#i think saying the solution is just for him to abdicate kind of misses their *interpersonal* conflict for the season

[shimmerluna]

really it's not that Wille needs to abdicate for him and Simon to be together, it's that he needs to check his privilege and start actually listening to Simon when it comes to things like that. Abdication isn't going to make him less of a privileged brat unless he stops viewing Simon acknowledging their huge wage gap and the downsides of the monarchy as personal attacks and actually becomes open to learning things

[sir-phineas-lost]

Continued

I’m moving my discussion with @theredhairedmonkey​ so as to not bother other people with constant notes.

Well, you’re the one who wants this exchange so badly. And look at the result, the number of notes you got for this post is in the high-80s now! Is that a new record for you? 

Is that supposed to be an attempt at sass? Dude, it wasn’t even my post. All the notes went to the original OP.

And I don’t “want” this discussion. I just refuse to let cowards who won’t debate in good faith win just because they think they can force the burden of proof onto everyone else.

Anyway, your criticism seems to boil down to “they could have made it better” and “they should have made it more obvious.” That’s just moving the goalpost. The way they did Ezran’s scene (which was remorse, not sadness, of the fact that he enabled Viren to make others do horrible things) was sufficient to get the point across. If you’re really going to argue that you’re too dense to pick up on that, fine. But that’s not really all too convincing of an argument. 

Again, you really don’t seem to understand what “moving the goalpost” means. And remorse doesn’t look like that. We have seen what faces other people in this series makes when they are remorseful.

And it looks nothing like Ezran’s face during Soren’s speech, and it is always accompanied by vocal admission of guilt. That really is what it boils down to. I don’t buy that this was just supposed to be “subtle” because this series has never been subtle about these things before. You making a huge leap from “Ezran looks sad” to “Ezran regrets his choices as king” doesn’t make you smart unless you can actually prove that this interpretation is consistant with the storytelling until this point.

The whole point of storytelling isn’t lights and design, but character arcs. Do Viren’s motivations become corrupted over time? Yes. Does this make him a villain? Absolutely. And that’s not a comment on his moral complexity, any more than Runaan’s status as a villain suggests he’s pure evil. Anti-villains have a place in this story too, to contrast with the motivations of the heroes. 

And in a visual medium, those arcs are communicated through lights and design. And again, you keep harping on Viren’s “corruption” even though I have repeatedly made a case for why that isn’t the point of his arc without ever addressing any of my arguments. Why does Soren make the point about “who his dad really is” if it is supposed to be about him being “corrupted”? If you are so ignorant about the language of visual storytelling that you think this...

...or this...

...is communicating that the person in the middle is an “morally complex” and not pure evil, then that is your problem. Like, the second picture doesn’t even require interpreting the visuals. He is just straight up admitting that he has no problem with throwing his best friend’s kid in jail. You would think that would be hard for him if he is supposed to be morally complex.

And here we see Viren’s motivations are complex too. He still wants to create a bright future for humankind, eschewing conquest until he’s convinced it’s necessary. He willingly risks his life at Lux Auera to reduce potential casualties on his side. And even though his status as the main villain is over, his arc will still continue. 

Yeah, except we have no reason to believe he really didn’t want to conquer Xadia from the beginning. He was raising an army long before he met Aaravos and Aaravos didn’t have to make any kind of argument for why conquest was “necessary”. He literally just went:

...and Viren relented. Again, no analysis of the “lights and design” necessary here. This is clearly portrayed as a man who wants power and conquest looking for any excuse he can find. And I remind you, this is explicitly confirmed by Soren to be Viren’s true character, not a corruption.

I have no doubt that Viren’s arc will continue. And it will continue to make him the only one responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world. Mark my words. When King Ahling is upset because Aanya murdered his son the solution will no doubt be to prove that Viren “killed him” first by turning him into a monster.

...yea, making Ezran’s arc simplistic and having enough time to flesh everything out are *totally* incompatible concerns! Seriously, all your edit of the exchange between Callum and Ezran demonstrates is that you’re angry the story shows rather than tells. That line you made up is campy, anvillicious, and unnecessary, because Ezran’s actions explain everything that line does. Maybe *you* didn’t pick up on that, but that’s a different problem. 

I wouldn’t say that they are incompatible, just that “simplicity” only seems to be concern for you in this specific case because you sure don’t seem to have a problem with Callum telling rather than showing his feelings.

And I really don’t see how the exchange I made up is in any way more campy than Soren’s monologue or Ezran’s pitch for peace to Kasef. Like I said, I just don’t buy that this show suddenly thought they could be “subtle” with Ezran making a complete heel-turn when they have always worn their intentions on their sleeve previously.

And no, this change needed more connective tissue to make Ezran’s choice of “no fighting” to his choice of “burn them all” to make any sense and not just come off as him always putting cute magical creatures over his own people, which is something of a pattern with him I might remind you.

This is part of what makes it difficult for me to see his “actions” as an indicator of anything but a preference for dragons.

Really? Corvus says Ezran is noble and wise? I seem to have missed that part. He doesn’t tell him he did the right thing, only that at the end of it, he’s shown great strength and courage. Ezran didn’t have to have made the right decision to be those things, and this was certainly the encouragement he needed to hear. If you paid attention to the rest of his arc as much as you do to this one line, maybe you would have picked up on that. 

Fair is fair, I kind of extrapolated the “wise” part but “noble” and “graceful” are synonyms (and isn’t it interesting that you did apparently miss that part?).

Ezran’s arc of not running from his problems came to a head at the end of last season when he went back to be king. This could have worked as a continuation of it if they hadn’t insisted on praising his every decision so darn much. Whatever you may think of Corvus little pep-talk it sure as fuck doesn’t express any indicatiion that Ezran just wanted to avoid the problem. And I think what Ezran (and his “arc) needed was something more along the lines of “you may not have thought everything through but you still have all the qualities of a great king”. You know, something to actually encourage him to work on these flaws.

When I look at Ezran’s entire arc, I see a kid who repeatedly claims to have empathy for everyone but abandons it when it is convenient for the people he cares about the most. It will always be “right” to help the dragon who burned his people alive before even checking to see who made it out of the blaze. It will always be “necessary” to fight a bloody battle and kill soldiers who have famillies at home when it is to defend his little dragon friend. And the story will helpfully make that even easier for him by dehumanizing the soldiers for him first. That is the pattern I see when I look at Ezran’s actions as a whole.

By long term consequences to Ezran’s actions, you mean “how people acted and reacted to his choices,” which...doesn’t change whether his choice was a good or bad one. Viren’s defeat was not a reasonably foreseeable outcome of Ezran’s abdication. I should not need to tell you.

Have you been listening to anything I have said? This is exactly why I have a problem with this whole thing and why I keep coming back to framing. Ezran couldn’t predict that this would save everyone so he shouldn’t have made that choice, but this is a story and by having the soldiers he saved come back to save the day again the narrative is telling us that this is something Ezran is responsible for and giving him credit for the victory. Combine that with the constant praise and the lack of any criticism and you have a story that says “Ezran always makes the right choice, even when all logic tells us that it shouldn’t work”.

How people act and react to his choices absolutely changes whether the choice was good or bad, because it is a story. This is how storytelling works. The way the characters react and the consequences of what happens is what tells us, the audience, how we are supposed to feel about it.

This dissonance between what we as real people can tell is bad leadership and what the story rewards as good behavior is literally the core issue I have been talking about since the beginning.

[broken-heroes-and-potatoes]

hello hello!! i'm here to send some requests 💖maybe some Bakugou, Tamaki and Hawks best friends to lovers headcanons? good luck with your blog !! 🥺👉🏼👈🏼

Thank you so much senpai @bnha-imagines-forall for the shout-out and for the interesting request too, to be honest I have no idea what this is..I don’t think that’s headcanons though’ I hope it’ll be okay nonetheless, don’t hesitate to tell me how I can improve! #toomuchpressure

Katsuki Bakugo

- Being friend with Bakugo is already a big thing, I mean, being upgraded from despise/indifference to tolerance isn’t something Katsuki grants to everyone, so you probably passed some ‘unconscious tests’ throught the early steps of the relationship.

- First of all, you intrigued him, pricked his curiosity whether because of your quirk or your personnality, you immediately caught his attention and even with that, he was definitely not the one who will approach you. He [im]patiently watched from afar, listened to other talk about you, studying your every moves from the corner of his eyes. [spoiler alert, he ended up doing the first move because you took too damn long to give him attention.]

- He had everyone recognitions for his strenght and abilities, but he couldn’t really understand why it bothered him that you never showed him yours, not that he needed it anyways.. but still.

- You ended up hanging with him because of your friendship with Kirishima and even if you he gave you the cold shoulder at first, he quickly accepted you and, to the surprise of his closest friend, undertook friendly actions so you’ll feel at ease around him.

- Bakugo being Bakugo, you often get into passionate and, sometimes, sterile debates with him ‘cause of how stuborn he’s, it usually ends in screams and shouts, or pillow thrown at each other. Whatever, it stimulates him, and more important, no matter what, you still sticked to his side supporting him even when he was in despicable states and you’re defintely worth of his trust and respect because of this.

- You challenge him and it’s what drag him into you, not necessarily on a fighting level, but on a daily basis of every single aspects in his life

- On the other hand, you assure a kind of balance, appeasing him when he can’t go down from a high frustration and he realized that as things progress his feelings evolved too.

- You are one of the only person he never pushed away (too harshly at least), the one he thinks of before falling asleep, the one he felt the ‘need’ to be with when he has something happy to share or when he’s feeling overwheelmed by negative emotions

- He’s an emotional constipated boy, but when he pulled all the pieces together and understood what those...unwanting feelings was, it angered him to no point. You never thought a grumpier Katsuki could exist? Say no more. He’s on edge and fuming at everything and everyone. Midoriya breathing next to him? He nearly blew his head off His pen stopped working? He exploded it like confettis.

- Once he was aware of it, he can’t get it out of his mind and it pissed him off, the only logical option he came up with? Avoiding you. And when you try to act as usual? Ignoring you.

- The fact was that the thing he could least bear? Himself. For feeling that way, for realizing it, for being distracted and affected by something so trivial, for hurting you.

- One night when he couldn’t fall asleep because of the situation, turning and tossing in his bed, he angrily thrown off his sheets on the ground, storming off of his room and frowning while taking the direction of yours with a determine step.

- He knocked [BANGED.] on your door, not giving a freakin’ care that it was past midnight, and when you opened it slightly panicked in your nightie, rubbing your eyes, he just blurted out nonsens and the only words you grabbed were «can’t stop thinking about you – it pisses me off – I miss you – in love with you» ponctuated with some ‘shit’ and‘fuckin’ here and there.

- When he finally shut his mouth, his ears turned bright pink, stupor painted his face and as he was about to leave the same way he arrived, you grabbed his wrist to prevent him to vanish and dropped a quick clumsy kiss on his lips.

- His brain freezed, his eyes wide opened, he didn’t know how to react, not even realizing he woke the entire floor with his shouts.

Tamaki Amajiki

- He’s one of most the complicated person to reach, whether physically or emotionally, so it would take YEARS to make him accept that 1 – He can Love someone 2- He deserves to be Loved too

- Tamaki is a fragile little cinnamon roll that shouldn’t be pushed too much, it’s like sitting into bushes and wait to take wild animals in pictures. Patience and delicacy are required along with silence and empathy.

- If you both knew each other since elementary school, he would develop the same bond and dependance he has with Mirio, a solide relationship based on trust. But he would burried deep down his feelings so you would never discover his love to you, neither do he.

- If you met at U.A, then he would accept your presence only because Mirio and Nejire included you without his opinion to the group. If they do so without really consulting him, it's because they both know you could get along and won’t go beyond the pale and impose yourself on him.

- Either one of the other, he would very slowly open up to you, studying you at first, and leaving each time you sat next to him. Then he would accept that you could speak to him, sometimes he would even answer and to finish, he would talk to you and ask for your advices.

- If you’re lucky enough, you’ll be able to put your hand on his shoulder or brush his arm with yours after a few months!

- There’s something pretty reassuring about you, something that makes him feel at ease, almost confident when you’re around, the way you make all of those impossible things for him look so easy and smooth, and the bravery you show to accomplish little things in your life, even if it costs you a lot of courage to do so. He admires your convictions, the way you fight for what you love and what you believe in..

- He likes the fact you consider his feelings and apprehensions and don’t push him too much as much as you tend to help him find solution and don’t go and do the thing for him.

- You enlighten a path for him, guiding him throught the shadows of his emotional blinders, and help him make few steps in this horrific world. And he needs nothing more to fall in love with you.

- It was crystal clear for everyone to the point some people thought you were already dating, everyone except two persons, Him, and you.

- How he blushes each time you smile to him, how he searches you around when he losts sight of you, and how his own innocent smile gained his lips when you joke with him.

- Your two friends tried, REALLY hard to get you together, to help him realize and open up his feelings, to arranged some date between the two of you  while hidding to spy in the background.. but nope.

- When Mirio couldn’t bear it anymore, he took him under his arm to have an adult talk and it rang in Tamaki’s head like a bell.

- Thinking about it, the warm in his chest, the goosebump on his arms and the way he, sometimes [often], wanted to keep you close and don’t let you go after an afternoon by your side.. Mirio’s words do made sens.. and it was freaking him out now.

- A trap later settled into one more arranged date, he couldn’t look at you in the eyes, nor focus on what you were saying. You were so… and he was.. No. You definitely deserved better and there were no chance..

- «Are you.. okay Tamaki?» His heart was about to exploded when you got him out of his thoughts with the sound of his name, eyes wondering on your face in panic, what where you saying ? Why does he have to act like this, why do you look so sad? He’s already a terrible friend, how could he be a good boyfriend to you

- «No, it’s- it’s okay, I should have know you're not returning my feelings, I’am sorry I misread the signs-I .. I hope we can still be friend?»

- Tamaki thought he was about to faint when he heard you, wobbly legs, buzzing ears, blurry vision, he couldn’t think straight, but the tiny bit of reason in his head push few words to escape from his lips before he black out from the pressure. «I love you.»

Hawks - Keigo Takami

- This cocky Bastard had won your heart for ages but you kept it to yourself because you knew it was just a game between the two of you.

- You had to admit he was a pretty cute guy when you both met and began to work together, but this smart ass deserved some slaps on the head from time to time and it was a charm that would drag you to him even more.

- You were like an elusive target to him, reproaching his nonchalance and laid back attitude, spending your time pushing him away and resisting to his teasing demeanors.

- Despite the constant lazyness he tends to wallow in, he took it as a challenge and he put a point of honor to make you abdicate.

- [Un]fortunately, after months of playing with your nerves, he got caught at his own game and he was the one to fall deeply for you.

- You also fell for him hard, and quick after you two became friends, it was some kind of funny fight at first, a pleasant banter between two grown persons, he was throwing flirty comments your way and you answered to him with a wink accompanied by snarky remarks.

- Beyond that, the two of you created a really healthy bonds, he knew in a sec’ when something’s wrong and dropped anything he was doing to cheer you up, leaving all of the challenge out.

- He would took you on the roof of his building to watch a reassuring movie outdoor, your favorite snacks prepared, even if he would never admit that he fly throught the whole city to find them.

- It surprised him how much he remembered useless things when it comes to you, how many sugar you put in your tea, how your mustard scarf look good on you and how the tint of vanilla in your perfurme get along perfectly with the natural one of your skin.

- He also noticed the changed in his feelings toward you, for example, he was annoyed to the tips of his wings when Best Jeanist proposed to accompanied you to chose a new jacket to welcome spring and you seemed utterly happy about it.

- Whether for you or for him, it was more and more difficult to accept the situation when you realized how the feelings had settled down and there was no way to back off now that the relationship always been like that.

- He tried to didn’t take it seriously, but he liked this..thing.. going on between you too much, could he call it an addiction? He didn’t like it but, Maybe. Anyway, he would take the risk to confess even if it means not coming out unscathed

- Being an organised and clever guy didn’t help him much because each of is attempts to wooed you failed as you took it as the natural behaviour he developped toward you.

- And God knows how he gave it his best, he made it clear to call it «A DATE», he offered you flowers carefuly picked with his feathers while you were both sitting in a meadow as the sun set, he was neatly dressed and if you squinted a lot, he even did something to his hair!

- You wished all of this could be true but you refused to believe in it, because the fall would only be harder, proof with how hard the pain already thundered in your chest.

- When he leaded you home that night, you felt as if you didn’t wanted him to go, it wasn’t the first time, but right now, you would have given everything you could to keep him by your side. You anxiously turned to him once you reached the door, no word were needeed for him to understand what was going on in your mind.

- He approached confidently, shielding you both with his wings, his gloved hand on your cheek before you could react and his mouth on yours in a chaste kiss. You felt a smile crept on his lips when you put enough pressure to return it and he pulled away slowly.

- You plunged into amused golden eyes when his breath tickled you in a whispered words «I won», he laughed against your lips, trying once more to steal a kiss as you pushed him away gently, not-so-nice words leaving your mouth.

[vaguely-problematic]

the whole 12 minutes is gold but especially this part:

for too long those of us with opportunity and privilege have failed and our responsibility to look at the truth squarely and name the system of racial oppression that artificially divides Americans and benefits those already in positions of relative power.

It’s perfectly understandable to not want to do this. It’s human. No one wants to lose privileges or position. Especially when fear of that loss is magnified and stoked by political leaders for their own supposed Advantage. I say supposed Advantage because if you deny the human rights and dignity of any people you will ultimately destroy the society and civilization that you claim to protect.

58 years ago John Kennedy said those who make peaceful Revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Not only is addressing systemic racial and economic Injustice The right thing to do. It is the safest most conservative most self-protecting most self-serving thing to do.  contents Under Pressure will eventually explode and that’s not a threat that’s a law of nature. So it’s time to ask ourselves as it is always time to ask ourselves. What kind of nation do we want to live in?

that answer requires moral leadership.

Take it upon yourself to be a leader and set an example of the kind of country You want to live in.

that might mean going down to a protest or making a donation or having a tense conversation about race,

but you’re not going to get that from the White House. So we need to step up and provide it ourselves. America is now officially byop:  be your own president.

(Full speech-to-text transcription under cut)

i’m Stephen Colbert, well, we’re back after 10 days off and I never imagined that after 10 days a global pandemic would not be the lead story.

Remember when we were all afraid of our groceries. I miss those days.

No the story that has pushed 100,000 covid deaths below the fold is America’s pre-existing condition- racism.  protests against police targeting black people have broken out in dozens of cities.

So April was global pandemic May is massive Nationwide protests over systemic racism. I assume June is a plague of locusts then in July pleated pants are coming back.

That’s not just US citizens protesting racism in the United States. protesters gathered in London Toronto. Even Berlin, you know, it’s bad when Germany thinks your country is racist that’s like Jamaica telling you to put down the bong.

These protests were sparked last Monday by the extrajudicial execution of a man named George Floyd face down in a Street in Minneapolis Floyd died after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes now in civilized countries that’s called Murder.  Minneapolis police officer and cop who so dirty even his badge is crooked Derek Chauvin even adding to the outrage is that it took four days to arrest the officer even though there’s  video of him doing it.

It would be the shortest episode of Law & Order ever in the criminal justice system. The people are represented by two separate but equally important groups the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders who in this case are the police because come on we all saw the video. What are you waiting for? That’s it. I’m going to the protest. do the "dun dun”.

Even after Chauvin was arrested. He was charged with third-degree murder. That’s a pretty light charge. That’s like Prosecuting Jeffrey Dahmer for a bad case of the munchies. We find the defendant, hangry.

Plus the other three officers involved have not been charged with the crime. So if you’re wondering why people are so upset. It’s because this is so upsetting. Also, it’s not an isolated incident on the very same day that Floyd was killed. There was another viral video of a white woman named Amy Cooper who is confronted by a black bird watcher who asked her to put her dog on a leash in Central Park, and he responded by doing this and I’ve hidden please. Please call the cops. Please call the cops. African American man threatening my life. She knows exactly what she’s doing and why that man should be afraid of the police a brilliant performance. She should win the white lady Oscar.  also known as the Oscar.

now Floyd’s death comes on the heels of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arberyurry and also has Eerie similarities to Eric Garner in 2014. And in that same year, there was the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson Tamir rice and Cleveland all of those Echo Emmett Till and the Scottsboro boys, which happened in the context of Jim Crow, which itself was a soft relaunch of slavery. See really got to go back to the Triangle Trade which ultimately stems from man. Man’s inhumanity to man and are essential Fallen nature. So maybe start with the Garden of Eden actually, you know what in the beginning there was a single point of all matter and energy under tremendous pressure. But you know, there’s always a few bad atoms and the whole thing exploded

now in times like these we need empathetic and moral leadership. Unfortunately. We have Donald Trump. normally during National unrest president step up and address the nation’s pain.

Following the death of Michael Brown President Obama met with activists in the White House President Clinton comfort of the nation with a moving address after the Oklahoma City bombing. Even Richard Nixon in 1970 made a surprise trip, or he spoke to students protesting the Vietnam War who can forget his stirring words. We’ve got to come together and defeat are common. Enemy. The Jews I wrote down on this rushed

Trump can’t even match the compassion of a Nixon because as the Protests raged on Pfizer’s discuss the prospect of an oval office address in an attempt to ease tensions, but the idea was quickly scrapped for lack of policy proposals and the president’s own seeming disinterest in delivering a message of unity. Okay? Mr. President. We’re thinking a short powerful speech from the Resolute desk where you call for racial healing. I’m sorry. What’s that sir? You want to act it out with a box of Aunt Jemima. You know what? Let’s just scrap the whole thing. Today Trump had a call with the nation’s Governors to discuss the ongoing protests and he read straight from the authoritarian Playbook. Why isn’t comforting words. It reminds me of what? Mr. Rogers said about times of tragedy. Look for the dominators. Oh won’t you be? Oh you will be my neighbor you jerk.

That was mr. Rogers dominating someone.

Then Trump said something really scary, you know and you’ll never see this stuff again. So people are upset about systemic racism and a society that over polices and imprisons black people and Trump solution is to do more of that. You know, what they say those who refuse to learn from history are Donald Trump. So Donald Trump is the big tough guy going to dominate the opposition pew pew pew so naturally on Friday as

Range nearby Trump took shelter in the White House bunker. Well if history has taught us anything is that things always work out well for strong men who Retreat to underground bunkers. Mr. President. Come on. This is your moment. You’re always calling to beat up protesters at your rallies. You could shut this whole thing down just pop a couple of hydroxy xand come out of the White House swinging a 5-iron with a Confederate flag tape do it. But instead he tweeted great job last night at the White House by the US Secret Service. Service, they were not only totally professional but a very cool. I was inside watched every move and couldn’t have felt more safe adding a nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would dad dad. Dad. Dad dot-dot-dot have been greeted with the most officious dogs and most ominous weapons I’ve ever seen that’s when people would have been really badly hurt at least many Secret.

Agents just waiting for Action. We put the young ones on the front line sir. They love it. I don’t know why they’re not letting him give that reassuring speech from the Oval Office my fellow Americans. Let me send a clear message to the people protesting police brutality law enforcement is just a bunch of cool guys who cannot wait for things to get crazy. They see you as target practice now a truly enjoy watching you get eaten by vicious. Dogs now, let’s all come together in peace. Come buy guns my Lord come buy guns.

The protest of the White House were specifically in response to this tweet. These thugs are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor. Tim was and told him the military is with him all the way any difficulty and we will assume control, but when the Looting starts the shooting starts, thank you. Kind of an unnerving way to end a threat. It’s like that scene in Taken. I will look for you. I will find you and I will kill you. Thank you. Stay safe. Everyone top also had some more succinct thoughts tweeting. So terrible where the arrests and long-term jail sentences. We tried to sir, but Susan Collins voted to acquit you.

Now while Trump is in hiding it’s really good to see average citizen stepping up and filling in the void yesterday in Queens police knelt with protesters while in Flint Michigan the sheriff joined the march in Brooklyn protesters protected to Target from looters and Kentucky this group of white women formed a line to protect black protesters from police in Louisville protesters formed a human barrier to protect a cop who got separated from his unit and in Minneapolis.

Group of Mennonites showed up to support the protest Tonight’s Mennonites think America’s too racist! and they live in 1840.

Now I make a lot of jokes about Donald Trump because he is a dull and dark corrupting force that is undermining America’s moral leadership around the world and sewing hatred and fear among his own citizens. So that’s fun. and during this covid crisis the president is totally abdicated his responsibility of leading the people to understand the need to do the right thing for themselves and each other and yet the large majority of Americans have done the right thing anyway,

My Hope Is that the American people will do the same thing now Because ultimately they have to for too long those of us with opportunity and privilege have failed and our responsibility to look at the truth squarely and name the system of racial oppression that artificially divides Americans and benefits those already in positions of relative power. It’s perfectly understandable to not want to do this. It’s human. No one wants to lose privileges or position. Especially when fear of that loss is magnified and stoked by political leaders for their own supposed Advantage. I say supposed Advantage because if you deny the human rights and dignity of any people you will ultimately destroy the society and civilization that you claim to protect.

58 years ago John Kennedy said those who make peaceful Revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. Not only is addressing systemic racial and economic Injustice. The right thing to do. It is the safest most conservative most self-protecting most self-serving thing to do. contents under Pressure will eventually explode and that’s not a threat that’s a law of nature. So it’s time to ask ourselves as it is always time to ask ourselves. What kind of nation do we want to live in that answer requires moral leadership?

Take it upon yourself to be a leader and set an example of the kind of country you want to live in.  that might mean going down to a protest or making a donation or having a tense conversation about race,

but you’re not going to get that from the White House. So we need to step up and provide it ourselves. America is now officially byop:  be your own president.

[vintage-royalty]

I haven’t said anything about Wallis in a long time because I was sick of the misconceptions and the drama and just everything, but I saw this article on a different site and it made me so frustrated I figured I’d come back and say my piece on it. Not really here to argue about how any of y’all feel about Wallis or Meghan but rather the inaccuracies and disingenuous comparisons made in this article. 

Part of the reason I even clicked the link is that I recently finished Anna Pasternak’s biography of Wallis. And I liked it. It was actually a very good, balanced, book. Not a particularly deep exploration of her life, but she debunked some of the false stories and it seemed pretty well researched and written and I probably agreed with 90% of her conclusions as someone who knows Wallis’s life backwards and forwards. It was also, as far as royal biographies go, a relatively feminist interpretation of Wallis’s life. 

So, I was expecting this article to be about the media’s sexist mistreatment of Meghan and that perhaps the headline was a bit clickbaity but the actual article would be good. Tragically, I was mistaken. 

“This sexist scapegoating is probably as unfair today as it was in 1936, as both Edward VIII and Prince Harry were ambivalent about their royal responsibilities before their marriages. But there are lessons in history.”

I agreed with this part: I had been hoping that perhaps she would articulate what I’ve felt but rarely seen spelled out in the media: that like the Abdication was unfairly blamed on Wallis even though she had nothing to do with it, that “Megxit” was clearly something Harry had wanted to do for some time and that it was more Harry’s decision than Meghan’s and it’s extremely sexist that everyone is baselessly assuming it was her idea. There also seems to naturally be a 100% overlap in the demographics of people who think Harry leaving is a horrible betrayal of his family and dereliction of duty and people who are inclined to be sexist and racist towards Meghan either way. 

“It became his life’s aim for the world to know and adore Wallis as much as he did. Alas, this festering emotional sore was not lanced during his lifetime. Will this become Harry’s angry preoccupation, too?

It’s agonising, as Edward Windsor discovered, when the world misguidedly mistrusts your wife. Yet the solution is not to fight back, but to retreat and enjoy the private tenderness you have, together.”

This is fake news. The Windsors did fight back against false media stories, starting in 1937 when they sued the publisher of Coronation Commentary by Geoffrey Dennis. They also did numerous interviews over the years, they each wrote a book, and wrote articles defending themselves. 

“Unlike Meghan, Wallis understood the royal creed. While it appears Meghan seeks to control her public narrative, allegedly encouraging friends to speak out and now trying to censor her press, Wallis resigned herself to the mute impossibility of her situation.After the abdication in 1936, she wrote plainly to Edward: “The world is against me and me alone. Not a paper has said a kind thing for me.” 

Admirably, instead of openly bleating about her situation, Wallis schooled herself to survive the shadow side of infamy. This she summed up as “to have one’s character day after day laid bare, dissected and flayed by mischievous and merciless hands”.Wallis contained her suffering with laudable resolve. Meghan would do well to learn from her predecessor, who triumphed with a “kind of private arrangement with oneself – an understanding of the heart and mind – that one’s life and purposes are essentially good, and that nothing from the outside must be allowed to impair that understanding”.”

These are all real quotes but none of them say what Pasternak is suggesting they do. Wallis didn’t just lay back and accept the fact that everyone hated her. She did push back on numerous occasions, though admittedly not as much at first. Meghan is also not trying to censor the press, she is just very smartly refusing to grant access to publications that have treated her unfairly. The Sussexes are not the first celebrities, or likely even the first royals, to make this decision, they are just choosing to be more transparent about it and making it clear that they will no longer dignify nonsense from racist tabloids with a response. In some ways, when you think about it, that’s doing exactly what Pasternak is saying Meghan should be doing. The Sussexes are choosing to not even comment on articles from tabloids that have a history of treating them unfairly. 

“If Meghan were more emotionally contained – which is not the same as having a stiff upper lip – might she earn our respect? There is great merit in stoic dignity, as the Duchesses of Windsor, Cambridge and Cornwall can attest.”

Wallis tried being emotionally contained and she also tried being more emotionally open. She got criticized intensely for both. And eighty years ago there was a lot more to be gained by “stoic dignity” as she calls it, that just doesn’t apply at all in today’s culture. She doesn’t mention Princess Diana, who was much more emotionally open, and significantly more popular than all the people she does mention. 

Then she goes on about how Wallis tried to repair David’s relationship with his family, with quotes to back up her claim, and contrasts it to Meghan, without anything at all to back up her claim Meghan is acting differently. We know basically nothing about what’s gone on behind closed doors between Meghan and the royal family. Anna Pasternak is making exactly the same kinds of baseless assumptions about Meghan that the media made about Wallis that, once we had more information, turned out to be completely wrong. David was the one who made demands, and behind the scenes Wallis generally tried to discourage him. The royal family blamed Wallis without knowing or caring who was really behind it. We have literally zero information about these dynamics regarding Harry and Meghan and the royal family. 

“Wallis did keep Edward happy – he adored her until the last – but nothing changed for her. Everything can still change for Meghan.”

So Pasternak’s advice for Meghan is that she should try doing things that didn’t work for Wallis because maybe they’ll work for her? She does not at any point make an argument as to how the media culture has changed that might make things work better for Meghan, which I suppose would be a legitimate argument she could make. No, her argument is basically: follow in the footsteps of a woman who everyone in Britain always hated and still hates or else you may be hated even more. Not to mention she is oversimplifying Wallis’s relationship with the press and her handling of the royal family to a ridiculous degree. 

“If she restrains her husband from ill-advised outbursts, if she accepts her own press and if her marriage is as long and devoted as the Windsors’ was, then she will prove, just like Wallis did, that the sacrifice was worth it. And we may come to love and admire her as Harry does.”

I’m mainly going to focus on the first part here because this is exactly the sort of sexist bullshit she specifically tried to debunk in her book on Wallis. Wallis couldn’t control her man, and he did and said much more damaging shit than Harry has done. It’s not the responsibility of a man’s wife to keep him from making bad choices, and Meghan, like Wallis, has already been baselessly attacked as a domineering control freak who has her husband pussywhipped. Read the comments on any article about the Sussexes: people blame Meghan for anything Harry does they don’t like and give her absolutely no credit when he does something they do like. I’m sure Meghan shares her opinions with Harry, and we don’t know if she agreed or disagreed with his recent comments, but he is a grown man who makes his own decisions. Furthermore, if Meghan wants to pick a fight with her husband and demand to look over his shoulder every time he talks to the press, she’s going to significantly reduce her chances of making their marriage work. Which, according to Pasternak, is also something she needs to devote her energy to.

This article not only feels extremely unfair towards Meghan, it’s not accurate about Wallis, and it’s entire thesis is based on assumptions about what Meghan is saying and doing behind closed doors. It’s also a missed opportunity: there’s a lot Meghan could learn from Wallis’s story, though unfortunately more of it is about what not to do than what she should be doing. 

[elles-choices]

Part 6: Water Under The Bridge (TRR AU, Liam x MC - NSF*W)

Pairing: Liam x MC (Catherine)

Words Count: about 3500

PS: For part 1-5 please look below :)

Summary: Catherine Spencer returns to New York after her fall from grace in Cordonia. She left the love of her life behind and all the dreams she had dared to dream. Now she has to pick up the pieces and move on but her past has a way of finding her.

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Choices by Pixel Berry

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„If you're not the one for me

Then how come I can bring you to your knees

If you're not the one for me

Why do I hate the idea of being free?

And if I'm not the one for you

You've gotta stop holding me the way you do

Oh honey if I'm not the one for you

Why have we been through what we have been through?

It's so cold out here in your wilderness

I want you to be my keeper

But not if you are so reckless

If you're gonna let me down, let me down gently

Don't pretend that you don't want me

Our love ain't water under the bridge“ Water Under The Bridge, Adele

------------------

Catherine looks through the can window, wondering where the driver is taking her. Liam called 30 minutes ago telling her that his meeting was finally over and she should come meet him. However, he didn’t want to share any further detail as it was supposed to be a surprise.

The black Mercedes stops in the entrance of the marina — the same place where Catherine won the ceremonial race a few years ago but for her it seems like ages. She feels an uneasiness in her stomach… how many times had she hoped Liam would just send the other ladies home because he knew exactly who was the one for him; instead, he would repeat many times how he ‚should be fair to the other women‘ — she takes a deep breath and repeats to herself ‚but that was then and this is now‘. 

One of the King’s guards open the car door to let her out. She looks around looking for Liam but all she sees is a group of men in black suits, part of Liam’s security team. The man who opened the car door says: „Lady Spencer, please follow me“. She nods and they walk down the docks towards gate D where she sees an impressive-looking yacht. „His Majesty the King awaits you inside, my Lady“, he bows to her and leaves. 

Catherine embarks the yacht slowly, looking for Liam but there is nobody in sight. She walks up to the flying bridge and finds Liam studying a map, „Hello, Captain!“, she smiles and waits for him to turn around and see her.

„Hello, my love“, he walks up to her, pulling her into an embrace that lasted for a few seconds, „God, I missed you so much!“, he leans in for a slow, smooth kiss full of love.

„Hmmm“, she says when his lips leaves hers letting him now how much she enjoyed his taste, she has still her eyes closed. „These were the longest 5 hours in my life…“, Catherine says.

Liam puts his arms around her waist and chuckles, „I could barely concentrate, Kate. I kept looking at the photo we took this morning, flying back to Cordonia“, he looks into her eyes, „I could get used to this, you… here. Seeing you after a stressful day makes my life worth living“, he rests his forehead against hers. „I cleared my schedule for the week so we can do something special“. Catherine smiles, looking at him curious, „We will take the royal yacht, drive a couple of miles out into the Mediterranean Sea and spend these five days alone out there, just you and me. What do you think?“, he smiles, lowering his hands to her butt. 

„It sounds nice but I thought you hated boats?“, she says cupping his cheeks, „Also, I didn’t bring my luggage with me…“. Liam takes her hands into his and says:

„Well, I may be coming around… with the perfect company and a scenic background it is the perfect place to be“, he kisses her hand, „And your luggage should be in our master cabin“. Liam turns around and takes her to the map, „Tomorrow we can drive to the French Riviera but now you should go get ready for dinner, while I drive us out. We don’t wanna miss the sunset…“, he kisses Catherine gently and says, „Go all the way down, it is the only door to the right“, she excuses herself and makes her way to their room.

———————

Catherine walks into the cockpit and sees Liam leaning against the railing, looking into the horizon. She observes him attentively for a minute until he realizes she is standing there looking at him. His eyes widen and a smile grows over his lips when his eyes meet hers. She looks like a bride, his bride, in a white fitted, sleeveless mid dress in satin with a v-neck and narrow straps crossed at the back. She moves her blond hair to one shoulder and walks slowly to him. His eyes sweep over her body, with a look that is slow and lingering, stopping at her bold red lips.

„What did I miss?“, she smiles looking at the setting sun, „Wow, this is stunning…“, she says stopping by his side.

„Yes, indeed… I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life“, he says looking at her. Catherine glances at him and realizes that he was talking about her. He gets closer pulling her into a fervent kiss and she feels an electric charge, a surge of power going through her body… it is intense, it is primal and incredibly familiar — it’s the way only Liam can make her feel and she knows whatever happens to them, she will always have this… his love and desire for her. Liam draws back, savoring her taste on his lips with a satisfied smile. He holds her in front of him and they watch the spectacle together for a while. „I never thought I’d feel this happy ever again… and it’s all because of you, Catherine“, his hands roaming her curves, trying to memorize them as he kisses her neck from behind. She is his soulmate, his present and future, his weakness, his strength, his happiness… she was divine, he was sure of it from the moment she breath life into his being, healing his deepest wounds.

She turns around holding him tight, listening to his heart beat and feeling his chest raise and sink with his breathing.  „Thank you…“, she says, looking up at him, „for not giving up on us“. She sees a single tear leaving his eyes and she brushes it away, kissing his cheek, „I love you, Liam. All this time… it has always been you!“, she rests her head on his chest and feels so vulnerable. It is undeniable now that she can’t fight this feeling anymore, her heart belongs to him… he is the solution for everything.

———————

After dinner, they cuddle in the luxurious sky lounge. His hand brushing her arm as he kisses her temple. He sighs deeply and she asks:

„What is it, honey?“, she turns to look at him.

„We should talk about a few things that happened throughout these four years“, his expression is serious and thoughtful. „I don’t wanna feel like I’m hiding things from you…“, he holds her hand.

„You are scaring me, Liam…“, she looks at him unsure of what he means.

„Don’t be, sweetheart. I’m here with you…“, he squeezes her hand and breaths deeply. „The first thing I need to tell you is that although Tariq came forward taking all the blame for the scandal, he wasn’t the conspirator… unfortunately, my father was…“, he looks down feeling the pain of this betrayal.

Catherine shakes her head in disbelief, „What? No… it can’t be…“, she takes a deep breath, „But why would he do that?“.

„He abdicated because he had an aggressive cancer and only a few months to live. He knew I would have chosen you to be my Queen that night and thought you would weaken the monarchy standing because of your courtly inexperience…“, his eyes meet hers, „I never forgave him and I will never forget what he did to us. He changed our lives and because of him, we almost lost each other forever“, his eyes fill with tears.

„His ways may have been twisted but your father loved you, Liam. Trust me, I’m not happy about it either but he was more to you than just that. You have to let it go, you can’t carry this anger and rage with you forever“, she caresses his cheeks.

„You amaze me every time… Why do you think he deserves our forgiveness?“, he looks at her confused.

„He doesn’t but this is what forgiveness is about. He is gone now, Liam… it is okay to grieve the father you loved and admired your entire life. His mistake was one chapter of his life, it was a desperate decision of a dying man trying to make sure his son would survive in a dangerous world“, she gives him a gentle kiss on his lips, „Don’t let these feelings consume you, turn his actions into a reminder of what you don’t wanna turn into. One day you will have a family of your own and you will understand the kind of love that drove him to do this… he was wrong, very wrong by not trusting you but nobody can denies that he loved you“, she holds him tight in her arms and they stay like this in silence for a few minutes.

„Thank you…“, he whispers, „for making me a better person“. Catherine smiles with so much love for him that he feels his heart skip a beat. He kisses her cheek and says: „There are still a few things I want to address though…“.

„Oh God… I don’t know if I can take more of this, Liam“, she smiles unsure.

„This was definitely the worst news, my love“, he brushes his thumb over her knuckles. „Remember when I told you how difficult it was for me to accept losing you?“, she nods, waiting for him to continue, „I got involved with some women but I want you to know that it wasn’t serious… it was just sex and I don’t want you ever wondering about it“.

„Well, I wasn’t until you brought it up again…“, she says a little annoyed at him for bringing up the topic. „Look Liam, four years passed for you and for me too. We made mistakes, we learned from them… I don’t really wanna know about your sex life during this time because in the end it doesn’t matter. Today, I am the one by your side and tomorrow, you will be the one waking up in my bed“, she feels awkward, she has never been the jealous kind but she knows she won’t handle this talk too well if he goes on.

„You are right… but there is something I have to tell you“, he sighs closing his eyes, getting ready to share the upsetting news.

„Please, don’t tell me that you have a kid…“, she buries her face in her hands.

Liam laughs and says: „No! Oh, God, no… I was drunk but not too drunk to forget using protection!“. Catherine breathes deeply in relief. „Most of these woman were not from Cordonia and I didn’t know much about them but…“, he pauses and watches Catherine opening her eyes waiting for the blow, „One day I was in Lythikos with our friends. It was late, most of them had gone to bed and it was only me and Olivia. I drunk too much, she made advances and we almost did it…“. She looks at him as if her head was going to explode. „I was too drunk to actually do it. We talked about it the morning after but now we just pretend it never happened… she won’t be a problem since she and Drake are exploring their options. However, I don’t wanna hide it from you“, he kisses her hands.

„Please excuse me, I… I need some air“, Catherine stands up and leaves. She leans against the railing, looking at the lights of the capital. It doesn’t take too long before she feels his hands touching her back.

„I’m sorry for hurting you…“, he holds her from behind and they stay there for a few seconds.

„I’m not mad“, she says, „It’s just… Olivia? Really? She used to be one of your best friends and you knew she always had a thing for you, Liam… why would you go there?“, she shakes her head.

„I was too drunk to think straight, Katie. I apologized to her afterwards. We agreed that this was a mistake… I do take responsibility for what happened but I want you to know that I wasn’t myself at that time…“, he kisses her head and tightens his embrace.

„Does Drake know about it?“, she says under her breath.

„Yes, he does. He understands that it was before they even had feelings for each other, we just don’t talk about it. I was too drunk to even remember exactly what happened“, he kisses her softly down her neck and bites her skin gently, causing her to shiver with pleasure.

She turns around and says: „Okay… if it didn’t mean anything to you, I am sure I will get over it sooner or later…“, she hugs him, closing her eyes, „I don’t have any right to be mad at you, Liam… maybe we should leave the past in the past and figure out how we want to move forward“, she looks at him and he kisses her gently on the lips, smiling as his lips leave hers.

„I’d like that“, he looks into her eyes shinning bright like two aquamarine gemstones, „I don’t deserve you. I don’t know if I ever will but I know I wanna become the best man I can be, for you“, slowly his lips move towards hers, getting so close she can feel his breath. He touches her lips like a whisper at first, so gentle and lightly sending shivers of desire through her body, causing her to gasp in delight. Then, suddenly, he greedily takes every inch of her mouth, leaving her breathless.

Catherine pushes him gently away, making her way back into the sky lounge and leaving him puzzled for a second. She stops at the entrance, lowering the straps of her dress and opening the concealed side zip. She trows him a glance over her shoulders, „Are you coming?“, letting the dress fall to the floor and making her way to their master cabin.

Liam bites his lower lips as he watches her swaying her hips as she walks. He looks at her tight ass and swallows hard, feeling his trousers getting tighter by the second. He moves quickly after her, holding her from behind — one of his hands massaging her bare breasts while the other slips under her tiny underwear. He closes his eyes and kisses her neck while his fingers slowly circle her bundle of nerves and she moans, sticking out her ass against his hard cock. „You are so wet, love… I want you so bad…“, he says with his husky voice.

„Then take me, Liam…“, she whispers and he turns her around, grabbing her butt and lifting her up, she wraps her legs around him. Carefully, he walks down the stairs and enters their room. He kissed her with a heat, letting her know that he wants her. He lowers her onto the mattress and licks her body back up to her chest. She helps him with his clothes until he is only in underwear. She slips her hand inside his boxer briefs and starts stroking his 8 inches long cock, he groans her name:

„Catherine…“, he kisses her passionately for a few seconds before spinning her around on the bed. He kisses the back of her neck, down her spine and she pushes her butt against his cock, „Do you want it now, love?“. He takes his underwear off and throws it on the floor.

„Oh yes, Liam…“, he lifts her a little and slips a pillow under her belly, canting her hips higher. Opening her legs, she leaves her sex wide open to him. Slowly, he guides himself to her slick folds, rubbing his thick member through her wetness, making her beg him to finally fuck her. Liam grabs her hip with one hand and glides himself into her and she purrs. She moves her ass as he thrust like there will be no tomorrow. His fingers find their way to her clit, massaging her as he thrusts harder into her, „Oh God, Liam…“.

„You feel so good, beautiful!“, he says. He pulls her up to him, both still kneeling and she nestles tightly with her back to his chest. She hugs his neck with one hand and he caresses her breasts, kissing her shoulders. He slows his pace a little, enjoying the sensation of her pussy. One of his hands reaches down and gently massages her clit. He turns her head to him and she holds his gaze for a while — this moment is so unique and intimate to both of them, they can clearly feel the deepness of their souls' connection. „Come for me, love“, he whispers and she moans, leaning forward, her hands grabbing the sheets and she moves her butt up and down while he thrusts harder into her. She moans his name and he feels her muscle tightening around him. He groans reaching deeper into her and they reach ecstasy together.

Liam lies down and pulls Catherine into his arms, he is exhausted but can’t stop smiling. She rests her head on his chest, „This was… incredible!“, she giggles.

„I love you, Catherine… I adore you… I don’t need anything in my life but you!“, he kisses her head and she looks up smiling.

„I love you too, Liam“, she kisses him one more time before they fall asleep in each other’s arms.

———————

The days have gone by so quickly and Catherine will return to London the next day. They have never felt as close as they feel now. She feels more secure with him, they laugh together again and things seem to be heading to the right direction — Liam knows that his decision of taking the week off to spend with the love of his life was one of the best he has ever made. They reconnected and they are so good together.

Catherine sits on Liam’s lap as he checks his emails, she waits for him to get it done so they can finally enjoy the sun. Suddenly, her phone rings and she looks at the caller id, „Oh, it’s my work. I gotta get this!“, she kisses Liam’s cheek and disappear inside the sky lounge. Liam watches as she leaves, not thinking too much of it and getting back to his email. After 10 minutes she comes back and takes a seat in front of him, she looks a little unsettled. 

„What is wrong, love?“, he looks at her worried.

She shakes her head and tries to smile, „Nothing, really… I have a working trip coming up. I just found out about it“, she says looking at the horizon. 

„Oh… when is it? How many days will you be gone?“, Liam reaches for her hand, squeezing it.

„Hmm, I’m flying out in two weeks and I’ll be gone for three…“, she looks into his eyes.

„Three days is not that bad… and when you are back I’ll come see you! There is no need to be sad“, Liam smiles and brings her hand to his lips.

„Not days, weeks. I’ll be gone for three weeks… but I will really miss you!“, she smiles but there is a sadness in it.

„Wow… three weeks is a long time!“, he brushes his thumb over her knuckles, „I can visit you then. Where are you flying to?“, he smiles.

„No, it’s fine… we can talk every day and Skype“, she smiles but he doesn’t buy it.

„Where are you flying to, Katie?“, he looks at her, serious and arching a brow.

Catherine looks away, „I can’t share this information with you… I am going with a few of my colleagues in a UN mission to gather information, conduct interviews and try to find witnesses in refugee camps“, Liam lower his face holding his head with his hand, „I don’t want you to worry. It’s going to be my third time flying there… It just... it has never been this long“.

„You don’t want me to worry?“, he whispers, „You are going to the Middle East and I should not be worried?!“, he raises his head looking at her, shaking his head. „You are not going, Katie… this is a fucking war zone. I can’t let you go… this is not happening!“, he covers his mouth with his hand.

„This is my job, Liam. How do you think I get to the informations I need for court? I can’t just go to my boss and tell him that my boyfriend, the King, doesn’t want me to go. They will replace me in a heart beat“, she tries to explain. ‘Boyfriend’, she said it and he noticed but he can’t feel as happy as he thought he would. Not when his girl is leaving putting her life in danger.

„This is too dangerous, Catherine. I don’t care where you are going to… I know it is too dangerous and I don’t want the most important person in my life to be exposed to this danger!“, he tries to convince her.

„I’ll be flying from Rammstein to a Peshmerga controlled zone far away from the front. It isn’t as dangerous as it sounds“, she stands up, walking behind him and hugging him.

„Fucking Iraq? You are going to fucking Iraq!? This is insane… please don’t do this to yourself, please don’t do this to me“, he closes his eyes and one tear runs down his cheek.

„I have to…“, she buries her face in his shoulders.

(to be continued)

For more chapters go to my MASTERLIST in my bio.

———————

The Royal Romance Liam x MC Tag

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[pinkipie100]

On Keith Leaving Voltron and the Validity of His Decision

*deep breath*

Here we go... So, it couldn’t be more clear that a lot of the fandom is upset or dissatisfied or confused at Keith giving up the Black Lion and instead joining the Blade of Marmora. I admit, it does seem like a step backwards from Keith’s character development as a leader of Voltron from the previous season... But I think that’s the point.

Let’s take a step back and think about this; first, let’s start by asking some basic questions: What is Voltron: Legendary Defender? [Yes we’re getting that fundamental; get back here, take some time to read an actual intellectual argument about a family show for once.] That’s right, Voltron: Legendary Defender is a TV show! Now, what are TV shows, really? Well, they’re basically expressive visual media stories meant to shed light on the human condition and entertain us while doing so; the alternative to the written word doing so, yes? Meaning, they’re a kind of art. And the best art/stories challenge us to think in a new or creative perspective. This is why I love how Keith’s story has been unfolding.

Last season was spent exploring Keith’s attempt to fill Shiro’s shoes as Voltron’s leader. He wasn’t the best at it, surely, and he blatantly expressed hesitance to even take up the mantle. Even up until the end of the season, Keith told Shiro he didn’t believe in his ability to lead the team. This doubt in Keith’s mind culminates as he makes the decision to yield the Black Lion to Shiro and leave the team altogether for the Blade of Marmora. This is a good thing. Keith’s undeveloped leadership skills and his cognizance of his skill set poignantly validate his abdication as Team Voltron’s leader.

Keith, try as he might, just doesn’t have the right traits to be a fully functional leader to the team, as we all know, because of his lone-wolf mentality, impulsiveness, and lack of self-control. From the very first mission the new Team Voltron goes on, Keith demonstrates the opposite of leadership; he full-on yells at his teammates to stay out of his way when they seek guidance from him:

Lance obviously calls Keith out on this, and most of the fandom would agree that Keith needed that from Lance to help the former realize his mistake and correct it. That is true, but there’s an implication from this aggressive line that many may miss. I feel this line perfectly exposes Keith’s discomfort when people look to him for advice or guidance. He’s been suddenly put under a lot of pressure, and everyone is depending on him. As a result, he lashes out when the battle is going so drastically downhill and the other paladins keep pressuring him for a solution.

Even by the end of the third season, Keith struggles to operate as the leader of the team. Granted, Shiro is back, and this causes a power struggle between them, but ultimately, Keith had to rely on Shiro’s advice in order to defeat Lotor’s generals and destroy the Galra cargo vessel:

Keith is the one who came up with the plan to trick the generals into shooting their own ship, but if Shiro had not called Keith out on the limited time they had before the cargo vessel escaped, it probably would have gotten away. Now, this is to no fault of Keith, necessarily. Again, this was a tense situation, and Keith has a very one-track mind. Notice how Lance asks Keith what to do, but Shiro is the one who answers. Keith just stays silent and sticks to his initial plan to take on the generals’ ship first.

Taking these two scenes into account, Keith is not very comfortable being an authority figure to his team. He tends to defer to someone he views as an authority figure in high-pressure situations when it comes to a team dynamic, otherwise he reverts to his impulse-driven instincts without thought to the consequences affecting others. There’s no doubt he gives leadership an honest try, and those skills are vastly improved by the end of the third season, but ultimately, he is still disinclined to become Voltron’s permanent leader- he is still better suited as a temporary replacement.

Having discussed Keith’s abilities in his leader role, something else that is equally important to consider when addressing Keith as leader of team Voltron is his own desire to be the leader. It doesn’t take much to see that he doesn’t want the position. We’ve touched on it in the previous points, but there are moments when Keith explicitly delineates his preference in position, such as when Shiro first makes his return:

Keith jumps right on the opportunity for Shiro to retake his role as leader, so he wants the latter to recover as soon as possible. He acknowledges Shiro’s importance to the team, and the implied words here are, ‘They need you, not me.’ That may sound like he doesn’t have much confidence in his leadership position, and that’s exactly the case. Worry not, however, because this will be addressed later.

Meanwhile, shall we take a look at the actual season in question?

Season 4 really solidifies Keith’s inclination towards following as opposed to leading. The season opens with Keith operating under the Blade of Marmora, following [well, sort of] Kolivan’s orders:

While he may not have done this well, his poor rule-following was more due to, once again, his independent thinking than him actually wanting to be in charge of the mission. He was not trying to be insubordinate. One thing is still clear, however, and that is that Keith is still loyally subordinate to Shiro when it comes to Voltron:

Keith and Shiro are still very insistent on their respective views, Shiro’s being that Keith is the chosen leader of Voltron, and Keith’s being that Shiro is. The most damning evidence here to support Keith being unfit as leader is that he so stalwartly holds to Shiro being a better leader than Keith overall. Note well that Keith does not feel any remorse from stepping down from a leadership role- a paladin role, certainly, but Keith always felt that Shiro is better suited as leader, and, in fact, lights up at the very thought:

I had to capture a few screens of the same line just to emphasize Keith’s movement in describing the ‘bright side’ of the team’s situation. Though it pains Keith to leave, he would rather have Team Voltron under the rightful leader, even if that means he must leave the team.

My point here is that Keith recognizes where his talents and abilities lie, and that is not as Team Voltron’s leader. A majority of fans who prefer Keith as the Black Paladin, or even feel it makes more narrative sense for him to be Black Paladin, think thusly because every narrative element and character has pointed towards this being the direction the story is going:

Every sign in the universe is pointing Keith towards piloting the Black Lion- all because it chose him. But Keith still gives it up in the end, because he knows where his strength lie. Keith may be headstrong, but he is not a leader. He is ultimately still a follower. He is self-sufficient, but that does not translate well to helping a team be the same way. And Keith knows this. It’s not that Keith is not confident in his ability to be a leader- it’s that he recognizes it’s not his place, and certainly not what he wants.

So what are the implications of all of this?

Well, firstly, Keith is a masterful example of subverting a painfully common trope in hero stories and, typically, action-oriented and male audience-targeted TV and movies: The Chosen One. Keith had literally been chosen by not only Shiro, but the Black Lion itself to be the leader of Voltron, despite his hesitance and minimal qualifications. In falling under the Chosen One trope, Keith would have hesitantly grown into his own as a leader, and, in the end, wholeheartedly come to embrace his role appointed to him by what is essentially Fate. While this is a trope as old as time, and comes with a well-intentioned message, the problem with the Chosen One trope is that it’s so linear. Yes, there are struggles on the way to fulfilling the Chosen One role, but we all already know how it ends. The hero accepts their role and fulfills their destiny, now matter how unsure they are.

Keith turns this trope on its head by allowing him to do what heroic, broody anime-protagonist archetypes like him rarely ever do: Keith defies Fate. He refuses the call to be a leader and pilot the Black Lion, having determined that he truly is not fit for it, and there is a better fit for said position. This is an especially important message for young boys, because they are often taught to never show weakness or admit defeat, particularly to other men; they are supposed to be men and suck it up, man up, even. Keith, a passionate, conventionally masculine character that many a young male viewer may admire, sets a fantastic example of unashamed deference to a more skilled man than he. To be fair, Keith did give himself a chance to fulfill his Chosen One role, and he gave it his best effort, but recognized that his talents were better spent in another way. Keith is unafraid of staring Destiny in the face and firmly and rightly saying, ‘No.’

I want to wrap up with what this indicates in tandem with the fandom’s vastly negative reception of Keith’s stepping down.

There is an aspect of this fandom that is particularly poisonous not because of its tendency to cause discourse, but because of the toxic rationale of the topic as a whole. The fandom has collectively accepted that a leadership position correlates directly to character worth. Remember pre-season 3 and the Lion Swap Debates? Ungodly amounts of discourse arose from it, and continued to do so after the season aired. Keith stans and Lance stans argued over why their respective advocate should be/would make an infinitely better Black Paladin, while others felt Allura was most qualified, and yet, still others felt infuriated that fans were already so eager to replace Shiro as Black Paladin so quickly. 

Interestingly enough, no one [except myself and a handful of elite intellectuals] argued very strongly for Hunk to be Black Paladin, let alone Pidge [forget about poor Coran]. The reasoning for this is that those three characters were already accepted in the lions that they were [or weren’t] in. The other four characters, however, were not. Fans felt that in order for the character of their preference to receive development, they had to fill the power vacuum and prove themselves as a capable leader, or in Shiro’s case, retake that position of leadership. The named characters do, indeed, each have leadership potential, there is no question. That does not mean it is vital to their character development that they be in such position.

The fandom has really started to think like Zarkon- the Black Lion, to them, represents power and influence. If a character is not in that position, then they are not at their full character potential, and they are not important- That character is losing.

This could not be farther from the truth. Just like Keith, no character needs to be a leader to develop into a three-dimensional character, even if they have such traits- Likewise, not everyone in the real world needs to be a go-getter or business owner or entrepreneur to be a valid person. Linking success or validity primarily to leadership is an incredibly toxic and incorrect viewpoint, regardless of whether it’s in the fandom setting or reality. The world needs followers just as much as it needs leaders, and that is the lesson of Keith’s story arc so far.

And that is an important and unique message- a challenging, new, and creative perspective.

This got extremely broad and long-winded, and I apologize, but I hope you took they time to closely analyze and comprehend it all. What the writers did with Keith was masterful, in my opinion, and it breaks my heart that a story that so strongly resonates with me is being so misconstrued and poorly received by fans.

You have my utmost gratitude if you read the entire essay to the end!

[kane-and-griffin]

“I Put a Spell On You,” Part 2

A Kabby Halloween fic in three parts for the AU The Woman That Fell From the Sky, in honor of @brittanias‘ birthday!   

Part 1 here

PART 2: “Fox-Trot Time” (Halloween 2009)

“The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.” -- Dashiell Hammett, from The Thin Man

When Abby left New York nine years ago, she left it for good.

She and Jake had built a life there, one they’d believed would last.  She’d moved there young and made it her home and loved it with the same fervent intensity as all the city’s Midwestern expatriates.  But all of that meant nothing without Jake.

There was nowhere she could run to escape the crushing sorrow of loss.  Every bodega, every hole-in-the-wall wine bar, every bench in Central Park, every subway station, Jake was there.  The bank where he’d been shot was on her way to work.  The hospital cafeteria on the third floor looked out over the police station where she’d sat, cold and numb and dry-eyed, filling out form after form while Marcus attempted to comfort the confused and tearful Clarke on the bench in the hallway outside.

She could not stay in this place.

The job in Massachusetts had been offered to her a month before Jake’s death, and she had declined it.  They were New Yorkers, she’d explained to the hospital recruiter.  Their daughter would be a New Yorker too.  The city was their home, and they couldn’t imagine leaving it.

The job was still open six weeks later, something that seemed to Abby to be a kind of miracle; they couldn’t find any other surgeons of her caliber willing to move out to the middle of nowhere – leaving behind every modern amenity, from Korean barbecue to decent theatre – to take a job in a small sleepy town with only a few thousand residents.

But Jake had never set foot in that town.  She had never even told him its name.  It felt, in that moment, like the one place in the world she could go to escape.

So she packed up her car, strapped Clarke into the backseat, and off they went.

And she never went back.

Nine years ago, watching the New York skyline disappear in her rearview mirror as steel buildings turned into green forests, she hadn’t been able to imagine ever returning.  She hadn’t thought the pain would ever fade.

But Clarke is a freshman in high school now, and they’ve made a life for themselves, and it doesn’t hurt to remember Jake the way that it used to.  She’s changed.  Marcus has changed her.  She’s older and sadder than she was when she and Jake were reckless urban twentysomethings together, but she’s also steadier on her feet.

It’s because Marcus knows this – because Marcus can sense this – that he even dares to ask her the question.

It starts with a senior citizens’ cruise to the Bahamas.

Abby’s parents come to Massachusetts for Christmas every year, to flagrantly spoil their granddaughter.  But this year, they have, improbably, entered some grocery store sweepstakes and actually won, which means they will be spending the latter half of December aboard what Marcus describes as “an unfathomably enormous maritime shrine to capitalism, with liquor”, thus depriving them of their best opportunity to buy fourteen-year-old Clarke hundreds of dollars’ worth of things she doesn’t need.  Abby suggests Thanksgiving as a compromise, privately hoping they’ll decline it; her parents have very particular views on proper Thanksgiving food, and with her mother there to appraise it she will never be able to relax about the turkey, even though Marcus has never messed it up once. 

But they have an entirely different solution in mind.  They want to take Clarke to Disneyland for Halloween.

Clarke, of course, is over the moon, and says yes immediately, only afterwards pausing to realize that Marcus – now the fall festival’s most devoted attendee – will be crushed.  It’s quietly become a tradition over the past few years, and if his fans have noticed that he never takes Halloween concert gigs, no matter how good the money, they’ve certainly never put two and two together.  He would never dream of missing a Halloween with Clarke and Abby, and Clarke is afraid she’ll hurt his feelings if she tells him that this year, she’ll be the one who isn’t coming home.

Like a chicken, she makes Abby break the bad news to him.  Ordinarily her mother would protest this uncharacteristic abdication of responsibility, but the tradeoff is a promise to clean her room without being reminded every day from now until the trip, an offer Abby can’t refuse.  She approaches the topic gingerly, and Marcus is predictably disappointed, but brightens almost immediately, that endearing lift in his voice she knows means he’s just had a great idea.

“Come to New York with me,” he says, startling her into silence.

“What?”

“For Halloween.  Come to New York this year.”

Abby has always thought she would never go back.  But she loves the fall festival because Clarke and Marcus love it and she can’t imagine enjoying herself there without them; so, surprising both of them, she says yes.

“You used to love throwing Halloween parties with Jake,” he says, his voice gentle, cautious.  “Do you think maybe . . . we could have one?”

She pauses for a long moment before responding, the magnitude of the thing hovering between them apparent to both.  It sounds like such a small thing, but it isn’t.  It’s massive.  It’s a real question.  It’s a decisive relationship step.  Can she not only return to the city she left behind, the city where she was Jake’s friend and then lover and then wife, but return there for the purpose of being a couple in public with somebody else?

The last time she did this, it was in the tiny Brooklyn apartment she’d shared with Jake since they were college students.  He’d stood on the kitchen table to drape orange and black crepe paper along the ceiling and replace the bulbs in the light fixture with ones that glowed green, and they’d handed out gummy snakes and spiders to all the trick-or-treating kids in the building.  Clarke had been three and told her parents she wanted to dress up for Halloween as a cup, a bizarre notion from which they could not dissuade her (“Clarke, why do you want to dress up as a cup?” “I like cups.” “We could go to the store and look at other costumes –“ “NO A CUP A CUP A CUP”), so Jake had sighed and gone down to the basement and dug through the piles of recycling in the trash room to find a cardboard box, which he cut into a cylinder and covered with a red plastic tablecloth, pleated at the top and edged in white, like a red Solo cup.  He had written “DO NOT DRINK” on it in black Sharpie, which Clarke found hilarious.

The last time she’d experienced Halloween in the city, she’d been a wife and the mom of a toddler and a big-shot surgeon on the rise, shooting up through the ranks at Sloan-Kettering, destined for greatness.

The last time she and Marcus were alone together in New York, they were drinking coffee and flirting and very nearly holding hands while Jake was being raced in an ambulance to the hospital where she worked.

It’s not just about the party.

She thinks for a long time, and he waits patiently, quiet at the other end of the line, letting her have her space.  She turns it over and over in her mind before finally speaking.

“Can we compromise?” she finally asks.  “Yes to New York, and yes to a party, as long as it’s very small and you can promise I won’t get my face in a magazine or something.  I don’t . . .”  She pauses, unsure how to say what she wants to say without hurting him.

“You don’t want to go out in public with me in the city,” he finishes for her, and the sadness in his voice isn’t directed at her, but she feels it anyway.

“I can’t,” she says heavily.  “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Abby.”

“I’m just not quite ready to end up on a Worst-Dressed List,” she jokes weakly, but neither of them laugh.  It’s just a little too close to being true.  

Marcus is very careful about deflecting attention away from Abby and her town.  He’s friends with a lot of beautiful women and he usually takes one of them to the red carpet events Abby finds too terrifying to even consider.  He has a nice comfortable arrangement with a young actress friend of his named Lexa, a rising young romantic comedy star whose agents have been very blunt with her about not coming out as a lesbian until she’s “more reliably bankable,” so she and Marcus are often each other’s red carpet safety net.  Abby likes Lexa.  They had lunch once when Abby was in L.A. for work.  Every time an awards thing comes up, Marcus always asks Abby if she’d like to go, and she always suggests he take Lexa instead.  All it would take, she reminds him, is one sharp-eyed music journalist, and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down.  Which is everybody’s nightmare.

So Marcus goes on appearing in public with scores of different lovely women and journalists keep breathlessly speculating about who “The Woman” might be and Abby continues living the calm, quiet life she built for herself, which Marcus gets to share when he comes to visit.

But it doesn’t go both ways.

Abby’s town will always protect her.  New York City never will.

“I’ll come,” she tells him, “if we can be normal people for the weekend.  If you can be Marcus, and not Marcus Kane.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” he tells her, but then she hears that little lift in his voice again.

“What?” she demands.  “What are you plotting?”

“A small private party,” he insists, and she can hear him grinning through the phone.  “Just like you asked.  I promise.”

Jake never liked black-and-white movies.

This was a fight they had many times.  “Casablanca is a classic!” Abby would insist, causing Jake to roll his eyes.

“No, Rocky is a classic,” was his inevitable rebuttal.  “Casablanca is just old.”

“It’s considered one of the greatest films of all time.”

Jake would dismiss this with a handwave.  “It doesn’t even have any explosions in it.”

“It’s a war movie, of course it has explosions,” Abby would retort, though she had not seen it in so many years she could not always reliably remember whether or not this was true.  And so on and so forth, ad infinitum, until Jake would smack her on the ass and make her laugh and they’d forget what they were arguing about because kissing was a much better use of the couch than watching a movie anyway.

But Marcus loves old movies as much as she does.  Just one of the many small constant reminders that this relationship is profoundly different from her last one.  Not better or worse, not more or less, but endlessly, constantly, impossibly different, in ways she is still discovering.

They’d watched The Thin Man together on the couch one night, three or four days after he’d first arrived on her doorstep, the whole world still reeling.  He’d been clicking through the cable channels, trying to find something that wasn’t another replay of the same sickening footage of the plane smashing into the towers, and had landed on a marathon of Myrna Loy films on one of the classic movie networks, The Thin Man just starting.  “I love this movie,” he’d said absently, almost to himself more than to her, and Abby turned from where she sat beside him to rest her forehead against the soft blue cotton of his sweater, and began to cry.  He cupped her cheek in his hand and tilted her face up to regard her with confusion and a degree of worry that teetered on the edge of panic.  But through the tears she was smiling.

“You sounded like you,” she said softly.  “Just now.  When you said that.  It was the first time since you’ve gotten here that you sounded like yourself again.”

He didn’t say anything.  He knew exactly what she meant.

So she rested her head on his shoulder, curled up into the cradle of his arm, and they watched Nick and Nora Charles quip and banter and toss back oceans of champagne and solve murders in glamorous 1920’s New York, along with their faithful dog Asta, and for an hour and a half they forgot about everything that wasn’t the movie and each other, and Abby fell asleep in bed that night with her head pillowed on his bare chest, listening to his heartbeat and thinking to herself that maybe such a thing as happiness was really possible.

They’ve watched it dozens of times in the intervening years, and it has lost none of its charm, which makes it perhaps inevitable as Marcus’ suggestion for their Halloween costume.

“Why are we dressing up? I thought we were just having a small, casual party,” she asks suspiciously, when he calls to make the suggestion, and she hears him hesitate on the other end of the line for just a moment before carefully answering, “ . . . You never said ‘casual.’”

“I definitely did.”

“Small. I agreed to small.”

“Marcus – “

“Clarke will never forgive me if I don’t make you wear a costume this year.”

“Marcus –”

“Is that Marcus?” asks Clarke, strolling in from the other room as if on cue (which she might be; it’s entirely possible that he texted her).  “He showed me your costumes and they’re so cool.”

So that, of course, is the end of that. Nick and Nora it is.  (He’s even managed to locate a stuffed wire fox terrier.)

Marcus has opted for the costumes from the Christmas party scene, with Nora in a floaty tiered confection of black-and-white striped chiffon, hair curled into sleek Marcelle waves, and Nick in a dapper pinstriped suit and white pocket square, hair slicked back, beard shaved off once again into a perfect tiny handlebar mustache. (“You could just recycle your Gomez costume,” she’d pointed out when he sent the photos, which he rebutted with indignation.  “Abby, this is a completely different suit.”)

He’s also decided the party should be held in one of the private banquet rooms at the old Sutton Club Hotel, where Dashiell Hammett wrote The Thin Man, a decision he plays off to Abby as merely aggressive commitment to the theme, but she knows better.  It’s to protect her, and their guests, from being seen coming in or out of his apartment, which is never free from the watchful eyes of paparazzi. 

If they’d had the party at Marcus’ apartment, Abby would never be able to let down her guard, too worried about being spotted.

But anyone can enter a hotel and get into an elevator and go up to the sixth floor and give their name to the pair of unsmiling security guards (incognito in hotel uniforms) outside Event Room C, and close the door behind them, without People Magazine being any the wiser.

They spend the nights before and after the party in the hotel.  It feels like a sinful indulgence to share a king-sized bed with Marcus after so many nights curled up together in the center of the full-sized mattress she’d bought for a house she thought she would always live in alone,  and which she has always felt superstitious about trading in for a roomier one now that an extremely tall man who sometimes hogs the covers is sharing her bed on a semi-regular basis.  It feels too much like tempting fate.  So they’ve simply gotten used to it, sleeping tangled up together in the center of the only-just-big-enough mattress.  The gleaming white linens and pillow-top  at the Sutton Place are an unimaginable luxury.  Though they still sleep tangled up together in the center anyway.  Old habits.

Marcus will not let Abby help with, or even see, the decorations until it’s time for the party.  He has not even shown her the guest list.  It’s impossible to shake the worry that he has perhaps adhered too strictly to the letter of the law (“small”) while entirely discarding the spirit of it (will they be drinking thousand-dollar champagne? Is she going to have to make small talk with Sting again?).  She dresses alone in their room (he put his suit on hours ago and is downstairs with the caterers), and realizes she feels oddly vulnerable without Clarke.  It’s only Halloween, it’s not Thanksgiving or Christmas, she knows that, but it’s the first holiday they’ve ever spent apart.  She would feel safer walking into a room full of strangers in a 1920’s movie costume if her daughter was there to zip up her dress and pin up the back of her hair and hold her hand.

But Clarke’s not here, she’s at Mickey’s Halloween Ball with her grandparents, wearing a pair of orange neon light-up ears and beaming with joy and texting her mother picture after picture of the parade and the rides and the alarming number of shopping bags slowly accruing in her Cinderella-themed hotel room, which means Abby has to make an entrance on her own into a room full of famous strangers, which is basically her nightmare.

Her heart pounds in her chest as she puts the finishing touches on her bright red lipstick, closes the hotel room door behind her, takes the elevator down two floors, says hello to Marcus’ security guards, who wave her past, and then opens the white and gold door.

“Surprise!” says Marcus, and Abby’s heart stops when she realizes she knows everyone in the room.

Marcus didn’t throw a fancy Halloween party for all his famous friends to meet his girlfriend and shove her uncomfortably into a spotlight she doesn’t want. 

He threw a fancy Halloween party as a gift for her, and filled it with all the friends she left behind when she moved out of the city.

He kept his promise; by Marcus standards, 30 people counts as “small”, so she’s willing to allow it.  Because every single one of them is a person that she loves and misses and thought she’d never see again.  The elderly Italian couple who lived next door to her and Jake for six years, who babysat Clarke when the daycare was closed and brought pans of meatballs in Sunday gravy over every week so the broke young parents could eat at least one home-cooked meal.  The two nurses who worked under her the whole time she was at Sloan-Kettering, who’d become her right and left hand, and who had been devastated when she left.  The priest who’d married them and said Jake’s funeral.  The parents of Clarke’s best friends from day care.  And more than a dozen others, friends of hers, friends of Jake’s, people she has missed since the day she left but couldn’t quite bear to face again for fear of reopening old wounds.  People she’d thought, so often, about calling, or visiting, or emailing, but hadn’t, because what if it turned out she wasn’t ready to spend time with anyone who had their own memories of Jake?

But they’re here, they’re all here, and they’re mingling with friends of Marcus’ who she actually likes, the ones who don’t terrify her.  No Cynthia Nixon, no Thelonious J.  But she recognizes his drummer and bass player and road crew, she recognizes his old roommates from the shitty Queens apartment he was living in when she first met him, she recognizes the bartender from the East Village dive where he used to play every Thursday and who always snuck him a free beer when Marcus was too broke to pay for it himself.

These are their real people.  These are their real friends.  This is Marcus Kane’s real New York.

She’s so overwhelmed by the sea of smiling faces in front of her that she doesn’t notice until a few minutes have passed and she’s been hugged by everyone in the room how perfect everything else is.  The decorations, simple and elegant in black and white and gold.  The food, indulgent but not so expensive that it makes Abby uncomfortable, and no pretentious hotel waiters; just trays heaped with crab cakes and spinach tartlets and chocolate truffles all over the room, for everyone to graze to their heart’s content. 

No bartender, either; Marcus has taken on this job himself.

“’The important thing is the rhythm,’” she hears him quoting Nick Charles cheerfully to her old neighbors as she approaches the bar.  “’Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, a dry martini you always shake to waltz time.’”

The neighbors are unimpressed enough with Marcus Kane’s fame and fortune to roll their eyes at this ever so faintly as they take their dry martini, and Abby feels the tension in her spine unknit for the first time since Marcus said the words “Come to New York with me” a month ago.

Her friends are talking to Marcus Kane as though he is a normal person.  As though he is simply the man Abby loves.  A man wearing the costume of a film noir detective, a man who cut decorations out of gold paper himself and taught himself how to shake a Manhattan to fox-trot time and who has spent so many years listening so carefully to everything Abby has ever said to him that he knew every single person she would want to see in that room.  Marcus is already a star by now, Marcus has opened for U2 all over Europe and “The Girl Inside the Mountain” is already piling up an awful lot of zeroes in that bank account that will pay Clarke’s way to college in a few short years.  But nobody mentions this.  They let him leave all of that on the other side of the door for tonight.

And none of them have forgotten Jake.

On the contrary, he’s everywhere, everyone mentions him, everyone tells stories about him, everyone asks if Clarke still has his eyes.  Does Abby remember the year she tried to make Jake hand out raisins instead of candy because it was healthier, so he retaliated by purchasing an industrial-sized bag of king-sized Snickers bars.  Or the time they’d made a green Jello mold full of gummy eyeballs and it had worked flawlessly as a Halloween decoration but looked too weird to eat, sitting untouched in the center of the snack table until everyone went home and Jake threw it away, but left one gummy eyeball in the bottom of Abby’s coffee mug to make her scream the next morning.

It has never occurred to Abby how deeply it would heal her heart to talk about Jake, to hear other people’s stories about him, to know how much he was missed by people who weren’t her lover or her child.

She needed this, and she didn’t even know it.

But Marcus did.

She’s wondered, from time to time, whether her old friends, the people who shared her life when she shared it with Jake, would look on her relationship with Marcus as a betrayal.  Perhaps it’s this, in part, that’s kept her from coming back to the city. 

But she needn’t have worried.

All of them see it.

When they look over at Marcus in the corner, brushing a loose curl out of Abby’s eyes, they smile, every one of them.

“Good for her,” they’ll all say to their spouses in the taxis on the way home.  “I’m glad she’s happy.”

[ilovemysaltygayson]

“let’s not be overdramatic”

“let’s not make this personal”

I love Alec Lightwood (unconditionally and in a way that makes me feel deeply deranged sometimes). He’s a good character; he’s a good person; he’s got good intentions. But he doesn’t fight fair. 

There was this thing that used to happen on Dawson’s Creek in S4 when Joey and Pacey got back from their sailing trip, where for a stretch of episodes, they’d fight, one of them would walk away mad, and at 8:54, they’d make up, hash it out, and make out. And it wasn’t growing towards anything, it was just conflict to get to the end of the episode. I see that happening sometimes when shows are spinning their wheels on a pairing they don’t know how to put through the paces of healthy conflict, growth, and emotional complexity. It’s boring. S2 of Shadowhunters has had a lot of “Alec fucks up; Alec experiences an eye-opening situation; Alec makes right on his fuck up,” and what’s interesting to me about that in hindsight is that it’s setting a pattern in this relationship where Alec is able to make excuses for himself in ways that don’t force him to assess his own behavior honestly. He sets up these conflicts in ways where he can let himself off the hook.

(Jace is missing, and I lashed out; I’m sorry. [I, me, the person writing this, have a particular amount of feelings about that scene and I think he genuinely learns something in it, but it initiates the pattern.] This is my family, how dare; you could have died horribly and it made me see how much I care about you. Valentine tricks people, I didn’t know; I’m so sorry and I want to make it right. I’m following orders; the person giving the orders exposed how ugly their origins are and I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to put you in that position; I’m sorry but I’m not wrong.) (They’re not all perfect examples but they are all points at which Magnus and Alec have been on opposite sides of something, and Alec has been the one to come to Magnus and plead the fault.)

And what Alec has done in these last two conflicts is underscore that it’s not really his fault, and it’s not really about him and Magnus. Let’s not be overdramatic, let’s not make this personal--that kind of language is that of someone who feels guilty for having done something but doesn’t want to admit culpability for causing pain. “I’m sorry if what I did made you feel bad” is not “I’m sorry for what I did and that what I did hurt you.” When you try to counter an argument by minimizing the other person’s reaction--you are being overly emotional about this or you are making this more than it is--you’re placing the blame for their own distress on them. It’s a lot like saying “I’m sorry but I didn’t have a choice,” wherein you abdicate personal responsibility for the result of an action you took knowing that it would hurt someone. It’s asking not to be accountable for the emotional repercussions of a decision when it affects someone else negatively. I don’t necessarily think Alec understands that he’s doing that, nor is he intentionally doing it repeatedly because he wants to be hurtful. Emotionally, he’s very young; he’s never been in a relationship before; he knows he feels guilty and bad and he doesn’t want to, so it’s easier to make it about Magnus’s emotions. Minimizing them by saying his responses are disproportionate to the situation at hand is a way of assuaging that kind of guilt and bad feeling--I feel bad but I also don’t really think I should feel bad because I don’t really think what I’m doing is wrong in the long run. And, I think added to that is an element of Alec thinking he’s protecting Magnus, while what Magnus sees is more machinations of the organization behind Alec trying to sideline him during a fight that’s about him. Like, about his existence and defending it.

It was going to come to a head. It had to come to the point of Magnus walking away. Alec thinks “I love you” is an apology and a cureall, and sometimes it’s enough, but in these last two fights, Alec hasn’t been acting as a person advocating for Magnus, he’s been acting as an institution infringing on Magnus’s right to know and act on his own behalf. There’s no salve for that other than action. Alec saying he wants transparency and cooperation while also not providing those things 100% is the same as saying I love you and thinking that’s a solution or a resolution. I don’t want to quote Robert, because fuck that guy, but Alec’s always had a hard time wrapping his head around the idea that “the honor is in the deed.” It’s not “it’s not what you say, it’s what you do,” because it’s absolutely about what you say, but what you do has to live up to that. And Alec has a good heart. He does love Magnus. He has a hard time getting out of his own way and seeing his actions for what they really are. I think Magnus has let that go as far as he’s capable of, because Alec is young and Magnus has believed him when he’s tried to make amends, but this is the tipping point. Magnus has dozens of lifetimes’ worth of pain and trauma being tread on very recently by the actions of the Clave, and he’s not wrong to expect Alec to understand that and respect it differently than he has. I don’t know how they’re going to repair this, but at some point, it’s going to have to be about Alec not being on the defensive when he’s also in the wrong. 

[paulisweeabootrash]

Book Review: How A Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom (vol. 1)

“In history, there are some scenes which are easily dramatized by later generations.  There are some conditions for this: First, it must be the turning point of an era. Second, it must have a certain flair when dramatized.”

In Elfrieden history, I assume the most dramatizable scene is going to be the point at which King Souma causes some kind of disaster that could’ve been prevented by listening to the kingdom’s existing experts.

Today we’re looking at a book again, and it’s... bad.

How A Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, vol. 1 (2016)

Souma Kazuya is an economist by training who dreams of working in the civil service.  But one day, he, like any number of unremarkable Japanese men before him, gets isekai’d into a fantasy world, specifically into the Kingdom of Elfrieden, which is (of course) at war with a Demon King.  The incumbent king decides Souma is The Prophesied Hero and abdicates the throne to him, along with arranging a political marriage between Souma and the king’s daughter Liscia to give him a veneer of legitimacy.  A mixture of societal reform and silliness is supposed to ensue, and if you’ve already read this and the series eventually delivers on either, let me know, because this first book in the series is bad enough on both counts that I am not interested in continuing.

After a shaky and rushed start, it felt like the book would pick up.  But instead, we got the talent contest, which poisoned the rest of the book for me.  See, in the third chapter, Souma decides to recruit fresh talent for his new administration by seeking people with extraordinary skills in any number of areas, no matter how unusual or seemingly-useless they are.  Many of them compete in contests in their respective skills (including martial arts, beauty, and... uh... an apparently performing arts category vaguely called “talent”), and the winners of some of those contests go to Souma for him to evaluate what jobs they’d be suited for, while others are sent directly to him due to unique abilities.  Those who Souma evaluates in person include a child who can talk to animals (apparently a nearly unheard-of talent even in this world of magic), a prolific memorizer of books who claims to be the greatest genius in Elfrieden and in search of a king worthy of his service, and the country’s most... skilled... eater(???), all of whom he finds a place for in his master plan.  It’s kind of stupid, but at this point, the book still seemed like it could become the story of an eccentric leader laterally-thinking his way to unusual solutions... if it weren’t for Aisha.

Aisha is a wood elf and the winner of “best martial artist”, and Souma's questions about her and her people’s way of life portend the terrible direction this will go.  Aisha’s people are subsistence hunter-gatherers, and when Souma provides just the most cursory explanation of forest management to her, she obsequiously pledges to defend him with her life.  Nobody finds this strange, nobody doubts the king.  It’s not even so much that I think Aisha’s people must have their own indigenous forestry practices (although that is certainly possible) as it is that this is one of many half-baked and overconfident schemes to rebuild this world in Earth’s image, and no matter how hamfistedly Souma does it, Aisha’s starry-eyed enthusiasm for anything he says or does comes off as the correct response.  Her introduction sets a different and awful tone, in two ways.

The first problem is that, over and over, Souma is... an incompetent person’s idea of a competent person.  He does not act in a way that ought to convince either the audience or the other main characters that he understands what the kingdom’s problems are or actually knows how to fix them.  Any effort on Souma’s part happens unseen in the background through magical multitasking, and it is rare that he is shown actually trying to understand or work on something instead of just pontificate about it at other people.  In one particularly frustrating move, near the end of the book, there is a landslide which was made worse than it would’ve otherwise been because of someone refusing Souma’s forestry policies.  If the landslide had happened before Aisha swooned over the concept of forest management, this could have easily instead been an example of Souma learning about a problem he is equipped to solve, an opportunity for him to prove himself.  But instead it’s just an “I told you so” moment.  On top of it, if Souma had misunderstood, misremembered, or miscommunicated his vague promises of forest management by culling too many trees or trees of the wrong age, he might have made the situation worse, something which I was able to learn in about two minutes of Googling but I guess the author didn’t bother to.  Introducing this real-world information could have created drama, or even just a near miss that once again would have created a better opportunity for Souma to come off as actually heroic and actually knowledgeable.

Even his introduction of a public sewer and water system, probably the best-thought-out reform plan in the book, doesn’t stand up to more than slight scrutiny.  The capital of Elfrieden has open sewers, a real-life problem (although it also incorporates the common trope of the medieval English dumping sewage directly into the street, which is a massive exaggeration) and that an enclosed sewer system was the solution.  Okay, so far so good.  He has a former elaborate system of escape tunnels renovated into a multi-tiered system of aqueducts for both fresh and waste water.  He thinks just enough about this scheme to include the completely reasonable step of at least some basic cleaning of the outgoing wastewater... but he gives no thought to the quality of the incoming water.  He also replaced the existing, apparently sufficient, well system with the same inflow of untreated river water that is then flowing downward into the sewer.  Even upstream of the sewer, replacing groundwater with untreated river water seems like a great way to produce an outbreak of fecal- and animal-borne diseases like cholera or giardiasis or whatever their fantasy world equivalents are.  Did he stop to consider that there might be a reason people weren’t already drinking the river?  Nobody knows, nobody cares, the whole thing is presented as an exposition dump in a conversation months after construction started, and it moves on to another tangential topic about a page later anyway!  Okay, so how is this safe?  Is there magic and/or some locally-made existing technology that might be suitable for decontaminating the water?  No, in another exposition dump, this time of Souma explaining background information directly to the audience as narrator, we learn that magic doesn’t work on infectious diseases.  Then why the hell would you have people replace their well water with an untreated river, you absolute moron?

Some outcomes of the changes he makes -- the wolf people starting a soy sauce company, for example -- are clearly meant to be punchlines.  I understand that, and I’m not condemning this for its genre or even its optimism, really.  But I am demanding that a story that sets it self up as being about “a realist hero” fixing a stuggling country actually show some sign of thinking about what that entails at a more than surface level.  The author could at least have set up Souma to be a playful and sanitized version of the Meiji Emperor, and have to face some kind of meaningful resistance by supporters of the old ways as he imposes sweeping top-down changes to eventually improve things, or of Catherine the Great, imposing his idea of modernization on a less-than-enthusiastic people, but without the tyrannical parts (I mean, we still want our main character to be sympathetic, right?).  And hey, that latter inspiration would even offer harem shenanigans, which tend to go over well in this sort of story.

As Souma comes in and orders changes, there is also little resistance or failure to be found.  He’s just another boringly-unbeatable isekai protagonist, with his only distinction being that he’s unbeatable in policy instead of combat.  I’m not saying I don’t want a story of someone succeeding at something.  There don’t need to be outright tragic consequences to Souma’s decisions (although some decisions really should have them).  But it blows chance after chance to show us the process of improving a country.

And that idea of improving a country brings me to the second giant glaring problem.  Even as Souma introduces the people of Elfrieden to many things that I would argue are improvements -- a greater diversity of foods, broadcast media, deliberative democracy, sewers, paved roads -- he does it in a way that people for the most part accept.  Over and over, he just sort of shows up and does things, succeeds, and someone praises him for telling them how stupid and backwards they’ve been.  And that gives the book an unfortunate colonialist implication.  Yes, he has been summoned by magic for the purpose of being declared a hero, but he still acts like he’s there to “civilize” people, which is absolutely jarring to see in a book published in the past century. It’s just scene after scene of Souma taking a top-line glance at the current state of Elfrieden and then succeeding telling people he explicitly describes as primitive how to fix themselves by spouting a solution about as specific and useful as you’d get from a cable news political commentator or high-school-level textbook.  (Interestingly, his definition of “primitive” is such that he objects to an apparently equal-footing and non-coercive form of polygamy, but not to the legal power to punish an entire family for the crimes of an individual.  So that’s... lovely.)

We just see Souma effortlessly and correctly “fix” these hapless primitives, with very little attempt to flesh out the world before he arrived, very little attempt to show the audience that the problems exist in the way they are briefly mentioned, and just the praise of almost-comically-overenthusiastic supporting characters to show that his alleged solutions actually fix anything.  Souma is eventually depicted learning from locals and acknowledging the existence of experts who know things he doesn’t, but it takes until about 3/4 of the way through the book before that happens, and infuriatingly this is a shift that is not addressed.  There is no learning process, no setback that causes him to seek to understand how and why things might be different in this fantasy world than they are in our own.  And it’s not until the epilogue that we see any meaningful formation of a reactionary plot against Souma’s moves against formerly-autonomous (and highly-self-dealing) nobles, a backlash I expected from the beginning.  I wonder if the author realized these problems and/or received harsh feedback on the first few chapters.

As much as I’ve complained about That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime, at least that had Rimuru using his OP helpfulness to play around with the absurdity of a world that runs like an RPG.  In that series, the hapless primitives Rimuru patronizes are, at first, NPCs incapable of doing anything consequential autonomously.  No such in-universe justification, no matter how weak, exists here.  It’s just a world of people who Souma can somehow enlighten with little effort because he is better than them. 

I am willing to accept that some of my complaints are really just distaste at the genre or storytelling style, and that of course a story focusing on the actions of a king isn’t going to look much at what’s going on outside the court.  But it is so grandiose and so disinterested in showing us the results of Souma’s policies that even the most charitably I can approach this story, it’s like watching him brag without backing it up.  And that, combined with the colonialist implications and uneventful stream of dumb and unbelievable successes mentioned above are why I can’t stand this book.  At best, this book is like reading someone else try to describe the rambling deconstruction/author tract Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality but fail by leaving out all of the parts where dramatic things happen and how magic works is explained.  At worst, it’s The White Man’s Burden: Medieval Fantasy Edition.  And I hate it.

-----

W/A/S: 7/3/8

Weeb: Offhand references to chuunibyou.  Internet memes.  This damn quote: “Tomoe’s going to be my sister-in-law.  A wolf-eared loli sister-in-law... that’s too many character attributes.”  This book, unsurprisingly, presumes not just a Japanese audience, but an otaku audience.  But make no mistake, broader Japanese cultural background info is also casually woven in, whether it’s mentions of this guy or this (NSFW) art genre or just the main character’s assumptions about the right way to do things.

Ass: The author sure does seem to like to describe how form-fitting the female characters’ clothes are, but it never gets explicit.  Just the low end of a certain kind of cringey bad writing.

Shit: There are, somewhere in here, the seeds of a few interesting ideas.  And there are certainly still ways the writing could be even worse (at least it’s no Battlefield Earth!).  But so much of the plot is handled so poorly that I can’t stop being angry at it.  I am not surprised to learn that this was originally self-published online; it feels like a story that was made up on the fly with minimal planning.  This book may well be a couple points better on this scale if the author had revised the first, oh, half to three quarters before the print publication so that there is more showing rather than telling and some sort of character arc for Souma.  But just having him suddenly act differently?  For me, it’s too little too late.

[doorsclosingslowly]

4, 10, 22

4. what headcanon will you defend to the death?

One of my favourite things about fic is the multiplicity. I love that there can be strands of mutually contradictory stories that flow from different interpretations of the same thing, I think it’s super cool. So I’m pretty open to believing a lot of headcanons at least while I’m reading them even if I might prefer different ones or find others more plausible, and when I’m writing most of the things I make up are there to fit that particular story and not written in stone. Which is a long-winded way of saying: none. (Though I’m also just generally bad at answering these kinds of questions and may, if given a concrete headcanon, go: yes absolutely this one.)

The main kinds of headcanons I get annoyed by are the ones that contradict parts of canon I find interesting, haha. Like making a character nicer than they are in canon or erasing their mistakes

10. do you think the jedi were right or wrong?

About what? Sitting in a circle around a nine-year-old slave that one of them won in a bet and vocally judging him for missing his still-enslaved mother was not the greatest of moves. Neither was the whole policy of taking very young children, nor their view on attachment. They treated a lot of people badly, for example Boba and Ahsoka, and training Luke to unknowingly kill his father could have ended so fucking badly.

They lead a slave army, and even before that they “didn’t come to free the slaves” to quote Qui-Gon. The root of a lot of those mistakes was viewing themselves as apolitical & simply the enforcer of the Senate imo. I know the justification of, “we’re powerful because of the force and this way we don’t become tyrants,” but the solution to that is working with others to build a more egalitarian world. It is possible to imagine a world in which physical force -- and force-sensitivity isn’t that different from physical force -- gives you very little power over other people’s lives. The Jedi didn’t renounce power but instead abdicated their moral responsibility.

TD;DR: Wrong about so many things. OTOH if they hadn’t made those mistakes Star Wars would have been a completely different story.

22. favorite droid?

Threepio forever.

[foursproutwealth-blog]

Mark Zuckerberg's Personal Challenge for 2018 Is a Truly Terrible Choice. Here's Why

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/mark-zuckerbergs-personal-challenge-for-2018-is-a-truly-terrible-choice-heres-why/

Mark Zuckerberg's Personal Challenge for 2018 Is a Truly Terrible Choice. Here's Why

Every year, Mark Zuckerberg sets himself a personal challenge. He’s been doing it for ten years now, and his annual personal challenges have included such items as running a mile every day, visiting all 50 states, and learning Mandarin. This year is different. This year, Zuckerberg has himself a new kind of personal challenge: To fix Facebook in the wake of revelations that the social network became a tool for Russians seeking to alter the course of the 2016 election, and more recent allegations by former Facebook executives that spending time on Facebook is really bad for you. 

As he explains in a Facebook post:

“The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do — whether it’s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent.

My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues. We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we’re successful this year then we’ll end 2018 on a much better trajectory.”

This may not exactly sound like a personal challenge, he adds, “but I think I’ll learn more by focusing intensely on these issues than I would by doing something completely separate.”

Maybe he would, but that’s just not the point. I’m a big fan of personal challenges in general, and Zuckerberg’s personal challenges in particular. But this one is wrong, wrong, wrong. 

Here’s are just some of the terrible message this choice sends:

1. It suggests that he can’t have a personal life an run Facebook at the same time.

Or at least not in difficult times like these. But this is not the first time Facebook has faced a crisis, and fixing the particular set of problems facing the company at the moment requires a complex set of solutions that will probably take more than a year to implement.

Is Zuckerberg prepared to give up his personal life for more than a year? I think the answer to that question should be no, because he’s also the father of a two-year-old and a newborn. That’s a pretty awful time to abdicate your parental duties and take up residence at the office, even if there are plenty of staffers at home to pick up the slack, if only because you stand to miss a lot of development. A parenting-related personal challenge might have made more sense.

2. It makes it seem like he wasn’t really trying before now.

In a video, my Inc. colleague Emily Canal commented, “Looks like he’s finally ready to do his job.” I think he’s been doing it all along, except while he was on paternity leave this past summer. But you can’t blame her for the sentiment. Setting himself a personal challenge to make the huge and hugely influential company he runs the best that it can be does suggest that he hasn’t been doing his best all along.

3. It implies that Facebook is a one-man show.

Even when Steve Jobs ran Apple, and it was more like a cult of personality than a tech company, he relied on the brilliant talents around him. If Facebook can’t thrive without Zuckerberg dropping everything else to concentrate on fixing it, that makes it seem like there’s no one else there who can run a company of such size and importance. But of course, Zuckerberg does have some amazing talents to help him at Facebook as well, beginning with the formidable Sheryl Sandberg. The fact that he can’t take step away from his job long enough to do his usual personal challenge this year makes it sound like he doesn’t trust their judgment.

4. It sets a terrible example.

Zuckerberg is an icon. He’s the prototypical college boy entrepreneur, and the creator of a service that a staggering 2 billion people–more than a quarter of the world’s population–use on a frequent basis. So it’s easy to forget that he’s also something much simpler and more ordinary: A boss.

Every good boss should encourage employees to preserve work-life balance and take some time away from work, if only because it will make them better at their jobs and less likely to get sick. But whatever the boss says, employees will take their cue from what the boss does. It’s hard to go home at 5 o’clock or take off on a week’s vacation if the boss works late every evening and comes in on weekends as well. By declining to focus on his own personal life this year–especially with a toddler and newborn–Zuck seems to be saying that Facebook’s key employees shouldn’t either.

5. He actually may be giving up work-life balance.

The personal challenge is only one aspect of Zuckerberg’s personal life, so it may be wrong to infer from this challenge that he intends to only focus on work this year. But if that is what he plans to do–well, that’s a very bad idea. There’s plenty of evidence that working longer and longer hours and not taking time to relax or follow outside pursuits makes you less effective at your job over time than you would be if you had a more balanced schedule. 

So I hope, despite this work-focused personal challenge, that Zuckerberg is setting some time aside for rest and family and fun and learning new non-work things in 2018. All those things will make him a better leader. And Facebook needs the best leader it can have.