#it’s not the transgressive statement some people seem to think it is

[txttletale]

but.... that same breadth exists for nearly all music genres! and people say they dont like country, classical, metal, kpop, jazz all the time without anyone accusing them of holding discriminatory views against the people who make those kinds of music

the post that kicked this off emphasized that rap and hip/hop are some of the most popular genres in the united states! most people DO listen to this music. why does it matter that some alt girls on the world's least important social blogging platform dont? it just feels very consumption as identity, consumption as politics in a way i thought you're normally opposed to. listening to rap music will not cure white people of their racism. not being particular interested in mainstream rap/hip hop as genre is not some moral transgression and neither is not seeking out the perfect microgenre that would interest you

now if you take the opportunity while saying you dont like rap to denigrate it for not being art, make it out to seem unusually misogynistic, or otherwise smear it with racial stereotypes thats another story.

sure, like i litcherally said in my post, i don't think it reflects on you in any particular way to not listen to rap, but there's a pretty big difference between not listening to rap and saying you don't like rap. like idk, i don't watch brazilian cinema. and i don't think that (unless i went around claiming i was some kind of cinema expert) anyone would think i have some duty to go and watch a bunch of classic brazilian films and deep dive into that space to understand it. but i also don't go around confidently saying i don't like brazilian cinema when i haven't done that digging innit and if i did i think it would be fair for people to sideye me about it!

obviously there are like, historically contingent factors with jazz and rap in particular, where these are historically Black cultural products that are devalued because of that, that make that kind of statement come with even more baggage -- but i do in fact think that that kind of uninformed blanket dismissal towards any entire artform is narrow-minded in general, like when people say they "don't like video games" i roll my eyes a little, because what common elements between, idk, gone home, call of duty: ghosts, tetris, and horse master: the game of horse mastery can there possibly be to justify such a uniformly negative opinion?

& it's the same thing here, i just think that there is a big difference between simply not listening to rap music and going around saying you Dislike an entire art form like it's a monolith. like ultimately its just the extreme variety and breadth of rap that makes me feel like, yknow, again--that, 'smearing it with racial stereotypes' is the only way to come up with a confident blanket dislike of what is, i can't stress enough, essentially an entire artistic medium.

[steelycunt]

i am quite curious on your opinion on how regulus black is characterized in fandom… completely understandable if you do not want to answer, but since i have my own opinions on the matter i was curious about yours! i love a steelycunt ramble

hi omg yeah! unfortunately for all of us i do have thoughts lol...i already know im about to ramble because ive been dying for an excuse to do this for ages so i think it would easiest to break them down into points but tl;dr or i suppose thesis statement i think the fandom characterisation of him is soooo awful lol. terrible 0/10. i do not even massively care about him as a character other than as background for his brother but since he is pretty unavoidable ive been driven to develop opinions.

he was a willing fascist stop pretending he wasnt its LAME

so many colourful ways people have conveniently sidestepped his fascism to uwufiy them, all of which i find extremely lame and pointless considering we know virtually nothing of the guy other than that he was a fascist and then had second thoughts. which actually could be really interesting if you just accepted that rather than bending over backwards to create these alternative (and so much more BORING) narratives where his being a DE isn't his fault or he was forced or whatever. we know that wasnt true he was a fascist because he chose to be a fascist and he held the views of a fascist. the moral purification and absolution of his character because people want to interact with him but are uncomfy about the fascism thing is so lameeee and stupid lol imagine being so uncomfortable with a character you claim to love that you have to get rid of everything we know about him and invent an entirely new personality for him. boooo. grow up. you can be interested in fictional characters who are bad. although it is funny how much easier people seem to be able to reconcile their fav being a fascist than like. being a cheater or something. which is a cardinal sin apparently.

2. the black cat goth sassy millennial characterisation.

theres this really common characterisation of him where hes like this sassy dangerous deadpan tiktok-esque spurter of witticisms which i just find so cringy and boring and inaccurate. the whole 'ooh he takes his coffee black he looks like a cinnamon roll but he could kill you!!!!' thing that makes me feel like ive been dragged back to tumblr 2015. he kind of sucked he was a conservative who did one good thing in his life and got killed in the process i dont know where people have got this badass thing from he just wasnt. also the idea that he was a goth girl because his name was black? we can try a little harder than that come on now. but yeah im not trying to imply theres some moral problem with characterising him this way i just find it cringy and inaccurate and i think there are much more interesting things you can do with him

3. abuse + relationship with his brother.

another thing i find really annoying is the assumption that he was treated by his parents the same way his brother was. big disclaimer because i can hear the complaints already yes i accept that being a child in a house where there is abuse in and of itself in traumatic and horrifying. but there is no canon reason to believe he was directly abused by his parents the way his parents were, especially considering his brother seemed to be punished for transgressions against his parents. regulus was the good boy he was the better son and he did as they asked. i think people have begun to just assume he was also abused the way his brother was in order to make him more sympathetic or excuse his behaviour (not how this works anyway) and again i find it very lame. the dynamics we actually get from canon are consistently infinitely more complex and interesting than what people then do with them. as for his relationship with his brother theres the whole idea of sirius 'leaving' him in the house which is ridiculous and almost too laughable to discuss but. the idea that regulus is the victim of his abused brother running away...girls get real. he was in his room getting radicalised i dont feel sorry for him. plus his whole relationship with his brother tends to irritate me anyway--i dont know if these people just dont have siblings, but the whole ultra close, sirius being incredibly protective, would die for each other, them against the world thing again seems to contrast everything we actually know about that relationship and also...not all siblings are that close? like theyre just not? idk again, personal taste but i find their super healthy close relationship very boring its kind of a dealbreaker for me!

4. he wasnt conventionally attractive and if you cant deal with ur fav being ugly he's not ur fav

needed a section all of its own because thats how bad it annoys me but the way people swear to hell and back that he was actually super handsome. or 'umm he wasnt handsome but he was PRETTY. umm ummm ummm'. booo throws tomatoes at you. we know from canon (again like. one of five things we know about him). that he was not considered handsome, like his brother was. i find it so incredibly pathetic the way people who claim to like him deny this like their life depends on it and try to argue that actually he was like omg conventional beauty is everythinggggg to you people isnt it. omg this fictional character who isnt real is nothingggg to you if hes not described as a model is he. you cant really like him that bad!!!! again what a fun thing to lean into that fandom instead has to revise. the guy was not hot why does it bother you that bad omg. if you cant accept that i immediately know all ur opinions suck sorry its the same as when people have to pretend remus was some sort of hunky alt casanova to like him at this point just write an oc pleaseeee because you dont seem to like anything about him thats actually established. anyway. tl;dr he wasnt handsome get over it my god

5. he would not be friends with remus u guys just think he would be because you borrowed remus' personality to give him one

another dealbreaker for me i cannot read something that implies remus and regulus would be friends. to get the obvious out of the way: regulus was a fascist and remus is part of a minority group he would want dead. but otherwise the idea that theyd be friends confirms to me that someone doesnt get either of them and the only reason i think this has gained traction is because regulus doesnt have a personality and in order to position him and james as r/s 2.0 where james stands in for sirius, people just superimposed remus' fanon personality (quiet, sarcastic, dry, bookish, exasperated) onto regulus. which is a characterisation i dont like anyway but then because youve turned them into the same person people then say theyd get on...i cannot think of two people would be gel worse. theyd have nothing in common. nothing to say. absolutely nothing. they would sit in awkward, unpleasant silence. literally no two characters less suited to each other i am begging you. also the substitution of peter for him as the fourth person in their group nowadays bffr...not only is peter far more interesting but also he would not get on with any of them his brother included. i hate when i am reading a fic and he turns up when hes not supposed to. put him back! he belongs ina victorian dollshouse!

6. things i like + how i picture him.

okay done a LOT of moaning. again i dont really care about him as a character im not interested in him apart from how he affects sirius' character and i dont like jegulus so i dont really read much where hes a central figure but i do think he COULD be very interesting if done right, and so things i do like: characterisations that lean into the fact that he was a willing fascist as a teen, willingly radicalised, nasty nasty politics. i like a regulus who is very uptight, who has a very strained relationship with his brother as the younger brother to someone he knows would always have made a better heir than him, was better at practically everything but just didnt want to do it. i think living in the shadow of that would make him crazy uptight and touchy lol. as for stuff which is less grounded in canon and more just how i imagine him: i think he was a nerd, i think he was a serious young boy with a huge sense of responsibility, and i can imagine him having some sort of niche hobby which is quite antisocial like stamp collecting or model railways or reading big dense history books about ww2 or the magical equivalent of one of those. i think he was a bit weird and quite weak and sensitive. his brother is a massive sore point for him. he was not cool or sassy or badass i think he probably wore matching pyjama sets to bed and carried around a handkerchief with his initials embroidered into the corner and clung to his family and his wealth and his ancestry as a marker of his superiority and good breeding for dear fucking life because he did not have much else going for him.

[justivik]

LOVE POISON.

; yandere! metalhead x reader

english isn't my first language

You accompanied your friends to little stores hidden in the nooks and crannies of various streets. Y'all loved the vintage shops where you found unique accessories for your outfits or to decorate your apartments.

While walking together, Natalia, one of your best friends, commented that she had seen a peculiar store: it smelled slightly of marijuana and had a metal and gothic style that caught your attention. Intrigued and excited, y'all decided to go in and explore the place.

As the door opened, the sound of a rusty bell echoed, and a heavy aroma, somewhere between incense and something herbal, filled the air. The walls were covered with posters of metal bands, dark wooden shelves and display cases with gothic jewelry: rings with dark stones, bracelets with skulls and necklaces that looked like ancient relics. The place was a mix between the mystical and the transgressive, and you, fascinated, felt you had found a little hidden treasure in the city.

Natalia, with an excited smile, was the first to head toward a section of leather jackets with classic band patches and metallic studded details.

“Look at this!” she exclaimed, holding up a jacket with dark embroidery and occult symbols.

Meanwhile, you made your way to a darker corner of the store, where they seemed to sell handmade accessories: silver rings with runes, bracelets with snake designs, and pendants in the shapes of moons and stars. Some even seemed to have semi-precious stones embedded in them that glittered in the dim red light of the place. Something about these accessories attracted you, as if they hid secrets from a remote time.

As you approached a display case with amulets, you encountered an intriguing-looking figure. It was the owner of the store, a tall man with long blond hair, pale skin and a mysterious expression in his eyes.

“Do you like anything in particular?”

he asked you, his low, quiet voice echoing among the echoes of the metal music playing in the background.

His delicate but deep-set eyes outlined your thoughts. You stammered timidly as you found some words to explain but a small nervous groan came from you. The man just laughed and nodded his head.

You pointed out a pendant that had interested you, it was perfectly detailed and as beautiful as a ruby.

“Good choice. Follow me”

The fresh air of the street greeted you as you left the store, clearing a little of that dense and strange feeling that had left the place. You looked at the pendant in your hands, the small dagger carved in dark silver, and thought of the guy's words.

“Prepare yourself for what is to come”

You put it in your pocket, determined not to think too much about it.

As you walked to a nearby coffee shop, Natalia looked at you with a knowing smile. “Looks like the store owner caught your eye, huh?” she joked, nudging you gently.

You laughed, trying to disguise it; there was something about that man that had really stuck with you. The days passed, and every time you put on the pendant, you thought of the store and the mysterious connection you had felt with the man. You kept thinking about that place, and on impulse, you decided to visit it again one Saturday afternoon, this time alone.

When you arrived, the store was as quiet and dark as the first time. The guy, upon seeing you enter, flashed a smile as if he had been expecting you.

“You're back” he said, more as a statement than a question. You felt your heart racing, but tried to remain calm.

“Yes… I kept thinking about that place” you replied, scanning the store with your eyes. “And in your words” you added, a little quieter.

He laughed softly and, to your surprise, approached you with a warmth you hadn't noticed before. “Few people come back. But there seems to be something here that draws you” he said, his eyes fixed on yours with an intensity that made you shiver.

Gradually, between increasingly frequent visits, you began to get to know him better. His name was Vance , passionate about music and things about metal genre, someone who found meaning in everything he sold. He would teach you about the history of each accessory, each piece of clothing, and sometimes he would even play heavy metal songs on his guitar when the store was empty. Every conversation with him became more intimate, and you found it harder and harder to leave when the store closed. One afternoon, after closing, Vance invited you to stay a little longer. There was a complicity in the atmosphere, a connection you both felt but had not yet put into words.

“Have you noticed that you come more and more often?” he commented, half jokingly but with a warm tone.

Blushing, you tried to excuse yourself. “Well, I like this place… it has a special charm” you replied, looking at the objects around you to disguise yourself.

He came closer, not taking his eyes off you. “I don't think it's just the store” he murmured, dropping the sentence with a sincerity that took your breath away. You felt your heart pounding, and before you could respond, he reached out for your pendant, brushing it gently.

“This pendant reminds me of you now,” he said, his voice soft and low. “Something enigmatic and beautiful.”

Not knowing what to say, you simply looked at him, and that's when his lips brushed yours in a warm kiss full of pent-up desire. The store, with its dim light and memory-laden atmosphere, was the perfect setting for that first kiss you had both been waiting for, unknowingly, since day one.

From that night on, the store became their little refuge. Vance would show you his world through every object, every vinyl record and every shared story. And you, with each visit, fell more in love with him, with his passion for what he did and his intense gaze that, like that day in the store, seemed to tell you everything he felt without the need for words.

Well, that was the beginning of your relationship. Where Vance was not yet showing his true toxic, possessive and manipulative personality.

my first post after a long time 😭 (I didn't like it that much but I couldn't go on without posting anything anymore)

[softantlers]

okay so travnatlot meta that is seriously so long & probably will be read by no one. love you guys bad!!

so i have been absolutely obsessed with the scene in the s3 finale where travis is crashing out over his berry wine and talking to shauna about how he feels javi's thoughts and jackie's thoughts. specifically, i can't stop thinking about the way taishauna lurch at him and lottie physically shields travis from them, saying "it's not him."

first of all, to focus on lottie here: her behavior is absolutely fascinating in this scene and courtney fucking killed the acting. it's hard to articulate, but there is something visceral and powerful in the way lottie redirects tai and shauna and orders them to "go hunt." if you rewatch and focus on her voice, you'll notice lottie is having a very hard time speaking here (is this a prelude to becoming nonverbal?). in fact, she is almost unable to say the words "go hunt," and they are delivered in this stilted manner, like she is working overtime to force them out.

lottie's trouble speaking becomes especially eerie when you consider the fact that she didn't seem to struggle as much counting for mari's hunt moments earlier. this could absolutely NOT be the case, but over the course of the season, i've had an interesting time wondering if these stilted-voice moments are an insight into the lucid lottie that's drowning beneath the delusions. when she speaks in this clipped manner--especially toward the end of the season--are we getting intentions that are separate from her service to the wilderness?

for me, there's something compelling in reading lottie's protection of travis here (because man's drunk and tbh taishauna could really fuck him up if they wanted to) as a parallel to her earlier protection of natalie after nat kills ben.

there's similar behavior here. the group is converging on natalie and there's a threat of physical violence. lottie intervenes, ostensibly in a manner that's still serving the wilderness (ie: "shauna will lead us" is a parallel to "go hunt"), but the offshoot is that she successfully protects trav and nat from further harm in the process. in both scenes, lottie says very little at all but she still manages to deescalate and redirect.

how does this relate back to travlot?

"It's not him."

this language is so interesting to me because we could certainly read the statement as saying travis is literally not himself in this scene--that he's being yuri-beamed by jackie or some shit, but i don't think that's the case lmfao. i personally suspect what lottie is suggesting here is that this version of travis, this version of him that's so supremely fucked up and drunk in this moment, is not a reflection of who travis is as a person.

to carry that thread back to the intervention over nat killing ben, i've always said that the biggest indication that this is in fact an intervention (beyond kevin alves's bombass interview where he agrees) is that lottie--out of everyone--should be furious at nat for defying the wilderness and killing ben as the bridge. i mean, lottie jumped in front of a loaded rifle in order to protect ben for that purpose. but she's not mad. she doesn't exhibit any anger or ill feelings toward nat, despite the fact that nat's committed a huge transgression against the wilderness.

what am i trying to say?

Lottie sees people

in specific, lottie sees travis and natalie. she has a profound empathy for these two people that brings her back to them over and over, even when they betray the wishes of the wilderness & even when her actions invariably end up harming them or they simply don't want her. to bring that back to the nat killing ben thing, i think lottie is not upset because she fundamentally understands how it happened, how much nat had suffered beforehand, and she doesn't have it in her to hold it against her. instead of dogpiling, she reorients the team to a different path.

why do i think lottie can see that? well, she's incredibly perceptive. the scene where lottie addresses natalie when the team is trying to leave demonstrates the dynamic really well:

this is not the kind of statement someone who isn't an empath makes. this statement reveals a perception of natalie's home life that someone with a fuckload of insight (and perhaps an ability to relate) would make. it's also terribly delivered and horribly damaging thing to say in the moment, and of course, it pushes nat away. but i'd still argue that this is a reflection of lottie seeing something in nat that perhaps isn't as apparent to the rest of their teammates.

Likewise, Lottie sees Travis

travis's trauma is quite a bit more up front than natalie's since lottie literally watched him lose both his father and his brother to the wilderness, but in the same light, she has massive empathy toward him. the way she talks to him in particular across timelines (therapy speak tbh) indicates to me that lottie has probably had similar crashouts and panic attacks, which allows her to notice & respond effectively in kind--she sees herself in what's happening when travis loses it.

in the teen timeline, when travis has a sexual reaction to lottie comforting him, her response is fairly mature for a high schooler. lottie doesn't seem put off by it--"it's not him" is coming to mind here--and she continues interacting with travis throughout the season at the same time as it's obvious imo she's not romantically interested (and neither is he). it's not altogether clear how much lottie might remember from doomcoming but you could even argue that she might have some thoughts (even if she can't articulate them herself) about her role in travis's assault that leads to more tolerance for what i tend to read as a trauma response in this scene. (will admit: could be reaching)

but in essence, i think she might see what's happening (and what's not) between them here and that's why she moves along and doesn't mention it again.

Lottie also sees Natalie

across timelines, s2 was a veritable feast for their interactions, but the one i'll always go back to is the coronation. throughout the season, lottie and nat have insane tension--ben goes so far as to ask natalie whether she's jealous of lottie & nat's response is that she doesn't understand how lottie can exert so much control over the other girls. why is she so bothered? well, the offshoot of lottie's growing authority over the yellowjackets is, of course, the team's casual dismissal of the role that nat is playing in hunting and keeping them fed throughout the winter. for her part, natalie grows so frustrated with being overlooked (especially when the others jibe her) that she eventually caves to the hunting game during episode 4.

meanwhile, lottie is not particularly trying to get one over on natalie imo. it doesn't seem that she wants to be a higher authority or to lead at all--she's simply following her instincts. but as the episodes stretch on, i think she begins to understand the effect that she's having on nat and to have possibly regretful feelings over it.

now, lottie's coronation is complicated and i wouldn't reduce her choice of nat as leader to this one thing, but a dimension that's fun to play around with is considering the coronation as an act of generosity. essentially, lottie is telling natalie that she sees her, sees her capacity to lead, sees what she's fucking done for them over the course of the winter. i also think it's so telling that the crowning scene becomes this pathway to all of the yellowjackets showing their appreciation for natalie--lottie set that up. and it's so meaningful for nat, who in the grand scheme of her trauma, has rarely ever been affirmed as being good and worthy and loved. maybe lottie realizes that she needs this.

Why does this fucking matter?

well, i think lottie's empathy and pursuit of travis and natalie is a huge factor in the travnatlot dynamic. i also think her ability to see their trauma and hold that alongside their actions is why, for lack of a better way of phrasing it, she lets them get away with a ton of shit.

natalie not only killed ben as their bridge, effectively destroying the hope lottie had placed in him as a symbol for the wilderness, she also has a few moments where she loses patience with lottie altogether following the murder of the frogger.

despite these rejections (and whatever else lays ahead), lottie still pursues nat in the adult timeline. keeps track of her and cares enough about her to send her heliotrope goons after her and keep her from killing herself. "it's not him" is just as much "it's not her" here -- in a way (more on this later) lottie uses her understanding of travnat's respective traumas as a way to sidestep their rejection of her and keep pursuing them--because fundamentally i think she loves them both, and she's willing to love them both despite them pushing her away.

"It's not him." - Part 2

jesus fucking christ, the pit. absolute batshit insanity to consider that this scene is only an episode before the scene where lottie guards travis against tai and shauna. while i maintain that i don't think lottie knows how horrific the pit is (she literally can't see the spikes), i have to assume that she suspects that it's terrible. there's some suicidality that we could talk about in the way that she walks across it (way too much to go into for this meta), but all the same the scene still has this profound empathy to it.

lottie seems to understand how travis got to this point--the fact that she speaks about javi, completely unprompted after he calls her "bullshit" is an indication i think--and i don't think she blames him for it, even as she has her own views on the wilderness & thinks this is the right path.

so if we ride with the idea that lottie is aware travis was trying to kill her, i think "it's not him" takes on so much more meaning, as a sort of protective mantra for lottie. when travis says something (pretty clearly antagonizing to shauna) about jackie in his fit of drunkenness, lottie's primal instinct is to say "it's not him" -- i imagine she's had to sort of overlay that concept for herself, as the truth that travis really tried to kill her sets in: "it's not him." i mean, this protective mantra is the only way possible to keep this relationship going, and lottie is committing to believing it for that purpose.

going back to natalie and all of her own rejections toward lottie, there's also an unspoken "it's not her" imo. to lottie, it's trauma. it's a reaction to trauma. it's lottie's inextricable place webbed within all that trauma. and she will overlook the violence and anger directed at her because she loves these people.

What's my point?

well, i guess my point is that i think the central tragedy of the travnatlot dynamic is that lottie sees travis and natalie. she sees them for what they've gone through, she seems to empathize with their behaviors, even when they basically fuck her over. and she doesn't let up. she keeps going after them and trying to show them care (to be clear, in SUPREMELY MALADJUSTED and not always helpful ways).

but the thing that really fucking sucks is that i'm not sure that travis or natalie ever really see lottie in return (or anyone sees lottie for that matter). they see her for the harm she causes in the teen timeline and then they see her for her mental illness in the adult timeline and they see her for the possible "truth" she was preaching at the end of their respective lives.

lottie effectively becomes her illness/her own trauma: "it is her." and the real lottie underneath that all... where is she? is she ever seen?

of course, there are moments that cut through the haze where you might say that travis and natalie discern a lottie that isn't just her own trauma (the coronation for nat; many soft scenes between travlot throughout s2; lottienat's death scene on the plane; nat turning back when lottie says she's staying), but they are incredibly fleeting. and it's really fucking sad because the tumult of trauma, delusions, and escalating stakes mean that those moments can never, ever last. the shittiest part about thinking about their respective relationships is considering the possibilities--what would have happened if travnat ever saw lottie, ever related their own traumas back to her and were able to see the human that she sees in them?

it fucking hurtttssss, your honor.

[innocet]

Y’all I’m not agender and transneutral because I’m making a statement or doing a bit or trying to be the most transgressive transsexual in the police state I’m agender because I don’t have a gender and don’t want one. Like I’m literally just like this idk why many of you seem to think being non-binary is some kind of Political Choice To Piss People Off rather than just. Genuinely the way I move through the world. I don’t want this to be the most interesting thing about me. I don’t want it to be an interesting thing about me at all

[alexanderwales]

Sweet Polly Oliver

There's this trope that doesn't show up all that much in Western media where a woman has to, for contrived reasons, pretend to be a man. By contrast, it seems like there's a new K-drama every year or two that has this as its core premise, usually part of a romance.

Personally, I love it, and I'm not entirely sure why.

Some of it is that I'm a sucker for forbidden love, especially when the thing that forbids that love is something that's mostly in the minds of the characters. When two characters yearn for each other and feel like there's this enormous gulf between them, not realizing that that gulf is at best six inches across? That gets me.

Some of it is that I find the tropes fun — secret identities, misunderstandings, people talking past each other, double-booking, that sort of thing.

There's a stock scene where the love interest does something that his culture perceives as totally fine for two men but inappropriate for a man and a woman, but he's oblivious and she's shocked, stunned, or blushing. Maybe he slapped her butt, or got undressed in front of her, or just made some sexual comment.

There's this other stock scene where she does something that would be appropriate for a man and a woman but inappropriate for two men. Some of that "male distance" gets eroded. She falls asleep on him. She slips her hand into his without thinking much about it, then withdraws when she remembers.

Obviously this only works if you have some fairly strong gender roles, which I think might be one of the reasons that it's not super popular in the West. Of course, one of the things I like is that it's poking at how gender is performed and perceived, these arbitrary rules about how we relate to each other, what's appropriate and inappropriate, how feelings can bubble up, where the transgressions lie.

And of course most of these end up in completely conventional straight relationships, partly because the intended audience seems to be straight women, but also partly because they don't want to make a statement. I have watched three or four of these now, and I would be shocked if the next one I watch concluded with any kind of queer acceptance (beyond what's implied by all the gender stuff that goes on over the course of twenty episodes of gender poking). There's flirtation with queerness and gender nonconformity, I guess.

I've just started on The King's Affection, which seems to be taking the whole thing a little more seriously, but it feels like it might still fill the same niche.

[minimag1c]

Ending the radioapple trick or treat week with angst woops

Beware of the moth

Day 7 ----->ᶠʳᵉᵉ ᵈᵃʸ

2p universe but with a twist!

Man I can finally die in peace, don't even fucking care if it's short or doesn't have any sense or whatever I'm glad it's over and complete now holy moly-

Hum anyway- enjoy some tragic yaoi radioapple and monstrosity Agatha because again, why not.

•• <<────≪•◦⚜◦•≫────>> ••

This was so fucking bad and Samael knew that.

Actually, it was already bad from the very beginning. Ever since his 7 siblings had fallen from grace because of their transgressions against the above. Ever since Lilith went missing after a huge argument between her and the heavenly council with him being painfully and obviously against his own spouse. Ever since he had a strained and tumultuous relationship with his daughter Charlie. Ever since said Charlie befriended herself with that weird suspicious nun named Agatha whom he clearly didn't trust.

And ever since he became close with this god-damned Abdiel.

Samael was aware that, at first, he knew this deer only because of this- what was it again- the whole rehabilitation center-? Something along those lines. A project that unified both Heaven and Hell in which Charlie was unfortunately involved with this damned Agatha and two representatives from Hell, a sinner and a hellborn.

He himself, obviously, was not interested in it. First because he was not only part of the heavenly council but also the only remaining virtue and second whatever the purpose of this- whatever this was- was definitely not for heaven's advantage, meddling the holy realm with the most depraved one.

But Samael couldn't bear himself, surprisingly, to actually get in the affairs.

Because again, it's for Charlie and if she realized that the person who is against her new job is her fuck ass annoying and tiring dad, the heavenborn would have already lost it.

And as the remaining archangel, he couldn't just go around and fuck up with any winners nor anyone below his rank without having consequences on how people would perceive him.

And it was already risky. He started to get close with that damned winner Abdiel.

To be honest, if he had to be frank, that cyan deer was intriguing to him. So fragile yet he wasn't the type to just whine around and weep on anything despite being... Really emotional. He really had attachment issues and would easily get close to anyone who was nice to him. Luckily- what was her name again- Niko? Miko? Nuki? Something along those lines. Whatever. That short cyclop lady would, luckily for Abdiel, stay by his side to keep him from being hurt all over and so was Hery.

Somehow Samael could remember his name. He didn't know how but anyway.

In short, Abdiel was vulnerable. Abdiel was a meek doe with a huge bleeding heart and yet.. Samael has found himself getting a hook for him.

And it was so fucking bad.

Especially because Agatha seemed to have realized their closeness and became even more creepy than ever.

"I don't trust her at all." Samael accidentally confessed to Abdiel one day, while the two were on the highest balcony of the clock's tower, looking at the majority of Humility.

Abdiel's ear flicked at the statement as he looked at the archangel, curious.

"You mean..."

"Yes. Agatha. She's too shady to be a simple nun." Samael almost spat, gripping the rails of the balcony as his wings puffed up. Abdiel frowned and the archangel was thinking that the deer would do his little sensitive speech of seeing the good side of people despite their flaws or other shits like that.

"I do agree with you, she kinda intimidates me.." the winner eventually admitted, much to the shorter's surprise as Abdiel continued, his tail getting droopy like usual.

"... But I think we should still give a try to her and Charlie's project of redemption for sinners. Heaven has been empty for a while and Hell is dealing with overpopulation. Plus.." he stopped, looking away as he frowned and Samael would have guessed that what he was going to say would make him weep.

And boy he was right when Abdiel continued.

"Well- not everyone we knew are actually here and- a-and-"

"You're thinking about your mother aren't you." Samael guessed as the deer bleated in surprise before composing himself.

"Technically uhm-!" he tried to come up with something but then sighed in defeat. "Y-yeah... I'm thinking about her."

An awkward silence filled the air before Abdiel continued, his tone shakier.

"The last time I saw her was when I got mistook for another serial killer and executed without a trial." He started and Samael restrained himself from growing eyes all around in anger at the injustice of his death. "She was... Really amazing. To say the least. The pillar of my life and the one who taught me everything. I already know she isn't here. It's obvious it has been decades since she died b-but.." he fought the emotions that were stirring inside him as he continued, his words heavy. "She really deserves a place here. She's a tough woman, the kindest I ever knew and she went through so much. Her place should be and yet-" He breathed heavily. "-and yet even Saint Peter didn't see her name written in the book. Nothing! It's impossible she should-!"

"Hey Abby-" Samael started as he took Abdiel's hand and squeezed it. "-I know it's hard but you need to breathe. You're gonna have an emotional meltdown." The archangel tried his best to not sound like a robot nor neutral as if he didn't gave a damn before he tried to soothe him. "It will be okay. No need to feel horrible, it's not your fault."

Tears threatened to spill but Abdiel quickly and violently wiped them before they even had the chance to appear as he sniffed. "I-I just want to see her-"

"And you will." The virtue affirmed, taking Abdiel's cheek as he made the winner looks at him, trying to flash a non threatening smile. "If this project of... Your friends work then I can assure you, your mother will be here."

Despite him being awful when it came to reassuring others or giving pep talk, Abdiel couldn't help but slightly smile back at him, squeezing his hand in return. However, he couldn't help but ask, his voice barely audible.

"Are you sure-?"

It tooks Samael a few seconds before he wrapped his six wings around the taller's body, closing his eyes. "It's an affirmation and an omen. You will see her again."

Abdiel could only hum in wonder.

•• <<────≪•◦⚜◦•≫────>> ••

Samael hasn't seen golden blood for a long time. The last moment he remembered being even covered with it was when he had to banish his 7 siblings after the millennial war.

And when he saw the ripped off wings and antlers that laid below his feet, in a sunny puddle of grim and viscera, it felt conflicting and stomach churning.

"Ḧḕ ẇḀṠ ��ḕṮṮḭṆḠ ṆṏḭṠẏ ḀṆẏẇḀẏ. ṖḶṳṠ ḧḕ ẇḀṆṮḕḊ Ṯṏ Ṡḕḕ ḧḭṠ ṁṏṮḧḕṙ ḊḭḊṆ'Ṯ ḧḕ?" Agatha's distorted voice rang out, her long thin needle-like fingers slowly crawling on the archangel's shoulders and it tooks him all of Samael's willpower to not snap those sticks one by one.

"I hate you." He gritted through his teeth, surprising himself with the amount of poison and anger cursing in his words.

Agatha only smiled, her grossly stretched mouth taking literally half of her face as she approached furthermore the archangel, her long neck snapping and cracking at each movement while she looked at him, multiple eyes filled with glee.

"Ẏṏṳ ẇḕṙḕ Ṯḧḕ ṏṆḕ ẇḧṏ ḊḭḊṆ'Ṯ Ḋṏ ḧḭṠ ḊṳṮẏ ẇḕḶḶ ḀṙḉḧḀṆḠḕḶ." She argued back before squeezing Samael's body who somehow felt frozen, unable to move before she continued. "ḞḭṙṠṮ ẏṏṳ ḊḭṠḠṙḀḉḕḊ ẏṏṳṙ ḊḀṳḠḧṮḕṙ-"

"Keep Charlie's name out of your fucking filthy mouth you bitch!" The archangel snapped at her, letting out his six wings while his own angelic form appeared out of fury. However, Agatha didn't bulge as she continued, still grinning like a deformed Cheshire cat before chuckling darkly. "-Ṇṏẇ ẏṏṳ ṖṳṮ Ṯḧḕ ḃḶḀṁḕ ṏṆ ṁḕ ḃḕḉḀṳṠḕ ẏṏṳ ḲḭḶḶḕḊ ẏṏṳṙ ṏẇṆ ḶṏṼḕṙ"

She then got closer, using her finger to lift up Samael's chin who was still shaking albeit it wasn't out of anger only.

Remorse.

Dread.

𝙁𝙚𝙖𝙧.

Because she was 𝙧𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩.

𝙃𝙚 𝙠𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝘼𝙗𝙙𝙞𝙚𝙡.

"Ḭ ḕẌḉḕṖṮḕḊ ḃḕṮṮḕṙ ḟṙṏṁ ẏṏṳ ḀṙḉḧḀṆḠḕḶ." She said, shaking her head in disappointment before slowly shifting into a less gruesome form as she still smiled at him before going away. "But again, knowing you, it shouldn't be that surprising anymore." She concluded.

Not before she vanished, she muttered an order among the lines of "cleaning the mess" then disappeared in a tornado of butterflies.

Samael only collapsed on his knees and painted his already bloodied hands with Abdiel's, weeping silently.

•• <<────≪•◦⚜◦•≫────>> ••

Did that even made sense? Noooo

But am I just happy that I've finally finished this shit? FUCKING HELL YEAH

Uhm- thanks for reading my garbage I suppose? I swear if I knew how to time my writing well I thought I could do better and yet here we are so uh

Anyway

Thanks for the support everyone

N E V E R A G A I N I ' M D O I N G A W E E K P R O M P T

ÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆ

Yeshua I'm tired.

Meow.

[31/10/2024]

(1572 words)

----

Wattpad version

Archive of our own version

[runin-reads]

Some thoughts on the 70s & the Wizarding world’s attitudes towards queerness & trans masculinity

Note: this post is centred around my teen pregnancy James/Sirius fic

It’s taking me longer than anticipated to write the next chapters of CTTS because I want to do more research on the 1970s and incorporate more period typical attitudes from now on. It’s been really tough to find info on the lives of trans men at that time other than broad statements about a lack of research and knowledge on trans issues. I don’t want my fic to be too anachronistic, though complete historical accuracy isn’t something I’m aiming for or even want to achieve because fic writing is just a fun little hobby, and I don’t want to get too bogged down by the more minor details. As a writer, I’m much more focused on and compelled by characterisation and relationship dynamics than their external environment, though the former two cannot exist in isolation without the latter.

Now onto the head canons:

James will likely discontinue HRT/masculinising potions due to the lack of knowledge on trans masculine pregnancies plus the typical transphobia in (muggle) medical services. I imagine the WW would see a pregnant man as a bit unusual but, compared to everything else, not entirely transgressive or scandalous, unlike muggle society.

Overall, the WW isn’t overtly hostile to queer people. The magical community is smaller and more tightly knit so I think there would be a vague awareness of queer people, but that’s pretty much it. Again, I imagine queerness isn’t seen as too unusual, but it definitely isn’t as celebrated as heterosexuality since the WW does seem to put an emphasis on bloodlines and, especially in pure blood families, continuing said bloodlines.

After Thatcher becomes PM in 1979, the UK political climate becomes increasingly conservative. Thatcher even passes an act for homosexuality to not be taught/discussed in school, leading to increased hostility towards queer people. Consequently, I think James and his family would be more wary of the muggle world. Sirius would grow way more protective as well and won’t let James go to town etc without an escort

James gives birth at his parents house with the help of a midwife that’s also a trusted family friend

I think James and Sirius would be fortunate enough to not be as affected by the economic decline and political change of the 70s as, for example, a working class muggle family. It’s an integral part of James’ character that his parents were elderly and, by extension, extremely doting and likely permissive too. Mr and Mrs Potter would support them throughout James’ pregnancy and when Harry is born, they’ll play a big part in raising him too. I like to think they would allow J/S to stay in their house until they save enough money to get their own place.

[nicklloydnow]

“At 95, the Chilean-born cult director rejects being tied to a physical location or nationality, not even to this planet or to his own body. The concept of a city seems irrelevant to him. And when I ask him what he thinks of Los Angeles ahead of his upcoming visit, he replies with a cheeky query of his own.

(…)

Talking to Jodorowsky is a metaphysical experience. His brain-expanding remarks about humanity’s status in the cosmos often require some contemplation to digest. For example, take his lyrical musings on why film continues to entice us.

“Cinema is an opening to creation,” he says. “We are tired of being locked in a physical body. We want to open ourselves up because we see free bodies everywhere, in the seagulls flying or in a gram of dust that the wind carries.”

(…)

His heady statements match what he’s put onscreen and on the pages of his comics over the last 60 years. As esoteric in meaning as they are mesmeric in their imagery, the films of Jodorowsky are modern-day fables. To enter them is akin to walking in a dream where one must accept a bewildering logic.

(…)

Hallucinogenic cornerstones of the original midnight-movie scene, Jodorowsky’s work has long been an expression of countercultural transgression, the kind that could be called a trip. There’s always a visual dialogue between carnal desire and enlightened thinking.

Why does he think his movies have endured over the decades?

“Because they are true,” Jodorowsky says, with stark conviction. “They were not made by producers. They were made by people who love art. When they watch them, people always say, ‘These films are more modern than what’s currently out.’”

Still artistically active, Jodorowsky has a full schedule in Los Angeles. Apart from doing Q&As at his screenings, he will present an exhibit titled “Another World,” featuring paintings co-created with Montandon-Jodorowsky (under the joint moniker pascALEjandro) at Blum Gallery.

And to top it off, he will host a screening of his 2019 documentary “Psychomagic, a Healing Art,” accompanied by a masterclass on the therapeutic practice he devised using creativity as a vehicle to heal both emotional and bodily ailments. Jodorowsky’s book on the subject, “The Way of Imagination,” hits shelves later this year.

“It is a free healing that comes out of my love for humanity,“ Jodorowsky says of psychomagic. “A human being cannot achieve what he wants in this world or in others if he does not do acts of love.”

(…)

Never one to mince words, Jodorowsky declares that movies are in a period of decline, especially what’s coming out of Hollywood, a system he calls a “prison” and one he would never subject himself to.

“I’ve made 10 films, which for a film director is few,” he says. “Another may make 100 movies because he makes fairy tales. He can repeat himself. There is no huge mystery to discover in those films. Real art is not about totally entertaining the viewer but about changing their life.”

(…)

He cares little about materialistic notions of success. “Look at me, I am 95 years old and I’m here talking so much stupidity,” he says with an infectious smile. “I’m having fun. And if I can have fun, I succeeded. I’m not suffering. I’m happy to be creating in every possible way.”

At his age, Jodorowsky’s thoughts often turn to what’s next for him — not professionally but when he transitions from this plane of existence and ascends into something greater.

“I am condemned to spend less time on Earth,” he tells me matter-of-factly. “I have fewer years left than you. Because you have a black beard and I have a white beard. White indicates less time alive. I have to accept that, but I’m not in decline yet.”

Even when his mortal body no longer shares this space with us, he plans to refuse to disappear.

“I will not be an immobile skeleton,” he says. “I’m going to be something else because I believe that there is eternal life. You and I are going to be talking in a different way. We’re going to talk for thousands of years. That’s my hope.””

[fursasaida]

(this post is strictly analytical thinking out loud, not a moral statement. when I refer to terror and terrorism, I am not using the word in the common sense of "unforgivable crime that renders its perpetrator outside the status of human being," but rather as a type of violent strategy characterized by performative force - acts done for their own sake as spectacle/communication, rather than as a utilitarian means to a definite strategic/tactical end.)

somebody made the point that as recently as 2014, Hamas et al. would vehemently deny any accusation of endangering or harming civilians, and now they're publishing videos about it. I think this is a rhetorical shift worth paying attention to. it suggests a change in how they think they most benefit from being perceived abroad, and/or a change in which audience they prioritize. it of course represents an effort to shock and awe Israelis in a way they haven't attempted since the last intifada, if not the 90s. it also possibly reflects an enduring effect of ISIS' media strategy and its early successes.

some of this has to be for a Palestinian audience, given the coming succession struggle. recent polling in Palestine shows rising support for armed struggle (not surprising after the last decade, especially 2018); "we will do what the PA will not" is obviously part of what this is about. some of it is for the international Arab audience. (this does not mean that every Palestinian or Arab rejoices in every action depicted in the videos.) some of it is flexing Hamas's own demonstration of power and effectiveness, and here maybe is where the ways ISIS changed the comms game comes in - there are other propaganda strategies to achieve that goal, like the videos of paragliding, wall-bulldozing, the high-profile prisoners. in the abstract, videos of humiliating and killing civilians don't necessarily translate to evidence of effectiveness, but it would seem that Hamas calculates that here, they do, in the knowledge that a number of western lite "sympathizers" will be driven away and disgusted by them. which of course speaks to the shift in target audience I mentioned. what ISIS perfected was a social-mediatized bodily vocabulary of the performative qualities of terror. they attracted the types of people they attracted in part because on a very base level their execution etc. videos simply said "look what (taboo things) we can do." the fact of doing it at all was the statement, much more than its being done on acquired territory or through a nascent state apparatus or to anyone in particular.

terrorism (everywhere) has always had performative qualities - to me this is the only viable way to distinguish terrorism from insurgency etc, which again in this context is a distinction based on methods rather than moral valence - which is why relatively small incursions by Hamas in the 90s were such a huge deal. a huge, maybe the most important, part of these attacks was simply the fact of acting on claimed Israeli land, of demonstrating a lack of containment and a cheesecloth thinness in that Israeli claim. this offensive has that too, to be clear (again, bulldozing the wall, taking towns, and I think especially the paragliding given the psychic/symbolic Israeli investment in Iron Dome). ISIS propaganda was less about the performance of transgressive presence/mobility (for all their talk of wilayat and overthrowing Sykes-Picot, which they did not) and more about transgressively acting on bodies. (I also recall a lovingly made, braggy video of theirs about the shiny expensive advanced medical equipment they had in, I think, one of their Iraqi possessions - maybe Mosul. that was very striking to me at the time too. bodies bodies bodies.) that Hamas is using that language is extremely interesting for several reasons as noted already, but also because it perhaps suggests something broader about where credibility in the performance of force comes from right now. I am also thinking about Ukrainian videos not showing war crimes (for obvious reasons - the Ukrainian propaganda operation is admirably disciplined and intelligent; regardless of your stance on Ukraine you do in fact have to hand it to em on this), but: very often showing specific prisoners or corpses and their bodily states.

I don't know. I don't have a conclusion. I just think there's something happening here. performative acts of transgressing the body are not a brand new thing at all, obviously. heads on pikes at the city gates, and all that. but choices in how they're mediated and broadcast are.

[notmuchtoconceal]

David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch is one of my favorite films, and I feel it's frustrating in the way people claim FWWM is frustrating, both because it deals with heavy and secretive emotions, but also because there's a level of textual conflation.

FWWM works perfectly as a standalone film -- once you detach from the fan narratives, how the Missing Pieces would improve "flow", what the show wanted to be, but couldn't. Absolutely, familiarity with the elliptical storytelling of the series and diary is grounding and deepens the emotional resonance, yet I suspect FWWM primarily frustrates those who wish to intellectualize it and refuse to feel it.

Again, as an American genre film it may seem opaque verging on incomprehensible, but as a theatrical art film made with French money, its immersion in the enigma of time isn't anymore inherently baffling than anything by Alain Resnais.

For the most part, Naked Lunch also works as a standalone film, and this is the best way to appreciate it. However, its marketing and title not only present it as an adaptation of one of 20th century American literature's most transgressive and avant-garde works, but also as something of a loose biopic of its author, William S. Burroughs.

This conflation of fiction, with biography, with adaptation -- for the most part refines seamlessly into something which is not the sum of its parts, but something fabulously in-between. Yet -- there are also times where it breaks apart, loses focus, halts to the jagged. The central narrative of a sexually ambivalent junkie pressured into murdering his passively suicidal wife by talking bugs who embody prostate self-stimulation as creative, drug-fueled fervor -- is a wholly original creation of Cronenberg's borrowing only the names and sensibility of Burroughs's work, yet makes sense with recurring statements from the bugs about "an agent who merged with his own cover story."

The film feels more like Cronenberg working through his own potential feelings of repressed homosexuality and internalized misogyny, using William Burroughs -- Homosexual Junky Hipster Prophet as a mask. You can read Peter Weller's William Lee as an entirely heterosexual man "doing a job" ... or you can read him as authentically queer and repressing hard. It depends on which "author" you're identifying him as a stand-in for.

On some level, I feel the film makes more sense the less you know about William Burroughs, or the literary masterpiece Naked Lunch. You're left entirely with your own feelings, your own read. So many people -- this used to bother me -- would hate a film cause it wasn't what they expected, seemingly unaware that marketing can lie, cause sometimes a film can't be neatly stuffed inside the genre box.

When "Hank" and "Martin" -- the not Jack Kerouac and not Allan Ginsberg characters show up in Interzone to check up on Bill, and start reading him manuscript pages from the IRL Naked Lunch which he has no memory of writing... and you think about the book, and Burroughs's life: how that section being read describes his passage through New Orleans into Mexico -- where the final third of his first book Junky takes place, and the whole of his second book Queer -- as that's where the historical William Burroughs William Tell'd the living Joan Vollmer... while in this film he jumps straight from New York to Africa. Is this still 1953? Was it a scene transition? Is this man still in New York? Does he perform his "routines" because they're his cover story, or cause he can't face his own feelings?

During that scene, I almost picture Peter Weller's William Lee -- his deep, sad, piercing blue eyes in his long, gaunt, withered face, stoned out of his fucking mind -- simply having a dream that he's the author of a beat poetry epic being visited by his old friends, here between his two lowest moments.

He can't go back... He can't go back home...

Was it because he killed his wife :--

or he hasn't finished the book?

The film seems to induce maximum alienation as you're watching it, fermenting inside your head, taking vivid and clear slime mold form in memory.

It speaks to a depth of pain which is constant, yet which I remain almost wholly unaware.

Not bad for a Canadian boy with pretty hair.

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary82

12/2-3/2023

saturday - sunday

another short one today

basically i didn't get to work on music today because we went out, and i forgot we had plans. i thought maybe the plans would be cancelled but they weren't, it just seemed like we got left behind but it was a texting issue, and our friend came to get us. another reason i didn't get around to music today is i decided to watch that may december movie everyone has been talking about, it is as good as many say i think. anyway spoilers:

a very very painful portrayal of that sort of abuse, but also the movie's ability to turn its eye on the conditions that produce that, and the narrativizing of that abuse, which creates a desire/rationalization of the abuse on some level (men saying 'i wish my teacher fucked me when i was in school!' and so on). it made me think of, in kristeva, the role of the law, which might be transgressed in different methods of speaking/ speech, and the exile imposed on other semantic structures/possibilities, and then work which predicts the transgression, and smothers it, basically. the man at the center of this is hardly capable of articulating himself fully, he is under the rule of that law, and he is resisting being predicted, what he feels happened, the complexity of it, and what desire means at that age and so on, is left unexamined, semantically useless, pointless to the two logics which have sprung up to manage this (im)possibility. there are two instances of psycho-analyzing the abuser, in the movie, one instance where a character says: she must have a personality disorder, and another where a character say she too was sexually abused, to which natalie portman says: that explains a lot. the exile of the victim becomes apparent each time he really tries to express himself, there is a disconnect, an incomplete articulation in the fields either the law/the subsuming might recognize, but when speaking to his son, he is understood, and connected to i think. he is fragile, and wordlessly he transmits a kind of sensitivity to his children, it seems like, his desire to protect them, and they too have a desire to protect him. he is closer to them, in every respect. the fact the movie is capable of portraying that is really incredibly harrowing.

we also today went to see eraserhead, which was good. but it's harder to say more about it, i wonder about lynch's statement about it being spiritual, and if it's really spiritual in the sense that it's concerned with the idea of faith not being actual, a character consumed by fantasies and fear, not confronting anything in his life really, unless he is acting spitefully and destructively, always hoping for heaven, essentially. in that way it's less a movie about fatherhood and more about the spiritualist's hope that the world will be redeemed, or that it is in need of that. the movie confronts, as well, all these material struggles, class seems a greater focus here than in some of his other movies, but in a strange way. there is no high class, but there is the bourgeois familial fantasy, and then this kind of nightmare reality. hard to make it out entirely though, it sets up these fields it operates in, and goes as far as possible with them.

after that we went to a party, the party was weird, and maybe i'll talk about it more tomorrow. it was just a lot of drunk women, karaoke, and me standing and watching, while my gf tried to get me more involved, but i don't know any of those people too well, so i was just happy to observe.

we left from that, to go see my friend and his gf, + another friend at a restaurant, we hung for a while, his gf had to leave sooner, because her grandfather was put in the hospital. i don't want to say why, it is very scary though. i wish her and him well. i think she was more upset before we got there. the guy working there, also her co-worker, said she and her bf were fighting, which i don't think is true, he said she was crying, which i figure has to do with her grandfather, and not my friend. i do really hope they are doing okay.

anyway, later on our other friends showed up, we were like, stuck in the restaurant because the waiter was like, kind of coked out i guess and absent, just sort of going all over, asking insane questions to his coworkers like: do you eat spicy food, like, do you like it, can you? and he just would not bring the check. when he did, we basically went home. it was a good time with those two though, i love them, they're also a couple now basically, very lovely, two dudes, great to hang with.

anyway, a good day, with some worries scattered in, so:

byebye!!!!!!

[beanyboi173thegoober]

Here's a self-insert/OC TMA drabble I thought of. I just kinda wanted to write it out.

TWs// General Magnus Archives horror-type content, TMA spoilers, mentions of death, blood, insects, centipedes, darkness, claustrophobia, entomophobia, nyctophobia, scolopendrphobia

"I want to make a statement," He said aloud to the darkness. He felt the crawling bodies separate from over his mouth, his nose, his ears, and the pressure to speak intensely laid upon him.

"I knew this would happen. I predicted that I would be punished. I just didn't expect to be placed in a personalised hell for my transgressions. Though, I suppose, I should have thought of such.

I had joined the institute knowing what would occur. I remember my interview. Magnus seemed so pissed that he couldn't read me, couldn't see what I was thinking, and I laughed at it. He asked me what I was most afraid of, intending to make me answer, and I told him to at least take me out to dinner first.

I got the job in the end, which I assume was because someone whom The Eye could not see into was an asset that needed to be surveyed at all times. I was just happy to be able to read horror stories for a living, I suppose. At first, that is what I did, feeding into The Eye via tape recorder day after day, sorting through the mess which was the archives.

Then, Martin came in, having been terrorized by The Hive for a week. I knew I had to act. Knowing the future to some extent has perks, but it has many drawbacks. In this case, the drawback was that trying to help too much would result in far more casualties than if I left things well enough alone. I did what I could here and there, telling Sasha to watch out for artefact storage, and telling Martin about the CO2 canisters, but I couldn't do much of anything to truly help. I hated it.

Prentiss attacked, Sasha was gone, and Magnus' plan was truly underway. Jon's paranoia kicked up full swing, and I did my best to clue him into the true issue without being caught by the thing that wasn't Sasha. I also took some time to explore the tunnels, trying to memorize them for future usage.

I had stayed away from Tim. I knew he'd probably be a very good friend, but I didn't want to get attached to someone who would die horribly. I made friends with Martin. We bonded over our mutual urge to make tea when people were upset and laughed off work stress. He even showed me some of his poetry, which was very nice.

Magnus beat Leitner to death, Jon ran off, the thing that wasn't Sasha was trapped, the cops kept coming around, and Melanie joined our payroll. I stayed decently idle during these days, keeping myself occupied with job-related busywork. It was tough, keeping myself constantly working to prevent any attempts to help with what I knew was happening, but I carried on.

When Jon returned with Basira and Daisy in tow, I followed them to Magnus' office. I sat through the whole villain spiel, but when Magnus asked for all but Jon to leave, I refused. He tried to shoo me off and glared at me with the full force of his backing patron, but I remained, and he was forced to monologue with an audience of two.

Hop, skip, and a jump later, and Tim is dead, Daisy's stuck being half-crushed alive, Basira's pissy, Melanie is untrusting, The Distortion is 'helping', and Jon's stuck pining and going through his 'I'm a monster' phase. Before then, I was just inserting myself to lessen blows where I could, but now I was fully risking things. I helped as Martin piled recorders onto the coffin, but I didn't outwardly acknowledge him, lest he disappear. I helped Jon and Daisy recover from their atrophy as best I could manage.

When Jon and Martin were going to Daisy's safehouse, I asked to come with. They were surprised since I had no real reason to come along to their knowledge. I did have a reason, though. A very, very important reason.

I needed to let them rest. At least for as long as they could.

When Martin whipped out the statements that Basira gave him, I swooped in, picking through them to find the Statement of Hazel Rutter. Jon had been appalled and asked what the hell I was doing. I informed the both of them that this statement specifically would be extremely fucking bad, and would put an end to any possible comfort. I told Jon that he would have to read it eventually, but not right then.

The stasis lasted about a month. Jon clearly was having issues, being drawn to the statement in my pocket to the point of losing sleep over it. I gave it to him, and Martin and I stayed in the next room over as Jon was pulled through the ritual. I held Martin's hand as we felt the world around us change.

And now I'm here. The Ceaseless Watcher seems to be really fucking pissed at me for butting in on its ascent, judging by my current predicament. A private hellish domain, filled with my specific fears.

Even as I'm talking, the air in this small space grows stale with reuse, the darkness invades my sight, and the thousands of long limbs tapping over my skin seem to be growing restless.

I used to like centipedes, despite how much they scared me. I wanted a tattoo of one. A really large thing, greyscale, spanning my entire left arm. I hated the things, but their visage was so interesting that I wanted one permanently on my skin.

Now, that same interesting appearance is multiplied to the point where I can't even count the number of legs, and they're all crawling over me. Their mandibles lightly scratch along me, and with each passing minute, their scrapes and nips get more intense. They want to burrow into me. I feel it. But I cannot see it. It is far too dark.

As soon as my statement is over, I know they will encase my head again. I was only allowed such freedom so I could spew my own fear coherently....

I may sound calm, but I am terrified. My voice is warbling, and I want to flail my limbs to shake the pests off of me, but I know from experience that if I do so, they will bite hard to stay put. I am bleeding quite a lot already. I smell the iron of my blood mixed with the dust and that coriander-like scent the centipedes release.

I feel them growing irritated. I know no one will come for me. I will end my statement now, since I don't want a worse punishment than the one I'm receiving. But first, I have one last question.

How does it feel, Magnus? To finally know what I'm most afraid of?"

His statement ends, and the centipedes crawl over his face once more.

From where he and all others are being observed, a reply comes in the form of mirthful yet sinister laughter.

[onewomancitadel]

Redemption vs. redemption arcs

I was just thinking about redemption as a cultural idea versus redemption arcs in narrative. It's self-evident that redemption arcs, by their namesake, invoke cultural ideas surrounding redemption largely derived from Christianity - sin, atonement, redemption, and forgiveness. This often means a lot of the discourse issues surrounding redemption arcs are rooted in that context - the entire notion of redemption (whether it's possible), the Christian cultural dominance and how it conflicts with other faiths and ideologies, etc.

I really think that whilst this is a worthwhile concern, when it comes to writing redemption arcs and whether they are acceptable to be written about, something that might be useful to consider is structural question posed by a villain shifting to a heroic role in a story, and what's needed to get there. This is a pretty bold statement to make, so I'll address my thinking of it first.

It might seem impossible to separate the two - because the entire idea of a redemption arc is derived from the very idea of redemption. If you personally reject the notion of redemption, then you reject the idea of a redemption arc; this leads to a lot of discourse where personal judgements (treated as objective truth) dismiss the possiblity of redemption arcs in fiction (existing disparately from personal taste, or altogether objective statements about morality).

Largely, the people involved in this Internet discourse talk past each other, and it seems like there's no resolution - personal distaste or disbelief about someone going from being bad to being good (or even the idea of pure badness/goodness at play) talks past personal taste for the idea it's possible to change in a meaningful way. When it comes to storytelling, though, we have a much more binary tool at play, which is the very dichotomy of hero vs. villain, and the sorts of questions that might post - what makes a hero, a hero, and a villain, a villain? Could they swap places? Could one join the other? When you start talking about that - whilst all our ideas about good vs. bad are still involved (and it's hard to separate that) - the very natural question of a redemption arc - a villain figuring out how to help the heroes, or become a heroic figure - poses itself. The path to that is something that you can use to make a statement about redemption (even whether it's possible or not), but it does, by necessity, involve structural reasoning.

Some people who take moral objection to redemption may also reasonably take moral objection to a reasonable narrative device, irrespective of whether it makes sense. The sacred boundary of hero and villain, you might say, is there to preserve the proper moral order, and irrespective, once again, of redemption, to transgress that is morally distasteful.

That comes back to an issue about what role narrative plays in our lives; that is really beyond the scope of this post. I don't agree with the idea that the role of narrative is to only sympathise with, or learn from, the hero, and even playing along with that idea, that a moral lesson can't be learnt from a villain is absurd. Whatever thematic statements you decide to make about redemption is not really relevant from this angle, because if we can learn from a villain, and we can identify or sympathise with them, there's no reason they can't be treated with the same respect and consideration as a hero.

If you're attached to the hero/villain binary, one may even argue that stoutly transforming a villain to a hero reifies the characteristics of a hero. I really can't address this type of criticism from all fronts; the idea that narrative must be morally absolute and media consumption is political is something I find uninteresting and damning, but it's something that is unwieldy as each interlocutor's moral system changes. I want to see different perspectives through narrative; I want to see interesting things. Of course, you might argue that simply presenting the villain's perspective, who has complicated motivations, might be one way to achieve this; it certainly is, and whilst it's similar, exploring the theme that you or I could easily be the villain in different circumstances, the redemption arc takes it one step further and asks why they need to be a villain in the first place.

Distinguishing between redemption and redemption arcs means we can focus more on what's narratively suitable, and then build on the thematic statements about it. One might say renaming a redemption arc is necessary, but for a few reasons I don't think it's appropriate: we might encounter the same issues with a different name (like turncoat - is turncoat too absolute?); I don't think agreed-upon speech really works like that, and I doubt making a unilateral decision about it on my part will help; I want people to know what I'm talking about, and redemption arcs are at the heart of a lot of online discord.

Rather than saying being good from being evil is possible or impossible, the question becomes more about how you write a villain transforming into a heroic figure through a moral- and/or alignment-shift. What does their story say about your story? What is their ideology? Do they agree with the hero? What is the thing that made them evil? What are the things they want/need? (Very basic, but often skipped over with villains). What are the obstacles necessary to challenge their ideology? When does their character arc end? Because I don't think it should be taken for granted that redemption must end in death (which, I want to note, does skip over steps even in the Christian model); that's more of a statement about redemption than it necessarily is a complete character arc. If you've had so long to demonstrate them as evil, what is it like for them when they're not a villain anymore? What are the ways their acts as a good character (speaking simplistically here) can answer their previous misdeeds (or not!) in the story?

In some ways, I feel like when you're writing a redemption arc, creating a sense of imbalance in the story is necessary - when they transform, it should make sense where they are all along. I sort of mentally think of this as like an optical illusion which complements the twist of a redemption arc - it makes sense once you see it. What's interesting is that this feels equally true of a corruption arc in many ways (particularly for the sense of catharsis in tragedy), and it's part of what I love about the foiling of Ironwood and Cinder in Volume 7 and 8 of RWBY. He makes perfect sense as the necessary villainous figure, and it feels like something his character slipped into organically when considering the story.

We often get distracted with the question of coming back from bad things you've done is possible. I really don't like the idea that there are ideas about human good and evil in the heart that we're not allowed to explore because it's not servicing the personal desires of the few (with different narrative goals, different aims, different power fantasies), or because it's supposedly morally unacceptable. It's thought-stopping, and I really think the purpose of stories (for good or ill) are to make you think about things and feel things. The idea of a redemption arc structurally is more neutral than trying to contest the notion of redemption altogether, if you can identify where the two cross-over and where they depart (something I didn't address in this post is that real life struggle is nonlinear compared to linear narrative). When it comes to discussing a redemption arc and whether it's good or not, for me, it shifts the conversation to more about whether it's thematically and tonally appropriate, whether the character shift feels believable (and moving?), whether it says something interesting, whether it feels well-reasoned, etc. The idea of redemption in our personal lives is vulnerable and something lots of people disagree on, and that's what makes it hard talking about, but the redemption arc has a bit more distance.

I don't think this completely untangles everything about redemption in the context of redemption arcs and villain turncoats, however I do think it clarifies something I've otherwise felt about redemption arcs all along. The requisite components of redemption arcs feel like the things that most excite me about storytelling: the role of hero vs. villain and transgressing that, moral conflict, transformation - and - yes, a lot of thematic ideas surrounding hope, change, renewal. The fact that hero vs. villain exists in storytelling as the given, natural story structure means that a redemption arc of a villain changing to a heroic figure is something that is natural, irrespective of what role redemption plays in our lives or what personal distaste one has for it (or personal distaste/aesthetic preference presented as logical and objective judgement) - once again, why is the hero the hero, and why is the villain, the villain? To deny curiosity about that is, I think, really boring. So what ideas you attach to that redemption - whether you complete it or not, or abort it early, how you realise it altogether - obviously comes from a place of personal or narrative conviction.

Structural considerations of redemption, though - how they became a villain, how they're not anymore, how do they change and how does the hero - is useful both from a more neutral perspective, but also, I think, asks more interesting questions about how to write one well. It also, hopefully, offers something to the ongoing discourse, in trying to tease out narrative considerations from personal moral considerations. Hero vs. villain is the dichotomy of storytelling - once you start to unravel that, it's a lot of fun, but it is a balancing act.

[tomatograter]

If he has internalized homophobia then why he has no problem telling Dave he used to date a guy? Like, as you said, he cares about his reputation, and we know he really wanted Dave to like him, so that prolly means he was quite careful with what he could or couldn't say in front of him, specifically after he discovered that Bro abused him. So what I'm trying to say, if he cared about being gay, I think he would have avoided telling him he dated Jake? Or at least give it a second thought? I don't see what's the problem with Dirk being against labels, he seems that type of person, he prolly thinks that makes him more intellectual or some stupid thing like that

Hmmm thats not exactly what I said. I don't think Dirk has internalized homophobia so much as <he's afraid of the outside reception to the fact that he's gay, and how people will perceive him based on it>. Dirk knows that he's gay. We know Dirk is aware of that since he was at least 13, because he's already throwing undeniably romantic advances at Jake by then to test the waters. Dirk isn't in cutesy denial about anything here, he doesn't have the time or luxury for that. His problem is more that once you state 'Yes I Am Gay' as a definition of your character, that comes with a Lot of historical baggage and expectations- and from dirk's perspective, both the expectations and historical baggage are something so incredibly divorced from his reality in a future where no human society exists that he's waaaayyyyyy too careful of making that association. It could potentially bust the image he's trying to project.

Again, Dirk's thing is performance. Esp the performance of masculinity. He is the one homestuck character that truly, genuinely, wholeheartedly cares about putting up an image of what it means To Be Masc. He does this because he likes it. He's not forced to do it, he's not under societal pressure to do it, he's not whinning about how much he hates it, he's not doing it at gunpoint; this is a set of parameters he came up with for himself, even in complete isolation. They are a statement and holy boypledge he's making.

He thinks it is Very Cool, and he would like it if you thought it was Very Cool Too (especially if that transmits an image of how strong and reliable he "totally" is). And, again, when you think about our early 2000-10's context of GAYNESS, because homestuck is an extremely time-bound comic, the image "being gay" summons is... really not the one I described above. We're talking about gay men being stereotyped as catty & cowardly & effeminate, about the constant punchlines around 'useless fairies' (a term that was used to refer specifically *to* feminine, submissive, oft gender-transgressive gays ) not incidentally, Dirk's godtier is revealed to him in-comic through a drawing that depicts him as a fairy. He's immediately put off by it. Dirk and Jake's godtiers were called Fagtiers by more than a portion of the fandom. Relics of this are still high up on google images if you search for pictures of their godtiers, lol. Essentially, to admit to his gayness openly and broadly in that timeframe is to be stereotyped as something he doesn't entirely identify as, in an environment that is far from welcoming.

I am pretty open about reading Dirk as a trans man, and what I think is happening here is that together with Roxy's constant insinuations that Dirk Should Have Her Babies, Dirk is ultimately afraid that his claim to being a homosexual paints him as innately womanly. He either gets to be a man or he gets to love men. There's no middleground, or else these social features will cancel eachother out like pemdas. What we see in Homestuck is his haphazard attempt to keep both things intact. His courtship of Jake is only allowed if it is strictly masculine, if it seems like he has a semblance of control, if it looks like they are both just Dudes being Bros throwing it down like Fellow Action Men. This is harmful for Dirk and gives him extreme emotional constipation; not to speak of how tiring it is for Jake to try to keep up with this months-long improv game of Xtreme Axe Bodyspray Marathon when they could just... date. Jake really wouldn't mind if they decided to paint each other's nails or have stereotypical sleepovers or just chill out and have fun like Jane and Roxy are obviously doing. Jake would be fine with being soft so long as he's not being made fun of. But Dirk struggles with letting any sign of dangerous sensitivity show under the assumption that it will be read as a weakness, an inadmissible vulnerability in his set of armor.

Which becomes all the more relevant once you note that when Dirk's trying to convince Dave that he's not a threat and certainly not a monster, one of the first things he admits to is "I like men."

[flawseer]

Replying on Tumblr is so awkward, will I ever get used to it?

I can't really disagree with your rebuttal. So much so that I'm not going to argue against it, but use it to refine some of the things I've said. I might have been a bit unclear in that portion of the analysis.

You are absolutely correct in saying that Darkstalker is a manipulator, and that he is constantly trying to steer people towards situations that are to his advantage, even at their detriment. What I meant by making that point about Darkstalker's fear being genuine was that the sixth book does a good job of humanizing him and making him seem sympathetic (for that portion of the story. It crumbles away later).

Like, you have him acting suave and confident for most of the time he talks to Moon, but in these instances where he is reduced to beg he completely breaks down for a moment and shows himself as vulnerable. Those very specific events, where he screams for Moon when she puts the skyfire on and he thinks she's died, or when he begs her not to leave because he is scared he will go insane from isolation, I don't think were manipulation attempts. Preventing her from leaving is actually against his best interest, since she needs to go to find his scroll, which betrays the fact that his outburst is a gut reaction, not a calculated ploy. He usually has this slick and self-assured veneer when he manipulates, and it completely breaks away in those instances.

He does absolutely manipulate Moon even back then, but I wanted to point out this nuance to try figure out how people would rationalize his behavior to consider him redeemable (including the author herself).

As for the points you've made about the Moon encounter in the Nightwing city, yes, that has been on my mind too. I would have loved to see a more torn Moon who is wrestling with wanting to stand by her first friend but knowing that doing so would also condone his horrific acts. Have her be nervous and unsure of herself, trying to think of rationalizations.

Maybe she gets caught in a thought spiral like "He killed his father... but Arctic was threatening his sister at the time, he told me it was necessary to protect her... But is it right to enchant a person like that?... He said Arctic enchanted his sister too, it's only fair then, isn't it?... But the way he killed him was so cruel... Can that ever be justified? If I forgive him, am I complicit in his actions? But that was so long ago too, so if I don't forgive him now, am I trapping him in the past? Maybe if I forgive him he can move on and make amends... But he didn't sound remorseful when he told me, so will he ever even try making amends? Am I preventing him from growing, or enabling his behavior?"

Have a scene in Turtle's book where Turtle is listening in on a private conversation between Darkstalker and Moon. Maybe Moon is constantly trying to bring up the disemboweling, showing that it still bothers her, but Darkstalker diminishes her concern every time and shames her for still thinking about it. Maybe he says something like "Moon, I have been good to you, haven't I? Isn't it unfair to still condemn me for such an old transgression? If your friends can forgive you for keeping your powers secret, why can't you find it in yourself to forgive me for this one little thing?" And that makes her feel guilty and retract her statement. That would actually foreshadow the future scene and make her genuinely seem like the victim she is supposed to be.

Then perhaps when Qibli tells her about the mind control and presents the earring, have her be relieved and hopeful at first. Like "Darkstalker is mind controlling people, of course! I'm not a bad person for wanting to trust him, it's the control doing this to me!" Then when she puts the earring on she could be horrified to realize she's been in her right mind all along. That was her last out, the chance that her wanting so desperately to forgive a murderer could have been forced upon her after all. But it isn't, her desire to forgive is innate, and it leaves her deeply conflicted.

Basically, I wanted to see Moon struggle with this more. Her wanting to forgive the person who was her first friend is reasonable, and Darkstalker latching on to that to twist her beliefs is within his character as well. It could have been an interesting plot point if the narrative had played with that idea a bit more.

If that had happened I would be completely behind both Winter and Moon. I'd be able to imagine a scene later where they talk this out, with her saying "I'm sorry, I get overwhelmed dealing with people sometimes because of how I grew up, and I didn't know how to handle this situation," and Winter replying "I'm sorry too, I didn't realize you were going through your own struggles with him."

But how I remember that scene is Moon just nonchalantly says "No, I'm sound of mind, I just really like him" without much guilt, and then the narrative proceeds to try sway me against Winter--who is understandably upset at this--making it out like he is the unreasonable one, and thus a potential child murderer worthy of our contempt.

In your last ask, you mentioned misgivings with Book 10's ending, and especially how it pertains to Winter. I absolutely agree, and I know why, but I wanna hear your thoughts on it, too: What's up with Book 10?

The following is a (very long) examination of my personal feelings with regards to the WoF second story arc finale. While it is based on what is in the text, this analysis will be interpretive and fill in blanks with my own thoughts. Keep that in mind.

Hahhhh... okay. Since mentioning it in my last post I’ve gotten several requests to talk about my feelings regarding the second arc finale. There’s probably no way around it then.

If you haven’t read that last post (it was admittedly very long, and so will this one be), I talked briefly about why I didn’t like that part of the story. I have to warn you now, this will likely be the most negative and dour post in the history of this blog. In a few parts it will sound like I hate Wings of Fire, and I want to say now, while I still have the chance, that I don’t. I love this series, thinking about its setting and characters brings me joy.

I also—very emphatically—want to make it clear that I have no ill will against Tui T. Sutherland. I’ve looked around other people’s stuff a bit and there are a huge number of posts wishing violence upon her or threatening her for doing things to her series that people don’t agree with. That is NOT what I am doing here, shit like that is NOT okay! While I will be critical of her choices, I still respect her effort of bringing this vibrant, wonderful world of dragons to all of us.

Also, obligatory last disclaimer: If you liked the finale, that is okay. You are valid for feeling that way. I’m here to share my point of view, not to demand people agree with everything I say. Just be warned that you most likely won’t enjoy what I have to say. If you don’t think you can handle that kind of criticism, this is your guilt-free opportunity to stop reading.

Otherwise, let's get into it.

CW: Discussion of parental abuse, depression, disease, and extreme acts of violence.

In defense of the finale

Before I start to systematically disassemble this narrative and get lost in a quagmire of negativity, let’s talk a bit about the circumstances that brought forth this part of the story. The plot of this arc was a mess from the moment animus magic was unshackled from the restrictions it had in the first arc, and from then on there was no longer any conceivable way to end this story in a clean way. Sutherland had created an invincible, unbeatable, omnipotent villain; he could read minds, see the future with perfect clarity, and anything he could imagine he could conjure into existence at any time with no cost to himself and no drawbacks. She was likely wracking her brain about how to resolve this impossible conundrum. What we got wasn’t good, but I believe nothing could have been. The foundation was rotting and by the fifth book it couldn’t bear the weight of the plot anymore.

The thing about animus magic in arc 2 is that it is so potent, so all-powerful, and so free of restraint that everyone who uses it also HAS to be a simpleton, or they would be able to break the plot immediately and become god. From the moment Darkstalker broke out of that mountain, he could have said “Any and all spells that are cast with the intention to harm me, interfere with my plans, or do something I don’t consent to will not work, from now on until forever”, and he would have instantly won. The strawberry would have fizzled out. The Darkstalker-blocking earrings would not have been created, and no one could have saved the Icewings. On the flipside, Turtle or Anemone could have said “I enchant the concept of animus magic itself to no longer obey Darkstalker”, and his threat would have been neutered. Point is, powers as potent and easy to use as this really need limitations, or they will quickly eat your plot alive.

I don’t envy the situation Sutherland was in at the time at all. If you’re an author, that kind of thing is a nightmare. It really is no wonder she decided to blow up animus magic for good in her next arc, even if I would have preferred it to get more healthy restrictions instead of killing it outright.

The Darkstalker age regression thing

Everyone has talked this part to death already, but if I am to write a thorough analysis of my feelings regarding this finale, I’m going to have to talk about it as well. I’m sorry if I end up repeating a lot of things you’ve already heard.

This final fate of Darkstalker, to have his memories wiped and be reset to an infant, is really uncomfortable. As far as I am aware, though correct me if I’m wrong, Sutherland said in an interview that she didn’t want Darkstalker to die because, in her view, he did not deserve to. We can debate here about the philosophical question of whether anyone is truly deserving of death, and the merits of “justice” and “punishment”, but in general, Wings of Fire did not seem to have any issues killing off its villains prior if they committed suitably terrible acts. That makes this moment stand out as noteworthy.

Who is Darkstalker then--and if we assume villains can be “deserving” and “not deserving” of death--what about him speaks in his favor, or against? The guy had a pretty crappy childhood, coming from a broken home (there is that inadequate parent theme again). He genuinely loved his sister and felt protective of her, and whenever he liked someone he wanted them to be happy and feel affirmed. The thing that Queen Diamond does to his mother is awful and he is justified in hating her for it. He is also portrayed as rather sympathetic in Moon Rising. When he asks Moon to find his scroll for him and not to leave him, he is not manipulating her, he is sincerely begging for her help. He is stuck somewhere underground, trapped in darkness, in a space so tiny that he can’t move. He remains that way for months, lonely and sad. If you just focus on these aspects, it’s easy to understand why he has so many fans who want him to see healthy and happy.

On the flipside, while he is dedicated to the happiness of his friends, he doesn’t always go for the most ethical way to achieve it. He tries to brainwash said friends without their consent whenever they exhibit behaviors he doesn’t like, or when he thinks he knows better and wants to “fix” them. He has very little regard for other people’s autonomy, lies to his loved ones with alarming frequency, and is unhealthily attached to the idea of power. Those things are certainly not good, but they are his character flaws. These are his demons; everyone has them and they make him a person. If this was all there was to it, he might still be a villain, but I’d argue he’d not be wholly irredeemable.

But there are things about him that take him beyond the pale. Things that go beyond the realm of just being misunderstood, or easily excusable.

He is possessive. He wants Clearsight and Fathom for himself, and for them to listen to him primarily. When Indigo makes it clear she doesn’t like him and cautions Fathom against trusting him, he deceives his friends and traps Indigo in a wood carving, just so he can isolate Fathom from his support network and manipulate him easier. He alters Clearsight’s mind to make her more agreeable and stop her from holding him accountable for his actions; while he thinks he loves her, he only loves an idealized version of her that is wholly devoted to and unquestioning of him. This is why, when he later forcibly overwrites Fierceteeth’s existence to recreate her (which is another horrific thing), he tries to excise the parts he finds undesirable to create a perfect version of his lover. But this caricature he has created in his head is not and can never be Clearsight, which frustrates his attempts.

He is vengeful. Not against people who have actually wronged him, like Queen Diamond. That would be questionable, but understandable. What makes this unacceptable is his frequent targeting of innocent people who just happen to be related to the person who wronged him in some esoteric way. He enchants a secret murder knife that kills random Icewings regardless of who they are or what they think about the Queen, just because the one who took his mother from him happened to share their tribe. He hates Turtle and wishes death upon him in Moon Rising just because he is a green Seawing, like Fathom was. And then there is the big one: He tries to kill all the Icewings who are alive in the present day, where Queen Diamond is long dead and none of them have ever even met her. Even his mother, who suffered from Diamond’s actions the most and has the most reason to hate her, is horrified and calls him out on that one.

And lastly, he is sadistic. He revels in torturing those he hates. He forces his father to disembowel himself, while the latter is fully aware and powerless to resist AND the man’s traumatized daughter is watching. Later he sends a magical plague to kill every single living Icewing sans one.

It should be noted that Darkstalker possesses virtually infinite magical power; whatever he declares, with very few exceptions, will happen. Even if he wanted them dead, he had the power to prevent unnecessary suffering. He could have said “Arctic, fall dead instantaneously”, or “Every Icewing will fall asleep and pass away peacefully,” but he didn’t. He wanted them to feel pain and pass away in the most wretched, agonizing ways he could imagine.

So what he chose to do instead is—and I want you to picture this for a moment—Darkstalker sat down, calmly, and said “Henceforth every living Icewing, excepting Prince Winter and those of hybrid blood, will fall ill with an incurable disease. This disease will cause heavy internal bleeding and make its victims cough up blood and waste away for a few days, followed by certain death.”

This spell does not discriminate with regards to who its victims are. The book glosses over the implications, but imagine the ramifications. Young children are notoriously frail, how many newborns got infected and died because of this? How many families were torn apart because they couldn’t get the magic earrings fast enough? Or accidentally got one earring less than there were family members and had to decide who has to die?

Most of the Icewings were physically cured by the earrings, but an experience like that sticks with you for the rest of your life. Somewhere surely, a dragonet watched as his mother put the earring on him and then slowly wasted away because she didn’t have one for herself.

It’s really easy to overlook how horrific this spell is because it isn’t shown or dwelt on. But the trauma, grief, and suffering it caused must have been immeasurable.

And none of those victims have ever even met the person Darkstalker wanted to get revenge on. None of those deaths meant anything to anyone.

The attempted death toll and scale of the calamity here puts even Scarlet to shame. The ones who come closest to it were Queen Battlewinner and Morrowseer with their attempted Rainwing extermination. All three of those died for what they did. Gives you some food for thought for sure.

Peacemaker’s burden

Despite just airing all of his dirty laundry and declaring him an irredeemable villain, I actually do have a lot of sympathy for Darkstalker still. His story is really sad. He was a child born with an amount of power that nobody should possess, and it corrupted him to the point where it destroyed his life before it began. His parents were always fighting and no matter how good his intentions were, he was unable to understand why he couldn’t hold on to his friends and relationship. He kept making mistakes, then made bigger mistakes to fix those, until his hands were covered in blood and he couldn’t stop anymore. My belief is that, after he wakes up in the present and realizes Clearsight is dead, he loses his reason for living and becomes completely lost in his grief.

Therefore, my opinion is that it would have been appropriate for him to die. If not to punish him, then to finally grant him reprieve from all that rage and pain, and let him rest. I think that would have been a dignified end.

But instead he got turned into a baby. ... And then they decided to magically erase his father’s blood from him? I don’t know what it is, but something about that Icewing erasure makes my skin crawl?

The thing that turns this baby twist from weird into highly unsettling is the context. Darkstalker’s mind is erased, then modified into a new person via animus magic. This is the technique a lot of this arc’s villains used to victimize Hailstorm, Queen Ruby, Peril, Kinkajou, Fierceteeth, and Winter. The same technique is now used again, by the heroes, which is a dangerous thing to have your protagonists do if you want them to remain morally upright.

It is also very reckless, because in almost all of these instances, animus mind alteration has been shown to be very unreliable. The spells seem to wear down over time and are susceptible to partial breaking upon encountering certain strong stimuli. Hailstorm—while trapped as Pyrite—seems to retain trace amounts of his former memories, which is why Pyrite is subconsciously drawn to Winter and clings to him all the time. Ruby is able to ignore half of her conditioning because her familial love for her son partially overpowers the magic. Qibli is just straight up able to reason his way out of it.

The thing to note here is that spells of this nature require a very meticulous approach; you can’t half-ass your reprogramming or the victim will just think their way past it. If you alter someone’s mind, the wording of the spell must be ironclad, lest you risk it wearing down over time and even break.

Luckily we have nothing to fear in that regard, because the spell that created Peacemaker was written by a Rainwing with a total of four days of literacy training. No one better mention the name Clearsight to the new baby Nightwing, or next month is going to be rather interesting.

But that’s just speculation on my part. Let’s assume that, somehow, this spell isn’t as unstable as all the others. Somehow Kinkajou threaded all the needles, and masterfully dodged every conceivable pitfall to pen the perfect incantation, despite having been illiterate just a few weeks prior. This one is built to last and Darkstalker is sealed away really thoroughly, for good.

That is still absolutely terrible and morally dubious, because now you have Peacemaker, who for all intents and purposes is a COMPLETELY innocent little kid, saddled with this huge burden of being the certifiable reincarnation of a genocidal ancient wizard. He’s gonna grow up thinking things like “Mommy gets real quiet whenever the topic of the Icewing tragedy is brought up,” and “Why does Auntie Moon look at me like that? One time she accidentally called me a weird name, who is Darkstalker?” “What is this ‘Clearsight’ name my mind-reading friends from the village found in Mommy’s mind?”

In a village that will be full of mind-readers soon, eventually the secret will come out, and Peacemaker is going to learn what was done to him. A huge, messy load of undeserved baggage was forced onto this completely separate, innocent entity. He will be devastated. Whether he then chooses to forgive them for this remains to be seen. To be honest, he would be well within his right not to, and turn resentful.

Poor kid.

Qibli’s callousness

I love Qibli, he is one of my favorite characters. This happens to be his book, and the fact that I fundamentally dislike half of it makes me rather sad. If anything, I hope this tells you that I’m not just hating on it for my personal amusement. I really wanted to like this. I tried to, and I couldn’t.

Qibli is really weird in this one, to be honest. He is suddenly made to be co-dependent on Moonwatcher, fawning over her every third paragraph, saying how much he loves her, how he is an incomplete and dysfunctional wreck without her, how it physically pains him to be apart from her, oh if only the stars would grant his wish and split the mountains apart so that he may fly to his princess, his muse, his goddess of ebony wit. It gets so old.

And it’s not Qibli. He never acted this clingy towards Moonwatcher. It’s more intense than even Winter gets about Moon, and Winter was actually depicted with a crush on her in book 6. Qibli was always just a supportive element, eager to befriend Moon but never desperate, like he is going to keel over if he is separated from his true love five minutes longer. These very frequent love declarations feel so forced coming out of him. It strikes me like it was just written in service of the love triangle. Maybe if we make him confess his love every four seconds readers will overlook the fact that they had no proper romantic build-up.

You might rightly accuse me of bias. I have previously admitted I am fond of Qibli/Winter as a romantic pairing, on the surface this seems like I am just not happy with my pet ship being blocked by Moonwatcher. But I assure you, I am actually pretty flexible and accommodating even towards pairings that contradict my preferences. I have no issues with Winter/Moonwatcher, for example, because the possibility was properly established and they have good romantic chemistry in Winter Turning. In theory, I would have no problem with Qibli/Moonwatcher either if it was ever set up as an interesting romantic dynamic. But to me, it seems like Qibli is written as a good, supportive friend to Moon for four books, only to pivot hard into “Moon moon moon moon moon moon swoon” at the last second, and it just reads to me as obnoxious.

I got distracted. This section is called “Qibli’s callousness”, and I haven’t even talked about the main part.

Qibli and Winter have excellent chemstry together, whether you read it as romantic or platonic—both of these interpretations have merit and are set up. They’re always the highlight of any scene they’re in. Throughout the story arc you get the impression that these two really get on each other’s nerves, but they bond and grow into really strong friends who bicker a lot but have each other’s backs when it counts.

Then there is a scene where Qibli casually tells Winter that he wouldn’t object if someone wanted to mind-control away some of Winter’s more objectionable traits.

This is genuinely a terrible thing to say to your friend. Like, it crosses a line and ceases to be harmless banter; you’re just telling them that there is something you hate about them so much that you wish they were someone else. Winter actually WAS mind-controlled earlier and felt (and proably still feels) guilty about having attacked Qibli in that state. And now Qibli says “Hey, I wouldn’t mind if someone did that to you again! Hue hue!”

It is awful, BUT I don’t necessarily object to Qibli saying this here. Qibli is in the middle of his character arc at this moment, so he is expected to be flawed. He is making a mistake by thoughtlessly telling Winter this horrid thing, and it seems like a believable continuation of his current character track. This is a reasonable development as long as the plot acknowledges that it’s a mistake.

Spoilers: The plot doesn’t acknowledge that it’s a mistake. Qibli never has a scene after where he reflects upon what he said and apologizes to Winter. When Darkstalker has Qibli trapped in his mountain jail and mind-wipes Qibli’s grandfather into a toddler (hey, wait a minute), Qibli gets visibly disturbed. Like, this is so off-putting to him that he gets queasy and Darkstalker hastily changes the spell. That could have been a great way to bring this back. Like in the epilogue, have Qibli track down Winter and tell him about disturbing baby grandpa theater and how he realized that wiping people’s minds is actually messed up and should have never said that to him.

But he doesn’t. He just lets Winter go, allowing him to believe he is broken and needs magical intervention to be tolerable. It leaves me to think that maybe he’s still okay with it, and fantasizing about rewriting his friend’s mind. Great.

Moonwatcher’s character death

You will find as this goes on that, I get the impression that the second half of this book takes all of the wonderful, endearing characters I have learned to love throughout the story and replaces them with really mean, or stupid, or otherwise inaccurate caricatures.

Moonwatcher’s relationship with Darkstalker gets plenty of setup and development in Moon Rising. You get the sense that these two could be great friends if their circumstances were a little different. It does a great job at making you think maybe Darkstalker is just misunderstood; maybe Moon should free him from his predicament.

Then at the end of Escaping Peril comes the emotional gut punch. Darkstalker actually IS a villain. He callously admits to Moonwatcher that he used his magic to make his own father gruesomely disembowel himself. Moonwatcher is horrified and disgusted that he would do that. There is no circumstance in which something like that would ever be okay. She ends the scene awash in tears because the person she thought was her friend is a murderer and a sadist. This is good, that is a natural reaction to what she was just told.

A few hours from there, in Talons of Power, Turtle finds Moon again and she is completely cool with Darkstalker walking free, despite crying her eyes out after feeling so betrayed earlier. That may seem strange, but this is still good because later, Darkstalker’s mind control plot is discovered. This scene was obviously written to set that up, Moon is mind-controlled into forgetting that Darkstalker could do something that morally reprehensible, and thus forgives him. This is also completely in line with his characterization in Legends: Darkstalker. It’s a kind of stunt he would pull to get Clearsight to shut up about him slipping into villainy.

In my earlier post I alluded to a moment where Moon is set to narrative auto-pilot and says something so rampantly off-kilter that it does irreversible, permanent damage to her character. It happens here, in the second half of book 10. Qibli gives Moon the Darkstalker protection earring, and Moon, somehow, says “I’m not being mind-controlled, Darkstalker really is my friend.”

I get what the plot tries to do here. It’s taking this concept of mind-control and adding a nuance, in an attempt to flesh out Darkstalker and give his character depth. He is ready to control everyone in the world, but for Moon, who is his best friend in this era, he wants her to remain herself. Perhaps this is his attempt at attonement for playing with Clearsight’s mind and driving her away from him. It is very touching in a way, viewed in isolation.

Unfortunately, it does not work with the full context of all the books. Because Moon is in auto-pilot mode right now, her main character trait is “Darkstalker=Friend,” so naturally she would speak in support of him. But this revelation has devastating retroactive consequences. The earlier scene that was written with Moon under mind-control is now altered into her having been in her right mind! She is completely okay with Darkstalker’s admittance to cold-blooded torture and evisceration, within hours of being so shocked by it that it made her cry and ready to denounce him. That is such a quick turnaround it’s giving me whiplash. And what’s more it turns Moon from a principled, upstanding girl into a sociopath who casually accepts gruesome torture and murder if it is committed by someone she likes.

Did Sutherland forget about the scene two books ago, where Darkstalker’s actions were so inconceivably horrid for Moon to learn of that she started crying? It baffles me that this made it into the final version. Her saying she was never mind-controlled makes Moon come off as so awful. This torture-excusing lunatic is not the same kind-hearted and insightful character I followed in all the other books.

Kinkajou’s character derailment

The world is a sad place when I have to question the way Kinjajou is written. Fortunately she is mostly fine, despite her having the biggest excuse to act out-of-character since she’s the victim of a mind-altering spell. Her only real moment of “what!?” comes at the end.

I already talked about her role in casting the spell that regresses Darkstalker into an infant. But I didn’t mention how her being the source of it is questionable in itself.

The clue is in the first paragraph of this section: She herself has experienced the effects of invasive mind-alteration. She was cursed by Anemone in the previous book to be in love with Turtle, and kind of half-struggles kind of not with it, it’s really strange. Turtle is appropriately horrified and acts like really awful things are happening, but then it’s mostly played lightly for some reason. My assumption is that Sutherland introduced this plot point, but then realized how uncomfortable this premise really is and tried to downplay it until the story got to a point where it could get done away with.

But I think the takeaway is still supposed to be that this was a horrid thing to do (which it absolutely is), and that Kinkajou will have to spend a lot of time trying to untangle her real emotions from the fake ones the spell created.

The point is: Kinkajou knows first-hand how awful it is to do something like that to another person. Ideally she should never even conceive of the idea to cast a spell like that, but if we’re really set on this Darkstalker baby thing and it has to happen, she should at least be a bit hesitant about it. And afterwards she should struggle with the guilt of having resorted to it. Not celebrate it and be proud, like it’s funny.

The assassination of Winter’s future

Now we come to the part I’ve alluded to previously; the part where all of these threads converge to utterly destroy one character and drive him to the brink of ruin. Let’s talk about Winter.

Prince Winter is the son of Tundra and Prince Narwhal, hatching in the same clutch as his sister Icicle. He spent his formative years being unfavorably compared to said sister—who easily took to traits that Icewing royalty considers desirable—whereas Winter struggled greatly to embody those same ideals. He was just a little too kind, too merciful, too gentle. As a result he often had to endure abuse from his parents, who made him feel like he was defective.

Because he was young and didn’t have any other frame of reference, he embraced this abusive narrative and began to drive himself with a vigor unreasonable for someone of his age. He scraped and cloyed for every bit of credit he could get, obsessing over advancing up the circle rankings in an attempt to “purge” the wrongness out of himself. To make his parents as proud of him as they were of Icicle.

This never worked. He was always seen as the runt, poised to embarrass the family name. Whatever he did, no matter how hard he strived, there was always something he could have done better.

The only real source of love and affirmation in his life was his older brother, Hailstorm. Where everyone else only saw what Winter wasn’t, Hailstorm embraced his brother despite of his “failings” and was openly affectionate with him. When Winter was with him, it was okay to not think about rankings all the time, and just be himself for a bit. I assume Hailstorm fulfilled a similar role for Icicle as well, which is why both of them love him dearly, and Icicle destroys her own life to bring him back.

Winter also has a fascination with scavengers, possibly because they are small and perceived as useless, like he himself is. He likely feels a kinship with them and observes them being craftier and more adept than everyone else sees them. This is therapeutic for him, to see that a thing can have merit even if no one wants to see it.

One day, he and Hailstorm sneak into Skywing territory so Winter can catch a scavenger as a pet. This excursion turns hostile when they are discovered by a roaming Skywing troop and faced with the prospect of capture, possibly execution. In a gambit to save Winter from this fate, Hailstorm mirrors the words of his parents, calling Winter pathetic and useless, so the Skywings will not think of him as a threat and show mercy. His act succeeds in convincing the Skywings, but it also convinces Winter, who does not understand Hailstorm only said these things to save his life. He returns home—believing his brother hated him all along—to face the wrath of his furious family for losing them “the desirable son”.

For all of his life, these themes have repeated themselves and haunted him. “I was born wrong and defective,” “I am unlovable,” “No one wants me.”

A few months after the war ends, Winter is one of the five Icewings enrolled in the newly founded Jade Mountain Academy. Shortly after departing, he unexpectedly returns home, having successfully rescued his older brother and bringing him back. He is made to believe that this erases his mistakes, his mother even pays him a backhanded compliment, an uncharacteristically “nice” gesture. He is promoted to the top of the rankings, finally his parents are proud of him.

But of course it is all a trick. The “adoration” afforded to him was all a ploy. Secretly, his parents abused power and tradition to arrange for Winter’s death. They force him into a lethal trial they intentionally rigged against him, all to finally erase that stain on their family’s honor.

Winter finally realizes the true nature of his parents’ opinion of him. Even when he succeeds, and does everything right, he is still defective, unlovable, and unwanted. He will never be anything else to his family. And so he leaves his homeland, pretending he is dead, resigned to live in hiding forever.

During this time, while at the brink of despair, Winter is able to draw strength from one source: His new friends from the academy. He vocalizes that, for all the abuse he suffered at the hands of his birth family, he fervently believes that THEY would never do anything like that to him. They chose to stuck with him, even when he was awful, and told him he was not hopeless. He was not a mistake; he could be deserving of love.

So naturally, he returns to them; they accept him readily, are willing to be his new surrogate family. When he almost burns to death at a later point, they fear and weep for him. When Qibli sets out to confront his own abusive family, Winter, despite being mind-controlled into a placid potato at the time, feels concerned enough for his friend’s safety to insist to come along (returning the favor of them accompanying him in his time of need in book 7). When Darkstalker’s mind control forces Winter to attack Qibli, he is shown ashamed and guilty of it once the control wears off again.

They bicker and struggle, and make mistakes, they break up but always come back together again. Time and time again the one thing that is always reinforced: When the cards are down, Winter loves his friends, and they love him. They would never intentionally hurt each other, or give up on each other.

I want you to keep in mind how wholesome, and loving, and mutually supportive this ramshackle band of misfits has been portrayed to this point... Because we’re moving on to the arc 2 finale, and it will do everything it can to corrupt all of it and consign Winter to a life of misery.

We arrive at aforementioned scene, where Moonwatcher receives her earring. Just a little bit prior, Winter had learned that Darkstalker unleashed a magical plague onto his people in an attempt to wipe them out. Now here is Moonwatcher, revealing that she is not under any spell, and has aligned herself with this guy willingly, speaking fondly of him as if he was a dear friend who never did any wrong. Winter takes this badly and accidentally breaks a vase; the narrative lingers on this moment and really tries to sell us on how unreasonable Winter’s reaction is, how he is overreacting, but let’s examine that interpretation for a moment.

Moonwatcher doesn’t yet know about the attempted Icewing genocide, but she DOES know about Darkstalker being okay with casting spells to inflict immeasurable torture upon those he hates. WE know that she knows this, so her stance here is already suspect. Yet she goes on to praise Darkstalker and refer to him as a friend. Look at this from Winter’s perspective. This “friend” of Moonwatcher just tried to kill his entire tribe, and he actually succeeded in killing his aunt, Queen Glacier, a person Winter greatly respects. Winter is currently unable to return to his homeland for fear of being branded a traitor. Even if he could return, he knows his obstinate and spiteful family would prevent him from attending the funeral, meaning he is not even afforded the basic dignity of saying farewell to his aunt. The aunt whom Darkstalker murdered by making her vomit her own blood until she withered away in her bed. And here is Moon, absolving the person who did this to Glacier from his appalling actions, despite knowing full well what Darkstalker is capable of and choosing to look away.

I don’t know about you, but I think I can forgive the grieving, emotionally overwhelmed boy for shattering a little pottery after hearing his trusted friend—who held his hand when he was dying—say that the guy who makes people disembowel themselves and wipes out entire countries may be misunderstood and not so bad. I think I would have a similar reaction. In fact, I would never want to talk to her ever again.

There is no way I can read this scene in which Moon doesn’t come off as either an absolute lunatic, or critically stupid and callous. In fact, based on her earlier behavior I half-expect her to get over the news of the attempted Icewing massacre in a couple hours, saying “Eh, it’s kinda bad, but you just have to do these kinds of things sometimes, you know? I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Then there is the part where Qibli makes his off-color comment about how Winter’s brain could really use a good wash. I already went into how it could have worked but didn’t. But with the timing here, we’ve already had Moon spit on their friendship, so as Winter’s other closest friend, it naturally follows that Qibli also craps on his feelings.

Consider the context: Winter comes from an abusive household where his parents forcibly tried to change him away from who he was to purge the “wrongness” from him. When they betray him and he narrowly escapes their attempt on his life, he re-affirms his belief in his friends, and the knowledge that they wouldn’t treat him like that gives him the strength he needs to keep going. But now, Qibli asserts that Winter DOES need to be altered, thereby AGREEING with Winter’s abusive parents, rendering Winter’s affirmation from book 7 erroneous. Qibli WOULD treat him like that if it made Winter less “intolerable”.

Neither Moonwatcher nor Qibli ever make an attempt to repair this rift. Winter is left betrayed and alone.

Stuff happens, and the forces of the Nightwings and Icewings come to blows over Jade Mountain. With his two closest friends having written him off and his support network eroded, Winter relapses into thinking he is worthless, seeks validation in unquestioning patriotism, and realigns himself with his abusive family by throwing himself into the battle. Nobody wants him to, in fact his parents still hate him for it, but whatever. His father dies and his mother blames him for it.

Meanwhile Turtle, Anemone, and Qibli are cooking up a solution to the battle problem. They have the idea to make everyone’s minds connect in a huge empathy wave for a few moments, which I think is a pretty interesting idea for what it’s worth. But then they teleport both armies back to their homes, and the spell sweeps Winter up with them, taking him out of the rest of the finale and bringing him to the Ice Kingdom. The characters say “whoops” but aren’t further concerned with the situation. It’s all a big laugh.

Let me remind you that Winter is currently considered not welcome on Icewing territory. His family, whom he was sent back with, is extremely abusive and vindictive. His friends know this. Said parents have previously arranged for him to be killed, and are still on record as wanting him dead. His friends KNOW this. And now he is alone with them and a gaggle of other royal Icewings who all are extremely pissed off at him for ruining their sacred trial site.

It is very possible that he is being torn apart and mauled by an enraged mob right now. He could be forced into captivity and flayed. Maybe the interim regent is sentencing him to death and getting the rope ready. There is a million different horrible things that could be happening to Winter right now, while he is trapped alone with people who hate him, things his friends would be reasonably able to anticipate. And nobody is doing anything to get him out of there, to suggest bringing him back, even though it would only take a single spoken sentence to do so! They aren’t even concerned!

Then the climax happens, strawberry thing and all, and we get the coup de grâce. After all is said and done, the group decides that Winter is untrustworthy, and that they must protect the secret of Darkstalker’s fate from him, because they fear if he knew he would kill Peacemaker.

Moon, who read Winter’s mind in book 6 and reached out to him about how the “ruthless Icewing warrior” persona in his head is a facade and how she sees he has a gentle and good heart... Moon, who in book 7 finds out about Winter’s secret deal to kill Glory and STILL trusts him, who calls out his bullshit to his face because she KNOWS how kind-hearted Winter is and that he would never resort to murder... Moon who, again, held his hand while he was dying... thinks that the dragon she has reminded of his compassionate nature time and time again would kill an innocent child.

This is disgusting. Moon believing that is so far off the mark with regards to anything this group has embodied or done for any of the last 4 books, that my only conclusion can be that these are different characters. Maybe the Nightwing library collapsed on top of original Moon, and when Darkstalker magiced her back to health she came back wrong or something. I don’t know.

So after all of this, Winter is left alone. He somehow escaped from the Ice Kingdom; luckily there is a timeskip so we can just gloss over the horrible situation he was put in by his friends. He thinks about Jade Mountain. He reflects on everything that happened, how his parents never really loved him... How they hated him so much they tried to kill him... How he despaired, but found solace in his friends who loved him for who he was.... How those friends then betrayed him too and magiced him away... How they didn’t care about what happened to him... And he decides he is done. He won’t bother going back. A few people, probably Sunny, reach out to tell him he is welcome back, but he says “it wouldn’t be fair to other Icewings if an exile took up a bed”. The decision isn’t hard to make, after all there is nothing left for him there. Everyone has written him off, moved on and left him behind.

Kinkajou visits sometimes, tries to stay in touch, but that’s just how she is. Maybe the others sent her to check on whether he’s going to become troublesome. They don’t trust him. Better to keep an eye on him, he might kill the baby.

With nowhere else to go, Winter moves to Sanctuary, a place for rejects like him. I picture him standing there, at the edge of a cliff staring blankly into the distance. He is completely alone; no one wants to go near him or talk to him beyond the bare necessities. He could probably make new friends with the Talons of Peace if he tried, but there is no point. Why should someone like him have friends? It wouldn’t work. They’d just decide he is too inconvenient to be around. Sooner or later they would just tell him to leave anyway. It's better not to try, so he doesn't get hurt again.

And slowly it dawns on him. His parents had been right all along. It was never them, or the others, it was him. He is the problem. The Icewings said it, Qibli said it, Moonwatcher said it. There is just something fundamentally wrong with him.

He is defective. He is unlovable. Nobody wants him. He will never be anything, or have anyone. And so he stands at the cliff, looking over the broken vase fragments of his life... This is who he is. Prince Winter. A mistake.

And quietly, where no one knows or cares, he does the only thing he has left to do... he begins to weep.

As it is written, the tale of Winter is the story of a boy who is told he is wrong for being alive. He closes his ears and tries to keep walking forward, desperate to prove that he is not an error, that he has merit. But this book comes out and it unmistakably says that he doesn’t. He is nothing, and he deserves to have nothing.

And I just cannot accept that.

Why did this have to happen?

I think that the author was really struggling with the ending of this book. I’ve said before how much of a corner she wrote herself into with such an invincible villain. I think she came up with the strawberry idea as a solution to this problem. But as she was writing it, the characters kept fighting her. It was not a natural solution, not a decision the characters—as they were established—would ever make.

So concessions had to be made to force the issue. Established traits had to be bent slightly to make this plot work. The farther she went, the worse it got. The concessions piled up and turned into contrivances. Eventually the characters were no longer acting like themselves. Their bonds got stretched too far and some snapped. It’s a very tragic pitfall that occurs with long-running series.

I think Sutherland must have also been tired. Writing an entire book is a monumental task, and writing 6 connected ones even moreso. She also comes out with these things really quickly. Maybe she was burnt out? Maybe she wanted to be done and her attention lapsed. Maybe that’s why she forgot that Moon knew about the disemboweling. It seems reasonable to believe when you consider that the next story arc would make a relatively clean break from the problems of this arc, especially with regards to the magic system.

But I don’t know what ultimately happened, so I can only speculate. I reiterate, I bear no ill will against Sutherland for writing this. Even if I kind of hate everything about this finale, and very vocally wish it would be different, I don’t want this examination to generate (or reawaken) any hatred towards her, or to attack her personally. I understand the pain of an artist who gets trapped with something for too long and has to find the means, any means, to see it through to the end. I criticize the story, but I could never hate anyone for that.

But for me, I do not consider this half of the book as part of the story. The characters act too unnaturally for it to have happened. So to me, it didn’t. We don’t know what happened, maybe Darkstalker is still out there. Maybe they dealt with him. Maybe what actually happened is my crappy and self-indulgent rewrite of the ending which I will never show to anyone because it would be really embarrassing.

But whatever actually ended up happening, I am sure Winter never ended up at that cliff, pondering how worthless and meaningless his life was. He is currently at Jade Mountain, surrounded by friends who love him, and bickering with Qibli about the correct solution to their advanced calculus assignment that is due tomorrow.

Is there anything left to say?

Probably.

I didn’t talk about Anemone yet. You know, in the epilogue she enchants herself a bracelet that makes her “not be so mean all the time”. I find that creepy. To me it reads as Anemone voluntarily brainwashing herself with magic to erase her negative traits instead of growing past them naturally because she finds them undesirable and wants to work to change for the better. I would ordinarily assume that this is an overreaction on my part, and I’m just reading the scene wrong. But no, we just got through a part where the heroes brainwashing someone is treated as an unequivocal good and worthy of celebration, so I think my reading may actually be spot on. Why are we letting the little kid alter her own brain without supervision? Hello? Tsunami? Someone intervene maybe? This cannot be healthy.

Turtle stands out to me as the one bright spot in all of this. He (and Peril, but she’s mostly out of focus) remain as the only main characters of this arc who don’t have any mind-boggling out-of-character moments or sudden streaks of uncharacteristic callousness. I really like the part where Qibli goes to free Turtle from his captivity and plans to give him an earful about the comically unhelpful messages he’s been sending him. But when Turtle asks if what he did was helpful, Qibli sees how beaten down and exhausted Turtle is, and wordlessly drops his frustration to tell him “Yeah, they were helpful.” That is the true Qibli shining through for a moment, showing that he cares about the well-being of his friends.

Do I hate the pairing of Qibli/Moonwatcher? No. Well, I DO hate how it happened in the book, and how the story tried to assassinate Winter’s character to resolve the love triangle and make it happen. I don’t hate it on principle though. If you are a fan of Qibli/Moonwatcher and want to write fanfics about it, please do! I absolutely encourage you to do that! Maybe you can fix this mess and turn it into something that’s actually properly handled!

Mightyclaws keeps the power that Darkstalker granted him past the finale. That means all the spells that Darkstalker cast are technically still active. Does that mean the Icewings have to wear earrings for the rest of their lives? Do they get sick again if they take them off? Is Peril forever cursed to think of Darkstalker as a cool old uncle and has to somehow reconcile how everyone else thinks of him? How did the Nightwings relinquishing their powers work, do they have to wear the earrings forever too now?

And there is one more thing to mention.

My confession

You may have already intuited this, if you’ve been following the content of my blog. It is very heavily skewed towards the first and second arcs of the series. I would now like to confess something.

When I read the second half of book 10, I found it so disillusioning, Winter’s fate so upsetting... that I put down the series then and there. And I haven’t picked it back up since.

That’s right, I have not read arc 3. I don’t know if that makes me a fake fan. I know pretty much everything that happens in it, the controversial twist at the end, Pyrrhia coming back into the story later, Snowfall getting brainwashed by a piece of jewelry until she cares about a plot that had nothing to do with her or the fate of the Icewings, etc..

It’s not out of malice, or because it’s a new continent. The opposite in fact; I would have greatly prefered a clean break with a new setting—Bug-themed dragons in a slightly more contemporary, developed environment sounds fascinating and full of potential. I don’t hate Pantala or the new characters.

I just... I can’t really do this again. I can’t handle the thought of Pyrrhia coming back post-Darkstalker, with Winter showing up and talking to these guys again like nothing happened, seeming like a different person, joking around with them like his entire character wasn’t dragged through a mountain of manure to make the plot bend a certain way. I think as long as this is the ending that the story is continuing from, seeing that would just make me miserable.

Maybe I will just stay in the parts of the story that I fell in love with. And imagine a version of reality in which Pantala is allowed to exist on its own, where Swordtail was the fourth POV character of arc 3, where Queen Wasp stayed the villain throughout, and Snowfall got her own legends book about how she reformed Icewing society and fixed all the shit that poisoned Winter’s life, so future generations don’t have to suffer through the same stuff he did.

~~~~~

If you’re still with me, thank you for reading this far. I think this is everything I ever thought about the finale of the second story arc, so now I never have to talk about it again. Writing this was difficult. I found it crushing at times. This will probably stand as the only overtly negative post I have ever made on this blog. I love Wings of Fire, and I want to celebrate it. To add to it, not tear it down.

I hope this wasn’t too boring, or painful, or frustrating, or soul-crushing to read through. I’ll see you later, hopefully with a more constructive post.