#i think at least. it’s his style but obviously if it isn’t explicitly stated i can’t be sure

[gachiarchive]

Rug based on ch49 illustration (shown under cut)

78x55cm || ~31x22 inches

Andou Hideyoshi? || September 27, 2024 || MEQRI [link]

*for foreign fans, buyee seems to be built in so it should be easy to purchase!

[bisluthq]

Why would CFW be treated u fairly though? Like did people have some bias against Joe even when he was with Taylor? Unless there’s some reason idk I’d assume it just want very good to most ppl but you personally liked it a lot. A lot of people find Joe boring and his portrayal of the character boring (yes I know he’s supposed to be etc) who don’t have any bias about him due to Taylor one way or the other

I think lots of people had and have anti Joe bias tbh ESPECIALLY and WHILE he was with Taylor lol like I think it’ll decrease over time. Literally every other review that DIDN’T like it made jokes about London Boy/Lover/etc so yea no they knew.

I think lots of people misunderstood the book. I say this very wholeheartedly but I saw reviews that were going on and on about how this isn’t how they imagined it/how “wrong” it is, but Sally was involved so… it’s how SHE imagined it? It’s also stylistically very in keeping with the book idk? I’m not sure what people imagined. I saw everything from Joe is “too young” to play Nick (he’s explicitly stated to be 30, Joe looked 30 in the show so idk) to Frances is too weird and awkward (that’s explicitly her personality in the book?? She’s super socially awkward, as is Nick, and that’s why they gravitate towards one another because both are overshadowed by Bobbi and Melissa generally and find they sorta can speak to one another rather).

3. I actually think people had Rooney fatigue after NP and BWWAY. She was like EVERYWHERE and I suspect that for a lot of people it sorta started to get less fresh and more annoying. I must say, I personally didn’t really enjoy BWWAY that much so like I too was perhaps a victim of Rooney fatigue and I’ve thought maybe I should reread that book in like 5 years and see what I think then. I’ve read it twice and I did like it better the second time so perhaps if I give it another 5 years I actually will legit like it. My current gripe with it are Alice’s emails, not because I dislike them individually but because I got the sense that they’re just Sally’s essays on like… life… and then she should’ve published an essay collection.

4. I also get the sense it came at a different time and was “bigger” than Normal People/a lot more hyped than that (I learned last nights one of the awards it won is being the most looked up TV project on IMDb) and that in part was Taylor related but it’s also just not a good thing because NP followed an organic thing and came out during the pandemic when we were all sad and horny and bored and so it was very zeitgeisty. (Same as folklore lol). Those two things were very pandemicy. By the time CWF came out, people had gotten vaxxed and were starting to go out so sad and boring and horny wasn’t necessarily what people wanted. Also people who WEREN’T the demographic for or hadn’t ever watched NP watched CWF and… were bored.

5. Back to the overhype/oversaturation like it’s a problem Marvel faces now. People are over it. I was watching a fairly long form piece on BBC about like Marvel’s fuckups in relation to Deadpool and Wolverine (obviously which will actually be a huge hit but which is also very different in tone/vibe than the rest of the MCU) and the one woman did say like audiences are just over Marvel and I tend to agree. I’m not sure the movies have gotten that much worse but we’re just over them.

6. I bring up all of the above because it wasn’t just Joe related obviously but like I saw criticism of essentially Lenny’s style (the hyper realism which is his hallmark) and it didn’t do well in technical categories even though it was technically phenomenal so 🤷🏻‍♀️ No, it wasn’t purely Taylor/Joe related but that didn’t help.

7. As I have said many, many times - Limited Series is probably the most competitive thing to seriously compete with these days and plenty of ones with big names and that are actually very genuinely GOOD, to use my least favorite term, “flop” but most (all based on that weird this was the most looked up thing on IMDb award) aren’t as hyped as this so people have more choice to watch it or nah.

[share-the-damn-bed]

isn;t it hypocritical when jancy fans hate on steve for wanting kids with nancy only to head canon jonathan and nancy having kids?

Thanks for the ask, Anon! First things first, I would like it to be known that I personally headcanon Jancy as not having kids…

But regardless, I don’t think the belief that Steve’s dream (as he presented it to Nancy) doesn’t align with her future plans and the desire for Jancy to have kids is hypocritical at all.

I think (at least in my case) the critique of St*ncy in this regard isn’t simply about Steve wanting to have kids and Nancy not wanting kids at all. It’s about the value placed on having children (and the quantity) at this stage in life. This is Steve’s dream and it is clearly is very important to him even though he mentions Nancy’s being his wife is the most important aspect of that dream.

Steve clearly values family and wants to have a big family, that is his aspiration.

From what we’ve seen from Nancy, she has emphasized that her career is her major ambition in life. Sure she mentioned that Steve’s dream of traveling the country via RV sounds nice she explicitly states the kids sound like a nightmare and her reaction in the upside down on screen reiterates that. Additionally, we know from season 1 she rejects the idea of living the suburban life style and wants more than what her mom was able to accomplish (this has been a nice little plot thread throughout the series between Nancy and Karen).

Nancy hasn’t expressed an interest in having a family once throughout the show. She’s not in a place in her life where that is her priority. Not in the way it is for Steve.

When Jancy fans see them with children (generally, I cannot speak for all Jancy fans, obviously), they tend to be in a whole other phase of life once they’ve accomplished a few of their career goals and have lived their lives a bit.

Steve and Nancy’s life plans are currently conflicting. And current conflict is important because it can breed resentment in the way Jonathan is panicking about currently in canon (it’s what he fears the most from their relationship, that and ending up just like his father). I would even be bold enough to say that the fact that Steve presented this dream to Nancy as if she may be interested in it demonstrates that Steve doesn’t really know Nancy well at all. But that’s a whole other discussion.

[warblingandwriting]

I was not into The Archive Undying

I had a hard time reading this book - and full disclosure I DNF'ed it, I just couldn't keep going, so if you're a fan feel free to not read this. It's more of a vent/rant because I don't have any other way to get my thoughts about it out.... and I have Thoughts. The book, to me, is indicative of a lot of stuff I dislike in modern writing so I just want to get a few thoughts out here.

Personal Gripes:

Written in the present tense: I simply dislike it in a story, I mush prefer past tense, and present tense just sounds sort of... wrong to me. On top this, I think the present tense contributes to what felt rushed about the story to me, bypassing really interesting plot/worldbuilding elements without explaining them was annoying in and of itself, and the choice of present tense compounded this issue for me, that I'll talk about more in depth later.

MC and his voice: I’m not a fan of the main character and his voice. Honestly a lot of it really feels like the author wanted to write an anti hero, but was afraid that the Online folks would come for her for having an unlikable main character so she constantly explicitly states that there is something deeper beneath his veneer of unkindness. Something I neither needed to know nor cared about, at least, at the beginning of the story. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so clumsy, with the main character often directly thinking things like about how he’s worried that he has the urge to be nice to people etc. Obviously this isn’t the only book to do that, but I don’t enjoy it so it goes in the personal gripes section. I also just don’t enjoy the way the characters are written in general, at least at this point they all have very similar voices, and those voices feel very ‘today modern’ for a book set in the future. It’s just in the cadence of their dialogue, but it irks me a bit.

General Gripes:

Show and Tell: The book sort of does too good of a job of trying to show and not tell when it comes to the world, and the opposite when it comes to the characters. Like Sunai’s constant, very direct thoughts about how he is this or that (for a loner who doesn’t like to think he’s awfully good at dissecting his own emotions), the other characters get similar treatment where we’re often told very directly what they’re thinking or feeling. Admittedly this is a bit personal, as I do prefer books that are a bit more subtle, wherein characters often can’t state their direct feelings because they don’t know or totally understand them. But as it is I feel like I have a very narrow idea of what Candon’s (really interesting!) world is like, but I already know everything about her characters.

For a high concept sci-fi novel like this I would expect (and prefer) a focus on worldbuilding first, with the characters remaining obscure, getting to know them as the book went on, while at the same time getting a solid view of the world in the beginning so that as the story goes on I need less explanations. This is not helped by the book being written in the third person, since the omniscient narrator could just explain things without the (alleged) immersion breaking problem of characters explaining things they should already know to each other. It frankly feels like another preemptive reaction to a criticism I see a lot online around explaining worldbuilding. Many people want it to be organic, to just be thrown into a world and figure it out, and while I think that works in certain books with less complex worlds (something like The Mortal Engines comes to mind), in this book there is simply too much going on for the slapdash ‘the main character says something and you infer from there’ style of exposition Candon goes for. It feels like when someone has read and re-read their own novel so many times they forget which details are extraneous and which are vital to a first time reader.

Clunky events: The way things happen in this book also feels very clunky to me, like the pacing seems off. The first time I noticed this was in chapter one, when Sunai, who has awoken on a strange brage, decides to go talk to the captain to see what’s going on, as he was blackout drunk the last night, and doesn’t remember how or why he’s here. It’s written like this:

“...goes to track down the rig’s captain. He finds her near the head of the rig...” he just... goes to look for her and finds her. At this point I don't know if the rig travels by air, land, or water, no idea what the layout might be, and only the vaguest idea of what it’s purpose is. When I read the first sentence I figured I was probably about to get some explanation of how he gets to the spot the captain is in, some idea of what the rig is, it’s happening during a tense scene where Sunai has spotted the AI So-Beloved, so I presume Candon wanted to keep it fast paced for ensuing battle, but for me it didn’t work here. I would have preferred a bit of an info dump, because I genuinely think Candon has created a complex and interesting world here, I just wish I had understood it. I think this sequence may have worked better if Sunai had gone to find the captain, uncertain of why he was there, and had to walk around the rig a bit to find her, giving the reader a better idea of what exactly this rig is, and it's layout. And then spotted the AI from the captain’s window, and have the battle ensue from there to give a little time for explanations. Granted, I don’t need everything perfectly spelled out for me, but a little context would have helped.

Clunky writing: This was pretty mild, but mixed with everything else it felt like a major crutch in this novel. Candon’s writing is often simply redundant, which may seem counter-intuitive to what I’ve just been saying, but specifically, once again, she is redundant about character thoughts and feelings, and small details that didn’t need to be explained, while she’ll fly over a really interesting idea once, and then hardly ever return to it. Early in the novel, a character notes that in one lanaguage, the word for ‘archivist’ was a synonym for ‘vital organs’ that’s interesting! I wish she had actually made up a new word in this fictional language instead of always using 'archivist'. But we need to heard about how conflicted Sunai is over Veyadi 20 times a chapter.

Frankly, I think in spite of the seemingly complex world, Candon was more interested in her characters than her ideas, and for me, that is a writing style that demands a less complex world, something more recognizable. Or, perhaps, a longer book that took a little more time with itself to explore both. A mix of the personal and general grievances I had led to me not really liking this book, and I must admit my guard goes up every time I read something that seems to have been written to anticipate criticisms I see a lot on goodreads, especially when they’re criticisms I don’t necessarily agree with.

[maggiecheungs]

Hi I came across your tale of genji posts in the tag and I'm not sure if you've answered this before but what translation would you recommend for someone who's thinking of reading it for the first time?

MY TIME HAS COME!!!!

(first, as someone who has read all the english translations in full, a word of reassurance: it doesn’t really matter which translation you read. All the translations are excellent; they all have their own advantages. There is no definitive 'best' translation, and honestly, until you’ve experienced them for yourself, there is no way of knowing which is best for you.)

the unhelpful answer: honestly, it depends on what you want to get out of the experience.

for a first-time reader, i would generally recommend the Seidensticker, simply because it’s probably the most readable and is widely recommended as a good place to start; or the Tyler, which is probably the closest we have to a ‘definitive’ english translation atm (and my personal favourite)

however, everyone has their own preferences, so under the cut i’ve put together some of the pros and cons of each version (and obviously, this is very much a matter of perspective--for example, i prefer translations which have lots of footnotes, but some people dislike that etc.)

Waley (1933)

Pros: rich poetic language, first complete translation, gives a sense of the gradeur of the original, stands alone as a novel well, naming fairly consistent

Cons: poetry is run into the text, a (fairly unimportant) chapter is inexplicably missing, more liberal with his prose style, dense style if you're not used to 19th/early 20th century literature, very few footnotes

Seidensticker (1976)

Pros: most readable, easy to source, consistent naming

Cons: fewer footnotes, less academically rigorous than the Tyler translation, slightly less beautiful prose than the Waley and Tyler

Tyler (2001)

Pros: very true to original, lots of footnotes (integrated, so on ebook you can easily reference them), available easily (in print and ebook), accurate, excellent academic resource, direct and minamilist prose style that's still beautiful, good introduction

Cons: mostly the same as pros, just depends on perspective, i.e. lots of footnotes, inconsistent naming (use of shifting titles, true to original), very little is explicitly stated in-text (there were lots of things I only fully picked up on when reading different translations later). the Tyler is definitely the least domesticating, so if that isn’t your style, then maybe don’t start here

Washburn (2015)

Pros: academically rigorous, but less full-on than the Tyler; integrates contextualising information into the translation itself rather than in footnotes; excellent introduction

Cons: can be accused of lacking concision, a bit stodgy, sacrifices some of the ambiguity of the original text in favour of greater clarity

so in conclusion, i would say:

if you don’t have any experience with classical japanese literature and would prefer to read a version that is slightly more domesticated, and more readable, choose Seidensticker

if you don’t mind reading a version that is a little harder, but is ‘truest’ to the original, choose Tyler

if you have a burning passion for the Victorian novel and its style, choose Waley

if you want a version that spells out some of the more subtle elements of the story in the text itself, choose Washburn

but like i said, it’s very subjective, so here are some links to other people’s opinions:

this is a great summary of some of the key differences between the versions: https://maiji.tumblr.com/post/172828724619/saiyuri-dahlia-thank-you-so-much-for-the-reblog

and this is somebody else’s ranking of the translations (again, obviously subjective, but it mostly agrees with my own ranking): https://tonysreadinglist.wordpress.com/2021/08/15/the-tale-of-genji-ranking-the-translations/

and here’s a roundup of the various translations of the genji, with soem pros and cons listed and samples from the first chapter so you can see which writing style you like best: https://welovetranslations.com/2021/03/20/whats-the-best-translation-of-the-tale-of-genji/

[stitch1830]

Heyy, how are you? Sorry if I'm annoying you I just want to give a little bit of my opinion about Toph as a mother.

I personally think that Lok did something very weird with their character and how they portrayed her as mother because it's difficult for me to believe that Toph would be the kind of mother to let her kids do whatever they want AND not pay enough attention to them. Like the whole issue with her parents is that they treated her like she was helpless, they didn't pay attention to her and they ignored what she wanted. So I personally don't see why Toph would do the same to her kids, like why would she kind of ignore them by not being very present and attentive.

I belive that Toph would be an amazing mother. With flaws of course, because no one is perfect.

I hope I made myself understandable, English is not my first language and it's difficult for me to express what I think even in my own language.

Btw I love your hcs and the way you think :E

Hi Anon, I’m doing well thank you for asking, and thanks for the ask! I hope all is well with you.

And not to worry! You’re not annoying me :)

First off, I love your thoughts and opinions on Toph as a mother when it comes to LOK. You are right, I too feel that her characterization is a bit off, and I’ve talked only briefly on my thoughts about this as well. I see what the writers were trying to do, but it doesn’t really come off right if we consider Toph’s background and her issues with her parents, as well as her overall characterization.

Like, Toph Beifong is one of the most observant people in the ATLA universe. She understands what people need, she can pick up on changes in mood and tell when people are lying, and she waits and listens on the other person to move to decide what her next move will be. Toph is one of those characters that other members of the Gaang open up to, and she picks up on things pretty fast for a kid.

So why would those traits/tendencies not carry over when she taking care of her kids?

Toph’s seismic sense would most likely alert her and she would know if something was upsetting Lin or Suyin, even if they didn’t say anything to her. And sure, she’s prideful, but that’s never stopped her from asking for someone’s help in the Gaang (one scene that comes to mind is when she asks Katara to correspond with her parents). She’d obviously prefer to handle things on her own, but there have been times where she does admit to fault. So it would make more sense to me if she notices the change in her kid’s mood, try and figure out what’s wrong on her own, and if that didn’t work, turn to others.

And you’re right, ‘abandoning’ her kids would not be a flaw in Toph’s parenting style. You said it—she was neglected and not seen as her true self with her parents, and that led to the strained relationship. I think it’s safe to say that she would want to do the opposite of what her parents did to raise her, and the main point in Lao and Poppy’s parenting failures was that they only saw Toph as their tiny disabled child. So, not understanding her kids wants and needs doesn’t seem right. She reads people and observes their tendencies to get to know them, and that’s how she determines how to handle a situation.

So, if Lin came stomping home one day frustrated about something, I don’t think Toph’s instinct would be “Eh she’ll figure it out, she needs freedom.” I feel like it would be more like “Okay, is Lin sad? Upset? Angry? What does she need next in order to feel better?” And maybe her execution is flawed, but I think at the very least, Toph would ask her kids what is wrong and try and determine what they need to feel better. Maybe it’s a moment to themselves, maybe it’s a conversation, maybe it’s just comfort. But she would need to ask, and then wait for a reaction to determine her next move.

I struggle to come up with an actual parenting flaw with her sometimes, only because I love her character and like the idea of her being this amazing single mom and having a family that breaks the entertainment stereotype of “If it isn’t a nuclear family, it’s gotta look broken.” I guess one that comes to mind would be that she waits and listens too much… if that makes sense. Like, if Lin or Suyin don’t react or respond in a way that engages them with Toph, maybe she wouldn’t push the conversation further. Parenting does take initiative on the parent’s end when it comes to conflict and problems, and I think for those situations, Toph would rely on her earthbending tendencies and wait for the problem to approach her, and then she’d face it head on. An example I can think of is that Lin would prefer if her mother came to her about stuff, especially praise, and maybe since that’s not something Lin would explicitly state or something that Toph can feel, that need would go unnoticed if that makes sense.

Those are my thoughts, hopefully they make sense! And I agree with you, sometimes it’s just so hard to convey feelings and opinions into writing. Lol and I’m sure my thoughts are flawed just because I love Toph’s character so much, but I think she would be an awesome parent, and it’s a shame we don’t get to see that. I do enjoy reading metas about why Toph was portrayed as a bad parent, it helps give me some perspective on character creation and what makes them dynamic. But in my purely self-indulgent ATLA world, Toph ROCKS (pun intended) and she’s a great parent we take for GRANITE (okay I’m done now lmao).

Thank you again for the ask, and the kind words! I’m glad someone out there also likes my HC’s and thoughts lol! Feel free to send in more asks; I especially love a good question/HC about Taang, Zutara, or Sukka lol (also I'm off work today, what else am I gonna do haha).

Hope you have a great day :)

[floralkittygambler]

HuskerDust - More Toxic Than You Think [LONG]

This is the rough version of a deeper and more complex subject I want to ‘decorate’ with more ‘screencaps’.  DISCLAIMER: This is allegedly controversial and led to me getting literal death threats and an ED triggered. Ive about heard a lot of people’s shit on this so dont try it. I’m speaking from personal experiences too - experiences I really fuckin dont wanna be sharin yet they kinda validate my points. I want people to be aware of the damaging image from someone who can speak from experience without attracting dickheads or people twisting things. Again, I aint particularly comfortable sharing this so yeah- Be courteous- TW AHEAD - ALSO LONG ASS READ. DNI STANS OR ANTIS. May tag a few folks, may not.  HuskerDust is an extremely popular ship in the community however there’s glaringly obvious flaws in this one-sided relationship that both the fans and even the team fail to see. Neglecting the dangerous real world implications this ship [as well as many others] present to it’s audience - especially the more influenced of the audience, most who are children.

Angel flirts with all the male cast however one who catches his eye the most is Husk. Now I want to point out a few things [of many... obviously]; Angel is instantly starry eyed upon seeing Husk, likewise he actually started off with a ‘Hey~’ instead of something sexual. However he quickly ruins this after Husk tells him to go fuck himself [defined by: “ go fuck yourselfphrase of fuckVULGAR SLANGan exclamation expressing anger or contempt for, or rejection of, someone.” ie, he rejected instantly] by responding with an offer to allow Husk to essentially watch him masterbate. Alongside this, he cradles his face. Husk pulls away and seems to pull a face to express rage/disgust or growling imagery alongside COMPLETELY withdrawing his body away from Angel as Angel stares with goo-goo eyes. Firstly, Angel loves animals - perhaps it’s Husk appearing cute that adds to this, however Im not going to address animal imagery just yet. Secondly, Angel isn’t really portrayed to respect other’s boundaries BUT he does respect... Alastor’s. Al declines the blowjob to which Angel shrugs and doesn’t push this matter any further. With Husk, he’s pretty harshly told to piss off yet he makes quite and explicitly sexual remark, alongside invading his personal space and touching a man clearly disinterested and pulling away. From the initial rejection, it then becomes sexual harassment.  I also want to add that Husk comes with [some] perks in his feline form. And if my name didnt make it obvious, I work with and live with cats on a daily. Briefly, I have been educated in how to understand cat’s language in various individual cat as well as how to handle and work with them. Cats are often drawn towards me and Ive been successful with various types of cats. My most recent being a cat I’ve dubbed as Big - Big was abandoned quite young and has lived most his life on the streets [where I live is high in crime and drug rings, so you can imagine how strays are treated] leading to him being extremely fearful and hating people, hissing and fleeing just seeing people. I took time out last summer to finally give befriending him a shot. It’s taken just under a year of hard work and now he visits every day for his mush [wet food] and kisses, responds to his name and runs up to me in delight. Ive even taught him a phrase to signal that I dont want him or the other cat’s to fight [keeps them all safe and aids them becoming acquainted under supervision - something that’s been working surprisingly well]. I apologise in advance as this is not going to be the first instance of this sort of thing but they are relevant. Trying my best to keep it as brief.  For Husk, I will be using a mix of cat and human characteristics to break down his reactions.  In this first interaction, he turns his body away in a way to suggest caution, wariness and disinterest. In fact, much of his general body language is that of a man deeply closed off from connections - for starters, he folds his arms quick a bit which suggests lack of openness, shutting off and defensiveness *usually*. Likewise, when touched, he slightly jumps and tenses before pulling back in aggression with flattered ears - a sign cats give to display extreme hostility in a situation. It’s NEVER a good thing but then again, neither is crossing someone’s boundaries. It’s even stated that Husk hates Angel’s advances and wishes for nothing to do with him - the same dislike of sexual advances that Al dislikes in Angel. The ending as they all walk inside, Angel turns to Husk, winking and blowing a kiss his way despite the clear rejection earlier. In fact, Husk once again grows tense and is even irked by such a gesture. This won’t be the last mention of Angel totally disregarding how Husk feels - something that rubs off onto the fans AND the team themselves. And it’s... *concerning*, to phrase it lightly. Angel so far is the most persistent towards the most resistant, and in my post on RadioDust I have already established [briefly] on how Angel seems to chase unavailable men. The more unavailable, the more tempting. The one that got away, mentality. It’s not healthy. And I’m surprised so few have acknowledged this. Taking a break from what we’ve seen in the Pilot, let’s establish some facts about the pair.  Angel died in 1947 in his 30s [some posts specify 34-35], putting his birth year around 1911-12ish. Husk died in the 70s IN his 70s [again, nothing is truly specified, so for both we’ll go with 75 - the same number in his IG username] that puts birth year roughly 1900′s. Now an age gap between two adults of 11 - 12 years difference is actually reasonable and can work, depending on circumstance and whether theres a balance in power or not. But when we account for their life experiences and death ages, it’s something else entirely. Angel died young. Not only that but his mind seems more stuck in his raunchy teens than of an adult. And even THEN, he wouldnt be one to necessarily settle down [by which I mean in life, not romance]. He’s extremely emotionally stunted and his selfishness and wanting his own way come off very spoilt [when Husk is pissed off about the cat costume, Angel gets moody because he’s used to compliments AND is dressing to impress Husk. When Husk wanted the money he was rightfully owed, Angel threw a fit for ages until starting to earn it back - even though he owed Husk a drink, which I’ll be coming back to, Husk still wanted the money in the end perhaps hinting to only accepting a freebie as it’s on offer as well as Angel being overly persistent. He even dumps his pig onto Husk to look after, while theres no issue in pet sitting, Angel said Husk ‘owed’ him due to missing the show yet when HE owed Husk, he threw a fit.]. Angel’s life style is wildly chaotic in life AND death, and even though we all know he’s most likely going to be redeemed, he still lacks a lot of experiences in life. He lacks maturity.  On the other hand, Husk’s been through his own share of chaos and heartbreak. Difference is, he’s had a life time of experience. He doesn’t act immature in a childish sense. He truly behaves like a downtrodden old man. He’s had his days and would feel more secure settling down in a more peaceful environment with fun yet much needed calm. A better way to handle his need for risk. Age gaps in adults that are large [75 - 35 = 40 years!] are far less likely to work for a multitude of reasons. The main reason is the difference in life stages - that difference in mentality and experiences plays such an impacting role on compatibility. Often their goals and energies are polar opposites and their common grounds minimal. There’s also the looming concern of power dynamics. Whilst it’s usually the older figure that’s holds the power advantage, in this case it’s a little bit more complicated. I’d argue that it’s possibly Angel with the higher power. This rarely works irl but it’s POSSIBLE. Look at Hugh Heffner and his last partner before his death. I believe she was around 22. However there’s many common grounds, immediate attraction, and similar goals. Though incorrect, Heffner does give off a pimp-like vibe (he’s not but you get what I’m implying with mothlike imagery). Husk does not strike me as that type. It would definitely cheapen his character. In terms of interests, the main thing they have in common is that they like to drink. A bad habit, especially when one is an alcoholic. Both are also rather lazy except for certain circumstances [Husk will go out of his way to help HOWEVER he’s obliged to under Al, the only one he’s seen to willingly help and bond with/be seen with is Niffty. Angel is when there’s a fight, chaos, drama or any sex work]. Both are also rather snarky and vulgar. In terms of love, both suffer intimacy issues. On Husk, it’s ‘losing the ability to love a long time ago’ meaning he was likely cheated on or at least had a failed relationship. If he was ever ready for a new start, he’d definitely want something stable yet rewarding. For now, he needs a LOT of work - work he is not yet willing to put in, nor does he have a reason to. Angel doesnt want to commit because he’s extremely selfish as well as in an already abusive ‘relationship’ already. Sex work is sometimes VERY taxing on the mental health due to some of the folk you service. He’s seen the worst in many and just enjoys the pay and fuck. IF Husk was cheated on, then it’d make a lot of sense if a sex worker wouldn’t be his flavour, it would just serve as a reminder. Not only this, but Angel HIMSELF actively participates in cheating. Not with Val... but with *Travis*. BOTH know Travis is married (I’d be feckin worried if Trav didnt-) yet they still choose to cheat anyways, regardless of the pain it could cause. Angel even mocks this by sending greetings to Trav’s wife. Honestly this... Reminds me a LOT of Stolas - a main character who sexually harasses another character clearly not interested/comfortable, participates in cheating and we’re supposed to root for them (and before anyone gets offended, I do have more to say on Angel’s behalf so please be patient). Either way, it’s very toxic and concerning. Even if Husk wasn’t cheated on, I dont think many would feel exactly secure after having such a rough past with love, diving into a relationship with someone who’s openly participated in multiple affairs. And that’s no shitting on sex workers either, it’s just a point that some would feel uncomfortable with the idea of being with ANYONE (regardless of their work) having actively and KNOWINGLY took part in having an affair previously - especially multiple. Husk’s in an emotionally fragile place and needs more security. We’ve already established Husk heavily dislikes Angel’s advances. In fact, his responses to Angel are similar to his responses to... Al! His body language is VERY test and closed off to even Al, who’s most likely knew him for a very long time. If even Al gets this treatment (whilst also disrespecting his boundaries) then it’ll be the same with Angel (both force Husk into their lives and schemes, both disregard his boundaries). And he’s shown to STILL go out his way to help both however this is most likely tied to an unspoken ‘debt’ he owes Alastor. Plus he’s been mentioned behind the scenes to be a secret softie and protective grandpa type. But this animosity is very reflective of how Loona behaves and responds to Blitzo as well as how both Loona AND Husk (One being a ‘lowly servant’, the other being a literal old MAN) as pets - even the fans - just because of their forms. But this isnt the first of the disrespect they receive. Now we delve deeper Both are addicts of some kind (Husk - drinking, gambling. Angel - Drugs, possibly sex). Not a good mix at all romantically. Addicts often and unintentionally feed their addictions to each other as well as can increase likelihood of relapsing which even a recovered addict can slip back into. When times get tough (a natural occurrence) both are likely to suffer with their addictions. Interestingly, they can become addicted and dependent on one another, which is genuinely unhealthy for a mindset anyways, regardless whether addiction existed prior or not. Addiction only increases these chances. Angel likes confidence in a man (confirmed on Patreon). Yet, Husk is even confirmed  in streams to be deeply troubled and insecure. One thing he hates is his demon form, something that we’ll touch on shortly. Angel loves quality food ESPECIALLY of Italian origin whilst Husk is willing to eat the shit they give you in bars (admittedly that was painful to type as someone who grew up around pubs - either way it’s not exactly high quality or gourmet is what I’m saying). Interestingly, in some character references of Angel, it’s stated that he hates rejection. Hates. That’s a VERY strong word. This could explain but not justify why he’s persistent with Husk (similar to NiceGuys believing you’re playing ‘hard to get’ - further illuding to an immature and toxic mindset) though it interestingly doesn’t apply with Alastor. Odd.  There’s a counterpoint to symbolism in art. A very VALID counterarguement... If it suited Viv’s style. During Media Studies, Business, Design and Art, hell fucking Silent Hill! - I’ve been educated on effective symbolism as well as artistic trademarks (the most famous that most should know is Alfred Hitchcock!). Hitchcock often appeared in all his films, usually as a sidefacing silhouette, trading marking his films with his very PRESENCE. Viv’s seems to revolve around hearts. I mention this because an IG account made the point that hearts were to symbolise anyone connected with Angel’s story and love life (Valentino’s business and shades/collar, heart behind Angel’s head, Heart tattoo on Cherri’s right shoulder, hearts for Husk’s paws, eyebrow marks above natural brows, wings, and nose as well as most of the playing cards). Thing is, there’s hearts EVERYWHERE in all of Viv’s works and such symbology of Angel and hearts is weakened if it connects to the villains/abusers as well - taking away the positivity in a love symbol. Viv’s used hearts in her font, backgrounds, in characters ears, in all her series just generalised, Blitzo’s forehead, background characters, again the cards, Travis’s eyes, Millie’s right shoulder in the SAME place as Cherris. Even Vaggie had a heart tattoo on the shoulder in some christmas themed artwork (on her left). Heart’s is just something Viv seems to brand herself with. And that’s fine though I feel she could do with cutting it down slightly. One thing to early note on the cards (again, this’ll creep up later and my name should tell you why), most are heart suits and usually either a face card (J, Q, K), Joker, ace or 2s. Face cards/Jokers for more details close up (look at the signing artwork) and the rest are just easier to animate, though a little bit of a peeve to someone into their cards as well as the massive overuse of red in Hazbin overall. It’s extremely unlikely to be symbolic. If they change it to be so, then it’s... Weakened. As I’ve mentioned earlier, Silent Hill is an example of extremely clever symbolism in more darker media (more so, SH is considered a ‘hell’ of sorts and does feature religious iconography WITHOUT causing offence. A great example of how to portray this type of thing - they even mix humour in if you consider some of the sneaky references, dialogues and odd UFO/dog endings).  Discussing Viv’s art further, she drew a gift for her sister (original creator of Husk when he possessed white fur) of Angel playfully dragging a disinterested and annoyed Husk (I believe this was still around the time SpiderMoth was canon). The newish art tends to have Angel putting a holly crown on him or sitting on his knees, Husk seeming too lazy to really do anything about it. Very nonchalant. I also want to include some interesting stream arts here and later to further highlight their bond.  A fan asked Viv in a stream to draw them “actually getting along” - this wording implying that the fan is aware of Husk not enjoying Angel’s company. So Viv did, with an extra doodle of Husk being one of the ‘canadian people’ from South Park who sing “Im not your friend”. The art alone shows Husk’s absolute discomfort, even the extra thing Viv added w/o request. As they’re her characters and the fan asked for what they’d look like getting along, to show this discomfort goes to show the dynamic once planned. Husk just isnt a fan of Angel, especially when he’s being sexual and touchy. It can be great for small comedic parts, however both the team AND fans have now crossed this over to really creepy and triggering realms in their ships. It’s creepy and doesnt look good on Angel (who they actively root for) nor the gay community (more on that).

[Yes Ive already pointed out the comedic side of this ^ but it doesnt bode well considering the other points and issues that arise] There’s also a request for drag angel flirting with drunk husk. Personally thats a lil creepy to specify one of the two being intoxicated and thus not able to truly consent. If Angel is willing to flirt with someone in that state, it doesnt mean he would fuck them, but it does feel the fan was thinking that’s the case. In all truth, I think Angel WOULD flirt with those incapable of consent purely to swindle or pickpocket. I’d like to think [and HOPE considering his own abuse by Val] that he’d never take it further. And I hope Viv, the team and the fans see how incredibly creepy that thought is. I’ll give benefit of the doubt though it is still a concern. Either way, Angel appears... Annoyed? Husk is completely turned away and seems incredibly grouchy and confused. This shows yet more rejection on his behalf as well as Angel’s response to being rejected, which highlights his immaturity towards it. Remember, he’s USED TO and EXPECTS everyone to want him (even saying this in the Pilot). Hell, there’s even a Rich Vaggie request where Viv again randomly includes Husk. This time, he’s faced towards her and relaxed, though seems unimpressed and overall disinterested in this type of behaviour. Behaviour and interests of Angel [Celeb status and rich appearance due to Val, despite getting very little of the cut and the vanity, as well as Husk just not giving a shit about this sort of peacock display]. (Also wanted to note in Viv’s #3 stream 1:50:50, Faust makes out that Husk is a ‘dirty, creepy old man’ as well as him constantly threatening violence towards Angel. I dont see him as *creepy* in this context - as it implies perversion that he blatantly lacks fortunately - though it’s very telling of how Husk feels and again shows this toxic relationship).

/Angel’s Type: First off, daddy issues. He has them. Now let’s look at ‘daddy’. Henroin is shorter than Angel, dark fur, grumpy, old, wears only a hat and tie, big brows... Sounds familiar? Ok, look at his brother Arackniss. Similar to Henroin, dark, short, grouchy, bullied by and bullies Angel, is adverse to Angel and overall possess a bad relationship. Ok.... His main client, Travis! Short, dark fur, moody, Only wears hat and tie, drinker (shown in stream as request so take drinking with a pinch), similar face to- Is no one else seeing this trait? Angel seems to go for these shorter than him grouchier men who either want him for sex or hate his presence. Men who are like his dad and brother. All of these guys are far too similar, and we’ve got enough men in suits, bowties and sharp teeth in this show to boot as it is- The psychology of this type of attachment is rooted in a bad familial relationship alongside the subconscious desire to repair or compensate for it. Unknowningly the person will keep seeking out this sort of guy who isnt good for them to fix this internal issue. The resolution is to NOT go for these types. It’s also connected to intimacy fears, by going for those you know arent good for you/right for you/interested in you is often the manifestation of these issues. Pair them with daddy issues and it’s a disaster! There is science to back this up. Valentino is interestingly the opposite yet still toxic issues arise. Why? Because he’s going from one extreme to the other but with the same mindset. Neither of these men or types for MANY reasons are right for him. And visa versa. Seeing a pattern? ~~~~

Angel w Husk? I mentioned before that Husk hates his demon form. If you’re an old man, a gambler, some Vegas bloke and have this grouchier disposition, why the fuck would you want to look like an oversized pet? Exactly. Angel however adores his own aside from the feet. Now I find it strange how the guy we’re rooting for just so happens to like his own form which was intended for punishment. But that’s not todays post. I said earlier that Angel is heavily fixated on Husk’s appearance. Especially the feline aspects (calling him Husky and Kitty - petnames he hates that also treat him again more like a pet than a man -, dressing as a ‘sexy cat’ to appeal to him which can come off as more mockery. This is even backed up by fans who seem to think an old guy’s gonna act like some school girl anime trope?). All of this completely disregards and disrespects Husk’s feelings and perspectives. Something the fans and team take part in actively. Angel - whether you want to hear this or not - is SELFISH. When Husk ‘owed’ him for missing the show (babysitting Fat Nuggets), Husk begrudgingly fulfils this. The second Angel owed Husk for stealing drinks, Angel threw a hissy fit. The silent treatment, going to other bars and posting about it whilst complaining (again focusing on Husk being ‘cute’). Trying to cop out of it by buying Husk a smoothie (though it looked like a date, lets be real, do you REALLY have to bribe someone to date and be around you? No) and even then he still had to owe the money which was more of Husk’s concern. Yes he did in the end and more money than needed, hence the returning of the extra cash, but that is no excuse for the childish behaviour prior. He’s much too accustomed to being adored and pampered and getting his own way that he cant grasp when people arent a fan or willing to pamper him. If they make them a ship, all it does it make Angel completely into a shitty Gary-Stu that everyone loves and pities for his suffering, rather than teach him to grow, earn his redemption and confronting his own toxicity. Let me make this extremely clear: ANGEL DOES NOT DESERVE ABUSE OR RAPE. But when he starts behaving as shitty, he’s hard to root for. Remember, he’s sexually harassing all these guys, with Husk getting the brunt of it. But it’s treated as a joke for them and only taken seriously for Angel. Val abuses all of his employees. He abuses VOX and even THAT was mocked by fans and staff. It’s... It’s frankly gross.  In every interaction Husk has with Angel, his body language is closed off, tense, uncomfortable, turned away and hostile - look at the IG. He wont even allow Angel to touch him. Compare this to Niffty, who he’s fine with taking pictures with and letting her hang around and touch him. Body language is relaxed (relaxed shoulders, open body language) and he doesnt look hostile at all. What does Angel do? Always tries to get close to Husk (such as sitting as close as possible during Poker) and forces both his OWN hobbies onto Husk (ones that Husk shows a strong disinterest in) and Husk’s hobbies (Poker). It’s very FORCED and not natural. Going back to immaturity, he blames Husk and his cards for being shit at the game. They’re always bickering, insulting, fighting in the comments but fans only see this as a ‘cute couple fight’ or Husk being ‘tsundere’.Tsundere. An anime trope often used in young characters. Irl tsundere is NOT this dramatised. The tsundere you see in anime, apply that irl and you get the recipe for the most toxic, petty and immature relationship going. You get constant fights, unease, not feeling loved/appreciated, little trust - the list goes on. Plus an old bloke really isnt going to indulge in tsundere traits. It’s childish. After his history with love, I doubt he’d be up for games and messing about. For something meaningful, he’d just want open honesty. Their ‘relationship’ feels like it’s written by horny kids attempting a fanfic after being inspired by 50 shades and twilight (both show toxic relationshiiiiiips~). The worst is that these are adult writers trying to portray some realistic yet sensitive topics. This is just ill fuckin taste. Even the warnings in Helluva’s ‘Horny Demons’ leaves a bad taste when the fans are thinking Stolas is the best dad despite both parents ruining Octavia’s mental health. Despite the next day after that episode aired Stolas starts flirting with Blitzo again on IG. Despite Blitzo being clearly uncomfortable and sexually harassed and even co-herced into sex (VERY UNHEALTHY MESSAGES HERE). Viv herself has been in bad relationships so how the fuck she’s blind to this and even borderline fetishizing this sort of behaviour that everyone seems to play off as ‘Awwww cute tsundere <3 BOYFRIENDS BOYFRIENDS BOYFRIENDS’ is abhorrent. I’ll go into this more later on how this really just... It treats male sexual harassment and assault as a fucking joke- Angel’s constant unwarranted flirting is no different from the freaks on IG that send dick pics to underage kids and random women in their dms and fathom that they’re ‘nice’ and have a ‘chance’. Wanna know the creepiest? The candid photo of Husk on Angel’s wall. Something Husk seems horrified about. It’s fangirlish and teenager like at BEST, and obsessive stalker at worst. He’s NOT respecting Husk’s boundaries or feelings. That’s still up despite Husk’s reaction. He still wore the costume despite Husk’s feelings. Angel’s thinking with his dick and it’s such a fucked up message that everyone seems to support just because ‘its FICTION. Theyre in HELL.Theyre BAD people.’ Yeah? Well look at how that’s effecting and warping reality and perspective. It’s glamourising it. Fetishsizing stalking and making it cute. Yer have celebrity or boyband or whatever youre a fan of pics on your wall. NOT your crush. NOT someone who clearly isnt interested or happy with this. If someone who kept commenting on your pictures “sexy” suddenly had a picture of you on their wall, what would YOU think? How would YOU FEEL? Because myself and my own sisters have been in VERY fucking similar situations and it’s traumatic. His paw is even attempting the lens - Angel is crossing his boundaries and not getting the message that Husk doesnt want this. He’s forcing himself onto Husk. Yknow... VAL forced himself on Angel and it ended up in numerous rapes. Angel hasnt raped Husk, but if he wont take no. If he wont respect boundaries. If he only wants Husk to do what he wants but throws a fit when he owes husk - he’s picking up on Val’s bad habits more and more. How are so few - even the very team creating this - not seeing how disgusting this is? Are we only supposed to give a shit if Angels hurt? If so, the message isnt so much of how despicable Val is but how awful it is to upset Angel. Fans constantly blame Husk for being grumpy, annoyed at or rejecting Angel. Look at this real world implication. Not only that but Angel being gay just reinforces one of the worlds most disgusting and inaccurate stereotype of gay men being sexual predators and forcing men to have sex whether theyre comfortable or not. MOST gay men arent like this, and those who are its just because THEYRE shitty people (Jeffree fucking Starr, but look how people ‘stan’ his fuckin behaviour). Val is rubbing off on Angel as much as fiction has a MASSIVE impact on reality - whether we’re willing to admit it or not. Like Val, hes pushing past boundaries, he’s selfish, hes more into visuals than anything else. It’s one sided, superficial and theres no click. No connection. Be in this situation yourself and seeing this sorta shit becomes second nature to stay alive. Angel even says that most of hells residents are ‘ugly freaks’ yet finds Husk cute. It’s all LOOKS. Who else likes appearances alone? Val. I know this will trigger and upset fans, Ive been told to fucking die and have my ED triggered when I mentioned it before. But accept that all of them have flaws. Everyone irl have flaws. But there’s flaws and then theres a fuckin crime. If Husk was a woman, more people would see the flaw, but even then... Look at many romance movies - not all but many go for opposites attract (science proves this inaccurate irl), stalking, or even sexual harassments and assualts but she falls for him and they end up together. That aint love thats Stockholm with extra steps. Think you’re triggered and upset? Go through this shit - have a history with it happening - and then see some show you love and a comfort character get treated the exact same and everyone JUSTIFIES it, including the team themselves. It’s NOT cute.  Part 2 to the previous point: Both do share common interests, but it’s very unhealthy such as excessive drinking, both being addicts and being rather lazy, etc. Otherwise the common ground just isnt good. They’re opposites that really dont compliment each other. (Not a valid point here but I find it interesting how Angel loves aquariums and Husk can fly too). Viv’s writing is mediocre at best (but with glowing potential - a diamond in the rough - hence why it’s so frustrating) but Husk’s writing is the laziest. According to Viv he’s (paraphrased) “easiest to write... doesnt care about anything, almost always grumpy leading to similar reactions to everything”. His voice and alcoholism even has a lot of inspiration from Rick Sanchez. As I said with Angel in the RadioDust post, it’s almost like the addictions are seen as a joke. A running gag is fine if you can play it off well and it’s not about something so serious EVEN MORE SO when the series is about how damaging the addictions are and redemption. Why is this end goal being ignored unless it’s about Angel himself? That’s not just favouritism or bias, that’s also heavily self indulgent and a backwards ass message. Right now, Hazbin and Helluva have this ugly fixation on sex and ships. VIV has a fixation on ‘horny demons’. Her main characters are incredibly sexual bar Al (dont even say Husk, Niffty, Charlie or Vaggie or even loona and Moxxie are even on par with the focus and treatment Val, Angel, Blitz and Stolas are given). It’s very fixated and concerning. Its starting to feel like it’s about to divulge into hentai than a legit series with even a hint of the plot or a message. It reminds me of Family Guy trying to be BoJack. It’s starting to remind me of fucking Sausage Party and the final orgy. Sex and swears makes it inappropriate for kids but that doesnt make it adult or mature, and this is coming from someone who swears more than a fucking sailor whos stubbed his bare pinky toe on a fucking crate corner. Constant swears arent funny or artful in the slightest when it’s over done. It’s just... childish adult humour. We cant be expected to want to root for any of them at this rate- All A24 and other companies are seeing is big cash and easily manipulated child audiences (for easy money). They KNOW it can be better but theyd rather be lazy as they’ll profit big either way. This is going to end up like YanSim and YanDev. Amazing potential, shit writing with a leader too stubborn to accept and act on criticism, seeing it as hate. At this point, Husk isnt a deeply troubled man with vices and interests. He’s just fuck candy and romantic end goal for Angel. To compliment and complete him. Just another accessory to the Angel Show. Vivs sister who made Husk even loves Angel so it’ll only serve to further this already toxic narrative.  The ship doesnt look or feel right. There’s too much established now to see the dynamics and favouritism in the creators. Self indulgence. You cant play favourites when you do this sort of thing professionally. The audience can see it and it turns people away. Ask any nonHaz/Helluva fan what they think and it’s... Well, average.  Another thing is everyone went full hype on Frozen focusing on something other than romance as a form of love. But then go back to “Ok now everyone reenact the final scenes of Sausage Party” afterwards. Not everything is sex and romance, and it really is starting to feel Viv and the fans are focused on that like Incels focusing on ‘chad’. It’s creepy. Helping with food, telling someone self conscious on their weight that they’re not fat, not taking more money than someone owes, even helping out with a pet - that’s something that a good friend would do. In fact, Husk even laughs at the goofy Angel cutout and it being destroyed. It doesnt instantly equate to wanting to fuck. The fact that the fans and even some of the team seem borderline horny is... Completely destroying this show, it’s message and everything about it. Viv said ships were hardly the focus in her stream but look at it now. Look at what Viv focuses on now. It’s just fanservice shit. Nothing more. Self indulgence shit, look at the team making rape into a fetish or shipping themselves publicly with the characters on the public IGs. It’s like watching children run a business and it’s painful because the entire series is suffering when it could be amazing.  Friendship should be more normalised as a valuable type of relationship just as much as love or family are. I’ll also add that Husk adding after the show “Oh fuck... Is this what I missed? Shit.” is ooc like the ‘date’ (that was compensation for stolen drinks, like a tamer version of Blitzo fucking Stolas for the grimoire). It contradicts that he slept it off rather than an attempt at staying awake, as well as calling it a “god damn peepshow” implying a repulsion to the peverse tendencies. The constantly commenting, following and posting Angel related pics makes little sense either from someone who’s blatantly been sexually harassed as well as the clear repulsion of the candid pic on the wall. He outright rejected Angel. What would be realistic are the IGs focusing on learning about the characters, their lives and interests - ALL updating at realistic paces. Old men arent tech savvy usually nor care for social media that much. He’d post drinks, gambling, casinos, life with Niffty and Alastor. Heck maybe a picture of Angel captioned “When will this guy leave me the FUCK alone?”. He even only seems to tag angel, even in the pic that had Charlie and Vaggie [their shared account] or Niffty. Theres a CLEAR bias in the staff room and it’s messy. Look how most the female cast is ignored (Vaggie/Charlie, Velvet who posted a birthday gift to one of the new artists on the merch WHY? Gasu btw, Niffty, Millie only posting twice - heck even Vox and Loona sometimes get neglected. CLEAR. BIAS.) The ships focused on are 1) NOT established canon yet publicly favoured by Viv and the team (Stoliz, HuskerDust, VoxVal - that last pair havent actually got a VA either-), 2) Are TOXIC and theme around abuse or sexual harassment but it’s ‘cute because gae’ - NO. This makes gay people look really bad when they’re not. 3) HD and SL focus on one sided, stalkerish, cop out ‘tsundere’ excused ships to sugar coat the creepiness which only further fuels bigotry, 4) SL has MERCH on it now, so thats also profiting on sexual harassment imagery (again, dont give a shit they arent real - the EFFECTS are. The people who can relate ARE. The people being horridly stereotyped ARE). Thing is, the IGs originally were there to promote ADDICT which started as a fan song anyways despite everyone saying how Viv is stubborn in her ways an uninfluenced by her fans (proof says otherwise) yet shes allowed a fan song to be canon. Theres a focus on forced love for fanservice. The IGs have long outstayed their welcome. The Val account allows glamourisation of the sick shit Val does AND entinses fans to bully as they forget a REAL PERSON runs the fucking account, Val isnt even a scary villain either - hes just a big teen like everyone else - stuck in a teen drama with all this. Pimps are smart. Theyre scary. Theyre masters of manipulati- HOW DO THEY NOT DO THE RESEARCH?! Viv wanted this sense of realism and dealing with sensitive topics in one of the worst executed ways Ive ever seen- It’s toxic. It’s dangerous. These are shit messages and your fans display that when they think all criticism is ‘hAtE’ and actively bully real people w REAL EXPERIENCES. Telling them to ‘stop pls’ does fuck all because you still promote shit messages straight after. Like with Stolas to Blitz in a IG story a day after Ep 2. Classy.  Fanservice seems desperate to keep these fans (rather than market correctly... Just like YanDev) and it leads to fans feeling like they have the audacity to steer the series. Poor business with WEAK boundaries. Viv, you lost your series a long time ago. Want it back? LISTEN TO LEGIT CRITICISM. Stop surrounding yourself with yes men. Even my best fucking friend calls me out when Im out of line because a real friend will fucking take the chance of hurting your feelings if it means helping you in the long run and grow.  Mick joked about the inside of Husk’s ears matching Angels coat, that the ears are cat’s most sensitive and vulnerable parts. 1) Cats vulnerable part is their tummy - hence why you need their trust first (alternatively yer get the odd cat that has full confidence they cat hurt you a lot faster than you can tickle them - I own one), 2) Its weird that Viv doesnt know this considering how many cats she has - its important to learn the language of those you love to give them your full understanding and a great bond 3) This romanticises sexual harassment more than it already is in the media (remember, theres women out there still murdered for saying no!) as well as reinforces the stereotypes of gay men forcing non-interested men into sex (again, a very toxic and unrealistic trope - a dangerous one thats led to gays being murdered!). And the ears design is unnecessarily overly complex considering those fuckin wings he supports. If the design adds nothing to the character but aesthetic, then it can go on the chopping block. Rules for simple animation. Besides from Angel sharing the same tooth as Val (who knows if that was added after he started working for Val as branding?) you could use this argument to say Pent or Al are soulmates for Angel because of having striped suits, or sharp teeth - no, it was intended as a joke that Viv fueled to irresponsibly because it’s not the first time she’s dodged publicly addressing something (something youll NEED to get used to in a big company), and she’s publicly dodged shit after this too so Im not putting faith in her until she can act professionally as the job requires. Likewise, professionals should consider what and how they joke as they’re presenting an image of a company/business. And people WILL eat that shit up face value regardless. In her stream #2, a fan requests for art of flustered angel and smug husk to fuel their ship. at 2:10:21, she does so. She’s also done this for Baxter x Niffty and Cherri x Tom. As a professional, you really should be avoiding this sort of thing in the name of fanservice. I get it, fanservice = financial gain. But it also results in empty meaning. It’s a shell of what the passion project once was, hence why you make the ENTIRE skeleton before involving others. The team help construct the muscles, tendons and organs. The public - moreso critics and the more experienced in those fields help sew the skin. Then you bring it to life, the fans become like blood. They aid to keep it alive. Even Ash and Mick mention Husk being ‘tsundere’. Im had most my piece about it earlier, however I’ll repeat and add some extras. Tsundere is an exaggerated personality, often used in younger characters. In terms of a relationship, it’s very immature, leads to poor communication and results in a toxic love. Science can back this up as well as the lack of realism. It’s more immature minds/hearts that go to what they interpret as tsundere in hopes of the love life the media portrays. A farce. Y’know what Angel needs? Someone open, honest, open to love and comforting. He doesnt need someone rebuffing and him chasing. It’s nothing more than an immature thrill. Once the love begins, it’s burns out QUICK. It’s far from sustainable or healthy. It’s not what either really need and further show Angel’s fixation on men who subconsciously remind him of his father. It’s not healthy. Another thing is a tsundere actually IS interested but shows it in the most immature and childish means possible. Would a really old bloke actually give a shit to play those sorts of games? No. Not one coming from a place like husk has. It’s painful how lacking in research and experience these people are. Science backs up that opposites solemnly attract also. In fact, they often either repel or only get as far as friendship.  Fan and Team Mentality in Brief: Im coming out with my ultimate pet peeve: if you’re going to have one of the MAIN characters be a gambler, do your research. The only background shit is a casino, LOADS of sex references (in Pride? Really?) and drugs. It’s like someone listing what they think is adult and tabboo and naughty. It’s yikes. Cards are almost always aces, 2s or blank. MOST are heart suits (like we need MORE red - we get it, it’s hell. But it’s an immature larvae stage hell). I get 2s and aces being easier to animate, however you have Husks wings, the entire of alastor, angels arms - if youre busting the budget for the menial then bust it to the cards. Theres like ONE spade. The full house isnt a full house (here’s a display of the fans lack of education on the matter as well which serves as a sure sign that they know just as little on any of this as SpindleHorse, they think it’s a sign on him being a card cheat. A card cheat. I aint saying hes not but what I AM saying is poker professionals are some of the most observant people in the world. Especially when money’s involved they’ll ensure youve got your facts right. That wouldnt fly at ALL. But theres more~ fans think Husk spent loaaaads of time staring at angel’s face in the IG poker out of <3 Newsflash. When you play poker you read EVERYONE like a book. Every little twist and twitch of the features. Its not about love. It’s about winning. Its about money. Play enough poker and it’s instinct if you want to actually play decently. Call bluffs. Life aint a fuckin romance.) And playing Poker at a BlackJack table? In a casino? These are all common knowledge and basics if you just research. And this is coming from someone with a history of this.  The fans even believed Tipsy Bartender’s ‘Peach Princess Cocktail’ was something Spindlehorse made as a beverage form of Niffty, Angel and even Charlie because of the name. Now, Im not expecting everyone to be a fuckin boozy either, but to not even consider it’s a very real drink does show that many fans are far too young for that 18+ label.  Fanart of HD often has Husk being OOC OR being held hostage (often via webs - one even being reblogged by Viv, aint that cute!). Some even have Husk completely intoxicated, which would be rape. Im not sugarcoating it. Because too many are getting the sweet treatment and copying Viv’s ‘dont address and it disappears!’ tactic - A LOT of internet celebs do it. The ship is drawn a lot by the team in the public eye, Viv reblogs it publicly (SL, HD, alongside canon only ships, how curious-). Husk is pan yet doesnt behave as the stereotype. And Id FULLY support this with my fucking SOUL (fun fact: you cant sell a soul. Thats myth to scare people-) if it was done correctly. But the way bisexuals, lesbians, gays and aces are portrayed so stereotypically (even Pan in terms of Val’s sexomania), it’s really REALLY uncomfortly coming across as Husk being pansexual JUST to make him an ‘option’ for Angel. Hell even the hets are given a shite representation. Some art btw has husk tricked into a kiss. Cute, we’re really starting to like blurring consent aint we? Remember, Angel has celeb power in his world. In the real world, he has a following. HE has the power in the ship massively. Hell, fans JUSTIFY Angels behaviour and absolutely rip Husk a new shithole if he fuckin even so as to DARE OPPOSE ANGELS MUCH DESERVED LOVE! - sarcasm because I have to make that shit clear now. Fans dont care about Husks feelings, he wasnt even popular until this ship started to explode. Y’know what would be cool and break stereotypes? An old straight white guy actually accepting his friends sexualities. The pan thing feels really fucking gimicky and exploitive and gross based on the history of all this shit. It feels disingenuine. Representation doesnt come from it just being there. What next? Katie whips on blackface to further show shes a bigoted knobhead whos white and straight? Dont get me wrong, Katie’s an arsehole but theres other means to show this rather than ALL HETS HATE THE BIG GAE. They dont. They really dont. But hey, we’ll show a gay man sexually harass every guy and root for him! NO. Thats fucked up. It makes gays look like the predators theyre not. It’s like the fucking 50s with modern tech - is that the real identity of Vox? Fuckin maybe. WHAT THEY NEED - FUCKING FINALLY, ITS THE END IVE BEEN ON THIS SHIT FOR DAYS WHILST SICK LUCKY ME EH? CAN YER FEEEEEEEL MY TIREDNESS OF FANDOMS AND CREATORS EXCUSING SHITTY THINGS FOR CLOUT, MONEY, FAME AND OTHER DUMB SHIT? IF YOU CANT, THEN WHAT THE FUCK, AND OTHER NEWS: Right. Lets get our main shit. Compatibility between the pair is really low - lower than even the team seems to see. And yer old fart of a Hag here’s gotta use my personal suffering as an example because thats what the cool kids do, right? Their friendship compatibility is high. VERY high. But low for love. HEALTHY love. In terms of convo flow, it only has a river when insults are flying, otherwise Husk actively cuts Angel short or outright annoys him. In reality, someone like Husk would gross out Angel, but the cute cat look can turn that the fuck around - JUST the look. Fans and the team oddly think it’s cute though. Yes, I remember being negged at the bar and thinking “BOY arent my pants flooded like the fuckin planet when the ice caps are melting”. There’s no click. Theres infatuation and lust one sided based on looks. Husk isnt even remotely interested and no means delayed yes apparently. Angel as a rape VICTIM should know better than to blur consent like this. Angel isnt a rapist [for the skim reading raging stans ANGELS NOT A RAPIST, YAAAAAY!] but he sure has a shit grip on when he’s looking like Val when Val forced Angel into a kiss by not accepting rejection. It’s. CREEPY. Its fuckin weird. Husk is literally named after being a shell of his former self, I doubt random sex and forced interest is gonna make him spring to life like bastard Zeberdy from the Magic Pissin Roundabout. Honestly, sexual harassment and addictions are treated the same in this - a joke. A punchline. A gag. Sure makes me fuckin gag. Nah, the more healthier Chaggie relationship (needs work on Charlies damn part - dont let freaky taxidermy men sexually assault your life partner like that) is booooring, lets focus on sexual harassment leading to true love like all the other shitty romcoms shall we? Or sugar coat it with ‘getting to know them better <3′ like Beauty and the Beast. A story, by yours truly: My mom’s mates with this woman. Lets call her M because her name starts with an M. M is just like Angel except slightly older, overweight and disabled - so not everyones cup of tea visually (shes neither here nor there to me imo, not like I hold interest in shaggin her). Like Angel, she fuckin flirts with any ANY man around her. She’ll even touch without consent, rub allllll up and down their backs and bodies, and not leave them alone. She even did this with a few gay men. Shes not a horrible person BUT mom and I are constantly trying to stop her and get through her head how DISGUSTING this treatment is. But nothing gets the message across. Shes ALWAYS talking men and sex and has an on/off fling with this one bloke (dont worry, hes the male M, cheats and does the same as her). Everyone, even women, are uncomfortable with this. Irl it’s desperate and a HUGE repellent. Men are visibly SO uncomfortable. She does it to my father too who is - in case youd forgotten - MARRIED TO HER BEST. FUCKING. FRIEND. My father is not a man of fear (and interestingly, hes one of the real life Huskers I know!) but this woman? *insert Heavy bc why tf not* She scares him. My dad does everything in his damn power to pull away, reject, resist, avoid and cut her off. The only reason hes even nice to her at all is because mom likes her (when M isnt a gross hornbag, shes genuinely a good friend to my mother - much like angel and Cherri). My dad’s strictly banned from insulting her or telling her to fuck off from my mother BECAUSE of her nature with him. Even at her non horny times, he’s even said shes not his flavour.  I’ve had numerous accounts like this myself (ask any woman-) but the worst was the guy thinking - THINKING - that Id eventually be his whilst he played up a lot of our similarities up, seemed nice and I actually thought I had a good guy friend (put it this way, Im genuinely scared of men because of guys like this). At this time, there was a character I discovered who looks and behaves SO much like me, and shes married. My simping arse for this fictional BEAUT [Im sorry but Iris is fucking awesome] compared her romantic traits towards Olgerd as something Id do - and this was a STATUS. It wasnt even too him, tagging him, nothing. I was just spamming Iris like the Iris whore I am, and... Yep. Ill be honest and say that God only knows what else I did that made him think I was ready to rip off my clothes and shag him. My post history back then showed Im like this when I find a character I relate to. I also send hearts a lot publicly and to friends to express joy - I get NERVOUS how that’ll be taken now. He tried to pit my ex friend and I against each other for him and even cyberstalked us pretending to be a girl named Raven. My GUT told me this aint no bastard ‘Raven’. The vibes he gave me, and the fact when I kept saying no he took it as a delayed yes (He even said “Ill wait for when youre ready” not “I understand and am happy to still be friends”) gave me literal nightmares of this guy tracking me down and raping me. He’s currently dating that ex friend (I was still willing to be their friend and support them but they said it was hard to keep us separate in her lifes and she didnt want conflict, so I cut it off amicably with her and I fuckin hope he treats her right. I even sensed in my gut she’d like him and he’d like her - even that theyd be good together! But then I found she was 17 and he was 10 years older, that he was cyberstalking and pitting us against each other, that he was secretly an arrogant fuck and that he gives off red flags like her ex’s - but shes passed 18 now and I want to trust her as an adult that she can deal with this. Shes got a good family.) As a kid, Ive been fuckin groped at school in my shitty neighbourhood. One kid even harassed me wanting to know if Id started my periods yet. Hed constantly fondle girls and ‘keg’ them aka yank down their skirts or trousers in public, and 2 years later held a fucking KNIFE to my throat in a classroom with the shittiest substitute teacher, all because I stood up to him (I was not known for my bravery at school so). He was harassing my female friend who suffers from it since as well as her upbringing, bullying her and stealing her stuff. Shes TINY. She was bullied just as bad as I - who was somehow both the school ghost AND pariah somehow- - and I stepped in and told him to cut that shit out before snatching her things back. I told her to ignore the desperate prick. Thats when he took a boxcutter and held it to my throat, threatening me to keep my head down. Now my neighbourhood fucking qualifies as the British ‘hood’ but Id been lucky to avoid this. Ironically, I wondered what this situation would be like a year prior. Im convinced I can fucking foresee bad shit now and with anxiety that aint good. I froze mentally and I just said “Wooow, Im fucking scared- *friends name*, ignore him” and continued my work. I fucking mentally kicked myself for speaking but I genuinely didnt know what to do. Obviously not fucking that. He sat the full TWO HOURS at our table with this knife, jolting forward mockingly and switching who he pointed it at. The knife btw was from that very room as it was graphics and art. Teacher didnt even notice though honestly Ive had an entire class throw shit at me and call me a whore and the teacher in that class looked at me and TURNED AWAY. End of the day, I reported it to my actual graphics teacher when he returned and he told me he’d take this higher up and to get my parents. My home was only 5 minutes away but I had to walk alone when most the students were gone AND through a fucking alleyway. I always walked with my head low but that day I kept it high and tried to look brave because I genuinely thought he was waiting for me. That he was going to rape and kill me because he’s a pervert and Id just discovered a fucking violent one at that. I broke down at my door. Do you know how fuckin hard it is to look your parents who are dealing with two cancer patients and other issues in the eyes and tell them their ‘little girl’ had a knife to her through for standing up for herself? We went back, I described everything and even remember the yellow-orange handle just to get this kid punished? I even wrote an official police statement (well, the written witness account they add to their statement and evidence) and had to speak on mine and my friend’s behalf because she was that shook up. I never even used to speak for myself! He got expelled, but yknow what us jolly folk dealt with? Hearing kids and his mates mumbling about the ‘rat’ and how much of a cunt they were. Teachers and kids praise him for his art skills and even pin them on display EVERYWHERE (one - ONE - was a fucking self portrait and none of the staff seemed to find issue in that) and even an occassion where he came back into the school when he legally wasnt (trespassing). Do you know how hard it is to fucking avoid someone without raising suspicions from everyone around you in a narrow corridor? Im TALL too. I got NO support from this and felt on edge because he could easily sneak into school. I couldnt say shit because his stupid ‘spies’ were about. Just typing this is upsetting enough- I also know a rl Angel who’s like him minus the sexual harassment. She’s... I never used to like her and visa versa but we actually get along really well now, even though she can be creepy and perverse- But she wouldnt be my type either nor I with her. Often we really fuck each other off but we can also bond great. Another incident reminds me of Husk’s candid photo. Ive had people keep my photo despite me saying not to however I had someone SOMEHOW at that school one the fuck up that. There was a cut out from a magazine of a lady who looked like my DOUBLE except she was asian. Now I thought this was cool and it made me feel sorta pretty. This one girl showed everyone and the teacher, pretty much everyone was like “Oh shit that really is you, C!” and it was harmless fun at first. Until I wanted the picture. Again, this woman looked EXACTLY like me. Yet this girl refused and said she wanted to keep it and even carried it around in her pencil case. Yes it wasnt me but due to the similarities, this photo was called me (tbf the fuckin pic got more respect than I did-). This isnt the only creepy instant between me and this girl but the photo reminds me of it. And this tops people keeping photos OF me which happened in primary school. This was me but legal at that time. And asain. It was super fucking neckbeardy the way she treated this photo and stared, often stroking it and looking at me. I just hope she was only trying to scare me. Theres one final instance of a sexual assault but Im just not yet ready to be public about it. 2 here already know. Those are some of my rl experiences and more to come (unfortunately) that show these behaviours in real life. It seems - it comes across - that sexual harassment, MORE SO TOWARDS MEN, is seen as some punchline and not something legitimately horrifying or dangerous. It’s not cute. It’s fucking FAR from it.  Ive already mentioned how putting two addicts together can lead to relapsing, dependence on each other in an unhealthy way. And Ive even mentioned what Angel needs in a relationship in the RD post. Luckily for you, I’ll copy and paste it here: “ We need to think about where both are mentally. What benefits would a relationship give both? How would they be good and bad for each other? For Al, aside from his outdated views and being a fucking murderer and narcissist, he actually seems in a good mindspace for a relationship IF he opted to be in one. Angel however has a very immature mindset, likewise is in a phase of life where hes bed hopping. IF he were to be in a relationship, I’d say he needs a male equivalent of Cherri - someone with a similar mindset yet some differences, willing to have fun and in touch with their younger side, down to cuddle, open to share and receive love as well as not afraid to publicly be affectionate with him, someone who sees him as more than just for sex, someone fun, someone who’ll let him embrace his cutesy side publicly without shame - Cherri is younger so maybe someone who’s his age or slightly younger perhaps? I think Angel’s not retirement home ready to settle and needs someone on his level that can cuddle and chill as well as feels free and youthful enough to go wild with him. In one sense, he’s got a teen girl sorta mindset (dont put him with a teen though, it’s fuckin weird-). He needs someone positive and raw, someone to let him be himself as well as someone comfortable to be themselves around him. He has a habit of latching onto unobtainable men (in psychology, this is self sabotaging subconsciously): Travis the client, Val a pimp, Husk (emotionally unavailable and needs HEAVY self work - interestingly far more than Angel - plus he’s still onto his last relationship and an addict to gambling and alcohol), Pent who’s the enemy he was currently fighting (inappropriate timing), Alastor who’s not interested in another but his own needs [selfish, VERY bad for a relationship]. Subconsciously he’s self sabotaging on purpose. There’s many psychology books as well as sources online for this, if you’re interested. Either way, Angel is drawn to men either like his father [who dislike him, shun him, or are otherwise cold, abusive or just blatantly dislike or otherwise dont care about him] or anyone with money to fuel his drug addiction/’debt’ to Val. Going with any of these men isn’t a good idea. Preferably, Angel needs someone who he doesnt immediately crush and obsess over. Someone who he doesnt sexually harass or assault. Someone he can build a connection with quickly that can bud into romance (think how Chaggie started as a friendship which clicked immediately). Maybe even someone he doesn’t expect to fall for but does so anyways. It would be more realistic as Viv wants as well as more healthy. That for once he isnt sex or money craved instantly, thus doesnt sexually harass/assault and is given a proper chance to develop and grow a friendship and love. Someone who isnt an addict. Someone with an on-par mindset where they click. Someone open to love. For any chance of a good relationship, Angel needs to be with anyone BUT who we’ve already seen. There’s too much toxicity that’ll be swept under the rug and justified otherwise. Too much shit to fuel homophobes in terms of gay stereotypes. Even though Ive focused a fair bit on Angel, it’s NOT just about Angel. That’s something fans forget. Some he depends on or someone who depends on him in the long term wont last and will be very dangerous to both. Just because you suffer, you dont then deserve to be rewarded with ‘something nice’. You dont get to have everything youve ever wanted. Giving him any of these blokes [minus Val] gives him a pass. Gives him what he wants. I get Viv loves him but life doesnt work that way. True lasting growth comes from learning that. Acceptance and growth. You dont get everything you want and sometimes thats a GOOD thing. He’s not a spoilt kid who gets everything he asks for, he’s YOUR creation. If you really wanted what your creations deserve then you need to research and be realistic with it. Because hes starting to feel like a shitty Gary-Stu at this rate.” Sorry for that copypaste clusterfuck. Copy paste is not my forte lol Now Husk. Remember Big? Probably not after the info overload, but if you do GREAT. Big needed love, patience, understanding, someone who could help him, someone who understood and respected his boundaries. I spent so much damn time and now he cuddles up and exposes his tummy because I make him feel understood, loved and safe. He NEVER purred or meowed (why would he need to meow when he didnt speak to humans?) but now he does. He lives on the streets of a neighbourhood with rough folk. He used to draw blood and go rabid on my arms. But I was patient and showed him that I understood his reasons but that he was safe with me and had no need to strike out. I never pushed his boundaries let alone doing it multiple times (the rl angel I know is fucking skilled at pushing cat’s boundaries and wonders why they all huddle up to me and avoid her lol). Husk is an unavailable man. Romantic/Sexual love does NOT heal his wounds. But thats the only thought fans and the team have given on his side. He needs love to ‘fix’ him. The WORST reason to get with someone. Theyre not a project and you arent a fucking miracle worker. Treat them as an equal. He needs a good friend. JUST a friend. Like Big, he needs patience, trust, understanding, and extensive help (arguably more intense than Angel’s). He needs to love himself a bit more FIRST. Someone who respects his boundaries INSTANTLY. Someone relatable and similar, open to love not just sex and not as troubled (if they are, they need to handle it way better, healthily and overall be in a good mindspace). Viv can ship whatever the fuck tickles her fancy, but once your passion project becomes public and funded, you have set responsibilities on how to address and handle sensitive issues as well as having to accept criticism. If Husk goes sober in the name of love (ESPECIALLY with the guy not respecting his boundaries and sexually harassing him), then it’s a fucking INSULT to alcoholics.  I know a few rl Husks but there’s one that anyone who knows me enough knows the man I hold closest to my heart was an alcoholic and spitting of Husk. That’s why Husk’s character means so much to me. But there’s only 2 here who know a bit more of this man. This is something Id hoped to not share so soon, nor as messy. And Im already getting waterworks because this is FAR from easy. I guess Husk became the very thing *I* needed in order to face this. This man was my grandfather. WAS. I cant even fucking accept that. I was a fucking child. I feel stupid being so open about this over some stupid cartoon but it just shows the real life effects this has on REAL fucking people. This man was old and lonely. Always at the pubs. He taught me card games, card tricks and card magic as well as one of his own sons dealing with a gambling addiction. I feel so fucking stupid crying about this- I dont want to open up but its the only way I feel I can get people to understand my side in all of this. This man was a fucking MESS. A closed off, lonely, grumpy old bastard. He lost his love because of his alcohol addiction and never found love again. Never got over that woman. (Shes still kicking and we’re close - im keeping some things under wraps between them as its not my place). Gave up on life and love. Worked hard at his fixation on cards and puzzles, as well as crass jokes and knowledge. But he was very lazy otherwise. Bitter and angry. And you know what? He was my world. I love this man with every fiber of my being because he was the first person to love and accept me for me. He treated me as an equal and helped me grow as a person. In fact... He was only ever happy around us kids. He had hope again. Protected me. He used to hate gays and blacks and you know what? He taught HIMSELF as to why that was shitty thinking. He taught ME about differences in people and to accept it. He taught me that you dont always have to understand to accept. He taught me poker and... swears admittedly. He was a beautiful soul that was broken inside. He needed to love himself. But you know what actually fucking happened? You know what I watched as a kid? I watched as he smoked until every morning he woke throwing up phlegm just to BREATHE. I watched as sometimes the light in his eyes died and through smoke breaks and early drinking how he’d sometimes slip and show me his pain. And we’d have deep talks about it and the world and everything. How alcohol ruined his life yet he craved it. His scent. I remember arguments I wasnt supposed to overhear and growing up seeing him fucking DIE slowly in a hospital bed. The man he was ended up as a fucking husk. His skin was bloated and purple, he was half machine on how much shit he was hooked up to. How he was barely a man at all. He was dying of cancer and he fucking knew and never told us. His cancer meds gave him horrid hallucinations. And I practically spent most of my time in that hospital because TWO people had cancer. Two stunning people had fucking stupid bastard cancer. He was a fuck up. He was flawed to shit. But seeing glimpses of the real him was a fucking ethereal experience. He made me feel like a PERSON. And all we could do in the end was watch him just die. He WANTED to die and you could see it but hed only eat around us to fake fight out of his own hubris and not wanting to let us down. That year, I watched 2 of the only people who ever gave a shit about me die the most dishonourable deaths God could have gave them. Years prior I watched his son gamble EVERYTHING away - his lover, his house, his everything. Hes a moderate gambler now with a partner who never had a history of any addiction. She helps keep him in line as he helps her. But most nights I fucking dream of this shit. I cant even think about my hero because I fucking weep. I still have nightmares. Im still up thinking how I could have saved him from himself when it’s him who was the only one able to. I have to live my life with those memories and I was just a kid. Im a full woman and Im still haunted by it. Even that year is blasphemy and I fucking hate it. I want to take him in my arms, hold him and tell him he’s enough. That its ok and he can get through this. Anything that reminds me of him, I love because I know the other side. The real side. The side not tethered to vices. When I see people like that, I pray they see themselves like that too and I want to help them see it. Tell them that they can live again. It’s better than fucking decaying in a hospital bed. That when people make this sorta shit into a cute quirk it’s not. And it’s dickheads like me who have actually seen it play in the real world to REAL people they love. They arent a fucking accessory to fix for your own narrative. They arent a fuckin performing monkey. At least with Rick and Morty it’s kinda humorous and never played for some shitty toxic ship to appeal to everyone who’s never had to face that shit themselves. And Im like my old man but with more hope and no addiction. I drink and I gamble but I’ll never let myself get that low. Because I honour him but Im not as fucking saft. I wont allow it even though it’s a fucking battle. Those addictions are in the blood. My family history. Its always been so fucking normal. I’ll never knock someone for an addiction or try to preach them out of it because theres often pain fueling it, but I’d never encourage it or toxic faux cures and stupid romance promises as some bullshit MLM remedy either. I KNOW it’s fiction but I want people to see the real side. I want VIV to see the real side. Id willingly for FREE fucking sing that shit if it meant spreading a good message. Because this is fucking hell. FIXING IT: The ship’s basis is too set in stone now - too familiar to change. Best is to never let it be canon. Because you know what else it teaches? That rOmAnCe cures all. Not therapy. Not rehab. Not any REAL work. Just fuck and date it all away as if it’s that easy. It’s a mockery! I tried to be professional about this but when the media bombards this shit constantly, the has the AUDACITY to play like it’s giving a good message is salt to the wounds. A kiss with a fist. An old man dont care for the petty teen drama that Angel and Cherri (even fuckin Al) thrive on. Want this to send a good message still? Angel hates rejection and thinks everyone wants him. Have Husk reject him. Especially because no one should go out with someone whos sexually harassed them there. Been there, done that got the fuckin tshirt. Have Husk reject Angel the way Gravity Falls has Wendy reject Dipper. It helped Dipper move on and mature, and this is what Angel needs for growth and to be more humble.  Husk would be a fucking excellent mentor to Angel, a friend and protector, someone who shows him the ropes like Grunkle Stan like a grandfather figure. To not fall for his mistakes. Husk would be a better expert than any of them plus it balances the power dynamtic. It’s healthy and realistic. Touches the topic with the sensitivity it needs. Not everything needs a ship or romance. Wounds healed that way dont stay healed long. Angel seems more fitting as a son like figure, and he can play that dad like role for him. And if any of the team EVER saw this, fucking take this idea. Its YOURS. FREE. FOREVER. If we wanna play this NDA but still reblog some of the story telling arts and have some of our team indulge in it. I wont sue. Fucking TAKE IT if it means doing this shit right because Spindlehorse have beautifully triggered so many different people and their different traumas to please teenagers sexual fantasies, their own kinks and for a jolly good joke.  This is a bastard long read and Ive had to face the traumas again but if good can come from it then I’ll GLADLY dance this duet again. Stans, Antis, dont even TEMPT interaction. You arent brave sending suicide threats behind a screen, youre a coward and a waste of oxygen. I WANT Hazbin and Helluva to succeed. I want Viv and her crew to do well. Trust me, I wouldnt waste my time if I didnt give a shit. Viv is fucking gifted and its being wasted if it’s not at her full potential for the approval of a rabid army of kids and immature adults who dont know any better (stans and antis). I know she would like a good and decent fanbase. Stans and antis arent it. Tagging you folks because it’s long but yall actually helped me have the courage to open my trap to this. Screenshots are coming later though all of what Ive said is easily sourced. But this has been days, Im sick, im tired, ive been upset facing my own traumas. If any tags wanna help then by all means but otherwise. @honesthazbinarchives, @siaesnow​ (also added age still bc despite the lack of physical aging, theres also the mental aspect and experiences as well as power dynamics side to it, in case youre wondering), @noirellearts, @enchantedchocolatebars​, @galemalio​ (thank you for letting me weep like a bitch), @angel-blitz​, @critical-hazbin​, @what-the-hazbin​, @hazboobhotel​, @pineapple-critiques-stuff​, @devils-advocutie​, SORRY AGAIN FOR BEING A LIL BITCH FOLKS, I feel awkward like my teen years but yeah- fuck it Im old and imma rot soon anyways. If this experience can help then Ill be glad.

[pleaseshutupaboutsatou]

Before and After Ajin Volume 1

Part Three

[Part One] [Part Two]

This was supposed to be the last part but I had a lot to say on this one particular subject.

Ajin: Human or Demi-Human

Spoilers ahead and I will refer to Tsuina Miura as TM.

Before V2 - Ajin: Human or Demi-Human

Okay, so it’s always kind of perplexed me that Ajin are so objectified. They look like any other person but in the world of Ajin, they’re referred to as ‘another species’, a ‘life-form’, and sometimes even ‘it’. When someone finds out they’re Ajin, it’s not readily apparent and can easily be hidden. Probably the most conspicuous aspect of an Ajin is their IBM if anything -- especially if they can’t control it. 

Anyway, the way I’ve really looked at it, I’ve always kinda assumed that the objectification of Ajin was a purposeful and systemic way of othering people with immortal abilities so that they can be more easily taken advantage of. 

I forget that this thought is just pure speculation and not actually explicitly said in canon. (TBH, I would really like to know the origins of why people see Ajin as non-human.)

This aspect is just part of the unique takes Ajin has on immortality. Immortals can age. To be an Ajin is not seen as a cool or fun but something terrifying and unknown. You don’t want to be an Ajin. In fact, in the first chapter of the manga, when the teacher suggests the possibility that someone in the class might be one, it immediately makes everyone uneasy.

In TM’s part of the manga, there’s a strong emphasis on the idea of Ajin not being seen as human. It’s repeated a lot in Kei’s dialogue with Kai and in the pilot chapter with Shinya. In fact, the opening line in the pilot chapter is ‘Those life forms do not die... They are know as demi-humans’.

The language in the Wikipedia article about Ajin that Shinya reads uses dry language when discussing the relationship between Ajin and human experimentation. It seems like there’s no hint of controversy! 

If you’ve read Tenkuu Shinpan, this cynical worldview will probably be very familiar. Miura’s writing has this sort of color.

Anyway, in volume one, the humanity of Ajin is constantly questioned and touched upon in the dialogue.

What a bizarre question for Izumi to ask, of all people... Izumi could be playing detective a detective role here, but knowing that she’s an Ajin, this almost comes across as self-loathing. Perhaps Izumi might have gone down that path if Miura stayed on?

This bit of dialogue from Tanaka, shortly after the former scene, feels more consistent with the story thus far. Satou made being a demi-human a point of pride for Tanaka and for Izumi to pretend to be one definitely made her less in his eyes. Actually, he was pretty cruel to everyone in that room in this scene, but if you take into consideration Izumi’s anti-Ajin-like dialogue and her explicitly saying she’s from the Demi-Human Control Commission (the ones responsible for his imprisonment), I can see where it comes from.

Anyway, much of the compelling dialogue on an Ajin’s humanity is between Kei and Kai. On the run after being outed as an Ajin, Kei is constantly questioning his own humanity.

And, as long as Kai is around Kei, he constantly reassures Kei that he is indeed human and even if he isn’t, he can be human if he wants to be.

Now that I think about it, perhaps the idea of demi-humans not being human comes from the human fear of death and the loss of its universal certainty. Death is scary, unpredictable, unavoidable and not really something a lot of people like to dwell on. However, despite those feelings, it’s ubiquitous and maybe some comfort comes from that - that it will happen to everyone. Not to Ajin though (as far as the public knows, they don’t really know about aging or natural-death Ajin). In fact Ajin can tiptoe between death and life. Perhaps that comes across as grotesque and maybe that’s a reason why they’re feared? A scene that exemplifies this is Kei’s first suicide - or reset, as it’s later called. 

Kai’s expression is of sadness, worry, and terror because he just witnessed Kei, someone he’s trying to protect, harm himself. He obviously knows that Kei will likely be fine but you can’t really logic away the visceral reaction to seeing such a thing. Meanwhile Kei, is excited, almost ecstatic, because he sees he’s able to walk on his own two legs again and not be such a burden to Kai. His relationship to death has totally changed. Does the lack of ability to die correlate with a loss of humanity?

Perhaps, TM wanted that to be constant question in their story. Are Ajin really human? Or maybe TM wanted Ajin to actually not really be human and for us to mistakenly think they are? TBH though, it doesn’t really seem like TM’s fast-paced action writing style... but maybe those kinds of questions piqued Sakurai’s interest.

After V2 - Ajin: Human or Demi-Human

I think Sakurai is interested in exploring the theme of humanity and human experience in general through these immortal characters. 

As the story progresses, he seems to go with the notion that Ajin are just people who can’t die. I think this is emphasized with Tanaka’s increasing mundaneness. His very first appearance is incredibly striking. He looks diabolical.

And he doesn’t seem that way to just the audience but to Kei as well, who sees Tanaka with a mean face and a knife in their first encounter and is instantly scared. In Kei’s dreams, Tanaka becomes a symbol of aggressive masculinity.

It’s all a front though, and through Tanaka’s flashback a handful of chapters later, it becomes clear that, like Kei, he’s an ordinary person put through extraordinary circumstances.

Satou, however, comes across as a force of nature and inhuman. Physical obliteration and philosophical ideas of death do not phase him at all. His flesh body is a tool that he takes apart and puts back together with casual indifference. In the end, though, he is a human being, though, damn, does he make it difficult for other people, ourselves included, to believe that.

Last, but not least, Sakurai spends a great deal of care on Kei’s transition from teen to young adult throughout the story with all the self-doubt, risk-taking and awkwardness that comes with it. What kind of person will he become? What does he really want? 

He puts on a front as a disinterested, self-serving person whose no-nonsense, but, actually he does care and maybe he likes a little of nonsense (but not too much). As for the person he might become, it’s interesting that Kei has two older, contrasting figures in his life who serve as influences: Hirasawa and Satou. Hirasawa says he’s fine the way he is and that it’s okay to run away; he kind of indulges Kei and tells him what he wants to hear - maybe he sees himself in Kei and tells him what he wish he could have heard.  Meanwhile, Satou wants to challenge Kei, though, for entirely selfish reasons and maybe, he too, saw some of himself in Kei. Though, lmao, he got bored with that towards the end.

A big part of Kei’s journey is self-acceptance. Self-acceptance as a person coming-of-age and as a person whose an Ajin. To a person like Kou, he probably seems like he has a concrete idea of who he is, but that’s not the case at all.

Kei starts out as an incredibly reluctant hero. In fact, he only came into the role out of necessity as Satou grew to be a bigger and bigger problem that could no longer be ignored. In the period between the attack on Grant Pharmaceuticals and the attack on Forge Security, his lack of enthusiasm is very explicit; he even dreams of being whisked away. Nevertheless, he begrudgingly concocts a plan for defending Forge Security. 

It’s in the aftermath of Forge Security that he starts to change and aggressively pursue Satou. However, this change of heart will be repeatedly tested as Satou continues to evade him.

Sakurai has also had some things to say about the question of a demi-human’s humanity on a grander scale, particularly, through a character like Ogura. When you first meet him, he’s very blunt and sarcastic and seems to have little value in his own life. To Ogura, life has lost its meaning. It’s heavily implied that this is in large part due to the death of his 8-year-old son.

The only thing that he really talks about with any kind of enthusiasm are Ajin and his FK cigarettes. 

His fascination with Ajin could be, in part, a way to cope with his grief. Ajin defy death and the human spirit seems to play a large role in how they function. IBMs are invisible but can be seen if a strong emotion is present. Floods of IBMs are triggered by death along with an accompanying strong emotion. He states outright that life is meaningless, but his obsession with Ajin seems to come from a part of himself that doesn’t want to believe that.

Whether or not what Ogura says is true or not, it’s undoubtedly true that Ajin are inextricably linked with their own humanity. This is where Sakurai arrives at with the question of a demi-human’s humanity.

This ended up being wayyyy longer then intended but thoughts kept coming and coming. Hope I didn’t go off on too much of a tangent here. I will make another part with Kai, Tanaka and talk briefly about gore before and after volume 2. 

I think Miura is really good with coming up with concepts, but I think, personally, I’m glad that Sakurai was able to take those ideas and make them into what we have today.

[schraubd]

A New Challenger Approaches!: Evaluating the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism

Yet another antisemitism framework has emerged, with the release of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) signed by around two hundred Jewish Studies scholars. This, of course, comes rapidly on the heels of the Nexus document on antisemitism (of which I was one of the drafters), meaning we now have two new antisemitism frameworks standing as potential complements (or alternatives) to the venerable IHRA definition.

The other day I made a handy table summarizing the similarities and differences between the three definitions. That was designed to be a pretty straightforward, "just the facts" presentation. But I also want to give my evaluative judgment on the Jerusalem Declaration in comparison to IHRA and Nexus (I wrote more on the Nexus document, specifically, in this post). Obviously, the fact that I was a Nexus author means I have a dog in this hunt, though I don't view these definitions as in competition with one another. And likewise, I don't have direct knowledge of the background and genesis of the Jerusalem Declaration in the same way I do for the Nexus document -- some of my comments will be based on inference and speculation. So take them with however much salt you think is appropriate.

This is a somewhat long post, divided roughly into three parts. First, I address differences in the orientation of the JDA compared to the other frameworks -- who wrote and who their audience is. Second, I examine the JDA's relationship to IHRA -- particularly IHRA as a symbol of (depending on who you ask) rallying against antisemitism or creating toxic policing of discourse on Israel -- and how that is mediating the reception (both positive and negative) of the JDA. Finally, I address where the JDA is substantively different from the other frameworks and where it isn't. Likewise, I identify a few important areas that neither the JDA nor IHRA address that are included in the Nexus document: the inclusion of conditions (alongside attitudes and behaviors) as a potential form of antisemitism, recognizing and objecting to the practice of routine and reflexive dismissal of antisemitism claims, and addressing how Jews who take the "wrong" (however defined) position on Israel see their Jewish identity denigrated or denied -- a form of harassment that especially targets Jews of Color.

I. The JDA's Orientation

At the outset, there are a few core differences in the orientation of the JDA in comparison to the Nexus document -- who wrote it and what it is targeting. The JDA has more of a European center of gravity, whereas the Nexus is more American; the JDA is primarily endorsed by academics, whereas the Nexus document was geared more towards "community leader" sorts. Obviously, these are generalizations -- the JDA has American signatories, the Nexus document had academics involved (such as myself). But I think these broad-stroke differences exert a noticeable impact in terms of what is and isn't prioritized, and who was and wasn't sought to be "included" in the definition.

In particular, the JDA seems to have been very invested in coming up with a definition that could get non- or anti-Zionists onboard alongside at least liberal Zionists (getting a document signed by Susannah Heschel and Richard Falk is no mean feat!). In doing so, the JDA gives the non-Zionist contingent a few very big wins: it expressly declares BDS not antisemitic, and it more or less declares calls for the dissolution of Israel to be not antisemitic (the constraint is that any alternative polity that is envisioned must be one that protects "the right of Jews in the State of Israel [or, I imagine, its hypothetical successor] to exist and flourish, collectively and individually, as Jews"). The Nexus document, by contrast, had as its target audience (more or less) the median American Jew -- envisioned as a Biden-style Democrat who identifies as broadly Zionist and pro-Israel but has his or her fair share of criticism. Accordingly, the Nexus doesn't speak directly on BDS, implicitly judging it by the other standards in the document, and contains a more robust defense of the right of Jewish self-determination than is present in the JDA (it is notable that challenging Israel's "right to exist" is viewed as antisemitic by an extremely wide consensus of American Jews -- more so than almost any other issue). 

The JDA's audience is thus simultaneously broader and narrower than the Nexus': it reaches non-Zionist activists for whom it is exceedingly important that challenging Israel's existence as a Jewish state not be labeled antisemitic, but in doing so it may have language that's a veritable poison pill for rank-and-file Jews (at least in the US). The Nexus document was meant to be a viable set of guidelines for a Democratic administration that would let them handle antisemitism controversies while avoiding obvious shoals and pitfalls. The JDA (and I think this is true even if one agrees with it on its merits) would be more likely to provoke controversy simply because of its explicit language on BDS and its position that denying Jewish self-determination in Israel is not necessarily antisemitic. The JDA is I think more valuable as a tool of public discourse than something that could be "adopted" by a particular organization, especially (say) the Democratic Party (and the JDA is quite explicit that it is not meant to be adopted or codified as any explicit legal tool).

II. The Symbolism of IHRA

Speaking of provoking controversy, another defining feature of the JDA is its explicitly antagonistic posture towards IHRA. The Nexus document sought to position itself as primarily an interpretive resource -- a complement where IHRA was vague or incomplete (as Jonathan Jacoby put it, IHRA is the Mishnah and Nexus is the Gemara). The JDA, by contrast, is very much taking aim at the king. As I mentioned in my post on the Nexus document, IHRA has taken on such symbolic weight that one can generate almost reflexive support and opposition for a given initiative simply by presenting as a challenge to IHRA, and that's definitely occurring here. People who hate IHRA are cheering the JDA simply because it's the "anti-IHRA", even when their own conduct would seemingly be obviously indicted under the JDA's definition. As noted above, Richard Falk is a signatory even though he's endorsed materials which seem to cleanly fall under categories the JDA deems antisemitic. Jackie Walker praised the JDA too even though her antisemitism likewise would be covered by the JDA. It's doubtful that such persons are backing the JDA as a mea culpa for their past misconduct; rather, they see the JDA as a counter to IHRA's putative "weaponization" of antisemitism and endorse it on that basis. If or when the JDA does get cited to label them as antisemitic, I suspect they will be just as dismissive as they've been in the past. 

Arguably, then, just like IHRA there is a risk that the JDA will be "applied" in a purely symbolic manner divorced from its actual textual mandates. Just as IHRA's language insisting that context matters has been roundly ignored, one can easily imagine persons accused of antisemitism "citing" the JDA for the blithe retort that "criticism of Israel is not antisemitic" while disregarding language in the JDA which arguably encompasses their particular "critique". As always, one suspects the most important interpretive canon in accept or applying any definition of antisemitism will be the overriding principle "me and my friends are not antisemitic."

The hegemony of IHRA's symbolism doesn't just afflict the JDA's defenders. IHRA's advocates also have gotten so invested in the importance of IHRA as a marker for "taking antisemitism seriously" that they are often unwilling to recognize IHRA has quite a few serious gaps and ambiguities. The core definition itself is nearly useless ("A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews" -- what does that mean?), and the illustrative examples, while helpful as far as they go (and IHRA itself says they only go so far as to be cases which "could, taking into account the overall context," be antisemitic), are significantly underinclusive even leaving aside IHRA's relative lack of guidance on what "context" can be used to assess whether any given speech or behavior that abuts one of the examples actually is antisemitic. As a symbolic gesture where a given organization says "we care about antisemitism", IHRA can stand alone (in large part because for that function it doesn't matter what IHRA says). As an actual substantive tool for identifying antisemitism, IHRA needs to be expounded upon, and that is a task that (in different ways) both the Nexus document and the JDA attempt to tackle.

Unsurprisingly, I prefer the Nexus' approach of not directly trying to overthrow IHRA but rather fine-tune, calibrate, and direct it. I have no desire to undermine the symbolic importance of IHRA, but I very much have an interest in alleviating the very real gaps and shortfalls present under any honest reckoning with IHRA's text. Even still, if I'm being honest I suspect that the JDA will prove more influential than Nexus simply as a function of polarization. The people who blame IHRA for creating a toxic atmosphere around antisemitism want something that directly challenges it. The people who are basically content with the way antisemitism discourse has proceeded around IHRA will stick with it, without seeing the need for modification. Even if substantively the Nexus does the best job of filling the pitfalls and potholes in IHRA while representing a vision of fighting antisemitism that aligns with the median American Jew, the seemingly inexorable pull of polarization will drive people into the arms of either IHRA or anti-IHRA (which is to say, JDA).

III. Substantive Similarities and Differences Across the Frameworks

You might have noticed that the above analysis actually doesn't concentrate that much on the actual substantive differences between the three antisemitism frameworks. One reason for that is that, as my table illustrates, there are fewer differences between them than one might guess from the heated nature of the JDA and IHRA's reception. Certainly, it is fair to focus on the areas where the definitions depart -- that's what should determine whether one prefers one over another -- but that focus can overshadow the significant agreement in a large set of cases regarding what is antisemitic amongst all three frameworks. All agree that criticism of Israel can be antisemitic insofar as Israel is a Jewish institution (and thus none indulge in the tritely true but banal point that "Judaism and Israel are not the same thing"), all agree that criticism of Israel is not always antisemitic, all agree that "tropes" (variously worded) are an important feature of antisemitism, and all agree that notions of Jewish collective responsibility for alleged Israeli misdeeds are antisemitic.

What are the key differences? I've mentioned two already: IHRA and Nexus both consider denial of Jewish self-determination rights to be antisemitic, while the JDA seemingly does not; and IHRA and Nexus don't speak specifically on BDS, while the JDA expressly says it is not antisemitic. These are both significant. BDS is a well-known third rail in Jewish politics, and Nexus' "strategic ambiguity" (to put it uncharitably) on the question is an attempt to traverse a cliff the JDA eagerly dives off. Likewise, as noted above the "Israel has no right to exist" position is one on which there is almost unrivaled Jewish consensus regarding its antisemitic character, so the JDA's dissident position here is risky indeed.

Beyond those two issues (and putting aside any nitpicking one can do about phrasing or word choices), the other big departure I see in the JDA is that it explicitly says that "double standards" are not antisemitic, whereas IHRA says they are. The Nexus tries to take a middle position here, agreeing that double standards are antisemitic but refusing the simplistic argument that any time Israel is concentrated on or even "singled out" in a discrete case that is evidence of a double-standard (as I've argued, AIPAC "singles out" Israel -- is that antisemitic? Of course not). The JDA's rejection of including "double standards" likely stems from the view that this language has been particularly abused by right-wing zealots who argue that essentially any Israel-critical activity that does not simultaneously tackle the entire world is per se antisemitic. That notwithstanding, the JDA's dismissal of double standards as even a potential form of antisemitism seems clearly incorrect. Disparate treatment -- treating likes unalike -- is perhaps the closest thing there is to the paradigm case of discrimination and it'd be simply weird for antisemitism to stand alone in not including this very intuitive case. If one can subject Jews or Jewish institutions to different standards than other comparable actors in global affairs without it being labeled "antisemitic", you've created a loophole you can drive a truck through.

It is also important flag a group of important components of antisemitism that are found only in the Nexus definition and are not present or discussed in either IHRA or the JDA. The first is that the Nexus definition is the only one which considers certain social conditions (on top of behaviors or attitudes) to be cases of antisemitism: specifically, those conditions "that discriminate against Jews and significantly impede their ability to participate as equals in political, religious, cultural, economic, or social life." I lobbied very hard to include this language, and in some ways I think it is the single most important point in Nexus' favor compared to other frameworks. Ironically enough (given that the Nexus document is nominally limited to the Israel case), the inclusion of this language is why the Nexus document is probably the only framework of the three which could explain why a proposed ban on Kosher slaughter would be antisemitic -- it does not fall within any of either IHRA or JDA's examples, but it would represent a social condition which "significantly impede[s] [Jews'] ability to participate as equals" in European society. Understanding antisemitism as not just a set of attitudes or behaviors but as a state of social affairs better aligns antisemitism with emerging understandings of racism and other forms of oppression, all of which have dedicated considerable attention to understanding inequality at least partially in those terms.

The second inclusion in Nexus not seen in the other frameworks is an acknowledgment of the epistemic antisemitism that occurs when Jewish claims regarding antisemitism are reflexively or cavalierly dismissed. The so-called Livingstone Formulation, where claims of antisemitism can be immediately brushed off by claiming they're actually attempts to "silence criticism of Israel," is one of the primary mechanisms through which Jews are impeded in their ability to be treated as valid and viable claim-makers in public discourse. Here, too, recognition of this practice as a form of antisemitism aligns antisemitism with other forms of oppression where it has been well-acknowledged that these sorts of reflexive dismissals are themselves manifestations of racism, sexism, or what have you (as in the infamous and ubiquitous "race card" retort). The opening entry of the Nexus definition is decisive on this point: "All claims of antisemitism made by Jews, like all claims of discrimination and oppression in general, should be given serious attention" -- which is not to say automatic acceptance, but not immediate eye-rolling dismissal either. Neither IHRA nor the JDA address this issue -- IHRA probably wasn't thinking about it at all, and the JDA it's fair to assume includes a good number of stakeholders who are at least sympathetic to the notion that antisemitism claims are regularly abused and so need tighter policing.

The final major feature of Nexus not found in its compatriots is an acknowledgment of a particular type of antisemitism that targets Jews for having the "wrong" view on Israel, at which point their status as Jews is called into question. Rudy Giuliani claiming that he's "more of a Jew" than George Soros is a high-profile case here. But the importance of including this as a form of antisemitism stemmed from the way in which this sort of marginalizing rhetoric is especially likely to be deployed against Jews of Color, who regularly are assailed as being "fake" or "lesser" Jews (even by non-Jews!) if they deviate from an imagined proper or correct Jewish standpoint on Israel. The Nexus document accordingly recognizes that "denigrating or denying the Jewish identity of certain Jews because they are perceived as holding the 'wrong' position (whether too critical or too favorable) on Israel" is a form of antisemitism, and I can say that language was included in specific recognition of dynamics one increasingly sees on social media where JOCs have been subject to brutal and persistent harassment along this exact dimension. It is a recurrent failing of Jewish efforts on antisemitism that we often are not thinking intersectionally -- and so the discrete experiences or problems faced by, e.g., Jewish women, or Mizrahi Jews, or Jews of Color, as Jews are overlooked or not incorporated. I'm sure the Nexus document can still improve on this front, but I am proud that it made at least a step in the right direction.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/3fka31c

[craftypeaceturtle]

Sanders Sides- My True Identity Analysis

General:

Being honest, there’s like nothing to really analyse here but there were a few lines and characters that I felt really contrasted with later episodes. Also, Thomas seems like the kinda guy who would make references to the first few episodes to further a plot point. So I wanted to give this a go! 

The first line that kinda caught my attention was this (excuse the shitty quality):

The reason why he’s doing this style of content is to answer the question of “do I really know myself as well as I should?” which I think rings true for the entire series! Especially more recent episodes, they’re still tackling issues about figuring yourself out (e.g am I a good person?) and I dunno… I just feel like it’s cute that the series, even in the absolute beginning when it wasn’t going to be a series, has kept the same aim throughout. 

Along that line of thinking as well, the vague basic style of this episode and even the most recent still hold the exact same format. In this one, Thomas asks the sides a series of questions (how do I fit into romance? What impact do I want to make? etc). The other episodes have been a lot more focused on one issue/question and therefore give more in-depth answers. But ultimately the series remains the same as a question starting from a inner conflict that’s then resolved over the episode.

 One thing that really jumped out at me is just how lovely all the sides are in the first episode. Like they are delightful!!! Such lovely young gentlemen!!! They are so loving and comforting to Thomas which I feel is completely lost as the series progresses. An example:

As the series progresses, the flaws of each character is highlighted more and more. That alongside the fact that the sides are all dealing with their own issues/trauma means that this sentiment is kinda lost. But I see why this was kinda needed. If the characters remained over loving and praised Thomas then a lot of the conflicts and issues just wouldn’t happen. There would be no plotlines if the sides just mindlessly complimented and agreed with Thomas’ actions. But this is a line/idea that I wouldn't be surprised if Thomas referred to later on. The stark contrast between the loving sides here and the frustrated sides later is too good to not at least mention in passing! It could be used to link to the ideas that when we’re younger we think more highly of ourselves because we're not yet aware of certain flaws or even our idea of self. I dunno I just love this contrast!

Characters:

Logic- Okay this is the most different characterisation of them all. There’s not much to say because so much of his character is later rewritten so even the contrast isn’t fun to point out as you know it’s just unintentional. Logic is incredibly goofy- referring to a class despite there being none and the goofy ‘hi’ when seeing Creativity to name a few examples. This is also the most smiley and happy I think we’ll ever see Logic! 

Creativity/Princey- He is optimistic and his criticism of Thomas is that he isn't adventurous enough, something that remains later on. Most of his character is spent being referring to through romantic questions which is kinda seen later on in the Moving On episodes. Clearly there’s a connection between Creativity and romance. His characterisation feels largely the same but obviously with the later Creativity being more developed. 

Morality- He’s weirdly... clueless. Like scarily clueless. He doesn’t know Thomas’ name and doesn’t know basic questions such as where do babies come from. It makes him seem like an idiot but this is later written to be more nuanced. Here it’s just supposed to be funny but the not knowing his name thing just makes him seem really... off I guess? Him being the ‘dad’ character is explained that morality is often based on the morality of your own parents first and more knowledge is built off that foundation. It presents him more as a general father figure rather than the father of the other sides. 

Anxiety- While not in this video, there’s so much dialogue that revolves around Anxiety that it makes sense why Logic later says that despite not always being there his presence was always felt. Just felt like I needed to state that explicitly! 

Theories

There’s obviously not many theories that rely on evidence from this early on in the series but there’s a few points that need to be made! 

1) It’s said VERY explicitly that this is taking place in Thomas’ head. I’ve seen a few posts (rare but they are there) that theorise that the sides do have a physical presence but Thomas makes certain that these are his representations of his identity rather than a mental disorder or some weird hallucination. 

2) It’s not really a theory and more just fanon but the idea that Anxiety used to be Fear can be seen here. The sides all list their fears (Morality- spiders, Creativity- rejection and Logic- what's at the bottom of the ocean) and so the emphasis of Morality’s fear of spiders and Anxiety’s room featuring spiders does seem kinda intentional. Like kinda… It’s a weak point but I do think it’s interesting that Thomas had an episode where these facts were established at the same time (Accepting Anxiety). Also I feel like these fears could be a fun reference used later in the series... or maybe I’m putting too much emphasis this early on I dunno!

Note: At the end of the day I’m aware no one is asking for an analysis this early on in the series but being new to the fandom, I kinda want this sort of post to refer to. To get a basic idea of theories and fanon and when they were all established. Just something to read alongside watching the episode. Any points and theories this early on I think are kinda useless because Thomas was yet to realise this was going to be a series let alone start planning out character arcs. And by the time he did realise this, he was writing/ planning to rewrite a lot of these personalities. Also this video is SHORT! Like there’s not a whole lot that can be established in a five minute video... But if you’re reading this then thanks for taking the time to read this haha, I don’t think it was worth your time! I plan to do this for each episode but I imagine my newness to this fandom will really shine through when trying to tackle the monster of the newer episodes so if you have any other points you’d like to discuss then please do! I want this to be a discussion... 

[writingonjorvik]

The New Gang Pitch

Following my narrative arc pitch, I wanted to outline a pitch for the new central character unit around the MC to go with it, since characters can make or break a story.

The Self-Taught Vessel, Allacia Clair

One of the first characters part of this group I would imagine has a bit of a rivalry with the MC about their powers. While she’s also a Vessel (my name for the Aideen’s champion role from my narrative pitch), she didn’t have anyone like the Keepers to teach her about her powers. She has a strong grasp on the “Avatar State” power/connecting to Aideen, her other powers she can’t really control and doesn’t have a good foundation for using her other core abilities. Her arc with the MC includes them learning to work together, possibly coming to a head at some point when it seems to this character that the MC is having no trouble with learning about the “Aideen State” powers.

She should be reckless, her powers manifesting in bursts, kinda like an unbridled Lightning Circle Alex, to show she never learned basic control over her powers. She’s stubborn and resilient, with a bitter sense of respect for the MC. She should be funny in a dry humor sort of way, but heart of gold trope, all the way. Points for her being in her mid to late 20′s, so a little older than the “about to start college” MC to add to that “how can you do this thing I struggled with” arc. Extra, extra points if she’s a POC, because, you know, cannon POC badasses are great.

The Valley Girl Hacker, Brittany Bellwinter

We need a diva in the party, and there’s nothing I love more than the idea of a full blown, bubble gum popping, gag me with a spoon, Silicon Valley girl for that. None of the “I don’t get people” hacker trope. This girl gets people, but is also Elle Woods smart with computers. “You took down entire network of G.E.D. encrypted asset logs.” “What, like it’s hard?” She takes no shit for being the pretty blonde girl, and she works her ass off to pull off her chic cyberpunk style while she takes down an entire DC facility’s security system from the Stablebucks down the street.

She’s open, honest, and direct. Her self-confidence is through the roof, to the point of initial conflict. Her being a vigilante when she meets the MC is a great arc to have them working together, and also establishing people outside the Keepers having an issue with Dark Core. She’s hungry for knowledge though, and her handiness with gadgets can provide SSO with a lot of tools for having ruins being destroyed in story beats without losing the information. But also a problem as she risks her life to get those pictures.

The Heart, Kadin Fairwind

This is the one character I think whose gender is most important to be kept the same. Kadin needs to be masc-presenting, either as an enby person who uses he/him pronouns, or just simply as a male presenting person. This is first and foremost because of the message Kadin can send. If SSO wants to be a story about gender equality, then it needs to also talk about how men relate to “feminine” topics, in particular, being the heart of the group. The Heart of the 5 man band is exclusively reserved for a female in the party, which is why it’s important to have a character like Kadin, who is masc-presenting, be the heart, to subvert that and show other masc-presenting players that you can be masculine and also be an empathetic person that tries to keep your friends together.

Kadin is a big sweetie, possibly physically, who just has a soft-spot for people. But when I say he’s big, I don’t mean Kadin is this doofy gentle giant or some himbo. No, he’s physically built, like a quarterback built, but he’s also very intelligent. Kadin needs to be outwardly very masculine, with an awareness of his strength and how it impacts people around him. He’s smart and observant and is really good on picking up on people’s emotions. He wants to help people, with a passion for being either a counselor or a nurse (specifically a nurse, not a doctor). Possibly with friends who were assholes when they were in school who bullied people, until Kadin decided he didn’t want to do that and wanted to be better aware of how he hurt people and how to make things better.

As much as I’m an advocate for queer & POC rep, I think the best way to do Kadin is just have him as this straight, white guy. I think him just being a hetero-cis dude and becoming aware of his privilege can be such an impactful message, even if the why isn’t ever explicitly said.

The Magic Enthusiast, Nakai “Xen” Seiko

If Kadin is cis, then Xen is one hundred percent they/them non-binary. But also, if Brittany is the tech wiz, then Xen simply wants to be an actual wizard. And not just wishes magic was real kinda wants to be a wizard, legit knows magic is real and can’t figure it out/can’t use it wants to be a wizard. Xen consumes all things magic, which makes them an amazing outside asset to the MC and Allacia, who both can use magic, but don’t always understand magic. Xen gets magic fundamentally as a study, but not always as a practice, which is why they struggle to actually use it. And while I do think they should learn how to use magic, they should by the kind of character who wants to multi-class wizard over and over so they can get every school of magic, not so they can actually get better. It’s Xen’s craving for understanding magic that will be a great tool in learning more about other planes of reality and how they relate to magic.

Xen’s personality is fundamentally at odds. While they come from a very traditional Japanese immigrant family and have a high respect for their culture, they obviously struggle with who they are and how that fits into what they want to do with their life. This is import in particular to me because so many cultures gender magic, with feminine and masculine sources of magic. Xen as a non-binary magic user, like myself, has to struggle with figuring out where those legends come from and breaking down how to feel about that in their own practice, particularly when Aideen is shown has being a very feminine entity. Much like the points before, I don’t think this has to be explicit, but I do think it can be very clearly coded to say that gendering things is often forced. While there are gendered things in nature, like things surrounding baby-making, most things aren’t and just because something is gendered, like Aideen, it doesn’t designate that all things need to be. I think the best way to balance this message is to have Xen has a very comedic person, always telling jokes, even when the timing isn’t always right. They should have an issue with hyperfixating, and I think having them being someone with ADD/ADHD is a great match for their other struggles, getting consumed in their pursuit of magic to the point of it being a hazard too.

The Gentle Giant, Bogga Norsdóttir

If anyone is going to be the brute of this party, it’s going to be Bogga. Bogga is a “I’m going to deadlift a Shire” kinda girl, but she won’t, cause it’s a horse, and why would she scare a horse like that? She’s honestly the simplest concept I have. She’s a gentle giant, though I don’t think she should be “stupid.” I think she should have a simple code of ethics, a very black and white version of right and wrong. It’s simple, you hurt her friends, she fucks you up. I would love too if she’s part Kalter. But yeah, Bogga is kinda the constant rock of the party, and that’s not just cause she’s a solid unit. She’s just reliable, and for that she’s kinda a sounding board for everyone else’s more complicated arcs. The point is that Bogga will always be there to support the party, and she doesn’t really need to grow. She’s got her life figured out, and so she’s just there to help everyone else figure out theirs.

The Returning Soul Rider

If there’s any of these members I’m ok with dropping, it’s this one. Not just cause I can’t decide which one, but also the whole point of the above group is establishing a friend group that the MC chooses through the story and actively recruits, not an existing friend group like the Soul Riders are. Even with the new intro to the Soul Riders they added, there’s never going to be a point where the MC isn’t a fifth wheel to their group, at least for me and I know for a lot of you, particularly as SSL gets more and more removed. The only reason they could even effectively establish their friend group before was because only two of them were friends when Lisa got to Jorvik, and it was Lisa that brought the four of them together. And honestly, I think staying on their story makes if feel more and more to me like we’re cleaning up their mess and undermines the Soul Riders defeating Garnok in SSL. Which ruins their abilities, and it’s just yet another reason we need to move away from them narratively.

Still, that doesn’t mean I think the Soul Riders need to be cut out entirely, but I think we need to relook at the angle that the MC is relating to the Soul Riders. And that means the Soul Riders relooking at themselves, particularly post Garnok, which is also why I think this arc needs to end.

In any case, I’m tied between Alex and Anne. On the one hand, Alex is a fighter and suddenly having no big bad to fight is a hell of a good arc to pitch. I also think her in contrast to Bogga is a great square off. Alex not being ready to be done fighting is a good arc, because she’s always been a fighter. What is she without something to go after now? I think her being afraid of falling back into her old ways now that she doesn’t have a target to hunt down is such an interesting arc to follow.

Anne is another interesting one, because I think with everyone expecting Anne to be consumed with vengeance before Garnok is defeated and her to come out of that, people would expect that after he’s gone, she would be ready to be done and just go back to being a normal girl. But I think that even if Anne gets over her vengeance, she’s the Soul Rider of the Sun Circle. Her powers are to open portals, she’s destined to travel. Anne isn’t going to want to go back. Whether it’s being a dressage master or traveling between planes of reality, Anne is the portal master of the druids. Worse, she was an imprisoned portal master. She’s shouldn’t want to be still ever again.

I’m honestly up in the air on them, and I’m not opposed to both, but I think it should just be one in the main group and another with a side arc we touch in on when we touch base with the other Soul Riders.

And yeah, that’s the pitch.

[thaumaturtles]

Why do Karkat and Caliborn have so many apparent similarities?

This might seem like an odd question at first, considering Hussie is known for using “prototype concepts” and mixing and matching them to make more refined versions down the line. For instance, his comics on the poorly namedTeam Special Olympics site featured much intentional homophobia, racism, bad dialogue and worse art, and Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff was a later execution of those concepts which made it clearer that he was lampooning bad webcomics. To use an in-universe example, Nepeta was used as the in-universe avatar for audience engagement long before Calliope was a blip on the horizon. So, why am I bothering to ask this? Karkat was obviously just a proto-Caliborn, right? Well, let’s look at the facts:

They both type in gray

They both type in all caps and use the rudest possible terms for things

They both have candy red blood and are in some way related to lime blood (Karkat through mutation and Caliborn through his sister)

But those are all superficial similarities. Let’s go a bit deeper.

They’re both pretty sexist. Much as I love Karkat, he does say some shit that displays a pretty condescending view towards women in canon. You can point out that he was initially meant to parody internet trolls, and that he’s overcompensating due to Alternian culture, and that he Lives In A Society and whatnot, but regardless, he’s pretty sexist during most of Act 5.

They both serve as a “typical” example of what their race is like, and display elements of their culture (or lack thereof, since Caliborn makes it clear that an asocial species would have no need for culture) despite not being very typical themselves. Karkat is a mutantblood who doesn’t even experience the quadrants correctly, and Caliborn never dominated the way he was meant to

They both make friends with Jack Noir, though for entirely different reasons. Karkat makes friends with Jack because his natural inclination is to try to be friends with everyone, no matter the circumstance, while Caliborn forms an uneasy alliance (note that he explicitly calls him not a friend) with Jack because they’re equally bloodthirsty.

They both have an interesting dynamic with one Gamzee Makara. Admittedly, because of his level of importance, nearly everyone has some sort of relationship with Gamzee, but it is interesting that it’s concilliatory on both ends: Karkat pacified Gamzee during Murderstuck while Gamzee took care of Caliborn during his childhood.

Finally, the biggest bit of similarity between them: they’re both terrible at art. This is, honestly, the main reason I made this post. In Homestuck Book 5: Act 5 Act 2 Part 1, Hussie mentions that Karkat is the only character who’s as bad at art as Caliborn, going on to say, quote, “The fact that Karkat and Caliborn have a bit of overlap in personality and typing style may correlate somewhat with their artistic sensibilities as well. Like there's a certain part of the brain that's overactive in both kids, and possibly in all very special boys of their ilk. “

What, exactly, did Hussie mean by this? He’s previously not shied away from describing Caliborn’s brain as broken in some way, and it’s clear that Karkat deals with serious self-loathing issues; could either of those be it? Does this mean Caliborn’s self love isn’t nearly as unflappable as we thought? Is it a mask? Was he just saying Karkat and Caliborn are extremely “left-brained” in the traditional sense? This seems less than likely, to me. While I do think Caliborn is pretty left-brained (the jury’s still out on whether he can draw a CURVE, for the sufferer’s sake), Karkat, much as he fronts like this LOGICAL, NO-BULLSHIT, CUT-TO-THE-CHASE MACHO MAN, is far more in touch with his emotional side than anything else. In all honesty, he doesn’t even strike me as one of the more intellegent Homestuck characters, at least not in the traditional sense. (Please note that saying a character whom I adore very much and identify with heavily isn’t as smart as other HS characters is like pulling teeth for me).

I do wonder what exactly Hussie meant there, though. The word “special” is of course loaded, both within Homestuck and without. I’m sure I needn’t tell you of its perjorative, ableist meaning, considering I brought it up in the second sentence of this post. It’s very likely that Hussie is just making an off-colour joke here. Let’s act as though he isn’t for the sake of exploring this a little more though. Within the comic, the first thing I think of when hearing the word special is Special Stardust, which is of course inextricably linked to cherubim. Gamzee is a frequent partaker, as are Caliborn and Calliope. However, another place it’s used, especially with the context of a “special mind”, is with Jake English. (Caliborn is even the one to tell him this!) Our other major page, Tavros Nitram, is also linked to special stardust and also behaves similarly to Jake, which might lend water to this theory.

So, then, one must ask, what exactly is being said here? it’s suggested that Karkat and Caliborn have... something in common with one another, and furthermore with Jake and Tavros, but what? On this page right here, Caliborn says their shared uniqueness is because they have to work harder than everyone else. This makes sense, as we see Caliborn’s journey to Lordship is a long and arduous one, and we also see Jake and Tavros having to struggle to reach their full potential as Pages. Karkat has to fight his inner demons for a long time, and by the end of the comic it’s clear he still has a long way to go. I doubt that that’s what Hussie meant, considering he specified “a part of the brain that’s overactive,” but I do think it sheds some light on matters. I especially think it might give us a new theory relating to the Knight class: If it’s truly meant to be a counterpart to Page, then maybe that means they ALSO have to work hard to reach their full potential? This might just be a reflection of Karkat’s personal journey though, considering Dave managed to get a handle on Time shit fairly early in the game.

This post was the equivalent of me violently shrugging and stating self-evident facts for a few minutes, but it’s also getting a bit long in the tooth, so I think I’m gonna end it here. I’m open to feedback/counter-theories/telling me BKEW already came up with this theory in 2012

[itsclydebitches]

3 topics this time!

1.) I was watching Sarcastic Chorus’ video on Star Vs The Forces of Evil, and near the end there was a comment that stuck with me. “These ideas are present, but not fully explored. I like to call them the window shopping of ideas.”

And that was just such a perfect way of describing it. When I first heard it, I immediately thought of My Hero Academia and RWBY. And while both have this problem in spades, RWBY is much more obvious about it. Every single time RWBY introduces a concept they’ll look at it, try it on for a bit, and then dump it on the floor for other people to deal with, and then leave without buying into anything.

Raven? Dumped. Beacon? Dumped. Has anyone seen Tai? Glynda? Sun? Are the grimm still roaming around? Are we sure that Salem hasn’t yet retrieved the relic from Beacon? Wasn’t Nora supposed to get development? Are she and Ren still having problems? Shouldn’t Jaune be learning how to control his semblance better? Especially since it’s something so helpful? Didn’t Robyn need immediate medical attention? But she somehow survived? And is perfectly okay? How? Wasn’t she in a serious medical condition? Is Haven still in chaos? Where is Watts? Is he locked up? Or did he escape while the mains were throwing their temper tantrums? Where’s Tyrian? Where are all of the other students? All dumped. Little to no explanation, and off to the next shop.

2.) I disappeared for a bit after your recap because I was so purely infuriated with the last two episodes. Ironwood shooting Oscar feels ignorable to me in a way because it’s such an out of left field, ooc moment, that my brain is just refusing to acknowledge it. It’s horrible, terrible writing. And it feels a lot like shark jumping.

But as someone who started writing fanfiction in middle school, I get where they were coming from. They wanted a fall from grace story. Cool. Got it. But that takes time. If they wanted to do this properly, it should have been given much more time. Hit the topic episode 1 of the season and devote little time to anything else. The election? Scrap it. Overall it was barely relevant. Robyn. Skip it. Again, barely relevant. Don’t have Ruby&Co hiding info. That takes up time and attention. Have them put all of their cards on the table immediately. (It also serves to not make them hypocrites.) Give the teams another solution to save everyone. (At least a reasonably feasible one.)

Have the kids argue it out. Have Ironwood refuse to budge because they’ve already put too much time into the plan before Ruby and friends came along. Have Weiss go to her mother ask her to set up a meeting with the council to protest what Ironwood is doing. And have her gain their trust by revealing what her father has been doing. If you really want to do this in such little time, it’s possible, but you have to dedicate the time that you do have to it. If you don’t want to do that, and you don’t want to pace it out for another season, then scrap it. In the overall story for the show Ironwood being evil is wholly unnecessary. It adds nothing  to the show. Especially since they’ve already done this twist.

You could also make it so that the Ace Ops were going behind Ironwood’s back to betray him to Salem. Have the ace ops getting along with the mains to gather information. You could also have had Ironwood going down a dark path since his reintroduction. Have him plant spyware on them. Have him in shadows. Have him looking menacing in scenes. Alluding to terrible things that he might be doing. Looking at secret files. Messing with the relic. But for the love of god, don’t do what you’ve done. It was messy and lazy. If you can’t (or don’t want to) devote the time and effort to make this work, then remove it from your story.

3.) There was an article about the fan backlash regarding Clover’s death. In it, it talked about how anyone upset was just a whiny woman who was upset that she can’t fantasize about two gay men. And that it wasn’t queerbaiting or burying your gays because Clover wasn’t officially canonized as such. And that the show has Bumblebee, so it can’t be doing either of those things. And I was so disgusted by it and the comments that followed that I had to get off the internet for awhile. There’s just so much wrong with that.

No, Clover was not said to be anything other than straight in canon. (He wasn’t said to be straight either, so…) However, if we are only going with what has explicitly been stated in the show; then I will not be accepting Bumblebee as a legitimate point for the show from the same people any longer.

Do they seem to be headed into a relationship? Sure. And I hope that it gets proper time and follow through. But if we’re only accepting relationships and sexualities by being told in universe, then you can’t use that as a shield. Because nothing has been said. The writers could change their minds, place them in relationships with male characters, say that they’re straight (you better not RT, do not take this as a legitimate idea to do) and act like nothing ever happened. But it wouldn’t matter, according to this logic, because they never technically canonized it. And I know that it’s a little different, given that we’re shown Blake and Yang having signs of romance feelings for each other, but by this argument, nothing matters unless we’re spoon fed information. And  that brings me to my next point.

In the history of media wlw pairings have always been more ‘acceptable’ than mlm ones. Because there’s a history of denial and fetishizing them. It it’s women, then of course they’re all over each other! They’re women! With all those emotions and need for physical contact! If they’re in a relationship with another woman? That’s fine! It’s not a real relationship! They’re just playing! They need a man! And just imagine! Two attractive women being attracted to you, good sir! And imagine being such a studly man that these women change their sexualities just for you! Women are fickle after all! They change their minds all the time! 

A man in a relationship with another man? Is seen as unnatural. Because straight men can’t fantasize about it. They can’t fetishize it. And therefore, there’s no need for it in media. They don’t want it there. And I don’t want to accuse the writers at RWBY of specifically thinking this way, but it is the way media tends to go. And while the lead characters are women, and a good amount of the fandom are women, there’s still room to question if this is what’s happening. The main leads are all young, thin, and conventionally attractive. Even when in a place that marked by how cold it is, the clothes are more for style and having the girls look attractive over function. The only one of them that looks even remotely clothed appropriately for the weather is Weiss. And when you get to the male characters, they’re either evil, dead, or given so little character that half the time they’re easy to forget. Because the story nor the writing is interested in men.

Also, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend of the writing suddenly getting rid of characters that fans pair with Qrow. First Ozpin, then Ironwood, then Clover. You could probably make an argument for Tai being shunted off once that started to gain traction in fandom as well. It’s creepy. 

(Sorry if anything is phrased badly. One of the problems I have with social things is that I never know if I’ve phrased something well enough to get my point across without being offensive. Still working on it, so let me know!)

***

Response under the cut! 

1. absolutely love that phrase: “Window shopping ideas.” I feel like I may have heard it before, but not enough for it to stick. It really is perfect though. The story looks at something, seems to consider it seriously, maybe even tries it on… but in the end doesn’t commit. We move onto the next piece of clothing—or even the next store—without, ultimately, having achieved anything other than introducing the possibility of buying a new outfit (telling a cohesive story). One of the most common compliments I hear RWBY get, and one I agree with, is that it has so many cool ideas. The problem is this isn’t a tumblr post going, “Here are all my fun headcanons, random concepts, and nifty details vaguely held together by a broad plot.” Cool ideas alone isn’t enough to carry a mainstream story a lot of people are paying for, certainly not one as long and complex as RWBY has become. Granted, every story has window shopping to a certain extent. We can acknowledge that there are different levels: 

Dropping Glynda is super understandable largely due to the issues surrounding her voice actress. Finding someone new for Qrow is one thing because he’s still actively a part of the plot, but if you’ve lost an actress for a character currently off screen, it’s tempting to just keep her off screen. I get that. It’s an arguably smart sacrifice. 

Dropping Jaune’s development is somewhat understandable because we acknowledge that change within a cast this size has to cycle. Jaune got to improve last volume through figuring out how to heal that guy’s arm and amplify Ren’s semblance. So his development takes a backseat the next volume to make room for others’. Problem is… 

Dropping something like Nora and Ren’s development is both Not Good and actively hurting the justification behind dropping other things (like Jaune). What did we learn about Ren and Nora this volume? Nothing. There was no insight into Nora like we were led to believe there would be. Ren obviously has a lot of stuff he’s trying to work through, but the story actively kept him from working through it by silencing him with a kiss. And the kiss itself? Great in regards to moving forward with their romantic relationship, but we already knew that relationship existed. We were clear about Ren and Nora being a couple up until Ren voiced hesitation… which, as said, was then ignored. The kiss achieved little in the grand scheme of things and, unlike something like Blake/Yang, doesn’t function to provide absolutely needed proof. Again, it’s good we got it, it just wasn’t done particularly well and was done in place of much more important development. I don’t need them to kiss this second because their moments in Volume 4-6 firmly established that they’re a couple. I do need to know more about who Nora is, whether Ren agrees with Ironwood, and why he’s so torn about this relationship that just the concept of hitting a fake version of Nora in battle makes him cry. (Because seriously, don’t they spar? That was clearly something much bigger than just not wanting to his his girlfriend.) 

So… yeah. A lot of window shopping. Which connects to: 

2. The fact that yeah, there was too much going on this volume which resulted in none of it getting the time it needed. We keep coming back to the question of “What is the point?” What was the point of resurrecting Penny if she wasn’t going to grow as a person, or help Ruby do the same? What’s the point of spending so much time on Robyn learning to trust Ironwood only for her to immediately reject him on the airship? What’s the point of devoting time to Qrow and Clover’s friendship if Qrow thinks so little of it he’ll team up with Tyrian instead? What was the point of framing Penny? What’s the point of spending SO much time showing justified and sympathetic scenes of Ironwood if you’re going to take a sharp right and randomly make him shoot a kid in the finale? What’s the point of the group being devastated by Ozpin lying to them if they’re just going to turn around and tell the same lies? Nothing amounted to anything. All the time we spent developing Thing A was dropped for Thing B. Continuing the analogy, the characters spent a whole volume admiring the red dress, checking the price, talking about reasons why this was the perfect purchase for them to make… only to turn around and buy a pair of pants instead, something we haven’t even seen them look at, let alone try on. The journey these characters took is entirely disconnected from where they ended up. 

3. Oof yeah. All of that is a complex af topic that deserves more than my quick response… but suffice to say, anyone who believes that “wasn’t queerbaiting or burying your gays because Clover wasn’t officially canonized as such” fundamentally doesn’t understand what queerbaiting is. The whole point is that it’s NOT canonized. Like Blake/Yang remain. I admit 100% that Clover and Qrow were not teased in the same way that other potential queer couples have been (such as Dean/Cas in Supernatural), but there were a lot of hints and coding that encouraged a queer reading regardless and fans are right to point that out, regardless of what RT’s intentions may have been. Even if you don’t want to go that route, this volume still—quite obviously—encouraged a close friendship, something that in and of itself is chock-full of implications given the history of the buddy duo/opposites attract trope. Whether you read Qrow and Clover as platonic or potentially romantic, the end result is the same: two men embodied an intimate and gentle relationship (something rare for two “straight” guys) and then one was horrifically murdered off in order to “justify” the destruction of the one other friendship Qrow still has going. There’s a lot in there for fans to be upset with, especially when it was all set up so poorly. And frankly, until RT actually canonizes Blake/Yang, I’m not going to make any blanket statements about how they would never queerbait, not matter how lightly. Because you’re right. We don’t know what we’ll get in the future and no matter how seemingly obvious it is that they will enter a relationship at some point…we can’t swear that it will actually make it on screen. In which case everything we’ve seen—romantic hand-holding, intense blushes, going out on presumed dates—would enter the realm of really intense queerbaiting, which in turn would drastically color how viewers read Clover and Qrow. You proved with one couple that you’re willing to string viewers along… so why would we claim you weren’t doing the same here, even though it was a lot more subtle? As an on-going series it’s hard to make any definite statements about RWBY’s representation, but given how long it’s taking for their presumed, primary queer couple to get together (no matter how little time has passed in-world the writers are still making the fanbase wait years) and the history surrounding Clover and Qrow’s character types as well as the ending they got… I’m more than a little uncomfortable. Just like I was uncomfortable with the decision to make the first queer character a villain who blames her crush for those feelings, her abusive relationship, all while trying to murder her parents. That stuff hurts in a world where queer media is still both rare and often badly done. Even if next volume Blake/Yang becomes canon and RT has A+ rep moving forward, we’re still left for the next year with one queer coded character denouncing all his male friendships, one close male friend dead, and two women dancing around each other. Volume 7 has a lot of things that on their own aren’t necessarily that bad, but pull them all together and it paints a far worse picture. 

(Also yeah, another anon mentioned how RWBY is popular because it’s not fanservice and I’m like, “Yes… but also no lol. I have things to say about how ‘We don’t do giant breasts or pantie shots!’ shouldn’t be the only bar we strive to meet.) 

[ellynneversweet]

Ok, so I’ve finished Normal People and I have ... thoughts. Mostly about whether it succeeds or fails as a text, and what the relative metrics are by which success should be judged (it’s succeeded in getting me to think about it, for sure). This got long and a bit ranty, and does discuss the mental illness aspects of the book, so I’ve put it below the cut. Spoilers etc.

I haven’t watched the show or read any of Sally Rooney’s other books (book?) or reviews yet, because I wanted to get down what I took away from the book by itself, rather than what other people thought about it. I did see the headline of like, one review that seemed to think it was all about capitalism, which struck me as a significant stretch as a primary theme, but hey. My take was that it was primarily concerned with (many and various) degrees of mental illness and unwellness experienced by various characters, the causes and effects thereof, etc etc, and it’s really because of that that I don’t know whether or not I actually liked the book.

Ultimately I think my ambivalence comes comes down to how the narration is structured, and the way Rooney doesn’t at any point step in explicitly prompt the audience in one direction or another.

So what took me a hot minute to realise was that the book’s written in a very close third person narration, alternating between Connell and Marianne’s perspectives.The thing is, however, that this close third person isn’t immediately obvious, because Rooney subverts the whole ‘show don’t tell’ advice. There’s a lot of phrasing given as ‘she felt good’ ‘he felt anxious’ ‘then they had sex’ etc.  The most personal aspects of the plot are constantly elided with this flat, clinical, definitive language that sounds almost like a witness statement in a criminal case. That’s especially the case with Marianne, who disassociates a lot, and slightly less so with Connell, who’s anxious, but the flat description is pretty present throughout. There are moments when the narrative dips into describing sensation, but that seems to occur only with regards to things that are irrelevant and impersonal, like drinking a glass of (insert carbonated beverage here), or feeling the breeze from an air conditioner. The book is all about this very intimate, arguably co-dependant and unhealthy relationship between these two intermittently sexually involved characters, so the aforementioned flatness struck me as an odd choice initially.

However. There’s two things that this does. The first, and IMO more significant, is that is creates an illusion of the narrative voice as omniscient and impartial, rather than biased and unreliable as it actually is. The seeming authority of the definitive statements in the narrative is emphasised by the stock filler phrases that the each of the dual protagonists uses in direct dialogue, and which inevitably mean the opposite of what’s actually said — in the case of Marianne we get ‘okay’ (I disagree but I want this conversation to end) and ‘I don’t know’ (i believe this to be profoundly true but it makes me unhappy), and in the case of Connell we get ‘obviously’ (I’m not sure at all, what do you think?). So the upshot of this is that especially in the earlier parts of the novel the audience is led into thinking the description of a particular plot point is what objectively happened, rather than the biased viewpoint of one of two people who keep talking past each other (I’m thinking particularly of the part in which Connell moves home because he can’t make rent, and each of them was waiting for the other to propose his moving into her flat instead).

So it is really interesting on that level of language structure. I do feel that the section headings (‘two weeks later,’ ‘six months later,’ ‘five minutes later’) were a bit of a red herring — especially towards the climax of the book, when things became violent, I was frankly expecting it to take a schlocky turn towards one or both of the main characters being maimed or killed in a domestic violence and/or drunk driving accident, à la Jodi Piccoult.

It didn’t, which was a relief, but I didn’t subsequently find the ending satisfying, and I think that’s because the way that it ended — a breakup that’s not really a breakup, just a breather — felt like something that had occurred at least three or four times already in the text. It’s always tricky to write a satisfying ending when all the main characters are alive and young and (presumably) going to continue their lives. Why stop the narrative here, rather than there? I think for that sort of ending to work, a story does need to feel like it’s shifting into a different stage of the characters’ lives, one that can be inferred, however dimly, but is distinct enough from the part described in the text to form a natural break. This didn’t feel like a break from what had gone before. It felt like a groove in an emotional cycle that had already been repeated, that had been shown as being repeated, that gave every sign of being repeated again and again, forever and ever amen.

This leads into the part where I talk about what I didn’t like, fyi, and fair warning, mostly what I didn’t like was the characterisation of Marianne. Sorry if she’s your fave.

So Marianne gets the last word of the narrative, in which she thinks about how ‘they’ve [Marianne and Connell] been so good for each other’. And i would argue two things, which is that 1) unreliable narrator or not, this being the last part of the text gives weight to this being read as a true statement 2) this is, uh, pretty clearly not the case. Marianne’s still fundamentally the same, teetering on the edge of self-destruction, and Connell is still anxious (and being made more so by Marianne’s reaction to his small successes).

Now, neither character is perfect. They’re also not bad people -- but they are struggling people who use maladaptive coping strategies and don’t ever really appear to move past those.

At first glance, on a scale of quantifying unhappiness, Marianne gets the raw end of the stick. She’s a character who’s sympathetic and pitiable, because she starts out as the smart, bullied kid who turns out to have an abusive home life and who is brutally dumped by her first boyfriend. So far, so sad. Connell, by contrast, is much less upfront about the things that cause him trouble (although they’re very much there) and has the initial upper hand. Connell also comes off as much more self-aware than Marianne — the part where he’s lying on the floor in a post-shower depression slump reminds me of that piece that goes around tumblr occasionally, about lying on the floor sobbing about the state of the world, and simultaneously noticing that the last time you painted, you didn’t do a good job with the brushwork in the corner you’re looking at, and thinking about how you should re-do it once you finish crying.

But the thing I can’t get my head around with Marianne is how Rooney feels about her, and it boils down to this: what level of awareness and intentionality is Rooney operating at when writing about Marianne’s mental health arc? Does Rooney agree with Marianne’s self-assessment of herself as ‘better’ and ‘normal’ (ie still acting in more or less the same way as she did throughout the text, but no longer a subject of gossip) at the end of the book, or does she not?

As I mentioned, I haven’t seen the adaptation, but I’ve seen a gif or two, and what struck me as I was reading was that the way that Marianne is described as looking (and styled in the show) is reminiscent of the pop-culture caricature of Sylvia Plath — increasingly thin, indie-fashionista, bangs, statement lipstick, weird but precociously brilliant, magnetic, male muse and male victim, mentally ill in a way that is complex but always sexy and sexualised (of course she developed a cute, posh eating disorder that involved eating half an expensive sugary pastry and a sugarless black coffee every day. Of course she did).

Basically, what I want to know is, is Marianne someone Rooney wrote based on that image of Plath, or is Marianne someone cosplaying as that image of Plath, whom Rooney is consciously deconstructing?

See, I think writing Marianne as someone (possibly unintentionally) cosplaying Plath is interesting. The myth of the hot, damaged girl is pretty pervasive (Harley Quinn, the suicide girls, etc etc) and writing Marianne as a character who has legitimate issues that she has trouble facing, who then instead focuses her self-awareness into this trope of ‘acceptably damaged’ has potential. I feel like there’s an opportunity there to examine the line between struggling with a mental illness vs self-consciously performing that struggle in a way that’s socially acceptable, which is a topic that suits the period when the novel’s set.

Unfortunately though, I think Rooney is probably buying into that myth rather than  examining it, because the fact that no-one, in a book that starts in 2011 ever sits Marianne down and goes, ‘yes, I get that people have told you you’re mentally unwell as a tactic to bully you, and that was shitty, but you pretty clearly have a raging case of ptsd which is NOT YOUR FAULT, please accept some help’ — that is frankly hard to believe. Not Connell who seeks out therapy and takes some dubiously successful medication? Not Joanna, who is by all accounts well adjusted and who makes a point of caring in a friendship where she’s doing a lot the heavy lifting? Not Lorraine, parent of the decade? Not some random teacher or professor, looking out for an obviously promising student?  Really, no one?

Marianne is supposedly brilliant and a tireless researcher, but she apparently never becomes aware of the possibility that there might be ways to process her past experiences in a way that would allow her some measure of peace. Never wants it, even in the worst of times. Never ceases to wallow in her own unhappiness. And it’s relevant, I think, that in the period of the novel where Marianne is (kind of) happy, when she’s making a success of things at uni, the focus of the book is on how she’s making Connell jealous by dating an abusive man. The closes she comes to self-awareness is recognising her proclivity to seek out unhealthy relationships and decide to lean into that, in what is consistently the least unhealthy romantic relationship she has. That feels like a cop-out.

Like, I’m not suggesting that every story that features mental illness as a theme needs to show recovery. That’s, unfortunately, not always the case. Some people never get better. Some people can’t bring themselves to believe in the possibility of getting better. It’s not even the case that recovery is a straight line, when it happens. I know that. I’ve seen people I care about it struggle with a whole range of problems, I’ve struggled myself. But this felt like 13 Reasons Why for adults, like depression-porn, and I just...am a bit angry, I think, that I can’t tell if that was the intention, it that wasn’t the intention but was the outcome, or if that’s just my take and I’ve misread the thing entirely.

Obviously people can write whatever they want in fiction, but I do think that when you’re dealing with a topic that has impacted a lot of people, that’s been poorly handed in fiction in the past, you do have a responsibility to treat it sensitive and thoughtfully, and not glamorise something that is ultimately destructive under the guise of ‘this is interesting and cool, and a good way to treat yourself and others, actually.’ And I don’t know if that’s the case here.

[winterbites]

(Major JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime spoiler warning) My review of...

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders and Battle in Egypt (I'm counting them as one whole season but as two parts) is, admittedly, my least favorite season of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. 48 episodes long across the two parts, the show is definitely enjoyable but I personally wouldn't watch it again for anything other than a few cool fights. However, once again showing his viewers just how crazy his work can and will get, Akari makes JoJo's Bizarre Adventure even more bizarre starting with this season. For this review, I'm going going to take both parts into consideration. As usual, I'm going to keep my review as neutral as possible even if Stardust Crusaders isn't a top pick for me.

Unlike its predecessors, Stardust Crusaders has no narrator for the majority of the season, only showing up to speak the occassional thoughts of characters or animals. Akari always keeping things fresh, I think this is good for the show; we're no longer in the past so we don't need a narrator to tell us events as they happen in front of us.

First, I'm going to talk about the new element Akari brings into JoJo's Bizarre Adventure with Stardust Crusaders: Stands. An absolutely badass idea, Akari plays with this new element of the show beautifully. Unlike many other shounen manga/anime, the ability to control a Stand isn't solely about who has the biggest dick energy attack, but instead Akari turns the tables and uses the Stands for strategic battles; this way, it doesn't actually matter who's stronger or weaker, but instead who's smarter (which very much counteracts the art style of buff men quite nicely). Due to the Stands and mental/wit battles instead of physical battles the way it usually is in the shounen genre, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure takes a very unique turn for the better and works incredibly well given the context of the series.

Now lemme tell ya about the intros: I LOVE the both of them, and I'll start with Stand Proud from the first part of the season. So much energy, wonderfully timed visuals and the fantastic 3D-looking 2D animation; there is nothing about this intro that I don't like. It's ranked as my second favorite intro in terms of song choice, is tied for my number one in terms of visuals, and is tied for my favorite in terms of sound effects. The beautifully drawn night sky, the small addition of sketched art, the subtle hints of enemy Stands in the background, and the background constantly changing in such drastic ways are such terrifyingly engaging imagery that it makes me cry tears of happiness. Not to mention the hard to see hint of Dio at the end, only people who are active on-lookers or were shown that he's there at all will see him. I also love that, in the beginning of the intro, you see 5 stars, alluding to our 5 main characters, but then a 6th star appears, which alludes to Holly Joestar still sick in Japan. Also, the physics of Jotaro's chain and shadow is absolutely ravishing, it's little effects like that that really get me going, as well as the gradual breaking of glass at the end of the intro. The entire sequence is a masterpiece by my standards, truly a job well done.

Now, as for the second intro, I don't like it as much as the first one but it's still great in its own right. I adore the mixing of vocals, going from hard rock to the softer sounding male and then mixing them both for a wonderful Ora Ora Ora duet. I lean in towards my computer screen each time I watch the intro because the fast moving visuals are so enrapturing, not to mention you can see subtle changes in the faces of the characters and their body stance between the fast-paced frames. There's even one point where the group is lined up and the beat strikes, quickly switching them out for their Stands before swiftly changing to the next image. I also admire the way the credits are so well integrated into the intro, jumping and spiking along with the enthusiastic beat, emphasizing the song without being in the way. And when Dio uses his ZA WARUDO to stop time during the second version of this intro, I go into orgasmic bliss because it's so awesome; you can even see that piss bucket SMIRK while hearing his soft footfalls and I love it. Once again, there is nothing that I don't love about this intro.

Just like with Phantom Blood, there isn't much I can say about the soundtrack as a whole, but is fantastic in that it reflects the current situation and could easily switch up its beat when a battle turned.

As for the outros, I love Walk Like an Egyptian and its spirited inspiration, beat and vocals (fantastic job by the Bangles). There's no song quite like Walk Like an Egyptian so it's always a win in my book whenever it's used, especially in such a fitting case. I don't really like the second outro because, unlike every other intro/outro of the series, Last Train Home is a more somber or melancholy song, which doesn't really fit the show in my opinion. It's certainly a nice sounding song, but I'm just not crazy about it.

As for the characters, while I don't like them as much as other characters from other seasons, they certainly aren't bad either; we even get to see character development throughout both parts. Some characters become more mature, more level-headed and smarter with situations, and each person is internally unique as exemplified by their Stand. Some were more likable than others but, in general, the cast was pretty damn cool.

Now that I'm done gushing about all the things I love about this season, I'm gonna gush about the things that made me dislike this season more than the others, and I'm gonna start with the female side character Anne. This girl... did absolutely nothing throughout the show. In her defense, she didn't get in the way of the characters, but she didn't do anything for them either. She was even dropped out of the group halfway through the first part of the season, being inconsequential the whole way through. There was also some kind of weird sexualization going about her too: her age is never stated but she's definitely prepubescent (given the dialogue, she's probably 11 or 12 years old) but she had the body of a teenager and fawned over Jotaro. Once again in her defense, young girls fantasizing about older men (I personally enjoy the company of older men as they tend to be financially stable and more responsible) and having more developed bodies compared to their peers isn't odd at all; instead, it's actually very normal and healthy. However, Jotaro is 17, which is a lot older and, generally, the older the man (or woman) is the weirder it gets.

Speaking of sexualizing little girls, I want to turn attention to the Strength Stand user orangutan, Forever. This literal animal had the hots for Anne, and tried to do stuff to her that I can only describe as attempted rape, so that was a thing. Obviously, that's some fucked up shit that wasn't actually necessary to the story since Jotaro found out about Forever anyway and beat the shit out of him.

Next is, once again, Dio's motives. I love Dio, I really do, but he's just not that much of a well-explained character. His goal is explicitly stated this time around: he wants to rule the world. Fantastic, but WHY does he want to rule it? Who knows, it's never said why.

My next problem is with the villains of the show, they all seemed the same and reused to me. While each Stand (expect for two that did legit the exact same thing of stealing souls and putting them into objects) was unique given the user, whenever they were defeated they did one of two things: they either begged for forgiveness, which would always result in getting the snot beat out of them, or they swore their absolute loyalty to Dio (less of them did this) and died. Some of them would run away, but all of them (save for two Stand Users) never made another appearance, so most of them were just throw away characters.

Finally, my biggest problem is with Iggy, the last party member in our group of main characters who showed up at the beginning of Battle in Egypt. I know Akari wanted to make an animal Stand user to be a part of the cast and I know that Iggy was dragged out to Egypt against his will, but that doesn't make him any less of an infuriating character. For nearly the entire season, I absolutely hated Iggy: he was more useless than Anne as he intentionally turned his head the other way when the group was in trouble and/or DYING, he tried to sell Jotaro out to save his own skin as soon as he was introduced, and he had the absolute worst ambition of any of the characters in that he basically just wanted to be a pimp. After getting fucking up by an avian Stand user that totally should have won the fight (the finishing icicle appeared so much more slowly than all the other volleys, plot armor truly is invincible) and getting his leg dismembered, Iggy finally stepped up to the plate that he probably should have been on to begin with and earned my respect. Seriously, why would you so eagerly make an animal Stand user only to not use him for the entire show and then kill him off when he's barely shown what he can do? It makes no sense and it's so frustrating.

However, Akari truly has magic hands because as soon as Iggy actually started doing something, he immediately became a badass in my book and I cried another river to his death.

Speaking of deaths, just as a side note, why kill Avdol, bring him back, only to kill him again? As I understand it, Akari killed off Avdol the first time around but then realized that if he was going to kill a main character, he should probably make that character more important. But then Avdol died again and his death still felt insignificant. A good opportunity to learn on Akari's part, but I feel like bringing Avdol back to life didn't make much sense either.

[thepucegoose]

Starsky is Canonically Jewish - A Moodboard & Analysis

A detailed exploration of all the Many Many aspects in the canon that point to Starsky being Jewish can be seen under the cut + bonus headcanons! 

So I was looking at Starsky’s fanlore page and the discussion there talks about hints within the canon that Starsky may be Jewish. As one commentator notes, “There is plenty of mild justification for Starsky being Jewish”. Tbh, I’d say that, whilst subtle and never explicitly addressed, there is far more than just mild justification to suggest that Starsky is Jewish, and that he is in fact canonically so (and also I found the menorah they were talking about and I felt like I was on Myth-busters, which I’ve never seen but I imagine they mainly investigate fandom hearsay regarding background menorahs and other such suggestions. I’m insanely proud for having found it please appreciate because it took me a Very long time to, although I’ve found in researching this that there was at least one screenshot of it online here from 2011 :D). 

TV Tropes has Starsky down for the Ambiguously Jewish trope and whilst I definitely agree that Starsky fits this trope description, I would say that there really is nothing ambiguous about it. There are just so so many aspects that come together. This boy is just canonically Jewish! 

(Disclaimer: I’m not Jewish. Although I am very much considering converting and I’ve been studying everything I can about Judaism for well well over a year or so now, as well as attending services through whatever means I’ve been able to, I am by No Means even remotely close to being knowledgeable on the topic. Still, I figured there were some things I’d noticed whilst watching that hadn’t been mentioned that I wanted to bring up, and I also wanted to pull together observations by others into one place because I’m always hyped for canon representation and creating coherent resources. Extensive Research Is My Jam. If I’ve got anything wrong; said something in an uncomfortable way; talked where it wasn’t my place to talk; made assumptions I shouldn’t have; or like, said/done literally anything else that feels even slightly off then Please Please say and I’ll do everything I can to sort it!!)

Reasons why I reckon Starsky is canonically Jewish: 

For one, Paul Michael Glaser is Jewish and if William Shatner being Jewish is good enough for my Jewish!Kirk headcanons then it’s sure as heck good enough for my Jewish!Starksy headcanons. Furthermore, according to Wikipedia, both Leonard Goldberg and Aaron Spelling are Jewish, and a good many of the writers have Jewish surnames too, though I can’t find out much about them specifically. Due to their fame, and therefore extended biographies, Wikipedia does specify that writers Michael Mann, and Fred Freiberger are Jewish. Joe Naar, who produced the show, was also Jewish, and used to joke that his style “was born out of being a short Jew with a huge chip on his shoulder.” Rick Edelstein was hugely involved in the writing of the later series and you can really see the influence Judaism has on his work, as is evident in his more recent short story, Bodega. He also ended his short video supporting Obama in '08 with "l'chaim, to life".

Essentially, I think Jewish people were involved in all levels of production within the show - from the writing, to the acting, to the direction, to the production - and this can be seen in the varied means by which it’s suggested that Starsky is Jewish himself. As such, suggestions that may have been seen as accidental otherwise can then take on greater significance, whilst the more explicit examples take on more emotional weight. 

Why, then, would it not be more explicitly stated that Starsky is, and was always considered to be, Jewish? I read a really interesting post the other day about how Jewish people in Hollywood often felt unable to include Jewish characters/actors/themes in their work out of fear of seeming too “tribalistic, or insular, or that Hollywood was (as it was in the antisemitic imagination) a ‘Jewish’ front”. Obviously, I can’t comment from a Jewish perspective, but when I was younger I felt similar pressure in regards to including queer characters. As such, I think it’s really exciting to see the very explicit references to Starsky being Jewish, even if they aren’t clearly obvious to a wider audience not actively looking for such references.

Paul Michael Glaser also played Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof (1971) - which I mention not only because it shows Glaser playing other Jewish roles, but also as a recommendation because I Love My Hyped Wee Jewish Communist Revolutionary Boy. Glaser talked about how Starsky was a culmination of other characters he’d played prior to Starsky (DVD extras) and I think this is quite evident in Starsky and Perchik’s respective behaviours. As a nod to this, the middle top picture is (apparently) from a Jewish Labour Bund publication. This is something you can learn more about on its Wikipedia article here, and there’s more interesting things about The Bund here and here as well!

As we all know, Starsky calls Hutch the Blond Blintz (to his Puce Goose) :D Here’s a recipe for blintzes from myjewishlearning.com - they’re like pancakes and it’s an Ashkenazim custom to eat them on Shavuot. Also I love the scene in The Set-Up: part 1 where he first calls Hutch the Blond Blintz and Hutch is like???? and Starsky just says Blintz very definitively and with no further explanation and Hutch is just like,,, u kno what,, I’m just going to roll with this.) 

I basically just really love this because it’s an example of Starsky being very openly and explicitly involved in Jewish culture, not just when he says it in The Set-Up, but also in Starsky’s Lady, when playing with the kids, especially as there aren’t a lot of references to things that carry on across multiple episodes.

I also like the way he pulls everyone else into his reference of it very un-apologetically; it feels very in character. There’s a picture of a blintz in the left column of the middle row! (Also, I feel like,,,, there might be some,,,, Freudian Implications to naming your partner after a rolled pancake filled with cream cheese that gets released when eaten?? @jimmyandthegiraffes fite me.)

Whilst Hutch looks at a glow in the dark cross being sold by Huggy in Jojo (written by Mann), Starsky picks up a mezuzah, which are put up at gateposts and door frames in Jewish homes - here’s a video about it :D The picture in the left-most bottom corner is Starsky inspecting this mezuzah. I really like this scene because he goes straight to it and seems to be considering it with very real interest. This is interestingly contrasted with Hutch picking up the cross, which isn’t the only time the show appears to draw a distinction between their respective cultural and religious heritages. 

I think that really responds to some of the stuff William Blinn has said about their casting and how thrilled they were to have two actors playing characters from such different backgrounds whilst having such great chemistry, and how that really helps form the magic of the show even (DVD extras). I think their respective choices really help to demonstrate how assumed it was that Starsky Would naturally pick up a mezuzah, in contrast to Hutch’s cross. 

The menorah (or actually Chanukkiah if we’re going to be really specific about it) in the background of Starsky’s apartment in Foxy Lady and in Blindfold. For so long I thought this was a myth but!! it’s not!!!! You can see it in the right hand column, middle row :D With the greatest thanks to the canon compendium for pointing out the episodes it appears in and also for like, literally everything else - it’s genuinely just the best fandom resource I’ve seen. I love this because I think, asides from a Magen David (Star of David), I think a menorah is one of the most well known symbols of Judaism and I think it’s really rad that it’s something the crew thought consciously to include, even if it is a largely not shown background detail. Again, it’s subtle but explicit which is why I would argue that Starsky is canonically Jewish.

It’s also worth remembering that even though it’s in an area in his apartment that doesn’t get shot by the cameras except on a few occasions, it Is a part of the apartment that’s Really visible from like, every direction and is right across from the front door. I’ve got another screenshot below from Blindfold that puts it more in context of where it is. I think this is really cool!! It’s obviously something he considers a big enough part of his life to keep on display year round and it’s something instantly recognisable and visible for anyone coming into his house (Foxy Lady came out on March 1st and Blindfold on October 21st, neither of which are around Chanukkah, if you’re going by episode air dates).

Speaking of the Magen David :D As can be seen in the episode Little Girl Lost, Starsky has a couple of blue six pointed stars on his dash under his Christmas decoration, as you can see in the top left hand corner of the mood board. I think this is really cool because Starsky is obviously very hyped for Christmas in this episode, hanging reindeer from his mirror and singing Christmas songs and being really hyped for presents, and this could be used to suggest that Oh No He Can’t Be Jewish He Likes Christmas, but not only does he only engage in secularised aspects of Christmas (in contrast to the nativity scene at Kiko’s house), there’s the very conscious inclusion of these stars. All the scenes in the car are set during Chanukkah, which ran from 16-24th December in 1976, and the stars are blue, which, along with white or silver, is often used for Chanukkah decorations and is traditionally associated with Judaism. Basically this remains in keeping with the subtle yet very conscious inclusion of Jewish symbolism, easily missed by those not thinking to look for it. 

Also I know heaps of Jewish people that enjoy the secular aspects of Christmas, particularly if the holiday has meaning for their friends. In Starsky’s case this might be more because he wants to annoy Hutch and he likes bickering or perhaps because he’s upset by Hutch’s increasing cynicism and wants Hutch to feel happier. Or because he wants a new caboose for his train set. Probably that.

In the bottom left hand corner you’ll see a picture of Paul Muni, born   Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, Meshilem being his Hebrew name. I just like that Hutch suggests Starsky’s mother called him Rudolph Valentino and Starsky corrects him saying she “said I was more of the Paul Muni type”, suggesting the actor she compared him to was actually a notably Jewish one (Paul Muni references can be found in Lady Blue, as written by Mann, and Silence). Again, I think the contrast between Hutch suggesting a gentile actor, and Starsky raising a Jewish one instead is interesting, as well as highlighting Starsky’s mother’s engagement with, and perhaps predisposition towards, Jewish culture.

On it’s own this is perhaps more of a curiosity, maybe too much opportunity for coincidence to really warrant too much attention, but Dobey also chooses a Jewish comparison in The Velvet Jungle when he says, “who do you think you are, Starsky, Milton Berle?” So here we have two instances wherein the comparisons drawn with Starsky are with other Jewish personalities.

In Terror On The Docks (written by Freiberger), Huggy apologises for not bringing an ill Starsky chicken soup, instead bringing mustard green broth which, “where I come from is just as effective”. This might not have much significance in and of itself, except that literally just 2 episodes later, in Shootout, Sammy Grovner makes a joke about chicken soup being Jewish penicillin. In addition, Huggy’s reference to his own culture’s cure-all suggests that chicken soup would have been the culturally appropriate first-choice for Starsky. As such, I’ve included a picture of matzo-ball chicken soup in the top left hand corner. 

Also, in The Game, Hutch says in regards to their soup related upbringings that, “we obviously had different mothers” and Starsky says, “yeah, mine was chicken soup, yours was,, clam chowder”, which isn’t really that important except that the show likes to highlight their different cultural upbringings and once again they’re doing so by referencing something that is widely culturally understood to be Jewish, having already explicitly stated it within the show to be so. (I could write a whole dissertation about cultural soup references in Starsky and Hutch, but I’m not going to. Just note that there are a weird amount of them.)

We see in Running that Starsky calls his mother every Friday evening. I think this is really interesting because, if they were both observant orthodox, they wouldn’t be using electricity on Shabbat. I mean, duh, Starsky is Not observantly orthodox but this scene shows that neither is his mother. Any yet, the time they’ve picked to talk each week is on Friday evenings, when many Jewish families come together for Shabbat dinner. As such, I think this shows how Starsky’s Judaism holds a place within his life and his routines, as well as suggesting what tradition he may have been brought up in. I personally headcanon conservative, but Reform works too!

As the fanlore page says, “Starsky looked stunned when Nancy's mother asked him if he were Catholic in 'Terror on the Docks,' to which he replied he was not.” This scene is a really interesting one to watch for this (and, again, was written by Freiberger), and whilst this merely shows that he’s not Catholic, his confusion and bafflement suggests just how surprising this question is to him, and his discomfort is evident as he laughs awkwardly. I think this is an experience many minorities can attest to, and he’s feeling the unease that comes when you’re put under pressure to reveal a part of your identity that may well be not received well. 

In terms of the canon, I think the way in which this is played is so in line with the concept that Starsky is Jewish that it really suggests that this was something in clearly in mind in regards to his characterisation, at least by a number of the people working on the show. 

In terms of headcanons, I like Starsky’s bewilderment here because it seems like he straight up just thought it was obvious that he was Jewish, and so it offers an in-universe explanation for why he never says “I’m Jewish”, rather than the external explanation regarding the fears surrounding creating explicitly clear Jewish characters in the 1970s. 

It is interesting, in universe, that he doesn’t then say, “No, Mrs. Blake, I’m afraid I’m Jewish”, but I think this shows Starsky’s reticence to talk about his background with strangers, despite his comfort proudly talking about blintzes with Hutch and Terry. This is frankly just understandable, given the existence of antisemitism and Mrs Blake’s evangelical Catholicism, and again offers another explanation for why he never says I’m Jewish, wherein everyone he feels comfortable knowing already know, so there’s no need for him to say that. 

(This said, @jimmyandthegiraffes and I headcanon that he just explains everything he doesn’t know with the fact he’s Jewish, even when it’s totally unrelated, *queue Starsky’s sage voice* “Ah see, I wouldn’t know whether those out of date eggs are safe to eat because I’m Jewish.” - Hutch is going to throw something. Also saying he can’t eat something healthy Hutch has made because it’s not kosher, whilst eating something obviously treif, which I made a post about here.)

We also see Starsky’s reticence to talk about his background with antagonistic strangers/suspects in The Committee, “Starsky? What is it, Polish?” “Something like that.” And yet, in Starsky And Hutch Are Guilty we see Starsky talk with Sharon, with whom he obviously feels comfortable with, about his home cooked goulash, “My mother gave me a recipe straight from the old country.” Again, this shows an in universe explanation for why we never see Starsky talk about his background explicitly, as those who he feels comfortable knowing already know.

This line is also interesting as it suggests information about Starsky’s heritage that pretty clearly implies a family with an immigrant background;  this again would be in line with the experience of many Jewish people in the US, particularly when considering Starsky’s roots in New York as many families settled there fleeing pogroms and persecution. I headcanon that Starsky’s father was killed just after his 13th birthday (and his Bar Mitzvah) and moved to Bay City the summer after (this is taking Glaser’s birthday as Starsky’s for consistency).

This would mean Starsky lived in New York 1943-1956. The Jewish population of New York was at its peak in 1950 at 2 million. Still today, New York City is the largest community of Jews in the world within a city proper, including Tel Aviv. I think it perhaps goes without saying that this was and is particularly true in Brooklyn. I’ve seen lots of fics argue about where about in New York Starsky is from (with one claiming New Jersey which was pretty left field). The closest connection to New York that I have is that I grew up on the outskirts of the city it was named after. If you ever want to visit York, it has a lot of chocolate museums and a nice Gothic cathedral and a bad connection with Jewish history. I’m on a tangent. My point is, although I can figure Yorkshire accents, I’m not especially good at figuring out the nuances of New York accents so I leave it up to you lot, and on the whole people tend to suggest that he has a Brooklyn accent. We also know he has swum at Coney Island, and that the sea there tastes better than on the playboy island (Murder on Voodoo Island: part 2).

What we do know is that Starsky grew up on 84th Street (Targets Without A Badge: part 2) although there do seem to be a Lot of 84th streets in New York. We also know that if we are agreeing on Brooklyn then 84th street runs through Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, and Bensonhurt. I figure Bensonhurst works best because, even though it’s a very Italian neighbourhood now, until the 50s it was a Jewish/Italian neighbourhood, which works with Starsky’s grandmother’s flat above the Italian restaurant (Shootout). It also works with the implications surrounding Starsky’s family and the mob (The Set-Up: part 1) as the Bath Avenue Crew operated in Bensonhurst. The mob thing is also interesting when considering Starsky’s Jewish heritage. There’s a painted Bensonhurst shop front in the bottom middle of the mood board which has been kept the same since the 1950s when Starsky could have been living there!

This has all been largely (or wholly) tangential, but essentially my point is that what we know of Starsky’s heritage chimes pretty neatly with the experience of many Jewish Americans, which again ties in with the argument that Starsky’s Judaism was something held in mind by those involved in the creation of the show. 

Another thing I found interesting was in an article I was reading about Paul Simon, born less than two years before Glaser. In regard to Simon, Donald Fagen says, “There’s a certain kind of New York Jew, [...] almost a stereotype, really, to whom music and baseball are very important. I think it has to do with the parents. The parents are either immigrants or first-generation Americans who felt like outsiders, and assimilation was the key thought — they gravitated to black music and baseball looking for an alternative culture.” Simon responded to say that this wasn't too far from the truth. Obviously, Starsky enjoying baseball does not at all mean anything about him being Jewish, but it does fit in with his Jewish New York upbringing, from his father taking him to see the Yankees and him collecting baseball cards (Vendetta), to his enthusiasm with Pete (Little Girl Lost). 

It is worth noting how this enthusiasm for baseball seems to be something that Starsky engages in far more than Hutch, which is interesting given Soul's history with the sport. (I feel like they definitely could have done more with the fact that David Soul was a good enough player to be offered a contract with the Chicago White Sox). Perhaps this wasn't pursued because a passion for baseball was thought to be more in line with Starsky's upbringing, versus Hutch's Sea Scouts. Again, this maybe suggests a certain narrative held in mind regarding Starsky’s background and how it influenced his characterisation.

Curiously, any Yiddish on the show is typically said by Hutch rather than by Starsky. In Vendetta, Hutch says to Artie Sorkin, “Fagin, faigeleh. What’s the differences? You’re vermin.” Faigeleh meaning homosexual. Also, as the canon compendium notes, “Hutch calls his houseplant ‘Meschugah Mantherlus.’” ‘Meschugah’ means crazy in Yiddish.  “‘Mantherlus’ doesn’t translate as anything but is probably an inside joke and supposed to sound Latin.” (Ballad for a Blue Lady, co-written by Glaser.) 

Largely I just found this interesting, but I did read a really cool study talking about the use of Yiddish in the American vernacular and one of its many findings was that gentiles with close Jewish friends were, unsurprisingly, more likely to use more Yiddish terminology. Also, unrelated but super fascinating, LGBT+ people were more likely to use Yiddish too.

On the Jewish immigrant experience, in Partners Starsky tries to get Hutch to play Pinochle with him, claiming "you love Pinochle", suggesting this is a game they frequently play together. Pinochle used to be a favourite card game of Jewish and Irish immigrants. I get that at this point I'm probably clasping at straws but I'm going for as comprehensive as possible, and I think it creates a good story about Starsky playing it with his family and later teaching it to Hutch.

It is interesting how Hutch is possibly shown to be engaging with Jewish culture in regard to both his use of Yiddish and his love of Pinochle. This may well be because Jewish culture permeates American society, after all it's Soul we see say the Yiddish "putz" in the bloopers. But it is slightly interesting that these were lines given to Hutch, perhaps for plot purposes, or because the writers were choosing to include their own culture and ways of speaking in a way that is safer through the evidently gentile Soul rather than the conspicuously Jewish Glaser. 

There are other instances of Judaism in Starsky and Hutch that aren’t necessarily pointing to Starsky being Jewish but that are notable. Huggy Bear and the Turkey starts with Starsky and Hutch undercover in Caplan Laundry, where Hutch seems to be undercover as an orthodox Jewish man (and Starsky his wife? Seemingly? They certainly uh, go for it in the bloopers). 

Caplan/Kaplan is a surname found in a number of cultures but it is a common Ashkenazim surname which also makes me headcanon Officer Minnie Kaplan as Jewish because we all want more Jewish headcanons in our lives and I think it puts her friendship with Starsky in an interesting context. (Marki Bey more like Marki Bae)

Again, it's Hutch we see taking on the more visibly Jewish role, although this does not go to negate Starsky's own Jewishness, as this may well be understood to be his influence on the friend he spends significantly more than 75% of his time with. Also, it can be assumed that Starsky is undercover as a Jewish woman as he appears to work at the launderette. 

Obviously A Body Worth Guarding is the episode that deals most with Judaism as the Jewish protesters are a central plot feature. It’s interesting that Starsky’s involvement with them is largely hostile, however, I think this is more to do with the circumstances. At first he believes they’ve hired muscle to hurt Anna so he goes in hard which means the Jewish Organisation for Action respond with a more hostile approach. And yet, he’s completely on-board with dropping the JOA lead and following the fascist one as a result of Kauffman’s logic that attacking Anna would only lead to more antisemitism, which despite being a sound argument had no actual evidence to support it. From this point Kauffman is still resistant to working with Starsky which means Starsky maybe is more heavy handed in his approach, but it is on order to get Kauffman to help him follow the fascist lead. Once the job has been done he seems a lot softer towards the JOA and genuinely thankful for their help.

Essentially, the episode is noteworthy but Starsky’s reaction to the JOA tells us not so much about his own personal beliefs and upbringing and more about how he approaches his job. I do think it interesting that he believes Kauffman’s logic and subsequently drops all suspicion of the JOA and instead trusts him enough to bring him in as help.

Also Huggy calls the JOA the “desert people” which might just be Huggy’s turn of phrase but I think it feels more comfortable if Starsky is Jewish as it’s more like banter between friends then.

In spite of all these very purposeful allusions and references to Starsky’s Judaism, in Savage Sunday he complains about having to work on a Sunday, the Christian sabbath instead of Judaism’s Shabbat. And yet, I don’t believe this undermines Starsky’s Jewish presentation as it seems that his complaints are more that he expects to have Sunday off because he is in a Christian society which usually allows him a break on a Sunday to which he can look forward to. When he’s complaining about working on a Saturday in Jojo (written by Mann), Hutch says, “Could be worse, could be Sunday”, to which Starsky replies, “Come on, Saturday’s bad enough”, bemoaning all the sports that he could be watching instead. 

This is interesting too as you could easily use this to headcanon him using sport as an excuse to express his frustrations at having to work on Shabbat, especially as it’s Hutch who says, “Could be worse, could be Sunday.”

Note: It was mentioned on the fanlore page that Huggy gives Starsky a wreath of garlic ‘for those of other persuasions’, but, as far as I can tell, the garlic is to ward off vampires of “all the rest of the denominations” when the cross for “any vampire of Christian persuasion” won’t be of help, rather than the garlic being for non-Christian vampire hunters. As always, I’m loving Huggy’s enterprising approach to religion, making sure he covers all bases, but it’s not really a suggestion that Starsky is Jewish, just that he needs to protect himself from non-Christian vampires.

In the same vein, Huggy does say “Shalom” to Starksy (and to Hutch) in Dandruff, though this seems to be more as an aspect of his undercover role as Prince Nairobi.

Essentially, Starsky is frequently presented as engaging with Jewish culture, practices, and traditions, often very visibly so. Aside from the very explicitly Jewish references, Starsky is very frequently characterised in a way that suggests his being Jewish was held in mind, on a writing level, an acting level, a direction level, and a production level. As I mentioned earlier, American society in imbued with Jewish culture and so many of these things may have been purely incidental. However, coupled with the more explicit examples of Starsky's Judaism they may be said to take on greater purpose and subsequent significance. Pretty much across the board, he is understood to be Jewish and whilst these references maybe subtle enough to pass by those not engaged with Judaism or considering it a possibility, this does not preclude Starsky’s Judaism from being a very knowing and explicit inclusion, and therefore canon.

Given all this, I have some headcanons about to what extent Starsky is practising! 

We canonically know he doesn’t keep kosher – I mean this boy eats linguine with clams. I have read a fic where Hutch is forbidden from telling Starsky’s ma that he eats bacon or meat with dairy and I really like this as a headcanon. I definitely think she Knows but she lets Starsky pretend he doesn’t because it keeps him happy.

We also know neither he nor his mother have qualms about not being shomer Shabbos, but as I mentioned earlier, we Do see them using Friday evenings as the time they choose to call one another.

We know he doesn’t wear a kippah on the regular, too. And he never says the Sh’ma out loud if he thinks he’s about to die, although I do think he probably says it to himself. Again, I think I’ve read a fic about that. As I reread the ones I have bookmarked I’ll add them in if I can find them.

Other than these examples, pretty much everything else as far as I can tell is fair game, particularly if you’re considering along the lines of Reform, or even conservative, depending on the community. I know a lot of Jewish people who would consider themselves to be actively practicing who don’t keep kosher or who work on a Saturday etc.

About that, as I mentioned above, we know he does sometimes work on a Saturday (and he complains about it). This suggests that he doesn’t necessarily frequent synagogue regularly, particularly as he was frustrated about missing the sport he likes to watch on a Saturday.

However, for one thing, this doesn’t mean he Never goes to temple, and for another, we do know that Starsky very likely celebrates Chanukkah, due to his Chanukkiah. Chanukkah is a relatively minor Jewish holiday and so if he celebrates this it’s likely he also celebrates other, more significant holidays, and high holy days. Maybe he doesn’t go to shul every week, but a synagogue on Yom Kippur is generally full of people who are not regular attenders.

Please imagine this boy trying to fast I bet Hutch would be glad as hell that Starsky isn’t at work lol.

Personally, I tend to headcanon that Starsky moves to greater observance post Sweet Revenge. I think the hospital rabbi is good at playing Pinochle and the two become friends and they have good philosophical debates and Hutch joins in and after Starsky is discharged they want to see the rabbi so they start regularly attending shul and they both find something they can get out of it, especially as I headcanon that they retire from the force I think it gives them a community. For Starsky, I think it gives him a connection to his heritage and his family and maybe his father in particular, as well as a focus on social justice work through the synagogue so that he and Hutch can still feel like they’re making a difference. Tbh, I think that Hutch might find a lot to connect to in Judaism, maybe in the way it’s focused on making a difference in the here and now and not in order to access some afterlife. To be clear, I don’t think that’s necessarily the angle Christianity takes but I think it is how Hutch might perceive it and I think he might find Judaism more grounding in that respect. Also, if he converts then Starsky’s ma would be thrilled that if he hasn’t found a nice Jewish girl then at least he’s found a nice Jewish boy and Starsky will tease that Hutch’s hair is so long he might as well be a girl. I think it would create a really interesting relationship between Starsky’s ma and Hutch where they talk about Judaism and she introduces him to recipes and books and stuff and later Hutch is showing Starsky and he’s like, how come Ma never showed me?! And Hutch is like, she tried to idiot you just got distracted. And they can just, explore stuff together. It’s really soft.

Also, I think they host Shabbat dinners every Friday and it’s really cool because it’s a way that they can stay in touch with the Dobeys after they’ve left the force, and how they can stay close with Huggy when they’re not visiting for tips every other day. Also Kiko and Pete can come and then stay the night and spend Saturday with them maybe to give Mrs. Ramos a break. Minnie can come too and say the prayers!! Plus Paco Ortega and Joey and tbh any number of the other kids they’ve accidentally adopted over the years.

Pesach at theirs is just, the fullest house you can possibly imagine I love it. @jimmyandthegiraffes came up with the idea that there isn’t space for Dobey and the boys are like, oh you’re sat on the counter and he’s like? But there’s an empty chair and place set out here?? And he goes to sit down and everyone is like, nOOoO that’s for Elijah!! You cAnt sIT in Elijah’S plaCe?!

Gosh I love them

Starsky high key calls the new year “secular Rosh Hashanah”

Even though I personally headcanon a greater observance after sweet revenge, there really is nothing at all to say he isn’t at least somewhat practising over the course of the series and even that he is, given the Chanukkiah and what that means about holidays. I like how he keeps it up year round to maybe keep in mind his faith/upbringing/background.

I think it’s interesting that many of the fics that engage with Starsky as Jewish often suggest that he’s not religious, which is of course completely possible. However, just because he doesn’t ever talk about a faith in God doesn’t mean it isn’t present, especially when faith is often something so private and proselytising isn’t a part of Judaism. Personally I think that Starsky does have faith in God throughout the series and after, and this does impact his relationship with Judaism prior to Sweet Revenge as he considers things like the mezuzah and engages with Jewish culture, but that it’s after Sweet Revenge that he starts engaging with his faith more as connected to Judaism and religious traditions, rather than I’m going to celebrate my culture and upbringing and also I have a faith in God. He sees the two as more connected perhaps? and his faith as having a more direct impact on his life.

I really like how Huggy says the thing about the chicken soup too, and the “desert people” line is made a lot sweeter by thinking of him as a cool supportive friend who Starsky has known for a long time and who typically engages with Judaism specifically because it means something to Starsky.

I seemingly have a lot of thoughts on this.

Also, I really like how he calls him blintz, weird Freudian implications aside, especially because blintzes can be eaten at any time but are typically associated with Shavuot and I like the idea that Starsky has really a really fond association with his religion but also with Hutch. I really like the idea that if Hutch converts then the two can stay up all night together, eating blintzes and cheese and Hutch can maybe read aloud for my dyslexic boy.

Essentially, I just really love thinking about this and I think there’s more space for an actively practising Starsky than there’s generally understood to be, religious or not, even over the course of the show. Especially if you consider Reform Judaism. But tbh just give me Jewish!Starsky fics and I’m happy whatever they’re like.

I’ve worked really hard to find each scene I’ve mentioned on my DVDs (this post has taken me literally So Long to write (9 months-ish? it’s my Child) and I’ve researched it far Far more than I do my uni assignments whoops), so you can be sure I’ve checked to make sure each reference is legitimate. If you want to see screenshots of these quotations, or you want to know whereabouts in the episodes they occur, then message me! If you have additional examples or you disagree with me or if you’ve spotted a mistake then share that too!

With all my thanks to my partner Chester who’s put up with me banging on about this and spending Hours and Hours being ridiculously pedantic in the hopes of creating as coherent a resource as I can. They’ve also contributed so much and just they’re rad. I also cannot thank enough the canon compendium for helping me fill in all the blanks and pointing me in all the directions I needed to go in, I Genuinely cannot think of a better fandom resource. Also the first 3 seasons scripts are available here which is a huge help.

tldr; Starsky is irrefutably, canonically Jewish and also I love him