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variousqueerthings · 3 years ago

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Daniel LaRusso: A Queer Feminine Fairytale Analysis Part Three of Three

(another massive, massive thank you to @mimsyaf )

part 1

part 2

8. Queerness and femininity and masculinity and the colour red and *record breaks*

If we spin the record aaalll the way back to this paragraph: “…looking at what it is girls and women in fairytales have/don’t have, what they want, and how they’re going to get it. It’s about power (lack of), sexuality (repressed, then liberated), and men.” Reading Daniel as a repressed, bisexual boy in a society that doesn’t accept his desires it’s interesting looking at how he moves through the world of the Miyagi-verse, at how threatened other men are by him, at how obsessed they are with him.

He’s out in the symbolic woods and these large boys and men see him and decide for whatever plot reasons to come for him. And they are large and violent and attractive and apart from Johnny again, they don’t have the nebulous excuse of fighting over a girl and even that excuse dies by around the midpoint when Johnny kisses Ali just to get a rise out of Daniel. He’s not trying to “win her back,” he’s not even really looking at her. He’s just trying to get a reaction. They don’t have any of the fighters in Rocky’s excuse either of Daniel being a macho opponent.

You can read whatever subtext into TKK1 and TKK2 (which becomes especially tempting once CK confirmed that the guys he fought at seventeen have been thinking about him ever since – for thirty-five years), but TKK3 is where it’s really At in terms of obsession and lust and forbidden desires.

Silver is presented as both a handsome prince who saves Daniel and mentors him (where Miyagi is undoubtedly cast in a fatherhood role) and later on becomes twisted into a dark secret that Daniel has to keep, while he turns that thing that Daniel loves (karate, it’s… it’s karate… it’s also men, but it’s definitely karate, because karate makes him feel… things...) into an abusive, violent version of itself.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

But he’s also offering him something liberating. Whatever is going on in that nightclub scene is about something other than breaking Daniel down. Even the bloodied knuckles aren’t just about revenge. It’s about giving him something that he isn’t, in the end, willing to receive, at least not from Silver. In that roundabout, strange way of these feminine fairytales, it’s exploring hidden desires through the metaphor of karate.

Daniel wears red because it’s his colour. In the movies he wears red a lot. Often in scenes with violence in them (the beach/the hilltop in TKK1 and the date/the destruction of the dojo/the final fight in TKK2), but he also has a variety of shirts (and in TKK3 pants) that pop up all the way through the narrative. He wears a red jacket when he accepts Terry’s training, when he punches a guy in the face, and when he tries to get out of the training again (as badly as that goes).

Did anyone consciously think about red’s link to desire, obsession, and violence when they made these? Eh. But is it there symbolically? When he meets Johnny, when he fights Chozen, when he’s in emotionally fraught situations with Terry? Hell yeah.

Probably the most lust-and-violence infused red is that aforementioned punching-board-until-knuckles-bleed bit – not that I thought Terry was going to pull him in for a kiss, because I knew, logically, of course he wouldn’t right? There’s no way… is there? Or later on when Daniel punches that guy and ends up with blood all over his shirt and Terry once more grasps him, euphorically. Blood is violence. Blood is also desire. Red is Daniel’s colour, even though he doesn’t acknowledge it come Cobra Kai. (Maybe he just needs someone else - cough Johnny Lawrence cough - to inspire it in him again).

Daniel LaRusso’s narrative is exploring that most feminine of fairytale tropes: To want and be wanted by monsters and having to hide those desires.

“Maybe this time that strange churning in my stomach that feels like a mix of anticipation and fear will turn out good for me.” - Daniel’s mind.

At the end of the story, Daniel saves himself, with all of the strange mixed narratives around it, and the acknowledgement that the end of The Karate Kid Part Three isn’t satisfying and its aftermath will likely be delved into in the next season of Cobra Kai.

Nevertheless, he saves himself. Not from Silver or Kreese or Barnes, and not entirely, but he makes a decision not to give in to fear (and he continues to try and live by that decision, making it over and over again for the next thirty-five years, even when the return of Cobra Kai makes that difficult for him).

He doesn’t do it by being the strongest in the land or even through a lucky shot (although that too). He does it by refusing to be like the male antagonists that surround him, by telling them they have no power over him. The narrative isn’t just his getting lost in the forest and all the monsters he finds there, it’s about how he redefines power for himself within that forest.

He’s a man who isn’t violent, whose victories include helping out a girl whose ex-boyfriend just broke her radio, successfully doing the moves to a cultural dance he’s trying to learn, sitting with his father figure while he cries over the death of his own father, telling a girl that she’s just made her first friend, and breathing a sigh of relief that a tree that got broken has healed.

Daniel LaRusso is a good boy is the point!

Karate is a metaphor. It can turn into many things: A series of lessons learned about how to be his own man and take care of his own house, a respect for the history of the father teaching him and sharing his home and story with him, fear, desire, masculinity (and the different forms that can take).

When a tall, handsome stranger offers to teach him karate in the dark, without Daniel’s caretaker knowing how to help him, and twists that karate into something that hurts him - when he reclaims that, over and over, that means something too.

This man is fine and definitely isn’t carrying the weight of buried karate-based queer trauma - could a traumatised man do this? *stares blankly at a former tormentor as blood runs down his forehead*

9. In Conclusion Daniel Has Kissed Dudes… Symbolically… But We Can HC Literally:

So there’s Daniel and his coded feminine fairytale narrative. It’s all a series of fun coincidences.

1. Ralph Macchio is just Like That

2. Red. All the red.

3. large portion of his storyline is about lack of power. Yes, he regains that power by the end of the first and second movie through A Fight, but generally he is framed as powerless opposite these almost monstrously physically powerful boys/men. And in the third one it’s barely even about physical prowess (he’d still lose a real fight against Barnes or Silver) and more about regaining lost autonomy off the back of a manipulative, abusive relationship with an older guy.

4. The third movie in particular is narratively a mess, but if reimagined as a fairytale makes a lot of sense (because it’s secretly all about how karate is bisexuality and Daniel gets manipulated through that desire to be better at karate).

5. Queerness and femininity and themes about hidden desires that can only be approached sideways through couching those desires in symbolism: Handshake meme.

6. The fact that the more I think about it, the more feral I am for a Labyrinth AU.

7. To sum up over 5000 words of text: The inherent homoeroticism of wanting to be slammed against a locker by a bully, but extended over three movies and ever-more inventive ways of hurting pretty-boy-Daniel-LaRusso.

Johnny’s not going to be happy when he realises Daniel’s got other ex-rivals buried in his closet...

10. Some Other Stuff Aka The Laziest Referencing I’ll Ever Do

Further reading on trans Matrix

Further reading on masculinity and rape narrative in The Rape Of James Bond

Youtube Video from Pop Culture Detective (Sexual Assault Of Men Played For Laughs)

Some film/TV references in this: Dracula (Coppola), Princess Bride, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Labyrinth, The Matrix, Rocky, Princess And The Frog, Cinderella, Enchanted, Shape Of Water, Swamp Thing, Phantom of the Opera

Some fairytale references: Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Wolf And The Seven Little Kids, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Company of Wolves (Angela Carter), Through the Looking Glass, Princess Bride

Also referenced is Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel and the subsequent musical Funhome. Further thoughts on this by @thehours2002 and @jenpsaki:

https://thehours2002.tumblr.com/post/650033577171533824/daniel-larusso-and-fun-home-click-to-enlarge

https://jenpsaki.tumblr.com/post/650530225997971456/cobra-kai-fun-home-inspired-by-goldstargirls

My list of Cobra Kai meta posts

I wanted to delve into fairytale movies more, but then I was like “fuck, I have actual work to do,” but I was interested in the ways male and female characters are written in these stories:

The Last Unicorn, The Never-Ending Story, The Dark Crystal, Legend, and Stardust.

The Last Unicorn is an interesting one because she’s not really human, until she is. It’s more like The Little Mermaid (the fairytale, not the Disney film) in tone, and of course there’s a pretty substantiated rumour that Andersen wrote that one as a metaphor for falling in love with another man (who eventually got married).

Andersen in general is just fun to analyse as someone who popularized so many fairytales and exists as an ambiguously queer historical figure – might’ve been modern-day gay, bi, ace, but we’re just not sure. All your favourite fairytales can be read through the lens of queer loneliness and ostracization. Just like horror.

Anyway I didn’t go into the whole Little-Mermaid-Last-Unicorn transformation bit so much as the Monstrous-Desires bit, but I think there could be something to that too, with monsters representing otherhood and all. Stardust is a kinda-almost-this, except she sticks to her human form and all is okey-dokey by the end, she’s allowed to marry the handsome man and be a star.

The Never-Ending Story has Atreyu and Bastian and because of a lack of female characters, an interesting bond between the two of them, but mainly Atreyu is absolutely a go-gettem Hero Type and it’s just interesting to see how Bastian relates to him as both an audience insert, but also eventually as his own character in that world.

The Dark Crystal contains certain… androgynous elements of feminine and masculine coded characteristics in the main character because of how he’s not human, but also they do have a “female” version of his species that he needs to go save (and bring back to life) by the end, so in a way it’s both more and less heteronormative in its characters.

Legend sees another example of a monster (literally called Darkness and looking like a traditional devil) trying to seduce a princess through promises of power, and she “goes along with it” in order to trick him and succeeds in that trick, but is ultimately saved by the male lead.

In conclusion: I don’t even have Shrek in this.

#daniel larusso #terry silver #the karate kid #the karate kid part three #cobra kai #ck #cobra kai meta #and in conclusion... brain brain brain

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joneswuzhere · 3 years ago

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hello join me in thinking about some books and authors that are, or might be, part of s5′s intertextuality

5.10 in particular offered specific shout outs, and also u know i’m always wondering what might be ahead so i have some ideas on that:

- first, as mentioned in a previous ask post, i know i wasn’t alone in keeping an eye out for 5.10 parallels to the lost weekend (1945) the film that gave episode 1.10 its name and several themes - or to the 1944 book by charles r jackson which the film is based on

- s5 has not been shy about revisiting earlier seasons, especially s1. altho i feel that 1.10′s parallels to the lost weekend centered characters other than jughead (mostly betty), a 1.10-5.10 connection involving jughead and themes from jackson’s story (addiction, writers block, self reflection) seemed v possible if not inevitable

- but like,, , for a hot minute after the ep, i was really stumped on understanding how anything from the book or film could apply, even tho the pieces were almost all there

- jackson’s protagonist don birnam goes thru and comes out the other side of a harrowing days-long drinking binge that could be compared to jughead’s one-night hallucinogenic writing retreat

- but jughead is struggling primarily with traumatic memories, not addiction and self control like birnam. and tho drinking activates birnam’s creativity, it paralyzes his writing as he gets lost in fantasies; he’s never published anything. jughead’s drug trip recreates circumstances that already helped him write one successful book. even the rat that startles him mid-high doesn’t line up with birnam’s withdrawal vision of a dying mouse, symbolic of his horror at his own self-destruction thru alcohol

- and maybe the most visible discordance: in the film there’s a romantic motif around a typewriter. first it’s an object of shame; birnam’s failure to write, tied up with his drinking, makes him flee his relationship. he tries to pawn the typewriter for booze money and finally a gun when shooting himself feels easier than getting sober. but with the help of relentless encouragement from girlfriend helen, he quits drinking, commits to her, and focuses on typing out the story he’s dreamt of writing. rd goes so far to avoid setting any comparable scenario that jughead has brought a wholeass printer into the bunker so there can still be a physical manuscript to cover in blood by the end, even without his own typewriter. the subtle detail of his laptop bg image is a little less noticeable than his avoidance of betty’s gift

- tabitha might be closer to a parallel than jughead is, but she’s still no helen. both refuse to take advantage of the inebriated men in their care, but birnam takes advantage of helen, financially and emotionally. jughead refused a loan from the tate family and now has resolved to deal with his shit before he considers a relationship with tabitha. instead of helen’s relentless and unwelcomed attempts to get birnam sober, tabitha reluctantly agrees to help jughead trip safely bondage escape notwithstanding. she even helps him get the drugs.

- whatever potentials exist for parallels to jackson’s story, they were not explored for this episode. ok so why tf am i even talking about this? what was there instead?

- i have arrived at the point

- s5 has been revisiting s1, not directly but with a twist. and jughead’s agent samm pansky is back. u may recall, pansky is named for sam lansky

- jughead’s trip-thru-trauma is a story device tapped straight from lansky’s book ‘broken people’

- lansky is like if a millenial john rechy wrote extremely LA-flavored meta but just about himself no jk very like a modern successor to charles r jackson. both play with the boundary between memoir and fiction. lansky is gay; jackson wrote his lost weekend counterpart as closeted and remained closeted himself until only a few years before his death. both write with emotional clarity and self-scrutiny on the experiences of addiction, sobriety, and the surrounding issues of shame and self worth

- i feel like a fool bc after this ep i had been thinking about de quincey and his early writings on addiction (c.1800s), but i failed to carry the thought in the other direction, to contemporary writers in the genre, to make this connection sooner

- lansky’s second book, broken people, follows narrator ‘sam’, mid-20s, super depressed, hastled by his agent to write a decent follow-up to his first book, but too busy struggling with his self-worth and baggage from several past relationships. desperate, he takes up an offer to visit a new age shaman who promises to fix everything wrong with him in a matter of days. not to over simplify it but he literally spends a weekend doing psychedelics and hallucinating about his exes. jughead took note

- unless u want me to hurl myself into yet another dissertation about queer jughead, i think his parallel to sam - who, unlike jughead, has considerable financial privilege and whose anxieties center on body dysmorphia, hiv scares, and his own self-centeredness - pretty much ends there

- But,, the gist of the book could not be more harmonius with a major theme shared by the 2 films that inform the actual hallucination part of jughead’s bunker scene: mentally reframing past relationships to get closure + confronting trauma head-on in order to move forward

- so that’s neat. what other book and author stuff was in 5.10?

- stephen king and raymond carver get name dropped. i’m passingly familiar with them both but u bet i just skimmed their wiki bios in case anything relevant jumped out

- like jughead, carver was a student (later a lecturer) at the iowa writers workshop. also the son of an alcoholic and one himself

- i recall carver’s ‘what we talk about when we talk about love’ is what jughead was reading in 2.14 ‘the hills have eyes’ after he finds out about the first time betty kissed archie (at that time he does not respond as would any of carver’s characters)

- this collection of carver stories deals especially with infidelity, failings of communication, and the complexities and destructiveness of love. to unashamedly quote the resource that is course hero, ‘carver renders love as an experience that is inherently violent bc it produces psychic and emotional wounds.’ very fun to wonder about the significance of this collection within the s2 episode and in jughead’s thoughts. and maybe now in the context of the s5 state of relationships. or, at least, the state of jughead’s writing as seen by his agent

- anyway pansky doesn’t want carver, he wants stephen king

- i have too much to say about gerald’s game in 5.10, that’s getting its own post someday soon

- lol wait king’s wife is named tabitha uhhh king’s wiki reminded me of his childhood experience that possibly inspired his short story ‘the body’ (+1986 movie ‘stand by me’) when he ‘apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train tho he has no memory of the event’

- no mention of that in this rd episode but memories of a train could be interesting to consider with the imagery that intrudes on jughead’s hallucination. i still feel like it was a truck but the lights and sounds he experiences may be a train

- ok now we’re in the speculation part of today’s segment

- if jughead’s traumatic memory involves trains, then it’s possible this plot will take influence from la bête humaine <- this 1938 movie is based on the 1890 novel by french writer émile zola. this story deals with alcoholism and possessive jealousy in relationships, sometimes leading to murder. huh, kind of like carver. zola def comes down on the nature side of the nature-vs-nuture bad seed question (tho i should say he approaches this with great or maybe just v french compassion). also i can’t tell if this is me reaching but, something about la bête humaine reminds me of king’s ‘secret window’ which we’ve observed to be at least a style influence on jughead post time jump

- but wow a late-19th century french writer would be a random thing to drop into this season, right? then again zola also wrote about miners, which we’ve learned are an important part of this town’s history + whatever hiram is up to this time. and most notably, zola wrote ‘j’accuse...!’ an open letter in defense of a soldier falsely accused and unlawfully jailed for treason: alfred dreyfus. archie’s recent army trouble comes to mind.

- since the introduction of old man dreyfuss (plausibly Just a nod to close encounters actor richard dreyfuss, but also when is anything in this show Just one thing) i’ve been wondering if these little things could add up to a season-long reference to zola’s writings. but i had doubts and didn’t want to speak on it too soon bc, u know, it’s weird but is it weird enough for riverdale??

- however,,,

- (come on, u knew where i was going with this)

- a24′s film zola just came out. absolutely no relation to the french writer, it’s not based on a book but an insane and explicit twitter thread by aziah ‘zola’ wells about stripping and? human trafficking?? this feels ripe for rd even outside the potentials here for the lonely highway/missing girls plot.

- that would add up to a combination of homage that feels natural to this show

- anyway pls understand i’m just having fun speculating, most of this is based on nothing more concrete than the torturous mental tendril ras has hooked into my skull pls let go ras pls let go

#accompanying image has no meaningful organization it's just there to make me look insane. enjoy #riverdale speculation #filmref #but books #adhd has me like. this is Not the post i've been trying to write for weeks but my brain gave me no choice

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lemongogo · 3 years ago

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1/ THANK U FOR THE DETAILED REPLY<333 everything u said was exactly on point,, the way that there is no 'wrong' way to feel and different emotions motivate different characters and they are all treated with the same vailidity ?? BUT IT CIRCLES BACK TO TANJIROUS COMPASSION AND JST HOW SIMPLE KINDNESS CAN CHANGE SOMEONES PERSPECTIVE SO MUCH,, im sorry idk if im making sense but i also wanted to talk about how kny shows diff characters ways of processing grief an how they have moved on--

2/ --or never realy moved on. some forget, some never forget,, and i just realy admire the theme,, or ig the message tht u have to keep on moving but u can carry what others have left behind with you,, LMFAO again idk if im making sense but yeah what i said before abt diff motvations fr diff characters and none of them being inherently wrong (like shinobus anger) is just so good. I ALSO WANTED TO ASK,, what is ur fav sibling relationship in kny i must know tysm i love u have a nice day !!!!

NOO THANK UU OMG <3 so srry i take forever 2 respond but its so much fun to hear what u have to say abt it and thank u for indulging me 🙈🙈 BUT YEASS I LOVE THAT SO MUCHH i love how it explores grief thru a multi-faceted, nuanced lens as opposed to some binary of right or wrong.

the first thing that comes to mind is how different characters refer to the demons themselves, notably with the mt. natagumo arc . prime example being tanjirou viewing rui and demonhood as being this understandably miserable experience punctuated by grief and hardship,, and while he isn't one to forgive them for the trauma they've caused, he can also understand the pain they've gone through. meanwhile giyuu views their existence w hatred & disdain , but is none the less for it u know. like the story makes it a point to validate his and shinobu's contempt alongside tanjirou and kanae's more receptive viewpoints . its soo interesting .. and theres so much to be said abt how, even within the same circles of thought, there's so much variation to be explored. not to bring up sanemi and genya w every conversation, but i like how their story demonstrates the different ways people handle grief ; two opposite paths that stem from the same initial event

AND OMG NWW you are making sm sense to me .. especially w tanjirou's compassion YEAAH that stuff legit makes me soo mushy like . idk,, its so infectious . its my favorite protagonist model for sureee . and i love how his compassion never comes at the expense of anyones wellbeing, either. i feel like its easy to miswrite this sort of character type as someone who forgives ALL despite the fact that forgiveness isnt always the right decision. not for everyone, at least. and so for tanjirou to be the kind of character to provide appropriate compassion and empathy is .. really nice. if that makes sense .

also like "you have to keep on moving but you can carry what others have left beind w u" LITERALLY .LITERALLYSYYY pulls a giyuu and does this

like having recently finished this chapter , that part of ur message is soo sad like yeah. i rly liked what sabito and tanjirou had to say in this part . the whole "isn't what sabito entrusted to you, keeping you two together?" being followed up by, "they're still with you, giyuu" MAN. MANNNNNNNNNNNN. $*#U%)u3{@0(Ro467676(#)$9oelk.,...............................................................

also this is getting so long omg im so sry. but my favorite kny siblings have to be daki and gyuutarou :-) !! sanemi and genya are a close second :3

ive never been a big fan of sibling relationships in media tbh . they always feel so unnatural to me and like . uncomfortably forced. and i knoww thats like just due to my own experiences (and is not to say there aren't people w good sibling relationships) but its nice to see kny explore these less-than-perfect dynamics, especially when the resolution isn't something that can immediately be remedied.

kny chapter 96 is my favorite for this particular reason !!

i love tanjirou's response to it all, as well as gyuutarou's own reflection in ch.97., AAUWh,whjk its soo good . i knoww so many other stories have written this exact same thing (and way before kny too) but idk !!!!! i just rly love how gotouge handles these relationships yk

but what about u !! whats your fav sibling relationship in kny? but omgg thank you so much i hope u have a nice day too <3

#OK but w that being said like. i still rly enjoy tanjirou and nezuko's relationship and its like. new for me #bc usually i see smth like that and i like. immediately feel distanced or uninterested but #even they have a really good connection #i like the variety we get here too .like siblings who are close like nez+tanj #or kyoujurou or senjurou #vs like . sanemi and genya or muichirou and yuuichirou or yoriichi and michikatsu #which like . even if they did reconcile at a later point (mui and yui) it was still rly impactful and nice to read abt #kny #kny 96 #kny 131 #kny spoilers #kny manga #also so sry imlike. so tired i tried reading it over 2 fix the parts that r incomprehensible but like #ummm...... <3 i hope this makes sense #asktag #anonymous

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terramythos · 4 years ago

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TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 29 of 26

Title: The House in the Cerulean Sea (2020)

Author: TJ Klune

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Comedy, Romance, Found Family, LGBT Protagonist, Third-Person

Rating: 10/10

Date Began: 10/13/2020

Date Finished: 10/18/2020

Linus Baker, a forty-year-old caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY), lives a solitary and mundane life. But when he’s summoned by Extremely Upper Management and given a top-secret case, everything changes. Linus is sent to the classified Marsyas Island and tasked with investigating an orphanage housing six dangerous magical children-- including the Antichrist. He is to live among the residents for one month, record his observations, and report back to the organization. No more, no less.

The master of the house, Arthur Parnassus, is a mysterious and enigmatic man. But Linus soon learns that Arthur will do anything to protect his wards. As Linus grows closer to Arthur and the children, a secret from the past and prejudice of the present threaten to destroy the orphanage and their way of life. Linus must decide if he can abandon the world he knows in order to help the ones that need it the most.

"Fire and ash!” Lucy bellowed as he paced back and forth. “Death and destruction! I, the harbinger of calamity will bring pestilence and plague to the people of this world. The blood of the innocents will sustain me, and you will all fall to your knees in benediction as I am your god.”

He bowed.

The children and Mr. Parnassus clapped politely. Theodore chirped and spun in a circle.

Linus gaped.

“That was a lovely story, Lucy,” Mr. Parnassus said. “I especially liked your use of metaphors. Keep in mind that pestilence and plague are technically the same thing, so it did get a little repetitious at the end, but other than that, quite impressive. Well done.”

Minor spoilers and content warning(s) under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Semi-detailed discussions of child abuse and trauma. Internalized fatphobia (challenged). Structural discrimination, and hatred/prejudice associated with that, some of it internalized.

I'm going to have a hard time reviewing this book, because it was so goddamn good I don’t think I’ll do it justice in a few short paragraphs. So here’s the fast version: The House in the Cerulean Sea was a fucking delight to read from the first page. It’s full of genuine humor, magic, and charm, while being just this side of heart-wrenching. Though geared toward adults, it’s the first novel I’ve read in a long time that captures that childlike enthusiasm I used to have when reading a good fantasy book. It takes place in a world with magic (obviously), but it’s 98% character-driven. Both the main plot and the (queer!) romantic subplot are woven together so well that neither feel tacked on or lacking. The found family hit me in the emotions again and again and again. I read books out loud, and I spent the last third of this book struggling because I kept fucking crying and having to take regular breaks before continuing. And then I went through the whole book to find a good quote for this review and ended up fucking crying again. So yeah.

Ok. Got that off my chest. Usually in these reviews I talk about what I liked and then what didn't work for me or confused me. The good news (?) is I have zero complaints or critiques on this one. So you just get to hear me gushing about it for a while.

Since this is a character-driven book that’s where I’ll start. Linus Baker, the protagonist, is great. Let me just say I love speculative fiction books starring older characters. At forty, Linus isn’t old, but it feels like the majority of spec fic stars people under thirty. Linus is also a conspicuously ordinary guy; prim and proper to a fault, no magic, oblivious in many ways (including to his own loneliness), but with a hidden sense of justice and protectiveness for people that comes out more and more. His development over the course of the novel and how much he grows to love and care for the other characters is just so good. The writing draws attention to this through repeated phrases and jokes one doesn’t expect to make a comeback (more on that later). Seeing him come out of his shell and stand up for what’s right is cathartic as hell. As a side note, it’s also nice to have a fat protagonist who struggles with his self-image but gets warm affirmation and support from his family and love interest.

Arthur Parnassus, the deuteragonist and said love interest, is more of an enigma. A lot of his motivation and behavior makes sense once you get his Tragic Backstory (TM), and I think this will be a fun book to reread based on that. I picked up on some of it before the reveal, but not everything. But without spoiling it, I do love seeing an older (mid-forties) father figure who would do literally anything to make sure the children on the island have the care and love they need. Seeing his patient love and acceptance of them tugs my heartstrings. Maybe I’m a bit of a sap. Linus and Arthur’s obvious mutual crush on each other is also really cute, okay. There’s something about older queer people finding love that makes me smile.

And the children are great too, of course. I really liked each of them and thought they were all unique and interesting. My favorites are probably Lucy the six-year-old Antichrist, Sal the were-Pomeranian (his arc just really hit home for me), and Talia the gnome. They all have such distinct and fun personalities, and seeing them interact is great and often hilarious. I’m not very paternal, but I love seeing children with sad/abusive pasts blossom into their best selves with love, guidance, and support. It’s uh, a little personal. I’d be remiss not to mention Zoe, the resident island sprite, who brings a whole lot of personality and rounds off the group.

When I say the story is character-driven, I mean it. While a fantasy novel, there’s not any significant violence or action in the story (except for maybe one scene if you squint). The House in the Cerulean Sea is carried by its characters, interactions, and worldbuilding. The humor and inherent charm helps too -- and manages to do so without ever feeling trite. I can’t help but admire that. I was never bored; I honestly enjoyed every page because I liked the characters so much. Not to say there isn’t an overarching conflict with the whole DICOMY thing, but most of the focus is Linus struggling and coming to terms with his discoveries-- about the others and himself, and how he can make a difference on a grand scale. To me that kind of stuff is captivating. And boy does seeing someone find the place they belong get me. As I said, found family is a big thing in this book.

Aside from that, the writing is just super; it literally had me laughing from the first page. I can’t believe the fucking lemur joke came back at the end, too. But on that subject, I love that this book utilizes recurring jokes and phrases to show Linus’ character development. In particular, “see something, say something” and “don’t you wish you were here?” have VERY specific meanings to Linus at the beginning of the story, and over time transform into the polar opposite. I’m holding myself back because I don’t want to spoil shit, but if you read it you’ll see what I mean. There’s also a lot of meaningful callbacks to certain dialogue earlier in the story and I eat that kind of stuff up. But even small details, like the early quip about Linus forgetting his umbrella, come back to deliver an emotional gutpunch near the end. So thanks for that, Mr. Klune.

The book really takes a turn in the second half of the story, which is a tad darker. Avoiding the Actual Spoilers, this is where prejudice and hatred of the outside world become a bigger part of the story. We learn what’s really at stake, and that this wonderful found family in the first half is threatened by a world that hates and fears them. Boy does that shit get emotional REAL quick. Yes the allegory is obvious. No, that’s not a bad thing. Ultimately, The House in the Cerulean Sea becomes a story about love, hope, and change; and boy does that shit strike my gay little heart right where it hurts.

If you’re looking for a (literal) magical pick-me-up (ignore my comment about crying a whole lot) with INTENSE found family vibes and a side helping of queer mlm romance, dear God read The House in the Cerulean Sea. I don’t think I did it justice in this review; just trust me, it’s real good. My only complaint is that it ends; I want more, damn it!

#taylor reads #2020 reading challenge #BONUS ROUND #10/10 #i added content warnings right under the cut. idk if i will do that consistently but why not #anyway this book wrecked me

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cupidmarwani-archive · 4 years ago

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CISHETS DNI //

Just because Eddie can’t enjoy the day doesn’t mean he’s going to take it away from his son. He’d do anything for Christopher, that’s no secret or surprise, and if that means spending the evening dealing with his flashbacks alone, he’s more than okay with that. Christopher deserves to have fun like everyone else- he deserves good food and a bottle of soda and a blanket spread out on his school’s football field while he watches their firework show. Buck agreed to take him before Eddie could even ask because he always knows. At some point, he’s going to have to do something about how much his heart aches every time Buck does something that makes their lives better without a second thought.

“It’s not a party without s’mores,” Buck says seriously, throwing a bag of jumbo marshmallows into the cart. They’re going to be eating at the school when they go, not long into the evening, but the s’mores are a treat for when they come home after the fireworks are over. Buck said this morning that it was important that Eddie get to be a part of something today, and hip-checked him as he flipped a pancake. “I promise I’ll teach you how to make the best ones, Chris.”

All the supplies, including skewers, are together, which makes the grocery trip a little easier. Unfortunately, however, that’s the seasonal section, which Eddie would do anything to get out of. It’s too much. The flag is printed on everything, from paper plates and napkins to apparel with a silhouetted solider on it, alongside a cursive “God Bless the Troops.” Eddie kind of wants to buy it just to light it on fire, but that’s a waste of money and time. Burning things isn’t going to erase his trauma or his anger. He glares at a hat emblazoned with “USA.” It reminds him of the recruiters at his school who promised that college would be so much easier after he served.

Buck glances at him as he considers a bag of candy. There’s worry written all over his face, but it’s gone almost as soon as it appears, and Buck says they need to go to the snack aisle right away. Christopher nods seriously and walks alongside his cart, fast enough to get them away, but slow enough that Chris has no trouble keeping up. At the very end of the aisle, however, something catches Eddie’s eyes. Ear plugs. They’re probably not that great, since they’re $5 on an impulse buy rack, but they’re better than nothing, so Eddie throws them into the cart as well. It’s not a big deal. Buck doesn’t make it one.

Most of the people in the store are dressed patriotically, wearing red white and blue if not outright flags. Shiny head pieces sway with the motion of their walking, flag patterned shorts stand out bright against the mostly beige color scheme of the floor and walls. It’s a little too much. Eddie pointedly doesn’t look at any of them, instead watching Christopher debate the merits of getting pringles instead of ruffles.

He flinches when something touches him, only to realize a moment later that it’s just Buck. His hand is light on Eddie’s hip, just touching as a way to bring him back to the moment. He’s safe here. These people don’t understand, but it’s not up to Eddie to make them, and he’ll be back home in twenty minutes, anyways. He’ll spend a few hours with his boys and it’ll be fine.

For the rest of the shopping trip, and probably the day, he’s quiet. It’s hard to put his feelings into words. Everyone is celebrating the country, regardless of the flaws inherent to its system, and using the military to do it. With them, Eddie is still the pawn he was overseas. Participating in a game he didn’t want to play, hurting people and watching his friends die for a cause he doesn’t know anything about, and left with bullet wounds in his skin, PTSD, and the faces of soldiers who will never open their eyes again. There’s nothing he could say that would feel enough to express all that in a succinct, non-confrontational way, so he processes it to the best of his ability internally. Frank would be proud. He doesn’t engage with those who give him and his clear stormy disposition a look, nor does he look at the red, white and blue mass-produced cupcakes that Chris begs him for. He says no, but mollifies Christopher with the promise of licorice.

The checkstand line is long, so Eddie picks Christopher up and holds him on his hip. He’s getting a little big for it, doesn’t usually give in to being carried anymore, but walking around the store can take a lot of energy and he’s clearly getting tired now. It makes Eddie feel a little better, too. He’s at home, he has his son, and he has Buck, who insisted on footing the bill for the snacks since “I promised Chris we’d get them, and you paid for the tickets to the school show, Eddie.” It’s almost alright.

But then they’re paying, the checker bagging up their snacks and making polite conversation. She doesn’t work late nights, which is when Eddie usually has a chance to do his shopping, so he doesn’t recognize her off the bat. She’s friendly enough though, laughing at a joke Buck makes until she picks up the ear plugs from the belt. With one look at Christopher’s child-size crutches in the cart, then at him in Eddie’s arms, she smiles in that patronizing “oh a special kid” way.

“The fireworks too loud for you, sweetie?”

“They’re for Daddy,” Christopher corrects cheerfully,

She gives Eddie a weird look, but doesn’t comment on it. instead, she finishes up scanning their items and returns her attention to Buck. “Your total is $34.67, would you like to round up to $35 to support our troops overseas? Every five dollars sends a home cooked meal to a soldier in Iraq.”

Buck looks at Eddie, the way he always does when it comes to these things. They talked about it, once. How most active-duty military funds are a scam. Eddie shakes his head.

“They don’t allow non-rations. Don’t.”

The checker seems irritated now.

“What’s your problem, man? Do you like, hate America?”

Buck jams his card into the reader to finish this interaction quickly.

“I hate people profiting off the images of soldiers, who are usually just cogs in a machine that serves to hurt innocent people because the government said so.”

Now the person in line behind them decides to join in, and Eddie wishes he could have just kept his mouth shut for once in his life. But that’s not the way he was raised, and this is a touchy enough subject to send his self control out the window.

“The troops fight for your freedom, son. Show some respect.”

Eddie turns around and narrows his eyes at the old man, wearing a tacky flag shirt. He feels a little cornered, can’t wait to get out of here, but he also knows exactly how satisfying it’ll be to open his mouth,

“I’m a fucking vet, man. I know what I’m talking about. You wanna talk about respect, I served overseas and nearly died getting my friends to safety more than once. Shut your fucking mouth.”

Chris cheerfully pulls dog tags out of his own little striped tee shirt. Eddie gave them to him shortly after they moved here, as though it’ll erase their painful connotations. Christopher has always thought they’re cool, and shows them off gleefully without really getting how tense things are at the moment,

“He has a silver star,” Chris adds smugly.

At that, Eddie leaves before things can escalate more. He needs air. His chest is hurting and this is exactly why he hates going out today, of all days. None of these people ever know what they’re talking about, what they’re really glorifying. What their fucking fireworks are doing to everyone they allegedly care so much about.

A few minutes later, Buck joins them. They sit there quietly on the bench for a while before Eddie decides to get up and go to the truck. He doesn’t need to defend himself, he thinks bitterly. Buck isn’t mad, Christopher isn’t mad. But it still sucks that this always happens when he says no to donating to those bullshit projects.

In the truck however, Buck holds his hand over the center console, and gives him a reassuring smile that helps his shoulders feel a little less tense.

#buddie #eddie diaz #mine #this is kinda rushed bc my mom says I gotta leave but here we go

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octerminal · 4 years ago

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I’ve talked before about how Nadia being Earthborn is the central reason she’s renegade leaning, but I really want to get into it again because I’ve been listening to Hadestown a lot recently and that always makes me think of Nadia because the musical touches on how traumatizing poverty is. And also just because, well, I always want to talk about Nadia.

But before I can do that, I have to talk about a few other things first.

(This is going to be niche and also super self-indulgent, but it’s my blog, so who cares. Note that because of what both Hadestown and the Earthborn background entail, this is going to get slightly political. But again, it’s my blog, so who cares.)

Generally speaking, Mass Effect has an issue with downplaying trauma. Ashley, Tali, Garrus, and James all go through the traumatic experience of being sole (or almost sole) survivors. Tali goes through this twice, because the comics show that before she even met Shepard she lost the team she’d been traveling with. (And that’s not even counting the fact she also loses a chunk of her team on Freedom’s Progress. They use this trope with her a lot.) Liara loses her mother in the first game and she has almost no reaction. Shepard dies in the beginning of the second game and spends the rest joking about it, with very few opportunities to express anything but humor over the situation.

People respond to trauma differently, and the game is also told primarily from Shepard’s point of view, so consequently we only see what Shepard sees. All of these characters likely grieved in private, and they definitely do carry scars (literal and figurative) from what they’ve gone through. But I also think that Mass Effect likes making characters go through objectively traumatic things without fully considering how someone might act coming out of it. In fairness, that’s the fun of fanfic, and I also do think everyone on the Normandy has some degree of experience in compartmentalizing because they simply don’t have the time to sit down with their feelings. (A lot of them are also just averse to doing this.)

But exploring that trauma is what I’m interested in the most, and that’s how I approached Nadia. Earthborn is my favorite background for that reason. It’s not a single event that’s shaped their life thereafter, but a sustained stressful environment they endure for years and only escape once they sign up with the Alliance. And in that regard, Nadia rather sees it as trading one cage for another, but that’s neither here nor there.

Like, to go back to Hadestown (I swear I’m not going to write Hadestown meta on this blog), “When the Chips are Down” is one of my favorite numbers because it so accurately describes Nadia’s response to poverty. “How can you expect me to care about another person and put their wellbeing above my own, when doing that will result in my own death? How can you expect me to trust another person, when that could result in my own death? How are you going to lecture me on having no morals when if I had prioritized morality, I never would have survived?” (This is something I love bouncing off Kaidan, but I’ll get to that later.)

In other words, and this is an incredibly obvious thing to say, poverty is traumatizing and violent. It is an incredibly violent thing to put another human being through, to make them worry for their basic safety, to live their day to day in a constant limbo of uncertainty that permeates every facet of their life. Will you be able to eat today? Will you be able to sleep in a safe environment? Can you trust this person you’ve never met? Will trusting them endanger what little safety you’ve managed to achieve? How much money do you have? How long can you make that money last? Where will you be tomorrow? How about the day after?

This is something that leaves its mark on anyone it touches. It’s hard enough for an adult to plan for the future when they don’t have the luxury of knowing how they’ll even survive the week; when you’re a child, and that sort of stress is all that you’ve known, how do you even imagine a better life when you’ve known nothing different?

Before I get any further, I want to pause for a moment. Something that’s always been curious to me are the codex entries for Earth. Here’s a portion of ME1′s codex:

Here’s a portion of ME3′s codex:

(Written transcripts of the complete codex entries at the links.)

In both of them, they talk about how humanity is in a new golden age. A lot of pollution and common diseases have been eliminated. The colonies have brought in more resources. There's even been some correction to the damage early climate change caused. Then the Fire Nation—I mean, Reapers, attacked and ruined all of this. Except, take a closer look at ME1′s codex:

“While every human enjoys longer and better life than ever, the gap between rich and poor widens daily. [...] Less fortunate regions have not progressed beyond 20th century technology, and are often smog-choked, overpopulated slums.”

This seems incompatible with the idea of Earth being in a golden age. How can Earth be thriving if the class disparity is growing, not narrowing? How can Earth be thriving if entire swaths are still "smog-choked” and using centuries old outdated technology?

It’s not incompatible if the idea is that Earth has entered a golden age only for the ones who can afford it. And this is the reality Earthborn Shepards were raised in: the idea that their suffering is an unimportant, insignificant underbelly to an otherwise “prospering” homeworld.

So, resuming with that in mind: the way Nadia sees it is that to allow poverty to exist is an inherent societal failure that reflects on the government. This is why Nadia has no loyalty to the Alliance, and why she doesn’t trust them. This is why she subsequently has no loyalty to the Council, and why she doesn’t trust them, either. It doesn’t matter that the Alliance and the Council weren’t personally responsible for her childhood, because they’re still governments. She knows that governments will lie and exploit and allow for people like her to fall through the cracks if it will benefit them. She knows they will broadcast only the best of what they have to offer while conveniently pretending people like her don’t exist.

Like, personal politics aside, as shown above with the codex entries, this is just...canon. And Thane’s loyalty highlights poverty on the Citadel through Mouse and the concept of “duct rats,” so we know that it exists there, too. How the Council presumably feels about poverty on their station is outlined if you speak to Avina on the Citadel in the second game:

AVINA: Asari futurists believe poverty cannot be eliminated without “cornucopia” technology, which will create anything the user desires. Such technology is unknown outside science fiction.

Essentially: yeah, unfortunately, poverty exists on the station, but what can you do? Believing poverty is avoidable is actually utopian and therefore unrealistic, sorry!

But when you meet Anoleis on Noveria as Earthborn, he can literally tell you poverty doesn’t exist on Sur’Kesh. (And sure, he could be lying, and we have no proof either way. It doesn’t erase the fact that, at the very least, the existence of widespread poverty is something that even a corrupt and money embezzling salarian thinks is an easy jab.)

ANOLEIS: My homeworld is clean. Poverty is non-existent. If you take some perverse pride in that overheated, acid-washed slum, that is your business.

There’s nothing about the Alliance and poverty that I know of¹, which makes sense considering the main branch of the Alliance we see throughout the games is its military branch. There are still plenty of instances in the trilogy where the Alliance does exploit the vulnerable, or attempts to cover up their self-inflicted shortcomings. An obvious one is with Kaidan and Conatix; Kaidan literally tells you the Alliance is the one who “made mistakes.” That in their haste, they allowed a man to brutalize children for the sake of research. And when it backfired, they sealed the documents and pretended it never happened.

UNC: The Negotiation is one of my favorite ME1 missions for this reason, too—it highlights a part of the Alliance the series doesn’t really focus on otherwise. Darius tells you that the entire reason he’s operating in the region at all is because the Alliance is the one who set him up there.

DARIUS: You see this gun? This is your gun. Your military set me up here, and now it wants to pretend it doesn’t know me! But I know the truth. The Alliance needed me here! So treat me with the respect I deserve!

SHEPARD: You said we set you up. Did the Alliance give you weapons?

DARIUS: After the batarians were driven out of the Verge, the Alliance wanted to stabilize the region. I had the strongest syndicate in the area. They gave me the weapons and money I needed to take over.

After the mission, Hackett implies the entire reason he sent renegade Shepard to cover a diplomatic negotiation is because he expected and wanted them to kill Darius, because he was now more trouble than he was worth.

HACKETT: I’m sorry that you were unable to negotiate with Darius peacefully. His death is regrettable. Nevertheless, the resulting chaos will create a power vacuum that makes future raids upon our miners unlikely.

SHEPARD: You didn’t think I’d negotiate with him. You wanted me to kill him.

HACKETT: Sometimes extreme measures must be taken to ensure humanity’s safety. Or did you think you were the only one willing to break the rules to get the job done?

(Link, so you can watch the mission yourself.)

None of this is me saying the Council and the Alliance have no redeemable features whatsoever, or that they have never contributed positively to galactic wellbeing. It’s just me citing instances in canon that support why Nadia has the opinion she does of them, and why she’s not exactly incorrect in having them.

So, to loop this back around to Kaidan? As I said, he’s not a stranger to government-level negligence. But Kaidan had a much different reaction than Nadia did, and this is something that absolutely fascinates her once she finds out.

Before that, though: the two of them don’t really hit it off in the beginning—though they’re both still professional—and this is mainly due to Nadia being, well, Nadia. She is not a people person and she never tries to be, which consequently makes her off-putting to most people. On her end, she’s generally unimpressed and uninterested in the people around her. She sees a lot of them as puzzles to be solved and then to move on from, or threats to assess.² The rare times someone does pique her interest enough to act on it, she still prefers to not linger around for long. So, you know, just general unhealthy behavior.

So, Eden Prime is illuminating for them both. Like, on Kaidan’s end: Nadia comes off as callous. She doesn’t care about the colonists, she doesn’t care about Jenkins’ death. On Nadia’s end: Kaidan comes off as naive. How has he been a marine for this long and she has to tell him to suck it up after someone dies? (This is one of the reasons why she didn’t want to work with regular marines again; in my canon, Anderson had to needle her³ into accepting the Normandy position.)

But the truth of it is that the reason Nadia comes off as callous is because she’s thoroughly desensitized. Like, when you grow up poor, on the streets, and in a gang? You’re both witnessing and being put through a lot of traumatizing situations. Akuze, of course, only adds onto this. There’s this one dialogue option in the beginning of the second game when Miranda and Jacob are assessing Shepard’s memory, and while Nadia doesn’t take this option in canon, it is how she feels:

JACOB: You enlisted, and you survived a thresher maw attack that wiped out the rest of your team. Do you remember that?

SHEPARD: Yeah, I remember it. Everyone screaming, gunfire, blood everywhere. I was the only one focused on survival.

Paragon Shepard focuses entirely on the other marines: how they were their friends, how something like that can destroy you if you let it.

Renegade Shepard barely thinks of anyone else at all. There were fifty other marines on Akuze, and renegade Shepard thinks they survived simply because they were the only one focused on it. For Nadia, that’s because that’s what her entire life has already been until that point.

Look, there are a lot of different ways to play renegade; it runs a much larger gamut than paragon, in my opinion. Nadia is more of a neutral renegade. She’s not particularly bigoted, just dispassionate and apathetic⁴. She resorts to violence and intimidation because it’s the easiest way to control her surroundings, not because she thinks what she’s doing is particularly righteous⁵. This can get brought up in Samara’s loyalty when talking with Morinth:

MORINTH: Violence is the surest expression of power.

SHEPARD: Violence is a means to an end. Power is that end.

Like, Nadia is a person who’s had to live a life surrounded by violence, not because it’s what she initially chose, but because it was repeatedly inflicted on her. She didn’t have the luxury of nursing her compassion and generosity, or of prioritizing morality. Those things would’ve gotten her killed. What she focused on instead was survival: the best way to survive, the easiest way to survive, the way that consistently ensured her own safety. This meant violence, and in order to survive, she became very good at inflicting violence.

That’s what I meant when I said Nadia thinks she traded one cage for another: the Alliance wasn’t freedom in the truest sense; she’s still doing what she ultimately would’ve done if she had remained with the Reds⁶. She’s just doing it with government approval and a steadier paycheck. She knows she’s still being used, and it’s only who’s using her that’s changed. All that’s to say, she isn’t an N7 ranked infiltrator because she feels strongly about protecting Alliance space and dirtying her hands to do it. She’s an N7 ranked infiltrator because it’s simply what she’s good at.

One of my favorite renegade lines in the entire trilogy is during Thane’s loyalty because it perfectly highlights Nadia’s philosophy on her situation:

SHEPARD: Your father and I have killed a lot of people. You haven’t. There’s no reason you should start.

To Nadia, her life is what it is because of the circumstances she was raised in and the decisions she made in response to that. She doesn’t deflect blame for the sort of person she’s become; she holds herself the correct amount of responsible.

She kills people for the Alliance, she kills people for the Council, she kills people for Cerberus. Other Shepards might dress it up differently when death is unavoidable: “it’s a shame, but it was necessary,” said along with the appropriate amount of guilt. Or: they were a terrorist, they were a mercenary, they forced my hand. To Nadia, it’s all death, and there’s no inherent difference between killing someone “to protect humanity” (read: protect the Alliance’s interests) or killing someone “to protect the galaxy” (read: protect the Council’s interests) and simply killing someone in a situation paragon Shepards would deem unnecessary. And to Nadia, if you haven’t had to live a life like this—why start? You still have other options. Use them.

One thing I love about Hadestown is how it discusses the simple accessibility of being able to live your life, let alone live it virtuously. Like whether or not I agree with that, it’s an interesting thing to explore, and it gets brought up multiple times:

“When you’re hungry and there ain’t enough to go round / ain’t no length to which a girl won’t go / [...] and sometimes you think / you would do anything / just to fill your belly full of food”

“See how the vipers and vultures surround you / and they’ll take you down, they’ll pick you clean / if you stick around such a desperate scene / see, people get mean when the chips are down”

“Aim for the heart / shoot to kill / if you don’t do it, then the other one will / [...] nobody’s righteous / nobody’s proud / nobody’s innocent / now that the chips are down”

“Go ahead and lay the blame / talk of virtue / talk of sin / wouldn’t you have done the same? / in her shoes / in her skin / you can have your principles when you’ve got a belly full”

“I did what I had to do / that’s what they did too”

“Some flowers bloom / where the green grass grows / our praise is not for them / but the ones who bloom in the bitter snow”

Again, I’m not going to meta about Hadestown⁷ and the precise context for these verses are different in that canon (for starters, Eurydice never kills anyone), but the concept is similar: when you’re poor, you’re often driven to desperate measures to survive. Sometimes that means stepping over other people, or otherwise ignoring how your actions will affect them. Often, this is to your own detriment. And it’s really, really easy to cast judgment on the poor people driven to these decisions when you were never in their position. It’s really easy to just live when you’re not in a situation where you had to worry about your survival on a day-by-day basis.

I bring up Hadestown because it’s a nice conduit to explain Nadia’s issues. She’s not renegade because she thinks she’s on a crusade and anyone who gets in her way is acceptable collateral damage. She’s renegade because her survival depended on it, and as Sha’ira points out, it’s what has allowed her continual survival:

“I see your skin, tough as the scales of any turian. Unyielding. A wall between you and everyone else. But it protects you, makes you strong. That strength is what kept you alive when everyone else around you was dying. You alone survived. You will continue to survive.”

For her to survive her childhood, she had to step over other people and put herself first. This meant not allowing herself to get close to other people, and to not care about them beyond what they can give her to ensure her own survival.

And this is why Kaidan interests her. Kaidan’s response to brain camp wasn’t to minimize the importance of his morality, it was to double down on it. (Yes, partially to his own detriment, but that’s a different post.) His response wasn’t to distrust others, because after all, one of his defining characteristics is his compassion. It’s just that Kaidan’s inclined to troubleshoot everything, even his interactions with other people. He might be “once burned, twice shy” but he’s not going to be “once burned, byedon’tfollowmeI’mgoingtorelyonlyonmyselfforever.”

Like, he still wants to help...

SHEPARD: So why are you telling me this? Are you saying I’m cutting corners somewhere?

KAIDAN: I’m saying...it’s probably inevitable that we’ll have to. And when that happens, I want to help you. When someone important to you is up on a ledge, you help them. Keep them from mistakes better made by a kid.

SHEPARD: I’m a big girl, Alenko. I don’t need your help.

KAIDAN: I didn’t say you needed it, I said I’m offering it.⁸

...even though his desire to help (because he cares, because he thinks it’s the right thing to do) is precisely what led to the culmination of his trauma.

KAIDAN: He hurt Rahna. Broke her arm. She reached for a glass of water instead of pulling it biotically. She just wanted a drink without getting a nosebleed, you know? Like an idiot, I stood up. Didn’t know what I was gonna do...just, something.

He figures out what went wrong and tries to avoid repeating that mistake. He doesn’t just stop trying at all. He doesn’t lose his faith in having faith.

It’s antithetical to how Nadia responded to her own circumstances, and she can’t quite process the logic behind...why you would be this way. It’s not that she expects everyone to be like her. She’s seen a lot of different people traumatized, and consequently a lot of different ways people have reacted to trauma. It’s more like: “fool me once” is enough for Nadia. There are no second chances after that. She sees no point in ruminating over why something went wrong. Just accept that it did. (Or don’t, but never think about it, anyway.) She thinks living any other way is akin to, I don’t know, laying down in a snake pit right after one just bit you. Stupid, in other words.

(I should also clarify: this is mainly when it concerns people. She will troubleshoot when it comes to things like tech.)

Like, I’ve joked about this to a friend, but when Nadia first reads Kaidan’s file⁹ her impression is: alright, boy scout. Then she actually meets him and she thinks her assessment was more or less spot on, and she loses whatever vestiges of interest his file did manage to leave despite its otherwise boy-scouty-ness.

But the thing is, Kaidan isn’t naive. He chooses to have the faith he has in the Alliance despite what they’ve put him through. He’s acutely aware that the Alliance is capable of mistakes, because he’s been on the receiving end of it—yet he still wants to help and feels that as a biotic, the Alliance is his best avenue to do that:

KAIDAN: I’m not looking for “the dream.” I just want to do some good. See what’s out here.

KAIDAN: Commander, I thought real hard about how to use my talents. When I swore the oath to defend the Alliance, it wasn’t on a whim.

Like, Nadia thinks Kaidan giving his loyalty to the Alliance is a stupid reaction, yes (in fairness, Nadia thinks loyalty to organizations in general is stupid), but it still fascinates her precisely because Kaidan has some semblance of an idea of what the Alliance’s negligence can and has caused, and yet he still continues to put his faith in them. Kaidan hasn’t had the easiest life¹⁰, but instead of closing himself off, his reaction was to give the Alliance a second chance, to still place his faith in others, all because he still wanted to do some good.

It’s not what Nadia has done, and she can’t say she understands it, but realizing that Kaidan isn’t the ignorant boy scout she pegged him as goes a long way when it comes to the development of their relationship. (For instance: it allows the relationship to develop at all, lmao.) And the development of their relationship is one of the early domino pieces in a long line of dominoes that sets Nadia down a much healthier path.¹¹

¹ We do know, however, that the Alliance does offer to pay college/university tuition in exchange for serving with them in some capacity, thanks to conversations with Traynor and Ashley.

² You know that one Iron Bull banter with Cole where he talks about how one of the first things he does when he meets a new person is to figure out the best way to kill them? Yeah, that’s Nadia.

³ This is because Anderson’s brain is huge, and he understood no one can forever live life the way Nadia was living hers unless they’re a death seeker.

⁴ One of the most in character renegade lines in the trilogy is, once again, during Thane’s loyalty (a big reason why it’s one of my favorites: it’s really, really good Nadia content) when you choose the first renegade check during the interrogation. Shepard sounds so bored, so matter-of-fact. That’s the kind of renegade Nadia is.

⁵ This is probably worse to some people compared to “hard” renegade, since at least “hard” renegade can genuinely believe in what they’re doing, even if others consider it evil. Fortunately, I don’t care.

⁶ I don’t really think she killed anyone during her time with the Reds. (Or, if she did, it was only one person and it would’ve been near the end of her time with them.) I think they primarily used her for cybercrime. She still would’ve witnessed and been expected to participate in a lot of beatings, etc. And, as previously said, had she stayed with the Reds I do think this would’ve ultimately progressed into her killing for them, too.

⁷ Though if you enjoy criticisms of capitalism, an exploration into the traumatizing effects of poverty, and an ultimately hopeful message that meaningful change is possible even when everyone is conditioned to believe it’s not, I recommend giving it a listen. It’s easy to follow along through audio alone, but you can find a low quality bootleg pretty easily, too. (Be warned that some of the songs will differ from the official album recording, though.)

⁸ If the remaster brings better lighting to Kaidan’s little hub area and doesn’t hideously whitewash him like in ME3, this is absolutely one of the first things I’m going to gif because it’s one of my favorite moments in the entire romance.

⁹ Nadia reads the files of everyone she’s going to work with, not because she’s particularly interested in them, but because she wants to know what level of incompetency to expect.

¹⁰ Unrelatedly: ask me about my headcanon about how disgustingly rich Kaidan’s family is, and how much Nadia wants to kill him when she finds this out.

¹¹ This is absolutely not saying love, romantic or otherwise, cures her lifetime worth of unpacked trauma.

#ch: nadia shepard #this post brought to you by: my very desperate need #not to look at the fic i've been trying to work on all month #this post also brought to you by: my obsession with nadia and hadestown overlapping #this post also-also brought to you by: my desire to simply talk about hadestown #and finally #this post also-also-also brought to you by:#my desire to regain the ability to string sentences together again #(see point 1)#i'm going to go farm balloons in acnh now

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orbitalvoyager · 4 years ago

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A Medic’s Guide to Medical Writing (Shock)

⤹ or, in which bex teaches the basics of shock

⤹ read the other entries of “ A Medic’s Guide to Medical Writing”

Shock- (medically known as hypoperfusion) is defined as the condition where the circulatory system fails to provide sufficient circulation to enable every part of the body to function properly or the body is not getting enough blood flow.

Always remember, shock is a sign, not a diagnosis. The body going into shock is its attempt to fix an underlying problem. Your body is so smart! But it doesn’t just throw itself into shock for fun, it does to try to fix something else that is happening.

In order to understand the types of shock, you first need to understand what is the root of shock. Perfusion is the medical term that describes the circulation of blood within an organ or body tissues and it means the blood flow is meeting the adequate needs of the body. Simply, it means that the body is functioning normally. Hypoperfusion (hypo meaning “less”) is the medical term for shock because it means that the perfusion is less than adequate.

How does this happen?

There are three components to adequate perfusion (normal blood flow): the heart, the blood vessels, and the blood. You can remember this easily by thinking about it like so: the heart is the pump since it pumps the blood, the blood vessels are the container since they carry the blood to where it needs to go, and the blood is the substance/content. This is called the Perfusion Triangle.

Now how can these things cause shock?

Heart/Pump: the heart can be damaged by a number of things, but the most common is a heart attack. Heart disease and trauma to the chest can also cause the heart to stop functioning adequately.

Blood Vessels/Container: everything from spinal cord injury to drug use and infection can cause the blood vessels to become damaged

Blood/Substance: this is the main component that people think of when it comes to shock. Blood loss = shock. if your body is rapidly losing blood, it will divert the blood that it still has to the organs that need it the most (the heart and lungs)

With that, there are three stages of shock:

1. Compensated- this stage means that the body is still trying hard to restore proper blood flow (like directing blood to the organs that need it). The body is trying to maintain its critical systems on its own.

2. Decompensated- the body’s attempt to restore the normal blood flow has failed. The patient will begin to deteriorate and lose consciousness. This patient needs immediate medical attention.

3. Irreversible- shock, left untreated in any circumstance, can cause irreversible damage to the body. This is the point of no return. While yes, this patient can still be “saved”, it is likely they will not have any brain function. The end phase of this stage is death.

Still with me? Good. I know it’s a lot, but that’s the basics. Those are the fundamentals of shock.

Now let’s get into what you really came for: the types of shock and how they effect the human body. Shock is an umbrella term and if you watch any TV shows or movies, you only see one type of shock; but I am going to walk you through all seven types of shock.

1. Cardiogenic - “the heart shock”

Causes: disease of the muscle tissue of the heart, heart attack, disease, or trauma

Symptoms: Chest pain, irregular heartbeat, weak pulse, low blood pressure, cyanosis (blue discoloration of the skin) of the lips and under the nails, cool & clammy skin, anxiety, crackles/rales (crackling sound in the lungs when the patient breathes) and pulmonary edema (excess fluid in the lungs)

Treatment: allow them to lay in a comfortable position, give them high-flow oxygen, assist with their breathing if needed, and transport them immediately

2. Obstructive Shock- “the block shock”

Causes: tension pneumothorax (the building of air in-between the chest wall and the lungs) that was left untreated, cardiac tamponade (compression of the heart due to fluid building up in the sac around the heart) and pulmonary embolism (a condition when one of more of the arteries in the lung becomes blocked by a clot).

Symptoms: (dependent on the cause can be any of the following) rapid & weak pulse, rapid & shallow breathes, decreased lung sounds, decreased blood pressure, muffled heart tones, cyanosis

Treatment: if at an EMT level, immediately call ALS (paramedic). If at a paramedic level, some may try to administer nitroglycerin (if the shock is heart, not lung related), which opens the blood vessels. Most of the time however, obstructive shock is indicative of a deeper cardio problem that needs to be attended to by a surgeon. Administer oxygen and transport immediately.

3. Septic Shock- “the infection shock”

Causes: severe bacterial infection

Symptoms: warm skin, fever, tachycardia (racing pulse) and low blood pressure

Treatment: keep them warm, give oxygen, transport promptly. These patients will be the ones that accidentally cut themselves and didn’t properly clean the wound, which caused it to become infected. These patients will look very very sick, and there isn’t much EMS can do since this is a condition that requires long term care.

4. Neurogenic Shock - “the spine/mind shock”

Causes: damage to the spinal cord. Like I’ve said before, the spinal cord is the holy grail of the body. If your brain is the computer, your spinal cord is the cords that hook the computer up to everything; if the cords are severed or damaged, the computer can’t tell what the body to do.

Symptoms: bradycardia (slow pulse), low blood pressure, neck injuries

Treatment: make sure their airway is open and you will have to assist ventilations by inputting an airway (tube) and breath for them. Make sure to stabilize their neck and keep their spine immobilized. There is nothing you can do to fix their spine, so make sure not to cause any more damage until a surgeon can help them. Transport them quickly because one of the golden rules of medicine is “time is brain and brain is life”

5. Anaphylactic Shock - “the allergy shock”

Causes: extreme, life threatening allergic reaction

Symptoms: symptoms can develop and become life threatening in seconds, mild itchng/rash, burning sensation on the skin, edema (swelling), coma, rapid death.

Treatment: Epinephrine by the way of intramuscular injection (EpiPen), oxygen, determine what caused the allergic reaction. If the reaction is already causing the swelling of the airway to become so bad that the patient cannot breathe, a Paramedic can do a cricothyrotomy, but this is a patient that needs to be transported immediately.

6. Hypovolemic Shock - “the blood loss shock”

Causes: extreme blood loss

Symptoms: rapid & weak pulse, low blood pressure, altered mental status, cyanosis of the skin and lips, cool & clammy skin, increased breathing rate.

Treatment: Try your best to control the bleeding, assist their breathing, apply oxygen, keep warm and GO. Don’t stay for any length of time, this person is bleeding out and EMS doesn’t have access to blood bags to replace that blood. This person will die soon if you don’t move quickly.

7. Psychogenic shock - “the tv/drama/emotion shock”

Causes: anxiety, bad news, sight of injury/blood, traumatic events, severe pain, illness, exhaustion

Symptoms: rapid pulse, sudden low blood pressure

Treatment: I call it the emotion shock, but this is the type of shock that is most commonly seen in tv. This is the sudden fainting at bad news and the petrified look during a traumatic incident. There is nothing inherently wrong with this patient, but they can still injury themselves if they strike their head when they fall. Stay with them, make sure they are breathing normally and time how long they are unconscious.

Keep in mind that this is a very “broad strokes” explanation to shock. As a EMS worker, I understand all of this perfectly, but to a civilian, it can be hard to understand.

If you have any questions or need assistance in writing a shock scene, feel free to reach out, I’ll do my best to help you!

If my explanation isn't in the exact words you need in order to understand, here are some helpful links!

Introduction to Shock: The Basics for all EMS Providers

Let’s Talk Shock

Shock Outline

#medical emergency #medical #writing help #emt #paramedic #shock #types of shock

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bekahdoesnerdshit · 4 years ago

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Playlist: Charlotte Olivia Grace

Alternate Title: Dealing with Religious Trauma But Like in a Cute, Fun Way

Featuring: A director’s cut style breakdown of each song choice, and a bonus Campaign Song not found on the original playlist!

Not Gonna Take Me by BAILEN

You took my mother You took my father Oh, but you're not gonna take me!

This is SUCH a fun song and I feel like it sets the tone for the playlist so well! And, truth be told, it was the first song that I knew was going to make the final cut. The energy of the song is so lively and fun, and the chorus -especially the bit I quoted above!- is really just a Cog slam dunk. The toxic, insular culture that her parents had gotten wrapped up in is not going to take her too, and Cog is going to run as far and as fast as she can to make sure it never catches up with her.

Only the Good Die Young by Billy Joel

Well your mother told you all that I could give you was a reputation Aw she never cared for me But did she ever say a prayer for me?

HEY this is the Ace and Cog song. Thanks for the banger, Billy Joel. Like bro the whole song is about this guy rolling up and talking about whisking this girl who’s grown up wrapped up in religion away from it to a life that -not to brag- kicks serious ass. There’s more for you out in the world! It’s not a scary place, it’s exciting and full of life and people who are going to love you! Come on! Every time I listen to this song on Cog’s playlist, I picture Ace singing and doing a dumb little dance and voices along with it just to make Cog laugh because they’re SO cute. Also, coincidentally, Cog’s mom fucking Hated Ace. Presumably because he “stole and defiled” (her words!) her daughter. You hate to see it 😔 Also, every time I hear the line “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints” I picture Cog sitting around a fire with Ace and her party members absolutely breathless from laughing which is an incredibly healing mental image that I highly recommend.

Haven by We Banjo 3

Let me be your haven Let me be your light Sail with me across the ocean deep And find a place for love and joy

One of my dnd characters? Wanting to be a source of light and peace for the people around them, wanting to come up alongside them and bear their burdens with them? It’s SO likely, and it’s true. I think in my head this was originally another Cog and Ace song, where she wanted to repay all the ways he’d helped her by reaching out and trying to offer him a sense of peace in the midsts of everything he has to deal with, but the longer she’s spent with her party the more I think it’s come to apply to them as well. Yes, sometimes you have to fight. Sometimes, you have to make hard, painful decisions. But there’s light and love and joy to be found in the world! And if you can’t find them, it’s worth it to be the source of those things for the people around you! I think Cog would love nothing more than to take all of her friends troubles away from them to just give them a chance to breathe, and this song speaks to that so genuinely.

Hover by Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

The roof peels away And she's left uncovered Then feet leave the ground And she hovers, she hovers, hovers, hovers...

A song about discovering our self-worth, perhaps? About realizing you’re more powerful than the people around you want you to think you are, and then taking a deep breath and deciding to use that power for yourself? That’s self care, baby! This is very much the “I’m looking around, I’m realizing Home isn’t home for me anymore because it isn’t safe, and I’m starting to think that maybe it’s time for me to go” song. You know, that hyper-specific song that every playlist has. Also, it’s just such a pretty song! And right in my range, which doesn’t hurt its odds of making it onto a playlist.

Cloud’s Song by Brent Walsh

Hey, God, are You listening? Sometimes it feels like I'm not hearing anything back Why does that scare me so much? Hey, God, are You listening?

Y’all ever uh. Y’all ever grow up deeply rooted in your family’s church of choice, only to have a crisis of faith later in life when you’re old enough to think for yourself because you don’t feel the connection to your god that everyone is telling you that you should? No? Just me and Cog? Okay! Cog doesn’t believe in the Old Gods. Mystra is dead, same as all the other gods, killed by whatever force caused the apocalypse and turned the Wasteland into what it is today. Anyone who says otherwise is looking for a way to manipulate people. ...but it’s one thing to say that and convince yourself that it’s true, and another entirely to unravel 18+ years of being told otherwise and come to terms with what a world truly without gods means for you and the people around you. And what if the gods are real, what if Mystra is alive, and she just didn’t care for Cog? If Cog is just fine not hearing from her either way, what should it matter if she’s real or not? Except it does matter, somehow, and Cog doesn’t know what to do with that. Oof.

The Gardener by Sarah Sparks

God the gardener when the autumn comes I will not seasons fear With the pruning a branch is stronger, I will learn to love the shears

This song is about coming out on the far side of a situation she never should have had to be in, but realizing that she’s stronger because of it. Is it still unfair that she had to grow up in such an unhealthy environment, burdened by expectations she was never going to be able to live up to? No, of course not. There’s no outcome that makes it worth it for her to have suffered through that. But because she survived it, she is infinitely more compassionate, more patient, and more intentional than she likely would have been otherwise. It’s not easy to come to terms with trauma like that, and I definitely don’t think Cog is as close to finding closure as she would like people to think she is. But she’s getting there, and I think this sort of perspective has done a lot to help her on that path.

Shake it Out by Doll Skin

'Cause I am done with my graceless heart So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart 'Cause I like to keep my issues strong It's always darkest before the dawn

So technically this is a cover, but honestly I love the energy on it so much more than the original. It’s about moving on from a past that’s clinging onto you and weighing you down by shaking off that guilt and turning to face a new day. Also, it’s just a fucking banger. It’s unapologetic about shrugging off weight you’re not obligated to carry, and while I don’t think Cog is quite to that point in her journey yet, I hope that by the end of the campaign she will be. Right now she still has a lot of guilt for the way she left her home, even though she knew she needed to go for her own good, but this song is for a Cog who -a few years down the line- has made peace with her decisions and understands that she deserves the same kindness from herself that she gives to everyone else.

Echo by Talisk

This song is an instrumental, but it goes So hard and is so representative of the arc I see for Cog in this game that it honestly makes me emotional every time I hear it. The beginning is quiet and a little slower, then about 30 seconds in the violin comes in and starts ramping things up as Cog begins to look around and realize the life she has been living isn’t the one she wants to continue. At around 1:30 the melody gets more complex and other instruments layer in as she sets out into the world and starts meeting the people she now considers her closest friends, and it continues to build and build and build with this anxious but excited energy of fingers flying across strings, barely keeping up with themselves with how eager they are to get the music to the world. The final variation on the melody from about 4:19 to the end of the song makes me picture Cog just spinning, arms wide, eyes closed with the sun on her face and the world’s biggest smile, and it just fills my heart with so much joy!

Gold by Rabbit Wilde

All my friends are calling me Wild, like the wind I'm drifting from all I've known And packing up and trying all my best At staying gold

This song is so cute and fun, and high energy in the Exact way I was looking to cultivate for this playlist. This song is about the way Cog has grown and become more self-assured since leaving home and joining her party! Going from being tired and silenced, to having a fire burning from within her! She’s making new friends, she’s wandering and exploring the world, and she’s taking control of her life in a way that’s left her overall a happier and healthier person. And again, at risk of sounding repetitive, it’s just a bop. And bops always make it onto this playlist!

Hieroglyphics by The Oh Hellos

'Cause you've been too busy thinking ahead Of where we're all going after we're dead To maybe consider our bodies are worth More than the dust that we can return

I am literally Obsessed with this song as a Cog song (and also, as a result of my playlist building, with The Oh Hellos in general). The whole energy of the song is looking at people who view religion as this old, tradition heavy thing its followers are obligated to bear forward and just asking... why? The lyrics I highlighted above are the ones that really sold this song as a Cog song for me, but there’s another line in the second verse with absolutely beautiful imagery about nebulas being beautiful, sacred bodies of dust that goes on to pose the questions; why can’t the same be said for humanity? Is being human completely divorced from being divine? Is there not inherent divinity in being a living, breathing creature with independent thought? For Cog, this is what faith should be. It should be about reveling in being alive and in the beauty of the world you get to live in. If there are gods, she can’t imagine them wanting anything different for the beings they created.

Bonus Track! Tough Kids by Coyote Kid

I don't trust anyone more than I trust me and mine It's a dog eat dog world, but this pack runs till the end of the line

Campaign Song! Party song!! It’s just a banger!! If this campaign had a theme song, this would be it! I can fully picture the animated opening that would play before the start of the game, and it SLAPS. The first thirty seconds is this western style instrumental with the camera racing across the barren wasteland, with the first swell of the trumpet triggering the camera to pan up toward the sun setting on the horizon as the title card fades in. From there the camera takes off again and loops to each party member spread out across the Wasteland before they’re brought together. It swoops over the caravan Sunny and Wol are escorting, and they shield their eyes against the sun to look up at it as it passes. We see Nilos silhouetted against the outline of Scorch, steeling himself to enter the Bandit town with little more than the ratty suit on his back and the gun hefted over his shoulder. We see Maelo wandering out of his ramshackle house with his pack full and on his back, sparing one sad look at a swath of hazy green trees in the distance behind him before putting his back to it and setting out for the Crossroads. We see Cog! Bored to tears in a New Alexandrian classroom until she catches a glimpse of Ace beckoning to her from the doorway, and she grins and waits until her professor’s back is turned before grabbing her books and darting out of the room. We see Adiane in a dark alley somewhere, minding her business until she hears something that piques her interest! She looks up, rolls her shoulders, and we catch the flash of a dagger in one hand before she disappears into the night. And finally we see Clay, sitting against the back wall of what’s clearly a prison cell with his head resting on his knees, and we hear the rattle of a metal door being opened and Clay looks up as light from outside his cell falls on his face for the first time in god knows how long. And then the chorus! We cut between various notable fights the party has been in to showcase their thematic skills! Sunny gives a mocking salute before hauling back to punch some bad guy in the face! Wol ducks an attack completely accidentally as he flips frantically through an enormous book, and when he looks up to cast his spell his eyes are a void dotted with silver stars. Nilos blasts some poor bastard point blank with a shotgun shot, then whirls around to slam the butt of the gun against someone else’s head! Cog’s casting gloves glow white hot as she flings a hand toward the sky to call for aid, and her robes whip around her as she sends a shockwave of magic out with herself at the epicenter! Maelo looks up, pulls a very obvious ‘oh shit!’ face, then taps the end of his staff against the ground and causes impossibly dense vegetation to grow instantaneously and send the people charging toward him toppling to the ground. Adiane whirls out from behind him as he finishes casting, tucks and rolls into a crouched shooting stance, then fires off three precise shots that drop three different targets. And Clay catches an attack on his shield, laughs and shouts something we can’t hear over the swell of the music, then summons his pact weapon mid-swing to catch his attacker unawares and send them toppling to the ground. And the second verse? OH boy. The cadence of the line “it’s a dog eat dog world” lends itself so naturally to having the antagonist of each arc surge up onto the screen one after the other, with a grinning Valentine bringing up the rear with his arms spread wide. And then! The bridge? We cut between the party’s npc friends living their lives and kicking ass. Ace and Sunny’s dads! Nathan and Sierra! King Alistair! Wol’s family! Penny and I’den! Also!! Not only can you physically not lose your shit listening to the repeated “we’re gonna make it or die trying” it’s also PRIME real estate for a flash montage of important moments of the campaign. Bombing the first bunker with a Meteor Storm scroll! Sunny putting her fist through the shadow demon in Lafaroh! Cog tackling Nilos to Dimension Door them into open air eight hundred feet off the ground! Watching the Bandits shoot down the Emperion airship over the Crossroads! Staring down the elf queen in her own courtroom and telling her she’s wrong! Finding the Godkiller! Sauntering into Scorch to clean up in the Murderbowl! God we do so much cool shit in this game!! The final rendition of the chorus just shows the party working together as a team, having each other’s backs and covering weak spots without a second thought because they know how to work well together. The song fades out on an overhead shot of the party sprawled out around their campsite at the end of a long, exhausting day, eating and talking and laughing and just generally, blatantly, comfortable with one another. The camera swings up one final time to show the beautiful night sky overhead, with swaths of stars that wink out slowly one by one as the song comes to an end.

#playlists #mine #wasteland campaign #cog #did you already listen to it?? listen to it again it still slaps!!#lost my SHIT on that last one can you tell?? i needed to talk about this vision I've had for months and idk if my party would care #/how do I send them All Of That without looking like a lunatic lmao

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 6 years ago

Note

For each of the Animoprhs, which book would you consider the best for showing their characterization? Best book for understanding Jake's character, best for Rachel, etc.

If I can give a very me answer (i.e. verbose and bad at choosing things), I’m not sure there are any books that don’t advance the character arc of the narrator in a meaningful way. Going down the list:

Jake: Starts the series as a somewhat naïve, privileged kid who wants to save his big brother but isn’t sure why he’s in charge. Ends the series as a highly competent but also ruthless general who defeats the Yeerk Empire at the expense of his big brother.

#1: Establishes his antebellum family life, and his casual certainty that everything’s going to work out once the andalites come to help.

#6: Forces Jake to confront the simultaneous realities of the controllers’ helplessness in the face of trauma and the dangerous realities of their bodies becoming weapons, cementing his convictions about the war.

#11: Features Jake’s first real crisis as a leader and forms much of the basis for his incessant rumination on alternative outcomes.

#16: Establishes Jake’s biggest Achilles heel as a leader: that he consistently fails to secure his own oxygen mask before helping others. The plot also punishes indecisiveness and rewards recklessness.

#21: Causes Jake to have to define his role as a leader in response to David presenting the first real challenge to Jake’s authority.

#26: Gives Jake the chance to be his most awesome and competent as a leader, from managing Ax’s emotions and skillfully deploying Rachel and Erek to the Gordian-knot-cutting gambit that makes Crayak himself sit up and take notice.

#31: Confronts Jake with the slow-burning crisis he’s been struggling to ignore within his own family, causing him to (largely unsuccessfully) deal with the threat presented by Tom’s continued existence.

#36: Gives us some heartwarming moments of Jake expressing his love for his team while throwing himself between them and danger.

#41: Features Jake grappling with the realization that he can’t — and shouldn’t — save his own loved ones at the expense of someone else’s.

#47: Largely inconsequential, but does involve the only instance of Jake leading an army against invading forces in a “traditional” battle.

#53: In which Jake applies everything he’s learned to take over the U.S. Air Force, recruit the taxxons, manipulate multiple yeerk vissers, and strategically use all his allies in ways that are effective but brutal. Also, he FINALLY does something about Tom — and it comes at the expense of Rachel’s life.

Tobias: Starts the series as a dreamy-eyed idealist with no clear-cut identity who eagerly commits himself to the first cause that comes along. Ends the series as a pragmatic survivalist who values self-sufficiency but also his connections to his hawk and human and andalite and hork-bajir sides.

#3: Acts as the comedown of Tobias’s idealism following his somewhat-impulsive, somewhat-forced decision, as the reality of predation and nothlitization sinks in.

#13: Establishes Tobias as the kind of guy who (literally) looks higher powers in the eye and calls “bull,” but also the eyes in the sky for the team.

#23: Further complexifies Tobias’s already-complex species identity, but also gives him the chacne to be badass and self-reliant in a world that used to stuff his head in toilet bowls.

#33: Puts Tobias through the kind of pressure test that allows him to realize what’s really important to him, from his andalite family to his love for Rachel.

#43: Gives power back to Tobias through showing him — both in flashbacks and in the present conflict with Taylor — embracing the power not to decide (X).

#49: Leads Tobias to the realization that he may never have a nuclear family like Jake’s or Cassie’s, but that his crappy upbringing imbued him with a level of resiliency that Jake frankly lacks.

Ax: Starts the series as a kid who knows exactly who he is (a proud aristh in The Greatest Military in the galaxy) and where he’s from (andalite culture) and just wants to get home. Ends the series identified as “Aximili of Earth,” with a relentless wanderlust and a reputation for undercutting traditional andalite power structures.

#8: Establishes Ax as a lonely kid under enormous pressure to conform to two different cultures in two different ways, and sets him on the path to balancing those conflicting demands.

#18: Probably the apex of Ax’s embracing andaliteness at the expense of humanity, forcing him to realize that people are people and there’s no rank-ordering entire groups.

#28: Confronts Ax with the nastiest sides of humanity — animal testing and factory farming — to cast him as a witness to whom his human friends must justify themselves.

#38: Allows Ax to measure himself and his team against the andalites’ standards for competency and morality alike, and to find it is the andalites who are wanting.

#46: Probably the nadir of Ax’s embracing andaliteness, with all his prior experience culminating in deep longing to be human in light of the Air Force’s unflinching nobility and the craven imperialism of the Andalite Electorate.

#52: Culminates the conflict between Ax’s cultures through leading him to conclude that his friends specifically and humans as a whole don’t have to be perfect to have fundamental rights and dignity.

Cassie: Starts the war deeply uncomfortable with major decisions but nevertheless convinced that there’s a single “right” answer to every situation, largely only involved at all for love of her friends. Ends the war as a “one woman army” (emphasis on one) with a nuanced morality system and a willingness to go her own way rather than setting herself on fire to keep others warm.

#4: Forces her out of her comfort zone and into making decisions for the entire team, causing her to discover that she’s braver and stronger than she ever realized.

#9: Crystalizes Cassie’s willingness to embrace and protect the Earth in spite of fully recognizing its inherent brutality.

#14: Undeniably inane, but gets some great humor out of Cassie being a sweet straightforward kid and a terrible liar.

#19: Establishes Cassie’s Achilles heel: that she functions brilliantly with no one to watch out for but herself, but doesn’t play well with others. Also knocks her off her high horse through forcing her to realize that many enemy soldiers are just as clueless as she is.

#24: Acts as a check-in after the events of the David trilogy, showing just how jaded the kids have become that Cassie and Marco find violent alien abduction to be little more than a minor annoyance.

#29: Plays to Cassie’s strengths — working alone, developing her unusual allies, taking care of her friends, remaining focused under fire — to show her at her most awesome and draw out her competencies.

#34: Gives Cassie a glimpse of what it means to be a compassionate but still powerful leader.

#39: Sets up the end of the series through using the wolf morph to show Cassie’s ability to keep running and changing and being many things at once (both figuratively and literally) after all her friends have fallen behind.

#44: Foreshadows Cassie’s breakup with Jake through contrasting her ability to get by alone in Australia with his “zombielike” state of lost dependence while she’s gone.

#50: Drives a wedge between Cassie and her team, with the consolation prize that she makes a compassionate and discerning move which ultimately sets the Animorphs up to win the war.

Rachel: Starts the series as a restless “mall rat” who enjoys risk and challenge for their own sake, and has casually absolute faith in her own abilities. Ends the series by telling the reader outright that she’s scared, but that she must do what’s right for her team; uses her last minutes to apologize to Tom for killing him and to seek reassurance from the Ellimist that she made a difference.

#2: Establishes that she’s cocky and fun-loving even after being confronted with the realities of war, but also that she’ll gladly die for love of her friends, from Tobias to Melissa.

#7: Brings out Rachel’s truly reckless side through backing her into a corner — which is when she’s most dangerous. Also serves as maybe the biggest blow the Animorphs ever inflict on the yeerks with minimal loss of life, crystalizing Rachel’s sense of self-righteousness.

#12: Shows the struggle hidden under her role as “the strong one,” both for her team and for her sisters.

#17: Involves Rachel interrogating how her friends see her, including her awareness that this team would never be able to talk itself into continuously reentering the hell of war without her.

#22: Confronts Rachel with the darkest depths of her own brutality, but also establishes that she’s willing to be the one to do the hard jobs of the war if it keeps the others from having to listen to David’s pleas for help.

#27: Fully cements Rachel’s relationship with Tobias through allowing her to realize what’s really important to her.

#32: Uses one of those awesome SF identity premises to give Rachel the chance to literally argue with herself, and — by showing how much each of her halves relies on the other — shows how all the facets of her identity, ugly and pretty alike, make her who she is.

#37: Contains a couple different truly awesome moments with Rachel realizing that her strengths are not Jake’s, nor are they Marco’s, but that the team will carry her through at the end of the day.

#42: A little silly, but gives Rachel the chance to out-bluster even helmacrons and to force the hard decision that Jake hesitates to make — that they need to sacrifice Marco to save their own lives.

#48: Frustratingly inconsequential, but brings together the disparate threads of her conflict with Crayak, her conflict with David, and her conflict with Jake, and culminates with Rachel confronting Cassie with the reality that if Rachel herself doesn’t do the awful things (kill David, kill Tom) then no one else will.

Marco: Starts the war as a never-serious kid who is nevertheless familiar enough with the reality of death to try and hit the brakes before inevitable tragedy gets too close to his loved ones. Ends the war as a ruthlessly machiavellian strategist who believes in the necessity of matricide and even war crimes to keep the planet spinning on its axis.

#5: Contains the hilarity of Ax-wrangling and the utter horror of Marco realizing that Visser One thoughtlessly destroyed the lives of his entire family as an incidental aside on her rise to power, establishing early that he’s willing to burn down the world to protect his family.

#10: Gives Marco the chance to call bullshit on the chee’s moralizing about their own nonintervention in the face of massive injustice, delineating his own code of ethics.

#15: Forces Marco to confront his own trauma and becomes the first time that he must make a major ethical choice with no good solutions — and, by no coincidence, is all about him turning into a shark.

#20: Brings out the worst in Marco through emphasizing his mistrust (and lack of compassion) for strangers, his possessiveness of his friends, and his willingness to be a bully when David fails to see the big picture.

#25: Becomes the book where Marco calls himself “Mr. Ruthless” and also sees himself in a motherless pair of baby seals, where he expresses admiration for Jake’s growing manipulativeness and successfully distracts everyone from waiting around for their own deaths with really bad “dumb blond” jokes.

#30: Involves Marco giving an account of himself (as Cates would say) through justifying his decision to the reader as he plans his mom’s execution.

#35: Acts as some much-needed comic relief because of Marco’s refusal to take himself seriously, while continuing arc of his coming apart at the seams when he can’t define himself by his family.

#40: Has a deeply troubling after-school special vibe that culminates in Marco discovering that *gasp* disabled people are people too, and... Sorry, I can’t come up with anything nice to say about this book.

#45: Shows that (unlike Jake) Marco can find the balance between protecting his family and protecting the planet, and also that Marco’s brilliance has a very very dark side when it comes to manipulating Peter.

#51: Again acts as much-needed comic relief during one of the bleakest points in the war, while also showing that Marco may have overcome his intial mutual hostility with Tobias but that he’s also whistling as the world burns at a time when Jake and Rachel could both really use fewer jokes and more emotional support.

Anon, I promise I will do my best to narrow this list down, but your ask sent me off into rapturous enumerations about the tightly-woven character arcs in this series and the fact that even the ghostwritten books are remarkably consistent in light of the big picture for each of the six kids.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #animorphs spoilers #long post #asks #jake berenson #tobias fangor #rachel berenson #aximili esgarrouth isthill #i am bad at choosing things #Anonymous

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boo-cool-robot · 5 years ago

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X-Men Fic Recs Part 2: Comics-based

I’m updating my X-Men fic rec list, and it’s gotten long enough that it can stand to be split. This post has all the fics that are based on comics, cartoons, or other non-movie canons. My reclist for movies-based fic is here, to be updated at...some point in the future.

My favorite fics are marked with an asterisk, and authors with many good fics are marked with a +. I’ve tried to add warnings for untagged stuff that might be upsetting, but I make no guarantees. (Also, reccing a fic is not an endorsement of the author.)

Updated 2/14/20, organized approximately by character focus

*Scott’s Life is Hard series by yellow_caballero (X-kids ensemble; Scott; Kitty, Peter; Emma): Sometimes a family is like thirty mutant youth wannabe superheroes, all screaming, in one mansion. Also Magneto is there. Based in part on Evolution, the high school AU cartoon, but is still highly enjoyable without knowledge of that canon. Characterizations may differ significantly from comics, but are distinctive and strong. I constantly think about some of the lines from these fics.

Camp Xavier by captainpeggy [WIP] (Kitty, Bobby, gigantic ensemble): Charles and Erik run rival mutant summer camps and Kitty is going to make this her year. Loose, goofy, fun gay teens.

+Sticking to the Plan by Duck_Life (Kitty & Bobby): Post the most recent failed wedding, Kitty comes to term with being gay. Sweet and snappy.

*That Would Be Enough by Wish_I_Had_A_Tail (Kitty & Magneto): Lighthearted modern AU where Kitty spends Passover with Magneto. Kitty just feels like SUCH a clever, overthinky teen and I love this relationship.

*+Copernican Revolt by GoldenThreads (Original New Mutants ensemble, Jono, Magneto, Kitty): AU where the Utopia-era New Mutants adopt a toddler made from Doug and Warlock’s genetic material, and post-Necrosha, he goes missing. Don’t be deterred by the length, OC, or rarepairs--this fic is one of the best in the entire fandom. The author has an incredible command of the whole ensemble’s voices and points of view, and respect for every one of these characters shines through. The idea that, despite it all, the New Mutants can be traumatized and never the same again and still come together okay in the end is expressed in the best possible way here. (Also Magneto is more a supporting character, but this is an extremely good Magneto.

Where All the Fun Will Be by kispesan (Dani/Rahne): New Mutants canon AU where teen Dani and Rahne end up together. Sweet and satisfying in the ways it fixes canon.

*+Tempus Fugit and The Ship of Theseus by Franzbibliothek (Xavier/Magneto): Another one of the rare fics that are rich, well-characterized, funny, thoughtful, AND fluent in comics canon! They center around the events of the recent Astonishing X-Men run (pre-HOXPOX), but you don’t have to have read that run to enjoy these fics–these explorations of Xavier and Magneto’s contentious yet eternally fond relationship stands on its own. (If you know comics, the references hit hard though.) Franz can see and bring out the inherent humor in canon in delightful snappy lines as well as nuanced character dynamics. His Magneto in particular feels full, weighed with history, and deeply uncool in a way that I basically never see and makes me go apeshit. These fics are absolutely some of the best I’ve seen in X-fandom, and I’m shocked they’re not more popular. (Content notes: As tagged, Tempus Fugit has explicit sex and Ship of Theseus has a plot that involves N*zis.)

The World Outside Was Hungry by tzigane, Zaganthi (Caffiends) (Xavier/Magneto): Still-powered comics AU where they meet at Columbia as students and slowly build a life together. This Erik’s sense of the world feels so appropriately odd and lovely. (Warnings for Holocaust imagery and homophobia.)

*The Raw Materials from which a Boy is Made [WIP] by NezumiPi (Scott & Xavier): A strongly unsettling, deft, and often funny character study diving into the days around Xavier’s adoption of Scott and the founding of the X-Men. The author fleshes out this young Scott’s strangeness and trauma with grace. (In addition to the tagged past child abuse, there is a lot of disturbing Xavier POV thinking about grooming Scott into the perfect soldier.)

+That Which We Are by GrayJay (Scott-Centric): Deeply sad comics canon-compliant trans Scott Summers. Really really good fucked up medical stuff. (Also read all of GrayJay’s Scott fic. It’s that good.)

+Five Sleeping Arrangements by seriousfic (Scott/Emma/Jean): Scott and Jean drag Emma into having a semi-functional relationship. Everyone is a terrible delight, particularly Emma.

+Headmistress by Shobogan (Emma-centric): A brief character study on Emma Frost as a teacher and the grief she carries.

The Age of Reason by annanWaters (Emma/Jean): 70s college roommate unpowered coming-of-age lesbian romance that manages to make thorough use of every part of the setting. This particular Emma and Jean feel like whole people. Bittersweet ending.

#fic rec #to the x men then! who do not die the old fashioned way #basically: read the ship of thesus it RULES #long post

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janiedean · 5 years ago

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nebraska is the title song from bruce springsteen’s eponymous 1982 album, which is incidentally the objectively best record he’s ever put out or at least it’s in the top three and about everyone agrees about it in some kind of miraculous conversion of fan and critics’s opinions.

nebraska is not just a turning point in springsteen’s career, as it was the first time he put out a record which was pretty much bleak/depressing material with not much of a way out of it and a great stylistic change from his usual as it’s all voice, guitar and harmonica, to match the bleak atmosphere of the songs, but it’s also a damn gem of a song that everyone should listen to, so please let me have a go at it. ;)

now, background: nebraska is about real life serial killer charles starkweather, who in turn bruce learned from while watching terrence malick’s excellent movie badlands (guys y’all really should watch it it’s REALLY GOOD!). tldr, this dude at nineteen took his 14-yo girlfriend around nebraska and wyoming for a week or so and killed ten people and was then sentenced to the death penalty, and that’s all you need to know on the subject. bruce was interested in the story, researched it and wrote the song about it and put it as first in the album to which it gave the title, and that should already suggest you what you’re signing up for. but now on to the lyrics, shall we?

I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died

the opening is reminiscing of the malick movie we discussed before - the scene with the girlfriend twirling her baton is lifted right from it, and gives us an excellent summary of the entire song because bruce is good at summarizing things: you know that the protagonist, as the song is in first person, sees his girlfriend on the front lawn, takes her into his car and they killed ten innocent people. now, if you aren’t listening to the song you don’t know that he’s singing it in an extremely flat voice in such a way that he seems extremely detached from what he/the POV of the song has done, which makes the entire effect even creepier. so, what happened on the ride?

From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska with a sawed off .410 on my lap Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path

here we have another example of how good is bruce at painting a very vivid picture with ten words - we know where they left from (lincoln nebraska), we know what weapon he used (the .410), and then he went through the badlands of wyoming killing everything in his path, which if you know how the badlands of wyoming look, should give you a pretty damn good idea of the scenery. if you’re like jon and sansa stark and failed geography, I’ll remind you:

suggestive, huh? so, he has you visualize the entire thing while singing flatly and without emotions about a guy who went on a murder spree without many emotions about it himself. which is made clear in the next line:

I can't say that I'm sorry for the things that we done At least for a little while sir me and her we had us some fun

so: he’s not sorry, and he sees it as having had some fun. now, usually people who murder even one person without wanting to have life-lasting trauma because of it, because I assure you, no one likes murdering people in general. just a thought. then again if you look up starkweather he seemed to think he was above the law and to have a fairly nihilistic worldview according to which *dead people are all on the same level* so we can assume that mr. starkweather had definitely issues that no one had noticed/most people would have overlooked in the year of the lord 1958 and that went untreated resulting in the murder spree.

anyway, they got caught as it was bound to happen, which then results in the next passage:

The jury brought in a guilty verdict and the judge he sentenced me to death Midnight in a prison storeroom with leather straps across my chest

now, bruce doesn’t really waste much time with the trial because even if we didn’t know shit about the story before we might have guessed that he’d be captured/sentenced the moment he said he killed a bunch of people, so what we know is that they sentenced him guilty and to death too, and when he says leather straps across my chest we also know it’s an electric chair even if he doesn’t have to say it, and then you also get the midnight in a prison storeroom visual that gives you an idea of something fairly sordid and carried out in a haste when no one can see for how horrid the entire situation is. the entire point isn’t even making you empathize with him because you’re not supposed to... but the entire picture it paints is supposed to make you feel really, really creeped out including being in the head of an actual mass murderer, which is usually not a place where you find people feeling sorry or re-elaborating their trauma tied to their actions, because this guy certainly has no trauma related to them nor feels sorry about it. which we can see for true in the next bit:

Sheriff when the man pulls that switch sir and snaps my poor head back You make sure my pretty baby is sittin' right there on my lap

as in: when he talks to the sheriff in extremely blank/flat terms about his own death (pulls the switch/snaps my poor head back, poor being the only thing that suggests us he actually has feelings about it) the only thing he wants (which cannot happen obviously) is that his pretty baby is sitting on his lap, which considering that starkweather was 19 and she was 14 when the entire thing went down makes the entire thing sound really fucking creepy as it should sound. but that is what he cares about. not the people he killed, not his guilt, not any consequences of what he might have done, just that his girlfriend is there to see him die - which isn’t a thing he gives much of a fuck about anyway. and at this point you're wondering, what’s the point. well, the final stanza is giving you the point, even if he could also not giving you any point and it would still hold up because that’s entirely it, the guy killed people because he could and because he was angry, not because there was a point.

They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd be hurled They wanted to know why I did what I did Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world.

aaaand now you get the whole actual Meaning Of The Thing thrown in your face in three lines which need a lot of unpacking, but in order: they declared me unfit to live has a not so slight implication that it’s wrong for someone to decide who’s fit to live or not... which then in turn is kind of ironic coming from someone who killed ten people because he could, but that doesn’t make it any less true that he’s operating in a system that declares people unfit to live... same as he did, so he’s most likely asking why they have the right to decide it and he doesn’t. then we add that they wanted to know why he did what he did, which is the crux - until now he just said he had fun and he felt like it. now, bruce springsteen has no idea of why starkweather did it because of course he never knew him and only researched the topic, and the movie obviously had its take on things but it’s a movie. so what he does? he provides an answer which is also a reference to flannery o’ connor’s story a good man is hard to find’s ending where a similar thing was said (guys honestly read that it’s an a+ short story you should)... as in: well, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world. he GUESSES, he doesn’t know. *well, sir* suggests an answer like he’s just shrugging and providing it because it just occurred to him, not that he thought about it. but then what’s the point? that the world is mean. and it sucks. and meanness exists and you can’t do anything about it, and he was mean same as the world he comes from and so he did something mean that will result in his soul being hurled into the void (but other people said it, not him, he most likely doesn’t even think his soul will survive the execution), but that’s it. there’s nothing else. there’s no reasoning, there’s no guilt, there’s nothing. just, there’s a meanness in this world. dot. and since the world is mean people do mean things such as kill innocent people, to whom mean things happen all the time, and you can’t do shit about it. and then the song is over and you’re left with a chill running down your spine and wondering, is it really just as bad as that?

but since the singer isn’t giving you any answer either way and he’s not sympathizing with the murderer nor is trying to make you sympathize with him, he’s just telling him like it is, you as in the listener have to put effort into it and do the math and decide for yourself if you want to agree with the fact that the world is inherently mean and it sucks and it inevitably will do it over and over again, or if you want things to be different. you can’t know either way. he’s not telling you to judge his murderer not to sympathize with him. he’s asking you to think about it.

hm. imagine that.

now, if only people actually followed that advice and thought about things including how narratives focusing on seventeen-year olds having to kill someone in order to save people after developing ptsd for two years are not meant for the reader to blame the seventeen-year old with ptsd but the system that fucked him over that much, that would be even better now, wouldn’t it? ;)

#bruce springsteen for ts #ch: jaime lannister #nebraska for ts #murder cw #death penalty cw #death cw #btw you're blocked too ;)#murder spree cw #charles starkweather for ts #serial murders cw #long post for ts #bruce meta

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animebw · 5 years ago

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Kiznaiver: Series Reflection

There’s a part of me that’s frustrated I didn’t like Kiznaiver more than I did. It sits at the intersection of so many things I’ve come to appreciate about this medium, and particularly the people bringing it to life: Mari Okada’s incredible sense of place, Trigger’s stylish elevation of a fairly standard script, a cast of colorful characters with distinct and memorable personalities, narrative as meta-narrative that fuses text and subtext to comment on storytelling as part of its own story, and an overwhelming sense of heartfelt sincerity that defines the best of what anime has to offer. There is so much good that this show has to offer, and it’s aggravating that the pieces never gelled as fully as I wanted them too. It’s death by a thousand cuts, really; too many little things are out of place to keep from being distracted by them. But beneath all that, there still beats the core of a truly resonant narrative, unflinching and undaunted, and that’s still worthy of celebration.

It’s whenever it’s focusing on that core that Kiznaiver is at its best. This is a story about the complex emotional exchange inherent in human interaction, an idea given literal form by the Kizna system and pushed about as far as it can go in the process. Through the system of sharing pain, our protagonists explore what it means to open yourself up to someone else, how sharing emotional burdens makes them both easier to bear and harder to block out, how you can displace your traumas on the people who care for you without meaning to, how to find a healthy balance between isolation and dependency, and the importance of letting yourself accept the inherent uncertainty of human connection, because the pain it brings is pain worth feeling. It’s pretty much a pitch-perfect example of plot mechanics as narrative, entwining the literal story and the symbolic themes into a single, beautiful vine. And thanks to the strength of Mari Okada’s writing and Trigger’s stylish animation, it grounds this idea in a warm, intimate world that confidently allows its characters to exist within it, playing out their story in a universe as tangible as the connections they build over time. I could easily sink into this world as many times as I was asked, soaking in the same sensations as Katsuhira, Nori, Chidori, and all the rest.

Sadly, as good as this show’s core is, there’s an awkwardness to the construction that keeps it from shining through the way it needs to. Like most of Okada’s works, it relies on the raw, messy truths of teenage emotion to carry its emotional weight, but the truths don’t always feel raw or messy enough as much as coldly calculated to fit specific archetypical ideas of what raw and messy look like. I buy almost none of the many romantic entanglements that are explored over the course of its run; they all feel too unfinished, too clinical, too unmoored from the reality of the characters and their emotions. And considering these entanglements are the driving force behind the show’s most powerful moments, that leaves a serious dent in my ability to connect with Kiznaiver where it really counts. The actual execution of its ideas and themes is truly stellar, but it’s built on a foundation of wafer biscuits and pixie stix that can’t carry its weight beyond anything more than “impressive” when the end result should be just as heart-rending as Anohana. But while that show was also fairly uneven, there was a consistent visceral certainty to its portrayal of teen angst that carried it through its weaker moments and made its biggest moments truly resonate. Kiznaiver doesn’t have that same fire; it never really offended me, but it never had the kind of massive emotional impact that the best of Okada’s works are able to achieve.

Still, whatever criticisms I might have about it, I could never accuse Kiznaiver of being a bad show. Now when it’s so easily digestible on a moment-to-moment basis, not when its characters are so fun, not when its themes are so strong and well-conceived, not when its heart and soul beats so loudly in spite of its unevenness. Kiznaiver isn’t perfect, but it’s a worthwhile melodrama all the same, and as I’m fond of saying on this blog, sometimes being good enough is, well, good enough. And I award it a score of:

6/10

And with that, I’m officially on hiatus! Well, at least for shows: I’ll probably post about fun stuff I’m doing in Japan, and I might even be able to sneak in a couple movies on the plane rides if I’m lucky. Thank you all for sticking around, and I’ll see you for the start of a new adventure come mid-June!

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #kiznaiver

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twinkledadwa · 5 years ago

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Twinkledad’s #2

Dear Twinkledad,

Am I moving on too fast? I just got out of something super toxic... and not even 10 days later I’m hooking up with someone I just met. My ex really damaged me and I don’t know if I’m doing this to distract myself or if I’m really ready. I feel bad bc this new kid is very sweet and I don’t want to lead him on but also as of right now its just friends with benefits. also I’m talking to a old flame. I just feel lost and like I need a second opinion.

Anonymous.

Dear Anonymous, When I answered this question on air, I ran into a few technical difficulties with Serato. As a result, the first song had the audio quality of Never Meant earrape once it finally played. I hope it wasn’t too abrasive! Logan was a big fan of it, though.

So.

Here at Twinkledad’s, we support healthy sex lives. The act of hooking up with someone, even right after a breakup, is completely okay. You have this freedom and it’s in your right to use it. Where you should be careful is your intent behind this FWB relationship. What are you getting out of it? Is it sex for the sake of sex, or are you reaching for something deeper?

It is wholly possible you could be wanting the “emotional intimacy” often associated with relationship sex. That could be trouble for you and the other party involved.

Toxic relationships, from common knowledge and experience, can leave a lot of emotional trauma. Now is the time for you to learn how to heal. Finding healthy coping mechanisms is a trial-and-error process. That is what essentially takes up most of the timetable for moving on; once it clicks, and you’ll know when, it’s a matter of days from then.

The question could be, “am I trying to move on too fast?”. Forcing yourself to move on, actively or subconsciously, does not allow you the respect you deserve. Applying what was previously said to your specific question, you could be ignorant to what your emotions need right now. Likewise, if your FWB or old flame are not on the same page as you, they could become more attached than you are. No one’s at fault for this. You’d be coping and that’s reasonable.

You simply asked for a second opinion, and probably didn’t want this long of a response. To give an answer to your original question, yes, I believe you are. I know nothing beyond the question you’ve sent in, but I really wish you the best with everything.

“Anniversary Song” was chosen for its subject matter. The entire album, Just Married, is a very bitter and real portrayal of breaking up, moving on, and dying angry.

“Heathers” is not only catchy, but (possibly) about a booty call. It is a fun introspection about staying up all night and needing someone to talk to.

Glocca Morra - Anniversary Song

Insignificant Other - Heathers

Dear Twinkledad,

How do I apologize to someone who doesn’t want to talk to me? Is there a way where I can apologize without it being self serving?

Anonymous.

Dear Anonymous,

In essence, I feel like this is impossible.

There’s nothing wrong with that. You should give your interests and the other person’s interests the same amount of respect. It is difficult when you have genuine regret over something and you can’t necessarily go across portraying that when the other person, reasonably so, is hurt/upset/any sentiment that results in them not wanting to talk to you.

Apologizing right now, in this situation, will realistically be seen as self serving. In Moral Philosophy we discussed the concept of psychological egoism. Egoism is pretty different from selfishness, as egoism is acting in one’s self interest with wisdom, charity, and kindness towards others. Common critique brings up the possibility that other interests (in this case, the feelings of the other person) could be prioritized and therefore egoism can’t be achieved. Yet a lot of classmates, including myself, argued for all actions being inherently self-interested. Apologizing to your person, how would you consider it? Are you apologizing because they are hurt, or because you miss them?

That’s not to imply you don’t feel regret. We’re humans, philosophy was never meant to be taken as universal truth. It’s to suggest a possible answer on whether or not it would be self serving.

I suggest waiting for them to reach out. They could not be fully over what happened, and that’s straight chilling. I’m sure they recognize how you feel. One point in the future will come a time where both of you are on the same page in the same book.

“Weird Dream, Conscious Stream” was chosen because A.) I Hate Sex is stellar and B.) suggests an impossible reality for the narrator where the subject and other coexist.

“Do You Still Hate Me?” was chosen because of the title. According to Hugh, one of the best songs ever.

“I’m Here for The Pizzah Partie” was an obvious choice. Very obvious. Glaringly obvious. Fact. It’s fact.

I Hate Sex - Weird Dream, Conscious Stream

Jawbreaker - Do You Still Hate Me?

Two Knights - I’m Here For The Pizzah Partie

Dear Twinkledad,

I’m becoming more aware of my sudden anger and sadness outbursts. but I’m scared to go and get checked out bc I don’t want to be drugged up or I guess Face the music.

Anonymous.

Anonymous,

Let’s say you do get checked out. If you have a mental health diagnosis, good news! You have a mental “illness”.

Downside: you are stuck with this for the rest of your life.

Upside: you have all the time in the world to learn how to cope with it.

Getting checked out does not mean you’ll be drugged up. If you are of age, that’s entirely in your control. There are routes of dialectical behavior therapy (or just normal therapy) you can take. Nobody’s necessarily pro-medication in all situations. It’s hard not to have some ignorance of mental health problems if you don’t have the problem for sure. Take whatever path you feel best suits your needs.

We are not our diagnoses. However, it can be of great help to recognize your shitty behavioral ticks and understand why you have them. The start of your question implies you have been aware of specific behavior for some time now. With that, you have already begun to face the music. If you do decide to get checked out but give it a lot of time, a diagnosis could feel like a no-brainer to you. In fact, it could be a weight lifted.

Misdiagnosis can happen. Wrong meds, taking the medication, can happen. It’s part of coping, it sucks major ass. Time will come where mental health can feel worse than ever and like it is inescapable. The important thing is keeping your head up. I really hope you find the answers you want and or need.

I chose “As Cool As An Attempted Suicide”, beyond what the name suggests, for its energy. It’s a fun song for its subject matter. Being sad is not necessarily always bad.

“Why Am I Not Going Under Water?”/Snowing as a whole was an emotional crutch for me when I went through similar struggles. Galm’s vulnerability made me realize I was not alone, and hopefully it does the same for you too.

Leer - As Cool As An Attempted Suicide

Snowing - Why Am I Not Going Underwater?

Dear Twinkledad,

I've never really been in a real relationship my whole life, haven't even lost my virginity. It bothers me more than it probably should, but I feel almost desperate for a more than just a platonic relationship with someone. Wanna be able to have somebody to kiss/cuddle but seem to screw up every opportunity to have something good with someone.

Anonymous.

Anonymous,

A few weeks ago, I matched with someone on Bumble. We had this conversation:

“Heyy”

“Sorry, my mom said I can’t talk to girls.”

“Damn that’s crazy my dad said I can’t talk to boys *frowny face emoji*”

Then I left her on Read. Point being, everything will be okay.

Virginity is frustrating, in theory and in practice. It shouldn’t be a crime to not be sexually active or never had a serious relationship. Yes, love is great. However, one thing you’ll most likely learn when you experience love, because you will, is you can live without it. How we’ve constructed what virginity means has set pretty high expectations of what sex is like. In actuality, it’s pretty mediocre. Fun, but as you continue to open the bag of magic sex tricks, you’ll have plenty of mixed experiences. It is not a necessity by any means.

Love, on the other hand, is uncomfortably tied to our values. For a lot of people, having a family is their primary goal in life. I’ve seen this referred to as “honorable” multiple times as multiple people. What it does, subsequently, is pressure people into viewing sex and love as an accomplishment the same virginity does. Falling in love is an awesome feeling. Falling out of love is a terrible feeling. Experiencing neither does not put such a great weight on your shoulders like love does. To quote Quarterbacks, “love is situational”. You’ll have it. No way in hell you haven’t. The situation has yet to arise.

Dating apps are not worth it. Love is a feeling, right? There’s no need to force it. If you are relatively new in experience, your perception of love can be greatly skewed. I’m sure, whoever you are, you are in safe hands. You’ll be carried into the world of sex and love naturally, not at your own will, where it’s inevitably messier.

Once YOU, not anyone else, are satisfied with your romantic life, please send a message back. I wish you the best of luck knowing you have it, and just want you to be happy.

With a lot of music, worlds tend to be created through the instrumentals and not the lyrics. “Hardly Art” always forces a great sense of introspection and how I handle myself in situations of co dependence whenever it comes on.

“Try to Sleep”’s vocals, lyrics, and stripped back, lo-fi production echoes loneliness from all fronts.

Closer - Hardly Art

Attic Abasement - Try To Sleep

#twinkledad twinkledaddy emo midwestemo willard collegeradio college worldmentalheatlhday mental health

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