#i like exploring my own psychology its like pretending to feel my emotions by being aware of them

[devotedlystrangewizard]

every single day i log onto this app with hannibal on the brain is one day closer to my inevitably 5k word essay on the similarities and differences between zenoswol & hannigram. these are not at all related but they are both part of my special interests so they are now

[knightsteapot]

☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ TALKING ABOUT WANDERER II

Hello again, here you have the second part of my Kuni/ Scaramouce analysis.

Disclaimer: I just did some research and everything but remember that what you’re going to read is a theory or a bunch of ideas, we don’t have anything in canon so for now let’s pretend this is how this puppet works. Also, I know some shit about psychology but don't take me too seriously, please!

In my first analysis, I was talking about his body and a little bit of his mind, not behavior because that’s not where I wanna focus. If you haven’t read the first part I recommend you to do it before reading this second part.

☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ PHYSICAL STRUCTURE

He doesn’t have bones, of course, this is logical, he’s not human, so the material his skeleton is made of must be some sort of metal, taking into account that yes, the archons might be capable to do what humans can’t but still have to work with materials that already exist. His body, despite his size, is heavier than a real human with similar proportions; not only Kuni has this attempt of a skeleton inside but also a complex system that allows him to move, fight, dance, eat, and even think.

Something curious I noticed was how when you use his ultimate some parts of his skin are bright. I interpret this as divine marks, it’s very possible that if you take a look at him naked you’ll notice marks on his neck, chest, and hips. My theory is that usually, those marks are purple, representing electro because his mother is the electro Archon but once Kuni uses his vision these marks turn green, for two reasons: its a symbol of how anemo, his freedom, is part of him, claiming the marks of a negligent mother and make them his own marks. The second is easier, Kuni is still a divine creation, Archon’s hair gets bright when they use their ultis, Kuni hair doesn’t do that but his body does. He’s not any puppet/robot like Katherine.

☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ TRAUMA, FEELINGS AND BRAIN

That being said, we’re going to explore canon things just because: Kuni is beautiful, is pretty and he knows it. His skin, hair, and voice are smooth, the shogun indeed created a divine being, this said, Kuni is not only beautiful outside but inside. I’m not saying he has a heart of gold and is a good boy, no, the Shogun made Kuni with an angelic appearance and the ability to feel, that’s what makes Scaramouche so precious and at the same time so vulnerable:

He can feel the whole range of emotions, just like a human, and as a human, he doesn’t have control over his emotions, his emotions control him, this in addition to his experiences make a very dangerous cocktail. Scaramouche feelings run so deep that he developed trauma, the second most obvious: Dottore’s abuse which probably originated a PTSD

Low HP line: I'm used to this. Kuni is used to pain, however, I don’t think the pain he feels can even compare to human pain, as Dottore said, he was the perfect candidate for his extreme resistance. Extreme resistance doesn’t mean Kuni can’t be in pain, it only means he couldn’t die or beg him to stop.

He can cry, hate, and feel pity as we know, but he can be considerate too. Birthday line: Give me your hand. Heh, there's no need to be nervous. I'm just taking you to a vantage point.

How is it? The scenery here should be quite breathtaking. There's no need to thank me — I see little point in it.

But that’s not all, his brain not only processes feelings but also has the ability to fantasize, foresee the outcome of some situations, and create imaginary scenarios, this is proven in the Archon’s quest and his plan to become a god, he had expectations and goals, he imagined an outcome, he fantasized about a future in which he was a god, but he also, in the past, dreamed of having a heart even though that wasn’t possible for a creature like him. It suggests that Kuni might have the ability to dream while he sleeps. Dreaming is not a super complex process, even animals can dream but for a puppet, an artificial creation to be able to do all the things I mentioned? well… That’s another level.

☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ MOMMY ISSUES AND EXTRA INFO

In addition to this, I’d like to mention that Kuni has mommy issues, but please, don’t think it's about him wanting a “mommy” or having a “mommy kink”, it’s completely different. Kuni has mommy issues because he was abandoned by his creator, this disconnection makes the person, in this case, puppet unable to understand his emotions and have a hard time understanding the emotions of the people around them, they can get attached easily (as we saw in his story), they can be in extreme yielding (something we can see in his past and in the present when he forgets his memories) but also can be evasive, and having very low self-esteem. Sounds familiar? yeah, yeah, I know.

Having mommy issues can be also related to the types of attachment, in my opinion, Kuni has a disorganized attachment, and it’s sad because this makes his life and the way he interacts with others extremely difficult and tiring. Some characteristics of this type of attachment are:

Fear of rejection.

Difficulty with intimacy.

Low self-worth.

Poor emotional regulation.

Fear of abandonment.

Extreme distance or extreme closeness.

Resistance to forming secure attachments.

Trust issues.

Sounds like him, right? and it breaks my heart, holy shit, why, why my baby had to suffer so much? Ah, okay, but to finish my analysis I’ll throw in some extra facts I’ve been thinking of:

If he can cry his eyes should be humid and soft, not like a doll’s eyes.

If he can cook, he can smell and must have some sort of taste buds.

If he feels pain, he can feel cold and hot temperatures, again, not like a human would do.

If he can eat, which is pretty much canon (not that he needs to eat, he just can eat) he can process the food and dispose of the components he doesn’t need.

And if he is so complex and physically he can do all that, is very possible he can have an erection, yes, you can rest in peace now, kunihoes, I got you, but he can’t create life, it’s not possible no matter how much I tried to make it work.

And that’s all, babies. I hope you enjoyed my analysis and agree with me when I say that Kuni is more human than he thinks! Poor little rabid kitten, he just needs some hugs, kisses, therapy (thank you Nahida!), and sex. Thank you for reading 💕

[malka-lisitsa]

psychology + mental health deep dive !

tagged by: The most important person in my life.... me ♡

general mental health related trigger warnings apply.  feel free to include more or exclude those facts / test results that take too much time or don’t apply, you can check out this list for more personality-related quizzes to include!

QUICK FACTS ,

diagnoses: (unofficial like this bitch would ever go to a therapist, what goes on in her head is none of her business) C-PTSD, Borderline personality disorder. triggers: Literally everything? Not even kidding its hit or miss at all times because shes constantly in fight or flight mode and can sometimes see something as a threat one moment and not the next. skills:  She has ZERO healthy coping skills. She knows HOW to ground in a panic attack, but she often forgets to in the moment. She has zero emotional regulation so she lashes out a lot too. negative coping skills:  Drinking, lashing out in aggression words/actions, petty little revenge missions (or that time she became the devil) attachment style:   fearful-avoidant / disorganised (shes a mess) love language:  Katherine doesn't really have your standard love languages. If she likes you she wants to play with you, silly little games. I suppose that could be "quality time" and I suppose you could simmer her greatest show of love, putting her advantage and safety at risk as "Acts of service" ? myers briggs / mbti: entp (but she can be very introverted too, as long as shes not BORED she has no issues being alone for extended periods of time, and sometimes needs to be.)

HISTORY EXPLORATION ,

are their diagnoses formal ( via a doctor, therapist, etc. ) or informal ( self diagnosis, a hunch, unrealized, etc. ) Informal, she does not care shes just trying to live and be loved

have they ever been treated / medicated?  Oh she self medicates all the time <33333333

have they ever been hospitalized or treated on an inpatient basis?  Does Damon locking her in a tomb count?

how old were they when they first started experiencing / realizing symptoms?  Like most cases of BPD early teens.

do they have a family history of mental illness?   Well her father is a raging and abusive alcoholic man so probably.

how was mental health handled / discussed in the family / community? in the 1400's as a woman??? LMFAO SHE GOT STRAIGHT EXILED FOR HAVING A BABY OUT OF WEDLOCK.

what are their thoughts on mental health / their diagnosis?  Katherine is an advocate for mental health when it comes to pretty much everyone but herself. She had no problem helping Stefan with his PTSD, validated it and taught him grounding methods- which means shes highly aware and has at least researched some of her issues, but she considers herself too broken to be fixable. So she mostly buries her issues and pretends they arent there until she cant anymore. Bottle bottle bottle- breakdown.

in what ways has their diagnosis shaped their life or experiences?   ... you want me to just link her whole bio bc... No but her BPD makes it extremely hard for her to communicate the way she desperately wants to. It makes it hard for her to trust people, even when she wants to, and it makes her almost unpredictable in terms of reaction to rejection or criticism. Her paranoia is sky high. Shes just not having a good time and all she wants is Stefan.

SYMPTOMS: note that all of the below are, on their own, normative and typical aspects of human functioning. they become “symptoms” when they last longer than “normal” or when they pose a significant impact on someone’s life / functioning.

BOLD  all that are present,  ITALICIZE  those that are resolved or in the history.

depression.    anxiety.    panic attacks.    dissociation.    derealization.    depersonalization.    suicidal ideation.    self harm.    homicidal ideation.    psychosis.    auditory hallucinations.    visual hallucinations.    delusions.    mania.   hypomania.    racing thoughts.    hyperactivity.    attention difficulty.    flashbacks.    nightmares.    hyperarousal.    hypoarousal.    hypersexuality.    hyposexuality.    psychopathy.   risky behavior.    catatonia.    somatic / bodily concerns.    mutism.    phobia.    agoraphobia.    hoarding.    obsessions.    compulsions.    body dysmorphia.    hair picking.    skin picking.     amnesia.    illness anxiety / hypochondria.    sensory loss.    speech difficulty.    comprehension difficulty.    communication difficulty.    tics.    defiant behavior.    irritable mood.    vindictiveness.     aggression.    pyromania.    kleptomania.    paranoia.    attention seeking.    narcissism.    avoidance.    dependency.    pica.    rumination.    food restriction.    food binging.    purging.    soiling the bed.    insomnia.    fatigue.    sexual dysfunction.    delirium.    developmental delays.

explanations / elaborations on any of the above symptoms:

I have several HC's that deep Dive Katherine's mental state, two of them are linked in the above info <3

[flickeringart]

Satanism - a way to embrace Pluto?

My mind has been occupied with Pluto lately, the planet, god and symbol of “the hidden things”, the occult, the underworld, darkness, fate, rage, destruction, transformation, abduction, man’s primitive nature, life and death, power and powerlessness, fear, violation and fertility. There’s so much nuance to all planetary (archetypal) principles and there’s always more to explore. Pluto especially is a mysterious and threatening figure (force) in our lives and in the world at large. I have talked about it in previous posts, here / here and here… I’ve also explored the 8th house, which is the astrological house of Scorpio and Pluto here and here.

Many people understandably avoid anything that has to do with the darker elements of life and human nature until they are forced to deal with them. This is possibly why Pluto has been associated with violence because we are typically dragged into the depths; we don’t go there willingly. Some people, however, have lives that are marked by Pluto to such a degree that they can’t pretend that he doesn’t exist. By deciding to consciously accept him and embrace his influence it is possible to live a richer life. After all, Pluto is not only a god of destruction; he is also a god of riches. It seems to me, that the worship of Satan (as practiced by members of the Church of Satan) is very much in line with Pluto’s gifts and his riches. It’s an attempt to embrace the carnal nature. However, this Plutonian carnality is not as basic as it seems. It has its own intelligence, its own spirituality and its own laws. It seems to me that Pluto has to do with survival – psychological, emotional, spiritual and physical. He stands for survival and life at all levels of the being. As stated on the official website, “To us, Satan is the symbol that best suits the nature of we who are carnal by birth—people who feel no battles raging between our thoughts and feelings, we who do not embrace the concept of a soul imprisoned in a body. He represents pride, liberty, and individualism—qualities often defined as Evil by those who worship external deities, who feel there is a war between their minds and emotions.”

I think, that this philosophy attempts to treasure the whole (hu)man, to recognize his divinity even in his subjective thoughts and feelings. It’s an attempt to honor the darker aspects of human nature – anger, rage, and instinctual responses. It’s essentially to honor the earth, the dark void, and the merciless existence. Putting faith in external deities is robbing the individual of his divinity; it’s separating him from life. Christianity has, at least in part, made people think of Evil as an autonomous force (an external deity), corrupting good souls and creating fear and panic. By avoiding seeing reality as a whole, Christianity perpetuates fear instead of confronting it. As I understand it, Satanists don’t invest belief in any gods (symbolic of human drives and instincts) because they see that these mind-made constructs are part of their own psyche. Satanists place themselves at the center of their own subjective universe without seeking to befriend or worship mythical entities that are separate from them.

It seems to me though, from studying astrology, that there’s no way to escape deity. In the effort to not have any god, to place the self at the center, as is characteristic of the Church of Satan, one is in fact aligning or siding with an archetype. It’s impossible not to. I think this is made quite obvious when using astrology and analyzing natal charts. The archetypal energies are expressing themselves through and as the individuals.

In fact, let’s take a look at the chart of the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton Szandor LaVey. I would expect him to have a strong Pluto because of the emphasis on embracing the carnal side and the spiritual dimension of it. There’s also a big emphasis on being whole (a solar principle) through recognizing the totality of life, facing the strength and power within oneself and using the necessary tools to improve one’s own life. This would include consciously using symbols and images (like the image of Satan) in order to get the desired effect. If symbols are given autonomous power it’s a problem only if it puts the individual in a disempowered position. Personal integrity and liberty is also of utmost importance, which sounds rather Aquarian to me. Let’s have a look.

The chart of Anton Szandor LaVey, as found on astrotheme.com.

The Sun is in Aries, which is not surprising considering his strong faith in individuality, his initiative to start a “new religion”, to provide a contrasting influence, to place himself at the “center”, to go by no other rules than his own, to welcome opposition, the desire to be his own master and a leader of his own life. Aries as a sign is strongly linked to the warrior archetype, of fighting for what one believes in without compromise, to claim authority in spirit, to conquer, to place subjectivity over objectivity (because there’s no real difference from the perspective of Aries). Selfishness is the basis for existence; it is through honoring the self that one can honor other people’s independence. Mars, which is the planetary ruler of Aries, is concerned with personal strength and potency (note; Mars is sometimes referred to as the lower octave of Pluto). It seems like LaVey lived on his own terms, relying on his own natural instincts and gifts to get by in life. This is all very typical of Aries people, to live of off a self-generated optimism and conviction of one’s own ability. “The rules don’t apply to me” is the overall sentiment – the rules originated somewhere and that which originates from my own self is no less valuable or divine, even if it’s raw, ugly or imperfect it is still of “The Self”, the force that animates existence.

To no surprise, Pluto makes a square aspect to his Sun. He would’ve lived with the threat of his own destructive rage, his own inner violence and uncompromising desire. To him, it was probably difficult to consciously accept this side (the square aspect always represents a conflict) but he certainly tried to acknowledge his “darkness” through founding the Church of Satan. A person with a trine aspect between Sun-Pluto would not have been as motivated or pressed to bridge the gap between the self and the primitive and taboo because there wouldn’t have been anything to bridge. The square relationships between two planets usually motivate the individual to try to solve dilemma of conflicting principles within the psyche through external work. Squares usually force work in a very concrete fashion. When a person is serious about something, and is trying to make something happen it’s usually indicative of a square aspect within the personal chart. For example, I have a Neptune square Mercury aspect. I try to read and write and educate myself to some kind of higher state, some transcendent and elevated experience because the connection is not smooth between these planets. I try to articulate things properly in order to bridge the gap between personal mind and the nuance of collective feeling. I try to reflect the essence or feeling tone of energies through my writing.

The interesting thing about LaVey is that he truly took on the appearance of a devil – he was probably aware of the power of looks, the impact that certain clothing or symbols have. He was undoubtedly theatrical. Pluto in the 5th house might have something to do with this, as it’s the house of individual expression. The 5th house is all about personal creation; it’s the realm of children and play. In a sense, he was no different from a child dressing up in costumes and playing “the dark one”, which is probably why people mocked him for it. Even when Pluto is in the 5th house it is never light-hearted, he is all in, ruthlessly determined. Pluto placed in this house takes play seriously. He takes personal expression seriously. His creations are his and he should be at the center of them. The individual should be credited for his abilities, not the other way around, just as the individual shouldn’t be appreciated because his gifts are “of the gods”. They belong as much to the individual as it does to the deities. This is certainly the spirit of Pluto. He answers to no other god than himself and he sees life as it is, in its most vile forms, without flinching. Life is in all expressions, in the primitive as well as in the sophisticated. This is, in many ways, a deeply honest way to live. Another thing that catches my attention is the bi-quintiles Pluto makes to the MC (public image) and the AC (personal image/persona). The bi-quintile aspect is generally considered to say something about a certain talent or style, a mercurial quality or skill. He truly has the style of Pluto, both in his countenance and in his societal achievements. He looks dark and mysterious, preoccupied with the occult side of life. Perhaps he even had a certain talent for “magic”, at least he claimed to.

Satanists believe in indulgence (which doesn’t imply compulsion) over abstinence, primarily because there’s no belief in heaven or an after life. The individual is placed at the center of his own universe as his own master – through and through. Although many people would agree that self-mastery is a good thing, many also tend promote, in the same vein, that “people make mistakes” and that they “should be forgiven”. As I understand it, Satanism as a philosophy would state that mistakes are only mistakes if the self-mastered individual firmly believes it to be so in complete honesty and integrity. Self-deceit is considered to be a sin, unless of course it’s done intentionally - it would then not be a sin. Going along with roles that other people have cast one in is self-deceit – that is, for example, shouldering the role as a “sinner” because other people have imposed that label or role onto you is not indicative of self-respect, it’s a betrayal of your own reality. Notably, LaVey has an Aquarius Ascendant, Lilith in Aquarius in the 1st house and Uranus widely conjunct his Sun (both in the independent sign of Aries). He is definitely not a person to follow the herd – in fact “Herd Conformity” is one of the Cardinal Sins in Satanism. He leads life through the principle of being his own godhead, his own intellectual genius, and his own unique and separate individual, detached from the norms and conventions enough to go against them if he pleases. Aquarius is a sign that considers the map of life in an intellectual sense. This sign is also the sign of the progressive individual, someone who wants to make a difference on a larger scale. He certainly did, through constructing a thought-system that could benefit people. It’s no wonder that the first of the Nine Cardinal Sins (as found on the official website) is Stupidity. Of course it would be to an Aquarius Rising! “Think for yourself; don’t go along with everything you’re told” is the plea.

[papers4me]

Fruits Basket Manga Review ch (90)- First pages ONLY.

I skimmed thro ch-89 to know the context of ch-90. it was Cinderella’s play. In this chapter, Kyo says early on, that time has passed since the play & that they are NOW starting their third year in high school. cool.

This part will ONLY focus on the 1st few pages of ch 90 abt (kyo & tohru) & stop before kyo’s memories starts, because the early pages contain:

Tons of new unexplored analysis of (kyo & tohru) characters that unfortunately was intentionally cut & worse! “changed” in the anime.

No space to add kyoko’s story in this post.

Kyoko’s story is full psychologically & socially.. I need to take a deeeeeeep breath before I unpack it. very deeeeep breath!

-Glimpses of Tohru (the silent grieving girl) Subtle Writing of Grief:

Right from the beginning, I hate how much insight into tohru’s grief & weakness as a human being is already there in the first few pages of ch-90 than the entire 3 seasons of the anime! From few pages we have:

Tohru’s seemingly delighted watching a video. Subtly, showcasing tohru’s grieve & paving the path for tohru’s trauma exploration later in the story. Grief is not sth you quickly past, that’s the most tragic misunderstanding of grief. Time will pass, so, you’ll be better & healthier. Really?!. Tohru’s inner desire to see her mom alive manifested in her words: “ like a photo comes to life” T_T.

The story/writing/manga is acknowledging tohru’s heartbreaking & NOT cute habit of talking to her mom’s cold dead photo! In the anime, tohru talks to her a lot in se01 & it’s up to you to see as as “ cute” as all the canon characters do or actually feeling it IS wrong. Kyo’s  “ what would she do if there were a video of her mom”! “ drives the point more abt tohru being a sad grieving human~not the “advice-giving, optimistic angel, & rain-stopping sunshine in the anime.

Tohru telling kyo to NOT catch cold connecting it to se01, ep 9 (haru’s ep) when tohru was afraid that yuki might catch cold & kyo noticed that! so now in se03, they’re dropping this plot altogether within the main anime, for what? we dont even know if this part would be included in whatever “ kyoko’s” spinoff content would be. -_-’.

That’s how you write subtle trauma such as (grief) for a main (female) MC. subtlety is the key. Respect the viewers intelligence & do it.

You don’t have to give her the long speeches or the many focused ep that yuki had. he’s the kind who confront himself inwardly constantly.

You don’t have to showcase drama, confrontation & force the emotions out like you did with kyo. he runs from his trauma & punishes himself.

Tohru buries her feelings! she’s different from both kyo & yuki. So, with her subtle & symbolic scenes are enough!!!The viewers will catch it if you show it, but ignoring it, cutting it & hoping the viewers will magically predict what you cut, is weird. But the anime isn’t even into us predicting nor subtly showing her cuz this tohru is NOT the tohru we have in the anime. How?

Simply cuz there is no kyo’s inner thoughts abt small things such as tohru’s photo obsession which subtly shows her grief & trauma. If kyo didn’t monologue abt her, tohru does not exist as she’s meant to be. You loose the subtle insights into tohru if you cut kyo’s inner thoughts. Not everything kyo thinks abt in regards to tohru is romance!!! That’s a very narrow & superficial look into the writing of kyo/’tohru dynamics. Flip the pages, hmm..cut this kyoru scene here & there cuz we dont want the anime to be only their love story.. But the story itself IS NOT only their love story at all. These pages/scenes here are abt tohru as a PERSON. Not tohru the lover...

- Writing Clashes between manga & anime: (Kyo’s Conscious Gradual Psychological Exploration vs Shock Value & Drama)

In ch 90 i really love all the inner self talking that kyo’s doing. It really explains why he ended up rejecting tohru so strongly. Also, going for a trip into kyo’s mind is hella exciting, new, refreshing & full of analysis-worthy exploration! Kyo’s inner psychological argument with himself is a psychologically-informed presentation of a tried guilty mind:

“ Why can’t I stop thinking of (kyoko’s words) lately? Acknowledging that he IS remembering kyoko & never forgot her. This is also supported in the anime itself. When he apologized to a sleeping tohru in se01, ep14 & se02, ep9 , confronting yuki in the stairs & other instances as well. 

“ It’s like a lid been opened & all the memories came pouring”. Acknowledging that kyo DID open his lid since se02, ep9 byt chose to run & not confront it due to his guilt of ruining tohru’s happiness by confessing his connection to her mom. 

“ pretending I didn’t know, pretending I forgot”. Here is a blatant clash in kyo’s writing (1) between the anime & manga (2) between the anime’s episodes themselves!!. In the manga, again kyo chose to ignore & pretended to forget. Death is NOT sth you forgot. Kyo saw kyoko bleeding & dying.  The anime chose to make him totally forget & it could’ve worked if they didn’t included all the canon moments of him actually remembering & pretending to forget. Is that lazy writing? or was the director for se03 different from se 1 &2 &? chose to NOT watch the two previous seasons? Why would you consciously include a contradicting depiction of your character on screen for thousands of confused viewers? Was the scene of kyo’s shocked gave upon seeing kyoko’s photo that artistically appealing that you forgot everything? I really have NO problem of kyo forgetting kyoko if that was written in the anime since se01, but it wasn't. that's why it sucks. 

“Is this payback? maybe I want to blame ME?” augh! i love this line so much! Directly hinting to the viewers that this is kyo’s one-sided guilt before his story with kyoko even started! subtly paving the path for the reason of his rejection of tohru” I dont want forgiveness. I want to blame ME.

-I don’t mind that the anime left kyo’s thoughts of kyoko until the climax in eo8, cuz ep 8 was SO well-done! Se03, ep 8 pacing was very suitable to (1) uncovering dark secrets & death, trauma, & guilt. (2) ��for exploring the effects such secrets on kyo’s character, decisions, mentality. Also, the animation of kyo’s face all ep 8 was one of the most expressive facial expressions the anime has ever delivered! The eyebrows, eyes, mouth, tears, body languages, heartache was all 100% perfect. The fact that the following eps didnt have much time to express everything & chapters were cramped is not ep 8′s fault but the decision to have 13 eps. Kyo’s delayed trauma deserved to have its own ep.

-What I DO mind is the added scene of ep 6 where he freaked out upon seeing kyoko’s picture, the concept of shock is perfect & so suitable for an anime but was NEVER properly written into the anime itself from the beginning. On the contrary, the anime itself contradict such usage of such value. Good job ruining an otherwise perfect-depiction of two traumatized characters (kyo & tohru) with ONE scene.. -_-

Side Notes:

I thought tohru is narrating the 1st page in ch-90, turned it out it is kyo!!!! Kyo narrates sth? Kyo monologues? kyo has a POV? Just the setting of kyo doing that feels different! I duno if it cuz when that happens in the anime it’s always clash & drama! lol, or cuz it’s sth original!

Shigure’s “ it’s broadcasted all over the nation” is epic! XD! you know poor stupid kyo would fall for that! XD. kyo, you really are an idiot! XD... man this scene would’ve been epic comedy~ lol.

Tohru not knowing what a “dvd” is is outdated for the anime, but to still keep the sentiment of “her wishing she’d have a video footage of her mom”, they could’ve replaced her words with “ It’d be fun watching this play years from now & remembering all the details”. I know that to some, it feels weird that tohru doesn't have video footage of her mom in this era. but trust me, this is more common than you might think. My late brother, who’s way younger than me, doesn't have much video footage, he always felt awkward & preferred not to be filmed. We got photos for him tho~

Even if you want kyo’s knowledge of kyoko to be in the climax only. You can always include this scene of tohru & kyo in the first pages in the anime somehow. It doesn't even need to be abt the dvd even tho that’s manageable. Cutting this short scene of them talking abt videos, & catching cold is cutting tohru’s trauma from its core. Then, the old grandpa’s narration from se03, ep6 would at least have some backup in the anime’s canon.

Momiji & shigure are perfect as a comedic duo!

I can’t get over tohru’s art~ <3

Pinning kyo at the beginning is epic~ kyo always gets the BEST romantic lines when he talks to himself. “ burning (tohru’s ) memories into my head or forgetting everything”. The torturing fire inside him is only distinguished by loving her but is also ignited by loving her~ what’s the solution~

[boneshine]

Jack Stauber’s “Opal” Theory

Last night, I stumbled across Adult Swim premiering Jack Stauber’s “Opal” and got to enjoy it in its entirety. I’m a huge fan of his work, and seeing his latest and biggest animation to date was quite the treat in this season of tricks!

I really enjoyed the lore and thought I would (try to) explain my personal theories regarding the story.

If you haven’t watched “Opal”, I highly suggest you do so. It’s available for free on Adult Swim’s Youtube channel. Go ahead. It’s quite the ride.

SPOILERS BELOW CUT!

The first time you watch “Opal” and the second time you watch it, the story completely changes. The atmosphere changes. The characters change.

What you thought was a surreal tale about a young girl exploring a forbidden house and being consequently terrified by the residents inside transforms into a story where a young girl suffers in a neglectful and abusive household and tries to escape into her fantasies to cope.

You’re led to believe in the beginning that the girl’s name is Opal and that the residents mistake her for someone named “Claire”.

At the end of the story, you realize that “Opal” is actually Claire.

“Opal” is Claire’s fantasy. She pretends to be this happy and bright girl on a billboard in the distance (Opal’s Burgers), surrounded by a family who love and “see” her.

The story begins with “Opal” sitting in her kitchen with a burger while her “family” (the family depicted on the billboard) sings to her.

We see you, Opal

Your troubles are miles away

We see you, Opal

And in our eyes you’ll stay

These lyrics are important because no one in Claire’s house sees her.

From the dialogue/lyrics, each character that Claire interacts with in the house showcases how they never truly see her.

The grandfather watching television is blind. (“And the girls are singin’. They dance too, I assume.”)

The father spends all of his time in the Reflection Chamber staring at himself. (“Why do people look at me like the way you probably are right now?”)

The mother is always intoxicated and lying in bed and sees through a drunken haze. (“Who’s that?”)

None of these characters actually see Claire, which is why she delves into a fantasy persona where she’s given positive attention and love and affection.

The fantasy portion in the beginning, I believe, shows that Claire spends most of her time at or on the billboard until she has to go back to the house to sleep.

In Claire’s fantasy, “Opal” sneaks into the mysterious house next door (which her Billboard Parents warn her to “don’t mind the house across the street”), but she hears cries coming from the attic and goes to investigate.

The realization at the end is that the cries are coming from Claire herself, and her inability to escape her abusive household as she’s locked herself in the attic.

Let’s take a look at the rest of the household in detail...

There are three other residents in Claire’s home, which are represented by the billboard: The Mother, the Father, and the Grandfather.

The Grandfather

Claire’s real grandfather is a blind, obese chain-smoking man addicted to television. He struggles to breathe, coughs up blood, and scolds Claire for hiding his cigarettes, claiming that “it’s evil to help someone that doesn’t need help”.

Claire appears frightened and nervous around him.

When he demands that Claire give him his cigarettes, he soon grows concerned that she “smells weird” (because she had been outside) and won’t say anything.

Due to his blindness (and possible dementia), he mistakes her for a stranger, panics, and lashes out, yelling at her to “get out of his house”. In his panic, he falls out of his chair and screams as Claire runs away.

The Father

As Claire continues on toward the attic, the Father stops her. He sits in his Reflection Chamber in the bathroom, surrounded by mirrors. He is unable to see anything but his own face.

(It’s implied that he is delusional, as you can supposedly see the Father’s True Face at 11:09, which is distorted, grey, and horrifying)

Claire appears perplexed by him. It’s obvious that she isn’t used to him speaking to her. However, it becomes apparent that he doesn’t truly speak to her, but rather projects his own insecurities and feelings onto her.

He appears to be extremely narcissistic and unaware of the world around him. Religious themes collide with his self-reflection, as he rambles and talks about how “God is in his skin” and he considers himself in the process of becoming the world’s next “savior”. He spends all of his time fixing his appearance because “they turn me down so I live my nightmare”, and his need to be “seen by somebody somewhere”.

When she tries to leave, he raises his voice at her, only to calmly remark that “you could spare me a little time, you know; you act like I’m a complete stranger.”

Which, to her, he most likely is.

The Mother

Claire’s mother resides in a dilapidated room, surrounded by wine bottles, pills, and romance novels.

She lies in bed (or on the floor) underneath the sheets and grabs Claire’s leg.

She speaks with a slur, heavily intoxicated.

At first, she doesn’t recognize her daughter, but comments that “you’re being a person today, huh?”, implying that Claire often spends her time away from the family-- and for good reason.

She speaks morosely and in confusing tangents that reveal her inner turmoil about the family and her circumstances.

“Goodness exists. If I wait, Claire, and sit still... it will arrive.”

“You should be more considerate, obviously, but I forgive you. I forgive every single one of you... every night. It’s a virtuous cycle.”

“How did this get so bad? I feel terrible for all the things I... I feel terrible.”

“You and I don’t live, Claire. We survive.”

“Our adversaries are in denial. They don’t know the wrong they do. And they never repent how I want them to.”

(To Claire) “And you, you’re just like me. You’re just as powerless as I am, Claire.”

She lies back into the bed and drunkenly sings a lullaby.

The Mother’s Song

Mama needs a little girl to land on

Mama needs a little girl to fall in her arms

Mama needs a Mama’s girl to take good care

Mama needs a baby girl to hold her hair

After this, the camera zooms into the Mother’s rolling eye and a flashback is rapidly shown, including a hand dialing 9-1-1 on a phone, a child(?) being struck and falling to the ground, and what appears to be the Mother (or, perhaps, the Mother’s Mother) screaming in terror (or anger).

This is either a flashback to the Mother violently attacking someone, or a flashback of the Mother’s childhood where she herself was abused.

(It should be noted that the side of the Mother’s head appears to have a dent, implying she may have been the child.)

Claire appears absolutely terrified in her presence, most likely having suffered before from her physical abuse and escapes as soon as the Mother lunges at her, fleeing up to the attic and locking the door.

The truth about “Opal” is shown, and Claire quickly surrenders to her fantasy in her mind as her family beats on the door, where the camera zooms out and the story ends...

In conclusion, the world of “Opal” is a sad tale. Its themes center on fear, neglect, isolation, and abuse in its many horrific forms-- physical, emotional, and psychological. It focuses on Claire’s escapism in her mind, to imagine a happier life, far, far away from those who hurt her.

A forbidden house across the street, filled with dark and foreboding figures, and a little girl that just wants to be seen and loved.

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

it’s a fucking metaphor!

Titans 3.08

i’ve finally gathered the mental and emotional resources to do this thing, so let’s go! as always, i’m typing this up as i see the episode.

SPOILERS AHEAD

1. on watching this opening scene, i was thinking back to how gar was in s1, or even the early bits of s2. the way he idolised the others, particularly dick, and his readiness to go along with whatever they said, and the way he practically bled the need for acceptance. and here he is now, openly defying dick, fully open to and aware of the flaws of the people he loves and admires, knowing he is accepted no matter what and extending that generosity elsewhere. it’s a remarkable bit of character growth that’s... sort of blossomed in the background and so rewarding to see and acknowledge. 

1.25. i guess what i really love about this conflict over how to respond to jason--as clumsily as it is sometimes written--is how their histories and individual traumas inform each character’s reaction. dick is torn between his guilt over what’s become of jason and his drive to do what batman had essentially given up on doing: he is motivated to track down red hood at all costs but there’s a sense that he’s not completely sold on the idea that the only way to stop him is to kill him. (he might go the comics route and try to put him in arkham? god, imagine if the season ended with jason in arkham.) kory’s never had much of a connection with jason in the first place, and jason has done one of the worst things he could do in her book: track and kill a member of her newfound family and is threatening to kill more. 

and gar... sure. look. the idea of jason and red hood as separate entities appeals to him; that red hood emerged when jason was drugged to the gills by scarecrow and lost his usual inhibitions. gar’s struggled with what he becomes when he’s pushed to his limits, too--he did rip open that experimenting scientist with his teeth way back in 1.07, after all, and he was brainwashed by cadmus in s2 into becoming a literal monster. he needs to think, to know, there’s a dichotomy, a line that can only be crossed under extreme duress or by outside influence. 

and he says--and we say--that he was accepted back into the titans in spite of what he’d done, but was he really? gar’s always struggled with his footing in this group; relegated to the caretaker, the tech guy, the gatekeeper, and sometimes punching bag even though everybody’s paying lip service to how much of a family they all are. perhaps gar reaching out to jason and offering acceptance is aspirational on his part: perhaps this is the effort he hoped the titans put/or will put into getting gar back, even when it would seem like he’s too far gone.

1.5. anyway my point is that i don’t think it’s worth discussing this in terms of right/wrong decisions because all of their reactions make a lot of sense given their backgrounds/personalities. gar is doing a fine job here of tracking down jason’s friends and trying to find him that way, but we the audience know that jason is ultimately going to end up an anti-hero/eventually-hero character, so with that knowledge in mind we know that gar’s reaction is the right one. it’s knowledge that the other characters don’t have, so to judge them on it is... uh, unfair.

1.8. also, molly is awesome, yay!

2. dick and barbara flirting over the phone is so cute! i love to see this side of dick: lighter, peppier, willing (even if somewhat reluctantly) to put his mission aside to go out on a date with his girlfriend. and i love how easy this makes his dynamic with kory too: it’s all very domestic and utterly delightful. 

(also, re: the water leak in barbara’s office--you’re saying GCPD could afford fancy-schmancy table-wide touch screen computers and evil-lair lighting but needs its frickin’ commissioner to catch leaking water from above her desk with mugs and fishbowls????)

2.2225. this is probably a teeny tiny thing and i’m not sure i want to bring it up at all BUT. the fact that dick feels compelled to lie to barbara about not liking fancy gala food and eating something more substantial before the date? not a terribly great sign, though i wouldn’t call it a red flag per se. 

“this from a man who forced his students to eat cauliflower crust pizza...”

3. so.... conner and kom are a Thing. huh.

in theory i really like the idea of them bonding over an innate alien-ness and longing for a place they could really belong. both of them are alien twice-over: conner a mix of kryptonian and human, practically generated in a test tube, and kom being somebody that was born different and rejected by her own people, now stuck on a planet dominated by an entirely different species. i even like them exploring this bond physically. i guess it’s the sense of... uneasiness around what we do and don’t know about kom that makes this scene land slightly left of centre to me. i think titans, especially through s2, has cultivated in its audience a sense of distrust even until the final episode, just in case somebody vital to the season is suddenly revealed to have had ulterior motives (i’m even low-key suspicious of leslie). i really want to see this kom-conner dynamic play out but the anticipation of watching the other shoe drop is sucking out the enjoyment.

4. for fuck’s sake dick, gar’s not your gatekeeper.

TIIIIIIIIMMMMM \O/

4.5. i love this nod to tim’s origins in the comics, the way he just comes in and lays out all his evidence and makes it clear to dick that he needs tim’s help as robin. the fact that he was there at the flying graysons’ last performance, he was obsessed with their acrobatic moves, and was observant enough to connect those moves with that of robin and later nightwing... all of this came together to put him where he is right now.

(i also love how he can’t contain his giddy excitement when talking about the day dick grayson’s parents died... to dick grayson. even if dick weren’t nightwing, that would be a deeply uncomfortable thing! yet tim can’t help himself, and i love him for it.)

4.8. it’s a testament to how much dick’s caught off-guard that he can’t come up with a better response to tim’s allegations other than “uh... he stole my moves! as you know, no two gymnasts in the world are allowed to do the same moves. now, let me escort you out while pretending poorly that i’m not at all shaken by this...”

4.9. i’ve talked about this before, but i find the logic around secret identities in this universe utterly fascinating. the titans don’t make much effort in keeping their identities secret: everybody seems to know that kory is starfire for instance, or that gar is beast boy. dick grayson is seen hanging out with kory a lot, especially at crime scenes. it won’t take a lot of sleuthing to find out that the titans are currently camped out at wayne manor, and to put two and two together.

my theory was that superheroes and villains have become such an integral part of daily society that it’s almost not worth it to seek out their secret identities, or that it’s just not a big deal anymore. like politicians or diplomats, not everybody bothers to look into who exactly their local politician is, but the people who know just... know. it’s a sort of unspoken social contract.

tim’s broken this contract by confronting dick about his identity, and dick’s not ready to deal with it. not entirely.

look at him! *pinches his cheeks*

5. ngl, it was quite satisfying to see jason knock the scarecrow out like that. 

5.5. i guess... the question of jason’s culpability is always going to be a thorny one and would make for a great courtroom drama spinoff. there are a number of factors to consider: jason’s personality, the rough circumstances under which he grew up, his undoubtedly stressful transition to being robin, bruce wayne being... well, bruce wayne, never feeling accepted by the titans and having most of them turn on him, being roundly defeated and almost killed by deathstroke, alfred’s death, a fuckload of ptsd, his violent death, crane’s manipulations, coming back to life, crane plying him with a drug. but there is no easy line to draw between any of these factors to his actions. i think it would be a disservice to jason’s character to attribute his actions entirely to these things and rather irresponsible to do so. i think jason has to reckon with the fact that when he took crane’s drug, he wasn’t reckless and chaotic like the thugs he gave it to; the planning that went into hank’s death was meticulous and the way hank died--dawn essentially tricked into pulling the trigger that blew her lover into bits--is so drawn out and cruel. 

5.75. it’s occurring to me that crane might have given jason a placebo. maybe jason’s dependence is psychological, and he’s externalised his fears in such a way that he believes crane’s drugs literally wipe them out, however temporarily.

in any case, the boy needs (more) therapy.

6. “he walked like robin...” fuck, tim

“gait recognition sweep” god, this show. i don’t know whether to laugh or cry. hey, once we’re done doing this gait recognition thingy, can we get a goddamn plumber in the house??? or move the commissioner’s desk so that sewage water isn’t dripping on her head or the million dollar touchscreen desk???????

6.5. oh no dick!!!!!! i am delighted that you got hurt but i feel ashamed about it! that looked like it really hurt!

he’s really not having a good time of it, is he. from being shot by a sniper to slamming at full speed into an suv, he’s got to be really fucking battered by now. and that’s just the physical side of it.

“can you believe that just over a week ago i was sitting in san francisco eating cauliflower crust pizza and feeling good about myself for the first time in five years...”

7. kory’s having visions again! now that she’s figured what they are, do you think the show’s just dropped justin? it’s curious that HPG hasn’t been brought up in a while after featuring relatively heavily in the beginning. hmmm.

8. dick’s in hospital but... he looks remarkably whole for someone who took a spill like that. you’d think he’d at least have a bruise to show for it. on the other hand, i love that the first thing he says is ‘i need to call home’. reminds me of season 1 dick and his clumsy attempts to explain away his found family as an ‘alliance of necessity’ or some bullshit. what a long way he’s come!

*gasp* dick’s hallucinating again!!!!!!!!!!!! i’m doing the dick’s hallucinating dance! can you believe that we’re carrying over these huge honking issues unearthed in season 2 onto season 3? can you believe?!!! all that time and effort i spent talking about dick’s mental health from last season has not gone in vain!!

... ahem. anyway. more on this later.

“hold on barbara, i think kory gave me the number to this therapist that she kept calling Hot Psychiatrist Guy...”

9. just an interlude to say that i’m barely halfway through the episode and i’ve already written 2k+ words... ugh. i’m going to try and be more concise.

10. man i fuckin love it when titans goes all out with its weird mindscapes and i’m extra glad that kory’s the focus this time. is that baby kom or maybe a secret sibling that neither of them knew about? was that lady luand’r? and is this place where kory was circling where the secret sibling is? it’s all very intriguing. 

(if justin turned out to be that sibling... we’ve a real luke/leia situation on our hands.)

11. aw, i knew that nice security guard was going to die, but it still hurt to see him go :(

12. this show is so bizarre. like i get the mindscape as a narrative device, but jason using sex workers to try and vocalise his guilt about killing hank was just weird. like. i have to use tamil, sorry: idhulaan yaaru pa room pottu yosikara??? some things just can’t be translated into a second language.

i guess one way to interpret jason’s reckoning with what he did to the titans as a sign of him coming off crane’s drug, but i think it’s more to do with the disillusionment of realising that he was a mere pawn in a more sinister plan, and not, as he thought, a player in control of his destiny, rising to the purpose of liberating gotham of its fears in a way batman never could. along the way, he’s done some truly irreversible damage. it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

13. another hallucination! it’s really intriguing that it’s a young dick(?), younger than we’ve ever seen him, wearing an early-era robin costume from way before he even became robin. (this is also interesting in that it gives credence to the idea that ‘robin’ is an identity that dick created entirely on his own, and as a possible homage to his family.)

“old road, old house... it’s all gone.” i wonder what it all means.

13.5. it’s entirely likely dick’s hallucinating because of a brain injury from the accident, though just hallucinations without any other focal neurological deficit is unusual. he might’ve been microdosed with fear toxin at some point, though i wonder when... did jason do so after dick’s accident? did he get dosed at the factory from last episode? 

it’s also possible it’s a continuing manifestation of dick’s issues from last season--which, if you remember, he never told anyone about and therefore never properly addressed. maybe he was hallucinating bruce wayne in a psychotic episode accompanying an acute stress reaction and maybe that’s what’s happening now. nobody’s denying that he’s under an extraordinary amount of stress right now. another way to look at it is that this is how he externalises conflict that he can’t bear to suppress anymore; if in s2 halluci!bruce manifested his insecurities and self-loathing, then these hallucinations... something to do with his fears, no doubt.

yet ANOTHER way to look at it might be: rachel is reaching out to him through their, well, psychic bond. after all, they were able to use that bond unconsciously last season to get the titans back together; maybe rachel has learned to gain a degree of control over it in themyscira and is sending across warnings? it’s all very intriguing.

anyway:

“i hear you skipped over the discowing suit in your evolution to nightwing... how could you??”

14. can you imagine, gar did all the work of reaching out to jason via molly and jason wants to meet dick? smh.

14.5. “i’m just a regular guy doing regular things” he says, standing at the opening of a secret old tunnel, like a secret person doing secret things, confronting someone who can now officially be called his stalker. neither of you guys are ‘regular’

14.8. ‘my dad was a cop and he taught me how to investigate’ - hmmm. i guess they’re trying to Explain Tim but i don’t think that’s really necessary. so he’s smart and he’s obsessed with batman and robin--that should be enough, imo. 

15. that scene with scarecrow and his mother was... wow. i’m just laughing here helplessly, because what the hell? for a while i thought it was an extended dream sequence and i’m still not entirely sure that it isn’t...

anyway. i still love that titans is happy to throw out its plot in favour of extended character-exploration sessions.

15.5. it seems to me that this scene with crane and his mother (i have no idea if there’s anything in the comics similar to this) serves to move forward this season’s theme of harmful legacies and how parents can damage their children in the name of their mission. in a way it’s been the underlying message of the entire show but we’re really seeing it being reinforced this season. the titans, serving as a foil to scarecrow, are using the damage to rebuild themselves and actually work through their issues together, instead of spiralling further and further into the morass of their issues.

other than that... god, that scene was painful to watch. i can’t say i like this version of scarecrow or how this actor plays him at all.

16. i wonder what’s jason’s play here. i think he’s smart enough to realise that the titans aren’t going to just forgive him and let him be a titan again after what he did, and that dick agreeing to it is just a bid to pin both him and crane down. maybe it’s a ploy to trap them, get back on scarecrow’s good books so that he can have the drug again. who knows.

17. i absolutely felt dick when he said “we’ll bring him in and then re-assess the situation.” what the fuck else is he going to say? the priority is to get him.

so kory and dick are both hallucinating while potentially trying to rehabilitate their murderous siblings. CONFIDE IN EACH OTHER ALREADY

18. TIM NOOOO! you beautiful, reckless fool!

18.25. just to quickly address it here because i know it’s been brought up before: i think it’s perfectly justified to not have conner take tim to the hospital via superspeed because a) i don’t think we’ve seen conner do that with anybody so far and b) it’s probably not a good idea to submit tim’s body to that kind of stress without knowing what it would do to him. the paramedics with actual equipment and experience would be there in a few minutes, so on a risk assessment, i would say dick and conner absolutely made the right call.

18.5. i guess we won’t know what jason really intended to when the titans came to the pump to see him, but this is definitely going to set a big wedge in his relationship with crane. then again, crane got what he wanted--using starfire’s powers to blast through to the underground pipes--so jason can argue that this is exactly what he was working towards, too. 

anyway, mortal peril, hallucinations, murderous family members, creepy visions and robins sprouting left and right. time to get rachel and donna on the scene, i think.

[thehanwen]

Quarantine Netflix Recs

Since were all at home watching Netflix I thought I would give my fav show/movie for every letter so everyone has something new to watch. Please send me your own recommendations or make your own alphabet list and tag me! Here goes:

A: Anne with an E- This modern take on Ann of Green Gables is quirky, fun, and dramatic. It has good music, writing and is all around a good watch. It deviates from the books a bit, but keeps the spirit.

B: Broadchurch- If you like crime dramas, this is for you. With one crime spanning the complete first season it delves deep into motive and emotions. David Tennet stars in this tense British mystery. 

C: Cargo- A dystopian zombie apocalypse film set in Australia with a focus on human connection, and sacrifice. This is honestly so different than any other zombie movie I have seen in the best way. 

D: Daybreak- Sticking with the apocalypse theme, daybreak is a humorous view on what happens when a nuke kills all the adults and leaves all the teenagers. Its like if high school was the whole world, but the world had also ended. Strong characters and ‘Ferris Bueller’ esc fourth wall breaks give this show something special. 

E: The Worlds Most Extrodiary Homes- For a change of pace this mindlessly beautiful home reality show shows off architecture that could be classified as art and makes me wonder how anyone can actually live here. If you just want something with no stakes what so ever, this is the eye candy for you.

F: Frontier- A gritty, and dark period piece starring Jason Momoa as the badass outlaw working against the British in the Canadian wilderness. Half political, half survival drama this show focus on the fur trade during the 1700s as well as themes like revenge, family history and love.

I have to do two for F: Feel Good- This emotional comedy is about Mae, a gay, ex-addict comic and her previously straight girlfriend. It is real and emotional and hilarious. It’s filled with amazing characters and amazing writing and explores hard to talk about subjects, including addiction, love, coming out, and family and romanitc relationships. 

G: Godless- A refreshing addition to the western genre. An injuryed outlaw, a headstrong widow, the whole of the wild west. Gritty and dramatic, this mini series is a must watch

H: How it Ends- Another apocalypse film, can you guys see a pattern? This one is less about the event however and more about family. A young man and his future father-in-law travel across the desolate wasteland of the USA to save his fiance. 

I: I am Not Okay with This- A sci-fi coming of age story, based on a comic book, about a young girl who develops mysterious superpowers and is not okay with it. Also shes gay and in love with her best friend, its great.

J: John Mulaney- I assume everyone has already seen all of his specials, but if you haven’t go check them out! They are hilarious and relatable on a deep level. 

K: Klaus- This is my new favorite Christmas movie. Its got wit, charm, great character development and beautiful animation. It’s the first original Christmas movie that I've liked. It gives a new spin to all your favorite Christmas traditions while holding on to the essence of the Christmas spirit.

L: Let it Snow- Based of the book co-written by Maureen Johnson, John Green, and Lauren Myracle this film is a feel good romance with quicky characters that have thier lives changed forever by a snowstorm in their small hometown. Friendships and romances are formed and tested as these teens figure out how to deal with what life throws at them. 

M: Maniac: In an unlikely pair Emma Stone and Jonah Hill work amazingly well together in a drug trial that is supposed to cure all mental illness, of course not everything goes as planned. Our heroes go through multiple stages of the trial and discover their brains are miraculously linked. This series merges multiple genres into something surprisingly cohesive. 

N: National Treasure- “I’m gonna steal the declaration of Independence”

O: The OA- A psychological sci-fi thiller about a blind girl who gets kidnapped and held prisoner by a mad scientist looking for other dimensions. The friends she makes along the way mean everything, but when she gets found not only are they missing, but she can see again.

P: Princess and the Frog- A cute Disney twist of the classic fairy tale. A young woman working hard to buy her own restaurant meets a prince that has been turned into a frog by a shady magic man. But when she kisses him he doesn’t turn human, she turns frog. Together they have to figure out how to get back to being human and along the way they learn what they really need.

Q: apparently I have never watched a single thing on Netflix that starts with Q. So Queer Eye I guess. I’ve never watched it, but I've heard good things.

R: The Rain- After a deadly virus is discovered in the rain, sister and brother, Simone and Rasmus are separted from thier family and hide in a bunker for 6 years. Once they are forced to emerge they discover the world is much different than how they left it and their family wasnt all they thought it was.

S: Sense 8- This sci-fi drama focuses on 8 people from all over the world connected by some kind of psychic link. As they discover the extent of thier new abilities they also find out they aren’t the only ones and some others aren’t so friendly. This series was made with so much love and divotion and it shows throughout. The character development and backstories are rich, the writing is witty and thoughtful and the representation and focus on love above all else is so refreshing. 

T: Tallulah- This drama is dark and witty, while simultaneously being bright and uplifting. When a young drifter kidnaps a baby from a neglectful mother and pretends the baby is hers, her boyfriends mother takes them in. The story is about family and doing the right thing, even when you can’t find the right choice in the grey area.

U: The Umbrella Academy- This series based on a comic book written by Gerard Way is about superheroes with out being about superheroes. They don’t save the day. They can barely save themselves, oh and also the world. Numbered 1-7 these siblings all have their own issues and getting them to work together was the dying wish of their asshole of a father.

V: None? Anyone have any ideas?

W: The Witcher- This series, based on a video game based on a book, is about a mysterious monster hunter and the bard he meets a long the way. Somehow full of action and also full of humor this series delves deep into the history and culture of this fantasy world. 

X, Y, Z: I got nothing guys, but thanks for reading all the way down here. I hope you watch some of these shows and that you send some of your own recs to me! 

Also None of these photos or shows or anything are mine and all belong to their rightful owners

[astyle-alex]

Common Sense Meets the Autism Spectrum:

| a Parental Aide for ALL |

Last month was Autism Awareness Month, and in honor of that I've whipped up a little Parental Aide to help all grown-ups understand neuro-divergence a tiny bit better. I meant to post it here during the last week of April, but I forgot because of the craziness with Finals... But since Autism and neurodivergence doesn’t just magically go away at the end of April, here’s a little skim of it now:

I've recently been chatting with  a new consultation client / parent whose child has been recently diagnosed with Autism, and it got me thinking about the unfortunate nonsense surrounding the entire societal black hole of neuro-atypical / neuro-divergent presentations, especially in 'unusual' cases.

The first thing that needs to be said is IT'S A SPECTRUM, and it's honestly a comprehensive population spectrum, which means that EVERYONE IS ON IT.

Yes, say it with me: Everyone is on the Autism Spectrum.

From being perfectly, generically neuro-typical humans to rage-murder psychopaths to non-verbal, high-physical autistic kids to sociopathic con-artists. It's a SPECTRUM.

Accepting that is the first part of understanding it. And it's sometimes helpful to know in order for parents still in diagnosis shock to have something that reconnects them to their child.  If you've recently received  a diagnosis and you've dissociated at all, or know someone who is in that situation, knowing that the parents and the child involved are both still on the same spectrum, can help.

(It's a sense of cohesion and sameness that parents dream up for offspring, and can be problematic if over-done, which is why parents sometimes force their hobbies / goals onto children or react poorly to LGBTQ+ explorations / self-discoveries, both of which are fodder for plenty of other posts).

Once the spectrum is accepted, we can move on to understanding it better, and to diagnosing attributes of it that are affecting  our lives.  Knowing these attributes can help us navigate them, even in a capacity where the effect of them is not so severe that we call it a neurodivergence.

There's a stigma with mental illness, and autism is a trigger word regarding that, but it shouldn't be. We don't (as much, any more, at least) shame people who don't have clinical anxiety, but still exhibit crowd skittishness or phone distress or choice paralysis. And, honestly, mild autism frequently presents as anxiety, in our current popular understanding, as it's often limited to one or two aspects of life that provoke dramatic aversion responses where as actual, general anxiety is usually a more evenly distributed with lower-key hesitance / avoidance.  Mild autism also presents as ADD / ADHD (and in my opinion the ADD / ADHD diagnosis tools are essentially boiling things down to 'not a psychopath but probably autistic, but not like the autism in in the popular imagination').

We accommodate the small symptoms of both autism and anxiety, adjust what we can and power through what we can't.

That adjustment is a lot easier when we know the triggers for the distress.

Now, the scaling systems I'm about to share are not professional, not part of the DSM, and not a tool of formal diagnosis. Consult a licensed professional before taking any big steps, but take a look at these scaling systems to help start a conversation (even if it's only with yourself). I might have another post on adjustment strategies, because these don't really address the links between presents-as-anxiety and autism, but for now, we're just gonna look at how to start asking questions and how to wrap your brain around the biggest bit of the autism concept.

Again, none of this is a diagnosis or a practical guide on how to cope, but it is helpful to be generally informed enough to start recognizing issues / asking questions about what else might be affected by a given  place on a scale.

So, Autism is a spectrum, right?

Well, technically, it's multiple spectrums.

There are several sub-spectrums that layer over each other.

The crux of it, the most basic version specific to autism, is this:

Understands Emotion  --  vs  --  Does NOT Understand Emotion.

Now there are varied layers of that, such as  'displayed' emotion (like in facial expressions), or 'tonal' emotion (like voice tones), or even  'conceptual' emotion (as in the basic cause / nature of emotionality).

Plenty of kids understand Tonal Emotion (hearing and recognizing the difference between Mum is angry and Mum is happy), but not Conceptual (this is called being young, and usually gets grown out of as kids actually experience {and label} more emotions, the process starts at age 3 or 4, but honestly continues for most of life). Or kids may be able to hear tonal changes and interpret them accurately, but they don't read faces well (this is either a significant indicator of some sort of disconnect or, can indicate that the facial expressions they have seen shift do not shift in a way that is consistent with tonal changes {like if a parent is angry and tries to hide it with a smile}.). Some kids can track the changes in tone and expression but can connect them to a concept (such as 'fear' which doesn't develop as a concept to children until about age 5~7, even in horror-story situations, like children in warzones, only get a really nuanced concept fear a year or two earlier).

The second BIG scale to assess things on is intro- or outro-spective, and it's a 2-for1:

- misunderstand -- VS -- understands OWN emotions  

--  vs  --

- misunderstand -- VS -- understands OTHERS' emotions

AND misunderstands or understands the CAUSES of emotions in self / others, and why those causes and interpretations may be different for various individuals (which requires understanding the concept of there even being varied individuals, a process that ).

This is the line between "I like it, so others DO" vs  "I like it, so others MIGHT", that is difficult for young children. Having a distinct sense of a separate self is actually a complicated psychology process, and it takes over a year for most infants to even recognize that they have a reflection. If understanding the self/others division stays extremely difficult passed age 7-ish, we maybe should look more closely. But at the same time, it's rarely before that 5~7 range when kids begin to understand that shopping for a birthday present for a friend involves thinking about what the friend would like, and not what the kid themselves like.

And there's still gonna be moments of grown-up fan-rage at why don't people ship my ship?,  but all we might wanna do is limit time on Reddit or Tumblr when in anxiety mode.

The final BIG spectrum used in understanding these autism specific neuro-disconnects is one that revolves around concern for the disconnect:

Does not fully understand all aspects of Emotion and CARES that they don't.

--  vs  --

Does not understand and does NOT CARE.

This disconnect leads to Performative Emotion, which means acting the part of emotional responses without a full understanding of all aspects of them. Sometimes this is good, as in exhibiting quiet displeasure even though I think this warrants screaming because, I don't wholly understand what I or others feel, but I do understand the appropriate  / expected response. It can also be very bad, as in someone who understands the emotional response to pretend to have when a pet dies and is aware that doing so can cover that the pet was killed intentionally by said someone.

The last relevant spectrum isn't one that most people find critical, but I think it's important to delineate this one from the caring aspect. The previous note is specifically about caring in regards to the subjects understanding of emotion--and exclusively their understanding of emotion.

It is not a measure of concern for other respects of life, that spectrum is:

Sympathy   --   vs   --   Empathy

Now, defining terms is important here.

- Sympathy = care for how others feel

- Empathy = understanding / comprehension of how others feel

Someone who self-refers as an 'Empath' is actually expressing a high sympathy response, as in, I understand your pain so well, I feel it myself. What they mean to say, is that they understand the feeling and its causes well, and they care so much that they cause themselves to experience it.

This is also the line between Sociopaths and Psychopaths, as most people know it. The truth is a lot more nuanced, but basically, a Sociopath often lacks Sympathy, but has Empathy, where a Psychopath most often lacks both.

A Sociopath understands that they have a disconnect, cares that they do, and hides it by performing the emotive responses they are aware are appropriate (for the most part, occasionally making some exceptions due to exhaustion with the performance, or a lack of genuine care allowing for selective exploitation--making them great sales people / CEO's / business people / lawyers / writers / con-artists / Sherlockian private detectives etc).

A Psychopath either doesn't understand they have a disconnect, doesn't care that they do, or both. They rarely perform emotions and therefore often draw people in who feel trapped and in need of counter culture. They make great cult leaders, but not much else (occasionally business people, but some of them are cult leaders by a pseudonym). They truly CANNOT conform, and that can be seductive / freeing to others, but they also cannot conceive of anyone who decides to follow them ever changing their mind or not experiencing exactly the same  emotions / emotive responses to stimuli as they do.

BOTH are considered extreme presentations of their respective trait.

People with both very high and very low sympathy get exhausted around others.

Because experience other's emotions or pretending to care about others' emotions is HARD. It's work and it's exhausting on both ends.

People with both very high and very low empathy get anxious in not being around others for prolonged periods.

High-Em usually worries over current states (ie, what if something happened to them or what if they hate me now), whereas Low-Em usually worries over reunions (did I forget something someone else would've remembered, birthday, holiday, or that I was gonna bring you something we discussed).

And, as always, Presentations vary. HUGELY.

But sometimes, being told you're looking at an abstract a picture  of a dog, helps you spot the dog in the ink squiggles.

'Normal' isn't a fixed point, it's a range within every single subject presenting mild deviations that come together to form an average in a single person, and are then averaged again across populations.

Such data can always be understood better. And better understandings allow better accommodations to be made.  

Therefore, a given person's place on any part of any one of these spectrums needs to be assessed and reassessed constantly.

Also, if you're interested in learning more / supporting Autism Advocacy, check out a few more resources, but for the love of god DO NOT give money to Autism Speaks. Take a looks at THIS and do some research of your own! ^_^

Again, this is just a vague baseline, and it doesn't address symptoms like Face Blindness (in ability to recognize people by faces) or stimming (self-stimulation or emotive overwhelm release) or even environmental sensitivity (extreme dislike / like of certain noises, colors, light levels / sources, tactile sensations). Even so, it might be informative enough to start getting a conversation started and it'll be helpful for me to refer back to this one while making other Spectrum related posts.

^_~

For more on what I’m getting up to (and for more timely updates), check me out on Patreon!

[falloutboywife]

do u have any fob fic recs?

HEWWO YES i have a fuckton of fics to rec, i mostly just read peterick ones (i can’t find a lot of wentzporta or the rarest of rarepairs: stumporta, but i wanna start seeing if i can find any good trohley or joetrick fics) but i have an INSANE amount that i can suggest, i’ll link them and then offer a summary and tags for the content.

disclaimer: i don’t know if you were asking for nsfw fics but that’s like. all that i ever read unless it’s a REALLY good fic or character study or things like that. i’m also gonna warn that some of these are very dark because i like stories that tackle dark themes and a lot of them uh. let’s just say i like tttyg and futct a lot because i love the lore and dynamics surrounding the band in its early days so the eras i like to read fics about will reflect that

there are some in this list that are decidedly more normal than others, and even if some of the tags i mention sound like the fic is gonna be messed up, i can assure you there are way more fics lighter in tone than others in this list. like if a fic is BAD i mention it

I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE IF THIS ISN’T WHAT YOU WERE ASKING also these are in the order that i was able to find them so the quality/how much i like it isn’t in order

https://adellyna.livejournal.com/358618.html this one is about pete letting patrick drink for his seventeeth birthday, warnings for underage up the wazoo

https://adellyna.livejournal.com/355836.html patricksitting is like, THE peterick fic it’s about pete being patrick’s babysitter while his parents are out of town, again underage tag

https://adellyna.livejournal.com/350184.html ANOTHER fic about pete letting underage patrick drink but this time? pete’s recording him. warnings for underage shit and potential dubcon (i wouldn’t call it that bc it’s not how i interpreted it but the author tagged it, so)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/254157 this is a dance dance au where patrick fucks nerd!pete

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045467 this fic is SO good it’s about the time where pete and patrick got into that really bad fight behind the convenience store while on tour, the one where pete choked patrick so hard he couldn’t sing the next day, this one has like. fight sex i guess is the term. i guess you could call this a darkfic

https://archiveofourown.org/works/522666 this is one of my favorites, it’s about pete kidnapping babystump and patrick developing stockholm syndrome but i PROMISE it is way more heartwarming than that, it’s not a hardcore kidnapping darkfic i swear. underage warning WOW THERE’S A LOT OF THESE

https://archiveofourown.org/works/239403 this is one of the funniest fucking fics i ever read, the premise is that pete pretends to be patrick’s boyfriend to piss patrick’s parents off. underage warning yet again

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25420678 this one is short but literally anything by this author is great, this is @castleinthsky here on tumblr. wilson is a fantastic author and i wish she wrote more, i’d literally read a novel if she wrote it, same with adellyna on lj. this is about pete lusting after patrick but it’s all just him masturbating to the idea of him, underage warning YET AGAIN

https://archiveofourown.org/works/158907 this one is about pete and patrick right after a show fucking in one of the hallways

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069202 OH GOD THIS ONE IS SO FUCKING HOT this is one where pete is super controlling over patrick during sex he acts like a fucking scumbag it’s SO sexy but The Ending Will Warm Your Heart. i know this one is van days so it MIGHT be underage because i’m just a fucking creep i guess

https://archiveofourown.org/works/443472 okay this is one of my favorite fics of all time, this is part two in a series the author wrote about the idea of patrick having a twin brother, the first one is shorter and just introduces you to the idea but the second one is a fully fleshed out story and i love it so fucking much, you should seriously check this one out because this is one of the best fics out there period. warning for underage and incest YES I’M AWARE OF WHAT I’M LINKING PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK

inb4 “nyan do you read any fics that aren’t weird as shit” PLEASE I JUST WANNA BE HAPPY

https://archiveofourown.org/works/9871037 this is also by castleinthsky and it’s a lot more tame than what i linked before, this is just a cute 2008 fic where they’re on their way to the next town at night and patrick is drunk in the back with pete

https://archiveofourown.org/works/4373366 okay this one is a double whammy and also one of my favorite aus, this is 2011 patrick and 2007 pete. i LOVE the idea of different eras with each other, like i love the idea of post-hiatus pete and patrick ganging up on one of their younger selves and this one specifically is 2011 trick with 2007 pete. the same author ALSO wrote...

https://archiveofourown.org/works/4168323 this, which is literally just post-hiatus pete and patrick fucking babystump. it is so goddamn good warnings for selfcest and underage yaddah yaddah you get the point by now

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24333673 this is like the creepiest fic on this list, it’s straight up just pete being a creep (i loooove creepy pete so much if you haven’t noticed) and hypersexualizing van days trick and i feel like at this point i don’t need to warn you what’s in it

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163036 this is just really rough peterick sex but i also like stories where patrick is a fucking violent bitch so i’m throwing it in here. i love brattystump so much

https://archiveofourown.org/works/4307196 this is a two-part series that is also, that’s right, about patrick starring in a sex tape but this time instead of his consent being very dubious, he’s doing it intentionally as a gift for pete. i think patrick is 17 in this

i am deeply considering not even posting this list at this point because of how many times i’ve used the term “underage” to describe one of these. i swear to god it’s not how it looks

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20685 OKAY. BEWENTZED. THIS IS MY NUMBER ONE FAVORITE PETERICK FIC AND IT’S ONE OF MY FAVORITE FICS OF ALL TIME it’s like this REALLY long form bewitched au sort of thing where pete is the literal devil and he gives patrick seven wishes, but each wish patrick makes is turned into a lesson about how he can’t force friendships or fame or success and pete twists them in a way that backfires in his face. this is seriously one of the best fucking fics i’ve ever read and even though patrick is in high school in this PLEASE ignore that if that squicks you out because this fic is fucking legendary. this and patricksitting are CRUCIAL to the peterick extended universe

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32760 this is a short one where patrick needs to get laid but the only person around who can do it is pete because joe won’t make a direct offer and he’s pretty sure andy is far from interested

https://archiveofourown.org/works/335389 eden burns is another legendary fic that’s about pete treating patrick like shit as the two are growing up together, this has triggers up the fucking ass so i’d really suggest reading the tags and summary before reading this but it deals heavily with the psychological aspects of molestation rather than just as a kink thing. it’s THAT kind of dark fic i fucking love it i love looking completely insane

https://jamjar.livejournal.com/99731.html OKAY A FIC WHERE IT’S NOT PATRICK THAT’S IN HIGH SCHOOL FOR ONCE this is an age reversal fic and while it doesn’t explore the potential of the idea as much as i’d like it’s still a really good read, it’s about patrick and pete switching ages and it builds an entire setting around that, where pete goes to high school with joe and patrick is trying to establish himself as a musician with andy. pete is a very angsty and emotional teen in this it’s so good

https://swear-jar.livejournal.com/697877.html OH THIS IS A FIC I SERIOUSLY JUST DISCOVERED this one is sooooo fucking hot it’s so weird, it really elaborates on when pete was unmedicated when he was younger so the logic in this one is super fun to figure out. i love fics that try their own interpretation of pete when he was unmedicated and unstable because it’s so fascinating trying to explore his psychology in a safe and creative environment, and i relate to a lot of stories like these because i have bipolar like pete and when it was unmedicated while i was younger it destroyed my fucking life so i understand a lot of the things he used to do or say about himself, anyway in this fic he jerks off to patrick in his sleep without him knowing so warnings for that and for vomit. i wouldn’t call this a darkfic just really bizarre and i love it for that

https://giddygeek.livejournal.com/138523.html and this is the last rec i have for now, it’s another dance dance au where both pete and patrick gang up on nerd patrick and it’s very cute

please don’t be mean to me i pay my taxes on time and i vote democrat and bernie should have won the nomination instead of biden

[sternbilder]

Camille Has Many KDrama Thoughts

As some of you have possibly noticed, I have recently fallen into a KDrama hole and I can’t get up, and I have just finished my 10th drama, which seems like less of an accomplishment than I thought now that I say it out loud, but anyway,

As a checkpoint/thinly veiled plug of some shows I love very much, here is a very long post with some of my thoughts on all the KDramas I’ve seen so far, as well as what’s next on my list, in case you too were interested in joining me in nonexistent fandom hell!

So firstly, all of the dramas I have watched to completion, in the order of how much I like them. First, my top five:

1. Sungkyunkwan Scandal (2010). My #1 favorite drama to date. I’ve probably watched it in full 4-5 times, and it’s still an absolute treat every time. Is it the best drama I’ve ever seen? Probably not. But it’s so fun and charming that it’s just gotta be at the top of my list. 

The best way I can describe this drama is Ouran High School Host Club, except in Joseon era Korea, and instead of flirting with girls the main characters learn about Confucianism and solve mysteries and play sports (twice) and end up accidentally involved in a complicated political scandal. Also, that one text post about how Shang from Mulan is bi because he falls for Mulan while he thinks she’s a man...This drama has that, except actually canon. And while I won’t pretend this is show is a shining beacon of representation, there are multiple main characters who are explicitly not heterosexual and several others with very plausible queer readings, which earns it a very special place in my heart.

As for the actual premise of the show, it’s basically about a wonderfully determined and kind and clever but lower-class girl whose writing skills catch the eye of the most stubbornly strait-laced but idealistic aspiring politician-type on the planet. She ends up getting a one-way ticket to the most prestigious school in the country, except she has to pretend to be a man the entire time because women aren’t allowed to be educated at this time. 

It’s a bit of a silly, cheesy show, and here are many wacky shenanigans, but the main cast is full of incredibly highly endearing and multifaceted characters, there is a lot of sexual confusion, the slowburn roommate romance has an incredible payoff, and it’s also full of deeply moving social commentary about class, privilege, and gender roles. This drama is a blast and I could go on and on about what I love about it, I absolutely adore it to pieces.

2. Six Flying Dragons (2015-2016). I debated between this and Tree With Deep Roots (next on my list, to which SFD is a prequel) as my #2 but I do think I want to place SFD higher just because it's the drama that I keep thinking about even after finishing it. of course, it has the dual advantages of 1) being released chronologically later (and having better production value, etc., because of this) and 2) being twice as long, but there’s just so much stuff to unpack with SFD that it makes me want to keep coming back to it. 

The show is about the founding of the Joseon dynasty, and six individuals (half of whom are based on real historical figures and half fictional) whose lives are closely tied to the fall of the old regime and the revolution that brought in the new. It has an intricate, intensely political plotline based on the actual events that happened during this time, and though this may sound kind of boring if you’re like me and not super into history (admittedly, the pacing in the beginning is a tiny bit slow), it quickly picks up and becomes this dense web of character relations and political maneuvering. Though none of the major events should come as a surprise if you’ve seen TWDR or if you happen to already know the history it was based on, the show adds such a depth of humanity and emotion to every event and character that nothing ever feels boring or predictable. As a matter of fact, there are several events that were alluded to in TWDR that, when they actually happened in SFD, left me breathless--because although I 100% knew these were foregone conclusions that were coming up at some point, I still had a visceral moment of, “oh no, so that’s how that came to happen.” 

But though I really enjoyed following the story of SFD and learning about the history behind it, the highlight of the show for me is definitely the great character arcs. I loved TWDR’s characters, too (especially Yi Do, So Yi, and obviously Moo Hyul), but with double the episode count SFD just has so much time for rich, dynamic character development, and I absolutely loved seeing how these characters grew and changed over time when their ideologies and fates collided in this turbulent and violent age: How young and ambitious Yi Bang Won eventually spiraled into a ruthless tyrant, how the naive and kind-hearted Moo Hyul struggled to retain his humanity in a bloody revolution that challenged his values and loyalties to the core, how the fiercely determined and idealistic Boon Yi grew into a pragmatic and capable leader who comes to realize what politics and power mean for her and her loved ones. 

SFD was also everything I wanted as a prequel to TWDR--I loved seeing the contrasts between some of the TWDR characters and their younger selves in the SFD timeline: The hardened and ruthless Bang Won as a passionate and righteous adolescent, the cynical and resigned Bang Ji as a cowardly boy who grows into a traumatized and bitter young man, and my personal favorite character, the comically serious bodyguard Moo Hyul as the very model of the dopey, lovable himbo archetype. And though the ending was controversial among fans (particularly those who watched SFD first), I loved how it closed all the loops and tied it back to the events of TWDR, both providing that transition I wanted but also recontextualizing and adding new meaning to the original work. I think it's still a very good drama on its own, but this hand-off is what really sealed the deal for me personally, because it was not only super emotionally satisfying to watch how the stories connected, but it elevated TWDR to something even greater (suggesting that Yi Do and the events of TWDR was the culmination of everything the six dragons fought so long and hard for), which is exactly what I expect from a good prequel. 

I’ve already talked so much about this drama but I also do need to mention that the soundtrack to SFD is A+, and the sword fights are sick as hell. There is also some romance, though it’s not really a focus--and all the pairings that do exist are extremely tragic, which is exactly up my alley. Overall, this is a hell of a historical drama, coming of age, villain origin story, and martial arts film in one, and I highly recommend it.

3. Tree With Deep Roots (2011). The sequel to SFD, though it aired first chronologically. Although this show isn’t one of those shows that I could rewatch once a year like SKKS or keep ruminating on like SFD, TWDR (much like Les Mis, or Fata Morgana) is thematically the kind of story that just makes my heart sing.

The story centers around the creation of Hangul, the Korean alphabet, by Yi Do (a.k.a., King Sejong the Great, who is the son and successor of Yi Bang Won, the main character of SFD) as well as two fictional childhood friends whose backstories and ambitions become central to the story of how and why this alphabet came to exist. Not only is the actual process of creating this alphabet absolutely fascinating from a linguistic and scientific POV, but the show dramatizes Yi Do’s motivations in a way that’s so incredibly touching and human--portraying the king as a soft-hearted and extremely charismatic yet fundamentally flawed and conflicted figure who tries so desperately to do right by his people. 

The show explores both a number of personal themes like redemption, atonement, and vengeance, as well as broader societal themes such as the ethics of authority, the democratization of knowledge, and the power of language and literacy. Though the show never forgets to remind the audience of the bitter reality of actual history, it’s still a deeply idealistic show whose musings on social change and how to use privilege and power to make the world better are both elegant and poignant. 

Romance definitely takes a backseat in TWDR, even more so than SFD, though this isn’t something I personally mind. There are, however, a lot of interesting politics surrounding the promulgation of the alphabet, including a string of high-profile assassinations--if SFD is historical/political-thriller-meets-action-film, then TWDR is historical/political-thriller-meets-murder-mystery, and it’s an incredibly tightly written and satisfying story whose pieces fall into place perfectly. Though not the sprawling epic that SFD is, TWDR is an emotional journey and an extremely well-written story with a TON of goodies if you’re as excited about linguistics as I am. 

4. White Christmas (2011). My first non-sageuk on this list! White Christmas is, in a lot of ways, an odd drama. It’s an 8-episode special, and featured largely (at the time) new talent. it’s also neither a historical work nor romance-focused, but instead a short but intense psychological thriller/murder mystery. 

The premise is this: Seven students at a super elite boarding school tucked away in the mountains receive mysterious black letters that compel them to remain on campus during the one vacation of the year. The letters describe various “sins” that the author accuses the students of committing, as well as the threat of a “curse” as well as an impending death. The students quickly find that they’re stranded alone at the school with a murderer in their midst, as they are forced to confront their shared histories and individual traumas to figure out 1) why they’ve been sent the letters, and 2) how to make it out alive. At the center of the survival game the characters find themselves in is a recurring question: “Are monsters born, or can they be made?”

If you’ve been following me for a while, it’s easy to see why I was drawn to this drama. In terms of setup and tone, it’s Zero Escape. In theme, it’s Naoki Urasawa’s Monster. It’s Lord of the Flies meets Dead Poets Society. or as one of my mutuals swyrs@ put it, Breakfast Club meets Agatha Christie. The story is flawlessly paced with not a scene wasted. There’s so much good foreshadowing and use of symbolic imagery, and though I’ve watched it at least 3-4 times, I always find interesting new details to analyze. The plot twists (though not so meta-breaking as ZE) are absolutely nuts, and aside from the somewhat questionable ending, the story is just really masterfully written.

Above all, though, WC is excellent for its character studies. Though I typically tend to stay away from shows that center around teenagers because I don’t find their struggles and experiences particularly relatable, WC does such an excellent job of picking apart every character psychologically, showing their traumas, their desires, their fears, and their insecurities. We see these kids at their most violent and cruel, but also their most vulnerable and honest. Their stories and motivations are so profoundly human that I found even the worst and most despicable characters painfully sympathetic at times, as cowardly and hypocritical and unhinged as they became. 

Like I said, it’s only 8 episodes long with probably the best rewatch value on this list. My only complaints about it are its ending, as well as its relative lack of female characters, but otherwise I would absolutely recommend.

5. Signal (2016). Okay, this might be the recency bias talking because I just finished this series but I'm sure but I'm still reeling at the mind-screw of an ending and I feel like it deserves a place on this spot just for that.

Signal is a crime thriller based on a number of real-life incidents that happened in Korea in the last 30 or so years. In short, a young profiler from the year 2015, who has a grudge against the police after witnessing their incompetence and corruption twice as a child, happens to find a mysterious walkie-talkie that seems to be able to send and receive messages from the past. on the other end is an older detective from 2000 who tells him that he’s about to start receiving messages from his younger self, back in 1989. Through the seemingly sporadic radio communications, the two men work together to solve a series of cold cases, which begin to change the past and alter the timeline.

As they solve these cases, expose corruption within the police department, and correct past injustices, the two men (along with a third, female detective who has connections to both of them) also begin to unravel the mysteries of their pasts, as well as why and how they came to share this connection.

Like WC, the story and pacing of this drama were flawless, reminding me of an extended movie rather than a TV series. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, and the 16-episode run went by in no time at all. I always love timeline shenanigans and explorations of causality and fate and the consequences of changing the past, and this show has oodles of that peppered with the heartbreakingly tragic human connections and stories that the main characters share. The main pairing has great chemistry and gave me exactly the pain I crave from a doomed timeline romance, and the cinematography and soundtrack were also beautiful, which also contributed to the polished, cinema-like feel.

My only complaint is that I wish that the ending felt more like an ending, such that the drama could stand on its own. I do realize this is because there’s a second season coming, but right now the show feels somewhat incomplete, ending on a huge, ambiguous cliffhanger/sequel hook and with several loose ends. I obviously can’t give a final verdict until the entire thing airs (and I typically don’t like multi-season shows, so I will wait for the next season to come out both reluctantly and begrudgingly), but even where the show leaves off I still did enjoy it immensely.

...And now, some brief thoughts on the other 5 shows I’ve watched, because I ran out of steam and have less to say about these:

6. Healer (2014-2015). It’s been a few years since I’ve seen this show, but I remember being really impressed by this drama at the time, especially the storyline. Unfortunately though I don’t remember too much about the drama itself, which is a shame. It’s a mystery/thriller, I think, and there is hacking and crimes involved? The main character is a very cute and sweet tabloid writer and she falls in love with a mysterious and cool action boy who helps her uncover the truth behind a tragic incident that relates to her past, or something. Judging from my liveblog it seems like this was an extremely emotional journey, and I enjoyed the main couple (who are both very attractive) a lot, and it was just overall a cathartic and feel-good experience. I feel like I should rewatch this drama at some point?

7. Rooftop Prince (2012). It’s also been forever since I watched this show but I remember thinking it was hilarious and delightful and I definitely cried a lot though I do not remember why (probably something something time travel, something something reincarnation/fated lovers??). I do remember that the premise is that a Joseon-era prince and several of his servants accidentally time travel into modern-day Seoul and end up meeting the main character who is the future reincarnation of his love (?) and he is hilariously anachronistic and also insufferably pretentious, which the MC absolutely does not cut him any slack for, and they have an extremely good dynamic.

8. Coffee Prince (2007). I watched this around the same time as Rooftop Prince and I remember really enjoying it! it’s basically just SKKS, but the modern cafe AU, and I mean that in the best way possible? It definitely shares a lot of the same tropes--crossdressing/tomboy female lead, sexually questioning male lead who falls in love with her despite being “straight,” very good chemistry and also extremely charming secondary characters.

9. Shut Up Flower Boy Band (2012). This show...Was just OK. I enjoyed it at the time, but I can’t say I found it particularly memorable. As I said, I don’t typically find stories about high school students particularly relatable, and the battle of the bands-type plot was interesting enough at the time but didn’t really leave a lasting impression. As expected, the music was pretty good. I kind of watched this mostly to hear Sung Joon sing tbh?

10. Rebel: Thief Who Stole the People (2017). I wanted to like this show. I really did. I wouldn’t say it was bad, but the beginning was painfully slow, and I only really enjoyed the last 10 episodes or so, when the vive la révolution arc finally started kicking off. The pacing was challenging--the pre-timeskip dragged on about twice as long as it needed to, and I just wasn’t really interested in the Amogae/Yiquari storyline very much. I also really, really disliked all the romances in the show, especially the main pairing, since I didn’t particularly love either the male or the female leads until pretty late in the show. Overall I think I would have enjoyed the show more if the first 2/3 of it was about half as long, and it either developed the romance better or cut it out altogether.

What I’m thinking of watching next:

1. Chuno (2010). Mostly because the soundtrack to this show is so goddamn good, but also because I’m craving more historical dramas with good sword fights after SFD. I was kind of hoping Rebel would fill that need but I was a little disappointed tbh?

2. Warrior Baek Dong Soo (2011). Same reasons as above, honestly. also has a very good soundtrack, and Ji Chang Wook, who is a known nice face-haver, doing many very cool sword fights.

3. Mr. Sunshine (2018). Late Joseon era is something I’ve never really seen before in media so I’m pretty intrigued? Also Byun Yo Han was one of my favorites from SFD and I definitely want to see him in more things.

4. Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung (2019). A coworker recommended this to me and the trailer looks delightful. first of all it’s a sageuk with the gorgeous and talented Shin Se Kyoung in it playing a smart and plucky female lead, which have historically been extremely good to me, but also it gives me massive SKKS vibes, so how could I not.

5. My Country: The New Age (2019). This caught my attention because it’s based on the same historical events as SFD, so it features some of the same characters. I am very very interested in Jang Hyuk’s take on Yi Bang Won, even if he is less of a main character here compared to SFD, and he’s already an adult so he’ll already be well on his way to bastardhood. I also hear it’s very heartbreaking, which is instant eyes emoji for me?

6. Chicago Typewriter (2017). It’s about freedom fighters from the colonization era, which I’m very intrigued by after The Handmaiden and Pachinko, plus a reincarnation romance. I am very predictable in my choice of tropes. Also, Yoo Ah In is in it.

7. Arthdal Chronicles (2019-). Ok, it’s a gorgeous-looking historical fantasy set in Korea written by the same writers as TWDR and SFD, plus it has not just one but TWO Song Joong Ki characters, one of which is a pure, doe-eyed soft boy and the other an evil long-haired fae prince looking asshole who I hear is a complete and utter Unhinged Bastard Supreme. Nothing has ever been more Camille Bait than this, but unfortunately this show hasn’t finished airing, which does pain me deeply. speaking of,

8. Kingdom (2019-). It’s a fantasy sageuk with zombies, is about the extent I know about this show. The fact that it also hasn’t finished airing turns me off a bit but it looks absolutely gorgeous and I also just found out it was written by the same writer as Signal, so,,,,,,,,,

9. Gunman in Joseon (2014). I honestly don’t expect too much from this drama but I just enjoy its premise a lot? From what I understand it’s just Percy from Critical Role, but make it Joseon era.......Like, they just straight up took a Shadow the Hedgehog, “let’s make a sageuk, but guns,” approach, and I kind of unironically love that. Also the soundtrack kicks ass, which like...you can really see where my priorities lie here, huh,

10. Misaeng (2014). I don’t remember at this point why this is on my list but I found it in the Keep note I have of all the media I want to watch?? I have no idea what this show is about, except that it takes place in an office. Apparently Byun Yo Han is also in this one? I’m sorry this is the only non-sageuk or sageuk-adjacent show in this list, I know what I’m about, and it’s fancy old-timey costumes and cool braids.

[rhowena]

Pile of stuff concerning what happened to Loki between Thor and The Avengers

Originally posted on r/FanTheories

https://inforapid.org/webapp/webapp.php?shareddb=IAxUFHnwkGJSYMj9OFbT8mRl5goHm9SC2qHbWw4knO1cng5qI5Wrg48nP1MdgbWlJmHj6UpwbN343IqnstQUwxIIO01M5Rvb

As it does not escape my notice that I’ve created a digital version of this meme, some navigation help for anyone who needs it:

Mouse over/tap an item or relation to view its description

For items with the yellow ‘Note’ label, select the node and then 'Notes on Item’ in the side menu to view an additional notes page

If an item has a globe icon it the top-left corner, click it to open a webpage

'Adjust View’ in the side menu has controls to zoom in/out, increase/decrease the distance between items, and filter items or relations by category

Relations (and items) are color-coded by type: solid green lines are for in-universe evidence (light green connects evidence to the theory it supports, while dark green connects pieces of evidence that should be looked at together), purple dotted lines denote parallels, and dark red lines mark cases of “one of these things is not like the other”

And an overview of the theories contained therein:

First, the central piece of tinfoil around which all other tinfoil is arrayed: remember how, at the end of the first Thor, Loki was pathologically obsessed with gaining his father’s approval? And how, when he next showed up after vanishing for an entire year, he’d gotten mixed up with a guy who keeps a menagerie of adopted children? And how, during his argument with Thor on the mountaintop, he said this?

Loki: Did you mourn? Thor: We all did. Our father– Loki: Your father. He did tell you my true parentage, did he not?

Loki: I’ve seen worlds you’ve never known about! I have grown, Odinson, in my exile. I have seen the true power of the Tesseract and when I wield it—

Tom Hiddleston: There’s a bit where Thor says, “We all mourned! Our father…” and Loki interrupts him and says, “YOUR father.” And it’s that sense of 'don’t include me in this anymore. I have no relation or connection to you.’ It’s his way of saying 'I’ve let go, I’m gone, I’m on the outside of the fence, I’m happy here, I don’t want to come back in.’

If I may take a minute to get out some of my extremely complicated feelings on this, while there’s a bunch more evidence in favor of Loki having been another of Thanos’s children that can be viewed on the mind map, I want to highlight this pair of quotes because it’s everything implied by the words “Your father” that makes it into a devastating punch in the stomach which draws on both halves of Loki’s Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds characterization: his genuine love for his family is his primary redeeming quality and that he forswore it like this puts the terrible moment when he first knelt before Thanos and pledged himself to the Mad Titan’s service firmly into archetypal Faustian sell-your-soul territory, but when you consider the straits he was in at the time and the implication that Thanos initially ensnared him not through promises of power but by preying on him emotionally, it’s a very human kind of tragic mistake.

The other mitigating factor is that based on everything we’ve heard from Thanos’s other children, it’s a safe bet that he did in fact do unspeakably horrible things to Loki too – indeed, noticing the resemblance between the existing theories about Loki having been tortured/brainwashed and Gamora’s “He took me, tortured me, turned me into a weapon” was what prompted the above realization in the first place. (It’s reminiscent of Theon’s storyline in ASOIAF/GOT: yeah, he betrayed his adoptive family and did some generally awful stuff, but no one deserves what happened to him.) It also bears emphasizing that accountability cuts both ways: one of the key takeaways from the previous bullet point is that the suffering Loki went through doesn’t absolve him of responsibility for his villainous actions, but the other side of the coin is that Loki’s partial complicity doesn’t absolve Thanos of responsibility for the choice he made to take a broken, desperate young man who’d just lost everything and turn him into the rabid animal we saw during The Avengers, and I dearly hope that exploring the rich font of psychological horror that is that time period will erase any remaining doubt that Thanos’s claims of acting For The Greater Good are nothing but empty, egotistical, self-righteous posturing and everyone in the audience who insists on taking them at face value is being duped just as Loki was.

Stephen: No. I mean, come on. Look at your face. Dormammu made you a murderer. Just how good can his kingdom be?

As for where this is all going, I believe there’s a good chance that the Loki Disney+ series will be where they finally address this as a. the split timeline Loki the series will be following is still fresh from his time with Thanos and it will therefore have to explain what happened if we’re to understand the kind of headspace that he’s in at that moment and b. Tom Hiddleston has revealed that the series will also clarify whether or not Loki really is dead in the main timeline, and everything I have so far indicates that understanding the nature of his original pact with Thanos is essential to understanding both Loki’s choice to die and Thanos’s choice to kill him (see the 'Pledge of fidelity’ and 'Limited use’ notes pages on the mind map). Character-wise, I think one of the points of emphasis will be that Loki’s death in Infinity War doesn’t wrap up his story as neatly as it may appear to on the surface; truly completing his redemption arc will require him to confront this part of his past in full, and with it his guilt over everything he’s done and his fear that he’s wrecked his life and relationship with his family so thoroughly that he can never, ever fix them.

Loki: Can you? Can you wipe out that much red? […] Your ledger is dripping, it’s gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer… PATHETIC! You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code. Something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will *never* go away!

An additional giant red flag indicating we really should be asking more questions about that time gap is a group of lines in The Avengers which reveal that Thanos taught Loki how to use the Tesseract.

The Other: The Tesseract has awakened. It is on a little world. A human world. They would wield its power, but our ally knows its workings as they never will.

The Other: You question us? You question HIM? He, who put the Scepter in your hand? Who gave you ancient knowledge and new purpose when you were cast out, defeated?

Loki: I’ve seen worlds you’ve never known about! I have grown, Odinson, in my exile. I have seen the true power of the Tesseract and when I wield it— Thor: Who showed you this power? Who controls the would-be king?

Sharing that kind of knowledge and power with someone as volatile as Loki strikes me as an monumentally terrible idea (and as much as I don’t want to be the person who throws a tantrum because their fanfic didn’t come true, I’m kinda salty that Thanos was defeated without it coming back to bite him in the ass), which leaves me wondering what Thanos hoped to gain that he believed would be worth the risks. My thoughts on that particular sub-puzzle are still somewhat hazy, but my basic sense is that there’s something weird going on between Loki and the Tesseract and wanting to exploit that connection is one of the reasons Thanos went to all the trouble of breaking him into submission.

Loki: So I am no more than another stolen relic, locked up here until you might have use of me?

The other reason for Thanos’s interest in Loki ties back to all that emotional twistiness I talked about earlier: he planned to leverage Loki’s anger and resentment towards his family in a bid to destroy Odin and Asgard from the inside.

Zemo: An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one which crumbles from within? That’s dead… forever.

As a prelude to this, during The Avengers Thanos had additionally tasked Loki with killing Thor as a way to prove his loyalty and destroy the last remaining shreds of his own humanity, a test Loki failed because he still loved his brother too much.

Coulson: You’re going to lose. It’s in your nature. […] You lack conviction.

What’s more, Thanos anticipated this, and the Scepter’s influence over Loki was aimed at forcing him to go through with it if he refused.

Loki: I won’t touch Barton, not until I make him kill you! Slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear! And then he’ll wake, just long enough to see his good work, and when he screams, I’ll split his skull!

Lastly, even with Infinity War having established that Thanos simply gets off on emotional torture, that he would go out of his way to fuck with Odin personally by turning his second son against him leads me to believe there was a special hatred there stemming from some as-yet unrevealed history between the two. I mean, when I picture the alternate universe where Thanos shows up to attack Asgard with a corrupted Loki in tow like “You screwed up so badly that he chose me as a father figure over you” …that isn’t something you say to a complete stranger.

GRRM on writing villain POVs: That’s a comic book kind of thing, where the Red Skull gets up in the morning [and asks] “What evil can I do today?” Real people don’t think that way. We all think we’re heroes, we all think we’re good guys. We have our rationalizations when we do bad things. “Well, I had no choice,” or “It’s the best of several bad alternatives,” or “No it was actually good because God told me so,” or “I had to do it for my family.” We all have rationalizations for why we do shitty things or selfish things or cruel things. So when I’m writing from the viewpoint of one of my characters who has done these things, I try to have that in my head.

[jgroffdaily]

It’s been almost two years since we last saw Mindhunter’s intrepid FBI team, led by plucky but serial-killer-obsessed Holden Ford—played by Jonathan Groff, of Hamilton and Frozen fame. With his off-screen affability and dangerous penchant for on-set laughter, it’s a credit to the baby-faced Groff’s abilities that Holden—a character loosely based on actual agent John E. Douglas—appears convincingly world-weary at the start of season two.

As the show’s freshman outing ended, Holden was becoming increasingly invested in the real-life serial killer and necrophile Ed Kemper, which led to a major panic attack and breakdown. Between the pressures of keeping the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI afloat and his workaholic obsession, Holden was in rough shape.

Season two jumps from the late ’70s to 1980, where Holden and co. are investigating a new wave of serial killings that will eventually be dubbed the Atlanta child murders. With the support of the bureau, Holden’s team has moved out of its old basement office—but that upgrade brings with it a new sense of exposure and looming menace, especially since Holden also meets Son of Sam David Berkowitz and Charles Manson this season. We caught up with Groff to discuss the pressures of working for David Fincher, Mindhunter’s graphic sex scenes, and why serial killers aren’t actually the actor’s jam.

Vanity Fair: The two-year gap was tough on Mindhunter fans. Why did the show keep them hanging for so long?

Jonathan Groff: [Laughs] Only David Fincher has the power to do that, because he really takes his time. He worked on the scripts until he felt they were ready and they were exactly what he wanted them to be. That’s the honest, basic answer. He didn’t want to turn out a second season just because the first was successful. He wanted the story lines to be as interesting and complicated as possible. David Berkowitz and Manson aren’t the only two serial killers that we do this season; there’s a lot more that I think will be an exciting surprise. Manson has always been Holden’s holy grail in terms of serial killers that he wants to speak with, and he gets his wish this season.

Netflix got some heat earlier this year for allegedly glorifying Ted Bundy in a docuseries, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, and a Zac Efron movie, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Do you worry that Mindhunter could do something similar or open old wounds?

From the very first meeting we had about the show, David Fincher’s mission statement has always been that he doesn’t want to make comic book villains of serial killers. He wanted to show them as the sad, deplorable human beings that they are, and to explore their psychology. In no way did he ever want to celebrate the serial killer, and every single day on set operated with that mission and goal at the forefront. There is that temptation, in our cultural obsession, to make the killers powerful again by investing in them. We’re interested in taking an honest look and doing the opposite.

Do you see these men as monsters, or have you developed sympathy for them while doing the show?

I compartmentalize the work on the show, and I read as much as I can about any killer we’re about to interview—but I don’t really live for it. Serial killers aren’t my jam in that way. The thing that turns me on most about working on the show is exploring the psychology of the scenes themselves. Those long, 15-page interviews with the killers are the most fun for me as an actor, because I get to really lose myself and explore the psychology. If I stop and think about what the serial killers have done, I’d get really depressed. There is no empathy for serial killers in my mind.

In season two we meet the mothers of the murdered children from the Atlanta child murders. For the first time in the series, we’re looking at the families and parents of the victims. That was way more emotionally draining and heartbreaking for me. As the serial killer Ed Kemper said in season one, “We should all get death by torture.” I don’t think serial killers are really looking for sympathy anyway.

Do you take any emotional baggage from the show home with you?

I’m not a Method actor, so I don’t take any of it too seriously after they say, “Cut.” I go for a run every morning, and when I go home it’s pretty easy for me to shake it off. I think it might affect me in subconscious ways, because I definitely ate a lot during season two—a lot of Mindhunter emotional eating. My morning run [is] not only to stay in shape—but subconsciously, it’s my way to shake it off and mentally prepare for the new day.

Working on the show gives me so much respect for the people who actually talk to the serial killers, or those that talk to the families of the victims. It seems silly of me, as an actor playing pretend, to have any sort of damaging, emotional reaction to it when those people are out there living it every day.

Did you spend any time with real-life agent John E. Douglas when preparing for the role?

I emailed with John, but we had never met until about six months ago. He asked me to do the audiobook for his newest book, The Killer Across the Table, where he writes a little about Mindhunter and the characters Holden Ford and Bill Tench [Holden’s partner, played by Holt McCallany]. I did the reading, and then as a bonus feature on the audiobook, we did an interview with each other. The first time we spoke on the phone was really cool, and I was grateful to hear that he likes the show and what we’re doing.

Four months ago he came to New York and we had lunch for the first time. At the end of season one, my character has a panic attack and meltdown, and John Douglas did have a complete physical and emotional breakdown over the course of his career. We talked about that, and how exhaustive the work was for him. He was really encouraging, so it wasn’t awkward to meet him in any way.

In season one you had to portray a really intense sexual awakening for Holden. As an openly gay actor, were those straight sex scenes fun or daunting?

I think it was both. When I was 22, I was on Broadway doing Spring Awakening, where I had a very extensive sex scene with Lea Michele. It was the climax, no pun intended, of Act 1, and because I did that eight times a week for two years, I got really comfortable doing sex scenes. It was the routine of, “Here’s where I pull down your underwear and pretend to finger you,” and it was choreographed and blocked kind of like a dance.

Over the years I’ve heard horror stories from my male and female friends about their sex scenes. It usually stems from a lack of communication and the actors being thrown into it. When I got to Mindhunter, David is such a specific and intentional director, so there was never any wiggle room to feel weird, awkward, or afraid. There was just a lot of respect on the set—and it sounds so weird, but I end up really enjoying those scenes because there’s not a lot of dialogue to memorize. You’re telling the story physically, and there’s a natural vulnerability when you’re butt naked with another person that can’t really be faked.

What’s the most difficult part of working for Fincher?

You have to be on your A-game every second of every day, which is actually the most difficult and rewarding thing. It’s really simple, and that’s all that he requires of you. When everyone is doing it and we’re all vibing, it’s so much fun. It’s what I imagine it’s like to be on a really intense sports team, and that can be really confronting at times. We were shooting in Pittsburgh for a very long time, working long hours for nine months. At the wrap party for both seasons, when you’d expect everyone to get wasted and be exhausted, everyone said that it was the best experience they’d ever had.

Switching gears completely: With Frozen 2 coming up in November, do kids ever recognize you as the voice of Kristoff and lose their minds?

I do make voice memos for little kids because they never recognize my voice in person. I sing as Kristoff and the voice of the reindeer, and that’s when they freak out. Usually parents take video of their kids listening to it. On the street it’s usually just, “How do I know your voice?”—which isn’t as much fun.

[tanadrin]

@bpd-anon:

I think I agree on some points and disagree on others but mostly I would love an expansion of this part: "I don’t think he actually understands fantasy as a set of generic conventions as well as he thinks he does." Can you explain the parts that he is misunderstanding and what true understanding looks like?  

For some context, I have never seen GOT. I read the first book and it's tied for my favorite book ever but then college and its stress hit and I mostly stopped reading (same reason Blindsight is another favorite book ever but I haven't read Echopraxia). I mostly read science fiction books and I haven't even read the all-important LOTR (mainly because I hear there isn't any moral greyness, sounds boring). 

Martin has said things like this:

“I admire Tolkien greatly. His books had enormous influence on me. And the trope that he sort of established—the idea of the Dark Lord and his Evil Minions—in the hands of lesser writers over the years and decades has not served the genre well. It has been beaten to death. The battle of good and evil is a great subject for any book and certainly for a fantasy book, but I think ultimately the battle between good and evil is weighed within the individual human heart and not necessarily between an army of people dressed in white and an army of people dressed in black. When I look at the world, I see that most real living breathing human beings are grey.”     

“Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?” 

“By the time I got to Mines of Moria I decided this was the greatest book I’d ever read… And then Gandalf dies! I can’t explain the impact that had on me at 13. You can’t kill Gandalf… Tolkien just broke that rule, and I’ll love him forever for it. The minute you kill Gandalf, the suspense of everything that follows is 1,000 times greater. Because now anybody could die. Of course, it’s had a profound effect on my own willingness to kill characters at the drop of a hat.” 

Taken together, Martin is one of the people I’m thinking most of when I say things like “nobody reads Tolkien, only their caricatures of Tolkien.” About the only thing I can say for him is that he’s right on Tolkien being about an external battle of Good versus Evil a lot of the time; though for my part, Martin’s world doesn’t come off so much as Gray versus Gray as Evil versus Evil, and a lot of what he seems to take for “moral ambiguity” to me is perfectly unambiguous: they’re all (or mostly) villains, doing villainy things to each other. Sometimes for quite human reasons; but the best villains have comprehensible motivations beyond pure evil. Doesn’t make them not villains.

First of all, he’s simply nakedly incorrect that Tolkien never considered the difficulties of rule, or never looked at the practical aspects of his worldbuilding. They don’t come in much for emphasis, but they’re absolutely there (most notably in the scenes set in Minas Tirith, in the run-up to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields), and indeed the moral nature of the Orcs, and therefore the correct stance to take toward them, was of deep concern to him, and subject to a lot of later revision as he struggled with the idea of what we would now refer to as an Always Chaotic Evil fantasy race.

Tolkien certainly critically interrogates the morality and moral authority of rulership. In the Silmarillion, he has plenty of figures who cut heroic profiles but make bad (or at least ambiguous) kings, with much resulting conflict; and indeed, that ambivalence is something he’s in part borrowing from his medieval sources! To say that the medievals had a totally black-and-white view of kingship is to betray a lack of familiarity with actual medieval writers, who even (especially?) in the Early Middle Ages are adept at portraying leaders with powerful qualities that turn against them in the wrong situation. Beorhtnoth, the heroes of Njal’s Saga, and Beowulf would have all been extremely familiar to Tolkien, and are good examples I think. Tolkien absolutely understood that people come in shades of gray, and there are various admixtures of light and dark in almost all his characters. Even Frodo for Chrissakes puts on the Ring at the end--and Gollum redeems him. Like, come on! That’s one of the most memorable parts of the main trilogy! But from Galadriel right down to the Sackville-Bagginses, Tolkien is intensely conscious of the moral complexity of everybody in his stories, he just doesn’t need them to say “fuck” in order to express that.

What Martin seems to have confused for Tolkien is, like, the semi-mythic style of Arthurian romance (which... is still not always super black and white?), which is only a small part of the generic conventions Tolkien is drawing on. Tolkien is much more steeped in the conventions of the realist novel, with its penchant for psychological complexity, even as he’s borrowing the setpieces of older literature. I think that’s important because it’s what marks Tolkien out as a fundamentally modern writer, despite his sources; yet people skate over this and like to pretend he was some kind of reverse Connecticut Yankee who stumbled out of the 13th century with medieval sensibilities intact. Which is... weird.

The quote about Gandalf is especially telling. Gandalf’s death happens for extremely clear structural reasons: it provides a climax to Book II (if you’ve never read LOTR: each volume is divided into two “books”; the three-volume split was a post-writing publication decision, LOTR was originally written as a single continuous unit, and the “books” are like mega-chapters), much like, but stronger than, the Flight to the Ford at the end of Book I; it sets up the sojurn in Lorien (recovering from the trauma of the loss of their nominal leader); it helps the narrative transition from the low-stakes, bucolic setting of everything west of the Misty Mountains to the high-stakes dangers of the rest of the story; and it serves the conclusion of the story because without Gandalf’s sacrifice (plus many other events), the Ring never would have made it to Mount Doom. Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but Gandalf comes back, in a way that feels sensible within the world Tolkien has built, and which sets up further development of both the main plot and the the themes Tolkien is concerned with.

If Martin had written Lord of the Rings, Gandalf would have died to a random Orc arrow, would never have come back, and the Ring wouldn’t have made it to Mount Doom at all. And you’d be left feeling like Gandalf dies for basically no reason--and you’d be right. The suspense in Lord of the Rings doesn’t come from wondering who will die (the only major named characters who die permanently are Boromir and Gollum; both similarly serve important thematic and plot functions when they do, but by Martin’s standard, Tolkien isn’t even trying), or wondering how things will turn out--does anyone ever doubt that the good guys will win?--it comes from seeing how they get there, from wanting to experience the emotional and narrative beats of the story, wanting to see the narrative logic being brought to its conclusion. It’s why it’s a good story even if you know the ending! And all of Tolkien’s work is like that: a well-constructed narrative that is perennially satisfying is far better than a one-off surprise that can never be repeated. That’s a mistake a lot of modern media is making right now, which the rise of undue emphasis on spoilers isn’t doing anything to reduce.

More generally: there’s nothing wrong with high fantasy externalizing the conflict between good and evil. That is in fact one of its functions, as a kind of moral metaphor or moral proving ground in the same way that, say, science fiction often serves as moral and philosophical proving ground for ideas around technology or exploration or the alien. It’s not obligatory, but to cite that as an insufficiency of any work in the genre is to fail to understand the genre. Tolkien specifically provides some arch moral figures (Morgoth, Sauron, Manwe, Aragorn), but he also provides some much more mixed ones: Denethor, Saruman, Grima Wormtongue, Boromir, Gollum, etc. (also Thorin, Feanor and his sons, and in fact just like a huge chunk of the cast of the Silmarillion in general), and gives his characters plenty of opportunity to reflect that, even in a conflict with a literal evil spirit, there is room for ambiguity (cf. Sam’s meditation on the Haradrim in Ithilien). And the sum total of the effect in Tolkien’s work is that it actually feels like something is at stake. I don’t feel like that in Martin’s world. I feel like if the Night King were just to destroy all of Westeros that would make as much sense and be about as satisfying as any other outcome, because there’s nothing that feels especially worth preserving there.

In discarding everything about both the moral and narrative structure of high fantasy, Martin’s world leaves nothing for one to hang one’s hat on, nothing to use as a fixed point of reference when it comes to orienting yourself in it; he is writing a critique against many things, perhaps, but not an argument for anything. The result leaves me quite cold.

[nellie-elizabeth]

The Handmaid's Tale: Unfit (3x08)

Um. Well, that happened. That certainly was... something.

Cons:

Can we talk for a second about the utterly clumsy way this show deals with race? It makes me cringe every time. For the most part, they try to pretend this is a totally post-racial society, but obviously they can't pull that off. And then they have some casual moment where Aunt Lydia tells some other aunts that a certain couple doesn't want a "handmaid of color," so clearly casual racism is not only present here, but also condoned by the elite. Because, duh. Gender politics cannot exist separate from racial politics. And yet this show is not willing to grapple with what that means.

Especially considering June, who is the Whitest of White Feminists in this episode, and honestly, throughout the whole show. Her plot armor is seriously becoming a problem for me. June and the other Handmaids are open and unsubtle in their shunning of Ofmatthew, because they are all furious with her for turning in the Martha who was helping June. What happened to the first season, when the rebellion was deep, deep in the shadows? Now the majority of the Handmaids are allowed to be insolent. And then June is even more insolent, right to Aunt Lydia's face. She seems to think that her usefulness as publicity in the hunt for Nichole will protect her, and... that seems to be true, for some reason. But why? June could be flogged, or she could be castrated, or any other number of horrible things that would be invisible to a camera. June's cocky self-assured attitude is only made more frustrating by the fact that she seems to be right about being weirdly untouchable.

There were some things in this episode that I liked as individual pieces, but I'm still frustrated with these aspects as I look at the episode as a whole. For example, the idea of Ofmatthew cracking under the strain of her public shaming, in conjunction with her fear for her pregnancy, is a totally reasonable avenue to explore. But since we haven't spent any real time getting to know Ofmatthew, it feels instead like this big blow-out at the end of the episode is all just a part of June's story, instead of the story of a woman with her own story to tell. There was potential here, and there were moments that came close to tapping in to that potential, but the reality fell short. There are also two other reasons that the ending of this episode, particularly Ofmatthew's death, annoys me, and they are the two reasons discussed in earlier paragraphs.

1) We're seriously going to end two episodes in a row with the death of a black woman while June looks on, untouched by the physical consequences of her own actions? Yeesh. 2) She's pregnant. I give the show props for making me gasp when Ofmatthew got shot, because even as I critique this episode, I will acknowledge that I have very much bought in to the universe they've created. I was shocked that a pregnant Handmaid would be shot, because... it's shocking, and despite that moment of adrenaline, it's ultimately a stupid call for the writers to have made. Aunt Lydia is not as valuable as a pregnant Handmaid. Part of the visceral horror of Season One was the idea that the Handmaids would be punished physically and psychologically, but they never had to fear for their lives, because their bodies were far too valuable. There was something twisted and creative in how the system worked to break these women without ever being able to directly threaten them with death. And now, apparently we're just shooting pregnant Handmaids in the grocery store? That actually really broke me out of the moment.

Let's turn to the flashbacks for a moment. This is another instance where as a stand-alone thing, I quite liked learning about Aunt Lydia's past. I get the sense from other reviews that I'm in the minority on this, but I think Ann Dowd is so talented, and the story worked for me on the level of examining the early symptoms of Gilead, even before things had started in earnest. But on a macro level, these flashbacks still bothered me for a couple of reasons. For one, the themes explored in the flashbacks did not connect with the story in the present-day, other than that both were centered around Lydia. The flash-backs are about a woman who genuinely wanted to help people, turned bitter in part by her evangelical beliefs and in part by her loneliness. The present-day story is about June turning more and more ruthless, and Ofmatthew losing her grip on her sanity. What am I meant to understand by learning a bit more about Lydia's former life? And that's the second problem, honestly - from just this episode, I might get a good-ish understanding of who Aunt Lydia is meant to be as a character, but if you combine these flashbacks with what we've seen of her character so far, it doesn't really track. Aunt Lydia's characterization is all over the place. She seems to slide on the scale of devotion to Gilead depending on what the plot needs from her at any given moment. For a long time, I've held out hope that we would come to some sort of emotional core for this character and finally understand what makes her tick. But if these flashbacks were meant to provide that clarity, in my opinion they failed.

Pros:

Let's talk about June. Because on the one hand, I'm annoyed about the plot armor, as discussed above. And it's tempting to be upset and frustrated by how unlikable June is becoming. Last week, I certainly felt that way. But I'm trying to take the long view. Turning June into something of a villain is... well, it's not a totally crap idea. Maybe the final consequence of the torture she's been through is that there is no coming back for her. Maybe she'll keep being cruel and single-handed, focused on saving Hannah and nothing else. Maybe she'll nod sagely as Handmaids hold guns on her, and maybe we'll be hearing more voice-overs indicating that June is not only willing to inflict suffering on others... she's starting to enjoy it. I can't really sense what the endgame would be here, short of killing June off and letting the story continue without her. But that might not be as crazy an idea as it first sounds. This universe that they've created has legs. There are so many stories to tell. I'd be okay with telling those stories in a world where June is no longer at the center of them. Maybe that's not where this is going. Maybe I'll have to eat my words and be frustrated in the next couple of episodes at the direction the show turns. But for now, the idea of villainous June is kind of interesting!

One thing this show always does well is showing the creepiness of Gilead through the ceremonies. We have the birthing ceremony that ends in tragedy, as another Handmaid's child is stillborn. And then we have the shaming ceremony. It might be ridiculous to me that June doesn't suffer harsher consequences, but I do like the way Aunt Lydia's role in this shaming ceremony echoes her past as a teacher. The Handmaids are her students, parroting her words and internalizing the harsh messages they are forced to repeat, again and again. It's chilling, and it's meant to be, and it's a good scene, even with the flaws in the larger setup.

As I said, Ofmatthew unraveling and breaking down was actually an interesting idea, in and of itself. The acting and the pacing in that final scene was truly superb. At least in the moment, when I wasn't questioning the larger writing decisions going on, I was totally gripped. I thought Aunt Lydia might be about to die. I even thought Ofmatthew might actually shoot June, although I wasn't thinking June would actually die from it. And then when the shots rang out and Ofmatthew dropped, I literally flinched. I wish this story-line had explored more of its potential, but I did think this high-intensity scene worked really well on its own.

And again, I did enjoy the flashbacks for their own sake. I think it's interesting that Lydia was turned towards a darker, more cynical path because of her attempts to find love again. I read in another review that it seemed stupid to make Lydia evil because she was rejected by a man, but that's not the way I read the moment at all. She breaks so many of the rules she had set for herself on that New Year's Eve. She drinks, and she lets herself be comfortable, and she indulges her desires. Suddenly, she realizes that she's slipped away from the righteous path, and she over-corrects in a big way. That's interesting to me, and I hope that we can get some more clarity on Aunt Lydia's characterization moving forward.

I also like all the hints of the changing world. It reminds me of some of the Season One flashbacks. We learn that Child Protective Services has been replaced with privatized organizations, ones that ask questions like "do they go to Church?" in order to determine if a home is fit for a child. We see how Lydia is uncomfortable and judgmental of Noelle's behavior, and at first it seems perfectly reasonable, because she is neglecting her child. But there's something more dangerous underneath that, as Lydia is judging not only Noelle's parenting style, but her wearing of makeup, and use of profanity, and relationships with men. It all bleeds together, so you can see the sinister creep of Gilead's power beginning in these moments.

So... yeah. This is a very long review, and unfortunately a lot of it is less than positive. There are elements that have promise, and I'm giving this show the benefit of the doubt, because I believe it deserves that. But I'm also starting to feel like the writers need to re-evaluate some aspects of the story, and figure out how they're going to keep moving forward with June as a protagonist.

6/10

[riveir]

info dump                    canon au verse.

writing in this verse is set in an alternate universe scenario, in which river’s death occurs later in life than his senior year of high school. i’m very hesitant to say that it wouldn’t occur at all, for reasons explored below; because i would prefer writing in this verse to be heavily plot-based anyways, all of this can be altered & explored on a very individualized basis. i want to keep this plot-based because a big factor in river’s suicide is that he feels himself buckling under pressure without enough positive things or emotions in his life to, in his own words, ‘balance [him] out.’ writing river past senior year of high school assumes he has at least temporarily overcome these obstacles or found some reason to want to keep pushing through them. general reasons are outlined in each scenario below, but i think a lot of it would depend on individual specific relationships between river and the opposite muse. i think river’s mental health struggles extend beyond things like his parents and santa barbara and st. sebastian, though those things are certainly all factors in their own ways, and i hesitate to say that the things/changes applicable in each scenario below would be agents of such major change. a big part of this is acknowledging the lack of change that resulted after river’s first suicide attempt, which largely centers on his parents; no one else knew about his mental health struggles nor that he had received treatment until river breaks down and reveals it to the entire school because the family wanted to keep it between them, and his parents do not change their attitudes or treatment of river in the aftermath. in short, i just don’t take altering river’s death and its circumstances lightly, and this is all still contingent on individual plotting. however, because i’m not opposed to writing things in such a verse at all, i though doing an info dump for it would be helpful (: 

river living past senior year fall means that he would still be running for student council president. this can also be plotted individually, but as far as dealing with the rest of the canon timeline of the politician, it can be assumed that river continues running until he has an admissions interview with stanford that seems to virtually guarantee admission ( though family donations likely play a large factor in that as well ), at which point the student body presidency is deemed unnecessary and he drops out to try and allow payton an easier path to victory, though it can also be assumed that astrid takes his place on the ticket. exploring a scenario in which river does actually win the election, though, is definitely a possibility on an individual plot basis.

there are two default scenarios in this verse. the first is that river gets into stanford, attends, and continues along the path intended for him by his parents and continues giving into them, hoping that at some point he’ll feel some significant reassurance from their pride and happiness and that it will make a real difference in his life. the second is that he chooses to go against their wishes, elects to attend columbia university in new york city, and pursues a dual major in education and psychology and intends to spend some time as an english education teacher in the peace corps before he begins formally teaching, deciding that the inevitability of shouldering their disappointment would be outweighed by the chance of pursuing a future he feels as though he actually wants. 

“ i had to do it if i had a shot of getting into stanford. i mean, i had to do something to get my parents off my back. ”

despite applying to and getting into other schools, including other ivies like columbia and yale, river accepts his offer from stanford university, much to his parents’ pleasure. though he expects to feel some relief, given how much of the pressure put on him was contingent on admission to stanford, its motivation only shifts. his parents begin advising him on what extracurriculars to join even well before he arrives on campus, and put even more pressure on him as far as his grades, and constantly try and push him to forge useful business connections and almost even just choose summer internships for him. there continues to be extremely high standards for him to live up to; it seems to be never-ending, and despite hoping that getting into the school and agreeing to pursue a finance degree would have satisfied his parents and would have made them proud, river still can’t seem to be able to get off that hamster wheel. it is mentally and emotionally exhausting.

by the time he died in the politician canon, river had not really figured out exactly what his sexuality was, nor was he entirely comfortable with exploring it openly ( referring to his tense reaction to payton’s threat to tell the entire school they’d slept together ). choosing to dedicate himself to being the man his parents want him to be means that the fear of allowing himself to fully come to terms with his sexuality does not go away. it was made very clear to him that the expectation was that he would find a nice wife and raise a j. crew catalog family. still counting on familial pride being a saving grace, he continues to keep ‘that part of him,’ in astrid’s words, largely a secret.

essentially, circumstances do not change much from the politician canon, despite his continued hope that one day he will be enough for the people he cares about and so desperately wants to make proud ( which still exists largely because of payton and the faith in him he always showed and the support he gave that no one else did ).

“ you’re gonna go to college, and join the peace corps. ”

despite getting into stanford, river rejects the offer to attend columbia university instead. attending school on the opposite coast gives the opportunity for a break from the suffocation he associates with california, and ultimately decides for once to act on his own best interests and put himself in an environment where he thinks he might have a chance to finally breathe and be himself. away from the ghosts of his parents and their influence, river feels hopeful that new york will provide a new lease on life. however, the decision comes with a price, and the weight of his parents’ displeasure and disappointment is even heavier than river expected.

reports back home of his schooling and college experience are received with passive aggressive jabs, muttered wistful expressions of what could have been. “well, if you were at stanford, you could’ve been set up with [insert name of roland’s connection here] and been on a fast track to a high-paying job at the firm right out of college.” “you’re accustomed to a certain lifestyle, river, i’m not sure how you expect to maintain it on teaching degrees.” “seems like all those opportunities we worked to provide you with growing up were not quite as useful as we’d hoped they’d be.” it’s difficult for river to disappoint people; we see his willingness to please others in his decisions to run for student body president on others’ advice, in keeping the end goal of stanford in mind at the beginning of senior year, and even in the fact that he mentions trying something new every time he has sex with astrid in hopes of getting a more positive reaction from her, instead of her standard ‘you were great.’ he’s so used to living up to expectations and at the very least having that recognized, even if it’s always followed by the addition of a higher standard, so despite the liberation he anticipates coming with choosing to live for himself, to experience the opposite is crushing.

and how can he disappoint his parents even more by crushing the dreams they have for his personal, family life? distance gives him freedom, but he still knows he’s going to inevitably be returning to the superficial, inauthentic life that instilled in him habits he can’t quite break yet, that boxed him into someone he didn’t want to be and so distanced himself from the person he did want to be that river sometimes fears he won’t be able to make that his reality.

the peace corps is discussed as a stepping stone, a resume builder for when river inevitably does get that high-paying finance job, working in a skyscraper. “it could give you a leg up on international business.” but for river it’s so deeply personal, a way to give the knowledge and and facilitate the cultural exchange that he’d experienced growing up to those without the privilege that had given it to him in the first place.  it’s heartbreaking for it to be looked down upon, as well as the career he’d like to have as an educator, especially given his intent to emphasize the importance of mental health in youth in the way he might have benefitted from, in the way he would have wanted to at st. sebastian.

river is still faking it, and never feels that he’s given the freedom to actually be happy, at least to his full potential. river is so good at pulling vulnerability out of people and spends so much time and energy searching for authenticity in his life because he’s looking for permission to be his true authentic self, too. he’s terrified of what people would say or do if they knew what was under his easy-going, unfailingly friendly facade ( and this is even worsened by the way his parents handle it ), and how can he be comfortable living freely when no one else in this life is? he’s accepted for the person he is pretending to be, and being that person still proves difficult; for most, it isn’t enough. and even if / when river does get a little freedom, the rigidity of needing to keep it together and the habitualness ( so much so that it almost feels automatic ) of hiding this overwhelming depression are certainly and absolutely difficult to break and escape from.