#idk I love her and I think about her relationship with personhood a lot

[delaneytalks-tostatues]

This entire bit rattles around in my head 24/7. I love Hera. She contains multitudes.

(Yes we all know the script is wrong she says 4 not 3 in the episode)

[buckybarnesss]

I’m back with more Thots™

(Sad ones this time sorry)

When Kate shows back up in town and comes to the burnt out Hale house and attacks Derek it literally makes my stomach turn. Like. This is his rapist, assaulting him in the place where she murdered his family, the place where he’s punishing himself by staying. Like. To me, it always reads as an act of psychological self harm to stay in the burnt out ruins of his home, the destruction of which he sees as his fault and it just. It ruins me.

It’s always interesting to me to see how quickly Derek accepts harm to himself as acceptable—he tells Stiles to cut his arm off, pushes him out of harms way, and over and over again we see him devaluing his own well being. As a therapist watching the show, it makes me ache for him, to see his trauma so deeply affecting his every decision, to see him being hurt over and over again because he thinks he deserves it. He throws himself on the sword every time to try and protect others, and it’s always at the cost of himself.

And then I think about Stiles and him losing his mom and how he’s got his dad but he doesn’t really—he shares him with all of Beacon County, and what a lonely heartbreaking existence that must be for him. I feel like he sees in Derek so many of the things he feels, and that sparks a deep interest in him, a sense of kinship that only grows as he learns more about Derek, and in turn, Derek senses in him a person that understands pain, loss, and loneliness and with whom he can be himself.

Idk idk, I just, there’s so much depth to these characters that is so rich and I wish we had gotten more time with Derek and Stiles one on one where they talked about these things they’ve experienced.

this is such a good analysis. you are absolutely correct. i've said it before but i'll say it again: derek hale is one of the most traumatized characters to be on television.

the scenes in the tell where kate is just tormenting derek are brutal once you know the whole story. kate is truly an evil, evil person.

in my meta on laura i discussed how in addition to everything kate is doing to derek she's also demeaning laura and refusing her personhood. she never uses laura's name, refers to her as a literal bitch dog and croons at derek how they desecrated her body. it is a deeply, deeply fucked scene when you peel back the layers.

kate and gerard argent are the two biggest villains of the show and so many issues are because of them. especially gerard. like, fuck that guy.

most of stiles and derek's relationship is in the subtext of the show but the threads are there and once you pull on them it unravels revealing a surprisingly deep relationship despite the audience not seeing it all playout on screen.

(a lot of the relationships on the show are like this tbh but it's there).

it amazes me to realize that stiles learns so much about derek and is the only one who actively seeks out to know and understand him. stiles wants derek to trust him and once that trust is earned derek would do just about anything for stiles. it's such a core aspect of their relationship.

their first real scene in the back of the cop car where stiles is all "I'm not afraid of you." is practically his thesis on derek the entire show. derek believes he is something to be feared not because he's a werewolf exactly but because people around him die. he thinks someone caring about him, loving him is a death sentence and he doesn't deserve it. stiles deconstructs all of it by sheer stubbornness.

in the finale of the show stiles -- on his own -- saves derek from an fbi raid where he was falsely accused of murder. it's the inverse of the beginning of their relationship where stiles was the one accusing him of murder.

and the writers never make stiles confront derek over anything, or use it against him. it does nothing but give stiles more pieces to the puzzle that is derek. he holds derek's secrets just like he holds his own.

i think if derek had been around in s5 stiles would've turned to him for support with the whole theo ordeal and derek would've backed him up which would've honestly been a nightmare scenario for scott for a lot of reasons.

(but theo would've had no choice but to go die of shame once derek called him the wish version of peter and shooed him away.)

[vox-solaris]

to me, that quest explained a whole lot and just enough about sorren n jade's relationship. they were low ranking guardians that loved each other, jade got preggy, but sorren gave more of a crap about what the orokin think than his lover and kid. i feel like thats what stalker was guilty about. basically choosing the orokin over his lover, and presumably, she got turned into a frame WHILE being pregnant. jade chose to have a kid and die because it was sort of representative of her forgiveness for stalker and that she still trusted him to keep their kid safe. stalker's hatred of warframes was probably because it was a reminder of what he did to jade, and it was easier to do it for the orokin. but idk just my two cents. i think that if this quest explained more than it did it would just be an exposition-fest :P

i don't really get any of that from what was shown in game. jade had barely any agency or personhood in what little we saw of her, and her significance as an individual was entirely reduced to her role as a mother/wife/backstory prop for stalker. like hell, her only lines were about being pregnant and how he'll protect her. she was 100% a passive feature of her own quest, and that's disappointing to me.

now don't get me wrong, i don't take issue with people coming up with interpretations that fill in the blanks, because there sure are plenty of blanks to fill both regarding the backstory and present implications. you're right that too much exposition isn't in the style of the game, but i still think we needed more than what was given, and i *really* think DE should have been better about writing jade as an individual and should have shown more of who she was outside of this vague mother-wife-savior figure.

[utilitycaster]

26. freebie question, a good while back (before the party split) you mentioned that a possibly interesting ship would be Imogen/FCG. Obviously canon has not gone that direction, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on Imogen and FCG's relationship :D

It is interesting because Imogen hasn't interacted with FCG a ton. I think that friendship sort of fizzled out once FCG started believing in their personhood and particularly after they began building a relationship with the Changebringer. Imogen was not terribly supportive of that (possibly jealous, or possibly just not sure how to engage with it) and so there really hasn't been much.

They are really interesting as parallels, actually, though actually pretty much everyone in the party except for Orym and Chetney fit in this to some degree. Like Imogen (and Fearne), FCG was given particular powers by a megalomaniacal entity, for the purpose of furthering those goals. I think Predathos grants somewhat more agency to loyal Ruidusborn than Aeor entrusted FCG with, though that is to be seen, but there's something very tragic, in my mind, from Imogen's perspective, about how FCG was the tool of a destroyed empire, and so while he still carries those scars and consequences, he actually does have the freedom to be his own person. FCG has to manage a serious chronic condition, essentially, but they don't have missions, and unless some of the wilder theories are right (and they could be, though I have my doubts) the ones who did this to them are long dead. Is this her future? Will she be left with dreams and telepathy even if they defeat Predathos? Will they be the upsides (controllable sorcery powers) or the downsides (nightmares, uncontrollable sorcery powers)? Why did FCG get to just sleep through the hard part and she has to fight her way out?

It really is a fascinating thing about the party: Fearne and FCG were designed to be who they are (though Fearne's upbringing at least was her own). Ashton was partially created in a cult ritual (though it remains unclear if they were the intended recipient or merely the one it happened to stick to). I don't think Imogen was planned a la Fearne, but I do wonder if Predathos or the Weave Mind did specifically target Liliana to ensure her daughter would also be Ruidusborn. While the nature of Laudna's sorcery abilities hasn't come up (and, to be fair, a lot of sorcery abilities in D&D are just like "well that happened to your baby, idk what to tell you") she was used by Delilah for that as well. So much of this party shares this with Imogen and FCG but I think they are the most extreme examples (Fearne is mostly unaffected physically/mentally though obviously learning of her origins is unsettling and upsetting, and Ashton and Laudna's situations mostly hurt them and not as often others, though Laudna's is increasingly a crapshoot) and I think as this became apparent and as they both grew more comfortable with who they were they sort of lost that connection.

They do still share a lot of powers though and I'd love to see them talk again - Laura and Sam always play off each other well, and those earlier interactions where they both tried to read each other's thoughts, or coordinate probing Ashton or Ollie's mind, or the first casting of Shared Dream were all delightful - but they have drifted apart since.

[alienturnip]

Finished FF16 a few days ago and I do have some (long) thoughts about it, so I'm noting them down below. Reactions include the Waloed & Origin arcs.

Tagging @zadien as you requested <3 My thoughts won't be organized but I'll try my best to articulate as I go. Wall of text alert!

I think this is yet another case of "the story didn't satisfy me a lot but the characters bewitched me body and soul" so here I am at the end of the roads... with a lot of grievances toward how the story was structured & written but also impossibly attached to the cast haha, needless to say I have fanart ideas planned and incoming.

Things that I enjoyed a lot:

CliveJill's scene with the snow daisies, where she tells Clive that she wants to spread her wings after all this is over. MY GIRLFRIEND... YOU SHALL HAVE THE WORLD.

Jill being so good with acting dkfjsl <3 <3 she's so cute....

Jill being as much of a ruthless mtfk as Clive, they're soooo in tune when it comes to wrecking havoc

Everything about Joshua he brings SO SO MUCH to the table both with his personalities and the themes he represents. I would ramble if not for fear of this post's length...

Dion's contradictory demeanor hahahahaha - he insisted everyone call him "Dion" but wouldn't shut up about "Ifrit" and "Phoenix", he also refused Harpocrates' gift but then gave another to Clive 2 seconds later, then sauntered off without even checking if Clive likes it or not...

I generally bemoan the lack of discussion on Dion's relationship with his country's imperialism and his hands in that (like, everything about him was perfect to address that topic even in very brief ways?), BUT I highly enjoyed Dion's theme about the loss of personhood and to be reduced to a vessel of power and worship, his multifaceted relationship with the concepts of power & duty & hierarchy. So subtly yet powerfully done with so little screen time... I think Clive's own engagement with the theme (which is supposed to be his central theme) comes short in comparison.

Dion's side quest with Harpocrates also scratched my brain in INCREDIBLY ways, but again I won't ramble too much in this post...

(Hahaha by this point I think everyone knows who my fav is)

Dion & Joshua's dialogues are all so well-written (maybe save for Joshua's last speech...)

Everything about Mid & Gav, they're beautifully done, I love them they have such solid places within the narrative and lovely personalities too. When I watched Mid navigating the Entreprise I was just squealing and cheering for her! Her talking about the dream of flight and the danger it might entail, and her plan of turning such a weighted topic into a lighthearted treasure hunt! My gosh 💗 Gav's drinking scene with Clive is also especially touching, I felt a lot for his burdens.

Lady Isabelle may I have your hand in marriage--

Clive holding Joshua or clutching his body...... breaks me every time I love love LOVE tragic siblings

I can honestly write an essay for each of the characters (especially Jill & Dion my thoughts about them are overflowing) but they will have to be separate posts at this point, let me know @zadien (or anyone else reading this 🫣) if you'd like me to talk some more.

NOW onto the criticisms proper...

Waloed & Origin arcs were pretty underwhelming, mostly because I feel like they haven't offered anything new that wasn't already resolved in the previous arcs...? I enjoyed Barnabas' vibe but his impact on me was a big fat 0, and here comes the conundrum because, well, I'm guessing him being emotionless & devoid of a personality is supposed to be the point with his worship of Ultima, but even that was not done well... All his bedroom scenes kinda ruined all of that, not to mention the out-of-nowhere 'mother' appearances that the story doesn't even bother to explore aside from showing her naked body (Benedikta got the same treatment after her death my god I'm so sorry my beloved)...

Idk what I'm supposed to take away from the character and, in consequence, the Waloed arc? I know nothing of who he was, his dialogues didn't even match Clive's growth at that point - again, why is Clive questioning his humanity NOW of all time, when the story has been going so well? Could they have, idk, shown Clive's fear coming back to him after reuniting with Joshua & discovering Dion's descend to madness, so that they can segue into the Waloed arc more smoothly - that despite Clive's best intention he may lose all his control at the most crucial point and ruin all that he holds dear (like Dion), and that he never let go of his guilt at Phoenix Gate, and having Joshua back unwittingly brought back the nightmares he'd lived with for 13 years? Maybe that would give his identity crisis at the beach some more substance instead of "Barnabas bested me twice and now I'm wet and sat" situation he got going on... I am thankful for Mid & Dion's arc & CliveJill romance & everything about Joshua but the main villain & plot points felt so distant... MY BRAIN WAS NOT SCRATCHED

(I adore Mid & Dion & Joshua hahaha they're so colorful in 3 entirely different directions, my silly children)

I am also not really convinced by Ultima's writing. The plot reveal of him being a God who created humanity but then abandoned us all *could* have been pretty powerful and on point if it wasn't executed in such fragmented ways. If only they dig deeper into one or two specific aspects of that concept to explore...

I am especially fond of the idea of Ultima as symbolic for "the absent parent" and "the narcissistic parent" (both in the intimate familial context and the wider context of head-of-state/leader figures), which could have paralleled SO WELL with Anabella & Sylvestre & EVEN ELWIN had they not cut off Anabella's presence immediately after her death, or had they make Dion reflect deeper upon his relationship with his father beyond "I killed him I am so sad", or had they make Joshua's and Clive's memories of Elwin more complicated - maybe in how they (especially Joshua) worshipped his as their father & leader, but less so as a man, someone human & flawed? And then they can explore how the children gaining autonomy & freedom despite their parents & the circumstances that shaped their childhood as a direct mirror to them breaking away from Ultima? The frustrating thing is, I THINK they did try to do that, what with all the Inner Voice snippets and the initial buildups and all, but the execution keeps coming up short...

Ultima & the Eikons as symbols of "power that binds & enthralls" in contradiction with Clive's fight for a "free world" could've been much more relevant and poignant if maybe they allowed us to get more invested in Ultima's backstory (flashback cutscenes perhaps? more involved murals? a more multifaceted discussion around the concept of will? some attempts at humanizing Ultima's race so that when Clive says "you're just like us" we feel it a bit deeper?) instead of just having the guy monotonously narrating all the plot twists... my god. Not to mention all the on-the-nose dialogues of power of friendship & crude slavery allegories... I don't know! I think Square did NOT do it well in this one.

That's all I can pull from the top of my head at the moment! Ready to hop into replies or asks to talk some more, but yea!

[felixravinstills]

re: ask game

i am still not over allegory of the cave and would love to get your director’s commentary on florus’s relationship with iphigenia and clemmie since they got mentions!

Oooh, Allegory of the Cave!

Here's a link to another ask that Backpacks sent about Florus and Felix for others who may be interested!

Anyway, actually there was a lot more going on with them that got cut from the fic, because it kind of made the pacing and flow weird! Thanks for reminding me with this ask, haha!

In the original draft, Iphigenia and Florus were stated to have been close growing up but grew apart because Florus was a bit too liberal with things she told him in confidence (namely why she's been starving herself). The information that Florus spread her secret came to her by way of Clemensia whom Iphigenia cornered and who deflected to him pretty fast, so Florus has complicated feelings about them.

In the original draft (and there are traces of it in the final), Florus has a lot of guilt over what happened with Iphigenia. There was a section (pre-me remembering that I make the ending a fake Florus autobiography) where a kind of third-person omniscient narrator speculates that history will remember Iphigenia's mother (who I guess was alive in that version. I flip flop about if she's dead or not in my worldbuilding) as having been unkind to Florus after Iphigenia's funeral, but actually this was Florus projecting. <- a more convoluted way of highlighting how someone's personal biases might color a story/history.

There's an implication that Iphigenia forgave him towards the end, but Florus was too afraid to confront his past like that (ironic given he's a historian. kind of a parallel to him being uncomfortable thinking about Clemensia who is dead by the time of the fic). He never fully mended that bridge, and it hangs over him.

Clemensia is like really complicated, because there's a sense of friendly affection with her that he (in my head) would have for a lot of the mentors, but there's also kind of a jealousy? (and the resentment from the Iphigenia thing). I was conceptualizing her as kind of a foil to him. She's active in the rumor mill and actively weaponizing and influencing it for her own benefit, but unlike Florus, she's more well-liked and charismatic. She's also took a more active role in things, and Florus was more passive. The self-identification continues in that I imagine that she died due to medical complications from the snake bite that came later in life while Florus is also dying of similar complications. I think Florus has in his mind, largely forgiven Clemensia for the Iphigenia thing (and the using him to scapegoat other Capitolites), but once in a while, the bitterness resurfaces.

Not really Clemmie and Iphigenia related, but fun fact: the reason I figured that Snow hasn't killed him for what Florus might know from his time information brokering (key word might) is because Snow has the ability to cut off Florus' medical treatments (and Florus is already dying). Florus knows this, and lives under threat of Snow just doing that or poisoning some of his medication at any point (his death would not be suspicious given his state). It keeps him from acting out in his final days. (something something. it is better to live. once dead, you loose all true agency. you will be interpreted by others (as is history) so why not cling to the last of your personhood?) So, Florus' autobiography probably gets published post-Mockingjay. I like to think with Plutarch's help.

Final note that's just generally for this fic and not specifically what you asked:

idk how popular Florus' autobio is initially btw. I think Plutarch's support helps it make the rounds but also i think there is a lot of focus on anti-Snow history books in the wake of the rebellion to help the new government... history is not free of agenda ect. ect. It probably gets more popular later I think... when people can be more objective about Snow and the Capitol.

Anyway, thanks for the ask, Backpacks!

[lemonhemlock]

Hiiii lemon 👋🏻

I was trying to make an oc for Cersei and Jamie and talked about it with a couple friends to bounce ideas with and they all had the same thing to say "you really think Cersei would love someone!? she literally killed Melara for daydreaming about Jamie..." And this kinda made me a bit...

Anywayyyyy personally I think yes Cersei can be delusional, heartless... But that's part of her charm !!! And really people would not be as harsh on her if she was a man.

Like imagine a boy killing his bestie over liking his sister/lover... People would call that a romantic gesture lol.

Which is why I'm here to ask what would you personally do if you were making Cersei/Jamie a female love interest.

Hi, anon! There's quite a lot to unpack in your message. Cersei and Jaime could have the potential to love other people. But certainly their insular upbringing and dysfunctional family made them overly reliant on each other to the point of co-dependency. So I think that if you want to create realistic OCs for them, you should give them traits that tend to their greatest needs or inadequacies.

For Cersei, it's perhaps more easily identifiable the kind of husband who could make her happy - it's basically who she imagines Rhaegar to be. A noble, handsome, gallant young man who would be devoted to her, treat her kindly and involve her in his daily political dealings. Both Cersei and Jaime struggle with gender roles. Cersei wants to be considered a leader and valued for something other than her reproductive abilities, she wants to be respected and not discarded the replaced the minute her body becomes "irrelevant". So power-sharing with a husband who values her personhood and intelligence would help to heal her accumulated trauma. What Cersei yearns for in a partner is not so different than what any woman would wish for herself.

With Jaime, it's more complicated, because you somehow how to prevent him from joining the Kingsguard. Because 1. he would not be able to have a functional relationship when his vows are in direct contradiction and 2. if Cersei is still Queen somehow in this AU, he'd only be miserably sniffing around her skirts, entangling himself in her business, getting inevitably jealous and miserable and keeping her from taking her marriage seriously. Other than that, Jaime has no true interest in politics and he bores easily, so an ideal wife for him would be one with good social and administrative skills, who could handle the tasks Jaime would consider tedious in his position as (eventual) ruler of Casterly Rock. He also has a quick with and is quite funny, so I think he couldn't be truly content if his wife didn't share those qualities. So, IDK, some combination between Sansa and Aunt Genna. :))

Ultimately, I think they could really only reach a true level of contentment if their spouses help them fulfill their societal roles. They're too entrenched in their identities as Lannisters to ever run off to the Free Cities and do whatever and too comfortable to renounce all privileges and live the lives of regular peasants or merchants. Feudalism offers few opportunities that provide safety and comfort; they can't exactly became finance bros or get a job at the business factory to support themselves or engage in some other bullshit activity that's little work and high reward, so staying in the socio-economic sphere of their rich family is their best bet.

Cersei has this fantasy of swords and mail, but she wouldn't have been happy as a knight, with the pushback that comes with true non-conformity. Equally, Jaimie already did what he wanted and eschewed his role as heir, but life as a perpetual knight doesn't seem to bring him satisfaction either. They're not revolutionaries out to dismantle the status-quo and campaign for change, but, in the absence of that, society is not going to just simply accommodate their idiosyncrasies just because it's them. And they don't really like it either when they find out the world doesn't bend around their wishes! (affectionate)

[payphoneangel]

9, 12, 21, 31 for the questions ask :)))

HELLO <333

9. What is your biggest accomplishment?

Hmmmm. That's a toughie. I feel like I could say things like my degree or career or like, my growth as a person and how I view relationships and my own self worth... which are all fine and good and all but ehhh I feel like a lot of that just came with life (well, not the degree. That one was a lot of time and money). TBH I feel like my biggest accomplishment has probably been learning and sticking with guitar. It almost seems silly to consider it my biggest accomplishment, but it's a hobby that I've gotten so much joy and connection out of, it feels important. And I think because it's a hobby is part of why it feels like an accomplishment to me. I have to work to survive. I had to go to school. I had to get better at communicating and setting boundaries. But I play because I want to. Because I love the process of learning new songs and new chords and new techniques. Because I love sharing music and creating music with the people around me.

Idk. That feels big to me.

12. Where is somewhere you'd like to visit?

Oooh, SO MANY places!! Probably Italy, or Kenya, or Indonesia!! They have such cool bugs in Indonesia.

21. Who knows you best?

Another toughie! I feel like it's a split between my close friends and my family. Which, kind of feels like a cop-out answer lol. Like, no duh! Who else would know someone best besides their close friends and family? I guess like, a romantic partner or a therapist.

I say both because I feel like my friends and my family are both deeply familiar with different aspects of myself. It's all still me, but we are all multi-faceted people who act just a little different depending on the environment and who we're talking to, and I'm no different! My family has years of experience, my friends have no preconceived notions of who I'm supposed to be-- family tends to get stuck on ideals of personhood ime.

So they both know a side of me best. My family member who knows me best is probably my sister and my friend who knows me best is probably the one I've known since we were like 6.

31. Describe yourself with 3 singers.

THAT'S HARD. Okay wait, like 3 singers based on songs or appearance??? Individual singers or bands?? Singers whose songs I can sing or whose songs feel like describe me?????? Uhhhh okay I'll go with (in no particular order):

Haley Heynderickx-- since I just rambled about how important playing guitar is for me and people that I'm close to, I'll pick Haley for her song, The Bug Collector. It's a song that I do a cover of on guitar. It is one of the more technical songs I'm able to do and it took a long ass time to learn it. I sing it well, it was introduced to me by one of my closest friends (arguably the one who knows me best) I relate to the lyrics AND I love bugs. BAM. Relevant to every question.

Don McLean-- I stole my name from his song lol. It's also one of my faves to play with my dad.

I'll say Passion Pit because their album Gossamer was my middle school crying album and you know what I was right for that. That's a good ass album.

[rollercoasterwords]

What do you think of bellatrix/pandora??

Or pandoratrix (this one was a fun ship name to smash together)

hmmmm honestly. i'm not a huge fan of....any of the ships for bellatrix i don't think lol. at least not in a canon-compliant or canon-adjacent fic.

like, i don't really care if other people want 2 ship bellatrix with people + have fun doing that, but to me her story is kinda antithetical to any sort of romance, at least in the way i read her. like i very much view bellatrix as a character whose entire life was focused around her family + her sisters, who grew up essentially sacrificing herself in the name of duty to the point that it just. completely traumatized her + drove her insane as i talk about here

and to me her story is so interesting because of the way she was so isolated + devoted to a family who just...didn't really love her back. like i think her sisters did love her, but it was never in a way that really like...acknowledged her personhood, if that makes sense? just bc she was always this sort of mother/big sister figure to them and couldn't ever really be just like. human and vulnerable.

and so for me the idea of bellatrix falling in love with someone just doesn't really work--like, i think it changes her character to the point that she is no longer my bellatrix, in the way i conceive of her. i think if the devotion to her family was stripped away then bellatrix's first priority would be to herself, and to her own freedom. i don't think romantic love is something i could ever see her prioritizing or even really seeking out; in fact, i think that based on the way she's been raised the idea of falling in love would almost be like...nightmarish to her. and while i've seen people talking about "omg what if bellatrix was in love with this character and that's what drove her insane and death eater angst etc etc" i just....idk. sometimes i think putting a character in a romantic relationship can really contribute to their story + add a lot of really interesting angst, but with bellatrix i kinda feel like putting her into a romantic relationship flattens some of (what i view as) the nuance to her character. like for me bellatrix's story is about bellatrix, and nobody else.

i also think i just. don't entirely understand this tendency within the fandom to desperately search for ships for a character the second people start to pay attention to them. like obviously people have been shipping bellatrix around with different characters forever, but i feel like the black sisters in particular are having a little ~moment~ on like. tiktok right now. and so suddenly everyone is going "we need a ship for bellatrix!!" and i'm just like...no we don't? like she's SUCH an interesting character without romance. i don't really understand the need to pair everyone off in order to care about them.

(also....a lot of the shipping i've seen happening for bellatrix is like. happening in the most boring way lmao. sorry 2 be a hater but why is everyone suddenly trying 2 turn her into part of a ~girlboss~ power couple. she was one of the most unequivocally evil characters in the series and personally i think that is crucial to her character. obviously people can write whatever they want + i will just stick to my own corner of the internet, but most of the shipping i've seen happening recently surrounding bellatrix involves watering down her character in some way, and personally i do not enjoy that.)

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

character ask game: seven of nine and b'elenna torres

from this ask game

thanks for asking! since i'm procrastinating anyways i'm just gonna go through all the questions and put a cut because uh. this will be long :)

Seven of Nine:

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

I'm always obsessed with characters struggling with humanity/personhood and Seven is the character to me that best exemplifies that struggle in addition to having so many complex narratives about trauma and guilt that are surprisingly well explored despite Voyager's tendency to avoid any serialized elements. plus Jeri Ryan's acting really sells it.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

her autistic swag. no but actually her bluntness and willingness to challenge others (particularly Janeway) is really refreshing and adds some great conflict to Voyager.

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

going to cop out and say the costuming lmao. it bothers me so fucking much and in my head Seven's been wearing science blues on Voyager since s4.

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

i think Seven in any Doctor Who media would be really fascinating maybe specifically paired with the Eighth or Ninth Doctor? i think a lot of her problems around guilt and inhumanity are thoroughly explored in Doctor Who but she would also challenge the Doctor well when it comes to violence and whether the ends justify the means.

5. What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

Machine by Regina Spektor

6. What's something you have in common with this character?

a fear of intimacy and insecurity about letting people around you know the real me... oh dear. on a more uplifting side, all of Seven's interactions with Tuvok really remind me of me and my dad. autism for the win.

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

idk how widespread it is but i love thinking of Seven as a physically disabled character and her post-Voyager having to navigate medical systems that are openly hostile (if not downright dangerous) and her eventually finding that it's easier to be in pain and patch injuries together by herself than trusting others.

8. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

hmmm i don't think this is true on tumblr rn but i've read some older fic and posts that just comes off as weirdly infantilizing just because she isn't great with social interactions. (it's also just a larger problem of infantilizing neurodivergent coded characters).

9. Could you be roommates with this character?

tbh yeah? i think Seven might get annoyed at my tendency to leave clutter around and i might get annoyed at her tendency to mess around with things without telling people but i think we could pretty easily agree on boundaries and stick to them.

10. Could you be best friends with this character?

i would love to try but realistically i think both of us are too wary of social situations to actually be close friends.

11. Would you date this character?

if Seven asked me on a date then i would say yes but also i'm arospec and Seven has way too many relationship issues going on so that would not last.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

Seven cut off all contact with Voyager's crew after Icheb died because of her guilt over his death except for Naomi who she sent a message to on every birthday.

13. What's an emoji, an emoticon and/or any symbol that reminds you of this character or you think the character would use a lot?

gonna be honest the last thing i associate with Seven are emojis so... none?

14. Assign a fashion aesthetic to this character.

maybe a bit predictable but i would love a steampunk redesign of Seven.

15. What's your favorite ship for this character? (Doesn't matter if it's canon or not.)

Seven/Raffi!! they have a great combination of being actually cute and having tons of unresolved conflict and some parallels (i.e. Seven accidentally causing her sort-of-son's death because she tried to be in an intimate relationship vs Raffi pushing her son away because she was too focused on her career and Doing the Right Thing). i really wish their relationship was a bigger part of Picard (particularly s3) and we didn't keep having them break-up offscreen and then ambiguously get back together like their relationship felt like such an afterthought and i realllllly hope we get some show or movie or even a book where Seven and Raffi get to be lead characters together.

16. What's your least favorite ship for this character?

Seven/Shaw is one of my few hated ships. if you like it then sure whatever i don't really care but i'm incredibly uninterested in shipping characters where one repeatedly deadnames the other and is just generally rude and dismissive. i actually really like their canon dynamic, i think Shaw is a great semi-antagonist for Seven with good narrative purpose and i dig the begrudging respect he eventually has for her but I Do Not ship it.

17. What's a ship for this character you don't hate but it's not your favorite that you're fine with?

Seven/B'Elanna. it's not something i really picked up on watching voyager and i'm not super interested in it but i definitely see how it could work and be a good dynamic! i'm not a b7 shipper but i support their beliefs.

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

admire is a strong word (and tbh i don't think i admire any of Seven's relationships, she's an absolute mess on that front) but i'm fascinated by Janeway and Seven's relationship. it was obviously written to be a mentor & student dynamic but so much of it is fucked up in a really compelling way (with some strong sapphic vibes going on) with Janeway essentially forcing Seven to be human and presuming to know who Seven should be and then acting surprised when Seven isn't her perfect protege (even echoing the control the Borg Queen has over the Collective. sorry i just watched Dark Frontier the other day so that's fresh in my mind). i would die to see them have a scene in Picard era because there's just so much to get into.

19. How about a relationship they have in canon that you don't like?

Seven & the EMH. in the Voyager of version that exists in my head, they have a good dynamic and friendship and i generally politely ignore some of the later canon stuff but yeah... not a fan of the Doctor's crush on her that just ends up falling into a very objectifying "older man is in love with his young female student" dynamic in seasons 6 and 7.

20. Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn't matter?

i'm forever bitter than Seven and Hugh didn't have A SINGLE SCENE together. especially because the actors are actual friends! injustice! Seven and Hugh would be so cool together as they've shared so many of the same experiences but came out of them as very different people – Hugh choosing to be kind in the face of hatred and help the xBs vs Seven running away from the problem so she doesn't have to face her past. but yeah. Hugh is ideal best friend material.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

hm. i've mostly written (incomplete) stuff for Picard-era Seven and i really like to hone in on smaller movements and specify that they're very purposeful and planned because Seven has spent so long practicing "looking" and behaving human enough as a survival tactic (same thing with the way she speaks) and i love having her movements and speech pattern fall back to her earlier self when she's stressed or focused on something else.

something i don't like is that i have a hard time capturing her internal monologue and the way she views the world, particularly with Voyager-era Seven) as it always ends up coming out either too robotic or too human.

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to the character? Something you don't like?

hmmm i really like fics that explore some of the darker body horror type nature of the xBs (and particularly Seven) and i tend to get annoyed with stories (including canon ones) that erase the fact that part of her is still Borg.

23. Favorite picture of this character?

i do love the screencap that's my current icon (from The Haunting of Deck 12) but s1 Picard Seven is my favorite look of hers and particularly this shot is just. very good.

24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

oh this is an incredibly obscure pull but Compassion from the Eighth Doctor Adventure books who is a clone that's been recycled so many times that she's lost any resemblance to the person she was based on and has to struggle with not being a real person in a way that reminds me a lot of Seven.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

awhile before i started watching Voyager i had a friend who kept telling me how much i would like Seven (they guessed correctly) and from them i knew a) she was queer b) she was a badass c) she struggled with the idea of humanity which... again. is exactly my type of character and my impression hasn't majorly changed other than realizing that she is a much more nuanced and complex character than i originally thought.

B'Elanna Torres:

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

i love B'Elanna! she's just a good character who has so much internal strife but tries to be strong and not let anyone know that she's in pain which is tragic but i am a tragedy enjoyer first and foremost.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

i think the sadness she has, especially when she's alone and there's no one to argue with, is so compelling and Roxann Dawson plays her really well. i also love that she's shown as very competent and and intelligent but didn't graduate from the Academy and doesn't have a particular love of Starfleet unlike 95% of other Star Trek characters.

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

because of the all (or at least mostly) white writers i think her character often leans into some unfortunate "fiery/angry Latina" stereotypes that's not recognized enough because it's always under the guise of "oh well it's because she's Klingon" but like. assigning undesirable personality traits to races, even if fictional, is. still racist.

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

I'm not huge into Star Wars but I think B'Elanna would thrive joining the rebels in the original trilogy.

5. What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

it might be the fact that i'm currently listening to this song but Mama by My Chemical Romance.

6. What's something you have in common with this character?

i think we both have a tendency to doubt our ability to do things that we're good at when faced with people who might be more qualified but less talented but i love how quickly B'Elanna does gain confidence in her abilities in s1 and 2 and i hope to follow in her footsteps.

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

i have a lot of respect for the closeted lesbian B'Elanna headcanons i must say.

8. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

idk if this is a widespread fandom take or not but i always dislike the idea that B'Elanna would remain in Starfleet post-Voyager. like the show itself kind of forgets that the Maquis crew on Voyager still has some pretty big beef with the Federation (for good reason) and i don't think she would ever want to join Starfleet unless they have some systemic changes.

9. Could you be roommates with this character?

i think we would definitely have certain habits that would annoy each other but like with Seven, i feel like if we came up with some boundaries both of us would stick to them and it would work out.

10. Could you be best friends with this character?

we have very different personalities that would clash a bit too much to be best friends but i think we would get along.

11. Would you date this character?

again, probably not more just because i'm aro and not super interested in dating and B'Elanna deserves someone better than me.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

after returning from the Delta Quadrant, B'Elanna opens an engineering shop where she rehabs old ships (with or without Tom).

13. What's an emoji, an emoticon and/or any symbol that reminds you of this character or you think the character would use a lot?

i think B'Elanna would respond to a lot of messages with just the middle finger🖕

14. Assign a fashion aesthetic to this character.

B'Elanna would rock 90s grunge fashion so hard.

15. What's your favorite ship for this character? (Doesn't matter if it's canon or not.)

hmmm i thought about this for awhile and honestly i just can't really think of a ship that makes sense for her because she deserves much better than the canon characters she interacts with.

16. What's your least favorite ship for this character?

i've seen B'Elanna/Chakotay around a few times and... no. not for me please.

17. What's a ship for this character you don't hate but it's not your favorite that you're fine with?

B'Elanna/Seven (as I said in Seven's section)

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

i generally like B'Elanna & Chakotay's canon relationship (with a few notable exceptions where things get weird) and i think Chakotay is such a good mentor figure for her as someone who shares the same political ideology but is older and wiser and knows better than to act only out of anger.

19. How about a relationship they have in canon that you don't like?

B'Elanna/Tom and it's not that i don't think the characters could work together, there are a few moments from the show and people's fanons or whatnot that have a lot of potential. and there's so much potential inherent in two characters with a lot of issues that they tend to hide with humor or aggression or whatever who are now forced to indefinitely be part of this crew/family. however i hate that all of their interactions are plagued with 90s sexism and always shown from Tom's perspective of how much he struggles being in a relationship and remembering to pay attention to B'Elanna as if that's just. an expected part of being in a relationship rather than a problem that needs to be resolved. and so many episodes focus on their relationship problems and we rarely get to see them being happy so it comes off feeling like they're trapped in an unhappy marriage.

20. Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn't matter?

B'Elanna and Harry! they have such a good dynamic in s1 with Harry being the embodiment of Starfleet idealism and B'Elanna being so jaded towards Federation idealism and Harry over time developing his own Problems and B'Elanna beginning to resolve her issues. i wish we got more of them together!

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

i haven't written any fic for B'Elanna yet so i'll just skip this one

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to the character? Something you don't like?

tbh i haven't read much B'Elanna fic. i'll get around to it! i've only been a Voyager fan for like 6 months.

23. Favorite picture of this character?

i love her curly hair from the beginning of s6 sooooo much

24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

Clara from Doctor Who (specifically in s9). they both have some deep insecurities that they try to cover up with quips and deflection. they're also both very clever but don't necessarily think through their actions and have a tendency to throw themselves into danger.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

tbh i didn't really have a strong opinion about any of the Voyager characters when i first started the show and kind of expected B'Elanna to fall into the mixed (alien) race stereotype of torn between two worlds and some of the accompanying racist tropes but tbh B'Elanna became a much deeper character than i ever expected both with exploring the tension of her heritage and internalized racism (Barge of the Dead & Lineage come to mind) but also exploring her mental health (Extreme Risk) and how her character reveals some of the issues inherent in the Federation's existence. i just wish that Voyager did more and was willing to create a more complete arc for her that doesn't leave some stuff like her self harming behaviors and grief over the Maquis alone after one episode. i also didn't expect her to be probably the most competent engineer in all of Star Trek but i maintain that she is.

[butchdykeorpheus]

i'm about to spend WAY too many words talking about barbie movie meta btw just a warning. disclaimer this is just one guy's opinion i may not always hold these opinions forever i'm open to hearing other opinions i'm almost definitely missing something here etc etc

ngl i also loved the barbie movie but i feel like some people are hyping it up / expecting it to be Cutting Edge Radical Leftist Feminist Writing when like. it's definitely not that lol. greta gerwig is a great director and frankly i'm surprised she managed to get away with some of the things she did in a licensed movie based on such a major IP but at the end of the day she's riding a very fine line in making a corporate-approved toy ad that's also a satire with adult and feminist themes that's also a coming-of-age movie for tweens and young teens

like gerwig is spinning a LOT of plates with the barbie movie and whilst that gives it a lot of high energy and humour and wry commentary and the ability to touch on a lot of different topics, she's ultimately limited by runtime and also most likely by trying to toe a line set by mattel/WB about what is and isn't TOO far. and the end result is that whilst it's refreshing to see a high profile movie speak so candidly about how stressful it is to be a woman, some of the themes that it touches on end up feeling underbaked, shallow and performative. like the movie mentioning capitalism and white savourism without actually delving into any of that and whilst it's funny to point out how stupid it is for a company selling Girl Power™ to be run mostly by middle aged men the movie just Does Not Have The Time Or Space To Get Into it so we don't get an exploration of what that means for barbie's existence, for capitalist co-opting of feminism, etc and it easily comes off as a "where are all the woman CEOs???" #girlbossfeminism comment regardless of gerwig's intentions

i get the sense that gerwig & co. knew going in that there were going to be criticisms regardless about the limits of the movie's feminism, and included some of those comments nodding towards the "we don't have time to get into this right now" topics the movie touches on intending them to reassure the audience that she's not deliberately ignoring them. and the results of doing that were Decidedly Mixed. i can't really say if i think it was better for her to do that or not tbh i think that's a more individual judgement call

idk at the end of the day what the movie does best is not to make in-depth critiques about structural oppression but to speak directly to the experiences of modern young girls who grow up being told repeatedly that "girls can do anything" (whether in good faith by well-meaning adults or by capitalist marketing) but then start to realise that the world is still hostile to women in so many ways, who struggle to reconcile that message with the realities of how they're made to feel self-conscious and objectified and the observations they can make about the still patriarchal world around them. who are trying to process all this conflicting information while their sense of self and relationship with the society around them and also their physical body is still developing. and, in relation to that, to speak directly to the personal experiences of adult women in the audience who have internalised and tried to accomodate all those contradictions and become worn down by the stress. the priority of the movie is to tell women and girls that you don't have to be extraordinary or successful or pretty to be worthy of respect or personhood, that you don't need permission to be a full human being

through ken, to a lesser extent, the movie is also trying to speak directly to the experiences of young boys who are internalising patriarchal ideals as they mature and promised "rewards" if they live up to a hypermasculine ideal. except ken admits towards the end that being In Charge™ and hypermasculine did not make him happy, but that he doesn't know who he is if not his status symbols and "possessions" (his girlfriend, his house, his car). i have a few small gripes with how the conclusion of ken's arc was handled in that scene but barbie was speaking directly to the audience when she said that he (men in general) can and should find a sense of self-worth without domineering over others or feeling entitled to a woman simply because he's a man. it's feminism 101 lol it's hardly angela davis or simone de beauvoir but it's not an unimportant message to impart on young boys still wrapping their head around the way the world works

to a less direct extent the movie is also trying to grapple with the complex relationship the barbie brand has historically had with feminism, female empowerment/liberation, beauty standards and traditional gender roles, and the ways barbie has been progressive and regressive in turns. again you could have made a 2hr barbie movie about just this topic alone so your mileage may vary on whether barbie 2023 explored this in enough depth for you (i personally would have liked a bit more self-reflection on barbie's role in imparting beauty standards to young girls but maybe that would have been a bit too dark for mattel/WB lmao) but the movie isn't subtle about setting up the simplistic claim that "barbie saved women from sexism" only to repeatedly knock it down. barbieland is a Matriarchal Utopia™ but it's also explicitly in the text just an idea, a plastic stage onto which the real world projects its concept of an ideal world for women. it takes the slightest nudge from the "real world" - gloria being kind of bummed and stressed out by being a working mother with depression and cellulite - for the entire house of cards to wobble. i wish the movie's answer to this was a bit more complex than "what about an Ordinary Barbie?" but i think gerwig and baumbach knew what they were saying when the CEO called that a stupid idea until another suit whispered that it would make a lot of money lmao

and i think that last point is one of the most interesting things about analysing the movie for me, because you can almost see in these moments these little points of tension between gerwig/baumbach and mattel/WB - hints at the things gerwig/baumbach WANT to say more explicitly but can't without possibly upsetting the people bankrolling the project. i'm not smart enough to draw any intelligent conclusions or moral lessons about that btw i just think it would be interesting to look at these points in the movie where gerwig/baumbach noticeably gesture towards criticisms of Pink Capitalism™ without actually Getting Into It and what that says about the state of trying to make feminist/leftist media under the constraints of capitalism. like it shouldn't be lost on anyone that mattel/WB only bankrolled this project in the first place because we live at a point in time where a certain kind of feminism (and even the outrage generated by conservatives who think "women are people" is radical leftist rhetoric, and the ensuing wave of "let's support the thing that pisses of conservatives") is considered profitable

anyway this has devolved into rambling, my point is, outside of a) telling young boys and girls that patriarchy kinda sucks and they don't have to live up to specific ideals to have worth and b) grappling with the barbie brand's complicated relationship with feminism, the movie's feminist discourse is limited and we're kinda setting some viewers up for disappointment by propping up barbie as a radically feminist movie. that's not to say that barbie 2023 should be above criticism at all but yk. you're gonna have a better time with the movie and better be able to appreciate the prioritised messages if you temper expectations rather than being disappointed that the movie didn't advocate for marxism (or if you're not misled into thinking it's something that you wanna watch in the first place). also that no one should rely solely on big budget, heavily marketed movies based on highly profitable IPs for feminist perspectives or incisive commentary on the relationship between patriarchy and other forms of systemic oppression

also outside of the feminist discourse around it the movie is generally just funny, emotional, upbeat and a little surrealist if you think you'd be into that

[alazyparallelworld]

(i’m terribly late, you don’t need to answer this, but—) maybe amatojo for the ship bingo, and/or shiromatsu?

i'm splitting this up into two posts -!! this is the amatojo one

off the bat there is smth... unusual... the purple'd. the purple is, uh, 'my kneejerk response would've been this,' - as you (rumi) (Some viewers) know i have a very mild tilt of like for tojo... it used to verge on, ah, Dislike, but when you follow a kinnie (dry laugh)

so. when i got this ask, i was immediately thinking. "ah, but, this will be such an empty board. 'i have nothing to say about it, indeed,' i feel bad. it's gonna pale in comparison to the shiro/aka answer,"

and. here i am. SHOCKED THAT I HAVE A LOT TO SAY ABOUT AMATOJO ? the ship leaked through . Rumi's influence.

okay but for real

FIRST i have to clarify, "enable the worst out of each other" - i do not think amami would approve of, seedier implications of being everyone's puppet. What she's had to do for the 'greater good,' -- I think, amami would be at best horrified and at worst having to physically restrain tojo in some way.

"it's not someone else doing this.... it's you! this is your decision! you don't want to actually hurt people!" sort of argument.

when i say, 'enable the worst,' i mean more of their... Mutuals desires to please and their own obsessive fixations. amami is kept awake at night, whiteboards filled back-to-back with stickynotes and pinned down worldmaps, he has plane tickets reserved for 3/4th quarters of the year to continue his search. he loves his sisters so much it destroys him

and love... is a good, thing, right? tojo would not encourage in the way of - yes, stay up until 5 am, lose sleep - but rather tolerate and comfort him in these moments. she doesn't (at least not initially) have the heart to pull him away. It'd be cruelty.

and the vice versa - when her personhood and employment isn't ethically questionable - amami is amazed at tojo's competence. some of the things, she partakes in, even daily flies right over his head... and he too enjoys, 'the facade,' at least initially? She's so beautiful, she's so smart, she can do anything.... how are you supposed to sit someone down and rip their identity away?

so. It would be. AWHILE, or it would take special circumstances for them to have the argument of - "you are destroying your body! you need medical help! you are not responsible for the livelihood of your family!!" & "you aren't all you say you are! you need to stop! you - when you are off, it's like you're all alone despite being surrounded by everyone... i can't stand to see you like that anymore,"

and it would be. Really.

REALLY

REALLY messy. and thematically interesting. and fucked up. and -

idk i think entering a relationship with either of these people is. Uh. a strain on one another, pff... how can you feel like she's your girlfriend when she's - IDK, away at other people's homes more than in your apartment? when she's cooking meals for other people? when you barely see her, at least not 'off the clock'

and how can you dare impede yourself on his grief? how can you 'demand' love, affection, from such endless n continuing sorrow of being Alone? this is enough. this has to be enough...

[ungirthed]

i guess i have a lot of thoughts wow. i could bombard friends with this but i'm trying to stay off twitter unless i need information on the world immediately not hrs later so i am talking to myself. journaling or blogging for you is so weird who tf are u supposed to address. i never get it right in my physical diary lmao.

what i loved the most about atla was the characters. i think this is true for a lot of media (i think i hate this word lol)...art? idk. but not always! what makes people stay for something subpar is characters i think but...

for me, besides harry potter the character, the world of HP is much much much more interesting and thought out than the characters. i wasn't as into HP as most people—and thank fucking god now. fuck that cunt—but i still loved the series at the time. however, looking back at the fic i read when i'm bored: it's much more the atmosphere created, my age at the time, and the luck jkr had with the films since young millenials grew up with that. we sensed and felt that world as the books were coming out and seeing kids who were our age or a little older to represent that. the politic of the world suffers some of the same things that atla does tho.

anyway for characterization, i think the female characters in atla, and the shackles that are less oppressing when it comes to gender and sexuality, lend to it. this is the beauty of drawing from something not set in western conceptions and legacies that bog these categories down. these are some of the best female characters i have seen for kids particularly with relationships that aren't defined by men (which is why the live action is insulting lol). at least in the way where these women, when tied to men, are trying to remove those shackles and prove themselves.

but i can't laud any bullshit conception of pre western colonialism. the much less controlling, paternal, religious way of monitoring gender. the "morality or culture police" aka dai li are this function. the idea of laws steeped in "what is right" "what one must do". that is not exclusively western. conceptions of personhood emerge for ordering. man/woman may not existed but there was passive (vagina) and active (penis) then dredges (poor, "sexual deviants" on a skewed gender pattern who are poor).

obviously the oppression via gender was present, because it has to be, because the ordering of the world....imperialism is the contradiction. race-class (non un-tangleable but we can't call this [racial] capitalism bc they didn't live in capitalism but still trash. feudalism, slavery, etc). colonialism doesn't magically just appear and terrorize. it preys off of existing ills and wants. so the systems are there—the books writing about the freedoms one supposedly had and the differences one supposedly had before we were conquered is too easy.

still, i think having its own jumping point for gender and subsequently sexuality (non specific as to what that jumping point is) facilitates knowing women qua women. kiyoshi is so fucking cool and i wish i had more with her. i may read the books because i love everything about what she stood for even though she's deeply misunderstood which is why i think i love mai. excited to think about that more.

and even if you don't necessarily connect with these women—i struggled with azula because i think writing her was too easy because of the problems i'm going to think about more and i definitely struggled with katara but that is written in and because i identify with her and admire her immensely—

tangent: the bravery of these kids is insane. watching it i was like they are so fearless, so brave, so understanding of discipline and sacrifice. so human. i want to harness that. in their world death is hard, it is awful, it is sould-wrenching, but they know the meaning of life. in their world fighting, arrests, imprisonment are prices they pay for fighting. it is normal and the reason is because they know this is struggle and the more normalized struggle becomes, the more they can rely on each other, the less scared they are. they are comfortable with danger (and mischief heh) and that is so fucking important and valuable. also their attempts at self-governing and anarchic-communal living and ways of interacting. but anywho..

the fire nation girlies rship is very true to how women will interact esp from that environment. it's expected of them to have this clash and it's insulting when people believe those clashes are over boys and men. they can be but they aren't. only time that was defined was when meng called katara a floozy which i actually disliked. it was fine in terms of funny haha if i was 11 (which i was at the time lmao) but even back then i'd be like wtf. to be fair i was very very very willful over being a girl growing up because uhhhh patriarchy. that's not to say women or anyone else are off the hook. never lol. and we are allowed to be annoying.

another thing is they don't want these girls to be "just as" like men. their conceptions are shallow bc the world has told us that's what feminism is but it doesn't suffer from as much bullshit bc of their attempts at self-governing and fashioning. of resistance via respect, support, camraderie, disagreement, tension, and love. azula shows what happens when you try that bullshit.

From Ursula K. Leguin's (anarchist queehn) 1983 Mills College commencement speech:

I know there are men graduating, and I don’t mean to exclude them, far from it. There is a Greek tragedy where the Greek says to the foreigner, “If you don’t understand Greek, please signify by nodding.” Anyhow, commencements are usually operated under the unspoken agreement that everybody graduating is either male or ought to be. That’s why we are all wearing these twelfth-century dresses that look so great on men and make women look either like a mushroom or a pregnant stork. Intellectual tradition is male. Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man’s world, so it talks a man’s language. The words are all words of power. You’ve come a long way, baby, but no way is long enough. You can’t even get there by selling yourself out: because there is theirs, not yours. [...] The war-games world wasn’t made by us or for us*; we can’t even breathe the air there without masks. And if you put the mask on you’ll have a hard time getting it off. So how about going on doing things our own way, as to some extent you did here at Mills? Not for men and the male power hierarchy — that’s their game. Not against men, either — that’s still playing by their rules. But with any men who are with us: that’s our game. Why should a free woman with a college education either fight Machoman or serve him? Why should she live her life on his terms? I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.

this whole speech is amazing. she's wrong on the "it wasn't made for us" because it was but that's a complex thing and she's white so. also one of my fav lines from zuko is when he tells aang he will fail. it was helpful even if the characters didn't think so. it was helpful, extremely so, and even to me at 32. the idea of failure kills me. my favorite quote on that intensity is "the only penalty for failure is death". zuko knows failure. he's a failson lol and we will always know it. but that is ok. failure is a part of life. it isn't' to be despaired. try it again. and again. and again. this is building a life. fix it. there's a quote from the show about the solution being fixing the problem. how do we fix it?

and i don't think the show could answer that completely without linking it to some otherworldly ideas of life and outsized evil. the problem with bridging real life history in media is that we-the-viewer live in the real world.

the lack of specificity of the world of atla was simply confusing. i don't know what the nations entail nor do i understand the idea of it being the world. they had to speak english obviously but i wish they had found something similar that they do with anime in establishing that there is a lingua franca—not bc of colonialism cos it would be impossible without acknowledging languages themselves and this nebulous asian world wouldn't have had that—but that there are indeed differences and limitations or what it means culturally. i think they mentioned language but not often.

for the world they made: the fire nation could be chinese or japanese (i understand they use chinese in the atla universe and i'm assuming that's bc it is the linguistic root for krn and jpns?) and if japanese it would make sense to enforce that via language. i could be getting my history wrong as i am but a humble negro with some knowledge of this wrt culture, resistance and anti-colonialism but i hope i'm in the ballpark...regardless all the resistances are the same in a good way

[fate-motif]

same rules apply. this is all in some post-voyager context, so ships i would have been all over in some au don’t apply here. white string: just friends. green string: Uhhh. i’ll explain when we get there. pink string: we can talk about it, we can address the ship in a storyline, but it’s not gonna be endgame. red string: Endgame. and of course, gray string: no contact! cut these bitches outta your life!

so we’re starting with the gray string! no contact! i wanted this one for last but these ones do kind of define the situation going forward so let’s explain those shall we.

the doctor is not on talking terms with anyone connected to starfleet! except seven for reasons i’ll expand later. but all in all, the starfleet crew kind of violated his rights and personhood and didn’t take an artistic expression of his grievances very well (dogshit writing notwithstanding) so like, surely as he expands into greater society i’m sure he wouldn’t be compelled to go back to them. and on the other side the others may act a little sad but deep inside i’m sure they’re thrilled because for almost everyone he’s no contact with, the doctor either sexually harassed them, daydreamed about sexually harassing them, or made light about them experiencing sexual harassment! literally the last person i’d want in my friend group after being freed from his presence.

tom and b’elanna are getting a divorce. now they can’t be fully as no-contact as i want them to, because they have a daughter, but they’re as close as possible as can be because even though they had the potential to be really good friends they just blew it so hard after the marriage and the baby. those scars are not going away and they’re no contact not because they don’t care about the other, but because they care about the other and know that they’d get toxic if they got into each other’s vicinity. this is genuinely for the better i’m telling you.

and finally, tuvok is not speaking to tom because he has not forgotten all those times that tom insisted that tuvok should cheat on his wife and tom is like, oh he’ll come around, and then he never does. lol.

white strings! just friends! a lot of these are self explanatory but i’m gonna elaborate on some.

harry and b’elanna had romantic potential at the start of their journey. not by the point b’elanna’s a sour divorcée and harry’s becoming the new janeway, they’re just too used to being buddies.

all the seven white strings are kind of in a post picard s1 context. like there she implies she’s no longer talking to anyone related to voyager but by s3 she’s picked back up with janeway and tuvok after that so clearly she still has it in her to be friends with them at least.

much as i’d love it for seven to permanently cut contact with the doctor, i don’t think it would happen, because she’s been one of the more understanding members of the crew related to his oppression as a hologram.

also neelix would still be on talking terms with the doctor because he wasn’t really aligned with starfleet so he wasn’t really involved in the more messed up things the crew did to the doctor and also neelix enjoyed his terrible holonovel.

seven and chakotay would be gray string if not for the fact that by the time seven gets back in contact with everyone from voyager i think she would have matured enough from their breakup and also chakotay would absolutely be together with janeway so they’d have the opportunity for a new start, and their relationship would feel more like a bad dream than anything else.

okay technically the green string in quinton’s video was “idk what this means. you decide.” but to me i think the green string in this board is uhh subtext. like the subtext is there. and maybe we’re gonna shed a light on it a little but the characters involved will never explicitly address it because it would melt the brain of the audience to talk about it.

featuring! the people that janeway fucked up and has a weird mommy vibe with!

and tuvok and neelix! who literally became one at one point! literally the closest thing tuvok ever did to adultery, even if it was against his will, and thus you can be sure that shit weighs in his mind. he probably has some weird nightmares about it but he’ll be dead in the ground before he acknowledges it as A Thing.

pink string! the troy and britta string! these are like, straight up storyline worthy, and not just vibes.

i know, i know, kes is an energy being now and jennifer lien is never coming back, but in a world where she’d be available i can imagine her appearing as some kind of helpful presence in a high stakes adventure, like what wesley in s3 of picard should have been if terry matalas had been competent enough as a writer to use him without breaking the story.

with kes and seven there’s a weird what-could-have-been angle. if this is post picard you can be sure seven feels so weirdly about the fact that once upon a time kes had been her to the voyager crew, a young woman who had been denied her freedom and was discovering herself on voyager and when she looks at pictures of old voyager she just stares wondering what kes must have been like and kes in turn is a little in awe of what seven became and when the end of their storyline comes it’s tense and weird and gay (but they can’t like, kiss because seven’s with raffi) it’s just charged and you can tell in that moment that seven wished they’d been together. … i haven’t given this too much thought, you can tell.

but kes and b’elanna is an entirely different angle. we’re still in a “kes is back to stop the end of the world” kind of scenario but since kes and b’elanna actually knew each other it gets complicated. admittedly i’m biased here because i read this novelverse voyager short story compilation where in one story kes deals with the trauma of having been possessed by building a windmill with b’elanna. if they got to integrate that in, like with a flashback if this were in prodigy because it’s animated, then this could happen because then you could have b’elanna post-divorce thinking, you used to think i was someone and could get somewhere and now i’m here. and through whatever help kes offers the cast in this scenario then b’elanna she’d understand under kes’ love that she didn’t “fail” anything and even she who’s been so long away from voyager, will always love her. … i also haven’t given this an insane amount of thought. just kes’ return to voyager in general.

i know, i know, why is tom/harry in pink? surely they’re the kind of relationship that’s wide open once tom and b’elanna get divorced! but i don’t think they have it in them to be a long-term relationship once they get to the alpha quadrant. especially not as harry undergoes janewayfication and he’s going full on in his career to try and recapture what it was like being on voyager and even though tom recognizes that he’s far more miserable in the alpha quadrant than he was in the delta quadrant, he’d be perceptive enough to pick up on what a doomed quest it is to try and relive the glory days even if harry isn’t aware this is what he’s doing. but they’d give it a shot. and then it’d fall apart. they could still be friends after but there’s a little sadness under there afterwards.

harry/chakotay is actually a ship that’s like, scarily endgame potential if not for the fact that there’s already one ship extremely marked to be endgame, and it’s precisely because they have what harry/chakotay could have, but that one built up for it through seven seasons multiple times. but if harry had been on the protostar when chakotay went missing you know that shit might have gone romantic. i’m not kidding. we don’t know what harry’s gonna do in prodigy, though, so unfortunately i can’t elaborate much on this one, except that in the right circumstances, yeah, they’d date, and might even last a surprisingly long amount of time. except for, you know. The Other Ship.

b7 was actually on the running for red string for a while, except that seven’s with raffi in picard, and she had cut out everyone from voyager before then. and i get that polyamory exists, but i don’t think it’s possible that seven gets together with raffi, which represents a new start, a new family, and with b’elanna, which brings her back all the way to the voyager days as one of the only people who could understand her in context of what she went through leaving the borg. they had the potential though. you just need a little buildup to develop how b’elanna’s antipathy to seven may have been more than just her being a control freak in engineering and you’re good to go. suddenly all their interactions make sense now. except that by the time b’elanna and seven reconnect she’s already with raffi, so by necessity this would be some the one that got away pink string stuff.

red string. Endgame.

it hurts me that j/c’s the only one here, but let’s be real. this is the only ship left that actively improves voyager by becoming canon. the setup was there in all seven seasons and that’s not even questionable, whether you like them or not. and i feel like they’re the only ones who could have an active future having settled down in the alpha quadrant. everyone else has some issues there.

has anyone seen the 13 hour quinton reviews victorious retrospective

[lycanthrology]

@thebourneultimatum OK for some reason, Tumblr won’t let me edit the original ask so I’m doing it like this instead. I got deleted while answering this ask yesterday so maybe it’s connected. Maybe staff really hates Jason Bourne. Or they’re messing with me on Crow’s birthday 😔

Jason Bourne Crow Armitage similarities because we are being so normal on tumblr dot com

Warning for discussion of abuse

Let’s start with @vonkarma2 ‘s revolutionary checklist:

Jason and Crow’s narrative arcs both focus on identity and personhood. They both have their identities destroyed and rebuilt to fit a manipulative organisation’s ideals. Jason feels a big disorientation and struggles to piece together the events of his life and what things make up his ‘real’ identity. Crow ‘willingly’ gave up his old identity and is very aware of his decision at all times.

Crow is actually a rank and not a name. His first name is Lewis, but he’s become so tied to his role as a Knight of the Order of Crows that he almost entirely sheds his old name. Other people began calling him Crow in day to day conversation then over time he accepted it for himself. He’s become so tied up in what he is that he’s forgotten who he is. He’s so detached from the world that Lewis came from that he’s a completely different person in almost every way.

There’s also a lot of conflicting feelings for him wrt his name because while Lewis is his birth name, it reminds him of his mother and that’s very upsetting because he loved her dearly and feels like he betrayed her (<- this is more complicated than that. i won’t talk about it here), and the only people who use it for him in modern day are abusive. But Crow as a name isn’t a ‘real’ name. It was given to him because people couldn’t be bothered to call him anything else. It’s like Soldier or Captain or Officer. Very formal, no personalisation. He isn’t anything outside of the rank.

Also, it’s an animal name. He’s the only character (besides Hollyhock and Baize <- it’s different with her I won’t talk about it here) that doesn’t have a ‘person name’. In the text, he’s consistently likened to different animals. Specifically domestic or prey animals. I know Jason gets related to a dog in the films and I think he has a similar situation where his relationship to different names and identities get complicated and each moniker ends up kind of like their own compartmentalised person.

It’s almost the same situation as this post you made:

+ some animal metaphors i found quickly

So I’ve still only seen the first film. I’m sorry. So tell me if I’m getting this wrong. Jason is dehumanised and treated like a living weapon by Treadstone. They use him for their own gain, while fearing what he’s truly capable of. They have lethal contingency measures in place, in case he turns on them, or deserts. Treadstone created everything that Jason Bourne is, then realised they’d done too good of a job. It’s all very Crow.

Idk how much you know about him so sorry if I’m covering old ground here but Crow was raised in an environment that places humanity on an impossibly high pedestal. There’s a whole political history about this that I won’t go into here. Crow is a werewolf. But the differences between the two species are so slight, it’s almost negligible, aside from the obvious. Crow’s job is to kill other werewolves to ‘protect’ humans. Again there’s political and social history around this that I won’t go into. There’s guidlines and procedure. Think like K from BR2049 being a replicant that kills other replicants, so is ostracised from both humans and replicants. That’s Crow’s situation. He can’t find comfort from either humans or werewolves, because both groups despise and fear him. He’s a very isolated, lonely man which made him vulnerable to manipulation.

An irl of mine said that it’s as if he never fully woke from the Dream and everyone around can tell there’s parts of him that got left behind and that unnerves them like uncanny valley style. They can automatically tell something isn’t quite right. I wanted to hit her with a tire iron

From a young age, Crow was groomed to believe that he was specifically chosen by a werewolf deity because of his heritage. One of his ancestors was leader of a prestigious cavalry rank called the Order of Crows in the fifteenth century, so Crow is excited to follow in his footsteps. He’s led to believe its his prophesied destiny to take up his great-great-whatever-grandfather’s mantle. It isn’t. He’s being actively manipulated by a man called Harry Dashwood. Dashwood uses Crow as a political pawn to get ahead and become sworn in as the Prime Gardener <- the highest political/theocratic rank a werewolf can hold. He has his own agenda that Crow isn’t privy to.

Over time, Crow recognises that he’s being kept in the dark and wants to find a way out somehow, but there’s no real way he can leave without putting himself in serious danger. A lot of people want him dead (and rightfully so most of the time. he is a serial killer) and he’d never be safe without the Sanctum’s protection. Like with Jason and the CIA, the Sanctum itself would become overtly hostile towards him and organise their own ways of recapturing or killing him if he went rogue

When Crow becomes uncomfortable or feels threatened, he talks in metaphor to distance himself from the real situation. He gets stressed and falls back into different scripts or parrots things he’s been told in the past. He says what he thinks people want to hear rather than what he actually wants to. Crow’s go-to exclamation is ‘Equipoise’s mercy’ and the only other character that says that is Dashwood.

This got very muddled at the end. I could say a lot, lot more but I think it would be completely illegible. Whatever. Does any of this make sense? I just wanted to post and get it over with.

To conclude:

[googledocsdyke]

Do you have any thoughts/recommended texts for Cas analysis? I genuinely love the dean gender studies and I just wanna know what people might apply to Cas.

yes absolutely!! while dean studies is my first love i also deeply love cas analysis (casnalysis?) and wanna strive to do more of it. here’s some stuff off the top of my head:

1. gender, sexuality, heavenly embodiment

this is much more theological and less psychological than dean’s whole Deal because there’s so much fascinating stuff around how the angels in general experience express and conceptualise gender (@autisticandroids has a good post about angel gender & lily sunder has some regrets) but for cas in particular there’s this fascinating kind of collective fandom agreement (which i DO also agree with) that cas’ own gender kind of is gay man, that he actively chose gay manhood, but also that he’s kind of..... lacking the Insane Genderishness that dean exhibits at all times, even though he actively chose to engage in male gendering and became so comfortable housed Within Jimmy that he, as some post i saw the other day that i can’t find anymore said, “became his own body” when jimmy died. 

like on the one hand there’s an almost-canonical transness to the whole process but it also never feels fully written-into because 1) the supernatural writers for all their insanity are sometimes very boring and *most* of the time only feel interested in narratively expressing angels As Their Vessels anyways and just like leaving convenient spaces around these questions (boldest thing they ever did was hot girl cas which i WISH i had the range to unpack) 2) there’s a vague inevitabilist shrug to the whole thing since they obviously weren’t gonna recast misha collins (though they HAVE tried to get rid of him) and 3) something amorphous about cas’ entire..... personhood? makes him Empty Of Gender as a contrast to dean’s Full Of Gender (i believe it was @deanwinchestergender who said this) and like is it just the juxtaposition to dean/jensen’s whole insane Deal? or something else? 

like he actively chooses the terms of his own embodiment and yet narratively it feels like a shrug. and we’re all like “well obviously even though he’s a celestial being he was always a gay man” and like WHY. i love it idk idk much to think about! and yeah just in general the theological questions of possession and cas genuinely Becoming a man as he iterates himself consciously towards humanity it almost feels like. by doing the most boring things possible with his gender they made it interesting? idk if that makes sense.

2. discipline, free will, metanarratives

cas is like a tool (“i am not a hammer, as you say”) held in constant discipline and surveillance by the system that enmeshes him and it’s really, really fascinating to watch the way the angels hold each other to conformity. especially pre-god they kind of produce each other as foucauldian disciplinary subjects (which i posted about here) in perpetual visibility through angel radio, generating their own and each other’s conformity rather than being directly ruled through like a single centralised source of power. only the spectre of a god. and obviously cas’ whole thing is that he has ALWAYS disobeyed and the narrative affords him this psychological interiority never given to the foucauldian subject, an internal will and desire for freedom in a way that fits more with the liberal subject (super roughly and not with the same pro-capitalist implications but he has this internal drive for self-liberation. 

and that’s also where the metanarrative comes in ofc! i think it was @dykecas who said that cas is a real person written by people who hate him, and there’s this crack in the narrative (mirroring the crack in his chassis) where cas gets in, over and over, despite all the order imposed by the show’s authorfathergod. like we’ve all seen the analysis about how it was Never supposed to be this way they DID try to fire misha collins in 2012 and yet this gay man literally cannot be stopped! i think actually his appearance in scoobynatural is a neat little distillation of this — he drops into this animated world originally with a singular purpose (Save Sam And Dean) the same way he dropped into lazarus rising with a single 3-episode arc (Save Dean). huge hammer behaviour. his “utility” diminishes within the narrative (he finds that he can’t fly in the scooby doo universe) and so he is no longer a tool/means to an end that salvation moves Through. and in the process (and huge creds to @lesbianyuugi for this) he does something ENTIRELY unrelated to his original cas-as-tool aim, and learns, like, the meaning of laughter from shaggy and scooby. WHICH brings me onto the third point

3. love, queer kinship, family-making

HE’S GAY AND HE’S A DAD! i feel like a lot of tumblr throws around the term “found family” in a very flat and tropey way (which is fine it’s cute and fun no matter what!) but like . GOD there’s so much specific stuff going on here. like the way that cas (unintentionally) obliterates the midwestern white christian nuclear family (made incarnate in the novaks) which like could be uniformly portrayed as an act of deep malice and villainy but instead grows to serve as a surrogate (if imperfect/complex, but DEEPLY loving) father figure for the gay daughter who has now escaped that nuclear family/seen it destroyed depending on how you read it? like he remasters the entire concept of fatherhood and it’s a very interesting (if DEEPLY) unintentional subversion of the homewrecking non-nuclear gay trope. cas is so good because his character arc doesn’t say “look, gay people can be normal and have perfect settled families just like you” it says “gay people DON’T have normal settled families actually and they are full of love anyways! or Because of the abnormalcy itself!) 

to cite ziz lesbianyuugi again he DOES queer fatherhood in his parenting of jack particularly because it really is one of the ONLY parent-child relationships in the show that breaks the incessant cycle of abuse and control and cold indifference perpetuated by the authorfathergod (a cycle reified in 15x20 lol). like god’s treatment of cas and his siblings mirrors john’s treatment of sam and dean (particularly dean) mirrors victor’s treatment of krissy and her crew mirrors dean’s later treatment of jack. there is a CONSTANT reiteration of the story of authorfathergod (often a father tightly entwined in biological kinship) treating a child as a mechanism or a tool or a means to an end. and cas looks at ALL that he has suffered and all that he is ever known and chooses constantly to reject it with every piece of love he expresses for his child. and not to sound like the kind of academic people make fun of on twitter but there is an INHERENT queerness to that. gay love will pierce through [the veil of death/the thick silence of abuse/the mechanism of godly control/hegemonic american masculinity] and save the day

anyways here are some very haphazard recs on everything above for further reading:

angels in america (tony kushner)

histrionics of the pulpit: trans tonalities of religious enthusiasm

the public universal friend: religious enthusiasm in revolutionary america

discipline and punish (michel foucault)

friendship as a way of life (michel foucault)

the genesis of blame (recommended by @pietacastiel who has GREAT theology content in general

all about love (bell hooks)

the chapter “when hated characters talk back” in anti-fandom: dislike and hate in the digital age (is actually explicitly about cas)

also cannot recommend enough following the ppl i tagged above!! most of the unlinked stuff is available through http://libgen.li/ and bookshop is a good alternative to amazon if ur american and want physical copies