#it just shows in different ways and is for different reasons in my opinion

[muqingslover]

Ok, so... this might be a bit of a +18 think piece, but... what do you think the lads men would have as their top 3 kinks? I started thinking about it after I read the Xavier somno one, lol. Maybe I'm crazy but I think Caleb would have blindfolds/rope play in his top 3 (on mc not on him, since he wants to see all of you but is very resultant to show all of himself back due to fear of rejection+ if mc is tied up she can't leave)

[ choosing only three was a lot harder than I thought whew. Also, I'm testing out different layouts rn so don't mind me (⁠^⁠～⁠^⁠;⁠)⁠ゞ]

Xavier

Predator/Prey Play: This guy is the literal definition of wolf in sheep's clothing. What gets him going is the thrill of the hunt and the turntables (his specialty), which is why he will often let you think you're in control and have your fun teasing him only to then pounce when you least expect. If you run from him then you better pray he won't catch you or not.

Exhibitionism: This might be a hot take but walk with me. Xavier is a very jealous man so he won't ever allow anyone to actually see you, buuuut he is very into letting others know you belong to him. You gotta leave for a mission with someone else? Not to worry, all he needs is 10 minutes in the bathroom stall. The bread guy is back at it again? It can't be helped, he'll just have to fuck against the door while he's knocking to show you're busy. He'd love to see you struggling (and failing) to keep your voice down and looks like a smug cat when others notice the marks he left on you.

Cunnilingus: This man eats pussy like a goddamn champ. He absolutely adores having your thighs wrapped around his head, to the point he finds it comforting, and the feeling of his tongue stretching open your dripping pussy for his cock later. Your taste is something he could have every day, which he will if you let him, and he takes pride when you're left a writhing, whimpering mess that begs for him to fuck you.

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Zayne

Bondage: The joke about him tying MC up with surgical knots was definitely not a joke. In my opinion, rather than the power rush over the control he has over you, what really gets him off is the trust you put in his hands. Bondage is all about having faith in your partner to never truly hurt you and knowing you see him that way makes him feel beyond special. Given the chance he'd love to have you wrapped in dark blue, silky ribbons and the aftercare is top tier with this guy.

Lingerie: For some reason I feel like Zayne is REALLY into seeing you wearing lingerie. Ladies, feel free to tease him by telling him you're wearing one, but not letting him see until he's home much later. He'll spend the entire day imagining what type of lace you have under your clothes and he pretty please asks you to strip for him as a reward for waiting.

Phone Sex: Another one I just have a feeling it's his thing. I mean, he is a busy man and sometimes it can't be helped, people have needs yk. He'd like the feeling of knowing you think of him as much as he does of you when the other is not around. The photos you send and the sounds of your needy whines right next to his ear goes straight to his cock and he is mortified when the post-nut clarity hits him and he realizes what he did in his own office.

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Caleb

Overstimulation: I'm an overly sensitive Caleb truther. The overstimulation has his head spinning so good that he can barely form a coherent thought that isn't your name while he slams into your pussy for the nth time like a desperate man. He doesn't want to simply break you he wants to break together, to the point neither of you can think about anything else besides how good it feels.

Roleplaying: I've lost count of the amount of times we've seen him and MC roleplaying and this man will unironically take it to the bedroom. It starts as a joke where he's only doing it to make you laugh, but then he won't allow you to break character and will edge you until you say your "lines" correctly. Forceful and cold soldier? Check. Teasing and pervy Gege? of course. A loving and gentle husband? Sign him up. Strict teacher? No need to ask twice.

Brat Taming: Now defying Caleb is the equivalent of waving a red flag in front of a bull and you better run because when he catches you you're done for. He needs you to need him as much as he needs you and if he has to break you for you to admit it then he will. The rush of being the one in charge and "taking care" of you in a way no one else will is enough to have his cock throbbing.

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Sylus

Breeding AND Biting: These two go hand in hand every time you have sex with him. He craves to have a family with you but, more than anything, he wants you to be as full of him as his heart is of you. He wants you to be so filled with his cum that he has to keep his cock inside otherwise it'll leak out of you. He absolutely enjoys the slippery mess your warm insides become when he rocks his hips into you, slowly but deep, pushing his cum even further into your womb and hoping you'll get pregnant.

Body Worship: I've said it once and I'll say it again: Sylus is a lover boy! ! ! Each kiss on your skin is an offering, a promise and a worship. He wants to know the parts of your body not even you do and give you the love you deserve. The praises he whispers against your body are similar to a prayer and he could spend years exploring every inch of you without ever getting tired. You're the very reason for his existence and any less is just unacceptable.

Size: This guy is not only big but he's also very large. He is a softie who likes to tease you about how small you are compared to him while he holds your hand and pretends he doesn't hear your complaints about him suffocating you after the draped his heavy body over yours. That feeling of satisfaction extends when he has to gently coo you and kiss your tears away while he's spreading your little hole open. He can't help the fangy grin on his lips when he feels his cock bulge on your tummy and he holds your hand over the spot so you feel how deep he is inside of you as well.

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Rafayel

Rough Sex: Another controversial take but I feel like he's a secret sadist just not the extreme type. Man can flip his demeanor from "harmless babyboy" to intimidating sea god in a split second who knows what else he's hiding under that purple wig. He'll keep an almost cold demeanor while he coaxes whimpers out of you in the best way and a wicked smirk spreads across his face at the sight of your tears, spurring him on until he's completely broken you.

Food Play: That's definitely one way to make sure he actually eats. Having you be his meal will make him hungry like never before and oh he absolutely will feast (this may or may not be a reference to this). He makes a point of not using his hands while licking along your skin, tasting the sweet chocolate before he left a purple mark on your thighs. Oh, this goes both ways so please pour wine on him and lick him clean ;)

Body Painting: I forgot if there's an actual English term for this but Rafayel would love to draw on your skin and watch you squirm each time the soft, wet brush went over your perked up nipples. He'd scold you when you move because you're making him smudge the lines and holds you in place with his free hand, warning you to stop or he'll take "extreme measures" to make you keep still. You are the only one he'd ever dare to call a masterpiece.

[pomrania]

Now that these polls are over, let's talk about the results. My main qualification here is that I'm the OP, thus (except for when I turned off notifications for this post) I saw every tag and comment in my Activity feed, so I have a pretty good feel for what people have been saying here.

First, some numbers. "I know who the mayor is" had a couple of different options to it, but all put together, it's around 52%. In the second poll, once you remove the "I knew who the mayor is" and "show results" options, leaving only people who definitely didn't know who the mayor is, the results are more like 52% "voted", 27% "not eligible to vote", 5% "intended to vote but didn't", and 16% "didn't vote".

As for why I didn't include an option for "we don't have a mayor"… I genuinely hadn't known that it was so common, I'd thought it would just be a few rare places, and would fall under "it's complicated" or "show results". Which seems to have mostly been the case, although there's a suggestion that some people voted "no", as in "no, I don't know who the mayor is, because there is no mayor".

Second, on the subject of the large number of people who didn't know who their mayor is. I've already shown that it's not quite as large as it seems, 37% who don't know compared to 52% who do know. A number of people said that they hoped that 37% was all children; if the second poll can be taken as a representative sample (at n=779, and with the results pattern having been more or less consistent once it got into the double digits, I'd say it can), this is clearly not the case. (At a minimum, over half of them voted; "not eligible" includes "didn't live here then" as well as "too young".)

A bit of first-hand anecdotal evidence. When the most recent municipal election came around here, I looked at the various candidates for positions, picked the ones I thought were best, voted; and then completely forgot the names of everyone involved. Plus, I'm reasonably sure that my chosen candidate didn't win the election; so simply from "voting", there was no way for me to inherently know who the mayor is. ("Not following local politics AFTERWARDS" is entirely on me though.) I have since looked up who the mayor is, and I still can't give that person's name with 100% certainty.

Other anecdotal evidence, going by what was written in a comment or added in a reblog. There's people who have moved recently, people who know the mayor of where they WORK (which is more relevant to their daily life) but not the mayor of where they RESIDE, people who can picture the mayor's face but not remember the name, people whose mayor has been doing a competent job and thus isn't someone they need to think about compared to their other politicians who have been causing problems….

If there's one thing you learn from having a poll take off, it's that there's way more variety to life than you originally assumed. That applies to personal habits, environmental conditions, "common" knowledge, and anything else you care to name; even things where 99% vote for a single option, either it turns out you're in the minority and hadn't known it, or you learn about minority situations / opinions you'd never even imagined.

In some places, you'd have to go out of your way to know who the mayor is; in some places, you'd have to go out of your way to NOT know who the mayor is. "SHOULD someone go out of their way, if necessary, to learn about the mayor" is a separate issue.

[chthonic-cassandra]

more traumatic bonding thoughts

another thing about the unspeakability of loving [x]. it's not only about the deep anguish of this concrete infanticidal attachment, this intimacy that is borne out of violence, though it is very much that.

it's also, just more simply and prosaically, being fond of him. making jokes at his expense, with an edge but also lovingly. moments of sweetness and affection, in all their oddity. not being able to talk about his opinions on something, why I read a particular book, how I feel about something I had no good reason to encounter were it not for him. caring about him, worrying, feeling tremendous sorrow at the thought of him in pain. these things that are so fundamental in being close, in having someone be one of the most important people in your life.

there's no retrospective souring of these for me because there never was a revelation, never a changing of perspective, never a reveal of him being different than he showed and told me from the beginning that he was. so there's no line to draw except the incontestable one that I am now here and not there. and in the stories I tell about my life there's this gap bigger than the span of everything I do say. there's this wish that more people wanted to know, that more people could tolerate seeing him in the whole range of ways that I do. which is not something one can ask of others. and also, it's okay. there are people to whom I can say it, however few. I can hold the truth of it.

[nachiah]

Spoilers for Chapter 14 of Tokyo Debunker under the cut

Chapter 14 only made me love the Mortkranken duo even more!! I'm just gonna kinda ramble as opposed to my usual, more organized stuff with screenshots and whatnot: I really like that it focused mostly on Yuri's backstory - namely the things he would refuse to tell us otherwise. It goes to show that his bravado and somewhat self-centered nature is mostly for show. He's hiding just how bad he's been hurt by others, and keeping his guard up. As for Jiro, we get a little more of an idea of the sort of sheltered upbringing he had. It's becoming clearer and clearer that he didn't spend much time in the outside world. There are places he wanted to go, but couldn't for whatever reason. And now, it's not like he can just go anywhere. Yuri needs to be there with him - and we learn why: It's his stigma. The injection he received in the immortal patient chapter was probably something to further damage the anomaly without damaging Jiro too, too much. He has no control over his stigma, so *anything* that happens to him - including the effects of poisons and injections - happens to the one that inflicted it. My hopes for his stigma being something like that were realized. Perhaps at the point of making the pact, he wanted retribution. He wanted those that inflicted pain onto him to suffer the same fate. That, however was a bit of a double-edged sword, because now he can *only* be treated by Yuri - but we have no idea why he's unaffected. I personally think it has something to do with a certain level of trust, but that doesn't account for the coma... unless he already knew Yuri back then. Now for the ship-related stuff, and boy did we eat good this time: Yuri rips Nicholas a new one after letting the Frostheim thing slip, and gets mad when people mention that house in general... But when Jiro asks about the funding he could've had, he's met with a calm and direct answer. The way he stepped between Yuri and the Frostheim students when they tore into Yuri (and when he probably noticed Yuri couldn't handle it himself). That man was absolutely ready to throw hands. When Yuri was crying in the infirmary, Jiro said something interesting... to "wait until *we're* alone." Not "you." "We." This means, of course, that Yuri has let his guard down in front of Jiro before. More than once, I would assume with that kind of response. Then the tenderness when he asks MC to "keep him from losing his way..." I also have to note the proud smile he had when Yuri was revealing the truth of the matter to everyone. I love their dynamic so much. They clearly depend on each other, but they are independent enough to not give in to each other when there's a difference in opinion. Just a match of wits with a touch of snark. But when something does happen, they do whatever they can to help one another. Even having just struggled to awake from a small coma, Jiro uses everything he's got to relay that important tidbit of information to Yuri. Jiro *needed* to tell him about the discrepancy. I loved it all - start to finish. While MC took a bit of a back seat in this one, I feel like it was necessary to really show both Jiro and Yuri's overall dynamic and to keep the spotlight on Yuri this time.

[fromchaostocosmos]

I keep thinking about this.

DEI is very important and needs to be protected.

I do not think DEI is at fault for what is happening.

What I think it is that the language of progressivism, equality, and such is being used as a cover for antisemitism.

Because in places that truly care of equality and equability would see thriving Jewish spaces. And those Jewish spaces would show the full variety of the many types of Jews there are and other communities we are a part of.

There would also be an understanding that Jews are a marginalized minority group.

In the way that abusers can use therapy terminology against their victims to further their abuse this is how I see what is going here.

And just like in the case with the abusers and therapy terminology that does not mean that the therapy terminology is the problem, but rather what the abusers are doing with it.

So too is DEI and what it is trying to do and the problems it there to address not the problem. The problem is how antisemities are willing to use DEI as means and method to further antisemitism, to continue being antisemitic, and rid spaces of Jews.

Getting rid of DEI will not fix that problem just like getting rid of therapy terminology will not fix the other problem.

The only way to fix it is to deal with the root of problem which is the one who misusing the system and abusing the language so that they can continue to get away with abusing and isolating their victims.

So in this case we must find a way of dealing with the antisemities at the root of the problem. Not place the blame on DEI which is there to address other problems and is there for a very good and important reasons. Is there because it is needed.

This is much harder, but it is what is necessary for any true and meaningful change to happen. We can not just leave those who are the root of the problem in place or nothing changes.

So we need to call out when they misuse and abuse DEI be antisemitic and we need get rid of the antisemities.

Because sadly right now the reality is this: antisemities on Left are using DEI as a cover to be antisemitic and the Right is using "caring about antisemitism" as a cover to get of DEI. And in the meantime neither cares about Jews or anyone DEI is their to help and protect.

So we all get fucked over and doubly and even triply so for some of us.

This is how I am seeing/reading this all. Please let me know if you think I have missed anything or am overlooking anything or just want to your thought/opinion on how my read of it.

Because I really firmly believe that have such vibrant communities that full such wonderful and beautiful variety. It is something that I really love about us even though it can often come from a deeply painful place.

There are so many different Jews and that is something adds to our beauty. Because in the end we are all one. We are all parts of a whole and we are letters in the story of our people. Without any of us our community would less.

So to me it is only logical that should be a growth a Jewish spaces that allow there to be room for all that fullness to exist, all that difference to be allowed, and for all the commonalities and just pure am yisraelness to shine through like a thread that connects us all.

Suddenly, everywhere you look, the Jews are disappearing.

You feel it like a slow moving pressure system, an anxiety of exclusion and downward mobility. Maybe you first noticed it at your workplace. Or maybe it hit when you or your children applied to college or graduate school. It could have been something as simple as opening up the Netflix splash page. It’s gauche to count but you can’t help yourself: In academia, Hollywood, Washington, even in New York City—anywhere American Jews once made their mark—our influence is in steep decline.

For many Jews, the first instinct is to look inward: We blame intermarriage, assimilation, the loss of the immigrant work ethic. This is, of course, a cope. Because the most significant cause of the decline isn’t Jews themselves, but that American liberalism, our civic religion, has turned on us. Where Jewish success was once upheld as a sign of America’s strength and progress over its prejudices, Jewish “overrepresentation” is again something to be solved, not celebrated.

A tenure-track humanities professor at a prestigious public university tells of the finalists for her department’s next graduate school cohort. Of the 20 or so candidates, four to five are Jews. One is a working-class yeshivish applicant with an incredible backstory and even better recommendations. He is passed over for not being “diverse” enough. Of course our professor doesn’t complain— her own tenure is at risk. In the end, not a single Jew is offered admission.

Another Jewish professor applies to work in the UC system. In his mandatory diversity statement, which he describes as “the most shameful piece of writing I’ve ever done,” his sole aim is to convey the impression that he hopes to be the last Jewish man they ever hire. He still doesn’t get the job.

And why would he? Using YouGov data, Eric Kaufmann finds that just 4% of elite American academics under 30 are Jewish (compared to 21% of boomers). The steep decline of Jewish editors at the Harvard Law Review (down roughly 50% in less than 10 years) could be the subject of its own law review article.

The same pattern holds across America’s elite institutions: a slow-moving downward trend from the 1990s to the mid-2010s—likely due to all sorts of normal sociological factors—and then a purge so sweeping and dramatic you almost wonder who sent out the secret memo.

Museum boards now diversify by getting Jews to resign. A well-respected Jewish curator at the Guggenheim is purged after she puts on a Basquiat show. At the Art Institute of Chicago, even the nice Jewish lady volunteers are terminated for having the wrong ethnic background. There’s an entire cottage industry of summer programs and fellowships and postdocs that are now off-limits to Jews.

In 2014 there were 16-20 Jewish artists featured at the Whitney Biennial. After a very public campaign against a Jewish board member with ties to the Israeli defense establishment, the curators got the message. The 2022 biennial featured just 1-2 Jews.

From 2010 through 2019 there were at least three Jews in every MacArthur Fellowship class, sometimes as many as five or six. The Forward would write effusive columns celebrating the year’s Jewish geniuses. Since 2020, just 0-1 Jews a year have been awarded grants. The Forward hasn’t bothered to take note.

Today American Jews watch with Solomonic bemusement as Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard is argued before the Supreme Court. On some level we sympathize with the Asian American plaintiffs, who are suing Harvard for using admissions criteria that discriminate against them on the basis of their race. Maybe they really are the new Jews, facing the same barriers—insidious racism, personality scores, rural geographic preferences—that we once did.

On the other hand, fancying ourselves to be high caste members of a beneficent elite, we pretend not to notice that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is a cudgel used to exclude certain groups of Americans, including Asians and Jews. Desperate to maintain their waning status within the liberal coalition, Jewish communal organizations ignore these contradictions. Once a protector of specifically Jewish interests but now secure in its new role as handmaiden to power, the Anti-Defamation League filed an amicus brief—in support of Harvard.

In the 1940s, the ADL took a different tack. For decades unofficial quotas at most Ivy League universities limited Jews to around 10% of the student body, despite evermore qualified Jewish applicants. Jewish organizations made it their mission to break this invisible barrier and by the end of the 1950s the quotas were a dead letter. The long summer of American Jewish success had begun.

But the seasons always change. A FIRE/Yougov survey found that self-identified Jews now number just 7% of Ivy League students, compared to 10% during the height of the antisemitic quotas.

In his gripping podcast Gatecrashers, about the history of Jews in the Ivy League, Mark Oppenheimer describes the troubled state of Jewish campus life. Harvard has gone from being 25% Jewish in the 1990s and 2000s to under 10% today. “In theory it could be the case that Jews are the same percentage of whites at Harvard as they always were,” he explains. “But Harvard has not shrunk the number of athletes it admits […] and they’ve kept their geographical diversity. So if you’re a Jewish kid who’s not an athlete and not a legacy and not from Wyoming … then there’s not much room left for you.”

According to the Hillel College Guide, Penn’s Jewish population declined from 26% in 2015 to 17% in 2021; NYU’s dropped from 24% to 13%. Princeton, Columbia, and Cornell have seen smaller but significant declines (Brown and Dartmouth, with different institutional priorities, are by all accounts happy exceptions).

Data from the Yale Chaplain’s Office—which appears to be the only Ivy League university that still tracks religious affiliation—shows a similar trend: The Jewish population went from 19.9% in the 2000s to 16.4% in the 2010s. A couple of years ago, the school’s chaplain told Meir Chaim Posner, the Chabad rabbi at Yale, that around 11% of Yale undergraduates were Jewish. “It’s dropped slightly since then,” Rabbi Posner told me in November.

“The university has decided that DEI is the overarching principle of admissions,” one Hillel director told me. “There’s a general consensus that it’s more difficult for Jewish students to get into top tier schools.” Nor is this difficulty confined to secular Jews—the modern Orthodox population has also crashed. A college counselor at a top Jewish day school reports that as universities have revamped enrollment and gone test-optional, the number of Orthodox students has decreased. “Every year has been harder,” he said. “Our ability to thoughtfully predict the likelihood of admission has gone way down.”

An uneasy omertà settles in. The Ivies skip college nights at Jewish day schools they visited for decades. At Penn there used to be two daily minyans—now there’s one. There are hushed whispers that if current trends hold, some of these colleges might no longer be able to support an Orthodox community at all.

The 1999 Hillel College Guide now reads like a map to a lost civilization. Harvard and Yale have 1,500 Jewish undergrads apiece. There are 5,000 Jewish students and grad students at Columbia, 6,000 at Penn, 14,000 at NYU. It’s hard to imagine that as recently as 2008, articles were being written about the “race” to attract Jewish students.

What was normal less than two decades ago sounds like a siren call from a distant golden age. To even suggest that a 15%-20% Jewish undergraduate student body might be acceptable in a country in which Jews make up 2.4% of the total population is anathema in today’s liberal society.

The 1999 Hillel College Guide now reads like a map to a lost civilization.

In New York—the seat of American Jewish political power—there are almost no Jews left in power. A decade ago the city had five Jewish congressmen, a Jewish mayor, two Jewish borough presidents, and 14 Jewish City Council members. Today just two congressmen and a single borough president remain. Only six Jews now sit on the 51-person City Council. Shelly Silver, the corrupt Orthodox former State Assembly leader, was replaced by Yuh-Line Niou, a pro-BDS “progressive” whose oligarch father was featured in the Panama Papers. Not even the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is recognizably Jewish anymore.

“What you have is a lack of identity of Jews as Jews,” the Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf told The Washington Post. “And they don’t have the power to ensure that there’s more than one Jewish congressman. It’s astounding.”

Younger Jews are being excluded from the liberal organizations their parents and grandparents helped create. Identitarian meltdowns roil the progressive world. The Women’s March, the ACLU, and the SPLC all get rid of Jewish leadership. There will be no more “Mighty Iras” in our lifetime. Not even the Jewish president of the Audubon Society is safe.

There are still powerful Jews in Washington—neo-Nazis on Twitter like to post photos of Biden’s cabinet—but the influence is waning. Is it a coincidence that in the U.S. Senate (a handsy group of old men if ever there was one) the only senator forced to resign during the #MeToo panic happened to be Jewish? Or that activists pushed for Dianne Feinstein’s resignation for the explicit reason that she be replaced by someone who isn’t Jewish?

Of the 114 federal judges appointed by Joe Biden (as of this writing), just 8-9 appear to be Jewish—in a field that’s historically been at least 20% Jewish. Liberals worship Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a magical Jewish Teletubby, but they wouldn’t dare nominate another “white woman” to the highest court anytime soon. We are back to the single Jewish seat on the court.

Apparently Jews have so much power and influence that the highest-ranking Jewish senator in history finds it too politically difficult to hire a 22-year-old version of himself. There were at least 15 Jews on Chuck Schumer’s staff of 64 in 2014. After facing pressure for not being diverse enough, and despite an enlarged staff of 89, he can no longer make a minyan.

In Los Angeles—America’s second most Jewish city—there are now just two Jewish City Council members, down from six in 2000. In last year’s infamous dustup, Nury Martinez, the sharp-tongued council president, had despicable things to say about Black people, Oaxacans, even Armenians—but Jews were barely a footnote. “Judíos cut their deal with South LA,” she said. “They are gonna screw everybody else.”

It’s gauche to count but you can’t help yourself: In academia, Hollywood, Washington, even in New York City—anywhere American Jews once made their mark—our influence is in steep decline.

Speaking of LA, a decade ago there were 22 Jews on The Hollywood Reporter’s annual list of the Top 50 Showrunners. In 2022, that’s down to 13. Other than the half-Jewish (and already famous) Maggie Gyllenhaal, you’d have to go back six years to find a single Jew on Variety’s annual list of 10 Directors to Watch.

Thanks to the odious new Hollywood house style that requires a detailed ethnic and racial classification at the top of all capsule biographies, we can see just how many self-identified Jews are in the Sundance writers and directors labs, or the NBC, Paramount, and Disney writers and apprenticeship programs—it is zero. It seems not being Jewish is actually a primary qualification. So much for Jewish control of Hollywood.

The decline is so rapid—and the golden age so close to living memory—it’s a running joke. On the latest season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David meets with a group of younger non-Jewish studio executives to convince them to cast a Mexican American girl as Young Larry’s Jewish love interest. On Reboot, Steve Levitan’s Hulu show, an old guard of Jewish sitcom writers clash uncomfortably with their younger and woker—and noticeably non-Jewish—colleagues.

Not even Hollywood’s Jewish history belongs to Jews anymore. The new Academy Museum, dedicated to “radical inclusivity” and paid for with Haim Saban’s Jewish money, couldn’t bring itself to include Hollywood’s Jewish founders. In Babylon, Damian Chazelle’s epic flop about Hollywood’s golden age, the director follows an ahistorical Mexican studio executive and an Asian American lesbian rather than any of the very real Jewish moguls or screenwriters or directors of the era. What’s telling isn’t that Chazelle ignored Jews (anyone can do that) but that not a single reviewer bothered to notice this “erasure.” The culture has moved on.

What remains of Jewish Hollywood lives on borrowed time. Spielberg can make his Fabelmans, James Gray his Armageddon Time, but only because these are nostalgia pieces. Soon there will be no more RBG’s, no more Spielbergs, just a few off-brand Seinfelds doing a heritage act. There will certainly never be another Larry King or Andy Borowitz, Jews of such astounding mediocrity you wonder what was in the water.

In the 1950s, after Stalin’s death, after the purges, the Politburo turned to another pressing issue: the overrepresentation of Jews in Soviet life. Proportional representation (3% Tajik! 2% Uzbek! 12% Ukrainian!) became official policy, and the next decade saw the quick erosion of the Jewish nomenklatura. Soviet Jews—who had disproportionately contributed to and benefited from the building of the communist state—had outlived their usefulness.

A 1964 New York Times article explained that because Soviet republics assigned a certain number of students “preferential admission” based on their nationalities, other nationalities—aka Jews—were excluded. “A higher percentage of Jewish students was permitted to attend universities in Czarist Russia than is enrolled in the USSR today,” an outraged American Jewish Congress declared. “The 8.2% of university graduates who are Jews contrasts sharply with the present Jewish university enrollment of 3.22%.”

As true believers in the postwar liberal project, American Jews spent decades advocating for tolerance and equality of opportunity, not least because we were the prime beneficiaries. The ADL didn’t fight the quotas in the 1950s so Jews could matriculate in proportion to their percentage of the population. But there’s a tension between meritocracy and representation. The new DEI regime treats any disparity between groups as evidence of unfair advantage—and yet we’re supposed to think it’s a coincidence that Jewish representation plummets at the exact moment America frantically pushes to racially rebalance all high-status industries.

Because what is framed as a backlash against America’s “white” centers of power is in many cases a clever sleight of hand. Jews are being disproportionately purged from liberal institutions because Jews disproportionately exist within those institutions.

When activists and journalists and executives talk about how Broadway or NPR or publishing is “too white,” what they really mean is “too Jewish.” When The New York Times says it wants to make its internal demographics look more like New York City’s (excepting the Hasidim, of course), what this means is “fewer Jews.” Twenty years ago, if Pat Robertson spoke along these lines—making the same complaints about the same people and industries and institutions—there would have been a rush to condemn it as antisemitic. Today it passes for social justice.

In the 1960s and ’70s, facing hard barriers to their professional advancement, Soviet Jews lost the faith. The children and the grandchildren of the revolution tried to emigrate. When the authorities wouldn’t let them, American Jews rallied to their cause, created brand-new communal organizations, petitioned Congress, rallied thousands-strong outside the United Nations. Ours was a community confident in its power and confident in its future.

Asian Americans have the dignity of looking at admissions practices and demanding fair representation. The Jews, as ever, are a people apart. From civil rights to Vietnam to the spectacular bounty of their cultural and political achievements, liberal Jewish boomers always managed to be on the right side of history. It is a supreme irony that they’ve helped empower a movement that now places their children and grandchildren on the wrong side.

If Putin or Orban reduced their universities’ Jewish populations by 50%, the ADL would be howling. But Harvard and Yale can magically lose nearly half their Jewish students in less than a decade and we’ll take it on the chin. That this is occurring with the full acquiescence of a terrified liberal Jewish establishment should tell you just how much power Jews in America still have.

[defendingtheowlhouse]

a criticism i have towards THO is that Amity could have been better. I think her backstory is not compelling and her relationship with her mother was less interesting than the one she has with her siblings (especialy since her mother is just Audrey Bourgeois from mlb but with magic). I think her being a bully makes her very dislikable considering the fact she didn't have to bully Willow and that her behaviout towards Luz is just bad and weird since she's the only one who's mean like that of we ignore Bosha and Skara (they didn't matter fr) and she realy doesn't get confronted about it. Her being good at everything makes her quite annoying too. She's able to fight Hunter who is a trained soldier or smth (not saying she can't be strong but that shows favouritism to me. Atleast the fight was entertaining) One thing that negates that a bit is her social ackwardness(i guess) when she misunderstands Luz at the lake wich shows relationships is the one thing she's not good at but actualy wants. But i still think she could have been better. I was just dispointed with her character when i first started the show. People promised me Catra done right and i got a school bully who goes soft because of "kawaii silly human"😭 also she was better with green hair.

I get this, I found her a little boring sometimes too, but our feelings towards characters do not determine their quality.

Now onto the actual arguments: "she didn't have to bully willow and that her behaviour to luz is just bad" no character has to do anything, if her arc didn't start out like this she'd be a different character with different themes.

"She doesn't get confronted about it" while she isn't confronted in a yelling angry way often, she is still confronted. In covention, she reveals her insecurities, helping us understand her motivations and reasoning, her veiws are then confronted by Luz, teaching amity others struggle in the same way she does, eventually accepting that she was wrong and undoing her mistake by undoing the everlasting oath and admitting that luz has the ability to succeed. In lost in language she confronts herself showing her reflectfullness, admitting she hasn't been the friendliest witch either and promising to work on herself and finally in understanding willow she is repeatedly told off by characters like eda and inner willow before (again) explaing her motivations and promising to do better, even then there are still consequences and she still has to work to fix her mistake inner willow calls her attempt "a start" showing us the consequences of her actions towards willow are still there, even after a sorry.

This is in my opinion is a strength, not a weakness, she reflects and chooses to get better, she isn't yelled at or handheld until she does what's right, furthermore it fits into the shows themes of restorative justice, reflecting and choosing to undo your mistakes. It's not focused on retribution or making anyone suffer for what they've done but instead to try and fix the mess made, apologising, undoing the oath, fixing willow's mindscape and making an effort to fix their relationship are all restorative justice.

She isn't "good at everything". in fact, she is the weakest out of her willow and gus. Willow and Gus are exceptionally skilled with multiple episodes focused on their talent while amity "fought her way to the top" she may have been top student but that's never shown as meaning anymore than pretty good for a secondary schooler. This is a show about taking down the government, and we are asked to suspend our disbelief. She needed to win for the plot, so she barely scraped a win. The protagonists needed titan blood, so they got some of the titan blood. In this show background, teenagers are taking down trained, powerful officials with ease.

Another thing mentioned is comparisons to other characters. If you go in thinking a character will be like another character and go a certain way, prepare to be disappointed by the odds of that not happening. For odalia being like that one other person is because she's rich, cruel, and not that deep. Odalia isn't praised for her depth. She isn't a particularly interesting villain because she is made to be a fun one which is subjective and therefore difficult to determine quality

Thank you for coming to me with this discussion, and thanks for your civility (especially after the incident) I hope you have a nice day!

[tennessoui]

like. one thing that is Essential to any Obi-Wan dynamic To Me is that Obi-Wan is Not a kid person, nor does he particularly like or understand kids much(an exception is made for Anakin’s kids however, bc they’re anakins, and anakin probably had baby fever from the age of Baby), and i feel like u are particularly good at translating that vibe? like Obi-Wan with any partner he has: no i’d prefer to be childfree/any children will be an accident, something i do to fulfill expectations meanwhile Obi-Wan with anakin: how can I get more skywalkers? kidnapping?

ooo this is fun, I think my own ideas of obi-wan with children lean more towards ambivalence and bewilderment. he’s not a natural caregiver, but he has read all the parenting books within two days of getting settled with a child. He would not seek them out and doesn’t particularly want them or knows how to translate the care he feels towards them into something they’d understand, but he’s not so bad with children that they’re afraid or discomforted around him. He’s read the books. He’s studied for this 🫡

meanwhile anakin also does not strike me as a natural caregiver either but he’s stressed about it. He hasn’t read the books because he has a confidence thing going on about being good with children but that doesn’t make him actually good with children and the gulf between expectation and reality when he’s around kids stresses him out

when it comes to skywalker’s kids, has obi-wan ever had to once ask for a Skywalker to enter his life?? I imagine his thoughts are less along the lines of “how do I get more of these little guys? should I kidnap them?” and more along the lines of “I will just stand out in the universe with my arms open palms up and a Skywalker will be deposited within 2-5 business days”

[risingsunresistance]

twitter is entering their "rts > likes" phase now that likes are private after they spent years calling us ungrateful for being demotivated by ratios lmao

[sunsetsover]

you know i'd never hate you for this. you know i value your opinions and your perspectives on things, and you know i adore you. i truly didn't mean to bring discourse on your doorstep or anything 😭 i just happened to see the post while i was filling up the queue and was like hm. don't like that! so yknow lmao. but i know how it feels when someone mischaracterises your Character n i would never want to inflict that on you or turn this into a Thing i just. disagree that's all.

and it's not that i completely disagree! everything you said abt the school and the system i completely agree with - this show can't be divorced from it's queerness. and i do think he was projecting on the jums and i do think there's a conversation to be had about how by punishing the world remembers gang he was, in a way, punishing himself for what he believed to be some kind of 'wrongness'. for that reason i would never try to sanitise akk's actions. he did what he did and it was fucked up.

but i do think characterising it as 'specifically committing crimes against the queer students of suppalo' is untrue. like if you say we can't divorce what akk did from the gang's queerness, then we also can't divorce what akk did from the context in which he exists. their queerness, as far as i saw it, was never AKK'S issue with the jums. akk's issue was chadok. chadok's issue was the school. the school's issue was queerness. and ofc that's simplifying it a lot, and there's an argument to be made that it therefore leads back to the issue of queerness, which it does! but there's also a lot of nuance there that's missed by boiling it down to 'akk was targeting queer kids'. there's also an implication there that i don't like.

akk was a cog in a machine. he had his own issues going on with his own internalised homophobia that yeah, probably without him noticing or meaning it DID slip out in the way he treated the jums. the problem was the jum's queerness, yes, but akk did not strictly have a problem with the jums BECAUSE they were queer. if he had, i feel it would have been written differently - the source material had akk significantly more homophobic. had they wanted to, they could have easily used the version of akk they literally already had and make his externalised homophobia a much bigger issue, but they didn't. instead they went out of their way to write akk differently and remove a lot of the homophobia that already existed within his character in the novel. and sure akk made a few stupid comments, but to my recollection he never insulted the jums. he never ridiculed them. he just wanted them to stop causing trouble. and yes it all goes back to queerness, but AKK only had a problem with them bc chadok had a problem w them, bc the school had a problem with them. that context is essential, bc that's akk's motive, and that motive was never 'let me pick on the queer kids'. it was never 'these kids are queer and i must destroy that'. if it had been, he would have had a problem w thua, but he didn't. his problem was their disruptiveness. it was how unwilling they were to yield to him and that school. and yes that's tied to their queerness, but it's not the queerness itself.

do you see what i'm trying to get at? characterising his actions that way makes it sound like something it's not. saying that akk specifically targeted queer students to me implies that he was going out of his way to abuse queer students purely bc they were queer. it makes him sound like a homophobic bully, and that's never what he was. and it's complicated and i feel like it's 6 of one half a dozen of the other bc when you zoom out yeah the jums WERE targeted for their unapologetic queerness and yeah akk WAS enforcing that homophobic system. but i feel like boiling it down to 'akk targeted the queer students and abused them' turns it into something that is no longer accurate bc it's devoid of context. do you see what i'm trying to say?

and like. i feel like talking abt thua would probably be pointless bc i feel like we just fundamentally view him completely differently, but i also feel like it's kind of important too? bc both akk and thua played the role of the curse. and to be clear my dislike w him has nothing to with akk, it's just that to me there was no condoning his behaviour at the end. bc yes, objectively what akk did to the 3 jums was worse in the sense that it was more extreme and put people in danger, but what thua did to them (and to akk and ayan) was so unnecessarily cruel and viscous and as far as i'm concerned would do WAYYY more damage to the other queer kids in that school than ANYTHING akk ever did.

i understand why thua wanted akk caught and punished. i understand why he continued the curse. but i will never understand why he chose to go about it the way he did. as far as i'm concerned HE damaged his community far more than akk ever did. akk was stupid and fucked up for what he did, sure, but thua was vindictive. he didn't have to make a sign calling the jums misfits and hang it up for everyone to see. he DEFINITELY didn't have to post it online and expose those kids to even more abuse and potentially put them at risk of violence. he more than ANYONE should have known what it was like to experience that homophobia and abuse, so why the hell would he expose the 3 jums to even more of it?

thua put the jums in danger in ways akk never did. he was violent in ways akk never was. i know personally if i was one of the jums, having a sign calling me a misfit posted online and all of the backlash that followed and having a fucking EFFIGY of me with my NAME on it burnt in my own school would fuck me up far more than a falling plant pot or almost being hit by a car would. akk could have hurt them yes, but what thua did could have left life long scars on those boys' psyches, and to me that is unforgivable. and that's not even talking abt him outing akk (and ayan), which imo is one of the worst things a person can do, esp in a situation and environment like that. if he just wanted to fight the system and ensure akk got punished, he didn't have to do any that.

i feel like this is turning into a thua hate post and i didn't mean it to, but i do feel like it's important to compare his behaviour w akk's. to me what THUA did was targeted abuse of queer students. HE exposed the jums to danger they never would have been in otherwise. what if someone outside the school had seen his posts and decided to use that as an excuse to attack them? the blood would have been on his hands, no one else's. he EXPLICITLY targeted their queerness. like i said, he didn't have to do all that to get akk punished. and yet he did it anyway. why? to fight the system that was killing his siblings? to protect and advocate for his fellow queer students? what, by stepping all over them? by humiliating them and calling them names? by hurting them psychologically? by putting them in harm's way? no, he wasn't trying to change a broken system. he was voiceless, powerless boy who got a taste of power and revenge for the first time and let it get to his head, not caring that he was inflicting violence against his own community in the process.

i stand by what i said. but i also agree with you. i do think if the jums were literally anybody else akk would have gone after them the exact same way had chadok wanted him to. but it wasn't anyone else. it was the jums. it had to be them bc the story centers around queerness. these two facts aren't mutually exclusive! but that's also why i feel like its unfair to reduce akk's actions down to 'he was targeting queer kids'. it oversimplifies something that is really complicated, and reduces a really nuanced story and character down to something that, imo, isn't even really accurate.

but that's just my opinion yknow? we all view and experience things differently. i just wanted to explain why i felt the way i did without it seeming like i was just trying to absolve akk of all sins or ignore the inherent queerness of the story itself <3

another first kanaphan character that many people refuse to acknowledge is a red flag is akk. you guys remember when he almost committed vehicular manslaughter and also almost committed arson

[teamfortresstwo]

RA shippers are so annoying about Vox man . Like not only would he not fucking say that, neither of the characters you’re shipping would say that either . And I wouldn’t be bothered by it if they PROPERLY TAGGED THEIR SHIT but some people are just fucking incapable of it I guess .

Also! I get the want for your faves to be ooc sometimes but like . You can’t MAKE them ooc and then claim this version to be better than a canon ship because ohhhhh they love eachother so much more when in canon it is literally less intimate than the ship you’re bashing!!!!!! It literally has no basis so you have no leg to stand on!!!!! Stop claiming you’re somehow better for shipping it oh my god!!!!

[brightsout]

sometimes i hate fandom twitter sm like

[artisimpossible]

I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got paid to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.

Update: This is literally just a thought exercise to help you be more intentional with how you critique media. I'm not enforcing this as some divine rule that must be followed any time you have an opinion on fiction, and I'm definitely not saying that you have to structure every single sentence in a review to contain zero negative phrases. I'm just saying that I repurposed a rule we had at that specific reviewer to be a helpful tool to check myself when writing critiques now. If you don't want to use the tool, literally no one (especially not me) can or wants to force you to use it. As with all advice, it is a totally reasonable and normal thing to not have use for every piece of it that exists from random strangers on the internet. Use it to whatever extent it helps you or not at all.

[shitpostingsapphic]

Why I don't feel disappointed by Vi's arc, but you might

I usually have pretty strong and polarizing opinions when it comes to my takes on Arcane, but this is one where I wanna open up the discussion a bit more and invite people to my perspective, and it's fine if you don't see it this way.

I think there are two primary reasons why people feel disappointed by the arc of s2 Vi. The first, being that Vi had stronger voiced concerns about the state of Zaun in the first season. The second, being that she spent the whole show wanting to be with her sister and she didn't end up getting that.

Why I actually feel fulfilled in Vi's arc has to do with these two points, and I invite you to sit with what I have to say next.

Both of these parts of Vi have to do with her fatal flaw: her neglect of self.

We know two things based on what the creators have said about the show: the theme of Arcane is the cycle of violence, and the entire show was written together, instead of season 2 being written after season 1 production. From this, I can then ask: what do the creators want to tell their audience about this message, knowing they wrote it all out together, knowing the events of season 2 were very purposeful, using Vi as a conduit for that message?

If violence is a cycle, can one person defy it? No, of course not. At the start of Vi's arc, she wants to be a person that breaks it, though. She wants to change things in Zaun, wants a better life for her sister. As season 1 continues on, she wants to pick up where she left off with Powder without truly processing the gravity of the years between them. She thinks she can hold the world on her shoulders and fix any problem that comes her way. She thinks she can use her fists to make progress, thinks she can physically reach out and create change, but it only contributes to the cycle. And that's not because she's morally in the wrong when she does so, but she doesn't grasp yet that her fists can't fix everything. Vander tries to tell her as such in act 1, and it's a lesson that goes beyond just the literal application.

Vi's tendency to try and fix everything around her leads to her neglect of self. Inevitably, when you try to change things you have no control over, it leaves wounds. It leaves a person feeling like something is deeply wrong with them. And we watch Vi go down this spiral. I actually find myself really brokenhearted watching Vi in the first 2 acts, because I think she represents a lot of us: we see pain and devastation around us, but we don't know what the right thing to do is. We try different tactics and try to fix things and are left wondering why things feel worse than how they started.

I think that's something a lot of viewers could benefit to reflect on: I think in watching a show with strong political messaging, we yearn for a message that tells us the answers to these big problems. Truthfully, most of us don't have a fucking clue what we're doing. We want change but don't know how to see it through. That includes the writers. This isn't a show about the solution to political strife. It's about the cycle of violence. It's about not knowing how to change something that's been continuous throughout history in some form.

If we put ourselves in Vi's shoes, it would eventually take a toll on us to try and change something that isn't within our ability to change. Vi can't fix the problems in Zaun. Vi can't change the way time and distance and pain has warped her sister into someone else. In season 2 act 1, she's still trying to take responsibility for things that are outside of her control. She blames herself for the way Jinx has changed and has to tell herself that the only way to fix it is to end the cycle with her own fists. She teams up with Caitlyn because she's convinced herself it's the only way she can help. She sees how violence has devastated not only Zaun but innocents in Piltover as well, and she feels responsible for it.

BUT SHE IS NOT AT FAULT. And she cannot fix it any more than she could have created it.

Perhaps people may feel Vi's arc is lacking because they wanted to see more of her involvement in the revolution of Zaun. They wanted to see her be able to change the situation with her sister and for them to live happily together. But because of the circumstances surrounding both, for Vi to do so, she would inevitably lean into her fatal flaw. She cannot do either of those things without neglecting herself. That's not who she is.

The whole point of a character arc is for someone to be a changed person from beginning to end. If Vi starts out as someone passionate about enacting change to the point of self-destruction, what would a resolution for a character like that look like?

Vi needs to choose herself. Vi needs to release herself of the responsibility of changing the world. She can't do it. There are ways to contribute to positive change that don't involve putting the world on your shoulders, and Vi has yet to put herself first in any situation. Vi choosing love is how she does it.

Amanda Overton, one of the main writers that contributed to Vi's character and the Caitlyn and Vi dynamic and relationship, said about Vi: "If she has no one left to protect, she would fall in love". If Vi finally lets go of this crutch of hers to protect, to fight, to take responsibility for things that aren't her burden to bear, she would fall in love. She would finally be able to choose something for herself.

This is why I find her arc fulfilling. I feel like it's not an arc we really see a lot. It's not every day we have a character that starts out like the classic anime slash marvel protagonist, and instead of being the person that saves the world, they accept they're not a superhero and it's okay to choose love and personal happiness.

If it applies, and you're reading this, I want you to ask yourself: are you perhaps disappointed with her arc because you expected her to be the superhero? And would you be okay with accepting that she isn't and doesn't need to be? That it would be better for her to choose herself?

[corkinavoid]

DPxDC When You Are Suddenly Dating a Princess (pt. 2)

[<- part 1]

"What do you mean-" Jason starts, but the girl is already tapping her ear briefly - and only now does he notice a tiny comm there. Fuck, he should have known.

"Oscar? I changed my mind, I want to claim something," Jazz says easily, and, after a short pause, "A Tecpatl, the one with the owl. No, it's for personal reasons- You don't have to, but alright." She taps her ear again, and Jason can't help but ask:

"Who's Oscar?" He is not jealous. He is just insanely curious and very confused.

"My bodyguard," Jazz rolls her eyes, "At least he thinks he is. I'd say he is more of a secretary."

That doesn't really explain anything. It actually just adds even more questions - what kind of a magic user needs a bodyguard? or a secretary, for that matter? - but Jason keeps them to himself for now. He is... kind of intrigued now. Jazz said 'claim', not 'buy'. Which might be just a weird word choice, but somehow, Jason thinks it was deliberate.

A bald, black-skinned guy in a black suit and sunglasses - which, seriously, how does he even see a thing in here with those on - makes his way through the crowd and stops in front of Jazz, nodding slightly to her.

"Lady Phantom, I understand you want to make an impression, but using your status for personal matters-"

"Did I ask for your opinion, Oscar?" Jazz's voice doesn't change. It's still pleasant and sweet, and she is still smiling, if just a bit, but there's an unmistakable steel edge to her tone now. Jason feels a light shiver run down his spine. He's seen Jazz in a lot of different situations and circumstances; he's seen her get mad at a librarian who banned some controversial books in the public library, and he's seen her skillfully take down an armed robbery in a shop all by herself, and he's even seen her successfully stare down Killer Croc on one occasion.

Yet, he's never seen her like this, with her chin raised up high and radiating authority like she is the most powerful person in the room.

Also, Lady Phantom?..

"No," Oscar admits after a pause and presses his lips together, "But the Council of Ancients will not be pleased."

"Council of Ancients couldn't care less even if I declared war," Jazz brushes the comment off, and Jason's levels of confusion are growing higher and higher with every word they exchange. Oscar sighs and finally complies:

"Very well, then," he breathes out with a sense of surrender, and then turns his head to Jason just slightly, "Is this an urgent matter, or should I go talk to the auctioneer and the sellers?"

Jazz looks to Jason, raising her eyebrows in question. And, technically, it's not that much of a time crunch now since Jason doesn't have to try and sneak through the security or wait for the auction to start officially. But he feels a bit petty. Also, this man was questioning his girlfriend, which is offensive on many levels in Jason's opinion.

So, he nods, "Urgent."

Oscar's face doesn't change one bit, but Jason has plenty of experience with emotionally inept men who look like they are eternally constipated. He can see the traces of exasperation in Oscar's shoulders.

"Follow me, then," he tells them both, and turns around, headed to the back of the auction rooms. There's security there, but Oscar only shows them some kind of a badge, and they step aside, letting the three of them through. As far as Jason knows, no FBI or CIA agents should have that kind of clearance.

Which finally prompts him to ask the most important question as soon as the doors behind them close and it's only them three going through an empty hallway.

"Who are you?" He asks Jazz, who is still keeping her hand on his elbow. The girl hums, not looking at him, and keeps walking after Oscar.

"Jasmine Fenton," she answers, and, yes, he knows that much. He's seen the files Bruce has on her, but at this point, he is not even sure how much of the info in there was actually true.

"You are in the presence of Jasmine Fenton, Lady of the House Phantom, Princess of Infinite Realms and sister to a King," Oscar supplies, and his voice is... a bit petty. Like he knows Jazz didn't want him to say anything, but he still did just because he could.

Jazz huffs and rolls her eyes, "Yes, that, too."

Jason blinks.

He's heard about Infinite Realms. Mostly rumors through the grapevine of Leaguers, but also from Diana personally - he remembers her saying she is glad about having a truce with them. He didn't listen much since she explained it as the Underworld, the Land of the Dead, so he thought she was talking about some mythology shit. Turns out it wasn't.

But there's a more important thing.

"I'm dating a princess," he says to no one in particular as they come to a stop in front of one of the doors.

"Technically, you'll be treated as my consort if you ever decide to visit," Jazz admits, and Jason is officially out of surprised responses. There's only a limited amount of bafflement he can feel in a day, and he has exhausted the resources.

He is a royal consort of the Underworld princess. Sure, why not.

The room they step into after Oscar puts in some code into the lock is filled with boxes, packages, and crates. Jason looks around - sure, he knew all the prettily displayed artifacts back in the auction room were only replicas, but he didn't expect the originals to be literally just stacked in piles in the back room. Yet, here they are.

Oscar looks around the room and confidently makes his way to one of the shelves on the side, quickly going through the labels on the containers.

"Do you have, like, a crown?" Jason asks because he sucks at small talk. Also because he doesn't know what else he is supposed to ask in this kind of situation. Jazz snorts and leans to him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Not really. Danny has one, and it looks absolutely badass, with flames on top of it, like the ones you would see in cartoons. I have some tiaras and stuff, but they are just jewelry," she explains, and Jason nods sagely. Just jewelry, alright. Seems like he is simply destined to be surrounded by rich people from all sides.

"How about a castle?"

This gets a sigh out of Jazz, "We used Pariah's - that's the previous King - old one for the coronation ceremony, but mostly, it's just for storage. Both Danny and I live on Earth, and Dani, our little sister, travels a lot. So, I do, and I don't at the same time."

"What about-" Jason starts, but he is cut off by Oscar all but shoving a small box in his hands, "Oh. Do I-" he turns to his girlfriend awkwardly, "Do I have to pay you for it or..."

"No, it's from a dead civilization," she raises her head back and shakes it slightly, but after seeing Jason's frown, she elaborates, "I'm the Princess of the Dead. I can officially claim anything that belongs to the dead as mine."

"It's a law that is supposed to resolve any possible conflicts between the denizens of Infinite Realms and the living," Oscar supplies, his voice disapproving. Alright, makes sense why he said it was not for personal matters, then. Not that it's going to stop Jason, though.

"Like, anything?" He punctuates, and Jazz tilts her head, a sly smile on her lips.

"Sure."

"Lady Phantom," Oscar sighs, tired and chastising, but Jason doesn't plan on robbing the auction. At least not robbing it any more than they already did.

He has a different idea.

"Can you ask Batman for the Robin's suit he has in his cave?"

Jazz blinks, and then her smile turns into a full-on grin.

"Of course."

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

@akuworld777

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Since you've mentioned Scarlet Lady in one of your posts, what's your opinion on it?

I've mentioned before that I'm a big Scarlet Lady fan, which is the only reason that I'm comfortable answering asks like this one. I don't publicly criticize the content of hobby creators. That's wildly inappropriate! Punch up, not down.

The linked post was a general discussion of the adaptation process and how @zoe-oneesama did a fantastic job, so for this one, I'm just going to do some general gushing because I do actually like praising and enjoying things!

Scarlet Lady's chosen format (comic) allows it to have this wonderful conversation with canon where it can rely on the framework of canon to tell it's own story while also using canon for jokes and meta commentary. This means that Scarlet Lady is about as close as fan content can get to a direct reboot because it's able to have moments like this one from the comic's first post:

[Image description: Adrien standing in his room after transforming into Chat Noir for the first time. He is beaming and his eyes are shining with excitement as he exclaims, "This is gonna be awesome!"]

A single picture that communicates everything we need to know about Adrien getting his miraculous. When I've done this same thing in fanfic, I had to write out the full scene because that's how novels work. You have to give the full picture. With a comic, you can just quickly acknowledge this thing that we all already know and then move on to the new stuff. A picture really is worth a thousand words! (Or, in my case, more like two thousand...)

This allows Zoe to keep the same akumas that we get in canon without her story feeling like a boring rehash because she can focus on what's different in her version. A novelization of the same content would have to show both the stuff that stays the same and the stuff that changes for it to be coherent. That's a lot less fun to read and write. It's why I basically never revisit canon akumas in my own stuff. It's just too derivative for the written word.

This is one of the big reasons that I loved Scarlet Lady. Because it was able to have that more directly conversation with canon, it was able to take canon and say, "hey, why don't we embrace the tone that you established in season one and retell the story with that vibe?" That's something that I desperately wanted to see, but that is totally unsuited to my chosen artistic form. It couldn't be a novel. It had to be a comic.

If you want to know what a true formula show version of Miraculous would look like, Scarlet Lady is it. It does everything that Miraculous should have done:

Sticks to a lighthearted tone where nothing is ever super serious

Keeps Gabriel entirely unsympathetic

Has slow character development and background hints at a bigger plot as the only serial elements, allowing the individual episodes to be their own story while never feeling incomplete or rushed

Allows characters other than Marinette to shine while keeping Marinette as the clear main character

Makes Adrien narratively important

MAKES THE LOVE SQUARE CUTE SO I CAN ACTUALLY SHIP IT

Understands that Lila and Chloe can't coexist as antagonists

Reverses the love square, which is the best way to tell their story. Yes, I will die on my "love diamond" hill. It's a good hill. Come join me. I'll bring cookies.

I could keep going, but you hopefully get my point. While Scarlet Lady is certainly not the only way to do a formula version of canon, it's proof that a formula version does work! You don't have to go the serious route for Miraculous to be successful.

I want to take some time to gush about the ending, but I don't want to spoil it, so I'll put that gushing under a "read more" in case anyone hasn't seen it. I'll finish out this less spoilerish section with this:

I feel like some people are surprised when they learn that I love Scarlet Lady because - as some of you have probably picked up - it is quite different from my ideal version of canon. I'm not sure why that would stop me from enjoying a thing, though. It's important to remember that our personal ideals are not the only way to tell a good story. There are lots of ways to take what canon gave us and make something wonderful! It's part of the reason that I enjoy being in a fandom.

If I only wanted to see my ideal take on canon, then I'd stick to writing/imagining my own stories. But I don't want that! I like seeing alternate takes, too. Scarlet Lady is one of my personal favorites. It's completely different from anything that I'd ever think to write and that's why I'm so glad that it exists! I like being entertained just as much as I like creating my own entertainment and I don't want to only read stories that look like something I'd write. That's boring!

Spoilers below:

I've mentioned before that there are many, many ways to properly handle Chloe's character and Zoe did such a good job with her take on that! Chloe isn't absolved of all the things she did wrong, but she's also treated as a young woman with the ability to change.

While the comic bares the name of Chloe's alter ego, she was the never the main character. She never went on a journey. The story kept her to her shallow season-one self: a petty brat who just wanted attention. It did this because that's who Chloe was in canon and who Chloe needed to be for the comic to work.

The first time we see any complexity from Chloe is in the comic's final few episodes, which was absolutely the right call for Zoe to make! In a recent post, I talked about how the end of a formula show is the only time when you can break the formula in catastrophic ways and that's what Zoe did. She kept Chloe static until it was time to end the story and that's when the formula breaks. That's when Chloe gets depth because, once she has depth, the formula doesn't work.

That depth is not used to redeem Chloe, but to show us that there's hope for Chloe. That this petty brat who we've been dealing with has some serious issues and needs help. Help that she's going to get far away from the people that she's hurt because her issues aren't an excuse for what she's done. They don't erase the harm that she caused. At the same time, understanding her issues makes us hope that she can be better now and Scarlet Lady took a moment to give us that hope. To show us the START of Chloe's true story.

That is the kind of ending that I have wanted to see in so many properties!!! It was so wonderful to finally get one that did this right. A story that understood that full redemption to the team and damnation to death/suffering are extremes on a scale of possibilities. You don't have to go to extremes! You can fall in the middle and the middle is a perfect, natural place for Chloe to land in this kind of story. Fully redeeming or even fully damning Chloe simply doesn't work in lighthearted formula content. It's too big a lift as canon has already demonstrated.

I also loved Zoe's take on Emilie. I've mentioned that I don't like evil Emilie in part because it makes her revival feel like the start of a new story. She's back and she'd bad, so we have to take her down now! But I don't want that. I want the story to end when Gabriel is stopped. Zoe does this by giving us an Emilie that is another perfect middle ground. She matches canon's uncomfortable implications without feeling like a true villain who is a threat to society.

[apersonnamedel]

Something I would like to point out while rewatching HTTYD2 that I think is very interesting and also not at all talked about is this.

HTTYD2 brings lots and I mean LOTS of parallels whether they are visual or spoken but the one I hear spoken about the most is between Hiccup and Valka and them not killing a dragon. Even the movie tries to make this seem like a parallel. They bring it up even!

“Ehh it runs in the family.” Hiccup says after the flashback scene.

But something I noticed is that it is not a parallel. Mainly because of a few key things. It’s more almost perpendicular. They head in the same direction and they have the same realization, then go in complete opposite directions.

Valka runs away. A key part of her character I’ve noticed while I’ve been writing my analysis of her is that she oozes of cowardice and willful ignorance. Now that doesn’t mean she’s a bad person, it simply means that she ran away and chose to stay away. But that’s not the main reason I brought this up.

Remember the flashback where they draw attention to how similar Hiccup and Valka are? They talk about it in a very specific way.

They bring attention to two points. Both of them looked into a dragons eye and saw themself. Then they both didn’t kill a dragon. They show this as some kind of parallel. Maybe to show that Hiccup has someone who understands him, maybe to add a bit of layering to the first movie and how he’s just like her.

But it’s not a parallel.

What’s the difference in this scene?

One dragon is tied up.

One isn’t.

It’s a matter of choice.

“You and your father nearly died that night. All because I couldn’t kill a dragon.” Quote Valka.

“300 years and I’m the first Viking who wouldn’t kill a dragon.” Quote Hiccup.

Hiccups statement STILL rings true. Valka had no choice in if she wanted to kill Cloudjumper or not. That’s why I brought up Valka’s cowardice. Valka was in a trapped house with an injured newborn and an unbound dragon 5x her size. She was in the middle of a raid with people all around. Stoick was around the corner. She simply couldn’t kill the dragon. It wasn’t a matter of would or wouldn’t.

Hiccup on the other hand was alone in a forest with a tied up dragon. He made the decision to not kill Toothless. He wouldn’t. Because he absolutely could have killed Toothless.

“I was a coward. I was weak. I wouldn’t kill a dragon.”

“You said wouldn’t that time.”

This scene (in my own opinion) is meant to show that Hiccup was never the hiccup. He was never a coward. He wasn’t weak. It’s meant to be ironic.

Hiccup let go one of the most dangerous dragons in the world and it was brave. He went against his culture, his tribe because he thought it was the right thing to do.

That’s where Valka and Hiccups story become perpendicular. Hiccup was brave. Valka was a coward.

Hiccup chose not to run away. He chose to change their minds. He thought their minds could change.

Valka ran away. She didn’t listen and didn’t think change was possible. She held this belief until Hiccup comes along.

Valka’s path is where she believes that dragons are more than they seem. Then, “This wasn’t a viscous beast, but an intelligent gentle creature whose soul, reflected my own.” She has the revelation. Then she runs away and stays away. Now she had her own reasons and I am very much phrasing this in a biased way but it’s meant to show a point. She stays away and doesn’t change much. Because she couldn’t kill a dragon.

Hiccups path is where he does not see much to dragons. He wants to kill one to be accepted into the village. He shoots down Toothless and- “Everything we know about you guys, is wrong.” Or- “I looked at him and saw myself.” Hiccup and Valka’s paths cross here. But Hiccup doesn’t run away and he changes Berk’s mind. Because he wouldn’t kill a dragon.

Anyways I think that’s about it for that topic and I think it should be discussed more! Because if you really think about it, there are almost no parallels in Valka and Hiccup. And if there are, it isn’t well executed enough that it leaves a strong impact. I definitely will talk about this more but it’s late and I crave sleep.