall in love and manipulate Alina! Again, I’m apologizing to the D*rklina shippers, because that is The Point. The Darkling is hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years old. That is why his talk of “eternity” is so compelling. He has felt it. He has lived it. When he tells Alina that he will break her, it should be greatly disturbing! It would change the feeling of the story completely if Alina looks like a teenager. It would be a story about survival - not of romance. And while survival is definitely a Y.A. dystopian or fantasy trope, depending on how it’s handled, it could be markedly different from its predecessors.

However, book Alina is a minor, and that doesn’t sit right with me. Thus, I would make Alina 18, or 19 at the most. She should still very much be a teenager.

Malyen Oretsev

Mal is the next character we get to talk about, and I’m sure you have an idea about what I’m going to say. Archie Renaux is 23 and his book counterpart is 18. That’s only a five year difference, which isn’t that damning, but still leaves some problems.

One thing a lot of people disliked about Mal in the books was his temper and the way he expressed his frustrations. Now, while it’s true that viewers tend to be more forgiving with male characters having bad attitudes, this attitude problem could still be something that viewers will dislike in later seasons. This problem is only larger when you factor in an older age. Already, I expect people to complain about Mal’s temper and his inability to vent his frustrations in a healthy way (avoiding talking to Alina, blowing up, having a sour mood, having violent or explosive tendencies). This is only going to get worse when another argument added is “he is a grown man. He should have learned how to cope by now.” This argument isn’t completely nullified by a younger age, but it is made a little more understandable to the audience. (Again, in no way am I justifying these unhealthy behaviors, nor am I saying it’s okay when younger men do it, I’m just saying that viewers on a whole are more likely to excuse this behavior from a younger man - a sad reality, but a reality nonetheless.)

And as for his tracking ability, which is the best out of everyone in the world, he is gifted primarily because he’s an amplifier. At the end of Ruin and Rising, it’s noted that he can’t track nearly as well as he could because the world doesn’t hum with life in the way it used to. The in-world explanation probably also explains the ease with which he can pick up new skills. Thus, Mal doesn’t need to be aged up for skill reasons.

So, I would make Mal 19-21 in the series. He can be the slightly older than Alina, and everything works out how it should.

The Darkling

This one is going to be really quick - I think the age they made the Darkling was fine. Ben Barnes is 39 and we really don’t get an answer as to how old the Darkling is in the book (although he’s older than 400 years old, because the Fold was created 400 years ago).

It’s worth noting that in the books, the Darkling isn’t described as being much older than (a 17 year old) Alina, but having him be markedly older than Alina was a smart move for subtext, but also for the presence that the Darkling has, and the reverence with which people regard him. The Darkling has power - I can’t imagine a 17 year old boy having the same effect as a grown man.

I have no beef with a 39 year old Darkling. I wouldn’t age him down much more, but I also wouldn’t make him much older, either.

Genya Safin

Genya Safin is another character I feel like should be addressed. Daisy Head is 30 years old. In the books, Genya is 19. Now, Genya’s character is an interesting one, because arguably either age suits her character. Throughout the series she’s shown to be more mature and capable than Alina, and while she places importance on the cliques of the Little Palace (which was poorly shown in the show, imo), she was raised in this environment from very young, and she’s at the bottom of the ranking. Her investment in it is justified. Sadly, I think more viewers would be moved by her story of sexual abuse if she were younger, but what happened is a tragedy and it was wrong no matter how you dice it.

Her age is one of the few I’m neutral on.

However, she and Alina are shown to be very close in the book, and while that doesn’t carry over as easily in the show, I think it would be nice to place her at least a little closer in age to Alina, but still keep her a little older so that she can offer her advice and it doesn’t feel preachy or unearned.

I would place her around 19-26. She has a lot of room for her age, because it’s not vital that she be any specific age.

David Kostyk

I’m very briefly talking about David because Luke Pasqualino is 31 and David in the books is 19-20. I aged down Genya, and since they are love interests, I would like them to be in a little closer range of each other.

However, David is a very gifted Fabrikator - so much so that he changes the war considerably in later books - so I still want him to be older than the average cast.

I would place him around 24-29, and mostly, it would be based around the age of Genya. I wouldn’t want him to be 29 if Genya is 19. That’s just the ballpark range.

Zoya Nazyalensky

The final Shadow and Bone character I’m going to talk about is Zoya because she’s really important later in the Grishaverse. Online, I could not determine exactly what Sujaya Dasgupta’s age is, but the two ages most commonly given are 19 or 21. Zoya in the books is 19-20, so Sujaya is one of the most faithful castings in terms of age.

I think it’s important that Zoya is around the age of Alina. Not only do they have a shared love interest in the form of Nikolai (and the Darkling in the show, which I absolutely hate), but they also have a rivalry for the Darkling’s favor (which isn’t romantic, but about sTATUS), and having her be markedly older than a teenage Alina would be weird, in my opinion.

Furthermore, Zoya’s character is pretty closed off and (dare I say) one-dimensional in the original Shadow and Bone trilogy, so keeping her younger isn’t going to make her any less believable. She’s not particularly wise, so keeping her young won’t be an issue.

Finally, she has a romantic plotline with Mal (even if it doesn’t go anywhere), so we want to keep her within range of Mal’s age, too.

I would place Zoya at 19-22. Thus, I am in agreement with the showrunners!

Nikolai Lantsov

A character that has yet to make an appearance in the show is Nikolai Lantsov, who is stated as being 20-21 in Siege and Storm, and the rest of the Shadow and Bone trilogy. Nikolai hasn’t been casted yet, but I decided to put him here because why not?

Nikolai, interestingly enough, is a character I would like to age up, however, only slightly. Nikolai is a very accomplished character, as anyone who has read the series knows, and while he does have the grooming to be that smart and accomplished, he is able to outsmart the Darkling and other older characters on multiple occasions, and him being so young just seems off. Of course, I understand why he is young - his love interests are, and he certainly has his moments where he’s boyish and unprepared - but these reasons pale in comparison to all of his talents and accomplishments.

Taking all of this into consideration, I would put Nikolai at 23 or 24. It’s a minor age change, and it would really just make him more apt to grow into his role. He’s still young enough to where people can underestimate him, but he’s old enough to justify having such smarts and charm. The only argument I can see going against this is his love story with Alina, seeing as she’s 18/19, but I think there was a lot that went into his pursuit of Alina. At first it was political, but after that, it became about how Alina was someone who challenged him and knew him for all that he was. It was less of a romance and more of a friendship that lended itself to a nice opportunity. It could have been more. It wasn’t. Plus, the age gap isn’t egregious.

Tamar Kir-Bataar and Tolya Yul-Bataar

I’m briefly talking about these twins, because they are originally 18-19 in the Shadow and Bone Trilogy, and I would like them to be older overall. Tamar and Tolya are some of the most competent characters in the Grishaverse, and having them be the same age as Mal and Alina is off, in my mind.

I would like them to be at least Nikolai’s age or older, so 23-27.

✧ *:･ﾟ

Finally, we’re on to the crows....

Kaz Brekker

Ah, yes. The Bastard of the Barrel. His is a character I was actually really glad to see aged up, before watching the show. Afterwards, I have some more complex thoughts. Freddy Carter is 28 years old and Kaz, in the books, is 17.

Kaz in the books is very competent. So much so that he outsmarts everyone he comes up against - characters who are older than him and often have military strategy. Furthermore, he is ruthless. He is probably one of the darkest characters in all of the Grishaverse, and all of that is placed on the shoulders of a 17 year old. To make a comparison, he and Alina are the same age when their stories take place (Shadow and Bone for Alina, and Six of Crows for Kaz). I don’t know a lot of young celebrities to make the comparison, but he’s a teenager. He’s a child. Aging up Kaz in the show was something I was very much on board for. Kaz is a ruthless killer and an expert thief, and making him older was a smart move, imo. A Kaz in his 20′s made more sense.

However, when we meet Kaz in season one of Shadow and Bone, he’s very much in his fledgling state. Not a single plan of his goes as planned. He is foiled at every step, and the most gruesome thing he did in the show wasn’t bad, when you compare it to thing Kaz has canonically done. Rumors say that the Six of Crows arc is going to pick up in season two, and while I hope it doesn’t, I covered that particular argument far more in depth in another post and won’t address it here. Whether or not I think show Kaz is up to snuff, I think they aged him up too much and they depowered him too much.

Part of Kaz’ secret weapon was that he was wicked smart and crazy competent, but people underestimated him because of his age. They figured he didn’t have nearly enough experience to be as ruthless and cunning as he was. They were clearly wrong.

I think that Kaz in his 20′s makes sense, but Kaz in his late 20′s does not. Especially when you factor in the fact that he was so epically unsuccessful in the show, the extent to which they made him older wasn’t doing him any favors. It made him less “Dirtyhands” than he is.

So, final say, I would have made Kaz 20 or 21 in Shadow and Bone. We’re de-aging him so he still has time to grow, but he’s not crazy overpowered at 17. Furthermore, in a perfect world, he has time to age between Shadow and Bone and the events of Six of Crows.

Inej Ghafa

Inej is played by Amita Suman who is 23 years old. In the books, Inej is 16. In an interesting turn of events, I don’t find Inej in the books to be terribly overpowered so much as she is just really talented.

Inej in Six of Crows is hesitant to kill. She’s smart and watchful, and she’s a really great spider. She’s given backstory to explain all of this, and it makes sense. At most, she is mature for her age, but that is also given a pretty damn good reason. She has to be.

The few reasons I could see as to aging up her character is to make it less awkward for the romance between her and Kaz, as well as make the crows group more cohesive in age, with fewer outliers, both of which I am not against.

I would make Inej around 18 or 19 and call it a day.

Jesper Fahey

Jesper is another character that I largely have no problems with. Jesper is played by Kit Young who is 26 years old, and in the books, Jesper is 17.

In the books, Jesper is an extremely talented marksman, but part of that (even if he doesn’t know it or doesn’t want to acknowledge it in the books) is because he is a Grisha Fabrikator and he is using his gifts to bend the bullets he shoots and aims them where they need to go. His character wasn’t particularly overpowered in the books, and as for his personality, in the books he acted the most “teenage-like,” but in the show, he retained his same youthfulness without it seeming out of place, so that isn’t particularly damning.

For Jesper, I don’t mind aging him up or making him younger. Both work.

However, he has a romantic plotline with Wylan (who I will get to eventually), so we wan’t to keep that in mind.

Final say, I would make Jesper 18. He’s the same age as (or slightly younger than) Inej, and that sits well with me.

Matthias Helvar

Oh, boy. If you’ve been on my blog long, you know this is the character that started this whole rant. Because here’s the thing: Matthias is an incredibly complex character. And part of that complexity comes from the fact that Matthias doesn’t know about anything beyond what Fjerda has taught him. He is heavily indoctrinated and heavily ignorant, and his struggle is what makes him such an interesting character.

Matthias is played by Calahan Skogman who is 28 (in my other meta, he was 27, but birthdays, y’know?). In the books, Matthias is 18 when Six of Crows takes place. That’s a whopping 10 year age gap. As you can imagine, so much happens in 10 years time. Now, with Matthias, we’re going to look at his life a little more in depth so that you can really understand how this 10 year gap affects his ignorance.

Matthias’ family were killed by Grisha when he was a child. We don’t know how young, but that doesn’t really matter, because either way it’s traumatic. Soon afterward, he starts training to become a soldier. Now, just when drüskelle are allowed to be fully initiated at Hringkälla is unknown, but I’m guessing the age would be at youngest, 14 (although, it’s probably closer to 16, but I’m not arguing about that right now). Grisha are supposed to be the most dangerous type of person. The Fjerdans are not going to put 12 year olds out there to fight them. So, a roughly 14 year old Matthias is going on expeditions to catch Grisha. When he is 17, Matthias meets Nina. At this point, he has only been a full drüskelle for 3-ish years. Regardless of how many Grisha Matthias has captured, 3 years is a vast difference from his show counterpart, who is 28 and therefore (as a drüskelle since he was 14) has been capturing Grisha for 14 years. In fact, in the show, they give Matthias props for having been the one with the clever ideas for capturing Nina, which shows he has done this often. After that, Matthias spends one year in Hellgate, making in 18 in the books and (eventually) 29 in the show.

So, why was it so important that I detail that for you? Matthias’ change of heart is prompted by Nina, a pretty Grisha. I’m not saying their bond is shallow, but if you are a man who has a nasty past with Grisha and has been hunting them for 14 years, having a pretty Grisha change your mind is a little shallow and a little unbelievable. Even though Nina saved his life, I think it’s a little hard to sell the substantial change of heart he has. On the other hand, if Matthias is 18-19, he’s still a hormonal teenager, and his feelings for Nina prompting some critical thinking makes more sense. Furthermore, Matthias is younger and more impressionable. It would be much easier to change his worldview, if he were younger.

All in all, I would de age Matthias to be 19-20. Slightly older than in the books to allow for Nina to be a little older than her book counterpart (which I’m about to get to.)

Nina Zenik

Almost finished with my rant, we’re talking about Nina. Nina is played by Danielle Galligan who is 28 years old, and in the books, Nina is 17.

Now, Nina Zenik is a capable character. She is a spy. She speaks multiple languages, she’s a talented Grisha, and she’s quite self-assured. All of that advocates for an older Nina, so that she may have time to hone these impressive skills. Furthermore, Nina is the most sexualized of the Crows. I wouldn’t mind her being older, and I’m sure general audiences would be in favor of her not being a teenager.

Nina is also a soldier and she has a very complex storyline in Six of Crows, and later. By all accounts, aging her up is not a bad idea. In fact, I quite like the idea that Nina is older. I agree that she should be aged up, just not to the extent she was.

If this were my world, I would make Nina 20-22. That would make her the oldest out of all of the crows, and I quite like that.

Wylan Van Eck

Wylan has yet to be casted, but he is 16 in the books, and pretty damn smart. He’s not street smart, mind you, but he’s a chemistry nerd and demolitionist, so he’s very competent. He’s still under his father’s thumb, but I don’t take that to mean he has to be young - abuse can affect you well into your life. He’s definitely a character more naive to the realities of the Barrel, but that can easily be played off as “the rich boy is out of depth.”

There’s nothing that explicitly needs him to be younger than an adult, although the argument for making him young amongst the crows is strong and still stands.

He has a love story with Jesper, so we want to keep in mind the fact that Jesper is an adult.

Wylan also has the tricky little storyline of him being tailored into being Kuwei, so in determining his age, we want to keep him in the ballpark of Kuwei. Luckily, he was tailored from a Grisha on parem, so truly, anything is possible.

For his smarts, his competence, and his love story, I think we should age him up.

All in all, I would make Wylan 18. It’s not far from his book counterpart, and I think it makes sense.

Kuwei Yul-Bo

Kuwei is another character who was yet to be casted. He is 16 in Six of Crows, and I would say he is the character who most shows his age. Kuwei may be wicked smart, but he’s a chaos gremlin who doodles in his notebook, pretends to not understand Kerch, and also renames himself to be nhaban - “rising phoenix” in Shu. He doesn’t scheme the way the rest of the crows do, and while this can be explained away by the fact that he’s not a criminal, there still seems to be something hopeful and youthful about his character.

He’s still a boy in mourning over the death of his father, and he’s currently one of the world’s most wanted. In Crooked Kingdom, he’s vibing in a tomb for the majority of the book. Kuwei is honestly such a fun character that I hope gets more complexity in coming Grishaverse content.

Kuwei is very similar to Wylan in that he’s wicked smart (although his dad is a scientist and they have worked together, so there is some in-world explanation) and he has a crush on Jesper (don’t we all?).

Taking this into account, I would make Kuwei 17 or 18.

✧ *:･ﾟ

TL;DR, the characters of the Grishaverse were aged up and I’m a little miffed about it. The reasons for aging them up are to detract from the source material being a Y.A. story, but you cannot separate a story from it’s genre. The story is inherently Y.A. because it uses story beats that are typical of a Y.A. story. It’s not just viewer expectation - the story is Y.A. The ages of the characters in the books are very young in some cases, but in the show they were aged up too much, imo. It detracts from the tragedy of them being young and forced to survive, and it adds very little in most cases.

✧ *:･ﾟ tagging @missumaru

56 notes · View notes

yeahhiyellow · 4 years ago

Note

19, 22 and 23? :^)

19. What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

Tbh there are a lot of things I hate, although by this point it's only very certain parts of the fandom that have these problems, since most of the shitty people have lost interest by this point. If I had to choose just one thing though, it'd be the overwhelming focus on white, male characters over female and/or characters of color. And there are a lot of areas where this shows up. One major example is that a lot of people like the idea of Connor, Hank, Gavin, and Nines (all white, male characters, mind you) staying at the DPD even after:

The DPD was the one (along with Cyberlife) responsible for the deaths, arrests, and brutal treatment of androids, the main oppressed group in the game's world

Connor and Nines are a part of that oppressed group, and at least Hank is shown in game to support them

Connor has already worked at the DPD and was routinely called an "it" (which as someone who is nonbinary and has been called "it" knows how insulting that can be and understands the need to get away from situations where that happens), was allowed to be sent to his death by, and was routinely harassed and nearly murdered, or in some playthroughs actually murdered, by workers at the DPD (*ahem Gavin ahem*)

Hank (if he is your friend) risked his career just to cause a distraction for Connor to keep him alive

Just because the android revolution was successful doesn't mean the DPD was going to follow that. I mean, the androids were heavily compared to African Americans in this game, and we all know how the current police system treats them (and if you don't, pay attention to the news, like, ever. Also read Jim Crow as that book is very informative on the oppression of blacks in the entire incarceration system as well as before and after that)

So I hope it would be pretty obvious to any sane person that suggesting these characters would join/remain in the DPD after everything is offensive on all sorts of levels.

In addition to that, you also have some people saying that they only cared about Connor's story, or that his was the only good one. The female protagonist that risks her own life several times to save that of a child (no matter if she is human or android)? Not important. The (half) black protagonist who is shot by police, has to rebuild himself, and leads his own people to freedom? Who cares? The only important story to these people is the white, male, cop android who spends most of his time hunting down the good guys. And if some people honestly prefer Connor's story because of their own reasons, that's fine. And yes, Kara and Markus's stories have lots of problems. But Connor's does too, and none of this gives people an excuse to ignore the other characters, especially since they are the minority characters. Then, there are also the people who say Connor's machine path was better than his deviant path, or that him being replaced by Nines in the end was unfair. And... what the fuck??? I mean, I get it, it's fun to play through different options, and Connor is hella badass in the machine path. But he is also hella badass in the deviant path (killing the guards in the elevator, possibly the team at the bottom if he doesn't catch the security camera, fighting Sixty, walking in front of all the androids he freed, like, come on), and he also, like, has morals and isn't oppressive??? In the machine route, he kills his own people, including those who just want to be free and might have been completely pacifist the entire way through. So I'm sorry, anyone who thinks his machine path is better is just looking for an excuse to be oppressive without openly admitting it.

Then there's the Gavin apologizers. While fanon Gavin is awesome, some people have way overstepped the line of redemption and allowing oppression. I've seen posts defending Gavin's in-game behavior, just because he refers to androids as "he" on occasion. This is despite:

Suggesting "roughing up," or being violent to Shaolin (the HK400 in "The Interrogation")

Insulting his partner, Chris, when he doesn't forcibly move Shaolin against Shaolin's will

Pointing a gun at Connor after Connor rightfully says to stop touching Shaolin for both succeeding the mission and for Shaolin's sake, and only stepping down after Hank points a gun at him and even after insults Connor

Punching Connor right in the thirium pump regulator and then pushing his head right where his LED is in the break room if Connor refuses to get him a coffee

Insulting and threatening Connor in the same scene even if Connor follows all of his demands

Insulting Hank's alcoholism in the Eden Club "it's starting to stink of booze in here"

Purposely pushing Connor to the side in the same scene

Trying to literally murder Connor and admitting he'd wanted to kill him ever since he first saw Connor, sometimes successfully

Both physically and verbally assaulting Connor

I forgive very easily and strongly believe in redemption, don't get me wrong. But trying to excuse Gavin's behaviors is so inexcusable, especially when most of his aggressions are towards androids, the oppressed minority.

Now, let's look at Ao3, shall we? Let's see how many fics posted there are with each of the "main" (including Gavin and Nines since even though they are not main characters in canon they are in fanon) characters... (also, keep in mind, I gathered this data about a month ago so it might not be completely up to date):

Connor: 16,150

Markus: 5,395

Kara: 1,504

Hank: 13,135

Nines: 9,807

Gavin: 9,939

Amanda: 1,177

Chloe: 1,521

North: 3,056

Simon: 3,192

Josh: 1,965

Alice: 1,098

Luther: 848

Rose: 193

This means that certain characters get unequal amounts of attention:

White: 59,042

Black: 9,578

Male: 60,431

Female: 8,549

White, Male: 52,223

White, Female: 7,179

Black, Male: 8,208

Black, Female: 1,370

Well, this says a lot. Now, some people reading this might realize that there are more white and male characters to begin with, so it could be fair even with their numbers being higher. So, okay, let's see the average amount of works a single character in each of the above categories would have (so divide each of the values by the number of characters in that category) (also I rounded to the tenth place aka first decimal point):

White: 6,560.2

Black: 1,915.6

Male: 7,553.9

Female: 1,424.8

White, Male: 10,444.6

White, Female: 1,794.8

Black, Male: 2,736

Black, Female: 685

If anything, these are even more telling. And if you don't believe me, look on Ao3 and calculate these yourself, because you'll get the same thing.

To be clear, I don't have anything against Connor, Hank, or any of the white and/or male characters. I even like the way that the fandom has redeemed Gavin. But the fandom has not done the same job of redeeming other characters, especially the minority ones, and pays way less attention to them, and that needs to be called out with evidence by someone.

Anyway, I spent a LONG time on that first question, so I'll try to make the next answers shorter!

22. Popular character you hate?

There aren't any popular characters that I thoroughly hate. The only characters I hate are ones that are already highly unpopular (Todd, Zlatko, Perkins). If we're talking canon characters, I do hate Gavin with a flaming passion. I mean, he is meant to represent police brutality. But fanon Gavin is cool with me, so I'm not sure exactly how much this counts.

There is one semi-popular character that I dislike though, and that is Kamski. I'm half-counting him again because within the fandom there are very mixed opinions. I personally dislike him mainly because of his treatment of one of his Chloe's: he is willing to let her get shot in the head and killed just to find a dumb answer to his Kamski test just because he feels like it. If Connor doesn't shoot Chloe, he tells Connor he's deviant, knowing full well that Amanda and Cyberlife are watching being the one to design the program, endangering Connor. While he arguably is responsible for deviancy and wants androids to succeed, that doesn't make up for those facts.

Another character that half-counts is Daniel. There are mixed opinions within the fandom on him as well, with some arguing that he is only wanting to not get replaced and protect himself. However, since his first response was to kill the dad, and then he proceeded to shoot at least 3 more cops, killing 2, and hold Emma, the young girl he had been friends with for years hostage, even though she had nothing to do with his replacement. You can't argue that he didn't want to kill Emma and only used her as protection for himself, either, as there are multiple endings where he tries and sometimes succeeds in killing Emma, even when he is also killing himself. I'm not closed to a redemption arc for him, but his in-game actions are inexcusable. He's the one deviant who truly has no valid defense for his actions.

23. Unpopular character you love?

There are a few. I absolutely adore North, Josh, Adam, and Alice, even though the fandom has conflicted opinions on them. Then again, none of these characters are really considered unpopular, just not as popular as others with a select few that don't like them. With North, I've been in this fandom since a few months after its release, when there was a lot of North hatred, and was actually in a group called the North Protection Squad lol. However, now most people like her, and she's really grown in popularity. With Josh, it's less that he's hated, and more that he's ignored. People say that Simon was the peaceful option when he was really the neutral, and recently I've seen more people against Josh's opinions on the revolution. While I don't always agree with Josh being so passive and undemanding (neither do I agree with North's violence), he's still an awesome character with some very valid points. Then, I do understand why some people dislike Adam, as at first he's against androids and almost reveals Kara and the others. However, if you meet him at the border crossing, he apologizes to Kara and changes his mind, promising to help androids. While he may start out scared and not on the right side, he does have a good heart and ends up making the right decisions in the end. With Alice, I haven't seen many people hate her, either, although I have seen some saying she's annoying and lacks a personality. I agree that she lacks a personality, although I argue that's the writers' faults rather than her character's (as are problems with other characters, I mean David Cage wrote this so what were we expecting). I also don't think she's annoying, as after all she is only 9 (in human terms), doesn't admit she's an android because she's scared Kara will reject her (and Kara actually can reject her for being an android, leaving her completely on her own in a world that wants her dead. Also, living her whole life with Todd can absolutely not help her feel more secure with who she is or make her trust Kara to still love her for it), and she is only cold and feels sick because her model of android is literally designed to replicate human sickness and discomfort (and it's clear she doesn't know how to turn them off, because even after Kara knows she's an android Kara still has to help Alice not feel cold anymore. Also, this is November in Detroit, in which the average temperature is 42°F (5.6°C). There are also scenes where it is snowing, meaning the temperature is below freezing. Still, despite the temperatures, in some scenes not having a coat, and feeling sick, she says Kara and Luther can't stop because of her, risks her life to save Kara's if you fail QTEs, and says she's "fine" even when she's cold to comfort Kara. So if you think she can be annoying, yeah, all 9-year-olds can be. But if you think she's annoying enough to actually hate her, idek what to say).

In terms of characters that are really unpopular, I actually like Leo. His actions at first are inexcusable. I mean, accusing Carl of loving an android more than hin, insulting Markus and treating him as less than human, threatening him, breaking into Carl's house and attempting to steal his paintings for drug money, and framing Markus for Carl's death leading to him getting shot and nearly killed are obviously not okay things to do. However, he is clearly on drugs, specifically red ice, the most dangerous drug in the world. Also, if you decide to push Markus leading Carl to still be alive, when you return to Carl's house, you can find a message Leo sent to Carl in which he apologizes for everything and promises it won't happen again. In the extras section, you also find out Carl missed out on Leo's whole childhood, only first meeting him once he was much older. Given that Carl spends all of his days pleasantly conversing with Markus while ignoring Leo, not calling him, only talking to Leo once he comes around himself, and doesn't even argue when Leo says Carl doesn't love him, it's almost fair that Leo thinks the way he does. Since he's also high on drugs throughout the story, at least up until Markus gets shot, we also know that the Leo we see isn't the real Leo. Later, if Carl is dead and Markus visits his grave, he encounters Leo again. This time, when Leo sees Markus he is only shocked. Now, off of red ice, not only is he going to see Carl's grave, expressing love for his father, he also doesn't try to hurt Markus, insult him, or anything mean or dehumanizing. His expression lacks any signs of aggression. It was only when he was high that he was such an asshole. Although that doesn't excuse his behavior, it does give a reason for it, and by the end I consider him redeemed.

~~~

Wow... that was a long response to a very short ask. No need to read all that (although I would highly suggest reading my first answer, at least, since that does contain some very relevant points). Although then again, if you've made it here, you've probably already read all that. In which case I would love to hear your opinions if you're willing to share (as well as anyone who sees this!) I guess I just had a lot of opinions that I needed to put out in the world lol, so thank you sm for the ask!!!!! 💛💛💛

#dbh #dbh meta #dbh analysis #my opinions #asks #detroit: become human #racism #misogyny #abuse

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where-theres-smoak-2 · 3 years ago

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I’m sorry for you haven’t read the Nikolai duology yet but I just need to vent for a min. The scene where Alina is telling Aleksander in ROW that she feel into greed like he did makes no goddamn sense! First of all he’s dedicated his life to protect his people and even him using merzost was due to that. Alina on the other hand never truly cares for the Grisha or was trying to really protect them. Her main goal was always to kill the Darkling while composing about how hard it is to be a Grisha and a Saint(girl for a Grisha you’re actually in a very privileged position,yes people will use you but you can use your position to influence and change the system which most Grisha aren’t able to do unless they’re proclaimed to be saints). Her loss of powers you know also her “punishment”also gives her the excuse to not see herself as Grisha and do the hard work for her people and fuck off instead so no B*rdugo don’t equate their goals as being the same that was never the case and for someone who supposedly became “greedy”she’s never judged harshly in the narrative(I mean in the Nikolai duology there was plenty of that in the trilogy but now that Alina’s not Grisha anymore she isn’t tainted by that inherit evil😡) the way Aleksander is. That right alway is actually a really good example of how people would rather idolise a Saint who actually doesn’t do anything and leaves them all to suffer and die rather than someone who’s dedicated his life and has been ready to become a villain in their eyes for the greater goal but his powers are darkness while hers are light so that gives her a free pass and the love of many.😒

Rant away, I don't mind. I personally really hated the whole 'greed' plotline in the books and the whole seeking power leads to greed and corruption message the author was sending, to me I just feel like its a really outdated message and I think choosing a woman and a leader of a minority group as the source of this message just didn't work for me. I think its wrong to be using these particular characters with all that they represent to say its wrong to seek power. Women and minorities have been oppressed for centuries and so I think its quite damaging to be telling them not to seek power because that makes you greedy. I feel like there were better characters in the books that she could have used to send this message for example the royal family. I mean if she really wanted to send a message about how power corrupts and leads to greed then she could have brought the lantsovs more to the forefront and had them as the true villains of the story. I mean she had already established that they were vain, greedy and that they abused their power, maybe its just me but it just makes so much more sense to me for them to be the focus of this message as oppose to the heroine of the story and the leader of an oppressed group.

Like I said though I personally feel like the whole power/greed moral story is one that is overused and outdated. I've seen this idea portrayed so many times, the idea that power corrupts and too much power makes you greedy, the whole with great power comes great responsibility ideology. But the thing is, sure power can corrupt, but it doesn't always. There are people out there that have power and influence and do good with it. I just think it would have been a more beneficial story to show Alina gaining all this power and instead of it corrupting her or making her greedy she uses it for good to help the Grisha. If they wanted to have a cautionary tale about temptation of power they could still have Aleks go a bit dark and then have him have a redemption story where he sees the light (yes pun absolutely intended) and changes his ways. Then have the royal family just be completely corrupt and greedy. That way you've got three different ways in which to show how power effects a person and how a person can use power. The person who uses it for good, the person who gets tempted but ultimately uses it for good so the middle ground I suppose you could call it and then the person who is corrupted by it.

Me personally I didn't really see either Aleks' or Alina's actions as being driven by greed despite the narrative continuously trying to tell me they were. I mean it goes back to that conflicting messaging the reader gets sent where we are told Aleks is motivated by wanting to help his people but he's doing everything for his own gain, which just doesn't make sense. Then we are told Alina is motivated by tearing down the fold and killing the darkling but she's doing it all out of greed and a thirst for more power. Again that doesn't make sense so its frustrating to the reader because it makes it hard to understand the characters' motives and also what the message of the story is because it is not told in a clear, cohesive way.

#darklina #anti leigh bardugo #row spoilers #rule of wolves spoilers #answered

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incorrectzutaraquotes · 4 years ago

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let’s talk racial micro aggressions, because i’ve been seeing a lot of them being used online toward people speaking out about racism and even in fandoms unfortunately, so i think it’s time we have a talk. this is gonna be a semi long one, so buckle up.

just for reference, im asian american. because of that i’ve gone my entire life experiencing racism and discrimination simple because im not white. of course, i have definitely had it better than a lot of people, but that doesn’t take away from my experiences at all. i grew up hating the way i looked, trying to fix myself because i genuinely thought something was wrong with me. this led to years and years of insecurity and self hatred. something i had to go through alone, because my family was white and i was too afraid to tell them how i felt. i was afraid they wouldn’t understand. it’s still something i struggle with, though it’s gotten better.

growing up, as stated before, i was around white people. growing up in a very white town, i unfortunately wasn’t formally educated on racism or what micro aggressions were, i just knew that certain comments made me uneasy and uncomfortable, and hurt my feelings. it wasn’t until i was older, when i started using social media that i really came to understand what all of this was.

a lot of you who have white privilege are using it to uplift bipoc voices, and i think that’s great. however it’s also important to acknowledge that many people who are actively anti racist still have implicit biases, which can lead to microaggressions.

first of all, what are microaggressions? you may or may not be familiar with the term. if you’re not, that’s okay! you can use this post to educate yourself and make sure you don’t make these mistakes in the future. microaggressions are defined as brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, particularly culturally marginalized groups.

basically, intentional or unintentional derogatory and prejudice behaviors directed towards marginalized groups.

these are very harmful to marginalized groups, mostly because they’re not as blatant as outright racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. this makes it often hard to detect, and you may have found yourself using micro aggressions at some point in your life. that’s not important though, what’s important is that, if you have used them in the past, you understand what you said or did was wrong, and that you learn from it.

now, what are specific racial micro aggressions? i’ve compiled a list of them under the cut, and explained why these are insulting and harmful to poc.

“where are you really from” – this insinuates that we will always be seen as foreigners, and not citizens to our own country. it brings on a feeling of not being good enough and that we will not be accepted.

“not everything’s about race” – if you’re white stop telling bipoc how to feel about race. we are tired of it. please don’t speak over us when we are expressing our discomfort. if poc people are telling you something is racist, it’s racist. stop trying to argue with us, as you are not the ones being affected by it.

“your food is so weird” – it’s only weird to you because it hasn’t been westernized or americanized. insisting that foreign foods are weird or gross because you aren’t used to it, is hurtful. it’s insulting.

“all asians look the same” – by saying this, you’re taking away our individuality. asia is a huge continent, not all of us follow the same traditions and not all of us look the same. it’s not a funny joke, and it never has been.

“you’re pretty for a *insert any race here*” – this is just such a backhanded compliment. it implies that we are not typically or conventionally pretty. it has the same negative connotations as saying “you’re really good...for a girl”. that’s misogynistic for the same reasons saying this is racist.

“i don’t see color” – again, you’re basically erasing our individuality and culture and telling us we shouldn’t embrace it. many pocs even completely distance themselves from their cultures to seek white validation, which is in every sense of the word, upsetting. people want to fit in so bad that they’re willing to leave behind their entire culture. something that sucks about being adopted at such a young age from a white family, is that i have never had a connection with my culture. i know nothing about it, and that hurts. i rationalized in my head that the reason i didn’t learn about it sooner was because i was happy, but that was a lie i told myself for years. the sad thing is, is that because i wasn’t connected to my culture at all, i fit in better and had an easier time making friends then other pocs in my school.

assuming all asian people are smart or good at math – stop. it’s not funny. never has been. the stereotype that all asians are smart is not a compliment, and puts a lot of pressure on us as individuals. it objectifies us, assuming we are more like machines and not actual people. long story short, it’s dehumanizing.

“im not/cant be racist i have black friends” – contrary to popular belief, yes you can be. you can still have a racial bias while being friends with bipoc people. being associated with poc people doesn’t suddenly mean you’re not racist. you may even make racist jokes and think it’s okay because they don’t tell you to stop. just because they are seemingly unbothered does not mean it’s not still racist. a lot of times we are uncomfortable in situations like that, but are too afraid to speak up in fear of our feelings being invalidated or being told to lighten up because it’s just a joke. saying we’re too sensitive when it comes to making mockeries of our races and cultures, is also a micro aggression.

saying “you people” or “y’all” when talking, usually negatively, about a person of a specific race – you’re generalizing an entire group because of one bad experience which is just contributing to the stereotypes and racism we face daily. one or a few bad interactions with a person of a different race does not speak for an entire population.

clutching your bag tight when a poc person, usually black or latinx, stands next to you or following them in the store – the way i still have to explain this one in 2020. they are not criminals, but by doing this, you’re contributing to the stereotype that they are all criminals and thugs, which simply isn’t true. this stereotype is very damaging and harmful, as it also contributes to the systematic oppression of those people.

assuming someone only got a certain job or position because they’re bipoc – this insinuates that we did not work hard to get where we are, and that we did not deserve what we got. we simply got it because we aren’t white. affirmative action comes up a lot in this conversation. all affirmative action does is help decide between equally qualified people by favoring the ones who suffer from discrimination in society, but it does not reserve spots for them.

assuming someone knows how to speak mandarin because they’re asian – asia is a large continent with A LOT of languages and cultures. not everyone is chinese. not everyone speaks the same language. it’s insulting and adds to the already hurtful stereotype that all asians look the same.

“you speak english really well” or “how did you learn to speak english so well” – it’s called practicing because people have been making fun of those with accents for years, simply because they are not used to it. being surprised when a poc speaks english well implies that you may think because they’re not white, they are less educated. we’ve simply assimilated because our cultures are constantly rejected and mocked by white people and even other pocs. this also contributes to the notion that westerners are more “civilized” or that they are better, because they(generally speaking this obviously doesn’t apply to everyone)make no effort to learn our cultures, but we have to learn theirs in order to be seen as “acceptable”.

“but *insert race* are racist too” or pointing out immoral things other countries do when people of that race speak up about racism - you’re redirecting the conversation to avoid responsibility. you don’t actually care about those issues, you just want to invalidate our struggles by pointing out that a place many of us have not been to in a long time, or ever, is very flawed. we have no say in what that government chooses to do. not all places are a democracy, and many democracies around the world are flawed.

something important to remember is that anyone can be guilty of implicit bias and micro aggressions. this is not selective to one race.

if you have anymore of these, please feel free to add on. also, if you’re a poc and something i wrote made you uncomfortable, please tell me. i want to make sure im being truthful with what i said. i did do research for some of these, and some were based on personal experiences, but if you want to add to something or you want me to change or delete something do not hesitate to call me out.

unfortunately they and other racial stereotypes are very prevalent in american media, which has normalized it in our society. this post is solely meant to educate if you weren’t previously aware of the dangers micro aggressions have on minorities. i started the list because i was tired of seeing so much normalized racism online, but i hope you learned something useful with this. if you stuck around this long, thank you for listening. i appreciate it a lot.

as for my zutara fans, i apologize for making so many rant posts rather than posting incorrect quotes. i just feel like im able to reach a larger audience with the platform i have on this account than any other one.

anyway, that’s all. thank you again for listening :)

#this is not to take away from blm #i understand that i talked a lot of asian experiences #but that’s just because i am asian #and ive personally gone through them #i’ll link some carrds to blm resources and other world issues tomorrow #it’s 4am now but yeah #please remember that your fight for equality cannot be selective #it’s important that we all understand our differences #and the different struggles we face #but it’s also important that we support each other right now #micro aggression #racism #racial bias #racism in america #black lives matter #fuck the system #its broken #and we need to fix that

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flying-elliska · 4 years ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#edouard louis #french literature #france #queer culture #queer literature #lgbt books #bookblr #also just like the first book is a walking trigger warning in every possible direction so like careful #also the dude is literary buddies with ocean vuong and im curious to see if there are any parallels there #long post #poli sci

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flame-shadow · 4 years ago

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Leisken the Lonely

[headsup- this one has some minor child abuse and bad parents, although it's implied that they get what they deserve in the end]

---

Things are getting worse.

The butterfly doesn’t talk much, but they listen plenty. Apparently, they’re safe to share secrets around. Is it because nobody would listen to them? Because of their stutter? Or because they’re viewed as less than a bug, less than an actual member of society? They don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter which reason because it’s probably all of those reasons anyway.

They stifle a yawn, waft their wings, and hold them out again for the fancy bugs nearby to view. A late night party with rich food and fermented drinks and plenty of whispers and gossip.

Rumors of sickness. Famine. Disputes. Violent disagreements. Should we leave the City? It’s probably more dangerous beyond. Have you heard if they’re going to close the gates? That would protect us, right?

Leisken fans their wings again. They feel warm. Cautiously, they turn their head to observe more of the room. Is anyone else feeling this heat? It… doesn’t look like it. They must be imagining it. Maybe it’s not having drunk anything in a while. Maybe it’s the discomfort of what they’re hearing. Maybe it’s…

YOU COULD KILL THEM, YOU KNOW.

Leisken jolts off their stool, falling to an undignified heap. Immediately, they attempt to scramble to their feet, but already Mother is storming over, her skirts and scarves roiling. With a tight grip on their arm, she jerks them up and drags them to the side of the room, away from the nearest cluster of socializing guests.

“What did you do?” she hisses.

“I-I-I j-jj- I just-” Leisken stammers, trying to keep from pulling away.

“What is it this time?”

“Mm-mm.. It’s-s-”

“Weakness is what it is. You’re supposed to be working on that.”

“I c-cann- I’ll d-do bbetter- I’ll j-just-” They turn their head to look at their stool. They’ll sit there if it means-

“No. No no no, you’re done. You ruined it. If I let you go back out there..." She clicks in aggravation. "But I won’t. You don’t deserve that. To your room. Don’t bother any of the servants. Don’t leave until I come for you.”

Their wings droop.

“None of that. Retain your dignity.”

Leisken obediently fixes their wings to an approved angle. They notice Father standing nearby wearing his guests-think-I’m-just-a-little-bored-but-actually-I’m-furious-at-you face. It’s hard to keep their wings from drooping again.

Mother waves her hand. “Go on.”

Stiffly, they turn and walk at a measured pace for the nearest side door. “Sometimes, I don’t know why we keep bothering with you,” Mother says under her breath but still where Leisken can hear. They’re sure they were meant to hear it. They resolve to do better next time. They make this resolution all the time. They’re not sure they’ve actually gotten any better at anything.

They stumble, but they make it to the door and slip out, almost catching the edge of a wing in their haste to put the door between themself and the ballroom. And hopefully that voice.

Miserably, they pass by a servant conveying a tray of food to the guests without interaction.

YOU COULD KILL THEM, YOU KNOW.

They trip as they whirl around. Again on the floor. They look around a little frantically, but they quickly stay their terror as the servant, an expression of concern, stops to look at them. But they’re not supposed to interact! Leisken pushes themself to their feet and shuffles quickly away. To their room. It’s nothing special. But they can almost be alone here. Almost be safe. That’s what they pretend, anyway. It helps. A little bit. Maybe.

But they’re still warm. Uncomfortably so. It’s never warm in here.

YOU COULD KILL THEM, YOU KNOW.

Where is that voice coming from?! Nobody should be in here with them! Tremulously, they speak: “H-hello..?”

No answer.

“Pl-please… I n-n-need to- I ddon’t want to k-k-k-k…”

YOU DON’T HAVE TO WANT TO.

They breathe shakily.

ARE YOU HAPPY HERE?

Automatically, they nod, even though they’re not sure what happy feels like. They’re not supposed to reveal their discomfort, much less their misery.

Silence. Warm silence. Hot silence. Oppressive silence.

Leisken stands stiffly and waits.

A gust of cool air washes over them along with Father’s voice: “You missed the servant’s knock summoning you to breakfast. Surely, you aren’t still trying to-- Oh?”

Leisken blinks and stiffly turns to see Father standing in the doorway.

“Practicing your form? Maybe you’re finally learning. Well. Come along, it’s time for lunch.”

Weakly, Leisken follows.

----

Things carry on as they did before.

Except not really.

All those things that Leisken had heard rumors about? They are becoming more than rumors. People are getting hungry and hurt and scared. Leisken is too, but they do their best not to show it. And when they feel the heat, they expect the voice to follow. They do their best not to show a reaction to either of those.

They’re losing it. They know that. They’ve long suspected, but these are… These are hallucinations. Or something. Right? Not real. Nobody else feels the heat. Nobody else reacts to the voice. … unless everyone else is hiding their reactions too?

One day, they notice that one of their antennae aches. It’s not much, but they swear it feel hot even when the rest of their body isn’t experiencing that sensation.

“Leisken. Stay focused.”

“R-right.” they mumble, adjusting their posture.

“Honestly, it’s like you’re trying to irritate me. …I’m waiting.”

They do a quick check of themself, but everything feels positioned how she’d want it to be.

“Your antenna.”

“M-my..?” They thought they were holding them both in the same way, at the proper angle and curve. Hesitantly, they reach up to feel them. The one that always feels warm now is stiffer except for toward the end. The club part feels hotter than the rest. And heavier?

“Something the matter?”

“Mmgh.. I d-d-don’t--”

“Forget I asked,” Mother scoffs in an offended tone as she turns away.

Leisken suppresses a wince as they try to coax the stubborn antenna into an acceptable shape.

---

“Why didn’t you say anything to us about this?”

“I d-d-didn’t-t-thin-nk th--”

“You need to tell us about things like this. You understand that, right? We need you to look your best, and this? This isn’t it.” Mother holds the antenna none too gently, but Leisken can barely feel her fingers over the heat. The swollen clubbed ending throbs painfully. “This won’t do. You can’t attend the party like this. People will ask questions.”

“O-oh…” Not have to attend a party..? That’s.. That’s..! But, they shouldn’t get their hopes up. And besides, the antenna is still...

Mother snaps her fingers toward another bug. “Come here. Take them to get this fixed. If it needs to be amputated, get a prosthetic. Asymmetrical antennae are not what people want to see.”

The servant bows and takes a step nearer Leisken who doesn’t want anything amputated, but… What can they do?

---

“We’ve already had the servants stock it and move enough of our things over. We’ll go there soon enough. ...Leisken, stop playing with that. You’ll just mess it up, and with businesses closing their doors, who knows if we’d be able to get you a replacement.”

Leisken lowers their hand. They’re not used to having the prosthetic antenna. They think they look fine without it. And there are no bugs to show off to right now. Everyone here knows. And it’s not like they’re symmetrical anywhere else.

Besides, the antenna still aches, still feels warm. But that swollen bit on the end... it’s good that was removed. The orange that oozed out startled the surgeon, but the servant assured Leisken that everything would be fine. Their parents wouldn’t learn about this.

They’re soon told to pack up and be prepared to leave. But once they’re in their room, they just sit on the hard bed. What’s there to pack up? Nothing. Their room is decorated with items that other bugs have picked out for them. They don’t care to take anything with them.

They sigh and wonder when they’ll hear the voice again.

---

But it’s not until they’re in the vault, safe and secure as the City falls apart outside, that the voice deigns to talk to them again.

DO THEY REALLY THINK THEY’RE SAFE HERE?

Leisken’s breath catches.

DO THEY THINK I CAN’T REACH THEM HERE?

They close their eyes and hug their arms to their body.

“Leisken,” calls Father sharply from across the room. He’s making that face again. “It’s only been a couple weeks. You’d better keep it together.”

They nod and try to relax their body. They’re hot, but they know it’s not because of their clothes. Nor the stuffy vault they’re trapped in. Nor the constant judgmental presence of their guardians.

YOU COULD KILL THEM, YOU KNOW.

They don’t want to-

IMAGINE! NO NAGGING, NO PRESSURE TO BE PERFECT AND PRESENTABLE!

They don’t-

YOU’D FINALLY BE FREE TO DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO!

They-

YOU WANT THIS.

They do.

THAT’S RIGHT. YOU COULD KILL THEM. EVERYTHING WOULD CHANGE FOR YOU.

It would.

It will.

It does.

---

It’s so dark.

IT’S SO LIGHT, YOU MEAN.

There’s no purpose for anything.

JUST LISTEN TO ME.

There’s no point in hiding the bodies. They’re all hidden down here together. Forever.

FOREVER.

Alone forever…

NOT QUITE. YOU’RE WITH ME FOREVER.

With you…

---

Time has no meaning in forever. It’s always warm and light. Nobody judges them because there’s nobody to judge. They don’t have to adjust their posture because they don’t have a body. Not really. It’s not theirs. It hasn’t been for a long time.

Leisken hasn’t been in a long time.

Leisken was their name, right? That’s… that was them?

Why does that matter now?

Why does it…

Where are their…

What’s over th…

Oh.

...

They…

They need to get out.

They fumble weakly at the locks and mechanisms. They cry and they shake and they try not to think. They’d gotten so good at not thinking.

Out! They’re out! They stumble out into the rain and collapse. What do they feel? They don’t know. But they feel. And that feels significant.

Slowly, they force themself to rise. To stand. To lean against a crumbling stone wall.

Why do they feel so cold? More cold than this rain could make them.

Why do they feel so alone? More alone than the empty streets around them.

Disorientated, confused, tired, terrified.

Leisken moves forward.

---

[bonus art because it's a mood]

#leisken #hollow knight #hollow knight oc #the radiance #mywriting #okay so this one implies things in multiple places but i believe it's still clear enough #art is old but fits well enough

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yandere-daydreams · 5 years ago

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bokuto and akaashi sharing a darling please? 🙈💕

A delusional Obsessive and a very, *very* controlling Possessive… Who could ask for a better pair? Still, I like the idea of letting them be soft together, even if their Darling doesn’t get to join in the fun.

TW: Kidnapping, Implied Physical/Sexual Abuse, and Bondage.

Bokuto was coming home.

He’d been gone for a while, now, the better half of a week. Akaashi didn’t see fit to explain his absence, just nodding when you pointed out that you hadn’t seen Bokuto lately, and you didn’t ask, accepting Akaashi’s abrupt, oppressive take-over. He had away-games often, and you weren’t surprised he hadn’t remembered to let you know. If anything, you were relieved. The house was quiet, when he wasn’t home, bordering on peaceful. As peaceful as it could get when your ankle was tethered to your bedpost, anyway.

That was how you knew Bokuto was on his way back. You’d been sure of it from the moment your precious, wonderful, fleeting tranquility shattered into a million irreplaceable pieces.

You cursed as you struggled, your limbs aching and your fingertips numb from how tight Akaashi had made your restraints It was all you could do not to cry out in frustration, but every glimpse you caught of Akaashi, every time his hands brushed against your skin, every breath he took spurred you on, fueling your attempts to kick at his thighs and jerk against the sleek, silver handcuff that’d replaced your bulky chains, the pair your captors only brought out for special occasions. That was the only sign you needed before your fight or flight instincts kicked in, an excess of the prior making up for your inability to indulge the latter. You’d bite through your restraints, if you had to. The long-term didn’t matter, as long as you got out of this.

“Brat,” He grunted, the title forced out through clenched teeth. He was sitting on the center of the bed, positioned between your bent legs, one hand latched onto your thigh while the other fussed with something scratchy and suffocating. You refused to look, but judging by the few glimpses you caught and its constrictive presence against your skin, it was supposed to be a thigh-high, its twin already in place around your other leg. Both stockings were dyed an inky-black, made to match the oversized shirt that’s been shoved over your head, one of Bokuto’s spare jerseys. You wondered whose idea it’d been, at first, which one of those sadists wanted to see you suffer more. But, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, as long as you got it to stop.

Akaashi growled, the sound low and throaty, drawing your attention back to its source. His irritation was obvious, only growing as you continued to writhe and buck. He abandoned the sock a moment later, taking you by the neck, instead, pinning you to the headboard. The pressure wasn’t crushing, but it could be if he put an ounce of his strength behind it. Still, you didn’t stop. Akaashi was the level-headed one, the bystander. You didn’t have to worry about violence, real violence, until Bokuto arrived. “I’m trying to do something nice,” He spat, venom dripping from his tone. “You’ve been so good, (Y/n), and you’ve been making Kotaro and I so happy. You shouldn’t throw away all that progress for something so minor.”

“Minor?” You went still, if only out of shock, locking your knees together to form a temporary line of defense. “You lied to me, kidnapped me, and now you’re dressing me up like a fucking doll.”

Akaashi frowned. You glared. “When you say it like that--”

“You lied to me, kidnapped me, and you’re dressing me up like a fucking doll.” You pulled the handcuffs taut, cringing as cold metal bit into the flesh of your wrists. “I’m not just going to sit here and let you play out your fucked-up fantasies. I don’t care how happy it makes you.”

He opened his mouth, but he was cut off by the sound of the bedroom door opening, hitting the nearest wall with a soft thud. Reflexively, you froze, going stiff underneath Akaashi and shutting your eyes, but the self-imposed darkness did little to stifle the dread slowly forming a deep, raw pit in your chest. You could still hear Bokuto’s affectionate greeting to Akaashi, the slight stumble in his footsteps as he gauged the situation in front of him, the delight in his laugh as it echoed through the room. Akaashi shifted, pulling away from you and moving towards the edge of the bed, but didn’t stand, only holding out his arms as Bokuto approached.

There was a gentle affection between the two of them, one you used to admire. That faint, fuzzy envy was still present as you watched them embrace, Bokuto pulling Akaashi to his feet and melting into him, both men doing their best to forget there’d ever been distance between them. But, the feeling dissolved as soon as they separated, quickly replaced with seeping, sapping terror as Bokuto’s attention shifted onto you, his grin only broadening as he scanned over your crumpled form.

“What’s this?” He asked, an innocent amusement heavy in his tone. Again, you jerked at the shackles, but your movements were meek, this time, your body suddenly hesitant to do anything that might snap him out of his blissful haze. Akaashi lingered in the background as Bokuto ran a hand through your disheveled hair, combing it back and watching as you averted your eyes, your gaze falling to the wrinkled bed sheets. “It’s only been a few days. You didn’t have to do anything so--”

“I wanted to,” Akaashi assured, everything about him now light, airy, as calm as you always wished he would stay, when Bokuto left. “(Y/n) didn’t seem to like it, though. You should’ve seen the fight they put up, it was so hard to handle them alone.”

Bullshit. He was a liar, a sociopath, but if Bokuto could tell, he didn’t feel the need to show it. Instead, he pouted as he sat beside you, one arm keeping him steady and the other rising to cup your cheek, rubbing slow, practiced circles in your jaw, attempting to comfort you as you concentrated on curling into yourself, biting the inside of your cheek just to keep quiet. “Is that true, angel? You know what happens when you’re bad, did ya’ still give him trouble?”

You shook your head, pleading your sincerity through murmured, stuttered whispers, but Bokuto was already convinced, already set on his plans. He was still holding you as he leaned forward, kissing your forehead and letting his lips linger for a moment too long. All you could do was stare at Akaashi, or more accurately, the wide, toothy smile creeping across his lips, as unabashed as it as voyeuristic.

“Don’t worry,” Bokuto mumbled, his free hand brushing over your side. “It won’t take long, and I’ll try to be gentle. It’d be a real shame to ruin all the work Akaashi put in, wouldn’t it?”

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oaklies-side · 3 years ago

Text

Intro!

Hi! I’m Oaklie, you can also call me Blue. (Oak is chill as well, preferably no other nicknames unless I know you.) I’m a professional artist and animation hobbyist. (Though I dream of making animation my profession one day.) I’m genderfluid and my pronouns vary by day, but you can use any, I won’t mind. I mainly use he/she/they, but if you’d like, I don’t really mind if you call me neopronouns either. (The only ones I’d rather you not use are it/its or any object/objectself pronouns. (Ex bun/bunself) Nothing against them ofc! Anyone who uses them is hella valid, they just don’t feel right when referring to myself.) Boundaries:

Don’t pry into my personal life. This includes my job, photos of me, my legal name, address/city/state, my irl friends and family members, school, ex. Use common sense. If I haven’t explicitly shared it on the internet, it’s for a reason.

I am a minor. Nothing nsfw please. Don’t be creepy.

You may make animation requests. That doesn’t mean I will make them, so don’t try and force me to. Animation takes time and if an idea doesn’t inspire me, I won’t make it, simple as that.

No threats, unless you make it very clear you are joking.

Don’t repost or trace my art. Reblogging it is fine, and greatly appreciated.

I am a queer person. If you’re queerphobic, get over it or get out. If you don’t support equality in general (Women's rights, blm, Asian rights, plus sized and neurodivergant equality, and all other oppressed/marginalized groups), get off my blog. I don’t support you or your views. Grow up, learn to care for others.

If you have any questions about my boundaries, feel free to ask! I never mind questions, and would much rather you ask if you’re unsure of something than assume, and possibly do something that brings me discomfort.

Not sure if this belongs in boundaries but I feel it needs to be said, if anything I say/do EVER upsets you in any way or is something you deem offensive, please please please let me know. I never mean to upset or offend anyone and I’m always trying my best to make sure I don’t, but I’m only human, and I’m going to make mistakes. With that being said, I always want to correct myself and learn from those mistakes, so shoot me an ask or dm telling me what I did wrong and I will apologize immediately, take whatever course of action is necessary to help fix things, and try and do better in the future.

Interests:

Dream smp/mcyt

D&D (Dungeons and Dragons)

Playing Ukulele and sometimes guitar, singing

Musical theatre (BMC, Mean girls, Heathers, Hamilton, DEH, Beetlejuice, In the Heights, 36 Questions, Wicked, Six)

Digital art and animation

Socials:

Youtube: Oaklie’s Side https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOtU1W_RnxR3mzla9bt_bXA

Instagram: Oaklies_Side https://www.instagram.com/oaklies_side/

Etsy: OakliesShop https://www.etsy.com/shop/OakliesShop?ref=profile_header

Tbh I don’t post here often, and most of the stuff I do post is just repostings of stuff from my other socials, so definitely follow those if you like my stuff cuz I’m much more active there. (And if you’d like to commission me.. check out my etsy. That would be pretty cool of you but no pressure ofc) That’s about all! Thanks for reading this far lol, I’m kinda surprised anyone did tbh.

#intro #pinned post #lgbt artist #small artist #artist #dream smp artist #artist intro #intro post

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cg-eraserhead · 4 years ago

Text

Kisses for Skinned Knees

Words: 2780

Hizashi skins his knee, and suddenly Shouta has a toddler on his hands. Thankfully, he's used to this, and cartoons and cuddles are in order.

(I’ve never posted fic on Tumblr before, so please let me know if I’m doing it wrong!)

Shouta stands panting after the end of the battle, his capture weapon still clutched in his hands. In the stillness, he’s now aware of sweat slipping down his back under his loose uniform, warm in the oppressive summer heat. He doesn’t smile, but he feels the bone-deep satisfaction of having done a good job. They won, him and Hizashi. All the villains are tied up and sitting on the ground. Nobody was injured, neither of the heroes or any of the bystanders, and even the villains were captured with little more than minor bruises.

At least, he thinks nobody was injured until he looks over at Hizashi, who is on the ground.

His heart clenches, but he doesn’t move right away, just calling out, “Mic? Are you alright?”

He gets a little more worried when the answer doesn’t come right away. But it does: “Y-yeah. Just tripped and skinned my knee!” Hizashi is climbing to his feet.

Still, Shouta walks over to him. “Are you sure?” Hizashi’s voice was high and wavering.

Hizashi doesn’t answer. There’s something about the way he pushes his glasses up to rub at his eyes with his fists.

“I’m f-fine,” Hizashi says, quietly, the hitch in his voice becoming more obvious.

Shouta suddenly catches on to what must be going on, and he lowers his voice, making it soft. “Does it hurt a little?” he asks, putting a slight emphasis on the last word.

Hizashi pauses, and when he looks at Shouta, it’s with wide eyes. “Y-yeah,” he confirms, his head bouncing as he nods quickly.

“It’ll be okay,” Shouta says, his voice going warm and gentle. He puts a hand on Hizashi’s shoulder. “Can you go sit on the curb away from everyone?” The sirens that have been approaching for a while now are getting louder, the police almost here. “I need to talk to the police, and then I’ll come take care of you.”

Hizashi nods, more slowly now. “Okay,” he says, voice going slightly clumsy and mumbled.

“Good,” Shouta says, still quiet, giving Hizashi’s shoulder a pat.

He tries to make his report of the situation as quick as he can, wanting to get back to Hizashi.

In a few minutes, it’s over and they’re cleared to go home. Shouta hurries back over to the figure hunched on the curb. “How are you doing?”

Hizashi is rocking slightly, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms around them. “Still hurts,” he mumbles.

“Okay,” Shouta says, kneeling next to him. “Can you show me, baby?” The petname is a little risky, but that’s why he wanted Hizashi a ways away from everyone else.

Hizashi sniffles a little as he rolls up his pant leg with clumsy fingers. When he reveals a red scrape on his knee, he lets out a small gasp. The sting was one thing, but seeing the little red scrape is another.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Shouta reassures quickly, reaching out to rub the uninjured part of his leg comfortingly. He looks down to quickly rummage in one of his belt pouches. “I’ll put a band-aid on it.”

“’Kay,” Hizashi says, his lip wobbling.

“We have to clean it, first. Can you be brave for a minute?” Shouta pulls out a piece of gauze and a small water bottle. He wets the gauze.

Hizashi stiffens when he gently wipes the blood away, and again when Shouta gently applies a smear of antibiotic ointment, but he doesn’t make a noise.

Shouta pats him again and smiles. “Such a brave little hero.”

He gets a smile in return, even if it’s a little watery.

“Now for the band-aid,” Shouta narrates. It’s a little worrying that Hizashi isn’t talking more. Either he’s in more pain than he should be, or he’s much younger than usual.

He pipes up when Shouta unwraps the band-aid, though. “It’s not the one with birdies.”

Shouta looks at it. “No, this one has cats.” It’s got pink and yellow stripes with blue cats.

For a moment, Hizashi frowns, his face scrunched up. “Why didn’t you get the ones with birdies?” For a moment, Shouta thinks he’s going to have a fit thrown by what he’s pretty sure now is a toddler, but then Hizashi smiles, wide and pleased. “Oh! Because you like kitties!”

“Yes, I do,” Shouta agrees, taking advantage of the distraction to peel off the paper and carefully spread the bandage over Hizashi’s tiny injury.

“They’re your favorite,” Hizashi asserts confidently. He looks down at his knee, smiling again. “Now my knee is your favorite. I like being your favorite.”

“You’re always my favorite,” Shouta says, leaning forward to kiss Hizashi’s forehead. Hizashi giggles, and Shouta stands up. “Now, can you walk on your own?”

“Think so,” Hizashi mumbles. Instead of getting up on his own, he reaches up both arms.

Shouta obligingly grabs his hands and pulls him to his feet. Hizashi doesn’t let go once he’s standing up. He still doesn’t look like his usual cheerful self, a pout pushing out his bottom lip.

“What’s wrong?” There has to be some reason for Hizashi to have regressed like this. Just skinning his knee shouldn’t have done it.

Hizashi looks like he’s going to cry again, his lip wobbling. “Don’t know,” he mumbles.

Okay, so he’s too young to effectively figure out what’s bothering him. Shouta thinks about how he feels himself. “Are you too hot?”

Hizashi nods. “Too hot,” he echoes.

Shouta carefully frees his hands from Hizashi’s grasp. “Let’s get your jacket off, then. First we need to get your speaker off. Turn around for me.”

Hizashi obediently turns around and lets Shouta unbuckle his heavy directional speaker from his neck. From the happy sigh that gets, it was one of the things that was bothering him.

Shouta puts it on the ground. “Turn towards me.”

When Hizashi does, sticking out his arms, Shouta unzips his thick leather jacket, pulling it off one arm and then the other. The shirt underneath is even sweatier than Shouta’s is. “Now you should be able to cool down. What else is bothering you? Are you tired?” It’s the day after Hizashi’s radio show, so he probably didn’t get much sleep last night.

“Tired,” Hizashi whines, then pauses. “Not sleepy.”

Shouta blinks, surprised. “Good job. That’s a subtle distinction. Good job, telling the difference.”

Hizashi smiles. “And head hurts,” he declares, running on the momentum from his last deduction.

Shouta nods. “Okay, that would do it. You’re hot and tired and your head hurts, and then you got hurt. Plus you’ve been way too stressed lately.” He holds out one of his hands, and Hizashi wraps his hand around a few of his fingers. “We made it so you shouldn’t be so hot, but we’ll have to go home to deal with the other two.” Shouta takes a second, but he makes an executive decision. “We’re not taking the train home. I’ll call us a cab.” That way Hizashi doesn’t have to walk to the station or be around all the noise and people on the train.

While they wait, Shouta pulls out his phone and connects it to the headphones Hizashi is still wearing, turning the volume down low and opening an app to play cartoons. He hands it to Hizashi, who grabs it quickly and sits down, still holding Shouta’s fingers in one hand.

Soon, the cab arrives, and Shouta can pull Hizashi to his feet again. The cartoons entertain him all the way home, the headphones also helping block out the noise of traffic going by.

Finally, they’re home. Shouta leads Hizashi over to the couch before hanging up the directional speaker and jacket he had been carrying. Then he unwinds his own capture weapon, hanging that up too. He takes off his shoes.

“I’ll be right back, sweetheart,” he says before padding into the bathroom. He rummages in the cabinet before finding what he wants, coming back out to the living room with it. “Here, some medicine for your head.”

Hizashi stabs the button to pause the video. He looks up, suspicion crinkling his face. “What does it tastes like?”

Shouta looks at the label. “Yummy Orange Flavor,” he reads.

Hizashi tosses the phone aside, but thankfully it lands on the couch beside him. Even if it hadn’t, its case is one that protects it against fights with villains and being dropped off of buildings, so it’s safe from one careless toddler.

Hizashi’s look of suspicion deepens into disbelief, and he crosses his arms. “No. It’s gross.”

Shouta sighs. “I know it doesn’t taste the best, but if you’re too young to take pills, it’s going to have to be this.” He puts the medicine down on the coffee table, heading into the kitchen. “I’ll get you some juice to have right after.”

He comes back with a sippy cup full of apple juice, setting it down on the table next to the medicine, sweetening the deal. Not giving Hizashi any more room to argue, he pours out the dose of medicine. It’s made for people much smaller than Hizashi, so the cup he’s using is bigger than the one it came with. It still might not be as strong as a pill, but it should do something.

Hizashi’s face scrunches once more before relenting. “’Kay,” he says, reaching forward to take the cup of medicine. He looks at it for a moment, smelling it and making a face.

“Don’t do that,” Shouta chides, starting to get slightly exasperated. “Don’t think about it, just drink it.”

Hizashi sends a pout his way, but he does raise the cup to his lips and gulp it down. When he’s done, he makes a face and quickly reaches for the cup of juice, drinking as quickly as the spout will let him.

“Good job,” Shouta says, sighing with relief that this wasn’t any harder. He picks up the little cup and medicine, returning it to the bathroom cabinet after rinsing the cup.

When he comes back, Hizashi has the sippy cup tilted high, draining the last little bit of it. “Now we have to brush your teeth after all that sugar,” Shouta says. “But you probably need a bath, first. To wash out your hair, if nothing else.”

Hizashi plunks the cup down. “Don’t want to take a shower,” he declares.

Shouta holds back a sigh. “You can be kind of a brat when you’re tired, you know that?” he asks rhetorically. “I didn’t say shower. I said bath. You can have bubbles and toys, but you need to get clean too.”

Hizashi looks like he’s considering it. “And song?”

Shouta nods. “Sure, we can sing a song.”

“’Kay,” Hizashi agrees, getting up from the couch and following Shouta to the bathroom.

He’s fine for a little while, just fidgeting a bit as Shouta runs the water (warm, but not too warm—the air conditioning isn’t strong enough to keep it from being warm even inside). He even starts to sing under his breath, making Shouta smile to himself. He gasps and leans forward when the bubble bath that Shouta adds foams up, sticking a hand into the bubbly mass.

But another problem comes when Shouta starts to undress him. His shirt comes off with no problem, even if Shouta has to stand on his tiptoes to get it over the arms Hizashi sticks in the air. Sometimes it’s unfortunate that his body stays the same size, whatever age his mind is.

When he steps out of his pants, though, he sees the colorful bandage, and he frowns. “The kitty will come off.”

“Yes, but that’s okay. It was just a little scrape, it’s not still bleeding. The bathwater might sting a little, but just for a little bit.”

“The kitty will come off,” Hizashi repeats, his face starting to scrunch up again.

“I’ll get you another one after your bath,” Shouta says patiently. “We have more here. You can have one with a bird this time.”

“No!” Hizashi says, shaking his head rapidly.

“No what? You don’t really need another band-aid. Only if you want one.” When Hizashi just shakes his head again, more emphatically this time, Shouta prompts, “Use your words, please.”

“No birdie!”

“Okay? You can have whatever one you want. We’ve got lots to pick from.”

“Wanna kitty! So can be favorite!”

Shouta lets out a small laugh. “I told you, you’re my always my favorite. But sure, you can have a cat band-aid again.” He switches tones, his voice going more serious. “Now get in the bath.”

Hizashi does. He swooshes his hands through the water, piling the bubbles up and then smacking a hand down in the middle of the spire to make the bubbles fly everywhere. Shouta joins him for a minute, reaching behind him to gather all the bubbles in the bath into one giant mountain.

When that one has been slapped and scattered, Shouta says, “Okay, now lean back so I can wash your hair.” Hizashi scoots forward and tips his head back, and Shouta picks up a big plastic pitcher, dunking it in the bath to fill it with warm water. He pours it over Hizashi’s big tower of hair, making it collapse a little. He does it over and over, until Hizashi’s long blond hair is all wet and down, sticking to his neck and back.

Then he gets the shampoo, squirting it onto his hands. He works it into Hizashi’s hair, digging his fingers into his scalp gently to try to help soothe away his headache.

“You’re being quiet,” he comments softly as he works.

“Little sleepy now,” Hizashi slurs.

Shouta chuckles. “You sound like it. After your bath, it’ll be time for bed.” He thinks Hizashi might fall asleep on him as he combs conditioner into his hair, but instead, he starts humming. “You were going to sing me a song,” Shouta reminds him so he doesn’t pass out entirely.

Hizashi wiggles a little, waking himself up. “Oh yeah,” he yawns. “What song?”

“Hm. What about the frog song?” Shouta reaches into the basket next to the bathtub, pulling out a plastic frog. He swims it through the water to bump against Hizashi’s hand, who grabs it with a giggle.

“Okay!” He starts to sing, his voice a little slow.

“Kaeru no uta ga,

Kikoete kuru yo,

Gwa, gwa, gwa, gwa,

Gero gero gero gero,

Gwa, gwa, gwa.”

Shouta smiles. Despite his musical career, Hizashi doesn’t sing to just anyone. It’s something only people close to him get to hear. Shouta has always thought he has a nice singing voice, and it’s cute to hear him sing a kid’s song.

When he starts the song over again, Shouta grabs a washcloth and wets it, pumping sweet-smelling soap onto it. He gently rubs the cloth across his skin, starting with his shoulders.

By the time he’s done singing, Hizashi is clean. Shouta grabs the pitcher again, washing out the conditioner and rinsing off the soap.

He stands up, grabbing their softest, fluffiest towel. “Okay, out of the bath.” He towels him dry, starting at the top of his head and working down to the bottoms of his feet. At this point, Hizashi is swaying on his feet, and he yawns again.

Shouta hunts in the cabinet again, finding the right box of bandages. He kneels to put on Hizashi’s knee, pressing a kiss to the plastic when he’s done. “There. It’ll be all better by tomorrow.”

“Yay,” Hizashi mumbles, hugging the fluffy towel around himself.

“Pajama time,” Shouta declares. He leads the sleepy Hizashi into the bedroom, picking out a big, soft shirt and dinosaur-print boxers. Hizashi steps into them, compliant now.

“Just need to brush your teeth, then you can get into bed,” he says. Hizashi whines, rubbing at his eyes again. “Come on, sweetheart.”

Hizashi sleepily pads back into the bathroom, and Shouta hands him his toothbrush, getting the fruity toothpaste out of the cabinet for him.

He’s a little clumsy getting the toothpaste onto the brush, but that might just be how tired he is. He seems to do alright brushing his own teeth. Shouta picks up his own brush.

Finally, they’re both ready for bed. Shouta strips down to his underwear, turning off the lights and pulling back the covers. Hizashi collapses into bed, curling up on his side. Shouta pulls the thin blanket over him.

The second he lays down himself, Hizashi squirms over to attach to his side, cuddling up to him. Shouta smiles. “Goodnight, baby.”

Hizashi doesn’t say anything, just makes a low happy noise and rubs his face against Shouta’s arm.

Soon, they’re both asleep.

(Here’s an English translation for the song Hizashi sings!

The frog’s song,

Come hear it,

Croak, croak, croak, croak,

Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit, ribbit,

Croak, croak, croak.)

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#Age Regression fic #bnha #bnha agere #fandom agere #Age Regression #cglre #sfw age regression #sfw cglre #Aizawa #Present Mic

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