#honestly this is beyond shipping as a whole and breaks into an actual social issue

[vts-ship-and-let-ship]

“Fiction = Reality” is Not the equivalent to “fiction affects reality” and it’s not even how the second phrase should be said.

“Fiction reflects reality” is a good hard statement, where cultural, social and pervasive ideas are pushed into major media- major media as what causes the next motion- which then gets slowly internalized and reflected back in reality as the world changes because it reinforces already established ideas. “Fiction affects reality but not on a 1:1 ratio but like a poorly reflected mirror, and on a major scale not a minor one” should be the established ideals.

For my explanation, I’ll use CoD, a major platform. Call of Duty is considered an excellent recruitment tool. Why? Because it glorifies military. Would this tool be as effective if we, as a full society and not individuals, decided the military was bad inherently and it was unnecessary?

Take a few moments.

If your answer isn’t no, then I’ll explain why you’re wrong. CoD would cease to be an effective tool because it’s a reflection with modifiers. There’s no consequences. There’s no social impact from the game’s killing, but firing a gun and murdering people online is carthatic. I’d even say it’s a useful thing. But without a positive societal idea of military, the recruitment tool would fall short because it wouldn’t reinforce perceived notions that the military is great.

In fact, try it. Try to convince someone who hates the military, that the military is great. By ONLY, and ONLY, making them play CoD

I beg of you to tell me how it went. Please I need the entertainment in my life.

Why major media? Because minor media actually has no giant impact socially and needs a different scale of ideals because it’s not on the same length as a major corporation or even major writers, in where curation now is widespread. Fandom is a niche interest and therefore more likely to invite people of varying social backgrounds.

This also is important because I’ve mentioned it before, these things play off of society, and society is fluid. In some areas, being transphobic and homophobic is so normal that talking against it is frowned upon, but in other areas it’s completely the opposite and those who are against regular ol’ people living their lives are judged harshly for it.

Online we forget, we have different societal influences and so the greater impacts on us change. Hence the pervasive idea some forms of media- fictional and not involving real people- are inherently harmful as a one to one ratio ends up being a false narrative. Because if everyone else believes America eats ice cream everyday, and you tried to push that idea onto an American, the American either will a) agree in jest, make jokes about it and such, or b) correct the misinformation.

Banning the fiction depicting the idea Americans eat ice cream everyday doesn’t do anything to prevent people thinking it. That’s not going to change no matter what you do.

Online and irl predators aren’t vanishing from bad fiction, school shooters from what we consider violent media would still exist. Rather if fiction plays a role, it’s a reinforcive role.

It reinforces the ideals that we have and therefore act upon, but is not causality, rather a smaller factor in a larger problem at large.

Which is to say, any fault of media is typically already a fault and we’re not capable of discussing a fictional impact on reality when we can’t even accept the idea fiction does not solely cause the atrocities but rather is non-sequiter and actually has almost a zero sum impact to influence actions.

The only media I’d say could be truly harmful, is Nazis in a positive light, for certain that’s a seriously big issued topic I’d rather leave for someone who is immersed in anti-nazi ideologies and actually could handle the careful mine-field of that topic.

Right now if I tried then I’d fail and likely mess up a serious issue, but I’d like to make the note now of it.

As for, “well Dragon, what the fuck do I do if I think fiction affects reality and helps impact people on a one to one ratio then if I’m wrong”. Easy. Educate.

Teach right from wrong, help break the societal norms. The only reason shows with mixed diversity can exist is because we’re breaking out, otherwise it’s a controversial issue that it happened and generates discussion on why someone’s doing that.

Get up, do some serious activism. These topics don’t disappear in fiction but already existed so if you’re that angry on them.

Fiction isn’t the problem. Societal ideals are. Target and destroy them with all you’ve got to break the cycle. Then we wouldn’t have such a problem with any form of fiction and fictional media existing because reality would be different as not something reinforced.

Smash the mirror. Don’t sit in front of it and say the reflection is the issue, don’t say the reflection is the problem. It’s a reflection. These ideas are pretty mainstream already. It’s time to make that a false idea.

Charicatures wouldn’t make such a societal impact, and these issues wouldn’t be as big if society wasn’t horrible, sure, fighting the charicatures is great, but fight the society that implements them as well because fuck, we n e e d it. That media generates healthy and positive discussions on why we shouldn’t be pieces of shit like that.

And when we don’t need them, when they are just racist/bigoted and unnecessary. It won’t be major media anymore because we’ll have destroyed the idea this idea can be pushed and profited off of.

Fiction is not reality. It’s a mirror. And we can’t even begin a discussion of fiction’s impact because people are too obsessed with fiction being the cause of the world’s problems.

Face it. This is a video games cause violence- research showed otherwise, DND makes people satanic- also Harry Potter and it’s both false, fiction causes LGBT+ people to exist- guys seriously you KNOW it’s wrong.

These ideas didn’t start by well meaning people, and it’s always been, “media causes deviant behaviour and causes people to be bad”, but conservatives were behind the wheel. As we pushed them out, don’t take the wheel.

Keep the blame on reality, they want you fighting fiction because then you’ll never go after the problem. The snake’ll still bite you unless you lop off it’s head, stop stabbing at it’s tail, you’re doing jack shit but getting people bit. The tail doesn’t have the fangs, it’s not biting the people.

- Dragon

P.S. I’m not clowning on this post. Fuck off if you’re going to blame fiction, because I shouldn’t need to explain a topic thirty times over. Stop removing the blame from reality, I’m tired of that apologism.

[miraculouscontent]

Didn’t Need Burrow (April 11th-16th)

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: After the Truth episode occurs, Luka will either not appear nor be talked about(not even by Marinette, Juleka, Sass, or Anarka) at all, or, if he does appear, he'll avoid Marinette like the Black Plague. Guess who's fault it'll be(Kagami will still appear and be on good terms with Adrien, though, since anything that makes Marinette happy needs to be either ruined or gotten rid of, while anything that makes her miserable needs to stay around just to be rubbed into her face.).

I s2g if they have Adrien and Kagami patch things up immediately just to make Marinette feel awkward--

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: The idea that Nino's hat is a keepsake from his late brother comes up during an episode where it inevitably gets damaged and/or destroyed. Marinette is somehow responsible/blamed for this, and/or is forced to try and repair it regardless of feasibility, while being guilt-tripped/ridden every inch of the way. Bonus points for Adrien making some clueless comment about buying a replacement and STILL being treated as more empathetic to Nino's feelings even while ignoring them.

“Bonus” if everyone pressures her over the hat, which eventually leads to Marinette realizes that it can’t be fixed to be the exact same way, so she hides it and lies about it, leading to the episode blaming her for hiding things from her “totally understanding friends” (who are suddenly “totally understanding” and are only upset that she lied to them/”thought so lowly of them”) instead of her friends for making her feel like she had to be perfect.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: A Sleeping Beauty-inspired akuma will ensnare Ladybug, 'forcing' Chat Noir to kiss her awake. While Adrien/Chat naturally claims that he would 'never take advantage of his lady', he is openly gleeful at the prospect and taunts her afterwards, complete with a call back to Oblivio as he tells her to 'check the LadyBlog' to find out what happened. Her dismay over this is played entirely for laughs.

*flashbacks to the “jokes” in “Prime Queen”*

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Just like in countless Salt Fics, Alya will get upset at Ladybug for claiming that it's 'too dangerous' for her to be Rena Rouge anymore after Miracle Queen. Regardless of what she does/how she lashes out, Marinette will be held 100% responsible for the fallout, with Su-Han criticizing her for selecting Alya/the others in the first place AND for 'allowing' their identities to be exposed.

That’s what you get for trusting people, Marinette (apparently).

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya will expose more Miraculous-related secrets on the LadyBlog, such as posting the identities of the heroes who were 'already outed' by Miracle Queen. Marinette will be blamed for this, with Su-Han reading her the riot act for every single choice she's made.

And also, Alya will get no flack for this because “she’s a journalist!! she’s just doing what she’s supposed to do!”

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: After spending most of the season taking the piss out of Marinette at every available opportunity, Su-Han will start warming up to her just in time to be taken out of the equation by something like Alya posting another 'big scoop' on her blog revealing his existence to the villains. Marinette will be left with even less support and all of the guilt, while Alya learns absolutely nothing from the experience because why would she?

Considering “Truth,” I just automatically presume that characters who support Marinette lovingly/unconditionally will either be abused or kicked to the curb.

Anonymous said:

Don't need Burrow: "Queen Banana" will be like typical episode with Chloe akumatization. 90% Chloe drama and angst, 10% akumatized Chloe (and probably 0% sense)

Show, I’m begging you, just let this character’s focus die already. We are SO tired...

Anonymous said:

didnt need burrow: the show ends with hawkmoth (now shadowmoth i guess) being defeated, heavy implications that the LS will be canon, but no solid proof, any other plot holes disappear in the cheery end music and all fans are left annoyed at the open ending filled with plot holes (bonus: That Guy says smin like "you would know if you watched carefully" to anyone that asks wtf happened)

Fun for us love square salters at least so there’s that? :P

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Trixx wants to return to Alya despite the danger/her past exposure, and ignores Marinette's concerns, leaving/reuniting with Alya over her protests. This is either played as 'It's fine, and Marinette should have trusted Alya more' or 'It's not fine, and it's all Marinette's fault for trusting Alya in the first place and letting Trixx get so attached'. Or both.

Astruc would totally use the opportunity to brag about the whole, “She’s already taken!” line in “Truth” being foreshadowing.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Bunnix reveals that there is an alternate, 'better' future in which Lila never worked with Hawkmoth and became a heroine instead. The turning point was, naturally, that Ladybug never called her out for lying/stealing from Adrien. (Possibly because Adrien never snooped in the safe in this timeline, yet it's still depicted as Marinette's fault.) May couple with confirming she's the future Hawkmoth and that it's all Mari's fault the heroes are still fighting her years later.

Which means that Chat makes the “reversible” mistakes (i.e: Cataclysming Bunnyx’s miraculous) while Ladybug makes the “permanent” ones.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Marinette/Ladybug will get accused of being a selfish glory hound who needs to learn how to share the credit and 'be a team player'... after Adrien/Chat slacks off during a fight and refuses to help. Bonus points if this is tied into the exposed heroes' predicament somehow, implying that the REAL reason she won't give them 'their' Miraculi back is that she's selfish/short-sighted/not good at working with others/insert other bullshit excuse here.

T_T

I’m so tired.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Marinette will do something unbelievably selfless and self-sacrificing, only to promptly be slammed by the narrative and treated as though her decision was incredibly selfish.

Honestly you could just ad lib that.

“Marinette will do [something positive], only to promptly be slammed by the narrative and treated as though her decision was [negative].”

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Su-Han will pressure, belittle and berate Marinette until she breaks and agrees to give up being Ladybug/the Guardian. This is naturally treated as the worst thing she could possibly do, with everyone (including Su-Han) ripping into her for it. There is no equivalent of Plagg's 'I've had many holders, but nobody can replace you, Adrien' shilling, beyond Marinette being informed that she MUST continue and deal with her many inadequacies by becoming BETTER. She has no choice.

“You’re the worst Ladybug!”

“Okay I’ll stop being Ladybug.”

“HOW DARE YOU”

“?!?!?!”

Anonymous said:

Don’t need Burrow to know that the writers will retcon Marinette allowing Adrien to BORROW her lucky charm so that Marinette actually GAVE it to him instead.

Bonus: of course, the birthday scarf issue/secret is never addressed. RIP in piece, Marinette gift number xxx0

Technically, this has already happened even back in “Befana,” so I don’t count it. Adrien has said that Marinette gave him that lucky charm forever.

Definitely adding that scarf one though.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: We get Love Square scenes (shipping fuel) in the next episode (even though Maribug and Adrichat just broke up with Luka and Kagami).

I mean, we got love square shipping fuel in the Adrimi and Lukanette episodes, so :|

I’ve just come to expect inappropriate timing at this point.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: In a future episode Chat Noir will be even worse than he was in Lies and still be portrayed sympathetically. I don't know how you can get that low, but I have faith that the writers will be able to pull it off and that's not a good thing

“I don't know how you can get that low“

they’ll find a way, I’m sure

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Kagami will become an antagonist/team up with Shadow Moth post-Adrimi breakup for the plot twist "the main villain has been in the show all along." ((This is based on the end card for Lies. I really hope they don't do this because Kagami is one of the only reasons I'm still watching the show.))

I’d only be here for that if her endgoal is getting Luka and Marinette as far away from the plot as possible.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: We STILL don't know how the Peacock Miraculous got damaged and how Emilie Agreste fell sick. Bonus points, we find out in the season/series finale or on social media.

Double bonus if Astruc claims that the decision is good and they did it on purpose (probably to keep people talking).

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Zoe debuts as the new Bee holder on the same episode Chloé is akumatized.

I’m 100% expecting Chloe to be salty at all the adoration that Zoe gets.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: if Adrien is ever in the wrong about something, it will only be for about five minutes and it will ultimately be blamed on Marinette.

Marinette: *breathes*

writers: Yes! Something we can blame on her!

Anonymous said:

Didn't need burrow: The relationship between the Couffaines and Jagged will not be explored. They might perform a song together and that's all, Luka forgives Jagged for abandoning him (his daddy issues just magically disappear so he doesn't bring it up anymore) while Juleka doesn't interact with Jagged at all

I’m torn between, “Luka will basically never appear again,” and, “Luka will suddenly appear much more often now that he’s no longer a ‘threat’ to the love square (Marinette didn’t break up with him because of Adrien but sure).”

Anonymous said:

Didn't need Burrow: "Gabriel Agreste" will be all about how he's not really evil just misunderstood. He had a lonely childhood or some garbage and we should feel totally sad for him you guys.

wow i hate it

[davidjjohnston3]

The trees are straight and true here, and the help comes without seeming harpoons.  I considered some insane things which were ‘above my pay-grade’ and as is my wont reflected on the state and implications of my former profession and what old friends and pharons meant to me.  Right now think that my core goal in life is not to blow myself up.  As a former would-have-been SecState said, ‘I love so many people.’  I am only sad that trying as I did to uproot that carrot of love just now could have resulted in the demolition of an entire root-network, of at least my own excision therefrom.

‘Some people’ want revenge against life for not going their way or not being the color or fragrance or face shape they like or feel it ought to be - ‘no that is not what I meant at all.’  They will never hold a life reliable which doesn’t resemble their ideal, imago, or ‘soul-idol’ &c.  The meaning of the name ‘Cordelia’ as in King Lear is something like ‘heart’s ideal.’  I was driving and considering a novel that I feel touched absolute supreme greatness without knowing it or in a way that could mislead some readers Mrs. Mary HK Choi’s Yolk a novel I looked forward for a very long time.  I had all these references and fractal coreferences and forgot about actual birds, like what does the chick eat in the egg.

‘Blood is the life’ - I liked etymologies for a long time and my intellectualism caused me acute trouble in Confirmation Class at Morrow Memorial United Methodist Church in about 1998.  ‘Pastor’ Gretchen taught us the word root ‘consacramentum’ which comes from dipping the hand in blood in the concave of a Roman shield - those huge rectangular shields which could be used in formation as ‘testudo’ or turtle to stop projectile weapons and allowed soldiers to make pin-point stabbing attacks from a ‘matrix(?)’ of high protection.  I forget what kind of animal was killed to pool the blood in the shield but it might have been a rabbit.

I was reading ‘Revelation,’ I don’t recall what everyone else was talking about.  Some kind of community service project, interview your parents, buy a wedding-magazine and make a whole plan for how you would get married and how much it would cost (and while you’re at it describe how you would 1) restore a classic Shelby Cobra using newspaper and Krazy Glue 2) drive foresaid drop-top to the Moon).  

The Pastor was a pipe-smoker named ‘Painter’ who used the NY Lotto’s ‘Hey you never know’ slogan to describe sth like Pascal’s Wager; OTOH St. Paul teaches us that everyone is born knowing God exists (Romans).  The problem is that people fail or omit to glorify Him or subsequently ruin or betray their own best efforts through blasphemy, turning or falling away, cowardice, denial, attachment to certain sins or being ‘yoked unequally’ with non-believers.  

I reflected starting in 2008 that I was shy of my ‘first love’ (rather, the woman I fell in love with at 14); at the time I gloried or reveled in the shyness like a Wallace Stevens poem that ends, ‘And not to have written a book.’  I could’ve written a few books by now or walked away from book-writing or changed my mind / specified which kind of book I might have written and for whom.  

I remember always admiring the ‘magic’ of literature and feeling sad I had no characters or world of my own to work magic with.  Star Wars and my own life and later much else supplied ‘materia poetica’ and till the point that I began to think in fiction and became addicted to interpreting my own in ‘story-ideas’ although that is not to say that what happened around me didn’t happen.  

America is trying to become a better country in numerous valences, loving our neighbors, holding each other accountable.  ‘Justice’ with or without the marks is important.  It is a divine Judgment that Covid fell on the world even if eventually we all shall learn who devised the virus or leaked it or modulated its mutations.  I was eager to rejoin the world feeling I might overcome my mental illness but I mishandled specific questions and tests.  I ended up turning people against me and creating monsters more than ever as well as perhaps terminally sabotaging any chance I might’ve had of fulfilling a dream or making good on the past.  I have a lot of opinions on the CCP but should’ve focused on love and family and personal responsibilities as in the past or at least held to my long-standing feeling that Chinese people deserve better rather than associating myself with hard-liners and racists or those who would simplify issues in order to bring about ultimate victory without temperance or concern for the side-effects.

In Milwaukee where I lived for far too long everyone’s spirit - electric, intellectual, visory(?), informational et cetera seemed to be militating against everybody else’s.  There were fake vaccines, radioactive ice cream (or thermogenic ice-cream), gun-battles as usual, lines crossed, all kinds of scores that people tried to settle.  I also realized that the police were probably tracking for years my various attempts to obtain weapons from samurai-swords to handguns though the purpose was defensive and I can only trust at this point that some good lawyer will prevent the bad lawyers and cops from presenting the most damning circumstantial case they could.  People in Milwaukee own AK-47′s, automatic shotguns, probably all kinds of explosives, improvised chemical weapons and (’our Black brothers’ - Schopenhauer) biological weapons - the cops don’t stand a chance that I can tell and even the National Guard perhaps could get outclassed by retired military.  I had told myself for years that it was only the ghetto’s that bore witness to this paramilitary equipage and that the retired SEAL Team 4 member with the ‘Stop Socialism’ and ‘Jobs Not Mobs’ sign on his front lawn would protect me from the Maoist-Covid Night of the Long Knives but I feel I tempted God a lot in the past.  

I read all these books and took to heart that people thought I was just entertaining myself with but now as then I should’ve guarded my heart or not begged the question of what others thought about me or saw in me.  I literally felt of late ‘I am the anti-Christ’ - good-looking at times, preach world peace, ‘form of godliness,’ want to be friends with everyone, build bridges - and had to rack my brains to come up with an ‘anti-Christology’ and science / concept of the Whore of Babylon just to make sure it was more than me alone.  I also wished to simplify my past and help kids ‘get life right the right time’ doing battle with philosophies that opposed this consciously or otherwise but stepped into numerous minefields and also tried running when I should’ve flown over.  

Everyone’s trying to get rich and build back better and I profoundly admired the American President for doing, finally, apparently, what presidents had tried to decades even as I remember ‘Flowers 1881′ a poem that implies that basically teachers can do only so much before turning their kids loose in a world no one has yet fixed and which others keep breaking; from a California almanac that also instructed me that the same old debates and cross-fires and burdens plague teachers as always, not that it is an ‘impossible profession’ but honestly that God won’t let us establish Heaven on Earth or at least not me or at least not America or at least not teachers who savor the experience of being a teacher or the beauty of their students more than the outcomes or commitment or intrinsic value of the work or the confirmed identity / vocation / personhood of the instructor.  There are always new and old at any rate and different cultures all describe the teacher as needing to keep both alive; as do descriptions of higher education and scholarship.  

I questioned my qualifications / background and wondered about re-training but can’t afford tuition anywhere so I am trying to cling to the core of my capabilities / blessings.  ABC and XYZ.  The glory of the soul or souls.  

I kept theorizing Russian literature as well as weapons-systems and ultimate destiny, sailing ships, noble names, divisions, the flaming sword of Archangel Gabriel, the mission of Russia today with respect to the world order.  I am also simply trying to be healthy and stop for a while trying to parse out who was the love of my life or what it still left in terms of action or redemption or justice or surrender or mitigation or meeting new friends or propounding the kind of understand with carefulness I have believed in - ‘saving people from themselves.’  Driving up here I remember being distressed at a gas-station in California when I was about 5 or 6 since the pump was leaking, being very upset with my parents and family.  In those days I also disliked animal-cruelty though the world today seems so depraved and deprived with respect to human interests I would make no bones about neglecting most all animals outside of military or police use.  When I was about 3 I saw white kids set a frog on fire; my mother has a history of running over cats.

I dislike winging it and taking risks.  There is a song I call to myself ‘Run Away’ though its title is ‘Paradise.’  I am not a utopian communist for believing in secular justice and its instrinsic value... I wonder whether when I helped people in the past there were always strings attached or maybe I was just trying to close my case and discharge my responsibilities too rapidly without allowing others to gestate or make an abode in my heart besides and beyond what I could get out of them, glorifying myself, or tell others about.  

What is motherhood?  What is travail?  Is there a kind of problematic ‘female gaze’ as feminists talk of a ‘male gaze’ associated with sadism or fascination / fetishism?  It’s psychology which is not my first love at all since it appeared pretentious and distracting and retarding (in the literal sense of slowing down).

I also remembered reading various things about Victor Hugo whose ‘93′ is an important novel today due to its techno-utopianism, feminism or ‘new model egalitarianism,’ fusion of revolution and religion, etc.  But I had forgotten ‘Les Miserable’ with its themes of ransom or eventual recompense, genealogies, caution, and more none of which is to negate the various complains against me or death-warrant from China or my parents with their partial private readings of Proverbs (’Let’s stone David for embarrassing us / not doing precisely what we want’ - no mention of witnesses, tribunals, questions, mitigation-hearings, actual counsels of judges etc. but just American-German ‘coalitions of the willing’ ‘run and get my gun’ ‘team-building’ etc. which in my experience ends with tanks on the street and military dictatorships as when at the end of the CultRev PLA regulars were gunning down former justice-fanatics who’d been stripping women, kicking pregnant stomachs etc. as in The Vagrants).  Naturally having grown up in a family fascinated with Lee Kwanyew and Arnold Schwarzenegger and conflicted about ‘fascism’ I had reservations about the United States’ ability to suddenly dress up and ‘stand at perpetual moral attention’ but I guess my own problems are just that I am poor with a rich kid’s mind and no one really likes me except strangers and faraway friends who were easily spooked and/or just couldn’t be there.  ‘King of South shall attack and King of North shall crush them  with chariots &c.’ - in the end righteous will prevail whichever side of the line I end up on in the final assessment.  I also remembered today a novel called ‘The Old Capital’ about a bad artist father, a virgin daughter, straight and true pines.  Some other aspects of this novel are silly as well as criminally problematic and there's a lot of that going on in new-old old news America / Babylon or at least to quote my favorite lawyer / leave lawyering movie 'First let's get out of Milwaukee.'  Miss the land of June snow. 

[it-will-not-last-the-night]

PQ2 - End

As I did expect; making sure I was able to comfortably beat the Velvet Rangers first did mean Enlil, though visually impressive, wasn’t a difficult fight. I simply equipped Ryuji with the Omnipotent Orb and had him All Guard every turn and this left Enlil unable to do anything whilst the Joker, Mitsuru, Chie and Ann wailed on them.

The ending was honestly good though, very emotional, heart-tugging, I honestly haven’t had this much fun finishing a game since J.J. Macfield and the Island of the Missing. 

PQ2 is honestly a gem I feel. Beyond fun mechanics that I found easy to get back into even after long gaps, it balances the character development of an enormous cast very successfully, with only some issues.

Even though I knew nothing of P3 or P4 the game conveys their characters in a way I found enjoyable and easy to sink into, and that is really no small feat considering that the cast is, honestly, just insanely large by the end. 

I enjoyed Enlil as an antagonist for the most part, though they could definitely have used a little more substance in the plot, but this game, overall, was less focused on it’s villain and more on it’s protagonist, and that’s fine.

To that end Hikari: the game is honestly the story of her character development and I loved her. It’s a pity we don’t see much of her in the fandom, because I honestly adore Hikari and find her enchanting and relatable in a number of ways.

Her farewell to the friends she made at the finale of the game was genuinely touching.

In general the farewells at the end are emotional, and I enjoyed them all, event he little nod to Akechi’s own mixed feelings, clearly dealing with something, as he is the most hesitant of the Phantom Thieves to finally exit the theatre after they have learned they will forget everything once they are outside. A nice touch!

Of course, because it is me, I do wish to gush briefly about Ryuji: OH MY GOSH I love his dynamic with Hikari? But, also, I just love him in this game? He comes across in PQ2 as if he has matured from his incarnation in the vanilla game. Not only is he the character, along with Futaba, who spends the most time supporting and speaking with Hikari, but even in the ending when most of the Thieves all express varying degrees of excitement or forced enthusiasm about returning home, Ryuji is the one who most noticeably feels sad about the whole affair, expressing how he suddenly misses everything they’d gone through.

On the note of Ryuji and Hikari’s bond: I had thought it mostly just an accidental outgrowth of Ryuji’s common role as an externalization of Joker’s words, but when I watch the ending perhaps it is more intentional than I thought. Noticeably Futaba and Ryuji deliver the closing lines to Hikari, Ryuji is the one who, as she tears up, tells her to remember to keep her promise to invite them to see her movies and in the post-credits scene Ryuji is the character who feels they NEED to see her movie when they find a flyer for it, going so far as to clutch at his head because he, without knowing why, just knows he HAS to go do this. Furthermore, the cutscene as Hikari says her final goodbye and leaves, is framed around a small group of characters: Ryuji, Futaba, P3FemPC, Yukari, Mitsuru and Morgana. Among those Ryuji, Futaba and P3FemPC are the characters with the largest interaction with Hikari throughout the game, and I honestly have adored those four together.

I honestly have no idea why I am typing this, the game is dated and I believe interest in it limited, but I’d recommend any fan of Persona who hasn’t given it a try to do so, if only because the story and characters are honestly well executed, better in many ways than Vanilla.

To be frank; whilst Vanilla has moments that legitimately make me depressed, the scene in Shinjuku and the scene after Shido’s Ship, even at it’s worst PQ2 never has it’s characters be that mean to each other. Even when they jibe or insult they never cross a line to abusing or accosting, and they never all single out one character to relentlessly, constantly, deride.

A breath of fresh air really!

Anyway; I loved the game, I had fun, now I guess I wait for Scramble to become available, and I hope we get to see more of the P5 cast still in future (ALSO ATLUS JUST LET ME HOOK THE PT’S UP WITH EACH OTHER OR DATE THE BOYS PLEASE I WANT TO GIVE THEM LOVE TOO THEY DESERVE IT).

For fun below the divide I’m just gonna mention the relationships, romantic or platonic I’m not going to bother much with a distinction, I really have come to like following this game even though, I am sure, they are all crack.

Enjoy:

Chie/Yukiko: Whether best friends or girlfriends no pair of characters in the P4 cast seemed to, from the outset, come across as obviously as if they are close. The two seem to complement each other well, know each other well and play off each other well and are always delightful and entertaining to watch.

Mitsuru/Junpei: I talked about this one before; I just honestly loved their Ticket and found it endearing how both, in their interactions with each other, were almost Tsundere-ish in admitting to private desires to get along, and take care of each other dearly, but struggling to break through the shell of the other to confess this. 

Ryuji/Hikari: Talked about this one at massive length already; suffice to say I honestly loved their interactions so much and, along with Ryuji’s interactions with Sophia I have seen now in Scramble, Ryuji radiates enormous, powerful, Big Brother/Father energy. Which I think is great? What better arc for Ryuji than, a person who’s life is overshadowed by his awful father, to turn out to be a wonderful father himself.

Yusuke/Yukiko: These two just get each other. Honestly they just click. They tune in to the same cosmic wavelength and leave everyone confused as they naturally just synch up. It is a pity as the game enters its later stages we see less of them, in the early game they are a treat.

Ken/Akechi: Ken and Akechi just are perfect, wonderful, foils to each other and it’s almost a pity the game can’t actually go the full way with it because Akechi’s secret can’t come out. This leaves it as a tease, the suggestion, of what could be, but that’s still plenty good. I also find it always interesting to see Ryuji and Akechi, two boys heavily formed by an abusive father, both in their own explicit words state outright they relate themselves to Ken in some way. With Akechi, because he is so good at wearing masks, I wonder how true it is when he relates himself to Ken, it’d be interesting to know if this is one of his lies to maintain his façade, or a bit of his true self creeping out as it often does. 

Joker/Junpei: I don’t know why I like these two? But Joker comes across as really fond and supportive of him with his consistent chances to shout out “Junpei! Master Detective!”

Yukari/Junpei: As I said in my head I go back-and-forth whether this would be endearing or a toxic hate-love relationship. There’s no denying, though, that these two interact more with each other than anyone else in the P3 cast, they’re the Yukiko/Chie in that sense, if Yukiko/Chie consisted of a lot of barbs and harsh words. We actually get a glimpse of what, I feel, is a healthier dynamic for the two in P3FemPC’s world in the epilogue, where Yukari is still barbed but rather than deflating Junpei ripostes back, this automatically makes it seem less mean-spirited heckling and more two people, comfortable with each other, bantering.

Futaba/Hikari: This one is the obvious choice since the game is obviously going out of it’s way to make this an important relationship. Futaba sees herself in Hikari and appoints herself like an older sister to help her. It is adorable and amazing character development as the socially reclusive and shy Futaba clearly forces herself out of her comfort zone to prove to Hikari that she can change and that she is not a lost cause. Along with Hikari it is, perhaps, Futaba who is the true MVP of this entire game. 

Futaba/P3FemPC: Futaba gets some lovely Sister-like sequences with the incredibly fun and social P3FemPC, who Futaba is clearly in awe of. It is a pity that these really only happen in the early game, I’d love for them to continue, but P3FemPC as the big, fun, sister figure of Futaba is fun.

Ryuji/Yukiko: This one is just because the ending of Haru and Yukiko’s ticket has one of the funniest bit ever when Haru and Yukiko decide they want to ‘play’ with Ryuji and Yosuke. Yukiko’s ‘Will you devote all of your being to the name of the Amagi Family?’ is wonderful and I can just imagine Ryuji’s reaction to such a frank proposition. 

Mitsuru/P3FemPC: This one was actually surprising to me but Mitsuru really has something of an almost maternal instinct for P3FemPC. She seeks to console her and let her know she is valued, even if Mitsuru is poor at expressions of affection, as seen in Junpei’s case as well. In many ways it strikes me as a more sympathetic Sae/Makoto. Mitsuru clearly cares for the P3FemPC and is aware of her disconsolate feelings, but struggles to find the words to comfort her, but doesn’t let that stop her trying. 

[yourmandevine]

Some stuff that made me happy in 2020, in no particular order

God send you no greater loss. It’s something my grandmother said a lot — a bit of highly Irish Catholic wisdom intended to remind you, warmly but sharply, that whatever you’re currently suffering through isn’t all that bad compared to what lots of other people are dealing with. That it probably isn’t too much to complain about, in the grand scheme of things. That you should, instead, be grateful for what you’ve got, big and small and everything in between.

God sent a great many people a great many unfathomable losses this year, and as hard as it felt at times, our family wasn’t among them; we’re lucky, in the big picture. In the past, people have recommended I try writing those reasons down, to give myself a list of stuff to be thankful for, for the times it’s tough to summon up the gratitude. I figured the end of the year was as good a time as any to make that list, to highlight the stuff that helped me get through this year — the reasons big, small, and in between.

So: here goes.

Peanut butter and jelly

I haven’t counted how many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I’ve eaten since March 11, which is good, because that would be an absurd thing to do, and a sure sign that I have succumbed to a very specific kind of madness. It’s also good, though, because I would undoubtedly be ashamed by the number; the figure would be titanic, like the unsinkable ship of same name, or the iceberg that sunk it.

Or, at least, I would be ashamed under normal circumstances. This fuckin’ year required whatever flotation device you could find, and you know what I found in the fridge and cupboard? A couple of slices of bread, some strawberry jam, and some goddamn Skippy.

Need a weird mid-morning “brunch” after not having breakfast because you went right from waking up to remote school with the 6-year-old? Crank up a PB&J with that third cup of coffee. Need to pack something in the diaper bag to feed everyone while you’re out at the playground for the afternoon? Stack ‘em up, son. Need a late snack after working the overnight shift filing weird bubble playoff columns? Three letters, one ampersand, one love.

I need to eat better in 2021. But I kind of needed to eat sort of like shit to get through 2020, and time and again, when your man needed it most, PB&J was there.

Sunday night Zoom sessions with college friends

I know that most of us started something like this back in March; I’m not sure how many have stuck with it. I hope the answer is “a lot,” because honestly, knowing that I’m going to end the week by seeing a few friends — some here in Brooklyn but mostly beyond our reach for safety’s sake, some who’ve moved away — has felt like a stabilizing agent on more than a few occasions. It’s important, and no small blessing, to have people in your life who really know you, weird messy ugly bits and all, and in front of whom you can let everything go.

That gallery view’s provided a place to vent, to seethe, to laugh, to cry, and to try to find some semblance of center before heading back into another week. I’m grateful for it, and for the people in those little boxes. Except for the time they reminded me that, when I was 18, I was pretty sure I was a Pacey, and they were all extremely confident I was a Dawson. They were right, but still: a bitter pill to swallow, then and now.

Olivia calling herself “Dr. Bloody”

She took out her little toy doctor kit and just turned into a cackling villain.

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Deeply disconcerting, yes, but also adorable.

All Fantasy Everything

What got me in the door was the conceit: three very funny stand-up comedians (Ian Karmel, David Gborie, Sean Jordan), often with a very funny guest but sometimes without, pick some topic or another and engage in a fantasy draft of their favorite aspects or representations of that topic. (It is, crucially, a serpentine draft. Now what is that? That’s a great question.) Some favorite examples: Mikes; Words That You Think Make You Sound Smart, vols. 1 and 2; Things You Yell After You Dunk on Someone; Fictional Athletes; Crimes We’d Like to Commit. Yeah. It’s that kind of podcast.

What kept me around was the friendship. Listen to an episode and it becomes really clear really quickly just how much the three hosts love each other, how much fun they have being around each other and making one another laugh. The warmth radiates, just pours out of the speakers; in a year where I sorely needed some good vibes, I appreciated my regular check-ins with the Good Vibes Gang to just ... unclench for an hour and a half or so. 

Drinking beer

OK, I’ll admit: This doesn’t sound great for me. It’s true, though. I really like beer. (We brewed one in our kitchen, which I realize is something of a “bearded guy in Brooklyn” cliche, but here we are. It was exciting to complete a project, and it tasted OK-ish.) At some points this year, it didn’t feel like there wasn’t much to look forward to, and sometimes drinking some High Lifes or Narragansett tall boys — with my wife in our living room, with friends on the computer, whatever — helped take the edge off a shitty day/week/month/year. I look forward to being able to do that outside with people again.

The Good Place

I am sure some very smart cultural critics and political thinkers and social revolutionaries have forwarded compelling arguments for why this show is Bad, Actually, because that seems to be more or less true about most things, whether because said thing is Actually Bad or because the economics of the attention economy on the internet functionally necessitate the composition and publication of pretty much every position on pretty much every issue, and especially ones that present a counterargument for why you shouldn’t like the thing you like, and might be kind of a piece of shit for liking it. But I liked this half-hour comedy about the way the universe might be put together, why we should try to take better care of each other, and how doing so might be a pretty great way to take better care of ourselves.

Andrew let me write about it a little bit for a big project we did before the series finale aired, which was really nice of him. I found myself thinking about this part a lot this year:

I also thought a lot about Peeps Chili, but that happens every year.

Taking pictures of my dog

Check out this flumpy goddamn champion:

“Lugar is a good boy” is the main takeaway here. They don’t all have to be complicated.

Schitt’s Creek

I know we’re not alone in this, but we inhaled this show this year. A half-hour comedy about people being laid low, learning how to deal with who they actually are, and finding some grace and community and opportunities for growth kind of hit the spot, I guess.

One of the most wholesale enjoyable ensemble comedy casts I can remember; Catherine O’Hara was already in Cooperstown, but what she made with Moira Rose only polishes her plaque. I’ll never be able to describe with any specificity the thing Chris Elliott does, but I know it has made me laugh since I was a child too young to understand the Letterman bits or see Cabin Boy in the theater, and it’s probably going to make me laugh until I am dead.

I love that people who, for years, never got to see themselves or people like them on screen got to see David Rose on screen and maybe recognize themselves a little bit. The idea that seeing the David/Patrick relationship might make them maybe feel a little more at home, a little safer and more whole, makes me happy. Sad, about the before, but happy, about the now and the what comes next.

Past that, I just love how what was ostensibly a family-and-friends production for a Canadian channel just got absolutely everything right—the tone, the look, the sound, the theme song, the cast, the jokes, my goodness, the jokes—and before long, the rest of the world just got it. Like catching a fastball square on the barrel. Something the show clearly knew a little bit about.

Finding new outdoor places it was safe to go

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the need to give the kids a place to be that wasn’t unnecessarily dangerous but also wasn’t inside our two-bedroom apartment led us to do more exploring than we had before. Shirley Chisholm State Park is great. Canarsie Pier was a fun place to spend a Sunday morning; so’s Canarsie Playground. If we got there early enough or made our peace with some rain, the beaches at Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden were pretty rad this summer. I lived in Staten Island from ages 8 through 18, and during breaks throughout college, and don’t think I ever hiked in High Rock Park — that’s dumb, because it was nice!

Even if all those little excursions did was kill a little time and reduce the overall stress level of the four humans stuck in our four walls, that’s not nothing. Some days this year, it was everything.

Cobra Kai

I know I’m late here; I didn’t rush to seek it out because I don’t consider myself a huge fan of The Karate Kid, or at least not a big enough fan to sign up for YouTube’s premium service. I checked it out when it came to Netflix, though, and I honestly can’t believe how much I enjoyed this show. Give me “dumb, but with heart” every day of the week.

I believe in Miguel Diaz; I believe in Johnny Lawrence; I believe I will be firing up Season 3 next month, and perhaps drinking some Coors Banquets in its honor. (I cannot, however, believe how the “get him a body bag” thing came back around, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Closing unread tabs

I’m a serial hoarder of links, and I am bad at finishing all of them. I’ve tried to get into Pocket and Instapaper, but I’ve never been able to turn that sort of workflow — open link, save to third-party service, go back to third-party service later to read, then delete from there — into something that felt instinctual, natural, or habitual. So: lots of tabs. Like, lots of tabs.

This was a dicier proposition than usual in 2020, because cutting my work week in half to be able to more effectively coparent two kids who didn’t have school or day care for most of the year meant less time to read things.

I tried to do my best to keep up with the important stuff for work, and to read at least some stuff about how other parents were dealing with their anxiety/anger/depression/frustration at having to be on 24/7 and work, and to stay abreast of (at least some of) what was happening in the world. Sometimes, though, I would wake up and realize I’d been holding onto blog posts about Really Interesting Rotation Decisions on the 11th-Seeded Team in the East or whatever for literally nine months, and I would go against my nature and just hit the eject button on a 25-deep window, and something amazing would happen: I wouldn’t get fired for being shitty at my job. I would move on with my day, and I would feel about 10 pounds lighter.

I still keep too much stuff open. (As we speak, I’ve got three different Chrome windows open on two different laptops. I choose not to count the total tabs.) But I do so knowing that, if it gets too heavy, I can experience the momentary joy of surrendering to the inevitability that I can’t catch everything. In that moment, I feel OK with my decay.

Reading writers I wasn’t familiar with before

Two in particular stand out in my mind: Nekias Duncan, now of BasketballNews.com, who does excellent film breakdowns and statistical analysis, and Katie Heindl, who writes basketball stuff of all types all over the place, and strings sentences together in a way that scratches an itch inside my brain. I’m grateful I got more chances to read them this year, I look forward to bigger and better things for both of them, and I’m hopeful that, if things calm down and our schedules go back to something approximating normalcy, I’ll have more bandwidth to hunt out more new voices in the year ahead.

The time I ambushed my wife as she was trying to break down and put away the girls’ space tent

Pretty good.

Siobhan learning to ride a bicycle (with training wheels, but still)

The moment passed pretty quickly; Not Exactly A Mechanic over here can’t get the training wheels to reliably work right without either loosening them too much or tightening them so much that she can’t pedal it. In that first moment, though, and for as long as it lasted, it was really great to see her get excited about doing something new, big kid shit, for the first time.

She was proud. I was proud of her. And then we went to a playground for a few hours. Pretty good day.

Tyler Tynes roasting me

Tyler did some incredible work this year — The Cam Chronicles is getting deserved praise as one of 2020′s best podcasts, and his reporting on the Movement for Black Lives was exemplary. It’s hard to top this, though:

You know what the messed up part is? I was excited to tell him what I was doing, just because I knew the reaction would be so violent. Like a body rejecting a transplant. So lucky to have such a dear, dear friend.

PUP

I’m late on everything, so I didn’t start listening to PUP until the spring of 2019, but I haven’t really stopped since. This year has been too sedentary too often; this band is too kinetic to allow me to stay there.

“Bloody Mary Kate and Ashley Kate” is never more than about 20 minutes away from returning to the front of my mind. I would fucking love for it to be safe enough to watch these guys live at some point, and I am absolutely going to take Steve up on his offer.

Someone sending me a shirt based on a joke I tweeted

First:

Then:

Then:

I’m not sure you should be rewarding my behavior, SnoCoPrintShop, but I appreciate it all the same.

Which reminds me:

Family dinner/family movie night

My wife works in Manhattan and commutes back on the train, and we've tried to prioritize getting the girls to bed early since they were little, so that doesn’t leave much of a window between when she gets home and they go in the tub for us all to connect; before everything shut down, we almost never really ate together. We’re still not great about it, but for a while now we’ve carved out Saturday as family dinner night, where we sit down to eat and talk about our “up” from the day — something that happened that made us feel good or happy, or something we’re looking forward to. (We used to talk about our “down,” too, but that kind of seemed like overkill. Why try to focus on more bad shit right now, you know?)

Then we settle in for a movie, with who gets to pick rotating each week. It’s mostly been Pixar, which has been great but also has its drawbacks; after she caught me crying during one of them (maybe the Bing-Bong scene in Inside Out? or Miguel singing to Grandma Coco?), Siobhan straight up told me, “You need to get yourself together, man.” We just watched My Neighbor Totoro, too, which they loved, so we’re probably going to try some more Miyazaki soon. It’s a really simple thing, but it’s one we rarely made time for before, and it’s been really nice to manufacture something positive that we can share and look forward to together.

Sometimes looking like a shiftless drifter

No shade to anyone who felt strongly about getting a lineup or whatever, but I haven’t really felt like going to the barbershop was worth the risk, and I continue to refuse to believe that my wife can actually pull off the fade she’s long wanted to give me. (It is also possible that she just means she’s intending to run my fade, and that I will before long wind up cold-cocked and slumped by my bride of nine years.) So I’ve just kind of been growing out my hair like it was when I was single, and sometimes been letting my beard get kind of out of control too, and, well, I sort of like looking a little bit like a Wildling, it turns out.

I have since trimmed things up a little. It didn’t go over well with my youngest. Oh, well. I’ll try to do better next time.

My wife and daughter singing the Pixies

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We don’t know all the words to too many lullabies, so we sing the ones we do know the words to. This will probably come back to bite us in the years ahead. For now, though: Pretty good.

Doughboys’ Tournament of Chompions: Munch Madness: Mac Attack

I can’t believe how invested I became in Nick Wiger and Mike Mitchell’s quest to determine the best menu item at McDonald’s in a 64-seed tournament that spawned hours and hours of delightfully funny audio featuring all-time home-run guests like Jon Gabrus and Nicole Byer, who gleefully feed into the often warm, sometimes antagonistic, always entertaining chemistry between the two hosts. I have also never found myself wanting to go to McDonald’s more in my entire life. I have hit the drive-thru a couple of times since, and the boys are right: The McDonald’s fountain Coke does just hit different.

Sound Only

I’ve lost track of whether or not a 38-year-old is considered a millennial, but I’m quite confident that I’m not exactly plugged into “the millennial lifestyle” as my teammates Justin Charity and Micah Peters discuss it on their podcast, which relaunched this summer. Doesn’t matter, though, because I love hearing Charity and Micah talk to each other even if I don’t know what they’re talking about.

Their conversation about Dave Chappelle was great. After listening to their Travis Scott episode, I felt like I kind of understood who he is and why he occupies the space he does in pop culture now. I had no idea how they were going to get me to give a shit about set photos from The Batman, but this they not only got me there, but wended their way toward blaming 50 Cent for needing to know who Groot is to have a conversation on the internet, which is something for which Abraham Lincoln did not die. The show is good, it's getting better, it’s fun to hear them talk their shit, and Charity’s regular bellowing of “I, TOO, AM AMERICA” has made me smile for four straight months. 

Siobhan’s letters and notes

She’s in first grade now, and she’s taken to communicating her feelings through the written word. A lot.

I won’t pretend that I loved all of these in the moment. I can only get so upset, though, when she’s already writing with such a clear voice. (And trying to use proper punctuation. (And drawing little cartoons to drive the point home.)

Palm Springs

I’m having a hard time remembering too many specifics about it right now, which probably means it’d be a good thing to rewatch over the holidays. But, as I’m sure many people noted many months before we got around to watching it, a comedy about living the same day over and over again, and about trying to figure out how to make your life mean something when everything seems meaningless, scratched a pretty particular, and particularly important, itch this year. It could’ve been twice as long, and I would’ve eaten up every second of Andy Samberg and Cristin Miloti together.

I’m pretty sure I cried, although this year, that doesn’t necessarily mean much.  Also, put Conner O’Malley in more things.

Joining our union’s bargaining committee

I won’t say too much about this, but I will say that becoming an active participant in the process of a labor union negotiating its first contract with management has been an extremely educational experience. It’s pushed me to have conversations, sometimes difficult ones, about our priorities as a staff and a company. It's helped me get closer with the other past and present members of the BC, and has led me to start developing relationships with members of our staff that I otherwise might not have had much of an opportunity to get to know.

The organizing work takes time, effort, and energy, but trying to do what I can to help take better care of my colleagues has been well worth all of that. Here’s hoping that in 2021 we can reach a deal that helps make our workplace even better, stronger, and more equitable for all of us.

Publishing a story about Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup

I swear this is true: After I accepted my offer to work at The Ringer, but before I started, I told a friend that one thing I was excited about was that you had the chance to work on offbeat stuff here, in both the “kind of weird” and “not about the NBA” senses. That, I thought, might maybe open the door to me getting to write a story about a Saturday Night Live sketch I saw when I was a teenager about Stevie Nicks from Fleetwod Mac running a cheap Tex-Mex restaurant in Sedona, Arizona — a sketch that I wasn’t sure anyone else remembered, but that was stuck in my head forever.

That story ran on May 26.

A lot of people seemed to like it.

Accomplishing this goal was, as dumb as this might sound, a highlight of my year, and, honestly, a highlight of my career. I’d like to do some more stuff like this next year, time permitting; we’ll see. Whether or not I do, I got to do this. I’ll always have that.

[dippedanddripped]

Upcycling boundary-pusher and ex-Reebok graphic designer Nicole McLaughlin has turned making something out of nothing into an art form. For her, sustainability starts with the urgent need to repurpose waste. The footwear industry alone pumps out 24 billion pairs of shoes a year, and much ends up in landfill. But it doesn’t stop there. Designers must think differently, says McLaughlin, and make sneakers circular. One thing we can do to fast-track it? Collaborate

Allbirds: How do you approach sustainability?

Nicole McLaughlin: “You can’t just kind of be in it; you have to fully be in it. I wouldn’t want it any other way, now that I’ve dipped my toe into to the world of sustainability, mostly through upcycling and having conversations with people who are much more expert than me. I’m learning as I go.”

Allbirds: What do you see as the most pressing sustainability issues in fashion, and how are you trying to overcome them?

McLaughlin: “Overproduction and waste. I used to work within corporate fashion and footwear. Coming into the industry as a lover of clothing and shoes, then being faced with the reality of working in the field, seeing the scale and travelling to factories - all that made quite an impression on me.

“I look at sustainability from a social perspective too: how you are paying your workers and how they are treated. The human side is very important. But I felt, honestly, that Adidas and Reebok had pretty good factories, so the thing that really got me motivated was how much product the industry produces. It’s crazy to see that in its full form. It changes you. Also, just being around piles of clothes and shoes in the office, you start thinking about using what’s already available.

“It’s definitely wild to see the scale of waste, and I don’t think most consumers really know about it. I’m trying to raise awareness without putting companies on blast. Rather, to help them, to be like: What are the things we can do creatively to address the problem? Because this is not about one brand or another brand; this is about the culture as a whole.

“Sustainability within sneakers is just starting to become a more discussed thing, but from an upcycling perspective, it’s not brand new. At one point Reebok used recycled tyre rubber to create soles. There’s so much that can be done if we’re more resourceful. Actually, Allbirds was my first real introduction to a sustainable brand that puts materials first, and I’m not just saying that!”

Allbirds: You did a collaboration with us, together with Chinatown Market, in August, donating the proceeds to charity. How did our materials inspire you?

McLaughlin: “I wanted to highlight Allbirds’ amazing materials and still have the fun, playful aspect. It was during peak quarantine, and you shipped me three or four huge boxes of sample materials, including these square swatches that were perfect for patchwork.

“It was my first time working with wool [and] it was cool to understand how it folds and moves. A lot of my process is sculptural because I am physically putting it on my body, seeing if it’s a malleable material, what I can do with it. I designed some bags, I did a vest made from shoe uppers, a shoe ,which was really cool, and a really fun basketball hoop bra.”

Allbirds: You use humour to cut through. Let’s unpack this statement from your website: “This unexpected translation of materials allows her to uniquely highlight the message of sustainability.” How do you talk to your community about your ideas and values? What kinds of reactions do you get?

McLaughlin: “Humour can break the ice. I’m trying to say there’s a lot of stuff already made, in a funny, practical way to get people thinking. I get messages pretty much every day from students, or people into sustainability that get it. Then I have other people who’ve followed me for a long time and it suddenly clicks for them; they’re like, ‘Oh, I see, all of this stuff is secondhand…’ That’s something I really love.

“My approach to upcycling and sustainability is a little bit different than the traditional way of creating a sustainable collection. For me, design - and the way that you perceive it - comes first. You think about the sustainability after you have been interested in the invention or the idea ... I don’t want to say it’s sneaky, because that’s not the right way of doing it, but you know what I mean. There are people who don’t want to be lectured to.”

Allbirds: You’ve made working with other brands’ deadstock into an art form, but what do collabs mean to you beyond their physical possibilities?

McLaughlin: “It’s funny to see the evolution because now brands are reaching out to me. When I started, I was using [items from] brands I liked, that I felt passionate about, just on my own. Now it’s great to have the opportunity to work together on finding solutions. There are more younger designers getting these collaborations, which is awesome. It goes both ways: we’re teaching these brands methods of dealing with waste, and they’re giving us a larger platform.”

Allbirds: What would real change look like for you?

McLaughlin: “I think a lot about circularity. It’s a daunting task for larger brands that have been in business for longer than I’ve been alive; they’ve put out years and years of product, and to change the whole way they work, and take back all that product, is asking for something major. But I see the value in brands that do take their product back, or have repair programs. Or if something’s too damaged to fix, they will take it back and re-use the materials. If you want to get really deep into it, there are so many layers driving the problems - consumerism, fast fashion, social media - but ultimately the solution that I find has the best design integrity is circularity.”

Allbirds: It’s interesting that you began by talking about takeback schemes and looking at responsibility for a product’s end-of-life…

McLaughlin: “I just don’t believe that brands should be like, ‘We made all this stuff, you buy it and then it’s your problem.’ I don’t think that’s the way we’ll do it in future. I mean, that’s what we have been doing, as an industry, and look where we are. More accountability would change things. Thrifting and donating is awesome but people don’t realise how much stuff is sitting in warehouses and on palettes, or getting burned. I think new technologies and new materials are part of [the solution], but what are we going to do with all the stuff we already have? We need to change the way we think about trash.”

Allbirds: Where do think the big opportunities lie for shaping a different kind of fashion industry? What gives you hope and why?

McLaughlin: “I am super hopeful when I do my workshops. Honestly, the most inspiring thing is to see people come up with solutions and make them happen. You could sit in a board room and chat all day about 2025 and 2030, all the targets you want to reach, but to make something together, a physical, tangible thing, is to be like: this is possible!

“It’s been amazing to have some of these brand partnerships on the workshops too. So you’ve donated Allbirds stuff you don’t need as the base for a workshop. Or Adidas helped me host one in China, where we also had people bring in their own things, which was really good because thrifting culture in Asia is very different. There’s the language barrier, but design is a way to communicate without words.

“I’ve held workshops all over, some in the UK, and around the States. All kinds of people come from different backgrounds and skills levels, not just design students - teachers, hospital workers, it’s crazy! People can come with no experience and leave with something amazing. They’ll bring their own items from home that they don’t know what do with anymore, and we find ways to rework them. It’s a very intimate process, of going around learning about each person and what they’ve brought, and creating a project around that. The most inspiring is when they start to work together and give each other advice. I miss the pre-COVID physical events.”

Allbirds: What have 2020’s disruptions highlighted for you as a business?

McLaughlin: “I’m going to go back to that word: resourceful. I really had to use what I had. Some of my old projects I took apart and remade. I literally used kitchen items from my house. It was like going back to my early days of designing. You run out of white thread, you have to get around it.

“I also think this year has pushed me more on connection and communication, to bring people along. Even just taking the workshops digital. You don’t have to be a designer or be able to sew to make better decisions about what do with the trash that you have.”

Through Waves of Change, Nicole McLaughlin is supporting Sunrise Movement to fight the climate crisis, and The Okra Project, a collective that brings culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans People.

[cpeacephoto]

This is kind of a moody post. So if you’re not into long winded, incoherent rants about nothing just enjoy the photos and move on. No one’s blaming you.  

There’s an episode of the TV show Firefly that I think about from time to time. The shows been off the air forever so if for some reason you hate spoilers, this is the only warning I feel socially required to give you.

The show’s premise is a group of sort of rag tag people on a ship out in space. It’s a lot like space cowboys. There’s an old military guy and his former underling acting as the ship captain/owner and 1st officer. The 1st officer’s spouse/pilot, a mechanic, a doctor who’s hiding from the law along with his sister, a hired gun, a preacher, and a professional companion. They take whatever jobs they can moving cargo or passengers to try and make a living. Doesn’t matter if the job is legal or not, so long as it’s not out right morally disgusting. Like they won’t steal medical supplies from those that need it.  

Specifically there’s an episode I think about a lot called Out Of Gas. It is kind of a slow episode but it is also a very heavy episode. In the episode the ship runs into a major malfunction early in the airing. The engine is down. Without the engine they are dead in the water. More importantly without the engine they are out of air. There’s two shuttles attached to the ship, but they themselves have limited range, capacity, and air.

Even if the shuttles could support absolutely everyone they have another very big problem. The ship is their livelihood. Being out in the middle of nowhere means there’s not exactly a lot of reputable people or even law enforcement around. Assuming, anyone comes at all. Should someone find the ship, they’re far more likely to see it as an opportunity for themselves to survive and just scrap it. If someone’s on board, they may be willing to injure, kidnap, or kill that person so they can scrap whatever of value is left on the ship.

So they’re boned. They can’t stay as they’re basically in a stationary coffin. They can’t all go, or there’s good chance there’s nothing to come back to. It’s with that the captain decides he’s going to stay behind. Despite being a little bit of an asshole, he means well. And he does have a moral code. He doesn’t hurt the innocent and he feels responsible to keep his crew alive. When tough decisions need to be made, like taking on risk or making sacrifices, he feels it’s his place. By sending the others off in the shuttles he saves them and gives them the best possible chance to find something better. By staying behind he’s giving his ship the best possible chance that someone will come by and actually help him.

Before everyone leaves he asks the pilot to deploy a communications beacon. There’s just a depth to this action. Space by definition is vast and empty. It’s similar to being on a ship in the middle of the Pacific and throwing a beacon overboard. There’s a very, very slim chance anyone is ever going to hear your beacon. Or if they do that they’ll hear it in time. If someone does hear it, there’s no guarantee that this person will be helpful, or even not malicious.

What that beacon is, is hope. It’s not super high tech, it’s not particularly wonderful. It’s just a small repeating signal. A shot in the dark that maybe, maybe the right person will hear it. Maybe you’ll get lucky enough that at your lowest and most vulnerable point the right person will save the day. But the odds of that happening are so overwhelmingly against you. So in almost desperation you deploy it. The last shred of hope slowly beeping in the dark. “beep……………beep………………beep………….beep……” because what else are you going to do?

I think about that beacon a lot. That against all odds shot in the dark at the hope of being heard by the right person. I talk a lot about my old friend. I always talk positively about them. And I mean every word of it. They have had the biggest effect on my life. And I’m amazingly fortunate that it was a positive one. Despite all the things that have happened in my life, particularly self-inflicted, for better or worse, they are the greatest and most positive effect.

And despite all logic, I do feel connected to them. Whenever I get to see a photo of them it really does just sort of make me feel complete, or normal. Which I usually don’t day to day. And yes sometimes it makes me feel happy too like their art usually does. Knowing they are okay, and safe, and happy even around people I’ve never met brings me a kind of comfort. There have been at least 3 different times I’ve suddenly gotten anxious for no reason and out of the blue started thinking of them only to find out later during that time frame something had happened to them. Like a breakup, or a car flat. I’ve had countless dreams about them, and the worst are the ones that are all too real. So real it takes a moment to figure out it was just a dream and didn’t happen. And they are someone who frankly makes me incredibly nervous, anxious, even scared. Something that when we talked would go away the moment they said hi to me and I knew it was all okay. But since we don’t talk anymore, I just sit there and spin.

I think about the Firefly episode because that beacon. I feel like so much of my life has been spent waiting for someone. Someone who for all I know may never come. Someone who I don’t know if it would be worse if they hate me, or if they’ve just forgotten I even exist. If they honestly don’t care about me anymore. I don’t even hit the radar. The last time I talked to them they said while I wasn’t the only thing bad to ever happen to them, I was by far the worst. And I by far had the largest effect on them. That statement, particularly from them, radiates with me daily. Almost 20 years daily. That they can’t remember why we talked or see what the point in talking to me was.

I think about the beacon because so much of what I do I feel like is just a beacon, that slow beeping in the dark, hoping beyond all hope that they hear it. And that if they did, they’ve be kind. I know the odds are overwhelmingly against me. But I have to put out the beacon. I have to have something that says, “I’m still here” floating out in the vast abyss and darkness. I have to hold on. I don’t know what else to do. I’ve been waiting for so long.

It’s made even harder when I know how to contact them. But I feel like I’m not allowed to. Nothing physically stops me. But I’ve always felt like part of that whole need to wait feeling, was that this all wouldn’t be over until they were ready for it to be over. I couldn’t force the issue. They had to make contact with me first. So I’m just sitting here, putting out beacons into the void. Hoping they’ll hear one of them and make the move I don’t think I’m allowed to break. And complete a cycle that started 20 years ago with a “hello”.

In the episode, the beacon does eventually get heard by someone. That someone is a group of people looking to scrap out the ship and seeing someone is on board, isn’t too particular about killing the captain to do it. With a bullet hole in his side the captain manages to convince his would be killers to vacate the ship AND leave him the part he needs to repair the engine. He’s now alone, not a mechanic, bleeding out, in massive amounts of pain, and running out of air. But if he can endure it, just fucking endure it, repair that engine and call back the shuttles then maybe everyone including himself has a chance. Even if he ends up dying at least when everyone else came back, they’d all have a chance.

I feel like that sometimes. Like I’m alone, and I have to just fucking endure it. If I can just endure it long enough, my friend will be happy. Even if I run out of time at least my friend will be happy. They’ll be safe, and healthy, and hopefully happy. But I’m really hoping that if I endure all of this long enough it’ll be okay. My friend will come back for me. I’ve seen them defend and come back for so many other people. I just know they have to come back for me. Tell me it’s alright now. Tell me to stop being so hard on myself. Ask me how my day is. Let me ask them how their day is. I just have to hold on a little longer…

The captain spends the episode from here on out flash backing to how he got the ship. Why it’s so important to him he’s willing to risk everything for it. And sure enough by the end of the episode he ends up fixing that engine, restoring the air, and calling back the shuttles just in time to pass out. By TV magic the shuttles make it back in time to save him before he completely bleeds out and dies. It’s a happy ending. But for the entire length of the episode it was really about hope, against all odds. And the length one man will go through for a fighting chance.

I think about this episode from time to time.

If you’ve read this far you’re probably wondering about the photos I’m posting. The out of focus shot is a digital portrait I did back in Salt Lake City. The fact it’s a woman in a tank top out of focus is really what spun me out on all of this. The fact it’s intimate, but she’s out of focus, out of reach, is what got me moody and thinking. The lavender was something I found at Pike’s Place market in Seattle. My old friend liked Lavender and I still use lavender scented soaps and air fresheners because of it. The digital shots of the woman with the blue coffee cup go back to a reoccurring theme with me and the idea of comfort. Knowing someone so well you don’t have to wear fancy lingerie or be all dressed to the 9’s. As well as perfectly imperfect. The girl in pink is a set of digital shots taken in my house. A fine example of how I won’t allow myself to have friends, and at this point don’t know how to have friends anymore. The girl in the bear was back in Salt Lake City. The graffiti was something on the back of a building we happened to wonder by. And the last shot is from way back in college. A fellow photo student who was probably the age I am now, and was the wife of a Michigan State Trooper.

[bigskydreaming]

Here's a random question for you: I know you're a big (the biggest) proponent of Scanny, but if you had to pick someone else for Danny to have a relationship with, who would it be?

I actually have thought about this! Honestly, my go to after Scott for Danny is Mason, because the younger characters are literally only two years younger than the original characters even if it seemed otherwise a lot of the time. And so given that we never saw Danny and Mason interact due to the whole ‘oh sure, he totally graduated offscreen a year early just in time to not be around for the season that revolved entirely around his specific expertise aka hacking’ nonsense....I can easily imagine a few years in the future, Danny and Mason meet in college or grad school or somewhere they’re on even footing and learn they have mutual friends/experiences/knowledge in common and from there grow into a friendship and also maybe then they’re boyfriends and then husbands and then dads and then grandpas and happily ever after yada yada.

Meanwhile, if Danny encountered Liam at any age, I feel like he would just be like: “No.” And then wave his hand around in Liam’s direction in a circle like to encompass all of him, as he’s all. “All of this is just exhausting, whatever it is. I am too old and too tired to deal with this....vibe you’re emitting.”

LOL I can’t explain it, like Liam and Mason have entirely different energies and I feel that age isn’t even a factor as to why Danny would just not at all have patience for Liam. Like, I don’t think he’d DISLIKE him exactly, so much as just....’I’m going to be over here, and you’re going to stay over there, and I just think that’ll be best for everyone and we’ll all get along great that way.”

Hmm, who else. Controversial I guess, but I actually did kinda like Dethan, waaaay back at the very beginning of it, before that very same season crapped all over any real potential it or even the twins at all had in the show. Given that I’m fine with them and even like them in AUs or fics that diverge before they had anything to do with Boyd’s death, but if that’s at all in canon for a story, I have no interest in them as anything other than cannon fodder. Which let’s be real, you always kinda have a need for in TW stories. 

But initially, I REALLY REALLY liked the fact that there was this (at the time) mysterious new character that was there for DANNY, like, deliberately seeking him out because of real or suspected significance....I was all for that, because I was like yes, excellent, clearly this means they have plans to focus more on Danny and bring him into the core group eventually and also obviously Danny’s gonna turn this guy away from the Dark Side and make him betray his pack of overcompensating losers for Danny and the power of LOVE because who doesn’t love that trope, am I right? Its all so clearly laid out!

Ahhh, to be that dumb again.

Anyway, so in AUs or early canon-divergent fics, I can be all for Danny and a better, more fleshed out and non-jackass depiction of Ethan. But by the time Ethan returns in actual canon, the fact that he’s with Jackson just irritates me in a ‘hooking up with your ex’s best friend is a jerk move and we get it, show, you don’t consider Danny important and never did, jfc’ kinda way. Beyond that though, I’m just like, Jackson can have him at that point, they deserve each other, go Team Jerkwad.

I don’t see Theo and Danny ever happening because I like to think that Danny’s view on scheming, ambitious and boundary-breaking friends with possible homicidal inclinations has changed since Jackson and Ethan’s presences in his life, and he’s like.....”Nah, I’m not doing that again. Two of that type are enough for me, and I’m kinda always gonna put up with Jackson at this point because...look, I had my reasons probably, just because I can’t remember the basis of our friendship now, like....just back off, okay?”

Just saying, I don’t think he’d inherently hate Theo if Theo’s story happens in an AU kinda way where he doesn’t murder and betray his way through the show’s social hierarchy, lol, but Danny would still just be like “Look, whatever your issues are dude, I’m not trying to judge you for them if you don’t make me, but like, go put in some you-time offstage and then maybe we can talk. I am not emotionally equipped to put up with the schemes of yet another person whose whole thing seems to be ‘am I good or bad, you decide, because I sure as hell can’t.’ I don’t care how big your biceps are, that is not going to be a deciding factor for me, not this time, no sir, I have learned from my mistakes, I have had hashtag Growth, and you need to go now, and also please put on a shirt. I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR!”

Danny and Stiles is Lol That’s A No For Me, of course, Danny and Boyd I would be totally down for and can picture them being like, a snark queen power couple who hang back and watch all the drama unfold around them while providing entertaining commentary back and forth to each other but otherwise act like they’re not even there, and when someone annoyed by their running commentary finally snaps and goes “Why are you two even here?” like, I can so picture Danny and Boyd just blinking slowly and looking at them, then at each other, then back at them as if confused by the question. 

“It’s Date Night,” Danny says slowly, in the tone reserved for being asked to solve the equation on the board that’s already got the answer written out right there.

“Okay, fine. But why are you HERE, then? If its your Date Night, like.....go have your date then. Catch a movie. Its all good, we don’t need you guys here at the moment.”

Boyd squints at them. “This IS our date. Whoppers?”

The latter is directed to Danny, as Boyd extends the box of candy towards him.

“Yes please,” Danny says, reaching for a handful.

Exasperated sighs are heard all around the room.

LOL anyway....who else....Jackson tends to be a no for me too, not for any real reason beyond like....I’ve read too many fics where they’re essentially treated as the Mirror Universe version of S/ciles, and you KNOW how I feel about that ship, so like, all even dubiously associated ships are by mere proxy also noped by me. *Shrugs*

Which mostly just leaves Isaac, and....idk, tbh. I’m not inherently opposed to them, and I’ve actually even read a couple of fairly long-ish and pretty enjoyable Danny/Isaac fics. But enjoyable in the sense of like....just as their own thing, a fun romance set in the TW setting/universe, between Danny and an Isaac-shaped woobiewolf. As the few Danny/Isaac fics I’ve found over the years tend to suffer from the exact same thing that’s always kept me from really ever getting into Scott and Isaac as a couple in anything other than theory...

Like, in the fics I’ve tried, I always tend to run into the same tendency to just....sand down all of Isaac’s rough edges and make him this shy, insecure, soft boy who is withdrawn until Danny or Scott bring him out of his shell....even when its based on the events of the show and Isaac’s already been turned into his leather jacket-wearing, snark-wielding, deliberately apathetic werewolfsona. 

And that’s just...not Isaac to me? So if I treat him as an original character basically, I can enjoy those stories, and do, just because there’s sooooo little Danny-centric fic that awhile back, I absolutely spent a good year or so making sure like, I found every last scrap of it, lol. I went spelunking in some deep, dark places in search of even a little spotlight time for Danny, because He Deserved Better and I was willing to put up with a lot to see him get even a little (except for like, blatant and unavoidable Scott hate being front and center in the fic as well. Then I exited with rapidity. I love Danny, but not even for him can I stomach that).

But yeah, otherwise, I very very rarely found a lot of Isaac fics, no matter who he was paired with, where he wasn’t like....constantly soft and vulnerable and the focus of Scott or Danny or whomever else’s regular attempts to comfort and protect him. Which I mean, I love Isaac, and I’m always projecting onto abuse survivors in fiction even if just a little bit, so its not that I object to the comfort and desire to protect him parts, just the sheer unevenness that tends to be present in his dynamics as well. I’ve always said that for me, the true theme of TW was survivor empowerment, that all of these kids had been hurt and exploited and traumatized in various ways and they all struggled individually and together to find ways to cope and to heal, and also to feel empowered enough to protect THEMSELVES from whatever or whomever tried to hurt them again in the future. 

And that’s the element that so often is missing from Isaac’s arc in fics, IMO...any hint of the character who he spent a lot of time and effort growing into on the show. Evolving first into a character who reveled in the power he’d been given and that made him feel safe and strong for the first time in his life, to the point where he was quite frankly an asshole a lot of the time. 

But then from there he grew into a character who came to terms with the reality that as his own power grew, so did the power of the new tormentors he was now often in conflict with, due to the source of his newfound strength...and his strength and brutality and apathy were not at all the tools able to help him find true protection and recovery in his new world. They just weren’t going to get the job done, and that’s when he started to let Scott’s example sink in and take his lead from that, finding the power and strength in committing himself more to others, becoming more of an active participant rather than just a spectator or a henchman who needed orders before acting.....allowing himself to be vulnerable in exchange for the benefits being more open to others afforded him.

Isaac’s growth onscreen from season to season was the very thing that made him so interesting and enjoyable to me....as well as how his bond with Scott did the same thing....so when the former isn’t really present in fics, even the presence of the latter doesn’t really do a whole lot for me. And its the same thing in the Danny/Isaac fics I read, so yeah. There for it in theory, but the execution I’ve found has never done anything to make it any more compelling a ship possibility than any other random ship.

I think that’s pretty much everyone though? Well I mean like, there’s Corey, but I don’t have strong feelings about that possibility one way or another. And there’s Derek, given the whole ‘Miguel’ thing in S1, but you know me, even in future/aged-up settings, I still tend to be ‘what if Derek dated people his own damn age tho, like just for the sheer novelty, let’s explore that some more’.....not to mention that as the show progressed, the more fandom hated on Braeden and her relationship with Derek, the more I spite-shipped them. To the extent that now I find it hard to picture even AUs where they’re not endgame, or if Derek HAS to be in another ship for some reason, then they still were a super serious relationship before the fic and there’s always that hint of her being the one that got away, kinda. 

*Shrugs* What can I say? The enemy ship of my enemy is my OTP. The Art of War, fandom style. I have no problem admitting it, lolol.

But yeah, that’s all of them I think now.

[nofliight]

HC MEME  ✹  romance

Tagged by: N/A I saw this and wanted to talk about this loser’s heart again Tagging: N/A

Name: Pit Nickname: Pitty, Pitty-pat, angelface, various others, normally used as insults Gender: Male Romantic orientation: Biromantic, with a reasonably strong female lean. Preferred pet names: You think he’s picky?? You think he’ll choose one?? Give him those soft tinglies and remind him he’s actually lucky enough to be in a relationship with someone who loves him back and you can call him whatever you want. Relationship status: Single. Very single. He’s a bullied dork with self-esteem issues, so Favorite canon / fandom ship: Uh, I’m assuming this is restricted to within canon - so Pit x Viridi. It needs development, they are not ready to date yet (what with Viridi still being a jerk and also a human-hater/murderer)... but there’s some real potential. Favorite crossover ship: HGH. THERE ARE SO MANY REALLY, REALLY GOOD SHIPS FOR HIM YOU GUYS DON’T UNDERSTAND. BUT to step away from the obvious Smash ships (Zelda and Samus are my faves for him btw)... I briefly got into him x Neptune HyperdimensionNeptunia and I still think there’s a lot of potential there. She has the power to tease the everloving heck out of him while also being very loving and playful and supportive and he’d get to be with a Goddess who also happens to be really sociable and generous and whose teasing never goes too far and MAN i miss neptunia blogs sometimes Opinion on true love: Pit totally believes in it! Now, he’s yet to reach the point he’s gotten to feel it so strong as to call it true (he crushes way too easily to get THAT far short of someone liking him back first), but being the kind of angel he is, he’s a very optimistic believer in love and he’s rooting for anyone lucky enough to find it. Opinion on love at first sight: Oh, don’t ask him about this - he gets all crushy fast enough it may as well be at first sight. He hasn’t honestly thought about it too deeply - his thoughts on love are really a bit too simple to take a stance on different kinds of it short of falling into it.

How ‘romantic’ are they?: His heart is romantic - even if he stumbles when it comes to actually acting on those romantic feelings. Once in a relationship, he’ll have his lover on his mind so often it’s distracting, and he’ll be thinking how much he wants to try holding hands, or cuddling, or maybe even kissing??? But he won’t know how to take action on any of it so either his partner helps or he just Dies. Ideal physical traits: He falls for prettiness so fast. Beautiful eyes, flowing hair, pretty voice, a lovely smile... he’s so weak. Princesses tend get him bad. Ideal personality traits: SHOW A GOOD HEART. Pit’s insanely open-minded, and patient enough in the long term to be willing to see good in just about anyone when there is goodness to see. Granted, he’s not gonna hold out for people who are actively mean to him or Palutena, obviously, but he can handle some roughness around the edges if they start showing a softer core. Just be nice to some degree... and also, be someone sweet enough to validate him?? And not harshly make fun of him for his shortcomings??? He’s a puppy when it comes to support.

unattractive physical traits: He can adjust to a lot - but don’t be an actual Slob. Take a shower every now and then... or at least hop in a hot spring? unattractive personality traits: Vanity, selfishness, bloodlust and especially sadism. A good, caring heart is vital to properly winning Pit over.

ideal date: Oh he is NOT picky. Mainly because as long as his date is happy he’ll try and adjust to anything. As long as he can see a smile and there’s an assurance he’s not making a fool of himself, he’s satisfied. do they have a type?: Those who are particularly beautiful and friendly win him over fast. But he’s not super picky, a good heart is a really good way to win him over, even if not as quickly as being the whole package. preferred non-sexual intimacy: TOUCH. He’s unbelievably Soft and touch-starved. He wants to hold a hand, be leaned on, cuddle... k... kiss?? The romance stuff. commitment level: While a proper relationship holding out for a family falls onto the trickier side of the spectrum since no relationship will change the fact that his devotion to and protection of his goddess is what he considers the most important task he has, you can nonetheless expect that he is loyal and will hold the relationship as best he can. While his bleeding, polyamorous heart does keep him from losing feelings for anyone else, it doesn’t mean his heart itself will waver - if he’s in a relationship, that’s his relationship and he won’t consider breaking it without only the most noble and necessary of reasons. As far as potential marriage, though, or having a family... well, it’s possible, but wouldn’t be easy. His job does mean his time with his significant other would be sparing, and the fact divine blood would be born through him could complicate matters, too... but if they could handle that, then the thought of making it work would make him... really happy.

opinion of public affection: Even besides the understanding that overt public displays of affection makes others uncomfortable, the thought of being particularly romantic in public feels embarrassing. He hardly knows how to handle those sorts of actions when it’s just him and the other, trying to be lovey in public would make him feel all kinds of weird and fuzzy, and not of the same variety that comes with the warmth of affection in private.

past relationships?: NOPE. Pit was “born” very small and weak, and through being somewhat ostracized and overlooked throughout his angel-y life means doesn’t have very good social skills besides. And beyond even that, the Centurions of Skyworld are too simple, bulky, and unquestioning to form meaningful relationships with, even considering Palutena an option beyond passing feelings would be another can of worms entirely, and nearly everything else in the Pantheon either laughs at him or hates him. And I mean... angels aren’t really supposed to Romance anyways,

[boldlygowriting]

Book Review #1: Aurora Rising

Aurora Rising published in April of 2019 is the first book in the Aurora Cycle series by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff is a sci-fi adventure. The second book of the series is set to be published in 2020.  Kristoff describes the book as a “Breakfast Club meets Guardians of the Galaxy YA sci-fi, action, adventure thing.”

Synopsis: The story starts with Aurora Academy Goldenboy, Tyler Jones, the day before the Draft. Since our best boy is well...best boy at this space-bound military academy, he gets first pick of his future space crew. Or he would’ve if he hadn’t gone out in space to calm his nerves and ended up rescuing a girl named Aurora who’s been cryogenically frozen for over 200 years. 

Bestboy Jones misses the Draft and ends up with whoever is left over ie. the people no one wants.  A space elf with anger management issues, a socially inept, trigger happy genius, and an alien techwiz with a physical disability who doesn’t know how to shut up--known as Kal, Zila and Finian respectively. 

Bestboy Jones also has his twin sister, Scarlet, and his best friend, Cat, who definitely doesn’t have a crush on him. (Books words, not mine, okay). Who are also especially good at their respective jobs as diplomat and pilot. 

Aurora sneaks aboard their ship during their first mission, murders and a cryptic message from the higher-ups set them up for a journey across the galaxy. The fate of Aurora and the rest of the worlds now in their quirky, all-to-capable hands. 

A lot is going on with this book and this is my first book review in this format so bear with me. 

The Pros

It’s fun. This book is really fun. Like watching Guardians of the Galaxy, you can have a good, pretty stress-free read of this book with little trouble. While reading this I found myself enjoying the adventure aspect of it, and I think they do it really well. 

Easy to follow. The book is action-packed that’s more interested in what’s happening than explaining all of the confusing lore that some sci-fi and fantasy novels can fall into. It’s not bogged down by a lot of space jargon and takes the time to explain the parts that a reader wouldn’t immediately understand. I appreciated that it kept things simple. 

Diversity*. Kristoff assured there would be diversity race-wise and in sexual orientation. Which is true. Aurora is half-Irish and half-Asian, Zila is black, and Finian has a physical disability and is either bisexual or pansexual (I’m not exactly sure. I mean, he is an alien so like I don’t know...look, all I know is I’m bi and black, I’ll take the representation where I can get it.).

The humor*. Think about it, 7 eighteen-year-olds stuck on a spaceship together. It’d be impossible for there not to be humor and banter between them. Not all the jokes land and there’s more than enough of nudging and winking in the prose, but there are definitely some chuckle-worthy moments. They also use humor really well when it comes to breaking up tense and heavy moments even if they don’t entirely land. 

The romantic subplot. I can’t say who obviously, but they’re pretty cute together. It was cliche, but, I think that by the end it was genuinely sweet and I appreciated the way they went about it by the end. It’ll definitely be expanded on in the following books and that’s what I like the most because it really is a subplot and they’re taking their time with it like a realistic crush turn relationship.

There are some things genuinely done well in this book that made me almost enjoy it, but for every action, there’s an opposite action. Starting off the Cons is my biggest issue with this book. 

The Cons 

The characters. I’m sure you could tell by my cheeky synopsis, I’m not exactly a huge fan of all the characters. In fact, I downright hated one. (Despite calling Tyler  Bestboy all the time, no, it was not him. I just wanted to clarify that).

I could honestly break down every character and talk about why I did or didn’t like them, but I think that’s getting too far into biased opinion. However, even for the ones I did like, they were still flawed...and not in the fun way. 

The characters are a huge weak point, part of that reason is that they’re all pretty flat. Flat, in this case, doesn’t exactly mean boring. A flat character is one that stays relatively the same from the beginning of the book to the end, and all seven of the protagonists are pretty flat. Even if it’s the first book of the series, knowing there’s time to develop characters, all seven protagonists shouldn’t be relatively the same by the end. 

There’s a lot of potential in most of them, but the time for their development is often rushed by and cut off by action. There are some real, genuine moments, but they mean very little in the overall scheme of things, especially when the team that’s supposed to be a group of misfits never feels like a group of misfits. 

The team is played up as a group of outcasts (or half outcasts), but they never feel like it. Both those movies the author compared the book to have a moment where they genuinely bond. There’s no point where the squad bond as a group beyond a few shared chuckles in between intense moments.

The skirmishes and arguments between them don’t really go anywhere and no one’s feelings are genuinely hurt for longer than a few pages, so when they already work pretty well together, I barely noticed any changes in their dynamic. I hope in the future books the authors expand on the group dynamic and the characters themselves because they could be really interesting, if I’m honest. 

Most of them had a glimmer of something, but a glimmer wasn’t enough to keep me from realizing they’re just semi-archetypal shells. 

This is a side note: this book switches the POV between the seven characters, and honestly, you can’t really tell much of a difference between who’s speaking. If switching POVs is not your bag, I wouldn’t recommend this book for you.

The humor. You know, it’s not so much the humor itself that’s a problem. The humor itself s pretty juvenile, but they’re 18 years old and I have a filthy, sarcastic mind so if you can stand a million sex jokes you’ll be fine. If not then you’re probably not gonna laugh much. The problem with the humor comes in the writing. There’s a lot of ‘winking and nudging’ involved. Finian (alien/techwiz/ can’t shut up), delivers a good portion of the jokes and after he says something, either he, the narrator or another character will comment on it. 

I once read when it comes to comedy, a joke isn’t funny if you have to draw attention to it. And if this is your kind of humor it is funny, but a lot of jokes aren’t allowed to stand on their own...making them, well, not funny. 

The plot and pacing. I’m not going to write a whole lot about the plot, partially to avoid spoilers. Tthe more I think about this book, the more I realize it’s a straighforward space adventure. The plot is simple because the adventure is what matters, but the fast pace of the book, while engaging, doesn’t spend a lot of time on it. One thing happens, then the next thing happens, and so on. 

At one point, I almost got the sense that quiet moments couldn’t last too long without another plot piece falling into place or something terrible would happen. The squad never flounders long despite how often they talk about how in over their head they are and how dangerous everything is. 

That might be a whole other gripe, but oh well. 

I said it was fun and it was easy to follow, but that’s probably because everything happens so quickly you aren’t allowed to think for very long. 

The pacing and plot go hand-in-hand because one bowls over the other and you get what I call the ‘you can infere events.’ 

These are events that you can infere obviously. In this case, they acquire a lot of items without actually showing how. I’m all for getting to the good stuff, but slowing down to show some things could’ve been a chance to expand on things like worldbuilding and the characters.

The worldbuilding. We’re getting into the minor stuff now if I’m being honest, but it’s a sci-fi story so I felt I couldn’t not write about the worldbuilding, which is a little lackluster. I’m pretty sure one of the planets is a Valerian rip-off. (I know that was harsh). 

Diversity. I debated talking about this too. I don’t know anything about the authors but I know readers say they’ve been inclusive in the past. I think they were here too, and maybe I’m spoiled or asking for too much, but I have to get some things off my chest.

First, Zila. 

I went back and forth on this a lot, but she kind of suffers from Princess and the Frog syndrome. Essentially, she’s a POC or LGBTQ+ character who is put into the story, but they either a.) don’t matter too much to the story or b.) are basically invisible. 

I went back and forth on this because Zila is quiet. She doesn’t speak a lot, she’s an observer. Sometimes I forgot she was in the book. I think having her be quiet and observant works in other character’s POV because no one really understands her. In her own POV it should be a different story. 

They opened that door so I have to comment on it. The chapters in her POV are significantly shorter than every other character. If her thoughts aren’t necessary to the story, why have them in there? It felt like she was there because they needed another warm body to advance the plot. I hope in book 2 she gets more than what she got. 

Second, the representation. Period. 

Tyler, Scarlet and Cat are the three members of the squad that stick together because they have a close bond. They’re not the misfits in this group. They’re also all white and presumably heterosexual as of this book. Zila, Finian and Kal are the outcasts of the group. Having the black girl, non-heterosexual alien with a physical disability, and the space elf with anger managment issues be the weirdos that the golden trio are saddled with doesn’t exactly read well on paper (pun intended). 

Third, queerbaiting? 

Don’t get your hopes up, I didn’t add the question mark because I think this might change. I added it as a Disclaimer: I’m not the authority on all things rainbow and beyond. Very few things raise my hackles when it comes to media and represenation even though there’s a lot that probably should. 

That being said, this might jimmy some people’s johns so I thought I might as well mention it.

We’ve all heard the “why don’t you two just kiss and get it over with line,” (yes, the book uses this line) and I’m kind of over it unless it actually ends in a relationship. Just a warning there kiss between two people of the same gender, and that line was directed at them but I can assure you it’s not going anywhere, it was a one off, and it wasn’t serious. After so much BS from other books, movies and TV shows, I know that’s enough to piss some people off, and if I mentioned Zila and the representation, I had to mention this.

That was weird. So much time is spent making sure you know how attractive every single main character is. Like...a lot. I was genuinely wondering if this would end with some kind of orgy thing. No matter what POV it’s in everyone was drop dead gorgeous with killer dimples and voices like melted chocolate and luxurious push-up bras. 

Consensus:  

I found this book on the 7th floor of my university library. Why they have a random YA space romp from 2019 up there, who knows? The important question is: Do I regret picking it up? 

Well…No and yes. 

Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t shell out the $18.99 plus tax for it. (I’m a broke college student, okay? I get anxious spending $15) 

Like I said, I had fun reading this. I laughed. It had me turning pages faster than Aurora can say “Holy cake!”However, this book isn’t clever and it doesn’t have a whole lot of heart, not all books do, but to be a space adventure with misfit characters...if you want to keep people engaged, maybe it should? 

Everything is sacrificed for the execution of this quick-paced, adventurous romp. The worldbuilding and lore, the characters, the plot, everything. All of it was obliterated for something quick and momentarily entertaining. 

If a quick, substanceless adventure is what you’re looking for (and there’s nothing wrong with that, not every book has to be a nail-biting, bloodbath), you’ll definitely find it in this book.

If you’re looking for a book that’s going to affect you and make you feel like you’re part of “the squad,” you should probably look elsewhere. 

TLDR: 

Pros:

It’s fun

Easy to follow

The humor*

The diversity*

The romantic subplot

Cons: 

The characters

The plot and pacing 

The worldbuilding 

The humor* 

The diversity*

Overall rating: 5.5/10. 

[justheretobreakthings]

Remember Me - Chapter 18

(First Chapter) (Previous Chapter) (Next Chapter)

Word Count: 3,386 (Total Word Count: 71,103) Read on AO3

Story Summary:

It was strange enough for the paladins of Voltron to have found another human this far from home, locked in a Galra prison. But it was stranger still when this human insisted that he knew them, and even that he was the former red paladin of Voltron.

That couldn’t possibly be true, could it? After all, if this Keith was actually a part of the Voltron team, then why does nobody remember him?

Chapter Preview:

“Something wrong, Lance?” Shiro asked.

“Nah,” Lance answered. “Red got spooked because she thought Keith was too close to her flamethrower, I think.”

“Really?” Keith said, sounding genuinely surprised. “She - was she, like, worried, or - ?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, pretty sure she just didn’t think the newbie could handle the heat.”

“Very funny. I’ve landed at least as many shots as you have in this battle, and I’ve been dodging just as well.”

“Yeah, easy to dodge when you’re that tiny a target.”

“Should be easier to hit the other ships when you’ve got that big a weapon.”

“Red says you’re a weenie, Keith.”

The first stop on their dreaded tour of new planets who seemed to be good potential sources of vehicles and transportation technology for the Coalition came around all too soon, and it wasn’t easy for any of the paladins to keep their eyes open as Coran went over the choreography for their air show. Sure, there had been a bit of a gap since their last one, but the basic structure of the show was so ingrained in all of their heads that it would probably take years for them to forget. Lance still occasionally found Coran’s charts popping up in his dreams at night.

“Coran,” Lance finally groaned, cutting Coran off mid-sentence after he’d been talking for what felt like phoebs on end. “We already know all of this. We’ve done these show-of-arms things before.”

“You don’t know all of it,” Coran said. “If you hadn’t interrupted me, you would know that this show includes almost a full twenty ticks of new choreography for you paladins to learn.” Pidge and Hunk joined him in groaning this time, and Coran harrumphed and turned back to his chart. “You know,” he said, “Back when we first did these shows you all were plenty enthusiastic about them. Especially you, Lance.”

“Yeah, but we were like little kids being excited about school on the first day of kindergarten,” Pidge said. “We didn’t know what sort of horrors were in store down the line.”

“Kindergarten?” Coran repeated, brow furrowed.

“It’s school for little kids,” Hunk said.

Lance nodded and added, “They put like thirty little six-year-olds together in a pit armed with rocks and make them fight for dominance to teach them the laws of the jungle.”

“Good gods, that’s barbaric!” Coran cried, his face instantly turning a shade paler.

“He’s joking, Coran,” Shiro said hastily. “Lance, what have we said about scaring Coran like that?”

“That it boosts creativity,” Pidge answered.

“No, Pidge.”

“Hmph,” said Coran. “Let’s get back on topic, shall we?”

“How come Allura doesn’t have to be here?” Lance asked.

“Because, Lance, she is currently piloting the castle,” Coran replied. “Besides, I already went over the new choreography with her while you were all on your sleep cycle. Honestly, the amount of sleep you humans need is utterly absurd. How you lot manage to fall asleep every single quintant is beyond me. In any case, I need you to stay awake for the time being. Thotirn will be invaluable to us as an ally - their spacecrafts and the fuel to run them are the chief intergalactic exports of their whole quadrant, and they’ve got plenty to spare. But they’ll only let us dip into their supply if we put on a good show! Now, back to where we were before I was so rudely interrupted. I want Yellow and Blue to be mirroring each other in a bell tailslide right here, so Hunk, follow closely…”

Lance sighed and slumped back into the couch cushion as Coran continued, only adjusting himself to keep from leaning against Keith’s shin. The latter had perched himself on top of the couch, feet on the cushions, in his armor, although still in the Altean armor rather than the paladin armor the rest of them wore. He wasn’t part of the air show, of course; Coran had asked if he’d be interested in taking a turn with the microphone, but Keith had declined, although he had still, after some hesitation, accepted the invitation to join them at the dinner party scheduled to take place afterward. In the meantime, he had joined them in the lounge for Coran’s choreography lecture simply for lack of anything better to do.

Lance noticed, though, that Keith’s eyes were just as glazed over as the rest of them, and didn’t seem to be following Coran’s movement, just staring off into space instead. “Bored?” Lance asked, quietly enough that hopefully Coran couldn’t hear him.

Keith nodded. “A little,” he muttered.

“You remember having to do these in your version of Voltron?”

Keith shrugged, by now long past the point of physically flinching whenever ‘his’ reality was brought up. “Some,” he answered. “A lot of the shows were probably after I had left, though. And before that, I kind of, um, missed some due to - I was busy.”

“You got to skip them?” Lance huffed. “Lucky.” Keith didn’t reply, so Lance continued, “So was it for Blade stuff or other missions or, like, ‘personal’ issues or - ?”

Keith shushed him and nudged him with his foot. “I can’t hear Coran,” he whispered.

Lance raised a brow. It wasn’t as if Keith needed to know any of this stuff. Still, assuming that it was just Keith’s socially incompetent way of ending the conversation, Lance moved his focus back to Coran and his holographic charts.

After another quarter of a varga that dragged on for an eternity, Coran finally turned off the charts, declaring that it was time to move to the bridge, as they would be reaching Thotirn shortly. The paladins stretched and did their requisite amount of grumbling before following him, moving to take their usual seats around the bridge.

“Do we have an estimated arrival time?” Shiro asked Allura where she stood at the castle’s controls.

“We’re on course to break their atmosphere in just under ten doboshes,” Allura answered. “After that it’s just a couple more to get the Lions to our planned landing site and - ”

She was cut off by a loud beeping as something red popped up on one of the holoscreens before her. Coran rushed to join her at the controls, and the other paladins were immediately on the alert, all their former boredom forgotten. “What is it?” Shiro asked.

“Is something attacking the castle?” asked Hunk.

“Not the castle, no,” said Coran. “But something’s attacking Zondrivis. The Thotirnian city we’re visiting,” he added in response to the paladins’ puzzled expressions. “We’re getting a distress signal from them. I’ll see if I can get a visual.”

“You think the Galra knew we were coming?” Pidge asked. “Is this an ambush?!”

Another holoscreen expanded from the control panel with a magnified view of the surface they were flying toward. “Hmm, doesn’t seem to be an attack for us,” Coran said. “Those ships look like Holvarthan craft. I’m sure if they’d known Voltron was going to be making an appearance here, they would have sent Galra ships after us.”

“Holvartha is currently under Galra’s thumb, though,” Allura said. “So they’re certainly no friends of ours.”

“Doesn’t look like they’ve got too big of an invasion force going here,” Coran said. “No reason Voltron can’t take care of this.” He turned around to face the others. “All right, paladins, looks like there’s been a change of plans. That distress signal was only just sent, so the Holvarthans probably haven’t done much damage yet. Thotirn has a large vehicle supply, but little by way of weaponry, so taking them down will be our job. Focus on pushing the invading forces away from industrial areas and civilians, then we’ll take them out. All in all, should be a fairly easy job.”

“Oh, this is wonderful!” Allura cried in delight, clasping her hands together with a smile.

The others stared at her.

Face reddening slightly, she hurried to say, “I meant, it’s wonderful that this should be a relatively simple victory. And, of course, taking down an invading force will be a far more productive way of demonstrating our skills to the Thotirnians than the air show… which we, erm, won’t have to do now…” She cleared her throat. “I wasn’t calling the attack itself wonderful, because, of course, a potential ally being invaded is… it’s not wonderful - ”

“Good save, Princess,” said Pidge. “We heading to the Lions or what?”

“Yes, yes, the Lions,” Allura said with a fervent nod. “To your hangars, all…”

Lance got up from his seat and started toward his zipline, and the others all did the same, save for Keith, who approached Shiro and tapped on his shoulder. “Um, Shiro?” he said. “The, uh, the cruiser’s been fixed up, and - and you and Allura said once I’ve done some training with, um, with you guys, that I could join on the - ”

“On the missions, yeah,” Shiro said. “Sure, go for it. This should be a good starter mission for you.” Keith’s face lit up, and he turned to the bridge’s exit before Shiro grabbed him by the arm. “But if I, the team, or Coran gives you an order, you follow it, okay?”

Keith nodded. “Yeah, I will.”

“And no unnecessary risks.”

“Okay.”

“Intentionally crashing your ship into another ship counts as ‘unnecessary’.”

“Shiro!” Allura said. “We’re going!”

“Right, right.” Shiro released Keith’s arm, and the latter raced out of the bridge with what Lance was almost certainly would be classified as a spring in his step.

Lance got to his own zipline, sliding down the wire until he reached his seat and sank into Red’s cockpit. Her dashboard lit up as he put his hands onto the controls. “All right, girl,” he said. “Ready to get some exercise?”

He interpreted the speed at which she bolted out of her hangar as a ‘yes’.

Red was the first in the air as usual, but the other Lions were quick to follow, with Keith’s little cruiser joining the chase after an extra half a dobosh before the castle returned to its own route to find its landing site. “Got a visual on a couple of them,” Lance announced into his comm as his viewscreen zoomed in on the moving ships on the horizon. “What’s our strategy?”

“Don’t do anything until we’re close enough to aim more precisely,” Shiro said. “We don’t want to hit any Thotirnian crafts by mistake.”

“Well, duh,” said Lance. “I meant, in a minute or two, when we’re closer, what’s our strategy?”

“We’re aiming to get the Holvarthan ships away from any areas where a proper battle could harm industry or civilians,” Coran said. “I’ve no doubt any Thotirnian ships current holding the fort are doing the same. The fighting seems to be concentrated near Zondrivis’ eastern border, so if you can push them eastward, you’ll have the space to take them down fully. Hunk and Shiro, your Lions are big and sturdy enough to push them physically; Lance and Keith, try to either corner them or see if any will give chase. Allura and Pidge, you can do the same, and disable any exterior weapons or thrusters if you’re able. Disable, don’t destroy.”

A chorus of assents sounded over the comms, and by this point they were close enough to the battle site to start splitting off and facing the various Holvarthan crafts head-on. Coran was right in that the Thotirnians had a few of their own ships in the air as well - judging by the blue-green accents on some of the ships as opposed to the purples that indicated the invaders’ Galra affiliation - but they wouldn’t have lasted long on their own, as those ships were outnumbered and absurdly tiny, looking to be merely half the size of Keith’s cruiser.

The Thotirnian ships made way as the Red Lion entered the fray, and Lance couldn’t help but let a little grin spread across his face. It was hard not to feel a bit like some sort of superhero whenever the Lions of Voltron entered a battle, the almost mythical presence swooping in and saving the day with apparent ease.

“Hello, little mouse,” Lance muttered as he set his sights on a Holvarthan ship that was racing toward one of the Thotirnians. “Kitty wants to play.” He shot Red’s flame out in front of the ship, blocking it from the smaller vessel it had been pursuing and turning its attention toward him. Immediately he sent another beam its way, careful not to actually hit its nose, but get close enough to force the ship to alter its course.

The Holvarthan fired back, and Lance easily ducked Red under the blast. “That really the best you got?” Lance asked, pulling Red around and firing again, forcing the ship to sharply bank left and still catching a bit of its wing. “Ooh, you’re gonna have to be faster than that if you wanna - ”

“Lance,” Pidge cut him off. “If you absolutely must trash talk this much, do you think you could turn your mic off first?”

“Oh,” said Lance. “Sorry. Just having a little fun with this one. I’ve got it chasing me.”

“Attaboy, Lance,” Shiro said, and Lance took a moment to be glad their conversation was audio-only, as otherwise Pidge and Hunk would never stop ragging on him for the way his chest instinctively puffed with pride. “We’re pretty close to some open space on your two o’clock, so you can take it down once you’ve got it readied.”

“On it,” Lance said. Tongue between his teeth in concentration, he set to toying with the other ship, keeping Red close enough to let the other think it could catch up to him, occasionally sending blasts back toward its tail as a little shove of encouragement to keep its sights on him.

Once he had lured the ship sufficiently into the safe zone, he rounded on it, positioning Red to take it down in one final rush of flame. Right before he had the chance, though, another sharp blast shot toward the ship from his nine, splitting the Holvarthan’s vertical stabilizer straight down the middle and knocking it off its center. The ship rolled in mid-air, then a second blast caught its impulse engine dead-center. The engine burst and took the surrounding craft down with it.

“Keith!” Lance snapped into his comm as the little cruiser darted across his viewscreen.

“What?” said Keith.

“You just stole my kill!”

“What are you talking about?”

Lance huffed. “I’m the one who got that guy over here! You shoot down the ships you push out here, I shoot down mine.”

“What the hell does it matter? As long as the ship is taken down, what’s the difference who hits it last?”

“You can’t just - ”

“Keith, Lance, not the time to argue,” Shiro said. “Keith, Lance has a point, you’ve got to be sure to communicate with us so we know what the team is doing.”

“Sorry.”

“And Lance, Keith has a point too. Our priority is just getting these ships out of commission quickly, so it’s not the time to call dibs or keep score. It’s not a competition.”

“If sort of is,” Pidge said. “The Holvarthans are losing.”

“Not a competition between us, I mean,” said Shiro.

“Eh, whatever,” Pidge said, and Lance could practically hear the shrug. “On the topic of communicating positions, got a big one here and we’re approaching Red, wanna help bring it down?”

“I’m on it!” Lance said, swiveling Red’s gaze until he spotted the Green Lion approaching, dragging behind her with a mass of thick vines a decently large Holvarthan ship, the cannon atop it frozen over with Blue’s ice.

“If you need any - ” Keith started.

“Nah, we’re good, you take care of your own targets,” said Lance. “Go ahead and move Green out of the way, Pidge, I got this guy.”

The ends of the vines broke off from Green as she flew off, and Lance sent a stream of flame toward the ship from Red. He let out a whoop as it hit the target dead-on, the flames moving along the vines to curl around the ship as they brought it down. “Nice!” he said. “I get bonus points for style on that one! Game highlight right there.”

“Lance,” said Allura. “Please keep in mind that there are real Holvarthan people piloting those crafts. Taking down invading forces is a necessity, yes, but let’s not be crass about it.”

“Right, uh, sorry Allura,” Lance said.

“They’re Galra allies,” Pidge muttered. “Seems like a waste of politeness.”

“Uh, if we’re not too busy arguing about battle decorum,” Keith said. “Some of these ships are trying to make a break to the west.”

“Not on my watch, they’re not,” Lance grunted, veering Red around to take off toward the escaping Holvarthans.

Overall, the remaining battle managed to be more or less uneventful - or as uneventful as an airborne battle on a foreign planet between an invading alien armed force and a bunch of giant magic lion robots can be expected to be. There was one minor incident, during which Lance had set to fire a blast from Red’s flamethrower toward an oncoming Holvarthan ship, only for her not to respond.

“C’mon, Red,” Lance growled. “I thought we were past this! Why are you - ”

In the back of his mind Red redirected his attention toward movement on his viewscreen, where Keith’s cruiser was pulling around from behind the ship. “Are you kidding me?” Lance muttered, trying the flamethrower again, and relieved to see that Red was cooperating again now that Keith was out of the line of fire. “He would have dodged that, no sweat. What’s your deal?”

“Something wrong, Lance?” Shiro asked.

“Nah,” Lance answered. “Red got spooked because she thought Keith was too close to her flamethrower, I think.”

“Really?” Keith said, sounding genuinely surprised. “She - was she, like, worried, or - ?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, pretty sure she just didn’t think the newbie could handle the heat.”

“Very funny. I’ve landed at least as many shots as you have in this battle, and I’ve been dodging just as well.”

“Yeah, easy to dodge when you’re that tiny a target.”

“Should be easier to hit the other ships when you’ve got that big a weapon.”

“Red says you’re a weenie, Keith.”

“Must you guys do this now?!” Hunk finally interrupted.

They both gave their requisite apologies and brought their focus back to the battle at hand, and said battle wrapped up fairly smoothly not too much later. Once the sky was clear of threats the Lions and the cruiser went back to make their landing near the castle ship, the pilots worn out but otherwise unharmed and the Lions no worse for wear.

It was usually nice to get a bit of rest and quiet in after a battle, but descending from the Lion’s jaw to be greeted by the applause of a gathering crowd of the population you’d just saved was a pretty decent substitute, as Lance was reminded as he and the other paladins disembarked. He removed his helmet and waved to the spectators, beaming brightly. “Yes, thank you!” he called. “You’ve been a great crowd! Don’t forget to tell your friends about Voltron!”

“Take it down a notch,” Shiro’s voice said in his ear as his human hand landed on Lance’s shoulder. He smiled politely at the onlookers, lifting his Galra arm in his own perfunctory wave.

“It’s the adrenaline, Shiro,” Lance said. “These the people who were here to watch the air show?”

“Seems like it,” Shiro said. He gestured with his thumb, and Lance looked to see that Allura and Coran had approached a couple of particularly well-dressed Thotirnians and were in conversation with them. “I think they’re seeing about rescheduling the show.”

“In the meantime, then…” Lance trailed off to blow kisses toward the crowd and begin waving again.

His wrist was just a little sore by the time Allura and Coran returned to the others and gestured for them to gather around. “We spoke with the directors who had been overseeing Voltron’s press appearance,” Coran said. “This whole affair with the Holvarthans ran clear through the time we’d blocked out for our show.”

“However, the dinner and fellowship gathering is still right on track,” Allura said. “So we’ll want you to remain in your armor for that, but feel free to take the time to eat up and stretch your legs.”

“Hang on,” said Hunk. “Does this mean we’re definitely not doing the air show?”

“Correct,” Coran answered with a nod. “The Thotirnians seemed to agree that our taking down the Holvarthan invasion was sufficient performance from Voltron.” He smiled. “They seem quite eager to see about joining forces. Congratulations, paladins, you put on an excellent show.”

“So,” Lance said slowly. “That whole giant review of our flight choreography…”

“Was a total waste of time, yes,” Pidge finished with a solemn nod.

“Fantastic.”

[toonstarterz]

BECAUSE I’M NOT POPULAR, I’LL READ WATAMOTE: CHAPTER #154

The Sports Tournament Arc has come to a close (watch me eat my words), and while things may not have ended in the most spectacular or dramatic fashion, it does offer a healthy dose of retrospection after the flurry of emotions we’ve undergone during this whole thing. Tomoko’s world may be winding down for the moment, but as we all know, that just sets the pace for things to spring right back up. 

Chapter 154: Because I’m Not Popular, The Sports Tournament Will End

Watamote has always been relatively good at picking apart what it means to be female, and acknowledging their habit for casual grooming is just one of those times. But where this series shines is that it neither advocates or condemns stereotypical female behavior. Its stance has always been, “it is what it is,” and the reader is open to make their own opinions on that.

Well, I never expected them to win, honestly speaking. This ain’t no shounen sports manga after all, where the underdogs make a dubious comeback thanks to Nakama Power™. The obligatory homosexual subtext was there, though.  

Yeeeah, one of Yuri’s biggest flaws is that it takes her some time to admit, or even recognize her own responsibilities. Naturally, that includes pointing out other’s faults before her own. That being said...

Is Yuri being Bitchy or Awkward? An Analysis to Come in A Couple More Pages.

Tomoko, being the one to slightly raise up everyone else’s spirits? I’d be more shocked if her growth didn’t already make that actually kind of plausible.

This right here is the single coolest girl in the entire manga.

Side note: Komi’s rekt face is sublime. 

That hit had so much force, it burst through the panel borders. For once, poor Minami.

I see friendships all over the place.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) Komiyama’s overzealous nature, she can also be hit pretty hard with a sense of shame when her efforts prove fruitless. Maybe Itou plays the role of the “Lift Their Spirits” Friend in times like this.

At least the other girls are also taking their defeat in stride. Although, Minami seems particularly down for once. Perhaps she surprisingly feels some disappointment over their loss.,,

....or maybe she just feels jaded watching Mike and her Boyfriend make kissy-face. 

The thing about Kiyota is that he doesn’t seem like an especially capable guy. But from what we’ve seen, the dude’s got a pretty agreeable personality that sort of just makes it easier for people to follow him. It’s the same reason why he became the class representative. Kiyota may not be at the top of the class in any way (that we know of), but his likability makes him a natural leader.

Of course, his true friends will still give him hella shit for it.

Like many loners with self-esteem issues, no one cares about winning until they actually start winning.

Hey, hey, hey! It seems that the disastrous fallout between Tomoko and Ucchi didn’t the stop the latter from making good on her claim to cheer Tomoko on. We don’t know if the Emoji Gang ever intervened after those events, but if Ucchi still has the nerve(cluelessness) to cheer the girl she berated, that can only be a good sign.

It’s kind of weird seeing Hirasawa next to her though, considered how Ucchi cut her down that one time. Long-term grudges do not exist unless you’re Tomoko.

Fuuka, eh? The gap between a character’s first major appearance and their revealed name gets smaller each time.  

So these two are close friends, I see. They certainly give off those “alpha girl’ airs, but not in an unapproachable way. Contrary to what Western media has fed me, bitchy queen bees aren’t actually that popular. 

I’m sure many a shipper thinks that Katou chose table tennis to be with Tomoko, but I don’t that’s the only reason. It could just as well be that she’s into the sport. For the longest time, Katou’s personality has increasingly contrasted with her appearance. On the surface, she looks like the stereotypical beauty whose friendly, girly, and is super popular. But underneath, she’s also rather unaware, possibly perverted, not actually that good with makeup, and frankly, a bit of a weirdo. She’s all full of surprises, and it honestly makes her feel more human.

That was probably not her intent, but a mini party is definitely more up Tomoko’s alley. She just barely made it through the KBBQ party after all, and while Tomoko would’ve probably made it through another large-scale party even easier, small get-togethers are the introvert’s bee’s knees.  

It’s still hard to get a read on Futaki’s sociability, but she seems like a middle-of-the-road case as far as we’ve seen.

Yuri using Tomoko as a support beam is way within my expectations of her. It hasn’t steered too far into the Unhealthy Zone (yet), but I do enjoy that Tomoko’s simple company is all Yuri really needs to enjoy herself.  

Introvert Problems #092: Preoccupying yourself with your beverage to break the awkward silence without realizing the social cue of waiting to clink glasses before drinking. 

Smooth move, me Tomoko.

Good taste, my girl. Very good taste.

I love how the artistic license in this series is played completely straight. Girls with cat smiles are a dime-a-dozen in manga, but it’s usually a visualization only apparent to the readers. But not here. Emoji eyes and a feline grin are just as ludicrous in-universe as it is to us.

Yeah...I have no idea what to make of this. Guess Yuri has her own weird quirks, after all. What makes it extra funny is when you remember that Tomoko is strangely good at cutting things. Ironic humor at its finest.

Harking back to what I said about Katou being full of surprises, it’s easy to judge Katou sorely on her appearance, given how much more refined she looks next to the other “plain" girls. But when you look beyond what’s skin deep, Katou actually has more similarities to Tomoko than she let on. Being decently athletic, but not sporty; having a high tolerance for perversion, and socially naive at times. Katou’s affection for Tomoko had always felt out-of-place when we didn’t know her personality too well. But now that we’ve gotten a good look at it, her budding friendship with Tomoko feels all the more authentic.

Being the Nucleus Friend is never easy, Tomoko. 

Ah, Tomoko, regrets are natural. One of the more informed aspects about Tomoko is that she doesn’t dwell on the past too much. Her episodes of cringe hardly have everlasting negative effects on her personality, and the only times she does dwell are when she comes to terms with the mistakes she’s made. The twist now is that Tomoko puts a positive spin on it this time. Instead of bemoaning how she did something bad, she now reflects on how she could have done something good. It’s a layer of positive reinforcement that I think Tomoko has truly benefited from.  

Futaki coming through with the Nakama Speech™. It’s a pretty good one, too. Not heavy-handed or overly sentimental, but it’s from a place of earnestness that many can appreciate.

And I just realized that Futaki has been going through a quiet development from being a single-player gamer to multi-player gamer. Damn, that was slick, Nico Tanigawa.    

Hey now, those Spot the Difference games are totally legitimate critical thinking exercises.

It’s easy to think from first glance that Yuri is being purposely insensitive by the way she’s ignoring such a heartwarming speech, but I don’t think that’s really the case. It’s not that she doesn’t care about it, it just that those dining table games are too damn engaging for her introverted mind to resist. Yuri’s personality is a lot of things, but a lack of empathy is not one of them. 

Even though that’s true, it sounds vaguely hypocritical coming from you, Tomoko.

As I thought, Mako the Mom is also Mako the Enabler. 

Is Yuri Being Bitchy or Awkward?

Neither. She’s being a weirdo.

We all know by now that Yuri’s no sheep. She’s not going to pretend she’s something she’s not just to reciprocate the mood. But at the same time, she’s aware enough to adjust herself in situations where just doing anything she wants would be potentially hurtful. Of course, that’s only when she realizes she’s being hurtful. And there’ve been a number of times where she failed at that. Yuri’s behavior is very much circumstantial, and in cases where she’s expected to fit in with the crowd, she can be bitchy, awkward, or neither based on how well she can read the atmosphere. 

And that, my friends, is why Yuri’s a weirdo.

I don’t know about that, Tomoko. As absurd as her face and gaming skills are, Futaki’s personality has always seemed fairly normal to me.

Don’t judge an emoji by its emoji.

You may laugh at their apparent difficulty at finding them all, but I read up that these specific Spot the Difference games are a reference to the ones they have in Saizeriya restaurants, which are known for being notoriously tough. (Seriously, a dude called up the manufacturer because he couldn’t find the last one). Thanks as always, /r/watamote!

Eat your words, Tomoko! Just because you have more friends now, that doesn’t mean you’re hot shit and too good for “childish” games. Not that I can blame her too much, though. It’s understandable that Tomoko feels there are certain social conventions that come with increased popularity. But if there’s one thing that Tomoko still has to realize, it’s that popularity doesn’t equal maturity. No matter how high you are on the food chain, doing dumb kiddie stuff is present all across the board. 

Didn’t I tell you that, “Not that I care” was going to be this series’ tsundere line? 

When you think about it, Yuri’s come a long way from how she was at the start. At the end of second year, she lamented that her new friends might drift away from her. Compare that to now, where she’s actually more optimistic about her relationships. Sure, the fact that they’re now in the same class is the key difference, but the sentiment is still there, and feels a lot more impactful given that Yuri has never really been this open about her feelings. 

That’s what happens when you get the last word in.

As with most of these arcs, it’s the journey rather than the end that has the most impact on our characters. For some, like Ucchi and Yuri, it was a major game-changer in their relationships with Tomoko. For others, like Itou and Hirasawa, it was an exploration of what made them the way they are. And then there’s Tomoko, still fumbling around with a degree of popularity she was never fully prepared for. 

But for everyone, it was all about trying. Trying something new, putting in the extra effort, and reaching out to others. While the results were kind of a mixed bag, nearly everyone came out of this tournament with some form of victory.

[charmingturkeysandwich]

On Series Finales

(I need to get this out of my head)

(I have so much to say about narrative structure vs. audience opinion)

People always have very strong opinions on series finales. Obviously. It’s the culmination of years of investment in something. Because of this you’re never going to make 100% of people happy. Each of us is invested for different reasons; we connect with different characters. What we “like” is always going to differ. 

That doesn’t mean that calling something a “bad” finale is all about taste or who you ship or stan or what have you. Sometimes the episode simply fails the narrative it built. Being disappointed in something because of a narrative failure can’t be written off as “you just wanted a happy ending and that was never going to happen.” Especially with modern dramas, bittersweet is the happiest we can really hope for. Even comedies usually have some painful episodes leading to the end. I don’t think anyone is expecting TV shows these days to end like Disney movies. Hell, Disney movies sometimes don’t end like Disney movies anymore.

Anyway, enough babbling. Here’s the thing: in fiction - as in life - expectations are everything. Many writing choices the writers, directors, and producers make will set up these expectations. When they’re not met, people are cranky. And for valid reasons.

1. Where you start a story is important. 

An often ridiculed series finale is How I Met Your Mother. The pilot focuses on Ted falling immediately in love with Robin. And the “twist” is all “oh, that’s not your mom; that’s Aunt Robin!” But there’s a reason it started there. Yes, technically, you can argue the reason is because Ted ran into the mother at Robin’s wedding, so meeting Robin was important. But they chose to continue to focus on Robin/Ted the whole fucking series. So technically it made sense narratively for him to come back to her in the end. Somewhere along the way I tweeted the show and said it should be called How I Met Your Aunt Robin, because it truly was more about her than the mother. So, yes, people were pissed when she died and it was “all for nothing.” But despite the title... it was never really her story. So in this way, I defend the ending. It fit the story that they told. They began with Robin. They continued to focus on Robin. Why wouldn’t he “end up with” Robin?

2. Pacing matters - and heavily influences expectations

In How I Met Your Mother, you have a day-to-day, usual kind of sitcom for 7 seasons. Then all of a sudden, a 48-hour span of time is spread out for an entire season! This was jarring and I found it to be tedious. Jack Bauer is not here; the world is not at risk. We do not need a minute by minute account of these two days. In this way, I think the whole last season is a disappointment. 

It also served to adjust our expectations. OK I just watched 20 episodes of how much Barney loves Robin - this must mean something. NOPE! Divorced in one episode. An episode, mind you, where they flew through years of their lives. After drawing out two days. For a whole season. They put a couple decades in, like, a half hour. In this way, How I Met Your Mother failed narratively. The pacing sucked and it made us expect something different from the finale. In this regard, I fucking hated that show and want my time back.

Pacing is super important to Game of Thrones, AKA the reason I can’t get series finale essays from running through my head. You’re set up in a world that is medieval-esque. There are no airplanes and Ubers and the magic doesn’t seem to have evolved into teleportation or the like. Everything was slow in the beginning, for many seasons. Conversations were at the forefront. It was  a social game. It was about the people, first and foremost, even though the stupid sword-y chair was important, too. That was the plot. Likewise, in the beginning, people weren’t protected by plot armor. Remember, GoT so fantastically shattered our collective expectations for a show, but in the most organic, realistic way. We were carrying the expectations of other dramas with us and projecting them on this show, assuming Ned was “safe” because he was our lens - at least, more so than anyone else. He was the protagonist! He might be tortured, but he surely wasn’t going to be beheaded. Wrong! He was. That and its fallout allowed us as viewers to fully commit to a whole new set of expectations.

But then as time went on, travel just kind of... happened. Things that should have taken a whole season happened in a scene! And with no kind of acknowledgement. Additionally, that initial slowness built us up to have HUGE payoffs. Think of all the tiny things that led to the disaster/amazing episode that included the Red Wedding. They built us up and they met that slow burn hype. In later seasons, they have ridiculous outward hype over the white walkers and Night King, over confrontations between Cercei and her potential killers (Jamie, Arya, etc.) The pacing led us to believe that these things would conclude in a deep and meaningful way that justifies the time we spend watching and theorizing on our own. When you suddenly hit fast forward through the good stuff, it’s jarring! And you lose character development.

And, oh, the plot armor thing. We were led to believe this show wasn’t like other shows. No one was safe. So someone please explain to me how exactly half (or more) of the named characters survived the battle with the undead?! Sam was basically crying in a pile of bodies. Jon was hiding behind a rock from the Ice Dragon who had just blue-flamed down a giant fucking wall. Brienne and Jamie had been on the front lines of that second wave. But their (and others’) plot armor was simply too strong. We were betrayed by the “new” expectations that I, for one, deeply respected. Gore is not my thing - I often had to look away and hum through certain scenes over the seasons - but to know that there were always consequences and that the stakes were always high and unpredictable... that’s what made this titty-fest bloodbath worth it! Take away its uniqueness from all other shows, and you’re just left with some really violent almost-porn. 

3. We watch your show for characters, not shock value

OK, yes, some people enjoy the big reveals and that’s kind of why they signed up to begin with. My brother cannot get over some of the CGI scenes and battles, so I get it. But for the most part, every story is rooted in the characters. You could take the most exciting story on the planet, in the most intricate world, but if you put boring ass people in it, no one will care. We’re invested in the characters and we want them to be consistent. And if they change... well they better change slowly, the way that actual people usually do. Redemption arcs are common in fiction - more common than in real life, sadly - and they can really pay off. As can whatever you call the opposite of that. Falls from grace? I’m not sure. Either way - slow is key here. Drop hints. Build it into their character. It’s a gruesome comparison, but if a frog jumps into boiling water, he jumps back out; if he’s in cool water and you gradually heat it up he will eventually boil to death. This is how falls from grace should occur. The character doesn’t just jump into boiling water. It doesn’t hold up.

Dany is obviously the big one here. I’m not arguing that it would be possible for her to become the Mad Queen and torch King’s Landing. But I’m saying that maybe at least a time or two before her little tolling bells meltdown we should see her saying “fuck the innocent people.” We should have seen her violence spreading beyond people who deserved it. The writers should have presented us with more moments that signaled she cared more about power than actually breaking the wheel. Her character was too consistent for too long (go back to pacing and expectations and where the story began) for her to have a turn like that and for it to be satisfying and accepted.

Similarly, Jamie’s abandoned redemption arc didn’t make sense to me. Drop us some hints that he’s still hateful above all else, maybe, before you have him just up and revert at the mention of Cercei dying... a thing he clearly had to realize was coming well before that moment.

There were complaints about this same thing with Barney from HIMYM, along the lines of “seriously we sat through a season of him redeeming himself (and truly, he started before that) just to watch him go back to banging any under 30 with daddy issues an episode later?” Honestly, that one makes a little more sense. He was problematic even at his best! And they did show that he tried to not be that guy - he and Robin were married for a year or two (offscreen, of course) before the divorce. The biggest problem with HIMYM wasn’t the characters - it was the pacing! It changed our expectations and left many disappointed. 

And finally, For God’s sake you don’t always need a crazy twist.

And maybe this falls to the producers and not the writers. They want viewers. They want coverage. They want listicles on Buzzfeed. And both HIMYM and GoT got them! But at what cost? The reason we didn’t get any lead up to Dany turning is because they wanted to shock us. The reason that they didn’t have some of the strongest theories come true is because they wanted to shock us. Shock has been used well in this series to this point. Masterfully, even! But this wasn’t masterful. This was the showrunners playing God instead of letting things happen organically. Some twists make sense after you look back and notice the buried hints. Some twists make sense because there were things that you as the audience didn’t know yet. But other twists are only shocking because they’re out of character, unrealistic, or just plain dumb. We didn’t get much after the twists except some speeches that honestly sounded like the showrunners themselves speaking to defend their choices. Awkward.

Another series finale that disappointed many fans with its twist was Lost. I never watched, but, I mean, if I watched a whole series just to have it never have been real, I would have been pissed. I was terrified that OUaT was going to do that - that in the finale we’d find out it had all been a dream little Emma was having at a group home or some shit. Fans are invested in long-running series - especially those with supernatural/sci-fi words - and to pull the rug out from under them like that is just... rude. And massively disappointing. You mean we speculated ourselves to death for nothing?! 

What people want from a series finale is an ending of this chapter of the characters’ lives that honors the past and acknowledges the future. There’s a reason that series finales often do something to bring it “back to the beginning.” It’s satisfying! I love that the last thing that we saw the Friends do is go get coffee together. That’s how it started! But after that coffee, they were off to the next part of their lives. I love when they get a little self-aware/meta in the last episode, like when Cory says, “Boy Meets World, now I get it.” And then he and Topanga were moving to New York City. Back to the beginning/the roots... but also going somewhere new.

My point in all this is simple: usually when there’s a massive uproar over a series finale, it’s not just petty people being mad their fave didn’t get the ending they wanted. It’s usually a sign of a problem in the writing, whether it be the writing of that last episode or of the series in general. 

Everyone’s opinions are valid and their feelings are real. But when the writing is bad/lazy/shoddy/too focused on a few scenes they’d clearly imagined before writing the finale/clearly leaving certain plot holes or opportunities for spinoffs even when it doesn’t necessarily make sense... people notice.

(And, oh, do they let you know it.)

[blacknsen]

Do you honestly think one of the guys including all chatacters would date a poc or black person during their time period. Realistically

no i dont.

the whole theme of the book is centered around the idea of the fear and difficulty of breaking social barriers. it took three people dying for everyone to figure that ‘hey maybe this aint right.’

there’s so many times when pony describes how he knows neither socs or greasers are better, how he doesnt like the rep of being a greaser sometimes, and how he understood why cherry and him just couldnt mix..yet he just kinda goes ‘that’s just the way things are.’

and pony was probably the most groundbreaking character (randy’s up there too) for being able to see past the whole wealth thing, and while they both took some steps that the other kids wouldn’t, it still wasn’t enough to mark them as serious advocates for change and to break social norms, they were just going through life and realizing that some things weren’t fair and that some things shouldn’t matter. (and they’re teens, wouldn’t blame or expect them to go beyond that anyways.)

but that’s what it would take to be a interracial couple in the southern states, in the 1960’s.

and that’s just pony and randy. the other characters showed no sign of being able to see past those things. i do understand that pony is the narrator and we didnt get anyone else’s thoughts, but he kept saying how he was different from everyone else, did things that typical greasers just dont do and thought things through more, which is why he could actually see past class at times. and judging by what the book gave us..i cant see any other characters with that ability (at the time of the book at least.) cherry did but it was all in secret~serving as a spy and the talks with pony~ bc she couldn’t act on it fully out of fear for ruining her own reputation (which again is understandable, she’s just a teenage girl)

if none of these characters could get over the issues with social class without having people killed over the matter first, to me, there’s no way they could see past skin color.

most people of color in a southern state like oklahoma would have even Less money than the greasers, would live farther out of town, would experience more poverty and violence than the greasers and on top of that they’d have to deal with discrimination from: greasers AND socs, adults, officials, work environments, safe spaces..the list goes on. it’d be so much more than just the teenage money fued that the characters go through

to me personally, none of them possess the qualities to actually make something like that work. interracial couples were scarce anyways, and honestly, i cant even see most of them even being attracted to poc bc they do live in a white centric area (if a character was colored in the novel, i really believe that it would’ve been stated, bc in that was then this is now, the whole division between race was very prominent and keep in mind that took place After the outsiders)

now if someone were white passing or biracial, more mixed into the crowd..i could see that, probably stemming from the character not even really knowing that they were of color.

but if anyone would be in a relationship with a poc, id give it to the hoods bc they are probably poc themselves, or at least closer to those neighborhoods. gang life, violence and poverty, was and still is at a high rate in neighborhoods with mostly poc because of the pushing of drugs into those places, poverty bc there was so much discrimination and no one would hire someone of color for well paying jobs, easy access to weapons and drugs since most people dont care for their safety..it just adds up.

it’s nice to think they would, i mean im black and id love to think of it that way but..cmon now it dont always be like that. and I obv dont have a problem with people shipping them with poc or whatever hcs yall have, but for me looking at it in the realistic sense of these characters i cant see it happening with the vast majority of them.

also johnny is a poc my boy just white passin, k

[ooc-but-stylish]

My thoughts on and hopes for Iris West

I liked Iris in the first two seasons of The Flash. Candice did a good job of capturing the charm, warmth and spunk of the character from the comics. I feel like Westallen is dragging her down and not allowing her to develop her identity outside of her relationship. I hated how they stripped away her autonomy in the third season. The theme of the season was free will vs destiny but Iris’s choices were diminished. It still pisses me off that they went with the Oh I will try to heal this screwed man with my love shit with Savitar. But what pisses me off the most is that our Iris West the woman who constantly risked her life for a story, the woman who wanted to tell the public about the unknown, the woman who tried to give the public hope, gave up her career to become Mrs. Star Labs. 

That shit is really backwards. I don’t care that the writers are trying to overcompensate by making Iris the boss, they took a huge part of her identity away. As a woman who is trying to break into a STEM field I could relate to Iris West in the first two seasons when she was trying to make a name for herself. I really related to her when she was trying to break into journalism and she had to prove herself. When she took risks to get a story or tried to give the public the truth. I loved it when she had to go against her editor in season 2. I am happy that at least towards the end of season 4, Iris is reclaiming that part of her identity. I honestly want less Westallen stuff next season so we can see Iris being a kickass journalist. I would love it if she started her own online news paper or something. 

Good submission. Thankfully, CP also wants Iris to go back to her roots in being an actual journalist and not just Barry Allen’s cheerleader.

IMO, the writing was always sub-par with Iris with the quality getting worse in later seasons, and a lot of it has to do with the writers not getting what issues there could possibly have been around Iris’s character in the initial seasons and then fixing the wrong problems with wronger solutions, or them just simply not caring about her at all to write her well compared to similar characters on the network or in the genre. 

She was a journalist in Season 1, but the B Plot of her reporting had to be contrived into a tangential relation to the A Plot of Barry vs. Reverse Flash. She was a journalist, but she had to be the last person to know that Barry was the Flash. She was a journalist, and didn’t learn a thing about Wells and Reverse Flash being one and the same, with that plot going to Mason and Mason getting killed off with her never finding out about that either. She was a journalist, and her most notable moment was showing Wells in 1x11 that she wasn’t going to ask “soft questions” so he could avoid being held accountable about the Particle Accelerator explosion and that’s it. She was a journalist but somehow consistently not allowed to be intelligent on her own, finding things out by chance or fate or whatever.

So instead of fixing that so that her plot established her character traits outside of propping up the Flash, they… made her more and more of a prop for the Flash,  like the only way she could be relevant was by not being herself. Aside from the subplot with Francine, where Francine existed just to die and also introduce Wally into the show. But I mean, Iris could’ve been writing articles about the breaches, or about people being seen in two places at the same time (suggesting Earth-2 doppelgangers), or whatever Grodd was up to when he had some episodes. 

I can’t even remember what Iris’s editor tried in season 2 that she went against. … Okay, now I do. It was that whole Trajectory bit, right, with the editor illogically suggesting that Iris write a piece about Flash “going Rogue” with 0 proof it was even him, then unprofessionally assumed her wanting a conversation with him was automatically a date. And it’s good that she didn’t take nonsense from her editor, but that was the writers sliding into “Iris as the Flash’s cheerleader” when Iris herself (in season 1) wanted to prove that she was a serious journalist interested in things that weren’t just about the Flash. We already know she thinks the Flash is a hero. We know she believes in him both in and out of the costume. We don’t need her writing articles about that. And a lot of season 2 even ignored actually developing Barry and Iris’s relationship beyond “Oh hey, remember how we were married in this other Earth, where most of the people we knew were had 180 in their personality, including us? Haha, yeah, good times” so they couldn’t even do WestAllen correctly.

So like, in and out of her job, Iris was pretty much just about Barry in what screentime she had. And she only moved on from Eddie because Eddie told her to in a video that didn’t exist until Barry changed the timeline.

Then again, Iris could have been way worse in S2. She could’ve been Patty Spivot.

Yeah. I said it.

Patty in Season 2 was pretty much explicitly there to be a Female Barry Allen– a scientifically minded, socially awkward, babbling comic book geek who wants revenge against a metahuman for the murder of a parent, but since she’s not actually Barry and is in a separate body, writers could portray her so that she’s such a fan of Barry that she read all of his reports, and totally gets him and his jokes you know? Lawlz! …. Yawn. Her character was a Flash and Barry fangirl right down to her willingness to drop her plans to go to college if Barry admitted he was a superhero. So like…. people saying they shipped “Spallen” over “Westallen” and citing Patty as the better character were really transparent. Patty didn’t bring anything to the table except being the genderbend of the main dude and willing to stop her whole life to be with him. The point is the writers are just awful.

Then season 3 was all about Iris dying and she had the least amount of screentime/episodes in it: what screentime she did have was replaying her death over and over and over and over and over, and if it wasn’t her dying it was trying to reassure everyone else that if she died anyway, to move on. For a season about Iris, a lot of the focus was on how the guys in her life would handle it and not about her own life and ambitions. She didn’t have a single thing on her bucket list to get done? She wasn’t going to fight for her own life?

It’s like, the way CW writers are approaching Iris is like their network never ever had 10 seasons of a superhero show with female journalist side characters in it before. You know, the show with not one but two Daily Planet reporters doing something other than writing about Superman constantly– and I’m pretty sure the first person that did get attached to Superman’s exploits and putting them on the paper was Jimmy Olsen.

[delerithmoriwen]

I leave the comfort of my home one day and Tumblr explodes into hate...

Ok so I need to put in my two cents here because this is getting out of hand FAST! And honest to god this has been bugging the living shit out of me and i’ll feel better after I write this all down. 

I will not hide behind an anon message because I stand behind my beliefs and I politely invite everybody who does not agree or just plain hates to hate to have a frank honest and most importantly ADULT discussion with me! First of all I want to say IT’S JUST A SHIP. Come on you guys, ok we are on different ships but at the end of the day aren’t we all just enjoying the same show?! Call me a flower power hippie, but if we all could get along more maybe the show would have better ratings... And people wouldn’t stereotype fandoms to begin with whether they be The Vampire Diaries, The Originals or any other series you enjoy! That being said, I wholeheartedly disagree with the fact that Klaroline is a sick and abusive ship. Because ever since scene 1 between them we have seen Klaus’ humanity return piece by piece and is that not what a relationship should be! Bringing out the best in each other! The fact that you shouldn’t try and change your partner is ridiculous narrow minded and naive. A good relationship is where you are passionate about each other and strive to bring out the best in each other. Lord knows that for Caroline Klaus has showed humanity and compassion on more than one occasion. And in return it is because of him, she allows herself to let go of that ever lasting control she so holds on to. He teaches her to be passionate and carefree at times!  As for what happened with hate to actors , that is NEVER EVER cool. Not even in the slightest and those people are what gives not only Klaroline but SHIPPING IN GENERAL a bad name. We acknowledged that and we call people out on it. But to generalize an entire fandom based on a few bad apples is in exaggeration a form of discrimination and racism (I’m using this word because in it’s essence racism is discriminating or generalization of a group of people based on race, gender, sexual preference of BELIEF!) And honestly I can’t wait to get hate for that statement but I stand by it! It wasn’t cool what happened not at all i’m not denying that but I’m part of this fandom too and I refuse to take blame for something I had no part in, nor will I let my friends or shop be blamed for it!  I re-joined this fandom after a really difficult time in my personal life, because I needed a place for my creative outlet and somebody to talk to. Not only did I find that, I found myself a great group of friends along the way! People who are beautiful and intelligent and caring. People who look passed their noses and see that the world isn’t as black and white as some might make you think. People who have honestly saved my sanity during a very difficult time and they may not even realize it. So to generalize this fandom with foul name calling and childish hate is pubescent. I have yet to meet A SINGLE PERSON in this fandom who has been rude to me or others. If anything I was welcomed with open arms and more importantly open minds! Do we see eye to eye on everything? Absolutely not! Is that ok? ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY! If people would just settle on having different opinion and respecting that finding ways to discuss matters in an adult way the world would be a much better place. And if this makes people happy who are you to tell them that it is wrong? If you view Klaroline as an abusive ship than you might as well view the whole series as abusive. Damon-Caroline? Rape! Stefan/Elena Mental Abuse.... Freya/Keelin Abduction and torture not to mention humiliation... Klaus/Camille Co-dependency issues. Vicky/Tyler ? I’m not even going to get into that one ... I could go on and on. At the end of the day the show has a certain target group, and this kind of drama is what appeals to that target group. Aside from maybe the Damon/Caroline story I view none of these ships as abuse. And even in that story line I respect the writers in the concept that this was needed for Caroline to grow into the person she was today. Do I agree with that particular storyline or concept. NO! Do I respect it! YES! Because that’s the viewpoint of another person and just because I don’t agree with it doesn’t make that other person any less of a human or unworthy of my respect!  Now if people say we are the only ship that is hating on others and name calling and all that shit i’d like to point out two things! ONE: We were not the ones who send and anon message to somebody telling her she deserved to be raped tortured and killed for her ship. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT ABOUT?! That is so beyond wrong I can’t even... I just can’t! When that happens YES we respond as a community and we respond HARD. Not to defend our ship but to defend our FRIEND! It is a cheap shot and it is bullying and I will stand up to you for it! You don’t know this person in real life and for all you know this could be very upsetting for them in ways you and your small brain can’t even imagine. I have a tendency to NEVER EVER call people stupid. Insulting somebody’s intelligence is something I don’t believe in because everybody is smart in their own way! But if you go out talking shit like that i’m sorry i’ll break my rule you’re just plain dumb! Not to mention anti-feminist hell anti-human for that matter! I’ve gotten my share of hate mail/reviews over the past few months and honestly I could not give a crap. I don’t even respond to it because i’m a confident and secure stable person and It doesn’t bug me! But I also realize that on a social media as Tumblr there are alot of young boys and girls. Most of them are artists, writers, painters, gifmakers etc. All people with creative minds who are often burdened with enough insecurities as it is so the last thing they need is for you to add on to that!  Steph and I have never actually talked in person. But I follow her blog and I enjoy her posts thoroughly! I have heard nothing but kind and loving words about her from the people I have met here and she is the heart of this community. So if you think you can bully your way into our fandom and our hearts you are sadly mistaken because we can and will stand up to you! Each and every one of us is strong beautiful and capable of greatness if you let them be. I belief this with my entire heart and soul. Not just in this fandom but in all the others! So instead of sending all this hate why don’t you try and be understanding and be just plain nice to eachother. The world is already trying to drag us down. We shouldn’t do it to one another as well! And if that is a problem for you, block our tags and leave us alone, we will do the same for you! With love,

Eve