#i admire her willingness to be so emotionally open and just !! go for the things she wants!!! she runs her own tarot business like thats so

[dragqueenpentheus]

ouGh

[zablife]

Okay you have me, can I please please ask for a Jake Seresin hearing some banging in the locker room and finding the pilot!Reader just smashing her helmet into the lockers while crying? (Basically she got a message that her old wingman (her female bestie, they were basically sisters) got killed during her deployment, in action? The reader is angry at Jake and telling him to leave her alone but he doesn't.

Just some soft!Jake mixed with enemies to lovers :333

Thank you and you are a gem ♡♡♡♡

“What was that about?” Jake asked, pushing off the wall outside Admiral Simpson’s office. Rebecca rolled her eyes at him and kept walking at a brisk pace.

“Hey, I’m talking to you! Why did the admiral want to see you alone?” he asked, stalking after her. He felt it was his business to know since she was his back seater.

Turning on her heel to face him with obvious emotion welling in her chest, she said, “Because it wasn’t about you, ok?” Then quickly swallowing it down, she took a deep breath saying, “Leave me alone, Jake,” and continued on to the locker rooms. 

Jake stood staring after her, wondering what she meant. He wasn’t one to wait for answers so he charged ahead, ready to find out. Rebecca could be stubborn and they fought about the best way to do things, but Jake thought their open communication and willingness to push one another made them a good team.

As he rounded the corner to the women’s locker room, Jake heard the unmistakable clang of metal. The reverberations could be heard down the hall echoing loudly off the walls. It sounded as though someone was  knocking over an entire row of lockers. “What the hell?” he muttered under his breath. A scream of frustration followed from the other side of the door.

This was unlike any behavior he’d ever witnessed from Rebecca and it was beginning to scare him. She was tougher than most of the men he knew and he’d never seen her crack under pressure. He couldn’t think of anything she’d been through that had shaken her emotionally, including the injury that saw her reassigned to Jake’s squadron.

Deciding to investigate, he barreled through the door, calling out,“Rebecca? Rebecca? Viper!” The clanging stopped and he heard a helmet drop to the floor. He listened as it rolled back and forth on the ground, the only sound in the room until Rebecca breathed a heavy sigh. Jake slowly approached and found his wingman sitting on a bench, head in her hands. 

“Hey, hey? What are you doin’?” Jake asked.

“Jesus, I ask you to leave me alone and you follow me in here? What the fuck, Hangman? I’m fine!” she said, kicking her helmet across the floor.

He jumped back dodging the projectile she had launched at him and furrowed his brow. “Yeah, you don’t look fine and if we’re gonna fly together you need to tell me why,” he said pointing a finger in her direction. She shook her head and looked away from, unable to say the words. 

“Fine, you wanna get us both killed cause your heads fucked up? Keep being stubborn, Viper,” he said as he began to walk away. 

Watching him go, she opened her mouth, finding an uncomfortable lump in her throat and her mouth too dry to say anything except a name. “It's Siren,” she called out through clenched teeth. Then the sobs began. 

Jake froze, recognizing the call sign of her previous wingman and best friend. They had flown together until Rebecca’s injury and Siren had been deployed shortly after. Jake didn’t need much more to connect the dots. Their work was inherently dangerous. Everyone accepted the risk that came along with the job, but somehow it never got easier hearing about the loss of a colleague. 

Instinctively, Jake went to Rebecca, taking a seat next to her and wrapping his arms around her. To his surprise, she accepted the comfort he provided, burying her head in his shoulder. “I can't believe she’s gone, Jake,” she finally managed to say against the rough material of his flight suit.

He placed a hand to the back of her head, stroking a hand lightly against her hair. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” he whispered, rocking her gently. She allowed herself to be held in his strong embrace, finally able to take a deep breath knowing she was safe. However, the nagging guilt would not relent.

“I should’ve been with her,” she said, chewing at her lip.

“No, we don’t get to decide. You know that,” Jake said, running a large hand down her back.

She pulled away from him to look him in the eye. “I understand if you don’t want to fly with me,” she said earnestly.

“Why would you say that?” Jake asked, looking hurt and confused.

“No one wants to fly with someone they don’t trust with their life. You just said as much. And if you think I’m fucked up from this, then maybe you should go talk to the admiral now,” she said, looking down at her hands. She was squeezing them together so tightly, her knuckles were turning white.

Jake slowly reached into her lap, placing a hand over hers and caressing the back of her hand with his thumb. “I was an asshole, alright? The truth is you’re the best pilot here. I’d be crazy not to want you flying with me,” he said reassuringly. “If that’s what you want,” he added hesitantly, looking into her eyes for confirmation. She nodded, throwing her arms around his neck. 

“You never hang me out to dry, you know that. You’ve always been there for me,” she whispered in his ear. 

He chuckled. “Well that’s cause we got a deal, remember, Viper? You watch my back too with those quick strikes." She nodded with a laugh. He tilted her chin up to look at him, "But you keep that temper to yourself, only strike the enemy, alright?”

“It’s a deal,” she said, capturing his bright green eyes in a longing stare. Without another word, Jake leaned down and placed a soft kiss to her full lips, fulfilling a wish they’d both had for some time.

[commonwealthoccurences]

What relationships do you think would form when Sole brings all the companions/characters together?

Romantically: I think Cait and Hancock would fall together, for better or for worse. This could either mean that they are incredibly toxic for each other, with them both having similar struggles they may accidentally, or intentionally, encourage harmful habits, or they could be positive for each other and help each other out of that struggle. 

Ideally, I see X6-88 (talking in the sense of post-Institute) would end up with either Deacon or Preston. Maybe all three together. So let’s break down that dynamic.      With X6-88 and Preston, they would have a very mutually gentle and supportive dynamic. Preston has wonderful people skills and has seen some shit; he knows how to help someone through the aftermath of something like X6-88 leaving the Institute and learning how to live an “average life” in the Wasteland.      Deacon and Preston have very similar morals from what I can tell, and probably somewhat similar life experiences with trying to defend their organizations, though opposite coping mechanisms (Preston throwing himself wholeheartedly into the Minutemen identity and Deacon constantly switching identities and becoming a compulsive liar). I think Deacon would very much admire Preston’s courage to stand by his identity no matter what, and Preston would appreciate Deacon’s intelligence and ability to roll with the punches. On the flip side, Preston may have issues with Deacon’s willingness to lie and change facades.      Deacon and X6-88 are an unusually good pair; opposites with a mutual understanding. Deacon has mostly seen what X6-88 is going through. Enemies to lovers, anyone? Deacon’s extremely easygoing when it comes to helping people out as they navigate their new identities, so that would definitely be a way they would bond.  Realistically, unfortunately, I don’t see Deacon sticking around. He’s very much the type of person, in my opinion, to think he doesn’t deserve normality or something positive. I think as soon as things got a little bit serious and the joking flirting turned serious he would run, despite reassurances from Preston and X6-88. MacCready and Curie would make a good pair. They’re both calmer types with a sense of responsibility and calmness. I think they’d get along great! Realistically, I unfortunately don’t see Gage ending up with anyone romantically. I don’t think he’s the type of person to subscribe to or allow himself that type of vulnerability. Also, his morals don’t really align with anyone else’s, so I don’t think anyone would be able to compromise on that. I also don’t think Nick Valentine would step away from his work long enough to become romantically involved with anyone.  Danse and Piper would make an interesting duo after Blind Betrayal. While I see Danse not letting himself get pushed around, I definitely see him becoming more passive and mellow. Lost, even. Piper isn’t afraid to pop off on anyone who insults him, though, and the first time she defends him he’s pleasantly surprised; he didn’t think he had that type of comradery left with anyone since he left the Brotherhood. I also think Piper would be great at helping him transition into a Wasteland lifestyle and would really enjoy his stories from adventures he’s been on. Friendships/Found Family: MacCready would become fiercely protective of X6-88. He may not be the most involved in the Railroad at any point, considering he has his own issues to deal with, but he can’t believe how the Institute treated X6 and it makes him furious. He knows X6 can handle himself, but he makes sure he knows that his door is always open if X6 needs a friend. Nick would also become close with X6. After all, he knows what he’s been through for the most part. Deacon, Nick, and Mac would have dedicated nights that Nick makes sure to take off to spend time together. They all just get it. Preston and Curie become good friends. Preston loves hearing her talk about her work and admires her intelligence, and she admires how emotionally (and traditionally) intelligent he is, as well. Deacon and Danse become unlikely friends, too. Eventually Danse joins them on their nights out, after some coaxing from Deacon. Sure, they’re complete opposites; Danse is extremely serious and Deacon struggles to stay serious in a lot of situations, but I think that would be good for Danse, and eventually leads to him loosening up a little more. While Cait and Gage may become friends due to the fact that she used to be surrounded by raiders and is simply used to their bullshit, Hancock can’t stand him. Gage stays out of his way and Hancock stays away from Gage, and that’s how they keep the harmony.  Piper and Curie become friends as well, and Hancock somehow ends up in that little circle. They may all be completely different people, but that’s why they work so well. 

[k7l4d4]

Owl House AU Ideas, ZA FIRST!!

Hello all, this has been a long time coming on my part. After procrastinating on the subject, I have decided to upload my personal AU ideas for the Owl House. Here’s hoping ya’ll like them, and feel free to make your own stuff based on them as you please!!

Tough Love: This AU is my own twist on the classic Siblings AU, in which I fleshed it out into my own little niche using whatever I had available in my brain.

Victoria Noceda: My name for Beta Luz, who in this Idea is the oldest of the three Noceda sisters. Brash, belligerent, always ready with a smart remark, Victoria is a tough girl who takes no crap from anyone, with her weapon of choice being a metal bat carved with glyphs. A short temper mixed with both a strict demeanor and a flippant attitude has earned her a reputation as a thug, one which she has done nothing to reject or deny. Growing up, Victoria quickly grew familiar with the uglier side of humanity, and when her sisters were born vowed to shield them from the harshness of the world, by any means necessary. She is highly cynical, yet being around Luz chips away at this persona of hers. Despite her attitude and behavior, she is highly intelligent, graduating from school as valedictorian to the shock of everyone bar her teachers. Victoria first ended up in the Isles by chasing down Owlbert after the Palisman tried (and failed) to pickpocket her. She and Eda, to their mutual surprise, hit it off rather well, with Victoria often acting as her Stall Manager, Gopher, Muscle, etc., and has amassed a large quantity of glyphic spells, which she keeps as tattoos climbing up both arms (she actually has enough to cover nearly her whole torso and part of her neck, but uses illusion glyphs to hide them so Eda doesn't ask how she discovered them... some of them were highly unpleasant for lack of a better word). Using her work with Eda to avoid getting a job on Earth, Victoria has a LOT of money, mostly due to Eda paying her with whatever bills and coins Owlbert brings her without consideration for how much they actually are worth. Offered to house her sisters so they could "branch out and get some real world experience," really an excuse to get her sibs away from the toxic environment at school. Convinced (threatened) Principal Hal to have Luz sent to stay with her for the summer. Her aggressive tendencies and willingness to use incredible violence to solve her problems has resulted in her relationship with her sisters partially atrophying, though she is unaware of it herself. Her first encounter with Boscha, in the body swap episode, is meant to illustrate this as she very clearly and deliberately tormented and ridiculed the girl for bullying Luz, refusing to let up even when Luz begged her to stop until Boscha apologized and begged for forgiveness; Luz rushing off to help bandage Boscha's nearly broken hands implies this isn't the first time she has done this, or at least something like this. Victoria has a bad temper when roused and often resorts to extreme verbal haranguing when she's cross with Luz, not knowing that this reinforces the idea that she doesn't like or care for her youngest sister, as she can't bring herself to raise a hand to her sisters. Finds Amaryllis hot and enjoys teasing her. Will answer to Victoria, Tori, or Ria, NEVER to Vic or Vicky, which will result in her threatening to break the offender's legs, THIS IS NOT A BLUFF SHE HAS DONE IT TWICE BEFORE. Mari Noceda: My name for Pilot!Luz, the middle child. Easily the most well-behaved of her siblings, though that isn't saying much. Unlike her hyper-impulsive younger, and her super aggressive elder, Mari is calm, logical, and significantly more easy going. However, she is an absolute snoop with a very poor understanding of personal privacy, resulting in her being sent to the principal for breaking into other students' lockers, on multiple occasions. After Victoria basically dropped off the map, she became hellbent on tracker her down, resulting in her discovering the Boiling Isles and magic. As is her usual, she quickly got over whatever shock she felt and proceeded to brow beat her mom, Victoria, AND EDA to let her stay in the Isles by homeschooling (Camila doesn't know she went to the Isles, just that she wanted to move in with her sister... it hurt her more than Mari thought it would), she soon set herself to studying everything the Isles has to offer, to Eda's chagrin. While her repertoire is much smaller than Tori's, she knows quite a few spells herself, all of which she has studied to a ludicrous degree. After reading up on some of Luz's fantasy novels, she has started viewing herself as an artificer, blending magic and technology together. Is VERY GOOD FRIENDS with Vela Blight (they are dating but don't want anyone to know). Often puts down Luz's fantasies as ridiculous. Luz Noceda: Canon cinnamon roll, sorta. Plucky, sweet, optimistic, and, oh yeah, Kinda mental. Was introduced to the Boiling Isles and Eda via Victoria picking her up and driving through a portal that opened up in Eda's living room. When she asked her sisters' to share what they know about magic with her, they both laughed and told her they would teach her how to use any spells she figured out on her own, and no more. Basically the same as canon, she is somewhat more fragile emotionally as a result of Mari's unintended put-downs, and Victoria's angry rants. She is convinced that part of the reason she didn't have friends was due to everyone being afraid of Victoria beating them silly, or Mari invading their privacy. While very similar to her original self, this version of Luz has a lot of repressed anger, which manifests as a slight twitch in her left eye and a compulsive hiccup when stressed. Eda: Due to taking in Victoria and Mari, she is much more in touch with her caring side earlier on than Canon, welcoming Luz easily and more willing to play the mentor role. Quickly picks up on the warning signs in the sisters' interactions but is repeatedly shut out, to her frustration and concern. King: Mellower than in canon due to having Mari, who considers him a fount of demonic knowledge, and Victoria, who appreciates his street wise wisdom when it peeks through his megalomania, to talk and interact with. Clings to Luz as a "new general in my Army! Rejoice, Mr. Ducky, REJOICE!!" Amaryllis Blight: My name for Beta!Amity, and the eldest sibling. Ruthless, ferocious, and feral, Amaryllis always possessed the hallmarks of a problem child, bucking her parents authority at every turn, which she got away with due to her immense magical power even as a toddler. Wears green hair dye to spite her parents after they virtually disowned her. Regularly forgets any and all information that she deems useless, which includes her parents' names, resulting in her always referring to them as Mr. and Mrs. Blight at all times, even in her head. Leads the Predators, an elite section of the Emperor's Coven tasked with locating and sealing dimensional breaches, as well as purging anything that crosses through. Has a severe survival of the fittest mindset; if you don't have the strength and will to survive and succeed, you are nothing. Ironically, she hates bullies, claiming them as weaklings who tear down those with true potential for greatness, and often curses herself for being too weak to separate from Belos. Her sheer power and accomplishments have forced the Blight parents to recognize her as their child, if only to capitalize on her success and prevent difficult questions being aimed their way, yet none are comfortable with the arrangement. Strongly admires Eda, genuinely believing her to be the greatest Witch of all time, which leads to her verbally, and sometimes physically, tearing a new one in anyone who speaks ill of her in Amaryllis' presence. The biggest inspirations for Amaryllis were Katsuki Bakugo from My Hero Academia, and Esdeath from Akame Ga Kill, being strangely friendly and amicable to her fellow Predators and anyone who she finds sufficiently impressive in terms of combat, though she has no ability to register those she thinks of as weak, often being incapable of recalling any real information about them beyond whatever part of their appearance stuck out most to her. She has no respect or regard for Emira and Edric, regarding them as fools and cowards, and is genuinely incapable of telling them apart, despite the fact that they are different genders, and often needs a moment to remember who they are. Often verbally scolds Vela for being weak, with the first "kind" thing she has ever said to her since graduating was congratulating her for taking the first steps to realizing her true potential. Admires Amity's dedication to be the best, but detests her kowtowing to their parents. Has a huge crush on Victoria, but is both better at hiding it than Amity, by a mile, and severely conflicted over it, due to regarding humans as "the weakest existence on the whole of the Isles." Amaryllis' animalistic mentality is considered extremely unusual, even by the standards of the Boiling Isles and results in everyone being incredibly wary of her. Amaryllis is insanely loyal to those she holds regard to and works with, viciously destroying anything that dares bring harm to her comrades, or "pack" as she insists on calling them, and has a win by any means necessary mindset, being genuinely puzzled by the crowd and Amity's distress at Lilith's cheating during the Covention, seeing the power glyph as a perfectly acceptable tactic and applauding Luz and Eda's mines to circumvent the Human's lack of spells, however even she disapproves of cheating that can result in permanent injury, which is her sole complaint about the duel. Vela Blight: My name for Pilot!Amity, and the Middle child of the Blight Triplets. Timid, meek, and polite to a fault, Vela is near totally lacking in confidence. Is hopelessly mediocre in every form of magic, despite her higher than average power, and regarded as a failure to the Blight name. Her parents disowned her shortly before Canon, but allow her to stay in the Manor as her siblings' attendant, even Amaryllis is better regarded than she is by the Blight parents. Is good friends with the Detention Track kids, and eagerly jumped on the bandwagon when they became multi-track students, joining Luz as an All-Tracker, which also exposed her immense talent for magic mixing, allowing her to merge different forms of Magic with ease and fluidity. Vela's sheer passion for learning magic exceeds both Amity and Luz combined, and is genuinely puzzled why more witches weren't trying to multi-track too. Is something of a teacher's pet, to her own embarrassment, as even with her poor abilities her sheer passion for learning has caused many of the Teachers and Bump himself to develop a soft spot for her. Has a complicated relationship with Ed and Em, as while she loves them, she envies their talent, and despises their pranks, as she is often punished for them whether she had a hand or not, and often when she tried to stop them. When her trip-mates decided to prank Amity, she lividly tore into them with a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech before storming off in tears, resulting in Ed and Em chasing after her and leaving Amity and Luz alone in the library. During the trip to the Knee, she was still bitter, and went out of her way to be as difficult for Ed and Em as possible, only forgiving them after took on the Slitherbeast. Vela is very close to Amity, as well as the Nocedas. Vela regards Amity as a treasure and has the healthiest relationship with her out of all their siblings, instantly pegging to Amity's crush on Luz (She ships them so hard), though she doesn't call her out on it. Vela is scared of Amaryllis. Ed and Em: Are wilder than in Canon, willing to resort to harsher pranks to meet their goals. They adore Vela, and assumed she adored them; having her verbally tear them a new one served as a massive wake-up call to how jerky they could be, and often were, provoking them to be better siblings and people all around, still tricksters though. Are jealous of Amaryllis due to her being unshackled from their parents, and are often rendered livid by her casual dismissal of them. Amity Blight: Mostly the same, but a bit more assertive against the toxic influences in her life. Idolizes Amaryllis due to her power and freedom, and trusts Vela with the same secrets as her diary. Sallix Park: Name for Beta!Willow. A maverick and an agitator, she enjoys stirring up trouble for the heck of it, but only when she's the one to cause it. Adores her little sister, but insists on her fighting her own battles, and enjoys training Willow through random plant attacks. Has been secretly gaslighting Boscha, in the hopes of the brat having some kind of epiphany and cleaning up her act, not knowing that her actions were causing the triclops to develop conflicting impulses and feelings regarding Willow, as well as an unhealthy fixation. Is good friends with both Victoria and Amaryllis, resulting in her serving as referee whenever they fight, which is often. Willow Park: Same as canon, but more assertive over her behaviors.

Let me know if any of you have any questions or opinions on it.

[schmokschmok]

live forever in the stars

As authors for the @avatar-rarepair-exchange-2021 have been revealed, I’m three hundred exlamation marks in a trenchcoat to share the fic I wrote for @zukkaclawthorne!

Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Relationships: Suki x Yue, Suki & Ty Lee (minor: Zuko x Sokka, Ty Lee x Mai)

Characters: Suki, Yue, Ty Lee, Sokka, Zuko (and a few more)

Wordcount: 9099 (3 x 3033)

Tags:

No Archives Warnings Apply

Alternate Universe - Modern

Weddings

Fake/Pretend Relationship (emphasis on fake)

Queerplatonic Relationships

Summary:

Then Yue leans close into Suki’s personal space (Suki catches her breath) and continues in a conspiratorial whisper: “This is actually Sokka’s second wedding. We were married in kindergarten for like half a day before I decided boys were icky and he found out girls have cooties.” She laughs, and Suki falls a little in love with her right then and there.

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29060613

CN: alcohol, food (mentioned); briefly discussed acemisia (not graphic)

#1

Before opening the door of the car she’s sitting in, Suki casts a glance towards the small group of people waiting in front of the karaoke bar. Katara, Azula, Aang, Toph, and, of course, Zuko and Sokka are standing close together, their hands shoved into their pockets and already leaning towards going in.

Ty Lee has exited the car and, before Suki can get a chance to reach for the handle, Ty Lee is pulling it open for her, taking a step back to make room for Suki to get up and extending her hand for Suki to grab. She asks with a giggle: “What are you waiting for?”

“I wasn’t waiting for anything,” Suki replies while letting Ty Lee help her out of the car and onto her two feet, and it’s kind of true. It’s not like she’s been expecting anything to happen, really, it’s more that she was hit unexpected and hard by a sudden dread of getting back to the others which doesn’t really make sense considering the fact that she knows and loves most of the people attending the afterparty.

Ty Lee lets go of her and closes the door before locking the car and turning towards their friends with a little twirl of her dress. The heels of her shoes come down hard onto the asphalt of the parking lot and echoes between the cars, and for a moment Suki is incapable of doing anything other than admire the outfit Ty Lee put together and the poise she’s pulling it off with. Everyone, Suki thinks, put so much effort into their appearance and they look like the feature section of a fashion magazine.

Self-consciously, Suki’s fingers start tugging at her obi and she tries to sneak a peek at the orange obi-jime wrapped around her waist, fearing that the car ride might have distraught her outfit. It’s not very likely but seeing them all in their post wedding glory makes her worry, nonetheless.

“You look a-ma-zing,” Ty Lee says, emphasising her words by grabbing Suki’s hand again to keep her from fussing over her appearance. “Like, why wouldn’t you?” The palm of her hand is dry and warm in Suki’s, and Suki immediately feels a whole lot better.

“I’m just a little,” Suki pauses to think of a neutral word to describe what she’s feeling, “self-conscious, I guess. I forgot they would change into tuxes.” While her head nods in the direction of Sokka and Zuko, her voice is as low as possible to avoid letting the others hear the uncertainty in her words. “The only other one wearing traditional clothing is Azula, and I never thought I would have anything in common with Azula, you know?”

“Oh, hun, it’s okay,” Ty Lee replies and she’s really one to talk in her bubble-gum pink cocktail dress and matching cardigan, “Mai’s, like, going to wear furisode, too.”

“Mai’s not here and she’s conveniently skipping the first party as well,” Suki says, slightly disgruntled.

“It’s totally not her fault, her plane’s, like, delayed,” Ty Lee says softly. “She’s not mad about missing karaoke, though, you’re right.” She giggles. “Whatever, you still got me, seriously, I’m your plus one, right?”

There’s no such thing as a plus one, they both had to show their invitations – names printed neatly in small capital letters on the bottom half – to enter the reception while handing over their wedding gifts – Suki’s in an elaborately decorated envelope with her name written on it, Ty Lee’s in a plain red envelope with her and Mai’s names on it. But the thought of a plus one is nice, and as long as Mai is absent, Suki can at least bask in the thought of Ty Lee as her partner in crime tonight.

“Yeah, you are,” Suki says and tightens her grip on Ty Lee’s hand. “Too bad you’ll leave me as soon as Mai gets here.”

“You’ll survive, for sure,” Ty Lee retorts, giggling, and pulls Suki into the karaoke bar. The twilit, cold street is exchanged for the warmth and clean-cut light of the interior. Azula has fallen back a few steps as if she were waiting for Ty Lee and Suki, but Suki’s not at all sure if Azula would ever do such a thing, and the unhappy line of Azula’s mouth is no help at all.

“Azula!” Ty Lee exclaims cheerfully, the glee in her voice only surpassed by the joyousness of her smile. She even steps up a notch to reach Azula faster.

“Ty Lee,” Azula greets, then her gaze falls onto Suki as if now were the first time she noticed Suki at all. “Suki.” The movement of her head could almost pass for a nod in greeting and Suki chooses to interpret it as such. (She’s a little reminded of Mai – stoic faced and hard to read Mai. Suki’s not sure why and how Ty Lee keeps on being friends with people obviously emanating the absolute antithesis of herself, but it’s something Suki’s trying to adjust to ever since she came to know Ty Lee.)

“It’s, like, totally bitchin’, right?” Ty Lee asks, throwing her free arm over Azula’s shoulder and forcing her to duck. “Our first wedding is like: done, done, done!” She’s accentuating every done with a punch into the air, forcing Suki to do it too, their hands still clasped together.

Even though Suki doesn’t always believe Ty Lee’s claims that she holds a special place in Azula’s heart, it’s moments like this, moments in which Azula lets Ty Lee rope her into soft embraces and excited hugs, that almost convince Suki that underneath Azula’s unaffectionate and rough exterior lies something akin to a friend. It’s nice to witness, seldom as it is.

“Very,” Suki agrees when Azula only rolls her eyes at Ty Lee’s antics.

“It’s hardly our wedding,” Azula states bluntly, but the dry tone of her voice is betrayed by the way she’s still willingly trapped underneath Ty Lee’s arm.

Ty Lee pouts ostentatiously, before pulling Azula closer and quickly pecking her on the cheek. Then she lets go of Azula and retorts cheerily: “The first wedding of our squad, whatever!”

Already opening her mouth, probably to say something rude, Azula takes a step back to put some distance between herself and Ty Lee and Suki. But Suki beats her to it and asks: “The others are waiting inside?”

“Very,” Azula replies, obviously mimicking the tone of voice Suki used a few seconds ago to answer Ty Lee. It remains unclear if it’s a friendly attempt at homage or a mean-spirited comment to rile Suki up.

“Awesome, let’s go!”

Ty Lee grabs Azula’s hand, too, and pulls both her and Suki towards the hallway leading to the different booths. Already past three doors on each side, she stops dead in her tracks, causing Azula and Suki to bump into her.

“Gals, I totally don’t know where to go,” Ty Lee admits sheepishly. “Which booth is ours?”

Sighing, Azula walks around Ty Lee and beelines further down the hallway until she reaches the right door, Suki and Ty Lee trailing right behind her. When they enter the booth, their friends have already started rafting through the song selection. Chatter fills the room, and nobody really pays them any mind.

Suki didn’t expect many more people to be in the room, but it’s not only the small group that attended the reception after the wedding with the grooms’ family, but also a few people Suki has never met before. It’s still a fairly small wedding party, Suki thinks, sitting down beside Ty Lee who is still holding onto her hand and chose a seat next to a beautiful woman in a red dress that Suki has never seen before.

“June!” Ty Lee throws her arm over June’s shoulders, and Suki experiences the weirdest kind of déjà vu. It could be either the way June ducks her head and draws her shoulders up under Ty Lee’s excited embrace or the way her mouth forms an unhappy line akin to Azula’s. (Suki makes a mental note to ask Ty Lee if being emotionally unavailable is a requirement to become friends with her and if so, why Ty Lee decided to befriend Suki anyways.) “It’s, like, so good to see you!”

Either Ty Lee wore them down over the time of their friendship or every single one of her stoic friends is severely touch-deprived, there’s no other way Suki can explain the fact that all of them just take Ty Lee’s willingness to touch everyone at any given time with such stride. June looks like someone who could and would break the arm of someone touching her unsolicited.

While June and Ty Lee start to catch up on their lives (or rather: while Ty Lee catches June up on her life and June provides a few strategically placed quips), Suki lazily starts to inspect the other people in the room. Sokka and Zuko are squeezed in between Katara and Azula at the head of the table, in perfect view of the TV mounted to the wall. The only person separating Azula and Ty Lee is June who is either not acquainted with Azula or demonstratively turning her back to her.

Katara and Aang lean over the tablet, punching in the first drink orders while Sokka tries to tap on the screen, apparently to support a point he’s making – whatever that may be.

Leaning back in boredom, Toph chews on a chocolate bar as if they hadn’t been dining less than an hour ago. Almost sitting directly opposite of Suki and softly talking to Toph is a not-quite-stranger that Suki has seen at the reception but has never talked to. Taking the few uninterrupted seconds she gets before Katara is going to ask either her or the stranger for their order, Suki looks as discreet as possible at them.

Now that Suki is actually sitting somewhat close to them, she can see the white, fan-shaped dangling earrings and the little silver studs above them, a crescent moon on the left ear and three tiny stars on the right. A smile gentle as low tide plays around their lips and makes the skin next to their brown eyes crinkle. Their hair, bleached to a silvery white, is pulled towards the crown of their head, held together by a hairpiece in the same shade of blue as their dress and separated into two braids. Another two braids frame her face, also adorned with blue hair pieces. Somewhere between leaving the reception and sitting down at the table in the booth, they lost the shawl that had been draped over their shoulders.

In short: They are absolutely beautiful.

(The thing is that Suki is already cleaning up her act as best as she can because if she’s perfectly honest with herself, the first time she laid eyes upon the ethereal being on the other side of the table [or in the prior case, two tables over], the only thing she could think about was that this is fucking ridiculous. No one has any right to be this beautiful, especially when Suki’s heart is so desperately trying to get lost. – Suki didn’t have, no, still doesn’t have words to describe the visceral feeling evoked by them.)

When they turn their head and it becomes apparent that they could meet Suki’s eyes any moment, she lets her head fall onto Ty Lee’s shoulder, lifting their still intertwined hands up towards her lips so she can whisper in Ty Lee’s ear as inconspicuous as possible (she’s not at all sure if this makes as much sense as she thinks it does, probably not): “Ty Lee …?”

“Su-ki?” Ty Lee splits Suki’s name in two and stresses the last syllable, a soft singsong in her voice. Her head drops on top of Suki’s and she’s talking almost as lowly as Suki.

Still hiding behind their raised hands, manoeuvred in front of Suki’s lips as if she were only moments from kissing Ty Lee’s knuckles, Suki groans as quiet as possible without losing the implications of her sever sufferings: “I’m very gay, did you know that? Just, uhm, very gay.”

Ty Lee giggles. “And this great revelation came to you because of, like, what?” Her nose brushes Suki’s hairline, and Suki can feel Ty Lee’s breath on her forehead. It tickles.

“Next to Toph,” Suki answers with an almost imperceptible nod towards the stranger. “Saw them at the reception, too. I think I am in love.”

Ty Lee retorts: “Big words coming from you.” And Suki’s not entirely sure if Ty Lee is poking fun at her or if she’s actually amazed at Suki’s pash. “The last time I heard you talking like that you were, like, totally smitten with Sokka.”

“Don’t remind me,” Suki groans. “I still can’t believe that was a thing that happened.”

“As if!” Ty Lee says heatedly as if she were required by law to defend Sokka because she never quite overcame her crush on him. “You seriously can’t say something like that at his wedding!”

With the back of her free hand, she gently slaps Suki’s thigh, and Suki can’t hold back a chuckle. In reconciliation, Suki backpedals hastily: “I didn’t mean it like that.” Now, she lifts their intertwined hands to her lips and presses a soft kiss on Ty Lee’s fingers. “Sometimes I kind of forget that Sokka and I used to date.” Then she realises the way her words could come off as. “Not in a bad way! Just … it’s been so long, and we’re really close friends. You know what I mean?”

Ty Lee makes a contemplating motion with her head and hums. Then, after a moment, she says light-heartedly: “Totally! To be honest, sometimes I’m, like, forgetting it, too. Like, it’s more like I can’t think of a time when Sokka and Zuko weren’t, like, dating and stuff, right?” Her face lights up. “They’re so married!”

Her last words overlap with Katara asking them for their order, dutifully typing in Suki’s beer and Ty Lee’s oolongcha.

“No Mugicha?” Katara asks distractedly.

Waving her free hand dismissively, Ty Lee replies: “DD for now, seriously, I totally need the caffeine, right.” A smile makes its way onto her face and Suki thinks it may be caused by a combination of two things: Firstly, that Ty Lee is only driving until Mai gets here and releases her from her sober duties, and secondly, that Ty Lee cannot wait anymore to see her girlfriend again who has been gone for almost a week. (Which, admittedly, is not a long time for most people. But Ty Lee is not most people and she almost started wailing half a day after Mai’s departure. Naturally, she had to do it in Suki’s flat, starfished across Suki’s living room floor, a couch pillow in hand to sob dramatically into every once in a while.)

The door opens, revealing the last two people awaited: Smellerbee and Pipsqueak. They sit down next to Suki and the stranger who briefly meets Suki’s eyes while scooting closer to Toph, a gentle smile on their lips. Suki can’t take it and averts her eyes. (She wants to talk to them, to know their name, what brought them here – besides, you know, the wedding –, if they are single and maybe even interested in girls – interested in Suki, by any chance.)

“Where did you leave Longshot and The Duke?” Aang asks, leaning over the table to face both Pipsqueak and Smellerbee.

“Longshot doesn’t sing,” Smellerbee says, shedding her jacket and draping it over the back of the bench seat.

Pipsqueak says: “The Duke’s gonna be at the club.” He grins, throwing a hello and the desire for a green tea into the room. Katara nods and punches his order into the tablet.

“What about Jet?” Aang asks, evoking laughter from both Pipsqueak and Smellerbee.

“Not invited,” Smellerbee cackles. “Jet says it’s because Sokka and Zuko would rethink getting married if he were present.”

A shocked gasp draws everyone’s attention to Sokka who’s hand is pressed against his chest in mock offence. He exclaims: “I would never rethink marrying Zuko!”

“I might,” Zuko pipes in, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Didn’t want to take any risks. And Sokka thought it’d be weird to have that many exes present.”

“It would be weird. The quota has been met,” Sokka says. “I’m gonna file for divorce right now if you could do with another ex in this room.”

Suki laughs quietly while assessing the people in the room. Either the grooms are referring to Mai and Suki or there is another ex present Suki has never heard of. And if Zuko didn’t magically date Katara without Suki noticing, it must be the gorgeous person in front of her. (Which, okay, on one hand opens up the possibility of them being hetero, but on the other hand clearly shows that they would date someone like Sokka or Zuko – which could mean that Suki has a chance.)

“Please don’t,” Zuko says, pulling Sokka closer to him, “divorce is too expensive. We don’t have that kind of money.”

When Sokka gasps again, Ty Lee hides her face in Suki’s hair, laughing about their antics. The grip on Suki’s hand tightens for a moment and Suki can’t suppress the warmth coiling in her abdomen because she loves Ty Lee with all her heart and soul.

Suki doesn’t know anymore why she was dreading coming here because with Ty Lee’s hand in hers, and the people she’s known for years surrounding her, this evening can’t be anything other than perfect. (Even if her singing skills are more subpar than sublime, she’s here to have fun. And the way Aang practically throws himself into the small space in front of the table after their drinks arrived and they clinked glasses with Sokka and Zuko, and performs like he’s trying to impress the jury of a talent show, she’s sure that fun will be the last thing missing in this room.)

“We’re, like, totally gonna duet the shit of them,” Ty Lee whispers and Suki barks out a laugh.

  #2

“Zlint!” Ty Lee exclaims right after stepping through the door of the karaoke bar, pulling Suki through with her. “We were totally bitchin’ it!”

“You did,” Suki agrees, not sure if her contribution to their duets is as major as Ty Lee’s. “But I think I lost every ability to can when you-know-who stepped up.”

The group spilling out of the karaoke bar behind them also includes Sokka who drapes his arm over Suki’s shoulders and singsongs: “I could still divorce Zuko, just say a word. I didn’t think my singing would convince you to get back together with me.”

“We’re not divorcing!” Zuko calls from where he’s standing with Toph and Azula, and Toph says something to Zuko and Azula that actually manages to make Azula smirk.

Before turning back to Suki and Ty Lee, Sokka yells back: “Let me live!” Then he continues in a moderated voice and a grin: “Sorry to disappoint, but apparently I am stuck with my husband. Forever! Oh, no!” His grin widens if that’s even possible.

At this point (not that it hadn’t been obvious from the start), they all know that Sokka just really, really likes to say that Zuko and he are married. (Suki remembers the days leading up to the wedding when Katara, Sokka and Hakoda made akutaq and invited Suki over to eat with them; the nervousness that Sokka wasn’t comfortable revealing to anyone other than Suki; the late-night talks on the kitchen floor after Katara and Hakoda had already gone to bed; the way Sokka had held her hand and asked lowly what if he doesn’t want to marry me anymore, what if he changed his mind? and the way she couldn’t hold back a chuckle, telling him that she has never ever met anyone who’s as smitten with someone as Zuko and that there is no way Zuko could have changed his mind.)

“What a waste,” Ty Lee giggles at the same time that Suki says: “We weren’t even talking about you, dork!”

Sokka blinks in astonishment. “Huh, you weren’t talking about me? How come, I mean, why?”

Ducking her head in an attempt to come off as inconspicuous, Suki replies: “Not everything’s revolving around you, you know.”

“It should,” Sokka retorts, feigning offence, and buries his head in Suki’s hair to demonstrate the severity of her invidiousness.

Ty Lee leans towards Sokka and stage whispers: “Suki has a crush.” Then she nods to the group of their remaining friends. Suki wishes the earth would open up and swallow her whole, this is not Sokka-relevant information material.

“Do not!” Suki gasps, right before Sokka yanks his head up to look in the direction Ty Lee has nodded. He searches the faces of their friends, apparently trying to sus out which of them Suki could find attractive. (As if any of them would play in the same league as Yue whose name Suki learnt right after she tentatively took hold of the microphone and a chorus proclaiming her name to cheer her on erupted. – Not that there’s anything wrong with the others, Suki’s just not interested in the little sister of her ex-boyfriend, or people like Aang or Smellerbee who are so much younger than her.)

Sokka doesn’t seem to have run through the same equation as her, because he grips her shoulders, making her face him, and whispers scandalised: “You’ve got a crush on my sister? Suki!”

“Oh, please,” Suki forces over her lips, “I don’t. I … Sokka, eww. What the fuck.”

He lets go of her shoulders, his own relaxed once again. Then he scratches his neck with an awkward grin plastered on his face and says: “Sorry?” But it sounds more like a question than an actual apology.

“Katara is like my little sister,” Suki continues, and Sokka holds up his palms in a display of defeat.

Ty Lee, the absolute traitor, waves her hand dismissively and chimes in: “No, no, Yue. Suki couldn’t take her eyes off of her, right, like at all.”

“Ty Lee!” Indignation in her voice, Suki lets go of Ty Lee’s hand and crosses her arms in front of her chest. “What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing, I just think you should, like, so do something to prevent you from, like, totally wallowing in self-pity the next few weeks because you didn’t even try to, like, chat her up,” Ty Lee replies light-heartedly. “She’s either with Sokka or Zuko, so you can at least check if you’ve got, like, a chance or whatever.”

Even though it almost sounds reasonable when Ty Lee says it like that, Suki doesn’t want help from Sokka or Zuko. She wants to quietly marvel at Yue’s beauty – from afar. Maybe test the waters and introduce herself. The least she wants is Sokka inserting himself and trying to matchmake; actually, she doesn’t even want him knowing because the probability that he gets way too excited at the prospect that Suki could be dating again, puts way too much pressure on Suki. In the end, he’s going to annoy her relentlessly if she already talked to Yue and if Yue is as nice as he made her out to be (because Suki knows that Sokka is going to oversell Yue, and Suki is going to end up disappointed – either because Yue can’t live up to the picture Sokka painted or because Yue’s not interested in Suki at all).

“Oh,” Sokka says, surprising both Suki and Ty Lee with his lack of enthusiasm. “Yeah, I don’t know. Yue doesn’t really do the whole dating thing. Most of the time, at least.”

“Normally, Suki, like, doesn’t do it either,” Ty Lee reminds Sokka (as if it were necessary) before Suki has the chance to say something. (She’s not even sure what she could have said. Maybe that she’s glad. Maybe that this is terrible.) “They don’t even have to, like, date. This is a party; today is totally about getting people together. Guys, don’t be like that!” Ty Lee extends her arms and twirls, her bubble-gum pink skirt lazily fanning out. “Live a little!”

“Yeah, Sokka, live a little,” Aang exclaims and jumps onto Sokka’s back like a spider monkey, the popped collar of his decorated kuspuk hitting Sokka’s ear. (Suki desperately prays that nobody listened to their full exchange. This is humiliating.)

Instinctively, Sokka grabs the hollows of Aang’s knees and laughs. He yells: “I’m living, okay, I am absolutely living my best life!”

Aang wraps his arms around Sokka’s neck and chortles: “Good! Now, go on, o my majestic horse, carry me towards the party!” His heels dig into Sokka’s hips and Sokka attempts to throw Aang off his back, but he’s not serious about it and starts to walk towards Aang’s van.

“Did you just call me a stud?” Sokka asks smugly, adjusting his grip again.

“Well, I didn’t call you a dobbin,” Aang concedes, startling a laugh out of Zuko, Toph, Ty Lee and Suki. “Now, go! Come on, let’s get this party started!”

But instead of going on, Sokka comes to a halt and turns back to them. After an accessing look over their group, he says: “We didn’t think this through, gentlepeople.”

“Why?” Katara asks, also taking a look at everyone as if she were able to find out what Sokka’s on about.

“The Mystery Machine doesn’t have space for so many people,” Sokka says, furrowing his brow.

Ty Lee shakes her head chidingly and chimes in: “Oh, whatever, Yue can, like, totally ride with us!” Suki almost loses it at the sight of Ty Lee’s shit-eating grin, but she reigns herself in because she doesn’t want Yue to think that she’s dissatisfied with Yue. Literally biting her tongue, Suki can see the winks Ty Lee and Sokka exchange before Sokka turns back to walking to Aang’s van, the rest of their group except for Suki, Yue and Ty Lee trailing after him.

You’re on thin fucking ice, Suki tries to convey through a hard gaze in Ty Lee’s direction, but Ty Lee just smiles at her as if she weren’t aware of her treachery.

When Yue opens her mouth to say something, Ty Lee exclaims: “I’m gonna go get the car, seriously, don’t move!” And then she’s gone.

“That was … weird,” Yue says, both eyebrows raised, but with the same smile she displayed on various occasions this evening.

Suki chuckles nervously and replies: “Yeah, she’s a weird one, our Ty Lee.” She has absolutely no idea why she said this; something that makes her sound like an elderly lady talking about the ‘special interests’ of her grandchildren. But Ty Lee is already too far away for Suki to find safety in following her without looking like a fool, so Suki remains rooted to the spot, averting her eyes before remembering that it’s kind of rude to ignore Yue.

“So,” Yue says unexpectedly, taking two or three steps to get into Suki’s general vicinity, “you’re Suki?”

“Yeah, I must be,” Suki replies but the uptilt of her voice at the end implies a question, so she corrects herself: “I mean, yes, I’m Suki. And you’re Yue.” At least she didn’t say something like and who might you be? Maybe there is mercy somewhere in the universe.

Yue, however, doesn’t seem to be bothered about Suki’s inability to talk to her. Instead, she pulls her shawl tighter around her shoulders and crosses her arms in front of her chest, and confirms: “Yes, that’s true.”

For a moment, they stand a mere metre apart, awkward silence encompassing them. Suki shifts her weight from one foot to the other and throws a glance towards their car, but there is no trace of Ty Lee even though their car is clearly in Suki’s line of vision. The traitor.

Yue drags one of her feet over the asphalt and a group of strangers walks past them. Suddenly, Yue’s much closer than before, probably because she got out of the way of the group. They look at each other and Yue breaks their silence with a question: “So … how did Ty Lee and you meet?”

This is not something Suki anticipated or expected. Normally, the first thing people ask of her is not … Ty Lee of all things. It’s not even that Suki can’t talk about Ty Lee – oh, she definitively could for hours – but when the first thing a beautiful woman asks is about the person you’re with, then the message is pretty clear, isn’t it? Yue is much more interested in Ty Lee than Suki. (This somewhat eases the tension in Suki’s abdomen because the focus shifts from her onto Ty Lee. But Suki also realises that she wouldn’t be interested in herself right now. She didn’t even manage to form one measly, coherent sentence since she’s been left alone with Yue. Why would Yue think of her as an acceptable conversationalist?)

“A few friends of mine and I founded a tessenjutsu group,” Suki says, longing for the wide pockets of her pants to bury her hands in. “After a couple of months, Ty Lee stumbled upon one of our flyers and joined our group.” The story is much less exciting than most people think. “Sokka and Zuko actually met at one of our show fights.”

“Oh! Sokka told me about that,” Yue replies, even though she doesn’t seem quite satisfied with Suki’s answer. “We used to talk much more, but sometimes life gets in the way.”

Her gaze turns melancholic and for a moment she averts her eyes, lost in thought. Then she blinks deliberately and changes the topic: “I only knew Katara and Aang before coming here. I hadn’t even met Zuko before which is pretty awkward if you ask me. This is the first wedding I’ve been to where I didn’t know both spouses to be.”

“Where did you meet them before?” Suki asks and it’s not the best phrasing because the wedding is so small (as is custom, but nonetheless), but she’s confident that Yue’s going to know what she means.

“Katara, Sokka, Aang, and I grew up in the same neighbourhood,” Yue answers, then she leans close into Suki’s personal space (Suki catches her breath) and continues in a conspiratorial whisper: “This is actually Sokka’s second wedding. We were married in kindergarten for like half a day before I decided boys were icky and he found out girls have cooties.” She laughs, and Suki falls a little in love with her right then and there. “But right before elementary school my family moved away. We corresponded until we were old enough to get phones.”

Yue doesn’t move out of Suki’s space again and Suki takes this as a sign and decides: She won’t be the embodiment of the useless wlw trope, she’s going to be a functional bi. She can do this. Just flirt with the pretty lady, Suki, come on!

“It’s a real shame that we didn’t attend the same kindergarten,” Suki says and in the very moment she continues, she thinks that this is probably not the right way to flirt, this is probably the worst way to flirt with someone who’s technically a stranger, but she can’t stop herself from talking, “you could have married me to get back at him.”

Suki’s not sure where she’s taking the courage from but she’s reaching for Yue’s elbow and touches it briefly to emphasise her point. (Maybe Ty Lee’s already rubbing off on her, terrible.)

“Emily Chen proposed to me a week later and I think we never filed for divorce,” Yue says, voice full of mischief. “I’m a married woman, it seems.”

“Scandalous,” Suki gasps in fake outrage. “If I had a nickel for every time I was rejected by a married person, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.”

Yue hides her mouth behind her hand, but Suki can still see the way her eyes crinkle at the corners. “Who could have rejected you?” An almost imperceptible blush spreads over her cheeks and Suki thinks that maybe she does have a chance with Yue.

“Sokka,” Suki jokes. “Or rather: Zuko did the rejecting for him. – Now that I think about it, it’s even weirder that it happened twice in one day, in like a really, really short amount of time.”

They laugh, and Suki catches sight of Ty Lee’s head that pops up behind a car right next to theirs. Redirecting her gaze onto Yue’s face, she says: “It seems like Ty Lee has finally remembered where we parked the car.”

As if on cue, Yue takes a step back, right out of Suki’s personal space into her own. As if she remembered that they’re not entirely alone; that they’re still out in the open on some street, Ty Lee only a few metres away.

“That’s good,” Yue says, the tone of her voice rather detached and distanced, and the line of her shoulders less relaxed than before. The engine of the car starts up and Yue turns towards the street. The awkward silence embraces them once again, and Suki wonders when, where and in what way she could have offended the universe to deserve such discomfort.

When Ty Lee pulls the car over, Suki reaches for the handle of the pillion seat because she thinks it could come off as flirty if she holds open the door for Yue. But when she opens the door, the seat is already taken: Apparently, Ty Lee thought it would be rather clever to move every little thing the car contains onto the front passenger’s seat to keep Suki and Yue from sitting in the front. The smile she displays would seem apologetic to most people, but Suki knows that Ty Lee is absolutely incapable of feeling remorse. (Well, okay, not entirely.)

“Sorry!” Ty Lee exclaims, motioning towards the backseat. “There’s still, like, plenty of room in the back, right?”

“Is that so?” Sukis asks at the same moment that Yue says: “No problem!”

Ty Lee sends a prompting gaze Suki’s way, and Suki closes the car door, already reaching for the backdoor without looking for it. Her hand brushes Yue’s and for a second her heart and head short-circuit. They let go of the handle, and Suki takes a step back to make room for Yue. Both utter an apology, and Suki can see out of the corner of her eye that Ty Lee suppresses laughter, only semi-successful.

Risking a second attempt, Suki reaches for the handle again and pulls the door open, outlandishly sweeping a curtsey (or rather: trying and failing at a curtsey and flapping her arm in a hopefully graceful manner). She adds: “After you!”

Yue smiles and shakes her head but climbs into the car without further ado. Suki slides in after her, catching sight again of Ty Lee’s shit-eating grin. (Now is not the time to think about it in great detail but she will definitely get back at Ty Lee for this stunt. If she’s persistent enough, she might even rope Mai into it. The probability of the latter happening is … not too high, but Suki likes to shoot for galaxies hoping that she hits a few stars on the way.)

“Your sense of orientation must be pretty bad,” Yue says. Then she gasps at her own words, clapping her hands in front of her mouth. “I’m sorry, I just mean: We could have walked to the car together, then you wouldn’t have gotten lost.”

Not trusting herself to keep it together and from straight up calling Ty Lee out in front of Yue or melt at the naïve sweetness that Yue emanates, Suki bites her tongue.

“I totally didn’t think of that, like, at all,” Ty Lee responds, sugary innocence resonating in her words. “That would have been such a help. I got totally lost in the parking lot.”

You did not!, Suki mouths and she’s pretty sure that Ty Lee has seen her, because she starts to giggle on the front seat again. Leaning her head against the headrest, Suki says: “We’re gonna take a photo of the parking spot, so we don’t magically lose the car again.”

 #3

 Suki is really doing her best, okay. She held open the car door for Yue and tripped Ty Lee on their way into the club; she asked Yue what she would like to drink and then went to the bar to buy her that very drink; she stood next to Yue and talked about their occupations and the way they spend their weekends, things they liked growing up, stuff you don’t usually talk about in a club with a stranger; she peeled Ty Lee off her shoulder (multiple times) to signal her availability; she initiated soft, gentle physical contact throughout their conversation to indicate her interest; she was genuinely funny, causing Yue to throw her head back in laughter, baring her teeth and revealing the column of her neck. At least seven of those actions could be considered aggressive flirting; if Suki were generous, she could even count tripping Ty Lee because it definitely counts as an act for the good of humanity.

Now she’s draining the last of her drink and thinks that she doesn’t want to go home, so she can as well go big.

“Would you like to dance?” She asks with more confidence in her voice than in her soul, breaking their contemporary pop-song remix filled silence. “I think I know this song.” In reality, Suki’s not sure if she knows the song or if the countless remixes have started to blur into each other so neatly that she can’t differentiate between them anymore. But it doesn’t matter, does it? She doesn’t need to know a song to dance to it with a beautiful woman.

Yue doesn’t look too enthralled at the prospect, and Suki feels her heart sinking. Maybe she’s been reading this absolutely wrong. Maybe she just thought that Yue seemed as interested in her. Oh, no, maybe she’s just being nice, and Suki is exactly the disaster bi she didn’t want to be, reading friendly banter as tentative dalliance.

Swallowing down her disappointment, she smiles at Yue and says: “Well, you know what? I think I’m gonna go and get some fresh air, now that I think of it.”

“Mind if I tag along?” Yue asks to Suki’s surprise. Because she had been sure that she overstepped Yue’s boundaries, alienating her in the process. “Fresh air would do me some good, I think.”

Suki nods and, without thinking about it, she extends her hand for Yue to hold, like she would do if Ty Lee or Sokka would stand before her. But Yue only spares a glance and doesn’t take hold of Suki’s hand, and even though it’s completely understandable and valid that Yue doesn’t take her hand, it still feels awkward. Suki's empty hand falls to her side, and she turns around to head for the exit and to avoid that Yue sees the look on her face. 

Once they get stamps on the back of their hands, they step out into the cool air, and it hits them right in the face. Suki feels a whole lot better underneath the streetlamp lit sky. Yue is right behind her when they swerve a group of smoking people in showy dresses and ten-inch heels, and Suki can almost forget what happened a few minutes ago.

The front court isn't too big, and a few benches are standing around, waiting for drunk and tired clubbers and hushed late-night conversations. Suki walks to one further away from the other people to catch a break from loud voices and close contact to strangers. Sitting down on the cold wood, she watches Yue out of the corner of her eye standing for a moment longer, until she’s sitting down as well.

The distant chatter and laughter of the other group is carried by the wind into the other direction, and they’re sitting in something almost resembling quiescence. From their bench, Suki can oversee most of the parking lot and she can even make out their car underneath a streetlamp at the far end.

Somewhat sobering up from the heated atmosphere in the club, Suki starts to wonder again what kind of signals Yue is sending her. When they finally reached the club and reunited with the rest of their group, Yue could have easily sat at Zuko’s, Azula’s, June’s and Toph’s table, or joined Aang, Sokka, Ty Lee and Katara on the dancefloor, or followed The Duke, Longshot, Smellerbee and Pipsqueak upstairs to the second dancefloor. But she didn’t. Yue waited for Suki to come back and stood with her offside, watching the people on the dancefloor, waving at their friends whenever they emerged from the crowd. – At any given time, she could have walked away. But she didn’t. She chose to spend her entire evening with Suki and that must mean something. – Yes, Yue hadn’t been interested in dancing with Suki, true, but it could also mean that Yue’s not interested in dancing, Suki or no Suki.

Yue had been receptive to her flirting, Suki feels confident. Would Yue be sitting next to her if she weren’t?

So, Suki draws a few deep and discreet breaths, and breaks the silence: “I don’t know if it’s bad luck, but there has been someone tonight really outshining the grooms.” Her eyes flicker to Yue’s face to gauge her reaction, before she can force her gaze on the parking lot again. Casual, Suki, just one damn time! “You know who’s the prettiest tonight?”

Her fists lying on her knees, Suki waits for anything. She’s a bit proud of herself because this is going to be the smoothest pick-up line she has ever used. There is literally no way this can go wrong. (Well, there is the possibility that Yue is deeply and utterly hetero and won’t take it as a compliment, but even if she’s not romantically interested in Suki, it’s still likely that she’s going to react in a respectful manner. – Suki doesn’t think that Sokka would be friends with someone that couldn’t handle being mistaken for gay.)

“Ty Lee?” Yue says. (Or asks? Suki doesn’t have the foggiest if the uptilt of her voice is meant as a question or just caused by embarrassment. – Either way, this is not what Suki envisioned. At all.)

Mai is supposed to arrive at any given moment and maybe it’s time that someone explains to Yue that Ty Lee is already in loving, monogamous hands, so Suki retorts, feigning an amused chuckle: “Don’t let her girlfriend hear you talk like that.”

The way Yue furrows her brow makes her seem more contemplating than surprised. The fingers of her right hand tap an unsteady rhythm on the back of her other hand, and her voice sounds uncertain when she says: “I think it's already too late for that.”

And Suki doesn't know how to take Yue's soft confession because as far as Suki is concerned, Yue and Mai have never met. Suki is at a loss for words, and they fall back into the awkward silence Suki was desperate to leave behind.

A few minutes go by, then a cab pulls into the parking lot and Suki looks without much interest at the shadowy figure inside paying the driver and rummaging around. When the door is opened, however, Suki perks up because it’s none other than Mai who exits the cab. And if Mai is here, it means that Suki is officially released from her role as Ty Lee’s chaperone. (Not that Suki had been dutifully chaperoning Ty Lee in the first place. Or that Ty Lee actually needed someone chaperoning her.)

With poise in her every step, Mai makes her way over to Suki and Yue, calmly stepping around suspicious puddles and radiating serenity.

“Mai,” Suki calls out as if Mai wasn’t already on her way to them. “What took you so long?”

Wrinkling her nose, Mai returns her greeting and says: “Hit a traffic jam after a massive departure delay.” Her left hand is wrapped around the strap of her pochette and she throws a glance towards the entrance. “Suki, I need to know something before I go in there.”

Suki nods and shifts involuntarily closer to the edge of the bench. Mai and her, they don’t usually interact too much even though Ty Lee is something like Suki’s best friend. They don’t really have as much in common as Suki sometimes wishes. So, if Mai needs her opinion on some matter or another, Suki thinks it must be vital.

“What do you think is more important,” Mai starts, her expression flickering between deadpan and concerned, “looking for Ty Lee or Zuko and Sokka?”

Suki snorts with laughter and asks: “Is this really something you should be asking?”

“I think,” Mai replies, and she seems peeved, “I want to act in the best interests of all parties concerned. I also think I could offend one of them by going to the other one first. And I am too tired to fall victim to their antics.”

Now Suki realises that Mai is serious, but she still can’t hold back teasing her a little: “You think Zuko could be offended if you look for Ty Lee first? Seems out of character to me.”

“Very funny,” Mai says, rolling her eyes at Suki. “You know better than me that Sokka’s a theatre kid at heart.” Which is true, unfortunately. “So, opinions?”

Suki shrugs and finally answers Mai’s question: “Last time we saw them, Sokka and Ty Lee were painting the dancefloor red. Best bet is walking straight into the crowd and taking potluck who’s the first one spotting you.”

Mai nods absentmindedly, then she turns away and heads for the entrance. She doesn’t make it that far before Suki calls after her: “Hurry up, Ty Lee’s been crying so much since you left.”

“Ty Lee cries crocodile tears every time we’re on the phone,” Mai retorts over her shoulder without turning back. “She’s going to live.”

When Mai enters the building while opening her pochette to retrieve her portemonnaie, Suki finally gives her attention back to Yue who looks positively alienated, so Suki attempts to explain Mai’s behaviour: “Don’t be fooled, Mai’s just as eager to see Ty Lee. You can’t pry them away from each other, even if you tried. Mai’s just … Mai’s not big on PDA, I guess. But you probably know that already.”

Yue blinks at her. “I,” she hesitates, “do not.”

Leaning into Yue’s space, Suki asks excitedly: “You wanna tell me she’s more public with her affection when I’m not around? This is outrageous. I think I deserve to see Mai all soppy and corny!”

“No,” Yue intercepts. It still looks like she’s trying to make sense of the situation. “I mean, I have never met Mai.”

Now it’s Suki’s turn to frown. “Didn’t you say that, you know, you told Mai Ty Lee is the prettiest?”

“I said I think I told Ty Lee’s girlfriend that Ty Lee is the prettiest,” Yue replies slowly. Which doesn’t make sense because Mai is Ty Lee’s girlfriend and Yue said those words to Suki.

Suki blinks. And she blinks. And she blinks. Then the realisation hits her, and she points to the entrance door of the club and then to herself. Her hand makes a weird circular motion, and she ascertains beyond doubt: “Mai is Ty Lee’s girlfriend.”

And when Yue’s only reaction consists of closing her eyes and throwing back her head, Suki declares: “Ty Lee is my best friend. Ty Lee is not my girlfriend.” (Her words may be tinged with the slightest bit of hysteria.)

“Oh,” is everything that slips past the smile growing on Yue’s face. She’s lifting her head, and when their eyes meet, Suki asks not without agitation: “Wait, let me get this straight: You thought I was dating Ty Lee? Because I’ve been flirting with you the whole night long and already began to think you just weren’t interested.” She snickers. “You can tell me if you’re not interested but if it’s because of Ty Lee I can assure you that she’s not my girlfriend. Never was, never will be.”

“Well, I must confess,” Yue replies, also snickering, “I was irritated because it seemed like you were trying to hit on me, but I also thought: Why would she try to hit on you, Yue, she’s got a gorgeous girlfriend. So, I didn’t try to dwell too long on the thought?”

“Oh, wow, you asked about Ty Lee’s and my meet cute, didn’t you?” Without thinking about, Suki reaches out and rests her hand on Yue’s elbow. “I thought you were really, really into Ty Lee. I felt kind of bad because I didn’t know if you knew that she’s in a committed relationship.” Suki hesitates but then she decides to throw all caution overboard. “And Sokka kind of said that you didn’t do the whole dating thing? So, I didn’t know if you were just trying to reject me as gently as possible.”

Yue splutters which shouldn’t make her more endearing, but it does. “Sokka is an overprotective dork.” She sighs deeply. “I don’t usually date, he’s not wrong. But I’m not not doing the whole dating thing.” Like an afterthought, she leans into Suki’s touch and Suki almost forgets to actually listen to the words coming out of Yue’s mouth.

(Concentrating is hard, okay, she’s so close to Yue. She can see the cut glass embedded into the tiny stars on her earlobe and the texture of the ivory, almost fan-shaped earring that Suki now knows is an uluaq-earring that Katara gave to her. She can see the moles dotted across Yue’s neck and cheek, and her dark roots. Suki sees her own distorted reflection in Yue’s eyes and the faint wrinkles around the corner of her eyes. She can make out a single freckle on the bridge of Yue’s nose. – It’s not that Suki doesn’t want to listen to Yue, but her beauty is truly distracting.)

“So,” Suki says softly, tearing away her gaze from Yue’s lips, “you do want to dance with me?”

Grabbing Suki’s free hand and enclosing it with both her own, Yue retorts: “Well, I want to dance with you but Sokka’s not entirely wrong? Dating is pretty exhausting, and I don’t often think someone’s interesting enough to try?”

“You know I’ve heard that everything that comes before but can be omitted,” Suki replies because she doesn’t know how to take Yue’s words. Yue’s either turning her down or asking her out. Which one it is? Fuck if Suki knows.

“Okay.” Yue starts drawing nonsensical shapes on the back of Suki’s hand, apparently turning over words on her tongue. (Suki’s about to melt. Just straight up dissolve into a puddle of confused contentment.) “I usually don’t date because people aren’t interesting to me, romantically speaking. This explanation, however, kind of ignores the fact that in the past some people didn’t want to date me because I’m … ace.” The hesitancy of Yue’s words hits Suki right in the heart (and elicits a rage that Suki can barely force down her throat).

But Suki doesn’t tell her some platitude about the validity of asexuality (because one must be a self-entitled twat to think that this is necessary in any kind of way; as if her asexuality were any less real without verbal confirmation) and Suki doesn’t tell her some truism about how it’s their loss that they didn’t keep her close (because duh). Instead, Suki says: “My last boyfriend broke up with me because, in his opinion, Ty Lee and I shouldn’t be touching so much.”

Her hand jerks up slightly to make air quotes but Yue’s hands are still holding it firmly between them. So, she shrugs her shoulders to make up for it.

“I think it’s nice,” Yue says. “You know, when I’m not currently obsessing over the fact that you’re touching my arm even though you’re clearly taken.” She smiles apologetically.

“Most people think it’s nice. At first.” Suki tilts her head. “But I think I would like to give it a shot. See how you like it a few weeks from now.”

Something in the back of Suki’s head rings out. Something about we grew up in the same neighbourhood but right before elementary school my family moved away. Something about I only knew Katara and Aang before coming here. But she doesn’t want to concentrate on the obstacles that lie before them, she wants to grab Yue’s hand and drag her indoors. She wants to dance underneath the neon lights. She wants to cup Yue’s face in her hands, brush her cheek with her thumb and take in the way her lashes cast a shadow on her skin. She wants to sink her fingers into Yue’s hairline. She wants to pull her impossibly close, and even closer still. She wants to drown in Yue’s laughter and drink in her every expression. She wants to listen to everything Yue is willing to tell. (She even wants Ty Lee’s triumphant cheers and her Seriously, I, like, totally called it!, and Sokka’s flummoxed expression.)

“Ask me again.” Yue’s grip on Suki’s hand tightens and Suki is positively overwhelmed.

Suki takes her hand off of Yue’s elbow and brings it down to their clasped hands. Cupping Yue’s hand in turn, she asks as desired: “Do you want to dance with me?”

Suddenly getting to her feet, Yue holds onto Suki’s hands and pulls her right up with her. They almost crash into each other, unable to catch themselves or the other, and laughter spills out of them into the eternal twilit night.

“Yes, I do want to dance with you,” Yue breathes out into the small space between them, and Suki almost lets go of her hands in excited surprise. “We should do it now.”

Yue turns around and pulls Suki with her, beelining to the entrance of the club and straight into the waiting mouth of a soft teethed beast. (Suki is ready. If she can turn a whole day from anxious apprehension to absolute perfection, then she can do this to. It’s just a dance with a pretty lady, Suki, come on, you got this! And she will.)

[intpstyle]

Detective Conan Meta: Trauma, being seen & the Inner Child

Okay, so it’s 6AM and I woke up with this essay half-formed in my mind and I need to talk about DC. Yesterday, I saw a quote on tumblr that read

“to be loved is to be seen”

and it literally haunted my dreams. I dreamt of Shinichi being unable to tell Ran who he is for so long now (we won’t go into the half a year debate (in this post)) and it got me thinking about the unbearable loneliness of it all. Then I thought of Heiji and of how liberating it must be for Shinichi that some people do know him for who he really is - that some people see him, that some people are able to love him, all of him, because they’ve recognised him even when he looks like a child. And that got a chain reaction of symbolism going in my brain because THINK ABOUT IT, Shinichi is literally forced to live as his own inner child.

So, we open with this lovably weird 17-year-old (fuck no, in the manga he’s actually only 16) with barely any survival skills who’s been left alone in a huge mansion because his parents went adios, who doesn’t have a whole lot of close friends because he always found it difficult to connect with others because he’s so focussed on his detective work and who, when he finally manages to ask the love of his life out on a date and inevitably stumbles over another murder, claims that “you get used to it”, that corpses don’t affect him, that nothing really affects him and, worst of all, he actually means it. This is our protagonist. He’s All Grown Up. He always tried to be All Grown Up. Frankly, with parents like these, he always had to be All Grown Up. And it’s okay! Because he found something he loves doing (finding the truth, restoring justice, helping people) and he’s good at it and people actually love him for it (look at all these fan letters, Ran, look at them!)

And then Ran (bless you, angel child) starts crying because - because so many reasons. One, she’s still affected by what happened. Two, she sees the love of her life being strong - and he always has and had to be strong; it must be so bloody exhausting and he’s not even aware of how tired he is, but to ask him to take a break, to take a look at what all this death and suffering and loneliness really means, to take it in, to stop, would be to take the one thing away (apart from her, but she doesn’t know that) that keeps him stable and grounded and to risk having him fall apart. I don’t think she knows this consciously, but Ran is empathetic and has been around Shinichi all her life - this, I think, is the moment it really hits her that this brutality (a literal decapitated corpse that spews blood like a fountain on a roller coaster!!!) has become her best friend’s “normal”. She is scared. She is worried. And she shows it.

And then Shinichi (bless you, cool child) tries to play it down, to make her feel better, to show her that this is nothing to despair over. He, too, is trying to be considerate of this incredible girl who always takes on other people’s burdens and their pain and grins and bears it. But it isn’t all compassion - he frankly also does not have the tools to deal with someone being so vulnerable and innocent and, dare I say?, child-like. And what does he do? Does he stay and engage with her side of things? Does he hear her out and consider that he HAS become callous and somewhat addicted to shedding light on the dark sides of other people? That he feels uncomfortable feeling the light turned back on himself? No! No, of course not! He’s 16 and has the emotional range of a tea spoon (#relatable). Instead, he latches onto the next sign of mystery and turns back to his quest for truth where he feels safe and needed. He LITERALLY tells Ran to “go ahead” and that he’ll “catch up” and boy, will he ever (emotionally).

We all know what happens next: he bites off more than he can chew. He stumbles over a case that even he admits is “serious” and is LITERALLY hit over the head with the realisation that this - socio-economic corruption, systemic criminal organisations, being vulnerable and opening up to a loved one - is the world of adults and he is NOT ready for it. So he, like everybody else, is given the choice to call it quits or to choose life, start over and re-learn the things he missed out in childhood to become an adult. He becomes his inner child again (the first chapter literally ends with the dialogue

“You okay!? Can you stand up, little boy?”

“Huh?”

and he’s trying. He’s trying to stand up, okay?) and it smarts. In this old/new form, he is taken care of, but not taken taken seriously by the policemen (”You must’ve been scared”) and it freaks him out that they treat him (the master detective!) like a child again. At this height, he fails to get into his own house (some more symbolism right there) and he is not recognised by Professor Agasa until he shows him some impressive deduction work, demonstrating that this really is at the core of his character - he enjoys and is good at mysteries. That was never the problem. Neglecting just about everything else was (- the same goes for OG Holmes, I’d argue). Seeing how the situation he went through literally (damn that’s a lot of literally) turned Shinichi back into a child, Professor Agasa warns him not to inflict the same traumatic damage on others - especially since the situation is not yet resolved. (...but Agasa’s involvement is another can of worms)

There’s a whole other post in Shinichi’s choice to call himself “Conan Edogawa” and wearing his father’s glasses as well (aka trying to redefine his identity by viewing the world through the lense of the people he admired (notably his father’s frames without the lenses though!)), but the most interesting thing happens when Ran shows up. He tries, desperately, not to be recognised - not to be seen - by her in this form because it’s not HIM (it is though) and because it would involve Ran in danger; would put her in the adult world he couldn’t deal with and couldn’t protect her from, thus, ironically, infantilising her and (although in an attempt to be heroic, nonetheless still) limiting her agency.

And this is where the irony really kicks in - because Ran finds it much easier to talk to this raw, vulnerable version of himself that he doesn’t allow her to see as a “grown-up” 16-year-old. It is now, as a child that asks straight-forward questions, that he learns that Ran really does love him and that she knows the good (dependable, brave & cool), as well as the bad (full of himself, bit of a jerk and obsessed with mysteries) sides of him better than he does. At the very moment, he, touched by her vulnerability and wanting to open up, decides to tell her the truth, he is again reminded of the Men in Black by Kogoro falling down the stairs like a sack of potatoes and he (dependable, brave & cool) decides not to involve anyone in the mess he brought upon himself until he can stand up to the world of adulthood that he shrank from.

The beauty of the series is that Shinichi slowly realises, bit by bit, drop by drop, excruciating chapter after excruciating chapter, that the way for him (an INTP) to become an adult is precisely by letting others see him as he is and thus forming lasting, real and dependable relationships (by developing his Fe). This tragically begins with Akemi Miyano (a first step and another reminder that he is not capable enough yet), is slowly built up with the Detective Boys (who are honestly so important for him), continues with Ai (#bestpartners, for both of whom Professor Agasa, the eternal child-inventor, is a safe haven where they can catch up on what they missed out on, Ai obviously much more so than Conan), reaches a really, really sweet high with Heiji (#bestbromance), a rather dissatisfying conclusion with his parents (who, and I cannot stress this enough, decide the best way to convince their traumatised son that his life is in danger is to point a literal gun (okay, it’s a pistol) at his face in disguise) and climaxes with Eisuke Hondo (at which point he is confident enough to proclaim who he is even while still in the form of a child (although that doesn’t make the context of the situation any less stupid (thus proving that he IS still a love-struck teenager at the end of the day))). tl;dr By being both the professional adult “Sleeping Kogoro”, as well as the cooky child “Conan Edogawa” at once, Shinichi can play with both facets of his teenage life until he reaches a level of stability that allows him to integrate the child mind into his adult mind - and that will be the point at which he’ll be able to fully become (not just temporarily play the role of) Shinichi Kudo.

PS: It is also interesting to compare Ai’s and Shinichi’s approaches to being stuck in their childhood selves. Shinichi, not as scarred and slowly building up a network of people he trusts, is eager to move on and begs Ai to give him the temporary antidote as often as he can - he WANTS to grow up and be a grown-up so badly. There is so much (Ran) waiting for him there.

Ai, on the other hand, is much more cautious and warns him not to jump the gun. To her, much more scarred and still rather alone, this is an invaluable second shot at life and she is as careful with it as she humanly can, constantly worrying and on the look-out that someone could drag her back to the prison of responsibilities and obligations. That’s why it was SUCH a pivotal moment for her when she used and realised the use of her adult form when she saved the Detective Boys from the fire. She, too, is slowly connecting the two halves of herself but I suspect that it’ll take her an entire childhood to do so. (Also, interestingly, as an INTJ, she puts down her roots in a very different way from Conan. She cherishes her new relationships and protects them fiercely, but the real signs of her settling down ever-so-slowly is her growing willingness to reconstruct her internal moral system (Fi) and to acquire and find security in material possessions (Se), like her designer handbags and her little football-man-phone-strap.)

[mediaevalmusereads]

Strange the Dreamer. By Laini Taylor. New York: Little, Brown Books, 2017.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Genre: YA fantasy

Part of a Series? Yes, Strange the Dreamer #1

Summary: The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around— and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever. What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving? The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: blood, violence, drug use, rape, sexual slavery, abduction and imprisonment

Overview: I really enjoyed Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, so I decided to give her new work a go. Overall, I also really enjoyed Strange the Dreamer because it had a lot of things that are characteristic of Taylor’s writing that I love - lush, lyrical prose; tragic, star-crossed love; a political conflict involving otherworldly creatures. The reason why I’m giving this book 4 instead of 5 stars mainly has to do with the pacing and the way events played out. There wasn’t anything wrong, I think, with the way Taylor handled her story - it’s just that I felt like things started to rush to a close too quickly, and I would have liked to spend more time in the book exploring character emotions.

Writing: Taylor’s prose tends to fall into two categories: lyrical and descriptive or straight-forward and economical. Part 1 of this book is more lyrical; the metaphors are more fantastical and the prose evokes a sense of longing and fascination. Taylor really captures the feeling of being immersed in a library, surrounded by stories, as well as what it’s like to have a dream (not a dream in your sleep - more like a goal or a wish that has a small or nonexistence likelihood of coming true). Part 1 was probably my favorite part of the book for this reason, as subsequent sections tended to lose that lyrical quality and fall into a style more typical of YA books.

Taylor’s pace is also fairly well-done in that I didn’t feel like I was being rushed or that I was plodding through the book. The only thing I would change in terms of pacing is the book’s ending; I felt a lot of things were dropped on the reader all at once, and though they were foreshadowed earlier in the book (which I very much appreciated), I tend not to like endings where too much happens.

Before I close this section, a couple of notes on descriptions and worldbuilding: though I know teenagers have sexual urges, I was a little put off by the descriptions of teenagers’ bodies in certain places. I can remember a few instances where Taylor describes the look of one character’s breasts, and though it wasn’t gratuitous, I didn’t like that these descriptions were included. I also thought the worldbuilding detail of “women get tattoos on their bellies as a rite of passage/coming of age marker when they become fertile and Sarai longs for one of her own” was a little uncomfortable. It made me feel like the world Taylor built was concerned with showcasing female reproductive capacity, and that just seems exclusionary. While it could have worked if the story was more about pushing back against reproductive regulation or exploring what such tattoos would mean for trans characters, as the book stands, that doesn’t really happen, so it was a weird detail that I felt distracted from the main themes.

Plot: This book primarily follows Lazlo Strange - an orphan who dreams of finding the lost city of Weep - and Sarai - the daughter of a dead god and a human who must hide her existence in order to stay alive. Lazlo is surprised one day when some inhabitants of Weep - led by someone called “the Godslayer” - show up in his library, asking for assistance from the land’s greatest scientists. Though Lazlo isn’t a scientist, he is the most knowledgeable person about Weep and its culture, so the Godslayer elects to take him along. Meanwhile, Sarai and several other demigods live in a secluded Sanctuary, hiding from the inhabitants of Weep so that they won’t be slain on account of their parentage.

Without spoiling anything (which is kind of hard, since there is a lot that happens), I will say that I really liked the central conflict of this book. Taylor does a good job of setting up a problem with no black-and-white solutions; it seems like everyone had a legitimate reason for acting the way they do, and no matter what happens, someone will be hurt.

But perhaps the thing I appreciated most about the plot was that Taylor never sets up a surprise twist that comes out of nowhere. I feel like I’ve read a lot of YA books that drop a bomb on the reader with no set up, and I personally feel like such twists make the story feel less cohesive. Taylor sets up all her reveals and twists by dropping hints early and frequently, and rather than make the story feel dull, I felt like they made the end emotionally fulfilling.

If I had one criticism of the plot it would be that the romance doesn’t feel genuine. Lazlo and Sarai seem to fall in love with each other too quickly, which made it seem like they got together because they just hadn’t had opportunities to meet other people. I didn’t see what they saw in each other aside from looks and special qualities like “oh, he’s able to share my dreams” or “she was kind to me when so many other people weren’t.” I wanted more out the romance, like Sarai falling for Lazlo’s kindness and Lazlo falling for Sarai’s compassion towards those who would harm her. Maybe there was some of that, but it was definitely overshadowed by lengthy descriptions of kissing, which I wasn’t much a fan of. I also wasn’t really a fan of the “dates” that they went on; some parts were cute, but overall, they dragged.

Characters: Lazlo, one of our protagonists, is likeable in that he’s pretty much the embodiment of a lot of book nerds. He starts off shy, completely absorbed with fairy tales and folklore, and loves to roam the abandoned stacks in his library. What I liked most about him, though, was his willingness to help people even if they treat him poorly. For example, there’s a character named Theryn Nero who is basically a Science Bro. He’s rich, beloved by everyone, and gets famous for cracking the secret of alchemy. While he puts himself up as the lone genius, he was actually aided by Lazlo and takes sole credit for a lot of things that Lazlo proved to be key in discovering. Lazlo, though annoyed, never lets his feelings get in the way of helping Nero when the greater good is at stake, and I really admired that.

If I had any criticisms of Lazlo, it would be that I wish his “dreamer” status or knowledge base was put to better use. After Lazlo gets to Weep, he isn’t quite as interesting as he was before, probably because he no longer needs to use his vast knowledge of stories to make his way through the world.

Sarai, our other protagonist, is fairly sympathetic in that all her problems feel undeserved. She is forced to stay locked away in a hidden Sanctuary in order to protect herself and her little found family (composed of other demigods), and though it’s for the best, it also feels stifling. I really liked that Sarai was not single-mindedly fixated on revenge for the things that happened in her past. Without spoiling anything, I will say that something happened which put the demigods and inhabitants of Weep in conflict with one another, and there is no easy solution that would guarantee that the demigods stay alive. Sarai has a lot of dreams like Lazlo - of finding family, of living a normal life, of living among the humans - but it’s not really viable for her, and instead of letting hate consume her, she tries to think up other ways of existing.

Sarai’s “family” is also charming. The group consists of 5 demigods who are the last remaining offspring of the slain gods, and all of them feel fairly complex. They all possess some kind of magical “gift”: there’s Sarai (who can produce supernatural “moths” that allow her to enter people’s dreams), Ruby (a girl who can turn herself into flames), Feral (the only boy, and he can summon clouds), Sparrow (a girl who can manipulate plants), and Minya (a girl who can make ghosts do her bidding). I liked that these characters had different personalities that often put them in conflict. Ruby is boy-crazy and seems to be obsessed with sex. Sparrow is more passive but has sweet moments where she makes a “flower cake” for Ruby’s birthday and braids Sarai’s hair. Minya is completely consumed by her desire for revenge, and it presents some real barriers to finding a solution to the group’s problems.

The supporting characters down in Weep are also fairly compelling. The Godslayer is sympathetic in that he doesn’t revel in his heroic image or title; instead, he feels complex and seemingly warring emotions tied to guilt over what happened to Weep and his role in it almost 20 years prior to the events of this book. The Godslayer’s companions are also sympathetic and have emotions that are easy to understand, and I loved that they seemed to take to Lazlo so quickly. They welcome all outsiders with open arms, but they have a soft spot for Lazlo, which I liked because it meant that he didn’t have to face bullying or gatekeeping from people he had longed to meet his entire life.

The inhabitants of the world outside of Weep were interesting. There’s Theryn Nero, who seemed like he would be a primary antagonist but doesn’t have enough “screen time” to truly be a threat. I liked that his conflict with Lazlo was low-key - it was intense enough to be annoying, but no so intense that their rivalry consumed the whole story or put petty emotions above the greater good. The other “scientists” who follow the Godslayer back to Weep served their purpose; not all of them had rich, complex lives, but they didn’t really need to because if they did, the story would feel crowded.

Overall, there weren’t any characters I disliked, per se. While I do wish Lazlo got to develop differently, there wasn’t much wrong with his character, and I think all of the main players had interesting backstories and motivations, and I appreciated the layer of complexity they all had. I do wish there had been more queer characters though. There is one wlw couple, though they aren’t too prominent in the grand scheme of things. Of course, that could change, as there is a whole second book to go through, but I wish some of the demigods had been lgbt+ so it felt like Taylor’s world wasn’t overwhelmingly straight and cis.

TL;DR: Despite some pacing problems at the end and minor details that didn’t fit my personal tastes, Strange the Dreamer is a lush, evocative fantasy about the power of dreams. Readers who enjoy epic fantasy and stories about gods, star-crossed love, and will probably adore this book.

[goldinavonlea]

What if Ant Jo offers to pay for Gilbert's schooling after he turns down the chance of going to Paris via marriage to Winnie?

Honestly? I think for Gilbert the whole Sorbonne dream is to his career what Winifred is to his heart.

The way I’m seeing all of this panning out, we have an eighteen year old who lost his father (and the entire rest of his family—we know he said they were a large family once which he is now the last of, and we’ve no idea how biologically or emotionally close to that family he was—we just know they’re all gone), then managed to find a new family he loved desperately only for that new family to be ripped open once again. Following that loss he decides he doesn’t want to be a Simple Country Doctor because he’s come to see it as helplessly standing by—having to watch yet more people die while he’s unable to do anything to stop it. He also becomes increasingly involved with Winifred, which has only stepped up since he’s met her parents and been provided with a possible path to the Sorbonne.

I think Winifred and the whole idealised future working in medical research in Paris are very much intertwined, and very much coming from the same root place, which is a blinding terror of getting his heart crushed again. He’s clinging onto the options which seem safer and easier, but they feel safer and easier because he wants them less and therefore there isn’t the same crushing fear of potentially losing them. He clearly likes Winifred but he doesn’t love her, and if there’s no love then there’s no potential for a tragical romance: if it all goes wrong it’s not going to destroy him. And if he goes into medical research—if he commits to a life of academic work instead of direct medical practice—he can help without having to bear the pain of watching his patients die. If the people around him that he loves keep dying then subliminally if he moves half way around the world they’re safe, right?

I think since John’s death he’s been scrabbling a bit, and having to experience another loss just when it all seemed to be coming back together has basically left him a raw nerve, and the choices he’s making at the moment are motivated by fear rather than passion. There’s that whole thing I read somewhere probably on here, talking about how people’s greatest strengths and weaknesses tend to be opposing sides of the same coin, and Gilbert’s greatest strength is that he truly, deeply cares about people—especially those who are marginalised or othered. That’s an incredibly powerful thing, but the flip side of it is that it makes you incredibly vulnerable to things like loss and rejection: if you take people right into your heart that means if anything happens, it hits you right in the centre and hurts like hell. Another one of Gilbert’s great strengths is that he seems to find it very easy to get along with people, people like him, feel easy with him, to my mind because he’s (generally, we’ll come back to this point) very perceptive in his interactions with people—he can read them easily, which means it’s easy for him to be what people want from him. The flip side of that, of course, is that it’s great for everyone else but not great for him: if you’re used to being what everyone around you wants you to be, it becomes very tricky to know exactly what you want for and from yourself.

So all this together, Gilbert has two paths: one is prestigious, low risk, with little potential to cause him great pain, but it comes at the price of cutting himself off from what fundamentally makes him special—his deep care for people, his ability and willingness to challenge the status quo in terms of who is perceived as being valuable in the world, the fact that he consistently shows that he’s happier and more at ease around people who are, in whatever way, Different. The second path is emotionally risky and challenging, but with the potential for much greater fulfilment, and surrounded by people he loves deeply but is scared to death of losing. The first path is the flat road; the second is the roller coaster, paying for the highs with the lows.

Now obviously this is my personal reading, my take, and this show loves to prove me wrong, but I just can’t imagine, in the end, Gilbert being able to walk away from his family, his people, when having that sense of family and community has always seemed to me to be his primary motivation. He ran from Avonlea as soon as he could after his father’s death I think more than anything because he just couldn’t bear to be alone—as evidenced by the fact that he was only willing to return after a) Bash agreed to come with him and b) he received in Anne’s letter evidence that there was at least one person in Avonlea who cared about him. And on the topic of Anne, coming back to what I said I’d come back to before: Anne is just about the absolute embodiment of the second path. As I said he seems generally to find it easy to get on with everyone else, can always say and do the Right Thing to keep things peaceful, but that falls apart with Anne all the time. I know a lot of us have stressed about the amount they’ve seemed to fall out, but I think part of that comes from the fact that she seems to render him incapable of being Whoever Is Convenient To The Situation and forces him to just be Gilbert (the same I think is true of Bash, who we also saw him have a falling out with last season—yes the issue there came from Gilbert getting tunnel visioned onto his own path and not thinking through what that meant for Bash, but the very fact that he was solid enough to be selfish with Bash eventually forced the resolution of the issue in a way that made Gilbert actually figure out what he really wanted, which again was to be with his family). The issue with Anne for him though is in that very fact: he can’t just make himself be whatever he figures she wants, and he has no reason to believe what she wants is him. That’s another potential pitfall of caring deeply about other people: he admires and respects Anne precisely for her worldview, the way she sees things and people, and if he really opens up and puts it all on the table for her and that worldview he so admires finds him unworthy, then that’s completely soul-destroying. If it could work with her then it would be his absolute dream come true, but if it doesn’t—if it went wrong in any of the myriad ways it could, if she turned him down or if she didn’t and then he lost her, it’d utterly ruin him. I think she scares the living shit out of him, and honestly I think he scares the living shit out of her too, she just has less of an instinct for self-preservation but anyway that’s another whole conversation.

I know I’ve wandered about a million miles from your question but anyway. ANYWAY. What I’m saying is that as lovely in theory as Aunt Jo sweeping in to save the day once again might be, I really don’t think Paris and the Sorbonne is actually what Gilbert wants or needs. I think he wants and needs to have the direct interaction of working directly with patients, and the emotional support of people he loves deeply around him in order to cope with the pains of that direct involvement (though I’m not saying he shouldn’t enter into any academia at all by any stretch, I think there’s a lot that he could gain from areas of that under the right circumstances, not to mention if you think I’m hopeless for the idea of the Doctors Blythe, Anne and Gilbert academic power couple of the university of toronto, you would be absolutely right). I think what he needs to realise is that no branch of medicine makes you a wizard, and that what really matters—the part in which he could truly shine and excell, is giving a shit. Is, as Anne said, caring deeply. That is what would make him a fantastic doctor. And that’s the other thing about Anne: she’s recklessness where he’s caution, and in both cases to a degree that they sometimes do themselves damage with it. But Gilbert makes Anne more considered, and Anne makes Gilbert brave. When they’re on the same page they’re absolute gold dust, and the potential they both bring out in each other is fantastic: he just needs to get past the fear that’s currently motivating him and let himself take a chance on the terrifying vulnerability of hope.

So. Hope that answers your question :p

[anika-ann]

Traditions Kept Pt.2

Midgardian Tradition

Pairing: Steve x reader

Warnings: fluff, attempt at humour, semi-consensual kiss (kinda?)

Summary: In which Thor learns about the purpose of the poisonous plant hanging from the ceiling and comes to conclusion that Midgardians are a bit strange.

Story Masterlist

A loud bang sounded from the roof, shaking the whole Tower. Your heart almost jumped to your throat, before you realized what – or rather who – it could be. Then you started to worry again.

Almost a year passed since you had joined the Avengers after several months’ training of your powers and combat skills, yet the peculiar team never failed to astonish you, every single one of them. It didn’t matter if it was their civilian side or the hero persona, their qualities (and faults) caught you off guard from time to time still.

Take Tony, for example. Lots of the things people were saying about him were very true. He could be self-obsessed like anyone else you had ever met, cracking jokes often at inappropriate times and you were pretty sure half of the reason he wore long sleeves most of the time was so no one saw that instead of blood, he had coffee flowing in his veins. But the amount of care he actually put into others’ well-being was a well-kept secret.

Natasha was… much more motherly than you would have guessed. She was a merciless killer, there was no arguing that, but the fierceness she would fight when anyone on team was hit – either literally or emotionally – was something she didn’t share easily with anyone, but came to aid when you would expect it the least.

Clint was an actual infant. One would believe he was an old soul, having his own family, being a father of two kids he would graciously visited rather often (but was refusing to spend all Christmas with them, because the Avengers were his family as well), but nope. Maybe it was the company, the fact he was away from needing to be the responsible father, you weren’t sure. But god. The prank wars he would fight with Sam and Tony… when he didn’t need to be all business, he didn’t bother to be.

Vision was… an odd snowflake, but then again, he was an android, unfairly smart and adorable as he was still grasping human concepts. Seeing him trying to learn by watching was just too endearing to get annoyed at being observed. But there was no doubt he was a kind man and enjoyed the company. And the rare occasions he would drop in a joke… well. Simply precious.

Bruce was a haven. You admired his intelligence, but more so his willingness to put up with the crazy bunch of people and the patience he had been (and still was) dealing with you and your powers, explaining their nature to you, apparently enjoying probing them – but always knowing the limits. He was a scientist with his whole soul, not rocking the whole social world, however, when he crawled from his shell, he was a pleasant company. Not to mention that he was one of the people you didn’t feel bad for resting in comfortable silence with.

Trying to read Wanda Maximoff seemed impossible and at the beginning of your stay, you felt rather uncomfortable in her presence, especially knowing she could read you without breaking a sweat; or snap your neck from the other side of the room with just the tinniest movement of her fingers. You had an enormous respect to her powers, but you were surprised to find out that she was one of the warmest people in the Tower. Also, she was young. She was the closest to your age and since she had suffered in her home, she loved to indulge life now.

Steve Rogers… was all you expected from a man who crashed a plane and ended his life to save millions of other people; brave and honest, determined and truest leader. It wasn’t hard to look up to him, but it was near impossible not to feel like a lesser human being by his side. He was untouchable. Ever when he was trying, carefully dropping the iconic persona and allowing himself to be an ordinary self-conscious (!) man, there was no way he could achieve that. You liked him. You liked him a lot, you admired him, but most importantly, you grew so fond of him you could easily call it love. Forever unrequired and ridiculous love.

His smile warmed up your heart and made you smile in return, you almost melted when he praised you, his eyes were the most beautiful thing you ever seen and… and yet none of those things was why your heart called for him.

The point of no return had come when you couldn’t sleep, wandering into the common room at three a.m., and had found him curled up on the couch, absently staring into a book. He tried to compose himself when you entered, but his eyes were glassy and lost in another world. The façade crumbled when you gently prodded for long enough.

He confessed to having nightmares about Bucky. About feeling the pain he had felt when injected the serum and stretched in every possible direction. About remembering the cold biting into his bones. About this whole world being strange. You couldn’t bear it. You hugged him, almost shocked when he buried his head in your shoulder and returned the embrace with crushing force, ruining the picture of him you had created in your mind as if he snapped his fingers. A new picture was painted and you fell in love with it.

He would never show weakness like that again. Yet, he seemed a little more approachable then and occasionally, you sensed that his effort to make you feel like an equal to him actually had an effect.  And there were few more nights you would find each other in the common room and just talked and talked…

Enough about Steve. Moving on. (You wish.)

The last member of the team had just arrived, you supposed.

Thor. Thor was… an alien in every sense of the word. You had only interacted with him once and rather shortly, but it was enough to leave an impression. Also, the fuss about his visit had been enough to leave you dumbstruck for days.  

So you mentally prepared for that when suddenly there was crack of thunder and a huge lightning bolt hit the Tower. You looked up from you book, worried what had happened to bring Thor to your base.

Once again, you were not ready for the broad smile the God wore when he entered the common room simultaneously with you.

“Hello, my friend!” he greeted you heartily, immediately pulling you into a hug.

You gasped, but reciprocated the gesture, a smile appearing on your lips. “Hello, Thor. What brings to— Earth?”

He released you, patting your shoulder; it almost sent you to the ground with him not knowing his strength.

Clint, Steve and Sam rushed into the room, panic all over their workout-sweaty faces.

“What wrong?” Steve blurted out, stopping dead in tracks when he saw the expression Thor wore.

As a consequence of his abrupt stop, Wanda crashed into him from behind.

“Sorry, sorry-“ she muttered, but Steve just waved it off, making space for her and staring at the alien expectantly.

“I heard a Midgardian holiday is approaching and that it is customary to visit my friends at least. So here I am! I have to admit, the colourful lights feel festive, but on Asgard, we appreciate food and drinks more…”

“Oh there will be drinks and food,” Clint assured him, grinning and finally relaxing, just like everyone else.

“But I don’t understand why there is this plant over here. I think I’ve been told it’s poisonous to mortals…? Why would you hang a poisonous plant for this holiday of all days?” Thor asked, gesturing towards the mistletoe few feet from him.

You frowned – you would swear it wasn’t there a moment ago.

“It’s a tradition, Thor. If you find yourself under mistletoe with someone, you give them a kiss,” Wanda explained with a grin, followed by Thor’s surprised ‘oh’.

The next thing you knew, you were being pulled that direction by a strong hand of the god, his arm wrapping around your waist when you stumbled.

And then his lips met yours with a loud wet smack, effectively stealing your breath despite the kiss only lasting for a fraction of second. You gaped at him as he grinned at you from above – because he was just that damn tall – and everything went silent.

You looked at the team still standing near the doorway and they had all their jaws on the floor.

Sam was the first to crack, instantly followed by Clint. They roared in laughter, while Wanda slowly made her way to you and Thor with giggles. She patted Thor’s arm gently and he released you, frowning, not following why his friends were laughing.

“It has to be a chance meeting, Thor. You can’t just drag someone under the mistletoe,” the Sokovian noted kindly, the corners of her lips twitching as she placed a short kiss on his cheek. “And usually, we go for a cheek.”

A realization dawned on Thor’s face and he looked at your still dumbstruck expression.

“Oh. My apologies, Nightingale.”

“It’s… it’s okay,” you stuttered, your heart finally slowing down in your chest. That was… unexpected. You felt your cheeks burning. “You just took me by surprise. It’s alright, next time you’ll know.”

Sam’s and Clint’s laughter died as you hinted them that there could be a next time. Scared they might be next for Thor to kiss, they escaped the room abruptly and you could hear that they started laughing as soon as they rounded the corner of the hall.

Steve, on the other hand, stared at the three of you with a strange expression on his face, one you couldn’t decode. You opened your mouth to ask, but he quickly charmed a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and walked to your group only to shake Thor’s hand warmly.

“Welcome, Thor. I’m sure the others will be here soon to give you a taste of Christmas spirit.”

You seated the god on the couch while Wanda went to prepare some Christmas punch. After all, drinks had been promised.

Apparently, Asgardians and Midgardians weren’t that different.

-.-

Part 3

[echodrops]

Why You Should Be Shipping Shigaraki/Ochako

No, no, hang on a second--I see that side-eye you are throwing hard enough to ruin your peripheral vision. I feel the shade you’re casting like a thundercloud rolling in. But you didn’t read wrong. I meant what I said.

I’ve never made a secret of my love for rare pairs, but for once in my damn lonely shipper’s hellscape of a life I would love it if my favorite crack ship in a fandom had more than two fics (I’m NOT JOKING) to its name.

What can I do to correct this egregious oversight before the entire summer passes with nary a whisper of the most romantic ship since Juliet wherefore art thou’d Romeo?

Well, what else? I was forged in the fires of early 2000s’ fandom, and I know that desperate times call for desperate measures meticulously researched and extremely rose-tinted

Shipping Manifestos.

Fam, I am about to blow your minds, align your chakras, open your third eyes--because Shigaraki and Ochako is the most slept on ship in the entire BNHA fandom, and if you give me ten minutes like an hour (holy shit, this is long), I can prove it.

Disclaimer: @mistystarshine is the enabler who convinced me to write this but we were both enabled by @ohmytheon’s Reconfigure (on AO3) so you know who’s really responsible.

Spoilers to Chapter 231, watch out.

First off, I know what you’re thinking. Maybe you’re still reading from pure shock. Maybe you’re doubt-reading to get your daily fix of internet skepticism. Maybe you’re waiting for me to say these two characters are meant to be because she wears pink and his hair is blue. Maybe you’re already freaking out about age gaps but like that is what future fics and AUs are actually for!!!

I’m not telling you to give up your IzuOcha or Kacchako. I’m not gonna pry ShigaDabi out of your eager little villain stan hands. But if you’ve never considered multi-shipping, now is the time my friends, because I’m totally serious heartfelt here! I’ve got VALID reasons for shipping Shigako--ten of them, in fact:

1) Midoriya is taken for granted as Uraraka’s love interest--but Shigaraki is incredibly similar to him.

There are reams of meta on the parallels between Midoriya and Shigaraki, with plenty people noting how Horikoshi specifically set the two up as foils to examine similar character development despite their drastically different circumstances. Yet for all the meta pointing out that Shigaraki and Midoriya are basically the same character through a mirror darkly, I’ve never seen anyone bear that thought out to its logical conclusion: there are traits Uraraka admires in Midoriya that are extremely apparent in Shigaraki too.

Multiple times in the manga, Uraraka expresses admiration for Deku’s resolve and refusal to give up. His determination in the face of impossible odds and his sense of dedication to his cause are powerful motivating factors in Ochako’s storyline, and Deku’s behavior--his willingness to charge straight into danger and his unflinching pursuit of his goal to be #1--have basically become the standard to which Uraraka holds herself.

Her crush is literally founded on an appreciation for Midoriya’s drive, earnestness, and constant growth as a person.

But these are all traits that Shigaraki also explicitly possesses. Shigaraki’s unwavering resolve is so strong that even though everyone around him says dream is unattainable... they follow him anyway.

Ujiko flat out tells Shigaraki he’s chasing a pipe dream, but he’s willing to come along for the ride strictly because of how committed Shigaraki is to making that dream a reality. The strength of Tomura’s conviction alone persuaded a collection of the most volatile and difficult personalities in the manga to band together and become found family the most well-known anti-establishment organization in all of Japan.

Shigaraki never, even in the face of overwhelming threat, backs down from a challenge, and he approaches each impossible task with absolutely as much effort, ferocity, and refusal to quit as Deku. He is just as dedicated, just as much of a shounen protagonist main character, and just as willing to push himself above and beyond as Deku.

The traits that motivated Uraraka to become the character she is today, many of the exact same traits that formed her crush on Midoriya, are all there in Shigaraki. In another world, the person who inspired Uraraka to go “Plus Ultra” could be Tomura himself, and if 1) no sense of self-preservation, 2) ZERO CHILL, and 3) dogged obsession are what Uraraka finds attractive, Shigaraki clearly has 'em covered. Oh no, he’s meeting all my standards.

2) Being serious though, Ochako’s role in the plot would be vastly improved by more meaningful interactions with the antagonists, even if just in battle.

I’ve written before about how badly the writing of BNHA treats Ochako, and why her constantly being out-of-focus is a hallmark of the genre’s crippling inability to handle dynamic female characters, but it bears repeating: in her current position in the story, Uraraka’s character has minimal agency. She exists to fill the role of Deku’s love interest (at worst) and an emotional crutch (at best). Again, absolutely no hate on the IzuOcha ship--it’s clearly canon endgame and “wholesome” I guess is what they’re calling it nowadays. But the way IzuOcha’s being written in canon is actually the worst possible thing that could happen to Uraraka’s individual character, because Ochako’s crush on Deku has been given virtually no bearing on the story’s main plot and allows Horikoshi to consistently reduce Uraraka’s personal accomplishments to “inspirations from Deku” (in order to, likely, fulfill young male readers’ fantasy of having a girl fixated on them).

Is Uraraka about to do something cool in the manga? Wait for her comment about being motivated by Deku.

Does Uraraka actually get to see some action and get involved in a fight? Wait for someone to bring up her feelings for Deku.

Is Deku about to have a dramatic clash with the story’s villains to advance the main plotline? Wait for Ochako to entirely vanish (at worst) or get sidelined into a three panel clip where she’ll use the same martial art move she’s been using since like chapter 10 (at best).

If I have to read “Gunhead Martial Arts” one more fucking time... Give Ochako her OWN supermoves goddammit!!

The story of the comic itself continually pushes Ochako out of any position of relevance. She’s not one of UA’s strongest fighters (despite having a quirk that, if applied like ANY of the male characters, has incredible potential), she’s not given half the emotional depth or attention even side characters like Kirishima get, and her backstory lacks the development many of the male characters’ get (I’m looking at you, Todoroki).

As a “good girl,” she isn’t allowed to get her hands dirty like Toga, she isn’t allowed to get as bloodied or ugly as any of the boys, and she can never be allowed to surpass the main male characters in coolness or plot relevance because girls can be “heroes” but they can’t be The Hero™. (I’m literally gagging, guys.)

Which is EXACTLY why a plot involving Shigaraki and Ochako--in ANY capacity, even just a flat out fight against each other!--would actually be a fan-fucking-tastic addition to BNHA.

Skip the token Toga vs. Ochako chick fight where they squabble over who loves Izuku more. Let Toga talk to Izuku as herself for once. Let Uraraka throw down with the League’s leader. At least once, Horikoshi? Just once?

Literally any form of plot that puts Shigaraki and Ochako into contact would mean moving Uraraka into a more central position within the manga’s plot, would boost her screen-time, increase the likelihood of her contributing to the story’s primary conflict, and would give her more to do and emotionally engage with than just repeating the same lines about Deku being amazing on an endless loop. There is untapped character development potential in spades here if Uraraka was given chance to genuinely interact with the other half of the story’s cast!

Give👏 Uraraka👏 something👏 meaningful👏 to do!👏

Putting the story’s foremost female character on out there on the frontlines with the manga’s actual main character antagonist would finally break her out of the mold she’s been forced into by genre stereotypes and set her on an even playing field with the male heroes at last.

A meaningful encounter with Shigaraki could be Ochako’s ticket to being treated respectfully by the story itself (and hell if giving underappreciated characters a real place in the world isn’t Tomura’s freakin’ calling card already).

3) Okay, I know the words “subverting expectations” leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth nowadays, but there is a huge difference between “throwing inexplicable plot twists at the audience just for shock factor” and “averting stale cliches in an emotionally rewarding manner.” Sure, cliches do exist for a reason, but there are still many instances where actively avoiding a cliche plotline is a great choice. A shounen manga’s token love interest ending up with someone other than the hero--namely with a (reformed) villain--would be an interesting flip on the trite “hero gets the girl” script.

Look, we all know how it goes: Hero clashes with Bad Guy. They duke it out all over Kingdom Come. RIP like fifty square city blocks. The Hero wins, heads home triumphant, sweeps his Princess off her feet, and sails off into the hero rankings sunset. End of the same story we’ve seen a million times. Sometimes it’s done well and the audience is left satisfied. Other times, the heroine involved is reduced to the hero’s reward, less person than wish fulfillment. In either case, tying up a romantic subplot with a hero is the go-to way of resolving female characters’ storylines and, at this point, pretty much a given in manga, even when the romantic subplot is never given the development it deserves, leaving audiences bewildered at how and why the hook-up actually happened.

I’m not saying every comic should “subvert expectations” and cancel its romantic subplot between the hero and heroine, of course not. But I am saying that it would be pretty refreshing to see something else for once.

By virtue of their role, villains don’t usually “get the girl.” Even redeemed villains rarely end up in happy, healthy, well-written relationships. It’s not impossible but it is unlikely that a series’ designated female lead ever wavers in her attentions from the main hero to a new romantic target.

So it would be pretty cool if one did, if the moral of the story’s romantic subplot wasn’t just "token love interest completes painfully shoehorned romantic gestures.” A good romance with a redeemed ex-villain instead of a hero would take a lot more explanation. It would demand, by its very nature, more work on the author’s part to suspend disbelief. The characters would have to develop an entirely different rapport from the normal interactions between designated love interests, and, to a certain extent, strong character growth would be required in order for such a romance to even get started. There’s more moral complexity and conflict to a subplot like this, and a greater sensation of choice--if the heroine doesn’t have to end with the hero by the end of the story, well hey... That means she could end up with just about anyone. Whoa.

Even more so, in the specific case of Shigaraki, who has lived a life of misery and manipulation, the idea that he could come out on the other side, grow as a person, redeem himself, and eventually enter a healthy relationship with someone who isn’t going to hurt him is an idea I find deeply appealing. I think there are a lot of villain stans, myself included, who see parts of themselves in Shigaraki. If a character who has been so severely impacted by abuse can still heal and ultimately end up happy, to me, that’s a far more hopeful and heart-warming conclusion than the alternatives. I did warn you this manifesto would be rose-tinted, didn’t I?

I want storylines that prove that none of us are beyond saving. That people who make bad choices can still change. That romance isn’t a reward for playing the “right” role. That heroines have options. That there are still pleasant surprises to be found in romance plots.

4) But why Shigaraki and Ochako, in particular? It’s not like they have any remotely shared life experiences--

Oops. Friendly reminder: Ochako is the only major character in the manga besides the villains who is overtly described as, I quote, “poorer than poor.” Todoroki, Yaomomo, and Iida can all make it rain; Kaminari, Mina, and Jirou can afford stylish clothes; Kirishima can drop a stupid amount on night vision googles... Even Midoriya, whose father “works overseas,“ can afford plenty of All Might merchandise. One of the popular fandom theories for a while was that Ochako could be U.A.’s traitor specifically because of her desire to help her parents financially, and I think that most readers at this point can discern a clear divide in BNHA’s society: heroes are the “haves” and villains are the “have nots.” To be a hero in this story is to attend a prestigious school, have access to expensive support items, gear, insurance, fame and glory, etc.

Meanwhile, with the exception of All For One, to be a villain in BNHA’s story is to be marginalized, live in unfit conditions, lack access to basic safety and nutritional resources, and struggle to make ends meet. When ability to thrive in a hero-centric society is synonymous with being a good and worthwhile person, anyone who doesn’t just naturally excel in the hero-driven economy is treated as flawed at best and suspect at worst. Poor characters in the story are ignored, and, as demonstrated with people like Twice, left essentially to fend for themselves.

Uraraka’s status as lower income is mostly played for laughs. She’s still a privileged character in that she can attend U.A., receive hero items for free, has a safe place to live, etc. But it is important that the story acknowledges her family’s situation, because her financial status does set her apart from her classmates.

She is less privileged than the others. Being “the poor character” situates Uraraka in the interesting divide between those who couldn’t cope and chose to rebel against hero society instead, versus those who conformed to the hero system in an attempt to improve their situations. In different circumstances, if Uraraka’s family was just even the tiniest bit worse off, we might be seeing a very different character here, one who had to make some much harder choices to keep her family afloat.

Having been in the position of "going without,” Uraraka also has a unique understanding of the “real world” that many of her heroics classmates might lack. She understands what it is like to go hungry, to not be able to afford to keep up with the newest trends, to be constantly anxious about the future--to feel unsuccessful, overlooked, and under constant pressure to perform. As someone who wasn’t raised in the lap of luxury or even really a middle-class home, Uraraka has more insight into--and would likely have more empathy for--the plight of the downtrodden daily criminals of the BNHA world. Just based on her own life experiences, Ochako is more likely than her classmates to recognize how harsh reality can be, and understand the temptations that lead people to make terrible decisions.

This makes Ochako an especially interesting character in terms of her pro hero future. Would she be able to sympathize and reach out to struggling "villains” more effectively than others from her class, who lack her humble background? Would she be able to better see the big picture of BNHA’s society, and the way it actively creates villains from its marginalized populations? Would she be able to look at the League not just as criminals, but also as people who never stood a chance within the confines of a rigged social structure?

Uraraka’s background shifts her closer to the story’s villains than many of the other hero characters, and puts her in a unique place to both empathize and become motivated to change the flawed system that produced people like Shigaraki and the League in the first place.

5) Likewise, Uraraka’s background actually makes her more palatable to Shigaraki than other heroes. At least at the beginning of the comic, Uraraka isn’t shy about admitting that one of her reasons for becoming a hero is to help her parents financially. Ochako’s original motivation for heroism isn’t portrayed as nobly as others’ like Deku--Deku has no ulterior motives for being a hero; he just wants to save people and wouldn’t care about personally benefiting.

Instead, Ochako is presented as someone who (initially) sees heroism as a means to an end. It’s not that she doesn’t want to save people, but that she’s not doing so only for the intrinsic worth... the hefty paycheck that comes from heroism is a big draw.

Over time the manga has shown her shifting away from this (which actually makes her character less unique, unfortunately), but I’m sure it’s still a thought for her, and she’s definitely going to send paychecks to her parents in the future. At the end of the day, heroism is still going to be Uraraka’s ticket to a better lifestyle, even if she’s committed herself to it honestly by the time she leaves U.A.

But it’s this exact form of personal motivation that Shigaraki is much more likely to understand than the “goody-two-shoes” motivations of people like Deku. Multiple times in the comic Shigaraki has expressed confusion with society’s habit of clinging mindlessly to symbols, of their blind faith in the virtues of heroism, and their ability to simply overlook suffering because “surely a hero will do something about it.” Stain’s ideals about “true heroes” go straight past Shigaraki, who seems to hate heroes who are earnest (All Might, I’m talking about All Might) far more than those who are simply faking their way through for fame. 

Shigaraki understands humans who are driven by personal gain. He respects the individual desires of people he cares about. Someone in the hero industry explicitly seeking tangible benefits would likely, to Shigaraki at least, come across as more genuine than someone who claims they have no ulterior motives, and a person who is blunt about their needs and grounded in the reality of BNHA’s world would likely be much more acceptable to Tomura than someone who spews trite lines about peace and justice.

Shigaraki’s feelings for heroes have been irreparably damaged by his conditioning from All For One, but there are certainly some heroes that he would find less loathsome than others. He will probably never understand Deku’s selflessness. All Might’s saccharine symbolism actively infuriates him. But a person who became a hero to put food on the table? To provide for her parents (maybe especially because it is her parents she’s trying to provide for)? That’s at least understandable. If the manga’s future does see Shigaraki redeemed, my thought is that the only type of heroes we’ll ever see him willingly interact with would still be heroes just like Ochako, with more “down to earth” personal motivations. Uraraka, your codename is “If I had to date a hero”...

6) While we’re talking about shared life experiences, there’s another very obvious similarity between Shigaraki and Ochako: neither one of them can touch things with all five fingers.

Cute/fridge horror observation: Shigaraki is even daintier about touching things than Uraraka is; Uraraka usually lifts just her pinkies, but Shigaraki frequently uses as few fingers as possible.

Yeah, yeah, they both have to be dainty and careful with everything they hold. It’d be cute to watch them eat together. They could mutually gripe about the annoyance of video game consoles not designed for four-finger use. More than that though, neither one of them can touch other human beings without the risk of causing death.

Uraraka, as a hero, has the more privileged quirk design (she can turn her quirk off, while Shigaraki can’t) and until recently, the comic was always very careful to portray Uraraka’s quirk in a way that no one was endangered by it. But dropping Zero Gravity into the hands of a villain for a single chapter reveals the truth: Uraraka’s quirk has just as much lethal potential as Shigaraki’s.

Like Shigaraki, Uraraka has to face the reality that her touch alone could jeopardize the safety of anyone she comes into contact with, in her daily life and in her hero work. Drop some debris without looking twice? Just crushed a civilian. Release your quirk without thinking? Now the villain you floated is paste on the sidewalk. Thought that it was safe to float away the building? Oops, you crushed someone still trapped inside. Yikes. In a one-on-one battle, Uraraka is actually at a disadvantage not because her quirk is weak, but the dead opposite--in an outdoor fight, she would have to actively work not to accidentally send people off into outer space.

Having an auto-activate touch quirk means that both Shigaraki and Ochako have to be conscious of every single thing they touch all the time. Both of their quirks require constant bodily awareness, and both come with the lurking knowledge that “My touch causes problems.” Even for Ochako, who would merely be a nuisance if she accidentally floated objects indoors, it’s easy to internalize frustration and negative associations with one’s own body. Every day, Ochako has to be careful with herself in a way that few of her peers do, another factor that sets her apart.

One of the story’s overarching themes is the idea of “self-acceptance” and what it even means to “accept yourself” in a world where (almost) every human being possesses a distinguishing feature, often built into their bodies at the expense of standard human functioning. For people with limited control over their quirks, who can’t choose when the effect activates, a quirk is a constant burden and facet of their identity that entirely re-shapes how they interact with the world. Both Shigaraki and Uraraka face the practicality of having burdensome, even lethal, auto-activate quirks that require constant self-awareness. This is a similarity that, of the major characters, only Shigaraki and Ochako possess so far. (Even other major characters with touch-based quirks like Overhaul appear to be able to choose when to activate their quirks).

The “funny” way Shigaraki and Ochako hold things seems like just a small similarity until you remember the amount of practice and frustration it must have taken to internalize a four-fingered touch. Until you remember that this similarity marks them both as very careful and self-conscious characters. Until you remember that Shigaraki’s got a one-touch instakill... but so does Uraraka Ochako.

7) Okay, similarities are cool and all, but you know what they say: opposites attract. And if we’re talking character motivation, there are no cleaner opposites in the entire series. Shigaraki and Ochako are actually even better emotional foils than Shigaraki and Deku, because Ochako’s central motivation is “Make as many people smile as possible” and Shigaraki’s is, literally, “Make it so no one can ever smile again.”

I know I ragged on it earlier, but now I’m going to use it to my full advantage: as the story evolved and characters grew, Ochako’s “true” motivation to become a hero revealed itself: she feels a deep, intrinsic happiness when witnessing the happiness of others. Her desire as a hero is to spread relief, the sense of security that allows people to go about their days smiling. She literally feels happiest when everyone around her is happy.

Even more so than Deku, this casts Uraraka as Shigaraki’s diametric opposite in the story, because Shigaraki’s entire pipe dream goal also hinges on the smiles of others--and how absolutely much he hates them. Shigaraki’s goal is total world destruction because he just resents the happiness of others that fucking much.

On the surface alone it’s more fascinating than the story will probably ever live up to: Ochako, the heroine who wants to spread smiles; Shigaraki, the villain who wants to destroy them. Even if we’re just talking canon, zero romance involved, that would still be an interesting conflict to explore. The story could cover a lot of deeper ground by drawing the comparison between these two characters more directly. It would definitely validate Uraraka being involved in more major plot events, at the very least.

BUT this was supposed to be about shipping, so of course I can’t leave it there, and leaving it there would only be half the story anyway, because nobody is born hating smiles. Everything we’ve seen of Shigaraki’s past so far indicates that he was a kid with a cute dog, a warm relationship with his sister, and an interest in heroes--i.e., a decent life that probably included his own fair share of smiles. Shigaraki’s hatred and resentment are direct products of the traumatic manipulation he suffered at AFO’s hands. He despises the idea that people around him can smile and act upbeat, even when they objectively know villains are lurking all around them. He is actually sick to his stomach at the idea of people blindly putting their faith in heroes, knowing what he does: that heroes often fail, that there are many people who desperately need to be rescued and are instead overlooked. The world failed Shimura Tenko and then had the nerve to keep on smiling without him.

Other people’s smiles represent nothing but the joy, security, love, and peace that Shigaraki Tomura hasn’t experienced since the day his quirk manifested. The sight of any living thing fills Shigaraki with rage because everything bright and beautiful, everything good and calm and kind and soft and warm, is everything that Shigaraki has lost and believes he will never, ever get to experience again.

Shigaraki doesn’t really hate the pure happy smiles of others; he hates the fact that the world has taken away every single thing he ever had to smile about.

It is my belief that Horikoshi is hinting at a redemption arc for Shigaraki, especially as we see the League become closer allies. But Shigaraki can’t be completely redeemed, can’t be persuaded to give up his world-destruction plan, until he can look at the smiles of others without scorn. Until the bright, upbeat attitudes of heroes other people no longer feel like a personal attack. Until he’s happy enough that the happiness of others no longer hurts. Until the weight is lifted.

And I can’t think of any character more obviously suited to helping lift an immense weight than Uraraka, the zero gravity hero who wants nothing more than to spread smiles.

8) Speaking of lifting weights... Kacchako is a popular ship stemming in large part from Bakugou’s refusal to treat Uraraka with kid gloves. He faces her head-on as a real opponent and views her like any other hero hopeful.

As I’ve said before, this is pretty much the most respectfully the series itself has ever treated Uraraka Ochako, and it caught a lot of attention because it was one of the rare occasions that a female pro hero-in-training was really treated as an equal to the male characters. Kacchako shippers had something awesome to work with.

But... You know who else treats women as equals? (Hell, you know who treats literally everyone as equals, from those with mutant quirks to trans people to those with severe mental health issues?) You can say what you want about Shigaraki’s habit of, you know, mass murder, but in terms of viewing others equally and respecting (okay, let’s be real, it’s probably closer to just ignoring) differences, Tomura is about as open-minded as BNHA characters come. The League is an equal opportunity employer.

Unlike actual hero characters, Shigaraki has never once suggested that Toga is incapable of keeping up with any of the male members of the League, and in fact has entrusted her with many of the League’s most dangerous and crucial missions. He explicitly has faith in her ability and skill.

Toga’s right there in the fight against Gigantomachia and the QLA, as much an equal member of the League as anyone else. In terms of gender equality, the villains seem to be light-years ahead of their hero counterparts, and Shigaraki in particular doesn’t discriminate, among his allies or his opponents either. He’s not a “spare the women and children” kind of guy; every hero and villain challenger is treated with equal violence (and equal snark), whether they’re male, female, a long-time pro or a student in training.

In whatever context--canon opponent, AU ally, or a future romantic interest--Shigaraki would take Ochako just as seriously as Bakugou did. If you like Kacchako because Bakugou doesn’t dismiss Uraraka, that same dynamic would be present in Shigako too.

9) And on the topic of Shigaraki and women... It doesn’t feel accidental that every single female character who ever had love for Shigaraki has been taken away from him. A distinct part of Shigaraki’s storyline is that all positive female role models have been systematically removed from his life. He lost his grandmother, a hero he could have looked up to; he lost his mother, who he now has no memory of; he lost the older sister he clearly held dear... All For One’s control over Tomura has always been total, but this particular detail feels especially insidious: was All For One’s spite for Nana so strong that he delighted in deliberately destroying every single relationship Tenko had with women connected to Nana’s legacy? (Or is AFO perhaps just a raging misogynist? Every single one of his known associates is male and he seemed to despise and mock Nana particularly hard...)

In any case, the point I’m trying to make here is that, even ruling love interests out, Shigaraki’s storyline would be enriched by forging a meaningful connection with a female character like Ochako. Acceptance--maybe even some grudging admiration--for a female hero? A fantastic opportunity to show just how different the “villains” are from the discriminatory society that produced them. Supporting friendship while he’s on the road to recovery? A+ way to diversify interactions between the male and female cast. Send a tough girl to Tartarus to question his motives? Nice chance for tense dialogue and some good old noire-esque foe yay. Hostage situation that takes a turn for the surprisingly cordial? Fun way to explore different dynamics and humanize the villains because hey, they treated the “damsel” to dinner shortbread cookies. My god, Shigaraki could even develop some positive sense of rivalry with a woman, for example! The possibilities are endless if you’re actually willing to give female characters a shot!

Being more serious, Tomura’s life has been dramatically marked by the loss of his female family members, and--at least from what we know so far--his entire youth was spent without the presence of reliable friendships, let alone any form of “love” that wasn’t disturbingly fake. Beyond his fragmented memories, he has no models for healthy relationships, romantic or otherwise.

Letting Shigaraki develop to the point that he could form a mutually positive relationship with a female hero character would be extremely cathartic for me as a reader. I don’t mean “rewarding redemption with a last-minute happy ending romance”--I mean actually getting the opportunity to watch Tomura rediscover what it means to be genuinely loved and realize he has the capacity to give love and be happy in return...

Reaching that level of mutual support and closeness--especially with a female pro hero--would be the biggest “FUCK YOU” that Shigaraki could give to All For One, short of, you know, actually killing him.

Shigaraki Tomura has a critical (and deliberate) lack of healthy connections to women. BNHA, coincidentally, has a criminally under-utilized female lead just twiddling her thumbs over here, waiting for a meaningful plotline to be thrown her way.

Sure, putting AFO in prison is cool and all, but have you considered... crushing his pride and legacy of evil by helping the boy he tortured for years learn to love again? I’m just sayin’!

Uraraka Ochako, snatching Shigaraki right the fuck out of AFO’s hands:

10) Basically what the whole thing boils down to is this: Shigaraki Tomura needs a hero.

Don’t mistake my meaning. A lot of “girl meets bad boy” plots end up amounting to “girl becomes emotionally responsible for fixing bad boy’s issues,” and that’s not what I’m gunning for--Shigaraki has to redeem himself because redemption is only meaningful when it stems from the character’s own inner desire to change; I’m not quite rose-tinted enough to buy into the Love Redeems trope myself. I’m definitely not advocating anyone dump Shigaraki Tomura as he is now into Uraraka Ochako’s lap and expect her to turn him from a beast to a beauty. It’s not an unrelated woman’s responsibility to fix a broken man.

But! From a reader’s perspective, I think we can agree: Shigaraki’s redemption cannot be complete until he learns to believe in real heroes. He doesn’t have to like them. He doesn’t have to support hero society. But he has to be able to look at real heroes like Izuku and Ochako and admit that they are doing what’s right--that society is a better place because they are here. Shigaraki’s path to recovery can’t even begin until he’s capable of at least acknowledging that the world has things worth saving in it.

If Horikoshi moves forward with a redemption arc for Shigaraki, it will probably be Deku who Detroit Smashes the message of truly noble heroes into Shigaraki’s head. That’s his job as the resident Warrior Therapist, I suppose. But you know... to me, it might be even more meaningful if Shigaraki’s hero--if the hand that reaches out to rescue him--isn’t The Hero’s™ but just a hero’s. We all know Deku is selfless and good to the core. As All Might’s perfect successor, he really has nothing to prove. It’s everyone else who is in question. It’s the whole rest of hero society that owes Shigaraki Tomura an explanation for the suffering of people like the League’s members. It’s everyone else who needs to prove they can do better--that in the future, there will be no bloody children left abandoned in back alleyways.

Uraraka Ochako’s conviction is to save people. As a female hero who hasn’t lived a privileged life, she’s uniquely situated to think about those who are most often overlooked. In a world where violence begets violence, where only those with strength and flash excel, what a powerful message it would send for the terrifying antagonist to effectively be rescued by someone the story itself has called “a frail girl.” At the end of the day, heroics isn’t supposed to be about mountain-destroying explosions and mach punches--heroics is supposed to be about heart, about reaching out a gentle helping hand, about spreading smiles to those who need them most.

Tomura’s faith in heroes has been brutally stripped from him, and every part of his conflict is tied up intimately with his misdirected hatred: it wasn’t actually heroes who isolated and hurt him--it was villains. In order to move forward, he will have to come to that horrible realization, deal with that means for himself and his place in the world, and recognize the truth: there are goodness and good people in the world. Selfless heroes, those who wouldn’t turn their backs on a crying child, do exist. There are people, even now, who would extend a kind hand to Shigaraki Tomura and do their best to bring a real smile to his face. Because that’s what’s really going on, after all.

Shimura Tenko is still waiting to be saved.

And I know just the person to do it.

[zdbztumble]

GUNDAM WING review

For how much of it appears on this blog, Pokemon is more “comfort food” entertainment than a great passion of mine, and the same was true when I was a child. Back in my late grade school days, the two shows that dominated my thought, my viewing schedule, my play and my early writing were Dragon Ball Z and Gundam Wing. Like a lot of kids, I can thank Toonami for that. But while I’ve checked in on Dragon Ball, off and on, since those days, I haven’t seriously revisited Gundam Wing since it left Toonami years ago. Sharing OPs with a friend on Discord led to the Wing openings coming up, however, and with the series being free to view on Crunchyroll, I thought I’d give it a rewatch.

There’s no subtle way to put this - Gundam Wing does not hold up to my childhood memories. It’s a mess of a show that frequently falls short of its own ambition. But it remains an enjoyable - even admirable - mess.

The single biggest reason that Gundam Wing is such a mess - the single biggest reason for nearly all of its flaws - is that it’s too short. At 49 episodes (two of which are given over to a clip show recap halfway through), the show isn’t long enough to contain all the story it wants to tell. By way of demonstration, and for those who don’t know/remember the series, I tried to summarize the basic plot of the series in just a few paragraphs here.

Look at that. Look at all that text in a basic outline. That was me paring away all but the most essential details needed to understand what happens in the series. Now imagine trying to fit all of that into 47 episodes while also including character interaction and development, action sequences, aesthetic elements, and a good chunk of essential information being revealed via backstory and vague insinuations only fleshed out in the OVA and manga series.

Things start out promisingly enough, with the action beginning on Operation Meteor and the initial conflict emerging gradually. But it doesn’t take long for the brevity of the series to work against the intrigues happening within it. To say that the show falls into “tell, don’t show” would suggest that it gets across more information than it actually does. Narration opens most episodes with some degree of recap, and occasionally within episodes, but this device is established from the first episode and is usually effectively used in the context of ongoing action. The problem spots are where the show neglects to tell or show almost anything.

Because the series is so short, and because all screentime is spent with either the series leads or the major supporting characters, there’s never an opportunity to showcase the state of world and colonial affairs, and little opportunity taken to describe them outside of the opening narration. Consequently, any feeling of oppression, subjugation, or desperation for the colonies - and thus, a sense of what the Gundams are fighting for - isn’t present at the beginning of the series, and doesn’t ever really emerge. There is some sense of danger towards the end of the series, but it results from the various conflicts that happen within the show, not the state of affairs from the initial premise. Earth’s condition is similarly underdeveloped; if anything is showcased on Earth, it’s beauty. Characters will occasionally talk about the desperate straits of the Gundam pilots, and the pilots themselves will take developments like the targeting of the colonies or their betrayal to heart. The VAs and the animation are strong enough to sell such developments, but the lack of world-building to support them does hurt the series.

But it’s the developments around the Sanc Kingdom and Relena’s relevance to the story suffer the most from the show’s failure to show or tell. After Zechs liberates the kingdom, Relena’s installation as its ruler is set up but never depicted. Relena’s outreach to other nations, and her building up support for total pacifism, is also never shown, and barely discussed. She and Zechs are never even seen to have a conversation until near the very end of the series. There’s plenty of discussion of how inspiring and charismatic Relena is, and why she should be heeded and protected, but with none of the work behind that charisma shown and little of it discussed in detail, there’s little emotional resonance to be had here. Relena’s efforts as queen of the world are slightly more fleshed out, but when Zech’s declaration of war against Earth happens in the same episode - happens, if memory serves, less than a second after Relena makes significant inroads - the notion of Relena as an effective spokeswoman for pacifism is severely undercut by the series’ own haste.

Beyond the plot, all of this naturally damages Relena’s character. Relena begins the series as a somewhat bratty, somewhat depressed girl often neglected by her family due to her stepfather’s job, who finds Heero’s sudden presence in her life a vicarious if dangerous thrill. The murder of her stepfather and the revelation of her true identity further shake her out of teenage ennui and move her to take part in the great events of her time. Like the show itself, it’s a promising beginning, but because Relena’s greatest achievements are glossed over - and because, being a pacifist and a diplomat, she can’t be involved at the point of action - Relena ends up spending a lot of time on the sidelines, looking grim or worried. Worse, when the final conflict between Treize and White Fang emerges, Relena is completely ineffectual at trying for peace with Zechs, and any opportunity for her to use the soft power of her (brief) reign as ceremonial monarch to further the cause of peace isn’t taken, leaving her largely irrelevant to the finale. Relena is less a full-fledged character in Gundam Wing than a solid concept for a character that couldn’t grow to fruition in the time allotted.

The same could be said of the series protagonist, Heero Yuy. In his case, there is at least a bit more told; his scientist mentor describes him as a kind-hearted young man whose devotion to his mission has rendered him a dangerous assassin, Relena instinctively latches onto what kindness and idealism she can sense in him, various characters are inspired by his skills and his devotion to his mission. But there’s little to no evidence of the kind-hearted young man underneath the child soldier, at least not in the initial episodes. We only see the cold-blooded Gundam pilot, and that pilot has the worst starting luck out of any of them, from his Gundam being brought down to his attempts to destroy it failing. His willingness - even eagerness - to die for his cause comes up so often in the beginning of the series that it ends up losing its punch. But being the series lead, and getting more screentime by dint of being a Gundam pilot, Heero does ultimately get fleshed out more than Relena. His remorse over inadvertently killing the Alliance pacifists and his blunt but pragmatic advice to the other Gundam pilots do let his softer side emerge later on. His struggle to find a reason to keep going in the fight in the middle of the series - something multiple characters go through - is rather muddled (not helped by some obtuse and stilted dialogue, another major fault in the series), but he comes out of that mess resolved to protect Relena and defeat White Fang - so much so that he not only unites with the other pilots, but designates Quatre Raberba Winner as their leader instead of himself because he recognizes what’s best for the team. The series ultimately benefits from his being the main character because of developments like this, but the journey is more awkward and choppy than it needed to be, and his romance with Relena and rivalry with Zechs are never fully convincing even if their basic mutual interest in one another is.

Stilted dialogue more than absent material is what most works against series antagonists Zechs and Treize, though Zechs’s lack of scenes with his sister and an abrupt jump from Sanc Kingdom spokesman to genocidal avenger are an issue. The philosophical notions that pepper Zechs’s and Treize’s monologues and conversations - the nature of war, the value of soldiers’ sacrifice, mankind’s natural proclivities, the possibility of peace and what it would take to achieve it - are all fascinating, and I’m still amazed that a show that spent so much time on these subjects was put in an afterschool block bound to attract younger kids back in the day. But for every speech that’s thought-provoking and emotionally resonant, there are three that are a chore to sit through and a puzzle to comprehend. Granted, the Crunchyroll subtitles for this series aren’t the best, so that may partly explain and excuse this problem. But especially in the middle of the series, where allegiances shift and motivations collapse, having the principle antagonists be so difficult to understand isn’t ideal.

Then there are the plot holes - mostly characters who somehow survived apparent deaths with little to no explanation - and characters who just don’t work. One of them is unfortunately a Gundam pilot - Chang Wu Fei, an arrogant misogynist wrapped up in his own ideals of combat who resists any teamwork or even temporary alliances with his fellow Gundams until the very end of the series, and is an unreliable partner even then. None of this would make him a bad character - one hardly needs to be likable or relatable to be an effective and compelling presence in a story - but Wu Fei has virtually no chemistry with the other Gundams, or any character, when actually does interact with them, except for ex-Alliance soldier Sally Po. His standoffishness and stoicism are traits shared by Heero and Trowa Barton, making his seem redundant, and his professed ideals of combat are muddled by bad dialogue. His great rivalry with Treize is also on shaky ground; they only interact twice in the entire series. But Wu Fei is at least comprehensible; Dorothy Catalonia, a Romefeller spy who takes an almost sexual delight in war, is not only obnoxious and intrusive when she appears in the second half of the series, but her motivations seem to swing wildly, her allegiances impossible to follow, and I sorely wish she had died by the end of the series.

With all of those faults laid bare - I did say the show was enjoyable and admirable in spite of everything, and indeed it is. Wu Fei may be redundant and Heero only a partial success as a character, but the other three Gundam pilots are well-realized, so much so that I’m baffled to see various critiques of this show imply that they’re static and one-note. Duo Maxwell is essentially the same person at the end of the series as he was at the beginning, but he’s a wonderful source of levity in the series, and he does have his trials and his low points that contrast well with his typical personality; his moments of anger and despair are some of the best in the series for selling the stakes of the conflict in the absence of proper world-building. Trowa, while much less emotive, goes through a significant journey, with his sibling-esque relationship with circus performer Catherine far more emotionally satisfying than either the Peacecrafts’ bond or Heero and Relena’s romance.

And then there’s Quatre, my new favorite character from this series. I didn’t take a great deal of notice of him as a kid, but rediscovering his story has been my favorite thing about this rewatch. A bright, gentle, and friendly personality, disdainful of violence but prepared to fight for a worthy cause, driven to despair and madness by the loss of his father and the ZERO system, only to emerge as the repentant leader of the Gundams, instrumental in bringing them together as a unit and binding them to Relena’s ideals; of all the pilots, he sees the most growth and change, and all the essentials to his story actually make it on screen. He also has the allegiance of the Maganac Corps, a group that doesn’t have a great deal of importance to the series...but they do have a cool name and cooler mobile suits.

And if Relena is somewhat lacking as a female lead, Gundam Wing does have Sally Po, military doctor turned guerrilla fighter and stalwart Gundam ally, and Lucrezia Noin. For a character that could easily have just been Zech’s love interest, Noin sees a degree of growth throughout the series to rival Quatre’s, moving from OZ instructor to Sanc Kingdom defense captain to the instigator of the Gundams as a unit, working to defeat the man she loves. The show also avoids sexualizing any of its female cast, so - a point for that, I guess.

The designs of the Gundams are all unique (as are their abilities), and some are downright beautiful. The other mobile suits are varied as well and easy to identify, making combat easy to follow. The quality of the combat - and the animation in general - is hit and miss, but it’s never atrocious, and when it’s solid, the end result is some great shots and action. The series also boasts a fantastic soundtrack, with lovely instrumental themes and two great opening songs (though why “Rhythm Emotion” was brought in with only ten episodes left to go on the series still baffles me.) 

All this contributes to Gundam Wing being enjoyable, but what makes it admirable is actually the stilted dialogue and overstuffed story that bring it down. To attempt a series that ruminates on the nature of war and the various philosophical positions around its necessity or lack thereof, of the chances for real peace, for the evolution of humanity if were to move into the stars, and the interpersonal conflicts between various characters, would be a tall order for any series, and not the easiest thing to make into visually compelling animation. That Gundam Wing made the attempt at all shows ambition and aspiration on the part of its writers and staff. As I’ve said at length here, it was frustrated by its short running time and the weaknesses of story elements and characters, but an ambitious mixed bag - even a failure - that aims high is a much more admirable (and interesting to watch) affair than a success that aims low.

And, in its failures to get certain elements across, Gundam Wing shows enough of what it was trying to do that I, at least, can forgive some (not all) rough patches. Characters like Heero and conflicts like the Gundams’ basic fight for the colonies still work despite their flaws. And the final run of episodes, where White Fang and Treize clash and the Gundams work around the battle to save the day, are incredibly strong. It’s a finale that surpasses much of the content preceding it, and if it would’ve been improved by that content being better, it still works because the intent of that earlier content can still be perceived.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering Gundam Wing, and I’d like to check out the dub again when I’m in a position to renew my Hulu subscription. For now, though - there’s a certain waltz to attend to...

[linkspooky]

Where do you think Norman's arc will go from now (that he's met Emma and Ray)? Also, how do you think the story will end?

So, the two most important facts about Norman’s arc is that one, he’s the character of the trio between Ray and Emma with the least flaws, and two the majority of his arc has taken place offscreen. This is not a criticism, this is pointing out where the subversion with his character is going to come from. 

So when analyzing Norman you have to take into account that both Ray, and Emma sort of believe Norman to have been the best of the group. Even if Emma is the moral fiber, it was Norman who did the vast majority of the planning for the escape. That was why Norman was taken away from them in the first place, for story purposes it was to show that it was in fact not all Norman which led to their success and both Ray and Emma are strong and capable in their own right. In the end all three of them are equals with equal capabilities. 

However, the fact that Norman was taken from them and that he also chose to sacrifice himself resulted in both Ray and Emma sort of putting Norman on a pedestal. Especially when it came into terms with their perception of him and their assessment of themselves. While it makes sense for them to remember him in an idealized light when he sacrificed himself, now that it turns out he’s actually lived Norman the real person is going to compete with the image of Norman both of them have been carrying around this entire time in order to motivate their actions. 

Norman not only put the finishing touches on him and Emma’s plan while knowing that he would die soon, but he also correctly predicted Ray’s actions and told Emma how to save him. 

When they’re escaping, as he watches the scene in front of him Ray hallucinates Norman for a moment to come to terms with the reality of the situation. Norman also speaks what are probably just Ray’s own feelings on Emma that he himself can’t admit and can only see coming out of Norman’s mouth.

In the second arc when Emma has a near death experience after being shot, it’s Norman that she imagines as the one who stops her from falling and also swims up with her back to the surface. It’s his image that literally guides her back to life. Except, we know Norman is not a ghost that can magically appear to either of the two at the time because he’s still alive in both cases. 

The trio is an extremely tight knit family, and they all believe in each other’s strengths of course, but of the trio we’re shown the least of Norman’s flaws, and that makes sense as both Ray and Emma admire him so much and this story is mainly told from the perspective of the children. Norman sort of becomes the symbol of their survival and escape, even though technically it’s never been Norman from the start, it was always Emma’s ideals of saving everyone, of escaping with their whole family that guided them and Norman was the one most driven to make those ideals a reality out of his love for Emma. 

Not only do the characters in the story treat Norman as a symbol though, now Norman himself has taken on the role of a symbol leaving his original name aside and calling himself William Minerva instead. Someone who was a literal symbol, because he was a made up person that James Ratri created to inspire children to escape from the plantation system.

In the first chapter we’re reintroduced to Norman and his situation as posing as Minerva the entire chapter he’s drawn without a face while all of his followers for the most part are detailed. This is more than just to preserve the twist that Norman has taken to posing as William Minerva. It’s also symbolic of what Norman is doing, he’s casting his own identity aside and forcing himself to play a role which he thinks will be of greater benefit to everybody else in the long run. 

He’s playing the role of an idealized hero, a children’s fairy tale hero when he still is just a child himself. 

So, a lot of Norman’s role in the story is concealed but there’s some very important hints to take from the introduction of his character. While Emma is the ain character, remember it was originally Norman who was introduced as the supporting male lead, the one who found out about Connie at the same time, the one who promised to escape with Emma at the same time. It was originally Norman who made the promise to escape together with Emma.

And eventually instead it became Ray who escaped with Emma, while Norman sacrificed himself intending to die and be eaten there. What happened instead was a reversal of their situations. Ray had Emma, and the rest of his family as support while enduring the hardships of the next year, whereas Norman endured it all alone.

Norman had only one accomplice and even that person he failed to protect them during his escape, which he had to figure out how to escape from an entirely second plantation all on his own. 

What I’m pointing at here is Norman is originally set up as the supporting character to Emma and the main one at her side, but he gets separated from her for the vast majority of the time after the first arc, and not only that but afterwards Norman had to endure a bunch of trauma all alone. His response to that however, has been to ascend to a position of power instead and make himself out to be the savior of the neverland, rather than showing any signs of being a traumatized kid who has been separated from his two closest friends and the rest of his family for a year and a half and forced through terrible human experimentation alone. 

Now finally, returning again to the opening chapters, what exactly is Norman’s main flaw? Ray’s is his tendency to always rely on sacrifices, both himself and others and his willingness to dirty his hands, which combines with a low self image he has viewing himself as worth less than his two friends because of what he was willing to do and the guilt he had already carried. Emma’s flaw and strength are one in the same, her naivete and willingness to believe in others puts her in reckless danger but it also allows her to take paths that nobody else would try to take to save everyone, and also to not give up in circumstances where most others would give up. Emma is vulnerable and she constantly exposes herself to danger and that’s not something that can be brushed off easily in a world that’s constantly trying to kill them, but also it means that he wearing her vulnerability on her sleeve makes her the most emotionally developed and the empathic of the other two boys and because of that she’s able to easily imagine the situations of others and constantly tries to offer them to join her side. It’s Emma’s unrealistic dreams that drive the three to try to make the world into a better place.

Then, where are Norman’s flaws in that? In a way Norman seems to strike a perfect balance between the two. He’s calculating and cunning like Ray, and yet at the same time he also is somebody who wants to hold up Emma’s ideals. Even in the first chapter, Ray demonstrates that Norman has a critical thing when it comes to thinking that Emma is lacking. 

Norman’s the smartest of the three, Ray can compete with Norman in terms of brains but he’s the most well studied. Ray even says so later that it’s not like he has raw genius he just studied his hardest even though he hated studying because he wanted to be a tasty meal that he could deny the demons. and Emma of the three is the most flexible because she’s constantly changing her ideals. 

Also, not only that but the first tag match in the first chapter ends with a one on one battle between Norman and Emma. Which is clear foreshadowing that while Norman and Emma start out as each other’s closest ally, and Norman as Emma’s supporting male lead that eventually the two are going to disagree with each other and probably have to compete with each other which is why Norman was separated from the plot for so long and so much of him still remains a mystery. 

In the 4th chapter, Norman gets some more foreshadowing to establish his flaws. The first thing is Norman mentions over and over again his main motiation is Emma, who Norman sees as a better person than him. (This is a theme with the trio gosh guys stop comparing yourselves to each other). Norman feels guilty for being scared only of his own life when Emma was crying not for herself but for the sake of her family. From that moment forward he swore to be the one to bring Emma’s ideals into reality no matter how far fetched they are.

Norman’s actually more logical and more driven by cold blooded reason than Ray, however Norman doesn’t wish to be like that so he makes most of his actions for Emma’s sake rather than following his own ideals. Norman’s statements in chapter four are rife with foreshadowing. 

“I’ll use myself to accomplish it.” “I’ve always managed to accomplish what I set out to do.” “So, what are you going to do? Emma and I are insane. We’ve completely lost it.” 

All of these statements which seem perfectly innocent at the time because they’re a part of Norman’s speech to motivate Ray, and his declaration of Love for Emma, but they’re also words in a different context that could take a much darker turn. The Promised Neverland tends to play the long game when it came to foreshadowing, reveals about the demons taking on the characteristics of what they eat that became relevant this arc were foreshadowed as early as the Goldy Pond arc where one demon ate the brains of another and then started to hear two voices in its head instead of just its own. 

“I’ll do anything…” is a recurring theme for Norman. 

At which point I must mention, the difference between Norman and Ray’s flaws. Ray is a pragmatist, he believes sacrifices are necessary and is willing to dirty his own hands to make those sacrifices. The difference in the flaw then lies in the ideals. Ray is a pragmatist, whereas Norman is still an idealist because he believes in Emma’s ideals to this day. Whereas Ray makes sacrifices for the sake of survival and accomplishing realistic goals, Norman’s flaw is that he’ll sacrifice to bring Emma’s lofty ideals into reality. He’ll do it for the sake of ideals.

And as early as the first arc, Norman is referred to as willing to do “Anything”. However, that was when Norman was surrounded by his family and in a much mentally healthier situation, so his definition of “Anything” has probably changed between then and now.

See Norman’s flaw is that his ideals aren’t his own, they’re Emma’s. Not only that, Norman is constantly criticizing himself for not being as selfless as Emma is in his eyes. Which is not really fair criticism that Norman is levying on himself, for example he gets upset when he a child gets afraid of dying. 

He has trouble seeing with himself individually as a person, and dealing with his own weakness. Especially when he’s usually relied upon to be the level headed one of the three, the best of the three, the leader of the three, etc. etc. And his way of coping with his feelings of powerlessness in those situations is to go back to tactics. 

So, when Norman gets more and more upset he tends to instead of working through those feelings buckle down and see everything as pieces on the board. He believes absolutely in every situation he can overcome with tactics and making use of everything around him. Not only that his appointed task is not even for himself and his own ideas but rather to make Emma’s dreams a reality because Norman doesn’t see himself as good of a person as he sees Emma as. 

So, right away that’s a combination of 1) Norman having a natural tendency to go to extremes especially when it comes to using people, situations, and everything present to get what he wants out of a situation. and 2) somebody who adheres himself to ideals and is intensely dedicated to bringing those ideals into reality even if those ideals are not his own. 

So, it’s easy to see why after being isolated from his two moral compasses and then traumatized in a child experimentation lab, that Norman’s way of dealing with this trauma and turning it into something productive another piece on the board has been to completely shed away his own identity as pose as someone else (Norman doesn’t really believe he’s a good person like Emma is), that person being the lofty ideal of William Minerva rather than an actual person, and two once again saying that he’s doing all of this to bring Emma’s ideals into reality. 

Neither of these things are necessarily harmful on their own. WHen they’re together Norman and Emma make a good team, Emma being the one who makes the ideals and Norman the one who wants to use strategy and tactics to bring them to life. However, Norman has been separted from Emma for a long time and making these decisions all on his own, and there’s been a clear case in escalation in the stakes Norman is dealing with.

The first thing he does in the chapter he’s reintroduced in is burn a platnation to the ground with the comatose mass production children still inside. I’m not going to discuss the ethics of this, but Norman himself feels guilty for not being able to save those children which shows the weight he’s currently taking on his shoulders and the decisions he’s making. 

So Norman in the year he’s been apart from his family has gone from, “I want all my family members to escape alive” to “Burn everything down to the ground and rebuild a paradise from the lost ashes”. I’m not making a moral judgement on Norman’s philosophy, especially since he’s rebelling against a fundamentally corrupt system based on child murder and human farming, however, his views are extreme and they’ve only become more extreme the more pressure he’s put on himself to carry out those ideals for every child he takes in.

So then you have the breakdown of the trio again. Emma, the reckless idealist, Ray the pragmatist, and Norman the extremist. Norman is now the most  in the know, and the one of the group with the most resources but that doesn’t mean Emma and Ray are going to go along with him and follow out his plan. 

Otherwise, the story would have been split up on focusing between Norman and Ray + Emma on their journey to reunite with one another. However, there’s one important thing to notice about this latest chapter. 

Norman talks about again in front of Emma that all he wants is to make her dream come true, living with her family and being able to care for them in a world that’s not actively trying to kill them. This brings a smile to Emma’s face.

Then Norman says that he’s been preparing all this time to make Emma’s dream a reality, and not only after losing their base does he have a plant to do it, but he also has resources, contacts, and measures in place to carry it out. It sounds too good to be true, after losing their hideout and Yugo and Lucas, they find Norman again and the same old Norman who seems to have everything figured out and only wants the best or his family. 

Yet, this is what Norman suggests.

Genocide, to simply wipe out all the demons and make this second world a paradise for humans, because if all the demons were gone there would be no reason to feed on humans anymore. And the author even takes the time to panel out Emma’s changing reaction, from a smile, to a hesitant face, to a slow look of horror. 

This isn’t what Emma wants to do. Norman’s strayed far from Emma’s ideals in his methodology. Emma is going to reject his answer, because Genocide of an intelligent species is a net wrong no matter what ends you’re trying to accomplish with those means. 

The kids have been killing demons all along, but can they really kill every single demon in order to build a world better for them? When things such as child demons and demons families exist? That’s what is weighing on Emma’s face. Her ideals are clashing finally with Norman’s need to go to extremes to bring those ideals into a reality and it’s going to cause a conflict between the two of them. That’s what’s registering on her face right now as Norman says with complete confidence all they need to do is wipe out every last demon to get the happy ending they want. 

That’s the direction I think Norman’s arc will go from now on! Thank you for sending the ask, anon. 

[the-desolated-quill]

Watchmen - Movie blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. if you haven’t seen this movie yet, you may want to before reading this review)

A movie adaptation of Watchmen had been in development in some form or another since the graphic novel was first published back in 1987. Over the course of its two decade development cycle, being passed from filmmaker to filmmaker who each had their own vision of what a Watchmen movie should be, fans objected to the idea of a movie adaptation, describing Watchmen as ‘unfilmmable.’ Alan Moore himself condemned the effort to adapt his work, saying that Watchmen does things that can only be done in a comic book. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and in 2009, Watchmen finally came to the big screen, directed by Zack Snyder.

I confess it took me a lot longer to write this review than I intended and that’s largely because I wasn’t sure how best to approach it. Snyder clearly has a lot of love and respect for the source material and tried his best to honour it as best he could. Snyder himself even said that he considers the film to be an advert for the book, hoping to get newcomers interested in the material. So how should I be looking at this film? As an adaptation or as an artistic tribute? More to the point, which of the three versions of the film should I be reviewing? The original theatrical cut, the director’s cut or the ultimate cut? Which best reflects Snyder’s artistic vision?

After much pondering, I decided to go with the director’s cut. The theatrical release was clearly done to make studio execs happy by keeping the runtime under three hours, but it comes at the cost of major plot points and character moments being chucked away. The ultimate cut however comes in at a whopping four hours and is arguably the most accurate to the source material as it also contains the animated Tales Of The Black Freighter scenes. However these scenes break the narrative flow of the film and were clearly not intended to be part of the final product, being inserted only to appease the fans. The director’s cut feels most like Snyder’s vision, clocking in at three and half hours and following the graphic novel fairly closely whilst leaving room for artistic licence.

Now as some of you may know, while I’m not exactly what you would call a fan of Zack Snyder’s work, I do have something of a begrudging respect for him due to his willingness to take creative risks and attempt to tell more complex, thought provoking narratives that don’t necessarily adhere to the blockbuster formula. Films like Watchmen and Batman Vs Superman prove to me that the man clearly has a lot of good ideas and a drive to really make an audience think about what they’re watching and question certain things about the characters. The problem is that he never seems to know how best to convey those ideas on screen. In my review of Batman Vs Superman, I likened him to a fire hose. Extremely powerful, but unless you’ve got someone holding onto the thing with both hands and pointing it in the right direction, it’s just going to go all over the place. I admire Snyder’s dedication and thought process, but I think the fact that his most successful film, Man Of Steel, also happens to be the one he had the least creative influence on speaks volumes. When he’s got someone to work with and bounce ideas off of, he can be a creative force to be reckoned with. Left to his own devices however, and his films tend to go off the rails very quickly.

Watchmen is very much Snyder’s passion project. You can tell a lot of care and effort went into this. The accuracy of the costumes, staging and set designs speak for themselves. However there is an underlying problem with Snyder trying to painstakingly recreate the graphic novel on film. While I don’t agree with the purists who say that Watchmen is ‘unfilmmable’, I do agree with Alan Moore’s statement that there are certain aspects of the graphic novel that can only work in a graphic novel. A key example of this is its structure. Watchmen has the luxury of telling its non-linear narrative over twelve issues in creative and unorthodox ways. A structure that’s incredibly hard to translate into any other medium. A twelve episode TV mini-series might come close, but a movie, even a three hour movie, is going to struggle due to the sheer density of the material and the unconventional structure. Whereas the structure of the graphic novel allowed Alan Moore to dedicate whole chapters to the origin stories of Doctor Manhattan and Rorschach and filling in the gaps of this alternate history, the structure of a movie doesn’t really allow for that. And yet Snyder tries really hard to follow the structure of the book even though it simply doesn’t work on film, which results in the movie coming to a screeching halt as the numerous flashbacks and origin stories disrupt the flow of the narrative, causing it to stop and start constantly at random intervals, like someone kangarooing in a rundown car.

Just as Watchmen the graphic novel played around with the common tropes and framing devices of comics, Watchmen the movie needed to play around with the common tropes and framing devices of comic book movies. To Snyder’s credit, there are moments where he does do that. The most notable being the first five minutes where we see the entire history of the world of Watchmen during the opening credits while ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’ is played in the background. This is legitimately good. It depicts the rise and fall of the superhero in a way only a movie can. I wish Snyder did more stuff like this rather than restricting himself to just recreating panels from the graphic novel.

Which is not to say I think the film is bad. On the contrary, I think it’s pretty damn good. There’s a lot of things to like about this movie. The biggest, shiniest gold star has to go to Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. While the movie itself was divisive at the time, Haley’s portrayal of Rorschach was universally praised as he did an excellent job bringing this extreme right wing bigot to life. He has become to Rorschach what Ryan Reynolds is to Deadpool or what Mark Hamill is to the Joker. He is the character (rather tragically. LOL). To the point where it’s actually scary how similar Haley looks to Walter Kovacs from the graphic novel. The resemblance is uncanny.

Another standout performance is Jeffery Dean Morgan as the Comedian. Just as depraved and unsavoury as the comic version, but Morgan is also able to inject some real charm and pathos into the character. You believe that Sally Jupiter would have consensual sex with him despite everything he did to her before. But his best scene I think was his scene with Moloch (played by Matt Frewer) where the Comedian expresses regret for all the terrible things he did. It’s a genuinely emotional and impactful scene and Morgan manages to wring some sympathy out of the audience even though the character doesn’t really deserve it. But that’s what makes Rorschach and the Comedian such great characters. Yes they’re both depraved individuals, but they’re also fully realised and three dimensional. They feel like real people, which is what makes their actions and morals all the more shocking.

Then there’s Doctor Manhattan, who in my opinion stands as a unique technical achievement in film. The number of departments that had to work together to bring him to life is staggering. Visual effects, a body double, lighting, sound, it’s a truly impressive collaborative effort, all tied together by Billy Crudup’s exceptional performance. He arguably had the hardest job out of the whole cast. How do you portray an all powerful, emotionless, quantum entity without him coming across as a robot? Crudup manages this by portraying Manhattan as being less emotionless and more emotionally numb, which makes his rare displays of emotion, such as his shock and anger during the TV interview, stand out all the more. It’s a great depiction that I don’t think is given the credit it so richly deserves.

Which leads into something else about the movie, which will no doubt be extremely controversial, but I’m going to say it anyway. I much prefer the ending in the film to the ending in the book.

Hear me out.

In my review of the final issue of Watchmen, I said I didn’t like the squid because of its utter randomness. The plot of the movie however works so much better both from a narrative and thematic perspective. Ozymandias framing Doctor Manhattan makes a hell of a lot more sense than the squid. For one thing, it doesn’t dump a massive amount of new info on us all at once. It’s merely an extension of previously known facts. We know Ozymandias framed Manhattan for giving people cancer to get him off world. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine the world could also buy that Manhattan would retaliate after being ostracised. We also see Adrian and Manhattan working together to create perpetual energy generators, which turn out to be bombs. It marries up perfectly with the history of Watchmen as well as providing an explanation for why there’s an intrinsic field generator in Adrian’s Antarctic base. It also provides a better explanation for why Manhattan leaves Earth at the end despite gaining a newfound respect for humanity. But what I love most of all is how it links to Watchmen’s central themes. 

Thanks to the existence of Doctor Manhattan, America has become the most powerful nation in the world to the point where its disrupted the global balance of power. This has led to the escalation of the Cold War with Russia as well as other countries like Vietnam being at the mercy of the United States. It also allowed Nixon to stay in office long after his two terms had expired. The reason the squid from the book is so unsatisfying as a conclusion is because you don’t buy that anyone would be willing to help America after the New York attack. In fact it would be more likely that Russia and other countries might take advantage of America’s vulnerability. Manhattan’s global attack however not only gives the whole world motivation to work together, it also puts America in a position where they have no choice but to ask for help because it was they that effectively created this mess in the first place. So seeing President Nixon pleading for a global alliance feels incredibly satisfying because we’re seeing a corrupt individual hoist by his own petard and trying to save his own skin, even if it comes at the cost of his power. America is now like a wounded animal, and while world peace is ultimately achieved, the US is now a shadow of its former self. It fits in so perfectly with the overall story of Watchmen, frankly I’m amazed Alan Moore didn’t come up with this himself.

It’s not perfect however. Since the whole genetic engineering stuff no longer exists, it makes the existence of Adrian’s pet lynx Bubastis rather perplexing. Also the whole tachyons screwing with Doctor Manhattan’s omniscience thing still doesn’t make a pixel of sense. But the biggest flaw is in Adrian Veidt’s characterisation. For one thing, Matthew Goode’s performance isn’t remotely subtle. He practically screams ‘bad guy’ the moment he appears on screen. He has none of the charm or charisma that the source material’s Ozymandias had. But it’s worse than that because Snyder seems to be going out of his way to uncomplicate and de-politicise the story and characters. There’s no mention of Adrian’s liberalism or his disdain for Nixon and right wing politics. The film never explores his obsession with displaying his own power and superiority over right wing superheroes like Rorschach and the Comedian. He’s just the generic bad guy. And I do mean bad guy. Whereas the graphic novel left everything up to the reader to decide who was morally in the right, the film takes a very firm stance on who the audience should be siding with. Don’t believe me? Just look at how Rorschach’s death is presented to us.

It’s very clear while watching the film that Zack Snyder is a big Rorschach fan. He gets the most screen time and there’s a lot of effort dedicated to his portrayal and depiction. And that’s fine. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. As I’ve mentioned before in previous blogs, Rorschach is my favourite character too. However it’s important not to lose sight of who the character is and what he’s supposed to represent, otherwise you run the risk of romanticising him, which is exactly what the film ends up doing. Rorschach’s death in the graphic novel wasn’t some heroic sacrifice. It was a realisation that he has no place in the world that Ozymandias has created, as well as revealing the hypocrisy of the character. In the extra material provided in The Abyss Gazes Also, we learn that, as a child, Walter supported President Truman’s use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and yet, in his adult life, he opposes Adrian’s plan. Why? What’s the difference? Well the people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t American. They were Japanese. The enemy. In Rorschach’s mind, they deserved to die, whereas the people in New York didn’t. It signifies the flawed nature of Rorschach’s black and white view of the world as well as displaying the racist double standards of the character. Without the context of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Rorschach’s death becomes skewed. This is what ends up happening in the movie. Rorschach removes his mask and makes a bold declaration to Doctor Manhattan, the music swells as he is disintegrated, defiant to the last, and his best friend Nite Owl screams in anguish and despair.

In fact the film takes it one step further by having Nite Owl punch Adrian repeatedly in the face and accuse him of deforming humanity, which completely contradicts the point of Dan Dreiberg as a character. He’s no longer the pathetic centrist who requires a superhero identity to feel any sort of power or validation. He’s now the everyman representing the views of the audience, which just feels utterly wrong.

This links in with arguably the film’s biggest problem of all. The way it portrays superheroes in general. The use of slow motion, cinematography and fight choreography frames the superheroes and vigilantes of Watchmen as being powerful, impressive individuals, when really the exact opposite should be conveyed. The costumes give the characters a feeling of power, but that power is an illusion. Nite Owl is really an impotent failure. Rorschach is an angry bigot lashing out at the world. The Comedian is a depraved old man who has let his morals fall by the way side so he can indulge in his own perverse fantasies. They’re not people to be idealised. They’re to be at pitied at best and reviled at worst. So seeing them jump through windows and beating up several thugs single handed through various forms of martial arts ultimately confuses the message, as does the use of gratuitous gore and violence. Are we supposed to be shocked by these individuals or in awe? 

Costumes too have a similar problem. Nite Owl and Ozymandias’ costumes have been updated so they look more imposing, which kind of defeats the purpose of them. The point is they look silly to us, the outside observers, but they make the characters feel powerful. That juxtaposition is lost in the film. And then there’s the Silk Spectre. In the graphic novel, both Sally and Laurie represent the changing attitudes of women in comics and in society. Both Silk Spectres are sexually objectified, but whereas Sally accepts it as part of the reality of being a woman, Laurie resists it, seeing it as demeaning. The only reason she wore her revealing costume in A Brother To Dragons was because she knew that Dan found it sexually attractive and she wanted to indulge his power fantasy. None of this is touched upon in the film, other than one passing mention of the Silk Spectre porn magazine near the beginning of the film. There’s not even any mention of how impractical her costume is, like the graphic novel does. Yes the film changes her look drastically, but it’s still just as impractical and could have been used to make a point on how women are perceived in comic book films, but it never seems to hinder her in anyway. It’s never even brought up, which is ridiculous. Zack Snyder’s reinterpretation of Silk Spectre is clearly meant to inject some form of girl power into the proceedings, as she’s presented as being just as impressive and kick-ass as the others, when the whole point of her character was to expose the misogyny of the comics industry at the time and how they cater to the male gaze. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the graphic novel did it perfectly, but it did it a hell of a lot better than this.

Die hard fans have described the film over the years as shallow and ‘style over substance.’ I don’t think that’s entirely fair. It’s clear that Zack Snyder has a huge respect for the graphic novel and wanted to do it justice. Overall the film has a lot of good ideas and is generally well made. However, as much as Snyder seems to love Watchmen, it does seem like he only has a surface level understanding of it, hence why the attention and effort seems to be going into the visuals and the faithfulness to Alan Moore’s attention to detail rather than the Watchmen’s story and themes. While the film at times makes some good points about power, corruption and morality, it doesn’t go nearly as far as the source material does and seems to shy away from really getting into the meat of any particular topic. Part of that I suspect is to do with marketability, not wanting to alienate casual viewers, but I think a lot of it is to do with it simply being in the wrong medium. I personally don’t think you can really do a story as complex and intricate as Watchmen’s justice in a Hollywood film. In my opinion, this really should have been a TV mini-series or something.

So on the whole, while I appreciate Snyder’s attempt at bringing the story of Watchmen to life and can see that he has the best intentions in mind, I don’t think this film holds a candle to the original source material. 

[magaprima]

THREES.

 ❥ TAGGED BY: @wildpawed​  ❥ TAGGING:  @killthebxy @lloronala @dr-jillian @ozwolff @youhavemyrespect @jennyorjanna @byersmom

MUSE: Lilith. First woman. First witch. Queen of Hell. Temporary High School Principal. 

3 strengths

Intelligence. Lilith has a strong emotional intelligence in that she’s able to recognise thought and feeling processes in the large majority of people. While everyone else, Satan included, were all about forcing and threatening Sabrina to sign the book, Lilith was the one who recognised Sabrina would never sign the book to save herself, but she’d do it to save others, and so manipulates events accordingly. She’s constantly manipulating at every turn, that is literally her whole jam, and she does it well; she’s never discovered, she’s never challenged, she gets everything done subtly and successfully, and she has been doing this well for thousands of years. She has a great track record (and yet still isn’t appreciated). The only reason she is discovered is her temper (weakness listed below) gets the better of her and so leads Sabrina right to her. She also general intelligence as she is able to make up stories and false histories on the spot, she teaches an actual history class, and apparently does it well, for several months, like she legitimately taught, and she has a never ending knowledge on all things magical. Everything she’s ever asked about she has an answer for, she is a constant pool of information. There’s a reason Sabrina keeps going back to her for answers and help. It’s also the reason Hilda goes to her, because the woman just gives off a constantly knowledgeable, mentorish vibe. 

Extremely powerful. We only see a few displays in the show, due to the primary narrative being about Sabrina’s magic, but what we do see is immense. She was able to use minimal items to make a very powerful scrying spell that covered the entire Spellman house and went undetected by the family,, she was able to put out a Yule Log (something that should have been guarded against outside magic) with relatively little effort, she is unaffected by the Spellman’s defensive spells, and she is able to hold the Dark Lord back by his throat using her own telekinetic gifts. Like literal Satan and she was able to hold him back with one hand. That’s extremely, fucking powerful. But she is, after all, the first witch and she is also a demoness. So, she is, like Sabrina, two things, and, like Sabrina, it seems to only add to her gifts and make her extra powerful. She is not someone an ordinary witch or warlock could hope to defeat alone. 

Her survival instincts. Lilith is thousand of years old and she has gone through several transformations, a long-term abusive relationship, she’s remained close to the Dark Lord without being killed, survived being Banished by the False God and left to wander a wilderness to die, and she is still here, still going strong. Self-preservation is a really big thing for her, and comes before everything. It’s even what she tells Sabrina, to leave her Aunts behind in favour of saving herself; this attitude is what has kept Lilith arrive and until the Part 2 finale she is very uninterested in changing that. She is a woman who knows how to survive, as a lot of long-term abuse victims do, and she does it no matter what. She has suffered majorly several times over, but she has lived through and, in the end, was able to come out on top and finally crown herself as queen, and that was only possible because she had survived everything else.

3 weaknesses

Lucifer. For so many reasons. He’s her weakness because she fell in love with him and a part of her will always love him no matter how much she tries to destroy that, so that make her vulnerable. He’s her weakness because he was her abuser for such a long, long time, millennia in fact, and therefore, for all her strength and confidence, she was always frightened of him, always wary of upsetting him. He’s her weakness because he’s one of the few in existence to be more powerful than her and older than her, therefore there’s a risk there. Due to my headcanon that Lilith got her witchly powers when she defied the False God, as she supposedly did in traditional mythology, rather than signing the Book, he isn’t able to take her powers away entirely, but he would have been capable of binding her, making her powerless, perhaps even has done for periods of time in the past, so he’s her weakness there. He is a rare chink in her very strong armour. 

Her lack of positive emotional experiences. The fact that nearly all of Lilith’s relationships- romantic, platonic, familial- have all been negative ones means she doesn’t have the full breadth of experience needed to make emotionally intelligent decisions and to react to things in an appropriate way. It’s the reason she sees Sabrina as an enemy rather than ally, because her experiences tell her Sabrina would stab her in the back and steal everything from her. It’s why she’s unable to make emotional connections until Part 2, it takes her that long to have those first developments. She doesn’t react normally because of this lack of range in relationships; she flips to extreme, negative reactions rather than waiting things out and weighing everything up. It’s also why, when people reach out to her, she doesn’t know what to do, and is either stunned into silence, or react defensively because she’s uncomfortable with the sincerity. 

Her temper. This is related to the previous points, as more positive experiences might have helped curb her temper, or at least her willingness to indulge it. Instead she gives into it with the fiery hellish passion you’d expect from the destined Queen of Hell. We see it first when her puppet scarecrow is destroyed and she throws the whole thing with an unearthly scream, it’s temper that makes her create the Adam Creature and try to kill Sabrina. Because she is intelligent and patient, her temper isn’t indulged too often, but when it is, it’s self-destructive. She doesn’t think intelligently or react thoughtfully when she gives into that rage. 

3 secrets

She’s not quite the mortal hater she appears to be, generally  speaking. Generally speaking, she doesn’t like mortals, she dismisses them as unworthy, but there’s never outright hate, because that would mean she had to care about them in any regard and she really doesn’t. Generally nothings them. However due to thinking nothing of them she can hate witches or warlocks for preferring the, a Edward did, for example. So, despite people presuming she abhors all mortals, she doesn’t. She can hate mortal men, but she also hates warlock men, so that’s more about gender than species, but as Lilith was originally created as mortal first (which is where a lot of her internal dislike and dismissal as being ‘unworthy’ comes from, due to everything she suffered as a mortal and also as she perceives it as the reason Satan thinks her unworthy) she can’t completely hate them, because some primal, original part of her still ties her to them, despite her denials. And, her recent experiences at Baxter High, have opened her mind a little more to mortals, and their worth, but this softening towards particular ones is a secret even to herself. 

She has maternal instincts, even if she fights and denies them constantly. Lilith was created as an all-mother, the wife, the life-giver etc etc. If she had kept her role as assigned by the False God, she would have filled Eve’s role, which is the archetype of the traditional woman; a wife, a mother, a life-giver, a nuturer. Therefore, Lilith  was created with those properties; she does have a maternal instinct in her, but it is perceived as weakness by almost everyone in her circle, including Lucifer, so she has suppressed it and denied it, except when she uses it to manipulate her own way. However, despite that, it can be prompted by certain people and interactions (as Sabrina prompted it in her in the finale. The way she speaks to her in her bedroom about her being Queen, and still studying the books, and the way she saves her life at the coronation), but when she feels that happen, she tries her utmost best to suppress it once more. But that maternal instinct is there to be triggered. 

She likes Sabrina. She genuinely likes her, even feels proud of her when she does certain things. Sabrina rebels against the order, as Lilith did, she doesn’t accept things from an unseen God, she challenges the rules, questions things, all things Lilith did, and so she can’t help but admire that. She never planned on actually liking her, but spending so much time with her in a supportive, mentor environment opened up the above maternal instincts as well as processes and bonds Lilith hadn’t expected. She has a genuine soft spot for her, hence why she didn’t just return her powers, but Ms Wardwell too. Lilith feels a bond to Sabrina, that they’re cut from the same cloth in away (it’s also why she can be wary of her too)

3 fears

That Lucifer will escape his prison. Lilith has always played her game from the shadows, never showing her cards until the last moment, the moment of certainty, but with challenging the Dark Lord, openly grabbing him, revealing herself as co-conspirator, there’s no way she could merely ‘survive’ if he escaped. He would be furious with Sabrina, but I imagine Lilith’s life would be forfeit. She knows personally how dangerous and powerful he is, so she fears his escape more than anyone. Which is why she will guard Nick relentlessly. 

That she’ll lose her crown/throne. She’s waited so long for it and worked so hard for it and finally it’s hers; she’s Queen of Hell. But she’s aware that Sabrina was the intended Queen and that certain residents of Hell will prefer Lucifer, or be loyal to him beyond his imprisonment, or don’t want to be ruled by a woman etc and will challenge her. She will fight to the last to keep her crown now that she has it, but she’s wary of coups and someone trying to trap and imprison her. She also the irrational fear that Sabrina will change her mind and want the crown after all. 

That the False God might drag her back to his realm and to Adam. This fear was at his greatest in the beginning when it seemed entirely legitimate that he might drag her back, but even after thousands of years she can’t shake that dread at the idea. Adam was a cruel ‘husband’ and treated her as something less than, something to serve, he was cruel and vindictive, dismissive, the list goes on, and he had the support of the False God. In a paradise, Lilith suffered and was unprotected, and even though she has suffered with Lucifer, she still fears being dragged back more, because with Adam she was mortal and powerless; at least in hell she has power. 

3 goals

Her main goal, in fact her primary and essential goal for like eternity, was to become Queen of Hell. However, originally it was to rule beside Lucifer, but then she changes to ‘let’s gut the bastard and I’ll take the crown for myself’, but then she actually got the crown, so goal achieved. So now, her new goal is to keep the crown.  

To see witches back in places of power. The path of night has taken a bad step in the very wrong direction in giving warlocks all the power. Under her rule, Lilith wants to see witches taking centre stage, more high priestesses rather than high priestesses, a Witches’ Council full of women, so she wants to orchestrate all that coming into being. 

To keep Nick safe, as her promise to Sabrina, but, more importantly, to keep Lucifer trapped and therefore unable to wreak bloody revenge on them all. 

[elizas-writing]

Animated August, Day 16: ParaNorman

While many cite Coraline as the scariest movie they ever saw, for me, there’s one Laika film which tops the scary factor. And that is ParaNorman. It may not have as much freaky imagery as Coraline, but ParaNorman deals with its subject matter of bullying so upfront in ways most kids’ media won’t, and it is unsettling no matter how many times I watch it. And I have nothing but mad props for this film taking its audience seriously and not dumbing anything down.

Norman is an outcast among his peers and family because he can see and talk to ghosts, and no one else understands his ability. He’s suddenly thrust with the task of subduing a witch’s curse from his late uncle, but fails due to the confusing instructions. That’s when zombies rise from their graves; the same ones who accused the witch and sentenced her to execution three centuries ago. Now, Norman and his new odd team of friends, including his older sister, are on the run from zombies as they find a way to end the witch’s curse and figure out what really happened all those years ago.

The frame rate in the character movements is much smoother with a lot of in between details like hair or clothing being in constant motion. Nothing feels like it lags, and they really went above and beyond to have the facial expressions flow from one to the other-- which helps when you have a 3D Printer to speed up the process. Once again, these are wonderful character designs which show a ton of personality, and it’s pulled through even better with the voice acting. Kodi Smit-McPhee is great as the emotionally detached Norman who eventually comes to allow people into his life. Tucker Albrizzi as his new best friend, Neil, is equally goofy and heartfelt. Anna Kendrick is too perfect as Norman’s older sister, Courtney, who’s a stereotypical cheerleader type. Casey Affleck is fun as Mitch, who’s an oblivious, dumb jock. And Christopher Mintz-Plasse is quite hilarious as Alvin, a bully stereotype-- and I’m pretty sure the first animated character I ever saw with gauges.

Part of what makes this group fascinating is that despite being stereotypes, they act like pre-teens and teenagers. They swear a bit and make some good adult jokes here and there. It may not be to the same level as say The Goonies, but it’s pretty damn close. It makes them realistic and identifiable as Norman tries to open up about his abilities and his repressed emotions, and the rest figure out how to adjust to the whole living dead thing. They’re constantly back-and-forth, screaming at each other, but over time, they learn to understand this is just how it is for Norman and will back him up as he figures out how to express himself and how to actually break the witch’s curse instead of subduing it for another year.

But what makes this film so great is its brutal honesty on the effects of bullying and how some of your worst bullies can be the adults you’re supposed to trust. It presents a massive generational gap between the kids who are more open and understanding and the adults who automatically fear what they don’t understand. It breaks my heart every time Norman’s dad speaks ill of him and his ability when he could just take a moment to understand what his kid goes through. It tries to rationalize his father’s behavior and fear, but over time as Norman opens up and learns about the history of the witch’s trial, it’s nothing more than bullshit excuses, especially as other adults just go bonkers upon seeing zombies who it turns out aren’t actually hurting anyone.

And God, when you learn about the witch’s backstory, it just punches me in the gut. Every. Fucking. Time. It’s a dark, fucked up, yet brilliant reveal which deconstructs adults’ fears, how far they’ll go to justify it, and the guilt to follow which never goes away. And ties well with the social commentary of sensationalizing parts of history and forgetting what happened. I have nothing but admiration for Laika for going that far and not pussyfooting around its criticisms. And it keeps the climax constantly building in the action and emotional drama until it hits that grand catharsis and a happy ending; it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen it, it always makes me cry.

Much like how Coraline continues to scare the piss out of you, I always feel like I’m watching ParaNorman for the first time with the clever writing and a willingness to go dark and brutally honest to make a point on the truths of bullying. There’s always little details I pick up on with each new viewing, and I love these characters and their growth to be better people. Hands down, one of the best animated movies I’ve seen within the last decade, and a high recommendation to all ages.

Day 15 >> Day 16 >> Day 17

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[theatredirectors]

Catie Davis

Hometown?

Peekskill, NY – about an hour north of NYC.

Where are you now?

NYC! I live in Sunnyside with my boyfriend, Jake, and our rescue dog, Edison.

What's your current project?

I am currently the associate director of Beetlejuice which is going out of town to the National Theatre in D.C. this fall. I’ve been involved with the show for almost a year and a half now and am really excited to be approaching a full production and to get to share it with the outside world.

I’m also developing two new musicals: Medusa, by Wes Braver and Rachel Dean, and Forget Me Not, with book & lyrics by Kate Thomas and music by Joey Contreras. Medusa is an adaptation of the Greek myth that unpacks the emotional and psychological experience of a young foreign woman who sought to make change in the world, but thanks to the broken system in which she found herself, went down in history as a gorgon. It’s been really interesting developing this show during the #MeToo movement, where the playing field is constantly changing. Forget Me Not tells the story of a remote costal town where a whale washes ashore and brings a burst of attention back to a struggling community. Inspired by the 1970 Oregon exploding whale and the Long Island serial killer, this musical is a fascinating mashup of scenarios that examine what we would do to keep from being forgotten.

Why and how did you get into theatre?

I joined the Peekskill High School Drama Club when I was a sophomore because my best friend was in it. I had just seen Spring Awakening on Broadway which opened my eyes and heart to how relatable musicals could be. The drama club was led by a retired dancer who gave the students a lot of control, and I immediately threw myself all in. I had always been a natural leader, and so when I was elected president of the club as a junior I decided to give student-directing a go. We did a production of The Crucible that fall, and I was hooked. I remember wishing at times that my club had better resources like many of the surrounding Westchester school districts, some of whom would go so far as to rent Broadway set pieces for their productions, but in retrospect I wouldn’t change a thing. I was given leadership opportunities that few sixteen-year-olds get and discovered my passion.

What is your directing dream project?

I would absolutely love to direct a musical at Shakespeare in the Park. Seeing Hair there back in 2008 completely changed my idea of what an audience and performer relationship could be. There’s something so magical about 1,800 people coming together to see a show not because they have all this money to spend on theater, but because they spent the time waiting in line for the opportunity. The untamable element of nature at the Delacorte Theater makes the whole thing even more magical and unpredictable.

What kind of theatre excites you?

I am excited by timely stories that are created and performed by a diverse group of people; stories that remind me of the value of embarking on an emotional journey in a room together. I belief we will be in deep trouble when we lose our ability to relate to one another, and theater gives us that necessary lesson in empathy. A score is typically the first thing I respond to, and I’m excited when I hear something new and original that really hooks me emotionally. I’m also excited when I see something or read something that completely changes how I view a character or historical event. I remember the first time I read Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, in which an architype like Creon makes a compelling, complex, and emotional argument for why Antigone should give up trying to bury her second brother, I suddenly felt like Greek tragedy was humanized and within reach.

What do you want to change about theatre today?

I’d love to see theater be more inclusionary of all types of people and stories. As a young woman, I am tired of going to see shows (especially stories about women) that were created entirely by teams of established white men. I am motivated to change that demographic with my presence and with the production teams I assemble. I don’t think enough value is placed on the lived experience an artist brings to a project, instead value is given to Broadway credits, and we end up with the same group of people making shows over and over. I just don’t think that’s very interesting or that it gives unique value to different shows. I’d also like to see more new works getting produced on a large scale. Arpita Mukherjee, who previously wrote for this blog, suggested a scenario where only new works get produced for a year, and that sounds awesome to me. I’m not opposed to adaptations, or revivals, that put a new lens or spin on a story we know, but think we need to hear from writers who are responding directly to the world we live in now.

What is your opinion on getting a directing MFA?

When I graduated from undergrad I was eager to get some work experience under my belt, and had a lot of student loan debt, so I figured an MFA was at least a few years down the line. Since then, working as an assistant and associate has felt like grad school; I’ve been able to observe really smart, passionate theater artists and learned a lot from them. I may still some day decide to go for my MFA, but I think I’ll know that time has arrived if I feel like I’m hitting a wall and no longer growing as a director, and fortunately there have been lots of other ways I’ve been able to challenge myself thus far.

Who are your theatrical heroes?

I have a deep appreciation for good stage managers; I wouldn’t make it through a single day of rehearsal without them and think they deserve to be acknowledged more publicly and regularly by our industry.

I owe so much to the actors who say yes to 29-hour readings or little development steps. Who, even though you can’t afford to give them anything more than a metro card, give you all their positive energy and bring so much clarity to the thing you’re developing.

I really admire the Public Theater for its initiatives to make theater inclusive and accessible, as well as for their leadership’s willingness to take risks with the work they produce and people they employ.

And personally, I am so grateful to Alex Timbers who has mentored and trusted me to be his associate over the past few years. I hear horror stories about experiences people have assisting, and he has been nothing but kind and supportive of me. I hope to pass that along as I grow and mentor younger directors.

Any advice for directors just starting out?

1. Trust your instincts. I directed my first real show outside of high school when I was seventeen. I had a cast from around New York and New Jersey, most of whom were older than me, and about one eighth of a production team. When I think back on that process, I remember feeling like I knew exactly what I was doing, and the crazy thing was – people trusted me. With the conviction and passion to tell the right story, my ragtag group managed to make something special. So, if you’re feeling compelled to direct, follow that instinct and find a way to make it happen. 

2. Say Yes! The biggest regret I have from the past five years was turning one specific project down. I didn’t feel like I totally jived with the creative team, I didn’t trust that they were going to make script changes without a fight, and so it just didn’t seem worth it. Now that same project has had a really cool production and is continuing to move forward. It took watching that train pull out of the station without me on board to realize there was no real reason to say no to it, and that I would have grown from the challenges it brought. I’m not suggesting you should say yes to everything – there are projects that will be in poor taste or with bad people that you should say no to (trust your instincts!), but until you have a really strong reason to say no, I suggest giving it a shot.

Plugs!

Tickets for Beetlejuice are on sale now! And D.C. is just a quick train ride or cheap bus ride away. Visit www.beetlejuicebroadway.com

I am helping my good friend and brilliant actress Tara Halpern develop her solo cabaret which will be performed at The Duplex on September 10. Tara’s hilarious piece, titled The Boys I Loved in Catholic School, takes us on an early 2000s teen-pop journey through her first twelve crushes, and considers the impact of pop media on young women’s self-worth. Keep an eye on catie-davis.com/news for ticket info, as well as updates on other projects!