#it's my personal 'quest' currently to hype him up so people notice him

[evilvvithin]

THE DARE giles alderson, 2019

[alexsfictionaddiction]

Alex Recommends: May and June Books

I must apologise for the late arrival of this post. It should have been up days ago but I’ve been struggling to read much for the last month or so. My head has been very foggy and dark with all of the confusion, anxiety and hate that has been filling my news feeds and I’ve been filled with a desire to combat it. Before this month, I’d have run in the opposite direction from any kind of confrontation but recent events have given me the kick up the butt to actively do better. I’ve been calling out bigotry when I come across it and I’ve noticed that some people, notably my older relatives, haven’t necessarily reacted favorably to the changed, more outspoken Alex. It has been pretty daunting and I’ve worked myself up into fits of rage and tears several times over the last couple of months.

A lot of things have changed for me since my last Alex Recommends post. I’m currently temporarily living in Staffordshire with my boyfriend because my depression got too bad for me to stay at home for much longer. I missed him unbelievably much and I knew that spending some prolonged time with him would help -and it has. Both him and I have spent 12 weeks religiously following all of the rules, so we’re both extremely low-risk for catching and spreading COVID-19 and being together was something that we simply really needed to do. Please don’t hate me for it! In other news, I have also started writing again, which feels amazing. I’m now a few thousand words into a queer Rapunzel retelling that I have lots of ideas for. Maybe I’ll even post an extract or two, when I feel it’s ready to show you.

In the centre of the renewed energy of Black Lives Matter and the undeniable exposure of the horrors that is police brutality, the book blogging and BookTube worlds vowed to uplift Black voices. I wrote a very long, in-depth blog post full of Black-written books and Black book influencers. Please check it out to diversify your TBR and educate yourself on Black issues, which is what every white person should be doing now and always.

June was Pride Month and I tried my best to compile a series of recommendation posts in honour of it. These included gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, ace, pansexual and intersex lists. I’ve had some great feedback on this, so I hope you find some fantastic new reads. It felt especially poignant to put them together the same year that one of my childhood heroes came out as an ignorant trans-exclusive feminist. As a lifelong Harry Potter superfan and someone who has repeatedly publicly supported Rowling in the past, I feel the need to clarify where I now stand. I do not support or agree with a single thing that she has said in recent times with regard to transgender people. I’ve never felt my own status as a cisgender female threatened by trans people wanting more rights or believed that children or women were at risk due to their existence. 

I read her words more than once and struggled to find any semblance of the woman who wrote the books that have most defined my life. I’m hesitant to say that we can always successfully separate the art from the artist but I will say that it makes sense to me that the Rowling of 2020 is not the same Rowling that wrote Harry Potter. She was a destitute single mother when Philosopher’s Stone was published in 1997 and of course, she is now a million worlds away from that lifestyle. It breaks my heart but it makes sense to me that she has changed beyond belief because her life has changed beyond belief. I’m not and never would make any excuses for her recent behaviour and I have stopped supporting her personally but I will not be getting rid of my Harry Potter books and I will undoubtedly re-read them several more times. However, I am now hugely reluctant to buy any more merchandise or special editions of the books, which saddens me but at the moment, it feels right. There is no coming back for her from this and I will make a conscious effort to keep Harry Potter and Rowling away from my future content. It can be really tough to admit that the people you once really admired aren’t great humans but it’s something that we all have to acknowledge in this case, in order to move forward with our own quests to become our best selves.

It didn’t feel right to post my May recommendations last month as I didn’t feel comfortable promoting my own content in the midst of boosting Black voices. So today I’m bringing you a bumper edition of Alex Recommends. Here are 10 books that I’ve enjoyed since the start of May that I’d love to share with you. Enjoy! -Love, Alex x

FICTION: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Set in the affluent neighbourhood of Shaker Heights, Ohio in the 1990s, two families are brought together and pulled apart by the most intense, devastating circumstances. Dealing with issues of race, class, coming-of-age, motherhood and the dangers of perfection, Little Fires Everywhere is highly addictive and effecting. With characters who are so heartbreakingly real and a story that weaves its way to your very core, I couldn’t put it down and I’m still thinking about it over a month after finishing it. 

FICTION: Get A Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

When coding nerd Chloe Brown almost dies, she makes a list of goals and vows to finally Get A Life. So she enlists tattooed redhead handyman and biker Red to teach her how. Cute, funny and ultimately life-affirming, this enemies-to-lovers rom-com was exactly the brand of light relief that I needed this month. The follow-up Take A Hint, Dani Brown focuses on a fake-dating situation with Chloe’s over-achieving academic sister and I can’t wait to get my hands on that.

FICTION: The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart by Margarita Montimore

Just before her 19th birthday at midnight on New Year’s Eve 1983, Oona Lockhart finds herself inexplicably in 2015 inside her 51-year-old body. She soon learns that every year on New Year’s Day, she will now find herself inside a random year of her life and she has no control over it. Seeing her through relationships, friendships and extreme wealth, this strange novel has echoes of Back To The Future and 13 Going On 30 with a final revelation that I certainly never saw coming.

NON-FICTION: The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

Atmospheric and engaging, The Five details the previously untold stories of Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate and Mary-Jane -the women who lost their lives at the hands of Jack the Ripper. Full of fascinating research and heartbreaking accounts of what these women’s lives may have been like, Rubenhold paints a dark immersive portrait of Victorian London and gives voice to these tragic silenced lives. Although we can’t know for certain if these accounts are entirely accurate, they feel very plausible and in some ways, The Five exposes how little time has moved on, when it comes to the public portrayal of single, troubled women.

NON-FICTION: Unicorn by Amrou Al-Kadhi

From a childhood crush on Macaulay Culkin to how a teenage obsession with marine biology helped them realise their non-binary identity, Unicorn tells the story of how the obsessive perfectionist son of a strict Muslim Iraqi family became the gorgeous drag queen Glamrou. Packed full of humour, honesty and heart, this book will give you the strength and inspiration to harness what you were born with and be who you were always meant to be.

MIDDLE-GRADE: The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates by Jenny Pearson

When fact-obsessed Freddie’s grandmother dies, he discovers that the father he has never met may actually be alive and living in Wales. So he has no choice but to grab his best friends Ben and Charlie, leave his home in Andover and go to find his dad! I laughed so many times during this madcap adventure and I know the slapstick crazy humour will hit the middle-grade target audience just right. It’s also a wonderful depiction of small town Britain with a focus on the true meaning of family.

MIDDLE-GRADE: A Kind Of Spark by Elle McNicoll

When Addie learns about her hometown’s history of witch trials, she campaigns tirelessly to get a memorial for the women who lost their lives through it. This wonderfully beautiful novel gives a unique insight into the mind of an 11-year-old autistic girl with a huge heart. Busting myths about neurodiversity while tackling typical pre-teen drama, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry but most of all, you’ll close the book with a huge smile on your face. 

HISTORICAL FICTION: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

In 16th century Warwickshire, Agnes is a woman with a unique gift whose relationship with a young Latin tutor produces three children and a legacy that lasts for centuries. This enchanting, all-consuming account of the tragic story of Shakespeare’s lost son, the effects that rippled through the family and the play that was born from their pain will send a bullet straight through your heart. Wonderfully researched and beautifully written, Hamnet is worth all of the hype.

HISTORICAL FICTION: The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

When a vicious storm kills most of the men of Vardø, Norway, it’s up to the women to keep things going but a man with a murderous past is about to come down with an iron fist. At the heart of this dark tale of witch trials, grief and feminism, two women find something they’ve each been searching for within each other. Gorgeously written with a fantastically slow-burning queer romance, Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s first adult novel is an addictive, atmospheric read with a poignant, tearjerker of an ending.

SCI-FI: Q by Christina Dalcher

When one of Elena’s daughters manages to drop below the country’s desired Q number, she is sent away to one of the new state schools and Elena is about to find out something she’d really rather not know about the new system. Packed full of real social commentary and critique of life as we know it while painting a picture of how things could be even worse (yes, really!), this pulse-racing, horrifying sci-fi dystopian gripped me from the first page and refused to let me go. 

[spectral-musette]

Finished Thrawn: Treason a couple of days ago, and typed up some thoughts (cause I don’t know anyone else who’s read it and I just wanted vent them somewhere).

Overall, I think I still liked Alliances the most of the new Thrawn books, but Treason (or as I’ve been calling it, Threason) was also really enjoyable.

(Spoilers to follow for the current Thrawn series, Outbound Flight, and the end of Rebels)

(Disclaimers:

While I think Thrawn is a fascinating character, I’m not under any illusions that he is heroic, good, or admirable just because he’s written as the protagonist of the current series of novels. To me, Thrawn is interesting because I don’t see him as the kind of villain who convinces himself he’s actually good; it’s just that, in his calculations, morals and ideals are valued below expediency. He doesn’t think he’s right, only that he’s necessary. When you’ve compromised morality and justice and sworn allegiance to someone like Palpatine for what you believe to be the greater good, what’s left? What remains of your own soul when you’ve made yourself a monster just to fight off worse monsters? None of the novels have gotten to that point yet, but I hope TZ will eventually take us there.

Also, I know Outbound Flight is considered “Legends”, but I think it gives a lot of insight into Thrawn’s character. At his panel at SWCC, Timothy Zahn said he always writes as if all his old books could still become canon, so I’m assuming that the events of Outbound Flight continue to factor into TZ’s development of the character.)

I think the title maybe oversold the angle that we might see Thrawn working against Imperial interests. Apparently, he’s much too committed and careful for that. Acts of treason certainly came into play in the plot, but not committed by Thrawn. He doesn’t even lie to Palpatine – he omits, carefully, sometimes, but rarely that.

I discovered at SWCC that fandom was pretty hyped about the return of Eli Vanto. I had admittedly been rather tepid on Eli in the first novel in the series. Any good things Eli did were always tempered by the fact that I couldn’t quite forget that this was a young man who quite freely decided that the Imperial Navy was the career path for him. In Treason, I found it much easier to like Eli now that he’s no longer an Imperial officer. Seeing him finding his footing on the Chiss battleship was interesting, and I liked the soft beginning of romantic feelings between him and Vah’nya (the Force-Sensitive Chiss navigator who, at 22, is the oldest known Chiss to ever maintain her abilities). I was going to say “hints of feelings”, but I think it was a bit stronger than that? Her flirtation was downright overt at times (“You were not merely coming to see me? Too Sad.” Lol, get it Vah’nya), and Eli did tell her that he’d die for her, so that seems like a pretty solid foundation? I’m a little worried about them, though. What I recall about Chiss society from Outbound Flight and Survivor’s Quest is that it’s pretty class-bound and that they don’t really think much of outsiders. It’s unclear to me if an important asset to the Ascendancy like Vah’nya would be permitted to have a relationship with a non-Chiss.

Much as Assistant Director Ronan (who is just the worst, see below) liked to throw around “traitor” re: Eli, I’m not sure I’m ready to give Eli Imperial Defector status, at least not quite at the same level as the people who joined the Rebellion. Eli has yet to actually work against the Empire. I feel like Eli’s background (being from Wild Space) did affect the way he perceived the Empire as just the same old Galactic Republic going by a new name, but after the things he experienced in the first Thrawn novel, Eli at least knows very well that the Empire uses slave labor. But I guess at this point he’s buying Thrawn’s rationale that the military strength of the Empire is keeping the Grysk, the spooky big bad from the edges of the galaxy, out of that part of the galaxy? It would be interesting to see how Eli’s perceptions of the Empire might change after the destruction of Alderaan.

Leading up to the release, I saw some promotion for the novel, I think on twitter, saying that a “new” female Chiss character was being introduced, Admiral Ar’alani. My initial response was, uuuuuuuuum wasn’t she in Outbound Flight, though? And I know that’s not technically canon anymore, but, wasn’t she also mentioned in the first new Thrawn novel? So actually, not really new at all? BUT Vah’nya and little Un’hee are both new and I love them, so there absolutely ARE new female Chiss characters in Treason… just… not Ar’alani. Though we do see a good bit more of her in this book than we have previously.

And I really enjoyed Ar’alani as a character in Treason. She’s a great foil to Thrawn to directly demonstrate that no, all the Chiss are not Like That. She’s honorable and cunning, and she’s quite passionate, quick-tempered but also quick to move past her anger. I liked that we got to see her being fierce and indomitable, but she was also able to be so soft and comforting to a rescued child without ever undermining her authority or seeming remotely awkward or uncomfortable about it. It was fun to see her get so angry and annoyed at Thrawn, but be able to put it aside and work with him because she knows it’s the best course of action.(There are points from Faro’s point of view when Ar’alani just goes off on Thrawn in the Chiss language aboard the bridge of the Chimaera, and I’m DYING to know what she’s saying to him). I was kinda getting a vibe that the two of them possibly were exes before the scene where Eli has the same thought -

Eli Vanto, on the bridge of a Chiss warship, during battle: I Think My Admirals Used to Bang.

(Verbatim, it’s “he wondered at the history and the relationship between Ar’alani and Thrawn”)

And it kinda solidified for me in the farewell between them:

[“Someday, Mitth’raw’nuruodo, you’ll overthink and overplan, and it will come crashing down all around you. When that happens, I hope someone is there to lift you back to your feet.”

“You, perhaps?”

Ar’alani shakes her head. Her expression holds regret, perhaps even pain. “I very much fear I will never see you again.”]

(I MEAN, wow okay, why don’t you two just make out right there in the turbolift, then?)

(And I get that you could totally read the dynamic another way, but that’s how it comes across to me)

I don’t recall their dynamic being that uh… charged? in Outbound Flight? But Outbound Flight was a bit more focused on Maris’s hero-worship/crush on Thrawn (and admittedly it’s been a while since I read it).

Speaking of Outbound Flight, the fact that Ar’alani has held the rank of Admiral since before the Clone Wars tells us that she definitely is not a young woman. Even if she rocketed through the ranks on a combination of extraordinary ability and family connections, it seems like she’d be at least in her 30’s at that point (and that’s really low-balling it), and that was 25+ years ago. Granted, we don’t know much about Chiss lifespans or how they show their age, but no mention is made of her age at all. The only descriptor I could find of Ar’alani when paging back through Outbound Flight (aside from the typical “blue-skinned”/“glowing red eyes” Chiss stuff) was “resplendent”, so I’ve decided that’s her main attribute and she might be slightly immortal.

Eli makes note of the fact that she has the same name-structure as the navigators (two-part instead of three-part, never abbreviated to a core name). This can’t just be a gendered thing – Eli is supposed to be good at noticing patterns in things and would SURELY have realized that (plus, Feesa in Survivor’s Quest is a lady with a three-part name) – but I wonder if the answer is just: Ar’alani was a navigator when she was a child. She knows an awful lot about the navigators’ abilities (even Thrawn doesn’t know much about “Second Sight”), seems particularly sympathetic to and protective of them, and both Vah’nya and Un’hee seem particularly attached to her. Force-sensitive Ar’alani is an interesting prospect!

I’m not sure I’d say I ship Thrawn and Ar’alani, exactly, but the idea of him being her ex-lover who keeps calling her up and asking for favors even though he’s off the grid doing CRAZY SHIT is amusing to me. I’m not sure if I like the idea of them having been together when they were young (in a military academy, maybe) and splitting up for political reasons (differences in class/family affiliations) or if I prefer to think they had a thing when he was her junior officer, or what. Mostly I think it makes an interesting sunken ship, as it were. She probably deserves better anyway (more on Thrawn’s personal problems in a bit).

Wow that turned into “just blather on about Admiral Ar’alani”, didn’t it? Anyway, she’s a great character and I like her a lot.

To move on to another character, Assistant Director Ronan is, as I said, the worst. I’m pretty sure Thrawn’s not wrong about Vader straight up murdering this dude, given the opportunity. And I mean, there are two types of characters Vader will murder: Ones you Really Don’t Want him to, and ones that you… do? Ronan is the latter. Instead, Thrawn is using him to let Ar’alani feed very select info back to the Empire about the Chiss. So, cape-wearing, Krennic-worshipping Ronan thinks the Emperor is petty and more interested in watching his subordinates squabble than providing effective leadership and also apparently hates Force-users (declaring himself an enemy to Thrawn if he’s working against Palpatine’s goals to eradicate them). And while I’m sure the Chiss will maintain the secrecy and protection around their navigators as well as they can, I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of this guy anywhere near my tiny blue daughters.

And I’m pretty sure Thrawn is not working with Palpatine to kill Force-sensitives in the Ascendancy. If he was, this would be a dark prospect given Eli’s project to collate data about the navigators! But as far as I can tell at this point, Thrawn’s goals for the navigators are the same as Ar’alani’s – more navigators who maintain their abilities longer are a benefit to the Ascendancy. And while navicomputer technology is certainly more sustainable, it seems like if the Ascendancy wanted it, that’s certainly something they would be able to obtain. Possibly they’re just being traditionalist about it (using navigators because they’ve always used navigators) and possibly it’s partly to contain the Grysk – a navicomputer doesn’t have an expiration date like a captured Chiss navigator does. Maybe Force-aided navigation has advantages we haven’t fully explored (or I’m just forgetting some of the ones we have).

I think TZ has tended to write Thrawn as more sympathetic over time (not that this is a recent development; see Outbound Flight) so it becomes hard to reconcile the version of Thrawn in Rebels to the current Thrawn in the novels, even though the events are tied up quite closely. Probably because Rebels Thrawn is drawn mostly from the less-developed version of the character in the original Thrawn novels, and mostly I think because TZ didn’t have any input in writing Thrawn’s episodes.

What seems to be an on-going thread in the current novels is Thrawn’s tendency to isolate himself. I think he’s actually pretty fond of Eli (insofar as he’s capable of things like “fondness”). And while I’m sure Eli can be an asset to the Ascendancy, with Eli serving Ar’alani, Thrawn also no longer has to deal with Eli, who views him as a good commander and a brilliant, admirable person, holding him accountable for any actions that might contradict that view. He holds Eli at arm’s length throughout the story in Treason; in part you can chalk this up to the urgency of the mission, but it strikes me that he’s actively pushing Eli away. Eli never gets much of a moment with Thrawn, no renewal of camaraderie. Eli’s angry about it at the beginning, perceiving it as a snub, but by the end he’s more resigned to it. It sucks to love someone who doesn’t seem to care about you.

(But I’m not sure Thrawn doesn’t care about Eli, I think he’s just being careful to let Eli get that impression.)

And Thrawn does the same with Commodore Faro, recommending her for a major promotion out of his immediate circle. She’s deeply loyal to him and admires him, and he is sure to remove her from his sphere of influence. Always to the benefit of the removed party (Eli is thriving in the Ascendancy, and I’m sure Faro will do well in her new command), of course. But they’re also gone. He doesn’t have to be privy to their disappointment, disillusionment, and he doesn’t have to be responsible for their lives or deaths. Thrawn is actively denying himself the opportunity to be cared for, and maybe keeping himself from getting attached beyond a certain point as well.

Because once upon a time, before the Clone Wars, Thrawn was a person who liked being admired, who deeply valued idealism in others, who loved his brother.

Does the self-isolation go back to his brother’s death, or is it part of his approach to serving Palpatine? If he doesn’t live like a person with feelings and loved ones, is it easier to tolerate the suffering he’s causing to other people with feelings and loved ones?

(And in the aftermath of the Rebels finale – assuming Thrawn survived the Purgill attack, and there’s no reason he MUST have – what happens when he is really truly isolated, with nothing between him and oblivion but an angry teenage Jedi apprentice who utterly loathes him? And… some space whales.)

[pass-the-bechdel]

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend season three full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (thirteen of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

41.16%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Seven, so just over half. Three of those are 50%+.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-four. Thirteen who appeared in more than one episode, five who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty-nine. Eighteen who appeared in more than one episode, seven who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Not nearly as good as you might expect or hope. As with previous seasons, the show’s most impressive content is not the feminist stuff at all, and on the feminist front it feels sometimes as if the show spends more time denouncing different aspects of the feminist movement as ‘the wrong kind of feminism’ than it does declaring and upholding the aspects it does approve. I tend to feel that it spends time talking the talk on women’s issues, but doesn’t often get up to walk the walk (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Easily better than the previous two seasons, despite a deflated ending. It takes a much more focused approach to its storytelling in the beginning of the season, in a manner which briskly becomes refreshingly confronting and leads in to a powerful middle. Unfortunately, it never sustains quality for very long, and overall the show still suffers for being too easily distracted. It’s not infuriating, but it can be frustrating.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Ok, let me explain something about myself first, something I’ve mentioned in other (non-Crazy Ex) posts which have gone live long before this one will, but for anyone who missed it in any of those other places, here it is: I am, right now, pregnant. In fact, I am pregnant with a child conceived non-traditionally with a gay friend of mine, and as such, Darryl’s non-traditional quest for biological parenthood in this season struck a very personal chord (though, unlike Darryl, I used the phone-a-friend option as my first choice, not a fallback. Would recommend, if it’s ever relevant to your life). I bring all of this up because I can categorically declare that there are certain plot threads that you absolutely will NOT have the same reaction to if you don’t have that very personal chord being struck, and even moreso if that chord is relevant to your life right now, rather than being something that you’ve experienced in the past but has since slipped from the forefront of your attention. Thus, when I talked about feeling like the emphasis was in all the wrong places for Darryl’s part of the narrative, and expressed irritation with Heather’s pregnancy and birth? I sure ain’t mad about it for no reason. I am extremely, extremely aware of what those processes are actually like right the heck now.

I’m not going to linger on all the details, but I am particularly annoyed at the writers for dropping the ball on the pregnancy/birth part, specifically because it’s something which is so often badly dramatised in tv and film already, and the writers not only know that, they openly reference it as if they’re somehow doing better. The same way that medical professionals sometimes find it too frustrating to watch hospital dramas because of all their inaccuracies, or someone in law enforcement might cringe their way through all the egregious breaches in procedure in a cop show, there’s always a significant risk that anything depicted in fiction will make you want to tear your hair out over the way the plot warps or disregards reality that is pertinent to your life, either through a lack of proper research or understanding of the subject matter, or a conscious choice to prioritise desired storytelling beats/developments over actual logic and realism. Suffice to say there are a LOT of concessions Crazy Ex-Girlfriend asked me to make to their storytelling with this little subplot, some of which most people who have never been pregnant wouldn’t notice, and yes, some of which I would probably dismiss if I were not in the midst of the reality right now. I’m someone who has been present at actual births before and has been raised with an above-average understanding of what’s involved, so I’m used to gritting my teeth and hoping to just not be too annoyed by the way pregnancy and birth is typically depicted on screen. The fact that I am currently immersed in the reality of preparing to give birth makes me less forgiving of fictional contrivances, yes, but in the case of this show’s approach, it’s also more than that: it’s the fact that this show actively promotes itself as a feminist text. And if you’re gonna do that, and criticise the way other things (”written by men!”) depict labour, but then you also choose not to include any education/empowerment of your pregnant character, rattle off a variety of (uneducated, disempowered) cliches anyway, and then handwave it all with ‘nevermind, she just got an epidural!’ as if that ‘solves’ the difficulties of birth (and post-birth recovery, for that matter), frankly that’s just...a really unimpressive failure of feminist storytelling. Congratulations, you neglected the subject completely, at the same time as actively claiming your intent to do better than all that written-by-men schlock out there! What a tiresome charade this turned out to be.

Setting that aside though (difficult for me, as I am...very preoccupied with it), there was actually a good lot of things to like about this season, even if I do still feel that I ultimately have more criticisms than I do praise. Having Rebecca actually reach crisis point in the form of a suicide attempt, and consequently getting a diagnosis for her mental disorder and finally being able to move forward in learning to live a balanced life with BPD? Frankly, it’s not a move that I anticipated, and if you’d asked me where I thought Rebecca’s mental health plot was heading, I probably would have just shrugged it off as an unfocused thread where the ultimate goal was just ‘figure out how to be happy on your own terms instead of defining happiness through someone else’ (which is solid advice, but generalised advice, not something that would require the show to commit to a genuine mental illness). Acknowledging that Rebecca’s behaviour comes from a more distinct source than just the nebulous idea of being ‘crazy’ is a vitally important development, and it ushered in some of the best storytelling the show has offered thus far, at least when the plot maintained steady focus and made an effort to be responsible and mature in its exploration of the issue. As ever, there were still times when the show used Rebecca’s mental state for comic relief in a manner which made me uncomfortable, and times when I couldn’t interpret the intentions of the narrative - I have come to the conclusion that this show and I are on completely different wavelengths, which makes us a bad match, regardless of any elements which I do appreciate. 

On the subject of things I appreciate, I’m going to discuss the true character highlight of the show, someone I wanted to talk about after last season, not realising that if I held off until this review instead, he was gonna wind up so terribly underused in the meantime that it’s almost weird that he’s still technically part of the main cast at this point: Josh Chan. Josh Chan is...kinda the most believable part of this show, both in the bumbling good-natured balance of the character himself, and in other character’s feelings about him. Being able to buy the idea that someone would give up their whole life as they knew it to chase after this guy is kinda important to selling the concept of the show from the outset, and honestly, Josh Chan is the only time I’ve ever seen a central male love interest for whom the hype seemed to make sense. Is he perfect? Not by a long shot, but that’s fine because ‘perfection’ is as conditional as it is unattainable. The problem with male love interests, often, is that they’re written by heterosexual men who treat the character as some kind of masculine wish-fulfillment, a combination of ‘guy I wish I could be’ and ‘guy I think women should want (me)’. Josh Chan is a great example of a love interest written by women for women: he displays positive masculine-coded traits (protective, physically capable), while rejecting negative, toxic-masculine elements (aggression, possessiveness), and he embraces key ‘feminine’ traits (non-threatening, kind, soft, emotionally expressive, family-oriented), while his flaws are unobtrusive and potentially even endearing (the main one is that he’s quite stupid, which is something a lot of straight women will happily admit to liking (at least in theory), and other traits such as Josh’s childish streak can be a source of joy under some circumstances, as well as being something Josh mostly keeps a hold on so that it doesn’t become a burden to his partners). Also, it would be remiss of me to neglect to mention how refreshing and meaningful it is to have an Asian male love interest. I really enjoy not being bored to death by Josh Chan, and I am annoyed at how little of him we got this season while we wasted time with that generic slice of white bread, Nathaniel. Bring back the Chan plots, season four. Do it for me.

[bunchill-blog]

RISE AND SHINE, KINGDOM HEARTS FANDOM! The fantastic new opening is up and I’m here to bring you some cool details that may have gone unnoticed with all the hype and questions that are popping up and eating all of us alive as we wait for January 25~29. Thus, I’m here to present you some cool theories (that absolutely no one asked for) based on the eye colours of the characters in the Kingdom Hearts series! Or, as I like to call it, the Rainbow Spectrum theory! Sounds a bit boring, right? But I promise ya it gets better, if not interesting! Okay, so let’s dive deep by starting with the basics.

As many of us have noticed, Kingdom Hearts is a game that most characters have blue eyes, with a few exceptions here and there that scream stranger danger to all of us; yellowish eyes are bad by default and are a sign of darkness, generally of people who got Norted, which means they’re considered one of the vessels of Xehanort, or simply put, golden-eyed people are the villains of the story (take Xemnas, Xehanort, Ansem the Seeker of Darkness, Xigbar, etc, for example) and the blue-eyed people are the heroes (take Sora, Ventus, Aqua, Roxas, etc, for example).

That’s cool and all, but... Isn’t it strange that Kairi is one of the few characters that have purplish eyes? She has indigo eyes, it varies between deep blue and purple, as we can see in the famous KH2 ending and in the new KH3 trailers. Huh, how curious. Then we can notice Sora’s eyes clearly changing colours from KH1 to KH3; the once strong, azure-like blue starts to fade away just so hints of green can begin to appear.

Then we have these two... Who share nothing in common, right? Except for the fact that they’re both considered “anomalies”, people who walk between darkness AND light, The Road to Dawn, as it’s explained in KH Re:COM. Not to mention that Riku’s entire arc is him accepting the darkness as part of himself, controlling it and using both darkness and light as his strength to protect what matters the most to him, his loved ones and his home. But what does this entire rambling mean? Well, I’ll let optical physics be our friend here to let us visualise it better!

The more vibrant an eye colour is, the stronger the connection between the individual and their nature [be them light-based or darkness-based] is. The closer such colour is to red, the closer the individual is connected to darkness. The closer such colour is to purple, the closer the individual is connected to light. (I used hex codes to make this little exemplification since I have some difficulty distinguishing between colours by the way so forgive me if they aren’t completely 100% spot-on!)

Rainbow. Seven colours. Seven lights?! Okay, maybe that’s seeing too much into things, but I had to put this here, my bad, let’s get back into being serious.

When you look into a simple colour spectrum it’s funny to notice that the Princess of Heart, Kairi, a person that supposedly has nothing but light inside their being, is the one to have purple-blue eyes. Meanwhile, Ansem The Seeker of Darkness, an entity that’s supposed to be made out of pure darkness since he’s a Heartless, has orange-red eyes. What’s even more fun to notice is that the colours are commonly divided by blocks of wavelength/frequency intervals, which in exchange makes the rainbow’s colours [violet, blue, cyan, green, yellow, orange, red]. Then, you have the dude that managed to control both darkness and light, and was chose to be one of the Guardians of Light and a Keyblade Master, Riku; he has cyan eyes, one of the most distinct eye colours in the whole series. By that logic, that’d explain why he’s still closer to the light even if he has great darkness within himself and a good affinity to it; such can be exemplified and justified when we observe that the cyan block interval is closer to the purple block interval instead of the red block interval. 

Tetsuya Nomura is known for his love for symbolism and little details [the X marks on items of clothing in BBS and DDD is just the biggest example of this I can think of], and I honestly can’t see how all of this can be a coincidence, especially when we have this new KH3 trailer showing a Young Xehanort facing the night sky with purple eyes. It’s something we should take into consideration, in my opinion. What happened to his eyes for them to change colours and turn golden? Is his name even Xehanort? What did he experience that made him follow the Dark Side path?

As it’s shown throughout the series, people can apparently change eye colours depending on their emotional state and current nature [light/darkness, good/evil]. Take Xehanort, Aqua, Larxene, and others! This clearly has a link to their hearts’ stats, so this is also a cue to Sora’s eyes changing colours. 

Literally, Nomura said that Sora will be on the edge of true despair in KH3, not to mention all the hints he left for a possible end to his character since he apparently doesn’t care about him at all, sympathizing with Xehanort way more than his little hero, which to me are pretty good reasons to consider his eyes changing colours in KH3. If this isn’t enough to back it up though, have screencaps of the video KINGDOM HEARTS III – Big Hero 6 Trailer.

Right from the bat, you can see that Sora and Roxas don’t share the same eye colour anymore. Sora’s eyes have major hints of green whereas Roxas’ eyes have hints of navies among shades of deep blue. Roxas currently has bluer eyes than Sora!

Now scroll up and compare to KH1 where Sora’s eyes were absurdly blue, like the summer sky (let’s not forget that Sora’s name [ソラ] is literally written as ‘sky’ in Japanese and that Nomura himself said in the past that that was the reason he named his character as such). I wonder what happens to a polluted sky? Or a cloudy one? Can a sky even get green? Hey, wait a second.

Let’s also not forget that “despair” and “tornado”/”thunderstorm” are constantly used in literature as synonyms or metaphors; you can have H.P Lovecraft (I’ll be exemplifying this with this poem of his, Despair) as a major example, here’s an extract of said poem: “Once, I think I half remember, / Ere the grey skies of November / Quench’d my youth’s aspiring ember, / Liv’d there such a thing as bliss; / Skies that now are dark were beaming, / Gold and azure, splendid seeming / Till I learn’d it all was dreaming— / Deadly drowsiness of Dis”. Please also compare said extract to the end of the poem, the final paragraph of verses, where he talks about oblivion, anguish and agony finally coming after the signs of storm: “Thus the living, lone and sobbing, / In the throes of anguish throbbing, / With the loathsome Furies robbing / Night and noon of peace and rest. / But beyond the groans and grating / Of abhorrent Life, is waiting / Sweet Oblivion, culminating / All the years of fruitless quest.” I honestly think Nomura takes some inspiration out of Lovecraft, but that’s a topic for another discussion.

Other modern authors that use such word-plays on their pieces [despair, torment, tornado, etc] constantly to describe an agonizing sensation are Stephen King, J.K Rowling, John Green, Rick Riordan, G. R. R. Martin and others.

And then we have a screencap from one of Tetsuya Nomura’s interview of this year that I linked before but here’s the link again if you wanna check it out once more. So, green is a hint of despair here.

Isn’t this curiously interesting? I wonder what all of this would mean to Sora, especially since we’ve been told over and over again by Nomura that this is probably the end to his journey as a hero, as exposed on the links above. We have a lot of theories that are based on him getting Norted by the end of the game and ones based on a possible sacrificial/martyr ending. Either way, when it comes to that, the possibilities are endless.

What’s certain is that times are indeed changing and along with it, so is the sky.

And what happens when the sky changes? According to what we learned with Kingdom Hearts, destiny itself changes.

What I’m trying to say is that KH3 ain’t looking so positive for our heroes, my friends. This new song’s lyrics (I deeply believe this song is specifically targeted at Sora, given what Nomura said and this whole context that I wrote) alongside what Nomura said about the KH3 having an ending that will shock or upset most of the fans is really unsettling.

Well, let’s hope for the best! I’ll be probably be writing more posts based on this theory in the future, relating it to the Organization XIII members and more! See you guys next time!

[deveharrington]

[8 new theories] + Response to anon: On the way David uses his words, his masks, and his social intuition (or lack thereof).

📬

Anonymous: 

I wanted to say thanks for the interesting read and also wow, it’s really amazing how different our perception can be. I never got the ’laid-back’ vibe from DD. Or rather, I get that he tries to project it, but always thought it‘s a mask and in reality he’s just as insecure and high-strung as GA, only hides it better. And I never believed he doesn’t care for his image. I think it hurts him badly that it’s forever tainted. Remember his words that he doesn’t expect his kids to be proud of him?

Hi anon, thank you so much for this message. I need conflicting perspectives like these brought to my attention, otherwise, as you can see, its very easy for me to get into a thinking groove.

I still stand by my claims, but I am willing to change them anytime in light of new info. Opposing opinions like this help connect the pieces in the end and put everything in perspective. It is invaluable to me, so thank you :)

Your ask brings up a lot of great points, so many that I put my response under a cut due to the length. But, before the cut:

Here is a table of contents to summarize, and if anyone is interested in these topics: 

The “short” version of my response to your ask.

The way David uses his words

David places more value on words than actions, and thinks the two are interchangeable. 

David and the excuse, “why bother?”?

David and using excess and indulgence to lose himself. 

David lacks the intuition to read others. He cannot see people for what they are, and maybe he doesn’t want to. (Could be related to him always wearing a mask). 

David and Gillian’s insecurities as both a compatibility AND incompatibility between them. 

On Gillovny (yep, I can somehow relate everything to Gillovny): David and Gillian both have an insatiable greed for this relationship, but they cannot act out of their own fear and insecurities. 

My current theory on why Gillovny is blocked right now (nothing to do with Monique).

*** And to Monique (Hi!), please deliver this message to David: 

(HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Oh David, your refusal to grow up essentially puts you in the Majora’s Mask universe. Haven’t you noticed that you’re constantly repeating the same mistakes over and over and over....? It doesn’t help that you seem to have a mask and excuse for EVERYTHING. I’m sorry about your terrible fate. But you’ve brought it upon yourself.)

(1) 💣 The “short” version of my response to your ask:

I agree with you that the laid-backness is a guise. And I could understand him using a guise if he were performing any progressive action in his career to warrant a guise, but he is not. Maybe the difference between us here is what we’re seeing beneath the guise, but I also believe that his guise has changed, even if its just a subtle change.

I said in my first thesis he has a drive to excel, is competitive, and wants to be seen. I still believe these things. But now, in his current phase, the guise isn’t even laid-back, its “I don’t give a f*ck”. To me, this is a red flag. 

** Its like he knows his career is nothing but he doesn’t want anyone else to tell him about it (his ego makes him want to be the source of all knowledge). So he’s just in “f*ck you” mode at any kind of input coming his way. 

** ACTUALLY maybe this is why it seems like he is ignoring so many issues in his life right now? It might be connected to his natural drive to succeed not being satisfied by his “career”. 

The biggest problematic piece of evidence, for me is reports of him being rude to fans in person, outright ignoring them/not engaging with them online, denying them what they’ve paid for, etc. Why bite the hand that feeds you, while at the same time announcing all the projects you have lined up for the future? It is an aggressive way to treat fans, but David gets by with using the “innocent exploring artist” MASK.

Another piece of evidence: I still see the situation as him doing nothing but I am looking to be proven wrong in the very near future. I haven't listened to his recent podcast about his future projects. I just can’t stand him nowadays, lmfao. 

Also, I created all the ideas of this response before the sofaology nonsense came out lmao! If it turns out that this is the “secret project” he’s been hyping then... LMAO!

For now, my conclusion of the situation is that David is applying some “all or nothing” thinking to his situation, and its throwing his decision making out of control. Like he’s looking at the ends only, not the means. He keeps having projects shut down, but can’t learn that he needs to start somewhere and build his skills and reputation, not just cry out advertisements for himself with no guarantee of fulfilling his many promises. 

I want to agree with you that he (still) cares about his image but... if he did, then what the hell kind of messages is he trying to send right now? And, could it be that he really is just NOT self aware AT ALL? That he might lack the intuition to read others, so he has developed a weird idea of how to interact socially. I say this because he expresses himself so weirdly. Also, maybe he assumes others wear a mask because he wears so many masks himself. So, he doesn’t place value on the way he comes across, only on the words he says?

I mean, and sorry, but let’s illustrate it with his disgusting “relationship”: what the fuck kind of messages is he sending to his kids? to his wife? About love, companionship, partnership, and family (example: “sorry, family, I don’t have time for you because I only have time for - I won’t say it.)? 

BUT it could be that he doesn’t mean to send these kinds of messages? I don’t want to think that he would try to put that image out there on purpose. 

So, what if he really is not aware of himself?? Like, is he THAT selfish that he only thinks about himself and NEVER others? Never even the way they see him? LMao?? Probably not, it might just boil down to a lack of social intuition (hence the “conquering” attitude with women)? That doesn’t make total sense but it does for me?? for now, I guess? I don’t know, lmao. 

(2) 💣 [THEORY 45] The way David uses his words.

I”ll just say this before going forward in hopes that it will show where my perspective is coming from. And this is just what I see:

When david uses words to express himself he mixes his honest sentiments with one or a combo of the following:

- Self-deprecating humour - to give an illusion of humility

- Edginess - to give an illusion of honesty, or some noble quest of “fighting the system” and to get you on his side. 

- Sensationalism/shock value - to get your attention and maybe distract you from the fact that what he is actually saying is either a) completely unfair to opposing views b) not founded upon evidence, but personal bias or c) just complete nothingness. 

- Overly convoluted/deliberately unknowable references - to a) again, distract you from the fact that what he’s saying is complete nothingness, or b) maybe to demonstrate his literary “prowess” and at the same time prevent you from researching the source of his statements.

- Imposing himself/dominating the conversation/making everything about him - a) to fool you into thinking that what he’s saying is correct and/or b) to make himself seem more interesting

*** I think he uses all these tactics because he is really scared that people will get bored of him...

*** BECAUSE he constantly needs people’s attention on him!!!!! He can’t risk people.... NOT paying attention to him!!!!!!

(And to my anon who once sent me some info talking about how David needed one of his girlfriends to constantly remind him that she loved him...thank you! and I didn’t forget about you! I’ll answer your ask... one day!!)

So, here is David blowing his own mind with his incomprehensible strings of alphabet letters because he is both a player AND easily played: 

You’re right, its all an illusion, a mask. But to what end? I think both David and Gillian are just like that, they constantly want the position of power. Humility is out of the question, but this contributes to their insecurity because humility is a socially valued trait. Maybe they are just not comfortable fully expressing who they are. I see this more for David than Gillian. You said, “David hides it better”, so absolutely this is the case, but I’m just asking, why does he feel the need to hide? 

But I can at least respect Gillian because i’ve never seen her really try to project “humble and relatable”. Actually, part of the reason why I love her so much is because she seems open about her insecurities. 

David plays his fans with the “innocent guy” mask and people fall for it. The players and the played just attract each other, I guess.

(3) 💣 [THEORY 46] David places more value on words than actions, and thinks the two are interchangeable. 

To your point about David and Gillian both being equally insecure and using a guise, absolutely. The only thing that makes me hesitate to end the conversation there is the massive difference in their careers. (Will elaborate later). 

For now, I will focus on a theory on how David is rationalizing his guise. You mentioned what he said, that “his kids would not be proud”, but, David, does this mean that you should do nothing to try to make your kids proud? 

Or, he might see his  reputation as “forever tainted”, but, David, does this mean that you should do nothing to try to improve your reputation?

I swear there is a quote of his (which I can’t find anymore, maybe I just made it up? lmao) where he said something along the lines of, “the problems men have are problems they’ve had since the beginning of time”. 

Now, David, come on. Is he saying that we should not even bother to correct ourselves with our actions? We should not try to improve, progress, or contribute to society through innovation? Imagine if women said, “women have always had the position of inequality, so we should not even bother to fight?”. 

To me, these statements of his are just red flags: examples of “all or nothing” thinking. 

Please consider it with what I said about the way David uses his words. 

My theory is that he feels that that as long as he can admit the truth of the situation, then this somehow excuses his actions. Like, his words are so powerful they can be used in the place of corrective action. 

And when he “admits a truth”, he sways the tide with his words to get people on his side. He uses self deprecation to convince you he is self aware. He uses edginess to convince you he is a badass. He uses humour to just make you happy and agreeable. He dominates the conversation to make you feel that he was the one with all the answers/arguments, or perhaps recreate a teacher/student dynamic.

I think he just sees too much power in words, and not just words, but ONLY HIS words. And of course this is not helped by his identity being tied to his education, and also not helped by the fact that he has been able to get his way through excuses. 

So, he just manipulates things to allow him to do whatever he wants in the future. Actually, there is a problem in this in that it can then be hard for people to know what exactly he wants (he has fooled them with his words) and therefore they cannot help him get exactly what he wants. Maybe that is why he is not progressing? Because he is trying to do everything on his own? David, you need to listen to others because you can’t even see yourself. LMFAO. 

This leads to the next two theories:

(4) 💣 [THEORY 47] David and the excuse, “why bother?”. 

It seems like his bread and butter. I’m sorry but I see him as carrying around a lot of judgments that maybe he feels are useful for directing his efforts and constructing his image, but in reality are just limiting him. 

And I think goes hand in hand with:

(5) 💣 [THEORY 48] David and using excess and indulgence to lose himself. 

This is just my perspective. I see that, with David, If something ends up working for him, he will exploit it to the ends of the earth. 

For him, it is not about progress but lateral movement. More and then less, give and then take.

AND he is able to detach himself from his feelings (example: lack of passion) because he is so good at creating arguments and agreeing with himself.

So, to relate to our discussion, I think me might just be saying, “why bother working any harder if I don’t need to?”. But how much lower is the dude gonna stoop past the Sofology nonsense? Lmfao. 

(6) 💣[THEORY 49] David lacks the intuition to read others. He cannot see people for what they are, and maybe he doesn’t want to. (Could be related to him always wearing a MASK). 

I’ll just repost what I wrote in my response to your ask. I want to elaborate on this, but I have nothing more to go on other than Brad Davidson being a scammer right in front of David’s eyes. 

Onto the copy and paste: 

Could it be that he really is just NOT self aware AT ALL? That he might lack the intuition to read others, so he has developed a weird idea of how to interact socially. I say this because he expresses himself so weirdly. Also, maybe he assumes others wear a mask because he wears so many masks himself. 

So, he doesn’t place value on the way he comes across, only on the words he says?

I mean, and sorry, but let’s illustrate it with his disgusting “relationship”: what the fuck kind of messages is he sending to his kids? to his wife? About love, companionship, partnership, and family (example: “sorry, family, I don’t have time for you because I only have time for - I won’t say it.)? 

BUT it could be that he doesn’t mean to send these kinds of messages? I don’t want to think that he would try to put that image out there on purpose. 

So, what if he really is not aware of himself?? Like, is he THAT selfish that he only thinks about himself and NEVER others? Never even the way they see him? LMao?? Probably not, it might just boil down to a lack of social intuition (hence the “conquering” attitude with women)? That doesn’t make total sense but it does for me?? for now, I guess? I don’t know, lmao. 

(7) 💣 [THEORY 50] David and Gillian’s insecurities as both a compatibility AND incompatibility between them. 

Let’s first discuss the compatibility aspect, and I guess it starts and ends with a similarity. So, they are compatible because they both have the same insecurities about being nothingness. 

To quote Daria, 

[David and Gillian] wear superficiality like a suit of armor, 'cus they’re afraid of looking inside and finding absolutely nothing. 

I think maybe both of them just have that fear. I think it might be because they want so badly to be in a position of power and position of provider. 

They can’t fully accept that they are nothingness and its ok to be nothingness, its ok not have the answer all the time, and its ok have to rely on others when that time comes. 

Notice how they talk about mindfulness/meditation almost to like, demonstrate that they are in sync within themselves but they kind of overlook the fact that no person owes anyone an explanation. They have no need to prove themselves. But it could be that they are just describing their lifestyle, sorry, lmao, I’m just always suspicious lmfao.

So, now let’s discuss the incompatibility. Which I see as the way they respond to their insecurity. 

Gillian = action and progress in the face of fear.

David = the complete opposite, resignation and rationalization in the face of fear (combined with letting himself off the hook with rationalizations)

Literally, Gillovny could be blocked by a situation where Gillian is putting in the effort and David is not. 

Although even I can see that i am very biased towards Gillian because I agree more with acting in the face of fear vs. doing nothing at all. But one is not more correct than the other, it is just my personal preference.

After all, anons keep telling me to resign myself and accept whatever this situation is supposed to be, but that is simply not my way :)

(8) 💣 [THEORY 51] My current theory on why Gillovny is blocked right now:

David and Gillian are the ones blocking Gillovny.

Its funny how similar they are in terms of really deep, personal, and unusual traits. David and Monique are the same on the surface (and apparently he can’t see past the surface), but David and Gillian have like… twin dark souls. 

I think with both David and Gillian there will just always be the internal conflicts they have within themselves. They have an image they want to portray, they want to be seen as strong but also vulnerable. I think they want to teach but still see themselves as learning. 

** They want the position of power but also have an insatiable greed themselves, as if they need someone else to be in power as well to provide for them....!!!!!

(I know Gillian said that she wouldn’t like a relationship where the man is the boss, and I love her for saying that, but all humans, male and female, need their partner to be a provider of something.)

** and they want to give but maybe their own greed AND personal insecurities stop them from involving themselves completely. I will offer this as a potential blockage of the Gillovny relationship. Literally, insatiable greed *fans self* mixed with crippling self doubt *cries and writes a gentle love letter to both David and Gillian that I will never send*. 

AS IN: 

Their greed = insatiable need.

And their insecurity = cannot even act to fulfill each other’s needs. 

SO WHAT IF they have a NEED they can’t satisfy because they are literally paralyzed by fear from their insecurities? 

... They have a NEED and they can’t ACT? ooooooooh bby!!!!!!!!!!

*** I could actually see them as being so short sighted in this relationship, probably from how emotionally exciting it must be, that they cannot even see that all they need to do is... ACT. LMAO. And by act I mean take it to the next level. Enough of the boy/girl sh*t everyone can see that this is something about a MAN/WOMAN. 

Maybe David and Gillian show their true colours when they are separated:

David shows he is a boy with his boy/girl nonsense “relationship”

Gillian shows she is a woman with her man/woman relationship. 

?? I’ll just leave it at that for now. 

Its just... If only they could get it into their hard heads that there is no need to hide... from their own love...

Anyways, thanks so much, anon. let’s talk anytime! 

[adaliacom105]

Blog 5

Hello classmates, professor, and anyone else that has stumbled upon this blog of mine! So you have probably noticed the trend by now that all the other blogs have something to do with movies. Well, this blog is no different! This week it was superhero movies, and they were fantastic! It was an interesting experience for me since they were live-action, and I usually prefer animated hero movies instead. The Marvel movies really impressed me and confused me since there were some characters I didn’t know because I have only seen their animated counterparts. So I might be watching more Marvel movies soon because of how good they were.

So now that you know what I have been watching, let’s get on with the topic for this blog. In this one, I will be creating my own superhero, and I am both hyped and scared for it. There is so much detail when it comes to creating your own character I learned that the hard way in my Sequential Arts class. Well, let’s get down to business then.

First things first let us start with their name and superhero name.

I have chosen the name Aelita Stones. I chose this name for two reasons. The first reason being that in my family by complete coincidence all the first-born female’s names end with the letter A. So I decided to do the same here. The second reason being it’s the name of a character from one of my favorite cartoons, Code Lyoko. Code Lyoko is a show about five teens who travel to a virtual world in order to fight Xana, an evil program trying to take over the world. Any character outside the group thinks it sounds like a game, and it does. In Code Lyoko, Aelita starts off as a being that lives in the virtual world called Lyoko. Since it's kind of like my character's power, I decided to use the name. This then brings me to the hero name, and that would be Player 1.

What does Aelita look like?

Well, she has dark brown hair with some pink highlights and chocolate brown eyes to match. She has a roundish face, and her eyes can be seen sporting some eye bags from all nighters and her mom refusing her to skip classes. Aelita prefers comfort over fashion, so she can be seen wearing baggy clothes. She is never seen without a sweater, whether it be tied around her waist or properly worn. She is also short...why? Well, because I refuse to make someone taller than me!

Now let's move on to her powers and how she got them.

Aelita’s powers are that when she uses this special handheld console, she can take classes and traits like from videogames and apply them to herself and others. For example she can use the handheld console and become a mage, an assassin, or a fighter class. Whenever she chooses a class she gets a new change of clothes that match the type she is currently using. The same mechanics of videogames apply to Aelita as well, which means levels, exp, traits, stats, special abilities, health, and extra lives. At first, she only has access to three classes, which are Mage, Warrior, and Thief, which all begin at level 1. All new class levels start at level 1. In order to unlock more classes, there are conditions that need to be met, but most are through leveling up. To do this, Aelita needs exp, which she can get in three ways. The first way would be going inside the special handheld console that gave her powers. Inside it has training and levels to help her master her powers. The second way would be real-life battles like you see in the games. The third and final way would be to do real-life tasks or ‘quests’ such as going to the store because mom asked, they don’t give much, but it’s still nice. In addition to training, her console can be used to store things like how bags in games are able to store many things. It doesn’t matter the size; it can all go into the console….., even humans. Another power she possesses is to give a class to another person, and they become player 2. With this power, she doesn’t need to be close to the person she is bestowing the power upon; she just needs to see them at least once, and they become an option on her list. She then gains control of the person like a playable character, and the area becomes the stage with boundaries within a limit. The downside to this is that they start off as level one unless she has taken over you before. In good news, they start off with three lives. After you die the second time, she has it set to be stored in the console in order not to risk it. Aelita can let them control themselves and join in the battle if she doesn’t or can’t stay on the sidelines anymore. She can make Players 2 and 3, and they can’t be the same class, or it causes some strain on her body. With enough training, this can be improved upon. She can also max out her traits or push up her level temporarily, but it leaves her drained and shouldn’t be done that often.

How did she get this awesome handheld console, you ask?

Well, she actually wasn’t supposed to get it at all. Aelita is a pretty known gamer, so when she opened her mail one day and saw a video game console, she thought it was some company who wanted to use her to promote their products, so she didn’t think anything of it. So Aelita was pretty surprised when she went to test drive the new console and all of a sudden she was in new clothes and broke her door. There are plenty of people trying to take this new power from her, but she has decided she likes it and won’t give it up!

The next thing would be Aelita’s history.

She was born on September 16, 2002, in Fortniles. Why that date? It's the date from one of the first games I ever played, Animal Crossing on the Gamecube (The very first would be Sonic on the Gameboy….I feel old). I choose Fortniles because I made it up, and it sounds cool in my head.

Who are her parents? Well, they are Flint Stones and Alexandra Stones. Flint is a doctor, and his wife is a zoologist. I one hundred percent picked Flint’s name because of Flintstones. Now there is a family tradition of naming the firstborn in his family after a stone. The two have been together for 20 years now. Next is the siblings.

Aelita has an older brother by two years named Jasper and was the one who actually got her into video games. They have a typical brother-sister relationship of bugging each other and always having each other's back. Aelita also has a younger sister named Yasmin, who is six years old. Aelita is usually the one to babysit her, teach her things, and spoil her a bit.

The next bit would be her childhood and adolescence.

Aelita is an indoor child, which means she prefers to be inside rather than outside. This would lead her brother to teach her about videogames and how to play them. They would then play with each other and rely on one another for a part the other wasn’t so good at. As the years went by, she started playing more and more games and became better at them as well. This then leads us into her adolescence. She has now become an awkward teen and has trouble making friends outside of her video games. She goes to school and is pretty smart, and has been caught for playing games during class multiple times. Her favorite class is English because the teacher is not picky about the subjects of the essays, so Aelita likes the freedom. She hates the gym as she has poor physical health and bad eating habits. This then gets in the way of her hero work as she has to get in shape, which eventually lessens her hatred of gym (curse them making you use effort). 

The next question is if Aelita is a hero, anti-hero, or villain?

The answer is Aelita is a hero, but since she is a teen and not fully mature, there are incidents where she abuses her new found powers. For example, temporarily maxing out her charm attribute inorder to convince her teacher to give back everything he had confiscated from her or using it to get a new friend.

The next question is to talk about her psyche, level of intelligence, and emotional attributes.

Aelita isn’t the fittest; as said before, she hates the gym, is an indoor child, and doesn’t have the best eating habits. She is a little chubby. This leads to a rocky start for her superhero career, but as time moves forward, she does get better and lose some weight. As for intelligence, she is very smart and usually receives 90s on her test, for she knows her parents would kill her and take away her technology otherwise. All the strategy games and puzzles have helped her think outside the box and in battle. For emotional attributes, well, she can be shy and awkward at first and then becomes loud and awkward as you get to know her. She is also excitable when in front of something she believes to be awesome. What does she advocate for? Aelita’s motto is you do you as long as it's nothing terrible. Her current goal is to win a gaming tournament and to live up to the heroes in her games and in life. Is she successful at it? She is trying hard. There have been successes and failures, but she is learning.

In terms of who they are, likened from the DC Universe and Marvel Cinematic, I would say Firestorm and Blue Beetle from DC and Spiderman from the Marvel Cinematic. Firestorm was the first one that came to mind when answering this question, and that is because of his personality. He can be smart at times, but at others, he is the goofy voice in a severe situation, but when it comes down to it, you can rely on him. Blue Beetle was because the stories are kind of similar. Aelita gets a strange package that gives her powers, and Jaime Reyes gets a blue beetle from space stuck to his back one day that gives him armor; both of these events changed them both. I say Spiderman because I imagine Aelita to act in a similar manner.

The final thing to talk about would be Aelita’s future.

How and when she dies? 

I honestly don’t know that quite yet. Aelita would prefer not to die at all, but if she had to, she would like to die knowing she did everything she could rather than be sloppy. Like she imagines it from the movies where they sacrifice their lives for others to go on but understands that it’s not how it works. It could be from anything really, and it doesn't have to be super related otherwise. Until then, she continues to live until that day comes.

What legacy does she leave behind? That would be the new Player 1. She ends up passing the torch to someone new to take over her position as a hero. She actually helps mentor the new hero through her handy dandy console, where she has collected her memories and preserved her in a way so she could help the next generation as best she can.

Well, we're finally done with introducing my very own superhero, Aelita Stones or better known as Player 1, or at least to those in that fictional world where she lives in. Thank you for reading this long blog, and I hope you enjoyed my character.

[virtualsilver]

Tag meme

I was tagged by @ferromans to answer the following:

1. What is your zodiac and is generally accurate?

My sign is Taurus, but. Uh, I don't really believe in it? At all? So I never check and as such, I don’t know how accurate it might be. I remember checking the horoscope a few times when I was a kid/teen and it didn’t ever fit or sound credible. I also realise as I’m typing this that maybe reading a generic horoscope is the equivalent of having an opinion on a fandom based on that one shitpost you saw that one time. I mean, I still don’t believe in it, but I haven’t had much exposure to it beyond pop culture, nor have I cared to look for more. Which is not to say I hate it or anything, I think it’s great that some people get something out of it!

Just the other day I heard a philosopher say something I really loved when asked about it, and it went something like this: astrology, like psychoanalysis, is a great metaphor, and one which can be really useful to people because, as all metaphors, it helps us think about things and it facilitates seeing things we might have missed, or putting the proverbial puzzle pieces in previously unthought of configurations. Whether there’s something there or not (I personally think not), it can be useful and fun and I respect that.

2. What is your Hogwarts house?

My Hogwarts House is Ravenclaw! For years, I had no idea, and a few months ago when I was asked about it I thought it through and decided I was probably some variation of adhd-riddled, procrastinating Ravenclaw who got way too excited about reading that one book or researching that one thing that’s like, mentioned in passing in page 3 of the book we’re supposed to be reading, and I end up wasting several days on a side-quest instead of doing the thing I was supposed to do, oops.

I took the Pottermore quiz recently and guess what? I got 86% Ravenclaw! Yay, I know myself! Took long enough, honestly, I started reading Harry Potter in, like, 2002?

3. What is something you hate that everyone else seems to like?

This one is so hard. My mind’s going to… a notp of mine, lmao. Um… I absolutely hated Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (the movie) when it came out, because it was the first movie I watched after reading the book (the previous two I watched before I read the books) and I was super hyped but they changed so many things for no good reason?? I was so disappointed.

As a teen I hated the music that was popular where I live, like would-leave-the-room hate it, I would feel physically disgusted and get a stress headache if I had to endure it for too long. I still don’t like most of that type of music, but I’ve grown to not care about it.

4. What is something you like that everyone else seems to hate?

Uh, I don’t know, can’t think of anything specific. I’ve had some somewhat niche tastes in art (music and films), so maybe that? I also like and respect furries, though I’ve never knowingly met one. I think they’re valid and people need to get over their prejudice.

5. Do you have any pets? If so, what are there names? If no, do you want any?

No, I don’t. I’d like a cat. 

6. When something is deemed ‘problematic’ do you drop it immediately, or try to learn the context?

Funny you should ask! I never drop a thing because others are saying it’s problematic, though I will drop it if it makes me uncomfortable (and a lot of things that would be considered ‘problematic’ do, in fact, make me uncomfortable). I will try to learn the context if I care (if it’s a thing I’m engaging with or might want to in the future, I care. If it’s some random show/whatever I don’t care about, I won’t check unless something in the accusations make me curious).

But the thing is, I noticed very recently that if I read discourse about something accusing it of being problematic, I will consciously decide not make a judgement of it… but unconsciously, I do start feeling more negatively towards it. I’m much less likely to check out a movie, or artist, or whatever after I saw it being called out for something I personally consider problematic. And this bothers me. Because I know what discourse is like, there might be nothing to it. I have seriously read the most ridiculous shit before, I know I can’t just take strangers’ opinions as fact, and yet. I need to look out for that.

7. Your stance on the pineapple pizza discourse.

Dude. Buddy. Pal. Live your life. Treat yo self. Let people put whatever they want in their mouths. We don’t kinkshame on this blog.

8. If you had to pick a fantasy universe to live in, which would it be?

Ohh, this may be the hardest question. I like the X-Men universe a lot, but let’s be honest: that universe is a mess and I wouldn’t want to have to deal with supervillains. Star Trek is supposed to be a really great one? I don’t know much about it, though. I don’t know, I’d like to live in an alternate universe where people are better. Less cruel, more empathetic and less easily corrupted. I can’t think of any specific one right now.

9. Coolest place you’ve ever traveled?

Oh, man. This is probably Machu Picchu. It’s gorgeous. It makes you feel small and insignificant, but in a good way? Like, it made me think of all the generations before me, all the people who’ve walked these paths, who’ve seen these breathtaking views, you know what I mean? I felt more connected to the earth and more present and in the moment than I normally do. It was... spiritual? And I’m not a spiritually inclined person. It felt joyful and wondrous and just significant

10. If you could do one thing to Donald Trump, what would it be?

If I could do anything I wanted, no matter how unrealistic, I’d indoctrinate him. Better yet, I’d convince him of my political views and then I’d sit back and watch him turn on his supporters and do the exact opposite of what everyone’s expecting of him, and hopefully he’d manage to do some good.

11. Have you ever tried to runaway?

No, I haven’t. It never even crossed my mind once. I am incredibly privileged in that I have a loving, supportive family, so I was never in a position where it would make sense.

Thank you for tagging me @ferromans! This was fun :D 

I’m stealing my questions from a previous ask meme:

1. Are you a warm climate person or a cold climate person? (As in, which do you prefer, regardless of where you live.)

2. What’s your favourite dish/what’s a dish you choose regularly when you’re treating yourself?

3. If you could spend some time in a fictional universe as a visitor, say one full year, and then come back, which would you choose?

4. Is there a band or singer that you’re currently obsessed with?

5. What would you answer if presented with the trolley problem? (The original one, as explained in the first paragraph of that link)

6. What’s your drink of choice?

7. Do you have a fond childhood memory that you could share with us?

8. What was your first fandom?

9. What’s your dream job? It doesn’t have to be realistic, anything goes.

10. How long does it take you to shower?

11. What’s a work of art that changed your outlook on something? (Could be a book, a movie, a fanfic, a painting, a graffitied quote you read on a wall in a public bathroom, literally anything.)

I’m tagging @fhetabulous-fumbduck, @pi-feet-per-attocentury, @artdefines06, @architect-of-ages, @nebula-cnidaria, @literallywhateverfan, @fly-into-infinity, @melodyrider and anyone else who wants to do it! 

If you do it, please @me so that I don’t miss it!

[deadmediafuneralparty]

Ever notice how many books there are about the Internet these days? About 13,493 so far, right? And how about "multimedia?" There are 8,784 books on this topic, even though no one has ever successfully defined the term. CD-ROM -- is there a single marketable topic left that hasn't been shovelwared into the vast digital mire that is CD-ROM? And how about the "Information Superhighway" and "Virtual Reality"? Every magazine on the planet has done awestruck vaporware cover stories on these two consensus-hallucinations. Our culture is experiencing a profound radiation of new species of media. The centralized, dinosaurian one- to-many media that roared and trampled through the 20th century are poorly adapted to the postmodern technological environment. The new media environment is aswarm with lumbering toothy digital mammals. It's all lynxes here, and gophers there, plus big fat venomous webcrawlers, appearing in Pleistocene profusion. This is all well and good, and it's lovely that so many people are paying attention to this. Nothing gives me greater pleasure as a professional garage futurist than to ponder some weird new mutant medium and wonder how this squawking little monster is going to wriggle its way into the interstices between human beings. Still, there's a difference between this pleasurable contemplation of the technological sublime and an actual coherent understanding of the life and death of media. We have no idea in hell what we are doing to ourselves with these new media technologies, and no consistent way even to discuss the subject. Something constructive ought to be done about this situation. I can't do much about it, personally, because I'm booked up to the eyeballs until the end of the millennium. So is my good friend Richard Kadrey, author of the COVERT CULTURE SOURCEBOOK. Both Kadrey and myself, however, recently came to a joint understanding that what we'd really like to see at this cultural conjunction is an entirely new kind of book on media. A media book of the dead. Plenty of wild wired promises are already being made for all the infant media. What we need is a somber, thoughtful, thorough, hype-free, even lugubrious book that honors the dead and resuscitates the spiritual ancestors of today's mediated frenzy. A book to give its readership a deeper, paleontological perspective right in the dizzy midst of the digital revolution. We need a book about the failures of media, the collapses of media, the supercessions of media, the strangulations of media, a book detailing all the freakish and hideous media mistakes that we should know enough now not to repeat, a book about media that have died on the barbed wire of technological advance, media that didn't make it, martyred media, dead media. THE HANDBOOK OF DEAD MEDIA. A naturalist's field guide for the communications paleontologist. Neither Richard Kadrey nor myself are currently in any position to write this proposed handbook. However, we both feel that our culture truly requires this book: this rich, witty, insightful, profusely illustrated, perfectbound, acid-free-paper coffee-table book, which is to be brought out, theoretically, eventually, by some really with-it, cutting-edge early-21st century publisher. The kind of book that will appear in seventeen different sections of your local chainstore: Political Affairs, Postmodern Theory, Computer Science, Popular Mechanics, Design Studies, the coffeetable artbook section, the remainder table -- you know, whatever. It's a rather rare phenomenon for an established medium to die. If media make it past their Golden Vaporware stage, they usually expand wildly in their early days and then shrink back to some protective niche as they are challenged by later and more highly evolved competitors. Radio didn't kill newspapers, TV didn't kill radio or movies, video and cable didn't kill broadcast network TV; they just all jostled around seeking a more perfect app. But some media do, in fact, perish. Such as: the phenakistoscope. The teleharmonium. The Edison wax cylinder. The stereopticon. The Panorama. Early 20th century electric searchlight spectacles. Morton Heilig's early virtual reality. Telefon Hirmondo. The various species of magic lantern. The pneumatic transfer tubes that once riddled the underground of Chicago. Was the Antikythera Device a medium? How about the Big Character Poster Democracy Wall in Peking in the early 80s? Never heard of any of these? Well, that's the problem. Both Kadrey and I happen to be vague aficionados of this field of study, and yet we both suspect that there must be hundreds of dead media, known to few if any. It would take the combined and formidable scholarly talents of, say, Carolyn "When Old Technologies Were New" Marvin and Ricky "Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women" Jay to do this ambitious project genuine justice. Though we haven't asked, we kinda suspect that these two distinguished scholars are even busier than me and Kadrey, who, after all, are just science fiction writers who spend most of our time watching Chinese videos, reading fanzines and making up weird crap. However. We do have one, possibly crucial, advantage. We have Internet access. If we can somehow convince the current digital media community-at-large that DEAD MEDIA is a worthwhile project, we believe that we may be able to compile a useful public-access net archive on this subject. We plan to begin with the DEAD MEDIA World Wide Web Page, on a site to-be-announced. Move on, perhaps, to alt.dead.media. Compile the Dead Media FAQ. We hope to exploit the considerable strengths of today's cutting-edge media to create a general public- domain homage to the media pioneers of the past. Here's the deal. Kadrey and I are going to start pooling our notes. We're gonna make those notes freely available to anybody on the Net. If we can get enough net.parties to express interest and pitch in reports, stories, and documentation about dead media, we're willing to take on the hideous burdens of editing and system administration -- no small deal when it comes to this supposedly "free" information. We both know that authors are supposed to jealously guard really swell ideas like this, but we strongly feel that that just ain't the way to do a project of this sort. A project of this sort is a spiritual quest and an act in the general community interest. Our net heritage belongs to all netkind. If you yourself want to exploit these notes to write the DEAD MEDIA HANDBOOK -- sure, it's our "idea," our "intellectual property," but hey, we're cyberpunks, we write for magazines like BOING BOING, we can't be bothered with that crap in this situation. Write the book. Use our notes and everybody's else's. We won't sue you, we promise. Do it. Knock yourself out. I'll go farther, ladies and gentlemen. To prove the profound commercial potential of this tilt at the windmill, I'll personally offer a CRISP FIFTY-DOLLAR BILL for the first guy, gal, or combination thereof to write and publish THE DEAD MEDIA HANDBOOK. You can even have the title if you want it. Just keep in mind that me and Kadrey (or any combination thereof) reserve the right to do a book of our own on the same topic if you fail to sufficiently scratch our itch. The prospect of "competition" frightens us not at all. It never has, frankly. If there's room for 19,785 "Guide to the Internet" books, there has got to be room for a few useful tomes on dead media. Think of it this way. How long will it be before the much-touted World Wide Web interface is itself a dead medium? And what will become of all those billions of thoughts, words, images and expressions poured onto the Internet? Won't they vanish just like the vile lacquered smoke from a burning pile of junked Victrolas? As a net.person, doesn't this stark realization fill you with a certain deep misgiving, a peculiarly postmodern remorse, an almost Heian Japanese sense of the pathos of lost things? If it doesn't, why doesn't it? It ought to. Speaking of dead media and mono no aware -- what about those little poems that Lady Murasaki used to write and stick inside cleft sticks? To be carried by foot- messager to the bamboo-shrouded estate of some lucky admirer after a night's erotic tryst? That was a medium. That medium was very alive once, a mainstay of one of the most artistically advanced cultures on earth. And isn't it dead? What are we doing today that is the functional equivalent of the cleft sticks of Murasaki Shikibu, the world's first novelist? If we ignore her historical experience, how will we learn from our own? Listen to the following, all you digital hipsters. This is Jaqueline Goddard speaking in January 1995. Jacqueline was born in 1911, and she was one of the 20th century's great icons of bohemian femininity. Man Ray photographed her in Paris in 1930, and if we can manage it without being sued by the Juliet Man Ray Trust, we're gonna put brother Man Ray's knock-you-down-and-stomp-you- gorgeous image of Jacqueline up on our vaporware Website someday. She may be the patron saint of this effort. Jacqueline testifies: "After a day of work, the artists wanted to get away from their studios, and get away from what they were creating. They all met in the cafes to argue about this and that, to discuss their work, politics and philosophy.... We went to the bar of La Coupole. Bob, the barman, was a terrible nice chap... As there was no telephone in those days everybody used him to leave messages. At the Dome we also had a little place behind the door for messages. The telephone was the death of Montparnasse." "The telephone was the death of Montparnasse." Mull that Surrealist testimony over a little while, all you cafe-society modemites. Jacqueline may not grok TCP/IP, but she has been there and done that. I haven't stopped thinking about that remark since I first read it. For whom does the telephone bell toll? It tolls for me and thee -- sooner or later. Can you help us? We wish you would, and think you ought to. Bruce Sterling -- bruces@well.com Richard Kadrey -- kadrey@well.com  The DEAD MEDIA Project A Modest Proposal and a Public Appeal by Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com

http://www.deadmedia.org/modest-proposal.html