#hive blog

[insomniphic]

Here’s an abandoned/unfinished drawing I had of my Hive (@braisedhoney ) sona :D

[vickapinto]

Beryl lleg�� a la Península... Y aquí un relato.

[zulfrontado]

(ENG-ESP) Introduce Myself: Call me Zul Frontado. I've finally made it to Hive Blog! | Introduce Myself: Llamame Zul Frontado. ¡Al fin he llegado a Hive Blog!

[pepperf]

I'm a little puzzled by a few takes I've seen along the lines of, Lila was such a great wife and mother and Diego took her for granted! Because I don't think the show gave us that at all, and I think it relied heavily and lazily on societal norms to get the audience to make that leap. It also ignored previous characterisation, which is why I plan to disregard the season as a whole - because if the characters had been like this from the start, I wouldn't have fallen in love with them.

So, what I mean is: the whole time we see her as a parent, Lila is basically phoning it in. She seems to view her kids as one monolithic, sticky entity sent purely to ruin her day (distinct shades of the Handler there). They're just a list of chores - diapers, dentist, ballet, cake, piñata... And I'm not underestimating how much parenting really is a list of chores to be done - but that's all we see, no love, no fun. She's eager to get away from them, and she's only - finally - desperate to be with them when it's convenient for the plot, at which point we're supposed to buy the idea that her kids are her sole focus (not the relationship that they spent the past two seasons building up). And even then, the focus is not on the reunion with the kids, it's on all the awkwardness of the surprise love triangle. Hell, one of the kids doesn't even get a name.

Their intent might have been to have Lila be the better parent, but like much of this season, it's all tell and no show. We're working off a couple of brief conversations from the points of view of two frustrated, tired, biased individuals who are already at odds with one another, plus the evidence of what they actually do. They show that they’re not communicating well, but they don’t show how that happened, how long this has been growing, if one of them really is more at fault. All we know is that he complains a lot, and she’s sneaking out at night to play secret agent. They tell us that she loves her children (eventually, after seven years apart), but they show her being annoyed and/or bored in every normal, non-apocalyptic interaction. They have her (and Five) tell us that Diego is a bad husband, but they show Lila sniping at his weight, his way of running a birthday party, rolling her eyes at his efforts to impress her and regain her attention - and they show him dadding at everyone (he will turn this van around, so help him), the comfortable love and affection between him and his kids, the Punjabi he learned to speak fluently to his in-laws, him looking for ways to fix his marriage...

Take the bracelet thing, for example. "You hate bracelets," says Diego. "I gave you one for Valentines and you traded it for a Dyson vacuum." I think what we're supposed to take from that is a) Lila stopped wearing the wooden bracelet (uh oh, signs the honeymoon period has worn off!), b) Diego gives thoughtless, stereotypical gifts, and c) he doesn't understand what she really wants.

But an alternative reading is this: a) Lila stopped wearing the wooden bracelet (could not be a clearer or more loaded 'fuck you' to Diego), b) Diego tried to find another way to win her affection (on his pay as a delivery driver, with a wife and three kids to support, he managed to buy a bracelet that was expensive enough to trade for a Dyson?), and c) she rejected that gift as well, without any deeper explanation than 'I hate bracelets'. She's shut down all communication between them and is not telling him what's wrong. She has shut him out so comprehensively that she's got a whole undercover life - for which she apparently has the time and energy! - and yet we're supposed to think that oh it's all on Diego. Why? Lila is not a shy and retiring flower, and she and Diego have been shown before to have some very sincere heart-to-hearts about their relationship. Something changed, okay, fine - but why would we assume it was Diego that caused that?

I think our expectations about What Women Are Like are doing a LOT of the heavy lifting in how the show wants Lila to be perceived. She's a woman, and therefore she's automatically a good wife and mother - that she's emotionally intelligent, the organiser, she'll love her children and would do anything for them, she'll tried the hardest to make her marriage work, just...because boobies, I guess. This is not how you write good parents, or good female characters, TUA! A truly astonishing amount of people actually ARE women, and they know that it doesn't automatically confer any kind of maternal or wifely abilities! These things have to be worked on!

(In real life, women are often socialised to be better at these things, this is sadly true. But an awful lot of us do not have an innate talent for it, and there's no shame in that. And, more relevantly to this post, this is not real life, and Lila is not your average person. She's not normal, and I love that about her. She was raised to be a weapon. Do we really think the Handler installed the 'homemaker' module? Lila herself said that she was scared that she wouldn't know how to be a mother, because she had no good example to base it on.)

I also think the show assumes that, when you get married and have kids, you're automatically granted a house in the suburbs, a bunch of in-laws, and enough money from just the husband's job to get by. And I think that is an incredibly privileged and blinkered assumption. Frankly, unless her parents are financing them, they should be struggling a lot more. None of that is explained, and for me it was a real gap, because these are the arguments that Lila and Diego should be having. Lila caring for the kids versus getting a job. Living with family versus striking out on their own. Diego sticking at a job that makes him miserable and difficult to live with, or taking the huge financial risk of trying to find something better. These are the real life issues they should be facing.

Listen, I think the characterisation of Lila as a parent and spouse in this season is horseshit. I think she would be so much better than they showed - of course she's going to have some low times, she's going to struggle with her own upbringing, but I think she would try her damndest to get it right, and I don't think she'd be defeated so easily. But if we're dealing with what canon actually shows us, she's, uh, kind of mediocre as a mother, and really not that great as a partner.

And yes, I'm sure Diego is no angel, either, he's obviously wrapped up in his problems, and he's probably not much fun to be around when he's fixating on, uh, *checks notes* wanting a more fulfilling job (the fiend). But honestly, he's not that far removed from the Diego we've seen all along, the one she fell in love with. It takes one conversation for him to realise how incredibly fortunate he is, and to convince him to try to work harder on his relationship and stop focusing on the unobtainable. The idea that he's the only one who is failing at this whole gig - the chief culprit in the failure of their marriage, the only one who needs to make an effort to fix things - is bizarre. And it's pretty obvious why they've done it: to justify her thing with Five later and make it all seem more palatable. But there's no real substance behind it.

tl;dr: this season was badly-written, takes some incredibly antiquated attitudes towards the role of women that are inconsistent with the characters they themselves established, and some incredibly classist attitudes towards manual labour, and just hopes that you'll either take it at face value or read the fuck into it, to better sell you a shitty romance that added nothing to the plot.

[janeissx0x]

It girls in leopard print 🐆

[confusedandzalgofied]

How are you doing? And what it like being the coolest demon around?

F͜A̸̲Nͭ̏̍͒ͣ̐T̯͔͚͔̏̈̄̍AS̘Ṭ̦̤̲ͧ̏͆́̚Ḭ͌͢C͈̹͉͌͒͋.ͤ̌͢ A̙̻͚b͓̥͔s͔ol͎̫u̝̲ͅtel̖͚y̱̻ ͖fantasti͕̦c.̞

It's quite a̍ͬm͓̍u̼̥̙͍̦͊ͬ̍̽ͦs̢̱̩͎̺̳̥̾̂ͤ͆ͭ͛i̤̭̳n͇̆g͉̩͗̈́. F͈ͅu͓̱n͈, e̘̗̪veͅn͉͎. Still c̩͙o͈̰nfi̼̳ned ̻beh̩͈ind ̙̹t̼͕̳he walls of reality, ̱b̝ṵ̣͙t͍̠͓ th̳̻at̲̗'͉s̺ͅ ̩j̞̺u̠st ̲fine.

Hu̺̤m̙̩anity ͉̹̤is s̻a̗fe̫͕ fo͎͍̜r now̯̼. Thank you f̘o͔̅r àsͮkinḡ͇!̢̟̮̄ͧ I'll spare you for now.

[anglerflsh]

my favourite passtime is making up incredibly unaccurate armour designs. That's a lie my passtime is researching but this comes at a close second

[ask-guardian-gallade]

[@pokepalsarchive/@askpokepals]

Ninasha @ Romeo: Hey hey! Sick arm you got; betcha you can do some wicked cool secret handshakes! Mind if ya' teach me one?

Romeo: Hey, this is actually fun. It's like I'm in a gang. @pokepalsarchive

[akkivee]

i made an easy access page for the curry translations!! that way you won't have to try to navigate my blog lmao

[pick-a-plush]

[honeycoveredpaper]

hell yea gaslight Cucurucho, king

[spartanlocke]

i can be your angle or yuor devil